Then he turned to Meg and Laura, “Fair ladies, let us go and spend a great deal of money.”
Meg was still trying to protest when they entered the establishment of a fashionable dressmaker. As soon as she saw the gowns on display, however, she abandoned all attempts to be sensible. She’d never pined for pretty dresses, not being one to pine for what she couldn’t have, but if he was going to insist it was her wifely duty to be clothed in such fairy-tale garments, who was she to refuse him?
She let the earl and Madame d’Esterville play with her like a doll, choosing designs and draping her with fabrics so beautiful she could almost weep to think of them being cut. By the time they left, she seemed to have ordered dozens of outfits but had no clear idea what they would turn out to be.
Laura was in a daze of delight, since she, too, was to have new gowns suitable for social occasions.
When Meg gave the earl a worried look, he said, “They’ll be as decorous as you could wish. But she’s old enough to come to the theater with us now and then, and perhaps even to attend a party in the country.”
“Really?” Laura gasped.
“Really.” His twinkling, indulgent smile and Laura’s happy laughter made Meg even more intent on being worthy of him.
“Now,” he said, offering an arm to each of them, “we’ll let the carriage trail along and visit a place I know you’ll like. Mrs. Sneyd’s.”
“And what, pray, is Mrs. Sneyd’s?” asked Meg.
“A haberdashery. But a haberdashery, my dear ladies, such as you have never enjoyed before.”
And he was right. The place was a vast emporium, displaying every item imaginable. Dazed by hundreds of styles of stockings, thousands of gloves, by lace, and ribbon, and braid, by shifts of silk and shifts of linen, by nightgowns and robes, and even by cheaper types of jewelry, Meg was literally spoiled for choice.
Again, he took over. She wasn’t sure she had drawers enough for the stocking and shifts he bought for her, all of the finest quality.
“My lord,” she protested, watching him gathering silk stockings like someone picking berries, “I will need cotton hose, too.”
He smiled at her. “Of course. I was thinking of me.”
Laura turned, startled. “Do you wear silk stockings, my lord?”
His lips twitched. “With court dress, yes. But not like these.” He held up a pair made of finest flesh-colored silk with tiny butterflies embroidered up the back. He winked at Meg, causing a fiery blush. Her legs would look naked in those. Naked, with butterflies!
Clearly, however, he had not developed a disgust of her, and she couldn’t help but be fiercely glad.
Conscience eased by his extravagance, she began to choose for herself, or in fact, mostly for her brothers and sisters. She happily equipped them with new underclothes, stockings, and night wear.
As Mrs. Sneyd’s delighted employees ran out to the carriage with pile after pile of purchases, the earl sighed with the satisfaction of a job well done. “I think we’ll command the shoemaker to the house. But I’d like to stop by a certain millinery I know.”
As they strolled into the busy street, Laura asked, “Do you have sisters, my lord?”
“Only my new ones. Why?”
“You know so much about ladies’ clothing.”
Meg had to bite her lip, and Saxonhurst seemed a little strained as he said, “I have a great many female friends who ask my advice.”
“Oh,” Laura said. “How strange.”
Meg found herself sharing a suppressed grin with her husband, and blushed. But it was a pleasant blush. She liked him, and she thought that perhaps he might like her.
She wasn’t even shocked or offended at his rakish admission. He’d been right in saying she wasn’t pure. It must be all the reading she’d done, that and her natural curiosity. Thank heavens her husband didn’t seem to mind.
It was ironic that they shortly encountered one of his female friends—a fashionable woman on the arm of a dashing, red-coated soldier. With clustering golden curls under a high, elaborate bonnet, and cheeks and lips that clearly owed something to paint, she made Meg feel like a hedge-sparrow.
“Sax, darling! What a lovely surprise. I was just wishing I had your advice on silks.” She presented a cheek, and he obliged by kissing it, then nodded to the officer. “Redcar.”
The woman ignored Meg and Laura as if they were servants, and stepped a little closer to the earl. “I’m trying to decide on just the right material for some very intimate apparel. . . .”
“Then you’ll have to rely on Redcar’s advice, Trixie.” He turned to Meg. “My dear, let me introduce you to Lady Harby and Colonel George Redcar.” To them, he said. “This is my wife, Lady Saxonhurst, and her sister, Miss Gillingham.”
Two jaws literally dropped.
The silence was embarrassing, but Saxonhurst didn’t seem to mind. It could only have been seconds, anyway, until manners clicked in and both lady and officer smiled, greeted, congratulated. Then they hurried on, carrying a promise of invitations to the ball the earl would be holding shortly to introduce his wife to the ton.
“Ball?” Meg queried, rather shaken.
“I confess, I hadn’t thought of it till then, but we might as well puff it off in style rather than in dribs and drabs. A Twelfth Night ball. We’ll make sure you have that apricot gauze thing to wear.”
Meg tried to distinguish apricot gauze from the rest of the rainbow of fabrics. . . .
“Our wedding announcement was in the papers today anyway,” he was saying as he stopped in front of a familiar shop. “But Trixie Harby never reads anything.”
Meg seized her courage. “Will you invite your family to the ball?”
He turned at the door. “Family?”
She knew this wasn’t wise, but had to do it. “Your grandmother and—”
“No. Come along.” He shepherded them through the door of Mrs. Ribbleside’s, and Meg’s brief spurt of courage faded. It was early days. She’d heal his family’s wounds later.
The pretty milliner gushed and glowed again, but with a calmer eye Meg didn’t entirely like the way the woman smiled at Saxonhurst as she curtsied. Theoretical tolerance clearly didn’t extend to actual examples. Meg wished she knew another fashionable milliner to suggest. An elderly one. Or one with warts, or crossed eyes, or an enormous sausagey nose.
She didn’t however, and Mrs. Ribbleside was clearly skilled at her trade. As Meg was determined to make up for her moral shortcomings by being a perfect wife in every other way, she could not object. Soon she was a mere head under a parade of toppings, bombarded with questions about brims, height, ribbons, fruit, flowers, feathers. . . .
The earl, lounging on a chaise, gave most of the responses. “Not that one. Too heavy round the face. . . . Try another pink. Ah yes. Very becoming . . .”
Eventually, hat boxes were stacked to be delivered later, and the earl gave Laura carte blanche to choose some headwear for herself under Mrs. Ribbleside’s advice. He drew Meg over to the window.
“Tired?”
“A little,” she confessed, feeling a poor creature when he hummed with energy in a way that reminded her of the sheelagh. “But I must thank you—”
“Devil a bit. I’m having enormous fun.” He turned to watch Laura angle her head to admire a wide villager hat of white lace trimmed with cream roses. “Take that one, for sure, pet. Come spring, you’ll slay all London.”
Laura chuckled, but ordered it, eyes brilliant with excitement.
“She’s going to be wonderfully dangerous,” Saxonhurst said.
“Dangerous?”
“To men. And,” he added with a twinkle, “to our peace of mind. She won’t even need a fortune to be hunted. You’re lucky to have me, you know. I’m not sure you could have kept the predators at bay.”
Meg stared at him, forcibly reminded of Sir Arthur, of what might have been.
He deserved so much, this generous man she had trapped. She wished she could be comple
tely honest, but she didn’t dare. She could, however, try to put one thing right.
“The other night,” she whispered, glancing to be sure Laura and the milliner could not hear, “I lied about . . . about my courses.” She wouldn’t give him an explanation, for that would need a new untruth.
He smiled, apparently unshocked and unoffended. “I thought so.”
Oh dear. “I am normally very honest, Saxonhurst. I assure you.”
“I believe you.”
Meg had to turn to stare through the small-paned window at the bustling street before she could go on. “Tonight,” she whispered, even more quietly.
“Yes?” He leaned his head close to hers, as if he were having trouble hearing her.
She cleared her throat. “Tonight. It will be all right.” She flicked one glance at him, then stared away again. “Tonight.”
She felt him take her hand, and as he raised it to his lips, she met his eyes.
“My dear Lady Saxonhurst,” he said, “tonight it will assuredly be all right. I pledge my life on it.”
“What do you think—?”
Meg snatched her hand free and turned to Laura, just as Laura broke off her own words. Both she and the milliner were looking at them with bright-eyed interest.
Had they been overheard? Meg felt her face flame at that.
No. But probably the tone of their conversation had been noisily obvious.
Sax, unconcerned, strolled over to her sister and adjusted a saucy toque that seemed entirely composed of ribbons. “Laura, my dear, there should be a law against it. I think I shall put a bill before the House that all pretty young ladies be compelled to wear veils and wimples like nuns.”
Laura gurgled with laughter. “Then veils and wimples would be all the rage, for who’d want to rank themselves with the un-pretty?”
“And poor Mrs. Ribbleside would lose most of her custom. However, since I suspect we’ve stripped her stock for today, let us be on our way home to prepare for the evening.”
Meg, still standing by the window, felt a jolt at those words, but a moment later she knew they were mostly innocent. He’d planned a trip to a pantomime tonight.
As they left to return to the carriage, however, she knew by a look in his eye that they hadn’t been entirely innocent. He had other plans, and though deeply nervous, quiveringly so, Meg couldn’t wait to end up in this particular fox’s jaws.
He wooed her. Slowly, over the remainder of the day, Meg was aware of her husband leading her toward the promised night.
In the carriage, despite Laura sitting opposite, he took her hand. It was no more than that, and they both wore gloves, but throughout the short journey to the house, she was aware of his fingers wrapped around hers.
Then, for the last few minutes of the journey, his thumb slid beneath the edge of her glove to rub against the skin of her inner wrist. She had never felt anything so dangerous in her life.
At the house he, not a servant, removed her cloak and bonnet, his ungloved hands whispering briefly against her neck. As they went toward the room where tea awaited them, his hand rested lightly against her back—so lightly and yet so unignorably.
They conversed. Jeremy was home and had things to say. Laura and the twins were keen to tell their brother all about their adventures. The earl made the occasional comment. Mr. Chancellor played his part, and so did she, she thought, though her mind was completely tangled in intimate matters.
He sat beside her, not touching, but almost seeming to. She felt like a piece of metal placed beside a powerful magnet, as if she could quite easily slide right up against him, locked there.
He served her, plying her with tea and cakes. Sometimes his fingers brushed hers. Occasionally, his eyes lingered on her lips like a phantom kiss.
Sipping at tea, she realized that this was seduction! This was what happened when a man like Sax singled out a woman and began to invite her to his bed. They were married, and yet she felt perched on the edge of wickedness, secretly being invited into sin.
She had to put down her cup before her unsteady hand created a spill.
Despite the fact that the others were still chattering and nibbling, he rose, holding out a hand. “If you’ve finished, my dear, let us go upstairs for a while.”
No excuse. No explanation, despite the sudden hush, and the interested looks. Mr. Chancellor suddenly picked up the conversation again.
Now?
She’d thought tonight.
She wasn’t ready yet!
But she wouldn’t dodge him again.
Her legs astonishing weak, she let him guide her up the stairs to her bedroom.
No! To his. She’d thought it would happen in hers, though it shouldn’t make any difference.
Again his hand on her back gently guided her to her fate.
Once in the room, she looked around nervously, desperate for something to talk about. “Oh my!” she gasped, before she could stop herself.
Who would paint a camel figurine green, and then ornament it with orange spots? Who would purchase such an object? What kind of man gave it a prominent place on his mantelpiece? What man had as a clock a gilded face stuck in the belly of a fat white figure wearing a pink and gold wrap?
And what of the oval platter beside them? She had to go closer to be sure she wasn’t mistaken. Indeed, the picture in the middle showed the starving poor breathing their last by the roadside.
“You admire that plate?” he asked.
Meg looked around, trying to conceal dismay. What a contrast to the rest of his elegant house! And yet this, and his bizarre paintings in the library, must be his true taste. And his dog, of course. And his bird.
Clearly Saxonhurst, despite appearances, was not entirely sane. Yet she was tied to him for life.
And he was being so very kind to them all.
She looked from him to the plate. “Is it supposed to create a guilty conscience, perhaps? To deter gluttony.”
“I have no idea. Do you not care for it?”
From a range of possible answers, Meg said, “It is not to my taste, no.”
She’d caught sight of another peculiarity—a stand of some sort composed of tortured bamboo painted bright pink but topped with green leaves. Apart from its other problems, it clashed horribly with the gold-papered walls.
She shuddered, wondering if she might eventually be allowed to throw these objects out and choose more suitable ones for the poor man. If she was to engage in all her marital intimacy here, it would be essential.
With sudden alarm, she wondered just what sort of clothes she’d let him choose for her. Her memory told her they would be in good taste, but now she wondered.
She glanced at him and saw that he was watching her, perhaps amused. “You haven’t admired the painting over the bed yet.”
Meg had been deliberately ignoring the bed, but now she faced it, and stared. On the back, above the headboard, set among swags of golden brocade, was a huge and extraordinary picture of naked women. Astonishingly muscular naked women.
“Amazons, of course,” he said, coming closer. “You’ll note the absence of the right breast.”
“It’s hard to avoid.” Meg couldn’t take her eyes off the outlandish painting. It wasn’t the nakedness that disturbed her most, or the breastlessness, but the fact that the women hurtled shrieking in all directions, bearing blood-drenched swords and assorted severed body parts, and that all the corpses were men.
She feared he really must be mad to sleep under a thing like that.
With a forced smile, she turned to him. “You admire military subjects, my lord?”
“I admire strong women.” He was close, and came closer. “Like you.”
He took her hands, and her heart tried to race to a stop. “I don’t feel at all strong just now,” she whispered.
“Of course not. Nature doesn’t work that way.” He was drawing her into his arms. A protest trembled on her lips, a protest stimulated in part by his unbalanced decor, but she suppresse
d it. This was her duty, the payment she must make.
And beyond duty, she wanted it. She wouldn’t lie about that.
Mad or not, the Earl of Saxonhurst stirred her wanton senses.
Pressed lightly against his body, held gently there by his arms, she steadied herself and turned her face up for a kiss.
His skin was not so smooth this close. She supposed no skin was. His honey lashes were long, however, and his eyes were yellow as trees are green, created by a million shades. He smelled of a faint perfume, and also of something much more earthy that she knew was him.
Doubtless, she had her own smell. She hoped it was as pleasing.
“We are still going to wait for the night, Minerva,” he said, snaring her attention for his lips. “But I cannot wait that long to kiss you again.”
This was unlike his other kisses. Meg had not known there were so many types of kisses. His lips pressed upon hers, warmly, softly, playing there a little, but meaning—she was sure of it—more.
He angled his head and teased her with his tongue. “Open to me, Minerva. Explore me. . . .”
With a little noise that startled her, Meg obeyed, driven by the fact that he had turned passive. What she wanted, she would have to take.
She touched his teeth with her tongue, almost groaning at the shocking intimacy, then felt his tongue against hers, a gentle greeting, a welcome.
He sucked at her. At her tongue. She made another noise. It might have been a protest. He ignored it, drawing her in, pulling her close so she could tumble deep into his kiss.
Then he was carrying her. To the bed!
He seemed to settle her there, to settle beside her, without any interruption. His leg came over hers, his torso pressed her down as he captured her mouth and her soul. One hand caressed her breast, his gentle touch like fire despite layers of cloth and corset.
She’d thought they were going to wait, but had no real objection to doing it now if he was being carried away by his animal nature. She’d quite like to get the first time over with so she could stop worrying about it.
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