Page 6 of My Lord Rogue (Wicked Widows’ League #34)

T heo lingered in the drawing room only as long as protocol required.

Then, with a nod to Verity—who was already embroiled in a match of whist, her laughter carrying like the call of a distant bird—she slipped away from the guests, back through the maze of halls and staircases toward her sanctuary at the far corner of the guest wing.

At her own door she paused, breathless, half expecting—half hoping?—to see a shadow lengthen behind her, a voice whisper from the dark. But the only sound was the soft laughter from downstairs. She stepped inside and closed the door softly.

She crossed to the window, parted the heavy curtains, and was met by the honest, unfiltered moon.

The lawns below looked spectral, all detail erased by a hard silver wash.

There were no voices, no movement, the revelers and their laughter had retreated behind a barricade of stone and etiquette.

Only her own pale reflection peered back at her, faint and insubstantial, two white ovals for eyes.

Her writing desk sat precisely where the maid had left it, on the only table in the room. Theo eased herself onto the hard chair and, with hands suddenly clumsy, unfastened the clasp at the back of her neck.

She turned the locket in her hand, thumb rubbing at the hinge until it opened with a dry click.

Inside, Charles’s smile was frozen in oil paint.

She pressed the image to her lips, closed her eyes, and for a moment let memory engulf her—the hush of his voice, the slide of his palm down her spine, the way he had once traced the very bones of her face as if mapping a future no one else could see.

She set the locket beside her journal. The book was thick with pages, some of them covered in her spiky hand, others still blank, a mute reproach. She brought the candle closer to the book so she could see to write.

She dipped her pen and waited, staring at the blank page until her thoughts aligned into something she might bear to articulate. When she finally began, the quill scratched with the urgency of a creature desperate to tunnel free.

I am undone .

She stopped, staring at the words. Her hand trembled, a fine tremor, but visible enough that a drop of ink spilled, spreading like a bruise against the page.

Tonight he looked at me. Not as a man looks at a woman, not even as a hunter at prey, but as if I were a challenge he meant to break and remake in his own shape. I am terrified .

Beneath the terror, a tiny coil of exhilaration uncurled itself, spreading a blush from her throat to her cheeks. She wrote quickly, as if to outrun her own shame,

What have I done, to conjure a ghost and give it the face of a man so alive, so intractable? I could not have foreseen this—how could I? But now he is here, flesh and laughter and the relentless heat of his eyes, and I ? —

The pen faltered. She flexed her fingers, massaged the cramp from her knuckles. The air had grown thick with candlewax and the acrid tang of ink.

She looked at the locket, glinting in the candlelight.

Guilt pinched her, a physical ache behind her ribs.

How many times had she whispered to Charles’s memory that she would never, could never, love another?

How many nights had she lain awake, twisting the ring on her finger, promising fidelity to a man who could never hear her?

She returned to the page, forcing herself onward.

Is it betrayal, if the heart refuses to forget?

If even in the presence of another, it is still the lost one who lingers in every breath?

But the world demands so much of a widow—cheerfulness, fortitude, even the grace to pretend at moving on.

I lied because it was easier than suffering their pity, and now the lie walks the earth, haunting me with every sly remark and every stolen glance .

She pressed her palm to her chest, the absence of the locket a raw, unfamiliar patch of skin.

He is so very real. More real than I am, sometimes.

She heard it then—the faint, unmistakable surge of laughter, far away but rising up through the floorboards, as if the entire house were a stage and she its only off-script player.

Downstairs, the guests were still drinking, still telling stories, still living as if nothing in the world could trouble them but the lateness of the hour.

Up here, she floated in a silence so complete it might never break.

She dated her entry, tore out and folded the sheet, and slipped it into the pocket sewn inside the journal’s cover.

It was feeble protection. Anyone with a mind to look could find it, could read all her secrets in the black slope of her hand.

Yet, the act of hiding it felt essential, an ultimate act of control in a world that had shifted beneath her feet.

Theo blew out the candle, plunging the room back into its natural blue shadows. With the ease of long habit, she lifted the locket to its place at her throat, then hesitated. If she were truly a woman falling for a new man, she wouldn’t be wearing another man’s image at her throat.

Her hands shook as she tugged open the strings of the bag that contained her jewelry. For some reason, letting go of the locket was even more difficult than leaving behind her wedding ring.

I’m sorry, Charles .

The necklace settled in the pile with a small chink, and she quickly tugged the strings to close the bag.

Crossing to the window, Theo pressed her forehead to the glass, and watched the moonlit gardens below. Somewhere out of sight, an owl cried once, twice, then fell silent.

She stood that way for a long time, unmoving, letting the cold seep through the pane and into her bones. She watched for signs of life in the darkness—a fox crossing the path, or the tremor of a branch in the wind—but the world outside remained as still as the secrets she held inside her own chest.

Josiah poured himself a third measure of brandy, the viscous amber running slow as honey into the heavy cut-glass tumbler.

He stood with one hip braced against the footboard in his bedchamber, the other hand working at the knot of his cravat, methodically loosening it until the starched linen fell away from his throat.

The relief was immediate. He tossed the cravat onto the nearest chair and shrugged out of his coat, casting it after with a twist of the wrist. The fire on the hearth spat and hissed, but the room was dominated by the scent of old books, leather, and the faint trace of tobacco from the cheroot he had abandoned earlier.

It was not a bad room—certainly not by the standards of English country hospitality—but the place bore the unmistakable mark of a guest rather than a master. The sheets on the bed were already in disarray, rumpled by his habit of reading late into the night.

He sipped. Let the brandy burn a slow, deliberate line from his lips to his belly.

Lady Pattishall.

He rolled the name in his mind, not tasting it so much as measuring its weight.

Theodosia, Charles’s widow. It had been years since he’d thought of Charles—a stolid, faintly insufferable man with more virtue than imagination—but the memory of their university days flickered in fits and starts.

Late-night arguments about the French Revolution, Charles’s baffled, almost pained reaction to the stories Josiah would tell of women he’d met in various candlelit corners of Europe.

He had never expected Charles’s bride to be anything but a mirror of the man himself, dull, pious, utterly without intrigue.

But tonight at supper, the shock in her eyes—no, not shock, something more volatile—had nearly undone him.

For a moment, he’d glimpsed her core, a hunger so pure it threatened to consume her.

He smiled, unguarded and wolfish. It was a rare thing to encounter a woman who wore her secrets on the surface and still kept them veiled.

He let the brandy settle and thought about the supper in detail.

She had played her part well, the downcast lashes, the precise modulation of her tone, the impeccable self-control.

But beneath all that, she was trembling, alive in a way none of the painted, lacquered ladies at the table could ever hope to be.

It was not just the lie that excited him—though the lie was, in itself, a small work of genius—but the audacity required to pull it off.

To invent a suitor, to draft his history and quirks, and then to walk into the world as if he were real.

Josiah admired the audacity.

He drank, holding the liquid in his mouth for a moment before swallowing. He closed his eyes, and in the dark behind his lids, he reconstructed the evening.

The way she’d entered the drawing room, gaze darting from corner to corner, as if searching for an escape route.

The tension in her neck when he’d addressed her for the first time, the slight but unmistakable shudder in her shoulders.

The flush that spread up her chest when he had invoked their “old favorites” for the table’s amusement.

He pressed his hand to his lips, stifling a laugh.

He had watched her for the rest of the meal, not bothering to mask his interest, and had seen when she surrendered to the inevitability of it all.

Her eyes, so blue they bordered on unnatural, had flickered to him again and again, as if daring him to expose her, to tear the mask away.

He would oblige her. Oh, he would.

He tapped his fingers against the rim of the glass, a rhythm of anticipation.

He had come to St. Ervan out of necessity, not pleasure.

the Continental escapade had grown stale, the debts at home had grown impatient, and his mother’s letters—from whatever dreary rectory she currently haunted—had grown shrill with her customary refrain, “Find a wife. Any wife. But for God’s sake, do it quickly. ”

He had no intention of obliging her in that, either.

But if he must marry, it would be a matter of strategy, not sentiment.

A quiet woman, preferably one with means, who would keep to herself in the country while he pursued his amusements elsewhere.

Someone too invested in her own hobbies to mind his constant absences, or the rumors that would inevitably follow.

He considered Lady Pattishall in this light, weighing her as he might weigh a precious stone, value versus volatility, brilliance versus brittleness.

She was still in mourning—though more so than society required, which in itself was telling.

She had invented a lover to protect herself from the men who circled her, and now the lover had appeared, breathing and insolent.

It was, in its way, perfect.

He wondered what she would do next. Would she retreat further into her lies, or would she dare to play the game with him in earnest?

He almost hoped for the latter. He could think of nothing more diverting than a contest of wits played out in the drawing rooms and corridors of this house, with every guest complicit and every interaction a new front in the war.

He set the glass down, careful not to spill, and ran his hands through his hair. The candle guttered, then brightened as if in sympathy.

Tomorrow, then. He would seek her out—not in public, but in some shadowed corner where the real conversations happened.

He would force her hand, see if she blushed or bit, if she ran or if she pressed back.

And if she proved as clever as he suspected, he would give her a choice, keep up the pretense, or join him in crafting a new, more interesting one.

He stripped off his waistcoat, tossing it onto the bed with the rest of his clothing.

For a moment, he stood in his shirtsleeves, staring at the untidy reflection in the window.

He was not a beautiful man—never had been—but his mother used to say he could charm the feathers off an angel if he set his mind to it.

She was wrong about most things, but in this she was correct.

He drained the last of the brandy, savoring the final, warming bite. Then he returned to the window, gaze sweeping the silent lawns and the cold, blind face of the moon.

Josiah wondered if she was awake, reading a book, or composing another letter to her ghostly baron. He wondered if she was thinking of him—if the lie she had conjured had, by some alchemy, become more real than the life she had before.

He doubted she would sleep. He doubted, if he was honest, that he would, either.

Leaving the curtain open, he let the night into his room. He shed the rest of his clothes and crawled into the unmade bed, stretching out full length. The sheets were cool, the mattress unfamiliar. He closed his eyes, but he did not expect to dream.

Instead, he let his mind build a future, a life in his country house, a wife who did not care if he vanished for weeks at a time, an endless series of parties, and the entertainments of the beautiful, blue-eyed widow who would forever keep his secrets, because she had so many of her own.

He slept at last, with a smile curled on his lips, and a plan taking shape in the dark behind his eyes.