It had made him furious. What he wanted? He wanted his wife back again, the one who smiled and laughed and adored him. He wanted Emily, who made his heart sing and his body thrum with pleasure. He wanted back the easy days of their early marriage when every day was a delight and the nights were heaven.
What he did not want was the silent stranger she had become, the quiet, downtrodden little doormat. Every time he was in her presence he felt the weight of guilt descend on him, and that was why he had said what he said. He still wasn’t quite sure where it came from, but he told her she should sleep with other men. Then if she didn’t have a child, maybe she would stop blaming him.
He had known it would hurt her on many levels: the reminder that she was barren, the implication that he could not care less if she bedded down with someone else, the accusation that she blamed him in some way. If he had wanted a fight, he had gotten it. After years of quiet resignation she had flared up in anger at his cruel words and they had had a row of enormous proportions. He had felt justified in leaving the next morning with just a cold list of written instructions for her.
And he had not seen her again until that night in the opera house.
Despite his first words to Less, he had felt a jolt of pleasure at the sight of Emily. He never—or rarely, anyway—lied to himself, and yes, it was pleasure he had felt at seeing her. Not unalloyed pleasure, not pleasure unmixed with pain, but pleasure nonetheless. So why had he been so supercilious to her when they met? Sometimes he did not understand his own responses to his wife, so layered were they, and complex.
But then she had come to his side when she found out about the attack, and she had sat at his feet and touched his leg, giving him more pleasure with that simple touch than Belle had in all the times she had made love to him. Emily’s hands soothed and yet aroused him, gave him ease and inflamed him. She was still his Emily, still his beautiful bride.
And she seemed to have gained back some of what he had loved her for. That she had needed his absence to regain her strength and confidence in herself was a painful reminder that neither of them—toward the end, anyway—had brought out the best in each other. She had become a weepy stranger and he had become a cold monster, hating himself every time he turned away from her.
His mother had been silent all this time as he sat thinking, and he glanced at her curiously. It was she who had chased Emily away from Brockwith, and yet now she was demanding that they get together to produce an heir, the child that had been denied them during years of loving. But then his mother believed that conception was a matter of determination. She had always blamed Emily for not wanting a child enough.
Baxter knew otherwise. He had seen his wife with her cousins’ babies and the children of friends. It had almost killed him to witness the raw longing in her eyes and know that he could not fulfill it. He was arrested by that thought. It came to him in that moment that he blamed himself for their not being able to conceive, and that was why he had said those horrible words to Emily on the last day he saw her at Brockwith.
He could give her diamonds and emeralds and rubies, houses and villas and vacations in Greece, if she wanted, but he could not give her a baby. He had been with many women, and none, to his knowledge, had ever conceived a child by him. Surely that was a rather good indication that the problem was his?
He had done Emily a grave injustice in what he had said to her, and it stung even more now that he knew where it had come from. But it was too late to make amends for the past now. No matter what his mother wanted, it was not going to happen. After the other day, he had some hope that he and Emily could learn to be civil to one another. She had a forgiving heart, he believed. Maybe she had forgiven him for his spiteful words.
“You are ignoring me, Baxter, but you should know that I will not just go away. I want you to get back with that wife of yours and have a child.”
“It is hardly that easy, Mother.”
“Nonsense. I have put it to her as well, and I am sure she will see sense. Once you two do your duty, then you can forget each other and we can raise the next marquess.”
Baxter stared at her in wonder. Did she really believe it was just that easy, that one made up one’s mind to have a child and went about conceiving it? And that one could determine the sex of a child just by sheer willpower? He supposed she believed that one knew the moment it had happened, too. Maybe in her own remarkable physiology she had known the moment she had conceived him, Baxter Eggleton Godfrey. And he supposed after that she saw no reason to go on with the ridiculous business of sharing a bed with her husband. The marquess, his father, had certainly had enough mistresses.
“Do you mean,” Baxter said slowly, struck by something she said, “that you went to my wife and told her we needed to get together to create an heir?”
“I did. Why do you think I came to London? Dreadful city, even in spring. It stinks and it is dirty.” She drained her cup and stood. “I came the moment I heard she was back in town. You do not think I am so deluded that I thought you could conceive an heir by mail, did you?”
“Whyever not, Mother? I’m sure you could.”
She snorted as she stood and raised herself to her full height, not inconsiderable for a woman. “I will leave you to finish your breakfast, Baxter.” She threw a disdainful look at Belle, who remained silent and still in her chair, her eyes unaccustomedly downcast. “I will expect you to dispense with the services of your mistress until you conceive with Emily. No sense in wasting your potential. Of course, I fully understand that you will not be able to do so until your ankle heals, but with your constitution that should be soon. Good day. I am staying with your Aunt Ophelia while in London. You know where to find me.”
She swept from the room.
Chapter Nine
“Lady van Hoffen and Lady Grishelda May van Hoffen,” Trumble announced, bowing the ladies into Emily’s parlor.
“Grishelda! Lady van Hoffen!” Emily said. “How nice to see you both in London. It seems an age since we met in Cumbria at Christmas.” She rose and took Grishelda’s hands in her own, noting how the spare young woman seemed to have lost weight and color since their mutual stay at the Marquess and Marchioness of Ladymead’s. The marquess’s younger brother was the very same young man who had married her niece, Celestine Simon. Lady van Hoffen had taken her daughter, Grishelda, there in the hope that she would be his chosen bride.
Lady van Hoffen, a showy redhead of around forty, pasted a fake smile on her round, still-pretty face. “It does seem an age, does it not? I was just saying to Grishelda that to look at her face you would think it had been years, not months, so changed is she!” She cast an unfriendly look at her daughter and took a seat by the tea tray.
Emily pursed her lips and shook her head. She had never been able to manufacture even a slight liking for the mother, but Lady Grishelda was another matter. She was similar to her own niece, which perhaps explained her preference, in that both were thin and serious, and good to the core. But where Celestine had an optimistic outlook on life, despite the severe deprivation she had undergone for much of her existence and the pain and suffering of arthritis, Grishelda seemed to look on the world with unfriendly eyes. In their few conversations it had become clear that she believed the world held little happiness for her, and that she must be content with what good she could do in her life.
She looked like she had been ill. Her pale blue eyes were dark-rimmed and her cheeks hollow. There was no tactful way to ask if something was wrong, however, so she settled on sitting Grishelda down beside her and plying her with cakes and tea. The girl’s abstraction was troubling, though, so when Lady van Hoffen’s attention was diverted by Dodo’s entrance and subsequent conversation, Emily said, in an undertone, “Pardon me if I am poking my nose in where it does not belong, but are you unhappy, my dear?”
Grishelda stared down at her thin hands, knotting and unknotting the fringe on her Norwich shawl of fine gray silk. “I am wretched, Lady Sedgely.”
; “Emily, dear, call me Emily.”
Tears welled in the girl’s fine eyes at the sympathy in her hostess’s voice. “Oh, Emily, I am wretched. I am being pushed and prodded until I think I will go mad!”
“What is it?” Emily asked, concerned at the sharp hint of desperation in the girl’s voice.
“It is my mother. She has a friend, a Captain Dempster, and he is always visiting, even . . . even overnight.”
It was no surprise that Lady van Hoffen would be so indiscreet. She was a blowsy woman plucked from the stage in her teens by an elderly foreign nobleman who survived the marriage only two years, long enough to see the birth of his daughter and to see that she favored him in looks enough to be sure of her legitimacy. After his death Lady van Hoffen had set off on a long and scandalous bout of affairs that titillated even the most sophisticated of dilettantes. She was avid in the pursuit of male admirers even twenty years into her widowhood.
“Why is that a problem, my dear? I don’t mean to be snide, but has your mother not done that before?”
“Oh, often! I have learned to lock my door and not come out till morning; learned it at a very young age.” Her pale blue eyes held a haunted look as she glanced over at her mother and lowered her voice even more. “But Captain Dempster . . . I am sure he picks my lock. I awoke late one night to find him standing over my bed! I screamed and he put his hand over my mouth. He said I must have failed to lock my door, and he was just checking to make sure I was all right.”
Emily sighed and took the girl’s hand. Lady van Hoffen glanced over at them suspiciously, but Emily sent her a bright smile and nod, and she rejoined her conversation with Dodo, who sent a significant glance Emily’s way.
“You are of age, are you not, my dear?”
Grishelda nodded. “I am soon to be twenty-three.”
“Then why do you not simply leave? Go back to your country estate.”
The girl glanced over at her mother yet again. “I thought of that, but when I told my mother, she did not react well. She intends that I shall marry this season, and she has picked my suitor, an elderly roué named Lord Saunders.”
“Saunders! That old lecher? She cannot force you to marry, my dear.”
“She controls my fortune until I am twenty-five or until I marry. And she has implied that if I do not go along with her she will have me kidnapped and taken over the border, telling all that I am a runaway bride!”
Grishelda’s voice was thin with fear, so Emily did not give vent to her first instinctive reaction, a loud noise of disbelief. It was her firm opinion that the girl’s mother was just trying to lay pressure on her to do what she wanted. After all, this was England, not some colonial backwater where lawlessness was rife. No one could force her to marry! But the girl was obviously worried, so Emily said, “My dear, if ever you need help I am here. Please feel free to come to me any time and for any reason.”
Grishelda gratefully sighed and took a proffered cup of tea. “I feel better just for having told someone. I have no friends. I never seemed to have the ability to make them. At Christmas, though, I felt that with both you and Celestine I could talk openly.”
“I am glad you feel that way, my dear. Indeed, you remind me of my niece a great deal. She is a very good woman.”
“You don’t know me very well, though,” Grishelda said gloomily. She cast a dark look in her mother’s direction. “Sometimes I think I am more like my mo—”
Trumble entered. “Mr. Lessington,” he said.
“Less, how good to see you.” Emily rose and took his hand, pulling him over to meet Grishelda. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see Lady van Hoffen preening, pushing out her bosom and smirking as an attractive male entered the room. He merely acknowledged the introduction with a bow, made his obeisance to Dodo, and joined Emily and Grishelda.
Of course the conversation could not return to the personal matters they had been discussing, but Emily had the satisfaction of seeing Grishelda more relaxed in Less’s undemanding company, and when she rose to go at her mother’s insistence, the young woman pressed Emily’s hand and whispered “Thank you” in a soft tone. Dodo followed them out.
“I am glad to finally get you alone, my dear!” Less took her arm and led her back to the settee.
“You sound so serious, Less! What is it?” Emily felt her heart constrict, and yet, surely, if Baxter was in trouble her friend would have said so immediately.
“And you would have me believe you do not love him,” Less teased with a smile.
Emily relaxed. “I believe I admitted that I still do, much to my chagrin.”
He patted her hand. “I know, my dear. I will not tease you any longer.” He gave her a considering look. “Would you take him back?”
She pulled away from him. Why did he have to ask questions like that now? She had just made the decision to move on with her life, to take a lover and stop drying up like an old maid, and then Less had to ask if she would take her husband back into her arms and her bed? Hypothetical lovemaking would not keep her warm at night. She still loved Baxter, but she saw no possibility that their marriage could ever be reanimated.
How could Less think that after all this time they could heal the rift between them? “You talk in riddles, Less. What did you really come here to impart? Come, I can see you are bursting with information; tell me!”
He smiled. “Very well, my dear, very well. I have learned some of what our mutual acquaintance was up to on the Continent.”
Emily toyed with a music box on the mantel over the fireplace, and it tinkled out the last notes of a mournful tune. “Besides bedding a very comely little actress?”
He liked the bite of jealousy in her voice. It boded well for his plans to reunite his friends in wedded bliss, a state to which he was convinced they both secretly longed to return. “Besides bedding la Gallant!”
“She’s very pretty, isn’t she,” Emily mused, arrested in mid-movement and staring out the window. “So lithe and slender, as graceful as a little butterfly.”
“Come, my dear,” he said in a bracing tone, loath to allow her to sink into maudlin jealousy. “Do you not want to hear what Baxter has been up to?”
“Of course,” Emily said, returning from the fireplace to sit by her friend. “Tell me.”
“He has been a courier! The last days of the war were very tense, and he carried papers, unofficially of course, for the Iron Duke! Castlereagh used him as well, and others.”
“How thrilling! But why should that be such a danger if his duties were concealed?”
“Perhaps someone found out. Or perhaps, and this is what I think, there is more to it than simply courier service.”
“You think he was doing something else?”
“I am convinced of it. My contact refuses to divulge the information, but I shall wear away! I will be victorious, or my name is not Sylvester Lessington!”
Dodo came in that moment carrying a beautiful bowl filled with roses.
“Those are lovely, Dodo!”
“From one of your admirers,” she said gruffly, handing Emily a note.
Her heart pounding, she remembered how Baxter had plied her with roses in the first years of their marriage, after he learned they were her favorite flower. Had he remembered? Was this a token of the truce they seemed to have made in his parlor the previous day?
She hurriedly opened the note.
My lady,
I have not yet dared confess my feelings for you, but they are of such a magnitude I can no longer keep them to myself.
Chérie, may I attend you in your chambers tonight, that I may give you tangible evidence of my worshipful love? Please say yes. I await your word to suspend my agony,
Yours always with hope in my heart,
Etienne.
She paled. He wanted to make love to her and he wouldn’t wait long before importuning her in person. She glanced up to see Less studying her face. She forced a smile. This was her own business, and no one else’s, and her
own decision to make. She had thought she had come to a decision but found that it was still very tentative.
“What were we speaking of?” she said brightly.
“Your husband,” he said.
“My separated husband!” she corrected.
“You make him sound like he has fallen apart.”
Emily laughed. “Oh, Less, I can always count on you for a smile.”
“Do you go to the Enderby rout tonight?”
“No, I have, er, plans.”
“Plans? Sounds exciting.”
Trumble entered. “Vicomte Etienne Marchant.”
The young Frenchman entered and his eyes sought Emily immediately. His quick gaze took in the roses as he bowed to Dodo, at the other end of the room, and Less.
“You received my roses and my billet doux?” he said softly. He stood before Emily holding her hands in his after pressing a kiss to each one. His voice was caressing, and his eyes traveled over her body with amorous heat glowing in them.
“I did.” Emily felt herself color, and wished, for once, that she could be more sophisticated. Society lovers came across each other in ballrooms and parlors every day with no display of emotion. But she met the man she was thinking of making love with and turned a bright crimson. Very déclassé!
Marchant cast an irritated glance at Less and placed himself on the other side of Emily on the settee. He retained one hand in his.
Lessington felt his heart drop. There was no mistaking the body language of the very handsome young French viscount. He was desirous of making Emily his lover, which was probably what the note was about. If he wasn’t mistaken, and he seldom was about women and their affairs, she was considering it. Baxter had left her alone for too long.
Grimly he hoped he was not too late trying to reunite the husband and wife. Baxter was hurting, and Lessington had never had a friend who felt so much like a brother. He would just have to do whatever he could and hope that the two would find their way back to each other . . . with a little prodding from him, of course.
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