But he learned that she was a poor but genteel relative of his—a cousin, many times removed—and resided as a kind of companion to his aunt at the house he was visiting. Attracted first by her beauty, he was utterly enslaved by her gentle sweetness and modesty. There was no question of merely tumbling her in the nearest bed or convenient corner; she was of good family, a lady. Wedded bliss was the only way to sample her charms to the full extent that he desired, and since he had fallen deeply in love with her, he needed only to follow his inclinations. Their marriage less than a year later had been the talk of the ton.
Though he was not yet the marquess, he was still a viscount with a fat purse and an elevated future title as his father’s heir. He could have looked much higher for a wife, and his mother was bitterly disappointed in him, but he only wanted Emily. She was, he said, the love of his life.
A tap on his elbow brought him back. “I say, Baxter, you’ve gone away on me!” Lessington peevishly said. “You’ve been staring at your wife in the most vulgar way imaginable, old man. Simply not done! ’Specially when you’re separated!”
“Thank you, Less,” Baxter said caustically. “I would not want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”
His biting remark set the other man to laughing, a hearty sound unlike his usual refined titter.
“That’s right, think of me, old man. Look upon your lovely ladybird; the lights are going down and this is her dramatic entrance. She begged me for this part, and as she is your protégé, I gave her the opportunity. She has not disappointed. Half of London is mad for her already. The male half, anyway.”
Sedgely settled into his chair and watched Belle Gallant float onto the stage, her tiny, perfect figure swathed in delicate diaphanous draperies. She was a fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and had chattered about nothing else when he saw her the previous night. He faced the stage and ostensibly paid sufficient attention to his little ladybird, but his mind stubbornly returned to his glimpse of Emily. He had not seen her for . . . how long? More than a year; more like two, actually. He had been traveling the Continent, which was where he had found the entrancing Belle. Emily, he knew, had been keeping to her lonely Yorkshire estate, but she must have decided this year to brave the London season. Would she be staying all through the spring?
When had she gotten fat? he wondered. She had always been pleasantly rounded, but his glimpse of her had revealed a much fuller bosom, rounder arms, and the hint of a double chin. And so Prinny was chasing after her now, eh? She was younger than his usual flirts, being . . . hmmm, thirty-six, he decided. She would be thirty-seven on June fourth, three months away.
And he was forty-two, and Belle was twenty-one, half his age. And what in God’s name was this morbid obsession with numbers? The lights brightened again and Lessington rose.
“End of the last act, old man. Unless you mean to stay for the farce?”
“What? Oh, no, of course not.” Sedgely smiled up at his friend. Less was a fribble, to be sure, but an entertaining one. As well as being a successful theater owner twice over, he wrote the most comic and vitriolic verse about the Prince Regent, risking royal censure and imprisonment did he but reveal his true name. But he wrote under the nom de plume of Geste Royale. More than that, though, he was a loyal and good friend, one of the few people Sedgely knew he could trust with his life, if need be.
“I thought not,” Less said. “It is my theater but even I cannot abide the farce. It is a necessity though, or the patrons in the pit will riot. I thought perhaps we would go and get a bite to eat, and you could tell me all your adventures these last two years.”
Sedgely stood, straightening his pantaloons and coat. “I would like nothing better, Less, but I must look in on the Groveson frolic.”
Less made a face.
“Promised Lady Groveson, the bosom bow of m’mother. Don’t dare put her off.”
“What a bore!” Less pouted. His narrow, clever face and mobile mouth made him unusually expressive. His parents had been actors, but despite having a distinct dramatic flair, he had neither the desire nor the temperament to be an actor. With patronage from the elite, such as the marquess, he had instead become a theater owner and entitled to entrée into society. He had never been able to assume the correct bored expression of a true dilettante for longer than a few minutes, though, unless he was consciously acting a part, which it must be said he was a great deal of the time. A sparkle of mischief came into his light gray eyes.
“I have an invitation, believe it or not. Lady Groveson, a high stickler if ever I have seen one, has decided I am amusing. I think I shall attend—I want to be there in case you decide to dance with your lady wife!”
Sedgely shuddered. “I’d sooner waltz with Prinny himself!”
“Don’t think you’re his type!” Less quipped. “You’re not even my type. Much too tall.”
• • •
“Thank you, Bev,” Emily said, smiling up at her escort, Lord Fawley, as he draped her silk shawl over her bare arms. She turned to make sure her aunt by marriage was following them out of the box.
Dearest Dodo, she thought, as she watched her elderly companion pick up her reticule. It was a treat to be able to accompany her to the theater, something the woman enjoyed above all else. They had been rusticating in Yorkshire for so long that when they arrived in London three weeks earlier they had had to spend a week just attiring themselves in the new styles so they wouldn’t look a quiz as they joined society.
Even before engaging a modiste, though, Emily had sent out a footman to rent boxes at the theater and the opera. If they were going to reenter London society, they must be seen at all the most desirable events. Sylvester Lessington’s theater had become eminently fashionable recently. She hoped she would see dear Less, a friend to both her and her husband, sometime soon.
This spring she had felt, finally, like crawling out of the hole of self-recrimination and anger she had been thrown into by her husband’s desertion. Her beloved niece, Celestine Simons—Lady St. Claire Richmond now—was newly married, and somehow, seeing new love burgeon like that, she had felt impatient with herself for hiding from life for so long. Dear Celestine was now in Italy on an extended wedding tour that would hopefully, with the heat and dryness of the warmer climes, heal the latest outburst of her arthritis.
And Emily had decided to come to London. She and her husband, Baxter, the Marquess of Sedgely, had lived separately for nearly five years now, though the legal separation was only a couple of years old; they should be able to inhabit the same city with impunity. Not that Baxter was in London, or even likely to come.
She had heard through the rumor mill that he was still gallivanting the Continent, so at least she didn’t have to worry about running into him just yet. Worry, she chided herself as she waited for Dodo. Why should she worry about seeing him? There was no feeling left between them. It would be the merest awkward moment when they met, and then it would be over.
Fawley took her arm as they descended the stairs toward the front doors and their waiting carriage. Lady Dianne Delafont, known as Dodo to her intimates, followed with Major Carson, her escort and fervent admirer.
It was so wonderful to have dear Dodo’s support, Emily thought with gratitude, even more so now that she had reentered society. She was Baxter’s aunt and the only one in the family who didn’t blame Emily for her husband’s desertion. “They,” mostly her mother-in-law and everyone within her influence, blamed her even more for not presenting him with an heir before the break, as if it was not what she desired above all else.
She hadn’t pushed Baxter away, or not really, though he perhaps saw it differently. Surely he must have seen how desperately she loved him, how much she had needed his support and approval! She had made no effort to hide that from him. Couldn’t he see how she was hurting? It was he who had grown distant and cold, finally putting into words what they had both known for a long time, that their marriage was over in all but name.
He would not
divorce her unless she desired it, he said, but he would have his freedom. She had been deeply hurt but had not said a word to keep him. If he did not love her enough to work through their problems, then she would not beg. A legal bill of separation had been drawn up, and they parted formally. Since they had not been together in the marriage bed for two years, it was a formality only; they were already separated in everything but the legal definition.
But darling Dodo, his father’s younger sister, was steadfast in her loyalty, and two years ago, when Emily was forced to retreat to Yorkshire, she asked to come along. The good Lord knew she had no need of a home, as she was wealthy in her own right, but she was a wonderful friend and Emily had gratefully accepted.
But Dodo had not been happy in Yorkshire. She hated nature and the harsh, wild clime of Yorkshire, and thrived on the theater and people and the kind of crowd that visited literary salons and the opera and crowded routs. She had been ecstatic at the idea of coming back to London.
“Shall we go to the Groveson ball, Dodo?” she asked over her shoulder as they reached a landing where the stairs turned.
Dianne “Dodo” Delafont, sixty-three years of age and a spinster, gazed down at her niece. Her dark eyes sparkled and a girlish expression lit her narrow, long-jawed face. “Could we? I would love it above all things, Em.”
“Then let us be dissipated and drink champagne and waltz until dawn!” Emily laughed. “And maybe you will be surrounded by beaux and dance every dance.”
The elderly spinster’s expression became arch. “Perhaps, if the major will dance . . .”
Major Carson, a bluff, upright, rigorously martial man, turned from berating the couple in front of them, who dawdled on the stairs, blocking their progress, and said, “What? Dance? I don’t dance. Never have!”
Lord Fawley, ever polite, stepped into the breach. “If Lady Dianne would honor me, I would be proud to bespeak the first dance on her card.”
Emily squeezed his arm affectionately. Beverley Fawley, Viscount Sumter, was the sweetest man in London, a city not known for good people. He was charming and sane and trustworthy. She never had to worry about his motives in escorting her, no matter how much people gossiped, because she knew he was not interested in a dalliance. She had a feeling that there was a tragic romance in his past, or even unrequited love in his present, but she never pressed him about it. Maybe that delicacy was why he clung to her in the swirl of bitter gossip that was London society. She turned back to descend the rest of the stairs, as the blockage seemed to have eased. She glanced down to the bottom, where a chandelier brightly lit the foyer, and gasped, stumbling, and was kept from falling only by Fawley’s grip.
“Em, whatever is wrong, dear girl?” he asked, setting her to rights.
She was speechless, staring down into a pair of cold, black eyes. Her knees weakened, but she resolutely clung to her escort. Baxter, in London! She would not let her long-absent husband see how much the first sight of him in two years had affected her. But if she could have sunk into a hole that very second, she would gladly have done so.
Classic Regency Romances
The Viscount’s Valentine
A Rogue’s Rescue
A Scandalous Plan
Reforming the Rogue
Lord St. Claire’s Angel
Noël’s Wish
The Earl of Hearts
The Mad Herringtons
Romancing the Rogue
Married to a Rogue
Taming the Rogue
Books by Donna Lea Simpson
Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark
Revenge of the Barbary Ghost
Curse of the Gypsy
The Viscount’s Valentine
A Rogue’s Rescue
A Scandalous Plan
Reforming the Rogue
Lord St. Claire’s Angel
Noël’s Wish
The Earl of Hearts
Romancing the Rogue
Married to a Rogue
Taming the Rogue
The Rogue’s Folly
About the Author
Donna Lea Simpson is a nationally bestselling romance and mystery novelist with over twenty titles published in the last eleven years. An early love for the novels of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie was a portent of things to come; Donna believes that a dash of mystery adds piquancy to a romantic tale, and a hint of romance adds humanity to a mystery story. Besides writing romance and mystery novels and reading the same, Donna has a long list of passions: cats and tea, cooking and vintage cookware, cross-stitching and watercolor painting among them. Karaoke offers her the chance to warble Dionne Warwick tunes, and nature is a constant source of comfort and inspiration. A long walk is her favorite exercise, and a fruity merlot is her drink of choice when the tea is all gone. Donna lives in Canada.
The best writing advice, Donna believes, comes from the letters of Jane Austen. That author wrote, in an October 26, 1813, letter to her sister, Cassandra, “I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on till I am.” So true! But Donna is usually in a good humor for writing!
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