Midnight Pleasures

by Eloisa James

  “No,” Patrick replied. “Although I have to admit that since giving birth to the girls was so easy for you, sometimes I think about a son. Not an heir, just a son.”

  Sophie laughed for pure happiness. In truth, the only tense moment during the birth of the twins had been when Dr. Lambeth observed that the duchess had the hips of a peasant, to which comment Patrick took violent exception.

  But she shook her head teasingly. “I don’t know, Patrick. Now that Charlotte has a third daughter, and we had Frances and the twins, you and your brother have produced six girls. Perhaps girls are your lot in life.”

  Patrick only laughed and kissed his wife lightly. “Practice makes perfect,” he whispered against her lips.

  Ella gave a little grunt, and when her parents looked down at her, she was fast asleep.

  “I’ll take her back to the nursery.” Patrick reached out and deftly took his little daughter in his arms.

  “I could ring for Betsy,” Sophie said, smiling up at her husband as he tucked Ella’s blanket around her chubby form.

  “I like to fetch and carry my daughters. When I was little I told my father I wanted to be a footman. I liked their livery.”

  Sophie grinned. “What did he say?”

  “I can’t remember. Most likely he was outraged. He had a great sense of his own consequence, which didn’t include footmen for sons.”

  Just as Sophie was drifting back to sleep again, the door to the master bedroom opened and Patrick walked back in.

  “Oh Lord,” Sophie moaned. Now he had two flannel-wrapped bundles, one on each arm.

  “This one’s for you,” her husband said with obscene cheerfulness. He handed over a squirming, red-cheeked baby.

  “Katherine, I presume?” Sophie murmured, reaching out her arms.

  “Katherine it is,” Patrick agreed. He kicked off his slippers and lay down on the bed next to Sophie, Ella still sleeping in the crook of his arm. When Katherine had settled in for a midnight snack, Sophie looked at Patrick enquiringly, nodding toward Ella.

  Patrick smiled a bit guiltily. “Nanny was asleep in the chair when I got to the nursery, and Betsy was asleep on the cot. In fact, Katherine was the only one awake. She was kicking about and just starting to think about howling. So I scooped her up and brought them both back here.”

  “Ella should be in her bed,” Sophie said with mock severity.

  Patrick didn’t bother to answer. He was looking down at Ella’s little face.

  “She’s going to be a great beauty, Sophie. I’ll have to beat off gentlemen with a stick.”

  Thoughtfully, Sophie looked at the little girl she was holding. The twins were as alike as peas in a pod; both had inherited a dizzying combination of arching eyebrows (from their papa) and silky, golden reddish curls (from their mama).

  Just for a second, Sophie wondered whether their first daughter, little Frances, would have been as beautiful, had she lived.

  Patrick’s shoulder bumped hers, and a kiss landed on her ear. “She was very beautiful, sweetheart, but in a different way. She had your eyebrows.”

  Sophie’s eyes got a little sheen of tears. She leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder as he wound his free arm about her.

  “Don’t cry, Sophie,” he whispered tenderly.

  Sophie looked up, and their eyes met, both touched with sorrow for the daughter they would never stop loving. In the space of a heartbeat, it was all there between them: their grief and the healing balm of love, those small threads of life that meshed them together closer than the weave of a wedding dress.

  “I am very lucky to have a husband who always knows what I’m thinking.” Sophie rubbed her head against Patrick’s shoulder like a grateful cat.

  Patrick grinned a bit smugly. In the three years since they married, he had learned to judge the darkening of Sophie’s eyes to an inch. Now she even frowned at him occasionally, having found that she couldn’t hide her feelings anyway.

  Patrick dropped a kiss on his wife’s eyebrow. “A good wife always knows what her husband is thinking. Do you?”

  “Are you thinking about breakfast?”

  “No.”

  Katherine burped loudly and her body relaxed back on Sophie’s arm. Rosebud lips puckered and a tiny snore sounded in the room.

  Patrick sighed. “I’d better take them both back to the nursery, I suppose.” He was gone for a few moments and returned to find Sophie still awake.

  He stopped for a moment and looked at his delectable wife, propped against the pillows, looking tired but beautiful.

  “Have you decided what I’m thinking about?”

  “Perhaps …” she said teasingly. “I know! You’re thinking about the Sophie!” Patrick’s newest ship was named after his wife.

  Patrick propped himself up on one side, facing her. “The Sophie is due to dock tomorrow after her trip to China,” he said, his eyes wicked. “I am looking forward to boarding her.”

  The neckline of Sophie’s lacy white night rail was still disarranged from nursing the girls. Patrick tugged it gently, exposing one of his wife’s pink-tipped breasts. She shivered as he ran his hand around the bottom of her breast and then left it there, dark strength against creamy whiteness.

  “So tell me, O my love, what am I thinking?” One eyebrow sent her a seductive message.

  Sophie searched his beloved face, the strong planes of his cheeks, shadowed now from waking up every night, the fierce desire in his face, the fierce love there too.

  “If you are thinking about boarding the Sophie,” she said a bit shakily, moving closer to him and curling an arm around his neck, “I think she just docked.”

  The master of the Sophie rolled over and captured his wife’s mouth with hungry force.

  Behind them the last log in the fireplace succumbed and fell into two, sending a tiny blizzard of sparks up the chimney. Dying firelight danced a final minuet on the ceiling above the matrimonial bed, but no one noticed. The log crackled and squeaked as it burned down, but no one added another log from the basket next to the fireplace.

  The only sounds from the bed were inarticulate ones: sounds of desire, sounds of pleasure, finally of ecstasy. Gasped, at the moment of greatest bliss, words of love.

  The great master bed fell into silence again. Even the fire was silent now, reduced to a sultry heap of embers, glowing a deep carmine red in the depths of the fireplace.

  The silence was broken only by a deep voice. “Être avec toi, c’est toujours comme retourner à la maison, Sophie. Being with you is always like coming home.”

  Sophie reached up and caressed her husband’s cheek, love shining in her eyes. “You are my home, Patrick.” And again, as he buried his face in her hair, holding her so close that his large body seemed imprinted on hers: “With you, I am home.”

  A Note about Scepters, Sultans, and the Pleasures of Eloping with Strangers

  In 1613 Robert Tailor’s play, The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl, was performed in London. In the first act, a young gentleman, Carracus, stands below the window of his beloved Maria, waiting for her to climb down a ladder and elope with him. But alas! His best friend, Albert, descends from that window, where he has pretended to be Carracus and has (in his words) “robbed Carracus of what’s more precious than his blood”—Maria’s virginity.

  The Hog Hath Lost His Pearl grows a bit tedious after this climactic scene, since all three lovers end up wandering about the woods in disguise. And from a romantic point of view, the last act is rather disappointing: Carracus and Albert swear eternal union—”nothing now but death / Shall cause a separation”—and the three people return to London together. Clearly, male bonding was alive and well in the 17th century!

  The liberties I have taken with Tailor’s plot are naught compared to my endowment of Napoleon with an exploding scepter. In fact, Selim III (the Ottoman sultan from 1789-1807) did recognize Napoleon as emperor in 1804, and he did declare war on England in 1806. But the idea that Selim might have discarded the noble t
itle of sultan for that of emperor is purely my own invention. And Emperor Napoleon was likely far too busy with his unrealistic and hazardous plans to invade Great Britain to pay attention to a ruby scepter, unless it would grace his own coronation ceremony in December.

  About the Author

  Eloisa James is also the author of the acclaimed novel Potent Pleasures. She is a professor of English literature who lives with her family in New Jersey.

  Eloisa loves to receive mail from readers, and can be reached through her publisher, Bantam Dell, at 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036, or directly through her website at eloisajames.com.

  Visit our website at www.bantamdell.com.

  Look for the next exciting novel from Eloisa James

  Enchanting Pleasures

  Available from Dell

  Chapter 1

  St. James’s Square

  London 1806

  Fate had just dealt Viscount Dewland a blow that would have felled a weaker—or more sympathetic—man. He gaped silently at his eldest son for a moment, ignoring his wife’s twittering commentary. But a happy thought revived him. That same wife had, after all, provided him with two male offspring.

  Without further ado he spun on his heel and barked at his younger son, “If your brother can’t do his duty in bed, then you’ll do it. You can act like a man for once in your life.”

  Peter Dewland was caught unawares by his father’s sudden attack. He had risen to adjust his neckcloth in the drawing-room mirror, thereby avoiding his brother’s eyes. Really, what does a man say to that sort of confession? But like his father, Peter recovered quickly from unpredictable assaults.

  He walked around the end of the divan and sat down. “I gather you are suggesting that I marry Jerningham’s daughter?”

  “Of course I am!” the viscount snapped. “Someone has to marry her, and your brother has just declared himself ineligible.”

  “I beg to differ,” Peter remarked with a look of cool distaste. “I have no plans to marry at your whim.”

  “What in the bloody hell do you mean? Of course you’ll marry the girl if I instruct you to do so!”

  “I do not plan to marry, Father. Not at your instigation nor at anyone else’s.”

  “Rubbish! Every man marries.”

  Peter sighed. “Not true.”

  “You’ve squired about every beautiful gal that came on the market in the last six years. If you had formed a true attachment, I would not stand in your way. But since you haven’t made a move to attach yourself, you will marry Jerningham’s girl.

  “You will do as I say, boy,” the viscount bellowed. “Your brother can’t take on the job, and so you have to do it. I’ve been lenient with you. You might be in the Seventh Foot at this very moment. Have you thought of that?”

  “I’d rather take a pair of colors than a wife,” Peter retorted.

  “Absolutely not,” his father said, reversing himself. “Your brother’s been at the point of death for years.”

  Inside the drawing room, the silence swelled ominously. Peter grimaced at his elder brother, whose muscled body proclaimed his general fitness to the world at large.

  Erskine Dewland, who had been staring meditatively at the polished surface of his Hessians, raised his heavy-lidded eyes from his boots to his father’s face. “If Peter is determined not to marry, I could take her on.” His deep voice fell into the silent room.

  “And what’s the point of that? You can’t do the job properly, and I’m not wedding Jerningham’s daughter to … to … in that case. I’ve got principles. The girl’s got a right to expect a sound husband, for God’s sake.”

  Quill, as Erskine was known to his intimates, opened his mouth again. And then thought better of it. He could certainly consummate the marriage, but it wouldn’t be a very pleasant experience. Any woman deserved more from marriage than he could offer. While he had come to terms with his injuries, especially now that they had ceased to bother his movement, the three-day migraines that followed repetitive motion made his likelihood for marital bliss very slight.

  “Can’t argue with that, can you?” The viscount looked triumphantly at his eldest son. “I’m not some sort of a caper merchant, passing you off as whole goods when you’re not. Mind you, we could. The girl wouldn’t know a thing, of course, until it was too late. And her father’s turned into such a loose screw that he’s not even accompanying her out here.

  “Point is,” Dewland went on, turning back to his youngest son, “the girl’s expecting to marry someone. And if it can’t be Quill, it’s got to be you. I’ll send your picture over on the next boat.”

  Peter replied through his teeth, each word spaced. “I do not wish to marry, Father.”

  The viscount’s cheeks reddened again. “It’s time you stopped gadding about. By God, you will do as I say!”

  Peter avoided his father’s gaze, seemingly absorbed in flicking the smallest piece of lint from the black velvet collar of his morning coat. Satisfied, he returned to the subject at hand. “You seem to have misunderstood me. I refuse to marry Jerningham’s daughter.” Only the smallest tremor in his voice betrayed his agitation.

  The viscountess broke in before her husband could bellow whatever response he had in mind. “Thurlow, I don’t like your color. Perhaps we might continue this conversation at a later time? You know what the doctor said about getting overtaxed!”

  “Balderdash!” the viscount protested, although he allowed his wife to pull him back onto a couch. “By George, you had better obey me, Mister Peter Dewland, or you will find yourself out the door.” The veins of his forehead were alarmingly swollen.

  His wife sent a beseeching glance to her youngest son. His jaw was set in a manner that his father would have recognized, had there been a mirror in the near vicinity.

  But before Peter could say a word, his father erupted out of his seat once again. “And just what am I supposed to say to this young girl who’s coming all the way over from India? Tell her that you ‘prefer not to marry her’? You planning on telling my old friend Jerningham that you decline to marry his gal?”

  “That is precisely what I suggest,” Peter replied.

  “And what about the money Jerningham’s lent me over the years, eh? Given it to me without a word of advice—just sent me over the blunt to do with as I like! If your brother Quill hadn’t pulled down a fortune speculating on the East India Company, Jerningham might still be lending me money. As it is, we agreed to consider it a dowry. You will marry the gal, or I’ll … I’ll …”

  The viscount’s face was purple all over now, and he was unconsciously rubbing his chest.

  “Quill could pay back the money,” Peter suggested.

  “Bloody hell! I’ve already allowed your brother to turn himself into a merchant, playing around on the Exchange—I’ll be damned if I’ll allow him to pay off my debts!”

  “I don’t see why not,” Peter retorted. “He’s paid for everything else.”

  “That’s enough! The only reason your brother—the only reason I allowed Erskine to take on the smell of the market was because—well, because he’s a cripple. But at least he acts his age. You’re naught but a fribble, a sprig of fashion!”

  As the viscount drew a breath, Quill raised his head and met his younger brother’s eyes. In the depths of Quill’s silent apology, Peter saw the manacles of marriage looming.

  His father was glaring at him with all the frustration of a ruddy, boisterous Englishman whose younger son has proved to be nothing like himself. Peter cast a desperate look at his mother, but there was no help to be found.

  He quailed. His stomach churned. He opened his mouth to protest but could think of nothing to say. And finally the habits of a lifetime’s submission took hold.

  “Very well.” His voice was hollow.

  Kitty Dewland rose and came to give him a grateful kiss on the cheek. “Dear Peter,” she said. “You were always my comforting one, my good child. And in truth, darling, you have escorted so many women
without making an offer. I’m certain that Jerningham’s daughter will be a perfect match for you. His wife was French, you know.”

  In her son’s eyes there was a bleak desolation that Kitty hated to see. “Is there someone else? Is there a woman whom you were hoping to marry, darling?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “Well, then,” Kitty said gaily. “We will be right and tight when this girl—what’s her name, Thurlow? Thurlow!”

  When Kitty turned around she’d found her husband leaning back and looking rather white. “M’chest doesn’t feel so good, Kitty,” he mumbled.

  And when Kitty flew out of the drawing room, she was far too discomposed to note how odd it was that her beloved butler, Codswallop, was hovering just on the other side of the door.

  “Send for Doctor Priscian,” she shrieked, and trotted back into the room.

  The plump and precise Codswallop couldn’t resist taking a curious look at Quill before he rang for a footman. It was that hard to believe. Quill had a physique Codswallop had secretly admired: a body remarkably suited to tight pantaloons and fitted coats, the kind of body housemaids giggled about behind stairs. Must be some sort of injury to his private parts. Codswallop shuddered sympathetically.

  Just then Quill turned about and looked Codswallop in the face. His eyes were a curious greeny-gray, set in a face stamped with lines of pain and deeply tanned. Without moving a muscle, he cast Codswallop a look that scathed him to his bones.

  Codswallop scuttled back into the hall and rang for a footman. The viscount was supported off to his bedchamber, followed by his clucking wife. Young Peter bounded out the door looking like murder, followed rather more slowly by Quill, and Codswallop pulled the drawing-room doors closed with a snap.

  Some three months later, the whole affair was tied up. Miss Jerningham was due to arrive on the Plassey, a frigate sailing from Calcutta, within the week. There was one last explosion of rage on the part of the viscount when Peter announced, on the day before Miss Jerningham was due to arrive, that he was taking a long sojourn in the country. But by supper on the fifth of September, the sullen bridegroom had taken himself off to his club, rather than to Herefordshire, and Viscount Dewland repeated over stewed pigeon that the marriage would be an excellent solution to all their problems. There was an unspoken acknowledgment between Thurlow and his wife that Peter, if left to his own devices, might indeed never marry.