The Regency Season: Convenient Marriages. Sophia James

he?

      * * *

      ‘Hell.’ Daniel adjusted the fit of his trousers over a growing hardness. She had dumbfounded him with her reaction to his kiss, no tepid chaste reply, but a full-blown taking of everything he had offered, the promise of lust in the way her teeth had come down on his bottom lip, egging on all that he had held restrained.

      Like a siren. Like a courtesan. Like a woman of far more experience than she was admitting to.

      His plain little intended mouse-to-be was baring her claws and turning into a lioness and all before they had even got up the matrimonial aisle. Nothing made sense any more because the only thing he was thinking about was following her and demanding the completion of an intimacy that had left him reeling.

      He was glad that her scent lingered in the room, glad to keep the promise of Amethyst Cameron for a little while longer. The cloth bag she had brought in was still beside the sofa, abandoned in her moment of panic, some item of clothing spilling out on to his thick burgundy Aubusson carpet.

      As he hauled the thing upwards, one handle broke and the contents tumbled out. An apron and a tattered Bible were the first things that had fallen at his feet, Amethyst’s name printed in the frontispiece of the book and underlined in different colours. He smiled, imagining her doing such a thing. Beneath that was a ragdoll with a torn dress and another toy whose identity he could not determine—a cat perhaps, its paws missing. Incredibly, a diamond ring also sat there amongst the folds of cloth, the carat weight sizeable, and the cut, colour and clarity unmatched. Valuable and forgotten, strands of cotton and dust caught in the clasps of gold.

      Any other woman of his acquaintance would have worn the thing on her finger, showing it off, enjoying the admiration of others, but not Amethyst Cameron. No, to her the dismembered cat probably had more of a value and the Bible a better use.

      Stuffing the lot back in the bag, he called to his footman.

      ‘Have this delivered to the Camerons’ home in Grosvenor Square immediately.’ Daniel did not wish to take the thing himself, an unaccustomed fragility setting his countenance on edge after the last few minutes with his bride-to-be.

      He tried not to notice the curiosity in his man’s eyes as he handed the bag over.

      * * *

      Her father was still up when she got home and Amethyst’s heart sank. Of all the nights he had delayed retiring to his bedchamber, why did it have to be this one?

      ‘Papa.’ She tried to keep her voice steady, but knew that she had not succeeded as he stood.

      ‘What has happened? You look...different.’

      She almost smiled at that. Different. Such a word came nowhere near the heart of all that she felt.

      ‘I went to see Lord Montcliffe.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘I am not certain if he was the right choice after all. I think he might want a lot from me, more than I should be willing to give.’

      Her father laughed. ‘Your mother said that of me.’

      ‘He kissed me.’

      The stillness in his eyes was foreign. ‘Did you like it?’

      Her heart thudded as she nodded.

      ‘Then he was the right choice, Amy, for although society is disparaging in allowing any intimate contact between intending couples I think that it should be mandatory. As long as it is a consenting thing. He did not force you?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘If your mother was here, she would tell you of the power of feelings between a man and a woman and she would say it better than I. Whitely knew nothing about you, my dear. He did not appreciate the layers in a woman or the complexities.’

      Anger rose where only guilt had lingered. Until this moment Amethyst had always thought their broken marriage was her fault, but after Daniel Wylde’s kiss she wondered. Gerald had kissed her a few times in the very early days of their courtship, but his pecks were tepid reflections of all she had felt in the heated atmosphere of Lord Montcliffe’s library. The breath constricted in her throat and she swallowed back worry. If she could react this way to one of the Earl’s kisses, what might happen if things went further? The teachers at Gaskell Street had always drilled her upon the proper and correct reactions a lady might show to the world and she was certain that her response tonight would have been well outside any appropriate boundary.

      Decorum and seemliness were the building stones of the aristocracy. The gentler sex was supposed to be exactly that, after all—women devoid of all the more natural vices men were renowned for. She wished her mother was here to give some advice and direction. Her father, however, seemed, more than ready to supply some.

      ‘Whitely was a conniving liar, that was the problem. He was no more than an acquaintance when you married him and nothing more when he died. I tried to warn you, but you would not listen. If your mother had still been alive, I am certain things would have been different, but it is hard to advise anyone against something they have their very heart set upon.’

      His words dug into Amethyst’s centre. Her fault. Her mistake. Her deficiency to tumble into a relationship that had been patently wrong from the very start.

      With Gerald there had been no true underpinning attraction. With Daniel it was the opposite. She did not know him at all and yet... She shook away the justification. Lust was shaky ground to build a relationship upon and she could not afford another disaster.

      Her father’s coughing started in a little way at first, a clearing of a throat, a slight impediment. But then his eyes rolled back and he simply dropped, folding in on himself, a slight man with his jacket askew and his spectacles crushed underfoot.

      She shouted out as the doorbell rang and the Cameron butler and a stranger rushed into the room, the bag she had left at the Montcliffe town house abandoned at their feet as they both lifted her father to the chaise longue. Wilson untied his cravat and loosened his collar, arranging Robert on his side so that his breathing was eased.

      Amethyst could not move. She was frozen in fear as the numbness spreading across her chest emptied her of rational thought. Was it his heart? Was this the final moment of which the specialist had spoken?

      ‘Get a doctor.’ Their butler seemed to have taken charge and the man she did not know nodded and left the room. A Montcliffe servant, she supposed, returning her bag. Nothing made sense any more. The housekeeper scurried in with a hot towel and a bowl, the maid kneeling with new wood to stoke up the heat of the fire, Wilson trying to awaken her father from the stupor he had fallen into. The moments turned into a good half an hour.

      * * *

      And then Lord Montcliffe was there, his voice calm with authority as he took in the situation, a doctor at his side.

      Amethyst’s jaw ached from where she held it tightly together, but when he took her arm and led her across to her father, she went.

      ‘Hold his hand and sit beside him. Talk to him so that he knows you are there.’

      When Robert’s wilted fingers came into her grasp she held on. Cold. Familiar. The scar upon his little finger where he had fallen through glass, a nail pulled out by heavy timber. A working man’s hand and the hand of a father who had loved her well. She brought the back of it to her lips, paper-thin skin marred by brown spots, age drawn into years of outside work. Kissing him, she willed him back, willed him to open his eyes and see her. The doctor frowned as he felt for a pulse.

      ‘Is there other family we can call?’

      She shook her head.

      Just her and just Papa. The horror of loss ran through her like sharpened swords and her teeth had begun to chatter, shock searing into trauma. For a moment the next breath just would not come.

      * * *

      Daniel kneeled down before her, hoping the panic he could see in her eyes might