A Lady's Taste For Temptation (Historical Regency Romance)

by Emily Honeyfield

  Emily enjoyed being spoiled by Martha. Martha had always been so gentle in the way she helped to dress her, or in doing her hair, and so elegantly too. Being twenty-one was an enjoyable age for a well-to-do woman in London, and it was on nights like this when high society would be at its finest and best behaved.

  Emily took a last look in the mirror and clutched her matching purse. She was happy with the way she looked in her sapphire blue dress, a beautiful arrangement that her mother recently had made for her, signifying the height of fashion-ability during London season.

  “I’ll see you later, Martha. Thank you for making me look lovely.”

  “You always do, m’lady. And your blue eyes are brought out by the colour in the sparkling fabric, and the blonde in your hair looks simply wonderful now.”

  “Thank you. Alright, I must be away now to see Luke. He will already be waiting at the bottom of the stairwell. Sometimes I do know him far too well.”

  “Have a beautiful time, m’lady.”

  Emily smiled broadly. “Yes, I know I will.”

  Ms. Bragg was excited to greet her brother at the bottom of the stairwell. And he looked just as dashing in his black, well-pressed suit. His hair was combed well, and his blue eyes were shining brightly in anticipation.

  “My dear sister, you are twenty minutes lacking, but you look as lovely as ever. Are you ready? The coachman is waiting outside. The Beggar’s Opera is said to be one of the most successful operas this coming season. This writer, John Gay, well, he is exceptionally talented according to The Herald Ledger.”

  “Yes, brother. I have heard much talk of it at The Guild Society. I am simply bursting to get there, and the weather is lovely tonight, and it’s not too cool, thankfully.”

  Luke offered his arm to his sister, and the butler, Leroy, was already at the door, opening it and saying a kind farewell that they both enjoy themselves immensely.

  Before long, the coach was skimming the long road, heading towards the heart of London to get the two siblings to the opera showcase in good time. It was a feeling like no other for Emily, the wonder of a new opera and the fanfare of the many who would be there, all dressed in their finest clothes, and with true smiles upon their faces at being at such a grand event.

  Emily was glad to be in the crowd of people who went through the huge doors of the place. They were accented in a hue of yellow, and she could smell the vast array of perfumes that mingled in the air so well. There were many faces she recognised and many she did not. The women looked elegant and very fine in all colours, and she noticed a lovely peach dress on a woman of around her age.

  As they walked upwards to their privacy of the balcony view, Emily thought she might like to enjoy this feeling forever. A mix of excitement and anticipation of the voices she would hear, and the congruence of herself mixed in with the larger audience at the grand event. She could barely wipe the smile from her colour-filled, painted face. It was a most magical feeling.

  “Our seats are quite grand, brother,” said Emily, looking down at the closed curtain, centre stage.

  “Yes they are. I am glad we are situated centrally because last time the view was quite a bit more skewed when we saw that Italian-themed opera.”

  “I do hope it starts soon. I am so excited for it to begin!”

  Emily looked at the sea of people below, and some were scrambling (very properly) to get to their seats, and many were already duly perched in their positions, waiting for the brilliance of the opera to begin. Emily loved the orchestra and the sounds of the voices that were so dutifully trained in such wonderment and expertise.

  “Oh, I see Duke Philip Keats. There, you see, two balconies from us, brother,” said Emily, her eyes moving to the left, instead of pointing, so as not to be altogether obvious.

  “Oh yes. The Duke. Goodness, the rumours are quite madness about him. Haven’t you heard?” asked Luke plainly.

  “Well, I must admit, Tabitha told me that he is somewhat rude, and that he has been a hermit of late, but then we were interrupted by Mrs Mallinger, who was speaking about her raspberry jam again. She had been dabbling to get the most prized recipe to place in the competition this coming August. She always seems to know how to ruin a perfectly good bit of gossip.”

  Luke smiled at his sister. “Mrs Mallinger, oh good gracious, it sounds like a very non-interesting conversation ... raspberry jam indeed. Yes, he (the Duke) has rarely been out for months actually. The man grew up in the country and then was involved in a scandal some ten years ago when he broke off an engagement the night before the wedding with Miss Charlotte Grey. Because of this, he has gained a reputation of being somewhat callous.”

  “Oh my goodness, the bride to be must have been incredibly devastated. Imagine how she must have felt, the poor woman.”

  Emily noticed that Luke’s attention was on the evening’s programme now. He had always enjoyed reading it whenever they were at an opera event. And so she looked at the Duke, not obviously, but with a hint of intrigue in her mind about who he might be, and regarding the workings in his mind and heart more personally.

  She also noticed how surly he looked, and how his jaw line was bold and quite manly. For a moment, she thought she may have even blushed as she looked at him, and was grateful that no one could see her peeking, and her brother was too wrapped up in reading page after page, from the beginning to outer cover.

  “I think it’s about to begin,” Luke whispered, after a few minutes, pointing to the opening curtain.

  “Oh yes,” said Emily, still spying the Duke from time to time and finding herself wanting to know more about him. She resigned herself to the fact that her dear friend would tell her more at The Guild Society, and when she could make sure they were far away from Mrs Mallinger, who always seemed to threaten everyone’s more private conversations.

  The grandeur of the opera was moving, enticing, and exciting. The music played its perfect tune every time as the audience remained hushed through most of it, sometimes gasping at a plot twist or turn that came so wonderfully. And Emily had been feeling her own body move from the inside. Like a flurry of liquid or water cascading from a waterfall, it was the sheer wonderment of the music, and so Emily noticed her heart wanting to feel this way all of the time, and as much as was possible.

  Her body felt as if it was energetically humming as the music played, almost effortlessly, and each singer who sang graced the music by complementing it fully. She enjoyed the harmonies and the melodies, and sometimes the sharpness of the woman’s voice or the deepness of the man’s.

  She knew then that her own love for music would only increase, and that she would practice her grand piano skills more and more often. She could already play some of the greats including Tchaikovsky and Mozart, and she also enjoyed Chopin’s classics too.

  “Oh, it’s so good,” said Emily, with eyes brighter as she watched on.

  “Yes, dear sister, it really is profoundly good.”

  Emily was still puzzled by the thoughts of what might cause a Duke to call off a wedding. Her mind liked to try to work things out sometimes, and in a way, it cheated her now, taking her away from the wonderment she was supposed to be enjoying in its fullest capacity.

  The poor woman, she heard herself say. She would have been absolutely devastated and ashamed to go out in the public eye.

  Emily persuaded herself to leaving her thoughts be for the time being, and she let herself get lost in the beauty of the opera once again, delighting in the scene below and centrally. The voices were in unison now, and most of the players, the amazing cast were singing in harmony, the last directed number of the play. And then it happened, the curtain came down, and the applause grew louder and louder as the audience watched each of the cast members take a bow. The applause was so loud that Emily’s ears were still ringing when she and her brother reached the lobby.

  “Oh, it was ever so wonderful,” she said, waiting in the long line to leave the enormous building.

  “Oh, indeed it
was. And the score of music was divine,” Luke added.

  “Oh yes.”

  Emily continued to smile as they waited for the people in front to billow out, but the pace was definitely at a snail’s pace, with people chattering as they walked slowly, discussing their favourite parts of the show they had just witnessed in all of its magnificence and vibrant colours.

  Luke was now in deep conversation with a gentleman he knew through their papa, and Emily occupied herself with straightening her white gloves, knowing the air was probably cooler outside than when they had first arrived. And so, with her head down, she moved forwards, but leaned slightly right without realising, thus bumping into someone without meaning to.

  “Oh, I am so very sorry,” said Emily, as she placed her head up to see who she had knocked.

  As if by remarkable chance, she zoomed her sight forwards and met eyes with the Duke she had been watching earlier. “You should really watch where you’re going,” the Duke said abruptly, storming off to get somewhere more quickly.

  Emily gasped and was quite shocked by his tonality and his words. She had never been spoken to in such a way before, and it made her feel slightly shocked.

  How could someone who is supposed to be a gentleman be so rude?

  She looked to her brother who was still in deep conversation with the family acquaintance, and he had not seen any of it. She wondered why he was so rude and continued to think of their accidental meeting as she climbed into the carriage and sat beside her brother to go homeward bound.

  The beautiful sound of the hooves on the cobblestones was also like music to Emily. It was a delightful sound she had always savoured ever since she was a small child. Sometimes she would tell her brother to “be quiet” so she could listen, and he would tease her saying that it was a “silly thing to enjoy, especially for a boy.” And so Emily would state that she, in fact was a girl, and that it had absolutely nothing to do with him, and that he should just keep quiet. She would add a comforting “please” at the nanny’s interception of their conversation, but then become annoyed that another person was blocking the resoluteness of the sound.

  After a time, Emily decided to tell Luke about what had happened at the opera. “Luke, I bumped into the Duke as we were walking.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  Her brother seemed to be in another world as if he was thinking strongly about something other than her words. It was a Bragg tradition, thinking about things and being in one’s own world. Her mother had said it was something that came down from their papa’s side of the family, as if they needed to live in a whole other world of their own sometimes.

  “He actually said that I should look where I was going,” said Emily. “The Duke, Philip Keats.”

  “Yes, I can imagine he did,” answered Luke, still seeming to be lost somewhere else within his mind.

  Emily thought more about the Duke. His face was so handsome, even when he was angry or annoyed. That black hair and those hazelnut brown eyes. He was tall and strong, and his hair was styled so wonderfully well. She had not seen that in many men, or feel it to attract her so, and it made her feel slightly awkward that she kept imagining him, especially after his words were so gruff and unlike a gentleman at all. There had definitely been no nicety in his words.

  Emily decided to close her eyes now, knowing that her brother was in his own realm of thoughts and possibly tired too, due to the lateness of the time of evening, being near eleven p.m.

  She would need to undress herself and let Martha sleep, for Martha would need to be up early in the morning to arrange clothes and other things for Emily, and getting into a nightgown was an easy enough task to do. For her bed would already be rolled down and everything set nicely as it always was, and she felt very lucky to live at their beautiful estate with servants who looked after them so well.

  She would hear the opera music in her mind now, and resign to the gentle whispering of the hooves as they clicked so wonderfully, taking she and her brother home to the sanctity and sanctuary of their own beds, knowing full well she might never forget the chiselled face of Duke Philip Keats, the rude man who had so intrigued her.

  Chapter 2

  The Duke had got home by ten thirty, or thereabouts. The study was a place he enjoyed most of all, and for a moment he savoured in a drink, orgeat lemonade, a non-alcoholic beverage he liked to fully enjoy before retiring.

  He had been reading for a time and was enjoying the work of Plato and Aristophanes.

  “And so, when a person meets the half that is his very own, whatever his orientation, whether it’s to young men or not, then something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don’t want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment. Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Love is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete ... and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other’s sight, as I may say, even for a moment ... Love is simply the name for the desire and pursuit of the whole ... So where it is a general rule that it is wrong to gratify lovers, this can be attributed to the defects of those who make that rule: the government’s lust for rule and the subjects’ cowardice, and nor when love is of this disinterested sort is there any disgrace in being deceived, but in every other case there is equal disgrace in being or not being deceived. For he who is gracious to his lover under the impression that he is rich, and is disappointed of his gains because he turns out to be poor, is disgraced all the same: for he has done his best to show that he would give himself up to any one’s ‘uses base’ for the sake of money; but this is not honourable. And on the same principle he who gives himself to a lover because he is a good man, and in the hope that he will be improved by his company, shows himself to be virtuous, even though the object of his affection turn out to be a villain, and to have no virtue; and if he is deceived he has committed a noble error. For he has proved that for his part he will do anything for anybody with a view to virtue and improvement, than which there can be nothing nobler. Plato, at The Symposium.”

  He read Aristophanes point of view too. “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature. Each of us, then, is a ‘matching half’ of a human whole … and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him. When a person meets the half that is his very own, something wonderful happens: the two are struck from their senses by love, by a sense of belonging to one another, and by desire, and they don’t want to be separated from one another, not even for a moment. These are people who finish out their lives together and still cannot say what it is they want from one another.”

  Staring into the open fireplace, he enjoyed the philosophers of old, even though the concepts would never be something that would entertain his own life, not really. He had been enjoying the peace and quiet now, especially after a time of listening to the opera and all of its rowdy musicality. He liked the duality of it, the loudness and fullness of the opera, compared to the resolute quietness of being at home.

  It was something he enjoyed and savoured, with the ringing in his ears still beckoning him to the marvellousness of the evening, and the quietness not bringing him to a more relaxed state, as if arguing with him to go to bed now, as soon as the after-effects had finished pulling him in the opposite direction.

  He decided to read on. “Through her surrender, she lets go of his non-absolute version and connects with his soul essence and the Divine too. She gives herself completely to the divine will, and God takes her emptiness and fills her with fullness, love and divine insight, until this love starts to effervesce. She recognises her Flam
e, her Twin Flame within herself, and having found a wholeness within her, she is now able to move with her life peacefully and relatively pain-free, knowing that the day will come when her Twin Flame would also rise into knowing her, with the pair meeting, and recognising her as the counterpart who was sent by God to guide him to his own divinity. She never doubts that this will happen, she knows that he is home.”