He began to undress, pulling off his neckcloth, unbuttoning his waistcoat and pulling his shirttails free. Looking around for somewhere to put his damp clothes, he saw a partly open door. His dressing room?
He went in and saw that it connected to another bedroom. Emmaline’s? Quietly he entered and, in the dying firelight, stood gazing down at his sleeping wife. Her dark hair was spread over the pillow. She was sleeping on her back, one hand curled to her breast, one hand flung across the empty half of the bed, palm up, fingers slightly curled.
She looked young and peaceful, and utterly enticing.
A lock of hair lay straggled across her cheek. He bent and smoothed it back. Still fast asleep, she made a breathy little sound and snuggled into his hand. He stood there a long minute, cupping her soft cheek in his palm, hoping she would waken, but unwilling to disturb her.
She must be exhausted. She’d just made a long trip squashed in a carriage filled with noisy young women and a gangly great dog with a flatulent habit.
He could just slip into her bed—to sleep, not for any other reason. He wouldn’t have to wake her.
He pulled his shirt over his head, intending to slide in beside her, then stopped, wrinkling his nose. Not only was he damp to the skin, but his clothes, and possibly his skin and hair, had been imbued with the stench of the street. He looked down at his sleeping wife and sighed.
He couldn’t bring that to her bed.
He turned away and stripped in the dressing room, leaving his clothes piled on the floor, then slid between the cold sheets of the master bed.
He lay there, waiting to get warm, his body aching for Emmaline. How long had he been married? A week? And already he missed sleeping with her?
It wasn’t a good sign.
***
A sliver of cool gray light pierced a gap in the drawn curtains. Daylight. Cal yawned and stretched lazily, peering through sleep-filled eyes at the ormolu clock on the overmantel. And blinked and looked again. After ten? He never slept that late.
He rose and rang for hot water, and while he was waiting, he tiptoed through the dressing room and glanced in. His wife’s bed was empty, neatly made up as if she’d never been there.
A man who claimed to be his new valet arrived with the hot water. Another of Phipps’s appointments. Did the man not realize Cal was leaving in a few weeks?
Cal shaved himself, waving away the valet’s services, completed his ablutions and dressed in the clothes the fellow insisted on laying out for him. Cal shrugged himself into his coat, glanced down at it and frowned. Emmaline must have packed all his clothes and brought them up to London for him. Used to traveling light, he’d shoved a few things in a saddlebag and ridden out.
Another convenience of a wife. He felt mildly guilty.
He went downstairs, intending to have a quick breakfast and head off to Whitehall to see what had happened overnight.
He was halfway down the stairs when a voice accosted him. “There you are, Ashendon.” A thin, immensely elegant elderly lady stood in the middle of the hallway, watching him critically through a lorgnette. Aunt Agatha, the elder of his two aunts.
Her hair was iron gray, with two dramatic wings of silver swept up from her temples. Like Aunt Dottie, she’d aged, though in quite a different fashion; the two sisters had always been chalk and cheese. She wore a smart black-and-white outfit that nobody would imagine was for mourning. “Lolling abed till all hours, were you? I cannot abide slugabeds.”
Cal hoped his sigh was not audible. “Good morning, Aunt Agatha.”
She sniffed and held out her gloved hand to him. “That remains to be seen. Where is this wife of yours? I wish to meet her.”
Cal looked around, hoping to see Emmaline somewhere about. Burton the butler cleared his throat. “Yes, Burton?”
“Lady Ashendon and the young ladies went out earlier, my lord. Shopping, I believe.”
Aunt Agatha made an exasperated sound. “No doubt she’ll purchase all the wrong things. Nobodies from the country invariably do. Now explain to me, Ashendon, if you please, the reason for this disgracefully hasty marriage to a complete and utter nobody! Did you giveanyconsideration to what you owe your name? Obviously not!”
“I beg your pardon?” said Cal, outraged by this description of his wife.
“Apology accepted,” Aunt Agatha said regally, “but you still haven’t explained yourself.”
“My wife,” he began stiffly, “is not a nobody. She is—”
“Oh, pish tosh, of course she is. Nobody has ever heard of her, and those that have know nothing good of her. Agoverness, Ashendon! Could you find anyonelessdistinguished? A washerwoman, perhaps, or a milkmaid? Milkmaids have good skin, or so I’ve heard—does she have good skin, at least?”
Cal leashed his temper. “My wife is well educated, well born and—”
