Chapter Seven

Money and a musket: there wasn't much a man couldn't accomplish if he was good with both.

Magnus was. He'd applied everything he'd learned and observed by growing up in a squire's household and by rising through

the ranks of the army. By the end of the war, clever, fortunate investments had made him a man of consequential wealth and

property.

And what he'd told Alexandra the day he'd freed her bonnet ribbon was true: he never judged people. Judging limited one's

tactical options.

But he noticed nearly every detail about them.

He'd met her father, Viscount Bellamy, at White's some years ago. A man of great charm and fine looks, his interests were far ranging, and he was amusing company when he got to talking. And while his penchant for impulsive, risky investments was at odds with his expensive proclivities—food, wine, horses, lavishly entertaining wealthy friends—Bellamy never postured, or tried to impress or challenge him when they met, unlike many aristocrats. He seemed entirely comfortable with who he was, and Brightwall always respected that sort of man. When he was in vited to Bellamy's house party at his legendarily lovely country estate, he'd decided to make it his last stop in England before he left for a diplomatic assignment in Spain.

And there he'd met his daughter.

He noticed how the eyes of every man present at Bellamy's house party unconsciously tracked Alexandra when she was near, the

way one would watch a bird, or a butterfly, for that fleeting feeling of weightlessness a beautiful, graceful thing brings.

He noted in particular the heat and yearning in the eyes of younger men, most of whom possessed pedigrees and fortunes.

He saw the fraying edges of the Bellamys' gentility in the unkempt far reaches of the garden, the worn edges of carpets and

the odd bedraggled hem on a curtain, in an un-dusted windowsill. He knew staff was the first to be peeled away when financial

disaster loomed.

He saw the purple shadows of sleeplessness, the drawn worry, beneath Lord Bellamy's eyes.

And because Magnus's very presence inspired both confidence and confidences, he learned of Bellamy's concerns about his recalcitrant

son, and his sickly younger daughter, and he soon learned exactly how much money Bellamy owed creditors. The amount gave Brightwall

pause.

And because many lavish dinners, outings, and gatherings were arranged during his visit, he'd had plenty of opportunities to witness both the affection and the tension between all the Bellamys, and how Alexandra was consistently the family balm. The fulcrum around which their family turned.

He was reasonably certain Alexandra would do just about anything for her family.

And even while those yearning, rich young men were constrained by the need for their fathers' approval before they married,

there might be one in the pack capable of impulse.

Time was of the essence.

Above all, Magnus knew Bellamy was desperate.

Every brilliant wager carries a risk equal to the reward. And Brightwall had nothing if not nerve.

One afternoon, he'd requested a meeting with Bellamy. Sitting across from him in the man's cozy library, brandies in hand,

the gilt titles of leather-bound books winking from the wall-high bookcases, Brightwall calmly explained to the viscount that

he would pay the entirety of his debt at once, as well as settle a sum of five thousand pounds on him.

"With the stipulation that your daughter Alexandra and I wed before I leave for Spain."

The silence that greeted this seemed endless. He'd clearly shocked Bellamy nearly witless.

Magnus had simply waited, outwardly impassive. He remembered, however, how he could feel his own pulse rushing beneath the

thumb he'd pressed to it.

Finally, Bellamy cleared his throat. "Well. Colonel... it is... this is a great and unexpected honor. Does she know that you would... how you... that you..." Bellamy's voice was frayed. His complexion stark white.

Magnus merely said, "I am confident we have developed a rapport during our admittedly short acquaintance, and I believe she

will be a credit to me in my life as a diplomat."

Lord Bellamy stared at him. And Magnus saw what he'd seen before in the eyes of men: a stunned realization that he had failed

to fully estimate the character of the man in front of him. The uncomfortable comprehension that so many things said about

Colonel Brightwall were, in fact, true: He might possess a certain charm. But he was also, indeed, cold. And ruthless.

There passed over Bellamy's face a swift spasm of fury, no doubt at the realization that he, a viscount, had been played into

a corner by a man who'd begun life in a potato sack. But it was likely more a reflex born of some ancient, hereditary sense

of entitlement that flowed through his veins. Bellamy was, at heart, a decent man.

Magnus wasn't without sympathy. But Bellamy would recover. He was certain the viscount hadn't the fortitude or discipline

required to hold a grudge, or to endure long stretches of unpleasantness. He was an intelligent, albeit currently a financially

flailing, man who had just been handed a miraculous and quite respectable solution to all of his problems.

"The offer expires in one week," he told Bellamy calmly.

But some of the color was already beginning to return to Lord Bellamy's face.

And some of the tension had already left his shoulders.

"I'll talk to her," Bellamy finally said quietly.

But Magnus already knew he'd won.

A few days after that, Bellamy told him, "I spoke to her. You may approach her privately at any time now."

So Magnus had taken Alexandra for a walk in the garden to propose.

He had known by her uncharacteristic, nervous silence that she'd been expecting it.

He regretted that his words were stilted and formal. He could not quite bring himself to articulate the intensity and specificity

of any of the things he felt about her. If they unnerved even him, they would likely frighten her.

He would rather die than see pity or confusion in her eyes.

He tried to say with his eyes, with the warmth of his voice: You may not want me yet, but I will live to make you happy, Alexandra.

And though the conclusion was foregone, he exulted when she accepted him gravely, and with the graciousness that characterized

everything she did.

"I should be honored to be your wife, Magnus," is what she said.

It marked the first time she'd used his Christian name.

Her hand was trembling when he raised it to his lips.

"I do think we'll suit, Alexandra."

He made it sound like a vow.

By virtue of a special license he'd been able to obtain from the Archbishop of Canterbury, who did indeed consider him a hero,

they were wed one day before he was due to leave for Spain. Only her immediate family was in attendance.

And that night he'd felt like the most blessed man on earth.

Tonight they would share a bed for the first time.

His wife. The word "wife" seemed to him so very soft. Soft as a featherbed, soft as her eyes, as soft as the way he would

draw his fingers over her skin.

He was accustomed to packing swiftly and lightly; anything he needed that he didn't already own he could acquire in Spain.

But a half dozen servants had been packing for Alexandra all day, and she'd been supervising. A caravan of trunks would join

them on their journey.

He leaned out the window of his bedroom.

The sky was filled with a gray-purple light, soft as a dove's wing. The moon, waxing toward fullness, silvered the edges of the leaves on the trees and the hedgerow. Everything was still, the air like a feather on his skin. He remembered this part well. The beauty and peace of it. He was too seasoned to ascribe portent to weather. Battlefields could run with blood on sweet, balmy spring days, too. Birds still sang in the trees when bodies were rotting below. But knowing this only made him mark beauty wherever he found it.

He went still when he heard voices.

The cadences were urgent. Their words a tumbling rush, in a volume just above a whisper.

One of them was Alexandra's.

And the other...

The other was a man's.

The little hairs on the back of his neck prickled to attention.

It wasn't a voice he'd ever heard before.

His heartbeats fell like hammer blows in his chest.

He swiftly descended the stairs and pushed open the door into the garden, moving stealthily toward the conversation. The grass

muffled his footsteps.

Alexandra and the man stood with the garden gate between them. Their closeness and their postures suggested a familiarity

that made the hackles rise on Brightwall's neck.

He could not see the man's features; he was a tall, slim, shadowy figure. Coltish. Clearly young.

His breath ceased flowing into his lungs when the man lunged across the gate for Alexandra and pulled her into his arms.

And he kissed her.

She went rigid.

Every muscle in Magnus's body tensed to lunge toward them, to hurl that man away from his wife. To tear him limb from limb.

But some instinct made him wait.

Because somehow he knew.

He watched her soften in the man's arms. Watched their two dark silhouettes blend into one as her arms went round his neck.

Watched her give herself up passionately to a lingering kiss.

Brightwall felt as though his lungs were being ripped from his body.

Long moments—an eternity, it felt to him—later Alexandra pulled away.

The two of them tenderly, briefly held each other's faces.

Then she stepped away abruptly and ducked her head and shook it swiftly, roughly.

She uttered a single syllable. It sounded like "go."

The man backed away from the garden gate. For a long time, he walked backward, as if to savor every last sight of her.

And then he ran.

Magnus watched until he could no longer see the man's shadow darting through the trees. It occurred to him that he hadn't

really drawn a breath in all that time.

He was reluctant to draw one now, in a world that had just changed forever.

Alexandra dashed a palm against her eyes, as if to brush away tears.

Magnus watched, heart lodged in his throat, as she straightened her spine resolutely and turned toward the house.

That's when she saw him.

Her face at once flashed stark white as the moon.

She swayed as shock poured violently through her.

And even then his muscles tensed to spring to catch her before she fell.

But she didn't faint.

Nor did she flee.

She stood before him, silently, like a rabbit caught before a wolf.

He knew a little about rank fear. Doubtless she couldn't move right now if she tried.

Oh, but he could move. He was accustomed to moving forward through unbearable circumstances. To making wounded limbs do things

against which sense and sanity balked.

And so, slowly, as if through a dream, he paced to her.

In that low purple light, they stared at each other in silence.

Now that he was close, he could see that she was trembling. Despite everything, he knew an impulse to wrap her in his coat.

He cursed the traitorous reflex to protect her; it seemed innate, not a thing he could help.

"Magnus..." His name was a choked plea.

"Who is he?" His voice was calm. If perhaps a little loud. There was an odd ringing sound in his ears.

For a time, all he could hear was her breath shuddering in and out.

In and out.

He waited.

She swallowed. She pulled in a longer breath. "The person at whom you are angry is me." Her voice shook. "If you wish to throttle me, I will not stop you. You are entitled. But I will not give you his name."

"Oh, no, Alexandra," he explained, with gentle menace. "I'm angry at you and the foolhardy bastard who kissed my wife on my wedding day. Give me his name ."

The last four words were hard and dangerous as bullets.

But she didn't flinch. She stood before him demonstrating, maddeningly, nearly every quality that made him admire and want

her so: her poise, her pride, her grace, spirit, her gentleness, her beauty.

Her loyalty.

Even if it was to some man he somehow had failed to anticipate at all.

This stubbornness he'd only recently come to suspect.

Her voice shook only a very little. "I am not a soldier under your command. I am a woman, the daughter of a viscount, and

now your lawful wife. I will not respond to orders as though I'm a subaltern. You've every right to be angry. So shout if

you must, or make threats. But nothing you do will persuade me to tell you a name you do not need to know, because that man

is—and I swear this on my life and the lives of all I hold dear—irrelevant to our future. He is my past. Nor could I bear

any harm or scandal to come to you as a result of harming him. For your reputation for mercy does not precede you and you deserve to live a peaceful life."

It took either extraordinary nerve or insanity to issue any part of that little speech acerbically.

And yet she had.

Pride died hard.

He knew that too, too well.

"Harm?" he said almost offhandedly. "No one would blame me, Alexandra, if I surgically removed his cock with a rapier. I suspect

I could, in fact, gather a cheering audience for the deed."

She visibly jerked, as if he'd pricked her skin with said rapier.

No, she had not married a born gentleman. But she knew that.

"I need his name." The words were slow, measured, and shot through with ultimatum.

He felt, somehow, as though he were floating above the proceedings. Because even as he said the words, he knew she was right:

What would knowing the man's name change? He realized then he was just saying words, any words, because he had no idea know

how to articulate the furious tangle of things he felt. Knowing the man's name wouldn't give him what he needed, which was

for all of this to never have happened. For her not to have kissed that man.

And for him not to have witnessed that kiss.

When the moonlight illuminated tear tracks on her face a vise clamped over his heart.

"You don't need his name." Her entire body was visibly trembling now. "You will never meet him. I will never see him again. He is leaving the country, and so are we. I wanted to visit the gate tonight, as this part of the garden has been my favorite, and I did not know he would come here tonight, I did not know he meant to... to... kiss me, I certainly did not mean for you to witness it. I am... horrified... if I have caused you pain. And I am... I am more sorry than I can express."

If I have caused you pain.

And he thought, with a scalding epiphany: this was a fair statement. What did he truly know of love, or being loved? What

woman had wept for him, or missed him, or suffered for him?

Why should she assume he suffered from anything more than wounded pride? He had essentially bought her.

He only knew that he did suffer. And though the church, the law, and his vows said she was his, he realized he hardly felt

he had the right to his own suffering.

His pride had stopped him from telling her how thoroughly, swiftly, unreasonably she had conquered him because he'd never

wanted to see anything like pity in her eyes.

And now he was glad he'd never told her. Because that left him a shred of pride.

"I would caution you against attempting to tell me that man is nothing to you."

"No." Her voice was frayed. "I can't say that. But I ended it with him the moment I accepted your proposal. He is my past.

I swear to you."

"He knows you are married?"

She hesitated.

"Yes." It was a whisper.

He could see the pulse beating in her creamy throat. He'd imagined laying his lips there tonight, in bed, as he made love

to her for the first time. As he showed her the pleasures that could be had from the joining of their bodies.

Would she have been imagining this man instead?

He could not believe this woman he'd so admired—whom, despite all his wisdom to the contrary, he'd elevated to a sort of pedestal—had

stood up in church next to him and taken a vow this afternoon, only to break it hours later.

"How long has this affair been—"

"Half a year. It was over before we were wed, I swear it. I made certain of it. I do not think... I do not even think I

would call it an affair. We never made plans of any kind. We never intended to... I never intended to..."

"Perhaps you have a different definition of ‘over' than I do. Is it your first affair, or do you make a habit of kissing men

in the garden?" he said relentlessly.

She jerked as though he'd slapped her.

"First," she said hoarsely. Giving up.

"Has he done more than kiss you? Has he made love to you?"

Scarlet rushed her cheeks. "No. Never. " She sounded hoarsely horrified. "He has never before even kissed me. I swear on my life. How can you think... No! He has never kissed me before tonight. I have never kissed anyone before tonight."

He stared at her in rank amazement. He'd just caught her in a clinch in which she'd participated enthusiastically. That's how he could "think."

But he believed her. He knew exactly what he'd seen: her shock.

Followed by her ardent capitulation.

And then...

And then her grief.

He would never have known he'd married a woman who was grieving another man.

How well, how stoically, she had hidden this.

He understood he was being hateful simply to punish her. He was tormenting her because there was no other place to put his

fury or pain. He hadn't known himself capable of it. He despised the sort of man who lashed out rather than planned or resolved.

He pulled in an involuntary breath as he recalled her fingers touching that man's face so tenderly. He didn't think he would

ever forget it.

Another heartbroken man was out there in the dark.

"Magnus..."

Her voice was so soft. So gentle. How he wanted to move toward that gentleness.

This weakness in him for her infuriated him.

"I regret more than I can ever adequately say the... the injury done you. What you witnessed was the end of something I never expected even to begin, and which has been a source of solace before I met you. I have entered into our marriage in good faith and I am resolved to be a good wife to you. I honestly did not know that he would be there at the gate, or that he would... he would kiss... I did not know that I would... I've no experience at all of..."

Her eyes on his face were bewildered and tormented. Beseeching.

Oh Christ.

He briefly hovered a palm across his eyes.

He wanted to hear that she regretted it. But he didn't dare ask, because he knew she didn't, and he knew she wouldn't lie.

If he hadn't witnessed it with his own eyes, Magnus would never, ever have known that his new wife had kissed her allegedly

erstwhile lover on their wedding day. She would have known, and her lover would have known, and he would have gone on, a blissfully ignorant fool, for the rest of

his life.

To date, no one had made a fool of Brightwall without paying a price.

And now he was flailing. Here he stood, closer to forty years old than to thirty, infuriated and almost frightened that despite everything he'd survived and learned and lived, despite every sacrifice, every triumph—none of that had taught him how to reconcile or abide any of this: her white-faced terror, her perfidy, her loveliness, her beautiful mouth, her pleading, tormented eyes, his own madness for wanting this one, specific woman so badly that he'd engineered what he'd thought was a shrewd triumph.

Instead he was now confronted with a tragedy—a farce—he had somehow not foreseen. He had outsmarted himself. He had trapped

both of them.

And he didn't want to admire her in this moment. If he was brutally honest with himself—he generally was—he did anyway.

He could not abide her suffering, because it made his own heart feel like shards in his chest.

He could not abide the fact that this very conversation made it so clear that they didn't know each other well enough to maneuver

through it, and now likely never would.

Let alone well enough to ever touch each other's faces tenderly.

And yet they were legally bound to each other. Married strangers.

Forever.

He gave a soft, bitter, almost wondering laugh. "And I would have done anything for you."

He heard her breath snag in her throat.

She must have realized that whatever he decided to do next, mercy for either of them wouldn't be a part of it.

The next morning he left for Spain.

Alone.