The Unexpected Wife - Jess Michaels Page 0,9

so he wouldn’t be so foolish as to do something like that again. “I was too bold. I have no place to offer you comfort.”

She shifted. “I appreciate the sentiment. I doubt I’ll receive much support from anyone else.”

He folded his arms. “I realize that confessing your past to me, a near stranger, one with an ulterior motive, is not pleasant. But I’m not asking out of some salacious desire to pry into your pain. It is merely to better understand the circumstances so that I might solve Montgomery’s murder. And perhaps even help you detangle his deceptions of you.”

She worried her lip a moment, which made him look at that same mouth. Even thinned with concern and displeasure, it was a kissable set of lips. And there went his mind again.

Clearly he needed a woman if he was panting over the widow of a murder victim. One of three widows. God’s teeth, the woman was in trouble. She didn’t need him to add to that burden.

“The marriage was arranged,” she said, her tone low and rough, as if she had to force the words from her lips. “Erasmus showed up in Twiddleport a little over a year ago. He swept into a country dance and made himself known. My mother…well, you have met her. She knew he was the son of an earl and her eyes lit up like a thousand candles as she set her sights on him.”

“She didn’t know of his first marriage,” Owen said. “Even though she had heard of his origins?”

“When pressed, I believe he told her some desperately sad story of losing his first wife quite tragically. He made it clear he didn’t wish to speak of it, so my mother railed at me not to mention it. I had no interest in getting to know him any deeper, so I complied.”

Owen wrinkled his brow. “You had no interest and she insisted.”

“She insisted will be written on her tombstone.” Celeste sighed heavily. “She hated that I was a bluestocking spinster and happy to remain such. She demanded I allow him to court me, and when that didn’t work, she upped my dowry and made the arrangement behind my back. I was kept in the dark and sold off like so much chattel.”

He could hear the pain of that statement. The anger that bubbled right at the surface of her. The helplessness she had felt then and continued to feel now thanks to desperate people who didn’t think of her comfort or happiness in the least.

“And so you married,” he said softly.

“I tried to jump out the window first, to escape,” she said with a small smile. “But I was sadly caught and marched up the aisle, and became…well, I thought I became Mrs. Erasmus Montgomery.”

“And how did he treat you?” he asked.

She clenched her hands on her thighs, rubbing them against the fabric of her gown as if that could comfort and soothe her. Make this more palatable.

“With…indifference, mostly. The moment he had his prize, the money, he no longer pretended charm. He took his husbandly rights, I suppose to give me no cause to annul the union. I asked him if I would go with him to London. After all, if I were to be chattel, at least in Town I could have some happiness. I have friends there.”

“He refused,” Owen supplied.

She nodded. “He laughed in my face, deposited me in this home and left. He never wrote. Occasionally he’d show up here, horse wet with exertion, face wild with emotions I didn’t understand. But I think I saw him maybe three times in the year we were wed? We had no relationship, we had no connection. And now I suppose I understand the why of that much more.”

“And he never spoke of his life in London when he came.”

“No,” she said. “He…oh God’s teeth, this is all so humiliating.”

“Any fact might help,” Owen said softly.

She took a moment to gather herself. “He did talk in his sleep on the rare occasion he deposited himself in my bed. He often said the name Rosie. I thought it to be a lover of his, but perhaps it is one of the other wives?”

Owen straightened. “No. That isn’t either of their names, nor the woman he was courting for his fourth marriage.”

She covered her face with her hands. “There must have been legions of women he betrayed. What a club to be a part of. And news of this will spread, there will be no