“His work is interesting,” she said.
“If I were an aspiring poet,” he said, “and you called my work interesting in that best hostess voice of yours, Mary, I should drown both it and myself in the nearest duck pond. Go, then. I shall see to my own entertainment.”
Mary returned gratefully to the group she had just left, and felt all the bad manners of her behavior and hated him for having forced her into it. It was inexcusable of her to abandon a late guest without first of all seeing to it personally that he had a drink in his hand and had been introduced into some group.
She hesitated, as there was a flurry of polite applause to herald the end of one of Mr. Pipkin’s longer and more impassioned pieces. Perhaps she should return to Lord Edmond? Even considering who he was, she would have treated him with the proper courtesy if those events surrounding Vauxhall had not happened. Of course, her salon would be the last place on earth he would be if it had not been for Vauxhall.
She was relieved to find when she looked behind her that he was half hidden among the large group about Mr. Beasley. The look on his face had changed to one of amusement. How dare he? she thought, giving in to a wave of anger. How dare he find one of the country’s most prominent and progressive politicians amusing? How dare he find her entertainment amusing! Doubtless he would be far more comfortable and serious if she had a few half-naked dancers cavorting on the tables.
“Mary!” Penelope Hubbard tapped her on the arm and drew her to one side. Their mutual friend Hannah Barrat was with her. “Whatever is this?”
“Lord Edmond Waite?” Mary did not pretend to misunderstand. “He said that he has a curiosity to know how the other half lives.”
“I could have died when he walked into the room,” Hannah said. “Julian will not like it above half when I tell him, though Julian is a thoroughly dry old stick, of course, and I never pay him any mind. The whole idea of women being interested in politics and matters of the mind shocks him. But Lord Edmond Waite, Mary. He is somewhat beyond the pale, is he not? Poor Lady Dorothea Page.”
“I told you about Vauxhall,” Penelope said.
“So you did,” Hannah said. “I think I would have developed smallpox and returned home when I saw that he was one of the party, Penny. And you were caught in the rain with him, Mary? That was most unfortunate. But could you not discourage him from coming here this evening?”
“My guests come not by invitation only,” Mary said. “I would not turn away a guest. Besides, he is behaving with perfect propriety.” For some reason her anger was suddenly directed against Hannah.
“Mary,” Penelope said, “Vauxhall less than a week ago; a drive in the park the day before yesterday; here this evening. The man is not conceiving a tendre for you, is he?”
“How ridiculous!” Mary said. “Of course he is not.”
“He must be sent about his business without further ado, Mary,” Hannah said. “It will do your reputation no good to be seen consorting with him, you know.”
“Oh, come, Hannah,” Penelope said crossly, “sometimes you can be as stuffy as that husband of yours. And yes, of course I apologize for the insult. But friends can be excused for some plain speaking. Is he bothering you, Mary? Do you want me to be sure to be the last guest to leave?”
Mary hesitated. What if he really did as Marcus had always done and lingered after the other guests had taken their leave? Except that Marcus had always done it with her consent, of course.
“Yes, please, Penny,” she said. “I would be grateful.”
Penelope gave her friend a penetrating look. “He is being troublesome, then,” she said.
“I must go and see if the refreshments are ready in the dining room yet,” Mary said, and she smiled and turned away from her friends.
“A wonderful evening, Mary,” Colonel Hyde told her at supper. “It is a shame that Margrove was unable to come, and a shame perhaps that most of us are in such awe of Beasley that we put up no argument against his theories. But one must confess that they are interesting theories. And as usual you have attracted the cream of London society here.”
“Thank you,” she said.
He leaned a little closer to her. “Waite is the one who puzzles me,” he said. “What on earth is he doing here, Mary? The man does not have two serious thoughts to rub together, does he?” He chuckled. “Dorothy was put out that I stopped in the park the other day. People would talk about our showing civility to such a man, she said. But how could I ignore our little Mary, I asked her.”
Mary’s smile was a bit forced. “I hold open house,” she said. “Anyone is welcome to come, provided he is appropriately dressed and well-behaved, of course.”
“Of course,” he said, patting her hand. “I did not mean any criticism, Mary. It is a thoroughly pleasant evening, as usual.”
Provided he is well-behaved. The words echoed in Mary’s mind less than an hour later. They were back in her salon, in three groups this time. Mr. Pipkin was surrounded by a new group of the curious or of those who felt that good manners dictated that he not be left in isolation. Mary had maneuvered some people into his group herself. A second group had gathered spontaneously to discuss the play at the Drury Lane they had seen the night before. The third and largest, of course, was about Mr. Beasley.
Mary joined the third group, despite the fact that Lord Edmond Waite was still part of it and still a silent and amused spectator. Or so he was for a while, at least. Mr. Beasley had been delivering a lengthy monologue in which he was expounding some of his most radical theories. He gazed about at his gathered disciples with condescension and satisfaction. There were several murmurs of surprise and disapproval, even of shock, but no one spoke up against him as Sir Alvin Margrove would surely have done. Not until Lord Edmond spoke up, that was, his voice bored and quite, quite distinct.
“Beasley,” he said when the great man paused for breath, “you are an ass.”
Everyone, including Mr. Beasley, froze. But the politician had not been a member of the House for several years for nothing. He recovered himself almost immediately.
“I beg your pardon, sir?” he said in a tone that boded ill for his critic.
“You are an ass,” Lord Edmond repeated, and Mary closed her eyes, white with fury. “I cannot imagine how so many apparently intelligent people can stand here and listen politely to such utter drivel.”
“My lord.” Mary stepped forward. She was using her best hostess voice, she realized, instinct having taken over, though she had no idea how she was going to smooth over the moment.
But Mr. Beasley held up a large staying hand. “Don’t distress yourself, pray, ma’am,” he said. “Doubtless the gentleman will explain himself.”
“Redistributing wealth equally will make everyone equal in value and happiness,” Lord Edmond said. “Utopia will have been arrived at. Heaven will be on earth. It is an idea as old and as asinine as the proverbial hills.”
“Of course,” Mr. Beasley said, looking about him for approval, “the speaker is one of the wealthy and privileged. One who would have much to lose under the new order. The same would apply to most of us in this room. Most of us, however, have a spirit of humanity and justice.”
“Spirit of cow dung,” Lord Edmond said. “If you seriously believe that by artificially making everyone equal, Beasley, you will make them content to remain equal and to live happily ever after, then obviously you have a pea for a brain.”
“I have ever found,” Mr. Beasley said, inhaling deeply so that he appeared to swell to twice his size, “that those people of dull mind and brain invariably attribute like intellectual powers to those they cannot understand.”
“And I have ever found,” Lord Edmond said, “that asses consider themselves to be intellectual giants. If you are to bring justice to the poor, Beasley, you do not abolish all property rights and title and position. Do you seriously think that by setting a gin addict and pickpocket down on a few acres of land and stuffing a wad of money into his hand you are e
nabling him to live a happy and productive existence for the rest of his life? He will spend the money on gin and sell the land for more and steal from his neighbor to secure yet more for his future.”
“A liquor addict.” Mr. Beasley pursed his lips. “From one who knows, sir? I would have no experience of such matters myself.”
“And have sealed your own doom and confirmed me in my estimation of you by admitting as much,” Lord Edmond said. “If you do not understand people, Beasley, then you cannot concoct theories for their happiness. Have you learned nothing from the Revolution in France and from the career of Napoleon Bonaparte? A wonderful exercise in univeral liberty and equality, would you not agree?”
He turned away from the interested group as Mary squirmed with embarrassment and impotent fury. How dare he? Oh, how dare he!
“I must be leaving, Lady Mornington,” he said. “I wish I could stay and converse longer, but I believe I have made my point, and I would not wish to monopolize the conversation.”
She could have let him go. She could have stayed to smooth over the situation as best she could. There was no compulsion on her to see him to the door. But she turned and preceded him from the room.
“A delightful evening, Mary,” he said, closing the salon door behind him.
She rounded on him, her eyes blazing.
“How could you!” she said. “How could you so have embarrassed me and ruined the evening?”
He raised his eyebrows. “As I understand it,” he said, “these evenings are meant for conversation, not for the delivery of monologues. I seem to remember that Colonel Hyde was looking forward to the evening because a few sparks would fly if Margrove had come. Well, Mary, I rescued the evening from dullness for you. I believe I stirred up a few sparks, did I not?”
“You called him an …” She drew in her breath sharply.
“Ass?” he said. “And so he is, too. A horse’s ass, to be more precise. How can you listen to him spouting such poppycock without shouting with laughter, Mary? Politeness must be very deeply bred into you.”
“And perhaps it is as well,” she said, her voice tight with fury. “Or I would tell you precisely what I think of you.”
“I wish you would anyway,” he said, smiling at her and flicking her cheek with one long finger.
“You are unspeakably vulgar,” she said. “Your language belongs in the gutter.”
He considered. “In the farmyard, I believe,” he said. “Asses and cow dung are to be found there, Mary. Duck ponds, too. Have you never been into the country?”
“I believe you were leaving,” she said with icy courtesy.
“I must take you there sometime,” he said, looking down to her lips. “It would be an education for you, Mary. You would not believe, for example, the number of uses there can be for a haystack. I will show you at least one of them.”
“Please leave,” she told him.
“When will I see you again?” he asked. “Will you come to Kew Gardens with me tomorrow? There are no duck ponds there, or haystacks, either. Nothing to shock your sensibilities. Will you come?”
“No,” she said, “thank you.”
“Because I called Beasley an ass to his face and a horse’s ass to yours?” he said. “My apologies, Mary. I was angry with the man. Forgive me?”
“Please leave,” she said.
“You will not come to Kew?”
“No.”
“No without the thank-you this time,” he said with a sigh. “You must mean it, then. But I shall see you sometime soon, Mary. I do not like this primness. It is what I have always disliked in you. I like the other Mary—the real Mary. Good night.”
He took her hand in his, and she steeled herself to having it kissed again. Instead he leaned forward and kissed her firmly and briefly—and openmouthed—on the lips.
“Get out!” she whispered fiercely. One of her servants was at the door, just out of earshot, waiting to open it for him. The man must have seen. “If I never see you again, it will be too soon.”
“A cliché unworthy of you, Mary,” he said, his pale blue eyes boring into her for a brief moment before he released her hand and turned to leave the house without a backward glance.
If she were any more furious, Mary thought, she would surely explode into a thousand fragments. She was … furious! Feeling had shivered downward from her mouth, just as if it were a physical reality, past her throat, through her breasts, down into her womb, and lower, leaving an uncomfortable throbbing between her legs. They felt rather as if they might collapse beneath her.
And she remembered again all that she had remembered with great and physical clarity each night since Vauxhall. She turned quickly and hurried back into the salon.
HE DID NOT know quite why he was pursuing her with such determination. She seemed seriously to want to have nothing to do with him, and her world was not his. He could not understand how she could take people like Pipkin and Beasley seriously. He had always found the deliberate pursuit of intellectuality either amusing or tedious. Could she not see that it was all hogwash?
He had been sent down from Oxford once upon a time for saying as much to a don—though his language had been rather more colorful on that occasion and had strayed somewhat from the farmyard. And he had bloodied the man’s nose. Mary would have had ten fits of the vapors—though perhaps not. She had followed the drum for a few years with her husband, had she not? She must have heard it all, and more, then.
The Oxford episode had been atypical of him at that time, of course, happening as it had a scant month after Dick’s death and at a time when his mother’s life had hung by a thread. Lord Edmond’s mouth formed almost a snarl as his mind skirted the memories. The don had been fortunate not to have had his neck wrung. Sanctimonious fool!
Why was he pursuing Mary? For the sheer challenge of overcoming such obvious resistance? Perhaps. He had pursued Felicity for similar reasons. So that he might degrade her and show his contempt for her world? No, not that. He felt no hatred for her, only a certain amusement at the fact that he might be the only man in existence, with the possible exception of Clifton, who knew that a more worldly and more earthy—and damned more interesting—Mary lurked below the demure surface.
Because her performance in bed had left him aching for more? Yes, definitely that. Women, in his experience, did not enjoy sex. Either they lay still and limp as fish, submitting to having their legs thrust wide and their bodies penetrated, and smiling like sweet martyrs afterward—that type he rarely bedded twice. Or else they twisted and gyrated and panted and shouted out with ecstasy and then adjusted their hair and held out a palm for payment. At least such women worked hard for a living, and often they knew how to give exquisite pleasure. He occasionally returned to them for more. Twice he had employed one of them as his mistress, one for a year and a half, the other for longer than two.
Mary fell into neither category. She was the only woman he had had who had quite openly and honestly enjoyed having sexual intercourse. And so she was the only woman with whom his own pleasure had been unmarred. Just the memory of that first bedding in the scarlet room could make his breathing quicken and his temperature soar—the time when she had asked for it slow and had been given it slow.
Yes, that was the reason. There could be no other. He wanted her. But not as an occasional bedfellow, someone with whom to while away the tedious hours of a useless existence. More than that. As a long-term mistress—very long-term if her performances continued to match those of that night. He wanted to have her to start his days and as dessert to his luncheon, as a mid-afternoon exercise, as an appetizer before whatever entertainment the evening had to offer, and as a nighttime lullaby and a middle-of-the-night drug.
He wanted to teach her more—much more. And he wanted to learn all she had to teach.
He wanted her. And by God, she must want him, too. As far as he knew, she had had no one since Clifton. And a woman of such passion and appetite could not possibly find fulfillment from
abstention. She was just too prim and too respectable for her own good—despite Clifton. Doubtless his reputation bothered her. Many ladies had avoided him even before he had dumped Dorothea. After that, many had totally shunned him—like Mrs. Hyde in the park the other day. The old fool! As if he cared.
Perhaps Mary had heard about Dick. It was a fifteen-year-old scandal, dead almost as long as Dick himself. But perhaps she had heard about it.
She must be made to realize that reputations and labels do not make a man. The man she saw and thought she knew was no more the real person than she was the woman he saw. The two people who had met and loved during all the frenzy of a bad storm were not the two people that the ton knew and the two people they had thought each other until that night. He could see that clearly. She must come to see it, too.
And if she did not, well, then, by God, he would make her see it. He wanted her. And he needed her. And he would have her, too.
And so he set about discovering where he might meet her within the following week. She would be at the theater with the Barretts and a few more of their friends two evenings after her literary evening, he discovered by devious means, which were second nature to him. And she had accepted an invitation to the Menzies ball three nights after that. He had not himself received an invitation, but he would not allow that to deter him from going. They were scarcely likely to make a scene by turning him away. And if they did, well, then, it would give the tabbies something else to gossip about for a few days until another scandal came along to amuse them.
Lady Mornington had not seen the last of him by any means.
5
SHE HALF EXPECTED HIM TO CALL ON HER THE NEXT day to try to insist on taking her to Kew. It was an enormous relief when he did not. He did not appear all day, or all the next day. He had finally taken the hint, she thought, though the words she had used to him could hardly be classified as a hint. He had finally accepted the fact that she wished to have no further dealings with him.
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