“I don’t know. Perhaps I would have. I could tell you now, if you’d like,” he said desperately. “Anything you want to know. All of it.”
Lee meant it: from the time he’d spent acting, to his alias’ more current occupations, to the shock that flooded him when he realized how horribly his brother had ruined their assets, their stability. No wonder there’d been less and less money coming in for him—there’d been less of it altogether. And Thomas had been too cowardly to say anything to him.
A little like he was being cowardly, now.
Feeling like using words would be a frightening prospect, despite what he’d just promised, he pulled her forward. With a gasp of surprise, she allowed it, letting her torso sprawl into him.
Before he could think any better of it, and before he could say something new and horrific, he kissed the pulse on the outside of her throat.
Chapter Nine
Morning came. If she hadn’t been such a persuasive element in last night’s proceedings, she would be livid. There was also the piercing fear that her parents would be frantically worried about where she’d gone.
Teddie looked around the strange bedroom, unafraid of her surroundings, but fearing the future.
Why did she have to be so weak-willed with the one man who managed to fascinate her, yet mislead her, more than anyone else she had ever known?
Well, if she went with her original, possibly extreme reaction to discovering Lee was not what he seemed—which was breaking off the engagement and finding another husband, whoever would have her—the ton would see her all but roasted on a spit. She would be cut hard and deeply.
If, as was the case with the garden and her jaunt on the Strand, she was found out.
Such a small, but mighty, word.
Resigned to her frequent calling to ruin her own life, she looked over her shoulder at the warm, comforting—naked—body curled next to hers. They’d had to curl or risk falling off the bed. This was no ducal bedroom, although it was elegant, and she could not keep a smile from her face as she surveyed it in daylight.
She’d keep this memory for a long time. She wanted to remember the taste of independence. Apart from going to the Sans Pareil, this was the most bold indiscretion she’d ever dared to make. She could hardly be called shy, but neither had she ever directly disobeyed what was expected of her. This morning’s Teddie was markedly different from last night’s, and not just because she’d slept with the duke. It felt like an ideological shift as well as an emotional one. She was expected to remain chaste and unsullied, which she believed was nonsense. And at the rate she’d heard of people, even women, seeking their own pleasure, she was starting to suspect it was permissible when one did not get found out.
That seemed to be the case with everything else that was branded bad.
Easing herself from the bed carefully, she set about locating her clothes. She would not attract attention in them. They had been borrowed from Bess under pressure, although both the maid and her sister had tried to keep her home. She wondered if either of them had the wits to obscure her absence, or if she would be fending for herself.
What she thought was the rustle of her garments was actually Emilian stirring in the bed.
“You probably want me to feign sleep, but I’m a terribly light sleeper,” he said.
Teddie steeled herself against the kindness in his voice. She didn’t even want to look at him, in case her eyes made up her mind for her. She was not mortified about what they’d done, but she was still angry at him.
“Let me see you home,” said Emilian.
And she was still reeling. Mostly from the confirmation that he was not quite what he projected himself to be.
She’d enjoyed everything else. She had made up her mind to enjoy it, especially as this would probably be the only time she enjoyed it.
Yet she’d thought she’d made up her mind before following him upstairs: she would not marry the Duke of Welburn. Originally, she hoped his intentions were good, and she could now say that they were not. Unfortunately for her heart, she liked him, and apparently, this made her act in all manner of untoward ways. Her body also craved him, which was relentless.
She felt a small current of air eddy behind her, then there were firm, cool fingertips on the back of her neck.
There were memories in those fingertips, now, and she half-waited to be brought to the same levels of sensation and pleasure, but knew neither of them would wish for that right now.
“Teddie, please?”
Maybe he sensed what she wanted to do.
“I…” Well, she thought. It will be easier to keep up a pretense with Mother if it appears to everyone else that we are still engaged. But she knew that even when one was engaged, couples did not spend the night together in such a way that it would be obvious to all.
If asked, they might coyly allude to those relations, but good taste would mean they’d never actually admit to having them.
If they had.
But it was almost the time of day when one could go visiting, so perhaps any curious observers would conclude that the duke was on his way to see his fiancée. If they were in a closed carriage and it was assumed that he was on his own.
There’s that dreaded if, again.
She didn’t flinch from his fingertips, but she cringed and pinched at the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. This just kept getting more and more twisted, and she’d been the cause of it.
Last night, she could have waited to speak with him until it was a civilized hour and they were meeting under approved circumstances. She didn’t have to steal out of the house to the bewilderment of her maid and bemusement of her sister. I do hope either or both of them has accounted for me, she thought, again. This time, she offered it up as a prayer.
“Perhaps if we delay leaving for later… it could work,” Teddie said.
Yes, it could be passed off as something very innocent. Perhaps they’d arranged an early call. Perhaps the duke was only there at her home to pick her up.
Confound it all, she was conflicted and confused. If only he hadn’t lied to her. Then she could most likely have accepted such a quick offer of matrimony, provided it was from someone reasonably palatable. Emilian was beyond palatable: he was the most tantalizing thing she could have conjured to mind.
She turned to face him.
He immediately and gently brushed a stray curl from her face. “Please don’t do anything rash.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, like running away to your fiancé’s home dressed as a maid to ask him questions about his estate, and taking him to bed after he distracts you from them.”
She had to chuckle. “So, you admit you were trying to distract me?”
He put his hands on her hips and caressed them, moving down toward her thighs.
“If you admit you took me to bed.” She had been the one who led. Metaphorically. He’d had to lead them to the room. “And. As I may try to do, again.” If she wasn’t vigilant, he would, and he would succeed. Her legs parted slightly, as though they had a mind of their own. “I want to talk to you, though. If you’ll let me.”
His fingers drifted purposefully, teasing her. She tried not to look between them, and she knew that only a chemise separated her from him.
“I don’t know if I can trust you, if you were willing to conceal such a problem from me,” she said. “Will you speak to me about that, or do you merely want to say some pretty words and hope that I like them enough to fall silent?”
His lips parted, but he nodded.
“What do you want to know?”
He paused his fingers and tilted his head just a little, inviting her to say something. It was a small gesture, but it pleased her.
“First of all, is your valet trustworthy?”
“Mason was Thomas’ valet, first, but I think he’s proven himself to be worthy of our trust. Conversely,” he added, “if we see any caricatures soon, we’ll know who to find.�
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Teddie swatted at him and grazed his chest in so doing. “It’s actually very serious, what we’ve done.” Trying to bluster, wanting him to think he did not matter, she clarified, “Not the… but what they’d say about it.” She brought her hand away as though it had been scorched.
He sighed. “Do you think you feel for me?”
Letting out a puff of air that buffeted past her lips, she shrugged. “Yes, and that is why this is so hurtful.”
“As soon as I realized I liked you, that I felt for you, what I’d set out to do seemed far more repugnant.”
“I shall try to make myself less likable, then,” she said, disbelievingly. “You mean to say that if I had been different—rich, but not as I am, or somehow unappealing to you—you would have had less trouble lying to me? Marrying me?”
“No!”
“It should have been repugnant to start with,” she said, disappointed.
Emilian sat back down on the bed and she still looked only at his neck and face.
“I’m sorry. I have been in London—after Spain, I mean—and I was responsible for supplementing my own maintenance.” She watched him carefully. “My brother denied me increasingly more, until it became so bad that I had little choice but to ask him what was going on. I am not a greedy…” he sighed. “I didn’t need much, but I needed more for the time being. I went to see him shortly before his death. He could have told me how badly he’d marred our means, our income. The Valencourts’ fortune. But he only alluded to it. I didn’t know until after he died.”
“So you decided to go fishing?” Teddie asked.
He scowled—until he stopped looking at her face and became distracted by her body.
“I cannot tell if you are having this conversation with me now so that you have an immeasurable advantage in your glorious almost-nudity, or…” he sighed.
“Trust me, if you were standing and I were sitting, I would be at a similar disadvantage. But I am not doing it on purpose.”
She had to give praise where it was due. All she had seen of men under their clothes came from drawings and art, and he surpassed them all.
“I can hardly ask us to switch places now. I am a gentleman.”
“No gentleman would sit while a lady stood,” Teddie said.
And nothing about last night had been especially gentlemanly.
“He would if he wished to take her seriously and didn’t want to make a rather, well, pointed priapic statement by standing.” He licked his own lip, lightly, waiting for her to catch his meaning. Her smirk turned into a pleased, small smile. “But to get back to your salient point… I know it seems opportunistic.”
“Isn’t it? Opportunistic?”
Teddie did not want to upset him, but she also did not want to make this easy on him. She might have acted on instinct to come here, and what followed was certainly instinct, too. But a marriage and presumably a family could not thrive on passion that might only be present part of the time.
“No—and that is because of you,” he said. “I know you don’t want to hear that I might have gone along with something that turned my stomach before we met, but everything you are as a person made me quite conflicted.”
Most women might be flattered by his words. Some women. Perhaps if they were not terribly astute.
Teddie said, “I was considering taking you up on your offer of seeing me home, but on second thought, I might walk.”
Openly frustrated, Emilian made a noise that might have been a grumble of dissatisfaction had it not been for his damaged voice.
“I don’t often find my tongue so stymied.”
He was very adept with it when… Teddie felt herself blushing.
“I could be less dogged about it, and perhaps that would help. But I’m sorry, I just don’t… I don’t know if…”
His valet, the man with knowing brown eyes and that inscrutable manner, spoke through the door.
“Your Grace?”
She knew that they could not pretend they were not in the room, as she recognized the voice and knew it belonged to the man who had allowed her into the townhouse late last night. If she had her guess, he was quite aware of everything that went on here. She brushed away the thought that she might not have been the only woman Emilian brought here. Don’t be so sure, she reminded herself. He cannot have. He has not held the house as his own for so very long. Even a confirmed rake might not work so fast.
Casting her a disappointed look, he said, pitching his voice as loudly as he could, “Mason?”
“I tried to prevaricate, but Mr. and Mrs. Driffield have come.”
Teddie sat on the bed next to him and hid her face in her hands, awash with embarrassment and ire. She was not crying. She wished that she could scream. Emma must have told them what had really happened.
Or Bess, if they’d made her.
Emma would have done it voluntarily if she felt Teddie had acted too rashly, whereas Bess had always had more of a rebellious facet and would only break under a threat about her employment or something similar.
But Emma isn’t to blame. I’m the one who went out. Again. She was only trying to help Teddie find her way to a more sedate life.
“It’s all right,” said Emilian. “Or it will be. We are engaged.”
It didn’t seem possible that the short sentence could evoke a host of rather magnified reactions. She knew that his mind and hers, his body and hers, were compatible. More than that, truly. It made her want to apologize for mucking things up for them once more.
Then she recalled she’d been proposed to so fast, as well as why that had come about.
It made her deeply irritated. Because it wasn’t about honor or kindness or any other good thing.
No, her duke needed a big catch.
Emma might say she was expecting too much, but that was the Emma whose husband had died. The one who had seen how bleak and cruel the world could be when you had little and were alone. But it didn’t feel right to Teddie to allow a deception like that to go unexamined.
“If you think it will be all right, I suggest you go downstairs and speak to my mother first,” she said, poking him gently in the shoulder.
She listened as Mason’s quiet, well-practiced footsteps retreated.
Emilian pretended to flinch. “I am sure she will accept this with such equanimity and grace… which we have always been given to expect from her.” He took one long, lingering look at her and said, “I can help you.”
He probably could.
Goodbye, Emilian.
*
Uneasy for reasons besides her mother and father being in his threadbare townhouse, Lee went to them directly once both he and Teddie were dressed. She stood just near him, a pace or so back. Her mother, as he’d expected, was the more chagrined of the two parents. Mr. Driffield did not strike him as dull in any way, but it was clear who instigated more household rule.
The man might have been a mastermind in trade, but Lee was fast becoming convinced that in his home life, he was little more than a bystander.
“I have never encountered such behavior from your sister,” she said to Teddie. “And good afternoon, Your Grace,” she said, giving a curtsy that managed to be indignant. “I must say that I am surprised at your conduct. Most unseemly, even between the affianced.”
“It was a private matter,” he said as calmly as he could.
“I trust it shall remain so,” said Mrs. Driffield, prim as a blooming daffodil in spring.
“My servants and I are to be trusted,” said Lee, reluctant to make it seem as though he had a bevy of women coming and going—he didn’t.
But he did wish to intimate that no one would discover the night he and Teddie had shared from him or his own.
“And I trust that you will apply for the special license?”
Blankly, keeping himself positioned between the Driffields and Teddie, he said, “I beg your pardon, Madam?”
“You must marry as soon as you possibly can, Your Grace,” said
Mrs. Driffield. The woman would have made a superb majordomo. “I can brook that silly business with the theater, and I don’t fully understand what went on in that garden, but this? This I do not condone.”
Mr. Driffield simply shook his head back and forth in either a gesture of deliberation or disgust.
Knowing that Teddie was already unsettled with the pace of everything, Lee said, “I know we have barely had the time to discuss matters, but I was hoping that you and Teddie could use the time to plan the wedding, especially as I’ve no close women relat—”
“Your Grace, what you do once you are man and wife, I do not care,” said Mrs. Driffield, erring dangerously into the waters of rudeness, “but if you think I am fool enough to let a man like you ruin my daughter, you are sorely mistaken.”
He wished so deeply that he could raise his voice.
“I have no intention of ruining her!”
“Your actions speak otherwise,” Mrs. Driffield said.
Teddie intervened, clearing her throat, and Lee turned partially to her. “Stop, both of you, Your Grace… Mother. Please.” She was almost yellow under her freckles. “I am ending our engagement.”
If Lee thought he knew how shrill Mrs. Driffield could become, he had been wrong. Her shrieking distracted him from his sudden sense of loss and utter failure.
“Theodora, you most assuredly are not! What in Heaven’s name has come over you? Mr. Driffield, whatever can she mean? End it. She cannot simply…” Mrs. Driffield waved her hands, agitated. “Sample the wares and…” She redirected her attention to her daughter, rather than her husband. “You are not a son, Theodora. And even if you were, I’d have your hide over what you’ve done.”
“If we all agree never to speak of this to anyone, then I see no reason why the engagement cannot be broken,” said Teddie. “My lapse in judgment when I went to the theater with Lord Valencourt will be forgotten, if not overtly forgiven, and I am sure I can find an acceptable husband amongst those who will have me.”
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