Page 31 of The Inconvenient Compromise
“Yes. But because she is the wife of a peer, she can claim the Privilege of Peerage. Even if she were tried and found guilty, she would not be punished. So, we take a different approach.”
“What approach is left?”
“Lord Bruxton has secrets of his own… secrets would bear far greater consequences than even the shame his wife has brought to the family name. I will agree to keep his secret if he agrees to put Charlotte in an asylum where she can hurt no one else. It isn’t a prison.”
“No. Some would argue, and quite rightly, that it is worse,” Fiona stated with a shudder. “I hate to think of anyone in such a place, but I also hate to think of her out here soliciting murderers to hunt us down.”
“Precisely. I will see Lord Bruxton this afternoon, along with Westerhaven and Ralston. Between the three of us, I think we can be quite compelling,” Lucian stated. He reached out and swiped a bite of a kipper from the plate on her tray. “I’m famished.”
“You’ve been quite busy! You ought to be,” she said. “And I slept through it all.”
“There was naught you could have done. The place where all of this occurred was not a place you would ever need to frequent. Not for any reason.”
“Lucian, I—” Fiona stopped. Fear gripping her. The words ‘I love you’ had been on the tip of her tongue. It was something she hadn’t wanted to feel. Nothing would make her more vulnerable. She trusted him, of course. But what if she loved him, and he did not love her in return? Desire was not love, after all. “Thank you. Thank you for clearing all this away and keeping us safe.”
He leaned toward her then, his lips brushing her cheek. “It is as much for my benefit as yours. What would I do without you, after all?”
Because he needed a wife. And he needed an heir. Not because it was her specifically.“Indeed. What would you do?”
He looked at her rather strangely for a moment, almost as if he sensed the disquiet in her thoughts. “I must get the day started. Are you all right? Truly?”
Pasting a falsely bright smile on her face, Fiona nodded in the affirmative. “Never better. All our troubles are going away. And it will just be us.”
“Um-hmm,” he said, obviously still suspicious. “We will talk more about this when I get home.”
“Of course.”
Fiona watched him get up from the bed and begin his morning ablutions. Unlike many gentlemen, he did not use a valet to help him dress, choosing instead to do it all on his own. As she watched him shave, scraping away the soap and the rough whiskers that she so loved to feel against her skin, she accepted one irrefutable fact. She’d made a grave mistake and fallen in love with her husband. He might, one day, love her in return. But it would not be the same, would it? Loving one’s wife and being in love with one’s wife was an entirely different thing. And Fiona very much feared that she was not the sort to inspire such a depth of emotion.
When he had dressed, he walked toward the bedchamber door. But as he reached it, he paused. Instead of walking out, he turned on his heel, walked back to her, and with a deliberateness that was almost predatory, he took her face between his hands. Leaning down, he pressed his lips to hers. It was no chaste kiss. It was heat and fire and passion. It was a clash of lips and teeth and tongues. When his hand grasped the thick braid of her hair, pulling her head back even further, Fiona felt it all the way to her toes. She had never thought having her hair pulled would be an erotic or sensual experience. Clearly, she had been wrong. She wanted nothing more than to throw off her nightrail and drag him down to the bed with her. But then he broke the kiss, stepping away.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“Why did I kiss you, or why did I stop?”
“Both.”
Lucian smiled at her, his lips quirking upward on one side in that charming and slightly crooked way. “I kissed you because I couldn’t stand walking out of this room without having at least a small taste of you to get me through this day. And I stopped kissing you because I realized one taste would never be enough. I mean to end this mess today, Fiona. And when it is done, I am going to come back here, I am going to lay you back on that bed, and I am going to taste every last inch of you.”
Her eyes widened in shock, her lips parting in surprise. “But, surely you—”
“Just wait,” he warned. “Just wait.”
Then he was gone, sweeping from the room on long strides, a man moving with purpose.
TWENTY-FOUR
Monday—Noon…
Charlotte read the column again.Damn, Estelle! Damn her to hell.She was ruined. Socially, she’d be shunned entirely. Ostracized by the very people she had once ruled.
A knock sounded at the door. Assuming it was her maid, she called out for the woman to enter. But she had been wrong. Standing there, silhouetted in the doorway, was her aging husband. Yes, he was old. He was nowhere near death, unfortunately.
“You’ve put us in an untenable position,” he said softly. “We agreed, when we married, to live separate lives. I would not force you to my bed. I would not demand that you ruin your beautiful figure bearing countless children. And in turn, you would never make a spectacle of us. You would never bring shame to us. You would never make us an object of curiosity!”
The last bit had thundered, the words reverberating around her chamber. “John,” she began.
“No. I will not be cajoled, wheedled, coaxed, or manipulated by you again. Nor will anyone else, given what was in the gossip sheets. You’ve been exposed, Charlotte. The world knows what you are now. They will be watching you closely. And if they watch you, then they will also be watching me. I cannot have that, Charlotte.”
