“Yes.” Christina smiled at her reflection. “That was the idea.”
The old lady scowled as she struggled with the clasp. “I hope you know what you’re doing. Pah! What am I saying? You’re too young to know. All these silly ideas of yours, running the house like it’s a charity boarding house for young men, not taking any money from their earnings, and now this, taking a stranger into your bed for one night. Just to see what it’s like, of all things to say! I ought to wash your mouth out with soap and send you to bed with no supper, young lady!”
“Mrs. Draycott, that’s quite enough!” She was heartily sick of being told today that she was too young. “I’m a grown woman, not a child. I wish you would treat me as such.” Perhaps, she thought, if her own housekeeper stopped acting like she needed a spanking, other people would start taking her seriously, too, and treating her like an adult.
People like Harry Blackwood, for instance.
“Where is he now?” she demanded, heart pounding in her bosom at the thought of him somewhere in her house. He had a very strong presence. She could feel it, even through thick walls.
“In the wretched bath still. I’ve never known a man to take so long over it. In my experience, they generally avoid water if they can.”
Despite her nerves, Christina smiled. “Well that’s good then.” She turned her head, looking over her shoulder at the little woman. “Isn’t it?”
“I never said there was anything wrong with the man. He’s just not right for you, Miss Christina, that’s all.”
“It’s only for one night, Mrs. Draycott.”
“Even worse! Then what? You should be saving yourself for a husband.”
“I don’t mean to have one, so why save myself? Why should I suffer the monthly disadvantage of being a woman while never getting any advantage out of it?”
“Miss Christina, that’s a shocking thing for a young lady like yourself to say.”
“The truth often is shocking, don’t you find?” She was learning that herself lately.
“If you don’t mean to marry, Miss Christina, you should go back to the good post you had as a governess with that family.”
Poor Mrs. Draycott. She hadn’t given up yet, and Christina loved her for still trying. However, she could hardly go back to her previous life now, could she? Her eyes were wide open, her naivety was gone. “Oh, they would have found someone to replace me by now,” she said calmly.
“But all that education…”
“I can assure you, it won’t go to waste.”
And tonight she would add to her vast compendium of knowledge. The more she thought about it, the more excited she became. “You know I’m going to get my own way, Mrs. Draycott.”
“Really? Doesn’t he have any say in the matter?”
“No. I want him and he’ll do as I say.” If she said it aloud enough times, she could convince herself, surely.
“This might come as news to you, saucy-tongued little madam, but big, solid men like him don’t generally take commands from skinny bits of stuff like you.”
Laughter bubbled out of her and couldn’t be stopped. She might not be as bold as she pretended, but she knew what she was taking on. It thrilled her, terrified her, and challenged her as nothing else ever had. How could she resist?
“There is something I need you to help me with, Mrs. Draycott.” She drew a breath as deep as her corset would permit. “I don’t want tonight to have any long lasting consequences, naturally, so you must tell me what to do to prevent it. And don’t make that face. I know you must be conversant with all the tricks, having taken care of my mother for twenty years.”
“It’s not something a good girl like you should know about.”
Christina grinned slowly. “After tonight, I won’t be a good girl anymore, will I? As long as Harry Blackwood’s performance lives up to expectation. So you’d better tell me what to do. I haven’t time for a baby. I’ve got a bordello to run.”
* * * *
He leaned back, head resting on the copper rim of the bathtub. The water was nearly cold now, but he was enjoying it too much to get out yet. It was a fortnight since he’d had a thorough dipping, two days since he’d had a shave. Now he took his time with both, while he pondered his dilemma.
The very lovely, very naughty, very young Miss Deveraux seemed to think she could turn him into her plaything. It was possible, he reasoned, that she’d never been turned down before. Who would refuse such an opportunity?
He would. Harry had never slept with a woman younger than thirty. Ever. It was a rule of his. A woman of thirty knew where she was in life and didn’t clutch at him for anything more. She didn’t look for marriage or any other commitment. Frequently, a woman of thirty had already been married and knew she didn’t want it again, which worked out very well for him.
A girl of nineteen had her whole life ahead of her and was still discovering what she wanted and what she didn’t. A girl of nineteen was still making mistakes and learning from them.
Harry refused to be one of Christina Deveraux’s mistakes – a future regret that, in ten years, or five, she couldn’t bear to recall.
He’d take her to this ball tonight and keep watch over her, for her own good. She needn’t think she was getting him into bed later though.
When he first saw her in the tailor’s shop, he thought she was older. She was very self-contained and had none of the nervous chatter he usually saw in younger women. Then, outside in daylight, he’d begun to wonder. Her skin was smooth, unlined by experience. The light in her eyes flickered with shades of mischief and curiosity. There was none of that resignation, the sort that comes with wisdom and crushed disappointment. And settling. Finally, in her parlor, when she confessed she was only nineteen, he lost all hope.
Chuckling softly at his ill luck, he shook his head, rolling it against the back of the tub, wet hair dripping in his eyes. She was brave, he’d give her that, for thinking she could take him on. She was also incredibly foolish for doing all this simply to prove a point. Oh yes, he knew what she was up to. He’d dared to point out her youth and she’d taken offence. Now she wanted to turn the tables on him, show herself capable of winding him around her little finger.
He shifted under the water. Speaking of fingers, those hands of hers were extraordinary.
Ironically he had, not so long ago, told his brothers that he planned to slow down now, give feminine charms a miss for the time being. He was feeling a bit worn out with it, truth be told. It was all in danger of becoming rather dull and tiresome. Mundane.
But when Christina touched him that afternoon and worked him with her lithe fingers, he’d felt a new burst of enthusiasm for the sport. She must be incredible in bed. Not that he would find out, of course, no matter what she did to tempt him.
Perhaps, in another ten or so years, he’d come back, he mused, when he was forty seven and she was twenty nine.
If she was still here by then and didn’t belong to another.
The water was suddenly too cold. Time to get out. He’d sat there long enough.
* * * *
She was in the hall, talking to Mrs. Draycott and pulling on her long white gloves, when he came down the stairs in his formal evening wear, whistling a nonchalant tune, his hands in his pockets.
Christina almost tripped over her hem.
Harry Blackwood, freshly bathed, shaved, and dressed for a night out, was a very different sight to Harry Blackwood unshaven, caught in the rain, and attired in scruffy, crumpled traveling clothes. To say he cleaned up nicely was an understatement.
“Everything all right?” he asked as he descended the last few steps with one, suspiciously jaunty leap. “You look a bit pale.”
She dropped her gaze quickly to her gloves. “About time. I was just wondering when you would finally be ready. The carriage is waiting.”
He offered his arm. “You look lovely,” he whispered as they walked down the steps of the house.
“Thank you,” she whispered
back. “So do you.”
He laughed at that, and then he pointed out a chipped stone in the path as if she might not know it existed. Helping her into the carriage, he held her hand lightly in his fingers, his other hand lifting the ruffled train of her skirt so she wouldn’t trip on the small step. Then he followed her up, closing the little door behind him.
For a while they sat in silence as the carriage rocked gently forward. The interior was shrouded in shadow, but she could see his eyes shining and the gleaming white of his shirt and waistcoat.
“By the way,” she said finally. “I looked in my mother’s diary this evening and she does mention your father.”
He leaned forward, a shaft of coppery light from a passing streetlamp stroking his face from chin to brow. “Oh?”
“Yes. They were lovers once. Did you know?”
He shook his head.
“She mentions him only as R.B. A man who painted her in oils. I think we can assume—”
“What does she say about him?”
She thought carefully, wondering how much to tell. Louisa’s diaries were very explicit, although she mostly used discreet initials instead of full names. “She said he was a good lover— physically. It was as if he didn’t want to feel anything deeper.”
A curt laugh shot out of him. “My father fell in love once, and she broke his heart so badly he never wanted to go through it again.”
“Really?”
He fidgeted across the seat. “Our mother,” he explained eventually. “He married her for love, which was, apparently, a terrible mistake because she didn’t love him back. Not enough in any case. She left him, and left us, when I was ten.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
“It doesn’t matter. If she was unhappy it was better that she left. Sometimes the best thing you can do for a person is let them go.” He spoke stiffly and she didn’t believe he had truly forgiven his mother. How could he? But he tried, it seemed. What a strange man he was, full of caring.
“I never met my father,” she said after a long pause.
His twinkling eyes found hers again through the shadows.
“He’s never acknowledged me,” she added.
“But you know who he is?”
“I do now.”
He lurched forward, his face looming closer as they passed another street lantern. “Not my father, surely? Not Randolph?”
It hadn’t occurred to her that he would think that. Surprised, she exhaled a short laugh. “No, no.” She licked her lips, looking down at her hand in his. She hadn’t realized he was holding it. When had that happened? “The Duke of Berwick,” she said quietly, almost losing her train of thought. “He’s my father. Tonight he’ll see me for the first time.”
The horses trotted onward, and the carriage rocked from side to side. His fingers slowly slid from hers and he sat back again. “You were invited to this ball?” he demanded, doubt shadowing his voice.
“Not…exactly,” she replied, just as he had to her earlier when she asked whether he knew her mother.
“I don’t understand. If you’re not invited, why—”
“Let him throw me out, if he dare.”
There was s short, frosty silence, then he snapped, “He wouldn’t throw you out. He’d have someone do it for him, foolish girl.”
Anger rippled through her. “I know what I’m doing.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
“If you’re afraid, Blackwood, you can wait outside.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, but she sensed his disapproval stroking her through the gathering folds of darkness. Disinclined to explain herself any further, she concentrated on the view through the carriage window and tried to look calm, when inside she was anything but. It was no easy thing to attend a ball when one wasn’t invited, or to meet one’s father for the first time. But the moment was almost upon her. No going back.
Again he moved restlessly on the seat. “What exactly do you hope to gain by seeing your father tonight?”
“I want him to acknowledge me, to look me in the eye and tell me he’s sorry.”
“Good luck.”
“What do you mean by that?”
His face was quizzical in the next flare of street light. “The Duke of Berwick isn’t going to throw his arms around you and invite you to his hunting box in the country, Christina.”
“I know that. Of course, I know that. But won’t he be curious to see me? Wouldn’t he have wondered about me? Wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not the Duke of Berwick.”
Sighing, she turned her eyes to the carriage window. “I’ll make him see me and acknowledge I exist. I’ll have my fun tonight, you’ll see.”
“Like chancing your luck, don’t you, Christina?”
“Yes. What’s life worth if we don’t take chances? Isn’t that what we’re here for? It would be amazingly dull otherwise.”
There was another long silence between them, until he said solemnly, “I’ll take you to this ball, but that’s it. Don’t expect anything else from me. I told you, you’re far too young, and I can do without the complication, thank you. I suspected it before, but now I see exactly how much trouble you could get me in to. I’ve never attended a ball without an invitation before in my life.”
Certain he’d committed far worse transgressions in his thirty-seven years, Christina bit down on her tongue to keep from laughing. “Are all old men as funny as you?”
He didn’t answer, but she heard him huff and saw his arms fold over the white patch of his shirt.
“You can dance, I hope?” she demanded.
“Of course.”
“Good.” She hadn’t thought to check before now. “My mother said dancing was like sexual intercourse.”
A small groan escaped the man across the carriage.
“Every man is skilled to a different degree, but some just stamp all over your toes, leaving you bruised. Some only know one dance, some have no rhythm, and some are always counting the steps. But then there are men who can dance all night long, leaving a woman dizzy and breathless. Some even invent new steps. Which one are you, Harry Blackwood? I can hardly contain myself waiting to find out.”
No reply but a stifled curse.
She lifted her shoulders and laughed gently. He really was a silly old grouch and a great hypocrite, considering his earlier flirtation with her. Before he knew she was nineteen. Now he called her a foolish child and thought he could put her off by being all grim and dolorous, but Christina wouldn’t let him get away with that. She’d dealt with sulking little boys before.
* * * *
They passed through the great entrance and made the necessary pauses at hat room and cloak room, where she collected a dance card on a little gold string for her wrist. “Shall I write you in for the first two dances, Mr. Blackwood?”
“Write me in for all of them.”
She merely laughed, not taking him seriously, although he meant it.
He knew this outing could only end in tragedy for her. Thankfully, he was there. It was destiny, as he’d said to her, that they’d met today. What were the chances of that happening? Had he looked through the opposite carriage window, he would have missed her and gone home never knowing she existed.
Their names were announced on entry, but in the general clamor, few people heard. It wasn’t the stately, organized gathering he’d expected. More of an unruly rabble spread out between three adjoining rooms with the ballroom in the center. A large, overly ornate staircase rose up from the entrance hall to the second floor of the house where other guests looked down on the new arrivals from a gilded gallery, their flushed faces searching for the important, the rich, and the well-connected. Body heat rose quickly and uncomfortably in the surging, noisy crowd, and as he burrowed his way through, leading Christina by the hand, his eye was almost poked out by a long feather in one lady’s twitching, nodding headdress.
“Harry! There you are again. You didn’t say you were coming her
e tonight.”
He closed his eyes briefly, the right one still smarting from the feather. Bad luck had brought him directly into Rosamund Wakely’s path, and she descended on him like a hawk.
“This is Lady Pendlebury St. James, my mother-in-law.” She turned to the lady in the feathered headdress. “This, Cecilia, is Harry Blackwood, Randolph’s eldest. You knew Randolph, didn’t you?”
The woman gave him the once over, almost as if she hardly dare look. “I knew of Randolph Blackwood, my dear,” she corrected her daughter-in-law. “It’s not quite the same as knowing him. Thankfully.” She punctuated her rude remark with a condescending smile in Harry’s direction, as if he couldn’t have heard.
Suddenly, she saw the woman at his side and her eyes, previously cold steel, became white hot, sparking with prurient interest. She quickly surveyed the fashionable arrangement of Christina’s pale blonde hair, the heavy diamonds dangling from her ears, and the pearl ropes around her slender throat. Then her gaze continued down, patently assessing the body beneath the stunning peacock blue gown.
He didn’t want to make any introductions and would have moved Christina onward through the crowd, but Roz screeched in his ear, “I see you brought your young friend with you. Claudia, isn’t it?”
“Christina,” she replied before he could say anything.
Lady Pendlebury St. James tilted her head back, the long feather flung over her shoulder. “Aren’t you Louisa Deveraux’s girl?”
Enraptured (A Private Collection) Page 5