The Historical Collection 2018. Candace Camp

fancywork with a dancing couple who twirled on the hour.

      They worked their way through the morning room, the music room, and the dining room. Alex kept notes of every timepiece, room by room.

      When they came to the door of the ballroom, Emma stopped and pressed her ear to the door. Clanging and intermittent grunting could be heard from within.

      “We’ll come back to that one later,” she whispered, steering Alex back down the corridor to the safety of the entrance hall.

      They made their way upstairs, where Emma struggled to remember the names of all the guest bedchambers. Some were easy, like the Rose Room and the Green Suite, but they had to resort to making up names for the rest: the Unsettling Portrait Room, the Hideous Wallpaper Annex, and the Suite of Ridiculous Size.

      “What’s this one?” Alex opened the next door. “Oh, it’s the grandest yet.”

      “These are the duke’s rooms.”

      Emma paused in the corridor. She hadn’t been prepared for this. To be honest, she only knew these rooms to be her husband’s because they were just down the corridor from hers. She’d never been inside them, and she was embarrassed to admit it. Even to Alex.

      She shouldn’t be ashamed to enter, should she? She was mistress of the house, after all. It was no intrusion for her to come in and inventory the clocks. It wasn’t as though she meant to rifle through his chest of drawers and sniff his laundry.

      Besides, she knew him to be downstairs—clanging and grunting with poor Khan. Lord, what suffering he inflicted on the man.

      Emma moved into the room, pretending to have the same confidence she’d shown when exploring the others.

      Alexandra scribbled in her carnet, taking note of the clock on the mantel of the antechamber before proceeding into the bedroom. There, she peered at the small timepiece at his bedside.

      “Is there a clock in the dressing room?” Alex asked.

      “I don’t . . .” Emma cursed her own ignorance. Rather than admit it, she plowed forward in false surety. “I meant to say, no. There isn’t.”

      “Did you want me to set the pocket watch?”

      “The pocket watch?”

      Alexandra nodded toward the washstand. To the side of the basin and ewer stood a military rank of gentleman’s toiletries: tooth powder, shaving soap and razor, cologne, a linen towel . . . and at the end of those, a silver tray holding a stickpin, pocket watch, and an assortment of shillings and pence.

      “I’m not certain,” Emma said, unwilling to go that far. “I’ll ask him about it later.”

      Her gaze tracked back to that shaving soap and razor. She’d never stopped to consider it before, but it must be astoundingly difficult for him to shave around his scars. Yet he did so anyway, every day. Every evening, too, come to think of it. When he suckled her breasts or settled between her thighs—her skin heated at the memories—she never felt the scrape of whiskers against her skin.

      Did he go to all that trouble just for her?

      The thought was deeply stirring. She felt her body softening in unconnected places. The corners of her mouth. Her knees. Her heart.

      To distract herself, she wandered to a corner of the antechamber, where a Holland cloth had been draped over some tall, narrow furnishing. Could it be another clock, out of use? If so, Emma hoped it needed repair. She could pay Alex a frightful sum for mending it.

      However, when she pulled the cloth aside, she did not discover a clock behind it.

      She found a mirror.

      A full-length looking glass in a gilt oval frame, cracked to pieces. A spiderweb of splinters radiated from the center. Each shard reflected at a different angle, piecing her image into a patchwork Emma.

      She touched her fingertips to the center of the shattered web. It looked as if someone—a strong, tall someone—had driven his fist into the glass.

      A lump rose in her throat.

      Alexandra tugged at her elbow. “Emma, someone’s coming.”

      Oh, no.

      Someone was coming. Worse by far, she knew who it must be. Steps that heavy could only belong to one person in this house.

      The duke.

      “We should move on anyhow,” Alexandra said.

      Emma whirled in place, desperate. If they left the suite now, they would confront him in the corridor—and he would be suspicious of her intent. Displeased, or even furious.

      A door creaked. He’d entered through the antechamber.

      Emma grabbed Alexandra by the wrist and tugged her to the other side of the room. Together, they dove behind a settee.

      “Why are we hiding?” Alexandra whispered. “It’s your house. Your husband.”

      “I know.” Emma fluttered her hands. “But I panicked.”

      “I suppose we’re stuck now. Let’s hope he doesn’t mean to stay.”

      Emma put a finger to her lips for silence as the duke’s footsteps moved into the bedchamber. The room fell almost silent. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she peeked around the corner of the settee. His back was to her, and he—

      God have mercy. He was disrobing.

      She slunk back to the other side of the settee and quietly thunked her head against the upholstery.

      Why, why, why? Why now, why here?

      Well, she supposed “here” was the logical place to disrobe, it being his bedchamber. But that answer did nothing to assuage her rueful, silent bemoaning of the entire situation. She had never felt so stupid.

      “What is it?” Alexandra whispered.

      Frantic, Emma made every hand signal she knew to indicate the need for absolute silence. She probably invented a few new ones, as well.

      Remain calm, she told herself. Most likely he’d only come up to exchange his coat, or retrieve his watch or some other small item. Otherwise, wouldn’t he ring for his valet?

      After waiting through twenty heartbeats—which likely added up to four seconds on Alexandra’s chronometer—she peeked again.

      Oh, Lord. He’d tossed aside the coat, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and—as she watched—tugged his shirt free of his breeches and pulled it over his head.

      Her pulse stopped—and then began again as a low, painful throb.

      Dear heavens.

      The left side of him was muscled and sculpted and Roman-godlike and all the other descriptors a woman could muster to signal attractiveness and sheer, raw lust. That ridge between his flank and his hip alone . . . the way his trousers rode it, dipping to reveal an enticing glimpse of taut, firm backside.

      Emma wished she could claim she was riveted to that sight. All the places where he was strong and perfect. She wished her gaze had never wandered to the wounded side of him and stubbornly stuck there.

      But it had.

      And now she couldn’t look away.

      The injuries he wore on his face were only the beginning. His torso bore a long, angry swath of scars that snaked from his neck, down the right side of his shoulder and chest, and then blazed around his ribs to end at the small of his back.

      As he splashed water over his face and neck, the rivulets followed a tortuous path downward. His flesh was raised and twisting, as gnarled as the bark of ancient tree. Warring scars tugged at each other with aggressive fingers. And then there were a few bits of him that were simply . . . missing. Depressions that deepened into hollows, where fire had carved him away to sinew and bone.

      What