Chapter 1
October 5, 1851. Alverton House, Mayfair.
I have to leave. Lord Devlin Cader, seventh Earl of Alverton, lay slumped in his wife’s bed, with satiation a warm blanket, one imbued with the aftermath of sensual pleasure, lying heavy over his limbs.
He did not want to move—not now, not ever. But…
On a primal level, he was reassured by the warmth of his wife’s body, stretched alongside his, and his reckless inner self insisted that there was no good reason he couldn’t remain where he was and let the cards fall as they may.
Yet while his muscles lay lax and unmoving, his mind had come alive, driven by the knowledge that, courtesy of his unwise and impulsive words of yesterday, there was a degree of urgency in deciding what came next, and thinking rationally while lying beside Therese, with the perfume that rose from her hair and warm skin wreathing his senses, was next to impossible.
Aside from all else, if she woke and, with dawn approaching, found him still there, she would be surprised and would question him, and he had no idea what to say.
No idea what it would be safe to say or how to explain that, for the past five years, he’d practiced on her and everyone else what some might call the ultimate deception—not that he’d pretended to love her when he hadn’t, but that he’d allowed everyone including her to believe that he didn’t love her when he did.
That challenge and the stark realization that he had no idea how to respond to it had him easing away from her. Luckily for him, she was deeply asleep.
He turned onto his back and stared upward, unseeing, at the darkened canopy of the four-poster bed. The words she and he had exchanged yesterday afternoon, at her oldest brother’s wedding breakfast, rang clearly in his head.
“I am so utterly in charity with dear Christopher. I’d virtually given up all hope that he would ever be sensible enough to choose a lady like Ellen as his bride—that he would recognize the possibilities, the prospects, even were she to appear before him, pressed upon his notice as, indeed, I gather occurred.”
It hadn’t been the words so much as her smugly proud tone and the depth of satisfaction in her consequent sigh that had unexpectedly pricked him on the raw and resulted in his unwise riposte: “Perhaps your dear Christopher finally opened his eyes and took his cue from me.”
He’d immediately bitten his unruly tongue, but of course, that had been too late.
She’d taken umbrage and sought to set him right, reminding him that, as all the ton knew, she’d had to badger and hound him to the altar—or so she still believed.
He could have smoothed things over by smilingly agreeing and ascribing his gaffe to a faulty memory; she’d been expecting that and would have accepted such a retreat with nothing more than a haughty sniff. Except he’d glimpsed a species of hurt swimming behind the nearly reflective silver blue of her remarkable eyes…and he hadn’t been able to stop himself from responding.
“Oops.”
Such a small, inconsequential, even nonsensical word, yet given the context, his faintly taunting delivery, and her character, it had been tantamount to a red-rag invitation to pursue—to doggedly investigate his meaning until she’d uncovered all and had satisfied herself that she truly understood him. Him and their marriage.
He was confident that lure would fix her interest unswervingly on him and allow him to lead her step by carefully judged step forward until she uncovered all he’d kept hidden.
She would believe it more readily if she discovered it for herself rather than through him trying to convince her of it.
Such was his reasoning, albeit assembled after the fact.
Reviewing the events of yesterday, he realized her comment regarding Christopher having had the sense and the courage to seize love when he’d found it had been merely the last straw that had tipped Devlin over the edge of the precipice on which he’d already been teetering. Therese had been the first of her generation of Cynsters to marry, and consequently, over the past four years, he and she had attended a string of Cynster weddings up and down the country. He and she were now one of a group of couples who regularly met at family events such as Christopher and Ellen’s wedding. When he’d embarked on his deception, he hadn’t anticipated the impact that being surrounded by couples united in marriages based on openly acknowledged love would have on him, much less that it would rescript his view of what he wanted from his and Therese’s marriage.
More than anything else, viewing the contemporary Cynster marriages against the backdrop of those of the older Cynster generation had brought home to him that, as he and Therese would inevitably grow old, he wanted to grow old like that—in an openly loving relationship.
In a marriage acknowledged as being based on reciprocated love.
Although his change of heart and mind had happened prior to yesterday, he hadn’t made any definite decision about how to correct Therese’s belief. He’d been vacillating for months, and yesterday afternoon, his reckless inner self, having grown increasingly impatient to the point of revolt, had seized the opportunity and taken over his tongue, resulting in his uncharacteristically impulsive pseudo revelation.
Deep inside, he’d known he’d been dragging his heels for no valid reason, and his reckless self had resolved to act for his own good. Over the years, that had happened twice in business dealings, and in both instances, his inner self had been correct; his reticence over acting was a weakness of sorts—when he knew he should do something, but kept putting it off.
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at Therese, letting his gaze linger on her features, currently relaxed in sleep.
He’d said enough to engage her legendary inquisitiveness, then aided by circumstance, had frustrated her every attempt to learn more immediately; because they’d had their children with them, she’d declared that they wouldn’t stay, even overnight, at her childhood home, Walkhurst Manor in Kent, given that the bridal couple had intended to retreat there and the manor wasn’t that large. Along with most of the Cynster couples attending, he, she, and the children had driven back to town, and because of the children, they’d been among the first to leave. They’d broken their journey to dine at Sevenoaks, then continued to London, arriving at Alverton House just before midnight.
Courtesy of the children and the ever-present staff, Therese hadn’t been able to question him regarding what she no doubt considered his inexplicable comments, and after settling the children, she and he had retired to their respective rooms, then later, as he usually did, he’d joined her there, in her bed. In doing so, he’d made very sure that from the moment he’d walked through the door, she’d been sufficiently distracted to be unable to form coherent questions and, later, that she’d been drained of all energy and inclination to do so.
He could hear the soft sough of her breathing, quiet and steady, much as she was. Capable, reliable, steadfast, loyal; she was that and so much more.
From the instant he’d first set eyes on her—across Lady Hendricks’s ballroom—he’d recognized that she had epitomized everything he wanted and needed in a wife, and so it had proved. When he’d first looked into her silver-blue eyes, he’d known beyond question that his life had, in that moment, irrevocably and inescapably changed. He’d loved her—had fallen in love with her—completely and utterly, just as, thank all the saints, she had fallen in love with him.