“It has indeed, but before you go, I nearly forgot my reason for coming to you this evening.” He reached into a pocket of his dressing gown and extracted a small box. “I have a wedding gift for you.”
A wedding gift. In the rush of their unexpected nuptials, securing a gift for him had never occurred to her. She felt shabby now, standing before him, his generosity and compassion so blatant.
“A gift is unnecessary.”
He moved around the chair and held the box out to her. “Please. I would like for you to have it.”
What could she do but accept it, their fingers grazing, heat shooting through her like lightning at the contact? She opened it to find a strand of pearls nestled within.
“They belonged to my mother,” he told her.
“I cannot accept this.”
“Of course you can.”
“But they were your mother’s,” she protested.
“I want you to have them. She brought them with her from America when she settled in London. It would please me to see you wear them.” A small, sad smile flirted with his lips.
The gift was not just extravagant; it was priceless.
“Northwich.” She winced at her inadvertent use of his title.
“Roland.”
Yes, she must remind herself to call him Roland. She had before, long ago. Before they had been strangers. Before they had been torn apart. When she had been a naïve girl who believed in happiness and love, when she had been undamaged.
“Roland,” she repeated. “You should save this necklace.”
“For whom?” he asked. “There is no other woman I would want to have it.”
She stroked the cool pearls, appreciating not just their beauty, but the significance of this gift. His beloved mother’s pearls.
She swallowed down a rising swell of emotion. “I will treasure it always.”
His smile quirked up, turning beautiful. He was such a handsome man, and at this proximity, his expression bereft of some of the harshness and seriousness which often marked it in her presence, he quite took her breath. His head dipped toward hers, and her heart leapt faster, anticipating a kiss. She could not move away. She found herself moving toward him, head tipping back, eagerly offering her mouth for his to claim.
But instead, he pressed a kiss to her cheek. The scrape of his whiskers against her skin, the nearness of him, the scent of his soap, combined for a heady moment. Her awareness of him as a man, as her husband, soared.
He backed away. “Sleep well, Pippa.”
She had been dismissed.
Pippa blinked at the suddenness of the severance of the connection, the end of the moment. This was what she wanted, she told herself. Distance between them was for the best. She was not yet ready to fully entrust herself to him. Their marriage had been made out of necessity and nothing else. A desire to protect her daughter.
She exhaled the breath she had not realized she had been holding. “You as well, Roland. Goodnight.”
And then she hastened to the safety of her chamber.
For the first time in as long as she could recall, she slept the whole night through.
Chapter 13
Roland found himself absurdly pleased by the sight of the ivory pearls encircling Pippa’s throat that morning at breakfast. She was wearing his mother’s necklace, the gift he had given her the night before. The gift she had been so very reluctant to accept. It suited her, he thought, and seeing the pearls get new life gave him a whimsical sense of pleasure. Mama would have been pleased, he thought. She would have liked Pippa, despite the complicated past she shared with Roland.
Mama had found the best in everyone, in some cases to her detriment.
“How did you sleep last night?” he asked Pippa as they filled plates from the sideboard in the breakfast room.
