“Do you never get tired, Mother?”
The emerald-green eyes snapped with impatience. “Of course I do. So does your father. And so does your husband, I might add. Is that what this is about”—she gestured toward Elizabeth in bed—“you lying abed . . . because you are tired?”
Yes, that was exactly what it was about, Elizabeth thought with a spark of anger. She was tired . . . tired of coming fourth place with her husband. Edward had his politics, his mistress, his children, and then there was his wife. Just for once in her life she would like to come first.
Just for once in her life she would like to lie abed, free of social and political commitments, with a man who loved her.
Her face blanched. Not with “a” man, she harshly corrected herself. She wanted to lie abed with her husband.
“No, Mother, I am not tired. I had the migraine last night and took laudanum to ease the pain,” Elizabeth lied, acutely aware of Emma, who hovered by the door and who must know that she lied. “Perhaps I overdid the dosage.”
“And Monday?”
Elizabeth forced a smile. And added another lie. “The dean rang up. He wanted to see me immediately, so—”
“What has Phillip done now?”
It should have been amusing, her mother repeating the words Elizabeth herself had asked the dean. It was not. Whereas Elizabeth viewed her younger son’s antics with tolerant amusement, her mother vociferously disapproved of Phillip’s innocent pranks.
“It was nothing,” Elizabeth said hurriedly. “He was involved in a dispute with another schoolboy. If I do not get dressed soon, Mother, we shall be too late to take lunch. Emma . . .”
Elizabeth was mildly amazed at the way Emma gently but firmly propelled Rebecca Walters out of her bedroom. The abigail had not blinked an eye at Elizabeth’s lies.
Perhaps Edward had “seeded” the household for deceit, she thought cynically.
Flipping back the covers, she dragged her legs over the edge of the bed.
They were pale legs with neat if not dainty ankles. The rub of her thighs as she scooted across the mattress created warm, moist friction.
Do you know what a climax is, Mrs. Petre?
“Shall I run a bath for you, ma’am?”
Elizabeth gripped the sheet in both hands to anchor herself to the bed.
Emma stood in the doorway, blandly watching Elizabeth and the nightgown that had ridden over her knees.
She jerked down the hem of the shapeless white cotton gown and slid off the bed, heart thumping. “Yes, please. That was rather quick. I thought you were going to escort my mother downstairs.”
“Mrs. Walters did not want my escort, ma’am. She said that you more urgently needed my assistance to dress.”
Elizabeth bit her bottom lip to keep from snapping that Emma was her abigail and that here, in this house, the wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer outranked the wife of the prime minister. Instead, she said, “Then I had better hurry. You should not have let me sleep so late.”
“My apologies. I thought you might need the rest.”
Elizabeth’s heart seemed to do a somersault inside her chest. Did the servants know? . . .
Her lips were cold and stiff. “Why did you think that, Emma?”
“You have a very demanding schedule, ma’am. I sometimes think that you work harder than Mr. Petre does.”
The abigail’s words were too enigmatic to be reassuring.
Did she mean that Elizabeth worked hard at “seeding” the political grounds for her husband? Or did she mean that Elizabeth had a very demanding schedule now with early-morning rendezvous?
The hot bath did not thaw Elizabeth’s unease.
She should stop the lessons now, before suspicion became fact. If rumors spread that she was meeting the Bastard Sheikh, her marriage would be over. As would her husband’s career.
But even as she contemplated giving up the dangerous tutelage, thoughts of The Perfumed Garden crowded aside reason. What had the sheikh written in the second chapter?
She rubbed a bar of soap underneath her breasts. And wondered if the Bastard Sheikh had ever rubbed flower petals against a woman’s flesh where she now rubbed the soap.
Emma waited in Elizabeth’s bedchamber with a pile of clothing. Stepping behind a white enameled dressing screen, Elizabeth donned cotton drawers, wool stockings, and a linen chemise before rejoining Emma so that the maid could help her with her corset—
Elizabeth sucked in her breath to accommodate Emma’s ministrations. She had worn a corset for twenty-three years. It should not feel like a whaleboned prison. Nor had it until now.
The corset was rapidly followed by two petticoats. Elizabeth took a tentative breath, inhaled the scent of starch and laundry soap.
What did Edward’s mistress smell like? she wondered.
Did Edward move like a pestle while his mistress swung her hips side to side in lascivious accompaniment? Or were certain sexual motions peculiar to Arabs?
Emma twitched a heavy navy wool dress over Elizabeth’s bustle. “If you’ll step up to the dressing table, I’ll repair your hair, Mrs. Petre.”
The blood drained from Elizabeth’s face.
Emma had brushed out her hair the night before and braided it, as she did every night before Elizabeth retired to bed. When Elizabeth had later dressed for her lesson she had twisted the braid up into a bun.
After so cleverly changing back into her nightgown and hanging up her clothes that no one would know she had been outside the house, she had forgotten to take down her hair.
“Thank you, Emma,” she said through stiff lips.
Elizabeth’s face in the dressing table mirror was chalk white—the same color as was the reflection of Emma’s apron. The abigail’s square, competent hands moved deftly through the dark auburn strands, unpinning, unbraiding, brushing, twisting, repinning.
Emma stepped back—a square chin and an attractively plump neck appeared in the mirror above the white apron. “Would you like your jewelry box, ma’am?”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Very good, ma’am.”
Elizabeth realized that Emma was as much of an enigma now as she had been sixteen years earlier.
“Have you ever been married, Emma?”
“No, ma’am. Employers do not encourage servants to marry.”
“I would not object.”
Emma turned, presenting a rather broad black backside to the mirror, and then that, too, was gone and Elizabeth had no alternative but to stand and face the abigail. She patiently held out a black cloak.
Elizabeth slipped first one arm and then another into the sleeves. The wool was still damp from Elizabeth’s earlier outing.
“Your gloves, ma’am.”
Elizabeth stared into Emma’s gray eyes and could see . . . nothing. No curiosity, no disapproval, no awareness that anything was amiss.
“Thank you, Emma.”
“Don’t forget your reticule, ma’am.”
Elizabeth sighed with relief. At least she had possessed the forethought to put the Bastard Sheikh’s book and her notes into her desk.
“Mr. Petre.” She slowly fitted her left hand into a black leather glove. “Is he lunching at home today?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Elizabeth concentrated on drawing the remaining glove onto her right hand. “Did he inquire as to why I overslept?”
“No, ma’am.”
Elizabeth blindly examined the contents inside her reticule.
It was bad enough that she had to question a servant about the whereabouts of her husband. Worse yet, she had to ask a servant if he was interested in his wife’s comings and goings. But far, far worse was to be informed by a servant that her husband was not interested in her welfare.
A dozen excuses raced through her head. She leapt upon the most plausible.
No doubt Edward, due to the late hour that he had come home, had slept late himself and had not realized she was home. It was Tuesday.
>
The horsehair-lined bustle weighting her down suddenly felt pounds lighter.
Downstairs, a brown-haired footman dressed in a short black coat and black bow tie stood at attention by the sitting room doors.
Elizabeth frowned. She did not recognize him.
“Hello,” she said cordially, advancing forward. Up close, he was older than what she had first thought, probably in his late thirties or early forties. “I am afraid I do not recall seeing you before.”
He bowed briefly, then as if he were not quite certain what to do with his hands, he clasped them behind his back and stared over her shoulder. “I be Johnny, Freddie Watson’s cousin. There be an emergency with his mam, came up sudden this morning. Yer butler didn’ think there’d be no trouble if I worked Freddie’s position until he came back.”
Freddie, a young man in his early twenties, had been employed in the Petre household for a year. Because he needed to help take care of his mother and younger brother, who both had tuberculosis, he lived at home.
“I am so sorry,” Elizabeth said in all sincerity. “Of course it is all right. Please let me know if Freddie or his mother need any assistance. I would be happy to advance him a month or so of wages.”
He nodded his need. “Thank ye, ma’am. I’ll tell ’im.”
Elizabeth patiently waited. Starting, as if suddenly realizing the duties of a footman, he leaned down and jerked open the door.
Whatever “Cousin Johnny” did in the normal course of events, she thought with a flicker of amusement, it was not being a house servant.
Elizabeth smiled. “Thank you, Johnny.”
Inside the drawing room, Edward and Rebecca leaned close together on the stuffed, floral upholstered divan. Their heads, he with his midnight-black hair rigidly controlled with an application of macassar oil and hers capped in black silk, nearly touched. They stopped talking at the sight of Elizabeth.
Edward stood, as a matter of courtesy rather than welcome. “Hello, Elizabeth. I was just telling Rebecca that the House is going to repeal the Contagious Disease Acts.”
Elizabeth searched her husband’s face, the dark, olive-shaped brown eyes, the neatly trimmed side whiskers and mustache, the generous lips that always curved in a smile.
He had not come home Sunday night. He had come home at two-thirty in the morning last night—she had heard the grandfather clock chime the time—and all he had to tell her was that the Contagious Diseases Acts were being repealed?
“Mrs. Butler must be pleased,” she said neutrally.
Mrs. Josephine Butler, the wife of a clergyman and the secretary of the Ladies National Association, had devoted sixteen years of her life persuading Parliament to repeal the Contagious Disease Acts.
“It is a victory for all women,” Rebecca pointed out, smoothing out a wrinkle in her dove-gray wool gown.
Both Elizabeth and Rebecca visited charity hospital wards as part of their “political” duties. Perhaps she could forget the women who came there diseased and starving, but Elizabeth could not.
“Not all, Mother.”
Rebecca turned frosty green eyes onto Elizabeth. “Whatever are you talking about?”
Edward silently watched Elizabeth, brown eyes oddly calculating. For once that supercilious smile did not curve his lips.
It suddenly dawned on her that Rebecca attended the same routs and rallies and dinners as did Elizabeth. She, too, must have heard that Edward kept a mistress.
Why had she not said anything?
Why did she stand beside her son-in-law, defending his politics, while he made a mockery of his marriage vows?
“The women on the streets will receive no medical care now,” Elizabeth explained woodenly. “They will die of disease, they and their children, and they will pass it on so that others will die.”
“The Acts demean these women, Elizabeth,” Rebecca sharply admonished. “Prostitutes must endure routine medical examinations. A woman’s modesty cannot survive the indignity of a vaginal inspection.”
Elizabeth stared at her mother in shocked disbelief.
Shocked, because she had never heard Rebecca use anything other than the most euphemistic terms for the human body, “limbs” for “legs,” “bosom” for “breasts,” “privates” for “genitals.” Disbelieving, because a prostitute daily endured more than one vaginal inspection—and not by a physician.
Incongruously, she thought of The Perfumed Garden.
The sheikh reverently described a woman’s vulva as a thing of wonder and beauty. Her mother spoke of a woman’s “vagina” with her mouth primped, as if the female body were a thing of shame. And her husband—
She scrutinized his familiar face.
Edward’s brown eyes revealed neither disgust at Rebecca’s vulgarity nor dismay at her priggishness. He looked, Elizabeth thought, as it he had no interest . . . in any woman.
She suddenly felt if she did not engage his attention that very moment, it would be too late and his mistress would have won before Elizabeth even attempted to seduce him.
“Mother and I can stay home and lunch with you, Edward,” she compulsively offered.
Edward’s lips curved in his politician’s smile, a smile of impersonal warmth and uncommitted caring. “I know how you look forward to spending time with your mother, Elizabeth. There is no need to forgo your lunch on my account.”
“I want to, Edward,” she quietly, desperately, insisted.
“I have papers to go over, Elizabeth.”
And no doubt a mistress to go over after the House meeting tonight.
Her lips tightened at the polite rebuff. “Of course. Please do not let us keep you from your work. Mother. Are you ready?”
Rebecca critically eyed Elizabeth before standing. “I have been ready this last hour.”
The sky outside the town house was even more gray than the light inside; coal smoke hung over London in heavy black clouds. Elizabeth was overcome by such an acute yearning for fresh, sun-warmed air that it was painful.
Parliament would break for Easter. Perhaps she and Edward could take a holiday.
It suddenly dawned on her that she had never holidayed with her husband. Always it had been her and the two boys driving down to Brighton or Bath or wherever the latest fashionable resort happened to be.
“You really should hire better trained footmen, Elizabeth. I swear your latest has no notion of the responsibilities his position entails.”
For once Elizabeth was impervious to her mother’s criticism. Staring at the soot-stained horses and carriages crowding the street, she tried to imagine her mother and father locked in a passionate embrace . . . and failed utterly.
Her breath misted the coach window. “When is the last time you saw Father?”
“Your father is a busy man, as is your husband, Elizabeth. It is not your position to question their politics. You were not raised to do such. A woman’s duty is to support her husband. Love is not a play that demands an audience. It is sacrifice.”
Elizabeth turned her head and met Rebecca’s disapproving gaze. “When did you last see Father, Mother?” she repeated.
Rebecca was not used to being questioned by her daughter. Perhaps that was why she answered, albeit reluctantly, “Sunday.”
Sunday.
“You will not aide your father and husband if you go on in this fashion. Tomorrow night we attend Baroness Whitfield’s ball—the baron opposes your father and husband on a new Act, and it is very important that we win their favor. Thursday you speak for the Women’s Auxiliary. Andrew and I cannot attend the Hanson dinner party, so you and Edward will have to go in our stead. Saturday is the charity ball. I trust you will not take to your bed because you do not receive the attention that you feel is your due.”
Elizabeth bit back a sharp retort; There are more important things than politics.
But there had never been anything more important than politics to her mother and her father. And now Elizabeth was married to a man who showed every sign of foll
owing in their footsteps. Except, of course, Edward had a mistress.
The carriage jarred to a stop.
Rebecca had not seen Andrew for three nights and two days. Did Elizabeth’s father have a mistress too?
Is that why Rebecca dedicated her life to politics . . . because of her husband’s neglect?
The coach door opened.
If Elizabeth did not change the course of her marriage, would she one day be like her mother, with nothing but her husband’s career to occupy her time and conversation?
Chapter 5
“You have beautiful hair, Mrs. Petre.”
The door closed behind Elizabeth, sealing her inside the warm intimacy of the library with the seductive echo of the Bastard Sheikh’s compliment ringing in her ears.
No one had ever complimented her hair.
She self-consciously raised her hand to her bare head—caught herself. If she had beautiful hair, then her husband would not now be out with another woman.
Damn him. Edward had not come home again.
“I have unfashionable hair, Lord Safyre,” she corrected him icily.
The flickering gas lamp on the massive mahogany desk alternately cast the Bastard Sheikh’s saturnine face in shadow and light, hair shining first gold then dark wheat. “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.”
“As is a man’s ‘meritoriousness.’ ”
A smile hitched up the corner of his mouth. He gestured toward the burgundy leather chair. “Please. Sit down. I hope you slept well.”
Holding her spine straight and her head high, Elizabeth crossed the Oriental carpet. The abrasive rub of her linen shift and heavy wool dress against the tips of her nipples was an acute irritation. It reminded her that she had needs no respectable woman should have, but she had them and they had led her to this, being mocked by a man who could have any woman he wanted while her husband stayed overnight with the woman whom he wanted.
She perched on the edge of the chair, anger simmering inside her, searching for an outlet. “Thank you. It was not difficult after reading Chapter Two.”
Robin Schone Page 6