Dearly Beloved

by Mary Jo Putney

  Opening his eyes, he said, "Every month Diana is my mistress, I'll have two hundred pounds deposited in an account in her name. You can tell her about it or not, as you choose, but you will not be able to touch a penny yourself. Is that satisfactory?"

  He expected anger that the money was out of her reach, but she smiled serenely. "Perfectly satisfactory, my lord. A very gentlemanly thing to do."

  He stood, saying with heavy irony, "Will there be anything else, Miss Gainford?"

  "Yes. Please don't mention this arrangement to Diana."

  His mouth twisted. "Do you really expect me to believe that she doesn't know what you are doing?"

  She gestured gracefully, the candlelight glinting from the needle in her hand. "You should believe it. It's the truth."

  "Ah, yes," he said, unable to avoid bitterness as he remembered the innocence on Diana's sleeping face. Diana, the consummate actress. "Everyone knows how truthful whores are."

  There was some satisfaction in seeing the dull flush on her cheeks, but it was nowhere near strong enough to counter the dark mood that dogged his heels on the walk home.

  * * *

  The next morning it was easier to accept Diana's duplicity in having her companion demand more money. Doubtless the viscount's new mistress had her full female share of volatility and illogic; he supposed that after grandly refusing his offer of a regular allowance, she had changed her mind.

  When he joined her for a morning ride the day after, he went prepared. Diana was waiting in her salon and she greeted him with a blithe kiss as the morning sun burnished her chestnut hair. Did she ever look less than ravishing? After bowing over her gloved hand, Gervase handed her a small item of filigreed gold.

  Diana studied it in puzzlement, then gave him a smile that began deep in her lapis-blue eyes. "Should I recognize this? Perhaps it is too early in the morning and my wits are begging."

  When she smiled like that, Gervase felt the usual enchanted delight begin to steal over him. His lingering resentment over her request for more money dissipated. "That is the beginning of a series of payments to you."

  "Oh, I'm to be paid in little bits of worked gold?" she asked with interest.

  "It's the catch of a pearl necklace," he explained, "a rather beautiful double rope of pearls. I had the jeweler disassemble it." He dug a tiny object wrapped in velvet from an inner pocket. "Whenever I visit you, I'll bring another pearl. Then, when the necklace is complete, I'll have it restrung."

  She examined the flawless, lustrous sphere, its silvery sheen marking it as a pearl of the highest quality. "How very imaginative, my lord! In one stroke you have surprised me while efficiently saving yourself from having to think about the subject again for months to come."

  The viscount's face grew more than usually expressionless, but there was no criticism in her chiming laughter. Placing one hand on his arm, she stood on her toes to brush a velvet-soft kiss on his cheek. "Thank you, Gervase. You are most kind."

  Even that light touch was enough to make him consider forgoing their ride for indoor sport, but the morning was bright and beckoning, and there would be few more as fine before winter set in. They walked back to the stables, where Phaedra had taken up permanent residence. Since Diana was now her mistress, the loan horse had become a gift horse.

  As they rode the short distance to Hyde Park, Gervase felt some remorse about the pearl necklace. His midnight chat with Madeline had resulted in a commitment of two hundred pounds a month, to be deposited into a bank. Based on the cost of the pearl necklace, if he visited Diana an average of three times a week, she would receive one hundred pounds' worth of pearls each month, which would equal his original offer of a monthly three hundred pounds.

  He had thought that he was being ironically clever, but she had accepted the idea with such good grace that he was a little ashamed of having calculated so closely. Since she provided such superior service, he would rather be generous than haggle over every pennyworth of value.

  Shrugging guilt aside, Gervase gave himself to enjoyment of the brisk autumn air and the teasing conversation of his mistress. Diana was surprisingly well-read, and they became involved in a discussion of Restoration dramatists, a light topic for a bright morning. They had thrice circled the park and were heading back to Charles Street when Diana's words broke off in the middle of a dissertation on the female playwright Aphra Behn.

  Gervase's mount was a step ahead of hers and he glanced back when her voice broke. Diana had unconsciously tightened her hands on the reins, pulling Phaedra to a stop, and her face was white and strained as she looked down a small cross street. "Is anything wrong?" he asked quickly, responding to an automatic protective instinct.

  She swallowed hard and shook her head, but her voice was uneven as she signaled the mare to move forward. "Not really. I just saw a man who..."—she searched for a phrase, then ended lamely—"was once rather unpleasant to me."

  Gervase felt his face harden at her remark. So she had seen an old lover. Doubtless London was full of them. His voice cool, he said, "If you placed yourself entirely under my protection, I would have the right to deal with any man who bothers you, but your present position leaves you open to insult."

  She lifted her head, quick color flaring in her cheeks. "I have not asked for your help, my lord."

  "No doubt the dragon who guards you chases off unwanted suitors," he said acidly.

  "The dragon...?"

  "Your friend Miss Gainford."

  Diana laughed. "I never thought of her as a dragon, but she would make an elegant one. Or would she be a dragoness?"

  Gervase smiled back, his momentary irritation forgotten. Diana had a near-magical ability to disarm, and as they rode on, debating the merits of Aphra Behn, he was calculating how much time he could afford to spend with her before going to Whitehall.

  By the time they rode into her stableyard and he had helped her from Phaedra, his hands tarrying on her supple waist, he had decided that Whitehall could damned well wait.

  * * *

  The Count de Veseul had no trouble following Diana Lindsay and Lord St. Aubyn the few blocks to Charles Street. It was mere chance that the count had happened to see her as he returned home from a long night of illicit business. He had thought about the trollop a great deal since meeting her at the opera and had made discreet inquiries, but she seemed to have disappeared from view after the briefest of appearances on the courtesan scene.

  He had been on the verge of instituting a serious search when luck had thrown her right in his path, but then, he had always been lucky. Amusing to see how quickly she had recognized him, and how the blood had drained from her face. She was no less beautiful for being frightened; quite the contrary.

  Ao think St. Aubyn was one of her current lovers; if that didn't prove his luck, nothing did. The count knew a great deal about St. Aubyn, and respected the cool, analytical brilliance of the Englishman's mind. Indeed, St. Aubyn was the only man in Britain that Veseul feared might expose him, and he was delighted to see the viscount looking like a daft youth with his first woman. How satisfying to know the Englishman was prey to vulgar emotional weakness; the Frenchman had no such frailty.

  After the couple entered the elegant town house, Veseul lingered in an alley opposite, imagining what the two were doing upstairs behind that proper Mayfair facade, images flickering through his brain like a lewd dream. It aroused him to think of another man possessing that beautiful wanton. Knowing that man was a British spymaster added a soupcon of decadent excitement. When the count finally took Diana Lindsay, it would take a very long time indeed to satisfy the desire that was accumulating.

  The detour made Veseul late for his rendezvous back at the rooms he leased in a large block of flats, a busy place where comings and goings at odd hours were unremarkable. Waiting impatiently was his associate Biron, a weasel-faced man of no style or elegance, but most useful.

  After they had discussed the usual business, Veseul pulled a cigar from his desk and trimmed t
he end as he said casually, "I want you to put someone in the household at 17 Charles Street."

  Biron regarded him suspiciously. "Who merits such close investigation? Our resources are not unlimited."

  Veseul lit the cigar, then exhaled, watching Biron flinch back from the stream of smoke. "Just a whore, but she has interesting guests. Make sure that whoever you put there is observant, reliable, and of unquestioning loyalty."

  Biron glared, suspecting that his superior's motives were personal, but he nodded his head stiffly. "It shall be done."

  Biron was an orthodox revolutionary, bound by dogma, and it chafed him to obey an aristocrat of the ancien regime. Veseul took malicious amusement in knowing that Biron thought the count should have been sent to Mme. Guillotine in the heady days of the Reign of Terror. The weasel-faced man had a small, unimaginative mind, and for all his revolutionary fervor, he had done less for the cause of France than the aristocrat he despised.

  After Biron left, the Frenchman mused for a moment, pleased by the thought that the snare was beginning to tighten around Diana Lindsay, so slowly that she would have no inkling of what lay ahead of her. The count was not like other men, a creature of impatient lust that must be gratified instantly. A connoisseur knew how to wait and savor. He imagined how she would look with her limbs bound to the posts of a bed, her flawless face distorted by the knowledge that there would be no escape.

  But he had more important things to do than contemplate what he would do to a whore, be she ever so lovely. Veseul began to write a summary of the information Biron had brought, adding his own comments about the implications before translating the report into a cipher and recopying it.

  When he was finished, he folded the sheet very small, then took the heavy brass seal that bore the reversed incisions of the arms of Veseul. Unscrewing the handle revealed a second, secret seal in the form of a bird rising from flames: a phoenix.

  Chapter 9

  Diana moved through her daily rounds with a cat-in-the-creampot smile on her face; no amount of intellectual knowledge of loving could match the reality. Gervase was constantly in her thoughts, and not just because of the passion they shared.

  The thought of making love with him produced a quickening deep inside her, but his unexpected tenderness drew her most. He was a warm and witty companion, seldom laughing but with a wry, self-mocking smile that was irresistible. With her, he was a different man from his usual cold, commanding presence. She took pride in the fact that she created that difference.

  Diana wanted Gervase in her life with a fierceness similar to what she felt for her son: she wanted to be his woman publicly, to sleep all night in his arms and be accepted by his friends. It was a cruel paradox; becoming a courtesan may have tainted her forever, yet they would never have come together had she not entered the harlots' world.

  Sometimes, with chill despair, she remembered what Maddy had told her: He has a mad wife in Scotland. Those flat words represented a conundrum she had no idea how to solve. She knew that he desired her, at least for now, but a mistress was an object of lust, not love. While she had a place in his life, it was a small, dishonorable one. Was this what she had come to London for? Surely, somewhere ahead there would be a solution.

  Whenever her thoughts reached that point, she resolutely turned her mind to other things, laughing with her son and friends, practicing her knife throwing. She did her domestic chores, she hired a French cook who had a tale of woe, and she fought a running battle with Geoffrey about riding lessons.

  The issue was an old one. Her son had always loved horses, and Phaedra's residence in the stables caused him to redouble his pleas for a pony. Diana felt deeply ambivalent about the subject. The life she wanted for Geoffrey meant that he must someday learn to ride. A gentleman who didn't was a freak, and that was the last thing she wanted her son to be.

  But riding could be dangerous even for the best of horsemen. If Geoffrey suffered a grand mal or even a petit mal seizure, he might be seriously injured or killed in a fall.

  For the last three years she had taken cowardly refuge from his desire for a pony by saying that she would consider it when he was older, but she knew she could not put him off much longer. To compensate for her refusal to let him ride, Diana let Geoffrey keep a scrawny kitten he had rescued from a gang of street boys. But few beings are as persistent as young children, and Diana knew that the subject of riding would surface again.

  * * *

  When he recalled the autumn of 1807 in later years, Gervase knew that rain must have fallen, the London skies must have grayed, a hundred minor irritations of living must have occurred, but he remembered none of them: the weeks passed in a haze of golden days and fiery nights.

  The affairs of the nation, if not prospering, at least became no worse. The Portuguese were persuaded to remove their fleet to safety in Brazil. His own work went well as his network of informants grew ever wider and deeper, and government officials of all political stripes came to accept that his recommendations were untainted by self-interest.

  But it was Diana that cast the enchantment over his life. Warm and welcoming, she was always there when he wanted her, sensing his moods, knowing when to talk and when to be silent; when to melt in his arms and when to take the lead with a gentle sexual aggression that was richly stimulating.

  Diana was so much the perfect woman that she couldn't possibly be real; only a paid mistress with a flair for acting could be so wholly responsive. Gervase sometimes wondered what was the real woman and what was pretense. The warmth and sensuality couldn't be entirely false or she would not be so convincing, yet she had a maddening, elusive air of mystery that veiled the central core of her.

  He seldom wasted time with such thoughts. It was easier to accept her as she appeared, and he glided through the days on a strange emotion that he neither recognized nor named. Only much later, when those perfect days were history, did he realize that the emotion was called happiness.

  More than three pearls were being delivered every week. He should have bought a triple-strand necklace, not a double. Diana kept the pearls in a crystal goblet on her dressing table, and the level visibly rose as the weeks passed.

  The goblet was another gift from him, one of a set of heavy Venetian cut-glass vessels. He found that he enjoyed giving things to Diana, and she took the same pleasure in the armload of flowers that he impulsively bought from a street vendor as she did in the priceless, exquisitely wrought mantel clock said to have belonged to Marie Antoinette. In fact, she may have liked the flowers better, judging by the way she buried her face in them before giving him a brilliant, pollen-dusted smile.

  A routine soon developed. Several nights a week Gervase came by after working late and they shared a supper, talking and laughing before making love. Sometimes they rode very early in the morning, when Rotten Row was as quiet as the viscount's own country estate.

  Gervase offered to take her to more public gatherings, such as the theater, but she always refused, and he was secretly pleased. He knew most men would flaunt the fact that they had won such a prize as Diana, but he preferred the magical bubble of privacy that they shared. Their seclusion also saved him from having to speculate on what other men present might be enjoying her matchless charms.

  Then the golden age ended. The changes were subtle, though the event that triggered them was not.

  Gervase had been in Kent talking to smugglers, and he'd missed Diana with a constant ache, much as a missing limb was said to haunt its former owner. He had returned a day early just to see her, and his first act had been to send a footman the short distance to her house to ascertain if she could receive him. He was not sure what he would have done if she had refused or had been otherwise occupied. Probably gone to her house and kicked her other company out of bed.

  It was almost ten o'clock when he arrived and she let him in. He wasted no time before kissing her, at the same time checking that every curve was just as he remembered it. Though Diana was laughing when she emerged fr
om his embrace, he saw that she looked tired. Beautiful, but not quite as flawless as usual.

  "I shouldn't have left you," he said teasingly, his forefinger brushing the hint of shadow under her eyes. "You look like you missed me."

  "I did." She accompanied her words with a long hug, her arms wrapping his waist while she laid her head against his shoulder. It was a simple request for comfort with no undertones of passion, and Gervase felt oddly touched as he held her, feeling her tension diminish as he stroked her. After a few peaceful minutes he asked, "Is something wrong?"

  She hesitated, then stepped away, shaking her head. "Not really. I'm always a little sad at this time of year. Everything is so bleak. The whole of winter lies ahead, and spring seems so far away."

  Laying his arm around her shoulders, he steered her downstairs, where they shared their late meals. He liked the hominess of her kitchen, so different from the lethal formality of the official St. Aubyn dining rooms, where sixty people could eat cold food in high state. "English winters are a dreary affair. But they don't bother me much. I was born in winter so it's my season."

  "Really?" Diana removed a pheasant pie from the oven, using heavy mitts to transfer it to the pine table, where two place settings, a bottle of red wine, and an assortment of homemade pickles waited. "When is your birthday? I'm ashamed of myself for not asking before."

  "Good Lord, Diana, what does it matter?" he scoffed as he poured wine into the goblets and served the steaming hot pie. "But for the record, I was born December 24."

  "Christmas Eve! What a lovely present that was for your mother." Ignoring her own plate, Diana sat on the bench next to Gervase, enjoying the feel of his thigh against hers.

  "On the contrary, she said that being in the straw wrecked her holiday." The dryness of Gervase's voice did not quite conceal the remembered pain. His mother had made that statement in her characteristic manner, the barb concealed under languid honey as she beckoned and rejected at the same time.