Bedchamber Games

by Tracy Anne Warren

  A knot formed at the base of her throat, but she ignored it, forcing herself to do what she must. “What of us? We’ve had a great deal of fun, I’ll admit, and I’ve adored our time together. It’s been vastly educational.” She flashed him a smile she hoped looked carefree when inside she was dying. “But we’ve always known this arrangement would be temporary. This seems as good a time as any to say our farewells.”

  He looked stunned; then his eyes turned stormy. “Did you come here yesterday planning this? What was last night? Some sort of energetic good-bye?”

  “Last night was wonderful and this morning as well. I’ll never forget it or any of our other times together. But our affair needs to end. I can’t very well come over here wearing my hat and veil every time one of us has an itch to scratch. Doing it once was scandalous enough.”

  Crossing to the chair where her dress was draped, she picked it up and slipped into it. She turned her back to him. “Will you button me up, please?”

  For a moment, she thought he was going to refuse, and then he moved behind her and reached for the fastenings. Silently he secured each one, but rather than releasing her when he was finished, he wrapped his hands around her shoulders and pulled her tightly against him.

  “Maybe I’m not ready to end things,” he murmured as he brushed a kiss along her throat. “Maybe I don’t want to let you go. Perhaps I need you with me both day and night.”

  Her pulse leapt, some nascent glimmer of hope flaring to life inside her. What did he mean? Surely he wasn’t implying that he wanted something permanent. He hadn’t said anything about love, but could this be his way of leading up to a proposal?

  Then he went on. “Let me take care of you, Rosamund. I own a town house on Brook Street, but if it doesn’t suit you, I’ll buy you something else. You’ll have anything you desire, a coach and horses, servants, clothing and jewelry, whatever you want. We can travel. I remember you saying once how much you’d love to see Paris and Rome. We’ll go to France first, then Italy, and tour both countries, top to toe. And when we return, you can assist me with some of my cases. I realize it won’t be the same as representing the clients yourself, but I’d value your insight and you can keep a hand in that way. You can still work in the law, only with me this time rather than your father and brother.”

  Her heart turned cold, her shoulders tensing beneath his hands. “So I’m to be your mistress—is that right?”

  “No, you’ll still be my lover.” His voice changed, obviously sensing that he’d misstepped. “We just won’t have to hide as we’ve been doing until now.”

  “And you’ll pay all my expenses and find me a new place to live. How magnanimous.” She pulled herself from his hold and went to find her remaining garments. “But you see, I already have a place to live. Besides, won’t such an arrangement cause difficulties with your fiancée?”

  “What do you mean?” he said guardedly.

  “Oh, come, now, Lawrence.” She gave a hollow laugh. “Let us not dissemble, not at this stage of our acquaintance. I read something recently that said you’re all but engaged to Judge Templestone’s daughter.”

  “I am not engaged to her.”

  “But you know her, do you not?” She turned and leveled a look at him. Her stomach churned to see the guilt on his face. “You’ve been courting her all summer long. All the time you’ve known me.”

  He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Look, it’s a great deal more complicated than you think. I met her before I met you and at the time a match between us made sense. I suppose, on the surface, it still does.”

  “Because of her father? Of course.” She thrust her feet into her shoes, then went to retrieve her gloves. “Given his position on the high court, I can see how he would be of great help to you and your desire to move into the judiciary.”

  “That was the original idea, yes,” he admitted.

  “And now?”

  He met her gaze, his eyes haunted. “And now Templestone expects me to offer for her. If I don’t, he says he’ll make it his life’s work to destroy not only my hopes to be a judge but my career as a barrister as well. She doesn’t mean anything to me, Rosamund. It needn’t have anything to do with us.”

  The breath went out of her at his confession, which was by far worse than anything she might have imagined. “So you thought to have us both; is that it? Miss Templestone and me?”

  “No. Maybe. Bollocks, I don’t know.” He dragged his fingers through his hair again, leaving it in an even messier disarray that somehow still managed to look attractive. He sank down on the edge of the bed. “I’ve been cudgeling my brains all week trying to think of a way out of this, but I can’t. Not without . . .” His words dwindled into silence, hanging between them, heavy as a lodestone.

  “Not without giving up the law,” she finished.

  “I suppose I could call Templestone’s bluff, but I don’t think he’s bluffing. I think he really does mean to destroy me unless I marry Phoebe, and unfortunately he has the influence to do it.”

  He was right. Templestone was an extremely powerful and influential figure in legal circles. A positive nod from him could make a man’s career. A blackball would end it.

  Loving the law was what had drawn her and Lawrence together in the first place; losing his ability to practice it would crush him, even more so than it was going to do to her. But then, she’d always known she would have to give it up; being a barrister had never been anything more than a fancy. But for Lawrence, being cast out of the courts and unable to practice . . . well, it would be like a death.

  As for any possible affection he might feel for her, it would surely die under the weight of such a loss. And if he were to choose her, he might well come to resent his decision—might even come to resent her. Hate her? And what then would any of it have been for?

  Her heart splintered into a thousand jagged pieces, and suddenly she knew what she had to do.

  “Marry her,” she said in a dull voice.

  His gaze swung up to meet hers. “What?”

  “Marry Miss Templestone.” She stared at the floor, blinking rapidly against the pressure building behind her eyes. “It’s the only logical thing to do.”

  “But, Rosamund, I don’t want to marry her,” he said thickly. “I don’t love her. I love—”

  She put her hand over his mouth and silenced him. “Don’t say it. You may feel that way right now, but later you won’t.”

  He lifted her fingers away but didn’t let go of her hand. “How can you be so sure?”

  “It’s only an infatuation,” she lied. “One we’ll both soon be over.”

  “And if it’s not?” he asked. “I know I shouldn’t ask again, but might you reconsider?”

  Easing away, she moved to pull on her gloves. “Being your kept woman, you mean? I think we both know the answer to that. I’ve far too much pride for such an arrangement. What we’ve had these past few weeks, it’s been like something out of an enchanted dream. But I could never abide being seen as your whore. So no, Lawrence, I will not be your mistress.”

  His eyes blazed with sudden anger. “I thought I told you never to call yourself such a thing. You would be someone infinitely precious to me.”

  “Maybe so, but the world would see it differently.”

  He sighed, his expression bleak. “Will I see you again?”

  Picking up her hat, she put it on her head and tied the ribbons beneath her chin. “No, I think a clean break will be the best thing for us both.”

  He laughed but without any real humor.

  “What is funny?” she asked.

  “Nothing really. Only that I’m usually the one who says such things. I never thought I’d someday be the one on the receiving end.”

  She hesitated, then crossed to him. “Will you promise me something?”

  He looked up from where he sat o
n the edge of the bed, his beautiful gold-green eyes very bright. “If it is within my power.”

  “Promise me you’ll be happy, Lawrence.”

  Without giving him time to answer, she cupped his face in her hands and kissed him, pouring everything inside her into that last passionate touch.

  Then, before she could change her mind about everything, she wrenched herself away and hurried to the door, unable to bring herself to utter that one final word.

  Good-bye.

  Chapter 26

  For Rosamund, the next month moved past in a kind of fractured blur, some moments sharp and distinct, others barely acknowledged and forgotten only seconds after they had occurred. She went about her usual routine, presuming of course that there was anything remotely usual left of her routine, given the fact that she had lost two of its most essential parts within quick succession of each other.

  First had come her breakup with Lawrence; then five days later she signed Ross Carrow on the documents for her last legal case and put an end to that as well. With dull eyes, she’d taken off her male garb, had it laundered, then folded all the garments neatly into a trunk. Her robe and wig had gone inside as well, since Bertram said he had no use for them; he was done with arguing cases before the court as well.

  Afterward, she’d taken to drifting around the house like a ghost, quiet in a way she had never been. Often she would sit in a chair next to the window that overlooked the rear garden, a book lying open and unread in her lap. Bertram did his best to rally her, making sure she ate at least a few bites at each meal, offering her cups of tea and attempting to engage her in work or conversation. But she had no heart for any of it. Since losing Lawrence she felt as if she had no heart left at all.

  She hadn’t cried, not once. It was a pain that went far too deep. And at night, when she should have been sleeping, she would lie in the dark and think of him, wondering whether he missed her or if he was secretly glad to be free.

  She remembered how she’d felt when Tom died, the boy she’d loved so long ago. Yet in spite of the depth of her sorrow then, it was nothing compared to this current loss. She’d known Tom very little really, their affection so innocent and carefree that she could now only marvel at its youthful folly.

  With Lawrence, though, there had been nothing innocent or carefree about the experience. It had been raw and passionate, bold and maybe even a little insane. Knowing him, loving him, had been soul-altering, as if his touch had imprinted itself upon her and changed her in ways she was only now beginning to understand.

  Perhaps worst of all, she simply missed him. Their quiet conversations and spirited debates, their mutual enjoyment of so many of the same things. At least once an hour she thought of something she wanted to share with him, or ask him, but she couldn’t, not anymore.

  Never again.

  And so she pushed it all away, shoved it down deep where she hoped she could keep it securely locked away so that someday she might find the strength to forget.

  Then, on the morning of the thirteenth day, she saw it, the one thing that burst the dam wide. It was a tiny column in the Morning Post, only a few lines long, that relayed the information that Miss Phoebe Templestone, only daughter of esteemed justice The Lord Templestone, was lately engaged to be married to The Right Honourable Lord Lawrence Byron of London and Gloucestershire.

  Bertram tried to keep her from reading the announcement, but she’d been alert enough to realize that he was keeping something from her. She’d demanded to see the paper, holding out a hand despite a protective part of herself that warned her to leave well enough alone.

  She leapt from the table after reading it, racing for the nearest convenience in which she could be sick. She’d heaved until her stomach was dry, then let Bertram carry her upstairs to her room where she’d been put to bed. One of the maids had brought cold cloths for her swollen face and aching head, but nothing could stem the tide of the ragged sobs that broke through her like endlessly pounding waves.

  She cried for two days straight, rising only to be sick again before finally she fell into a heavy, listless sleep.

  Cook sent up strong beef tea and egg custards—two of her favorites whenever she was under the weather—but she left them untouched, preferring to huddle in a cocoon of oblivion.

  On the third day, an extremely worried Bertram sent for the physician, who pronounced that she seemed to have suffered a nervous shock of some sort and advised repeated bloodlettings and immersion in a series of freezing cold, then boiling hot, baths.

  Bertram kicked him out the door, Rosamund would later learn from one of the footmen, the doctor buoyed away on a stream of stuttered, but very understandable, curse-filled epithets.

  It was Bertram who had finally broken through her delirium, forcing her at first to eat and drink, then later coaxing her to soak in a pleasantly warm bath, put on her dressing gown and come downstairs.

  Yet even as she regained some of her emotional equilibrium, her nausea and vomiting continued, coming upon her most often in the mornings. It was at the start of the third full week when she realized the cause.

  She was with child.

  At first she was panicked and disbelieving, telling herself it couldn’t be true, even though she knew in her heart that it was. She’d missed her menses right around the time she learned about Lawrence’s engagement and had assumed it was her emotional breakdown that had caused the delay. But she’d always been as regular as one of the king’s clocks, and when she still hadn’t begun her bleeding eight days later, she began to suspect the real reason.

  She thought back, reviewing her last few rendezvous with Lawrence, and realized that in the days leading up to the final night she’d spent with him, she’d forgotten all about taking the herbs he’d given her. She’d run out of them several days before, and in all the anguished anticipation of their parting, it had completely slipped her mind to visit the chemist for more.

  Or had it?

  Had some unconscious part of her secretly longed for his child, despite the difficulty and potential shame a pregnancy would cause? She supposed she would never really know, and at this point it didn’t much matter. She was pregnant and that was that.

  Curiously a strange calm came over her, a clarity of purpose she hadn’t felt in weeks. For the first time since she’d parted from Lawrence, a small glimmer of brightness lay on her horizon.

  Still, she’d had to work up the courage to tell Bertram, anticipating how disappointed in her he would be. But if she were to make things work as she wished them to, she would need his support as well as his understanding.

  To her surprise, though, he took the news with considerable aplomb, blinking a few extra times before he drew her into his arms for a long hug.

  “You’re k-keeping it, I presume,” he asked as they sat together behind closed doors in the family parlor, talking over cups of afternoon tea.

  She nodded. “Yes, but I’ll need a story, something that will be believed by people we know, even if a few may still have their suspicions. I’ve been trying to think of a way, but so far I haven’t come up with anything plausible.”

  Bertram drank his tea and fell silent. Then abruptly he set down his empty cup. “You’ll go to our cousins in the north country.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, we’ll write and ask if you can stay with C-Cousin Ross and his wife. I reckon they’ll be happy to have you.”

  She arched an eyebrow. “The same Cousin Ross I’ve been impersonating.”

  “Exactly. And don’t worry, they know n-nothing of what you’ve been doing here in London and there’s no reason why they ever should.”

  “But what will I tell them about . . . well, about the baby?”

  “I’ve been thinking that through and I believe I have the answer.” He paused and reached for the teapot to pour himself another cup.

  “Yes?” she said impati
ently. “And?”

  His eyes went to hers. “Oh, you’ll tell them you were recently married but your husband d-died shortly after the wedding. Accidental drowning or some such. You’re so distraught that you need a change of scenery, can’t b-bear to stay in London. Once there, you’ll discover you’re with child and ask to remain through the baby’s birth. Fear of traveling and losing the child en route.”

  She frowned, considering. “And when I return here to London?”

  “We’ll tell everyone the same thing, only slightly rearranged. You went north to spend time with our c-cousins, met, married and were widowed while you were living away. As for the baby, you can claim he was premature. As you said, a few people may have their suspicions, but that’s all they’ll be. Most will accept the t-tale at face value, particularly if I lay the groundwork here at home with news of your letters telling me everything you’ve been through.”

  Slowly she smiled. “That’s brilliant, Bertie. If we play this right, I think it just might work.”

  “I haven’t the slightest doubt.”

  “You know, you really are rather marvelous at making up stories. Perhaps you ought to switch professions and write novels like Lawrence’s brother.”

  She froze, Lawrence’s name hanging in midair between them. It was the first time she’d said it aloud in over a month. Her smile fell abruptly away, her lighter spirits along with it.

  “Will you tell him?” Bertram asked after a pause.

  She didn’t have to ask who or about what. “No. I’ve thought about it a lot, but I don’t see the point. He’s to be married, and telling him about the baby will only complicate things.”

  “Still, he’s to be a father. Hasn’t he a right to know?”

  Guilt rose inside her, but she pushed it aside. “He didn’t want a child. He made that more than clear when we were together. I doubt he’ll care.”