Page 98 of The Ladies Least Likely

“I can’t believe I have it back. Intact. There’s no mold, no spots, no nibbles from mice. Thaker thought to store it in a cedar chest, a cast-off from the house.” She ran her hands over the parchment, feeling the light indentations the nib had made as the scholar scratched his ink into the page.

“How lucky that he is the one who found it,” she marveled. “And now he is married, with children!”

“It’s the way things go for many a man, so I’m told.

” Mal’s eyes captured the candlelight and its shadows of gold.

There was something deep and fathomless in his expression, as if he felt the same current that she sensed: attraction, that undeniable pull, and the deliciousness of lingering in that expectancy.

“Not for my poor cousin, I’m afraid.” She giggled. “At least, not with me.”

“That’s why I came. I fear he might try to force himself upon you. I can sleep on the floor, if you wish.”

She gave him a demure smile, tucking a pillow into the space between them. “Against the door, like a squire guarding his knight? We did well enough before, though Eyde must never learn we shared a bed. I don’t care what Reuben’s servants think, though.”

She felt so much safer with Mal here. Outside the door, the rest of Penwellen loomed a forbidding mass, dark with shadows. Here, in the golden candlelight with Mal, they were held in an enchanted circle. She never wanted to leave.

She wanted to kiss him again.

“You can put the book between us. Better than a sword.” The warmth of his smile roused a curl of heat in her belly. Her entire body hummed.

“Bea would not approve, I am sure, but I am more afraid of my cousin than of your aunt.” She watched him kick off his slippers.

Trying not to stare at his well-shaped feet, she fixed on turning the pages of her book, examining it for marks of damage.

“And Joseph would be horrified. I wonder how he is faring with Miss Pettigrew?”

“I hope he has got as far as calling her Susannah, if not as far as sharing a bed. Only precontracted couples are allowed that, I should think.” He gave her a small, accusing look.

She swallowed hard. The candle dipped in a sudden draft of air, sending a wavering light over his face, its strong lines and shadows. Warmth emanated from his big body, glazing her skin.

“I do beg your pardon. It was all I could think of to make Reuben desist in his delusions that I should marry him.”

“I thought it very noble that you should sacrifice yourself to me. If he tries to coerce you, I have leave to call him out for attempting to alienate your affections.”

Mal reached across the pillow and laid a hand on her hip, lightly, a question. His hand was large and warm, and heat skittered through her belly, shooting darts to her legs and breasts. She recognized the sensations now, that fire being lit.

“You aren’t in the habit of fighting, are you?” The thought of Mal in a duel made her chest hurt.

“Only in practice, and not always successfully. Viktor’s trounced me more than a few times.” He leaned on one elbow, his eyes turning smoky. “How do you feel about kissing your intended?”

“I adore it.” She leaned down to touch her lips to his, and their mouths met as if two halves of a whole. He rose to meet her, his hard chest so close, and she slipped her arms around his shoulders, only just managing not to dive her hands beneath his robe. She could not lose herself completely.

But sense lifted away when his tongue teased against her lips. She parted her lips in surprise and he swept his tongue into her mouth, and a wild sweetness welled in her core, molten wax held to a hot flame.

This was delicious madness, utterly wanton, and her whole body came aglow, like those figures in medieval illuminations surrounded by a halo of gold. He smelled rich and earthy, like warmed brandy on a winter night, and he tasted faintly of lemon. She scrabbled at his shoulders, urging him closer.

His tongue in her mouth stirred a deep wildness, a hunger inside that she didn’t know dwelled there. Her hips and the tops of her thighs felt hot, his hand a brand on her waist, and her breasts tingled as his warm breath wafted over her face with his kisses.

She panted for breath as he kissed her jaw, that stretch of her neck below her ear.

She recalled their last embrace, how he had almost taken her breast in his mouth, and the very thought of him kissing her there made her nipples grow hard and aching.

She mewled like a kitten, pressing mindlessly toward him, and something about her entire collapse, her surrender, made him raise his head.

“That’s enough for tonight, I daresay.”

She blinked at him, dazed, as he released her, drawing back to his side of the bed. She rode on a wave that might carry her out to sea.

“We should save something for the wedding, don’t you think?” His smile was warm and wicked, his lips still damp from her mouth, and that same tightness that pulled at her nipples tugged between her legs. An ache she guessed could only be relieved by his body against hers.

“I suppose so.” Best not let him see how entirely she’d lost her head. She would have allowed him to do anything to her, so long as she stayed wrapped in that spell of enchantment.

She touched the corner of his mouth with a fingertip. “Mal. Is it always like this?”

He tucked a loose curl beneath her nightcap, and the tenderness in his face hollowed her chest. “It is like this with you and I.”

Little wonder that women threw themselves headlong into a man’s arms, then, without benefit of a priest saying a few words. She understood now. A wonder that people could go about normal lives at all when this awaited them in bed with their beloved.

He leaned against the padded headboard, hands linked behind his head as he studied the room, and her belly warmed at the sight of him at ease, stretched out in her bed. Near enough to touch.

Did she marry him, she would have this access to him all the time, Mal in his most unguarded moments.

She would be free to touch him whenever she pleased with the possessive touch of a wife.

All his steady strength, his deep loyalty, his streaks of impish humor would be hers to delight in. And his body would be hers to hold.

He had shown her companionship already. He had shown her passion. She guessed their bond could deepen into love.

And when, or if, she were discovered, he would be trapped in her lies. Realization split her warm daze like a knife cutting parchment.

She could not let Mal marry her under false pretenses. It would be the worst sort of thievery. She had to tell him what she really was, what she had done.

And then she must somehow not break from despair when all his glowing warmth went cold and he turned away from her, and she lost the chance forever to be close to Malden Grey.

She reached for her Book of Hours and pulled it into her lap. She did not have to tell him tonight.

“I’ve been wondering how much your mother read of her book. If she chose it for herself, or someone else did. Lady Willoughby de Broke would have read medieval French, but did your mother?”

She flipped through the pages, drinking in the neat lines of script, the images she remembered. Saints with their beatific faces and open hands, the typical marginalia of mythical creatures, the devotions for each hour of the day.

“She did love antique things,” Mal said. “She had a chatelaine, one of those chains women once wore at the waist. Hers had a pair of sewing scissors and a small vial of scent. I like the idea that my father might have bought this to please her.”

“I wonder how he came upon this volume. It seems strange that it might have surfaced in Bristol. Margaret Greville, the baroness, her family seat was in Warwickshire, I thought.”

“There’s some Hunsdon property near Wellesbourne. Though it’s equally likely my father pilfered the townhouse. The first duke had no notion how to build a library and acquired whatever took his fancy.”

Amaranthe slipped through the book to the back flyleaf, marveling that the volume was so intact, and as beautiful as she remembered. “That might explain how he procured the alchemical manuscript Ned showed me. It’s very curious that?—”

She stopped as her fingers found an unexpected bulge, pasted between the last page and the cover board. “Wait. There’s something glued inside here.”

Carefully she worked her fingers around the border of the cover, not wanting to tear the parchment.

“This could be interesting. People often stored things in books, you know, or wrote their own notes in them. Any number of medieval manuscripts have recipes and sometimes even household accounts in the margins. On occasion someone left a last will and testament…”

She fell silent as she unfolded the document and read it. The room spun.

“I can read that script,” Mal said, glancing at the page. “It’s not that Gothic hand or what have you. More modern.”

“Mal.” She reached over and gripped his wrist, her nails digging in. Her voice clogged her throat. “These are your mother’s marriage lines.”

“What?” He reared back as if she’d slapped him.

“Look. There is her signature, the same as in the front of the book. Here’s your father’s. And witnesses.” She caught her breath, lifting her gaze to meet his. “Mal—this is a witnessed document. Their marriage was valid.”

Wonder softened his face. He looked like a young boy at Christmas as he traced his mother’s name.

“Then she wasn’t deceived by him. He cherished her enough to wed her. I’m glad to know that.” He followed the large, looping M of Marguerite.

“She must have hidden this in the midst of her fever. Your aunt said she had a spell shortly after they married. And then she couldn’t produce her marriage lines, so when the duke came looking for his heir, he didn’t believe they were wed.”

“It would have broken her heart that she couldn’t remember where she’d put the proof,” Mal considered. “But that meant my grandfather could make my father marry Christine.”

He hadn’t grasped the implications. Not yet.

“Why wouldn’t there have been a record in the parish register?” she asked.

He shrugged. “The duke didn’t want his son married to a haberdasher’s daughter. That might have been enough to keep anyone from looking. My grandfather was as large and terrifying as your cousin, I’ve been told, and he was a duke besides. Not even his son dared defy him.”

“Mal,” Amaranthe asked, trying to keep her voice calm. “When did your mother die?”

“July 12, 1757.”

“And when did your father marry Christine?”

“The fall of 1756, I believe.” He met her eyes as understanding slowly dawned.

“His marriage to Christine was not legal if his first wife yet lived,” Amaranthe whispered. “It would make him a bigamist and invalidate the union. Mal—this document means you are his only legitimate child. You are the heir of the third Duke of Hunsdon.”