“Jessup, I like you a great deal.” She reached out and rested her hand on his until he looked at her. “And I think you have feelings for me. Let’s face the truth—neither of us is getting any younger. Need we really waste our time with all these ridiculous rules when we could be moving on to something…more mutually satisfying?”
His eyes widened slightly, and then narrowed as she leaned over the table until her lips met his. A heat danced between them at once, a heat Lucia had feared was gone from her life forever, and when she opened her eyes to look at him, he was smiling.
“That was nice,” he said softly, taking her hand between his and smoothing it. His eyes filled with moisture. “It…it’s been a very long time, Lucia, since I kissed anyone.”
“Pretty good for being out of practice,” she teased as she leaned over the table again. Only this time, she let him take the lead—and she was not disappointed.
Jessup was less hesitant with his next kiss, and his touch sent a delightful shiver of pleasure that she felt from her eyebrows to the balls of her feet. Their lips brushed once, twice, and then she tasted the tip of his tongue.
“I think I should go home with you,” Lucia murmured, searching his eyes. Then she smiled mischievously, drawing her fingertips under his clean-shaven chin. “You don’t seem as shocked by my proposal as I would have expected.”
He took her hand in his. “Nothing shocks me anymore, my dear Lucia.” He chuckled, turning his head to gaze through the open doorway where several of the young gentlemen had begun a game of cards. Angelique and her Lord Carter were dancing to the strum of a hired minstrel’s lute. “I do, however…”
“You what?” She clasped his hands, drawing him close again. “There must only be honesty between you and me, Jessup. I don’t have time for any drivel.”
He grinned lopsidedly and Lucia thought she caught a glimpse of the young man he had once been—handsome with dark hair and a devil-may-care smile.
“The young ladies.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not certain that…” He stopped and started again, seeming uncomfortable.
Lucia waited, even though she was fairly certain what he was about to say. What he wanted to break gently to her was that he could not be associated with such scandalous young women. It was bad for business and his clients would never stand for it.
“If it’s money you need, Lucia, to care for you and the young ladies, I have more than enough. My sons are both ungrateful louts and they don’t deserve a pence of what is mine. I’d be happy to spend it all before I die, if I could figure out how to do it.” He met her gaze again. “It’s not necessary that these young ladies do this. They could marry—I could perhaps offer them a small dowry—”
Lucia turned away and laughed. That was not what she had anticipated. She had thought he would say something about having to keep their affair private so his business would not be affected. But his offer to care not only for her, but also for her chicks, was a pleasant surprise.
Now it was her own eyes that filled with tears, and Lucia was not a woman who had time for tears. “Jessup—”
“I mean what I say, dear Lucia. What is money if it cannot make a person happy? It means nothing to—”
“Jessup, listen to me. This is not as it appears. Despite the gossip you hear or what you may believe you see, my charges are not really looking for protectors.”
He glanced through the doorway again. Angelique was now perched on the edge of the dining table, flashing more than a little calf as she swung her legs with the hapless lightheartedness of a child. Sapphire sat in a chair, fanning herself madly.
Jessup looked back at Lucia again.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” she said, “and I’ll warn you, it will sound far-fetched. I’ll also warn you that if you don’t believe what I say, you and I will have a nice tumble tonight. I’ll sleep with you until dawn and I’ll probably come to your bed again, but we will never have any more than that.”
Jessup swallowed hard and nodded.
“This—” she pointed in the direction of the larger dining room “—is a ruse. A way to get the American, Blake Thixton to listen to my Sapphire. You see, she is also a Thixton, and we journeyed from Martinique so that she might claim her legitimacy.”
“I don’t understand. His lordship is only nine or ten years older than Miss Fabergine. He could not possibly—”
“Just listen, Jessup, and let your supper settle.” Lucia withdrew her hands, poured him more wine, then sat back and told the tale.
“Such a claim would be very difficult to prove now that her father has passed away, Lucia,” he said when she had finished.
“Sapphire has letters written by her father to her mother. Love letters. And a jewel. An exquisite sapphire that belonged to the Thixton family. Surely there must be written records of the stone being lost or stolen at the time Edward gave it to Sophie.”
He shook his head. “Probably not, as the family would have guessed where it had gone—they already knew about his love affair. It would be an embarrassment to announce one’s eldest son and heir had given away one of the family jewels to a dairy maid.”
“She was his wife,” Lucia stated insistently.
“There, there.” Jessup patted her knee. “I’m only telling you what the courts would say. And I still don’t understand what Miss Fabergine’s claim has to do with all this.” He indicated the merry party going on in the next room.
“Why, we’re going to embarrass the family into acknowledging her! Isn’t that a delicious idea?” She clapped her hands with delight. “Sapphire has let it be known she’s in need of a protector and intends to go into keeping. Once we leak the truth of Sapphire’s birth, the family name will be in jeopardy. The countess and Mr. Thixton will both wish to preserve the integrity of the name.”
“But for the countess to recognize Miss Fabergine, she would have to concede that she herself was never legally wed to Lord Wessex.”
“That’s makes no difference to Sapphire. At this point, the countess will care about what most women her age care about—her daughters and seeing them properly wed.” She raised a finger. “The fact that Edward was married to Sophie and therefore couldn’t marry the countess won’t matter to the American. It will only mean she isn’t really of the house of Wessex. His primary objective will be to save the family from scandal.”
Jessup lifted a bushy brow and indicated the other room with a hook of his thumb. “And this is not a scandal?”
“Oh, posh, yes, but a different kind of scandal. Every Englishman and woman loves a tale of romance. What would it mean to the American to simply acknowledge her in name? Nothing. She doesn’t want any of his blasted money!”
Jessup flinched at her last words.
Lucia frowned. “What on earth is wrong? What did I say?”
He shook his head. “Nothing, dear Lucia, it’s only that I’m just not certain your plan will work. It might be better to find the original marriage certificate and legally prove that Edward married Sophie.”
“And where would I find that? Jessup, they were married twenty-one years ago. I don’t even know where. Not in London, certainly. Some hill or shire, I would imagine, in a potato patch or some country church.”
He tapped the table thoughtfully and then looked up at Lucia. “Let me see what I can do.”
She smiled, leaned forward again, and this time took his hand to rest it on her knee. “That would be wonderful. In the meantime, I think I’ll let the girls continue with our plan.”
“Just one more question.”
“Certainly.”
“Miss Fabergine—the other Miss Fabergine…”
“Angelique, yes.”
“You say she is no blood kin to your goddaughter.”
“She is not. Only a dear friend, something better than blood kin sometimes.”
“Then why is she pretending she is in need of a protector?”
“Oh, just for the thrill of it!” Lucia reached for the wine bo
ttle. “Now, what will it be for you, sir?” She lowered her lashes seductively. “More wine or another kiss?”
Seated on Blake’s lap, Rosalind threw her arms around his neck and kissed him fully on the lips, brushing her nearly bare breasts against him. The other diners in the rented room above a popular tavern, the Cock and Screw, burst into bawdy laughter, clapping and whistling. Her friends were an eclectic group, mostly actors and actresses, a few gentlemen, a Frenchman on holiday, several orange girls and a brunette who was obviously a courtesan. Blake was the only American, the token guest of the evening, he presumed.
After he and Rosalind had coupled on the floor of her dressing room, they had talked while she removed her stage makeup and dressed for supper. She had informed him that he was already quite famous among the unmarried ladies of London and their mothers, and everyone wanted a chance to be considered a potential wife of the new Lord Wessex. When he asked her teasingly if she, too, was looking for a husband, she only laughed. “Why pay for what I can get for free?” she declared with a wink.
Rosalind rose from his lap and he slapped her bottom playfully; she laughed and danced across the room into the arms of a fellow actor. Blake leaned back in his chair until his head rested against the wall. He lifted his glass to his lips and drank deeply of the English whiskey, wishing it was scotch. He’d had quite a bit to drink. Enough. He was tired, tired of the party, of Rosalind and her vulgar friends. He wanted to go to bed, but that would mean returning to the Mayfair town house, and he wasn’t quite ready to do that.
Beyond the wall he leaned against, he could hear that there was another dinner party going on. He could hear the rattle of dice, the clink of glasses and boisterous male laughter. He could also hear the voices of women.
He kept thinking he heard Sapphire Fabergine’s voice. He thought he heard her husky laughter, and when he closed his eyes, he could feel her mouth on his. God, he really had had too much to drink.
He opened his eyes, sat up and set his glass on the table as he stood. That little fortune-seeking strumpet was invading his thoughts too often and he found it worrisome. All these years he’d managed to keep any woman from getting under his skin—why this one?
“Where are you going, Blake?” Rosalind called out to him when she saw him walking toward the door. She tried to escape the arms of her dance partner, but he held her tightly, pressing his lips to her breasts bared by the low-cut bodice of her gown.
“Home.”
“Don’t you want to come home with me?” she asked, pursing her rouge-stained lips. “Worn you out, have I?” she teased loud enough for several of her companions to hear her.
They chuckled.
Blake offered a perfunctory smile. “Precisely. Thank you. Good night.” Grabbing his coat and hat from a hook near the door he slipped out onto the stair landing. He glanced down the hall in the direction of the lute music and the voice he kept thinking was Sapphire’s. He couldn’t hear her now; maybe it had been his imagination.
At the very end of the dimly lit hall was a small table with a middle-aged man and woman seated at it, their backs to him. He frowned and turned away as he punched his arms into his coat sleeves. They ought to know better at their age. There was no such thing as love—anyone with sense knew that. There was only lust.
Blake lowered his top hat to his head and started down the narrow back staircase. Hearing someone approaching from below, he attempted to move to the side, but the stairwell was narrow. He could tell it was a woman from the sound of her light footsteps. A woman in heeled slippers. Another actress or orange girl, probably. They’d been coming and going with men all evening.
At the landing halfway between the upper rooms and the main room over the tavern, the staircase turned sharply and Blake nearly collided with the woman skipping up the steps.
“I…”
One green eye. One blue. She stared up at him, as shocked to see him as he was to see her. Her cheeks were flushed and her lips rosy, her hair slightly tousled as if she’d been dancing…or kissing. It had been her voice he’d heard.
Sapphire found herself staring up at Blake Thixton, breathless, her heart pounding. She tried to step back to put space between them, but on the small landing there was no place for her to go. He was holding both of her forearms tightly—she could not escape him.
“Why wouldn’t you accept the letter I sent to you?” she demanded, feeling her cheeks burn. “You have to give me a chance to explain my situation to you.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do! I am Sapphire Thixton, daughter of—”
With a quick movement, he covered her mouth with his hand, turning her so that her back was pressed against the wall of the stairwell.
She wanted to scream when she felt his weight against her, his whole hard, lean body molding to hers. He held her immobile against the wall, taking his hand from her mouth only long enough to kiss her savagely.
Sapphire tried to push against him with her free hand but there wasn’t enough space between them; with his body pressed so intimately against hers, she couldn’t get any leverage. She tried to call out, but he only kissed her harder, forcing her mouth open with his tongue.
She thought she was going to faint, but at last he slid his mouth from hers, only to draw it along her cheek to her ear.
“What’s the matter?” he murmured. “Those tiresome fops good enough for you, but I’m not? I’m wealthy enough to buy and sell them all, damn it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she panted, turning her face away from him.
“I think you do. I saw you tonight at the theater, flirting with those men, strutting your wares before them. I heard you upstairs laughing. Really, Sapphire, all those men, what do you do, move from lap to lap?”
Sapphire stiffened and turned to stare at him. “What is it to you?” she demanded, feeling her eyes blaze with hatred for him. “Now let me go,” she ordered. “Let me go, or—”
“Or what?” His voice took on a teasing tone. His breath smelled of scotch. She could still taste it in her mouth. “What will you do to me, Miss Fabergine? Make me kiss you again?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she snapped. “Let me go. Someone will come looking for me and then—”
“And then they will see this for what it is. You’ve been upstairs all evening with a bevy of male suitors. You and I are doing nothing you weren’t already doing upstairs with them.”
She tried to breathe deeply, tried to slow her pounding pulse. “I can assure you those men are all too kind, too gentlemanly to take advantage of a women in that way.”
“Is that right?” He cleared his throat. “That’s interesting because that’s not what I heard. I heard that the Fabergine ladies are in search of protectors, and those gentlemen upstairs were all vying for a chance to be the fortunate fellow to take one of them into keeping.” When she didn’t respond, he went on. “What is your price, my dear? I know—lavish apartments, an account with a dressmaker, the hatter, the usual female requirements—but how much are you asking a month in stipend?”
He still held her against the wall, allowing her no chance to escape. “It doesn’t matter because the offer is not open to you, Mr. Thixton!”
He laughed aloud and his laughter startled, then angered her.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Miss Fabergine.” He let go of her so suddenly that she fell back and her head hit the wall. “I’m not interested personally.” He grabbed his hat off the landing where it had fallen and started down the steps. “Just asked out of curiosity,” he called over his shoulder as he lowered the top hat to his head and disappeared around the bend of the narrow staircase.
“Sapphire? Dear?” Lucia called from upstairs.
Sapphire took a deep breath, forced a smile on her face and, grabbing handfuls of skirt, hurried up the stairs. “Coming!”
Lucia and her Mr. Stowe were waiting for Sapphire at the top of the steps. “Where have you been?” she asked, frowning with
concern. “You’re flushed.” She reached out, placing her cool hand on Sapphire’s forehead. “Are you feeling all right, dear?”
Sapphire pulled back. “I just went downstairs to the ladies’.” She glanced at Mr. Stowe and gave Lucia a quick smile, laying her hand on her forehead. “I’m getting a bit of a headache, though. Do you think it’s time we go?”
“I’ve been telling Angelique that for half an hour. She wants me to leave her here, but I told her it was out of the question. We must, after all, keep up some appearances.”
“I’ll call the carriage if you two lovely ladies will excuse me,” Mr. Stowe announced, skirting around them and starting down the stairs.
“Are you certain you’re all right?” Lucia asked Sapphire again. “The young men who escorted you tonight all seemed pleasant enough, but you never know with men.”
“Aunt Lucia.” Sapphire turned to her. “I’m fine. Just tired, I’ve a headache and…” She hesitated. “I ran into Mr. Thixton when I was coming up the stairs.”
“Dear me.” Lucia sighed. “I wondered if you might. He was in the dining room next to yours, with the actors and actresses from the play tonight.”
Sapphire lifted a brow, knowing that actors and actresses had a reputation that was not always tolerated by polite society, though she didn’t know why it should surprise her that Blake Thixton would be comfortable in those surroundings. Nothing about that abominable man would surprise her.
“I don’t suppose you had a chance to ask him if he might reconsider addressing your claim?” Lucia asked, watching her carefully.
Sapphire didn’t meet her gaze. “No. No, I didn’t. He had his chance. I’ll not approach him again on the matter. Next time it will have to be him coming to me.” She rested her hand on Lucia’s shoulder and walked past her. “Let me go and find Angelique. Mr. Stowe will be waiting with the carriage. I’ll drag her out by her hair if I must.”
Lucia laughed. “You might just have to, puss.”
11
Lady Wessex drew the veil down over her new broad-brimmed Parisian hat and entered the church, her three daughters in tow directly behind her. The crowd in the elaborate marble vestibule parted to allow her, a woman of obvious of high status, to pass through so that she could take one of the better seats in the chapel.
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