by Eloisa James
Stephen Fairfax-Lacy was just what she needed: an antidote to her loathed husband. Rees’s antithesis. Helene’s hands curled into fists at her sides. She would do it. She would do it, and then she would tell Rees that she had. And when he looked stricken with jealousy…
The smile on Lady Helene Godwin’s face reflected pure feminine glee.
When Rees was stricken with jealousy—and suffering from a curdled liver—she would just laugh and walk away.
6
The Contrariness of Men Hardly Bears Repeating
Bonnington Manor
Malmesbury, Wiltshire
Marchioness Bonnington was not accustomed to opposition from the male sex. She had ruled—and survived—two husbands and fourteen male lapdogs. To her mind, there was no question as to which group had provided the better companionship. And as for logic…her own son was an excellent example of the worthiness of lapdogs over humans.
“Did I understand you to say that you are living in a garden hut, Bonnington? A garden hut?”
Her son nodded. The marchioness let silence fall between them. She had not invited him to sit, since she considered sons to be inferiors, along the lines of a butler: willing to take advantage, and needing to be continually reminded of their place. Not that her only son Sebastian had ever shown much proclivity for rebellion. He was a quite appropriate example of his sex, if she said so herself. Never caused her a moment of worry, until she had heard he had been courting the Duchess of Girton and persuading her to seek an annulment of her marriage.
That had ended in disaster, as she had known it would. In the end, her only son had been exiled to Europe, labeled unmarriageable, tarred as a liar and deceiver. The only thing that had sustained her in the past eight months had been a lifetime’s knowledge that the sins of young, very wealthy men seemed to dissolve after a year or so. She had fully intended to recall him to England in the summer and rehabilitate him in the eyes of the ton by marrying him to an upright young woman, perhaps someone who reminded her of herself at an earlier age.
Except here he was. Back in England without her permission.
She placed her hands carefully on top of her walking stick, which was planted in front of her chair. “May I ask why you have chosen such an insalubrious location in which to lodge?” she asked gently. Neither of them was deceived by her tone. The marchioness tolerated insubordination in no one.
“I am living in a garden hut, Mother,” her son said now, smiling at her for all the world as if he were a natural rather than a marquess, “I am living in a garden hut because I am working as a gardener on the estate of—”
She raised her hand. “I do not wish to hear her name spoken out loud.”
He looked at her and said, “On the estate of Lady Rawlings, Mother, the woman whom I shall marry.”
Of all possible outcomes to her son’s disastrous impudence, this was the worst.
“I cannot fathom it,” she said, punctuating each word with vigorous disapproval. “I understood when you were courting the Duchess of Girton last year. I was as aware as anyone that Ambrogina Camden’s marriage was not consummated. She was a respectable woman, an excellent choice for marchioness, if one could disregard the unfortunate annulment that would have had to occur.” She paused and gripped the carved top of her walking stick even harder.
“As I say, I understood your wish to marry her. Marriage to a duchess, even one who has annuled her previous marriage, can never be seen as a mistake. But marriage to Esme Rawlings is—is beyond my—I cannot fathom it. The woman took lovers under her husband’s nose. Everyone in London knew what she was up to. Her own mother has publicly expressed horror at her behavior. I was never so surprised as when I heard that Lady Rawlings was actually entertaining her husband in that bed of hers; Lord knows all of London had been there at some point or other.”
“If you repeat that comment one more time, you’ll never see me again.” His voice was calm, but the fury there made the marchioness blink.
She rallied quickly. “Don’t be a fool!” she said sharply. “In my estimation, the gossip probably didn’t cover half of what she did. I know for a fact—” Her eyes widened, and Sebastian saw that she had only just grasped the full ramifications of the situation.
“You to marry her! You, who killed her husband?”
“I did not kill her husband,” Sebastian said, standing taller. “Rawlings’s heart failed him on my unexpected entry to the chamber.”
“You killed her husband,” his mother said. “You entered that room looking for the bed of your duchess—oh, don’t give me that folderol about a false wedding certificate. I don’t believe common gossip. You had been bedding the duchess, but you crawled into the wrong bedchamber and encountered a husband. I call that killing the man! In my day”—she said it with grim triumph—“a man ascertained whose door he was entering before he did so.”
Sebastian suppressed a grimace. “I mistook the room,” he said stolidly, “and it had an unfortunate effect.”
“Then why in the name of blazes should you marry the woman? A mistaken notion of paying for your crimes? If so, I shall have the vicar speak to you. Because one can overemphasize the doctrine of reconciliation, and marrying a doxy simply because one killed her husband is Going Too Far.”
Sebastian sighed and looked about him. He was tired of standing like a schoolboy before his mother. She was perched on a thronelike chair in which the Regent would have felt comfortable, fitted out with claw feet and serpentine arms. He spotted a reasonably comfortable chair in the corner and strode over to fetch it.
“What are you doing?” his mother barked. “I didn’t give you permission to sit down, Bonnington!”
“My name is Sebastian,” he said, putting down the chair with a decisive thump and seating himself directly before her. “My name is Sebastian, and I am your son. Your only son. It would make me feel a great deal more comfortable if you did not refer to me as having killed Lord Rawlings. He had a weak heart, and the doctor had given him until the end of the summer. It was truly unfortunate that I was the cause of his seizure—and I would give anything to have not instigated that episode. But I did not kill him.”
The marchioness blinked. Her ever-courteous, ever-proper, almost boring son appeared to be showing a little backbone for the first time in his life. She didn’t know whether to be pleased or horrified.
She chose horrified.
“The only man with whom I have ever been on a first-name basis was your father,” she said with some distaste, “and that only in the most intimate of situations. You, Bonnington, are my son, and as such should offer me only the greatest respect.”
He inclined his head. “And that I do, Mother.” But he stayed seated. He had her looks, that son of hers. When she was young, men wore their hair powered and women wore patches. But it would be a pity if Sebastian powdered his hair. He had her hair, the color of sunshine, that’s what Graham called it. Of course, Graham hadn’t been bad-looking either. Those were his deep-set eyes looking at her. After her first husband died, she had married the most handsome man in London, and if Graham Bonnington wasn’t a lively conversationalist, he knew his place. He listened to her. She said enough for both of them.
She thumped her stick on the floor. The stick made some of the younger servants quite ill with anxiety, but her son merely glanced at the floor, as if checking for scuff marks. She decided to stay with the most crucial point.
“You cannot marry a doxy out of some misplaced sense of obligation. The Bonningtons are an ancient and respected family. Make Lady Rawlings an allowance, if you must. The estate can certainly bear the cost.”
“I intend to marry her,” Sebastian said. “But not out of obligation.”
“No?” She invested the word with as much scorn as she could.
“No. I love her.”
The marchioness closed her eyes for a moment. The day had begun with the unpleasant shock of seeing her son in England, and it was rapidly turning into something truly o
dious.
“We don’t marry out of love,” she sat flatly. “Marry a decent woman, and you can always see about Lady Rawlings later.”
“I love her, and I will marry her.”
“I believe I have fallen into a comic opera. And I detest musical theater. Are you planning to break into song?”
“Not at this moment.”
“Let me see if I understand you: you feel yourself to be in love with a doxy who has shared her bedchamber with half the men of London, and whose husband you didn’t kill, but certainly helped to his grave?”
“This is your last warning, Mother.” He said it through clenched teeth. “You speak of the woman I intend to marry, who will be marchioness after you. Speak so again, and you will have no part in our life.”
The marchioness rose with some difficulty—the gout in her left foot was growing worse by the moment—and thumped her stick for good emphasis, although it seemed to have little effect. She was pleased to note that her son rose when she did. At least he hadn’t discarded all manners.
“The day you marry that doxy, I shall disown you,” she said, as if she were commenting on the weather. “But I am quite certain that you knew that would be the outcome. I may remind you that my portion is not inconsiderable. Any child you—”
Sebastian groaned inwardly. The other shoe had dropped.
“By God, the woman is enceinte! I’d forgotten that trollop is carrying a child. Tell me you are not planning to marry Esme Rawlings before that child is born!”
Sebastian toyed with the idea of threatening to marry Esme tomorrow, an action that would make her unborn child his heir. But he didn’t want to be responsible for his mother having heart palpitations. Miles Rawlings’s death already weighed heavily on his conscience. More to the point, Esme still refused to marry him at all.
“Lady Rawlings has not accepted me,” he admitted.
A look of grim satisfaction crossed his mother’s face. “Well, at least someone is showing intelligence. Of course she won’t accept you. You killed her husband.” She began to stump her way toward the door. “I don’t know where you got this devilishly self-sacrificing side to you. Your father didn’t show any penchant for that sort of nonsense.”
Suddenly Sebastian felt his temper, which had been growing at a steady rate, flare into life. He walked around his mother and stopped before the door.
“Move aside!” she said.
“I will make Esme Rawlings marry me. She will accept me because she loves me as well. Moreover, I shall expect you to attend the wedding and behave in a respectable fashion.”
“There won’t be a wedding,” his mother replied calmly. “I felt a momentary anxiety, true. But from what I know of her, Esme Rawlings is as intelligent as she is dissolute. She won’t marry you. She won’t even think of it. I’ve no doubt but what Rawlings left her warm enough in the pocket, and a woman like that doesn’t need a protector, or yet a husband either. Now if you’ll excuse me, I will return to my chamber.”
And she walked past him.
Sebastian spun on his heel and walked over to the other side of the room. He looked down at his clenched fist, pulling it back on the point of putting it through the window. His mother had said no more than Esme herself had done, although she had never said he wasn’t the one to father her child. But she probably thought it. How could a man serve as father to a babe when the whole world—his mother included—thought he’d killed the child’s true father?
Sebastian Bonnington had faced few obstacles in his life. Thanks to his mother, he was both remarkably beautiful for a man and rigidly aware of proprieties. When other men strayed to mistresses and gambling, losing their estates and their minds in dissolute activities, he had watched and not partaken. Before he’d met Esme, in fact, he had never even felt the urge to commit an indecorous act.
He shook his head, staring blindly at the garden. Oh, he loved Esme’s delicious curves and her beauty, but it was her eyes that he found irresistible. There was no other woman in the world with eyes at once seductively enchanting and secretly sad. They had taken his head, robbed his heart, and stolen his senses. Something about her made him love her, willy-nilly.
And if to love her and to marry her was indecorous or foolish, he had no choice in the matter. All he had to do was convince her of the same.
7
A Saint, a Sinner, and a Goat
Lady Beatrix Lennox was bored. There wasn’t a man to flirt with in the entire house. Lord Winnamore was eligible, but he was hopelessly besotted with Arabella. Too old, naturally, although he was curiously attractive in a ponderous kind of way. But Bea would never, ever take a man from her godmother. She wasn’t proud of many of her characteristics, but she had always been loyal.
Bea drifted over to the mirror and practiced a seductive pout. She had dressed herself for a walk, but she didn’t know why: there was nothing she found more tedious than the countryside. In fact, the very idea of traipsing through a meadow, gazing at cows, filled her with boredom.
Yet here she was, dressed up like a trussed turkey. In fact, distinctly like a turkey, given that she was wearing a walking dress of Austrian green, exuberantly adorned with ribbons. Little bows marched all the way up her bodice, the better to emphasize her bosom (amply padded with cotton). But there was no one in the house to enjoy it.
Except, of course, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy.
Mr. Fairfax-Lacy had one of those lean, well-bred faces that would have looked as attractive in an Elizabethan ruff as it did in fashionable garb. His grandfather probably wore one of those huge collars. Still, Elizabethans in portraits always seemed to have slightly piggish, avaricious eyes, whereas Fairfax-Lacy had—
A curt voice made her jump. “Lady Beatrix, your godmother is going to the village for a brief visit. Would you like to join her?”
Talk of the devil. She turned around slowly and gave Mr. Fairfax-Lacy a smouldering look, just for practice. The one that began just at the edge of her eyes and then turned into a promise.
He looked unmoved. Indifferent, as a matter of fact. “Lady Beatrix?”
A pox on his well-bred nature! He really was a Puritan. Or perhaps he was simply too old to play. He had to be forty. Still, the combination of her reputation and personal assets had made Bea widely admired by the male gender, irrespective of age.
She sauntered over to him and put her hand on his arm. His eyes didn’t even flicker in the direction of her bosom, something she found quite disappointing, given the amount of cotton she had bundled under her chemise. “I would rather take a walk,” she said. He was much better looking than a cow, after all; his presence might make a country stroll palatable.
“It has been raining on and off all day. Perhaps tomorrow would be a more pleasant experience for you.”
“Oh, but I love rain!” she said, giving her sweetest smile, the one that always accompanied outrageous fibs.
Sure enough, he responded like a parrot: “In that case, I would be enchanted to accompany you.” But was there a trace of irony in that enchanted? Did the Boring Puritan have a little bit of depth to him after all?
Bea thought about that while the footman fetched her spencer. Luckily her walking costume came with a matching parasol, because the idea of allowing even a drop of rain to disorder her face or hair made her shiver.
It was appalling to see how wet it was outside. Bea could hardly say that she didn’t want her little jean half-boots to touch the ground, given as she’d squealed about loving rain. So she picked her way over the cobblestones in front of the house, hanging onto Mr. Fairfax-Lacy’s arm so that she didn’t topple over and spoil her spencer with rain-water.
At least he seemed to be enjoying himself. She sneaked a look, and he was smiling as they started down a country lane—a messy, dirty little path guaranteed to ruin her boots. Oh well. Bea had had lots of practice saying good-bye to people and things—her sisters, her father—what was a pair of boots? She let go of Fairfax-Lacy’s arm and tramped along on her own. Th
e path was lined with sooty-looking, thorny bushes with nary a flower to be seen.
He wasn’t exactly the best conversationalist in the world. In fact, he didn’t say a word. Bea had to admit that the landscape was rather pretty, with all those sparkling drops hanging off branches (waiting to destroy one’s clothing, but one mustn’t be squeamish about it). And the birds were singing, and so forth. She even saw a yellow flower that was rather nice, although mud-splattered.
“Look!” she said, trying to be friendly. “A daffodil.”
“Yellow celandine,” her companion said curtly.
After that, Bea gave up the effort of conversation and just tramped along. Helene was welcome to the Puritan. In the city there was always someone to look at: an old woman peddling lavender, a dandy wearing three watch fobs, a young buck trying to catch his whip. Bea found the street endlessly amusing.
But here! This lane had only one inhabitant.
“Hello, there,” Fairfax-Lacy said, and he had a gentle smile on his face that she’d never seen before. He had nice creases around his eyes when he smiled like that. Of course, it would all be rather more attractive if he weren’t scratching a goat.
The man ignored her cotton-enhanced bosom and saved his smiles for a goat! Still, the goat seemed to be the only object of interest, so Bea poked her way across the lane. The animal stuck its wicked-looking face over the gate and rolled an eye in her direction.
“He looks quite satanic,” she said. She’d seen that face before, in the grandest ballrooms in London. “Evil, really.”
“He’s just an old billy goat,” Fairfax-Lacy said, scratching the goat under his chin. The goat had a nasty-looking beard, as if it had been partially eaten while he wasn’t watching.
“Aren’t you worried that you will catch fleas?”