Page 4 of The Lyon Returns
Gwen blinked, flustered, and resisted the urge to fan her cheeks to cool the instant, thrumming heat.
Mrs. Dove-Lyon, evidently, did not require her assent. She tapped her chin, as if working out a conundrum. After an interminable silence, the gambling den proprietress angled her face toward Gwen.
“As it happens, I believe I have the perfect husband for you, madam. Well-to-do, well established, and while not a peer, related to a very powerful one, and…”
Gearing herself up to argue, Gwen nearly missed the woman’s next words.
“…almost certainly dead.”
Chapter Two
One month later
The big, leatherwriting-chair’s coiled spring made not a whisper of protest as Gwen twined her fingers behind her head and leaned back from the massive desk. A fine bit of workmanship had obviously gone into crafting the piece. She’d lived in the grand town house on Portman Square only two weeks, but it had not taken a third of that time for her to discern one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt: Her so-called husband of seven months, shipping magnate Mr. Gideon Devereux, did not skimp on the luxuries.
That included his furnishings. He preferred large and sturdily made pieces, likely to accommodate his solid frame.
Through Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s description, bits and bobs she’d picked up from her friends, and her own late-night investigations through his personal effects, Gwen had developed a rather pleasing image of the man she’d supposedly married.
Broad-shouldered, lean-waisted, and standing heads taller than most of his contemporaries, he had thick, wavy hair of a deep, chestnut brown. Frequent sailing ventures and time spent at the docks had put honeyed-gold and blond streaks in his locks and lent his complexion a vital, burnished cast. Thick, dark brows over-scoreddeep-set, intense, hazel eyes that glinted with intelligence, danced with humor, or roiled with impatience, depending upon the circumstance.
She could well picture him seated at this very desk, penning his anecdotes, observations, and reflections into one of his private journals. She’d stumbled upon a cache of them one evening while meandering through his den, enjoying a glass of his very fine cognac.
Feeling only slightly guilty, she’d started reading after deciding it a fine way to get to know the man she’d supposedly married. She’d kept reading because Gideon Devereux made the pages come alive until she almost felt she had known him, and now mourned the loss.
With a heartfelt sigh, she righted the chair, planting her slippered feet on the carpeted floor. She’d idled away enough time fantasizing about a dead man whom she would never have occasion to meet. She had work to do.
Stacking the papers before her, she mentally prepared to scrutinize each line on each sheet—again.
The number of times she had read the purchase contract tempted her to skim the previously agreed upon sections. But she mustn’t grow careless now. She picked up her stylus and, hand aloft, began reading.
Section 1, the parties of the agreement shall be the Bell & Company Publishing House Stakeholders and Mrs. Gwendolyn Barnes Devereux, hereafter known as…
A ruckus outside the den had her head snapping up. The sound reverberated through the walls, flooding the space with a cacophony of excited voices, and seemed to emanate from the vicinity of the front door. She heard Mr. Higgins rapid speech, and another man’s voice—masculine, and very robust.
Ten to one, she could bet who had come to call.
She slammed down the quill, rose to her feet, and marched around the desk. Glaring at the closed door, she braced for the appearance of Mr. Higgins’s shining pate as he ducked in to inform her of the arrivalof Master Devereux’s brother, Lord Ashwood.
The stakeholders had proven a pesky lot, and it had taken a lot of back-and-forth correspondence between them before the agreement met both of their specifications. Yet, difficult as those negotiations had proven, the stress they caused her did not compare with the deluge she faced after the announcement of her wedding to Mr. Gideon Devereux hit the papers, all owing to one impertinent caller: Lord Ashwood.
If not for her memorization of Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s list of crucial facts—the where, when, and how of her courtship and subsequent marriage to Mr. Devereux—she never would have passed muster with his relentless menace of a brother, the future Duke of Ashwood.
She’d extended patience worthy of a saint—at first—for the sole reason that despite the implied insult to her person—Lord Ashwood clearly had difficulty believing his brother would ever deign to marryher—the man’s unmistakable puppy-dog worship of his older brother spoke to the better part of his nature. She could manage a degree of lenience, considering the fact that Gideon was dead, and that nothing she could do would bring him back. Lord Ashwood would suffer much when the truth became inescapable.
But enough was enough. Future duke or not, he could not simply barge into her home—his brother’s technically—but as Devereux’s lawfully wedded wife—and she had the paper to prove it—she had every right to be here and Ashwood had not.
The door swung open. Only, Mr. Higgins did not appear.
A tall and powerfully built man with brown, wind-tossed, sun-streaked hair and unfashionably tanned skin, and wearing a well-made suit strode into the den as if he owned the place.
He closed the door behind him, crossed his arms over his impressively broad chest, and fixed her with a quizzical gaze.
Gideon Devereux? No. It couldn’t be. He was dead.
Gwen found her tongue. “I beg your pardon, sir, but—”
He held one long finger to his lips, silencing her in a blink.
