Lessons of Desire

by Madeline Hunter

  Turning to feminine games did not end the intimacy but it did lighten the mood. Together they walked to a looking glass on the wall. Alexia removed Phaedra’s hat and settled the new one on her crown.

  “I thought to make a bonnet, but that would look odd if you do not dress your hair,” Alexia said. She twitched at the large soft bow on the hat’s crown. “The prussian blue looks even better than I hoped. It is a soft color with your complexion, don’t you think?”

  Phaedra gazed at her reflection. It was not an image that matched the one she had of herself. The hat made her appear paler, somehow. But also less young. She saw a woman approaching full maturity who was no longer an innocent. No longer a girl. No longer a daughter.

  She stepped closer and peered harder, stripping away the memories of other reflections so she could see what was really there now, in front of her eyes.

  “It is beautiful. You are beautiful.”

  The praise startled her out of her reverie. The reflection of the room had changed in the looking glass. Alexia no longer stood behind her. Elliot did.

  He would have liked some warning. Perhaps Alexia feared he would refuse the assignation if she proposed it. Maybe she believed he and Phaedra could not claim it was accidental that way. Still, he had never expected to find Phaedra here when he responded to Alexia’s note requesting that he call.

  Phaedra had not even heard him enter the chamber. She had been engrossed in her reflection, studying it as if she did not know the face she viewed. Alexia had silenced his greeting with a finger to her lips, then walked away ignoring his scowl of displeasure.

  Phaedra turned in surprise just as the library door quietly closed on Alexia’s departure.

  “Do not scold her,” Elliot said. “She no doubt thinks she is helping.”

  “I was not thinking of scolding her.” She carefully lifted the new hat off and set it down on a chair. “I am glad to see you, Elliot. I thought you were out of town.”

  “I returned yesterday.”

  He was glad to see her too. Ridiculously glad. Elated like a boy. He did not care for the evidence that he had made no progress in conquering the hold that she had on him.

  She sat on a divan. He dared not join her. He wanted her so badly his teeth were already on edge. If he got close enough to touch he would be lost. He remained standing a good fifteen feet away.

  “It is convenient, this meeting,” he said. “I was going to write to you. You will be approached by the Earl of Chalgrove. He wants to talk about the memoirs. I ask that you listen to him.”

  She did not object, but her expression reflected her impatience with all the requests she received about those memoirs.

  “Your home has remained secure?” he asked.

  “There have been no other intrusions. The printer now has the manuscript and he will keep it very safe for me.”

  “How long before—”

  “A month, he says.”

  A little smile played at her lips. He did not think the pending publication amused her. She merely appeared happy, much as she had in the library that day while she looked at him.

  She confounded him. How could a woman make him so proud and also so miserable and angry?

  “I met with Pettigrew yesterday,” he said, broaching the how without planning to.

  She picked up some white gloves and fussed with them, smoothing them together into a neat pair. “It was good of you to do so.”

  “Yes, it was.” Too much of his resentment sounded in his voice. He had left that meeting seething. “He intends to make a mockery of you, Phaedra. They will paint you as a woman that no rational man of good standing would ever want as a wife. They will use that to convince the court that the vows were not consensual, that I merely fell on my sword to save you.”

  She looked up from the gloves. “He will only speak one truth that the whole world already accepts, and another that you and I know to be accurate.”

  “You are very cool, Phaedra. Very confident in what you think is true. Damnation, but I almost told him to go to hell. I came within one breath of—”

  She waited for the rest.

  Of telling him we married willingly. Of claiming you as mine forever. Of lying if necessary, in order to end this separation and to avoid the life of half-measures you offer me.

  “Phaedra, I want you to withdraw your petition. I will make any promises that you want to reassure you about this marriage.”

  “You would go to such extremes to save us all from the scandal this will create?”

  “I don’t give a damn about the scandal. Not for me at least. I do not want to see you endure it, however, and this will avoid that.”

  “I will survive it. I have always been somewhat scandalous. I think that I know the real reason, and it is shortsighted. I miss you too, Elliot. I miss the pleasure and your company. I count the days to when I can hold you again. It would be a mistake to act rashly to hasten that moment, however.”

  “Once again you assume you understand when you do not.”

  She was going to make him spell it out. Of course she was. She did not know where his head and heart had been the last weeks.

  “I want this marriage to stand, Phaedra. I want us to repeat the vows so there is no mistaking its validity. I have been thinking about this and I find myself praying that your petition is denied. I do not want you married to me that way, but God help me, I find myself wanting that if it is the only way.”

  She rose and walked over to him. She looked like an angel in that blue dress, with her copper curls rippling down to her hips. But no angel had eyes like hers, that so frankly revealed desire.

  He crossed his arms to thwart the impulse to grab her. She saw the movement for what it was and stopped far enough away.

  “I am flattered, Elliot. However, it is our separation that makes you think that way. Once we are together again—”

  “No, damn it. I am not speaking out of base hunger and lust. Even when I can have you again, it will not be enough. I love you, Phaedra, and being your good friend will not satisfy me. I cannot live that way.”

  He had not planned this ultimatum. His angry heart had spoken without consulting his brain. Now there it was suddenly, hanging like a sword between them.

  “You tell me that you love me for the first time, Elliot, then you list conditions.” She appeared astonished and sad. So sad it made his heart clench.

  “I was not allowed to speak of love before. I wanted things from you, remember? But that is behind us now if you have gone to press. I have wanted you more than anything else for a long time, and I must speak honestly so you understand why I cannot do it your way.”

  She stepped closer. Desire long denied tensed through his body, making all of him hard. “If we love each other, truly love each other, it should work any way we choose, Elliot. Is it not better to share free love, the way we have up until now?”

  “We have not been sharing free love up until now, Phaedra. We have been sharing free pleasure. I miss that, but I have seen more clearly in its absence. It is not enough anymore. Nor is mere friendship. Not for me at least.”

  She reached out and gently touched his face. Her fingers felt like cool velvet, but they still seared his skin.

  He clutched her hand and kissed her palm. He closed his eyes while he tried to control what she did to him. He had been living in hell since that dinner party. Now he endured its worst torture in touching her again. That, more than anything else, told him that he was right. He could not do it her way.

  His hold on his sense frayed rapidly. He wanted to settle this argument the way they always had, by claiming her body and trying to brand his name on her soul.

  He looked in her eyes. “I speak of love, but you do not, Phaedra. Perhaps I was wrong and you do not feel it. Maybe you fear it and what it does to a person, or maybe it was only desire on your part after all.”

  He did not want to hear that he was right. He did not need to face that truth today too. He released her and str
ode to the door.

  “I do love you, Elliot. More than I can bear. I love you so much it pains me.”

  He stopped. He looked back. Emotion twisted her face and tears flooded her eyes.

  “If you do, then you know that there is no such thing as free love, Phaedra. If there is truly love, one cannot remain truly free.”

  “One can. We can.”

  He shook his head. “The urge to possess is too strong and the tendency toward jealousy too human. To love with no requirements on the other, with no desire or hope of permanence, is not natural. I lost my freedom when I fell in love with you, darling. I am now bound by chains no matter what happens between us. I fear that I am enslaved for life, but I’ll be damned before I submit to the constant torture of wondering if you are mine.”

  She looked like he had hit her. The impulse to walk back and take her in his arms, to accept whatever she offered, swept him like a tidal wave. He could probably find some simulacrum of happiness living the way she wanted.

  He waited a long count for her to say something. Anything. Feeling so empty that he thought he would never breathe right again, he left the library.

  Elliot was long gone before Phaedra fought through her confusion. Her shock left her trembling. She sat on the divan, dazed and disbelieving. The cold stream of reality began sliding through her, chilling her to her core.

  She tried to accommodate what had just happened. In the space of a few minutes Elliot had declared his love, demanded marriage, and thrown her over.

  Thrown her over.

  His way or no way. That was the sum of it. Just like a man.

  Her heart tried to offer her some armor. It found the breastplate of her beliefs and even dredged up the shield of anger.

  It didn’t work. Nothing did. The truth sliced her heart to shreds. He was gone. Totally gone. Even if she lost the petition and they found themselves actually married, he was leaving her life.

  Her eyes stung so badly that she could not see. Her throat burned and tightened and she gasped for breath. A sob shook out of her, wracking her body. Then another and another, until she buried her face in her skirt.

  Arms circled her shoulders and lifted them. A soft voice soothed endearments. She accepted the motherly warmth and the sisterly support, and cried out her misery into Alexia’s shoulder.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I will never forgive Hayden. Whoever expected him to be so strict and capricious?”

  Aunt Henrietta’s vexation finally penetrated Elliot’s concentration. He had managed not to hear most of her complaints. He turned the last page of his manuscript and reluctantly gave her his attention.

  She had refused to return to Aylesbury last month. She had kept her daughter here with her as well. Christian had cleaned those dueling pistols every evening until Suttonly left town. Now mother and daughter wore long faces that said there would be no forgiveness.

  “You do not need to stay here, Aunt Hen. Return to your own home in Surrey. If he is a true suitor, he will find you and Caroline there. Give your consent and all is done.”

  “Leave this house? Easterbrook cannot manage without me. He is indifferent to domestic matters and his housekeeper and steward were robbing him every day. It is my duty to be here.”

  With the end of the drama regarding Suttonly, Christian had reverted to his old ways. He rarely came to meals and spent his time in his own chambers. Normally Elliot would have disappeared too, leaving the house to Hen, but he dared not venture to the museum’s reading room again.

  If he saw Phaedra there he would abandon all sense. He would beg her to forgive him and agree to anything she wanted, no matter how miserable it made him. Then he would strip her and lay her down and lift her hips and put his mouth—

  Hell.

  Easterbrook’s library had all the necessities. The book was as good as it was ever likely to be. It would have been done a week ago except for Aunt Hen’s frequent intrusions.

  “I expected Alexia to support me more,” Hen fretted. “If any woman understands the importance of a good marriage, it is Alexia.”

  “Well, Hen, we could have Caroline try it Alexia’s way. We can turn her out without a penny, make her become a governess, and hope that a man like my brother falls in love with her.”

  Hen could be a bit vacant and dreamy, but she was not stupid. She raised her eyebrows at the sarcasm. “What has affected your humor so badly? Of late you are beginning to sound like Easterbrook.”

  Many things were affecting his humor. Sleepless nights and distracting days. Hungers of the body and angers in the heart. Another meeting two days prior with Phaedra’s lawyer had done nothing to improve matters.

  Christian’s fury that his own brother refused to seize Phaedra’s publishing house while that marriage remained ambiguous had created a rift that might never be breached.

  Mostly his humor turned dark because he had not seen Phaedra since that day in Alexia’s library one month, two days, and twenty hours ago.

  By now he should be conquering whatever hold she had on him. He was not a fool. He was not a poet either, damn it. It annoyed him that he had fallen so stupidly in love with the only woman in England who did not understand the benefits of a good marriage and who loathed the notion of any marriage at all.

  He hoped his aunt would leave him to his stormy mood. She was the sort of woman who thought it was her duty to help one be happier. If she embarked on such efforts now he would want to strangle her.

  Fortunately, a footman entered the library just as she began cajoling him to adopt a sunny outlook. The man carried a package that he placed right on top of Elliot’s manuscript.

  “Lord Easterbrook told me to bring this to you, sir.”

  A note from Christian accompanied the package. Well done.

  As soon as Elliot touched the paper he knew what it was. His brother’s two words were not those of praise but instead an expression of sardonic fury.

  He peeled off the wrapping. Unbound pages faced him, awaiting a trip to a bindery. The first printed sheet held a lengthy title. Memoirs of an M.P. during the Reigns of Kings George III and IV: Being the recollections of Richard Drury regarding events political and cultural in London and its environs, with considerable comments on persons both famous and infamous.

  He had been expecting it to be published any day now. Christian must have told the footmen to haunt the bookstores and grab the first copy off the press.

  “What have you got there, Elliot? A book?”

  “Yes. A rather dry political one.” He picked up the stack of paper, his own manuscript along with Drury’s book. “Please excuse me now. I must attend to a few things.”

  He left Henrietta in the library. He carried his pile to the morning room to find some privacy.

  The pages were all cut. Christian had read it before sending it down. Well done, you worthless, disloyal excuse for a son.

  Elliot turned the first page. Seeing this book angered him more than he expected. He had no right to the anger, none at all. He did not regret that he had not stopped her. He just resented profoundly that he had been forced to choose between bad actions for a good cause and good actions in a hopeless one.

  He set aside the emotions evoked by this book and Phaedra’s duty and his love. Those were for another time. Eventually they would be about a different life.

  He began reading.

  Phaedra penned some figures into the account book at the offices of Merris Langton, Publisher. She added up the results. The final sum heartened her. If things kept up like this the press might survive. The debts could be paid down enough to keep the bailiffs from the door at least.

  Jenny came in, carrying another sheaf of papers. “Hatchard’s is taking forty more, and Lindsell another twenty.”

  Phaedra took the orders. Some of these booksellers had been surprised to find themselves dealing with a woman, but the success of Richard Drury’s memoirs made such sentiments insignificant. If they were also surprised to d
eal with Jenny, a female clerk, that had mattered even less.

  “It is going very well, isn’t it, Miss Blair?” Jenny said.

  “Most well, Jenny. As people talk, there will be better sales in the days ahead. I think we will need to print more copies.”

  Jenny left and Phaedra returned to her accounts. She remembered her father lying in his bed, putting that manuscript into her hands, demanding the promise that had since caused so much trouble.

  Had he known how it would be? Had he included the “considerable comments on persons famous and infamous” to ensure it would sell well, and she would be given more security? He had little else to bequeath her and that hundred a year from her uncle only went so far.

  She could probably take some money for herself soon. If she chose the next book well, there could be a regular income from this business. She dipped her pen, wondering what she would buy with the first few pounds. Maybe a new divan—

  A twinge below her heart caught the daydream up short. No, not a divan. There might be other needs for the money soon.

  The twinge twisted again. So did another sensation, that of a hand squeezing her heart.

  She set down the pen. Now that the book was published, it was time to speak with Elliot. Today was as good a day as the next. Her heart beat heavily with both dread and excitement at the thought of doing so. It was not that she did not welcome seeing him. If anything she welcomed it too much, even if she did not expect the meeting to go very well.

  She stood and steadied her courage with a deep breath. She swung her black cape around her body. She lifted a wrapped copy of her father’s book, told Jenny she was leaving for the day, and set off on a long walk.

  Elliot gazed out the windows of the morning room. The garden’s trees were beginning to change colors and the last blooms hung their heads in response to the day’s chill. A memory came to him, of velvet jewels surrounding an evening terrace near Paestum.

  He glanced back at the table. Richard Drury’s memoirs sat there in a neat stack of pages. It had taken him three hours to read the book.