“—but my actions outside the courthouse were impulsive,” Rose determinedly finished. And desperate, the flickering candle flame underscored. “I don’t need your services.”
Light glinted off reddish-gold whiskers while shadow scarred the murky face underneath the mist-kissed bowler. “You no longer want a divorce?”
“It’s no longer a matter of what I want.” Unaccustomed bitterness tinged her voice. “I’ve seen The Globe. Because of you, sir, I have been labeled an adulteress.”
“So like a child”—the harsh line of his mouth twisted—“you now want to hide behind your husband’s coattail?”
The unexpected criticism stung.
“I have instructed my husband I will not contest a divorce,” Rose said stiffly.
“But in order for him to win a divorce, he must first prove criminal conversation.” The shadow-blackened eyes bored into hers. “Did you sexually converse with a man inside the Men and Women’s Club?”
The injustice of his question tore through Rose. “You know I didn’t.”
“You forget, Mrs. Clarring, I am a man who made a woman an adulteress,” lashed the flickering darkness. “What makes you think you are any more impervious to a man’s need than she?”
Rose stared up at the shadowed eyes that showed no emotion, even as the illuminating candle flame dipped and spurted under the force of his emotions.
This man had loved another man’s wife. He had paid dearly for his love.
As Rose continued to pay for hers.
“I don’t,” she said quietly.
Rose did not for one moment think she was more moral than another woman.
In the distance Big Ben struck: It was eleven o’clock.
“Prove it,” Jack Lodoun abruptly commanded.
Rose’s heart skipped a beat. “Prove what?”
“Prove that a woman’s passion is worth a man’s reputation.”
Cold, wet air snaked underneath Rose’s gown and crawled up her naked legs. “It is a woman who bears the stigma of divorce, Mr. Lodoun, not a man.”
“As you reminded me earlier, Mrs. Clarring, I am a member of Parliament.” The misty rain softened the harshness of night; there was no softness inside the dark eyes that stared down at her. “I assure you, every situation I accept affects my career.”
Impossible hope was tempered by hopeless reality.
“And if I should prove to you that passion is as worthwhile as position?” Rose asked.
“I’ll consider your situation.”
But he would not commit to her situation.
“I’ll consider your offer—”
“Now.” There was no compromise in the dark eyes. “Or never.”
“I’m not dressed.”
“I know what a woman looks like.”
Inexplicable anger arced through Rose.
“But you don’t know what I look like,” she retorted.
No man had ever seen her naked.
She and Jonathon had been equally virginal, equally clothed in their marriage bed, she shrouded in a gown, he in a nightshirt.
Shadow flickered inside the too-dark eyes. “Do you want me to?”
Did she want this man to see her nakedness?
“No.”
“Then there’s no need to worry, is there?”
Every fiber inside her body screamed that there was, indeed, a need to worry: He was an inebriated man who was not fully in control of his actions, and she was a vulnerable woman who was naked in her emotions if not completely in her dress.
Rose stepped backward. Jack Lodoun stepped forward.
He filled the foyer.
The door closed with an ominous click; she did not lock it. “How did you know where to find me?”
Rose had only given her address to her parents and her husband—
“A clerk gave me your change of address this morning,” he said shortly.
—and to a clerk when she had registered at the courthouse, Rose belatedly remembered.
The candle flame flickered and fluttered, darkly revealing shadowed walls devoid of decoration.
Her progress was silent, naked feet softly impacting hard wood. Jack Lodoun’s footsteps echoed behind her, hard wooden heels a jolting reminder of the damage he was capable of inflicting.
Rose stepped through yawning darkness.
Pain exploded inside her right foot, toes slamming into leather-covered wood.
Hot wax scalded her thumb and forefinger. Simultaneously the tilting candle slid free of her hand.
Rose straightened, fighting back tears. She suddenly felt as young as the child the barrister had accused her of acting like.
Gas hissed to life. Light aureoled a stooped figure, turning black into gray: a coat . . . a bowler hat.
Diamond-bright drops of water shimmered on gray felt.
The grip of an umbrella hooked a small, round table beside a heavy brass lamp base.
To the left of a masculine hip materialized a blue damask settee, a remnant of the former row house’s occupants; to the right a sullen iron fireplace formed out of the darkness.
Jack Lodoun straightened. Turned. Underneath the brim of the rain-misted hat, purple-blue eyes snared her gaze. “Why is it that you answered the door, and not your butler?”
“I leased the house yesterday.” The empty row house creaked a warning; innate honesty stiffened her spine. “I haven’t had time to hire servants.”
“Some would say, Mrs. Clarring”—his eyelids lowered, dark lashes shadowing his cheeks; blatantly his gaze fingered . . . cupped . . . weighed her breasts—“you’ve created an idyll trysting place.”
“That may be, sir,” Rose said with a calmness she did not feel, forcing her arms to stay at her sides instead of independently hugging her chest, “but since both my parents and my husband have this address, the trysts would be subject to untimely interruptions.”
“Yet here I am.” Slowly he lifted heavy lids; the blackness of his pupils swallowed the purple-blue of his irises. “And there’s no one to interrupt us.”
Rose did not glance away from the dark sexuality that glittered inside his eyes. Of one thing she was certain: “I am not the woman you desire, Mr. Lodoun.”
The hiss of gas was deafening in the ensuing silence.
“If you want to end your marriage,” he abruptly said, purple-blue irises shrinking the blackness of his pupils, “all you need do is prove that your husband is unable to give you children.”
She forgot the dark excitement that had for one infinitesimal moment called to her. She forgot her swollen breasts that pulsed in time with her bruised toes.
Rose forgot everything but the husband she would not further betray.
“No,” she said with conviction.
“Then you must not want a divorce,” Jack Lodoun impersonally deduced.
But she did: just not at that price.
“My husband has been punished enough.” Rose stepped around the heavy trunk that separated them, and advanced into the circle of light. “I will not publicly humiliate him.”
“You don’t think a divorce will humiliate him?”
He deliberately did not understand.
“A family is all my husband has ever wanted.” Clearly she enunciated each word, forcing upon him the strength of her resolve. “I will not have men judging him because he cannot father children.”
“Don’t you?” Jack Lodoun returned.
Rose held his gaze. “No.”
The truth.
Lashes flickering downward, he stared for long seconds at her left hand.
The white flesh circling her finger—the only physical evidence that remained of her twelve-year-long marriage—pulsed.
Abruptly his lashes lifted; purple-blue eyes snared her gaze. “How do you know he can’t give you children?”
It was the barrister who now questioned her, and not the man who had appraised her breasts.
Rose took a deep breath, ignoring the rise of flesh that irrevocably proclaimed her femininity. “I told you Jonathon had the mumps.”
Only six hours earlier, she had told him so. It seemed as if six years had lapsed since she had followed Jack Lodoun outside the courthouse.
“But mumps don’t always make a man sterile.” He pinned her with his frank appraisal. “Did you share his bed after he recovered?”
“We have separate chambers,” Rose evaded.
But Jack Lodoun would not be evaded. “You denied him his conjugal rights?”
“My marital life is none of your business, Mr. Lodoun.”
“It will be Parliament’s business, Mrs. Clarring, should I petition them for a private act,” he replied, gaze unwavering. “Do you or have you ever denied your husband his conjugal rights?”
Her throat tightened. “No.”
“Do you or have you ever used preventive checks?”
“No.”
No matter that The Globe printed otherwise.
“Does your husband?”
The cold lapping Rose’s toes traveled up through her body. “My husband has never used a preventive check.”
“Did mumps render him impotent?”
This private invasion was far worse than had been a public examination.
Rose forced herself to answer. “No.”
“Was he able to sustain an erection?”
An empty ache spread through her lower abdomen. “Yes.”
“Did he ejaculate inside you?” Jack Lodoun probed.
A rush of warmth spread deep inside her lower abdomen, the memory of the sperm her husband had spurted inside her.
Rose dryly swallowed. “Yes.”
“And you have not once conceived?”
“No.”
No matter that she had cried each night, praying to God that she do so.
“When is the last time he ejaculated inside you?”
Rose would not look away from those penetrating eyes. “The twenty-fourth of December, 1875.”
Westminster Chimes distantly struck the quarter hour.
“Why now, Mrs. Clarring?” Jack Lodoun harshly asked.
For one dizzying second Rose felt as if she were once again standing in the witness box.
But then she had looked down into his eyes. Now she looked up into them.
“Why now . . . what, Mr. Lodoun?” Rose politely returned.
“Why, after being celibate for more than eleven years, do you suddenly want a divorce?”
“I told you.”
“Tell me again.”
“I saw the manner in which Mrs. Hart and Mr. Whitcox gazed at one other.”
The explanation hollowly rang over the pop of a burning coal.
“Your nipples are hard.”
Rose’s breath caught inside her chest at the blunt, masculine observation.
Between one heartbeat and the next, Jack Lodoun shrugged out of his coat. Long, tapered fingers stretched out toward her. His wrist below a stiff white cuff was lightly covered by fine, reddish-gold hair that glinted in the gaslight. “Take it.”
Over the all-too-familiar scents of brandy and damp wool wafted the unfamiliar fragrance of masculine spice.
“No.” Rose clenched her fingers into fists. “Thank you.”
“Take it, Mrs. Clarring.” The long, tapered fingers were steady, the purple-blue eyes calculating. “Or I might imagine your nipples are hard from more than the cold.”
Rose took his coat. It swallowed her.
His warmth. His scent.
Without warning, Jack Lodoun turned.
A darkly illuminated hand removed the gray bowler hat and dropped it onto walnut wood.
Gaslight danced on thick, wavy hair, turning brown into gold and gold into red.
Inside the courtroom, she remembered, he had worn a gray periwig.
No color had gleamed in the shadows.
Not on his head. Not on his face.
Not on the white-cuffed wrists that the black silk barrister’s robe had revealed with each motion, each gesture.
He leaned over the flickering lamp.
Rose could not see what he did; she could only watch the stretch of his shoulders under a tailored black wool frock coat while her body prepared for his next question.
Jack Lodoun straightened . . . turned again in a semicircle, red-and-gold glinting sideburns bleeding into bristly whiskers. A small bump, evidence of a previous break, marred an otherwise straight nose.
Gripping the candle that had leaked hot wax upon her—charred wick flaming—he knelt in front of the fireplace.
Rose had lit a fire earlier, but now the coals were cold and covered with white ash.
Slowly, a deep red glow shone through the ashes.
A black sleeve slashed upward, white cuff flashing; metal clanged, the flue opening.
The deep red glow spread. The heat did not reach her.
Standing—yellow-and-blue candle flame flaring—Jack Lodoun confronted Rose. “You admit, then, that you want to divorce your husband so you can take a lover.”
“I admit no such thing,” Rose swiftly denied.
Eyelashes lowering, he brought the candle up to his mouth—his bottom lip was full, the top lip sharply delineated—and blew, his breath a short, definitive whoosh.
The flickering flame died.
Slowly his lashes—tips reddish-gold like the hair lining the sides of his face—swept upward; his eyes were uncompromising. “Do you really expect Parliament to believe you want to divorce your husband simply to spare him the pain of your presence?”
Jack Lodoun’s cynicism burned hotter than wax.
“Yes,” she riposted, breathing deeply to counteract the small pain he inflicted.
Parliament must grant her a divorce.
Jonathon needed, but so did Rose.
“If I am to be your barrister, Mrs. Clarring”—he paused, turned, placed the dead candle on the narrow wooden mantel, turned again before resuming, cold eyes riveting Rose—“I will accept nothing less than the truth.”
“I have told you nothing less than the truth,” she lied.
“You’re not wearing your wedding ring.”
Rose’s thumb involuntarily sought the comfort of gold, found flesh instead. “Our marriage is over in all but name.”
“But you don’t want a lover,” Jack Lodoun probed.
“No,” Rose returned.
Silently he weighed her answer, as he had earlier weighed her breasts.
A burning briquet collapsed.
The slick slide of silk-lined wool rubbed her shoulders: chest expanding, breathing in . . . chest constricting, breathing out . . .
Abruptly the wait was over.
“I think you’re lying,” he concluded.
Rose stiffened. “You are at liberty to think whatever you wish, Mr. Lodoun.”
“I think you do want a lover, Mrs. Clarring.” The purple-blue eyes were inscrutable. “A man who will fuck you hard and often.”