Her golden blond hair had been artfully pinned atop her head and tantalizing tendrils had framed her heart-shaped face.
The image of her eyes came to mind. Each time he’d felt an inkling of panic, she’d smiled at him and the warmth from her coffee-colored gaze had somehow soothed him.
Which made no sense, he hardly knew her.
He glanced down at his timepiece again and Horace nudged his hand.
“I know, old boy. But you would be nervous too, trust me.”
Christian would swear his dog was laughing at him when he opened his mouth to pant slightly. Smiling and laughing. “What would I do without you, old buddy?”
Christian had discovered Horace behind one of the tenant farms at Winter’s Edge, the Warwick country estate, two days after learning that his oldest brother’s ship had gone down while crossing the channel. The farmer had complained that the dog was naught but a nuisance—a mongrel, the runt. He’d thrown the dog away.
That had been eight years ago, shortly after Christian turned seventeen.
He remembered feeling angry at the world. Bernadette had pestered him, and he’d ordered her to leave him alone. He’d had little sympathy for his sister back then.
His other brother, Calvin, had not yet arrived at his majority but had gone on to hold the title until two months ago.
In the face of the farmer’s disregard for life, Christian had spent the six weeks that followed caring for the pup in the loft of one of the stables. He’d fed Horace by hand, and by the time the pup could lap milk on his own, he’d become twice his original size.
Christian reached down and rubbed the dog’s scruffy head. He’d not realized how rudderless he would feel without Calvin.
Christian, alone, was the head of the family now. He was responsible for Bernadette, Horace, and the dukedom.
And now Lillian.
Which was why he faced this most unusual predicament today. He was to bed a woman, a beautiful woman who was also a lady, who’d married him out of nothing more than compassion—pity?— and a desire for future independence.
She was willing to help him. She was willing to marry him and then wait for him to die.
Christian glanced down at the timepiece once again. Ten minutes had passed since she would have been expecting him. He grasped his knee to stop it from bouncing and yet still he couldn’t force himself to get up. What the hell had he done?
Lillian had sentBecky away nearly half an hour ago. Where was he? Had he changed his mind? A handful of maids from the kitchen had delivered several trays laden with food and wine that now sat waiting, untouched, on a low table adjacent to the velvet settee that made for a small sitting area just opposite her bed.
Lillian glanced in the mirror again. She’d not had time to buy any sort of trousseau, and so she’d brought with her the prettiest cotton night rail that she owned and had donned a pale pink dressing gown with lace at the wrists and hem to wear over it.
Her eyes looked larger than normal against her complexion, which seemed to alternate between looking either more pale than usual or unusually flushed.
She glanced at the door that she knew opened up to his suite. She hadn’t heard any movement at all since before the food had arrived.
Was it possible he’d decided to spend the afternoon in the tap room? Joined his servants downstairs rather than bed a woman who’d married him for such mercenary reasons as she had?
Lillian bit her lip. That did not seem like something he’d do. Was it possible she’d been wrong about him? He had withdrawn from her after the attack. but he had been injured. She was not wrong about his character. She was certain of it.
What if he’d fallen ill? This explanation was far more likely than the first.
More worried for him than nervous for herself, she tiptoed across the room and pressed her ear against the door.
Nothing.
She knocked three times softly, and then three more times, louder and with more urgency. When met with only silence, she turned the latch and pushed it open.
“Christian?” She spoke his name, expecting to discover an empty room.
It was not empty.
Not ten feet away, illuminated by just a few candles, Christian sat still as a statue upon a high-backed chair. Horace shifted a matter-of-fact gaze in her direction, but his master did not move. The vibrant man she’d married barely an hour before now appeared almost as though he’d been hypnotized.
