Page 30 of Raked Away in September

Lysander raised an eyebrow. “The Earl of Haversham frightened of a slip of a girl?”

“I don’t know how to do this,” Rowan admitted, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper as he stared at the piece of chalk he hadn’t even realized he was holding. “You know how badly my father and mother despised each other. I have never seen a husband who didn’t look at his wife with either cold indifference or bitter resentment. I don’t know how to be a husband. And if she... if we have children... God help me, I have no idea how to be a father, either.”

He thought of how Tamsin had looked just minutes ago, small and pale under Elena’s cruel remarks, pulling away from his touch. He was bound to fail her. His past would probably always come back to haunt him in one way or another.

“Happy marriages do exist,” Ashford told him. “My brother and his wife are ecstatic with each other, even after half a dozen years. And my parents seemed to rub along together reasonably well. My mother was devastated when the old man died.”

Rowan met his friend’s gaze, realizing Lysander had never really spoken to him of his parents before. Was that the key? Did one have to grow up in a happy home to be able to recreate that? No, he realized, thinking suddenly of George and Julia. They were happy. Almost nauseatingly so. Just yesterday, he’d been thinking that a happy marriage was possible, but Elena’s appearance tonight had sent him spiraling into negativity once again.

“I have enjoyed my time with Tamsin more than I ever expected,” Rowan admitted, his chest tightening. “And to my great surprise... I don’t want the clubs. I don’t want White’s, or the gaming tables, or the dancers. When Elena came up to us tonight, all I felt was disgust. I didn’t want her. I didn’t want anyone but my wife.”

He looked up at his best friend, feeling a raw, shocking vulnerability. “I just want to go back to that drawing room, take Tamsin’s hand, and go home. I want to lose myself in my wife’s arms and pretend the rest of this godforsaken world doesn’t exist.”

Lysander stared at him for a long, quiet moment. The silence stretched between them until a slow, warm smile spread across his face. He stepped forward and clapped Rowan firmly on the shoulder.

“Then you are a much better man than your father ever was, Rowan,” Lysander said softly. “The very fact that you are terrified proves it. You care enough to be afraid.” He squeezed his shoulder. “And if you want to go home with your wife, then go. The gossips are already abuzz. Deprive them of their fodder. They will talk no matter what you do.”

Rowan let out a breath he felt he’d been holding since that night in Vauxhall Gardens. “She thinks I regret marrying her. Especially after Elena tried to prove that I was still hers. Not that I ever was.”

“Then go show her that you don’t,” Ashford advised, steering him back toward the door. “Now, get out of here before I have to listen to you wax poetic about her eyes. I have a reputation to uphold, even if yours is utterly ruined by domestic bliss.”

Rowan gave a short, genuine laugh—the first real one of the night—and clapped his friend’s arm in return. “Thank you.”

“Go,” Lysander said, opening the door. “And Rowan? I’m happy for you. Truly.”

With his heart pounding a frantic, hopeful rhythm against his ribs, Rowan didn’t waste another second. He strode back out into the crowded corridor, his eyes fixed on the distant doorway of the drawing room, desperate to get back to the only woman who mattered.

Chapter Fifteen

Tamsin didn’t speak to her husband as they climbed into the coach outside Lady Radcliff’s town house. A miserable September drizzle had begun to slick the cobbles of Mayfair, the gaslights casting long, distorted shadows through the rain-streaked windows. Thank goodness the drive home would be short.

Tamsin sat as far from Rowan as the narrow bench allowed, her gaze locked on the blurred streets passing by. Her hands were knotted so tightly in her lap that the seams of her silk gloves threatened to split. Her thoughts were spinning out of control, and she feared that if she opened her mouth, she would scream things she couldn’t take back.

You humiliated me. You left me.

And worst of all…

You made me believe you actually cared about me.

Right after his mistress had marked her territory, Rowan had vanished. And he had been gone for an eternity. Tamsin had been forced to sit on that velvet settee alone, feeling every pitying, mocking gaze in Lady Radcliff’s drawing room boring into her. She had heard the whispers—the soft, venomous titters of the ladies behind their painted fans. The poor girl. Left alone while the earl pursues his old habits. Only a few weeks married and already abandoned.

To make matters worse, Elena had disappeared from the room shortly after Rowan left. All the cautious optimism she’d been feeling over the past few days seemed so foolish now. He’d taken the first opportunity to steal away with someone else. Images of what she’d seen at Vauxhall Gardens had overwhelmed her. How could she ever let him touch her again if he was doing that with Elena in some dark room while she sat in the drawing room alone?

She had known what he was. She had married the Rake of September under no illusions. Yet, in the quiet sanctuary of the library and in her bedroom before the fire, she had allowed herself to believe a beautiful lie. She had believed they were building something real.

“Tamsin.”

Rowan’s voice cut through the dark, soft and laced with a warmth that made her throat tighten with unshed tears. He shifted, leaning across the small space between them.

“Please, look at me,” he murmured, reaching out to hold her hand.

Tamsin pulled her hand back instantly, tucking it beneath her cashmere shawl. “I am quite tired, my lord.”

“Why are you so angry?” he asked, his voice tightening with a sudden, sharp frustration. “I am sorry about the things Elena said, but I have no control over her. I thought I made it very clear to her that I no longer wanted anything to do with her.”

Tamsin let out a small, breathless laugh that held no mirth. It was a cold, brittle sound that she hadn’t known she was capable of making. She finally turned her gaze to him. “You promised me that there would be no lies between us, Rowan. We made a bargain, and I understand my position. I only ask that in the future, you show me enough respect not to leave me at the mercy of the ton’s gossip while you… return to your old ways.”

She would not let him know how badly it hurt. How she had believed him when he said he’d try to be faithful to her.