Free Mistress by Marriage by Maggie Robinson Page A

She’d be in a haze for the foreseeable future.
    But perhaps Edward would be similarly afflicted. She could only hope he’d be so befuddled from lust and lack of sleep he’d walk in front of a dray cart and be crushed. That had happened to the hero in Love Lane . The heroine had nursed him back to health, but Caroline would do no such thing. It would be preferable to be a widow rather than a divorcee, not that she really wished Edward dead or ever expected to join the ranks of society again. He had seen to that when he moved her to Jane Street, and she’d compounded the problem when she began to write her books.
    It was ludicrous that people read them to escape their everyday problems, when her own life was so complicated. She was hardly a relationship expert, and it was by far easier to reform a rake or bring a villain to justice on the page than it was to live with a flesh-and-blood man. Not that Edward had ever been a rake or a villain. It might have gone easier for her if he had.
    She put the pen down on its tray and capped the ink. It was pointless to think she’d be able to write anything. Thoughts of Edward and the life she’d lost were swamping her, drowning her, making her feel uncharacteristically sorry for herself. Most days she shrugged off her blues, pinned a jewel to her breast, poured a cup of tea, pulled up a weed, or lent an ear to someone even less fortunate.
    Would he understand if she told him everything? She couldn’t imagine telling him all her secrets. If he held her in contempt knowing just a fraction of them, she couldn’t fathom what he’d feel if he knew the whole. His own green eyes would glitter like evil glass. She would wind up in court, not for a divorce but for murder.
    She glanced at the new clock on the mantel. He might be back tonight. She had the whole day before her to have a long bath and do something, if she could only think what. She’d already planned the menus for the week, filled her unbroken vases with flowers, inspected Harold for fleas. She had no friends to write to, children’s clothes to mend, piano to play. Caroline tried to remember what she did to fill her days before Edward stepped back into them, but she was as blank as the page of her manuscript.
    She could go shopping. She would go shopping—to buy red dresses that Edward would hate. She’d pledged to her friend Charlotte she would do so. If Caroline had to endure Edward underfoot, she would make him suffer, at least visually.
    She had been wearing a red dress when she met him, a dress the color of ripe cherries designed to make a lasting impression. Its audacity had scandalized her cousin’s wife and every other woman in Lady Huntington’s ballroom. It had shocked the gentlemen too, but in precisely the way Caroline hoped. There wasn’t time or money to flutter about in pasty pastels. Caroline had needed a husband fast.
    Once they were married, Edward expected her to hang that red dress in the closet. There were a great many things she’d had to give up to please Edward and his impeccable Christie standards, and the closet got crowded. But she had been eager for change, for structure, for respectability. Perhaps if she’d had a few more months, she could have pounded herself into submission.
    Oh, who was she kidding? She was a red dress girl at heart.
    “Lizzie! Fetch my bonnet and gloves, and yours too. We’re going shopping to find the reddest dress in all of London!”
     
    Edward wore his Christie face. His son had not perfected his own. Ned was a veritable barometer of emotion, his mercury rising and falling, shame-faced one moment, defiant the next. It was all Edward could do to keep himself from reaching across his mahogany desk to throttle the boy.
    One was mistaken to assume Edward had no feelings, but they were kept carefully in check. It was better that way. Slow and steady won the race, although he wondered if the rules might have changed lately while he wasn’t looking. He’d always