by Claudia Dain
When Melverley, who had a revoltingly white arse sprinkled with curling red hair, grunted and lurched for perhaps the twentieth time, though it could have been merely the third, she was simply too revolted to be relied upon for an accurate count, she decided she simply could not wait any longer and must speak out.
She was completely certain that Emily, young and struggling as she was to maintain even the display of ardor, would thank her.
“Lord Melverley,” she said lightly, grinning when he jerked to a halt and swore a curse into Emily’s bodice. “How delightful it is, bumping into you this way. Though, I suppose that is not quite accurate. ’Tis Miss Bates whom you are bumping into, so to speak.”
Melverley, thankfully, covered his most unappealing arse, and stood, clumsily, to face her. Emily, by the look of it, was struggling not to grin and to appear properly embarrassed by the interruption. Dear Emily would simply starve if she ever had to rely upon her acting skills alone.
“Are you lost, Lady Dalby?” he said gruffly, still adjusting his breeches as he faced her.
“No, but I am so very afraid that you are, Lord Melverley. You seem to have quite completely lost your way with your elder daughter,” Sophia said, looking at Emily, who read her nicely enough, smart girl, and who, mumbling, left the box to them. Melverley did not look pleased, but then, when did he ever?
“Louisa is none of your concern,” he said, still gruffly because the poor man simply had no other way of communicating. It would have been distressing if it were not so amusing.
“She certainly is proving to be none of your concern, though Lord Henry Blakesley does not seem to mind giving her the attention she deserves and, perhaps, requires. How like you she is. How gratifying it must be for you, to observe at least one of your daughters following in your deliciously debauched footsteps.”
“What the devil are you talking about, Sophia?” he said. Gruffly. “Lord Henry ruined her and she can stay ruined. ’Twould teach her well.”
“I’m not precisely certain what you think it will teach her, unless it be how to live a life debauched, which, while it has a certain appeal, is not the route most men choose for their daughters.”
“You know as well I, as well as all of London, that she is none of mine,” he said. Yes, gruffly.
“Darling Melly, they do say that the father is always the last to know, but I do think you are pushing it. Louisa is all yours, from her ginger hair to her stubborn will and, I hesitate to say it to your face, her sharp tongue. How could you think otherwise?”
“Westlin told me as much,” he said. “Margaret warmed his bed. She even admitted it once.”
“Darling, Westlin thinks he has fathered every person of ginger hair between the ages of twenty-five and two who live within fifty miles of Town. It is a rare conceit, and I am quite certain he expects everyone in Society to indulge him, but I see no reason why I should, nor why you should. Can you?”
His poor battered face, for he did suffer from an extremity of color about the nose and chin that was most alarming, grew thoughtful and still. Poor dear, thinking was proving something of an effort after decades of fleshly indulgence. Well, he required managing, a tender leading string to prompt him to the correct conclusion.
“Her mother confessed,” he said, belligerently, which did prove some improvement over gruffly.
“Darling, of course she confessed,” she said in a gay tone. “Let me guess as to how the stage was set for that particular performance. You were then, as you are now, prone to dalliance. Westlin had started his rumors, all to benefit himself, which even you must admit. You accused her, the scent of another woman likely still fresh upon your skin, and she . . . ? She was supposed to play the long-suffering wife, true to the end, as you played Othello and smote her down?” Sophia laughed to see the look on his face. “Melly, you simply must stop living your life by some play or other you’ve seen. What did you expect her to say? She’d been accused, you were neither faithful nor discreet, and you presented her with the perfect revenge. I applaud her for taking it. What woman would not?”
“She could have denied it,” he said.
“In the face of your disbelief?” she said. “Admit it, Melly, remember Margaret as she truly was, not as you’ve rewritten her in your memory. Could she have been faithless to you? Did she not love you? Was she not a good wife, a credit to your name?”
Melverley looked very thoughtful, melancholy, almost on the point of tears. How very well-deserved they were. He had behaved abominably, and he should repent of every foul deed from the day he first tupped a dairymaid to this.
“I should kill Westlin,” he finally said, having composed himself to the best of his ability, which was not great, poor man.
“Westlin is not your problem, Lord Melverley,” she said. “Louisa is. She has been ruined and will continue to be so and more so if you do not step in and make all right.”
“You mean, to marry Henry Blakesley.”
“Precisely.”
“She could do better.”
“My dear Lord Melverley,” Sophia said, gesturing across the theater, the shouts and catcalls rising, “she is being done better even now. By Lord Henry. What you will not give, will be taken.”
It was then that Melverley, who really must get his head out of a lady’s skirts more often and look about him, saw what everyone else in the Theatre Royal was seeing, and commenting upon, loudly. Namely, that Lady Louisa Kirkland, eldest girl of the Marquis of Melverley, was almost certainly being tupped by Lord Henry Blakesley in a box at the Theatre Royal. She seemed to be enjoying herself far more than Emily Bates had done, but Sophia did not think that Lord Melverley would appreciate that distinction being pointed out to him.
“And you doubted she was your daughter, Melverley,” Sophia said brightly. “You must be blind.”
Twenty-four
“I’M not going to take you here, Louisa, pressed against a wall at the Theatre Royal,” Blakes said, holding her at arm’s length and breathing hard, rather like a man who was fighting for his very life.
Poor man. He was having such a difficult time resisting her. What was she to conclude but that she was irresistible to him?
“I think, Blakes,” she said, smiling at him and licking her lower lip. He nearly moaned. It was extraordinary. She was enjoying herself completely. “I think that I shall have you anywhere I want you. I think, darling man, that you are powerless to resist me.”
“And you want me powerless, do you?” he said, his blue eyes glinting like rubbed pewter.
“I’m a woman, aren’t I? Naturally I want you powerless, at least where I am concerned.”
“Darling Louisa,” he said, mimicking her, “if you think that you have all the power here, now, you are very, very stupid. I don’t mind, you understand, for a man does not require intelligence in a woman, particularly if she has a firm bosom and a solid arse, but I had thought, once, that you possessed some small bit of intelligence. Oh, well,” he said with a rather nasty grin, “we shall have to make do without, shan’t we?”
“Whatever do you mean?” she said.
She was very well aware that he was baiting her, but she could not fathom his reason. She was ruined. He had ruined her. Her father had to be punished for it somehow. And they had stumbled upon this happy solution. Why did Blakes have to muddle it all by thinking so much?
He did have the unfortunate tendency to complicate things. She would have to work on that.
“Only that, as ruined as you are, I’m not at all certain that Hyde will allow me to marry you, no matter what Melverley decides. I have done my part, certainly.”
“I presume you mean the part where you ruined me?” she snapped.
“I thought your supposition was that you had ruined me?”
“Blakes, you know perfectly well that only a woman can be truly ruined, and I am most sincerely ruined!”
“You most certainly are,” he said. “Which would mean, I presume, that I can take you or leave
you, as the mood strikes me.”
“Something certainly will soon be striking you, Blakesley,” she snarled, grabbing him by the arms and trying to shake him. He was, most annoyingly, unshakeable. He stood like a rather stupid rock embedded in the soil, and with all the capability of a rock, too. “You have ruined me, in your father’s very house, and you shall do all within your power to make it right.”
“Ah, my power. I have so little, you see,” he said, smirking at her as if this were a jest of immense proportions. “Your father denies me. My father, after this night’s exhibition, will certainly deny me. We are, it seems, left without options. Except, naturally the option of me setting you up somewhere, somewhere not quite as respectable as you are accustomed to, but nice enough for all that. I shall set you up, give you a generous allowance, and see you at my pleasure. In fact, I have begun the arrangements today, as Lady Dalby so helpfully instructed.”
“Lady Dalby! I should have known,” Louisa spat.
“The only thing left, of course,” he continued, all but ignoring her, “is for me to decide just when and where I will take you and, having sampled the goods, decide how much I will settle on you.”
“Blakes, you have the most appalling sense of humor!” she said, crossing her arms over her breasts. It was all well and good to play at being a girl on the town, but it was altogether another to actually have to perform as one. “You know very well that you love me and want to marry me.”
“Do I?” he said softly, pressing her back into the darkness, away from the catcalls of the crowd and the leers from the peers all around them. Was this to be her life now? “When did I tell you that?”
“You told me that,” she said, lifting her chin and her hopes, “when you sat by my side at every event in Town for the past two years.”
“The two years that you were chasing Dutton?” he said. “Is that when I declared myself and you heard my vows?”
Oh, he would make everything so difficult. Leave it to Blakes to want to poke and prod every little thing, even ancient things like her ill-founded fascination with Dutton. How was she to have known that Dutton couldn’t kiss and couldn’t make her blood roar? It was even worse that he couldn’t make her laugh and, as Blakes well knew, only he could make her truly laugh.
“Blakes, you know very well that I allowed you to ruin me. That speaks volumes, if you would only admit to hearing the tune. Do you think I would have kissed you if I didn’t know that you cared for me? Deeply cared for me? Really, I can’t think why you are being so argumentative all of a sudden. You know perfectly well that you want me desperately.”
“And you, Louisa?” he said on a soft growl. “Do you want me desperately?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not quite,” he murmured against her mouth, almost kissing her, but not quite. He truly did have the most malicious sense of humor.
His hands were doing wonderful, scandalous things to her breasts, teasing them, taunting her, and his mouth, that wicked mouth, breathing, tickling, tantalizing her without truly satisfying her.
She could hardly think for wanting his mouth on hers and his hands on her, and yet he was mumbling something against her skin, which was irritating in the extreme. The man needed serious instruction in debauchery; she was quite certain that there was no need for this endless talking. Certainly, there were far better things he could be doing with his mouth.
“Melverley pearls,” he whispered just before he kissed her. It was not nearly enough of a kiss to satisfy her, as he almost immediately moved from her mouth to her throat to her chest to her . . . right breast. Finally, he seemed to have the idea of the whole thing.
And then he stopped and lifted his head and said, in an almost conversational tone of voice, which he was obviously putting on just to annoy her, “What about them, Louisa?”
“What?” she gasped, thrusting her breasts at his mouth with a moan of longing. “What about what?”
“Your pearls. This all started because of the Melverley pearls. What shall we do about them?” he said.
It was with some relief that she noticed he was struggling for composure and to keep his hands still, though they were snuggled just beneath the shadow of her breasts and he seemed to be having a bit of a time not moving them about. Blakesley was far less immune to her particular charms than he cared to let on. She had the most peculiar urge to giggle for joy.
She squelched it, naturally.
“I don’t care,” she said, making a grab for his head, to pull it down to her mouth, which he rudely avoided by pinning her arms to her sides. She did have the satisfaction of having her bodice gaping open in his general direction, but her skirts were firmly planted around her ankles and he didn’t seem particularly eager to repeat his performance of the Hyde House dressing room. Really, she had never known Blakesley to be so ill-tempered and stubborn. One would almost think that he didn’t want to seduce her.
“I thought you cared very much. I thought you wanted them back at any cost.”
“Almost any cost,” she said, deciding that trying to fight her way toward Blakesley’s mouth was indecorous and, possibly, indecent. She relaxed against the wall and took a deep breath, hoping that the jut of her breasts would distract him.
He did, in truth, seem mildly distracted, at least for a moment.
It was not a pleasant moment; she was becoming seriously in doubt as to her powers of appeal. Could it be possible? Might he actually be able to resist her?
“I tried to get them for you, at almost any cost,” he said, staring at her bodice, his gaze moving slowly down to her skirts. She tried to think of some way to encourage the direction of his gaze, but couldn’t, other than trying to tackle him by wrapping her legs around his waist. She was completely certain that such an attack would be both indecorous and indecent. And she would likely miss.
“Yes, that was very nice of you,” she said softly, staring at his mouth. He seemed to respond well when she stared at his mouth; it helped a great deal that she enjoyed his mouth immensely. “Did you get them? The pearls?”
His gaze left her skirts and went back to her eyes. Oh, well, she supposed she could entice him with her eyes as well as her skirts.
“Do you care so much, Louisa?”
Something in his voice, some small sound of pain and longing, made her forget all about his mouth and his hands and even her skirts to let her gaze linger on his face.
He was not a beautiful man, her Blakes, not beautiful and seductive as Dutton was, but startlingly male and strong and intelligent. And she found that far more beautiful and seductive than any lovely face could be. When she looked at Blakes, she could barely remember what Dutton looked like, and she couldn’t remember anything that Dutton had ever said. Blakesley’s words hung about her like jewels, every sentence golden, every word a pearl of humor and insight.
It was all so clear. She could see it all so clearly, now that he had forced her to stop and think. It was not a comfortable habit, and she was entirely certain that she would not adopt it. This one moment of introspection would just have to be enough for him.
“No,” she said, staring into his eyes, letting down the gates into her heart that had been put in place so long ago, a defense against Melverley. “I don’t care.”
“I have the necklace, you know,” he said, watching her, waiting.
“But whatever will you wear it with, Blakes?” she said, smiling softly.
“I could give the pearls to my mistress,” he said, leaning closer, which was very stupid of him, really. She could attack him at any time now. Poor Blakes, getting so careless of his virtue.
“You should only give them to the one you love,” she said, pulling his face close to hers and kissing him on the edge of his mouth. “Give them to your mother.”
Blakes started laughing then and pulled her into his laughter as he pulled her into his arms.
“A strand of pearls will likely warm things enough for Hyde to give his permission for me to marry
you. He likes you, you realize,” Blakes said, wrapping one arm around her waist and with the other hand, lifting her skirts slowly. Finally. “Hyde likes redheads.”
“As does his son,” Louisa said.
"As does his son,” Blakes repeated just before he kissed her. About time, too.
Twenty-five
IT was perfectly clear to Melverley, indeed to everyone in the Theatre Royal, that Louisa was being thoroughly seduced and irretrievably ruined by Henry Blakesley. What was less certain was how far the seduction was actually progressing and if, once fully engaged, Blakesley would marry her.
“I must admit to a bolt of nostalgia,” Sophia said, hovering near Melverley’s elbow, though his linen truly was past due for washing, “for it was in this very theater that I lost my virtue to . . . well, I suppose it would be very indiscreet of me to name names, even at this late date.” And she laughed to punctuate the moment. Melverley, as was to be expected, did not take it in stride.
“You don’t mean to say you lost . . . but that’s not possible, for I know you were taken up by Westlin before your arrangement with Dutton.”
“Oh, darling, of course I didn’t mean my actual virtue, but my virtue specifically as far as Dutton was concerned. And I do think it dreadful of you to name names. Dutton is certainly dead, but his son lives on, and you know how it distresses these children when the past is paraded out for them to see. And now Louisa and I shall have that in common. How lovely for her, to lose her . . . oh, but I suppose it may already have been lost in that wonderful dressing room at Hyde House. I simply must have a carpenter in to see to my dressing room. It is most definitely not performing as it clearly could.”
Which produced the precise result she had planned for.
Melverley, who did so love to bluster and storm and speak gruffly whenever he possibly could, shouted out across the theater, which was such a huge success that all the players on the stage stopped their performance to watch and listen, for surely this moment was the most entertaining play of all, to Blakesley in his box,