The Devil Takes a Bride

After all, not every moment in the tea shop had been dreadful.

* * *

JEFFREY’S PRIVATE CHAMBER was situated in the front hall of the first floor, overlooking the entrance to Blackwood Hall. It was twenty-four steps long and sixteen steps wide.

The master suite, which Mr. Cox frequently brought up in the hopes that Jeffrey would one day occupy it, was at the southern corner of the first floor. It had two walls of windows, with three windows each, overlooking the more picturesque bits of his estate. It was also thirty-one steps long and twenty-three steps wide.

Mr. Cox believed that Jeffrey preferred not to sleep where his father had passed away, and Jeffrey was content for him to assume so. But in truth, he preferred it here, in the quiet comfort of eight. It settled him, made him feel at ease.

Until today. This room was uncomfortably close to the new Lady Merryton’s suite of rooms.

He had taken refuge in his rooms when they’d arrived from Bath, pouring himself a generous portion of whiskey and removing his boots. He’d sat down onto the upholstered chair before his hearth, had leaned his head back and closed his eyes, his mind racing around the improbable fact that he was now married to a woman he did not know.

As he sat there in his quiet, he heard the servants in the hall. “Have a care, Willie, mind you not make a noise,” one footman said harshly to the other. “I told you, one bucket, each hand. If Mrs. Garland notices you’ve sloshed water on the carpets, she’ll have you sent to the stables.”

Jeffrey slowly opened his eyes. He realized that they were hauling buckets of water so that Lady Merryton could bathe.

He downed the rest of his whiskey, clenched his jaw and closed his eyes again. He tried his best not to imagine her naked body sliding into steaming water, her breasts floating on the surface. But the more he tried to banish the images, the faster they came at him. He saw water swirling around her sex, caressing her as he ached to do. He saw her lifting a slender, tapered leg from the water and running her hands over it, then her breasts, then leaning her head against the back of the bath and sliding her hands lower to where he wanted to put his hands—

Jeffrey suddenly came up with a start. He walked to the windows and flung one open, leaning into the casing, taking deep breaths of air. He had to control himself and his ugly thoughts. He had to learn to exist in this house with that woman—that treacherous, beautiful woman.

He whirled around from the window, grabbed up his boot. He silently counted to eight, then shoved his foot in. Again on the other leg. And then he strode out of his rooms, bound for the study, his fist tapping in a futile effort to ease his racing thoughts.

There he remained, burying his thoughts in an avalanche of work. He reviewed invoices, examined the ledgers, wrote his own correspondence. At ten of seven, Cox entered the study. “Will you dress for supper, my lord?”

“No,” Jeffrey said without looking up from his work. His response no doubt caused Cox a bit of consternation, for Jeffrey was nothing if not habitual. “Quite a lot to be done,” he said vaguely, and looked at the papers before him. “Please inform her ladyship of when and where we might dine.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Jeffrey stared blindly at the page before him as Cox went out, counting the butler’s footsteps. Six. Only six. Everything around him was off-kilter, out of balance, and Jeffrey didn’t know how to get it back. He couldn’t avoid the feminine presence in his house. He could already feel it seeping in through the walls, surrounding him like a vapor. He had spent so much of his adult life carefully constructing the boundaries around him that he’d not thought of what he might do if those boundaries were breached.

He certainly didn’t know what to do now, and continued working, filling his head with figures and the problems of managing a large estate until the supper hour. As much as he would have liked to have dined alone in his rooms, his sense of order and habit was much stronger. He strode down the hallway—sixteen steps in all—to the family dining room. He walked in, and the woman, his wife, was standing at the buffet.

His entrance clearly startled her; she jerked around, knocking into the buffet and causing the stack of plates to rattle. She quickly put her hands around the plates to still them and smiled apprehensively.

Her hands, he noticed, were slender and elegant. Long, tapered fingers. He looked down, pushing an image of those fingers sliding into body orifices.

“Good evening, my lord,” she said with as much cheer as one could muster, given the day. Her voice sounded melodic.

“Good evening, Lady Merryton.”

“Ah...Grace,” she said, as if perhaps he hadn’t remembered it, as if he hadn’t signed a marriage book and a special license with her name clearly spelled out for all eternity: Grace Elizabeth Diana Cabot. Twenty-four letters in all.

“You will forgive me if I do not feel the familiarity necessary to address you by your given name as yet.” He thought he was being helpful. He couldn’t very well explain to her that certain things had to happen before he could call her by her given name—even he wasn’t sure what—but he couldn’t speak to her as if they were known to each other. As if he had courted her, had asked her permission to address her more intimately.

Clearly, his helpful explanation had not had the desired effect; he could see her delicate swallow course her neck. She pressed her lips together and nodded politely.

She apparently had given up any pretense of mourning her stepfather, as she was wearing a shimmering gold gown with intricate embroidery of crystals on the skirt. They caught the light and made it look as if she were sparkling. The gown hugged her body tightly, and her breasts, heaven help him, were two creamy mounds that looked as if they would burst from her décolletage at any moment. Her golden hair was swept up in a simple roll at her nape. Jewels that matched the glitter of those around her throat dangled at her earlobes.

She was, in a word, lovely.

Jeffrey gestured to a seat at the table; a footman instantly moved to hold the chair for her.

She sat elegantly, her hands in her lap, her gaze on the setting before her. Jeffrey admired her long neck, the tiny wisps of hair that were not caught in the roll of her hair. She took a deep breath, her chest lifting with it, then smoothly falling again as she silently released it.

Jeffrey sat heavily in his seat at the head of the table, prepared for what he assumed would be a difficult evening. He tried not to look at this stranger, this beauty, his wife. To look at her was to imagine the claiming of her, the possession of her body. It was within his right, but Jeffrey could not bear it. He feared what he would do, that he would lose control, that he could, God forbid, hurt her. It was one thing to seek the company of women who shared his appetites, or could be persuaded to like them with a generous purse. It was something else entirely when the object of his desire was a virginal debutante.

He couldn’t help himself; he tapped his forefinger against the table eight times as nonchalantly as he possibly could.

“Shall we serve, my lord?” Cox said behind him.

Yes, please serve, let this day be done! “Please,” he said, and leaned back, his fists on his thighs, his jaw clenched.

The place settings had been laid perfectly—the water goblet four inches above the center of the plate, the wine goblet four inches to the right of that. The china plate, purchased from a rather desperate aristocratic Frenchman, boasted a fleur-de-lis in the center of the plate. The top of the fleur-de-lis pointed to the center of the water goblet. Jeffrey did not look at the plate’s border; it was a terrible hodgepodge of scrolling evergreen boughs and tiny fleur-de-lis that made no sense to him and disturbed him.

“You have a lovely home.”

The dulcet tone of her voice slipped through Jeffrey; he risked a look at her. The first thing he’d truly noticed about her—the first time he’d seen her in light, in that wretched office before they were wed—was her eyes. They were hazel, more green than brown, and they reminded him of the colors of late summer. Her lashes were darkly golden but long, her brows feathery arches over her eyes. He’d been struck by her beauty, something that he’d failed to notice the night in the tea shop.

What he noticed tonight was that her fingers were tapping lightly on the stem of the wine goblet. She had pulled the goblet out of its place, closer to her, and that it was out of place gave him a feeling of uneasiness. “Thank you,” he said. He looked away.

“Have you always resided here?”

Bloody hell, conversation could not be avoided. He turned back to her, his gaze sweeping over her. She was wearing a choker of amber stones about her neck, and he could imagine himself removing that necklace, his hands sliding over her shoulders, the jewels sliding into her cleavage, followed by his fingers.

That image was inexplicably and unavoidably followed by one of him at her breast, his mouth surrounding the tip of it, his tongue flicking across the hardened peak.

She was speaking, he realized. Jeffrey pressed the heel of his shoe into the carpet to settle himself. “Pardon?”

“I was inquiring if your family has been long at Blackwood Hall.”

“Generations,” he responded tersely. “This has been the Merryton seat since the title was bestowed on us. I am the fifth earl.” Her lips were full, plush and an amazing shade of coral.

“Do you live alone here?”

He shifted in his seat. “Mostly.”

She looked as if she wanted to ask more, but thankfully, the serving of the meal ended any talk for the time being. When Cox had filled their plates with lamb and potatoes, and had filled their wineglasses, Jeffrey sent him and the footman out with a single gesture.

He picked up his fork and began to eat. He was aware that his wife picked uneasily at her food as if she had no appetite, but drank her wine with more enthusiasm. When he finished, he settled back in his seat and placed his napkin on the table beside his plate. He noticed she’d only taken a few bites. “Do you not find the food to your liking?”

“What? No, it’s perfectly fine.”

Then why did she not eat it? He shifted his gaze to the buffet. Eight drawers, four by four.

“If I may,” she said, “I should like to...offer an apology for what happened.”

She had apologized to him. He didn’t know what she thought he might do with another apology.