How to Woo a Reluctant Lady (32 page)

“And what is this room?” Gran demanded. “Looks like a library.”

“It’s the study Giles fitted out for me so I could write,” Minerva said proudly. Even with things so strained between them, it touched her every time she thought of his considerate gift to her. “He had the bookshelves specially built and bought me that desk and couch and everything.”

“How wonderful!” Annabel cast a knowing look at Jarret. “I told you he would take good care of her.”

“He’s not here, is he?” Jarret said.

“He had to work.” Minerva scowled at her brother. “He has a very important position, you know.”

“He could get away if he wanted to,” Jarret countered. “He always managed to do so before, disappearing for days at a time with no explanation to anyone.”

Yes, and she’d begun to wonder about those disappearances. They hadn’t bothered her so much before, but after Calais . . .

“You have no right to criticize him for working all the time,” Annabel told her husband. “
You
said you could only stop in here for a minute because you have a meeting with the cooper. Or had you forgotten?”

“Damnation!” Jarret cried. He bent to press a kiss to Minerva’s cheek. “Sorry, sis, got to run.” He started for the door, then stopped to glance at her. “He
is
treating you well, isn’t he?”

She pasted a teasing smile to her lips. “Except for the nightly beatings. Those are growing rather vexing.” At Jarret’s raised eyebrow, she said, “Now go on, before you miss your meeting.”

“He
beats
you?” Freddy said, wide-eyed.

“It was a joke, old boy,” Oliver said, clapping his hand on Freddy’s shoulder. “You know Minerva.”

“Yes, dear, a joke,” Freddy’s wife said, though a moment before she’d looked as shocked as Freddy.

“Well?” Gran said. “Are you going to show us the rest of the house, girl?”

“As long as you realize it’s a work in progress,” Minerva said. “I still have much to do to get it how I’d like it.”

Maria eyed her closely. “And Giles doesn’t mind you taking that over?”

“If he does, he hasn’t said a word.”

“Then he’s a more long-suffering husband than I gave him credit for,” Oliver muttered.

They trooped about as Minerva gave them the grand tour, explaining what she intended to do with furnishings. They oohed and ahhed over the jasperware fireplace surround and anthemion moldings in the drawing room, the crystal chandelier in the large dining room, and the fine Chippendale dressing table in the master bedchamber.

“You don’t have your own bedchamber?” Oliver asked as he spotted her notebook on one bedside table and Giles’s law journal on the other. “Maria has her own—even if she never uses it.” He and his wife exchanged a knowing glance that grated on Minerva’s nerves.

“I don’t want my own,” Minerva retorted. “I’m perfectly
happy to share Giles’s.”

“Besides, they’ll need the rooms for their children,” Gran said. “These town houses never have enough bedchambers.”

The remark brought Minerva up short. How was she to bring children into a marriage where the parents were at odds? That was too much like her parents’ marriage for her comfort.

No, she couldn’t bear to think on it. “Come, let’s go see the garden.”

As if sensing her sudden dark mood, Oliver fell into step beside her. “He’s not going out every night and leaving you here alone to brood, is he?”

She could feel her brother’s searching gaze on her. “Of course not,” she said brightly.

“Not even to his club?” Oliver asked in surprise.

“He comes straight home and dines with me,” she told him. “So you had nothing to worry about.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said, though he still looked unconvinced.

“Even Oliver goes to his club occasionally.” Maria cast a shy smile up at her husband. “But he never stays out late.”

“No reason to,” Oliver said, patting her hand. “I have all the entertainment I want at home.”

Gabe and Celia snorted at that, but Minerva felt a stab of despair. Did Giles feel the same way as Oliver—that he would rather be at home with her than at his club? Or was he just keeping up appearances in these initial days? Would he soon be trotting off every night to find more amusing entertainment?

She wanted to think that her marriage would become like her brother’s in time, but Oliver and Maria were in love. Giles was not.

Still, he’d promised to be faithful. He’d also promised not to lie to her, though, and he’d broken that promise within days
after their wedding.

“What’s in here?” Gabe asked as they passed a closed door on their way out to the garden.

“Giles’s study.”

Gabe opened the door and went inside.

Giles had never said she couldn’t enter it, but he’d never invited her in, either. The first time she’d breezed in, shortly after their return from Calais, he’d jolted up in his chair, shoved something into a desk drawer, then asked in a rather terse voice if there was something she’d wanted.

Later, too curious to resist, she’d gone to see what he’d been so eager to hide, but every drawer in his desk had been locked. It had reminded her with painful clarity that she wasn’t privy to everything in his life. After that, she’d left it alone.

That was probably why, as her family crowded inside now, she felt uneasy. Which was absurd. It wasn’t as if Giles were Bluebeard or something, hiding dead wives in his closet.

“Good God,” Gabe exclaimed. “Look at this place. He’s as bad as you.”

Minerva blinked, then looked around at the shelves full of books organized first by category, then alphabetically by author. On his desk, the inkwell sat in a precise line with the quill holder and the wax seals. She’d thought nothing of it when she first saw it, but now she burst into laughter. It was exactly like the items on her own desk. They both preferred to keep their surroundings under strict control.

Celia chuckled. “Gabe can’t imagine anyone preferring order to the chaos that is
his
desk.”

Gabe scowled. “I don’t like things hidden away where I can’t find them.”

“Which means that you think they should be strewn across every available surface,” Celia shot back. She smiled at
Minerva. “Personally, I find it rather sweet that you both keep your studies so tidy.”

“Thank you.” A pity that they kept their marriage so messy.

“Makes you wonder what you two are like in the bedroom together,” Gabe muttered. “You probably make love with your eyes shut.” When everyone gasped, Gabe said, “What? You know you were all thinking it.”

“
I
wasn’t,” Freddy retorted. “I was thinking that Masters has a damned fine desk. I shall ask my father-in-law for one like that in my office. Do you know where he got it?”

Minerva wanted to kiss Freddy for changing the subject. She did
not
want to talk with her brothers about Giles’s bedroom prowess, of all things.

But as she answered Freddy’s question and ushered them out of Giles’s office and down to the garden, she couldn’t help thinking that Gabe wasn’t far wrong. Giles
was
a bit too controlled in bed.

Not that he didn’t give her pleasure. He knew exactly where to touch her, how to touch her, how to enthrall her, even when she didn’t want to be enthralled.

Unfortunately, he did so with a curious lack of feeling, as if he were trying to win a competition. She’d kept herself aloof in an attempt to provoke him into showing some deep emotion, but it hadn’t worked. It was killing her.

After her family left, promising to have her and Giles out to dinner at Halstead Hall soon, she wandered back into her husband’s study. The place really did remind her of how buttoned-up and restrained he could be. Not cold or stiff, just . . . curiously unengaged.

She’d tried to wall up her own heart against him, but that hadn’t worked, either. Something about the intimacy of
sharing a bed with a man night after night made it difficult to keep him at arm’s length.

So where did that leave her? She ran her fingers over the surface of his desk, with its locked drawers. How was she to make a man like him fall in love with her? Was that even possible?

“Madam, you have another caller.”

Wondering if one of the family had returned to speak to her privately, she glanced up to see the butler, Mr. Finch, standing in the doorway with Mr. Pinter at his side.

Relief swamped her. Now she might learn enough about her recalcitrant husband to figure out a way into his heart.

With a nod at Mr. Finch, she rose. “Mr. Pinter, how good to see you. Do come in.”

When Mr. Finch frowned, she gave him a frosty glance. She was married now, and there was nothing improper about her entertaining a male friend of the family in her own home, no matter what Giles’s stodgy new butler might think.

“Forgive me for intruding, Mrs. Masters,” Mr. Pinter said, with a furtive glance at the butler, who positively radiated disapproval. “I had thought your husband might be home. I could return later . . .”

“Nonsense. He’ll be here soon.” That was a blatant lie, but at least Mr. Finch didn’t know it. Giles had already told her he might not be home until quite late, because of one of his trials. “Do take a seat. Mr. Finch, if you’d be so kind as to send a maid up with some tea?”

Mr. Finch seemed less disturbed, now that he’d been made to believe that Mr. Pinter wasn’t calling on
her
, alone.

As soon as the butler hurried off, Minerva grabbed Mr. Pinter’s arm and made him sit beside her on the settee.
“Thank goodness you’ve come. So tell me, what exactly has my husband been up to?”

Half an hour later, Minerva sat on the settee, her mind whirling with everything Mr. Pinter had told her concerning the Baron Newmarsh, a man named Sir John Sully, and the two men’s connection to her husband.

“There’s something else you should know,” Mr. Pinter added.

She blinked. What he’d found out had already roused a million questions in her head. “Oh?”

“I’ve been following your husband for the past few days, wanting to see if he did anything that might explain those mysterious disappearances that your brothers were always mentioning.”

“And did he?” she asked shakily.

“I’m not sure. This morning he met with Lord Ravenswood, the undersecretary of—”

“I know who he is,” she said, letting out a breath. “They’re friends from school.”

“School friends don’t meet in boathouses in Hyde Park at dawn. They don’t arrive separately and part separately. They don’t take great care to avoid being seen together.”

She sucked in a breath. That
was
a shock. Why would they avoid being seen together when they’d been perfectly amiable at the wedding? What did it mean? “Did you happen to hear—”

“What the bloody hell are you doing here with my wife, Pinter?” growled a familiar voice from the doorway.

Both she and Mr. Pinter jerked up straight. With her heart in her throat, she looked up to find Giles standing in the doorway, glowering. Only then did she realize how it must look, the two of them seated close on the settee, whispering together, as if sharing confidences.

Then she squelched the niggle of guilt. She’d done nothing wrong. She had a right to consult with Mr. Pinter on anything she pleased. Anyway, it wasn’t as if Giles really cared what she did.

Though he certainly looked as if he cared. He looked fit to be tied.

Mr. Pinter stood abruptly. “I thought I’d pay a call on the newlyweds,” he lied with ease. “But you weren’t here when I arrived.”

Giles’s anger didn’t seem to diminish one jot. “So you thought that my absence gave you leave to get cozy with my wife in my own study?”

“Giles!” Minerva jumped to her feet. “Stop being rude!”

Her husband approached, his eyes narrowing to slits. “I’ll be whatever I want. This is
my
house and
my
study, and you’re
my
wife.”

“This is
our
house,” she said stoutly. “Or so I assumed when you married me.”

“I . . . um . . . should go,” Mr. Pinter said, edging toward the door.

“Good idea,” Giles ground out, still glaring at her. Just as Mr. Pinter started to pass him, however, Giles turned and growled, “If I ever catch you alone with my wife again, I will beat you within an inch of your life, do you understand?”

“Oh, I understand you very clearly, sir,” Mr. Pinter said. But as he turned to head for the door, Minerva caught a glint of amusement in his eyes.

Of course he was amused. Men always found such possessive
posturing amusing in other men. Still, although she’d always thought jealousy a boorish emotion, she found it rather exciting in Giles. It was the first sign that she might mean more to him than just a convenience.

Not that she meant to let him get away with it. As soon as she heard the door close downstairs, she said, “You’re being ridiculous, you know. What are you doing home so early? It’s barely three o’clock.”

That only seemed to anger him further. “The trial ended midday, and fool that I was, I thought I’d come spend time with my wife. Little did I know she had other plans.”

“I do hope you’re not implying that I was doing anything wrong.”

“He was practically in your lap!”

“Nonsense. And I can scarcely believe you’re jealous of Mr. Pinter.”

“I’m not jealous,” Giles said stubbornly.

“Then what do you call this display of masculine temper?”

Giles advanced on her with a brooding gaze, forcing her to back up. “I call it asserting my rights as a husband. You have to admit that you and he were very chummy when I came in.”

“He’s a friend of the family,” she pointed out, not sure whether to be angry or delighted by Giles’s behavior. “We’ve always been cordial.”

“Cordial! Is that what you call it when a man is sitting far too close, whispering in your ear, nearly on the verge of pressing a kiss to your lips?”

She burst into laughter at that outrageous image of the straitlaced Mr. Pinter. “You have quite lost your mind.”

“Have I?” He backed her against his bookshelves with a feverish look on his face. “You were far more friendly with
him than you’ve been with
me
these past few days.” Planting his hands on either side of her shoulders, he leaned in close. “With him you’re easy and comfortable; with me you’re a cool goddess, warning me to keep my distance.”