Of course, Lady Meltenbourne’s indiscreet inquiries about Claxton would not have escaped Fox’s hearing. No doubt the gossipy Aimsley sisters were dissecting the particulars at this very moment. Sophia flushed in mortification, but at the same time was exceedingly grateful Fox cared for her feelings at all. It was more than she could say for her own husband.

Yet she had no heart for adultery. To Fox she responded with a nod and a polite smile, and returned her attention to her sisters. While she held no illusions about the pleasure-seeking society in which she lived, she’d grown up in the household of happily married parents who loved each other deeply. Magnificently. Had she been wrong to believe she deserved nothing short of the same?

Clarissa touched her arm and inquired softly, “Is it true, Sophia, what everyone is saying, that you and Claxton are officially estranged?”

In that moment, the candlelight flickered. A rush of frigid air pushed through the room, as if the front doors of the house had been thrown open. The chill assaulted her bare skin, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. All conversation in the ballroom grew hushed, but a silent, indefinable energy exploded exponentially.

Both pairs of her sisters’ eyes fixed at the same point over her shoulders.

“Oh, my,” whispered Daphne.

Clarissa’s face lost its color. “Sophia—”

She looked over her shoulder. In that moment, her gaze locked with the bold, blue-eyed stare of a darkly handsome stranger.

Only, of course, he wasn’t a stranger, not in the truest sense of the world. But he might as well have been. It was Claxton.

Her heart swelled with a thousand memories of him, only to subside, just as quickly, into frigid calm. Without hesitation, she responded as her good breeding required. She crossed the marble floor, aware that all eyes in the room were trained on her, and with a kiss welcomed her faithless husband home.

Chapter Two

Welcome home, Claxton,” she murmured after placing a chaste kiss upon his cheek. And then, under the pretense of fetching her grandfather a previously promised glass of punch, she vanished into the crowd of guests.

“Welcome home, Claxton,” Lord Haden, Vane’s younger brother by two years, mimicked in an affected, high-pitched voice.

His cousin Rabe Grisham drolly announced what he had already surmised. “Her Grace is certainly thrilled to see you.”

Vane ignored them both and set off to follow her. He was tall, and though she was not, he easily tracked the path she made as she traversed the room, because…well, she sparkled. The diamond-encrusted hair combs she wore so artfully nestled in her stylishly coiffed mink-brown hair had been a betrothal gift from him, commissioned from the jeweler Garrard.

Her hair had always fascinated him. Though current fashion inspired many young ladies to cut theirs, hers, when set free from its pins, fell in luxurious waves to her waist. Not so long ago, he’d owned the privilege of seeing it unbound. He had touched it with all the awe and reverence of a smitten lover, and even now when he closed his eyes, he could recall its scent and the feel of it against his skin.

Upon first seeing her, his every muscle had drawn painfully tight and even now refused to relax. He had hoped time and distance would mellow his desire for her, but clearly he was a fool. He had always been a fool for Sophia.

From the brief glimpse he was granted before she fled his company, he could see his wife had only grown more beautiful in their months spent apart. But then, what had he expected? From the first moment Vane had seen her in the formal drawing room of his uncle’s home, for the purpose of an arranged meeting in advance of their arranged betrothal, she took his breath away. With her green eyes and mischievous-angel smile, he even fancied that in that very moment he’d fallen in love.

He never told her, of course, even in their early days of bliss. He kept such dangerous details to himself. To do otherwise would have been to expose himself to unbelievable torment and pain.

He was twenty-eight years old, and she twenty-one, her first season delayed by her father’s untimely death. He never expected to be presented with such a rare and precious gift. He didn’t deserve her, but apparently his newly bestowed title, fortune, and estates did. To his shock, she seemed just as enchanted with him as he was with her. For a time.

He gave up too easily then—but not this time. He wouldn’t allow Sophia to just run away and build up more walls against him. After seeing her, he felt even more resolved than before to end the estrangement between them. As if sensing his determination, the crowd of guests parted, giving him a clear path across the floor. Just then he lost sight of Sophia and her sparkling hair, when she disappeared beneath the archway that led to Lord Wolverton’s book room.

“Your Grace.” A small hand gripped his arm.

Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed the shimmer of blonde hair and bright blue silk. With his gaze fixed on the doorway, he murmured something cordial and continued on his way. He did not miss, however, the subsequent burst of tittering and whispers he left in his wake. As heir to the Claxton title, he’d long ago grown accustomed to whispers and learned to ignore them.

He paused at the door and peered inside. Here, the air smelled of legacy and comfort, of wood, tobacco, and books. Dim light from a garden lantern streamed through the window, revealing Sophia’s silhouette. She stood at Lord Wolverton’s cabinet, her head tilted back on her slender neck, lowering a now-empty rummer from her lips.

He cleared his throat.

She whirled. Her skirts rustled with the sudden movement. In the darkness, her emerald velvet bodice appeared black. Its high collar served as a dramatic foil to the pale skin of her throat and décolletage.

“Claxton,” she exclaimed softly. Eyes wide, she raised her fingertips to brush the moisture from her lips, no doubt oblivious to the sensual appeal of the gesture. “You startled me.”

He startled a lot of people. The same had been true about his father. Whether it was his height or his dark looks or demeanor or a combination of all those things, he did not know. He knew only he did not like the way his wife flinched upon hearing his voice.

What event would drive her to seek out a bracing gulp of her grandfather’s brandy, something he knew for a fact she never touched?

The unexpected return of a despised husband, of course.

He couldn’t fault her for that. Looking back at himself as he existed seven months before, he despised that man as well. God, he’d behaved like an ass—but worse, a coward. He ought never to have left her. He ought to have fought harder for them.

Before his betrothal and marriage to Sophia, he’d been…desperately lost. Only he knew how completely her love had transformed him. She’d given it so freely, touching him to his very soul and blotting out the stain of his former life. He’d never burdened her with those best-buried and forgotten details of his past. Even now, in the aftermath of their tragedy, she could never understand the magnitude of the gift she’d given him when they’d learned they were expecting a child.

Yet that dreadful February afternoon, she had turned her back on him.

Now, almost a year later, she turned her back to him again. Lifting the crystal decanter, she poured a splash into a half-filled punch glass. “For my grandfather.”

Capping the bottle, she lifted the glass and maneuvered toward him through the darkness. She would have walked past him if he hadn’t stepped into her path. Her skirts brushed his breeches, but she stopped herself before allowing their bodies to touch. It required every ounce of his restraint not to touch her face, to kiss, inhale, and taste her. To push her back inside the room and lock the door behind them.

“Come home with me tonight,” he said, his voice thick with desire.

Did she realize how difficult the words were for him to speak? That he had just given her a dagger and invited her to stab him in what was already a grievously wounded heart, one that he had made every effort to shore up in hopes that he might be worthy of her forgiveness? Of her acceptance?

She avoided his gaze. “I’ve already made arrangements to stay the night here.”

And so stab him she did, carefully sidestepping him and going a short distance beyond before turning back.

This time her eyes met his unwaveringly. “But you could certainly extend the invitation to Lady Meltenbourne. She’s here—I’m sure you know—and has already been making inquiries about you.”

* * *

Sophia wended through the crowd, avoiding the myriad curious gazes fixed upon her. Her hands shook. She quaked inside to her very bones. Had she truly just encouraged her husband to spend his night in the arms of another woman? Perhaps she ought to indulge in maraschino more often.

Cheeks aflame, she slipped behind the shelter of a Corinthian column, one of six twin pairs that lined the north and south sides of the ballroom. Backed against the cool plaster, she gasped in a fortifying breath. Except for the occasional servant rushing between the teaboard and the kitchen, and two blank-eyed marble busts of famed political statesmen and adversaries, Fox and Pitt, she was alone here.

While she could not exactly claim to have shocked Claxton, his eyes had noticeably widened and his lips had parted ever so slightly. For her cool, always-controlled husband, those reactions were quite nearly the equivalent. While the gravity of their exchange did not escape her, she could not deny the satisfaction that rushed through her at having astonished him.