Mistress by Midnight

by Maggie Robinson

  This was now the third full day of her mistressness. Was that even a word? Mistressship? Too many of the letter ‘s’. Mistresshood? Whatever it was, it was not agreeing with her. She was not used to idleness or isolation. She could not fault Con for the appointments in the house or the well-stocked bookshelves. But there was simply not a thing for her to do besides read and stare at her freckled reflection in the mirrors positioned throughout the house. Even the garden was immaculately weed-free, each dying petal plucked by unseen hands so all was tidy and serene.

  She paced her room in irritation, finally summoning Martine to help her change from her new day dress to one she had brought with her. Laurette had not thought it too shabby when she packed it, but in comparison to the clothes in her dressing room, it was a horror…. Good. She felt horrible. At least the old blue gown was hers, sewn by Sadie too many years ago to recollect. Laurette would wear it as she paced the upstairs parlor, paced the downstairs parlor, paced the garden. Con had given her no instructions about leaving the house, but with her luck she was likely to bump into an acquaintance and all would be lost.

  It was one thing to lie by letter, quite another to look into someone’s face and dissemble. Laurette had never been good at telling fibs, although she had left out a great deal of narration growing up. And look where that had gotten her. At one time she had thought it fortunate that her parents were so distracted with drink and gambling that she was able to slip off with Con. Now she saw the error of that. She had a secret child and a wastrel brother, and she was waiting for her Machiavellian lover.

  If she had been a young lady properly brought-up by proper parents, she would know how to occupy the useless hours that stretched ahead of her. She might be tatting or playing the pianoforte that was below. Embroidering a slipper or arranging flowers.

  Well. Perhaps she could arrange flowers. The ones on the mantle were a bit droopy. At home she would gather up buds and put them in clean jars. Here she had crystal vases. The garden was in riotous bloom.

  She stopped in the kitchen for shears, drawn by the rapid chatter. Both Nadia and Qalhata were engrossed in tonight’s supper preparations, the scrubbed table laden with all manner of foodstuffs. They seemed alarmed to see her. After a lengthy discussion as to why she didn’t ring for someone, Nadia needed to be convinced that Laurette was capable of cutting her own flowers and being entrusted with a pair of scissors. As if, Laurette thought grumpily, wielding scissors could cut her way out of her current predicament and get her back home.

  “I shan’t stab you with them,” Laurette mumbled, exasperated. “I shan’t stab myself, I swear. It hasn’t come to that.”

  “Oh! My lady!” Nadia rubbed her hands nervously on her pinafore. “Are you not happy here?”

  “No. Yes,” she said, catching the dismay on Nadia’s face. Laurette sat down on a kitchen chair. She reached across the table for a green bean and snapped it in half, tossing it into the earthenware bowl. “You are all very kind. It’s just that—” Laurette looked at the women. They would think her fit for Bedlam if she complained she wanted to work. They were both up before dawn and until well after dark creating this blissful artificial life for her. To them just one day of utter idleness would seem like a dream. Even though the house was small, Laurette knew how much effort it involved. She snapped another bean.

  “I live in the country, you see. I keep chickens and a garden. I’m just not used to inactivity. Waiting.”

  “Ah.” Nadia sliced a cucumber for the salad, so thin it was transparent. “You are lonely. I have neglected you.”

  “No, no. I don’t expect you to entertain me. I’ll get used to this. It’s not for so very long.”

  Nadia and Qalhata exchanged a look.

  “I’m sorry. I’m keeping you from your tasks. If you will just tell me where the shears are?”

  Qalhata rose from the table and went to the Welsh dresser. “You may keep these for your flowers. I have other pairs.”

  Laurette took the shiny scissors. They were as new as the rest of the furnishings of the house. “Thank you. I won’t trouble you again.”

  “Is no trouble. We are here for you, my lady.”

  The long kitchen opened to both the street and the garden by way of stone steps. Laurette shut the door behind her, because she was certain she did not want to hear the women’s comments on her spoiled behavior, if they even discussed her in a language she could understand. Everyone in this house was far more capable linguistically than she. Perhaps she could get them to teach her to speak something other than English and very fractured French.

  Ah, how ridiculous. As if they would have time for that. She was the only one with time on her hands. Laurette had seen even the young kitchen boy doing chores upstairs. Aram seemed to divide his job between Con’s townhouse and hers, but he was here in the evening to sleep beside his wife.

  Laurette glanced at the little timepiece she had pinned to the bodice of her dress. The watch had been her mother’s, and it told her she was but fifteen minutes closer to Con’s arrival since the last time she looked. She sat down on the stone bench. The back wall of the garden was bathed in sunlight, its bricks warm against her back. Deep blue and white tiles that matched the footpath were set at random intervals into the brick. Con must have rebuilt the rear wall, for it seemed twice as thick as her neighbors’, which she spied from her balcony. Thick glossy ivy climbed along the side walls, too well-established to have been created for her benefit.

  She closed her eyes, listening to the water splash. She should rise and cut some flowers. Roses, or perhaps something unfamiliar. The garden was full of plants she could not identify, all growing miraculously in the city in their square beds. Her garden-mad mother would have loved it, but would have been shocked to find her daughter installed as Con’s mistress.

  And then she heard the groan.

  It was actually more of a growl, coming from the next garden. There was a yip, a shriek, and the thud and crash of objects being thrown to the ground. Breakable objects from the sound of them splattering on the hard surface.

  “There!” came a satisfied feminine voice. “That will show the bastard!”

  Laurette moved to the ivy-covered wall, her curiosity quite overcoming her lassitude. “I say, is something wrong? Are you all right?”

  “I am now. Who’s there?”

  “Your neighbor.” She thought about giving a false name, but she never had been a happy liar. She’d lied too much. “I’m Laurette.”

  “How do you do? I’m called Charlotte. When he remembers my name,” the woman mumbled darkly.

  How very odd this was to talk to a disembodied voice. It was like something out of a play. A farce, for certain. “Are you going as mad as I am?” Laurette asked, throwing all caution to the wind. What did it matter if a courtesan thought she was crazy?

  “It depends how mad you are. I have always thought of myself as being the steady and sensible one, but lately I have reason to doubt. This is rather absurd, talking through the wall. There’s a wooden door, you know. I imagine it’s covered over on your side, but I’ll rattle the knob.”

  “There is?” Laurette stuck her hand through the ivy, searching at the sound. She found the door handle and pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. “I’ll have to cut back some of the ivy. Hold on.” She hacked away with Qalhata’s shears until she saw the seam in the wall. She then pulled on the door with all her might. The hinges creaked, and the door opened, but not wide enough for her neighbor to pass through.

  “Bother. Can you push?”

  “I can try.” Charlotte giggled. “If this doesn’t work, I suppose I could always come round and ring your doorbell.”

  “That would take all the adventure out of the endeavor. Here, I’ll pull, you push.”

  The rusted hinges cried out as if they were in dire pain, but at last Charlotte squeezed through the space. Laurette gave her a wide grin, the kind of smile the Cobb sisters had said showed far too many teeth.

  This C
harlotte did not look like anybody’s mistress. She was pretty enough—quite beautiful, really—but could have passed as a governess. For one thing she was old, at least Laurette’s age. Her dark hair was covered by a little starched cap, something Laurette wouldn’t have worn in a thousand years no matter how firmly on the shelf she was. Charlotte’s ugly gray dress was buttoned up to her chin and she wore a fussy fichu around her neck. The woman might as well have “Virgin Spinster” tattooed to her brow.

  But of course, that couldn’t be.

  “Oh! How absolutely lovely this is!” Charlotte gazed around the garden. “I watched them put it in from my bedroom window, you know. They all worked like fiends. Even Lord Conover dug right in.” She lowered her voice. “He removed his shirt. You are a lucky woman indeed.”

  Laurette snorted. “He is a fiend.”

  “Oh, my dear, you’ve no idea of a true fiend. Sir Michael Xavier Bayard’s portrait is penciled in right next to the word in Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary.”

  “Then why—” Laurette stopped herself. “Forgive me. It’s none of my business.” She certainly would not want to divulge her own particular history with Con.

  Charlotte sat on the stone bench and sunned herself. “It’s rather a long, sordid story. Let’s just say that one’s family obligates one to do things that are distasteful if not downright repugnant.”

  “Exactly so,” Laurette agreed, wondering how her scapegrace brother was fairing with the old turtle Dr. Griffin. “How long have you been in residence?”

  “Long enough. It seems like I’ve been here forever. An eternity. But at least I won’t have to look at the damn cherubs any longer.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard my little fit. The smashing and the screaming. I just broke what are no doubt valuable but entirely vulgar little naked statues that belonged to my predecessor. There are still more in my bedchamber. Would you like to help me finish off the rest?”

  Perhaps Charlotte was mad, and it had taken her very little time to get there. What would Laurette be like in a month? She shuddered to think.

  “Truly, I am not usually so bloodthirsty, not that there’s any blood in gilded plaster, mind you. But when you see them, you’ll understand. Come.” Charlotte stood up and extended a hand.

  “I’m not sure—they might miss me,” Laurette said lamely, tilting her head toward the house. For all she knew, this Charlotte would take it into her head to smash her.

  “Oh, you poor dear. I’ve heard all about the strange and mysterious Conover. I saw the tattoo. Is he keeping you a prisoner, then?”

  “No! Not really.”

  “Well then. Come along.”

  Laurette swallowed. This prim and proper courtesan was exactly like a governess who brooked no dissent. After one longing look at her kitchen door for a last-minute rescue, Laurette slipped through the ivy-covered door and into the next garden. It too was pretty in its way, but nothing as magical as the garden Con had created for her. And he had created it. Charlotte said she watched him do so in his half-naked state.

  Charlotte looped an arm through Laurette’s. “Is he stingy, your Lord Conover? Your dress looks seasons old.”

  Laurette laughed. “That’s because it is. It’s my own. I assure you, Conover has filled my closets. I just chose not to be tempted today.”

  “Very wise. I myself will not wear what Sir Michael has bought. It drives him to distraction.” They ducked into the kitchen entryway. The room was clean and empty. “My servants are out, otherwise I would not have had the courage to kill all the little angels. Follow me.”

  They moved through the house. The layout was identical to Laurette’s, although the furnishings were far more traditional. Except for the paintings. Laurette felt her face go hot to see so much exposed canvas flesh. There were naked women on every single wall, doing everything a naked woman could think to do and other things besides. Still, the brushwork was very fine, and Laurette said so.

  “None of them are my doing. Sir Michael is quite the connoisseur. He has excellent taste in all things, except mistresses. What that Helena did to the bedroom—well, you shall see for yourself.”

  They mounted the stairs and entered Charlotte’s bedroom. Laurette stopped in her tracks, speechless.

  “You understand, don’t you. How can one possibly live in a room where so many plaster eyes are on one? And they look far from innocent. See their leering little faces?” Charlotte poked a dimpled cheek and shivered.

  “I’ll help you. A pity we cannot borrow a wheelbarrow and roll them down the stairs.”

  “I daresay the exercise will do us good, but I’m grateful you’re here. We’ll have the job done in half the time.” Charlotte gathered up her skirt and started depositing the little Cupids in the fold. Laurette thought her new friend had lovely legs.

  It was a heady experience, dropping the plaster angels on their heads and shattering them. Laurette could not remember when she had more fun. After she was covered in dust and a healthy sheen of perspiration, she left Charlotte wielding a broom to push the evidence under the bushes, and returned home. They would take tea together tomorrow.

  She ordered a necessary bath and killed off another hour waiting for Con. Tomorrow she would entertain the rather entertaining Charlotte Fallon and kill more time. Six months was not so very long. She could—she must—do this.

  Hours later she sat opposite Con, who had fallen upon his plate as though he were a starving man and now was biting into a flaky, honey-laced pastry. He had dispensed with English clothing for the evening and arrived in a long embroidered jacket and loose trousers. His black hair was unbound, falling past his shoulders. Laurette thought he looked as a pirate might, if pirates washed and played at dress-up. No wonder her neighbor thought he was mad; he looked the part tonight. The gangly boy from Dorset was gone, and a thorough rogue was in his place. She took judicious sips of wine and passed up dessert, too nervous about what was to come.

  It had taken all her resolve not to weep with happiness after they had sex. She must continue to remind herself that their relationship was based on lust alone, that their friendship—and love—had ended long ago. She was simply a woman whose animal nature, long dormant, responded to a male of the species. It was not a sin or a failure of principal, but a simple fact of life.

  “A penny for your thoughts.” Con gazed across the table, his eyes so very dark.

  She was not going to flatter him telling him her thoughts had been about sex.

  With him. Over him. Under him. Con moving lazily behind her, pressing her against his clean, warm body, his fingers tracing down her belly to the apex of her womanhood.

  His fingers were amazing appendages. All ten of them had impressed her with their amorous indecency. Laurette looked at her own ordinary hands that had never managed to be skillful at much of anything. “I do not wish to bore you, my lord.”

  He sighed and dropped his fork to the plate with an un-gentlemanly clatter. “Please, I beg of you. This ‘my lord’ busi ness is offensive to me. We have known each other twenty-five years. You once called me by my given name.”

  Desmond. Des, most of the time, as they explored his estate, gorging on early strawberries and dropping half-dressed into the Piddle from their tree to swim and wash away their berry-stained mouths.

  But one day an eleven-year-old Desmond Ryland had come to her door, a black armband pinned to the sleeve of his best jacket. His grandfather had died on one of his endless trips, leaving Des in the care of his horrible uncle. How she had wanted to giggle when he’d looked at her so earnestly and said, “You must call me Conover now.”

  Her maid Sadie had said then that her old friend had risen in consequence and that Laurette should behave when next she saw him. “A marquess won’t have time for the likes of you,” Sadie had sniffed in a vain attempt to make her charge see the light of ladylike ways.

  Sadie had been wrong.

  “Twenty-four. My great-aunt invited us to live at the Lodge with her
when I was five. But I shall do just as you say, call you what you will. I am yours to command for the next five months and twenty-seven days.”

  Con’s lips quirked. “I have a mathematical prodigy on my hands, I see. I don’t remember you being so precise, Laurie.”

  “I never had reason to be before.” In fact, she’d been so careless with numbers she’d been two months gone with child before she realized. It was Sadie who reminded her. This time, the maid was right.

  “I suppose you teach maths to your little girls.”

  For a moment her breath hitched. Then she realized Con was talking about her informal lessons with the village children at the Lodge. She nodded. “I do. A woman needs to have useful skills to get on. I learned that the hard way.”

  Laurette had been thoroughly undomestic and under-educated as a girl. Why would she want to sit indoors with a stuffy book when Con was home from school and waiting for her at the riverbank? She’d had plenty of time over the years to correct those flaws, living with Sadie in the country, and tallying up Charlie’s expenses and excesses. She knew quite a lot now, and one thing she knew was that the man opposite was trouble.

  “I am so very sorry, Laurie,” he said quietly. “If I could change the past, I would.”

  She rolled her eyes. “What’s done is done. Let us not become maudlin, my lord. Conover,” she corrected.

  “Con.”

  It was she who’d shortened his name, because Conover clearly belonged to his dead grandfather. “As you wish.” She placed her linen napkin on the table and rose. “Enjoy your brandy, and smoke a cheroot if you must. I shall await you upstairs.”