by Claudia Dain
“It truly doesn’t bother you? To have to give Dutton up, I mean. Your plans, all your hopes that the two of you would . . .” Amelia said, stopping awkwardly as a blush fought to life on her cheeks. “What was it like?” she said instead, leaving the topic of Dutton altogether, at least for the moment.
Of course Louisa knew exactly what Amelia was asking, the problem was that she didn’t know how to tell her what it was like without sounding like the veritable wanton she clearly was.
Life, she was certain, was going to be so much more complicated from this point on.
“Did you mind it very much?” Amelia said.
To which Louisa jerked her gaze, which, yes, had strayed to Blakes again, back to Amelia. “Did it look as if I minded it very much?”
Perhaps there was some hope for her. Perhaps she wasn’t as lecherous as she felt whenever she looked at Blakes, and, yes, she’d once again allowed her gaze to settle on Blakes, which clearly was becoming something of a disagreeable habit, which surely she could break. Perhaps after they were wed. Perhaps then, these stirrings would diminish.
Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Life did not appear altogether hopeful when one was forced to rely upon a series of perhaps.
“No,” Amelia said, her blue eyes appearing suspiciously soft and dewy, “you looked . . . you looked as if you were being quite . . . quite, almost transformed by it. In fact, you haven’t looked the same since he kissed you. I had no idea such a thing could happen, did you? Do you feel different?”
Yes, as it happened, she did. She felt exactly like a wanton. And it appeared she now looked like one as well.
“SHE doesn’t appear any the worse for it,” Iveston said softly.
“I’d say she looks better,” Cranleigh said.
“Try not to say anything,” Blakes said. “I don’t care to have my future wife discussed by you.”
“I’m your brother,” Cranleigh said.
“Exactly,” Blakes said. “Brothers are exactly the wrong sort to discuss women one intends to marry.”
“But women of the other sort are perfectly acceptable,” George said.
“Only by default,” Blakes said. “It’s far better not to discuss women at all.”
“It’s clearly better to leave off talking and simply kiss them into ruin and marriage,” Cranleigh said. “Got it.”
It was going to be nearly impossible to keep his brothers from talking about Louisa for the next month, at least. It was going to be truly impossible to keep his brothers from talking to Louisa for the next few decades. Blakes understood in that instant that having his brothers realize his affection for Louisa and his delight in finally bringing her to the altar was going to be fodder for every conversation they would have for perhaps the rest of their lives. He didn’t particularly enjoy contemplating that as he preferred his private life to remain private and his brothers, on most subjects, to remain silent. On the subject of women, especially. On the subject of his woman, definitely.
Louisa was his.
He wasn’t at all certain how it had happened, namely, what had prompted her to so readily meet him in the yellow drawing room, which could easily have been managed, and to then kiss him like the veriest wanton, which could not easily have been managed, before he had his guard up.
He liked to think that he would have, given the appropriate warning, got his guard up in time to keep her from being ruined. But he wouldn’t have laid odds on it.
He wanted her, had wanted her for more months than he cared to count, and to find that she wanted him, even in a purely physical sense, was better luck than he was willing to abandon. Actually, that she so clearly had wanted him in a purely physical sense was better than any wanting he could imagine.
Louisa, not that he had ever had any doubts about it whatsoever, was going to prove a very passionate wife. As she was clearly a passionate woman in all her dealings, it only made perfect sense. It was one of her charms, certainly, that particular brand of violence to her emotions and her boldness in behavior. He’d always found that amusing as well as intriguing. So many women of his acquaintance, Louisa’s cousin Amelia for one, were so guarded and so correct in all their various interactions. It became not only predictable, but boring.
Louisa was never boring.
He’d found upon reaching his majority that boredom was a rather too constant companion and, once established, very difficult to abandon. If there was one thing he knew about his marriage to Louisa, and certainly he knew far more than one thing, it was that she would never bore him.
In fact, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she would excite him.
In point of fact, she excited him at this very instant.
Josiah laughed, his gaze upon the very tight fabric currently stretched across Blakeley’s tree of life, as the saying went.
“You’ll need to plant that in something, soon,” Josiah said.
“Go back to Paris, Jos,” Blakes said. “You’re too coarse for London.”
“Come with me and we’ll plant trees together. The ground is rich and dark in Paris,” Jos said, still laughing.
Blakes turned his back on his brothers, who were all chuckling by this time, and said to his father, “I’m certain the gossips are running low on fodder. Shall we not return to dinner?”
And so they did.
Seventeen
DINNER was an abbreviated affair, the food mostly gone cold, which no one seemed to mind in the least, the gossip having been served piping hot. Food could be got at any hour, but an on dit of this sort happened once a Season at best. That twice in a single week two girls of good family had been ruined in the dressing room of Hyde House was something of a miraculous event along the order of the immaculate conception, although completely opposite in type, of course, not that anyone cared.
It was to be expected that people kept leaving the table to disappear in the general direction of the dressing room, a rather large room, as dressing rooms went, but still, only a dressing room.
Hyde found it necessary to post a rather beefy footman at the door into the dressing room from the yellow drawing room. When that proved unsatisfactory, he instructed the butler to assign another largish footman to be positioned at the other door to the dressing room, the door reached from the bedroom.
Yes, it had come to that.
If that proved less than satisfactory, there was always the possibility of charging a fee for admission, though Hyde would likely frown upon that sort of thing. Molly, on the other hand, would think that when the opportunity of making a profit presented itself it was a fool indeed who looked the other way.
Sophia so liked that about Molly. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was their American upbringing, but discarded that thought as implausible as their upbringings could not have been more different.
Sophia surveyed the table with a very pleased expression, which she knew annoyed Westlin down to the bone, which prompted her to smile all the more. Really, things were going so beautifully well that even Westlin sitting in her line of sight was becoming a boon.
“If the girl’s to be married as soon as the license is obtained, it would seem that she’ll have no use for me,” Edenham said.
“Don’t be absurd, your grace,” Sophia said, sipping her wine and considering Edenham across the wide table. He was a most appealing man, the more so because he had such a pleasantly jaded view of things. Idealism and youthful exuberance were lovely by degrees, but one could so easily find them intolerable as a constant diet. These young girls and their marriage hopes, while entertaining, could become slightly tiresome. “There is always a use for a duke.”
Edenham laughed softly, considering her in the candlelight. She enjoyed the fact that he was taking his time as she knew that she looked particularly well in candlelight.
“Sometimes a man wants to be more than a duke,” Edenham said.
“A king?” Sophia said, smiling at him.
“A man,” Edenham rejoined.
&
nbsp; “But you are always a man, your grace. Did you doubt it?”
“I was only afraid that you might doubt it, or at least forget it.”
“Hardly,” she said, toasting him discreetly. “I’m not in my dotage, losing my teeth in my soup, no matter what you might have heard.”
“You’ll be relieved to know that I’ve heard nothing about you losing your teeth. On the contrary, they seem to grow sharper as the years pass.”
“From cutting them on so many bodies, I should suspect,” she said, enjoying herself immensely. How long had it been since she’d crossed swords so amicably with a handsome man of means?
Oh, yes, earlier today, with Lord Ruan.
Well, a woman could manage more than one man, if the men were amenable and compliant. And weren’t they all?
“Would you care to gnaw upon me, Lady Dalby? Your appetite is not yet sated?” he said, clearly enjoying himself as fully as she. Lovely man.
“Is it ever?” she asked him, scandalizing Westlin, such a nice bonus.
“You’re corrupting me,” Blakesley interrupted with a wry twist to his lips. “What shall my dreams be tonight?”
“Oh, will you sleep?” Sophia said to Blakesley. “I shall have to try harder.”
“Harder is not a word I want to hear, Lady Dalby. I am being pressed to the utmost at the moment.”
“You or your breeches?” she said, laughing.
“I yield,” he said. “But only because my mother can read my lips and will scold me later. I wither upon scolding.”
“You must require regular withering, Lord Henry. Whatever shall Lady Louisa do to manage you? Not by scolding, I’ll wager. There must be other, more pleasant ways to wither.”
“I’m certain we shall manage together very well,” Blakesley said, ending their bawdy exchange, which surely was an act of love and devotion that recommended him fully. That such a man as Lord Henry Blakesley should be so fully and obviously in love with Louisa Kirkland, it was almost enough to inspire one to write a sonnet on the glories of romantic love.
Almost.
“I’m equally certain,” she said. “You are content with the match?”
“I believe you had no need to ask, Lady Dalby,” he said, his eyes narrowed in sarcastic wit. “But if I am to be quoted, I am most content.”
“You will speak to Melverley?” she said softly.
“I will,” he said. “I am eager for it.”
“I don’t suppose I could cajole you into allowing me to come and watch. I do so enjoy watching a man fall into spitting fits, and certainly no one could be more deserving of one.”
Blakesley eyed her carefully. He was a most observant man; one had to be so very careful around observant men. Fortunately, observant men were rather more the exception than the rule, so she was almost never required to be particularly careful.
“You have a special attachment to Lord Melverley?” Blakesley asked.
“My lord, I either enjoyed or endured a special attachment to many men,” she said with a smile. “Do you require specifics?”
There, that ought to close that particular door of inquiry.
“I should say ‘no,’ to give credit to my breeding, but it is so very tempting to say ‘yes.’ Tell me this and I’ll ask no more. Was Melverley endured or enjoyed?” Blakes asked.
“It’s such a struggle to remember,” she began.
“Not a promising start,” Blakes said with a half smile.
“But I believe,” she continued, “that at first I endured and endured until finally I found my enjoyment. It was a rough bit of ground, but eventually I found my passage.”
Westlin, who was avidly listening to every word, slammed his fork down upon his plate, which resulted in a most inappropriate clang, which drew not a few disapproving glances in his direction, which resulted in a most delicious sense of satisfaction in Sophia.
Really, if one could not torment one’s most enduring enemy and first amorous conquest, what was life for?
“I’m delighted to hear it,” Blakesley said.
“For my sake or for his?” she replied.
“Why, for the sake of all men,” Edenham said, reentering the conversation, “for what man wants to believe that he cannot do his part, especially with so lovely a partner? If Lady Dalby failed to find her feet upon that bit of ground, what hope for the next man who traveled the same road?”
“The point being that a man likes a road well traveled?” she asked Edenham pleasantly.
“Only in that it promises an enjoyable journey. Surely, a point both women and men can agree upon,” Edenham said, dipping his head to her in salute.
“I couldn’t possibly imagine disagreeing, your grace,” she said, dipping her head in reply. “To an enjoyable journey. And to Lord Henry and Lady Louisa, may they find their feet quickly.”
Henry Blakesley, who had fallen silent during her exchange with the Duke of Edenham, nodded pleasantly, but his eyes, those sharp blue eyes of his, considered her far too closely and with unpleasant sobriety. Observant men were truly the bane of a woman’s life. She thanked Providence almost daily that they were so few of them.
As to that, best to get Blakesley’s gaze trained elsewhere.
“You might think of applying for a special license, Lord Henry, to hurry things along,” she said, indicating with her glass down the table to where Louisa sat surrounded by Penrith and her nephew George. “George may have yielded Lady Louisa to you, but I would not be as certain of Lord Penrith. He looks more determined than is seemly, though you are perhaps the best judge of that.”
With complete predictability, Blakesley looked away from Sophia to stare down and across the table to where Louisa sat. Penrith did, indeed, look quite intent upon Louisa, which required that Blakesley look intently at Louisa as well.
Things were going beautifully.
THINGS were going horribly.
One would think that something as scandalous as being ruined would, well, ruin a girl, but the opposite seemed to be the case. Louisa simply could not dissuade Lord Penrith from making the most flagrant and flirtatious remarks directly to her face, and Mr. Grey, who previously had been most solicitous, now sat in supreme repose and watched it all with a quite savage-looking smile on his face, his dimple winking at her outrageously.
And Lord Dutton! Louisa simply could not fathom Lord Dutton. Whereas for the past two years getting his attention would have required her to break her leg over his very pretty head, now that she was ruined Dutton could not seem to stop talking to her.
The Marquis of Ruan was hardly better, though not nearly as talkative. He only stared at her with an altogether too knowing smile upon his rugged face, when he wasn’t staring in what amounted to derision at Dutton, that is.
It was too, too much. It really was almost enough to make a girl want to avoid being ruined. There was such a thing as too much male attention and, clearly, being ruined invited it.
Why hadn’t anyone told her?
Amelia was no help whatsoever. Amelia sat in what could only be described as dazed silence whilst Penrith, Dutton, and occasionally Ruan talked about her impending marriage to Blakesley both as if it were a fact already achieved and, simultaneously, a thing which could be avoided by the merest effort on their parts. And they were encouraging her to avoid it, marriage to Blakesley, that is, and yet speaking to her as if she had, in fact, been literally and physically ruined.
It was most embarrassing. She did not know at all what was the proper form in the current situation, not that she was convinced that they were exhibiting the proper form, but she did like to set an example when at all possible.
It didn’t look possible in this particular instance.
“I don’t know why I think it should spoil your fun, for you are clearly enjoying this, Lord Dutton, but I am not interested in being your guest at the theater. If I were to attend the theater, you know full well that Melverley has a box for the Season and I should use his.”
“I shoul
d think you’d not want to share a box with your father,” Dutton said. “I was not at all aware that you and Melverley were on such intimate terms as to share a box in the Theatre Royal.”
“I am his daughter,” she said stiffly.
Really, it was terribly rude of Dutton to allude to the fact that she didn’t care to spend any time with her father in his box as it was a certainty that, if her father were in his box, he would not be in it alone and he would not be watching the theatrics. No, her father did other things in his box.
“Ignore him, Lady Louisa,” Penrith said, his famous voice washing over her bare shoulder. It was most strange, but ever since she’d kissed and been kissed by Blakes, Penrith and his voice had almost no effect upon her. She could not have imagined a kiss to have such power.
Perhaps it was only Blakesley’s kiss which did so?
Pity that she would never be able to put the theory to the test as she would have no opportunity to kiss anyone but Blakesley for the rest of her life. She was determined for that to be the case, for to even speculate otherwise would be to wander into wantonness and she was not going to be like her father.
“He only wants to best Blakesley,” Penrith continued, and she did find herself looking deeply into his startling green eyes. Some things just could not be ignored. “Don’t let yourself become a mere tool to that end.”
“And what do you want, Lord Penrith?” Mr. Grey said, leaning back in his chair to look at Penrith behind her back.
“Only what we all want,” Penrith said. “To do right by the women of our acquaintance.”
“Is that what we all want?” Ruan said sardonically. “I’d always wondered. So good to have that settled, then.”
“I’ve known Lady Louisa for far longer than you, Lord Penrith,” Dutton said. “Do not lay your own plans at my doorstep.”
“You have known her for far longer,” Penrith agreed, “yet have not managed to escort her to the theater before now? How tardy of you, Dutton.”
“Perhaps nothing was playing that he wished to see?” Ruan said pleasantly enough, yet entirely sarcastically.