“This is my offer. Six weeks, and you get your divorce.” It was a lie, but he’d cross that bridge when he got to it.
Her gaze narrowed. “What do you intend to do with six weeks of my company?”
“I intend to put it to good use,” he said, the answer coming even as he spoke it. “I intend for you to find your replacement.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath, and it was his turn to feel self-satisfied. To feel as though he’d won. His turn to smirk.
“What does that mean?”
“Just what I said,” he replied. “You come to the country and spend six weeks seeking your replacement.”
“You want me to matchmake you.”
He enjoyed the disbelief in her words, the way it helped him to regain his footing. “You must admit, it would save me a great deal of effort.”
She narrowed her gaze. “You do not think such an arrangement would be . . . impractical?”
“Not at all.”
“Oh, no. I’m sure it would not be at all awkward for the poor poppets eager for the attention of a duke to be closed into a country house, playing charades with his first wife—whom he is about to divorce.”
“I think it would be much more likely that they would find it a relief. After all, if we are able to coexist, perhaps I can avoid the worst of the divorce.”
One sleek brow rose. “You do not think that your dukedom will be a balm to your wretched reputation?”
“I should like them to have proof that I have not mistreated you.”
“Mistreatment is not only external.”
Guilt slammed through him, punctuated by the memory of the sound of the carriage door slamming shut as he sent her away. Of the sound of her tears on the day she returned. Of the sound of the silence that fell when she left him for good.
Not for good, though.
She was back.
He swallowed the emotion and met her gaze. “You want your divorce, do you not?”
She watched him as she seemed to consider her words. Finally, she said, all calm, “I do.”
“Find your replacement, Sera. And it is yours.”
It was a mad plan. Pure idiocy. And he would have been unsurprised if she’d told him so. Still, he held his breath, waiting for her reply, watching the way candlelight flickered over her skin, casting her into light and shadow, a remarkable beauty.
But she did not tell him so. Instead, she nodded her agreement. “Now leave.”
He gave her what she wanted and left without a word, making preparations to woo his wife.
Chapter 8
Season’s Slowest Scandal: Time Marches for Tick Tock Talbot!
April 1833
Three years, four months earlier
“Beethoven?”
Seraphina looked up from the pianoforte to find her sister Sophie across the conservatory, a piece of music in one hand, an expectant look on her face.
Sera wrinkled her nose. “Too bombastic.”
Sophie returned to the stack of music. “Hymns?”
“Too pious.”
“Children’s ballads?”
Sera shook her head.
“Mozart?”
“Too . . . Mozart,” Sera sighed.
Sophie cut her a look. “Oh, yes. No one likes Mozart.”
Sera laughed and toyed at the keys of the piano, playing a little impromptu tune. “Thomas Moore.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “It’s always Thomas Moore with you. Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you wished to marry him.” She lifted a well-worn piece of music and walked it across the room, squeezing herself onto the little tufted bench where Sera already sat and setting the page to the ornate music rack.
Sera reached out to lovingly smooth the paper. “If he weren’t double my age and married to an actress, I’d be inclined to do just that, honestly.” She fingered the keys, finding the opening notes to the song, loving the way they washed over her. She didn’t need the sheet music. Not for this, or any of the other pieces from Thomas Moore.
She closed her eyes and played from memory while her sister replied, “Nonsense. You’d never give up your perfect duke.”
Sera went warm at the words and missed a note. “He’s not my duke.”
Except she rather thought he was. Even if she did not think of him as a duke at all. He wasn’t a duke. He was Malcolm. Her Malcolm. All smiles and touches and kisses like a promise. And every one of them for her. They’d seen each other dozens of times in the six weeks since they met, in public and private, and every time, it had felt as though it was the two of them alone. Like magic.
“I should like him to be my duke,” she said softly.
“Then he shall be.” Sophie turned the page of the music even though Sera did not need it as she let the music take over.
She sang. “’Tis the last rose of summer, left blooming alone; all her lovely companions are faded and gone . . .” The song always made her ache. “No flower of her kindred, no rosebud is nigh, to reflect back her blushes, or give sigh for sigh.”
“Lady Seraphina Eleanor Talbot!”
She stopped playing.
Sophie looked to her. “It sounds as though you are in trouble.”
And the door to the conservatory burst open, flying back to connect with the wall beyond, revealing the Countess of Wight, formerly Mrs. Talbot. Their mother.
The countess brandished a newspaper in one hand, holding it high above her head like a heraldic banner, though the panic in her eyes indicated that the banner in question was in no way triumphant.
Sera’s remaining three sisters followed close on the countess’s heels, the warning in their respective wide-eyed gazes a clear indication that something had happened, and it was not a good something. Sesily, the sister closest in age to Seraphina, was shaking her head dramatically over their mother’s right shoulder, while Seleste and Seline, numbers three and four of the quintet, appeared to be aiming for meaningful stares.
Though Sera could not for the life of her divine what meaning those stares were meant to have.
And then the countess spoke, outrage shaking the words from her. “Has he had you?”
Sera’s jaw dropped at the crass question. “What?”
Seline and Seleste gasped their shock as Sesily’s eyes went wide. For her part, Sophie went stick straight, immediately reaching to take Sera’s hand. “Mother!”
The countess did not look at her youngest daughter, focused entirely on her eldest. “Now is no time for propriety. Answer the question.”
Sera was speechless.
Sesily—darling, loyal Sesily—leapt into the fray. “Have you gone mad, Mother? Who are you even referring to?”
The countess did not hesitate. “The Duke of Haven. And now that is clear, let me ask again, and you would do well to answer me, Seraphina. Has he had you?”
Sera closed her mouth. “No.”
The countess watched her for an interminably long silence before Sophie stood. “They are in love.”
The countess laughed, high and shrill and unpleasant. “Has he said so?” The question landed like a blow. Sera pressed her lips together, and her mother read the answer without it having to be spoken. “Of course he hasn’t.”
The countess turned away with a violent twist. “Dammit, Sera. What have you done?”