Lessons of Desire

by Madeline Hunter

  The voice shocked Elliot alert. It was very close to his ear. So was a face. Christian hovered, peering down at the papers on the desk.

  Elliot fished for his pocket watch.

  “Do not bother. It is well past ten.” Christian reached over his shoulder and turned a page. “This really won’t do, Elliot. It is bad enough that Hayden gets strange at times, but at least that new wife of his will probably cure him of it. If you have now taken to such eccentricity—” He glanced down sharply. “Why are you laughing?”

  “I find it amusing for you to describe Hayden as strange or eccentric.”

  “You do not find his behavior with those mathematical studies strange? Last spring he sank into an unhealthy, hermetic existence, and it was not the first time either.”

  “He is no more strange than you are, and I doubt I will ever be half so.”

  “If you have not gotten strange then you have become rude. I expected you in the dining room. I even dressed.”

  Indeed he had, if his open collar and brushed long hair could be called dressed. Still, he did not wear a robe and his feet were not bare.

  Christian strolled away. He threw himself into an upholstered reading chair and pointed to a nearby table. “I brought up a plate and some wine. I feared the voyage had taken a toll and you needed decent food. Instead I do not find you too wasted to attend on me, but too busy.”

  Elliot got up and brought the plate and glass back to his desk. “You are looking fit and healthy, Christian. Not so thin as when I left.”

  Christian stretched out his legs and crossed his boots. “I have been engaging in athletics. Boxing and rowing and such. I fence three times a week. It is all a nuisance but there is no choice.”

  Elliot tasted some of the capon. Easterbrook’s cook was a fine one and this fowl swam in a redolent sauce. It smelled heavenly compared to the meals at sea. “What compels you now when nothing did just months ago?”

  Christian got up again and nosed around the bookshelves. He found the cigars and helped himself to one. “I expect to fight a duel soon. It is best to be in military form for that.”

  Christian appeared the image of bland contentment while he lit the cigar. He might have just announced that he was boxing and fencing to prepare for a night at the theater.

  “Whom have you offended so much that he will be calling you out?”

  “I expect to make the challenge, not pick up another man’s gauntlet.” He lazily waved his cigar. “Our young cousin Caroline is being wooed by Suttonly, whom Hayden has broken with for reasons I do not know. Need I say more?”

  “Yes.”

  “Her first season went to her head. Aunt Henrietta only encouraged her. Now they allow Suttonly to continue his addresses after Hayden tried to crush the budding romance with his boot. Hayden has informed Aunt Hen that if Caroline marries Suttonly, the door to this house and her welcome in this family will be over.” He took a deep puff. “Bold of our brother, since it is my house and my welcome. However, he subdued Aunt Hen so thoroughly that I did not care to point that out.”

  “Christian, I suspect that you have spoken to no human being since the family went down to Aylesbury. Your lengthy explication suggests that you are newly fascinated with your own voice.”

  “I am recounting the family news. You are too impatient.”

  “Could you get back to the duel?”

  “Hayden warned Suttonly off. Caroline cried for days. Aunt Hen and Alexia took her down to the country to recover. And Suttonly has now left town. It is obvious what will happen.”

  The only thing obvious to Elliot was that Christian had not talked this much in the last eight months combined. “Pray, spell it out.”

  “D., Viscount Suttonly will not cease his pursuit. It is a matter of pride now. He will convince her to elope. U., Hayden will follow and catch them before they marry but the deed, as it were, will have been done. E., Hayden will not move from his rejection of Suttonly. Aunt Hen will have the vapors, Caroline will be ruined; and L., I will be calling Suttonly out.”

  “Why wouldn’t Hayden be the one to call him out? Hayden is trustee and guardian.”

  “I could not permit that. If he got himself killed, Alexia would be left a widow with an unborn babe.”

  “Alexia is with child?”

  “That is the other news.” He relaxed into the chair again. He tapped some ash off his cigar. Quite suddenly he ceased being the companionable brother and became Easterbrook, very completely. “Now, we are done with that. Tell me about your journey.”

  Elliot ate more of the capon. He chewed a good long while. He drank down the wine. Christian’s lids lowered a bit more with each gastronomic delay.

  “I found Miss Blair at the address that Alexia had provided.”

  “Did she have the memoirs with her?”

  “No, but she does possess them. We were correct about that.”

  “What is this going to cost me?”

  “Regrettably, she would not take our payment.”

  The companionable mirth that Christian had brought into the chamber disappeared. “How much did you offer?”

  “I was not specific. She was insulted by the mere suggestion.”

  “Everyone is insulted by the mere suggestion. That is why you do not merely suggest. You name an amount. A big one. Then they do not have time to get insulted because they are so busy calculating what they can buy with the plunder.”

  “No amount would have moved her. She promised her father on his deathbed to publish his words. She will not be swayed from that duty now.”

  Christian dismissed Phaedra’s duty with another flick of the ash. “Then we must do it another way. Where is the manuscript?”

  “She did not have it with her, so I assume it is here in London somewhere.”

  “It should not be too hard to find. She owns little property. It must be in her home or else with a third party, a friend or her solicitor.” He pondered the problem. “When does she intend to return home? How much time do we have?”

  Elliot considered lying. “She is back. She sailed on the same ship that I did.”

  Christian’s attention froze on the burning glow of his cigar. Then it shifted sharply to Elliot. It was the gaze of a hawk who sees the details on the ground far below very well.

  He stood. “You did your best, I am sure. However, I will deal with this now.”

  Elliot stood as well. “No, you will not. You will stay away from her. You will do nothing to coerce her.”

  Christian examined him again. Searching. Wondering. Finally, knowing.

  “Hell. She seduced you.”

  “No.” And she hadn’t. Not really. “It was not like that.”

  “However it was, whatever it was, she disarmed you. While you enjoyed the favors of this fair damsel, did you at least request the favor that you wanted most? A woman well pleasured can be very amenable to her lover’s requests.”

  “Do not speak of her in that way, damn you.”

  “How should I speak of her? As your beloved? Your mistress?” He gestured violently toward the desk. “I’ll wager she has not given you cause to think of her as your anything. That is why you lose yourself in that dead, long-ago world. The truths you unearth there are more secure than the ones you must face here.”

  They were not yelling, but their voices sliced the air and each other.

  “If any of us knows why it happens, it would be you, Christian. Hell, you are spending your whole life there.”

  “Well, I am not there now, nor will I be until this is settled.”

  It was not intended as a threat but it might as well have been one. It did not help that with each angry statement the current Lord Easterbrook looked more like the last.

  “She was not indifferent to our concerns about the family name,” Elliot said, trying to make his tone more reasonable in order to encourage his brother’s reason. “She was willing to compromise for us alone.”

  “For you alone, you mean.”

 
; Actually, it had been for Alexia. He explained what the memoirs said, and how their father was not named. He described his unsatisfactory meeting with Merriweather.

  Christian listened, darkly interested. “Merriweather is a fool.”

  “Honor would not allow him to lie. It would be ignoble for you to hold it against him.”

  “Are you now Merriweather’s protector as well as Miss Blair’s? No, wait, you do not have that role in her life, do you? Her belief in free love means she is free of both the rights and expectations that would give a man.”

  Elliot waited for more reaction regarding Merriweather’s suspicions and the implications they held for their father. Denial. Fury. Instead his brother remained coldly expressionless and suspiciously calm.

  “Damnation. You know the truth,” Elliot said, amazed. “You know if he did it.”

  “I know nothing of the kind.”

  “Then, you know how to find out.”

  “I do not want to find out. Nor will I need to defend him if Miss Blair removes that passage. If she does not, and Merriweather holds firm, we will have more than society gossip to deal with.”

  “If it is not true there will be nothing to fear and everything to gain if it all comes out. I think we should do that—find out if it is true or not, so we know.”

  “I repeat, I do not want to find out.”

  “Christian, it may not be true.”

  Christian walked to the door. “What a hopeful son you are. But then, you did not know him very well. As for Miss Blair, I will consider staying my hand out of respect for your sentiment. However, there are others with a keen interest in those memoirs. It is unlikely that she can bewitch all the men in all those families.”

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  Phaedra stepped out of the hackney cab, clutching a thick package in her arms. She waved to the women she had sat with. She had learned long ago that with a little boldness one could find strangers with whom to share the hire of a conveyance. Her visit to the City had not taken long at all as a result.

  She had delayed retrieving the manuscript for several days. She needed to rest after her voyage, of course. Then she needed to resettle herself and call on some old friends.

  She had also waited for some old friends to call on her. Alexia, in particular. She hoped the absence of Alexia’s letter or card meant a visit to the country and not a repudiation of their friendship due to the package that she now carried.

  She could not blame Alexia if it was the latter. Not one bit.

  Honesty was a virtue that she tried to practice, especially with herself. And so this morning she had faced the truth while she dressed. She had a duty that she did not want, but it was time to get on with it. Those letters that had waited for her on her return made that clear. The other one that arrived yesterday sounded the trumpet.

  People besides Elliot wanted the memoirs destroyed and were willing to pay dearly for it. The anonymous letter yesterday had gone beyond offers of bribes. It had been a veiled threat, but clear enough to raise the hairs on her neck.

  If she had not made that promise to her father she might give them all what they wanted. She would burn these pages and let the press go bankrupt. She almost did not care that she would be left penniless if it did.

  She turned a corner onto her street and approached her door. She stopped and gave a few pence to Beggar Bess.

  “Them cats know you are here,” Bess said, cocking her head to the building behind her.

  Phaedra did not hear the mewing the way Bess did. She saw the cats, one black and one white, at the wavy glass of the house next to her own, however. An old woman petted one and a little girl the other. Her neighbors had taken the cats when she left for Italy. It was supposed to be temporary, but little Sally’s attachment meant it would now be permanent.

  “A carriage came by earlier,” Bess said. “Big one, from the sound of it. It didn’t stop, just rolled past real slow. No one’s been to your door before that one there.”

  Bess had taken this spot for her trade five years ago. Although blind, the old woman had realized that Phaedra’s visitors had more money than most of the people who came to this street, and that proximity to Miss Blair’s door could be profitable.

  One of those visitors waited now. He lounged against the door. A large portfolio rested against his leg and he held open a little book in which he drew.

  Harry Lawrence, a young artist whom she had befriended the past winter, awaited her return. She had clearly forgotten his letter that arrived yesterday saying he would come by. That other letter had obliterated her memory of it.

  “My apologies,” she said after their greeting. “My visit to the City took longer than I expected.”

  “I do not mind. I sketched the beggar and also the whore at the window across the way. An artist is never bored.”

  She settled him in her sitting room. She put the manuscript on a table beside the divan to wait until she finished playing the hostess. She and Harry spent the next hour looking at his drawings. She much preferred his sketchbook’s expressive jotting to the careful studies he had made in preparation for a large painting that he intended to submit to the Royal Academy.

  Another caller interrupted her explanation of why. She opened her door to find Elliot waiting.

  Her heart rose at the sight of him. Joy paralyzed her. She could only gaze at him, stunned anew by how he stirred her. For a long count they just looked at each other.

  He presented his card. “I hope that Miss Blair is at home today.”

  She took the card and examined it critically. “Well, perhaps she is, just for you.” She held the door wide and pecked his cheek when he stepped over the threshold. He closed the door and embraced her in a less proper kiss.

  “You did not write,” he said. “I could not wait any longer.”

  She had not written because she did not know what to write. She only knew that she did not want their affair to die in sadness, and she feared it would if it continued here at home.

  Her joy now, in his kiss and his warmth, in his mere existence near her, warned just how sad it might be. That could not diminish her happiness, however. It had only been four days but she had missed him badly. She had not realized how badly.

  She guided him to her sitting room, feasting her eyes on his face. He stopped at the doorway. His smile firmed into a line less friendly.

  She followed his veiled glare to where Harry still pored over his sketchbook.

  “It appears Miss Blair is not home just for me,” he muttered. “One of your friends, Phaedra?”

  She was so happy that she actually found his jealousy flattering, even though it heralded all that would be wrong between them here in London. She introduced the two men. Harry, dear innocent that he could be sometimes, all but danced over his good fortune in meeting a member of the ton here in Phaedra’s humble home.

  Elliot was nothing if not gracious. He sat and pretended interest in the drawings. Phaedra sensed his impatience with a visit that was not going the way he intended.

  “I believe that I will let you both toast my safe return,” she announced. “I will return shortly with the necessary spirits.”

  She slipped away while Harry explained his artistic intentions regarding a large image of a general on horseback. She retreated to her kitchen, poured two good measures of brandy, and made her way back to the sitting room.

  Harry was gone, along with every sketch and drawing. Elliot stood by the wall studying her Piranesi etching of a macabre prison. He came over to take the glasses. He placed one on the table beside her divan and sipped the other.

  “Mr. Lawrence had to leave,” he said.

  “Abruptly, it appears.”

  “I have probably seen a man move faster, but I can’t remember when.”

  “What did you say to him to make him depart in a run, Elliot?”

  “I admired his prodigious talent and alluded to the possibility of purchasing his new painting for Easterbrook’s art
collection. Oh, yes, and I also told him to leave or die.”

  She swallowed a giggle as she pictured Harry’s reaction. “That was very wrong of you.”

  “I do not feel the least bit contrite.” He looked around the sitting room. His gaze lingered on the worn upholstery of the divan. The strewn venetian shawls could not entirely hide its thinning fabric.

  “Was this your mother’s home?”

  “She let chambers in Piccadilly. I bought this house when I began my own life.”

  “When you were sixteen. The poor choice of neighborhood can be explained by your inexperience, but you live here still.”

  “It is my home. I know the people now. I am content here.”

  “There is a beggar outside your door and a woman exposing her breasts at the window across the way.”

  “They are both harmless and either one would risk her life to pull me out of a fire.”

  “I am hardly reassured by your mention of fire, considering the condition of the buildings on this street. I want you to allow me to find a better place for you.”

  She sat on the divan. Elliot no longer wore the friendly face of his arrival. The Rothwell sternness had claimed him. She knew why, but she wished they could have delayed this conversation for at least an hour or so.

  “Did you come here to offer to keep me, Elliot?”

  He sat beside her. “I came because I could not stay away.”

  “So the offer of a better home was an impulse?”

  “I had not noticed how poor this street was when I left you here the other day. My thoughts were only on our parting and how I did not want it. Nor did I expect to find you entertaining another man so soon after—” His jaw squared. He drank more brandy.

  “Elliot, men call on women all over London. In the best houses. Even in the houses of women being kept by another man. No doubt you have done so. A visit from a man does not mean a love affair is under way.”

  “Are you saying that artist was not the lover who awaited your return?” He tried to keep it from sounding like a demand for an explanation. He also tried to hide his relief at the possibility of that explanation. She thought both reactions very sweet.