Seductive Silence (Mistress in the Making Book 1) Page 2

  He had an interest other than boxing, dammit—he just didn’t know how to pursue it. Not without branding himself a simpleton.

  “Daniel,” Elizabeth called his attention back to her. “Why can you not find a hobby that doesn’t involve being at daggers drawn or going at loggerheads several times a week?”

  Feeling instantly defensive, and uncertain why, he sputtered, “I like to bu-bu—” Blast it! He couldn’t even get out a simple three letter word: box. A fast exhalation and he spit out, “Like sparring.”

  “You like beating things to a pulp and proving how strong you are.”

  A pulp? Talk about embellishing!

  So he enjoyed a few rounds of pugilistic endeavors every week. Could he help it if he was adept at fighting? If the exhilaration he got from firing off punches and having onlookers cheer him on helped sustain him through the silent—and solitary—hours of his life?

  He didn’t have to talk in the ring. Wasn’t expected to wax eloquent at the boxing academy. Didn’t have to jabber over inane comments that in reality meant nothing. All he had to do was strip off his shirt, strap on his gloves—when he and his sparring partners agreed to them—and let his fists talk for him.

  It was the one place he could be around his peers without fearing coming across as weak.

  “Men!” A decidedly feminine lift of one shoulder accompanied that pronouncement. “Why you cannot all find tamer amusements closer to home that satisfy your manly urges, I’ll never comprehend.”

  What? Had she been reading his mind?

  “What’s this?” She noticed the advertisement he’d cut out announcing Mr. Taft’s visit to London and presentation on orreries.

  Something Daniel had been debating whether or not to attend. “A lecture I’d like t-to hear.”

  “On what?” She turned the page toward her, then flicked it away with a smile. “Orreries. I should have known. Go. I daresay it’ll be a good experience for you.” Her gaze drifted across the room. “Have you fixed it yet?”

  His scowl answered for him.

  “Then go. Learn who else shares your interest. Possibly get Grandfather’s machine running again.” She gave his face an arch look. “A much better pastime than fighting, if you ask me.”

  Before he could respond, the bright smile slid from her face. “Daniel. I came because I needed to see how you got on.” Her gaze flicked over to the window behind him, then she focused on his face. Her beautiful eyes were somber, sadder than they should be. “I know where your mind tends to dwell on days such as this.”

  He wondered whether she knew he was expecting her husband. That he had other, even more pressuring, topics on his mind. As always, when in the company of anyone save Cyclops, he carefully considered his words before he spoke. “Meeting someone shortly. ’T-tis what snares my attention.”

  Well, that and Penry’s note.

  “Oh, posh.” She dismissed his excuse. “No one ever calls this early.” Elizabeth rose and gripped his clenched fists. He hadn’t realized his fingers were tangled until she applied herself to unknotting them. “When shall you forget all he did?”

  He didn’t need named, nor the incident in question. They both knew what had transpired that long ago rainy afternoon. Elizabeth had been so young, Daniel marveled that she still remembered.

  God knew he’d never forget. After all this time, it wasn’t what their sire did that haunted Daniel; it was what he’d said.

  ’Twas barely a year after his twin brother died; David’s sudden absence leaving a gaping hole in young Daniel’s life. He’d just seen Robert, his older brother, and their dear mother put in the ground. A child of nine should’ve been allowed to grieve. But that would have been a luxury in the presence of his austere parent. A parent who had just found Daniel and his sister crying in their mother’s abandoned morning room and who quickly made his displeasure known.

  Craven bastard. Stop cowering like a whipped cur! It’s only a little blood. Father had turned from him then and wiped his riding crop clean while leaving the blood to dry on his only remaining son’s face.

  “Daniel.”

  The sound came from far off, far away from the memories gripping him. Not a day goes by I don’t wish you’d expired instead of them. Sodding Fate—took me wife and real sons and left me a useless cripple! The revered Tremayne title, going to a bloody idiot—it makes me sick.

  “B-but, Father,” he’d stammered, as he had for years, “you du-du-don’t mean—”

  Damn imbecile! His sire had rounded on him, crop slashing toward his head for another strike. You are dead to me, do you hear? Dead to me! The blows fell swift and accurate, piercing his heart and shredding confidence more than skin, slicing will more than flesh. Dead! To! Me! Some fiendish plot of Satan may have saddled me with his stuttering spawn, but you will not speak in my home. Ever, ever again!

  Warm fingers plied at his neckcloth, stroked his cheeks. “Daniel. Come back to me, dearest. Daniel!”

  The terror receded under the heartfelt pleas of his beloved sister. His arm came round her, and Daniel was startled to find himself standing in the middle of his study with no recollection of having moved there.

  “Ah, Ellie, I am… Fine.” When she would have gone on smothering him, he pulled her hands down and set her away. “Fine now, thanks to-to-to you.”

  She gripped his wrist when he tried to escape toward his desk. “What has happened?” Her grasp tightened and she forced him to face her. “What has changed? You’ve not—not…”

  Humiliated, he spun from her hold to finish bitterly, “Not acted the madman?”

  “You are not and never were,” she cried. “And that wasn’t what I meant to say!”

  “Acted the-stupid-clunch?” Without thought or intent, the words rushed out, angry bullets peppering the air. “Buffle-headed-chaw-bacon-nnnnnn—” Noddy! If his tongue hadn’t glued itself to the roof of his mouth, who knew how long he might have gone on spewing self-directed insults? Insults he’d heard time and again from both Robert and his father.

  “Not retreated.” Elizabeth said it as though he’d gone on a mere vacation, a weekend sojourn, when in fact he knew the lapses frightened her. Damned if they didn’t frighten him too. Which probably explained, if not excused, his anger. It had been years since he’d lost the present like that, fled inside himself to escape the taunts. “You’ve not retreated in so very long. Why now? What has happened?”

  “I’ve not been sleeping well,” he admitted, startled when the truth slid from his tongue with such ease. “Not sleeping much at all. Not since pa-pa-parting ways with Louise and— D-damn me! I should not have said that to you.”

  Red crept over her sun-tinted features, rendering her as cherry bright as one of the tomatoes she grew with such pride. “Daniel,” Elizabeth chided, and he saw how she busied her hands arranging the folds of her dampened skirt in order to avoid his gaze, “lest you forget, I am a married woman now. I daresay you may speak of your…your paramours without any fear of censure from me.”

  Bemused by her attempt at sophistication, he was nevertheless taken aback when she added, “As to that, if you cannot sleep for the lack, though how one could miss that coarse wretch I cannot fathom, then why not simply find another?”

  A single time, well before her own recent marriage, Elizabeth had visited London and stumbled upon him and Louise during one of their rare public outings. A new Egyptian exhibit had opened and apparently both women had fancied seeing a mummified cat. Likely the only thing his sister and former mistress shared in common, given how Elizabeth possessed elegance and sweetness and the most tender of hearts, qualities the self-serving, sometimes crude, always lusty Louise could never hope to attain.

  “You’d recommend I find another coarse wretch t-to warm my bed?” He didn’t try to halt his chuckle at her look of outrage.

  “Never that, you wicked fiend!” She swept up her frilly parasol and playfully swatted his shoulder with the side. “You are the best of men and deserve only the
best of women. Louise could never be that for you and I’m relieved you finally saw it. I do think it’s time you found a wife though. Someone to love—”

  “A wife? I think not.” He cut her off by snaring the pointy end of her parasol. It might not be one of her hair ribbons he’d filched but it would do. He set off, tugging her round the room as he had when they were younger, swerving between furniture, orreries on display and book-lined walls as he steered her toward the exit. The subject of a wife was not one he chose to contemplate, not today. Especially when he’d yet to respond to Penry’s note. “Let me amuse myself with at least one fine mistress ’ere I fall upon the bu-bu-blade of the parson’s mousetrap.”

  By design, they’d reached the door of his study. Daniel nudged it open and waved for the remaining footman to summon her maid from the kitchens before he turned back to Elizabeth, who frowned up at him.

  “What?” he asked, their laughing trek around the room loosening his tongue. “And why are you shredding me with that affronted look? I cannot indulge in a bit of b-bachelor fare before I am no longer one?”

  “’Tis not that. ’Tis—”

  “Ah. Tremayne.” The masculine voice interrupted whatever she’d planned to say. “Your good man Rumsley told me to come right up and here I find you entertaining my lady wife.”

  A grin broke free and Daniel released the parasol to take the outstretched hand of his brother-in-law. “Wylde. You made it.” An hour overdue. And looking a mite haggard. Odd, that. “Glad to see the latest storm d-d-”—didn’t, dammit—“failed to carry you off.”

  “Wylde.” Her demeanor subdued, Elizabeth gave her husband a deferential curtsy.

  “My lady.” Wylde’s bow was just as restrained. “I did not expect to find you here.”

  The formal greeting between the pair wasn’t anything unusual. Nor was the flush on her cheeks—Elizabeth pinkened over the slightest provocation. But the sudden anger glinting from her expression? The hard clench of Wylde’s jaw when he addressed her? His unpolished appearance, coat buttons askew? Those were definite surprises.

  “And I did not realize visiting my brother was disallowed.”

  Daniel’s brows flew skyward at that. It wasn’t his place to inquire into the married lives of others but still… “Is all well…between you?”

  Elizabeth flashed teeth and eyes at him. Hazel eyes that shimmered with unshed emotion. “Lovely. And now, I’m off. The house does not run itself you know. Oh wait.” She cast a cutting look toward her husband. “It does! How juvenile of me to forget.”

  With an uncharacteristic flounce, she whirled toward the stairs.

  “Pardon me,” Wylde said swiftly. “I need a word with my wife.” He sped across the landing. “Elizabeth!”

  Backing into his study, Daniel left the door ajar so he could observe. Trusted friend or not, if Wylde was mistreating Elizabeth, Daniel wouldn’t stand for it. But though he witnessed a heated exchange, one that lasted well beyond a “moment”, and though he hated the growing look of horror on his sister’s face the more Wylde talked—low murmurs indistinguishable at this distance—Daniel couldn’t miss the passionate kiss his friend bestowed on her or the powerful way Wylde captured his wife when, at its conclusion, she would’ve tumbled down the stairs.

  Neither could he miss how Wylde ensured she found her balance, then stood stoically with nary a flinch when she steadied herself and delivered a stinging slap to his cheek. One that rang louder than any syllable of their exchange.

  Whatever convoluted emotions presently ruled his sister’s marriage, the steely look of determination on Wylde’s face as he watched his wife calmly descend the stairs, the man’s rigid stance only easing once she was safely on level ground, boded well for an eventual reconciliation. Or so Daniel hoped.

  What was that all about?

  He retreated to his desk, a mahogany monstrosity he rather favored, and assumed The Pose, the one he’d perfected after analyzing how it made his father so intimidating.

  What in blazes was going on with his normally refined friend? The man was always in twig, never such a shabbaroon. Saved from being a dandy by his posture and bearing alone, Wylde spent an inordinate amount of time on his grooming—but not today. Mayhap his valet had quit, beleaguered by the stringent demands of his employer? Daniel’s lips quirked at the thought. Wylde had to dress himself and that was why he was late?

  An inch or so shorter than Daniel, Wylde nevertheless often appeared taller, being more leanly built. But though the brushed-back dark hair was typically styled to Byronic perfection, today it had the look of stress and sleep.

  Wylde returned to the study and shut the door to prying ears. When he turned, Daniel pounced. Arms spread wide, fingertips perched on the surface, upper body inflated and bowed forward, head leading the charge, he roughly inquired, “Wylde? Is there something you want…to…tell me?”

  The imprint of fingers flared bright on his friend’s surprisingly stubbled cheek. “Nay.”

  Daniel bristled and abandoned the stupid pose to stand. Once the din made by his chair toppling behind him died to an echo, he growled, “T-try again.”

  A sardonic lift to his lips, Wylde nodded once. “I may not want to tell you anything, but I am willing to tell you this: I chose Elizabeth for my bride. Despite what she may claim to the contrary, it is not a decision I regret.” Wylde brought one hand up to his cheek, the first acknowledgment Daniel had seen of the impetuous slap. “Although, judging by what you just witnessed and I’m still enjoying”—he fingered the reddened skin—“she derides my methods, I assure you I only seek to garner a satisfying and enjoyable union between us.”

  Which all sounded well and good but told him positively nothing. “That is all you care…to say?”

  “It is.”

  If there was one thing Daniel had taught himself, it was the art of silence. He employed it now. Occupying himself setting his chair to rights and settling his frame, casually, back into it, he quietly bided his time.

  Wylde was here to get something from him—a political issue wasting away in committee he wanted brought to a vote and sought support for, according to the impassioned note he’d sent round yesterday. In fact, he’d requested the ultimate sacrifice: for Daniel to speak—voluntarily—in public.

  Hell, his prized orrery languished, broken, because he couldn’t face a roomful of mechanically minded men discussing their solar system miniatures with relish and great delight, not without revealing himself as a cork-brain the first time he tried to join in, yet Wylde wanted him to make verbose on a topic he could legitimately profess ennui over?

  He’d sooner show an asteroid his arse.

  Since true friendship was worth personal sacrifice, he’d consider granting the favor. But, gad, the thought of it made his flesh crawl with syllable-spewing maggots.

  Before they discussed it further, Daniel expected answers. Ones that explained the strife he’d just witnessed. Perhaps accounted for Wylde’s unheard-of appearance.

  So he held his peace. Waited.

  And without a word, gained what he needed—at least in part—when Wylde, minutes sooner than Daniel had anticipated, exploded with, “To stop you from breathing fire, because a blind man could see you’re about to erupt, I’ll share this—where it concerns Elizabeth, I believe she and I both want the same result, to make a go of our marriage. More than a tolerable go if I have my way, but we have decidedly different ideas on how to proceed. Thus far I’ve tried things her way and I don’t need to tell you it hasn’t proved successful. Now it’s my turn.” His decisive speech faltered to a musing, “She doesn’t like to speak up much, does she? Share what’s going on behind those expressive eyes? Like you in that regard but for different reasons, I gather.”

  Wylde was one of a select few outside his sister who knew of Daniel’s ongoing difficulties. “Few” as in two—Penry being the other.

  “She wasn’t allowed,” Daniel conceded. “Not while Father was alive.” Not after their mother died
. The tyrant who’d created them hadn’t wanted to hear a single peep from either of his remaining offspring once the one in his image perished.

  “I suspected something of the sort. Tell me—other than dirtying her hands with her prize-winning produce, what might she like? Something she’s always wanted to do here in London.” Wylde scrubbed one hand down his face and Daniel couldn’t miss the lines testifying to sleepless nights. Seemed they had more in common than he’d suspected. “I tell you, I’m at a loss. She’s decried attending every ball or soirée almost since we came to town. Afternoon carriage excursions in the park are out because she must be home for callers. Morning rides are met with a sniff because the abandoned patch of garden needs to be readied for planting and heaven forfend she trust one of the servants to do it for her.”

  “A sniff? That…does not sound like Ellie.” Especially considering how much she loved to ride.

  “Laugh not over my husbandly peril, for I tell you I’ve tried everything I can conceive.” Wylde took an impatient step forward, made a fist and slammed it into the opposite palm. “We got on well enough in the country, by blazes! It’s only since our return to London that she’s turned up stiff.”

  “Theater?”

  “She declined that as well.” And the exhalation following that admission said more than words that Wylde had neared the end of his tether. “Have you any other ideas? Any at all? I refuse to strip to skin and prance naked through the furrows she’s creating but I fear ’tis coming to that.”

  The fist landed on Daniel’s desk this time. “Stop laughing, damn you! My marriage is not a jest.”

  Nay, but the thought of his fastidious friend frolicking in the dirt—in his altogether—was. “Hold.” Daniel raised his hand, asking for time.

  After several moments’ silent contemplation, he suggested, “The opera.”

  “She’s already refused.”

  “T-take her anyway.”