Chapter 4

Chapter Four

C learford Castle was huge and gray and covered in greenery from the outside. It looked old and cold yet surprisingly comfortable, as if it had grown out of its surroundings, a welcome extension of the rolling green lawns, parterre gardens, and old trees. Inside, Clearford Castle was dark and warm and utterly chaotic. Surely the house relished the company of its daughters, the Merriweather sisters.

Cora certainly did, allowing herself to imagine she was not a guest here, but a ninth sister. Not a banker's daughter, but a duke's child, well loved and cared for.

The younger members of the family had taken over a large drawing room with windows that stretched the length of it and a massive white marble fireplace on one end. The room managed to seem open and inviting despite the dark, wood-paneled walls and low ceilings.

Cora sat near the windows with the youngest Merriweather sisters. Ten-year-old June bounced, watching Cora with rapt attention, her legs crossed before her beneath her skirts. Beside her on the floor, the fourteen-year-old Gertrude flopped on her belly, her chin supported in her hands, her body resting on her propped elbows.

"And then he put an arrow through her heart, didn't he?" June clutched her heart. "He's a villain. That's what villains do."

"Don't be absurd," Gertrude said. "He's not a real villain. Her love is softening him, and he will soon throw over his evil ways to live a life of virtue."

"It's not your story to tell, Gerty." Nearby, but not too close, the fifteen-year-old Earl of Avelford reclined in a chair, reading a book. Pretending to, perhaps. "Let Lady Norton finish it."

Gertrude rolled over and sat up straight, her hands finding her hips. "I can have a guess. And it's a good one." She stuck her nose in the air. "Let's see you do better, Rupy."

June giggled. "He hates that name. Watch his eyes bulge out, Lady Norton."

And the young earl's eyes did bulge. He snapped his book shut. With dark hair and thick brows, he greatly resembled his older brother, Mr. Tristan Kingston, the bastard son of an earl who'd married one of the Duke of Clearford's sisters. "My name is Rupert Edward Alexander, Earl of Avelford." He pulled himself up tall and tugged his jacket straight. "You, Trudy , may call me Lord Avelford."

Gertrude snorted. "I'll call you dicked in the nob."

"Gertrude!" A heavily pregnant Lady Andromeda Merriweather, now Mrs. Kingston, waddled over, her light-brown hair pulled back in a soft coiffure and her hazel eyes sparking. A soft woman with enough of an edge to make her the tiniest bit intimidating. "Where did you learn such words?"

The young girl scowled. "Rupy has quite the illuminating vocabulary."

Andromeda aimed her scowl at her brother-in-law. "Alex. What have I said about your language around ladies? What has your brother told you?"

"To behave like a gentleman," Avelford muttered.

"Precisely."

"Shouldn't you be resting, Annie?" the boy asked, eyeing her belly as if it might pop.

"Absolutely not."

"I'm going to go tell King. He'll make sure you stay off your feet." Standing, he dropped his book in his chair, sent one final glare at Lady Gertrude, and left to find his brother.

Andromeda took his abandoned seat. "Dear Alex worries more than Tristan does. He'll be an excellent uncle when the babe arrives."

"We'll be better aunts," Gertrude insisted. "Just you see. Won't we, June?"

June nodded, her previously amused face falling into utter seriousness. "The best."

"I heard you were telling a story, Cora?" Andromeda said. "I thought I'd like to hear a bit."

"Ah, well, Gertrude guessed the ending. It's all over now."

"I knew it!" Gertrude preened and jumped to her feet. "I'm going to find Rupy and let him know."

"Me, too!" June scrambled after her sister, leaving Cora alone with her friend.

"They are adorable," Cora said. "Avelford included. He'll be a fine man someday."

"Someday soon, I'm afraid. He's almost as tall as Tristan and taller than me." Andromeda sighed, the happiest of sounds.

"Are you really feeling well?" Cora asked.

Andromeda nodded. "Particularly with everyone crowded about me. Lottie is a dear for thinking of inviting you and Lady Templeton. If I cannot have my own mother nearby, Lady Templeton is a lovely substitute. She and my mother were quite close, and Lady Templeton's arms were the first to hug me outside of the family after my parents' deaths. I am glad you are here, too. Having everyone about is quite distracting me from this." She rubbed her belly.

Prudence dropped into a chair next to Andromeda. She shared her sister's hazel eyes and slim frame, but her hair was a bit lighter, more dark blonde than light brown. "The baby has clearly been speaking with her Uncle Ben. He's always late. He just left to meet Samuel and the others at some cottages. He should have left half an hour ago." A sly grin tipped the corner of her mouth upward. "I must admit, though… this time his lack of punctuality is not his fault."

"You and Ben should have gone on a honeymoon," Andromeda said. "It's not right for newlyweds to be trapped with their family."

Prudence shrugged. "You are here. The baby is soon to be here. So, we are here. And glad for it."

Andromeda swallowed, her eyes glistening. "Thank you."

"Don't cry, Annie!" Their oldest sister Lottie plopped onto a nearby sofa, Lady Templeton sinking down beside her.

Andromeda swiped at the tears with the backs of her hands. "The baby is making me do it."

"Naturally." Lady Templeton reached out and patted Andromeda's arm. "It is the way of things. When I was enceinte with Thurston, I cried every day. And I'm sure had I any more children, it would have been the same. Your mother certainly did. With each one of you. Once because she'd put two different colored slippers on and couldn't reach her feet to change them."

"I will certainly not cry when I'm with child," Lottie said.

"That I don't doubt." Lady Templeton jerked her attention across the room. "Cora." Cora jumped, and Lady Templeton continued in a softer fashion. "I assume your words have returned since you were telling the children stories."

Cora sighed. "No, they are not. Lady Gertrude guessed the ending right away. I cannot write that one for Lady Escher."

"You will think of something," Andromeda said. "I'm not at all worried."

"Perhaps," Prudence offered, "you might use one of your more popular poems but change the ending from tragic to happy. Then you need to not create an entirely new narrative."

"I cannot. That would feel like cheating. Besides, those stories must end that way."

Andromeda wrinkled her nose. " Why ?"

"Because there is no other ending."

"Then you must find a story where the only possible ending is happy," Lottie said.

"Do such things exist?" Cora couldn't think of one. Every story possessed a potential tragedy. Happy endings, on the other hand, were rare miracles doled out only to the fortunate few.

"Yes," all four women said together.

Cora pinched the bridge of her nose, her limbs feeling heavy. "I'm tired. I think I'll return to Bluevale to rest before dinner."

"Shall I accompany you?" Lottie asked.

"No. Please do not. You must be with your family, and I have an itch for solitude."

Lottie nodded. "If you insist."

As Cora left the happy chatter of the drawing room behind her, she felt no better than she had before. Alone in the hallway, she could not even pretend to be part of that family.

"Cora," a voice hissed. " Cora ."

Cora looked up. Two identical countenances peered at her from behind a door across the hall. The duke's twin sisters, Imogen and Isabella.

"Come," one said, "We've something to tell you."

" She has something to tell you," the other corrected. "I am here to support you should you need it."

Cora followed them into the room and closed the door behind her. The sisters were almost impossible to tell apart except they never wore the same gown. While some might capitalize on the exotic picture their identical countenances produced, Imogen and Isabella refused. Cora appreciated such practicality. Today, Imogen wore green, and Isabella wore white. Isabella usually wore white or variations thereof, and her twin wore every other color under the sun.

"Support?" Cora asked, "What do you mean?"

"It's Lord Norton," Isabella said.

"I care for no gossip surrounding him." Cora made for the door. She put her hand on the handle, twisted, but could not bring herself to push. With a sigh, she said, "What is it, then? Tell me quickly." Good to have all the details, even if she did not want them. Had her mother known her father's hijinks, she would not have been constantly bludgeoned with them at gatherings, hearing first of his misdeeds as whispers on others' lips.

"I am so sorry," Imogen said, wringing her hands before her.

Isabella fortified herself with a heavy inhale, then smooshed all her words together in a rush. "Madame Juliet has been holding court in his chamber at Hotel Hestia."

Madam Juliet. The proprietress of Mother Circe's Nunnery. Cora should have been prepared for this. Liam may have gone to the brothel originally for an education. She believed him about that. But a man could not hold out indefinitely. And since she'd refused to warm his bed, it should be no shock he'd found a willing woman to replace her, to slake his lusts.

Should have come as no shock at all. She knew how men were. They needed release and didn't care which woman gave it to them.

No. Shock. At all.

And yet the air had become difficult to breathe. Too thick. And she pressed a fist against her gut, needing something to hold her steady.

"Ah." She pushed open the door. Perhaps the air would prove easier to breathe outside. "That's all? Thank you for letting me know."

"Are you upset?" Imogen asked. "I'd be terrifyingly angry."

She wanted to feel anger bubble her blood. Because if she didn't, another emotion would swamp her entirely so she might never escape. Loss could pull a person under as surely as a giant sea wave. But why feel loss? Of Liam? Ha. Of course, he would take comfort where he could. He'd seemed so very… truthful, so very willing to make things right the last time they'd seen one another in the hallway of the Norton townhouse. But she had sent him away after that conversation and ran from him since then. Of course he'd sought out other women.

Cora shook her head. "I cannot be angry. Once I have given him an heir, I… suppose I'll do the same thing. Take a lover. Thank you for telling me. It is good to be armed with all the information." Now she knew not to give him a second chance, not to let him through the door. Now she knew her decision to lock her heart fast away had been the right one.

She slipped from the room and made her way outside, tying her bonnet on tight against the golden autumn sun. The path between Clearford Castle, the duke's country seat, and Bluevale, Lottie's husband's estate, had been well-worn years ago, and as Cora trudged down it, past narrow roads and through thin woods rustling with life, she tried her best not to feel so lonely. The duke and his sisters had lost their parents, but they had one another, and they had husbands and children and those who had been friends with their parents and still cared.

Cora's parents lived still, yet Cora had not even seen them. She did not have the friends she'd grown up with, the daughters of cits , because they'd been abandoned once her father decided to find his daughter a titled husband. She had not the ton , either, because she was, after all, merely a banker's daughter. Wealth, it seemed, could not buy everything.

The sisters would say she had them . And she would not deny their support, their love. What an ungrateful thing that would be. But she could not feel part of the bustle of family life she'd just left.

If she must write a happy ending, she would make it like that—loud and bursting with mirth, more people bouncing about than a person could remember names for. A large family, a teasing and welcoming one. But she must create a heroine suited for it, one unlike herself. A lady alone from birth could never find a place in the chaos of family and friends.

Bluevale rose before her. Newer than Clearford Castle but less comfortable. It seemed to defy the landscape, its many windows reminding the viewer whose hands had shaped it—ambitious men with deep pockets. Grand and old, still, older than anywhere she'd ever lived. Not even her ancestry could provide a fellowship for her to belong to, and—

Cora stopped at the end of the drive riding up to Bluevale's courtyard. A coach idled there. But whose? No other guests were expected. Were they?

She started walking once more with slow steps that quickened once she'd moved close enough to see the crest on the coach's side.

The Norton crest.

"Liam," she whispered. Surely not. Surely not . She ran, her heart thumping, and as she rounded the conveyance, its door flew open.

A man stepped out, his chin tipping up as he took in the house before him. She skidded to a stop, and his gaze swung her way. "Cora."

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

"I've caught you." The corner of his lips twitched up before he ruthlessly pressed them thin.

Irritation bristled along her skin. "How did you find me?"

"Why must you hide?" He stepped toward her.

"I'm not hiding. I'm enjoying what is left to me of life."

He took another step toward her. He could touch her now if he extended his arms.

She scuttled sideways toward the house. "I need to freshen up. I've just walked a mile. And dinner is soon. Excuse me, my lord."

The crunch of his boots behind her—the sound of a man giving chase. "When will we talk? May I come to your room and—"

"I'd rather be alone."

A low growl, more crunching gravel. "We must talk."

"Are you in need of an heir, then?" She tossed the words over her shoulder, not a hitch in her step, though her belly flipped over and over.

"An heir would be a nice consequence of other much wished-for occurrences, but that is not what we must speak of."

"If you do not wish an heir in nine months, then we have nothing to speak of until you do." She pushed through the large front doors and inhaled the cooler air inside the shadowed hall. She let the door slam behind her.

But not before he could snap half his body between it and the frame. With a grunt, he pushed the door back open and followed her up the stairs. "Talk to me." He sounded breathless now.

She fisted her hands in her skirts, lifted them, then climbed each step with the precision of a queen marching to her coronation. "You've said all you need say with your actions, my lord. Tell me, how fares Madame Juliet?"

Silence, the cessation of the ringing of boots on stone. He'd stopped behind her. She did not stop, though. She smiled, though not a bit of anything like happiness could penetrate her defenses.

The slap of his boots on the steps started again, this time faster. "Madame Juliet is eager to see me reconnect with my wife."

Cora made a smothered, guttural sound and finished the climb, raced down the hallway, came within reach of her door, and—

A hand caught her elbow. She whirled on him and had to tilt her head back to see into his face.

It had been more than a month since she'd seen this man, and he somehow discomposed her still. The familiar restless energy coursed through him, and he looked the same as ever with the forgettable good looks of a light-haired man. But he'd changed as well. He wore his clothes differently, somehow. The cravat loose and his hair mussed. His top waistcoat button undone, and a bit of scruff running across his cheeks. His shoulders seemed broader, too, his thighs thicker.

She licked her lips, an unconscious act as her gaze tried to gobble him up. He was the only man to touch her intimately, and he… Well, he made her feel… hungry .

No, no. Impossible. He looked like that—slightly undone and more beautiful for it—because he'd just spent hours in a coach traveling. Nothing about him had changed; nothing in her had craved him for weeks.

"Why do you haunt me so?" she asked, shaking loose his hold on her elbow. "Why cannot you leave me to lead my own life?"

"Because I am your husband. We are married, Cora! We cannot continue as we have been. It's not right."

She wrapped her arms around herself. "Why not? Husbands and wives live as we have been living for ages. My own parents never see one another if it can be helped."

"That is not how we will be."

"And why not? It's convenient. Happiness can be found in this state of separation, Lord Norton. We need not be together to enjoy life. I have plans, you know. I do not mind what happened anymore. Not much. Your reaction was, perhaps, overly dramatic, but then"—she chuckled—"who am I to reprimand someone for dramatics? It's over, my lord. We are over. But for the matter of an heir. Eventually."

His hand on her shoulder—fast and strong and spinning her around, pushing her against the wall. His other hand landed on the wall beside her head as he leaned over her, their noses almost touching. "Do you remember our first kiss, Cora?"

She poked her chin at her shoulder, refusing to look at him. Refusing, too, to admit the truth—she remembered that kiss every night and morning, every afternoon, too. That blasted kiss had given her hope.

"I remember it." His voice dark. It sent a shiver through her. "I can do better."

He closed the distance between them, his lips descending, the dark intention glittering in his eyes, stealing her breath.

But not her strength. She jerked out of his embrace. "No, I do not think I would like to see." She picked up her skirts and made for her bedchamber. Not a run, but not a walk, either, and when she reached her room, she called for her maid, requested a bath. Soon, a line of maids were pouring pitchers of water into a large copper tub that two footmen had placed before a fire before stoking it into roaring life. Her maid, Miss Tarte, helped her undress, and then she was slipping into the warm water and washing away the sweat of her walk, the unexpected pain of seeing Liam again.

She leaned her head back against the tub's edge and closed her eyes. Good thing she'd resisted the impulse to kiss him. Her father once had won her mother back with a kiss. A bad few months, that, when her mother had been as teary-eyed as she'd been starry-eyed.

A click across the room and bootsteps brought Cora upright and alert. Liam was slipping through the door, his jacket gone, his hair pushed back in broad finger strokes from his forehead.

"What are you doing?" She ducked lower in the water, covering her breasts with her arms.

"Being ruthless." He strode toward her, grabbed the back of a chair as he passed it, and pulled it to the very end of the tub. He straddled it as he sat and stared down at the tips of her toes where they peeked out of the water.

"You must leave," she demanded.

His gaze roamed over the water, up the crisscross of her arms and the column of her neck, then stopped on her face. "We'll speak now."

She reached for the linen folded nearby. She'd get out of this tub is what she'd do. Then find something blunt to smash over this man's head.

He beat her to it, whipped the linen out long and settled it around his neck as she sank with a gasp back into the water.

"You can have this after we've talked," he said.

"You are going to force me to face you naked? You're a vicar!"

"I am not anymore, and I was never a good one to begin with. Now I'm a viscount with no moral imperative one way or another, and since I can't convince you to face me at all, I am not above holding your towel hostage to keep you in place." His lips were set in a grim line, and the fabric of his breeches stretched across his strong thighs on either side of the chair back. His shoulders strained the rumpled silk of his shirt.

"You… you are not dressed properly, and—"

"I'm dressed more properly than you. We're dressed well enough for this conversation. No more evasions. You're going to listen to me, Cora."

Humiliation raged red over every inch of her skin. He could not make her do this naked . She could discard modesty and rise from the tub, find her clothes, leave. Wrapping her hands around the tub edge, she pushed and—

His face shifted, the hard lines scrunching for a moment and then melting into softness. He groaned and said, "I'm going to regret this. Another impulse to explode my good intentions, but I can't seem to keep the words locked up."

Frozen halfway out of the tub, she sank slowly back into the water and cleared her throat. "What words?"

"I owe you. And these too… I've spent many hours since last we spoke thinking of those words. I owe you. I embarrassed you when I tore out of Norton Hall. I made you feel ashamed of who you are. And it's where my biggest sin lies. That is what I must make up to you."

Despite knowing better, she let her curiosity guide her next words. "And how will you do that?"

"By sharing with you my three most embarrassing moments."

Oh. She should continue yelling at him to leave, but… she wanted those moments more than this warm bath, more than her next meal, more than the air that kept her alive. She settled into the tub and flicked water at him.

"Very well. Proceed." She kept her arms crossed over her chest. The water hid little, merely wavered her curves into abstractions. But he kept his gaze locked on her face, and somehow that rocked her toward comfort, trust.

"I was fifteen the first time my father caught me with a woman."

"Oh!" She slapped a hand over her mouth. She'd not been expecting that, and when his gaze flicked downward for the briefest moment, she remembered. Entirely nude. She snapped her arms beneath the water's surface once more. "Proceed."

"It was in the graveyard. Atop some poor resting soul named Nelly Feely. Lived to a ripe old eighty years old. I'll never forget the epitaph. May God grant her ecstasy ."

"Odd."

"And perhaps ironic for no ecstasy was had on Madame Feely's grave. My father discovered me and the local innkeeper's daughter." He dropped his head and cleared his throat. "It's difficult to speak to a lady like this. We are taught to never speak to ladies like this. But I assume"—he lifted his head incrementally and peeked at her—"you do not mind?"

"Not in the least." In fact, she wanted it, needed it. "Go ahead, then."

"Right. Well, I'd just—erm—revealed myself to her, and she'd just taken me in hand, and I… Well, things were coming to a climax, and I was trying to come into her, and my father appeared over the top of Nelly Feely's tombstone, scowling. Right as I…" He shivered. "May no other man on God's earth know what it's like to come, looking into his father's scowling face."

She hiccupped a laugh.

He narrowed his eyes.

She could not help it. She laughed harder.

"Fine, then." He waved an arm at her. "Laugh. That's what this is about, after all."

She did, great belly-hurting guffaws. "Oh," she said between gasps for breath and strangled cries of merriment. "That sounds so horrid." Not at all the stuff of her poetry, not at all the stuff of books.

"Are you ready for the second embarrassment?"

"I do not think I can take it." She still shook from the first revelation.

"I'll go into less detail. The second time was at a pub near Oxford. My friends had bought a lady for me. I was so nervous my father would pop up and catch us, I had an ale first. Then another, and so did the lady. By the time I was ready to forget my father even existed, she was ready to sleep. I kissed her, and she snored. And frankly, Cora, I gave up."

She rolled her lips between her teeth, holding back her laughter.

"The third time I was caught," he said, "it was by two children, in the stable of the village inn my first year as my father's curate. I knew better. But this widow kept batting her lashes at me on Sundays, and I thought… why not? The hay was soft, the lady willing, my own desires… about damned desperate. I was so close, Cora. At the very portal to leaving behind what has for so long seemed my biggest flaw as a man—my virginity. And two children swung open the stall door and gaped at us. The widow's children."

"Oh." A soft exclamation that blew a bubble in the water as she sank farther beneath its surface. She winced. "It sounds horrid."

He nodded. "Frankly, after that, I realized it would be best if I waited until I could conduct such activities in the safety of my own bedchamber."

"There are other ways. Hotels. Brothels." She snapped the word in two, anger returning like a crack of thunder on a sunny day—unexpected and threatening. "You have spent the last month learning those ways."

"I've spent the last month reading."

"Reading?"

"An attempt to catch up with your breadth of knowledge. But I tire of such passive study. I'm ready to practice." His gaze dragged down the length of the tub, probing beneath the water's surface. It seemed to boil the water around, boil her blood, too.

"Th-there are plenty of ladies to practice with. You know well how to find them."

"I don't want any lady but my wife." He slid his hand down the towel, off the end of it, then traveled the short distance to the tub edge. He slipped his fingers into the water, and when they landed on her heel, she gasped. His hold on her tightened as he pulled her foot up and into the cool air. She slid lower in the water until only her nose and eyes poked out, letting him keep her foot.

He ran his knuckles lightly against that small bump of a bone on the outside of her ankle, then ran a curve under her heel to brush his thumb over the bone on the other side. "Delicate."

She shivered despite the fire, despite the still-warm temperature of the water. She lifted her chin an inch, revealing her lips above the water. "You, sir, are confusing. You muddle my brain."

This touch—his hands gentle and insistent on her foot, her ankle, higher—like the first time he'd touched her. But now he knew her identity. Knew and gave her the passion she'd longed for from him since that night.

"Let me clarify, then. I wish only for the chance to be a good husband to you, Cora. An attentive husband."

Attentive. More meaning loaded into the word than its definition intended. She pulled her foot from his grasp.

"And what of Madame Juliet?"

He scowled. "What of her?"

"You expect me to accept that you will be a good, attentive husband after you've spent months in her bed, her in yours? I've heard the rumors. People have seen her at your hotel, slipping into your room."

His head dropped back on his neck for a moment with a groan, and then he dropped his chin back down to his chest. "She has been in my chamber, but not with my invitation. And not with me . She"—he pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh—"invited herself. I met her once at that brothel, a brief introduction before I fled. But apparently, I triggered her amusement or interest or something like. Must have been how I introduced myself. Blurted out like a fool ‘I'm a virgin' before even telling her my name. Then I spent a quarter hour muttering about how I wasn't a virgin, not technically, but I might as well be and how my wife was probably laughing at me, and—" He growled, hands turning into bone-white fists. "After that she's followed me about, offering advice."

There was a lot to think through in that last speech. Was he lying? He did not appear to be. He seemed… embarrassed.

But still he pressed on, one hand reaching for and uncorking a small vial of scented oil nearby. He poured some into his other hand and massaged the stuff into the ball of her foot, trailing his thumb down her arch to her heel. "While I'm ripping open my soul for you, would you like to know another truth?"

She nodded, swallowing a moan, doing her best not to melt under his touch.

"The nights I came to your bed, I wanted to lick every inch of you."

Her breath caught thick in her lungs, refused to move. "Why didn't you?"

"Because I thought it would scare you. Your mother told me you would not welcome a hungry sort of man, and I believed her. More fool me."

"Do you always do as others tell you?"

He winced. "All men and women must do their duty."

"Not I," she said. "I must do as I please, and I do not please to pretend to one and all I'm a dutiful wife."

"Cora, I—"

She ripped her foot from his hold, curled her knees against her chest, wrapped her arms tightly around her shins. "We do not suit for a real marriage and let me tell you why." This was it, her last secret, and she'd wield it like a weapon. "I am not simply a reader of erotic literature, Lord Norton. I write it. I'm a poet, and if you really wish to know what I want, what I desire, it is to be a published author, and I will soon have the chance. I want to write a happy ending that everyone adores, and you cannot help me do that."

He opened his mouth, tongue frozen in hesitation, then snapped it shut again.

"Will you hand me the towel now, Lord Norton?"

His jaw twitching, he did as she asked.

"May I have privacy?" She stood, wrapped the linen around her, and stepped from the tub. "To dry myself and dress?"

Another twitch in his jaw, then he, too, stood, so slowly, the muscle beneath his trousers bunched and strained, and she could not control the spark of desire igniting between her legs.

He strode to the door, then faced her. "A happy ending? Yes, that's exactly what I'd like to help you with. Will you let me try?"

"You cannot mean that. Did you not hear me? I write—"

"I don't care. Last time I ran. This time I will not. I'll stand here next to you. If you wish it of me." He opened the door and stepped into the hallway. "I'll see you for dinner." Then he closed the door silently behind him, leaving her alone.