When she made no reply but instead stroked a gentle hand over his shoulder, he realized what he’d said. The attraction might not abate soon, but that only implied it would abate later, which wasn’t at all what he’d intended to convey.
His attraction to Elegy Hampton, his affection for her—hell, his love for her—was unlikely to abate in his lifetime, however long or short that turned out to be.
***
“What has you frowning so thunderously?” Cato moved a pawn and eyed the brandy decanter. The trouble with helping oneself to the good stuff was that the thirst for the good stuff was only reawakened, not slaked.
Just as an appreciation for being warm at night, thoroughly scrubbed at the end of the day, and clad in clean clothes could become an itch under a man’s skin.
Even the books in Amherst’s library—
“I’ve had a letter from my brother, Darius.” Amherst moved a pawn as well. “He’s heading back to Town soon but has had a rollicking good time with Lord Valentine Windham in Oxfordshire. My brother is happy to count out board feet of lumber when he should be contemplating marriage, for pity’s sake.”
“Marriage is a fine old institution.” Cato considered bishop, knight, rook and queen in turn, though volumes of Pope beckoned from behind Amherst’s shoulder. “A married man gets to swive his darling without limit, babies appear, life is good.”
“Sometimes,” Amherst said, but clearly the man knew Cato wasn’t above distracting an opponent with chatter. “Sometimes not.”
“Mr. Lindsey struck me as a particularly canny fellow.” Cato moved another pawn. “Though skirts make fools of us all.”
“Which reminds me,”—Amherst countered by getting his queen’s bishop out—“what are you about, fetching Lady Rammel on command? You know she’s been shot at once in my company, and squiring her around the countryside hardly keeps her safe.”
As if Amherst could have refused Elegy Hampton’s summons?
“So why don’t you give her ladyship the little speech about your paths parting ways, though it’s been lovely, and you’ll always treasure the memories, and who knows, your paths might always conjoin in the future?”
“There really is a manual,” Amherst murmured.
“Beg pardon?”
“I should give her that speech,” Amherst said more clearly. “I’ve rehearsed it, as well as the lecture about the safety of a woman living virtually alone, and the one about my having no intention of remarrying, but the rehearsals never quite make it out onto the stage before a paying audience.”
“Not marry?” Cato sprang his king’s bishop. “You’ll let one woman’s megrims make a dowager of you?”
“Apparently not quite a dowager,” he replied, touching his queen. “My enthusiasm for the institution of marriage wasn’t much to begin with. My parents were intimate enemies, and my wife was not happy with me.”
“I daresay Lady Rammel is not like your first wife.” And Amherst was not at all like the late Lord Rammel.
“She’s not. I, however, am a lot like my first wife’s husband.”
When he’d sorted out Amherst’s verbiage, Cato sat back and folded his arms, his concentration on the game shot to hell by this nonsense.
“No, my lord, you are not. You’re older, wiser, a papa three times over. You have the reins of the earldom, your brother and sister are getting tidily situated, and you are not the same man.”
Amherst moved another pawn, though Cato couldn’t fathom what his strategy might be. “The Irish are supposed to be charming.”
“When it suits us.” Cato’s first decent game of chess in months, and his focus would not stay on the board. Peak would laugh heartily. “You should marry Lady Rammel. You can keep her safe that way and also swive her silly.”
“Check.” His lordship sat back. “But you can get out of it.”
Cato stared at the board, seeing a metaphor for his life. “You’ll just chase me around. My mind is not on the game.”
“Nor mine.” Amherst got up and poured his guest a drink, but none for himself. “You are reputed to have experience with females, Catullus.” He passed over the drink. “What makes a woman hate marital intimacies?”
Cato eyed his drink, then his host.
“I was raised among Papists, so I lay some of the blame at the feet of Mother Church, who preaches that bodily urges are sinful, until the wedding night, and then, lo, for the purpose of getting children, those same urges are part of God’s plan. This confuses a poor lusty lass, I’m sure, as it would have played hell with me when I was a lad.”
“The Church of England hoes the same row.” Amherst looked disgruntled at the thought. “We do let our priests marry, so some of the edge comes off the confusion. I don’t think my wife’s loathing was religious in nature.”
“Loathing. One wonders how you managed three children.”
“She was fertile.” Amherst started putting chess pieces in their velvet-lined box. “Thank God.”
“You weren’t…” Cato watched the black knight land on a pile of pawns. How in God’s name had they strayed onto this topic?
“Bumbling?” Amherst eyed the black queen. “Inept? Virginally inconsiderate? Hardly. I waited almost a month after the wedding to consummate our union, and I assure you I learned as much at university as any other randy young man does outside the lecture halls. Had she not wanted children, though, I’d probably still be waiting to consummate the union.”
“This has put you off marriage,” Cato concluded. “One can see where it would, but my guess is Lady Rammel wouldn’t be that sort of wife.”
“One can’t know such a thing.” He held up the white queen, a right, scowling little wench. “Before I married her, Paula was charming, cheerful, coy, and willing to be kissed a time or two.”
“On the cheek?”
“What is it with you and kisses on the cheek, Catullus?”
“I’m asking if she led you on. Teased you down the garden path.”
Amherst pitched her royal highness toward the box but missed, so she bounced onto the carpet at Cato’s feet. “Maybe.”
In courtship, Amherst’s late wife had likely led her swain around by his lordly…nose.
Cato set the fallen queen on the table. “Sometimes, the coy ones send a signal they don’t intend to, and mischief befalls them.”
Amherst tossed the queen in with her court and speared Cato with a look. “You mean someone forced her?”
“This happened to a young lady I know,” Cato said slowly. “She was sweet and dear and charming, and did not see when her demure looks were being taken as a sign of willingness. Her innocence got her accosted in the stables, which, when witnesses came upon the scene, resulted in her ruin. Her only option was to marry the fellow who’d tried to rape her, and even if she could swallow that bitter pill, she’d never be quite received.”
“You give me something to think about.” Amherst closed the lid of the chess set. “Though I beg your pardon for harping on an unhappy topic. How has the fare been in the servant’s hall of a morning?”
“Decent.” Cato knocked back the last of his drink. “Fluffy eggs, crispy bacon, plenty of white flour in the toasted bread, hot fresh buns, sliced fruit, and the tea almost strong enough.”
“Glad to hear it. What about at mid-day?”
“Meat, most days, plenty of cheese, and fare from the gardens, a definite improvement.”
“Progress.” Amherst slid the chess set onto a high shelf. “I’m traveling into Town tomorrow, and I might bide a night or two. I’d take it as a favor if you’d sleep up here in my absence.”
Oh, yes, now that the warring armies were up on their shelf, Amherst got out his big guns. Even in the servant’s quarters, the beds would have clean linen and soft pillows. Likely, sachets hung from the posts, and hot water brought around with the last bucket of coal.
“If I bide at the house, talk will ensue.” Cato rose and set his empty glass on the sideboard. Not the least of the ta
lk would be a blistering lecture from Peak.
“My children are here.” Amherst’s voice took on an edge. “If I want you sleeping here, nobody should question it as a means of ensuring their safety.”
“You have footmen, a butler, and myriad other fellows on hand to see to that,” Cato pointed out. “I’m your Irish stable master, and I haven’t slept on clean cotton sheets for two years.”
“Catullus.” Amherst’s tone was very mild. “One doesn’t lose the knack of sleeping on clean sheets, or bathing in a tub. You’ll sleep across the hall from the nursery and give the nannies and nurses the vapors. It will be good for them.”
“Louise will have apoplexies.”
“Good. She’s a miserable woman who fortunately knows her way around a kitchen. You’ll watch my babies while I’m gone?”
“If you insist.” Cato tried to sound put upon, but God in heaven, a soaking bath and clean sheets… “You tell Lady Rammel where you’re off to, or she’ll come toddling about, indiscriminately kissing cheeks in your absence, and there will be no explaining that, my lord.”
He’d nearly said, “my friend,” for dipping in the creek even in high summer grew tedious.
“Lady Rammel excels at kissing cheeks,” Amherst said, with the air of a well-informed man. “I delight to see you discommoded by a mere female.”
“If you only knew. If you only knew.”
***
“You said we’d go to Scotland for the shooting.” Imogenie dipped her lashes and pouted her lips, though Wilton purposely turned his back on her best attempt at coyness.
“We might.” The earl tossed back a finger of brandy. “Trevisham extended the invitation last night to use his box because he intends to bide in the south this year with his family.”
“You said you’d introduce me.” The pout in her voice became genuine, as if Wilton might truly have meant to introduce her to Baron Trevisham as more than a passing fancy.
“You’ve been standing up with Trevisham’s get since you let your hems down, my girl.” Wilton poured another finger. “Believe me, you would have been bored to tears by the conversation. I’ll tell you a secret.”
Imogenie patted the bed and tucked the sheets under her arms, eagerness written on her features.
“Lady Trevisham doesn’t even come down to table these days. Trevisham is consigned to Tidewell and Thomas’s dubious company.” He sat beside her on the bed and held the drink up to her mouth.
She obediently drank, though he knew she didn’t care for brandy—which was exactly why he offered it to her.
“More,” he murmured, putting the glass to her lips again. Half-tipsy, she was ever so much more amenable to his games. “Now turn over.”
She looked reluctant but intrigued. “Must I?”
“You’ll like it,” he assured her.
Imogenie did like it. Whether he laid his hands on her in anger, lust, or a combination of the two, she did like it, and he liked it, too. Slowly, she twisted down and onto her stomach.
“Why doesn’t Lady Trevisham come to table?” Imogenie shivered, despite the heat, as Wilton pushed the sheets aside, leaving her naked and exposed.
“Prostrate with shame.” Wilton almost chortled regarding the young woman prostrate on the bed. “Her sons had to be collected from Town by their papa, again. Seems the older one was dueling and the younger acting as his second.”
“I thought that’s what young bucks did when they were loose on the Town.” Imogenie’s voice betrayed a hint of a quaver as Wilton used one of the silk stockings he’d given her to tie her right hand to the bedpost.
“They’re hardly young. The oldest is several years Amherst’s senior, and it’s long past time he set up his nursery. Be a good girl, no squirming.”
“I never liked him.” Imogenie watched docilely as Wilton secured her other wrist, her expression uncertain. “When I was little, Tidewell always wanted me to sit on his lap.”
“He did?” No, that was not exactly what Tye Benning had wanted. “Just think, Genie, if you’d given him what he sought, you might be a baroness by now and we might be related by marriage.” He secured her first ankle, giving the binding a little yank to make it snug. “Or the next thing to it.”
“Wilton?”
He tied her second ankle to the remaining bedpost, a novelty in their dealings thus far.
“You’ll like it,” he assured her again, though it was better when he could see the trepidation building in her eyes.
“You’ll take me north with you?”
He delivered the first blow almost affectionately, using the flat of his hand smartly on her exposed buttocks. Sexual pleasure blossomed at the sound of his flesh impacting hers, and at the sight of Imogenie hunching in on herself against her bindings.
“That depends,”—he paused to untie his dressing gown—“on how naughty you’ve been and how naughty you’re willing to be. Not a sound, Genie. You’re not to make a single sound.”
She didn’t. Imogenie was the best, most biddable kind of fool. He’d taught her how to keep quiet through their games—he never hit her all that hard, never left many welts or bruises—and then he held her after he’d found his pleasure. That’s when he’d comfort her with the lies she liked to hear the most, about what a fine countess she would make, and how he wished he’d met her earlier, and how he’d marry her, once she proved she could bear his heirs.
***
“Why the scowl?” Cato settled into one of the library’s upholstered armchairs, crossing an ankle over one knee. “And why do you look like you haven’t slept since you left here for Town a week ago?”
Trent shifted back in his own chair and stifled a yawn. The clock over the library mantel had taken to whirling away the minutes of late, and yet the hours and days…dragged.
“I damned near haven’t slept. Benton writes that Wilton is growing rambunctious, testing the limits of his freedom, and calling upon all and sundry in the district.”
“If the highest-ranking title in the parish made no calls, it would look odd.”
Trent rose and rubbed the back of his neck, knowing he’d summoned Cato in part because the man was the closest thing he had to a friend on the property—though Cato outranked him—and would be honest with him, regardless of their respective titles, or appearances, or anything.
“Wilton never neighbored very well, unless it was to show up in his finery at the hunt meets, or to shop for my bride. His is the only earldom in the district, and the two barons in the surrounds are in awe of him.”
“So he’s come late to the pleasures of country life.” Cato kept to his seat, tracing one finger along a seam on the chair arm. “You can’t refuse him that much without causing a lot of talk.”
Cato would know exactly how tedious and corrosive talk could be in a rural earldom.
“I might not begrudge him some socializing with his neighbors,” Trent said, “but he’s swiving a local girl silly, and she was decent before he got his paws on her.”
“She’ll dine out on her wicked youth for decades. Moreover, he’ll let her go with a parting gift that should keep her in style until her dotage.”
“I pay quarterly pensions to two women who were given parting gifts by his lordship.” Trent pinched the bridge of his nose. “Half-siblings make one hell of a parting gift. My mother claimed there were others whom she dispatched with lump sums.”
Cato shifted, making the chair creak. “Not uncommon for an English peer, particularly with men who ascribe to the old-fashioned droit de seigneur school of aristocracy.”
Diplomacy was not what Trent sought from the discussion. “Wilton is conscienceless. I will have another very frank talk with the young lady’s father.”
Cato rose. “Must be awkward as hell, having to warn the locals off your own father.”
“Even more awkward having to warn my father to cease his games,” Trent said. “He’s up to something, planning some grand coup. I can feel it.”
“You can
feel it?”
“When I was young, he would humiliate me periodically. His tantrums grew predictable. He’d find some fault with my studies and thrash the hell out of me, then leave me in peace for a time until his ire built again. He’d find another pretext, then get out his cane and have at me over a trifle. It became a dilemma.”
“In what sense?” Cato poured a drink and offered it to Trent.
A whiff of roses wafted by on the evening air. Trent shook his head, and Cato sipped at the drink himself.
“When I was small, and trying to endure my father’s discipline, I’d reach the point where I cried, or screamed, or tried to run off. Then Wilton would beat me for not accepting my punishment. I eventually learned to keep my peace, lest the footmen be required to hold me for my canings.”
Cato downed the rest of the drink in one swallow. “If my papa were alive, I’d kiss him on both cheeks for never doing more than swatting my arrogant little backside with his hand, or worse, giving me his disappointed look.”
“Thank him anyway. I could not stand the pity of the footmen, so I learned to take my medicine without a word. That only challenged Wilton to see how much I could take.”
“Your father is an evil man. You probably don’t need me to tell you that, but to go after your own son that way… It doesn’t build character, or instill respect, or whatever else he tried to tell you. It hurts an innocent child, plain and simple.”
Cato was certain of his point, and that was…reassuring.
“What?” Cato tried to take another sip of his drink, then glared at the empty glass. “You’d argue with me? The man is a monster, Amherst. If he were a horse, he’d be shot for his vile temper lest the trait breed true in his progeny.”
“I suppose that’s what I’m afraid of.” The realization made Trent abruptly queasy. “I am his son, and while I don’t beat my children…”
Trenton: Lord Of Loss Page 21