Mary Balogh

by A Counterfeit Betrothal; The Notorious Rake

  “You slept well this morning?” he asked her.

  She stiffened.

  “I am afraid I did not allow you much sleep before you returned home,” he said.

  “I would prefer not to talk about that,” she said.

  “Would you?” he said. “Do the memories embarrass you? They need not. You were magnificent.”

  “Last night was a strange out-of-time experience,” she said. “The storm made me lose my mind. I am grateful for the comfort you offered. I just wish it might have taken a different form.”

  “But there was no storm,” he said, laughing, “when you told me that you liked it slow, that you liked both the foreplay and the main event slow. And you proved to me more than amply that you had not lied. You did indeed like it—as I did.”

  Her jaw hardened, he saw, and she gazed very rigidly ahead of her. “If you are a gentleman,” she said, “you will forget last night, or at least keep your memories strictly to yourself. But of course, you are not a gentleman, are you?”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You do not mince words, do you, Mary?” he said. “That was a blistering setdown.”

  “I am Mary only to my intimates,” she said.

  “Then I am glad I did not call you Lady Mornington,” he said. “I am nothing if not your intimate, Mary.”

  “Hush,” she said. “May we please change the subject?”

  He had turned his horses’ heads between the gateposts leading into Hyde Park, and almost instantly they were among other carriages and horses and pedestrians. It was right on the fashionable hour.

  He considered her in silence for a moment. She was rigid with anger or embarrassment or something. He supposed that he might have guessed she would not accept the situation as easily as he had. She was doubtless embarrassed to know that she had revealed her passionate nature so early in their relationship.

  “I hope you do not expect me to discuss Virgil or the Elgin Marbles or any such thing,” he said. “Shall we discuss bonnets? What do you think of Miss Hodgeson’s—she is the lady in blue with the sharp-nosed dragon seated beside her.”

  “It is elegant,” Mary said.

  “Do you think so?” He set his head to one side and stared at the bonnet. “If all the fruit is real, I suppose there is practical value to it. She and the dragon can have some tea without having to go home for it. If it is not real, then I would have to say that she is imposing a great deal of unnecessary weight on her neck and it is in danger of disappearing into her shoulders. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I am sure the fruit weighs nothing at all,” Mary said.

  He chuckled. “You have no sense of the absurd, Mary,” he said. “Do you ever laugh?”

  “When something is truly funny, of course,” she said.

  “Ah.” He winced. “Another setdown. Do you specialize in them?”

  She did not have a chance to reply. Colonel Hyde, one of her acquaintances, signaled to his coachman to stop his barouche alongside the curricle. Clearly he intended to talk. Lord Edmond inclined his head to the man and touched his hat to Mrs. Hyde, who sat hatchet-faced at her husband’s side.

  “Ah, Mary, my dear,” the colonel said. “So you are taking the air, too, are you? Waite?”

  “Hello, Mary, dear,” Mrs. Hyde said. “Are you quite safe up there?”

  “I am taking good care of her, ma’am,” Lord Edmond said.

  But the colonel’s good lady chose to ignore his very existence. Just as if Mary had decided to take a ride in the park in the passenger seat of a curricle with only the horses for company.

  “Quite, thank you,” Mary said. “Have you recovered from your cold?”

  “Who is to be at your salon the evening after tomorrow, eh?” the colonel asked. “Dorothy wants to go listen to that Madame Paganini or whatever her name is at Rossford’s, but the woman screeches. I would prefer to enjoy some intelligent conversation at your house. Who is it to be?”

  “Mr. Beasley for certain,” Mary said. “And Sir Alvin Margrove has said he will look in if he can.”

  “Ha.” The colonel barked with laughter. “I would not miss it for worlds, dear. There will be a duel at dawn the following day, for sure. I’ll have to bring Freeman with me. He will shoot himself if he finds out later that he has missed such fun. Will you be there, Waite?”

  “Beasley and Margrove?” Lord Edmond said. “They can set the House on a roar, I have heard. They may just be too much for Lady Mornington’s salon. I shall be there to protect her if it should come to fisticuffs.”

  “Marvin,” Mrs. Hyde said frostily, “we are blocking the thoroughfare. We must drive on.”

  The colonel touched his hat and gave his coachman the signal to drive on.

  There was a short silence in the curricle.

  “Your literary—or political—evenings are not invitational?” Lord Edmond asked. “You hold open house?”

  “Anyone is welcome,” she said, her voice stiff.

  “Then I shall be there,” he said. “If you have no objection, of course.”

  “I am not sure the entertainment will be quite to your taste,” she said.

  “Ah,” he said. “Your meaning being that there will be no gaming tables and no deep drinking and no willing barmaids, I suppose.”

  “The words are yours, my lord,” she said, “not mine.”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Not always, I must admit, but sometimes I can live without those things. Perhaps for one evening out of seven. I am not utterly depraved, you see, Mary, only almost so.”

  “I wish you would not talk so,” she said. “It is not seemly.”

  “But then, you yourself said that I am no gentleman,” he said. Two of his acquaintances, he saw, had been about to bring their horses up alongside his curricle. But both looked askance at Mary, raised their eyebrows at him and rode on.

  And yes, he thought, it would seem strange to them that he was taking her of all people for an afternoon drive. But then, they did not know. He felt as if he were hugging a precious secret to himself. He drew his curricle away from the most frequented part of the park.

  “It is strange,” he said, “how people can be quite different from what we expect them to be. You are very different.”

  “You do not know me at all, my lord,” she said.

  “On the contrary,” he said, “I think I know you very well indeed in the biblical sense, Mary. I think it unlikely that there is one inch of your body, inside or out, that I did not explore to my great pleasure last night.”

  She looked away to the trees beside the path.

  “I would have expected you to be cold,” he said, “or at least only decorously warm. I have known many women, Mary, but none as passionate and as uninhibited as you.”

  Her teeth were white and even, he noticed as they bit down into her lower lip.

  “You are different from what I would have expected,” he said. “Wonderfully different.”

  “You do not know me at all,” she said again.

  “Was it your husband who taught you?” he asked. “I did not know Lord Mornington, I regret to say.”

  “This is insufferable,” she said.

  “Or was it Clifton?” he asked. “I must confess that I used to wonder what he saw in you, Mary. Now I know. And I know why he kept you for so long. I think I might want to keep you longer.”

  Her eyes blazed at him when she turned her head, and he saw yet another facet of Lady Mornington’s character.

  “This is intolerable!” she said. “Set me down at once.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Alone in the middle of the park?” he said. “I am enough of a gentleman not to do that, Mary.”

  “Gentleman!” she said. “You do not know the meaning of the word. Let me be very clear, my lord. Despite what happened at Vauxhall, I was and am grateful to you. I believe I might well have gone out of my mind if you had not taken it upon yourself to comfort me. What happened afterward happened because it was a strange night and because the storm l
ingered in the distance and because … oh, because everything was strange. I do not blame you for anything that happened. I was as much to blame as you—more so, perhaps. But what happened was over when you took me home last night. I wish to have no further acquaintance with you. None whatsoever. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Mary,” he said, “you enjoyed it as much as I.”

  “It brought me comfort,” she said. “Enjoyment was no part of it.”

  “You are a liar,” he said. “Next time, Mary, I shall force you to admit to your enjoyment before I allow you release. You will tell me in words as well as with your body.”

  “If you will not set me down,” she said, “then take me home, please. I thought when I awoke this morning that I had awoken from some nightmare. But it is still with me. I want it to end the moment you set me down outside my own door. It is to end.”

  He turned his horses in the direction of the gates. Yes, he should have expected it, he thought. A woman of Lady Mornington’s pride could not be expected to give in unprotesting to her physical nature. Doubtless she was a Puritan and considered physical passion to be sinful. She had been married for a number of years—he did not know how many. And she had been Clifton’s woman for five or six years. She had probably not had any other men except him the night before. Having been bedded by three separate men—and only one her husband—would doubtless seem sinful to someone like her.

  Well, he would have to teach her. Slowly. Lady Mornington must learn as she loved—slowly.

  “It will not end,” he said quietly to her. “You know it as well as I, Mary. Something began last night, and it is very far from its end. Very far. But I can wait.” He laughed. “I am named suitably. I can wait for you to accept the inevitable, as I have. We will be lovers. You will be my mistress. Perhaps for longer than you were Clifton’s. I cannot imagine growing quickly tired of what we shared last night. But I can wait—for a while. I am not by nature a patient man, but I can patiently await something I really want.”

  “Then you had better be prepared to wait until your dying day,” she said.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But I think not. I think it will be sooner than that.”

  He was content to be silent for the rest of the distance to Portman Place. And he was glad when he got there that he had brought his curricle. Had she not been perched so high above the road, he did not believe she would have allowed him to assist her to the ground. As it was, he lifted her by the waist and slid her down his body. He felt her shudder.

  “I shall attend your salon two evenings from this,” he said.

  “I wish you would not.” She raised her eyes to his.

  “But you said yourself that you hold open house,” he said. “You would not turn me away, Mary, or have me thrown out?”

  “Please do not come,” she said.

  “You will be ashamed to have me seen there?” he asked. And he smiled at her, although he found it a little difficult to do so.

  “Yes,” she said fiercely. “If you will force me to be so ill-mannered, yes. I will be ashamed.”

  “Ah,” he said, his eyes glittering down at her, “but no one will know that we have lain together, Mary, unless you choose to make the announcement yourself. Or that we will lie together again more times than you can count.”

  She turned sharply away from him and rapped the knocker on her door before he could do so himself.

  He watched her straight and rigid back until the door opened and she disappeared inside without another word or a backward glance. He smiled and climbed back into the seat of his curricle.

  But he was not amused. Felicity, too, had fought him, and he had refused to believe that she did not mean to have him eventually. He had even offered her marriage in the end because it had seemed to him that there was no other way of having her. Was he being just as blind and just as foolish with Mary? Was he inviting rejection just as surely?

  But he had never had Felicity. He had had Mary, and she had wanted him then. No other woman had wanted him as she had wanted him the night before. No other woman had loved him as she had loved him.

  It could not be the end. That could not have been both a beginning and an ending. There was a feeling of near-panic at the very thought.

  Devil take it, but he would have her. And she would like it, too. He would make her tell him so the very next time he had her beneath him and mounted. He would keep her writhing with unfulfillment until she had told him that she enjoyed it. And that she loved him.

  He would make her tell him that she loved him. By God, he would. And she would mean it, too.

  4

  MARY’S ENTERTAINMENTS WERE KNOWN TO MOST people as literary evenings, though that was not, strictly speaking, a true description of them. Sometimes she did have poets or playwrights in attendance, but very often it was politicians or artists or musicians. Occasionally there was no special guest at all, but just those who liked to gather for an evening of good conversation without the distraction of dancing or card playing.

  She was proud of her literary evenings and of the class of people who attended them.

  She had told no one that Lord Edmond Waite planned to attend this particular one—not even Penelope. Perhaps he would not come, she thought. Surely he would not, on mature consideration. He would be vastly out-of-place. And she must have made quite clear to him that she had no wish or intention of furthering their acquaintance.

  But she looked forward to the evening with a trepidation she did not normally feel. Normally she would have been excited at the prospect of having Mr. Beasley and Sir Alvin Margrove in a room together—in her salon. She knew that the gathering of guests would be larger than usual as a result, though it was by no means certain that Sir Alvin would be able to find the time to come. Even Mr. Beasley alone would draw people to her house, however.

  But her eagerness was tempered by anxiety. She wished she could be back to the old days, when Marcus would be coming, as like as not, and staying afterward, too, when everyone else had gone home. He had stayed just so that they might talk and relax cozily together. It had not been discreet of them, perhaps. Inevitably there had been some gossip. And that gossip might have had foundation. There had been one occasion early in their acquaintance when he had embraced her and she had responded. She had even led him to her bedchamber, but once there she had faced him with outer embarrassment and inner shame, and he had laughed, breaking the tension, and agreed that, no, such a relationship was not possible between them. She had joined in his laughter, relieved and a little shamefaced.

  After that, surprisingly perhaps, they had developed a deep and warm friendship. She wished she could have those days back. But she could not.

  And Lord Edmond wanted her to be his mistress, had confidently predicted that it would be so. It would be laughable if it were not so annoying—so infuriating in the extreme.

  She dressed with greater care than usual, wearing an apricot-colored gown more suitable for a concert or the theater, perhaps, than for a literary evening. And she washed and fluffed her hair so that the curls were softer and glossier than usual. She did it to boost her confidence, to enable her to feel good about herself.

  There was an anxious hour when her salon filled with familiar and a few less-familiar faces, while neither of the main guests appeared. But Mr. Beasley arrived finally and apologized for being somewhat late. Mary breathed a sigh of relief. If he was somewhat late, then so was Lord Edmond, and probably that meant that he would not come at all.

  Young Mr. Pipkin had arrived unfashionably dressed, long hair unkempt, one pocket bulging with copies of his latest poetry. Mary built a group about him and stayed there herself, listening to his theatrical readings of very mediocre poetry, and was pleased to find that most listeners were able to give positive and tactful criticisms of the poems. Perhaps he should try writing in the more modern vein instead of feeling himself confined to the heroic couplet, Lord Livermere suggested. He would find more rein for his talents.

 
Mary began to relax and enjoy herself. Although there was no sign of Sir Alvin Margrove, the group about Mr. Beasley was large.

  And then she saw him—Lord Edmond Waite, that was. He was standing in the doorway of her salon, a quizzing glass in one hand, dressed with exquisite elegance in black evening clothes. He looked rather satanic, Mary thought, anger warring with dismay as she moved away from Mr. Pipkin’s side. He was looking about him with a supercilious expression, as if he had walked in upon a colony of worms.

  “Ah, Lady Mornington,” he said as she approached him, “I am sorry to be so late. You must have been afraid that I was not coming at all.”

  He reached out an elegant lace-covered hand, and she was aware as she placed her own unwillingly in it that his arrival was attracting a considerable amount of covert though well-bred attention. She felt she would surely die when he bowed over her hand and raised it to his lips.

  “Not afraid,” she said, appalled at her own lack of manners. “Hoping, my lord.”

  “Well,” he said, and he still retained her hand in his. He even covered it with his other hand. “Sometimes, Mary, one feels the compulsion to see how the other half lives. Your literary evenings are quite famous.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “May I direct you to a tray of drinks?”

  “On the assumption that I cannot live without a glass in my hand?” he said. “Perhaps you should give direction that a tray of drinks be placed at my personal disposal. And you do not need to direct me. I can see with my naked eye three trays with servants attached to them. To which one shall I escort you?”

  “I do not like to drink,” she said. “And I must return to Mr. Pipkin’s group, if you will excuse me. He is reading his poetry and will perhaps be hurt if I desert him so soon.”

  “And I will not?” he said. “Pipkin? The one who likes to look and live the part of a poet but has a lamentable lack of talent to go along with the image?”