Lady Windermere's Lover

by Miranda Neville

  The blond woman was probably married; Julian would hardly be escorting a young and single lady, and the female in question was clearly no Cyprian. Even at this distance she exuded an air of breeding and delicacy, though the latter quality was deceptive if she openly deceived her husband with a man of Julian’s ilk. Intruding on them without knowing her identity seemed potentially awkward. Suppose her husband was a friend of his? Reestablishing relations with Julian was going to be tricky enough without adding an unknown woman into the equation.

  “The curtain is falling. You should go now.” Lady Belinda nodded to someone in another box and waved him toward the exit. “I can spare you for quarter of an hour.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone.” If Lady Belinda pursued her own mischievous agenda, he refused to be manipulated “Also, I might be de trop over there. Who knows what Denford may be getting up to in that box.”

  She smiled sweetly and changed her tack. “Some women have all the luck,” she purred, and put her hand back on his knee.

  He inched away and calculated how much more of A Midsummer Night’s Dream he had to endure.

  Chapter 3

  Through the incompetent machinations of Puck, the four lovers were in a tangle and Titania was in love with an ass. Cynthia shifted in her seat and let her attention wander to the crowd in the pit.

  “Not enjoying the play?” Denford asked.

  “How did you know?”

  “I notice everything about you, Cynthia.”

  “I had never seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream acted,” she said quickly, “only read it. It’s very different on the stage.”

  Despite making great strides in worldliness, she couldn’t help being a little shocked at the skimpy costumes, suggestive posturing, and outright kissing that was featured in the production. Lysander and Hermia had kissed on the lips early in the play and Titania was doing the same to Bottom now, positively devouring him beneath his ass’s head. Cynthia kept telling herself that it was only clever acting and they weren’t really behaving with such wantonness in public.

  She stole a sideways glance and encountered Julian’s intense blue gaze. She lowered her eyes to his mouth and recalled the only time that she had been kissed like that, lasciviously, mouth-on-mouth, like the players on the stage.

  The momentous occasion had been in a dark corner of her garden on a chill autumn night a few weeks earlier. It should have been her husband—such intimate caresses were the right of spouses—but Windermere had never kissed her thus. This man, the Duke of Denford, had introduced her to the delight. She felt guilty for kissing another man and resented that the man she’d married had not seen to the business himself. Her classmates at the Birmingham Academy for Young Ladies—ignorant girls like herself—had talked about love and marriage and kissing. The three went together, all with the same man.

  “In what way do you find the play different?”

  “The actors have revealed new aspects of the characters. I had not previously perceived that Lysander and Demetrius are in competition with each other. First they must both love Hermia and then, when one turns to Helena the other must follow.”

  “You don’t give much credit to the intervention of the fairies.”

  “I believe magic merely reinforces their own inclinations, which is that of former best friends turned rivals.”

  “My dear Cynthia,” Julian said with a deep laugh. “You have grown into a woman of subtlety.”

  “I hope so,” she said, not without pride. “I came to the capital a naïve provincial. I had no idea how to convey my thoughts except in the most straightforward manner. Since I quickly learned that simplicity is not appreciated in London, I could not convey them at all.”

  “You know you may always speak frankly to me because I am incapable of taking offense. You can tell me what you really mean about the rivals in this play.” Julian was far too clever. And while he wasn’t always straightforward, he was never afraid to be frank. “Is that what you think?” he continued. “That I want you only because you are married to my former friend?”

  “The notion has crossed my mind.”

  “If you believe that your only value to me is as Damian’s bride, then you don’t know your own worth and he is a bigger fool than I thought for leaving you alone so long, and letting you think you mean nothing to him.”

  I know I mean nothing to him. She was too proud to say it aloud. Instead she soothed her vanity by defending her neglectful spouse. “He was called abroad and did his duty, for which I respect him.” Her hand convulsed on the gilt handle of her lorgnette.

  “And of course he fulfills his duty to you by frequent letters, attentive to your needs.”

  To that there was no answer.

  Long fingers enveloped her clenched fist. “If you will let me,” he whispered, “you will find me neglectful in nothing.”

  He chose his words well. Neglected was precisely how she had felt for so long, long before she met Windermere. Her husband had merely raised hopes that finally she would have someone to call her own, and dashed them. She ignored a shiver of yearning, withdrew from Julian’s touch, and raised the glasses to her nose. Her throat was tight. “Not now.”

  “Why not now? Admit that you are tempted. Why else did you come out with me tonight?”

  As his wicked voice stroked her like a sable brush, she determinedly surveyed the faces and figures in the boxes opposite. There were a few she knew, but very few. Despite her rank, she was not of the ton. The niece of a Birmingham merchant, abandoned by her brand-new husband, had no entrée to the more rarefied households of Mayfair. If her only recourse had been to the faintly disreputable company of Caro Townsend and her set, including Julian Fortescue, it was Windermere’s fault. Through the lorgnette she saw the Countess of Ashfield, a pillar of London society with the eyesight of an eagle, glaring back at her. Another box was filled with drunken bucks; luckily they were on the bottom tier or the occupants of the pit below would be in dire danger of being hit by flying glasses and vomit. The next box was also a trifle crowded: The owner had decided to cram his wife and six young ladies into the narrow space. By contrast, the very elegant lady next door had but a single gentleman in attendance.

  She inhaled so hard her chest hurt. She would recognize that gentleman from a mile’s distance, with or without the benefit of magnifying lenses.

  She didn’t know him as well as she knew the man at her side, but on the other hand, unlike Julian, he had shared her bed. He was her lawfully wedded husband. Back in London after more than a year’s absence, he had not sought the company of his wife. Instead he was tête-à-tête in a box at Drury Lane with another woman.

  Every muscle rigid, she lowered the lorgnette to her lap with exaggerated care.

  “What is it?” Julian asked.

  “Who is the lady in red in the box closest to the pit door?”

  “Lady Belinda Radcliffe, wife of the undersecretary for foreign affairs. Windermere has known her for a long time, through her husband.” She heard pity in his voice and felt his hand on her shoulder, like comfort, not seduction.

  “Did you know Windermere was back in London?”

  “I heard a rumor. But when you agreed to come out with me tonight I thought I must be wrong.”

  Cynthia blinked hard and didn’t trust herself to speak through thickening tears. Instead she tilted her head to press her cheek against Julian’s hand. Across the theater she saw Windermere’s gaze linger on them for a few seconds, then he turned back to the beautiful Lady Belinda.

  If she were honest with herself, she had hoped he would see her, or at least hear a report that she hadn’t been waiting at home like a meek Quaker for her spouse’s return. When imagining his reaction to seeing her transformed into a fashionable lady—and escorted by a duke, this particular duke—she hadn’t expected indifference. Expectations confounded again, she thought wryly through her distress.

  “I heard that rumor too,” she managed finally. “But I didn’t k
now Windermere was already in town. I assumed he had been delayed.”

  If Denford expressed sympathy now, she would leave. She would ask the theater servants to find her a hackney and go home alone. Her sense of humiliation was too great to be borne in sight of another. Gradually her heightened breathing abated. “So he is merely escorting the wife of a senior colleague, then. Very polite of him.”

  “I’m sure that’s the reason,” Julian said. She’d almost recovered her equilibrium when he delivered the final blow. “It is common knowledge that Windermere’s affair with Lady Belinda was over years ago.”

  Common knowledge to all except the stupid lowborn wife he’d married for her uncle’s money. Foolishly, she couldn’t keep her eyes off them. She saw her husband take the satin hand of his former mistress and raise it to his lips. Not so former would be her guess. The letter from the Foreign Office had told her he’d reach London two days ago. Perhaps he had. But those two days—and nights—had not been spent at Windermere House.

  Julian’s supple fingers massaged the tense muscles of her neck, out of sight of the casual observer. The sensation of flesh on flesh sent tingles of sensation down her back and up between her legs.

  Damian, Earl of Windermere, might have come home this night and satisfied the desire that pooled in her most private place, but he preferred a former mistress in red satin. And when, after all, had he ever satisfied her desires?

  She wanted satisfaction. Even more, she craved intimacy and human connection.

  “I don’t want to see the rest of the play, Julian. Take me home.”

  Even if he changed his mind, Damian had no chance to tackle Denford at the theater. The duke and his blond beauty left before the last act. Damian accompanied Lady Belinda home. Declining offers of refreshment—liquid or carnal—and the use of her carriage, he opted to walk back to his hotel in St. James’s. It was a crisp, clear night without the pervasive damp that chilled one to the bone in a London winter. He could almost see the stars, or at least could imagine they were there. London always seemed both domestic and exotic to him. As a child, the occasional visit to the capital with his mother and sister had been exciting. Then, when they weren’t gallivanting around continental Europe, Julian, Robert, Marcus, and he would raise hell and shock the straitlaced out of their stays. After he determined to become a responsible citizen and serve the public, he’d chosen diplomacy, and once more spent much of his time abroad.

  The pleasant streets of Mayfair held no particular memories, good or bad. He had no intention of going as far south as Pall Mall, site of the great disaster that changed his life. On a whim he prolonged his walk by an eastward diversion to Hanover Square, the site of his family’s London abode.

  Reaching the square, he detected light through the drawn curtains of the square brick mansion. Intending to leave for the country almost immediately, he hadn’t thought it worth opening the house. With his new, and most unwelcome mission, he supposed he’d have to bring his wife back from Beaulieu and occupy Windermere House.

  During his absences abroad, the house was let for the season, bringing in a handsome income, but it was odd that there should be tenants in occupation during December. He walked around the square and found the knocker on the door; someone was in residence. Before he could dwell on the possible awkwardness of intruding on strangers late at night, he rapped sharply.

  A couple of minutes later his butler admitted him.

  “Good evening, my lord,” Ellis said, betraying not an iota of shock. “We expected you two days ago. I trust you had a pleasant journey.”

  “Very good, thank you, Ellis. Who told you I would be in London?”

  “Her Ladyship, of course. She only arrived this morning but she wrote and warned us to be ready for you.”

  “Her Ladyship is here?” The woman was supposed to have stayed in the country and waited for him to return. Looking past Ellis, he noticed changes in the hall. The paint had been freshened, which was an improvement; a large Chinese urn occupied one corner, which was not. Ugly as it was, it paled in comparison to a ghastly Dutch still-life painting featuring a variety of dead birds.

  “Has Lady Windermere spent much time in London during my absence?”

  “She has been in residence most of the year.”

  With trepidation he remembered that he’d given her carte blanche to refurbish Beaulieu Manor. If this was an example of her taste, he shuddered to think what she might have done to his mother’s house.

  “Where is she?”

  “When she came in, she retired to the small parlor. She said she wished to read in peace and would ring when she was ready to go upstairs. She asked not to be disturbed.”

  “I don’t suppose she meant me.”

  “Certainly not, my lord. Her Ladyship will be very happy to see you at last.” A subtle reprimand colored the butler’s final words. “Do you need anything? I see that your luggage has been delayed.”

  “Nothing for now, Ellis. That will be all.” He didn’t need a witness to a reunion whose course he could no longer predict. He’d anticipated his bride grateful for his arrival in the wilds of Oxfordshire. By moving to London without permission, she demonstrated an unpleasing independence. He passed out of the hall, behind the double staircase to the short passage leading to the rear ground floor rooms.

  The small parlor was empty. He tried the library next door and found it dark and unheated. He returned to the parlor, where the fire glowed, though it looked as though no one had tended it for an hour or two. A leather-bound novel lay open on a table next to the chaise longue. The curtains over the French windows were open a crack and the door into the garden was unlocked. Apparently, like him, his wife, had felt the need for fresh air. Detecting no light outside, he stepped out.

  “My lady?” No response. The garden was of a fair size for London, but it didn’t take long to see that it was empty, unless she was crouching behind the shrubbery. His boots were almost silent on the frosted lawn and he could hear nothing but the occasional rumble of wheels in the street beyond. Back inside he looked out one last time and saw a bobbing light coming from the left side. Acting on instinct, he slipped hastily into the dark library. A pair of shadowy figures, one a woman, appeared against the garden wall. They spoke for a short time, then exchanged a tender embrace. The man faded back into the wall and the woman headed for the house. As she hurried up the path, the lantern illuminated his wife’s long-forgotten features. She was prettier than he remembered, and her hairstyle had improved, her blond hair now dressed in a fashionable tangle of curls. Her blue evening gown was modish and in excellent taste. Something about her appearance nagged a memory, and not a distant one. As she neared the house she tossed a look over her shoulder. The other man had disappeared.

  Though he hadn’t spent much time in the garden in recent years, he remembered an iron gate in the wall, leading to the adjacent garden of . . . Denford House.

  Idiot that he was to have forgotten. Julian and he used to joke about their family mansions being next door to each other. But Julian had never set foot in his. From a distant and despised branch of the Fortescue family, he hadn’t been welcome at the family headquarters. Now he must own the place.

  And Damian’s wife had been visiting him. After midnight. It had been she at the theater, of course, sitting brazenly in a box with her lover. He wondered if she had recognized him there. She expected him in London.

  Rejecting his first urge to confront her, he collapsed into a chair, listened, and thought.

  It was all Julian’s doing, of course. His wife was a pawn in their escalating exchange of revenge that started the night Julian had permitted the great disaster to occur. Anger and hurt welled in Damian’s chest, as acrid as ever.

  Much as it galled him, he would let Julian get away with this latest game, at least for a while. He had to because he’d promised Ryland. But he’d be watching for his chance to get his own back, once he’d obtained the pictures for the Prince of Alt-Brandenburg. Then he’d d
eal with His Disgrace, the Duke of Denford. As for the Countess of Windermere, he almost felt sorry for her, a naïve young woman caught up in Julian’s complex toils.

  All was quiet in the next room. Presumably she had returned to her novel, blissfully unaware that her tryst at Denford House had been discovered.

  Silently he tiptoed down the passage. Since supernatural hearing was one of the qualifications for senior servants, he wasn’t surprised when Ellis appeared.

  “Her Ladyship has fallen asleep. Since I didn’t expect to find her in town, I am at a hotel. I will move to Hanover Square tomorrow. Better not to tell her I was here. I wouldn’t want her to be disappointed.”

  He would have to decide what to do about his erring bride, but tonight was not the time. His anger at her was tempered with the nagging sense that, however reprehensible her conduct, his own was not above reproach. Even the day of their wedding could not be recalled without an unpleasant twinge of his conscience.

  Beaulieu, Oxfordshire, a year earlier,

  October 1799

  Damian had sold himself to Joseph Chorley at a simple ceremony at the village church in the village where his mother had grown up. Only the Chorleys and a few servants were present, perhaps to prevent the church from being embarrassingly empty. He himself had been unaccompanied. He had no desire to summon his cousin or any of his Foreign Office colleagues to share in the joy of an event he knew, in his heart, was a shameful one.

  He didn’t know whether to be sorry his father wasn’t alive to see him regain Beaulieu, or glad that the late Lord Windermere didn’t know the sacrifice his son had made. With no sense of triumph, he took possession of his birthright and sat down to dinner in his mother’s dining room at Beaulieu, his first meal as husband to a young woman he had accepted sight unseen and met fewer than half a dozen times.

  Her big blue eyes stared out at him from a frame of frizzy fair curls, demanding something. Courtship? Love? She knew as well as he that this was an arranged marriage and a damn inconvenient one. Still, he was beginning to think he’d made a terrible mistake.