Chapter 3

Chapter Three

M adame Juliet flourished the wooden cock before her like a sword. She pinned Liam with a stare cold as death and pointed the cock at the book in his hands. "You are not listening, my lord."

No, he wasn't. He was thinking of Cora's eyes when she'd cursed him from across the room the last time they'd spoken. Anger there, passion, too—a heady concoction. He was imagining her as the lady in the book he read, imagining the man as himself. Would she like to bend over a table for him?

Madame Juliet clasped the phallus behind her back and paced the length of his hotel room and back. "Sprawled across that chair, brooding."

"Reading, you mean."

" Brooding . That's what you're doing." She sighed. "Lord, I tire of your brooding."

"Then leave." Elbow propped on the chair arm, he scratched his chin, lifted one booted ankle to rest on top of the opposite knee. "I did not invite you here."

Madame Juliet stopped in front of him, hands (and wooden cock) on hips. "I educate you not for your sake, my lord, but for your wife's. If you are as tepid in bed as you say you are, she needs all the help you can acquire." She held the phallus out to him. "Take this and show me the proper rhythm you'd use to—"

He brushed the toy aside, snapped his book closed, tossed it onto the table, and stood. "I'm off to Jackson's." Leaving seemed to be the only way he could avoid this woman. And he had to avoid her because she'd already caused trouble. More to the point, she'd caused rumors, gossip that made the men at Jackson's slap him on the back and produced glares from the ladies he happened to pass on Bond Street or in Hyde Park.

He found his coat hanging on the top corner of the opened wardrobe and slung it on.

She tsked. "You're going to wear your knuckles to bones."

Boxing provided the only outlet for his energy these days. Fencing helped, too. Riding down Rotten Row in the early hours before everyone awoke helped. Most days he started with a ride, found Angelo's by noon, and as the sun sank below the London skyline, he found himself at Jackson's. But nothing fully doused the desire coursing through him. Desire to show his wife he could damn well do better.

"You have such nice hands," Madam Juliet cooed. "I cannot abide your hurting them. Your wife will not like it. Put those hands to better use."

"I'd like to," he said, circling her as he strode for the door. "But my wife won't let me."

He didn't even know where she was. He'd tried following her about the country, but she moved more quickly than he did, bouncing from country estate to country estate, from house party to house party like a leaf in the wind, whipped up and away from him before he could take a single step in her direction.

The proprietress of Mother Circe's, however, had pinpointed his location at Hotel Hestia more quickly than a dog sniffs out a bone or a rake sniffs out a lady's floundering virtue. He had, apparently, piqued her interest. Now he couldn't get the woman to go away. She didn't seem to care what rumors her presence here rippled through the ton . She'd named him her little project and would not be persuaded to leave him be.

To be fair, though… he had learned from the madame. Much. All of it theoretical, intellectual, lessons without a single touch, without revealing even an inch of improper skin. Not even an arousal unless he happened to close his eyes and think of Cora taking the woman's place, Cora demonstrating first one position and then another.

He'd become a faithful dog, loyal but unwanted. Then whoever slapped his back would howl with laughter if they knew.

He dropped his forehead against the door with a thud . "I'm going to go mad."

Madame Juliet produced a commiserating hum. "Unfulfilled desire has been known to have that effect. You must figure a way back into your wife's good graces or risk losing every bit of common sense to the throbbing of your cock. Come, sit, my lord, and let me teach you about this." She waved the phallus between them.

"And what, besides its simply outrageous size, is notable about that?"

"It's diverting. And your lady might enjoy it if you use it on her. If she has, as you say, a particular literary taste, you will not shock her with such… toys."

Would Cora enjoy the use of such devices? He groaned and dropped back into his chair. What a green boy he must have seemed to her, meeting her in pitch dark to preserve her modesty, raising the hem of her shift and plowing into her with little foreplay but for innocent kisses about her mouth and neck.

What did he know about how viscounts bedded their brides? He'd studied! He'd worried. He'd tried his best to get it right. And in the end, he'd failed her. Because even if he'd gotten the viscount part right, he'd gotten the Cora part wrong.

"Marriage is deuced confusing," he said. Wasn't marriage. It was him . Always had been. Some men could do no wrong. Liam could do no right.

"So I've heard, and so I am pleased I will never wed. But, my lord, if you can convince your lady to listen to you, if you can just speak with one another, then—"

"I can seduce her?"

"Hm." She slapped the phallus against her palm three times, thinking. "I cannot speak to your success in such an endeavor as you've never tried to seduce me." She twisted her mouth to the side. "But you can always bring her to me. I am sure I can educate the both of you together, and—"

"No." He rose once more, shaking his limbs. "Jackson's." A necessity. He steered Madame Juliet toward the door and out of the room. "You must leave."

She grinned. "Confidence. Dominance. You've got it. You must remember that's the true secret to a happy bedding. Do not hesitate. Know what you want, what she wants, and be ruthless in attaining both. Lady Norton will love it." She winked.

He slammed the door, and he should have felt guilty about it, but her muffled chuckle from the hallway alleviated him of any sort of pity for the brothel owner.

Perhaps she had the right of it. Perhaps Cora needed a confident husband to guide her in her new life as viscountess. One who tore ruthlessly toward what he wanted. He could do that. He felt ruthless, desire hard and tight within him, anger like lightning skittering across his skin. She was running from him. And hiding.

He was trying to make things right, and she was refusing to let him.

He'd spent his entire life doing things that didn't quite suit him. Every action and reaction an ill-fitting suit of clothes only just hiding the plague of a human being he couldn't help but be. God, wouldn't his father be livid if he were alive? To see his son take a wife and lose her within a month. If he'd been angry enough to lock Liam away in a windowless room for an entire week after discovering him with that girl from the village, what would he do now? Call down God's vengeance on Liam's head, that's what. But Liam was no longer a vicar, and he was no longer obliged to live by his father's rules.

No, he had to live by an entirely new set of rules. Those dictated by his grim grandmother, self-ordained defender of the Norton title from… well, from Liam. Or presumably anyone who'd not been raised in the proper ways of title having.

He stepped to the window and threw it open. Juliet always left a sweet scent behind. Not unpleasant, but not for him. Inhaling the not at all fresh London air did nothing to rid him of it. It clung to his shirt. So, he threw off everything and pulled new linen from his trunk. Arms full, he paused.

What did it mean to live out of a trunk, to live in a place meant for travelers, those going and coming but never staying? He had several homes. And he'd ceded them all to a wife he barely knew. He'd sacrificed his comfort for hers. What man would do such a thing, gentleman or not?

But she'd seemed such an unmoored little thing, and he hated that. For anyone. He rubbed an aching in his chest right beneath the eternal black ink he'd had etched there years ago. And more recently. Two small tokens of each of his life's commitments. Reminders, really, of who he was supposed to be.

Who was that? Not who he was —a man always one mistake away from absurdity. A man who bumbled along because he could never quite live up to who he was supposed to be.

Who was that? A holy man of God. A stern and noble viscount. A virile gentleman capable of making the ladies swoon with a wink.

He slammed the trunk closed and quickly dressed before stepping out the door. He could be those things. He would be those things. Well, but for the man of God bit. That he could happily leave in the past.

To do his duty, he had to win back his wife. By any means possible.

"Pardon me, Lord Norton." A maid stepped between Liam and the door to the street. She bobbed a curtsy, her white cap crisp atop her head. "Mail for you."

His heart almost leaped out of his chest to grab the bundle she held out to him. But it was not his wife's tiny, meticulous handwriting that scrawled his name across the back of either letter. It was a handwriting he knew well.

The scrawl of Satan.

His grandmother.

He sighed as he stepped outside and opened the letter, setting off toward Bond Street. Grandmother wrote from an estate he owned near Bath, where she'd run off to during mourning for her son and grandson, the direct heirs of the Norton title and holdings. She'd been managing Liam from a distance ever since, and now she wanted to know when he'd return to Norton Hall, wanted to ensure he understood his duty as viscount, worried he had no idea how to go about running an estate.

But not in a hovering, doting, grandmotherly sort of way.

No, each of her words dripped with ire, phrases such as pallid pretender to the title and uncouth nefarious nodcock hit him like bullets to the gut. She had quite a way with words. He'd chuckle if they weren't aimed at him. If they didn't poke at an already bruised bit of himself that needed no prodding.

Because he already knew these bloody things about himself, and he was trying to do better

Grandmother made only one mention of Cora: You should have chosen a wife from your social circle. Perhaps you would not be estranged. Perhaps an heir would be on the way. But considering her lack of pedigree, perhaps it is best not to further dilute the Fletcher bloodlines.

Really, what more did she need to say?

He flipped the other letter over with a sigh and froze. Stamped into the deep red wax holding the letter closed—the Marquess of Templeton's seal. Why would he write to Liam? They'd never met, but… Lady Templeton, his wife… Liam knew the marchioness much better. She'd been a guest at Norton Hall but a few months ago. She was the one who'd revealed Cora's reading preferences to him.

He ripped through the wax, unfolded the paper, and read.

Dear Lord Norton, you dunderhead,

Your wife is going to be at Viscount Noble's estate, Bluevale, for the next fortnight at least. I write to you against her wishes and without her knowledge. But I write to atone for my mistakes. Had you heard the truth from her, I believe events would have turned out quite differently between the two of you. You may not care, but your wife has been quite busy of late, flitting about from one place to another. She is not a butterfly, though, darting between blooms. She is more one with the moth, flying ever closer to her own extinction.

Her eyes seem tired, and a good husband would take care of that.

Are you a good husband?

Sarah Simmons, Marchioness of Templeton

He knew where Cora was. He finally knew where she was. He ran up the stairs. He must pack, set off for Bluevale as soon as could be. But he had books to pick up. Hell. Halfway up the stairs, he bolted back down.

"Is something amiss, my lord?" a maid asked.

"No, everything's perfect. Could you inform my valet that we're leaving this afternoon? I need everything packed."

"Yes, my lord." She bobbed a curtsy.

He tipped his hat and set off for Bond Street. He'd pick up his books first. Then enjoy a quick bout at Jackson's to burn off this energy coursing through him.

He'd finally found her.

And by the time he finished his errands about Town, his valet Mr. Harte would have finished packing.

Bluevale. Less than a day's ride from London. Too late to leave today. But he'd crow before the cock tomorrow, rise before the sun, and set his sights on winning back his wife.