I see your heart is one of the secrets you’ll keep to yourself. Pity. I think I’d find it as attractive as I find the rest of you.
Can you at least consider letting me know if you have a mistress? And if so, do you plan on giving her up or keeping her after we wed?
I suppose you may not receive this letter before you leave London to travel North. If so, I’ll have to ask this question in person. Perhaps that is the best strategy after all. It’s much more difficult to avoid a question when sharing a confined space with your new wife.
The soon-to-be unescapable,
Lady Maggie Bromley
Tobias folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket before climbing into the traveling coach that would take him north to his waiting bride. A mistress? That’s the information she’d been trying to drag from it. What an odd approach to the matter. Mistresses had little to do with love for most men. Had she asked about a mistress right out, she’d have had her answer sooner, and he’d have avoided annoying her as much as he obviously had.
No. It wasn’t annoyance wafting off her letter, but disappointment. He’d disappointed her because he’d kept his secrets close. He’d warned her he would. She should have believed him. He squirmed, trying to get comfortable for the long ride ahead, but he could think only of Maggie’s disappointment. “I’ll make it up to her,” he grumbled, pulling his coat tight around him and tipping his hat down over his face. He’d show her an artist could be the perfect husband for her, even if he lived partly in the shadows. And those parts that lived in the light? She could have all of them. They belonged entirely to her.
* * *
Maggie’s first engagement had lasted a mere week and the second exactly twenty-two days. But the bans had been called, and she and Tobias were to wed in—she glanced at the clock—any minute now! She waited in her bedroom only for her mother to come gather her up and escort her to the family chapel.
A knock sounded on the door right before it swept open and her mother entered.
“I was just wondering when you’d come, Mama,” Maggie said.
“’Tis time, my darling girl, ’tis time to meet your fate!”
Maggie rolled her eyes. “It’s not fate, Mama.” It was two people who happen to get along and whose goals align. Not romantic, perhaps, but practical.
“My dreams say otherwise. Only good omens ahead for you, darling. And improvements for us, of course, too.”
Her mother’s eager expression and fluttering hands piqued Maggie’s irritation. The woman acted like she’d saved everyone, as if she’d made the match herself. “Come along! Your fiancé is waiting.”
She dragged Maggie downstairs and bundled her into a coach that trundled down the road a short distance to a chapel sitting picturesquely within a copse of trees. As the coach rolled to a stop, Maggie’s heart lurched. This was it.
She stepped down from the coach and entered the chapel, barely noticing her surroundings. She saw only the groom. Tobias stood at the very end of the aisle, and as she left her mother, took her father’s arm, and approached her future, her future winked.
Tobias took her hands in his with a warm smile, and she almost laughed. He knew it, too, for he arched a brow in warning as if to say,Do not sully this most sacred of days.Then he grinned and she did laugh, and the entire ceremony went like that—mock serious expressions, grins, guffaws, a clearly confused crowd of onlookers—until he kissed her chastely on the cheek and marched her stern-faced back down the aisle, bundling her into the coach once more. When they sat facing one another as man and wife, alone and isolated from the crowd of cheering onlookers outside, Maggie said, “What, pray tell, was that?”
“A play,” he drawled, looking out the window. “A bit of fun for their benefit.” He pulled the curtain over the window, blocking out the crowd, and turned to her. “Thisis reality,wife.” His sensuous lips curled intimately around the proprietary word. He left the facing seat, closed the distance between them, and pulled her onto his lap. And he kissed her.
Maggie allowed herself a single inhale and exhale of pleasure. She tasted him and let a truth settle around her and into her—he was hers now. She hadn’t planned of falling in love with an artist, but she had, and she might as well embrace it. And him.
But only after she clarified certain matters.
She pulled away and moved to the seat on the other side of the coach.
Tobias frowned and followed her. He settled onto the bench beside her, and she rose and switched sides once more.
His scowl must have matched her own. “Maggie,” he almost growled.
She put her arm straight out, palm flat to keep him away. “You stay over there. You know what I’m going to ask you, and if I do not keep distance between us, you’ll keep me from asking it. Admittedly, a fine plan from your perspective, but I’ll not let it—you—undo me, Tobias Blake.”
Tobias crossed his arms over his chest and leaned into the squabs. “Ask away, Mrs. Blake.”
Maggie’s face heated at the use of her new name. She liked the sound of it. It made her want to curl into his side. She wiggled her backside into the seat. She would stay there until she had her answer. She lifted her chin, arched a brow, and locked her gaze on his face. “Do you currently have a mistress?”
He stretched his arms behind his head, pulling his jacket and waistcoat tight across his chest. “No.”
The relief that washed through her made her slump onto the seat. But it was a moment’s work to re-straighten her spine and face him once more. His eyes sparkled, and he grinned at her with one side of his mouth. She gulped. Her pulse raced. “Really? Lovely.”
His half smile grew, slow and sensual, until it included his entire mouth, his face, even his eyes. “Is that all?”
