Demon's Bride

Chapter 4

Anne paced the corridor, watching night fall in thick black currents. Her skin felt tight and confining. She was a ghost haunting her own home. Aimless. Uneasy.

Keeping house for a man who seldom made use of it proved a more difficult task than she had anticipated. She had spoken to the cook about planning meals, only to learn that Leo sometimes took coffee in the mornings, but that constituted the whole of his requirements. The cook, in fact, had been painfully eager to talk with Anne, desperate for something to do. Just as Anne was. Yet she had no answers for the poor man. Could they expect guests? Possibly. Would the master be joining them for meals more often? Perhaps.

The clatter of carriage wheels on the street drew Anne to the window. But it was only the man who lived across the street. She watched as he alit from the carriage, and the door to his house opened. A woman stood there, her shadow thrown in jagged increments down the stairs. Her shade swallowed the man as he climbed up to her, then, with their arms looped, they went inside together, and the door closed. The carriage rolled on toward the mews.

Not a word from Leo all day. She’d had supper prepared and waiting for him at four. The hour had passed, and another, until there had been no choice but to eat alone, again, and have the remainder of the dishes shared amongst the servants.

The more hours passed, the more she thought of the previous night. Leo’s warm hands and hotter gaze, the press of his body close to hers, and the even more intimate revelation about his parents’ marriage. A tentative step toward knowing each other. Yet as the day crept forward and Leo’s absence resounded in the empty halls of his home, she began to think of last night as a dream whose details faded after waking. Soon, she would begin to wonder if his touch and disclosure had happened at all.

Anne turned away from the window and resumed her restless pacing. Back and forth, crossing the landing that had a view of the entryway below. Everywhere her gaze fell, she found expensive objects. Axminster carpets, marble-topped tables with elaborately curved, gilded legs, Chinese porcelain. Brilliant things, glittering things. Soulless. Empty. Like elegant corpses.

She hugged herself and kept walking. These were idle fancies brought about by a day of inactivity. Seldom had she had so little to do, and so much time in which to do it.

Leo kept far more servants than her own family. Until yesterday, he was the house’s sole occupant, and even then, he was rarely there. Between the abundance of servants and a master with few demands, Anne found herself superfluous. She’d been far busier at home—her old home. This is where she lived now. This richly furnished ... mausoleum.

Sensation prickled along the back of her neck. The strangest feeling. As if she were being observed.

Anne spun around. “Meg?” She tried to recall the names of other servants she had met today—Leo’s valet, and the steward. “Spinner? Mr. Fowles?”

No answer. Nothing at all, until the middle candle in a three-branched candelabra abruptly went out. A curl of smoke drifted up to the ceiling.

She took one of the lit candles and used it to reignite the one in the middle. Yet the moment she replaced the taper, the middle candle went out again. It didn’t gutter or flicker, as it might if there were a draft. It simply extinguished itself.

As if someone had blown it out.

A rolling clatter sounded on the street outside. Startled, her heart contracted, a painful grip in the center of her chest. Then came the footman’s steps echoing across the checkerboard floor as he strode to the door and held it open. Anne drifted to the railing and looked down.

Cold air swirled in, and a man stood in the doorway. Light from the linkboy’s torch outside made the man a figure of darkness, limned in fire. Tall, and broad-shouldered. He came into the entryway, sleek and sinister as night. She felt a clutch of instinctive fear, the urge to turn and run. Then light from the footman’s candle touched the stranger’s face and she saw it wasn’t a stranger, no one to fear. Only her husband.

Though calling him only anything seemed paltry. For, as Leo strode into the house, removing his hat and caped coat and handing them to the footman, he looked up. Right at her. His storm gray eyes fixed on her with startling accuracy. The chandelier hanging in the domed entry bathed him in light, all the hard and handsome angles of his face, the long lines of his body. He wore the clothes of a gentleman, but the guise did not fool Anne. This was a dangerous man.

They stared at each other. It seemed to take a moment for Leo to place her, like running into an acquaintance after several years’ absence. Then came recognition. He smiled, yet it did not much soften his face.

“Is that a bruise on your cheek?” Her voice sounded overloud, echoing in the foyer.

He reached up and absently touched his face. “I was in a fight.”

Anne hurried down the stairs. “Footpads? Are you injured? We should summon the constabulary.”

“And tell them I paid for the privilege.”

She reached his side, tilting her head back to look at him in confusion. “Paid?”

“A pugilism academy.” He held up his fist. Small cuts and bruises adorned his knuckles. “Every afternoon, after business at the ’Change is done. The man who did this to me looks much worse, but he was given a half crown for his troubles.”

“Boxing.” It made sense. The way he moved, how he held himself, as if expecting a fight at any moment, and not only ready to defend himself, but eager for the challenge. Of course, her supposition was all theory, but she had a rather good grasp of theoreticals. “I’ve never seen a boxing match.”

He raised a brow. “Never?”

“Young ladies aren’t encouraged to attend events where men in undress pummel one another. Though I’ve always been curious. It’s a very ancient sport, isn’t it?”

“I should take you.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You can’t.”

He frowned. “It isn’t illegal for a woman to attend a boxing match. In fact, I’ve heard that, once or twice, a woman was one of the pugilists. Next time a match is arranged, I’ll take you.”

“It will be quite scandalous.” Her pulse came a little quicker to think about it. But not entirely from fear.

“Scandal doesn’t bother me.”

She looked at him, with the bruise on his face and the scabs on his knuckles, his sandy hair coming out from its queue, and suddenly understood that what made Leo so very dangerous wasn’t his humble birth, nor his wealth, and not even his physicality. What truly made him dangerous was this: he honestly did not care what anyone else thought. And that gave him perfect freedom to do exactly what he pleased.

It was a thought both frightening and exciting.

Rather than address any of this, Anne said, “That bruise wants tending.”

He merely shrugged. “I heal quickly.”

“A meal for the victor, then?”

“Meal?” He looked blank.

“Food. One consumes it. Often at home. Though,” she added, “I’m given to understand you seldom do.”

“Little reason to.”

“Until now.” She wondered what he must think of her impertinence, yet she was unable to curb herself in his presence. His sense of liberation must be communicable.

He did not seem to mind, however. His smile actually warmed, becoming more genuine. “This must be the side of marriage that is so celebrated. A doting, fussing wife.”

“I’ve little experience with the matter,” she said, “having never had a wife before.”

“Then we are equally innocent on the subject.”

One word she would never choose to describe Leo: innocent. Even a rather sheltered young woman such as herself recognized that a whole life was lived behind the cool gray of Leo’s eyes, a life utterly unknown to her.

She turned to the footman. “Ask Cook to prepare a collation for Mr. Bailey. Meat, cheese, bread. Wine. Some of the pie from this afternoon’s supper.”

The footman bowed and departed, leaving Anne and Leo standing alone in the chill of the vaulted foyer.

“Do you wish to bathe before eating, sir ... Leo?” She caught the scent of fresh sweat from his skin, musky and clean, and fought to keep from drawing closer to his wool coat and inhaling deeply.

His smile turned rueful. “I did not know you had a supper prepared.”

“It is a wife’s duty to have meals ready.”

“And a husband’s folly if he forgets. Consider me chastised.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort,” she answered. “You aren’t chastised in the slightest.”

He chuckled. “Perhaps a little.”

Anne gestured toward the stairs. “A bath? And then something to eat. I’m given to understand that is the common order of things.”

“Behold your obedient husband.” He turned to the stairs and brushed past her, his body large and warm. A shiver of awareness passed through her, like a fingertip drawn down her throat and between her breasts. She remembered the sensation of his hands on her, and the insistent press of his arousal. No, this was not to be a chaste marriage, but as to the when of its consummation ... The promise filled her with dread. And eagerness.

At the foot of the stairs, he paused, his hand on the newel post. He gave a low laugh.

“A wife. A bath. A meal at home.” He shook his head. “I’m becoming damned civilized.”

As he continued up the stairs, Anne understood that no matter what Leo Bailey did, he would never be domesticated. He was, and always would be, wild.

“This is where we’re supposed to eat?”

Anne noted the appalled expression on Leo’s face as he surveyed the capacious dining chamber. He had bathed and changed into fresh clothes. In his pristine stock, snowy against his jaw, expertly cut green woolen coat, his hair dark, gleaming gold in the candlelight, he had transformed from a bruised brawler. But he didn’t look a gentleman. No, in his restrained evening finery, he seemed a pirate prince contemplating future pillaging.

“You found no fault with the room yesterday.”

“Because there were people everywhere. This.” He waved his hand at the chamber, where a collation awaited him at the vast dining table, and two footmen stood in disinterested readiness. “All we need is a bear to bait.”

“One of your footmen is a very big fellow. Perhaps he’d be willing to play the part of the bear.”

With Anne on his arm, Leo brought them farther into the room. All the chandeliers had been lit—an expense she could scarcely fathom—yet this only illuminated how large and empty the dining chamber truly was. He frowned at the walls as if displeased by their distance, and the look was so commanding, she half expected the walls to simply get up and move closer just to please him.

“No wonder I never ate at home. Who could dine in here?”

“I did.”

Her quiet words snared his attention. “Today.”

“Yes, today. I broke my fast in this chamber, and dined, as well.”

“Alone.”

“There was a footman.”

He shook his head, his frown deepening. “God, I’m an ass.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. “This is the point in the exchange where you contradict me.”

“I was given to understand that a good wife does not contradict her husband.”

His scowl transformed into a smile that glittered in his eyes. “I think I’ve married an impertinent hoyden.”

Her own lips curved. “No one has ever called me a hoyden before.” And she rather liked it, for as a daughter of parents with little means, subdued obedience had been her byword. Being poor and an unmarried woman did not improve one’s chances of being abided. “I suspect it’s the low company I now keep.”

The moment the words left her, she wanted to call them back. Leo’s face shuttered at the perceived insult.

“I didn’t—that’s not what I mean.” She gripped his sleeve. “It was a jest. Nothing more. I don’t think of you as low.”

“But I am,” he said, words cool and impersonal. He withdrew his arm.

“Not truly. Low is defined by deeds, not blood.”

His smile returned, only now it had a dark and cynical cast to it. “To repeat: I am.”

She did not understand to what he referred, but the shadows in his eyes made her think perhaps she did not want to know. Blast. They had been heading toward something, a connection as tenuous as it was vital, and a few thoughtless words had torn it asunder.

Another realization dawned: he claimed not to care what others thought, and in many ways, he didn’t, but there was still some part of him that bristled and brooded when his origins were derided. He lashed out when hurt, like a wounded beast. To keep her hand from being bitten off, she must proceed carefully.

“Grand though this chamber is,” she said, searching for another topic, “it doesn’t lend itself well to intimate suppers.” She turned to one of the footmen. “Remove the collation to the parlor upstairs.” The servant bowed, and he and the other footman began gathering up the plates and platters of food.

“There’s a parlor upstairs?”

She exhaled. At the least, Leo’s voice had lost its cold timbre. “This house has a saloon, two parlors, a promenade, study, drawing room, and three bedchambers. I can draw you a map. I’m very good with them.”

“No need. If I get lost, I’ll whistle for you.”

“Like a hound.” She affected a sigh, though glad that his aloof, cutting mood had not lasted long. “Has any woman received a more romantic proposition?”

A mercurial man, her husband, for now he was grave. “I know little of romance. If it’s pretty words and poesies you want, you’ll have to find them in the pages of a novel.”

“I don’t read novels. Besides,” she added, smiling, “I think we’re doing well enough on our own. We do not need a histrionic novelist to tell us how to behave.”

“Never did trust writers. A bunch of Grub Street scribblers paid to lie.” Affable, he offered her his arm. “Shall we go up to dine, my lady wife?”

She placed her hand on his sleeve, and felt anew the jolt that came from touching his solid, sinewy form. “Let’s. And I’ll provide direction, should we get lost en route.” At the least, she knew how to navigate the house. When it came to her husband, she found herself continually redrawing the map.

Leo never anticipated the pleasures of a meal at home. Until last night, his evenings had been spent in the company of his fellow Hellraisers. They had earned their name honestly—if such a thing could be done with honesty. Though he didn’t possess the privilege of birth, he had that other opener of doors: money. With it, in the company of gently born scoundrels, he had experienced all that London had to offer. Wine, carousing, music. Women.

His taxonomy of women separated them into discrete categories. The demimondaine was the sort he knew best, and as a man of business, he appreciated the clear directives by which they led their lives. Some men liked to pretend that courtesans truly held affection for them. Leo was not one of those men. For all his manipulations at Exchange Alley, he liked dealings honest and with clear intent. So he paid courtesans for their time, their company, and never flattered himself that they found him handsome or charming. Only wealthy.

There were the wives and daughters of rich merchants and men of trade, but he seldom interacted with them. His ambitions lay elsewhere, even if he could increase his fortune tenfold by making a strategic marriage. Money he could make entirely on his own. He didn’t need a wife to bring him that.

Also in his catalog were the women of the aristocracy. Staid matrons. Sly-eyed widows and bored, neglected wives—these were the sort who invited him into their beds, curious for a taste of the lower orders. He was happy to oblige. It gratified Leo to know that he vigorously pleasured women whose husbands sneered at him.

The delicate young ladies who played fortepiano and, by design, knew little of the world beyond the circumference of Mayfair—these he knew least of all. Wealth he possessed, but not reputation or bloodline, and genteel girls gave him wide berth. He did not mind overmuch, discovering in his limited conversations with them that they had been carefully instructed to have no opinions or use beyond silk-gowned broodmares. In his nights with the Hellraisers, the shortest portion of the evening was spent at aristocratic assemblies, for the company was dull and circumscribed, especially the young women.

Leo was young. And a man. When it came to female company, he wanted anything but dull and circumscribed.

To his surprise, this evening he learned that his young, aristocratic wife was neither of these things.

“Why not invest everything into a single trade?” she asked, pouring him another glass of Bordeaux. “Concentrate all your interests in the development of a single product—perhaps even fund its advancement.”

“Limiting one’s investment into only one commodity means disaster comes when that trade fails.”

“It might not fail, though, and the lion’s portion of its profits go to you.”

His smile was fashioned from witnessing many a disaster. Mr. Holliday’s gift showed him nothing else. “At one time or another, most everything fails.”

“How grim.”

“Many things are.” But not this conversation. For the past hour, as Anne had plied him with a cold supper, she had asked him many questions about his endeavors in Exchange Alley. She knew little of business, nor how one might buy and sell shares of things that only existed in theory, yet her mind had proved agile and eager for information.

Even the other Hellraisers had not shown as much interest or enthusiasm for his work.

Candlelight gilded her smooth face and the soft expanse of skin above the neckline of her peach silk gown, and her eyes were emerald one moment, topaz the next. He watched her hands as they floated over her wineglass, lively as birds.

Desire surged, low and tight in his belly. Pleasant in its demand and, surprisingly, pleasant in its deferral. He liked feeling it, the anticipation of what might be. For a long time, he had wanted certainties about the future, and thanks to the Devil, there were things about the future he knew with absolute authority. So he actually enjoyed not knowing entirely what the next few moments, or days, might bring. Including the pleasure of his wife’s body as he came to know her heart and mind.

“Thus the necessity for diversification.” He swirled the wine in his glass, fashioning a small vortex. “If a cotton mill burns down, or the canal bringing iron becomes impassable, I have other sources of income.”

“Yet any one of those ventures is also vulnerable to misfortune.”

“Never the ones in which I invest.” He could say this assuredly.

She tilted her head to one side, considering. “Never?”

“Not a one. So you’ve no fear of becoming destitute.”

Her laugh was unexpectedly low and husky, sensuous for all its innocence. “I’ve already been destitute. I have no fear of that condition. But,” she continued, “how is it that none of your investments suffer disappointment? If what you have said is true, that most everything meets with failure at some point, you must be either very sagacious or very lucky.”

“A compound of both.” The Devil’s gift remained a secret known only to him and the other Hellraisers. As far as Anne and the rest of the world understood, the Devil was an abstract, an idea preached about on Sundays and on street corners, but never truly believed as real. If he told Anne of what had transpired beneath a Roman ruin three months earlier, she would have him committed to Bedlam. There was nothing to be gained by telling her.

No, she could not know. Her learning about his magic would jeopardize this tentative connection growing between them, and he found—to his surprise—he valued that connection too much to place it at risk.

“So it was luck and wisdom that saw you from a saddler’s son to ...” She waved her hand at the parlor, its walls covered in ivory damask, gilded carvings adorning the mirrors, moldings, and sconces. In truth, he found the style of the room to be oppressively ornate, but had permitted the designer to decorate the whole house as he pleased. Naturally, the man had employed the most expensive designs and artisans.

Leo had been home too infrequently to be bothered. So long as his house had displayed his wealth, he did not care.

Now, however, seeing Anne like a bryony amongst rotten hothouse roses, he found that he did.

Abruptly, he got to his feet. Anne blinked up at him in confusion, until he came around to pull out her chair. “This room feels choked. There’s a garden out back. At least,” he amended, “I believe there is one.”

“It has paths and a fountain, though it is a little barren so early in the year.” She rose, and he caught her scent of green meadow and young woman.

He had an urge to place his mouth at the juncture of her neck and her shoulder. But it was too soon. Instead, he strode to the door and said to the footman waiting outside, “Have Mrs. Bailey’s maid fetch a cloak for her mistress. And don’t light torches in the garden.” After the glare of indoors, he wanted the darkness.

He turned back to Anne. “You don’t mind.” Leo realized he spoke this more as a directive than a question, but he wanted out of this room, out of the house. And he wanted her with him.

“I often walked in the garden at night. After the chaos of the day, it gave me some peace.”

He would scarce recognize peace if it shot him in the face.

In a moment, Anne’s maid appeared with a sapphire woolen cloak. Leo took the cloak from the maid, dismissing her with a nod. He stepped close to Anne and, with a flourish, draped the garment around her slim shoulders. A flush of awareness pinked her cheeks as he worked the fastening at her throat. Good. He wanted her affected by him, for he found himself growing more and more responsive to her.

Claiming his glass of wine, he offered her his arm. Her fingers rested lightly on his sleeve. Had his other hand not been occupied with his glass, he would have clasped her fingers closer. A testing, to see whether she would retreat, or push forward. Yet without the slightest provocation on his part, her hold became more secure, fingers curving with purpose around his forearm.

Desire knifed through him. He mentally shook himself. I’m a sodding boy again. A time in his life when just the fan of a girl’s eyelash could rouse his cock. Now, years later, only the firmer press of Anne’s fingers on his arm caused him to respond.

“Comfortable?” He wasn’t.

At her nod, they walked downstairs and then out together. Brittle air scented with smoke and fog bit at exposed skin, but after the close heat of indoors, Leo welcomed the bite. He led her down pathways paved with crushed shells. Accustomed more to purposeful striding than a placid stroll, Leo forced himself into an even, steady pace, feeling the cold air abrade his lungs.

Bare-branched privet hedges squatted beside the path, and Leo could just make out in the darkness the skeletal arms of espaliered fruit trees reaching toward the sky. He tried to remember what might grow in the neat rectangular beds and found that he could not.

“In the spring, this will be a very pretty spot.” Anne spoke softly, a deference to night and its muted expectation. “Broom, and Sweet William, and candytuft. The pear trees will have lovely white flowers.”

It was the first he knew of it, or even what fruit the trees might bear.

“We had no garden,” he said. “The saddlery shared a common yard with a potter and a chandler, and we lived behind the shop. The yard was just that, a square of dirt. It smelled of wax, clay, and leather.”

“That’s where you played?”

He snorted. “No play. From the time I could hold a pair of shears, I helped my da. Schooling first, then work. Da wanted to be sure I knew my letters. He didn’t, not until he reached four and forty.”

Leo had never spoken of this to anyone, not even Edmund or Whit. They knew many aspects of his low birth, but never such intimate details, and it surprised Leo that he talked so openly to Anne now. The false affinity created by darkness.

As if sensing this, a cloud over the moon abruptly shifted and icy light spilled into the garden, washing away the intimate dark. In the light, he felt exposed, the distance between him and his wife all too evident. Moonlight drove them apart, for now he had nowhere to hide.

He cursed himself for being so unguarded. Surely she’d mock him for being the son of an illiterate. He readied for her cutting words, telling himself that he didn’t care what she thought of his humble blood.

“Your father must have taught himself,” she said instead.

Leo’s steps slowed a little, surprised by her response. “He did. Sat at the kitchen table with a hornbook, struggling to sound out the Lord’s Prayer.”

“With such a determined son, I expect no less from the father.” Esteem warmed her voice.

Leo felt as though he’d taken a punch to the chest. To steady himself, he took a drink of wine. He had expected bafflement from her, or outright disdain. But not this ... admiration. Especially not in the clarity of a barren, moonlight-blasted garden. Yet she saw him fully, and liked what she saw.

“No one more determined than Adam Bailey,” he said after a moment. “Was as determined.” Leo’s father had died as he lived: working. Always wanting more. A trait shared by his only living son.

Leo had advantages his father did not. More wealth, a greater understanding of the exigencies of business. And magic, given to him by the Devil.

Leo would use his every power to seize whatever he wanted.

As if frustrated by the growing bond between him and Anne, clouds slid across the face of the moon, blotting out its light. The garden sank back into darkness.

“Fifteen shillings a week. That’s what he made.” The same amount Leo carried in his pocket wherever he went. “Hardly more than subsistence.”

“Something altered your circumstances.”

“A rich man’s fancy.” The irony hardly escaped him.

“He gave my father a commission. A bloody big commission that meant pulling me from school so I could help complete it in time. The man wanted a dozen racing saddles. And he wanted them within a month. So we made the damned things, my father, my mother, and me. I was ten at the time. We had to hire the coffin-builder’s wagon to make the delivery.” Sometimes he woke from dreams to find his fingers holding a phantom awl.

“The man must have been quite fond of horseflesh,” Anne murmured.

“He owned two horses only, to pull his carriage. Said that he’d been thinking about taking up racing, and wanted to be prepared, should he ever indulge the whim.”

Anne’s laugh was wry. “No wonder you think all noblemen are fools.”

He stopped and faced her. “I never said that.”

“Those words specifically? No.” Some light escaped the house, tracing the line of her cheek and curve of her ear as she stared up at him. Her gaze was alert, unblinking. “Yet it’s there, just the same. Your opinion of the upper classes is ... low.”

“They haven’t given me much cause to believe otherwise.” Memories of university lacerated him. He still heard the taunts of the noblemen and gentlemen commoners, how they’d called him scum and upstart vulgarian and emptied their chamber pots onto his bed when he was out attending the classes they disdained. The burning shame of those days still charred him around the edges.

He had returned home after one term, swearing never to go back. After that, he had worked beside his father once more, only by then work meant not the saddlery but Exchange Alley.

She dropped her gaze, yet only slightly, before looking up again. “So, those of noble birth are all the same person wearing different masks?”

Her voice held a bite, faint, but there, and he respected her for it.

“There are ... exceptions.”

“And I am indeed grateful you made an exception for me.” She moved away from him. “I find myself chilled. I’ll return inside.”

He caught her wrist as she turned, and drew her back. “Neither of us is who others suppose us to be.”

She gave this consideration, which was more than he had given her. “These past few days have been educational.”

“For both of us.” He still believed most aristos to be spoiled buffoons, but he was sage enough to admit when there was something to learn. Mostly, he was learning the intricacies of his wife. “Stay out here with me. Please,” he remembered to add.

Her wrist slid from his grasp, and for a moment, he thought she would storm back into the house. Instead, she looked pointedly at his arm, which he offered. She accepted, and they resumed their stroll, with the sounds of crunching shells beneath their feet and the distant tolling of Saint George’s bell marking the hour.

Ten o’clock. Bram would be at the Snake and Sextant, the usual meeting place for the Hellraisers before they ventured out for the night’s exploits. Edmund went out seldom, now that he had the wife he had coveted. John often had dealings at Whitehall that kept him late. Which meant that Bram was alone. Unless Leo joined him.

He waited for the feeling of restlessness that always presaged his evening entertainment. The need to do and see more and more. An unceasing appetite for the pleasures afforded by wealth.

Part of him felt he should go, merely on principle. Prove to himself that marriage had not changed him, nor the essence of himself.

Yet jagged and uncertain their conversations might be, he found himself enjoying Anne’s company. He liked talking with her. If he required a rationale, he could tell himself that he merely wanted to speed up the process of rogering his wife. And he did want that. But she was more than a receptacle or ornament. A person. Entire and genuine. Soft, but not fragile. Innocent, yet not immature.

There could be much more to Anne than he had first accounted—a thought both alarming and intriguing.

Since the subject seemed to interest her, he said, “The money my father earned from the commission was substantial. More than he could make in a year. But he didn’t put it back into the saddlery. He invested it instead. In a shipment of Indian cotton.”

“I didn’t realize saddle makers knew so much of overseas trade.”

“They don’t. My father would go to the pub and have someone read him the newspaper. Got his imagination sparked by tales of wealthy nabobs and all the faraway places making such wondrous things. He wanted to be a part of that.”

“It was a bold thing to do,” Anne said quietly. “Invest when he had so little experience with it.”

“The neighbors called him a fool for pissing away a year’s earnings, and all for a bit of Oriental cloth. Their smirks died when he earned thrice what he had invested.”

“What a fine day that must have been for you.” She smiled.

He remembered it vividly. The letter that came from London. Leo reading the letter aloud as his father stared at the banknotes stacked on their single, rough table. His mother’s tears. And his father’s vow that he would invest again, and again, until they could have butter on their bread and fresh tea in their cups. His father had contracted a sickness that day, a sickness for the future. Leo caught it, too. A fever in his blood, one he hoped would never be cured.

“By the time I was fifteen,” he said, “we were more than comfortable. We were rich. And every day, I grow richer.”

“Gaining you everything you want.”

He chuckled at that. “There is always more.”

“Never enough?” She glanced up at him through her lashes.

“When I become the wealthiest man in England, perhaps then.” But he doubted it. He stiffened when he caught the soft music of her chuckle. “You think my ambition ridiculous.”

She shook her head. “You mistake me. My laughter is for the peculiarities of circumstance. Yesterday, I found myself married to a man I barely know. And today, I learn that this man and I share something unexpected.”

“We share a name now.” And a bed, though they had only slept in this bed.

“Something else. For I realized just now”—she moved to stand before him—“that the saddler’s son and the poor baron’s daughter are more than husband and wife.” A rueful smile curved her lips. “We have both stood outside the assembly hall, watching the dancers.” She glanced toward the house. “Now it’s time to go inside.”