Page 9 of Impassioned
Perhaps heshouldvisit her tonight. If she was so changed, she might be different in their marriage bed. She certainly didn’t seem to be anxious or tense around him as she had before. Was there a chance shewantedto participate?
Making his way to his chamber, Constantine stopped abruptly in the sitting room as he caught the scent of apples and vanilla. His wife smelled like that, he realized.
For a moment, he tried to think of doing things to her that would make her scream with pleasure. He couldn’t envision it. All he saw was her pale, mortified face.
He should speak with her plainly—ask if she was still going to quiver with apprehension and turn rigid until he left her. But to speak of such things gavehimtremors of anxiety. And she thought him dispassionate. Her description had pricked him, made him question whether it was true.
Of course it was.
For fifteen long years, he’d worked hard to keep every emotion bottled tight. Before that, he’d only revealed them to one person, to the mother who’d loved him and assured him his father did too. Constantine wasn’t sure he believed that. The duke was proud of him, but that was not the same thing.
How he wished he could talk to her now, ask her what he should do and whether he was completely wrongheaded about his wife or, hell, about everything. Since he could not, he went into his chamber and carried on with his day.
The thrill of saying exactly what she’d wanted and the resulting expression of shock and uncertainty on her husband’s face was still thrumming through Sabrina when she met Charity downstairs. Together, they left the house and went to the coach, where a groom helped them inside.
“Where are we going, my lady?” Charity asked with an edge of excitement. This was her first time leaving the house as a lady’s maid, and she’d confessed that she was a trifle nervous.
“Just a few errands,” Sabrina said vaguely. Though she’d received Charity’s assurance that she wouldn’t gossip, Sabrina wasn’t going to freely offer information about certain things. And their first stop was one of those things.
When the coach entered Piccadilly, Charity asked if they were going shopping.
“We may.” That depended on what happened next.
A few minutes later, they rolled into St. James Square and then onto King Street, where the coach stopped in front of a small terrace house.
Sabrina turned her head to the maid who was staring out the window. “Now, Charity, you are going to remain in the coach while I pay this call. I shan’t be long.” With a brief smile, Sabrina left the vehicle and stopped short when she encountered the person she’d come to see.
“Lady Aldington?” Lord Lucien Westbrook squinted briefly as he came toward her. He removed his hat and offered her a bow. “What a delightful surprise.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said.
“Not at all. I am just returning from the mews after riding in the park. I saw your husband there, in fact.”
Sabrina did not react to him seeing Aldington. “May we go inside for a few minutes?”
“My apologies. I should have invited you straightaway.” He indicated for her to precede him to the door where the butler admitted them inside.
Lord Lucien’s house was much smaller and less opulently decorated than his brother’s or father’s. Which wasn’t to say it was spartan. The entry hall was compact, but the white marble floor gleamed, and a painting of a cloudy sky graced the wall.
“It’s an odd painting for an entry hall, I’ll grant you,” he said. “It reminds me of the sky in Portugal. I would lie on my back and stare up at the clouds, wondering where they’d been and where they were going. Sometimes, I fancied reaching up and catching a ride.”
She turned her head from the painting to see him smiling. “How do you possess so much charm compared to the other males in your family?”
Lines creased across his forehead as his smile dissipated, and a slight grimace pulled at his mouth instead. “Shall we adjourn to the library?”
He led her from the entry past the stairs and into the room at the back of the ground floor. It was a library but also a parlor with a comfortable seating area. Her gaze fell on a large desk in the corner, which was stacked with papers, and she realized it was also his study. It seemed Lord Lucien was an economical man, at least when it came to space.
“Can I offer you refreshment?” He stood in the center of the room, perhaps waiting for her to choose a place to sit.
“No, thank you.” Her bravado faltered for a moment. It was one thing to boldly face her husband and another to approach her brother-in-law, whom she didn’t know all that well. Then again, did she really know her husband well either? Perhaps not, but her frustration with him and their marriage provided an excellent fuel for her audacity. “I came to, ah, ask for your assistance. I understand you do that. Provide assistance, I mean.”
One of his dark brows ticked up. “I see. Tell me how I can help.”
Sabrina moved to a chair and perched on the edge of the peacock blue cushion. Lord Lucien set his hat and gloves upon the desk and took another chair nearby.
Gathering her courage, she laid out precisely what she required. “I am in need of a new wardrobe, and I should like to receive invitations to the best events the Season has to offer. You may wonder why I’m coming to you for this, and the truth is that I don’t know where else to go. I can’t ask my mother. She thinks my wardrobe is fine, and she’ll only tell me that as the Countess of Aldington, I already have everything I need and shouldn’t desire anything more.”
“How unhelpful,” he murmured. “I am sorry about that. Are there no other women with whom you may confer?”
