Читать книгу Lord Atwood's Lovers - Eva Clancy - Страница 6

Chapter Two

Imogen dreamed she was back at Harford House. She walked down the gloomy corridor, worriedly looking in room after room, thinking, Where is Edward?

When she first started having the dream, not along after his death, she would eventually find him—only to discover he wasn’t the same Edward she’d married. She would open a door and there he would be, levering himself off the bed, physically moving the stump that had once been his right leg with his hands, his ruined face thrown into cruel relief by a nearby branch of candles. And then he’d turn, and scream at her, Get out!

The dream had changed since she’d married Charles. Now she went from room to room and never found Edward. When she reached the last room, she would suddenly remember that he was dead, and would wake with the tears still wet on her face.

She woke both to the certain knowledge that Edward was dead and to the realisation that she had a new husband, one who was making her present wildly happy. It provoked a strange mixture of emotions: old grief, happiness, guilt and excitement.

It was how she woke this morning.

She choked her way into the new day through her own gasping sobs, bleak misery suffusing her. The feelings were so strong it took a full minute for her to recognise where she was.

She sat up in bed, shivering at the chill in the room. The bed was empty; Charles was gone. She glanced at the clock and realised he must have gone riding. She was glad. She didn’t want to wake beside him drenched with grief and guilt over her first husband. The strength of those emotions had faded in the four years since his death, but when the dream came, it felt like the day he had died.

Was it wrong to dream of Edward still? Wrong to keep his miniature in her drawer? She had loved Edward very dearly when she’d married him but that truth didn’t diminish her love for Charles.

Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to tell her new husband why she woke several nights each week like this. Nor could she stop herself hiding Edward’s likeness away, worried Charles would ask her to put it away forever. She had so many conflicting feelings about her first husband. Sometimes she needed to look at the miniature and remember him as he’d once been.

Gradually Imogen became aware of the rhythmic ticking of the clock on the mantel, and then the sounds of the household: a door opening and closing, footsteps, the rumble of voices. Outside on the square, a carriage rumbled past. The familiar sounds brought her fully to the present, and the stranglehold of grief and guilt that she began her days with slowly ebbed. She took a deep breath and wiped her tears away. Despite continuing to dream of Edward at night, her waking hours were happy. In fact, she was amazed by just how happy she felt with Charles. After the bleak years she had experienced before and after Edward’s death, she didn’t take any of her newfound joy for granted.

She had never been a melancholy sort—her father used to say she had a talent for happiness—but after Edward had come back from the war, and so damaged, all the happiness and joy in her soul had slowly been leeched out of her. They had shared three more years until his death. The last of them was utterly miserable, almost as bad as the long, gray year of hell that had followed his passing. Immediately after his death she had been hit by a melancholy so deep she had wondered if she would ever be able to rise from it.

And then, slowly, she had begun to live again. She had sold their house in Norfolk and come to London. She had put off her widow’s weeds and gone to balls and parties. At first it had just been so much show. A distraction from her habitual low mood. She had pasted a smile on her face and pretended an interest in life. But somehow, the show had become real, the smiles too. She had made friends. She had gained, to her considerable amusement, the reputation of a breaker of hearts, she who had no interest in marrying or finding a lover. But perhaps that was why men liked her. Men were like cats in that respect, she thought.

And then, four months ago, she had met Charles.

Was he the handsomest man she’d ever seen? Possibly not. But he was the most intense, the most determined and tenacious, the most single-minded. They’d met at a ball. She had felt the weight of his gaze alight upon her. It had felt like a physical thing touching her, like a kiss. She had turned her head and there he stood, a tall, broad Viking of a man with fair hair, icy blue eyes, a square chin and a firm masculine mouth compressed into a grim expression that had made her wonder if he disapproved of something about her.

Within minutes of their gazes meeting, he had secured an introduction from their hostess and was leading Imogen out to dance. She’d noticed the flutters of amused interest around the ballroom and wondered aloud about it.

“It’s because I’m making a fool of myself over you, Mrs. Standish,” Charles had said in his remote way.

She’d stopped and stared at him, arrested by the dissonance between the words he spoke and the way he spoke them. She thought she must have misunderstood him. “I beg your pardon?” she’d said.

“This is the first time I’ve danced at a ball in, oh, at least ten years. I’ve just destroyed my reputation as a gentleman who doesn’t dance.”

She laughed, astonished. “Why now?”

“Because I needed to be alone with you, if only for a few moments. If I must dance for that privilege, I will do so.”

Remembering that oddly romantic speech, she smiled. People had been amazed. The notoriously cold Earl of Atwood had fallen in love, and in the most public way, throwing his natural reserve to the wind without hesitation. He had pursued her with a single-minded tenacity that had taken her breath away.

How could she have resisted such a courtship?

A soft knock at the door announced her maid. Higgins bore Imogen’s morning chocolate on a tray and while she sipped it, they discussed what she should wear. Higgins reminded her that Lord Radleigh was due to take her driving in the park this afternoon. She smiled at the thought. Radleigh was a long-standing friend, a notable whip and a considerable wit besides—she was looking forward to the outing.

“My new carriage dress, I think,” she said eventually. “His lordship likes me in green.”

Later, she would enjoy telling Charles all about her outing with Radleigh. While he removed her new carriage dress, of course.

* * *

The Honorable Alexander Lambert swallowed against his roiling stomach and wondered what had possessed him to agree to this outing. He should be lying in bed nursing his aching head and delicate gut, not trotting slowly through Hyde Park, his youngest sister prattling at his side.