His Unexpected Bride (10 page)

“Thank you,” she said, although she wanted to remind Cameron what she needed was a way to sort out the confusion in her brain.

“Please have someone get Lady Hawksmoor's bags from the boot,” Cameron said.

“
Lady
—” The gray-haired butler regained his composure more quickly than a footman who stared agog at her from one of the doorways. “Of course, my lord.”

“She will be using the front room to the left of the staircase.” Cameron drew off his gloves and dropped them onto the table. Picking up a card from a silver tray there, he smiled as he read it. He slipped it beneath his coat, then frowned when he looked again at his butler. “Is there a problem, Harbour?”

“I wish only to be sure you wish her things taken to the left-hand room.”

“The left-hand room.”

Tess noted how the butler avoided looking at her. Was there a reason other than his obvious astonishment? Mayhap the man, in pristine livery the same shade as his hair, did not want to reveal his thoughts. In that, he might be very much like Cameron.

“Yes, my lord.” Harbour went to give the orders to the footman and the rest of the staff.

“I will take you upstairs, Tess.” Cameron offered his arm. “I suspect you will be glad to rest after our journey.”

“I will.” She did not add anything else, and she suspected he was pleased she was remaining as quiet as she had during the long hours of the day's journey to London.

Climbing the stairs by his side, she saw, when she reached a landing where the stairs turned to the next level, that the same herald design was placed over the front door. A lion and a dragon faced each other behind a bare sword in the talons of a great bird. It was a crest that suggested a warning to any outsider, because neither the dragon nor the lion could pass by the hawk and its sword.

“The crest is left from a time when the Hawksmoors were involved in more than the proper business of this century,” Cameron said. “It seems out of place in this time, but the family deems it a reminder of past heroic deeds.”

“I was thinking how perfect it seemed to be for you.”

“For me?” He shook his head. “Do not paint me with the glories of great heroes, Tess. I am not your knight in shining armor, nor your prince who has come to rescue you from that dragon.”

“But you are much like that hawk.” She raised her hand. “Flying high above and considering the world, alone with your thoughts as you keep yourself apart from everyone and everything else.”

“I doubt that is what my ancestors had in mind when this crest was designed.”

“Mayhap, but mayhap not.”

His mouth twisted into the caricature of a smile. “If you had the misfortune to meet my brother, you would know at least one Hawksmoor wishes to sample every bit of the world and its pleasures.”

“Is your brother in London?”

“He seldom leaves Town. Here, he has his club and his tie-mates and his mistresses.”

“Mistresses? More than one?”

His smile became more sincere. “You derided me for thinking of you as a bumpkin, but I suspect from that question you are more naïve than you wish to own to being. A man can have as many mistresses as he can afford.”

“And what about you, Cameron?”

She had thought he might not answer, but he said, “I never found it prudent to be involved with more than one woman at a time.”

Tess was unsure if she should be comforted or uneasy at that comment. Cameron did not intend to become involved with her now. Did that mean he had a mistress or … she closed her eyes in despair. What if he had been coming to London to call upon his fiancée? She had not given thought to the idea that more lives than their own might be ruined by this marriage.

As they climbed another set of stairs and stepped out into the upper hallway, which was filled with plants in pots of all shapes and sizes, Tess wondered if she was somehow dreaming the whole of this. Imagining she was married to a stranger made more sense than the jungle before her eyes. She could name only a few of the plants. The rest were ones she had never seen before.

“This is incredible!” she exclaimed as she tried to take it all in at once.

Behind her, Jenette was once again whispering, “Oh, my!”

“I did not know,” Tess added, quickening her pace so she could walk beside Cameron, “that you enjoyed having flowers about.”

“Why should you know that?” He did not slow his steps, but did lower his voice when a maid edged past them in the hall made narrow by the broad leaves of some flower Tess did not recognize. “What do you know of me other than I made a mistake that has upset our lives?”

She grasped his sleeve, halting the procession. When she motioned for Jenette to go with Cameron's valet along the hall to wherever they were bound, she did not let Cameron draw his sleeve out of her hand. “Would you please stop it?”

“Me?” Genuine surprise widened his eyes. “Stop what?”

“This constant grousing.”

“I know you sing oh be easy, but I cannot.”

“I what?”

“You do not complain when you have every reason to. I forget that you are not familiar with Town cant.”

She shrugged, but continued to hold on to his coat. “I do have many reasons to complain, and I would if I thought it would do any good. However, nothing can be done until you seek the advice of your solicitor. I believe that it would be easier on both of us to accept what has happened for now—”

“
I
cannot accept it!”

“I said for now.” She released his sleeve. “You might find, Cameron, that you can endure this with more equanimity if you would stop assuming I am delighted to be your wife. You may be the son and the brother of a duke, but you apparently find that fact far more impressive than I do.”

He halted her from walking past him by putting out his arm. “Are you always this disagreeable?”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Then why are you trying to be at daggers drawn with me on the few occasions when you deign to talk with me?” she asked.

“Because it is simpler.”

“Than what?”

His arm swept around her, tugging her toward him and giving her the answer she should have guessed. A hushed huskiness added fervor to his words as he murmured, “Do not think to use these airs of innocence to betwattle me.”

“It is no pretense. Simply an unthinking question.”

“Unthinking?” He laughed quietly. “Too often, I find myself thinking of holding you like this and even closer, Tess.”

Although she longed to remain in his embrace, she put her hands on his arm and pushed it away. He did not release her gaze as willingly. Knowing she should look away, she did not. Her nails bit into her palms as she fought to keep her hands from reaching up to caress his cheek, darkened with the shadow of more than a day's growth of beard. Her fingertips tingled as she imagined letting them sweep across his rough skin.

“Ah, Lord Hawksmoor, I …” The butler gulped nearly as loudly as Jenette had yesterday in front of the inn. “Pardon me, my lord.”

Tess dragged her gaze from Cameron's to see the butler's face fall with consternation. When she heard what most remarkably sounded like a chuckle from Cameron, she was amazed to see him smiling. She wanted to ask why, but was constrained by the butler's announcement that the baggage was on its way upstairs.

Cameron nodded, then walked toward the front of the house. Tess, her curiosity unsatisfied, for she suspected the butler had planned to speak to Cameron of other matters than the luggage, followed. When she reached the end of the hall, she was surprised that no window offered a view of the Square. Instead, a simple table almost invisible beneath the wild profusion of leaves sat between two doors facing each other across the hall.

Opening the door to the left, Cameron motioned for her to enter. The light from the hallway was swallowed by the golden shadows of the walnut furniture arranged elegantly in front of an unlit hearth. Around the furniture and in front of the tall window and edging each wall between the two closed doors were more pots with plants. A few were blooming, but the dim light consumed the color. When he drew her through the door, her slippers nearly disappeared into the royal blue carpet. She paid no attention as she stared up at the painting hanging above the mantel. It was of an orchard with a grand manor house in the distance. Beneath one tree, a lad sat, reading a book that appeared to have pictures of apples, although it might have been meant to show he had picked the fruit from that tree. The lad had hair as dark as Cameron's, and she wondered if it was a portrait of him as a child.

He allowed her no time to admire the grand frescoes and the art parading along the walls of what she realized was a sitting room. He drew her through one of the other doors. She faltered, for, set in a shadowed alcove, was a magnificent bed. Curtains that gleamed like cloth-of-gold were draped around it, but could not hide the carving that climbed all the way up the testers and even along the façade of the wooden canopy. Stag, foxes, and rabbits ran before hunters who were giving chase on foot and on horseback. Over their heads swooped a trio of birds. Hawks, she realized.

The bed was more than twice as wide as hers at home—at her father's house. Trying to act nonchalant, instead of revealing how she could far too easily imagine sleeping in such a grand bed with the man who was now her husband, she looked out into the other room and saw Jenette had the third door, the one closest to the front of the house, open. From what she could see, it led to a dressing room. Odd that it would be on the far side of the sitting room, but it was built against the front wall of the house, so that might explain its location. There were so many puzzles in this room, but the greatest one was Cameron Hawksmoor.

Untying her bonnet, she took it off. Setting it on the table beside the window that was as tall as the one in the sitting room gave her something to do with her hands instead of kneading them together as she had been doing since they entered the room.

“I trust you will be quite comfortable here, Tess.” Cameron pointed to a bellpull next to the bed. “That will ring in the kitchen, so you may let Mrs. Sheridan, the cook, know when you want a breakfast tray brought to you.”

“There is no breakfast-parlor in the house?” Oh, how grateful she was to speak of everyday matters, even though they were standing in this splendid chamber.

“There was one, but what use have I had for one when I have been living here by myself? It has been simpler for me to enjoy my coffee and the daily newspaper in the privacy of my rooms.”

“I will make every effort not to intrude upon your habits, Cameron.”

“You may do as you wish.” He walked back out into the sitting room, pausing to cup the leaf of one plant. He glanced at her and hastily dropped it. “It matters little, for I expect I shall soon be able to obtain legal assistance to end our marriage. Until then, you are to stay here and make yourself quite at home.”

“Staying
here
with you might not be wise.”

“Why not? Do you have someplace else to go?”

“A guest's chamber would be more appropriate.”

He smiled tautly. “Ah, now I see your concern. You need not worry about your husband demanding his espousal rights in yon bed, Tess. This is
your
room while you are here. I will have my own chambers on the far side of the hall. That will satisfy your fear about my encroaching upon your virtue, I assume.”

“Yes.” She was about to add more, then saw the intensity in his eyes. He wanted to pretend now that the kisses they had enjoyed last night had never happened, although she had been certain he would kiss her again if they had remained much longer in the hallway. That did not unnerve her as much as the discovery of how much she longed for him to kiss her again … and again.

“Then you must stay here. Although it may not be to your liking, you
are
my wife, and it behooves me to take proper care of you until the proceedings are completed.”

Tess nodded in resignation, but she wondered if a divorce would be as easy as he expected. If not, her life would be enmeshed with Cameron Hawksmoor's for longer than either of them wanted.

Eight

“My lord, your—”

A lanky form pushed Harbour aside from the doorway of the small parlor as if the servant had no more feelings than one of the velvet ottomans. Tess glanced at Cameron, who had been working on a letter to the solicitor while she had been writing a note of her own. She hoped Brenda Rappaport was in London. The woman who lived in the neighboring house of Tess's late grandmother had always made Tess feel welcome. Would Mrs. Rappaport have some advice for her now?

She folded the half-finished note and set it on the table beside her as she watched a man stride into the room as if it belonged to him. He smiled broadly and with obvious anticipation. His tousled, rabbit-brown hair had thinned to near extinction on his high forehead. His eyes were almost lost in the deep hollows of his face, and his expression pulled his thin lips into a parody of a grin.

Tess did not flinch as his gaze settled on her. She met it evenly, but in silence. The elegant cut of the man's dark coat and breeches bespoke a ready acquaintance with wealth and authority, yet they could not hide his spindly limbs. Bony hands emerged from the lace at the wrists of his sleeves. It was not a natural state for him, because his skin hung loosely on him. Mayhap he had been ill.

“Russell, what are
you
doing here?” Cameron asked as he came to his feet, closing the letter he had been penning.

Tess stared. This gaunt man was Cameron's brother the duke? She looked again and saw only a passing resemblance. If Cameron had not spoken his brother's name, she would not have guessed them to be related. Only their height and blue eyes were similar.

The balding man smiled and held out his hand toward the door. A woman appeared by his side. Tess forced herself not to stare at a carrot-topped woman, whose full curves suggested too many chocolates and too little activity. The heavy paint on her face concealed her age but hardened every feature.