by Georgie Lee
‘Given the warm day I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.’ And what Susanna needed to tell him was best said in public. Though she’d come to know something of Justin’s character over the last few days, there was no guessing how he might react when she delivered the news she was carrying Lord Howsham’s child. She didn’t think he’d become violent, or even shout, but whatever his reaction, with so many others around him he would be forced to show restraint and maybe even listen to her reasons why he should go through with the marriage. She didn’t want to force another man’s baby on him, but she didn’t want to lose him either, or condemn her child to the insufferable illegitimacy she’d endured her entire life.
‘Are you all right?’ Justin studied her with a concern she hoped wasn’t as astute as Mrs Fairley’s. She didn’t want him guessing her secret before she could reveal it.
‘Yes, only I haven’t slept well.’ It wasn’t a lie. After leaving the modiste’s yesterday, she’d barely been able to sit still, much less lie down.
‘Try and rest tonight for tomorrow night may be a long one...’ he breathed against her ear, twining the regret tighter around her stomach. There would be no wedding night and soon he’d discover it, too.
He escorted Susanna inside. A few couples sat at the tables scattered throughout the room, but most were empty. The plump older matron in a bright, white mob cap and an equally clean apron moved from behind the counter to serve two tall glasses of ices to two women sitting together on the far side of the room. The small table in front of the bow front window was empty and Justin guided Susanna there, holding out the chair as she sat down.
He took his place across from her. ‘What do you recommend?’
‘The orange ice. It’s what I had when I was here before.’ Then, she’d relished the treat. Today, her stomach was so tight with worry, she could scarcely imagine herself consuming something as rich as an ice. It’d been all she could do this morning to keep down two pieces of toast and her tea. She wasn’t sure if this illness was the result of the baby growing inside her or sitting across from Justin, preparing to reveal what she wished she could hide. But she couldn’t hide it. He’d been open and honest with her and shown her respect. He deserved her respect and honesty in return.
As she stared across the table at him, struggling to match his smile, the realisation the admiration he held for her was about to be flung into the street like an old broadsheet tore at her.
‘This isn’t my usual indulgence.’ Justin laughed. A young boy pressed his nose to the window to admire the coloured sweets displayed in glass jars before his irritated governess pulled him away.
‘Is there a public house you prefer?’ Her grandfather had frequented one in Oxfordshire. When she’d been little, she’d wondered at this strange male bastion. Then she’d peeked in the window of the dark timber-and-wattle building to view the plain wooden tables inside and it’d lost all hold on her young imagination.
‘No, I spend too much time in those places when I’m collecting information for Philip. To wander into one and pay for a tankard would feel too much like work.’
‘Then where do you spend your free time?’ Susanna asked, though she wasn’t sure why. There was no point continuing to get to know him when she was about to bring their growing intimacy to a terrible halt.
‘Philip and I regularly patronise a pugilist club. We’ve been training there since we were boys.’
‘It certainly explains your agility the other night at Vauxhall Gardens.’ And the sturdiness of his build. He had the bulk of the men who used to carry in the wine casks to her grandfather’s shop, but none of their coarseness.
‘That wasn’t even my most interesting skirmish.’ He held up his fists in mock sparring, his knuckles tight, the strength carrying up to his forearms, which bulged beneath his fitted coat. ‘And your brother wasn’t much of an opponent.’
The serving woman came to collect their orders, then hurried away.
‘Surely you don’t spend every night at the pugilist club?’ she asked.
He rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, a hunger for more than ices apparent in his rakish smile. ‘If you’re worried I won’t be home to do my husbandly duties, you’re quite mistaken.’
The recollection of his mouth against hers and his tongue caressing the line of her lips made her shift in her seat. She wished she could tug him out of his chair, hurry outside and pull up the hood of the curricle. She wanted to lose herself in the caress of his hands across her back and bask in his compliments and praise, but she couldn’t, not when she was about to pull down everything between them like a row of houses in the path of a fire.
She resisted leaning in and answering his invitation to flirt and tease. Instead she changed the subject, fear diverting her from her real purpose yet again. ‘Given the state I found you in at Vauxhall Gardens, I gather you don’t spend all your time at the pugilist club. Who was the woman I saw leaving your carriage?’
He tapped the top of the table a couple of times, not embarrassed, but not exactly thrilled by her question. ‘A friend of mine.’
‘A friend?’ His clothes had been too dishevelled for her to believe they’d been discussing business. Jealousy pricked at her, the sensation as surprising as it was troubling. Very soon he’d no longer be hers to be jealous of. His past mistakes could easily be walked away from while hers lingered to condemn her.
‘Mrs Gammon is a woman I’ve known for some time, most recently in the carnal sense. The night you saw us, I’d suggested we make our partnership permanent. Apparently, I was only good enough for bed sport. She’d decided to marry another.’ He slid back upright in his chair, his earlier excitement fading with this admission. Here was another person who’d failed to believe in him and she felt the sting as keenly as she had every time someone in her life had failed to believe in her.
‘You loved her?’
‘No. But we got on well together, or so I thought. She didn’t have the same faith in my ability to succeed as you do. But enough sour discussion.’ At once the seriousness which had marked him was gone and he was again the good-natured Justin. ‘How’s your dress coming along? Will Mrs Fairley have it ready in time for tomorrow?’
For the wedding which will never happen? ‘Yes,’ she barely managed to say, not trusting her tongue. The news she was carrying another man’s child was not something which could be blurted out across a table at Gunter’s, yet in the end it would have to be done.
‘Then why the long face? Did Mrs Fairley make the wrong dress?’
‘No, of course not. She’s an excellent modiste.’ Susanna’s stomach turned over and she swallowed hard. What she was about to say would heap another insult on him. She wanted to spare him the pain of it, but to lock this sin in her heart for the rest of her life, knowing every time he looked at the child it wasn’t his, was more than she could bear. ‘Justin, before we meet at the church, there’s something I must tell you.’
‘About what?’ He regarded her with a slightly more serious look.
The room swan around her and she laid her hands on top of the table to steady herself. She opened her mouth to speak just as the matron in the mob cap set two tall glasses frosted by the cold ices inside in front of them.
‘Here you are, then.’ She laid out two pewter spoons and linen napkins, then bustled off to attend to another couple who’d entered the shop.
Susanna met the eyes of the young woman in the red velvet pelisse striding to a table along the far wall, her narrow-jawed fiancé in tow behind her. She was Baron Holster’s daughter and she eyed Susanna as though she were a loose woman who’d crept in the shop to dirty the bright, clean establishment. Any other day, Susanna would have stared the woman down until her delicate sensitivities made her flinch. Today, it was Susanna who looked away first. The woman’s opinion of her was correct. Susanna was no better than a cyprian.
‘If you’re concerned about any lingering feelings I might have for Mrs Gammon, you shouldn’t b
e,’ Justin assured her, mistaking the source of her unease. ‘Her true opinion of me killed all my feelings for her, as I’m sure Lord Howsham’s behaviour did for you.’
‘Yes, it did.’ If only her time with him hadn’t resulted in a new life. She rested one hand on her stomach, remembering how her already weak love for the earl had wilted when he’d failed to arrive at Vauxhall Gardens. If he were as honourable a man as Justin, then she might appeal to him and tell him about the baby, but he’d callously walked away from her before. He’d have no compunction about doing it again and would probably publicly disgrace her this time. Once the Rocklands disowned her, there’d be no reason for him not to reveal the story, for it wouldn’t risk offending the duke. No one would be worried about offending her because she didn’t matter. The only people she’d ever mattered to were resting in the churchyard in Oxfordshire, or sitting here across from her, unaware she was about to crush his regard for her with the truth.
‘Speaking of Lord Howsham...’ she began hesitantly, swirling the melting ice in her glass.
‘I told you the other day we won’t discuss the past,’ he insisted, as aware as she of Miss Holster and her fiancé watching them with too much curiosity. Justin shifted his chair, the metal scraping over the wood as he placed his wide back between the couple and Susanna.
‘But it’s only fair you know—’
‘You and Lord Howsham were intimate,’ he interrupted in a low voice before she could say the words. ‘I’d guessed as much and I don’t care. Your time with him is as finished as mine is with Mrs Gammon. There’s no reason to discuss it further.’
He jabbed his spoon in the ice, scooped out a healthy portion and stuck it in his mouth with a finality to tell her she wouldn’t be able to broach the subject today, and if not today, then never. Tomorrow would see them before the altar.
‘Then I won’t say anything,’ she mumbled, as much to him as herself.
She slipped a spoonful of ice in her mouth. The orange was sharp and she swallowed it down as she did the words of her revelation. Both chilled her, but she forced the feeling aside. She wasn’t going to make a public spectacle of either of them by insisting on telling him something he obviously didn’t wish to hear. It wasn’t a secret she wanted lingering in the corners of her mind, but he’d made her decision for her, just as she’d made her decision to marry him the night at Vauxhall Gardens and again in the Rocklands’ sitting room. Her conscience nagged at her, but if he insisted she remain silent about her past then he accepted her as she was and she’d carry the secret the same way she’d carried all the other heartaches and disappointments of her life.
In time, when her child was happy and loved, she might forgive herself, assuming Mrs Fairley’s suspicions were correct. She might not be with child, or she might lose it after the wedding. After tomorrow it wouldn’t matter. Whether she gave birth to Lord Howsham’s child or a puppy, in the eyes of the law it would belong to Justin. No one would ever call the poor little mite a bastard or look down at it the way the baron’s daughter looked down on Susanna now. Her child would have the love and care of both parents and a home where he or she would be cherished. It was everything she’d wanted as a child and everything she’d be sure to give to hers. Heaven willing, he’d never discover the truth.
* * *
Justin finished the last of his ice, barely tasting the too-cold concoction. Her mention of Lord Howsham, and interest in Helena had turned the sweet sour. He didn’t want to hear about her past any more than he wanted to ponder his. He had a future to look forward to and it, not old ghosts, would guide him today.
‘I’ve purchased a shop for the business,’ he announced, his spoon rattling in his glass as he pushed it aside.
‘Why not lease instead? It’d be cheaper.’ She seemed as relieved as him by the change in topic. It settled the storm in her green eyes which had gathered there during the discussion of her past.
‘Buying it is a hedge against failure. If the wine trade doesn’t work, at least I’ll have the building to rent, or I can sell it and recoup some of the capital.’ Unlike a ship it couldn’t end up at the bottom of the ocean.
She wrinkled her nose at the last bite of her ice, then dropped the spoon in the glass. ‘Once, when my grandfather was doing well, the owner asked if he wanted to purchase the building with his shop. Grandmother begged him to do it, but he didn’t want to spend the money. When she tried to insist, he told her not to meddle in a man’s work. He should have let her meddle—she was better at business than he ever was.’
Justin reached across the table and took her hand, then slipped his thumb inside the small hole just below the glove’s button to caress her smooth flesh. It pebbled under the soft stroke, the tightness of her skin matched by the one in his loins. ‘You have my permission to meddle with my business as often as you like.’
Beneath the pad of his thumb the faint thump of her pulse quickened. Her heightened awareness of his skin against hers, even in this small way, increased the need surging through him. He slipped his thumb a little further inside the glove and swept it over the arch of her wrist. Her fingertips beneath his arm pressed into his coat with the same shock which parted her lips in a subtle inhale of breath. He shifted to the edge of his seat, wanting to push the table aside and pull her across the gap to him, but they weren’t alone or in some bawdy house. As conscious of his touch as she was, she was more aware of those around them. Her eyes shifted to the other patrons before coming back to him. Someone must be watching them, for the innocent reaction of her instincts faded and she pulled back her hand.
Justin let her go. He wouldn’t embarrass her in public, not when tomorrow night they’d be alone and they could both savour her unfettered response to his touch.
‘Shall we be off?’ he asked, as though a private room were waiting for them and not the imposing iron fences of Grosvenor Square.
‘Please,’ she choked out, before clearing her throat, gathering up her reticule and rising.
* * *
The ride home was no more soothing than their time in Gunter’s. Despite the traffic commanding his attention, Justin’s focus remained fixed on every shift of Susanna’s legs, each slide of her skirts across her knees and thighs. Her voice as she described her mother pierced him as sharply as the faint scent of the orange ice lingering beneath her jasmine perfume. He’d never been so aware of a woman before. Many had amused and intrigued him, but not one had ever exerted such control over his senses without even trying.
At last the noisy streets gave way to the quiet confines of Grosvenor Square. If he could have kept driving right on through today into tomorrow night he would have done it, but he couldn’t. Patience was necessary and he pulled the curricle to a halt in front of the Rockland house. They’d have their entire lives together after tomorrow.
* * *
Susanna studied the house, blinking against the intensity of the sunlight reflecting off the white stone. Netley pulled open the door and the cavernous entrance hall yawned, ready to engulf her. She wanted to stay out here in the daylight with Justin as the shadows fell from his hat to deepen the rise of his cheekbones. As agitated as she’d been before Gunter’s with her secret boiling inside her, the faint caress of his thumb over her skin had increased the tension until she thought she might jump from the carriage and sprint home. On and on she’d chattered at him, trying to dispel her increased agitation. He hadn’t demanded she sit quietly the way Lord Howsham used to do, but listened, deftly manoeuvring the curricle through the crush.
‘Thank you, Justin.’ She made for the house, needing to be alone and settle herself. How she’d get through tomorrow as the smiling bride everyone expected her to be she didn’t know. In the meantime, she’d concern herself with the business of seeing the last of her things packed and sent off to Justin’s house, wrapping up the unhappy life she’d endured with the Rocklands.
‘Wait.’ He caught her hand before she could go, his large fingers curling around hers and steady
ing her against the rocking which was making the street swim.
‘Yes?’ She wanted to cling to him and his solid faith in himself and her, even if she didn’t deserve it. She’d find a way to deserve it, to assist him in all his endeavours in the hope so much good could absolve her of the one wrong she was about to commit. All her behaviour from this day onwards would make her worthy to take his name and enjoy the protection of him as her husband. The sin wasn’t just for her own selfish reasons, but for the future of the child. This was her chance to give it everything she’d never had.
He inched closer until his chest was nearly against hers and she could see the faint ash and dust from the street in the threads of the wool coat. As she peered up into his heavy-lidded eyes, temptation almost overcame her better sense.
‘I can’t linger on the doorstep with a suitor, even if we’re meeting at the church tomorrow.’ It would only be a matter of time before Lady Rockland scuttled out from wherever she was inside, most likely making a maid miserable, and accuse Susanna once again of being common, or say heaven knew what to Justin.
‘Damn them all. I don’t care what they think.’ He bent down and claimed her mouth.
There was no evergreen bush to shield them from the view of the governesses parading up and down the opposite walk with their charges, or the nosy maid in the window across the street who’d weave what she saw into a fabulous tale to delight her employer and embarrass the Rocklands. Susanna didn’t care. Tomorrow she’d leave them and this world behind. Today she delighted in the firmness of his lips against hers. The heat from the sweep of his thumb beneath her glove ignited again until she was sure the trees of the square would catch fire and burn her and everything around them to the ground. She wouldn’t be sorry to see it go, only Justin when he drove away. Tomorrow they’d be together and then nothing, not her past, or his, could separate them.