“There, you see!” said Marie-Anne with satisfaction. “It seems already there is a happy resolution, do you agree?”
Amy laughed with relief, and even jumped up and down a bit in her rejoicing.
“Oh how wonderful!” She squeezed Marie-Anne’s hands enthusiastically. “How very wonderful.” She turned her shining face to her fiancé and said, “Mr. Harner, my sister Dahlia has only recently abandoned her attachment to Mr. Mason. And now I have good reason to believe – we have reason to believe that she will marry Lord Releford. Is it not most excellent news?”
She was breathless with excitement, but his expression turned stiff and he looked toward the open doors to the house, as though anxious to think anyone had observed her great emotion.
“Yes. Excellent. Of course you are very happy for your sister.” He employed the same tone one might use with an overexcited child. “It is natural you would forget yourself in such a moment.”
Amy’s bright smile immediately melted away. She tipped her head down as though to hide her face, and blinked rapidly. “Pardon me,” she choked out. “I seem to have become quite foolish. Do forgive my outburst.”
“Oh no, not at all,” said Mr. Harner earnestly, and Marie-Anne remembered now what Mason had said – that Harner was always pleasant yet somehow always criticizing. “Few ladies comport themselves with the elegant restraint that is your usual manner, Miss Shipley, when you are feeling less careless. I offer my congratulations on the happy news.”
Amy had gone very still. She resembled a china doll – very pretty and fragile and lifeless – and Marie-Anne saw with absolute clarity that this was exactly how Harner wanted her to be.
“Me, I know nothing of this elegant restraint.” Marie-Anne said as pleasantly as she could manage. She wondered if she looked elegant now, as she restrained herself from scratching at his eyes. “It pleases you so very much, this restraint?”
He looked irritated that she had spoken to him. “It is not a matter of what pleases me, madame, but–”
“Wonderful!” She fixed a smile of supreme satisfaction on her face. “We will not care what pleases you, as you say. We will care instead what pleases Amy. For myself, I would be ashamed to steal a smile from her. But I am not so civilized. I am famous for it, in fact!”
Her playful tone confused him into silence, but Amy saw her hostility. “Marie-Anne, je t’en prie,” she whispered, sliding into French with a quick look of apology to her fiancé. “Do not make a scene. I’m sure when you are more acquainted with him, you will like him better.”
Marie-Anne spoke her reply in rapid French, seeing that Harner found it difficult to understand. “I’m sorry, ma petite, but it reminds me too much of how your parents treated me when I first came to England. As if I should be ashamed to be happy. Your brother told them he loved my smiles and my sorrows and every other thing that came from my heart, do you remember?”
“I remember,” said Amy in a hushed voice. “But I am not like you, Marie-Anne. I do prefer to be more reserved in my manner.”
“Hmf. When you prefer it, that is what you are. When you prefer something else, you should be that something else.” She bit her tongue from saying that she thought Amy had chosen a husband who was too like her disapproving father. There was an unmistakable impatience emanating from Mr. Harner now, so she switched back to English and said stiffly, “It is rude to speak in French if you do not understand, monsieur. Please forgive us.”
“Not at all, not at all,” he soothed in the most gratingly condescending manner. “It has been a most eventful morning. I myself was so overset by this detestable pamphlet that I have quite forgotten to give my regards to our kind hostess. I wonder if you will do me the very great honor of presenting me?”
And so Marie-Anne spent the next few hours clenching her jaws shut in an effort to be perfectly inoffensive. Joyce was politely bored by Mr. Harner, and made her escape quickly. But her husband the Baron was far more in sympathy with the would-be vicar, so Marie-Anne sat next to Amy and quietly endured their talk about favorite theologians, the efficacy of hartshorn jelly as treatment for gout, and memorable card games in which they had participated. Only for Amy’s sake did she force herself to keep every improper impulse in check. She thought of it as a kind of experiment, an attempt to understand the appeal of this vaunted “restrained elegance.”
She entertained herself by imagining Mason without his clothes. She would be able to lick his neck very soon, that was a cheering thought. She planned to spend a great deal of time feeling the muscles in his thighs – if she did not suffocate from this stifling conversation first. The only time she seemed able to breathe were the few moments when she glimpsed Phyllida through the window, practically dancing as she came up the path from the woods. She was with some Huntingdon cousin whom she quickly abandoned when her gorgeous libertine poet appeared. Phyllida walked with him toward the garden, arm in arm and chatting merrily. It’s what Dahlia and Releford were probably doing as well, somewhere. Marie-Anne would love to find Mason and do the same. Yet here she was with the demure Shipley sister and her dull fiancé, nodding politely as the subject of proper field drainage was thoroughly explored.
A footman finally interrupted them to announce a light buffet had been set out for afternoon refreshment on the terrace. Marie-Anne jumped up with unseemly haste, desperate for a more lively conversation partner over the meal. But it was Charlotte who claimed the seat next to her. The girl was excruciatingly polite and Marie-Anne was so afraid of saying a wrong word to her again – the two of them trying so hard to prove they liked each other - that it was a new round of biting her tongue.
By the time it was over she was more than ready to be wildly improper. Maybe she’d take off her stockings and swim in the fountain. Or strike up a conversation with The Poetess about the poetry of Sappho, to see if she could make Mr. Harner blush. Or just hide in the priest-hole with a bottle of sherry.
She’d taken no more than a few bites of her food, but when she looked up to see Mason appear, she put her plate aside. Here was a far better option. Here was recklessness come strolling in, disguised as a gentleman in a very fine suit.
“I believe I will go to rest in my room a little while,” she announced. She caught his eye. “I am so very hot.”
Joyce admirably hid her smirk an instant after it appeared, and quickly engaged her husband in a conversation about the weather.
Once in her room, Marie-Anne kicked off her slippers and released the few buttons she could reach on the back of her dress. Fortunately, the maid came quickly and soon the dress and petticoat were removed. She heard the girl sigh, “So pretty,” as she loosened the corset string, just as she had sighed this morning when she’d laced it up. The corset was new, and already a favorite item in her wardrobe. It was silk, pale blue and embroidered in pink and white, and though Marie-Anne had seen far more shocking undergarments in her day, there was something undeniably erotic about it. She couldn’t wait for him to see it.
But she did have to wait. She supposed she really should feel a little embarrassed to be listening at the panel, waiting anxiously for a sound that told her he was in his room alone. When it came – the thudding sound of his main door closing – her stomach gave a girlish little flip. Oh really, was there anything better than this? She had almost forgotten what it was like to feel breathless and giddy and positively famished.
Once she heard his footsteps near, she lifted the latch. The panel swung open easily to reveal him standing there, waiting for her with his jacket off and loosening his cravat. His hands stopped as he stared fixedly at her corset. She let him look, though she was terribly impatient for him to bare his neck, and drew in a slow, deep breath so he could fully appreciate the view.
“Did I say this door in my wall was ridiculous?” he asked absently. “I take it back. God bless the genius who thought of it.”
“It does not creak today,” She stepped into his room and pushed the panel silently closed behind her.
“I
found some oil and aimed it at the hinges,” he explained, still staring.
“This is how you spent your morning?” She began to unbutton his waistcoat, because he was entirely too slow. “Hunting for oil?”
“And talking with that jackass Ravenclyffe.” He helped with the last few buttons and pulled off the waistcoat. “And tasting you at the back of my throat.”
She reached up to pull off his cravat. “I spent it in learning that Dahlia has announced she is not engaged to you, and being very proper and very bored, and wanting to do this.”
She licked his neck, and it was exactly as delicious as she’d expected. He sucked in his breath as her tongue moved over his skin, which was even more delicious. Everything about him felt wonderful. He was solid and so very warm, and his hands ran delicately over her corset as though he would memorize the embroidered details with his fingers. Best of all was how he put his weight against her, all his sublime strength and heat surrounding her and filling her senses as he pressed her gently to the wall.
“If you say only one kiss, I’ll…” He trailed off as her hands smoothed down his back and over his buttocks. He had lovely muscles all over him. “Jesus, I might actually cry.”
She pulled her mouth away from his neck long enough to ask him, “Where do you get these splendid muscles?” She tugged his shirt up so she could feel his belly. It was not the body of a typical gentleman. “Do you cut the trees yourself?”
“Trees?” He put a hand in her hair, piled loosely on her head. She could feel his pulse, rapid and heavy at his throat, and reveled in the sound of his breathlessness. “Oh, trees. Something like that. So more than just one kiss?”
“More,” she said. She leaned her head back against the wall, dizzy with the smell of him. His mouth had all her attention. She felt mesmerized by it. “Many more. As many as possible.”
He looked up from where his fingertips moved softly across the swell of her breast. Her stomach gave that little flip again, to see his eyes so full of desire for her. “I’ve never seen you so serious.”
That made her smile. “I am very serious about my pleasure,” she told him, and then kissed him. He responded with great enthusiasm.
It went on for ages. It was like being a girl again, like those days when kissing for hours was expected, when there was nothing but kissing. Well, kissing and roaming hands, and pleasure spreading out slowly through every inch of her body. Like last night, he was not too impatient for more. He was content to taste her, to explore every corner of her mouth and lips as though he had sworn to memorize her with his tongue. It was utterly marvelous. She had time to wonder where on earth had learned to use his mouth like this, and more time to consider that she didn’t really want to know and didn’t really care anyway so long as he kept it up.
But finally, after a very, very long time of kissing, the aching throb between her legs grew unbearable and she was the one who grew too impatient. She curled her hips up, pressing against the hard length of him. He responded with a groan and an answering pressure. He was wonderful, how he did no more than that, how he waited for her desire to direct him. His mouth moved to her throat now, down to her breasts, sucking at her as she panted and searched for the buttons on his trousers.
He was hot and hard, and he gasped in the most delectable way when she wrapped her hand around him. She put her lips to his ear and panted, “Lift my chemise.”
He obeyed with alacrity, and she did not need to say anything more after that. He took control, pulling her leg up over his hip, pushing hard and fast into her. He stayed there, filling her for a long and breathless moment while she tightened her leg around his hip, silently begging for more. Then he kissed her as he slowly drew back, teasing her with his withdrawal until she gripped his shoulders in desperation and he thrust into her again to the hilt.
It stole her breath. He did it again and again, a little faster and withdrawing less each time, so controlled while she was wild with excitement. His mouth was over hers, a plundering heat that smothered the whimpering, wailing sounds she made. He drove her higher and higher until she finally reached the peak of it, and it seemed endless. Waves and waves of pleasure, with him buried deep inside her, his own shudder of release barely registering as she pressed mindlessly against him.
When she had some sense of herself again, she was vaguely amazed they were still upright and the sun still shone. She was dazed, and it seemed to take a very long time to get her breath back. It was entirely possible she would never remember how to do anything but lean against him like this, skin to skin, awash in satisfaction.
“Merci,” she mumbled without thinking.
His chest heaved against hers, just as out of breath, like they had run a marathon. “Likewise.”
She put her mouth to his again, lazy and limp but still wanting his kisses. She thought she could probably kiss him for days without stopping, which was an alarming little fact as it meant – it had always meant, with her – that her heart was deeply entangled. Still, she did not deny herself. It felt too good, all of it.
“What’s that?” He had stilled, whispering against her lips. Then she heard it – a soft tapping from her room and a voice calling softly. Someone was at the door of her room.
Reluctantly, she pushed him away. “I must answer it. I’ll come back tonight.” Then she frantically pulled the panel open and latched it behind her. She made sure the panel on her side was closed securely before throwing on her dressing gown and running to the door.
She did not open it but called through it, only to hear Joyce on the other side.
“I am so very sorry to disturb you, my dear, but he says it cannot wait. Did I wake you?”
“No. Who says what?” she asked, trying to pin a large and unruly piece of hair back where it belonged.
“It’s a messenger from Summerdale House. He says he is under very urgent instruction from Helen and that he must speak to you without delay.”
She jerked the door open so fast her arm hurt. Joyce stood there with the maid beside her. “Is Hélène unwell?”
“No, my dear, she is perfectly fine, I made him swear it to me. But he has said she left him some vital instruction and it’s a matter of urgency, and he will speak only with you. I thought it worth disturbing you and I do so hope I am right. Here’s Lucy, she will help you dress and you can come to the library without delay.”
“But it must be a mistake.”
She sat in the small library and tried to believe this was not some bizarre dream. There was still that liquid feeling at the base of her spine, and her mouth was still pleasantly sore from so much kissing. Before allowing the maid into her room, she had taken a moment to wash quickly between her legs, and now she was extremely aware of the lingering dampness as this square-faced man told her that Mason had no prosperous business.
“I could of course be mistaken in my interpretation of the facts I have discovered, madame. It is also possible I am missing some information.”
He was so modest in this statement that she knew he did not believe himself to be wrong. He had no doubt at all. As secretary to Lord Summerdale, he would never say such things if he had any doubts. She very much wanted to deny it completely, call him a meddling old fool, and escape this room. But she knew she was already more than a little foolish about Mason, and that she had always been too quick to disbelieve unhappy news about a new lover. She would make herself listen to these accusations.
“I do not understand it,” she said. “He lives as a wealthy man. The finest clothes and… You say yourself the hotel in London where he stays is very exclusive.”
“We must conclude that he has ready access to funds, but I can assure you that no bank in London has heard of a Mr. Spencer Mason of New York. It is possible to make further inquiries among tradespeople and at the hotel but unless you feel the matter is pressing, it is perhaps more advisable to await the return of Lord Summerdale before taking such action.”
Bribes. He meant bribes, to shopkeepers and serva
nts. Handfuls of coins and whispers and speculation. In Paris when she was a girl, men had come around weekly, offering her a sou if she would tell them who came to Aurélie’s room, or if Delphine had been drinking, or where Luísa sent letters. Always discreet, always so civilized, these well-dressed men with their purses full of coins.
“If the matter is not pressing, then why are you here?” she asked him, irritated.
“I hope I have not misjudged, madame. Lord Summerdale instructed me to discover whatever possible of Mr. Mason’s situation, and indicated that it is a matter of grave concern to Lady Summerdale because of your acquaintance with Mr. Mason. Once I had discovered that at least three gentleman are seeking to invest a substantial sum in Mr. Mason’s timber business, I felt it my duty to learn more about the business. As I have said, it is unknown among several persons who should by all rights have heard of such a large and prosperous enterprise.”
He paused, but she could think of nothing to say. She only twisted her fingers together in her lap and told herself she was lucky to have such friends looking out for her. She did not feel lucky, though.
“I cannot yet judge if it is entirely a lie. The prominence and prosperity of the business may only have been, ah, exaggerated,” the secretary was saying. His name was Mr. Meeks, which seemed appropriate to his very deferential manner. “But I felt it prudent, knowing that Lady Summerdale felt very strongly, to apprise you of my findings immediately. Before three months ago no one had ever heard of him, yet now he has all of London believing him to be a man of consequence and has convinced several gentlemen to invest in a business that appears not to exist. I cannot call it anything but suspicious.”
It was hard to believe she’d been so limp with delight only moments ago. The picture this secretary painted was thoroughly disheartening. It did not seem possible that Mason was a charlatan. She had seen that he was very practiced at lying, but he was not so practiced that she was fooled.
Unless she had been fooled, and just hadn’t realized it.
House of Cads (Ladies of Scandal Book 2) Page 13
