She waggled her tawny eyebrows. “I noticed the number of dollar princesses invading London determined to marry a title for prestige grows by the year.”
“You mind?”
“I don’t mind it at all,” she said with a shrug. “But it does strike me as wanting your revolutionary cake and eating it, too.”
“Old King George is rollin’ in his grave,” he agreed, and her small burst of almost laughter nearly made him smile. He felt compelled to look at his plate while her gaze shied to her lap. A strange thought occurred to him as he watched her from beneath his lashes: that he had enjoyed this lunch. An unfamiliar lightness, an ease, had filled his chest throughout. He wondered whether she felt the same. Unlikely. The table separating them was small and yet the distance between them was still palpable. She was like one of her precious artifacts, on display but beyond his touch behind an invisible barrier. His usual course of action was to break whatever blocked his path. The usual way did not apply. He needed a tactic. She had already told him what she wanted in the Blue Parlor: to build her own world with a friend. Well, he wasn’t the man for that. She was shiny and preoccupied with colors; he had breathed and ingested darkness, had stared at it for so long it had begun to stare back into him. Darkness was a part of him now, encrusted in his soul like coal dust in a miner’s skin. But for the last half hour, he had had a glimpse beyond the veil, what it could have been like, and it left him thinking he needed a tactic.
Her first day as a married woman had slipped into evening, and beneath the quiet of the Belgravia house, tension began to simmer in step with the sinking sun. Another wedding night was looming. Presently, Lucian was ensconced in his study—after he had introduced her new protection officer, a Mr. Carson. Mr. Carson’s head was bald and shiny as a billiard ball, and he was larger and certainly meaner than Mr. Graves. She dared not ask in which jail Lucian had found him. Safe to say, it would be nigh impossible to run from Carson.
She spent an hour lolling around on her plush new bed, trying to absorb the contents of the new Woman’s Suffrage Journal, but her focus was too scattered. She wasn’t well on her own these days, and had to yet write to her friends. She finally closed the periodical and decided to visit Lucian’s private chambers. After the terrible awkwardness last night, she hadn’t expected a thoughtful bouquet this morning. Nor a pleasant lunch. Perhaps her husband was hiding other, promising things.
She inched open the connecting double doors and felt pleasantly surprised. His bedchamber exuded warm elegance, with rich shades of burgundy, navy blue, and dark woodworks.
She slipped inside quickly.
In contrast to the rest of the house, the décor here was sparse: an armchair in cognac leather next to the fireplace, a secretary against the wall, a large wooden chest with metal fittings at the foot of the bed. The bed was vast and square and covered by a tartan blanket patterned in earthy browns and greens. The MacKenzie tartan? Looking at the bed made her feel shy, so she moved on to a side door. His walk-in wardrobe. It was spacious and neatly organized: glossy cherrywood shelving from floor to ceiling and an armchair at the center. The lingering fragrance of his shaving soap drew her deeper into the small room. She trailed a fingertip over silken waistcoats. She stuck her nose amid the freshly starched shirts and inhaled. He might not have been her choice of husband, but she would bottle his scent if she could. She pulled out drawers and paused when she found his braces rolled up in neat coils. On impulse, she grabbed a pair and stuffed it into her skirt pocket, but the moment her loot had been securely stashed she felt like a terrible intruder. Her heartbeat picked up as she slid the drawer soundlessly back into place, and she hurried out the door. She screeched like a loon, for Lucian stood next to the bed.
“Good evening.” His tone was mild but his gaze was coolly assessing.
“Mr. Blackstone,” she said.
He approached, and now her heart was pounding at double speed. He halted with his toes an inch from hers, his expression opaque. “What were you doing?”
She had been in his wardrobe, sniffing his shirts.
“I wanted to see where you sleep,” she said. As if that was a less disturbing explanation.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Why do you want to see where I sleep?”
The beginnings of a beard shadowed his cheeks and jawline. This morning, in his exercise room, he had been perfectly clean-shaven, and it crossed her mind that he must have shaved last night, just before coming to her bed, for his face had felt smooth against hers …