B00Q5W7IXE (R) (6 page)

Her gaze flicked to the desk, where the paper and a book lay spread.

“I know, I know. I didn’t burn it. I couldn’t.”

“You will go back.” She said the words with a finality that scared her. But better she say it now than be taken off-guard in a week or two. Why had he even come for her in Naples, promised her she mattered more than his work, if he only intended to discard her again?

“No. This”—he gestured to the desk—“was only a momentary distraction. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Somehow those words made it even worse. Tears burned the back of her eyes until her nose watered from the sting.

He grasped her hands in his, brought them together as though in prayer between the two of them. “Baron asked me to take a look at the code, to try and decipher it. I told him no, but he slipped the paper in my coat.”

“He is at the ball?”

Guilt flickered across Blue’s face.

She inhaled sharply. “No, that’s not correct. This happened before.”

“At the theater.” He winced.

Heat flooded into her face, singeing her skin. She shoved his hands aside and pushed away from the door. “All night you’ve had this...this—” She gestured helplessly at the desk.

“Missive,” he supplied. She cut him a deadly gaze.

“—in your pocket and you said nothing?”

He didn’t answer, instead thrusting his hands in his pockets and appearing like a boy ready to take his punishment.

“And in the carriage, Lord and Lady Smythe knew about this missive, didn’t they? Lord Smythe wanted you to go back to spying?”

His silence told her everything.

“I knew it. If that is what you want”—she swept an arm at the vellum with the strange wedge-like writing on it—“then go. Go back to your precious Barbican group and
leave me alone
!”

His head snapped up, and he reached for her. She tried to jerk out of his grasp, but he caught her arm and pulled her to him.

“Never. I will never leave you alone. I love you. How can you still doubt your place in my affections?”

A tear slid down her cheek. “Because you give me reason.”

He closed his eyes tightly, the pain on his features etched in deep lines of frustration. “You agreed I should go back to capture Foncé. I did not leave you then. I dare say with all your rehearsals you barely noticed my absence.”

“And you swore that was the last time.” Another tear rolled down her cheek and onto her nose. Blue gave her a handkerchief with his free hand, and she dabbed her face. The cloth smelled like him—his soap infused with pine or evergreen, black tea, and the scent of home.

He’d always smelled of home to her.

“And I will keep my word. I refused Baron and Wolf. I’ll burn this vellum right now.”

“There will be another and another. You will never be free.” She held the handkerchief beneath her nose, breathing in his scent. It might be all she had left of him after tonight.

“Is that so wrong?” he asked suddenly. “Would it be so terrible if I deciphered a missive here and there or compiled a report on an enemy of the Crown?”

She closed her eyes, pain lancing through her. “That will not be enough for you. The Barbican group will become your life.
Again
.”

“No. I admit it was my life, but I was little more than a boy then. I did not understand what was important. Listen, Helena. I do not have to travel. I could stay here in London and do my work. You have the opera. Tell me”—he shook her lightly—“what do I have?”

She hadn’t considered that. She had thought he sought to reconcile with his family and reestablish himself with the
ton
, but that was not a calling. And she knew her husband. He was far too intelligent and had too much depth to be satisfied with a life of endless routs and balls.

“I haunt whatever theater in which you perform or wait at home for you, like some sort of puppy.”

“I never asked that of you!”

“And I want to be where you are,” he said, his hand on her arm soothing, caressing her as did his voice. “But I want something of my own. You have your music. Could you give it up, if I asked?”

“Yes!” she said fiercely, but inside her very soul trembled with fear at the suggestion. She would die if she could not sing. She would wither and die.

“You lie. You would hate me for even asking and if you gave it up, you would grow to resent me.”

“Is that how you feel about me?” she asked, the words spilling forth.

He pulled her into his embrace, his warm body heating hers. “Never, but I need more than dressing rooms and my box at King’s Theater. I am no longer four and twenty, no longer eager to traipse the globe in search of danger.”

“You are hardly an old man,” she pointed out.

“And yet I have seen more than enough danger for a lifetime. I want to spend every night with you, listen to you sing, watch you transform from Ifigenia or Desdemona or the Queen of the Night back into my Helena. But I want this too.” He reached behind her and lifted the missive. “Don’t you think it possible I could have both?”

She stared at the vellum, her body visibly shaking now. She wanted it to be possible, but she’d gambled and lost before. How could she trust him to put their marriage first when he’d always chosen the Barbican group?

She stepped back, and he released her. Her tears had stopped, but she held the handkerchief to her nose, as though holding him close as long as she could.

“I don’t know, Ernest.” She backed toward the door. She wanted to believe he could balance work and marriage now, but if she was wrong, their marriage was over. “I simply do not know.”

She crossed the room and opened the door, blinking when she all but collided with the duke and duchess.

“My apologies,” she said with a curtsy. “He is all yours.”

The thought made her ill, her belly cramping in fear. She’d never allowed anxiety to control her before. How she wished now she could go back and tell Blue she’d been a fool. He did not have to choose. She trusted him to cherish her and pursue his work.

Could she ask less of him when he gave her that same courtesy?

In the vestibule, she waved away the footman who approached with her cloak. Instead, she turned back to stare at the library door.

It hadn’t closed completely. Not yet.

Blue could not believe Helena had walked away. He could not allow her to go. He had to make her understand he was not choosing the Barbican over her. He chose both of them, but if he could not have them both, he would choose her again and again and again.

“Helena!” He started after her, but made it no farther than the door, where his parents blocked his way.

“A word, Ernest,” the duke said, pushing into the library. The duchess closed the door, trapping him. Blue shoved the missive into his pocket, still unwilling to toss it in the fire as he should have done.

“I have nothing to say to you.” He looked from his mother to his father. “I had hoped we might begin again, but I see that is not possible.”

“But that is exactly what we wish to discuss with you.” The duchess held out her hands in a pleading gesture. “We want to begin again as well.”

Blue stilled, his mother’s words taking him by surprise. She’d never spoken like that before. “I’m listening.”

“That is why we invited you tonight.” His father rounded the desk and sat in the chair. Blue saw his gaze flick to the book open on the top of the desk, but it did not linger. The duke pulled open a drawer and unearthed a file. “We hoped to bring you back into the fold, so to speak.”

Blue allowed his gaze to linger on the file and then touch on his parents’ faces. “And how, exactly, do you intend to do that? By introducing me to every debutante this Season? I have no interest in some silly green girl who wishes to giggle and flutter her lashes.”

“And we have come to terms with that,” his father said. “Your mother will no longer introduce you to debutantes.” He gave the duchess a stern look.

She sighed and nodded. “No. I will not interfere.”

Blue frowned. Surely his parents could not be saying they accepted his marriage to Helena. If that was the case, they would have embraced her when they’d had the chance.

“You do not need to pretend for us any longer,” the duke said. “We accept you, no matter whose bed you share.”

Blue was rarely surprised, but he felt his brow wing upward almost of its own accord.

“You are prepared to accept Helena?” he asked carefully.

“The opera singer?” his mother said on a gasp. “She is the reason we asked you here tonight. Ernest”—the duchess placed her small bony hand on his arm—“you need not pretend any longer.”

“Pretend? Madam, I have no idea what you mean.”

“We know what you are, Ernest,” his father said. “And we are prepared to accept you.” He opened the folder and pushed it toward Blue. “Sign here and there will be no more pretense.”

Blue followed the progress of his father’s hand across the desk as he slid the folder toward him. Their eyes locked, Blue trying to read something in the duke’s dark gaze. Finally, he looked down.

“An annulment?” He shook his head, stepping back. His mother grasped his arm, digging her fingers into his bicep.

“Ernest, everything has been taken care of. All you need do is sign.”

Carefully, he removed his mother’s hands from his arm. Why the hell had he been such a fool? He should have known his parents cared for nothing but their own misguided sense of honor. He had shamed them by marrying an opera singer, and now they would be rid of her.

“Why the devil would I sign?” He pulled the quill from his father’s outstretched hand and tossed it on the desk. “Helena is my wife, whether you approve or not.”

“There is no need for the sham marriage any longer,” the duchess said, her tone pleading. “You needn’t pretend affection for an opera singer. We accept you for what you really are.”

“What I really am?” Blue looked from his father to his mother. Clearly, he was missing something. “And what the devil do you think I am?”

Blue stared in utter disbelief as his mother’s cheeks colored. Whatever she thought he was, it embarrassed her to say it.

“A sham marriage,” Blue said quietly. He turned on his father. “If you do not think my marriage to Helena authentic, why do you think I married her?”

The duke cleared his throat. “As a disguise, of course.”

“For my work with the Crown?”

Helena would love that idea. The Barbican group had almost torn them apart and threatened to do so again. It was far from the reason for their union.

“No, because you...” The duke cleared his throat. “Because your nature is...because you prefer...”

Blue closed his eyes and shook his head, gritting his teeth in frustration. “What is it about me that makes everyone believe I’m a...”—he glanced at his mother—“that I prefer baritones to sopranos. I am not a sodomite.”

His mother gasped and stumbled to a nearby chair.

Blue rolled his eyes. “That is what you are saying, is it not?” he demanded.

“Ernest, watch your language!” the duke ordered.

“You can accept my preference for men, but I can’t speak of it?”

“Then you admit you are a—you prefer men?”

“No!” He raked his hand through his hair and paced away. His thoughts raced, and he struggled to contain and organize them. Finally, he paused in front of the desk, the damned annulment papers staring up at him.

“I have no qualm with the sort of man you describe. To each his own, I say. And I must admit, it is quite generous of you to accept me as I am. But I am not as you say. I am married, in truth, to Helena. There is no sham about it.”

“Then you...” His father began.

“Have carnal relations with her?” Blue nodded vigorously. “Yes! Frequently. I tumble her as often as I can.”

“Oh, good Lord!” His mother hid her face in her hands.

Blue knew it was wrong, but he was enjoying himself now. “I am sorry, duchess, did I offend your sensibilities? You can accept me if I prefer to roger men, but if I dip my...sword in my own wife, I am an abomination?”

“Ernest! Cease!” the duke roared.

“I will, but first I want you to understand two simple matters. One, let there be no doubt in your mind that I prefer women. I love women—their rounded hips, their full breasts”—he moved his hands to illustrate and his mother’s face turned from tomato to beet—“their plump bottoms, and especially their—”

“Ernest!” his father bellowed.

Blue stifled a smile. “The second matter you must understand is that I love my wife. Deeply, madly, and unreasonably. I love her more than life itself. I would no more sign these annulment papers than I would cut off my own nose. If you accept me, then you accept her. We are a matched pair, and you cannot have one without the other.”

“And you would choose her over your own mother and father, your own family?”

Blue placed his hands on the arms of the duchess’s chair. “Over and over and over again. But the question, Madam, is will you choose your precious family honor over your own son?”

“I’ve had enough of this!” The duke stood. “Either sign the papers, Ernest, or leave this house. Forever.”

Blue locked gazes with his father. The older man’s lips were pressed tight, his cheeks bright with patches of color. Blue lifted the annulment paper, walked to the fire, and threw it in.