Not Lottie. Recognition sifted through him like awareness, small grains of sand collecting into a greater conscious. The scent of oranges and musk traveled to him then, mingling with the copper of blood. Clara. His wife. Sweet little dove. He wished he hadn’t plucked the wrong name from the recesses of his aching brain, for he’d never confuse Clara with Lottie. The two couldn’t have been more opposite.
His hand curved around her waist where it belonged.
Yes, he recalled now. He was a married man, and his countess had not been pleased to discover his duplicity. They’d rowed. He’d gone to his club, hadn’t he? He’d intended to give her time and space to see reason. He remembered dining at his club. He’d given in to temptation and downed a whisky. The ride home had been ordinary, nothing of note to remark upon. After that, his memory was as blank as a night without stars.
“Julian?”
He forced his eyes open again, pleased to at long last hear his name in her buttery drawl. No defiant “Ravenscroft” or “my lord” this time. A worried bite made her tone almost harsh. She was a blur of colors for a moment as she came into focus. Her blonde hair fell unbound in a mass of burnished curls. Half moons darkened the creamy skin beneath her blue eyes. Her lovely face was a study in worry. Blood stained her dressing gown. His blood.
“Little dove.” He tried to smile in reassurance, but even flexing his facial muscles into a semblance of cheer gave him pain. “You look as if you’ve been to battle.” Even his words emerged slowly at first, as though his mind were a pump that needed priming after the blow he’d taken.
She looked down at herself, snatching her hand away from his chest and pressing it over the smears on her dressing gown. “I feel as if I’ve been to battle.” Her voice gentled as her gaze snapped back to his, drinking him in or so it seemed. “You gave us all a fright. How do you feel now?”
He gingerly lifted a hand to touch his head, finding a bandage there. The devil. “I feel like hell. What happened to me?”
Clara frowned. “I was hoping you would remember. Someone attacked you, my lord. You’d just returned from your club. Your driver saw only a fleeting shadow of a figure running away. No other servants were about.”
Jesus. He forced himself to think again about the drive home. He recalled debating whether or not he would knock on the door joining his chamber to hers. Weighing the merits of drawing out his seduction of her until she was mad for him or simply barging over the threshold and seducing her in one night. Then, the carriage had come to a halt and he’d alighted. He had a vague recollection of taking a few steps, but he couldn’t be sure what, if anything, had occurred beyond the moment the sole of his shoe had touched the ground.
“I was attacked,” he repeated, feeling fuzzy as he tried to comprehend the knowledge that someone had intentionally wounded him. And from the grinding pain in his cranium, it would seem that his assailant had meant to cause him serious injury. Perhaps even to kill him. A chill of foreboding passed over him. “I recall nothing.”
“I feared as much.” She caught her luscious lower lip in her teeth, pausing for a beat. She seemed to struggle for words.
As for him, he most assuredly wasn’t dead yet, for watching her work her lip made his cock stir to life. “Something troubles you. What is it, little dove?”
“Who would wish you ill, my lord?”
He made another attempt at a grin. “Damned if I know. I’ve fashioned any number of enemies over the years. None that I’d imagine would stoop to braining me from behind just outside my residence.”
The temerity of the bastard filled him with an unholy rage. It was his wedding night, by God. He was not meant to be lying abed, half clothed, with his virginal wife tending to him like a bloody nurse. He should have been in her bed, his head between her thighs, making her spend. He would find whoever was responsible for this travesty and feed him his teeth.
“I fear that whoever did this to you intended to do far worse, Lord Ravenscroft.” Her face was ashen, and yet she remained the loveliest thing he’d ever seen.
His head thumped. “Never say you’re worried for me, wife?”
“You mustn’t call me that.” Her fingers fretted with the sleeve of her dressing gown.
“Why? Are you not, in fact, the woman I married today?” It didn’t matter that he’d taken a severe bludgeoning. She was still his, damn it all, and he wasn’t foggy on that fact. Not one bit.
“You know quite well what I mean to say. Despite your protestations to the contrary, we will not have a true marriage. I’m returning to Virginia and you cannot stop me.” She looked into her lap. “But of course I worry. How can I not? Someone almost killed you tonight, and I very much fear your assassination was the villain’s primary goal.”
Ah, there it was, the truth unfettered between them. They were done dancing at pretense. She was too clever for a woman of her tender age. He wondered what had made her become cynical enough to reach the same conclusion as he. Other ladies he’d known would have swooned at the sight of an injured man. They would have retired to their chamber until he regained consciousness, and then they would’ve made the easier and safer assumption that he’d been the victim of a random crime.
For some mad reason, her worry warmed him. Perhaps she didn’t hate him for his subterfuge, then. Perhaps she even cared, just a modicum. “The bastard didn’t succeed, however.” He strove for a bland tone. No need to upset her more than necessary. His mind yet grappled with the implications of what had befallen him.
“Someone tried to kill you.” This time, she was blunt, looking up from her nervous fingers to meet his gaze. “Are you not concerned?”
Hell, yes he was concerned. But his mind was still jumbled and muddled. His head hurt like the devil. He very much wished he had not gone to his club, spurred by his pride, and had instead gone to her.
“Surely your father wouldn’t hire an assassin?” he asked, opting for flippancy, which had always served him well.
Her eyes went wide. “He would never! You cannot think my father to blame for this?”
He didn’t answer her immediately, partly because although he’d posed the question in jest, he had to admit it did have some merit. Her dearest papa, after all, thought him a black-hearted despoiler of innocents, a vile fortune hunter who had preyed upon his beloved daughter. The timing seemed rather suspect. The very night of his wedding. By the contract they’d agreed upon, his demise would have left Clara with any estates that weren’t part of the entail and all her marriage portion. Tidy method of solving a problem, that.
“My father is a good man,” she protested, apparently reading his silence all too well. “Do not waste time misdirecting your suspicion upon him, for then the true criminal will remain free to make another such attempt on your life. You ought to carry my pistol with you whenever you’re about, at least until the son-of-a-bitch is caught.”
He blinked. Had his murky mind heard correctly? Somehow, an epithet coming off the lips of his sweet little dove seemed wrong. But it also aroused him. He was an absurd fellow, half his scalp cracked open and nearly bleeding to death, and his cock hard as coal. Something was wrong with him. Perhaps the blow to the head had rendered him completely mad.
