by Anne Stuart
"Indeed, darling, I don't think you do," Monty said in a soft voice.
Lina moved away from the bed, letting Simon take her place. Why, in God's name had she turned to look at him, as if for help? There was no help coming from someone like Simon Pagett. She was anathema to him, and he was nothing more than a prosing annoyance. Monty didn't need to be subjected to someone lecturing him during the last few days or weeks of his life. He'd always sinned on a grand scale—it was disheartening to see him diminished to a repentant sinner.
"As for you, my dear Simon," Monty continued, looking up into the vicar's lined face, "you need to treat my darling Lina with more respect. She has stayed by me when most others were off consorting with Satan or whatever other bauble has caught their eye at these gatherings."
"You don't know?" Simon demanded, appalled. "You host these gatherings and you have no idea what your guests are doing?"
"Oh, I imagine some of them are trying to summon Old Scratch, but since I don't believe in his existence I hardly need to worry about it. They're just children playing games, the ones who aren't busy with rousing fornication." He glanced at Lina. "Hard to believe this straitlaced fellow ever knew a thing about fornication, isn't it, Lina? But he did. He had quite the reputation."
She really hadn't wanted to be dragged into the conversation, but for Monty's sake she turned back. "Very hard to believe. I suppose, then, that there must be redemption for us all," she said lightly. "Even whores like me."
It was an ugly word, and Monty looked distressed. "I think he's having a bad influence on you, my dear. You aren't usually so self-critical. Trust me, compared to some ladies 1 know, you've been a model of restraint." He glanced at Pagett. "If you're going to make Lina feel bad about herself then you'll have to leave, dear boy. I can't have my darling girl feeling sad.”
Simon had remained noticeably silent on the matter. "Everyone has to feel sad at some point in their lives, Thomas. And Lady Whitmore doesn't need my approval for how she chooses to spend her life—she only needs her own."
"Enough with the spiritual doublespeak," Monty said fretfully. "You two will simply have to learn to get along. I can't have you fighting over my deathbed—I prefer to be the center of attention at all times. Either the two of you go off and make peace, or you can setup a schedule of visiting with me where you won't have to see the other. Either way, I need a rest. Go away."
This was the second time Monty had told her to go off with his disapproving friend. She cast a suspicious glance at the pale man before rising. She could assume this was simply Monty having a temper tantrum, with no ulterior motive, but there had never been anything simple about Monty.
He continued to look fretful and exhausted, and she couldn't tell whether she was imagining things or not. And then Simon Pagett was by her side, his hand on her elbow, leading her away. "You always were a rude bastard," he said in a cool voice. "I'll do my best to convince Lady Whitmore to go away and leave you to me—it's no more than you deserve."
"You won't succeed," she said.
He glanced down at her, and for a moment she was caught, staring up into his brown eyes. Odd, she would have thought brown eyes would be warm and comforting. His were dark and almost bleak. "You underestimate my determination. Lady Whitmore."
"You underestimate mine."
She half expected Monty to shoo them off again, but when she glanced back at him he'd slipped into a restless sleep.
She tried to pull away from her unwilling partner, but his hand on her upper arm was almost bruisingly tight, and he whisked her out of the sickroom before she could even open her mouth to protest.
"You don't want to wake him up," Simon said, loosening his hold once the door was closed. "He'll need all the sleep he can get. And you can surely stand my company for a bit while we thrash things out. After all, we do have the same goal in mind. A peaceful passing for someone we both love."
That sounded much too intimate for Lina's peace of mind, but she decided not to argue. "Indeed," she said calmly enough, hoping to disguise the pain it brought her.
"I've told the servants to set lunch out on the terrace. We can talk without being overheard, and we'll be close enough should Montague need us."
This was fraught with a number of annoyances. First off, what right did he have to high-handedly order lunch, assuming she'd eat it? And to call Monty by his seldom-used first name. And why should he assume she wanted to hear anything he had to say?
He was the vicar and Monty's old friend, she gathered, but still—what right did he have coming in and making decisions and issuing orders?
And what was Monty doing? If she didn't know better she'd suspect him of attempting the single most ridiculous matchmaking in the history of the world. Or maybe it just appealed to Monty's sense of the absurd. One of society's most soiled doves and a pillar of the church. He probably thought if he threw them together enough sparks would fly.
They certainly did. Simon Pagett was looking down at her with what had to be contempt. Oh, to be sure he was all that was polite, at least up to a point, but she knew what lurked beneath his passive exterior. Well, so what? She found him similarly distasteful. They would have to be the last two people on earth to ever consider being attracted to each other.
During her nightmare marriage she'd only tried for help once. Bruised, frightened, she'd escaped to their local vicar, begging for help, for advice, for rescue.
The old man had folded his hands across his ample stomach and told her it was the woman's joy and duty to submit. And that he wished to hear no more complaints.
When she'd returned home she discovered that the vicar had preceded her return with a note to her husband, disclosing their conversation. That was the first night he'd beaten her into unconsciousness.
She'd never set foot inside a church again.
And now this...this man dared to look at her with what she was certain was opprobrium, judging her. I’ll eat in my room," she said and whirled away from him.
He caught her arm again, pulling her back around. "You'll eat with me," he said calmly. "You don't want the servants to know we're fighting."
"I don't give a damn what the servants think," she snapped.
She almost thought she saw a smile in the back of those dark eyes. "In fact, neither do I, but Montague would hear of it and then he'd start this ridiculous matchmaking all over again. We're better off pretending to go along with it."
She could feel the color rise to her face. "I hadn't realized you suspected it, too."
"I've known Montague all his life—it would tickle his sense of the ridiculousness."
She'd thought the very same thing, but for some reason hearing the words from his mouth was particularly annoying. "I'm an extremely wealthy widow, sir," she said in an icy tone, "and not unattractive. Most men wouldn't consider me a ridiculous choice."
He escorted her out onto the terrace, where a table was beautifully laid for Iwo. "Surely I haven't offended you?"
She smiled sweetly. "I'm impossible to offend, Mr. Pagett."
"You may as well call me Simon. Every time you say 'vicar' or 'Mr. Pagett’ I hear poison dripping off your tongue." He released her arm to hold the chair for her. There was no way she could leave without mating a scene, so she sat, glaring at him.
"You're hearing your own fevered imagination, vicar” She put deliberate emphasis on the word.
"And I suspect it's a great deal easier to offend you than I would have thought," he added, seating himself opposite her. There were no wineglasses on the table, and she was very much in need of something stronger than Monty's clear, cold water.
"Aren't we to have wine?" she asked.
"I don't drink spirits."
Of course he didn't. And she would have given her right arm for some. But she certainly wasn't about to admit it.
For the first lime she had a clear look at him in the light of day. He wasn't as old as she'd thought—the lines on his face were ones of hard experience, not age. The one g
ray streak in his dark hair was all the more startling, and for the first time she realized he looked oddly familiar.
"Have we ever met?" she asked abruptly.
"Have you been frequenting churches recently. Lady Whitmore?"
"Of course not. I just suddenly had the thought that I might have...seen you at some point."
He shrugged. "It's possible. I spent some time in London before I joined the church. When was your first season?”
She remembered it all too well—she'd been seventeen, the toast of London, and innocent. "More than ten years ago," she said stiffly. "But I expect you'd remember me. I was quite the toast."
"I hate to disillusion you, my lady, but I don't remember anyone from that time, no matter how heart-breakingly beautiful. I was too drunk."
She looked at him in surprise. "I thought you didn't drink spirits."
"Not any longer. I find they don't agree with me. I sincerely doubt we saw each other back then, my lady. 1 spent my time in whorehouses and gambling clubs. No decent hostess would have invited me over her threshold, and certainly no one would have introduced me to a shy young virgin. Which I expect you were, way back then."
"You make me sound like an old crone. I'm twenty-eight. Decades younger than you."
"I'm thirty-five," he said flatly. "Close your mouth. Lady Whitmore. If you're going to be astonished it's better just to raise your eyebrows."
She snapped her mouth shut, starting at him. She could see it now, the signs of dissipation. Her judgmental, self-righteous nemesis clearly must have been a libertine par excellence.
"So you see," he continued in a calm voice, reaching for the crystal glass of clear water, "I know whereof I speak. I know just how vicious and deadly are the paths you and Thomas are following. Thomas is about to meet his maker, and while I have no doubt that God will welcome and forgive him, I think his passing will be easier if he made peace with things beforehand. Which is why I'd rather you didn't sit there telling him ribald poems and gossiping about all your acquaintances."
"You think having been a hellion somehow gives you the right to tell other people what to do, vicar?"
"Simon," he corrected in an equally frigid voice.
"Simon," she purred. "Your story is quite touching, I must admit. If I were the sentimental sort I would quite be in tears. But let us examine the truth of the matter. You've just admitted to being the worse sort of reprobate, a drunkard, a lecher..."
"A liar and a thief," he added. "Those tend to go together."
"A liar and a thief," she added graciously. "Clearly you've been as despicable as every man I’ve ever met, with the remarkable exception of your old friend Monty, and you think simply because you no longer whore or drink you've somehow become a good man, a man with the right to pass judgment on other people. I'm afraid I must disagree. You have no right to judge Monty and you have no right to judge me. I will live my life exactly as I choose, and I don't give
a damn what you or anybody else has to say about it.”
He was watching her, and she had the odd feeling he was no longer listening to her. That something had distracted him in the midst of her tirade.
"Every man you've ever met is despicable, Lady Whitmore?" he said softly. "Then why do you spread your legs for all of them?"
She slapped him. She'd never hit anyone in her life, and yet she reached across the small table and slapped him across the face, as hard as she could.
The sound was shocking in the morning air, like the crack of a gunshot. She froze. Her hand was numb, tingling, and she could see the mark of her fingers on his face.
And then, to her horror, he made it even worse. "I'm sorry," he said. "You're right—I deserved that.”
It was the last straw. Monty was dying, her own heart was bleeding and God knew what was happening to Charlotte over there on that island of perverts. She rose so quickly the table tipped over, and the china and glassware went crashing to the ground.
"So much for Monty's matchmaking efforts," she said, her lower lip trembling.
And then she ran, before he could see the tears spill over from her eyes, before he could even begin to guess that the wicked Lady Whitmore's excellent exterior had begun to crumble. She couldn’t let it crack until she was alone. And then, if she had to, she'd howl.
Charlotte awoke slowly, cocooned in darkness and warmth, a blissful sense of well-being shimmering through her body despite the peculiar feeling between her legs, at the heart of her sex. She was alone in the bed, and she realized that light filtered through a heavy curtain that hid the sleeping alcove from the rest of the room.
She stretched, carefully, not certain exactly what was going to hurt and how much. Was this strange feeling between her legs going to continue? If she held very still she could almost feel him inside her again. Not the pain, but the deep, filling part of it, that had felt strange and foreign and yet somehow blessedly right.
However, she wasn't convinced she ever wanted to do it again.
She closed her eyes, snuggling deeper into the covers. She was naked. She'd never slept naked in
her life—it added to her odd sense of lassitude. The soft covers caressed her bare skin, the mattress beneath her cradled her body. Everything was strange and different.
She heard the low murmur of voices then. Adrian, speaking softly, to a servant. The light coming through the heavy curtains was daylight. Her ordeal, such as it was, was over.
She looked about her. The torn silk chemise lay tossed in one corner, but there was no sign of the plain brown monk's robe she'd worn when she entered his bed. She could pull the sheet off, wrap it around her nude body like a Roman toga, push the curtains aside and demand her freedom.
She didn't move.
What had happened to Charlotte Spenser, bluestocking, spinster, the practical, no-nonsense, plain and outspoken creature she'd always envisioned herself to be? She'd fallen into the bed of the man she'd secretly, shamefully dreamed about for three years, and suddenly everything had changed.
She no longer felt overtall and gawky. She felt sleek, sensual, her skin exquisitely sensitive to the feel of the sheets, the remembered feel of his hands that went places they should never have gone.
His mouth had gone there as well.
He'd taken her every way he could, he'd said, and she was exhausted, sensitized. And hungry.
Hungry for the smell of food beyond the thick curtain, the unmistakable scent of coffee and toast and bacon. Hungry for the touch of his hands, his long fingers, his body pressing hers down into the mattress.
She was mad. She'd disgraced herself, been ruined into the bargain, and the only way she could possibly redeem herself would be to scramble from the bed, wrapped in whatever she could find to preserve what was left of her modesty, and insist on being released.
She didn't want to be released. She wanted to stay in that bed all day, within the touch and the scent of the sheets. She wanted to make sure she didn't forget any of it—her fear, her anger, her shattering delight. It wasn't going to happen again, he'd already assured her of that. One night was all he'd wanted.
And there was no one else she'd even consider going near. What she'd done in the darkness with Adrian Rohan, what had been done to her, was so private, so darkly wonderful, that the very thought of one of her occasional elderly suitors trying the same thing was horrifying.
No, this would be enough for a lifetime. Even if she was greedy enough to want more, this would do. As long as she could keep things clear in her mind so that she could relive it.
When she returned home she would write it all down in exquisite detail, just so she wouldn't forget anything. She grinned in the darkness. Did women ever write of such things? There were countless French novels on the subject, hidden in rich men's libraries, and she'd always been unaccountably curious, but if Lina's husband had ever possessed such a thing it was long gone.
Besides, reading someone else's experiences would be almost as bad as lying beneath a stranger. She only wan
ted her own, to relive over and over when the need arose later in life.
She heard footsteps approach the bed, and she swiftly shut her eyes, feigning deep sleep. She could feel him watching her for a long moment, and she would have given anything to see the expression on his face. Whether it was boredom, distaste or impatience.
She was being pathetic—she was determined to open her eyes, but by the time she did, the curtain had closed again, and he'd moved away.
"Will you be attending the picnic this morning, your lordship?" The servant's voice was clearer now that she was paying attention. "Your cousin has requested that you join his party."
Adrian's laughter was without humor. "I imagine he has. I suppose he asked you all about my partner for the night?"
"He did, sir."
"And you told him...?"
"Nothing, sir. A good servant knows when to keep his eyes open and his mouth shut."
"And you're a very good servant, Dormin,” Adrian said lazily. "You may tell my cousin that I'm intending to stay incommunicado for the remainder of the Revels. My partner is more than sufficient for my needs."
There was a dear hesitation from the servant. "And if Lady Whitmore should ask? She's already sent two housemaids out to inquire about her friend."
"We've already agreed that you know how to keep your mouth shut, haven't we?" Adrian's voice was silky with menace. "It would distress me to dismiss you after all these years."
"I've served you well and discreetly for many years, my lord. I would be more disturbed to know I had failed you in any way. No one will discover anything from me." His voice was growing fainter, and she guessed he was moving toward the outer door set in the thick stone wall. "Is there anything else you require from me, my lord?"
He was leaving, Charlotte thought. Her chance of escape was leaving, while she lay abed like an eastern houri, awaiting the return of her pasha. Get up, she told herself impatiently. For God's sake, say something.