“All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Chapter 3
Spencer waited in the hallway outside the bedchamber and wondered at what point his life had ceased to make logical sense.
Had it been when he’d inexplicably freed this woman from her prison cell?
Or earlier? When Henry had turned up in his study with an advertisement clipped from a newspaper and bearing the name of his purported wife?
Or perhaps even earlier than that. When his sisters had discovered a love of scandal and become known as the Halifax Hellions, maybe.
When their parents had died. When Spencer, all of nineteen, had become the earl.
It seemed almost harder to recall the last time that hehadknown with any confidence what to do. It had certainly not been any time in recent memory, with his sisters or the earldom or the baffling woman behind the heavy oak door.
Two chambermaids had come up a quarter of an hour ago with buckets of steaming water and a hip bath for Mrs. Halifax—hell, ought he call her that?—to attempt to cleanse herself. He was not sure it would be possible with a single bath. He suspected she would require a body of water.
The chambermaids had blushed and giggled as they’d looked at him, and, when they’d departed, Mrs. Halifax—Miss Wallace? Winnie?—had directed a pinched look in his direction.
“Though Fanny and Kitty might think you are my long-lost husband,” she’d said grimly, “I know you are not. You can wait in the hall.”
For God’s sake. He’d felt his face grow a little warm. Had she thought he meant to stand over her while she bathed?
In truth, it didn’t seem a terrible idea, what with the woman’s propensity for flight, but he had scruples, for God’s sake. He was not given to nonconsensual voyeurism.
“I’ll take one of those,” he muttered, and swiped one of the buckets on his way out of the room.
He was still scraping the film of sheep shit from his jacket when Winnie opened the door.
“All right,” she said. “I’m ready. We’ll have to go downstairs. I’ve thought it through and there’s nothing for it. Try to pluck up. Whatever abuse they have planned for you, it won’t go on long.”
He had no idea what she meant. His mind had been wiped clean of language.
Mrs. Halifax stood in the threshold, clad in a damp, clinging, mostly-clean gown. Her hair was wet and her face had been scrubbed until her skin was rosy. She smelled of lemons.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Now that she was free of grime, he could see the delicate point of her chin, the high rise of her cheekbones. Her lower lip was wider than the top, the faintest suggestion of a petal-colored pout. Her eyes were a pale, pale green.
Her hair was pulled over one shoulder, dripping onto her dampened bodice, which was molded to the curves of her bosom. He could see a handful of droplets clustered around her collarbone, heavy and clinging, waiting to fall. He felt breathless—tense—poised to watch them slip over the ridge of bone and run loose and wet down in the shadow between her breasts. He was transfixed. He—
He made an inarticulate noise and stepped backward, nearly crashing into the opposite wall.
Oh sweet circles of hell, what new disaster wasthis?
The alluring golden-haired seductress on the advertisements for Mrs. Halifax’s Handmade Thread wasreal? The grimy, ragged, odoriferous woman he’d clutched to his chest on the back of his horse was in reality this—this—goddess?
“No,” he said.
She blinked at him. Jesus Christ, even her blink was astonishing, slow and serene, drawing his eyes inexorably to the long gold-tipped lashes that fell over her perfect cheekbones. “No?” she repeated. “You don’t want to go downstairs? Unless you mean to escape through the window, I’m not certain there’s another option.”
He strove for sense. “We needn’t escape through the window.” He did not suppose there was a window in the building that would fit him anyway. Were he to become stuck in a window-casing, Mrs. Halifax would flee in a moment, an outcome he was trying quite studiously to avoid.
At least, he’d meant to avoid it. He’d meant to keep her with him, caught up by his side, until he had her in front of a solicitor or a judge or, ideally, both. He needed to bring her back to London, take her to speak to Henry and then on to Westminster, should it be necessary to legally sever their relationship.
But suddenly his plan of keeping her within arm’s reach at all times seemed perhaps not altogether wise. He’d thought nothing of sharing a carriage with her and only her for days on end.
Until he’d properly seen her, in all her lemon-scented glory.
