But he had, apparently, chosen to fulfil it anyway.
Margaret had never cared for self-imposed martyrdom. But she couldn’t help a tiny jab of empathy.
She knew only too well what it was to be a disappointment to one’s family...and how it felt to lose those relatives whowerebeloved. After all, she hadn’t moved in with her aunt and uncle until her orphaning, halfway through her childhood.
So, she quelled her first, exasperated, response and chose instead to make her best attempt at diplomacy. “I believe two hundred and fifty years must be regarded as enough penance to serve any reasonable purpose,” she said. “But I can certainly see now why you’ve been growling and snapping ever since we met.”
“‘Growling and snapping?’” Lord Riven let out a snort as he raised his gaze to meet hers, sudden humor lurking in his expression. “I beg your pardon, madam, but are you now claiming to have been the soul of courtesy and warmth from our first moment of acquaintance? I seem to recall you nearly biting my head off over the state of my poor kitchen when you arrived.”
“Tea isimportant,” Margaret told him, “especially in times of crisis. A man of business who was truly on your side would have seen to exactly that sort of necessary preparation before your wife’s arrival.”
“Well, in that case, I trulydohave good reason to resent Shaw’s betrayal.” Her husband’s voice was wry. “However, the fact remains that I have failed at my family’s mission in the end, as my father always expected I would. Had I been able to take the Rose with me, I would have willingly stepped aside and accepted the loss of my estate to honor that commitment. But Shaw was, as I recall, astonishingly vivid in his description of the government’s plans to search each departing landowner for possessions they might illicitly secrete upon their person. He also claimed that a close eye was being kept on all of our estates in that final week before the law’s enactment, to ensure none of us attempted to stash our possessions elsewhere...and while your family, according to Shaw, had no interest in the Rose except as an historical relic, I couldn’t risk it falling into the hands of the government, to be used as an active weapon.”
“Of course not.” Margaret flapped one hand in dismissal. “But that’s all past now, and it’s just as well that you made the choice you did.”
“It is?”
“Of course! You would have lost the Rose regardless of which decision you had made. On this path, though, you have me by your side to help you get it back. We simply have to work out exactly who it was who bribed your man of business.”
She narrowed her eyes as she thought it through. “I don’t believeit could have been our own ruler. So far as I can tell, King Thomas hasn’t any dreams that can’t be satisfied by scantily-dressed vaudeville dancers and copious amounts of the finest champagne.” His mother, the late, great Queen Anne VIII, would have rolled in her grave if she’d witnessed such useless depravity. In her own fiery two decades on the throne, she’d overturnedsomany ancient customs for the better. “On the other hand, if one of his advisors has any grand plans for military glory, I can’t imagine King Thomas standing against them. And as for the nations beyond...”
“Aren’t you missing a logical step along the way?” her husband inquired.
Frowning, Margaret snapped her gaze up to meet his.
He gestured meaningfully between them with his half-full glass. “Have you not yet stopped to wonder how it is that Shaw introduced me,notto any sensible, impoverished young woman who might have welcomed a speedy marriage for financial reasons, but to you in particular?”
“My aunt and uncle?—”
“May be as greedy as any other pair of seemingly respectable villains, but that’s beside the point. He could have found a dozen other options if he’d searched, and every one of them would have been far more convenient, more willing, and closer to home...but he did not. He clearly wished me to marryyou.”
Lord Riven leaned forward, a glint of real intellectual challenge sparking in his eyes for the first time and making Margaret’s breath catch in her throat. “There cannot be an infinite number of scholars in this country who are currently researching the fabled Rose of Normandy. Judging by everything I’ve learned of you in the past few days, I’d wager you’re at the very top of that field. For you to then beaccidentallychosen as my potential wife in a nefarious scheme to steal the Rose of Normandy? No, that stretches plausibility past its breaking point.”
“I...dare say you may be right.” Blinking, Margaret straightened in her seat and tried to ignore her instinctive response to that unexpected acuity on the part of her new husband. Damn it, he wasnotmeant to be distractingly intelligent as well as attractive on a purely physical level. She had more than enough complications to manage as it was!
“I hadn’t considered that point,” she confessed, shoving aside that irrelevant, secondary issue. “But I suppose Iam,at the moment, the only female scholar with that specialty. For all of our late queen’s attempts at social reform, our antiquated laws still won’t allow marriages between two gentlemen, at least not yet...”
“But why would Shaw wish me to be paired with any such scholar in the first place? It seems contrary to his better interests to deliver me a partner who would be invested in reclaiming the Rose for their own study.” Setting aside the glass, Lord Riven held her gaze, his usual air of weary apathy nowhere to be seen.
In the kindling energy of his focused attention, Margaret found her first glimpse of the man he might have been—keen, curious, quick-thinking and decisive—before centuries of guilt and self-inflicted isolation had taken their toll.
Her chest tightened and her breath shortened for no reason whatsoever.
“No, madam,” he said softly, “I believe that when it comes to discovering the ultimate villain of this piece, we’ve no need to turn our gaze abroad to distant rulers and international strategies.Someonehired Shaw to trick me, steal the Rose and make you my bride—and thus render you a permanent legal resident of this manor. Thatsomeone, much like you, clearly knows a good deal about the Rose, to have followed every long-lost rumor—and they wantedyoutrapped here, deep in the countryside with me and far from the college you consider home.
“So, tell me truly, wife.” He cocked one imperious eyebrow. “I know your manner of diplomacy and tact all too well. Exactly how many enemies have you made since you arrived at university? Because clearly,someonethere wanted rid of you.”
“I’ve never even socialized in my own college. How...oh.Oh!” Margaret’s mouth fell open as the truth hit her. In an instant, the fog of disconcerting interest, attraction, and denial was dispelled. Cleansing rage took its place. “Thatbastard!”
Lord Riven’s lips twitched. “Ah. You have thought of an option, then.”
“Thoughtof one?” Margaret surged to her feet. “I’m going to strangle him with his cravat! Just because he couldn’t win against me fairly, he didthis?” All those threatening gestures he’d made at her when she’d won their department honors; those incoherent, vengeful shouts he’d launched in her direction as his friends had dragged him away down the street afterwards...
Oh, how he must have cackled as he’d watched her uncle drag her out of the library and into the family carriage at the culmination of his self-serving scheme!
Margaret’s vision turned a dark and bloody red. “I’m going to use the damned Rose to turn him into aworm! And then I’ll tear up all of his years’ worth of notes andburnhis diploma and?—”
“If I may?” Her husband rose to meet her, his broad chest filling her view and the cinnamon-and-cloves scent of his shaving cream filling her senses. “Naturally, I am pleased to hear you plotting another man’s doom, for once. In fact, I find it startlingly enjoyable. However, do you think you might allow me the satisfaction of knowing whom, exactly, you are planning on murdering on behalf of both of us?”
