Mistress by Marriage by Maggie Robinson Page A

peril far beyond the management of three obstreperous children.
    “Penny for your thoughts, Caroline.”
    Her hand shook as she wiped away a tear. “I am tired, Edward. I didn’t sleep a wink.”
    “Tsk, tsk. Didn’t sleep. Didn’t eat.” He patted the bed. “We’ll rest a while. Come here, Caro. Now.”
    Because she had no righteous outrage left, she went.

Chapter 5
     

    “This contract is illegal,” she sputtered. Her mama had taught her to read before she was forced onto the streets to lead her life of sorry sin.
    “So, sue me,” Lord Grant grinned. “I’ll have you, and have you now.”
    —The Viscount’s Willing Victim
     

    S he lay curled up like a child beside him, her hairpins scattered on the pillow. Idly he toyed with her braid, losing his fingers in the red silk as he unraveled it. It was a sin to confine hair like that, and words were inadequate to describe its color—not Titian nor auburn nor russet nor ginger. His own Boudicca, although not precisely tall or terrifying.
    They’d slept several hours, and slept only. She had been truthful admitting she was tired, as was he. Perhaps because he’d gone so long without sleep he’d made an irrevocable mistake taking her to bed again, but he wasn’t sorry. Yet.
    Tomorrow he would go to his old friend Sir William Maclean’s chambers to hammer out what needed to be done to end the marriage. Will would know what to do, and do it quietly until it was necessary to unleash his rapier-like tongue. A bill of divorcement before Parliament was not a light undertaking; it truly might be years before the thing was settled. Edward had the letters, but the damn things were undated, so getting Rossiter on board was imperative. Ironic that his entire future was in the hands of such a man. Rossiter would have to be sued, but Edward was well aware it would be he who would wind up paying the damages to himself. He had a severe dislike for the man, whom he kept tripping over in the most unlikely social situations. Rossiter was no better than a male courtesan, stylish and sleek, always looking to advance himself. Caroline had been foolish in the extreme when she gave her virginity to him without sufficient payment.
    Edward looked at his sleeping wife, her face smoothed of artifice. He had hoped her to be an innocent when he married her, but was not too terribly disappointed to find she was not. She did her damnedest to cry out and feign ignorance on their wedding night, but Edward was not a complete innocent himself. There had been his virginal, hesitant Alice, and a few other women besides. It had seemed important to Caroline to continue the fiction that he was her first, so he let it go. She had been five and twenty after all, living a shockingly unsupervised life with her ramshackle brother in the wilds of Cumbria, never coming to town.
    Town went to them. Certain elements of it, at any rate. Nicholas had been a viscount with a tumbledown estate and a penchant for sin; his parties had been legendary, reaching even Edward’s staid ears. But her brother was dead and Caroline had seemed eager for a new life. If Edward had not been thinking with his cock for the first time in his life, he would have seen how wrong she was for him and his children. But he couldn’t think then, and now he was thinking too much.
    She sighed and stirred, and he drew her closer. Her eyes flew open, black lashes bent and tangled from their encounter with the pillow. “Oh, it is true.”
    “What?”
    “You’re here. I thought it was a dream.”
    Edward chuckled. “Yes, I am every maiden’s fantasy.”
    “I’m hardly a maiden.”
    Edward thought it safer not to comment. Her sexual experience had proved to be one of her few virtues.
    She squirmed in his arms. “When are you going home? I need to write. I have a deadline.”
    “I’m sure you’ll find some way or other to placate Garrett.”
    She pushed at him harder, but he didn’t release her. “You will never think the best