Page List

Font Size:

She narrowed her eyes, smiling despite herself. "Not unless I'm allowed a rhyming couplet involving 'indelicate forehead.'"

His thumb lingered along her jaw. "I rather like that you challenge me. It's infuriating."

"Good," she whispered.

Another pause. Not awkward—only full.

This was what it meant, she realised, to be kissed by a man. A proper man. Not a boy fumbling at a garden party, not a rogue with flattering lines, but someone who saw you, admired you, and still chose to be gentle.

This was not flirtation, but rather a beginning that Jameson had dreamed of. When he had offered her an alliance that day in the cellar, he could not even gather the audacity to hope for this much, but today, he had it. A real bond with his wife.

When they finally stepped apart, it was with the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same. It was true that their matrimony had begun in convenience and caution but it now it trembled at the threshold of something far more complex.

And far, far more real.

***

The morning after, early light crept gently through the muslin curtains, casting pale gold across the embroidered coverlet. Gemma stirred beneath it, her eyes fluttering open slowly, reluctantly, as though her mind needed time to reassemble all it had felt the night before.

The kiss and his arms, his words, half-truth and half-tenderness, unfolded like a letter written in careful ink.

It all came back at once, the ballroom, the overheard whispers, the fragile honesty that had broken through the careful walls between them. She pressed her hand to her chest, as though the memory alone had stirred her heart back into a gallop.

For several moments, Gemma lay perfectly still, allowing the sensations to wash over her anew. The warmth of Jameson's lips against hers, the surprising gentleness in his touch, the vulnerability in his eyes when they had finally parted. It had been nothing like she'd imagined a kiss with Lord Brokeshire would be, not practiced or calculated, but something far more genuine. Far more dangerous to her carefully guarded heart.

She traced her fingertips lightly over her lips, reliving the moment. How strange that such a simple act could feel so profound, so utterly transformative. It was as though the world had reordered itself around that single moment, and she now inhabited a reality where everything—their matrimony, their home, their very existence, had taken on new meaning.

"Foolish," she whispered to the empty room, though without conviction. She had promised herself upon entering this matrimony that she would not fall prey to romantic notions. That she would maintain a level head and practical heart. That she would be a wife in name only, providing the respectability Jameson required while preserving her own independence.

Now, with the morning light illuminating the bedchamber they had never shared, she wondered if such promises had been doomed from the start.

The night had begun ordinarily enough—another lavish ball, another evening of practiced smiles and polite conversation. She had danced with all the appropriate partners, exchanged pleasantries with the expected acquaintances, and performed her role as Lady Brokeshire with the grace society had come to expect of her.

She had confronted Jameson immediately, pulling him away from a group of gentlemen into an adjacent, empty drawing room. The resulting confrontation had begun as an argument—her demand for answers met with his practiced evasion—until something had broken between them. The mask had slipped, and for the first time since their wedding day, Jameson had been entirely honest with her.

Not completely forthcoming, perhaps, but honest enough that she had glimpsed the man beneath the careful facade—a man burdened by responsibilities and haunted by past betrayals, yet still possessing an unexpected core of integrity.

And then, in the dying light of the ballroom's candles, with both of them disheveled from the long evening and raw from their confrontation, he had kissed her.

Gemma sighed and pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The memory was almost too vivid, too consuming. How was she to face him this morning with any semblance of dignity? What did one say to a husband who had gone from polite stranger to... to what, exactly?

She tossed back the covers and rang for her lady's maid. There was no use in dwelling on it. Today would be what it would be, and she would face it with the same composure she had cultivated throughout her life.

An hour later, dressed in a pale morning gown of soft lavender lawn with delicate white embroidery at the cuffs and collar, her hair arranged in a simple but elegant knot at the nape of her neck, Gemma descended to the drawing room. The door had been left ajar, and inside, voices floated like polished crystal.

She paused outside, her hand resting lightly on the doorframe. Her heart, which had only just settled into a reasonable rhythm, quickened once more at the sound of Jameson's voice—lower, richer somehow than it had seemed before. She took a moment to collect herself, smoothing invisible wrinkles from her skirts and taking a steadying breath.

Jameson was seated near the hearth, cravat retied but hair slightly mussed, as though he had run his fingers through it in a rare moment of agitation. Across from him, Lady Belinda held court in her usual manner—upright, alert, and faintly suspicious of anything too quiet. The elderly woman, Jameson's great-aunt and their current houseguest, had taken it upon herself to act as chaperone during the early days of their matrimony. Though the role had become largely unnecessary given the separate lives they had led, Belinda had remained, her sharp eyes missing nothing.

"…of course, if Parliament thinks the tariffs will hold, they're more deluded than usual," she was saying crisply, her teacup suspended midair like a punctuation mark. "And I needn't remind you that the Duke of Ferndale only barely recovered his holdings after the last slump. Barely. His wife has been reduced to wearing the same gown twice in a season." She shuddered delicately, as though this were the height of tragedy.

"Indeed," Jameson murmured, though his attention shifted the moment Gemma entered. The cup in his hand stilled halfway to his lips, his gaze lifting to meet hers.

She caught it—that momentary flicker in his eyes. Relief. And something softer, warmer than she had ever seen there before. A private look that seemed to ask,Do you regret it?

He rose to his feet, setting his cup aside with careful precision. "Good morning. I trust you slept…?" The question hung in the air, laden with meaning only the two of them could decipher.

"Well enough," Gemma replied, though she doubted her voice concealed anything. The slight tremor, the too-careful enunciation—surely these would betray her to anyone listening closely. She took her seat near the tea tray, her gaze never straying far from his.