The Lady's Command

Edwina’s veil was even harder to discern. Only because he’d known it had to be there had he managed to even glimpse it. Because her true nature was so very bright and glittery, her shield was almost like a mirror—something that reflected what others assumed they would see, not necessarily what truly lay behind the screen.

He’d studied Millie and Cassie, too; their veils were effective, yet less definite, softer and more amorphous—again, a reflection of their characters. While Lucasta undoubtedly possessed an iron will and a spine of steel—how else had she coped with the vicissitudes of fate over all these years?—of her three daughters, Edwina was the most alike, possessing a similar, pliable yet invincible, feminine strength.

That truth had dawned on him two nights before—and brought with it another ripple.

When he’d set his sights on Edwina, he’d assumed the Delbraiths, a ducal family, would be conventional, conservative, if anything rather stuffy. Instead, he’d discovered they were hiding a secret, one so outrageous and potentially socially catastrophic that it was crystal clear that in terms of being unconventional, the Delbraiths could give the Frobishers a run for their money.

Lucasta was a very far cry from the tradition-obsessed dowager he’d taken her for. As for Edwina…

His view of a predictable, ordinary, orthodox marriage had evaporated.

The lady he had married had an entirely different character from the lady he’d assumed he would take to wife.

Her small hand rested on his sleeve; he could feel the light pressure as if a bird perched there. Yet her presence held him so securely, captivated him so thoroughly, that he barely heard the comments of others enough to respond with the appropriate remarks. He wasn’t interested in those who gathered around them; he was interested only in her.

She’d explained that it was necessary for them to appear in society to “establish themselves.” He wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that, but clearly she had some goal in mind. Being as inexperienced as she was experienced in this sphere, he hadn’t yet figured out precisely what her ultimate goal was, yet he understood and accepted that she had one…

And that said something all by itself.

It was a reflection of that ripple he’d only recently recognized: His delicate, fairylike wife had a decisive and definite mind of her own.

She formulated goals and planned campaigns—then executed them. She spoke of what amounted to strategy and tactics.

He was now fairly certain she would also harbor a definite view of how their marriage would work, but he’d yet to gain any insight whatsoever into what her view of that critical issue was. Were her putative rules of engagement ones he could smile at, accept, and fall in with? Or…?

As of that moment, he had no idea what their future on that front would bring. Yet he’d married her, and he wouldn’t change that for all the gold in the world. Having her as his wife had been his principal goal, and now she was his.

He glanced at her and saw her eyes sparkle, her face lighting with animation as she charmingly accepted congratulations on their marriage from some other couple.

All in all, he was beyond pleased over having her as his wife. The part he had yet to define was what it was going to take to be her husband.

Edwina stood by Declan’s side with her smile in place and her eyes firmly fixed on her prize. She, her mother, and her sisters had agreed it was vital that she and Declan present themselves to the ton in exactly the right light. How the ton viewed them, now and in the future, would depend entirely on the image they projected over these critical first weeks. That tonight, more or less from the moment they’d arrived, they’d remained fixed in the center of the room with a constant stream of intrigued guests jockeying to join their circle testified as to just how highly the ton now ranked them as acceptable acquaintances.

A sense of triumph rose within her; her first goal as a married lady was all but attained.

When Lady Holland stopped to chat and, when introduced to Declan, deigned to smile approvingly, Edwina had to work to keep her delight from too openly showing and her relief from showing at all. The ton could be a highly censorious sphere, but the blessing of such an august hostess was the ultimate seal of tonnish approval; they had, in ton terms, arrived.

Of course, Lady Holland had always had a soft spot for charming and handsome gentlemen.

Slanting a glance at Declan, Edwina allowed her gaze to dwell on his chiseled features—the distinctly aristocratic line of his brow, the long planes of his lean cheeks below high cheekbones, the firmness of his mobile lips, and the definitely masculine cast of his chin. The crinkling around his sky-blue eyes, set beneath angled slashes of brown brows, and his perennially tanned complexion spoke of long months at sea. His light brown, sun-kissed hair completed the image, appearing fashionably windblown with the bright streaks and tips burnished by the sun highlighting the effect.

The combination of his height and his broad-shouldered stance, the very way he held his long frame, both upright and yet fluid, always perfectly balanced and ineffably confident and assured, set him apart from well-nigh every other gentleman in the room.

As Lady Holland moved on, Lucasta touched Edwina’s sleeve, drawing her attention. “My dear, I see Lady Marchmain holding court by the wall. I believe it would be wise for me to join her and ensure she comprehends all the pertinent facts.”

Edwina followed her mother’s gaze to a coterie of older ladies gathered around a chaise. She nodded. “Thank you, Mama. We’ll come and find you when we’re ready to leave.”

Lady Marchmain was one of her mother’s bosom-bows and also one of the most active ladies in the ton; if one had a message to deliver to the upper echelons of society at large, then Lady Marchmain was an excellent courier.

Returning her attention to the gratifying number of ladies and gentlemen eager to make Declan’s acquaintance, Edwina wondered how much longer they needed to stay. Neither she nor her mother had made any estimation of how many evenings it might take to establish her new position as a married lady and, more critically, establish Declan as a member of recognized society, but their assumption had been that it would take considerably more days and nights—more at-homes, morning and afternoon teas, luncheons, balls, and soirées—to achieve their aim. They’d arrived in town only a week ago; they’d been waging their campaign for a mere six days. They hadn’t expected to succeed so soon.

Regardless, she was exceedingly glad that matters had gone as well as they had. Spending her evenings standing beside Declan—handsome, attentive, and suavely engaging as he’d been—had proved far less of a trial than she’d expected. She had thought she would have to rescue him from social traps, yet that hadn’t been the case; he’d seen the snares and sidestepped adroitly all by himself. For someone who had rarely moved within the ton, he’d handled it well.

While she continued to exchange comments and the usual social banter with those gathered about them, as with every word the reality of their social success was confirmed and sank in, she was increasingly aware of rising impatience. Given they’d succeeded on this front, it was time to advance to the next stage in forging their marriage into the union she wished it to be. And for that, she and Declan needed to be elsewhere—anywhere but in the middle of the ton.

* * *

Declan was quite happy to depart Montgomery House. At Edwina’s suggestion, together with Cassie, they crossed to where Lucasta was conversing with several older ladies. The dowager rose and introduced him to her friends. Once the inevitable exchanges were complete, the dowager settled her shawl, and together their party took leave of their hostess, then made their way downstairs. Somewhat to Declan’s relief, Cassie offered to take Lucasta up in her carriage, leaving him and Edwina to their own company as they traveled the short distance to Stanhope Street.

The instant the carriage door was shut upon them, Edwina’s social veil vanished. During the drive, she chattered, animated and intense, reviewing the comments made by several of those they’d met, explaining the significance of this observation or that connection. Her insights proved illuminating; he was struck by how familiar the moment seemed. As they rattled over the cobbles, he realized it was very like a debriefing after one of his covert missions.

The more he thought of it, the more apt the analogy seemed.

Edwina capped her comments with the statement “It appears that Mama had the right of it.” Through the shadows, she met his eyes. “She was quite sure that, when it came to our marriage, the ton would take its cue from me—from how I, and Mama, and Millie and Cassie and their husbands, too, reacted. Mama was convinced that all I had to do was to keep you beside me and openly show my delight in being your wife, and all would be well.” She sighed happily. Facing forward, she settled back beside him. “As usual, Mama was correct.”

He debated several questions, then voiced what to him was the most pertinent. “And are you truly delighted?”

Her small white teeth flashed in an ebullient smile. Through the enfolding shadows, she glanced at him. “You know I am.” She slipped one small hand into his and lightly squeezed. “I couldn’t be more happy over being your wife.”

Confident sincerity resonated in the words; he drank it in and couldn’t help a satisfied smile of his own.

The carriage rolled around a corner, tipping her against him.

She glanced up as he lowered his head.

Their eyes met; their gazes held.

He raised one fingertip and gently, slowly, traced the lush fullness of her lower lip.

Her lids lowered, screening her eyes as she tipped up her face, and he leaned closer.

The carriage slowed, then halted.

Her eyes opened wide. From a distance of mere inches, she studied his, then beneath the pad of his finger, her lip curved.

He heard the footman drop down from the rear of the carriage, and with a sigh, he straightened. “I believe, my lady, that we’ve reached our home.”

“Indeed.” Even through the dimness, he saw desire gleam in her eyes. As the footman opened the door, she murmured, “I suggest, dear husband, that we go inside.”

Anticipation flared between them, tangible and hot. With one last wanton look, she turned to the door. He rose and descended to the pavement, then handed her down.

Retaining his hold on her fingers, he escorted her up the town house steps.

The door opened before they reached it. Humphrey, their new butler, bowed them inside. “Welcome home, my lady. Sir.”

“Thank you, Humphrey.” Edwina slipped her fingers from Declan’s clasp and headed straight for the stairs.

He prowled in her wake.

Humphrey closed the door. “Will there be anything else, sir? Ma’am?”

“I think not.” Declan didn’t shift his gaze from his wife’s curvaceous hips, sleekly cloaked in pale blue satin. “You may lock up. Her ladyship and I are retiring.”

Without glancing back from her steady ascent, Edwina said, “Oh, and please tell Wilmot I won’t need her tonight.”

Wilmot was her lady’s maid. Declan smiled.

Edwina reached the door to the bedroom they had elected to share, opened it, and sailed through. On her heels, he crossed the threshold, paused to shut the door, then, his gaze locked on his prize, continued his pursuit.

Before she reached the foot of their bed—a large four-poster draped in blue silks—she abruptly swung around. One step from her, one stride from him, and they met.

Her head barely reached his shoulder; coming up on her toes, she wound her arms about his neck, pressed close as his hands fastened about her tiny waist, and raised her lips as he bent his head.

Their lips touched, brushed, then settled.

The kiss deepened, their lips effortlessly melding. She parted hers in wanton invitation, and he sent his tongue questing. Conquering and commanding.

She’d been a virgin on their wedding night, yet she’d been anything but reticent; she’d plunged into the whirlpool generated by their avid, greedy, too-long-denied senses with an eager enthusiasm that had stunned him. Her open and ardent desire to learn everything about passion had claimed him. Her utterly fearless adventurousness in this sphere continued to captivate him.

Comprehensively enslaving him.

He didn’t mind, not in the least. As he steered her back toward the bed, the sole remaining thought in his head was how to most effectively enjoy the fruits of his surrender.

Edwina felt awash on a sea of triumph. She wanted to celebrate what ranked as a minor victory—successfully establishing their union as entirely acceptable and, more, as distinctly desirable in the eyes of the ton.

Joy and delight bubbled and fizzed inside her. Effervescent excitement gripped her as she felt the bed at her back, then Declan’s fingers found her laces, and she sent her own hands seeking, nimble fingers deftly dealing with the large buttons of his waistcoat. He paused only to shrug off both coat and waistcoat, letting them fall where they would, and she eagerly set her fingers to the small, flat buttons closing his shirt.

This was one arena within their marriage in which she’d felt utterly confident from the first, and she knew she had his passion, his understanding, his honesty, and his expertise to thank for that. His own inner confidence in his manly attributes, too. He’d been so focused on her, so openly desirous, and so unwaveringly intent on claiming her—so committed and caught up in the moment—that he’d shown her all.

All he felt for her.

All she meant to him.

She’d sailed into passion with a questing heart, buoyed by confidence in her own desirability.

No woman could have asked for more on her wedding night.

And from that night on, they’d embarked on a joint exploration of what engagements such as this could bring them.

She’d devoted herself to learning all he would teach her and all she might of her own volition learn. And every night, although the destination remained blessedly the same, the journey was different, the road subtly altered, the revelations along it fresh and absorbing.

His lips supped from hers, his tongue teasing hers. She responded, using all she’d learned to tempt and lure. She hauled his shirt from his waistband and freed the last button closing it. Anchored in the kiss, in the heat and the passion that rose so strongly—with such reassuring hunger—between them, she blessed him for his innate elegance, which ensured he used a neat, simple knot in his cravat. The instant she unraveled it, she drew the long strip of linen free. With gay abandon, she flung it away.

Finally clear of obstacles, she pulled his shirt wide, set her hands to the sculpted planes of his chest and joyfully—greedily—claimed, then she pushed the garment up and over his shoulders. He refused to release her lips but broke from the embrace enough to shrug off his coat and waistcoat. Then he opened the shirt’s cuffs, stripped the garment off, and let it fall to the floor, and she fell on him, fell into his embrace, and gave herself up, heart and soul, to learning what tonight would bring.

Shivery sensation. Heat.

Knowing touches that claimed and incited, that excited and lured and drew them both along tonight’s path.

The whisper of silk. The rustle of the bedclothes.

Fingertips trailing over excruciatingly sensitive skin.

Muscles bunching and rippling, then turning as hard as steel.

Incoherent murmuring.

Naked skin to naked skin, body to body, they merged and, together, fingers linked and gripping, lips brushing, heated breaths mingling, followed the path on.

Journeyed on through the enthrallments of desire, through passion’s licking flames, faster and faster they rode and plunged, then surged toward the glorious end.

To where a cataclysm of feeling ripped through reality and sensation consumed them.

Then ecstasy erupted and fractured them, flinging them into oblivion’s void…

Until, at the last, spent, hearts racing, blinded by glory, they sank back to earth, to the pleasure of each other’s embrace, to the wonder of their discovery.

When her wits finally re-engaged and she could again think, she found she was still too buoyed on triumph—on multiple counts—to, as she usually did, slide into pleasured slumber. She wasn’t sure Declan was sleeping, either; wrapped in his arms, her head pillowed on his shoulder, she couldn’t see his face—couldn’t be sure if he was sleeping or not without lifting her head and disturbing them both.

In that moment, she was at peace, sated and safe, and felt no need to converse. And, it seemed, neither did he; the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek soothed and reassured.

Her mind wandered, instinctively cataloguing—where they now were, where she wished them to go.

The path she wanted them to follow—the marriage she was determined they would have.

Her assumption that it was up to her, her responsibility to steer them in the right direction, wasn’t one she questioned. She had her parents’ marriage and that of her late brother as vivid examples of how terribly wrong things could go if a lady didn’t institute and insist on the correct framework. And putting that correct framework in place was much easier if one acted from the first, before any unhelpful habits became ingrained.

She knew what she wanted; she had several shining examples to guide her—her sisters’ marriages, Julian and Miranda’s marriage, and, more recently, what she’d seen of the relationship between Declan’s parents, Fergus and Elaine.

That from his earliest years Declan had been exposed to such a marriage, one that was founded on a working personal partnership—that he would have absorbed the concept, seen its inherent strengths, and, she hoped, would now expect to find the same support in his own marriage—was infinitely encouraging.

Throughout their teens, she and her sisters had spent hours in their parlor at Ridgware discussing the elements of an acceptable-in-their-eyes marriage. Both Millie and Cassie, each in their own way, had set out to achieve that ideal in their marriages and had succeeded. Both Catervale and Elsbury openly doted on their wives, were strong and engaged fathers to their children, and shared everything; they included their wives in all areas of their lives.

Edwina was determined to have nothing less. Indeed, with Declan, she suspected she wanted more. Compared to Millie and Cassie, she was more outgoing, more curious and eager to engage with life and actively explore the full gamut of its possibilities.

She wanted their marriage to be a joint venture on all levels, first to last.

With their position within the ton now established and their physical union so vibrantly assured, she could now turn her mind and energies to all the other aspects that contributed to a modern marriage.

On the domestic front, she had all in hand. Together, she and Declan had chosen this house to rent for the Season, and perhaps longer, but he’d ceded the tiller entirely to her with respect to selecting and hiring their staff. She’d been lucky to find Humphrey, and Mrs. King, their housekeeper, and the new cook were settling in nicely. The small staff met their needs more than adequately; other than deciding menus, she needed to do little to keep everything running smoothly in that sphere.

Which left her with one outstanding issue, that of how to merge the rest of their lives—how to align their interests, activities, and energies when they weren’t in the bedroom, or at home, or socializing within the ton.

All the rest.

Thinking the words brought home just how little she knew of the details of Declan’s business—how he occupied himself, what role he played within his family’s shipping empire, or any particular causes he espoused. He’d told her he didn’t expect to sail again until July, or perhaps later; that left her with plenty of time to question and discover all she needed to learn so that she could work out the details of how he and she were going to work together. How she could and would contribute to his career.

A working partnership such as his parents had was what she wanted, one where she contributed as she could, where appropriate—a partnership that allowed her to understand the demands made on him and the pressures those brought to bear. Despite her predilection for active engagement, such a partnership didn’t necessarily require her to be actively involved in each and every facet, but rather to always be in a position to understand what was going on. She was immutably convinced that such an arrangement was critical to them having the marriage she was determined they would have.

Sleep drew nearer; her already relaxed muscles lost what little tension they’d regained.

Even as she surrendered to slumber’s insistent tug, she sensed a nascent swell of eagerness, optimism, and determination. She was free to start her campaign to create the marriage they needed first thing tomorrow morning.

Declan didn’t succeed in summoning his wits—in being able to think worth a damn—until Edwina finally fell asleep. Until then, caught between worlds, he knew only the tumultuous emotion that welled and swelled within him. It had flared to life on their wedding night; he had assumed it would fade with time, that exercised daily—nightly—it would gradually lose its power. Instead, it had burgeoned and grown.

But, at last, the soft huff of Edwina’s breathing deepened, and she sank more definitely against him, and his senses finally ceased their fascination, withdrew from their complete and abject focus on her, and allowed his wits to resurface.

And that overwhelming emotion subsided, but the effects lingered, leaving him unsettlingly aware of just how much she now meant to him. He dwelled on that reality for a moment, then buried the understanding deep. The only consequence he needed to consciously grasp was that, now, putting her—or allowing her to put herself—in any danger whatsoever was simply not on the cards.

For several moments, the potential conflict between that consideration and her as-yet-undefined unconventionality—underscored by their recent activities—and how that might impinge on the way their marriage would work cycled through his mind. His only clear conclusion was that establishing the practical logistics of their marriage was shaping up to be significantly more complicated than he’d assumed. He would need to establish boundaries to keep Edwina separate from the other side of his life, to keep her safely screened from it.

He tried to imagine how he might achieve that, especially given the understanding that niggled deep in his brain—that given his own character, it was her adventurous soul that had from the first drawn him.

Yet adventuring of any sort invariably led to danger. How was he to suppress that aspect of her personality while simultaneously preserving it?

He fell asleep before even a whisper of a suggestion of a plan bloomed in his mind.

CHAPTER 2

The following morning, her marital challenge in the forefront of her mind, Edwina swept into the breakfast parlor to find her handsome husband frowning over a letter. She halted. “What is it?”

He glanced up. His gaze rested on her for a second, then he shook his head. He folded the letter and tucked it into his coat pocket. “Just a note calling me to a meeting. Company business.”

The tip of Edwina’s tongue burned with the urge to press him for more; for a second, she flirted with the idea of offering to accompany him just to see how he would react. But… It was too early for that. Frontal assaults rarely worked with men like Declan; they instinctively resisted any pressure, which later made convincing them to change their stance all the harder. She needed to pave her way.