A man who had been consumed with the details of her from the moment he’d met her.
And no, he had not thought of her beauty when she had been a girl. It had been her resilience, her sadness, her wildness.
But he had known her.
And he had known her when she’d gone into his arms.
‘There is much you don’t know of the world. We will find happiness together in it. But you must trust me.’
She looked up at him, her eyes filled with scepticism. And he could not stop himself. He reached out and took hold of her chin, gripping it tightly between his thumb and forefinger. ‘You must trust me.’
She looked away. ‘I don’t think I can.’
‘If you cannot trust me in this, you would not have been able to trust me with more.’
Her eyes flashed up to his. ‘With...’
He released his hold on her. ‘Let us walk this way, William. You wish to see St James’s Park?’
‘Yes,’ William responded, never quicker with an answer than when everything was going his way.
That was not fair. It was not about getting his way, it was about being in this perfect space where there was no resistance being brought against him by the things that he found challenging in the world.
Briggs understood that. He remembered being a boy and finding peace only in books, and then in the hours spent seeing to the health of his orchids. He understood how engaging his own brain could be when it was occupied by things that were important to him.
And how difficult the world could feel when he did not connect with what was happening.
It was not a choice to be bad or misbehave, but a strange reordering of his brain, as if all of the pieces of his mind had been shoved into an overcrowded corner, leaving him in part overwhelmed and the other disconnected.
He had better control over these things now. But he still remembered when he was at the mercy of his emotions.
They turned and began to walk towards the park, Beatrice next to him, the wind now against her. And he did his best to ignore just how appealing she smelled to him. And it was nothing to do with the rose water she had likely placed just beneath her earlobes. And everything to do with the smell of her skin.
He had tasted her last night. She had been marvellous.
He would’ve thought that it would be the easiest thing in all the world to protect his best friend’s younger sister in this position. For he had no interest in a wife, and he’d seen Beatrice as a child...
Did you?
He did not like this insidious voice searching inside himself for truth. He was not interested in his truth. He was interested, rather, in maintaining things as they were. And not allowing them to deteriorate.
St James’s Park was filled with those intent on taking advantage of the sunshine, a veritable menu of societal elite, promenading so as to be seen by those who mattered. Briggs had never had the patience for such things. It was perhaps why he had married as quickly as he had done. For participating in the marriage mart, in these sorts of games, had not been his idea of intrigue at any point.
And now that he was back here, it was thankfully with a wife in tow, so as not to bring any marriage-minded mothers and their debutantes his way.
Beatrice herself looked delighted by the spectacle, and her delight only increased her beauty. He could feel the envious gazes of men around him.
Truly, these fashionable dresses with their boldly scooped necklines flattered Beatrice in an extreme fashion. Her tits were a glory. That he knew well, as he’d had them in his mouth.
Desire was like a raging beast in him, right here in the sunshine in the full view of so many people, with his son so near.
And that was something unfamiliar.
He separated these parts of his life. For him, sex and desire had nothing to do with what he did the rest of his days. It was disconnected. A service he bought. He had purposed that he would not expose himself again by sharing his desires with a woman who might not have the same needs.
Beatrice did.
She wanted the same things.
It was intoxicating.
It had been sufficient, keeping his intimate desires satisfied by whores. Beneficial for all involved.
But this was something he’d craved. Something he’d determined did not actually exist. The possibility of sharing his life with a woman who also wanted in the way he did.
It made him feel vulnerable.
It made him feel.
He didn’t like it.
And yet he did not know if he could deny himself either.
William ran through the grass, though he did not join any of the groups of children that were about.
‘Does he not like to be with other children?’
‘He does not have much experience of them,’ Briggs said. ‘Though... I feel that if he wished to play with children, he would say.’
‘He does not seem to long for inclusion.’
‘No. I recall... I recall often feeling that way when I was in school.’
‘When did you go to school?’
‘When I was fourteen. I was taught at home by my governess until then.’
‘Do you know why?’
He laughed. ‘One does not question the Duke of Brigham, Your Grace. By which I mean my father. One does not speak to him also. I don’t just mean now, because he is dead. He was ashamed of me, and he did not wish for me to be at school where I might reflect poorly on him.’
‘Surely he did not...’
‘He did. It was not until he died that my mother finally sent me.’
‘What a terrible...horrible man,’ she said.
‘He was not a good man.’
‘My father was the same.’ She grimaced. ‘Even if he was different with it. Though I do feel you must know a bit about the notorious Duke of Kendal, and all the ways in which Hugh has taken it upon himself to rehabilitate the name and title.’
‘I do know,’ Briggs said. ‘It is one reason that I knew I must marry you. For there is nothing more important to Hugh than reputation. The doing right.’
‘Right as society defines it.’
‘It is the only way that matters.’
‘Yes, so it would appear. But I wonder...’
‘It does not benefit us to wonder, Beatrice.’
‘But if it did.’
‘But it does not.’
‘But you said yourself...’ She looked at William, overjoyed in his solitude at the moment, even when surrounded by others. ‘That happiness is not always found there.’
‘No. But you know, it is not a question of whether or not you are doing everything society dictates, but whether or not you appear to be. There are thriving parts of London that operate outside of this... This fear. Where people are... More themselves.’
‘Really?’ She looked very keen.
‘Ladies do not go to them.’
‘Do they really not?’
‘Not if their husbands are responsible.’
Truth be told there were a number of ladies who went to the sort of clubs he frequented. Particularly widows. Either looking for a man in the market to satisfy them, or looking to buy a harlot themselves. Briggs found nothing particularly shocking in the gaming halls and brothels of London. But perhaps that was simply due to his own acceptance of his nature.
Of course, he had wondered, when he was young, if there was something terribly wrong with him.
That he felt equal desire to kiss a woman as he did to take a riding crop to her.
But it had not taken long for him to discover books and artwork that suggested he was not alone, and then brothels that confirmed he was not. His particular favourite memory was when he had been a young man of sixteen travelling on school holidays, and he had gone to a notorious brothel in Paris and been presented with a menu
. There had been acts on it he had never even considered.
And he had tried most of them. He was a man with money and few hard limits, so there was little reason not to.
Brothels had provided the perfect venue for him to explore the darker facets of his desires, while providing him with rules.
Rules, he had learned, were essential for a man like him.
He knew the women enjoyed it too. It was why he had been so certain that Serena...
‘The issue, Beatrice, is that these places truly are dens of immorality.’
‘The kind of immorality I must be protected from because of my health?’
‘And mine,’ he said. ‘If your brother had any idea that I took you...’
‘To a brothel?’
Of course, it had been Hugh who’d accompanied him to the Parisian brothel all those years ago. He was becoming as annoyed with the hypocrisy of the world as Beatrice.
‘Must you say that here?’ he said, looking around. He knew William was not paying attention to them.
But others might be.
‘He would kill you,’ Beatrice said, sounding nearly cheerful. ‘That is a fact.’
‘I would like to avoid being killed by Hugh, and if I had wanted to be killed by him, I would have simply refused to marry you in the first place.’
‘So there are all these rules of society, and half of the people in society simply do not observe them? Tell me, where is the logic in that?’
‘I suppose this,’ he said, looking around, ‘is what separates us from the animals.’
‘That and corsets, I imagine.’
‘Definitely corsets.’
‘I had hoped to find, when I grew up, when I married, that the world was perhaps not so mystifying and unfair. That things were not quite so inequitable between men and women. I had hoped, that there would be a magical moment when all knowledge, and all things, might be open to me. But it is not to be, is it? I will always be... I will always have to live my life half in fantasy. And not even a good fantasy, because I don’t even know...’ She looked up at him, her blue eyes suddenly filled with tears. ‘I do not even know what I want. All these desires with you and me will be half formed. Except for that one moment. That one moment in the garden.’
She went away from him then, and knelt down beside William. Who began to speak to her in an animated fashion.
And he felt...
He felt perhaps like being a duke was pointless. Because with his status and power, he was unable to give Beatrice what she wanted without breaking his vows to Hugh, and William...
Well, none of it bore thinking about, really. He had never been the kind of man to rail at fate. The world did not care. It simply unfolded, one step at a time, and you had to take it. Or die.
As his wife had chosen to do.
No. Serena was not his wife. Beatrice was his wife.
Beatrice was his wife, and that bore thinking about.
CHAPTER TWELVE
On the second day in London, Beatrice had walked William endlessly around the little cluster of townhomes around Grosvenor Square. They had gone out to tea on the third day, though it was unfashionable to bring a child to such a venue.
He had not lasted long. He had become fractious and it had still been worth it, if only because they had left with cloth bags filled with scones.
Which she and William had elected to eat on the floor in his nursery.
Then she had gone to her bedchamber, to allow herself to be dressed to attend her very first ball as an actual lady.
Where she would dance.
But she would only be able to dance with Briggs, as he was her husband.
The partners did switch during many dances.
She had wanted this...
She had wanted it for a very long time.
All of her clothing fit perfectly, her measurements having gone to London ahead of her, the power of Briggs’s fortune and status evident in each stitch of her clothing. The gown her lady’s maid put her in was gold, with glittering beads stitched over a long, filmy skirt. The bodice was low-cut, with shimmering stars sewn around the neckline. Similar stars were fastened to her hair, which was arranged in beautiful, elaborate twists.
She felt beautiful. Truly beautiful. More so than she ever had in her life, with the exception of when Briggs had held her in his arms in the garden when her hair had been down in the simple braid, her body adorned in very little, and she had felt...
She had never thought about her own beauty. At first, she had always harboured anger against her body. For being weak. For failing her, and she had never much considered whether or not it was pleasing to look at. It just pleased her in its weakness, and that was what mattered. When she had found her secret strengths, the ways in which she endured pain...
She had begun to praise her body, for being stronger than all of the illnesses that had attempted to claim her.
A matter of perspective, she supposed. In the same way that being bled could have been nothing but an unendurable pain. She had allowed it to become something else. But this... This hurt, and not in a way that made her feel strong. Her throat ached as she stared at her reflection.
She was beautiful, and it did not matter. For she had a husband, and there would be no man that would look upon her and fall desperately in love. Least of all the man who had married her.
Briggs.
Her breath caught, sharp and hard, and she turned away from her reflection.
‘Thank you,’ she said to her lady’s maid. ‘I am ready.’
A beautiful, crimson-red pelisse was draped over her shoulders, and she walked out through the door of her bedchamber, at the same time Briggs walked out of his.
He was stunning. In black as ever, with breeches that moulded in a tantalising fashion to his body. She had so many more questions about that body than she had before. And such a great interest in what she might find beneath his clothes.
There was an intensity to his gaze when he looked at her, but just as quickly as she’d seen it, it vanished. Replaced by the cool detachment he preferred to treat her with.
‘You are ready,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘A good observation, though I suppose I should be grateful that you did not ask if I was ready, which would imply that perhaps I did not appear to be so.’
‘You appear more than ready to steal all of the attention at the ball.’
‘How lovely for me. And what shall I do with the attention?’
‘Allow yourself to bathe in the envy of others,’ he said, his voice low, and rich. Rolling over her skin. ‘For how often does one get to be the fixation of every man in a room, and the focal point of the fury of every woman?’
‘I can say certainly that I have never.’
She felt as if he had just given her a compliment, but she also felt like she was trembling, so it was difficult to linger on the good feeling for too long.
‘But isn’t that just more fantasy? Imagining what it is others think?’
‘Do you have something against fantasy?’
‘Perhaps I am simply tired of it, because it is all I’ve ever had.’ She wasn’t hungry for more fantasy, she wanted real.
She wanted more of those moments she’d had with him before. Real and raw. Pleasure and pain. Physical. Not gauzy, sweet dreams.
But she did not know if he would ever touch her like that again.
It made her despair. She didn’t want despair, not tonight.
She didn’t want to dwell on what could be, or what might not be.
She wanted to live.
They made their way out of the house and down to the carriage. He, rather than his footman, opened the door for her. When they were ensconced inside, she felt as if all the air had been taken from her lungs. Being this close to him was... It was difficult. It created a tangl
e of desires inside her, and she felt beset by them.
‘When I was a girl, all I could do was dream.’
‘Tonight is not a dream,’ he said. ‘Tonight is very real.’
‘You will dance with me?’
‘I will share a dance with you.’
‘No,’ she said, firm. ‘I have dreamt of this all of my life. I wanted to go to a ball and have a handsome man see me from across the room and know that his life would never be complete if he did not cross that space and take me into his arms. I will never have that. I have known that for a time now. I knew it even when I thought I was contriving to set myself up to marry James. I have had to let that go. But I ask you... I beg you... Please, give me this. If you can give me nothing else.’
She felt vaguely foolish, begging like this. But this was her life, her life. And everyone around her was making these decisions for her and she had tried to claim her freedom, and she had not been successful.
So if she had to beg to get what she wanted tonight, then she would.
‘As many dances as you wish,’ he said, his voice rough. And it sent a thrill through her body.
It was as if he cared.
And that made her hope.
* * *
When they arrived, they were swept into a glittering ballroom, replete with frescoes of cherubs, not half so lovely as the ones at Maynard Park. Nor as scandalous as the ones at Bybee House.
But they were nice all the same.
It was a thrill, to be in a new place, a new ballroom. To be at a party with different people.
And to actually be part of it, rather than standing on the fringes. It had not been long ago that she had been at her brother’s house party and got herself ruined. And she did wonder how her reception might be.
It turned out, there was no need for worry. Briggs was ushered immediately into a group of men, and Beatrice was summarily captured by their wives.
‘I did not think that he would ever marry,’ said a woman who was introduced to Beatrice as Lady Smythe.
‘No, assuredly not,’ said Lady Hannibal. ‘He had confirmed bachelor neatly stamped across him.’
‘Well. Circumstances...’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the Viscountess Roxbury. ‘We heard all about the circumstances.’
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