Three Lessons in Seduction

by Sofie Darling

  “Aunt, she speaks English,” Mariana repeated, “and she can hear you perfectly well. I would ask that you lower your voice or, better yet, keep such thoughts to yourself,” she finished on a firm note. Years spent alongside the stern headmistress, Mrs. Bloomquist, hadn’t been lost on her.

  Hortense brought the tray around and began pouring. A much-chastened Aunt Dot watched in silence, even as her unsparing gaze caught every nuance and stored away every perceived mistake for future conversation. A small prick of guilt jabbed Mariana’s conscience. “Was your journey in good order and comfortable?”

  “Oh, my dearest dear, the roads.”

  Mariana awaited further clarification, but that was all her aunt would say on the matter. The roads spoke volumes.

  Not a sip of tea later, Uncle Bertie pushed off the settee to a stand. “Well, we must be off.”

  Aunt Dot reached out and squeezed Mariana’s hand. “My dear, will you be well in our absence?”

  “I shall manage,” Mariana replied as Aunt released her hand. She ushered the pair to the door. “Thank you for your visit and for your . . . concern.”

  The instant the door clicked shut, Mariana called out, “Hortense, will you pour me a bath?” Partially obscured by a silk chinoiserie screen, stood a claw-foot tub, soft and inviting with mid-morning light.

  Once again, she settled into the familiar chair and rested her head against its firm cushion, eyes closed, while the bath was readied.

  Uncle Bertie knew something about the life Nick led on this side of the Channel, of that she was certain. Ever since she could remember, he’d been involved in vague governmental activities, like so many second sons of their class. In fact, it was Uncle Bertie who had paved the way for Nick, another second son, with the consulate.

  She felt in her gut that her earlier suspicion was correct: Uncle Bertie had received a note, too. Why hadn’t he said so? She couldn’t slough off the feeling she’d mishandled the situation by telling him that Nick was alive. She kept getting it wrong at every turn when it came to this spy business.

  She released a groan of frustration. Nothing was what it seemed. First Nick, then Hortense, now Uncle Bertie . . . Who wasn’t involved in this intrigue?

  Of course, she shouldn’t feel all that surprised. Nick had always withheld the core of himself from her. In the early days, she’d felt it with a deep certainty in the way only a girl wholeheartedly in love for the first time could intuit every straight and curve of her lover’s heart. And, in the way of a young girl, she’d accepted it. He was five years older; of course, he would have a past. Wasn’t his mystery part of his allure?

  Now that past was out of the shadows and in the light, but still between them. It was a whole new, strange world that unfurled before her. An image of Yvette and Lisette kissing sprang to mind. What sort of life did Nick lead?

  Her finger ran along the space between her breasts where her gold locket should lie. A stab of regret for its loss pierced her. What had possessed her to gamble her locket away?

  Not whiskey. Rather, it was a dangerous high-spiritedness that at times overtook her good sense and led her down paths wild and unknown, sometimes destructive. In all likelihood, and at this very moment, her locket was gracing the décolletage of a French strumpet named either Yvette or Lisette. She squeezed her eyes tight at the thought of what activity said French strumpet could be engaged in—

  “Madame, your bath is ready,” came Hortense’s soft, husky voice.

  Mariana stood and shrugged off her bathrobe as she closed the few steps between her and the blessed pleasure of a piping hot bath. No click of a ring sounded as her fingers closed around the tub’s edge, and she lowered herself into its steaming depths. She’d stopped wearing her wedding band years ago, the moment she’d learned about Nick’s affair, not from the gossip rags—they traded in lies, after all—but from his own lips.

  But she’d never stopped wearing the locket with the cameo inside. Not for a single occasion. The cameo represented an ideal, one they’d achieved together for a single perfect moment in time. She sank further into the water’s sultry embrace, banishing the thought and the regret.

  Eyes closed, her mind traveled to a different time and place, far away and long ago toward a memory long-suppressed. It was out of self-preservation, to be sure. But here, in the foreign environs of Paris, she could indulge in the luxury of such a memory—not just any memory, her favorite memory. The day she’d known Nick was hers forever.

  Chapter 11

  Arsy varsey: To fall arsy varsey, i.e. head over heels.

  A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

  Francis Grose

  The Cotswolds

  24 March 1812

  Unlike her twin sister Olivia, Mariana didn’t fall in love with her husband at a ball or anywhere near the glittering flow of the ton. If she were to characterize Society as a set of colors, its palette would glow bright gold and hard platinum.

  In direct contrast stood the place where she fell for Nick: a color palette of soft ambers and gentle greens, the palette of the countryside.

  As the younger brother of Mariana’s father, the Earl of Surrey, Uncle Bertie had been entitled to the Cotswolds estate that had been part of their mother’s dowry. From the earliest age, Mariana loved traveling to Little Spruisty Folly.

  To get to the heart of the estate, one turned off the main road and rode for more than half a mile down a wide lane flanked on either side by stately horse-chestnut trees before one caught sight of the main house. Although neither house nor grounds were “little,” and neither a single folly nor a solitary spruce pine were to be found anywhere on the entire estate, the name somehow fit the sprawling house constructed with various architectural styles, ranging from the original Tudor to the latest Georgian. It was a patchwork quilt of a house, and one not soon forgotten. One could easily become lost inside its jumble of rooms for hours, days, and even weeks.

  Mariana loved the Folly in a personal way none of her other family did, not even Olivia. As a result, she’d spent many a fortnight in her youth as Uncle Bertie and Aunt Dot’s lone girl visitor. No one—not even Uncle and Aunt, she suspected—could comprehend Mariana’s abiding love for the place since its bucolic solitude seemed so at odds with the bold, social girl London knew. For Mariana, the Folly was a place where she never felt the need to prove herself. She could just be. The Folly was her oasis.

  One morning, no different from any other, Uncle Bertie began going on at length about a promising chap making some excellent connections on the Continent. “The boy has the right ideas,” Uncle continued. “Just the sort England needs with Napoleon getting ready to march again.”

  The conversation occurred on the periphery of Mariana’s consciousness for she’d been entirely focused on the estate’s retired hunting beagle, Horace, who slyly snapped up every bit of ham she slipped beneath the table to his ever-patient chops. Uncle was ever rhapsodizing about one promising chap or another, which was why his remark about “the chap’s” return to England went right over her head. If she’d been more attentive, she might have been prepared for the sight greeting her eyes thirty or so minutes later. Likely not.

  Aunt Dot had other plans for the breakfast conversation. “Dearest Mariana,” she cut in, silencing Uncle Bertie, who directed his attention to his Morning Chronicle, “have you devised a strategy for the upcoming Season? You must make your second go around count. Did no young lord catch your eye?”

  Mariana inwardly cringed and exhaled a noncommittal, “Hmm.”

  “Well, Olivia made the most of her first Season,” Aunt continued, oblivious to Mariana’s increasing discomfort. “A love match with the son of a duke. Even if he is a younger son, Percy Bretagne was something of a catch. And married before the end of the Season . . . I daresay, I never knew the chit had it in her,” Aunt D
ot finished on a note of grudging admiration.

  Unable to take any more chatter about strategies and “catching” husbands, Mariana stood and excused herself from the table. With a low, short whistle she summoned Horace to accompany her on their morning walk. Sometimes he trotted alongside her; other times his sensitive nose picked up an interesting scent that claimed the entirety of his attention and off he trotted in a direction all his own. Scents were neither good nor bad to Horace. They were either interesting or not.

  On this particular morning, he stuck close as they lit across the stone portico and onto the closely-cropped grass that provided a carpet for the formal garden. Once past the ha-ha, Mariana cut right and found the narrow trail that led into the copse of woods forming the northeast boundary of Uncle’s land.

  Soon, they reached the bubbling creek, which ran through the estate. They continued parallel alongside until it flowed into the small and secluded Duck Pond, a name first optimistically, then ironically, bestowed upon the mass of water no duck had ever deigned to set feather upon. It was here that Horace usually strayed, but not on this day.

  This day, he stuck with Mariana as if he knew what they would encounter on the other side of the small rise that formed the southwest bank of the pond. She thought nothing of Horace’s unusual steadfastness. Instead, her mind wandered elsewhere.

  It was true that she was on the verge of her second Season. It was also true that she would have to face it without Olivia this go around. Horrifying thought.

  The thing was this: she couldn’t imagine the selection of potential husbands would be any better this Season. After all, they would be the same young men from last Season. It wasn’t that they were horrible young men with no prospects, they just hadn’t been . . . Him.

  He’d ruined her. Or, more accurately, she’d ruined herself on him. In the span of a single moonlit night, he’d become more than the standard by which she judged other men; he’d become the only man.

  She gave herself a mental shake. A year had passed, and she may never see him again. She must purge him from her mind. After all, aside from his accidental proposal that hadn’t truly meant anything, he’d given her no reason to believe that he would be part of her future. She must give up the idea of him, for that was all he was. An idea—a ghost, really.

  Horace saved her from further exploring that bleak thought, when, just before they reached Duck Pond, he stopped, lifted a front paw, and tilted his head. “What is it, boy?” she asked, unconcerned, her feet striding forward. This was typical Horace behavior, a hound to his stout, little core. It was likely a rabbit. Then she saw it: a shock of bright white glinting in the morning sun on the bank of the pond. It was the white linen of a shirt.

  She stopped in her tracks and noticed a few more anomalies: starlings weren’t trilling through oak and elm, and crickets weren’t chirruping in the grass. Utterly still, she listened for any sound which might proceed from the direction of that white shirt.

  Her feet inched up the rise at a snail’s crawl, carrying her toward it bit by bit, nature’s mulch of dead leaves and rotten twigs crunching dully beneath her feet. She was like a needle drawn to a lodestone, so acute was her curiosity.

  At last, she heard what her ears had been both expecting and dreading: a splash. Could it be an estate worker? It was a possibility. But her ambling morning strolls were well-known at the Folly, and no worker would take that risk. She braced herself for the likelihood that someone unknown to her was splashing about the pond. Her feet stumbled across a decent-sized branch, and she picked it up, fingers clamped around one end. Horace raced to the top of the rise and again lifted one paw off the ground, intent on whatever or whoever he saw.

  Just shy of the top, she stopped to inspect the layers of clothes at her feet: navy silk cravat, white lawn shirt, buff trousers, riding boots, and navy overcoat, all folded in a single compact pile. These weren’t the clothes of an estate worker. These clothes belonged to a man of her class.

  It was then her ears picked up a rhythm in the splashing. The man was . . . swimming?

  Her grip tightened around the stick, and she took the few remaining steps to the top of the bank. Her stomach dropped to her feet. Her suspicions had been correct. It was a man, and he was swimming.

  Except . . . the man was him. And he was . . . naked.

  A quick patter of heartbeats, and it set in that Lord Nicholas Asquith was swimming naked in Duck Pond. Her eyes darted away before a stronger, more elemental, instinct pulled them back in.

  With every stroke, his long, muscled arms cut through the water like blades, carrying him fluidly across the water as if he’d been born to it. Rills of water streamed across his tanned skin like transparent silk, down the length of ridged muscles before dipping at the small of his back and whooshing over his taut, muscled buttocks to flow over long legs kicking in effortless rhythm with his arms.

  She’d never imagined a man’s body could be a thing of beauty. Looking at this . . . Adonis . . . she understood she’d never possessed the capacity to imagine this sort of man’s body before now.

  The feeling radiating out from the juncture of her legs told her something else about a man’s body: it was a thing of desire. This was the feeling that inspired scandal. This was the feeling that upset the balance of the world. This was the feeling that ran the world. For the first time in her inexperienced life, she understood desire as more substantial than flimsy impulse or weakness.

  Her fingers loosened their grip on the stick, and it fell to the ground before rolling into the water with a tiny splash. Horace raced to retrieve it, but rather than bring it back, he found a soft patch of mulch and began lazily gnawing on it, Lord Nicholas Asquith forgotten.

  When Mariana’s gaze swung back toward the pond, everything was changed. No longer was he swimming. Instead, he was treading water, his eyes trained on her. Dark, wet hair slicked back and drops of water running down angled cheekbones and chiseled jaw, he was gorgeous. Eyes the hue and intensity of an afternoon storm cloud stared back at her, running up and down her length in silent query and evaluation. A frisson of excitement purled down her spine.

  She liked the idea that a man like Lord Nicholas Asquith was curious about her, an eighteen-year-old nobody on the verge of her second Season. A girl would never tire of being the object of attention of a man like him. Her pelisse became hot and constrictive, and she suddenly wanted—nay, needed—it off her body.

  As she began backing away from the pond, her feet stumbled over an object. It was his stack of clothes.

  Still, he watched her, silent and self-possessed.

  Annoyance stabbed through her. It was difficult for her to control the impulse to break through someone’s self-possession. As a child, she would pinch the ever-poised Olivia just to ruffle her feathers a bit. That same urge poked at her now.

  Fueled by whim, she seized the pile of clothes and hugged them close to her chest. A scent of deep, rich spice and utter male reached her nose, and she inhaled, eyes closed as her lungs filled to capacity with him.

  On the exhale, her eyes flew open. The right corner of his mouth tilted up into an almost-smile. His arms began moving in a languorous breaststroke motion, pulling him toward the shore . . . toward her . . . in slow, deliberate increments.

  Mariana’s heart became a hammer in her chest, imploring her to run away. Whatever was she thinking? She was out of her depth.

  Her capacity to reason through the situation evaporated when his feet found purchase on the pond’s floor, and he began emerging from the pond. Water streamed down rivulets formed by the sinewy muscles of his arms and chest, descending ever lower to his corded belly, following the fine trail of hair that coursed even lower.

  Heart racing, she lifted her eyes to meet his already upon her, daring her to again feast her eyes upon him. He may have been as naked as a Greek god, but she felt li
ke the exposed one.

  She wanted to look away. No, that wasn’t true. She didn’t want to look away. She should look away. Propriety and modesty demanded it. But she was neither proper nor modest, ever drawn toward the wild and unknown. Even so, she was shocked by his unhurried stride toward her . . . naked.

  His gaze held hers within its enigmatic grasp, and her knees went to putty. He and she might be the only man and woman on Earth. She’d never been especially attentive to her catechism, but the tale of Adam and Eve came to mind. Except standing before her wasn’t Adam, but a man both serpent and fruit, both tempter and temptation. All she had to do was reach out and . . .

  The spell broke when he stopped within a foot of her and removed his clothes from her compliant hands. His fingers brushed hers, sending a tingling sensation through her body. An emotion unfamiliar to her crossed his features, but it was gone before she could consider it.

  Later, she would know it as his responding desire. On this day, however, her thoughts moved on when he turned and strode to a sun-soaked patch of grass, softly intoning Horace’s name, and reaching down to ruffle the loose skin beneath the traitorous beagle’s chin.

  Trance-like, she watched in fascination and horror as he lay his greatcoat flat on the ground and then himself atop it—on his back, eyes closed as his body, every single inch of its long length, soaked in the dewy sunlight. Not once had he displayed a care for her presence or concern that she might feast her eyes upon him. And what a feast on display. All of him was long and lean except for, well, his male member was certainly long, but lean it wasn’t. In fact, it seemed to be growing . . . thicker . . . by the moment.