Lessons of Desire

by Madeline Hunter

  She did not know how long she remained like that, feeling his presence and marveling at the contentment it brought her heart. His rising from his chair jolted her out of her sweet daze. He walked to the shelves, removed another book, and walked back.

  She had to watch him. She could not release him from her gaze. He appeared so handsome in his elegant dark coats and crisp cravat and collar. If his eyes still reflected his intellectual absorption and his hair appeared mussed, that made him all the more appealing. It was not only the body that made the man.

  He noticed her attention and his own emerged from his thoughts. His progress through the reading room seemed to slow. He came forward with eyes locked on her own. Desire burned in his gaze, quietly and subtly, hidden to everyone but her.

  She responded as she always had. Like she always would. She imagined being old and gray and chancing upon him in town one day after being apart for decades. If he looked at her like this then, she would be reminded in a blink how much she had always wanted him.

  He did not sit this time. He came to her table, one scholar calmly curious about another’s work. He stood a bit behind her and hovered over her shoulder. She felt him there so clearly, so warmly. She gritted her teeth to control the impulse to turn her head and kiss his chest.

  “There are only a few pages left,” he said.

  “I may need to go through it all again. It could be some time before it is in fit form for the press.” She looked up at him. “I expect that you will need to come here often now too, to verify the details of your book.”

  “Normally there is quite a lot of that at the end.”

  “Then we might find ourselves sharing the sunlight again, Lord Elliot.”

  “That is doubtful. I will be leaving London tomorrow for a week at least. You should be well done by the time I return.”

  His eyes remained warm. Knowing. She saw his affection even if no one else would. She also saw those glints of steel.

  “Do not delay long at your task, Miss Blair. You have chosen your course in this and other things, and I am not interfering. However, it would be unwise for you to trust me to forever be convinced of such noble inclinations. I confess the scales in my conscience have been tipping of late.”

  His warning flustered her badly.

  “I am expecting a final request regarding the content of this work,” she said.

  “Any requests will come in the next week if they come at all. After that make your decision. Either go forward or do not. But do not dally on the matter or I will question your resolve on this and other things. I am too aware, and too often reminded, that one word from me will settle everything regarding you very neatly in ways I would prefer.”

  He walked to his table, put down the book, and collected his papers. “It has been a pleasure enjoying your company today. Too great a pleasure. I have accomplished nothing for the last hour and a half except imagining you naked on this table, begging me to take you.”

  He glanced around the book-filled chamber, at the spectacled readers and sober-faced librarians. “Damn it, Phaedra. I will never see this library quite the same again.”

  Elliot had intended to travel to Suffolk to visit Chalgrove as Hayden had requested, but he had put it off for a variety of reasons. As he rolled through the countryside in his carriage, he admitted the real reason had been Phaedra.

  Seeking her out in the reading room had been a weak capitulation to the melancholy that plagued him. He had sworn he would not sit near her. He had not even planned to let her see him. Then as soon as she walked in the door he had buzzed over so he could drink in her mere presence like a sot too long sober.

  Knowing he was ridiculous did not stop the urge to make a bigger fool of himself. Love was hell, that was all there was to it.

  He stared out at the farms but really saw him with her in the years ahead. Visiting her in that little house. She probably would not even accept the normal sorts of gifts that a lover gave his beloved. Days would go by when he did not see her at all. No matter how long the affair lasted, no matter if they declared undying love, she would not truly be a part of his life.

  The man in him rebelled at the notion. So did the besotted lover. She may have grown up learning that such a relationship was normal, but he could not reconcile his head or heart to it.

  Worse, the suspicion had lodged in his mind that she could accept such a life because she truly did not want him in hers. Which raised the question of whether he had stupidly fallen in love with a woman who did not in turn love him.

  They had never spoken of love. He had ignorance as his excuse, but she might have a very different reason.

  The carriage aimed off the road onto a lane, and he turned his mind to the meeting ahead. This would be the more welcome of his duties while out of London, but he still did not look forward to it. He could not influence Phaedra where the memoirs were concerned, least of all for the Earl of Chalgrove.

  Chalgrove’s estate showed the evidence of a lord in residence. The fields appeared productive. The manor house looked well kept. Hayden said that his friend’s finances were not in order, however. Inherited debts and losses during the recent bank crisis had Chalgrove placing his boots very carefully while he walked a precarious financial line.

  He received Elliot in his study. It was a well appointed chamber. If some rare volumes had disappeared and a few walls had lost some paintings, no one would guess it.

  Chalgrove was a big man with an athletic build. As a man-about-town in his younger years he was known as a Corinthian. He rarely came to town anymore, and had been notably absent through most of the last season.

  They sat in the study, spirits in hand. Chalgrove’s deep-set gray eyes barely reflected his concerns, but his presence bore the sobriety of a man with more responsibility than he desired.

  “Your brother wrote to me. It was good of you to come,” he said.

  “I do not know if I can be of any help. I have not read the manuscript.”

  “The publisher has, however. That woman, Miss Blair.” He rested his boots on a stool and relaxed with his drink. The boots showed bits of dried mud, as if the earl had been out in those fields today. “I was approached by Merris Langton prior to his death. Richard Drury, it seems, included my name in those memoirs incorrectly.”

  Elliot guessed that everyone named and not praised would insist Richard Drury made a mistake. “Was it a personal matter?”

  “Political. Drury greatly exaggerated my relationships with certain radical factions while I was younger. It is nothing illegal or seditious even in his telling, and I was little more than a boy, but it would be embarrassing. I prefer the error not be indelibly put into print. You understand, I am sure.”

  “I regret that it is unlikely that I can help you. Miss Blair promised her father to publish it as it stands. You are in a long line of people who want changes and she is not entertaining the requests.”

  “Damnation.” Chalgrove’s dark eyebrows lowered over an angry glare. “The man just did it as revenge. That is all posthumously published memoirs are, usually. A chance to settle scores from the grave and suffer no ill effects from the effort.”

  “I have never heard your name linked to his. Did you even know him well enough to create a score to be settled?”

  Chalgrove scowled over his glass while he drank a good deal of the spirits. He set the empty glass on the floor and gave his guest a long, hard look.

  “I barely knew him, but we had one conversation that did not go well. It was about eight years ago. I was young and in love and despite my expectations and birth the lady’s family would not have me. No doubt her father comprehended the limitations of those expectations in ways I had not yet discovered.”

  He gestured to the chamber, the house, and all beyond it. His weary exasperation spoke to the financial burdens better than any verbal explanation.

  “I had found myself included in Artemis Blair’s circle on occasion. So I knew Drury, of course. At a dinner party one night h
e favored me with a lecture about my disappointment.”

  “Foolish of him. A man disappointed would not appreciate that.”

  “This man did not, I assure you. He treated me to a long, boring explanation of how I was better off, how marriage ruined love, how much preferable it was to love freely, etc.”

  “It was the philosophy that he lived.”

  “To hell with his philosophy. I became angry at how he pontificated on his superior and enlightened views. So I told him he was a poor example of what he preached since Artemis Blair had taken another lover.” He vaguely grimaced, and shrugged. “As I said, I was very young.”

  “He would not have liked that thrown in his face, but you were not the only one who knew. I do not think it created the score—”

  “He did not know yet. I was the one who made him aware of it. I am certain of this. He was shocked. Angry. I thought he would call me out for suggesting such a thing. Soon after, however, it was clear how he stepped out of her life. Once his eyes were opened he had no trouble determining who the man was, I suppose. Or perhaps he just asked her.”

  “Did you know who it was?”

  “I believe so. I had some dealings with the man, I think. He was a scoundrel. A thief. He was selling antiquities that were frauds. He liked to approach green young men like me with them.”

  Chalgrove’s expression remained placid. If his eyes reflected any anger it remained inwardly directed. Elliot considered letting the topic die, but it sounded as if he and Phaedra had been too generous in interpreting Thornton’s activities.

  “You speak as if you bought some of these frauds.”

  “I have no proof that he knew they were frauds, although I think he did. In either case I will not slander him through gossip. I chose not to lay down information years ago, and to do so now—”

  “Of course. Actually, I believe I know who it was. I merely sought confirmation.”

  Chalgrove thought it over. He stood. “Come with me. I will show you something.”

  He led the way out of the study, toward the front of the house. “I fancied myself a collector even while at university. Roman coins to start. A few fragments of the past later. It was that which attracted me to Miss Blair’s circle, and led to my brief inclusion. So when offered a great prize privately, from someone who should know about such things and who had Miss Blair’s friendship, I felt secure in paying a good deal of money.”

  He turned into a ballroom. Their boots echoed in the huge chamber. Covers shrouded the furniture and dust coated the wall sconces. The room had not been used in years.

  “When my father became ill, he finally confided the estate’s problems to me. I had been living like there was no end to the money, only to learn the end was in sight. So I began to sell the collection. It was then that I learned that the great prize was a fake.”

  “You are sure?”

  “No fewer than four experts have told me. I kept looking for one who would disagree, to no avail.”

  “Did you confront the man?”

  They moved into the gallery that ran along the side of the house. Chalgroves from centuries past peered down from their ornate frames. “I did. He insisted my experts were wrong. So I went to Miss Blair with my evidence. I do not believe she was complicit, but she did not accept outright that I was correct. Her reaction, her expression itself…She showed dismay, but remained protective of him. That is why I think he was the new lover.”

  Chalgrove stopped in front of a glass case. He pointed to the middle shelf. “There it is. Impressive, no? I tell myself that I was not too much a fool, but I keep it here to remind me that I was enough of one. I have been reassured that it is a very good fake, identifiable mostly because the casting used a more modern method that only a few archaeologists would recognize.”

  “Yes, it is very impressive.”

  “Found in the sea off Italy, he said. Hell, he knew just how to pluck at my vanity.”

  They stood side by side in front of the glass case. Chalgrove smiled ruefully at the evidence of his youthful mistake. A new void opened in Elliot’s chest.

  “I suggest that you talk to Miss Blair yourself, Chalgrove. Go up to town and ask Hayden’s wife to arrange a meeting for you. Tell Miss Blair the story that you have just told me. I have cause to think she is most interested in the man who sold you this prize, and she may hear your request about those memoirs with an open mind.”

  “I would not want to name him, Rothwell. Not after all these years, not even in privacy to her.”

  “You will not have to. Just bring that with you.”

  He pointed to the case, and to the little bronze statue of a nude goddess that was just like the one he had recently seen in Matthias’s study in Positano.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-THREE

  Phaedra crossed her hands on her lap to hide the ink stains on her right glove. She had been to the printer today to discuss the production of her father’s book. A careless gesture near some fresh pages had sullied her only pair of gloves that were not black.

  Her hostess would not care if ink streaked her face. Alexia had never judged her by her appearance. Phaedra’s impulse to appear more normal today had nothing to do with their friendship.

  She was not sure why she had worn the blue dress and dug out these white kid gloves from her girlhood. Perhaps the setting of this visit had encouraged it. Alexia had written, asking her to call, and had even sent her carriage to facilitate the visit. If Alexia’s husband was willing to tolerate Phaedra Blair’s presence in his wife’s life, it might be wise not to be too flamboyant in her lack of “normal” while in the man’s house.

  “I have a present for you,” Alexia said after the conversation drifted into a pause.

  Alexia had spent a lot of time asking Phaedra for advice on her cousins in Oxfordshire and on Henrietta’s reckless behavior regarding Caroline. Alexia had described at length some new decorating planned for the library in which they now sat. Alexia had taken her up to admire the new winter carriage ensemble recently purchased.

  Alexia had filled almost two hours talking about everything except the things Phaedra desperately wanted to discuss. Unfortunately they were subjects that Phaedra did not know how to broach.

  Alexia stood and retrieved a muslin-wrapped package from a corner table. She unveiled the prize and revealed a new hat.

  “I thought that you could use two,” she said.

  Phaedra instinctively touched the one on her head. “This has been seeing an inordinate amount of wear recently. Did you make this new one too?”

  “Of course. It gave me great pleasure.”

  Phaedra pulled off the soiled gloves so she would not ruin the hat. Alexia’s designs always impressed her. They managed to appear fashionable while avoiding the worst excesses seen about town. In their restraint and perfect lines and proportions they stood out as superior.

  “You are an artist, Alexia. Your husband does not mind that you still ply your needle?”

  “Why would he mind?”

  Phaedra could think of several reasons why. Alexia’s skill at millinery was a little flag of independence waving in her husband’s face. It always had been, even during Lord Hayden’s peculiar courtship.

  “I read your mother’s pamphlet. The one on marriage,” Alexia said. “It is in Easterbrook’s library.”

  Phaedra looked up from the hat. “Why did you read it?”

  “You never tried to convert me, so you never really explained your beliefs. I thought I would understand them if I read it. I thought that I would understand you better too.”

  “What did you think of it?”

  Alexia gave that some thought. “I will admit there is a logic to her argument. The laws are bad and in need of reform, that is undeniable. But the rejection of marriage completely…”

  Phaedra waited.

  “Forgive me, Phaedra. I do not want to criticize. However, I felt it was written by a young woman who did not know much about life or marriage as it rea
lly is lived. I found it a lot like philosophers who expound on the meaning of life in ways that have nothing to do with the practical worries that occupy most lives.”

  Phaedra had to smile. Elliot had said something similar. “Artemis was young when she wrote that pamphlet. However, even after living more she did not forsake the essential points.”

  “Yes, young.” Alexia repeated the word knowingly, as if that explained much if not everything. “Before you were born, certainly. Most likely before she had ever loved a man.”

  Alexia’s calm observation stunned Phaedra. The impulse to defend her mother spiked but she respected Alexia too much to dismiss the comment as ignorant. It also poked at questions that had been plaguing her at night, when she tossed in her bed thinking about the costs of her own choices.

  “Alexia, do you never question the power that you gave to Hayden when you married him? He has your future and your happiness in his hands.”

  Alexia found the question amusing. “And I have his future and his happiness in my hands, Phaedra.”

  “It is not the same. You are his possession. The law—”

  “The law is about other things and other kinds of property. I am his, that is true, but he is mine too. Our love makes it so, but so do the vows we spoke. In this even the law is clear. I have lost nothing of myself in this union, dear friend. Nothing at all. I am now more than I was before I knew him, not less.”

  She spoke with a calm confidence that affected the mood between them. The unexpected intimacy moved Phaedra. She felt much as she had as a girl when she listened to her mother’s lessons.

  She took Alexia’s hand in her own. “You cannot know that he will never use the power badly.”

  “I suppose it is possible to love and not know for certain. However, I do know. It is one of the few things in life of which I am completely sure.” She squeezed Phaedra’s hand. “Now, I must see you in my new creation. It could be that I need to make a few changes for it to be perfect.”