Midnight Pleasures

by Eloisa James

  Madeleine’s brown eyes were earnest and passionately sympathetic. “He loves you,” she repeated. “I see him—watching you. Whenever you are not looking, he watches you. And his heart is in his eyes, Sophie.”

  Sophie smiled, a pinched little smile. She and Madeleine hugged a long good-bye.

  A few minutes after Madeleine left, Clemens appeared in the doorway of Sophie’s sitting room, holding a salver with a card on it. “Mr. Foucault and Mr. Mustafa are calling,” he said.

  His tone was resonant with hostility, and Sophie knew instantly that Clemens, who was a ruthless judge of character, did not approve of these particular callers.

  “Do I know them?” Sophie asked.

  “Certainly not, Your Grace,” Clemens replied. “They are acquaintances—distant acquaintances—of His Grace.”

  “I don’t understand, Clemens. Did they ask for me?”

  “They asked for His Grace,” Clemens said, “and when I informed them that he was not at home, they requested to speak with you.” He let it be known by the curve of his lower lip just what he thought of such a gross lack of propriety. Requesting a call with the mistress when the master was out of the house! Absurd. “I shall inform them that you are not at home.”

  Sophie nodded, and Clemens backed out of the room. He returned a few minutes later. Now there was a miniature silver castle on his salver, a willowy, fantastic castle whose turrets were crowned with glowing rubies.

  Sophie’s eyebrows rose.

  “A gift for the sultan, Selim III,” Clemens pronounced. His tone was still rancorous but he was clearly appeased by the obvious worth of the castle. “Mr. Foucault claims that His Grace is expecting the inkwell and has agreed to present it to the sultan on Mr. Foucault’s behalf.”

  “Oh, dear,” Sophie said, rising from her chair. “I had better greet him, hadn’t I? Why, what a lovely piece!” She approached and reached out toward the castle roof. “This must cover the well.”

  But Clemens shook his head. “Mr. Foucault desired most earnestly that the inkwell remain untouched at this juncture, as it is temporarily sealed for the trip to the Ottoman Empire. Apparently the well is filled with the sultan’s favorite color ink—green.” Clemens’s lower lip conveyed his opinion of green ink.

  “Of course,” Sophie said, withdrawing her hand. “Why don’t you set the castle over there, Clemens?” She waved toward a small parquet table in the corner. “Where are they?”

  “In the drawing room,” Clemens replied.

  “If you would ask Simone to join me, we shall greet the gentlemen in fifteen minutes.”

  Clemens bowed and retreated backward. Ever since Patrick had acceded to the title of duke, Clemens’s self-esteem—and his worth among London butlers—had gone through the roof. The extra consequence had translated into a formality unmatched except in the halls of St. James’s itself.

  By the time Simone had been located, and fussed with Sophie’s hair, rather more than fifteen minutes had passed. But Monsieur Foucault pooh-poohed Sophie’s apology.

  “It is a pleasure merely to be in the same room with such elegance,” he said, brushing the back of her hand with his mouth. “So many Englishwomen are so—so quaint in their attire!”

  Sophie barely averted a shudder at the touch of Foucault’s silky lips. When Foucault introduced his companion, Bayrak Mustafa, Sophie wondered for a moment whether to greet him in Turkish. She certainly had mastered enough of the language to conduct a simple conversation. But pregnancy had had a terrible effect on her memory, and she might make a total dunce of herself. So she merely nodded and said a polite greeting in English, trusting Monsieur Foucault to translate.

  She had no trouble understanding Monsieur Foucault’s translation of her greeting. But Mr. Mustafa’s response was rather more interesting. In fact, it made absolutely no sense, as far as Sophie could tell. His sentence—delivered with a deep bow—appeared to be a line from a nursery rhyme or a children’s song. She must have misunderstood! After all, Foucault showed no signs of surprise. He translated the nonsense line as a most conventional greeting and compliment.

  Sophie sank into a chair, feeling even more confused. But her curiosity was piqued. Monsieur Foucault seemed eager to speak of French fashions versus English; after a bit, Sophie managed to steer the conversation back to Bayrak Mustafa.

  “I am so sorry that Mr. Mustafa is neglected in our conversation,” she said sweetly to Monsieur Foucault. “Will you please ask him, for me, how our English cities compare to the great city of Constantinople?”

  A flash of annoyance passed Foucault’s face, but a beatific smile quickly replaced it. “How very kind of Your Grace,” he cooed, “to think of my companion, Mustafa. As it happens, he and I have overstayed our welcome in your beautiful house, and must be on our way—”

  “Please,” Sophie said, her tone as charming and as determined as his. “Do allow me to keep you for a moment. I am so curious about Constantinople!”

  Foucault nodded politely and turned to Mustafa. Sophie listened closely, trying to keep her face brightly polite.

  Sure enough, Foucault relayed her question. But Mustafa’s reply was a nonsensical jingle-jangle of words. And unless she was greatly mistaken, Mr. Mustafa spoke only nouns, no verbs.

  What’s more, Foucault’s translation did not represent what she had heard, even given her imperfect knowledge of the Turkish language. In Monsieur Foucault’s words, Mustafa had found the capital of England to be far superior to the great city of Constantinople.

  Foucault smoothly moved from his translation to a grandiose apology. “Do forgive me, Your Grace, but we must be on our way. I am”—he swept forward and kissed Sophie’s hand yet again—”your most obedient servant. I trust His Grace will find the inkwell amusing.” He paused for a moment. “I must beg you, Your Grace, to convey the fact that the inkwell is sealed. It must remain so until after it makes its long journey to the Ottoman Empire.”

  Sophie smiled, rising to her feet as well. “Naturally, we will not disturb the inkwell in any way,” she said. “May I compliment you on your thoughtful and most beautiful gift, sir?”

  Foucault bowed once again, then ushered Bayrak Mustafa out of the room, leaving in a babble of English words. Mr. Mustafa bowed silently and did not venture again into Turkish.

  After they left, Sophie frowned and walked up the stairs to her sitting room. She walked over to the inkwell, touching its delicate, jeweled turrets with one finger. There was something wrong, deeply wrong, about Monsieur Foucault and Mr. Mustafa.

  And yet she had scarcely even seen Patrick since the whole debacle of the Commonweal ball. How could she bring up the subject of Monsieur Foucault? As she thought about it, Clemens appeared at her door with more cards on his silver salver. The Duchess of Gisle was much in demand, and Sophie dismissed her concerns for the moment.

  Later that week, Patrick ran into his brother on a crowded street, and they stopped for a moment, nonplussed.

  “You’re giving me a damned bellyache, man,” Alex finally said.

  “Your stomach is not my problem,” Patrick retorted. His temper was worn to a thread by nights of sleepless walking.

  Alex scowled. “You might at least instruct a footman to help your wife,” he said acidly. “I found Sophie clambering out of her carriage yesterday by herself. She almost fell to the pavement.”

  Fury raced down Patrick’s spine. He bowed his head politely. “I will of course instruct the footmen to be more assiduous.” He ignored the unspoken criticism—that he should be shepherding his wife around town now that she was almost seven months pregnant.

  Alex swore. He had come to love his petite sister-in-law dearly, and something about the wounded bewilderment deep in her eyes told him that she had no idea why her husband was behaving so irrationally.

  “Have you talked to Sophie about your fear of the birth?” he demanded abruptly.

  Patrick’s body became even more rigid, if possible. His eyes were smoldering. “My ‘fe
ar,’ as you put it, is an entirely reasonable reaction to the fact that one in five women die in childbirth. Unlike you, I hoped not to put my wife in danger for the witless pleasure of reproducing myself.”

  The look in both men’s eyes was barbarous now, un-suited to the polite environs of Oxford Street.

  “If you weren’t my brother,” Alex said with icy politeness, “I would call you out for that. As it is, I’ll tell you, brother, that you have gone stark raving insane. You are making yourself and your wife miserable for no good reason other than senseless, childish terror.”

  Patrick’s teeth ground together as he stopped himself from slugging Alex on the spot.

  “You tell me,” he finally said, “you tell me what is senseless about thinking that the odds of one in five are not good.”

  “Those odds include women giving birth without doctors, without midwives, when they are ill or dying. How many gentlewomen can you think of who have died in childbirth?”

  “Plenty,” Patrick said with quiet force. “And so should you, given that your wife almost joined their ranks.”

  For a moment neither man spoke. Then Alex’s voice emerged raw, half strangled. “Charlotte was having no problem with the birth until I appeared, Patrick. You know that. You know it was my fault. Are you trying to break my heart?”

  The silence was broken only by the rattle of carriages passing.

  “Oh God,” Patrick said quietly. “I should just shoot myself, shouldn’t I?”

  At that, Alex smiled a little. “Not without giving me a chance first.”

  The two men came together in an improvised, unfamiliar hug. Patrick swallowed hard. Alex roughly patted him on the back. He didn’t know what to say.

  “There’s only what—two or three months left?”

  Patrick looked at his brother helplessly. “I don’t know. Sophie and I do not discuss the child.”

  “The whole town is chattering about the fact that you didn’t tell Sophie that she was being made a duchess. What in the bloody hell were you thinking, Patrick?”

  “I forgot. I just forgot.” He shrugged. “You know how little titles mean to me. I thought Sophie would be happy to be a duchess, but she’s furious because I didn’t inform her. We don’t really talk much anymore.”

  Alex nodded, accepting silently what he had already sensed. His brother’s marriage was in a dangerously fragile state.

  “I believe Sophie is beginning her seventh month,” Alex said, no trace of judgment in his tone. “She told Charlotte that she was going to stop attending public events after Lady Greenleaf’s ball tomorrow night.”

  Patrick had had no idea that Sophie was giving up the rest of the season. “I’ll accompany her,” he said quietly. He knew that Sophie often joined Charlotte and Alex in the evening.

  Alex nodded. “I don’t suppose it will do any good to say that you might have a conversation with your wife?”

  Patrick winced. “I shall try, Alex.”

  That night Clemens scratched on Sophie’s bedchamber door and informed Simone that the duke had announced his intention to eat supper at home. The master hadn’t eaten in the house for two or three weeks, and Clemens thought, rightly, that the duchess ought to know that she would be eating with her husband rather than alone.

  Sophie stopped short in the middle of fastening a bracelet on her wrist. Simone’s eyes flashed to her mistress’s face, then dropped to the floor. The whole household knew, of course, that the master and mistress were estranged.

  In fact, Simone and Patrick’s man, Keating, were engaged in a flaming battle over the master’s whereabouts at night. Keating maintained that the master was not up to hanky-panky; Simone scoffed and said the duke was spending time with a fancy lady somewhere and that Keating ought to be ashamed. The battle had grown so heated that Keating actually brought one of Patrick’s coats down to the servants’ quarters, the better to demonstrate its utter lack of female perfume or face powder.

  Sophie finished fastening the bracelet, quite as if Clemens’s message hadn’t arrived. She was wearing a loose sea-green evening gown, constructed with an extra panel in the front to accommodate her growing belly.

  For a moment she hesitated in front of the mirror. She felt ugly these days, an ugly, unwanted wife. Pregnant wife, she thought savagely. Perhaps I should just take a tray in my room.

  Then she steadied her courage and walked down the stairs. She walked slowly, concentrating on balancing the extra weight that jutted out before her. Patrick met her at the bottom of the stairs.

  Sophie smiled at him politely and took his arm as they walked into the dining room.

  Automatically Sophie forked pheasant into her mouth.

  “Isn’t this the second time this week that Floret has served pheasant?” Patrick asked.

  “Yes, it is. I’m afraid that my mother managed to bribe him.” Sophie suffered through two more bites, wondering how Patrick knew that Floret had also served pheasant on Tuesday. That evening he hadn’t come in until long after she fell asleep. These days she had stopped waiting for his return. She needed sleep more than she needed the confirmation that her husband rarely arrived home before dawn.

  Sophie ate another bite. The pheasant tasted like sawdust.

  “I will accompany you to Lady Greenleaf’s ball tomorrow night, if I may,” Patrick said. “I believe that it promises to be a great crush.”

  Sophie nodded. Her husband had come home for supper, and now he was going to take her to a ball?

  In the face of Sophie’s silence, Patrick kept talking. “You might be amused to hear that there are bets at White’s on whether Braddon will announce his engagement to your friend Madeleine in the next week or so.”

  Sophie said nothing. Patrick cursed silently. What was he doing? Sophie was unlikely to be thrilled to hear that Braddon was getting married to someone else, given her feelings for the man.

  “Perhaps we might take a picnic to the countryside, if the weather stays fine this weekend,” he said, suddenly inspired. Surely it would be a good deal easier to talk to Sophie if they were alone, rather than sitting at the table flanked by two footmen.

  Suddenly Sophie’s head swung up, and Patrick saw to his astonishment that her eyes were narrowed, blazing.

  “I’ll be damned if you can just waltz into this dining room as if nothing happened in the last month and ask me on a picnic,” she said furiously.

  Patrick looked up and nodded to Clemens, who directed the footmen out of the room with a wave, then quickly followed them.

  “Why not?” Patrick looked at his wife with stupefaction. This was a new Sophie. There was no difficulty reading the fury in her eyes.

  Sophie stood up and threw her napkin on the table. “I never complained when you went off with your mistress. I didn’t reproach you—once. If you want to go, go! But don’t come back to me as if I were a fish that you could reel in when you pleased. I suppose you think I will smile gratefully and go on a picnic with you, now that you’ve decided to grant your wife a bit of your time?”

  Patrick stared at his wife, his face imperturbable.

  “I’m going to my chambers,” she said abruptly. “I will accept your escort tomorrow to the ball, but I must decline your kind invitation for a picnic. I don’t feel like a wanton trollop today, and I don’t expect to feel like one tomorrow either. Therefore,” she said with savage irony, “I’m sure you wouldn’t be comfortable in my company!”

  And with that she walked out of the room and up the stairs, as quickly as she could manage in her state.

  The Duke and Duchess of Gisle lay in their separate bedrooms that night, both staring at the ceiling. If an angel had happened to look through the roof of the mansion on Upper Brook Street, he would have seen separate, sleepless figures. Patrick was, perhaps, the more despairing; Sophie, having rediscovered anger, was finding it a not unpleasant emotion.

  Had the same angel bothered to peer through the elegant silk roof of the Gisle carriage as it inched its way to a halt
before the entrance to Lady Greenleaf’s mansion in Hanover Square the following night, he would again have seen two separate, silent figures, but with one difference: Sophie was staring at the wall, and Patrick was staring at her.

  Sophie was dressed in a ball gown that deliberately emphasized her newly lush figure. Gossamer silk in a pale, pale blue, more lucid than a robin’s egg, wound its way around her bodice, playing hide-and-seek with the curves of her breasts.

  Oblivious to Patrick’s gaze, Sophie adjusted her cashmere wrap as the carriage drew to a halt, an action that unconsciously caused her breasts nearly to topple from their frail cover.

  I am not lustful, Patrick thought to himself. I am not jealous. The small hope that reiterating those statements would make them a fact died a quick death. All right, he thought, I am lustful. He jumped down from the carriage and automatically held out a hand to help Sophie from the carriage. And I am jealous, he thought fiercely, seeing the widened eyes of the London populace that had gathered to watch the swells go to a party.

  If only … if only Sophie would throw him a laughing glance and accidentally brush against his arm. If only she had toppled from the carriage into his arms, rather than dropping his hand the moment her feet were safely on the pavement. But she was obviously merely tolerating his presence. For a moment, agony clutched Patrick’s heart. He was better off walking the streets of London than being in the presence of his so-beautiful, so-desirable, so-uncaring wife.

  The minute they passed Lady Greenleaf’s receiving line, a flock of gentlemen descended, arguing over the privilege of dancing with the beautiful young duchess. Patrick stood there silently for a moment, then rudely interrupted an impudent young whelp and claimed the supper dance.

  Sophie looked at him, briefly, but said nothing. As Patrick well knew, she would never cause a scene in a ballroom. He bowed and sauntered off.

  Sophie watched him go, ignoring the prattling crowd around her for an instant. Somehow all her righteous anger was starting to fade away, just when she needed it. She took a deep breath. Tonight was the last of these agonizing public appearances. After that, she would retire for the season. A pregnant woman’s “confinement” was sounding better every moment. And, in fact, it was just as well that she dance with Patrick. She was getting tired of thinly veiled, solicitous comments about her husband’s frequent absences.