The Trouble With Virtue: A Comfortable WifeA Lady by Day

by Stephanie Laurens

  Josephine turned abruptly, just as Edgar announced their visitor and Bentley jumped off the chair and ran to the doorway in a frenzy of wagging and wiggling.

  “Sir Noah Rutledge, your ladyship,” Edgar said.

  Sir Noah picked up Bentley and strode into the drawing room as if it was a ship and he was its master, showing off his coarse and wild manners by appearing not half an hour since she’d left him with Elias. What the devil did he think he was doing?

  “Sir Noah,” Josephine managed to say calmly. “What a happy surprise.”

  “How gratifying that you think so.” His blue eyes sparkled with calculations that told her this visit was part of some kind of strategy. He rubbed Bentley’s neck and looked at Pauline with interest. “Someone is dreaming of the sea?” He spoke as if they’d all been closely acquainted for a lifetime.

  “These are my nieces, Miss Pauline Eckert and Miss Leticia Eckert.” Lettie dipped a graceful curtsy. Pauline pushed herself out of her chair and managed a small bob.

  “Pauline is forever drawing ships and turbulent seas and pirate coves,” Lettie informed him. “Other young women draw flowers and fruit. Pauline draws cannonballs and barrels of rum.”

  “Vastly more interesting subjects,” Sir Noah agreed.

  Pauline—quiet, sensible Pauline—moved her arm over her sketchbook as though it contained nudes. “I draw flowers and fruit,” she protested.

  “Passiflora and coconuts,” Lettie scoffed. “I daresay she came to London with the singular hope of hearing Auntie Josephine tell stories about Corsair Kate.”

  “I did not.”

  “Corsair Kate.” Sir Noah’s brows edged upward. “I had no idea your ladyship kept such company.” His mouth said your ladyship, but his eyes roamed over her with anything but respect, lingering near the base of her throat.

  “Katherine Kinloch was a childhood friend,” Josephine explained evenly. “I haven’t seen her since we were girls—” since before Katherine’s ship was tragically captured by Barbary pirates en route to Gibraltar “—so I have no stories to tell, as Lettie well knows.” She gave Lettie a scolding look. “Now. Do forgive us, Sir Noah, but we are expected elsewhere within the hour.”

  “I’m nothing if not forgiving,” he said, handing Bentley into Lettie’s waiting arms and following Josephine out.

  Outside the room, she faced him. “I’m sure I remember telling you I could not possibly have any papers ready this quickly,” she said evenly.

  “Oh, certainly not.” His tone said he didn’t expect her to ever have them ready. “I thought perhaps, since you plan to be out for the afternoon, I might be permitted to view some of the shipyard records while you’re away. Since you won’t be working on them, it seemed the perfect time.”

  “They’re in a terrible state of disorganization, I’m afraid. It would avail you nothing to see them now.”

  “Wouldn’t it.”

  “But I will let you know the moment I’ve been able to put something in order.”

  “I’m sure you will. In the meantime, I would be just as happy to merely discuss the situation with the shipyard.”

  “As would I, and I certainly would make the time to discuss it with you now, except that my nieces are waiting, and I am not dressed for visiting. So I’m afraid our discussion will have to wait.”

  “On the contrary.” He smiled wickedly. “I’m happy to discuss it while you prepare for your afternoon.”

  Irritation reared up, but she laughed. “Sir Noah, I am not one of those ladies who make a habit of inviting men into her dressing room. You may see yourself out.”

  “Very well. Perhaps another time.”

  Josephine turned her back and went to her dressing room, where Mary already had her afternoon gown set out. She was nearly down to her shift and stays when Mary let out a small cry. “Your ladyship!”

  Josephine turned to find Sir Noah lounging in the doorway, watching her. “Have I done something out of turn? Do forgive me. There are so many rules of behavior in London that I’ve forgotten over the years.”

  The devil he had. But if he thought she was going to scream and cower, he was destined for disappointment. “Please continue, Mary.”

  After a moment’s hesitation Mary unpinned the right side of Josephine’s stomacher. “What information about the shipyard do you find such a pressing need to discover, Sir Noah?”

  More pins, and Mary lifted the stomacher away.

  Sir Noah’s eyes roamed over Josephine’s shift and stays. “I suppose we could start with the number of ships currently under contract,” he suggested.

  “Seventeen.”

  “Seventeen. I saw only four in the shipyard yesterday.”

  Off came the morning’s jupe, billowing over her shoulders and head before Mary whisked it away and left her in petticoats. “Shipbuilding is a robust business—or were you not aware of that when you arrived at the idea to start your own shipyard?”

  He smiled a little. “Truth be told, I wasn’t aware of much. Bit foxed at the time, I’m afraid.” He rubbed his chin, and her eye followed the Ottoman design tattooed on the back of his hand.

  “Do you always develop ideas for grand business ventures when you’re intoxicated, Sir Noah?”

  “Mmm,” he said noncommittally. Those blue eyes wandered over her lazily while Mary cinched a new petticoat. “Sometimes I develop other ideas.”

  A sensation like a warm wind feathered her skin.

  “But this particular time,” she pressed, ignoring all that, “you decided that your life would not be complete until you’d uprooted your elderly cousin and built a shipyard of your own.”

  His eyes flew sharply to hers, but as usual, he smiled. “The flight of fancy of a pair of drunken sailors,” he said. “Turned out not to seem so fanciful by the light of day.”

  “You have a partner in this undertaking?”

  “Not unless Elias changes his mind.”

  “You said pair of sailors.”

  “A friend.” Sir Noah pushed away from the doorjamb and idly crossed the dressing room, pausing to study a statuette while Mary briskly added the afternoon’s jupe and pinned on a gray stomacher with blue lace.

  “One who apparently did not find the idea quite so unfanciful,” she said.

  “My friend is dead.” He walked to the connecting door and looked into her bedchamber.

  “I’m sorry.” She watched him cast his eye about her bedchamber—the walls, the furnishings.

  The bed.

  Something captured his attention and he took a few steps into the room where he had absolutely no right and no business being, to look at—devil take it—the painting of Gibraltar over her fireplace.

  Already her mind raced for an explanation, reached for a cool tone that would betray nothing of what the painting meant to her.

  “This is quite a magnificent rendition of the Rock at sunset,” he called.

  Sunset, not sunrise—he knew it that intimately, her beloved Rock.

  Mary finished pinning the robe into place and finally—finally—Josephine was dressed for the afternoon. “Please tell Lettie and Pauline that I shall be with them shortly,” Josephine said to Mary. And then to Sir Noah, “When I saw how the colors in the painting matched the room, there was no question I had to have it.” He did not need to know that the painting had come first and the room decor second.

  He emerged from her bedchamber, and she finally drew breath. “And here I thought perhaps you had a secret fondness for the Mediterranean,” he said.

  She wanted to ask if he’d been ashore at Gibraltar recently, and if it had changed, and what he thought of the Rock when it was shrouded in mist.

  Instead, she laughed. “The Mediterranean is your province, Sir Noah.”

  He stopped in front of her. �
�And London is yours.” He fingered a lock of hair falling at her neck The corners of his blue eyes creased with amusement. “Joseph.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “YOU WANT TO TURN the screws on Lady Mareck?” In the crowded coffeehouse, Nicholas Warre leaned back casually in his chair, shook his head and laughed. “Let me put this in terms you’ll understand, Rutledge. You’re firing a blunderbuss at a twenty-gun brigadoon.”

  It was not what Noah wanted to hear, but he smiled. “Perhaps I ought to consider a full broadside.”

  Nick only shook his head. “I know a dozen men who’ve been hoping to give her a full broadside for years.” The Earl of Croston’s youngest son had the kind of perfect face that would have ladies trampling each other to attract his attention, but the dark circles beneath his piercing green eyes were something new. “She’ll turn a man’s proposition over her knee and give it a good thumping, and he’ll walk away feeling as if he’s been given a macaroon and a pat on the head.” The corner of Nick’s mouth curved. “She’s impenetrable.”

  “Is she, now?” Noah laughed, even as his hand tightened around his coffee. He remembered how she’d looked, standing there in nothing but her underclothes. Watching her maid undress her had turned the screws on him. It was easy to imagine what she would look like with all of it stripped away—panniers, stays, shift, all of it.

  And not too big a leap to imagine spreading her across that perfectly furnished bed, proving just how penetrable she really was.

  God. He imagined how outraged she must have been when he’d followed her into her rooms, and smiled.

  “Certainly she and Woodbridge are close,” Nick said, “even if their only relation was through Mareck. But she can’t have much influence over his business decisions.”

  “This is about more than just business,” Noah replied. “And my impression is that her influence over him runs deep.” He thought of the way she’d touched Elias, the way Elias’s eyes had warmed when he’d looked at her even as he complained about everything under the sun.

  “I wouldn’t doubt she resents the hell out of you over this shipyard business,” Nick said, “though who’s to say what stirs inside that pretty head.” Pretty? Lady Mareck had to be one of the most stunning women in London. “Why not join Woodbridge here in London? No, never mind—anyone can see you’ve practically become a Moor yourself.” Only Nick could say that in a way that made it sound like a compliment. “I doubt Lady Mareck shares your affinity for the Mediterranean. Could be part of the trouble you’re running up against. Spent a year or two in Gibraltar, from what I understand—”

  “Gibraltar.”

  “Yes, and I doubt she remembers it with much fondness. Trapped in some godforsaken outpost while other girls her age were preparing for their first Season.”

  “When?”

  “Just before the war, I believe. Her father was lieutenant-general with the engineers there.”

  His mind did the math, came up with a year. Lady Mareck. Josephine. Gibraltar. An old story of Ahmet’s whispered through his mind, suggesting an impossible connection.

  He thought of that painting in her bedchamber. In every other respect, Lady Mareck’s private rooms were a perfect reflection of the lady herself. Elegant. Fashionable. Luxurious yet restrained. But then there was that painting. The Rock of Gibraltar. It took up practically the entire space above her fireplace. Dominated the room. It would be the first thing she saw when she awoke in the morning and the last thing she saw before closing her eyes to sleep—and the thing she would look at while doing anything else that might happen in that bed... But that was a dangerous line of thinking.

  “And since we’re on the subject of the Mediterranean,” Nick added, “what can you tell me about Katherine Kinloch that I haven’t already read in the papers?”

  “I suppose that depends on what you’ve read. I haven’t met her, if that’s what you mean, though a friend of mind did once.” Ahmet’s wistful, grinning face exploded into his memory.

  “Is she a pirate?” Nick asked.

  “Not in the traditional sense.”

  “Explain the atraditional sense.”

  “I would describe Katherine Kinloch as a merchant trader with a penchant for making prizes of vessels of questionable activity,” Noah told him.

  But it wasn’t Katherine Kinloch that Ahmet had usually spoken of. It was a young woman he’d met on a voyage to England.

  Her family passed the voyage below, sick as dogs. But my sweet little Josephine, she loved the waves.

  Lady Mareck—Josephine—had lived in Gibraltar at exactly the right time.

  It didn’t necessarily mean anything. There could have been any number of young English girls of military families with fathers stationed in Gibraltar. Josephine wasn’t such an uncommon name.

  “What do you want with Katherine Kinloch?” he asked absently.

  Nick’s lips tightened grimly. “Every bloody thing she’s got.” Nick began talking about a bill of attainder he was sponsoring in the House of Lords, but Noah was hearing Ahmet’s drunken reverie, telling the tale of the young lover he would never forget—an English girl on a ship bound from Gibraltar to London, on which Ahmet had merely been a lineman. It was surprising that Ahmet could remember a lover at all, he’d taken so many. But this one, this young Josephine, had been special.

  It just wasn’t possible that Lady Mareck could be the Josephine of Ahmet’s reveries.

  Was it?

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT AT the Bylar musicale, it became clear that as long as Sir Noah was in London, there would be no escaping him. There he was, talking with Lord Bylar himself, casting Josephine a knowing glance that made it clear he was remembering that afternoon.

  Oh, Sir Noah. After inviting yourself into my bedchamber, you can hardly imagine I could be moved by your presence at a musicale.

  No. The sudden tension in her spine was entirely due to the fact that Pauline was conversing with Mr. Crumley, and Josephine’s complete inability to determine whether the man had sparked even the slightest bit of Pauline’s interest.

  It had nothing to do with the memory of Sir Noah’s eyes roaming over her half-clad body, or the fact that it was impossible not to be aware of him at every moment. She knew exactly where he was, exactly when he was looking at her and when he wasn’t.

  Already the company had begun to be seated. Josephine moved toward Pauline, intending to help things along in any way possible, but Sir Noah intercepted her before she’d gone ten steps.

  Her fists curled. She made a studied effort to relax them.

  Sir Noah’s eyes creased with amusement, as though he could read her every thought and was enjoying himself tremendously at her expense. “Have you consulted a doctor about your nervous condition?” he murmured. “You seem a bit tense.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. He recommended solitude.”

  “Then by all means, let us seek it out.”

  “The music is about to begin, Sir Noah.” A quick glance told her Lettie and Captain Ryson were already comfortably seated together, and Pauline—heaven be praised—was seating herself next to Mr. Crumley.

  “Then let us be seated. Do, allow me.” He showed her to a seat near the back of the artfully arranged chairs, where few eyes would watch them during the performance. She started to object, but the other seats that caught her eye were suddenly filled.

  She arranged herself on the chair Sir Noah found for her. He took the liberty of pulling the adjacent chair a little closer to hers before seating himself.

  “I find it difficult to believe,” he said under his breath, “that there isn’t a soul in London who has suspected your double life.”

  “By the time you leave, will there be a soul who isn’t fully informed?”

  “I have no desire to disrupt your life the way
you have disrupted mine, Lady Mareck.”

  “Then by all means, do let me know if there is any way I can assist with reprovisioning your ship for the return south.”

  His eyes had a way of lingering where they didn’t belong—on her lips, the base of her throat, the tops of her breasts.

  The music began and conversations quieted.

  Josephine fixed her attention on the quartet. Sir Noah’s arm rested close enough to touch her skirts at the slightest motion. From the corner of her eye she saw him flex his right hand. His fingers were long. Thick.

  She inhaled deeply. Silently.

  Exhaled slowly.

  A tiny itch irritated her right shoulder.

  Ignore it.

  The itch grew. She lifted her left hand and rubbed her fingers over it. Saw Sir Noah turn his head to watch. She didn’t need to look to know his gaze had shifted to her breasts.

  Her skin flushed, and she tried to remain perfectly still. Inside her stays, the tips of her breasts grew firm.

  She returned her hand to her lap. Realized she hadn’t drawn breath in half a minute.

  Sir Noah shifted in his seat. His knee nudged her skirts. It was a strong, solid knee, joining a muscular limb made steady by years of fighting for balance atop the waves. His stockings hugged every contour, disappearing inside large, buckled shoes.

  One of Honoria’s favorite proverbs about the size of a man’s feet lodged itself in her thoughts.

  Suddenly, Sir Noah leaned close—so close she could feel his breath against her ear when he spoke. “Truth be known, they’re bloody uncomfortable,” he murmured.

  She frowned and slanted her eyes toward him.

  “My shoes.” He extended his leg a little.

  Devil take the man.

  She fixed her attention firmly on the cellist. From the corner of her eye, she saw Sir Noah smile.

  The quartet transitioned from a lilting, rhythmic piece to a slow and stately one, then picked up the tempo once more. Quiet conversations whispered here and there among the audience. It didn’t take long for Sir Noah to murmur in her ear again.