Vexing her was excellent distraction from the effect she had upon him. Her scent had not changed. Bergamot and rose with a hint of lily. He knew how sweetly the soft flesh of her throat smelled of the combination. He had set his lips there once, against her madly thudding pulse. But he had not known he would be forever robbed of the chance to hold her so intimately again.
It was just as well.
Mama had been in love with Father. Their marriage had made Shakespearean tragedies appear comedic in comparison. But as Mama had oft said,the heart knows what it wants. In his experience, the heart was always bloody wrong.
Pippa’s hazel gaze clashed with his. He could see her waging an inner war until at last she relented, plucking the gloves from her fingers and placing them neatly in her lap.
“If you insist,” she gritted.
But despite her anger, she prepared their cups of tea with an elegant ease befitting of the excellent hostess he had no doubt she was. She would have made a flawless duchess. Her family lineage was impeccable, the sort that would have made his father salivate in anticipation of securing such perfect English bloodlines.
Bloodlines so very different from Mama’s. The former Duke of Northwich had never forgiven his wife the sin of being an American with a varied ancestry, including a father who had been one half Oneida Iroquois.
Roland was nothing like his sire had been. He did not value aristocratic lines, succession, or societal edicts. He worshiped nature, movement, the incredible power and beauty of the Great Spirit. Still, he had understood that while Mama had taught him these fundamental beliefs, he was not meant to share them with others.
In public school, he had been mocked and ridiculed for his black hair and dark eyes, for his mother’s American blood. He had learned to grow stronger than the other lads. To outrun them, to defeat them in sport. And gradually, he had won them over just as he won every race, bout, and tournament there was. Rowing, cricket, fencing, football…
But there was one competition he had never emerged from the victor.
He accepted the saucer of tea from Pippa, trying not to notice the awareness flooding through him when their fingers brushed. Her disdain for him should have been more than enough cause to dampen any ardor he had once felt for her. To say nothing of the love.
And yet love was like a seed. Once sprouted, it grew, and even with the passing of the seasons, the plant flowered, bore fruit, and new seeds dropped, taking hold. Time could pass, but the love, like the seed, was continuously renewed, multiplying and growing.
He swallowed the tea along with the bitterness. It tasted excellent, if a touch on the cool side. He wished he could find more fault with it, just as he wished he could find more fault withher.
The silence between them stretched. Every small sound seemed magnified. The rattle of her teacup, the steady tick of the mantel clock, the sounds of the street below, the flit of servants in the hall, the rustle of her silken skirts as she shifted in her chair. The door to the salon had been left open in an ode to propriety. Not that he required it. He had no wish to marry, having decided to go to his grave a bachelor and allow his cousin Marcus to inherit. And Pippa was a widow, granted the freedom of societal movement unique to a woman in her circumstances.
The quiet seemed interminable.
He had to break it.
“Your daughter. How old is she?”
The wrong question to ask.
She stiffened. “I have no wish to discuss Charlotte with you. Nor anything else.”
“Pity.” He took another sip of his tea.
Her lips pursed, eyes narrowing. “What is a pity, Your Grace?”
Once she had called him Roland.
And he had called her Sunshine.
Because that was what she had been to him. Everything warm and bright, brilliant and lovely. The source of life.
“That you do not wish to converse. Taking tea in silence is rather…mundane. Do you not agree?” The tea was sweet on his tongue. She had prepared it well.
Of course she had.
“Taking tea in silence, when in the company of a reprehensible scoundrel, is ideal,” she told him tartly.
Well, she could still deliver a smart quip. That much had not changed. Her boldness, in a sea of similitude, had drawn him to her years ago. Plainly, it drew him still, regardless of how much he desired it not to.
“Why should you believe me a scoundrel?” he pressed, genuinely curious at the lies Shaw must have told her. When Roland had returned from his visit to family in New York all those years ago to find her married to Shaw, they had never again spoken until now. “So many aspersions to cast upon me, my lady, and I have yet to hear evidence. Should I not be considered as innocent as your husband until the opposite can be proven?”
“You proved it yourself, Northwich.” Her voice held tendrils of ice.
