Proud enough to stand in her purpose and drive her point home. “But perhaps you do not recall the specifics as well as you think. Surely, it is difficult to remember all the times with me, as there have been so many other women since.”
She reveled in his response, the way his head snapped up, his eyes—those beautiful, mysterious eyes—finding hers. He watched her, his anger clear, and she waited for his next move. Ached for it, even as she hated herself for doing so.
It had always been like this. Intense and evenly matched. Tempting beyond measure, even when it hurt.
“And so we get to it. Adultery.” He rubbed a hand along the back of his neck as he looked away, exhaling on a soft laugh. “Unfortunately, this is London in 1836, and while you might think yourself a veritable Boadicea, wife, the law does not. My actions beyond our bedchambers are not grounds for divorce. You shall have to keep searching.”
She picked at an invisible speck on her sleeve, affecting boredom. “Never fear, Duke. There is always impotence.”
His lips flattened into a thin, straight line as Sera pushed past him, toward the door to the chamber, her heart pounding from his proximity, from memory and panic and something else she did not care to name. She released the breath she had been holding in a long, slow exhale as she reached for the door handle.
She turned back to find that he was now staring out the window, across the rooftops of London, the golden, liquid sunlight gleaming around him like a halo, marking his broad shoulders, his straight spine, his strong arms and narrow hips. She hated herself for noticing any of it. For remembering the feel of it. The warmth of him.
“Malcolm,” she said, the handle already turning in her grasp. He stilled at the use of his given name, but did not look to her, not even when she said, proud and clear, “I feel I should point out that, while a husband’s infidelities may not be grounds for divorce, a wife’s are quite a different thing altogether.”
And with her closing salvo, the Duchess of Haven left the Houses of Parliament, scandal in her wake.
Scandal, and a husband so irate, she imagined her divorce would come swift and without hesitation.
Chapter 4
So-Fine Seraphina!
Doe-Eyed Duke Meets His Match
March 1, 1833
Three years, five months, and two weeks earlier
Mayfair, London
“Surely there is nothing in the wide world worse than the first ball of the season.” Haven pushed his way onto a small balcony at Worthington House, grateful for the cold, crisp March air, a welcome respite from the cloying heat and stench of the rooms inside, packed with more aristocrats than he could have imagined—all desperate to resume city life after months in the country, consumed with boredom.
“It’s not so very bad,” the Marquess of Mayweather replied, closing the door behind him.
Haven cut his friend a skeptical look. “It’s impossible to move for all the debutantes and matchmakers within. They’re slavering after us, as though we are meat.”
Mayweather smirked. “There are, what, a half-dozen titles up for grabs this season? That is, young and able-bodied titles. A marquess and a duke on the cusp of middle age are prime cuts, Haven.”
“Thirty isn’t middle age.”
The marquess moved to the balcony balustrade, setting his drink there and looking out over the extensive back gardens of Worthington House. “It’s old enough for marriage to be on our minds.”
Half the men of the aristocracy waited until their thirties to marry. Many until their late thirties. Haven wasn’t a fool—he knew his bachelorhood was on borrowed time. He’d require a marriage and an heir soon enough, but Lord knew he wasn’t interested in balls and long walks through Hyde Park to find it.
The idea was ridiculous. How many times had Haven heard Mayweather himself claim that heirs could be whelped any time? Unless . . .
“Christ,” Haven said softly in the darkness. “You’re caught.” Was that a blush? “Someone has her pretty hooks in you.”
The marquess looked away. “You needn’t make it sound so mercenary.”
“You said yourself that our titles make us meat.”
“She doesn’t think of it that way.”
Haven would wager everything he had that the woman did just that. He raised a brow. “No, I’m sure not. I’m sure yours is a proper love match.”
Mayweather scowled. “You needn’t make it sound so improbable.”
Not improbable. Impossible. Perhaps it was reasonable for others to assume their wives came to them with feeling. With desire. With more. But if that were true at all, it was for luckier men. For men born beyond the yoke of title and fortune and responsibility. Hackney drivers and street sweepers and sailors could marry for passion and even love. But men such as he and Mayweather? Dukes and marquesses, young and rich and titled? There was no such thing as love.
There was only duty, which required marriage, but if Haven knew anything, it was this: that men must enter marriage eyes wide open, aware of the disappointment the institution would no doubt set upon them.
Malcolm, Duke of Haven, knew it without doubt, as he was the product of that disappointment. How many times had his father looked past him, failure and something worse in his gaze? Not regret, though that was there as well. Something like loathing, as though he’d happily erase his son from time and space if it would give him back the life he’d once had. Haven had always imagined his father had been grateful when death came, and with it, freedom from the horrid reality with which he’d been saddled.
And then there had been the woman with whom the duke had been saddled. Haven’s mother. Born without title or fortune, climbed to the highest rank in the land. Duchess. And the way she looked at her son, cool and aloof, with a hint of pride—not for the child she’d borne or the way he’d grown, but for her great deception, her legendary triumph. The title she’d thieved.
So, no. Haven knew his own life too well to believe that others might have it differently. And he faced his future knowing that if one expected disappointment, one could not be disappointed.
He approached his friend, putting his back to the balustrade and watching the golden light in the building beyond. “I’m simply saying that love is a great fallacy,” he said. “Women are after certainty and comfort and nothing else. And if one is chasing after you, she is after your title, friend. Do not doubt it.”
Mayweather turned to look at him. “It’s true what they say about you, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re a coldhearted bastard.”
Haven nodded and drank deep. “It doesn’t make me wrong.”
“No, but it does make you an ass.” The words came from the dark stone staircase leading down to the gardens, clear and certain, as though the woman who spoke them made a practice of lying in wait for aristocratic men to say something for which she might chastise them.
Mayweather couldn’t contain his surprised laugh. “From darkness, truth.”
She replied to the Marquess. “If one of my friends said such things to me, my lord, I should make myself another friend. One with better manners.”