Married to a Rogue

by Donna Lea Simpson

  • • •

  “I am Belle Gallant, and all the gentlemen are wild about me,” she repeated to herself, turning in front of the mirror checking every angle of her lovely peignoir. It was peach, a very fetching color for her, she had been told, and if she moved just right one could catch glimpses of her body through the diaphanous fabric. She had sent her maid away and was waiting for Baxter to respond to her urgent summons.

  All day she had not been able to obliterate the words his mother had said in the dining room. An heir. He needed an heir.

  Baxter was a god, her savior, the only man she had ever known who had treated her with respect and kindness, even when she was a scratching, biting little spitfire being beaten by the manager of that mangy troupe of actors she had been traveling with. Baxter had rescued her, even though she had deserved that particular beating. After all, she had been caught stealing, and everyone knew that was wrong.

  But Baxter had swooped down like one of them funny-looking fellows in the fairy books, all in metal, and saved her from the worst hiding of her life. And then he had taken her away and hired a gent to teach her how to talk, and then he had bought her clothes and sent her to Mr. Lessington. Sometimes the weight of her debt to him felt like it was going to crush her. What could she ever give a rich, titled, perfect gentleman like Baxter?

  A son. An heir.

  She knew she was capable because there was those other two times . . . not that they had been born, exactly, but the old lady in the village she had been in when the last one was stillborn said it was just because she was so young. She had only been fourteen. Once she was more grown up, then she would be able to bring a life into the world. That was the same old woman who taught her how to prevent ending up with an unwanted child in her belly again.

  But now she wanted a baby. Or rather, she wanted Baxter to have a baby. He would just take it away, wouldn’t he? She wouldn’t be expected to take care of it and raise it, would she? Because it sounded like too much work, and she did not like children, ugly, noisy little brutes that they were. There had always been a ragtag crowd of little ones in the acting troupe, and sometimes she had been expected to take care of them. She would rather have done anything than that, and she had done a lot of unsavory things in those years.

  Now, when she looked back, she thought of her life as being two parts, the time before Baxter and the time since Baxter. The time since Baxter had been a lovely dream, but now it was time for her to grow up and start repaying the debt she owed him. She paced the floor. Tonight she would start the attempt to have Baxter’s child. It was the least she could do for him; she only wished there was more. It would be a fortunate child, to have a man like him to look up to.

  She remembered her own father. He was the reason she had run away with the actors. As ignorant a little slut as she had been, she did know what a father wasn’t supposed to do to his daughter.

  She heard a noise and looked up quickly. Was that Baxter’s step on the stair?

  • • •

  Emily paced back and forth in her private parlor, not sure of what she was doing or what she was supposed to be doing. What did a woman wear who was having a rendezvous with the man who was going to become her lover? It wasn’t the kind of thing she could discuss with anyone, either, even though Dodo, with a sparkle in her worldly eyes, seemed to know what was up. She had accepted an invitation to go out without Emily, a first since they had been in town.

  And she couldn’t ask her dresser, Sylvie, who was new. Agnes had left that morning to return to Yorkshire because the little dear was getting married to Emily’s estate manager’s son in April, and Sylvie was her replacement. But where Agnes was just a sweet English girl, Sylvie was terrifyingly French, with a wizard’s ability with Emily’s stubborn mass of dark hair and a ruthless fashion sense. But she was also dour in a way Emily had never thought a Frenchwoman could be, and therefore not one to confide in about a visit from a lover.

  And so Emily had settled for her afternoon dress of rose-and-white-striped percale. It was pretty and flattering but suddenly seemed wildly inappropriate. Would Etienne stare to see her decked out as for an afternoon of visiting? Would he know her for the gauche, naïve country woman she was at heart?

  But that was what she was, and she could not change it and would not pretend to a sophistication she did not own. For all her years as a society matron she had never lost the feeling that she was an unsophisticated trout in a pond full of glittering goldfish. The brittle hauteur, the air of condescension: she had never mastered those arts. Baxter had it down to a science. He could freeze a mushroom at twenty paces with just a flick of his quizzing glass. She had teased him about that but had never acquired the ability herself.

  And now she was about to partake in that most sophisticated of society pastimes, taking a lover. And a French lover at that!

  She had instructed Trumble to show the vicomte up to her private parlor, but when she heard his step on the stair, her stomach twisted. Would the evening end in her bed, with a night of lovemaking? Would she awake in the morning a different woman for having broken the marriage vows she had sworn to so many years ago?

  Would she regret it for the rest of her life?

  • • •

  Etienne took the stairs two at a time. That she had agreed to see him alone could mean only one thing, and he felt his pulse quicken in anticipation. He had always sought out a certain type of woman since his first sexual experience with a friend of his mother’s at the very tender age of thirteen; he liked softer, rounder women who cradled a man in warmth and security. Like a mother, but most definitely not like a mother. Large bosoms, gently rounded stomachs, wide hips: not a hard angle or bone jutting out anywhere.

  He had hoped from the moment he saw Emily that she would acquiesce to his urging, but he had feared that being married would prevent her. She had, if he read her right, a streak of purity, of innocence, almost. He felt a moment’s qualm when he thought of his purpose, his reason for being in London. Was he endangering it by bedding the foolish marquess’s wife? But no, they were separated, he had been assured by many who knew, separated for years, and the man had a mistress, so he was not likely to come back to his wife’s bed. What a fool to leave a woman like Emily for that hard little trollop who fashioned herself an actress!

  He tapped on the door the butler had indicated and heard a soft, “Come in!” He slipped into the room. There she was by the fireplace, in a pretty rose and white day dress. It pleased him that she was not attired in some peignoir or other variety of dishabille. It spoke of her innocence in les liaisons amoureuses. It would be his pleasure to disrobe her. He forced his mind away from racing ahead. Slowly, he must go slowly; that much he knew by instinct. Emily was younger and less experienced than his usual conquests, and he must remember that though she was his senior by perhaps ten years, she would be his student in the art of love. He had been taught well by many women; now it would be his privilege to become the teacher.

  “My lady, you enchant me!” His voice trembled with anticipation.

  Her eyes, a delicious brown the color of melted chocolate, widened. “Monsieur, please, have a seat.”

  “Only if you will sit with me.” He watched her, and with chagrin understood that she was nervous, and perhaps had not entirely made up her mind yet. He was confirmed in his belief that she had never taken a lover. All the more delicious to make love to a woman who had not been loved in a long time. He had all night.

  Chapter Ten

  “What is it, Belle? What is the urgent summons for?” Baxter stumped into her bedroom with the use of an elegant silver-knobbed cane and stared at his young paramour. He had expected to find her sick or in distress, but instead she stood in the middle of the room naked, a peachy peignoir in her hand and her blonde curls ruffled as if she had just pulled it off over her head.

  She tossed it onto the bed and threw her arms around him, throwing him a little off balance.

  “Good God, Belle!” He staggered si
deways and ended up sitting on the edge of the bed, her naked body across his knee. He had wrenched his ankle, and it started aching again, when it had just stopped. “What do you want?”

  “You!” she giggled. She pushed him back and, kneeling on the floor in front of him, fumbled with the fall of his breeches.

  He sat up and grasped her hand in an iron grip. “I thought there was something wrong! I left a rather important meeting to come here.”

  She made a face and got busy with her free hand.

  “Belle!”

  She sat back on her haunches.

  At least he had gotten her attention. How to tell her that he was tired of her, that it was only his body that went through the motions? Did she love him? Would she be hurt? He didn’t know. He didn’t even understand his own feelings in the whole affair. He only knew he did not want to hurt her.

  He felt oddly paternal toward Belle. He had not felt so at first, but now a wave of revulsion passed over him at the thought of sexual congress. He had successfully avoided her overtures since arriving back in England but now was faced with the dilemma . . . how to disengage himself from the affair without hurting a girl he felt an odd affection for? He couldn’t seem to help himself from hurting Emily, but he didn’t want to start along that same path with Belle.

  “Belle,” he said gently. “We don’t have to engage in sexual relations every time I come to see you, you know. We can talk, or . . .” He sighed in exasperation.

  She gazed up at him, her small, heart-shaped face drawn with a puzzled expression. He reached out and smoothed a blonde curl away from her forehead. She was so young, eighteen when he found her . . . or was she? She only looked that now.

  “How old are you, Belle?”

  “I’m . . .”

  He watched her shrewd face calculating.

  “How old are you really?”

  She blinked, and then shrugged. The candlelight flickered over her lithe, naked little body; her skin was tawny, her small breasts high and firm.

  “I think I’m eighteen. Or I could be nineteen now. I can’t remember when my birthday is. If I ever knew.”

  Baxter closed his eyes and shuddered. He had thought she was at least twenty-one, but it appeared he had been having sex with her since she was sixteen or seventeen. Most of his friends would not find that atrocious; many prostitutes were that age or younger when they started plying their trade. However, that was them, and not him. He felt her active little hands busy at his breeches again and seized them in his. “Belle, stop!” He opened his eyes and gazed down into hers. Moisture was welling up.

  “What is wrong, Belle?”

  “You don’t want me!” she wailed.

  “It is not that I don’t want you, my dear. Who could not want you? You are beautiful.”

  “I know what I was before I met you,” she said, her voice low. “I was a horrible, grubby little tart, but you made me into a lady!”

  He sighed and pulled her up onto the bed beside him and put his arm around her shoulders, chafing her to warmth. “You were a pearl, my dear, just waiting for someone to rub the dirt off of you to see the luster. I hope you know that.”

  She snuggled against him. “So you do want me?”

  Her voice trembled with hope and fear. He felt cornered and manipulated and hated himself for acquiescing, but he squeezed her and said, “Yes, of course, my dear. But not right now. I told you I had a meeting, and only left it because I thought you were in distress. I must now return to it.” And find a way to let her go her own way, he thought, without hurting her, for her own good.

  He had known for some time that she did not make love because she enjoyed it, but because it was her way of expressing gratitude. But they both deserved a lover who brought them passion and delight between the covers. Making love with Belle was very like his own first exploratory self-manipulations when he was young. It did the job efficiently, but was highly unsatisfactory other than that. They could not go on this way.

  • • •

  “Baxter! You seem much better, old man,” Lessington said, clapping his friend on the back with a smile on his mobile and animated face.

  “I finally discarded the damned cane two days ago.”

  They stood together at the edge of the ballroom floor. The Harrises were always among the first to hold a large ball in the season, and it was among the best attended. There were twittering groups of girls in white gathered near them, prohibited from the dance floor because it was a waltz and they had not yet been sanctioned to perform that risqué dance by one of the patronesses of Almack’s.

  Many others circled the dance floor, though, among them Emily, in the arms of the host, Walter Harris. Baxter’s eyes followed her progress.

  “That dress is a little youthful for your wife, do you not think?”

  Lessington’s voice cut into his thoughts and he sent a dark glance his way. “I was just thinking that she looked quite lovely tonight! That shade of rose was always becoming, and there is something in her countenance . . .” He caught his friend’s laughing eyes. “You are saying things to provoke me, I believe. She looks lovely.”

  “I believe you said she was fat?”

  Baxter shifted uncomfortably. “She has gained weight, Less, but not more than that and it is not so unbecoming. She looks as lovely as she ever did, and perhaps even more beautiful. When she went north to Yorkshire she was pale and unhappy, but now she has regained that delightful glow she always had.” He watched the dancers for a moment and then continued. “Why do you think she has gained weight?”

  “Unhappiness?” Less said quietly. “Seclusion, perhaps? Or just getting older. We all are, you know, even if some of us have darling little mistresses to keep us young.”

  The remark was rather more cutting than Less’s usual toward him. Baxter glanced sideways. He knew that his friend often visited Emily and had always liked her. But it was not his marriage, and he would stay out of it! “Less, I would not say any more, if I were you.”

  Less theatrically shivered. “I believe I have been threatened by the Maudlin Marquess! Very well, my lord, I shall refrain from any more remarks like that. Shall I settle for gossip instead? Would it interest his lordship to know that a certain young, very French and very handsome vicomte was seen a few nights ago entering a certain society matron’s private parlor—a marchioness, no less—who shall remain nameless, but whose initials are E. D. And he didn’t leave again for a very long time! I have it on the very best authority—servants, you know. They see everything.”

  Baxter was stung. Emily? With the Vicomte Marchant? Impossible. The young man was ten years younger than she! He watched her circle the room, a healthy glow coming to her cheeks. Did she seem happier?

  Was the glow sexual fulfillment? His black eyes narrowed. Emily, in all the years they had lived together as man and wife, had never given him a single moment’s worry that she had fallen prey to the immorality and sampling of illicit pleasures rife among the bored wives of the ton. So many of their friends accepted affairs as a way of life. But he and Emily were separated, and could he really expect her to go the rest of her life without physical release?

  Without thinking, he moved across the dance floor as the music ended. Harris had returned her to Dodo. Baxter approached them.

  “Aunt Dianne. How well you look tonight.” He bowed before Dodo, taking in her lavender silk dress and silver hair piled high. He turned to Emily. “May a husband beg a dance with his wife?”

  Emily started and colored. Whatever she had expected of him, it wasn’t that, and it gave him a moment of devilish pleasure to surprise her. Was that a guilty flush? Was she even now thinking of meeting her lover after the ball?

  “I would be honored, my lord,” she said, curtseying deeply.

  Her rose silk was cut very low over her bosom. The neckline was so low that an inch or even a scant half inch lower and her breasts would be exposed. Some other ladies in the room had dresses just as daring, or more so, though. She rose and
put her hand in his. It was not a waltz and he felt cheated that they must part time and time again in the figures of the country dance.

  They did not speak. She was as graceful as she always had been. He watched her when he knew she wasn’t looking and for the first time wondered what their life would have been like if they hadn’t separated. Would he have taken on his current duties with the government?

  Certainly not if they had been able to have children, but otherwise? He didn’t know. Less had suggested that whatever he was mixed up in, it had a self-destructive edge to it, but he was not suicidal. If he was honest, however, he would have to admit that he didn’t seem to care as much about self-preservation as he had when he was younger.

  He joined with Emily again. Was she seeing the young Frenchman? There had definitely been admiration in the young man’s eyes when they met, and it had surprised him at the time, especially with the young and lovely Belle Gallant in the same room. But the vicomte had not given the younger woman a second glance. His wife’s deep brown eyes turned up to gaze into his and she missed the footing of the dance for once and stumbled into him. He righted her and they stood for one long minute, with the strains of the lively violin around them and other couples having to move to avoid them. The look in her eyes surprised and fascinated him. When they were together, if he had seen that look he would have ordered the carriage immediately.

  “Are you spoken for in the next dance?” he asked, though he was not sure why.

  “No,” she replied. “I did not engage myself as I intend to leave early.”

  “Walk with me in the garden instead.”

  She nodded, wordlessly, breathlessly, and he took her arm and strolled out with her through the terrace doors. There would be a scandal, he knew. They were separated and everyone was aware of that. The gossips and tattlers would have a holiday when they learned that the Sedgelys were seen strolling together out to the gardens.