Your Wicked Ways

by Eloisa James

  Helene gave up the idea of bedding on the spot. “Can I help?” she said, tightening the cord of her dressing gown and walking into the room.

  He shook his head as if to wake himself up. “I think it’s improving.” He played the bit that Helene had heard outside the door. “What do you think of this?”

  “I like it.” This time it felt natural to nudge him over and sit down. “What if you ended on D in alt? Can your soprano reach that high a note?” She played it again. “You could pause here on A-natural, and then either up or down to the D.”

  “Better the first time,” Rees said. “It sounds a little florid with that triplet, but I like this minor chord.” He pushed her hands off and played it himself. “Nice! You always were the better musician of the two of us, Helene.”

  “Not so,” she said. “You write real music; I just play with notes. Real musicians don’t spend months reworking Beethoven for four hands. They write original pieces, as you do.”

  He closed the top of the piano over the gleaming keys with a quiet click. “I write poppycock, Helene. You knew it, even back when we first married, before I’d had a single piece staged. You told me that I was doing nothing more than writing squeaky duets and that my harmonies were unremarkable.”

  “I didn’t!” she said, startled. “I have never said such a thing, and I certainly don’t think it either! Last year, for example, I didn’t love everything in The White Elephant, but there were parts I thought were brilliantly conceived.”

  That lock of hair had flopped over his eyes again. He leaned against the closed piano keys and gave her a sardonic smile. She could see wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “I can list precisely what you disliked in the Elephant. The tenor aria in Act One, the oboe and clarinet duet in Act Three, and the minor scale that opened the Finale.”

  “True,” Helene said. “As I told you last year. But I also thought your delineation of character was dazzling. The repeated pianissimo high F’s in the Duke’s aria were exquisite. The sense of pandemonium during the thunderstorm, when the elephant is running loose, was brilliantly executed. And the soprano mezzo duet, as everyone in London undoubtedly told you, was a glorious bit of inspiration.”

  He raised an eyebrow. There was a self-mocking smile lurking in the depths of his eyes. “You never told me.”

  “I didn’t—” She stopped. “I should have. I didn’t think you cared.”

  “Did you really like the pianissimo F’s?”

  She nodded. “It was daring—but it balanced the second half of the aria perfectly.”

  “I never thought of it in quite those terms. But did you read the review in the Gazette?”

  “Written by Giddlesheard, and he’s a fool,” she said contemptuously.

  A slow smile was growing in Rees’s eyes. “He loathed that section.”

  “More fool he.” And: “My opinion matters to you?” she asked, still confused. The answer was in his eyes. And this was no time to stand by her pride, not in the darkness of the music room, with the candles making his hair look like coal touched with edges of flame, his eyes like dark pools. No time for dishonesty. “I have always known that you were the true musician of the two of us,” she said. “I never thought you’d want me to praise you.” She looked at her hands. “I just wanted you to think that I was clever.”

  He still didn’t say anything. She finally looked up to find his eyes fixed on her face. He had beautiful eyes, with the thickest black lashes she’d ever seen.

  “You wanted me to think you were clever,” he repeated.

  Helene raised her chin: in for a penny, in for a pound. “I listen to your operas more carefully than any other piece of music,” she confessed. “Obviously, I couldn’t go more than once. It would seem odd. So I listen for something—anything—I can say to you that will demonstrate my own…” Her voice trailed off. “I have been wretchedly ill-bred and ill-mannered,” she said quietly. “I’m ashamed of myself.”

  Rees reached out and pulled up her chin so his wife’s eyes met his, those astounding honest, green eyes of hers. “Did you truly like parts of the Elephant?”

  “I loved it,” she said flatly. “Everyone did, Rees. You know that.”

  “The hell with everyone. Did you?”

  “Of course.”

  He dropped his hand with a bark of laughter. “Do you know how I write these scores, Helene? Do you?”

  She blinked at him. “No.”

  “I sit here and I try something, and then I think, What would Helene think of that? And then I hear your voice saying that it’s underwritten, or tiresome, or—sometimes—clever. Never exquisite.”

  “Oh, Rees,” Helene said aghast. “I had no idea. None!”

  “I know you didn’t,” he said with that little half-smile again.

  There was an odd silence between them. “I feel like such an idiot,” she said miserably. “Here I’ve spent the last nine years picking your music apart, just to make myself feel clever.” She couldn’t even bear to look at him; a sense of humiliation was growing in her chest.

  “You have never been an idiot,” Rees said. He pushed open the piano lid with a snap that made the candles flicker and dance. “What if I wrote this section in B-minor, then moved into D-major from the Cantabile?”

  “Why a major?” Helene said, distracted from her self-loathing for a moment. She tried it. “Moving it to G-minor would make it even darker, more interesting.”

  “But I want a witty resonance there, not gloom,” Rees said, pushing her aside in his turn and demonstrating.

  Helene looked down at his powerful hands, then at his black hair, gleaming in the candles, at his powerful shoulders. It’s all changed, she thought.

  “You’re not paying attention,” Rees said. “Listen to this.”

  “Try it slower this time,” she said. “Andante.”

  Twenty-two

  The Vicar Falls in Love

  Tom arrived in the breakfast room to find it empty. He was not a man given to self-delusion; he knew perfectly well that his step slowed at the door because he didn’t see Lina, not because of the absence of his growling brother, nor Rees’s incomprehensible wife.

  “Would you like a dish of kippers, Mr. Holland?” Leke inquired.

  “No, thank you, Leke. Merely a cup of coffee and some toast, please.” He couldn’t bring himself to ask about Lina. “Has my brother eaten yet?”

  “Lord Godwin is still in bed,” Leke responded. “He was working at the piano quite late at night.” After fussing for a moment with the dishes on the side table, Leke left, closing the door behind him.

  Tom sat down and found himself wondering what Lina looked like in the morning, all sleepy and rumpled. Before he realized it, he was struggling with the impulse to run up the stairs and knock on Lina’s door. In the general run of things, Tom didn’t find himself faced with much temptation of the ungodly sort. His parish was small and such nobility as there were in Beverley attended the much larger and more majestic Minster Church. That didn’t mean he was ignored by the local gentry: the younger son of an earl, with a good private living, would never be ignored. But the temptations offered by local damsels had not, so far, been much of a struggle.

  Lina was another story.

  I want her, Tom thought to himself. I want her more than I’ve wanted any woman in my life. And it’s not just lust (although he was uneasily unaware that he was possessed by a feverish variety of that emotion, such as he’d never experienced before). But I want all of her, he reassured himself: that silly chuckle, her odd knowledge of the Bible, even those horrible jokes she keeps offering to tell me.

  Very precisely he cut his toast into small squares. He’d spent a great deal of his life respecting his instinct. An unmanly thing to do, perhaps, but it had worked for him. Instinct had led him to take the healthy inheritance his mother left him and more than triple it with shrewd investments. Instinct had told him to return to London and patch things together with his brother. Instinct told him…r />
  Lina was the one for him. She was wildly unsuitable for a vicar’s wife. Marrying her would likely ruin the possibility of his ever being transferred to a larger parish. Moreover, if his local Bishop found out that he had married his brother’s mistress, he’d be thrown out of his parish entirely. Marrying her would…marrying her was his only option, so why should he worry about the consequences? He finished his toast. If only he could just throw her over a horse and flee back to the North Country.

  He didn’t see Lina until afternoon. She didn’t come to luncheon, and neither did Rees. And neither did Helene for that matter, although Tom could hardly blame her for taking meals in her room. He was surprised his brother’s wife emerged at all. Finally, he was so tired of waiting around downstairs that he decided to visit Meggin in the nursery.

  The moment he walked down the hallway, he heard laughter. Lina laughed with the clear, belly-rocking enjoyment of a child, not with the practiced thrills of a courtesan. Because she was not a courtesan, Tom thought to himself, pushing open the door. Her clear eyes could not lie to him. His brother—his own rotgut brother—had made her a kept woman, a mistress. Tom hated the truth of it. It made him feel as if a piece of steel was lodged in his chest.

  Lina was sitting on a low stool next to the window and Meggin was standing behind her, drawing a brush through her long hair. Neither of them saw him for a moment. Meggin was utterly concentrated on watching the gleaming river of Lina’s hair run by her brush, and Lina was saying, “so you see, Meggin, the miller didn’t have any choice other than to send his three sons out to seek their fortune.”

  “Why couldn’t they stay home with him?” Tom said, walking toward them. Lina looked up quickly, and there was a welcome in her eyes. “Good afternoon, Miss McKenna,” he said, with a bow, and, “Hello, Miss Meggin.” Meggin didn’t even look up, just kept watching as if mesmerized, as her brush swirled through the silk of Lina’s hair.

  “Meggin, darling,” Lina said, twisting about. “I think my hair is sufficiently groomed. May I ask you to brush my hair again later, please?”

  A flash of real anger crossed the little girl’s face and she reached out to grab Lina’s hair and keep it in place.

  “This afternoon,” Lina said calmly, standing up and handing Meggin the swansdown muff.

  Meggin blinked and began to brush the muff carefully.

  “If you would ring that bell, Mr. Holland,” Lina said, “Rosy will return to the nursery to take charge of Meggin.”

  Tom rang the bell. “Meggin,” he said, turning back to the little girl, “would you like to go for a ride in the park this afternoon?”

  She didn’t look up or reply in any way.

  “I thought perhaps you might like to see the lions in the Tower of London?” he tried again.

  She still didn’t look up, but she said something.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Izzat near the Pewter Inn?”

  “No,” he said.

  Her mouth trembled for a moment and she went back to brushing the muff without a word.

  At that moment, Rosy bounced into the room and so they left.

  “Meggin is not happy,” Lina said without preamble, after Tom closed the door behind them. “She speaks only in order to ask when she will see Mrs. Fishpole.”

  “I could take her back there, but only for a visit,” Tom said rather helplessly. “Meggin was sleeping on a pile of rags in the corner, and Mrs. Fishpole’s circumstances were not such that she could take Meggin in herself.”

  Lina walked down the hall. “So you rescued her? Just like that? Took her away without a second thought?”

  “I had no choice,” Tom said, feeling oddly defensive.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there I was, and Mrs. Fishpole said to take her, and so I—”

  “But why were you there?”

  “I saw Meggin in an inn yard, and I thought perhaps she was in an unenviable position.”

  “You meant to rescue her,” Lina said flatly. “You meant to rescue her from the moment you saw her.”

  “It wasn’t so simple,” Tom replied, nettled.

  “How many children have you rescued?”

  Her hips were swaying before him in a way that made it hard for Tom to concentrate. “Not many.”

  “It must give you quite a glow of virtue.” She walked into the library and tucked herself onto a couch, looking up at him.

  Was her tone scornful? Tom felt a wave of irritation. “That has nothing to do with it,” he said.

  “Poppycock,” she said flatly. “You vicar types are all the same. You enjoy wearing a halo, so you removed Meggin from the only mother she had ever known—Mrs. Fishpole. And that was a mistake.”

  Tom was conscious of a feeling of resentment. “Mrs. Fishpole couldn’t keep her much longer. Meggin was sleeping on a pile of rags in the corner, and Mrs. Fishpole herself told me that she was worried for Meggin’s safety. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “Of course I do,” Lina said impatiently. “So you galloped in like a knight in shining armor and took Meggin away, did you? It must have given you quite a pious glow, for an hour or two at least.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he protested. “And why are you so scornful of an honest effort to help a child?”

  “I’m not,” she said. “But I am quite familiar with the godly sort rushing in to save people and doing it without forethought, and without the ability to admit that they may have been mistaken.”

  “So the mistake I made was to remove Meggin from Mrs. Fishpole, rather than Mrs. Fishpole from the inn,” he said.

  She nodded. “But surely you have thought of some pious justification for removing her so abruptly from her mother to counter my criticism?”

  “Mrs. Fishpole is not her mother,” Tom protested. But he’d never been one to deny a fair point. “You may be right. Although I do not agree that I did so merely for a sanctimonious bout of aggrandizement.”

  She wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead she was frowning and examining her fingernails. “We have to take her back.”

  Tom sat down next to her without asking for permission. “Meggin can’t live in the kitchen forever.”

  “No, of course not,” Lina said, throwing him an impatient look. “But she needs her mother. Mrs. Fishpole will have to find other circumstances. What a pity that Rees already has a cook.”

  “I suspect Rees wouldn’t like a cook whose main facility seemed to lie in fish and sausage pie,” Tom said. “Apparently he pays Cook one hundred guineas a year.”

  Lina gave up the idea of sacking Rees’s Cook while he wasn’t paying attention. “We have to do something. The poor little scrap: her eyes are like to make me start crying!” Lina never cried. That was a rule she set for herself the very first day she left home, when she got to London and discovered that her purse had been stolen and all her money was gone.

  “I thought I would find her a family when I returned to East Riding,” Tom said.

  “Who would take in an orphan?” Lina asked. She had seen many so-called charitable people decline to give a farthing to a beggar.

  “I could pay for her support.”

  “You? A vicar?” Lina laughed. “I can estimate how many pounds a year you earn, Mr. Holland. It’s a wonder you had the money to come to London, let alone support an orphan!”

  “How much do you think I earn?” he demanded.

  “Of course, you may have money in rents, but your living is unlikely to pay more than two hundred pounds a year. An amount that would almost pay for this gown,” she said, touching a fold of cloth.

  Lina was wearing a crimson morning gown made in the Russian style, with white tassels on the shoulders. She looked adorable and utterly expensive. Tom had never had much use for the money his mother left him other than supporting charity, but now he sent up a fleeting prayer of thanks. Lina could be the best-dressed vicar’s wife in the kingdom, if she wished. “The gown was a worthy purchase, in your mind?”
he said, putting an arm on the back of the couch, but not touching her shoulder. “You certainly look lovely in it.”

  “Of course it was! I am particularly fond of the silk fringe, which is all the rage. One cannot step outdoors without a fringe this year.”

  “And would that gown cost more than I might give to a family to support Meggin for a year, in your estimation?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “I despise that sort of trick, Reverend. Believe me, I’m an old hand at avoiding guilt. And I don’t think much of you for trying it. I’m not one of your flock.”

  Tom grinned. “No more you are. A fact about which I am very sorry.”

  She shrugged. “You’re a vicar. How else can you behave?” Suddenly she seemed utterly uninterested in him, as if he were no more than a tedious houseguest whom she was forced to entertain. “I shall ask Rees to support Mrs. Fishpole,” she said. “He can more than afford it, and he never refuses any of my monetary requests.” She said it flatly, without a gleam of triumph in her voice.

  Tom looked at her until she finally looked away. This vicar with deep gray eyes was altogether disturbing. It’s only his similarity to Rees, she had told herself the night before. For all Rees had never loved her, she had loved him. And here was the vicar, with all of Rees’s unruly looks and burly body, but paired with eyes that felt as if they looked to her very soul. How annoying.

  “Wouldn’t you rather sell the gown?” he asked her.

  “Given all your talk of my gown, I can only assume that you wish me out of the garment,” she said; leaning back against the couch, she gave him her most enticing smile, the one she had practiced for hours.

  He looked at her more intently than anyone ever had in her life; more intently than even her mama had looked when Mama knew full well that Lina had been stealing blackberries from Mrs. Girdle’s garden. “That goes without saying,” he said with a grin that made laughter lines appear around his eyes. “There’s no man alive who wouldn’t look at all those buttons and feel his fingers twitch.”