Page 40 of A Dark and Stormy Knight
“No! Not at all,” she rushed, before ceding the falsehood. Her father, and especially her mother, were devastated more by the loss of Sutherland’s earldom than the man, himself. And to have him replaced with a man of the working class, even a knight, was little compensation. “What I mean to say is that we’re attempting something highly irregular. It’ll take a miracle for society not to discover that I married two days after my wedding to poor George was interrupted by his murder and that I gave birth not six or so months after—”
He paused, and she nearly ran into the back of him.
“I would take it as a kindness if we mentioned the former Earl of Sutherland as little as possible in this house.” His chin touched his shoulder, but he didn’t exactly look back at her. A chill had been added to his endlessly civil tenor. “Ifever.”
“Surely that’s impossible while I’m still under suspicion.” She stepped closer to him. Close enough to put her hand on his back if she wanted. “Is that how you convinced my father to be agreeable? By offering to protect me from—”
“Your father is being investigated by the Yard for smuggling illicit substances into the country through his many shipping companies. He is aware of your pregnancy, and he concedes that marriage to me is the thing that could very well save your life and his reputation. If you want the honest truth, I resorted to little better than blackmail to gain his word and his silence.” He paused. “Let’s not pretend I have his blessing.” He turned the corner at the end of the hall and began to conquer the stairway up to the second floor.
Pru stood there for a stunned moment. “Smuggling?” She roused herself and trotted after him, lifting her skirts to climb after him. “Are you the one conducting the investigation against him?”
“I cannot discuss it.”
“Not even with me?”
At the top of the stairs he finally looked back to level a droll look down his sharp nose. His eyes were like two silver ingots glowing from the shadows covering the rest of his features.
“Especiallywith you.”
He disappeared from the stairwell and Pru crested the steps to turn and chase him down the corridor.
“The green parlor downstairs is for your particular use.” He both spoke and walked in short clips. “But I will leave the running of the house to you. Decorate and arrange it how you like. I’ve a cook, a maid of all work, and a footman, but I’m certain you’ll require additional staff. Hire them at your leisure.”
A naturally curious person, Prudence ached to open each of the doors they passed, but she didn’t dare. “Surely you don’t have my dowry yet,” she remarked.
He stopped, having come to the end of the hall. “Surelyyoudon’t think I need it,” he threw a perturbed glance over his shoulder. “I’ve quite enough to keep a wife. Even a high-born one. I should think that’s evidenced by my estate.”
She’d offended him. She hadn’t meant to, but despite his very fine house in an expensive part of town, and the sum he’d forfeited for surety, she hadn’t any true ideas what his finances were like. “I didn’t mean to imply…”
“You needn’t worry. Your dowry is yours to do with as you wish. I don’t require it and I won’t touch it.” He said this like her money was diseased, before he swept open an arched door. “Your room.”
Pru had to brush past him to step inside, and she hesitated to appreciate the scent of cedarwood and soap wafting from his warm, virile body. She prolonged a blink as she remembered that scent. Remembered burrowing her face into his neck and gasping in great lungs full of it.
Even now, it provoked her exhausted body into a state of unnatural awareness.
When she opened her eyes, she marveled.
This wasn’t a simple chamber, but a veritable suite. She’d a wardrobe at home smaller than the gilded fireplace, and everything else was to scale.
Like the rest of the house, the room was devoid of extraneous furnishings. However, the bed was half again as big as anything she’d slept in and angled toward windows that stretched from the ceiling to the floor.
Unlike the antique, leaded panes of downstairs, these had been installed recently, and the whole of the vast city spread out beyond in a tableau of dazzling light and spires.
“Your trunks are at the foot of the bed,” he informed her. “Until a lady’s maid has been procured for you, Lucy, the maid of all work, will tend to your needs. Unfortunately, she is with her ailing uncle until tomorrow afternoon. So you might need to call upon—”
“It’s all right. I’ll manage.” She turned around, clasping her hands in front of her, doing her best not to look at the bed.
He seemed to be avoiding it as well.
Lord, how different this interaction was from the last night they’d spent together. Would they ever find that sort of warmth again? Would he ever look at her with that all-consuming heat threatening to turn her into a pile of ash and need?
She watched him stride around the outskirts of her room, inspecting the view as if he’d never seen it before. Avoiding her as if she carried the plague rather than his child.
Perhaps he needed his mask.
“If you pull on these cords, the heavy drapes will fall and block out the sunlight if you are prone to sleeping late.” He demonstrated by tugging on a tasseled cord releasing one of the cobalt velvet panels. “This one next to it secures the drape back in place without needing to tie.”
“How clever,” she murmured.
