A Scot in the Dark (Scandal & Scoundrel #2)(115)

Haven exhaled and resisted the urge to scratch at his wig, knowing that if he gave in to the desire, he would become consumed with its rough discomfort.

Instead, he thought of Highley. He could be there in two hours, and he would have two weeks before the visitors began arriving. Not visitors. Before the women began arriving. Before he selected his second wife.

After all, he was the sixth Duke of Haven, and he required an heir, something that he could not procure with a wife who had left him two years, seven months ago, exactly. A wife who was gone. Forever.

And so, he would take the summer, and he would find himself a new wife. It should not be so difficult, honestly, considering how easily he’d found the first. He’d stepped from a crowded ballroom to a balcony in search of fresh air. And there she’d been, fresh air, incarnate. As though she’d been waiting for him.

And she had.

He pushed the thought away.

This summer, he would find a new wife. And in doing so, he would do what his first wife so clearly wished. He would forget her. And all the mistakes they’d made in the balance.

“My lords!” the Lord Chancellor called. “Is there, indeed, no additional formal business for the current session?”

A rousing chorus of “Nay!” boomed through the room. One would think the House of Lords was filled with schoolboys desperate for an afternoon in the local swimming hole instead of two hundred pompous aristocrats eager to get to their mistresses.

The Lord Chancellor grinned, his ruddy face gleaming with sweat beneath his wig as he spread his wide hands over his ample girth. “Well then! It is His Majesty’s Royal will and pleasure . . .”

The enormous doors to the chamber burst open, the sound echoing through the quiet hall, competing with the chancellor’s voice. Heads turned, but not Haven’s; he was too eager to leave London and his wig behind to worry about whatever was going on beyond.

The Lord Chancellor collected himself, cleared his throat, and said, “. . . that this Parliament be prorogued to Thursday, the Twentieth day of October next . . .”

A collection of disapproving harrumphs began as the door closed with a powerful bang. Haven looked then, following the gazes of the men assembled to the now closed door to chambers. He couldn’t see anything amiss.

“Ahem!” the Lord Chancellor said, the sound full of disapproval, before he redoubled his commitment to closing the session. Thank God for that. “. . . Thursday, the Twentieth day of October next . . .”

“Before you finish, my Lord Chancellor?”

Haven stiffened.

The words were strong and somehow soft and lilting and beautifully feminine—so out of place in the House of Lords, off limits to the fairer sex. Surely that was why his breath caught. Surely that was why his heart began to pound. Why he was suddenly on his feet amidst a chorus of masculine outrage.

It was not because of the voice itself.

“What is the meaning of this?” the chancellor thundered.

Haven could see it then, the cause of the commotion. A woman. A woman in the most beautiful lavender dress he’d ever seen, perfectly turned out, as though she marched into Parliamentary session on a regular basis. As though she were the Prime Minister himself. As though she were more than that. As though she were royalty.

The only woman he’d ever loved. The only woman he’d ever hated.

And Haven, frozen to the spot.

“I confess,” she said, as though she were at a tea party, moving to the floor of the chamber, “I feared I would miss the session altogether. But I’m very happy that I might sneak in before you all escape to wherever it is that you gentlemen venture for . . . pleasure. I shan’t be more than a moment.” She grinned at an ancient earl who blushed under the heat of her gaze and turned away. “But I understand that what I seek requires an Act of Parliament. And you are . . . as you know . . . Parliament.”

That was when her gaze found his, her eyes precisely as he remembered, as blue as a summer sky. No. Not the same. Different. Where they were once open and honest, they were now shuttered. Blank.

As though she, too, were escaped to somewhere else.

She watched him for a long moment, her gaze unblinking, and then declared, “I am Seraphina Bevingstoke, Duchess of Haven. And I require a divorce.”