by Claudia Dain
No one bothered to answer Henry. Really, what part did he have in this?
“You are very old,” Jane said primly. “I can’t think how you could even try to deny that. Did you think it was a secret?”
Penrith began to shuffle away. Jane grabbed his arm and looped her hand through it, holding him to the spot. Were all Englishmen cowards?
Edenham stared at her for a moment and then smiled politely. She braced herself.
“And you are a very accomplished kisser, for a woman who feels it necessary to proclaim her innocence nearly upon the quarter hour,” he said.
“I can see it shocks you that I am so very quick to defend myself, a trait you do not share, obviously,” she said sweetly, smiling at him in return. “As to your heartfelt compliment, and the clear depth of emotion you felt upon my kiss, I can only say, without false modesty, that I am a very quick study.” She smiled brightly. Edenham narrowed his eyes. “Particularly when my tutor has so many years of learning to his credit. I am a novice. I stand respectfully in awe of your so very eager tutelage. Tell me, your grace, do you teach all the girls who catch your eye?”
“Yes,” he said crisply, “I like to start when they’re young, their teeth having just come in. I do think they learn more effortlessly how to please a man at that tender age, before defiance and recalcitrance become imbedded in their natures. But I don’t have to explain that to you, do I, Libby?”
Whatever he meant by that, and she wasn’t at all sure, she was certain that it was an insult of the worst sort. He was simply that sort of man.
“If you think to insult me by describing me as defiant, you are far off the mark,” she said, taking a step nearer to him, dragging Penrith with her, the useless puppy. “I shall defy any man who seeks to drag me under his thumb.”
“Or under him in his bed,” Edenham said.
Henry looked positively ill, quite red about the ears.
Penrith was a lump at her side, useless.
“Which you would have no way of knowing?” Henry prompted, looking at Edenham with something like sorrow.
Jane looked at Edenham, her eyes wide. Edenham returned her look with a smug smile on his arrogant face.
That was not a good sign, was it?
“Is this one of those moments where I simply tell the truth, Libby?” he said.
“Please do,” she snapped. “Please, tell my cousin that you did have to drag me into bed. I’m certain he will believe every word of it. Your reputation, built upon your character, both as old as you are which is very old indeed, must certainly have proclaimed to the world before now the sort of habits you have perfected.”
“Perfected?” Edenham shot back, taking a step nearer to her, which brought them very close indeed. “I would be flattered but for the fact that, as it is my habit, I know I do it very well. Wouldn’t you agree? Oh, but you needn’t bother.
I could see that I did.”
Jane smiled, reluctantly impressed. He wasn’t a bad salon battler.
“I’m surprised you cared enough to look. A man like you certainly doesn’t care what happens, as long as his needs are met.”
“What precisely was he looking at?” Henry asked Jane, looking truly aggrieved.
“You had your needs met?” Penrith asked Edenham, looking truly curious.
“Of course I looked,” Edenham said to her, ignoring everyone else in the room, as she was doing. He did have that odd effect on her. She did become so absorbed by his presence, which was not a good thing, though she couldn’t seem to think why it was a bad thing. “You captured me by a look. I can’t not look. I begin to believe that I am destined to look at you for as long as I live, even if I find myself dragging you into the closest bed to do it.”
Her heart, yes, her recalcitrant heart tingled quite alarmingly at his words. She even found herself, more shocking yet, grinning at him like . . . well, like a woman in love.
It was most embarrassing.
“The closest bed?” Henry asked. “That would be the gold bedchamber? I can’t think the duchess knows about that.”
“Nor Jane’s brothers,” Edenham said breezily, still smiling down at her. “I do think they should know all about that, don’t you, Libby?”
Absolutely not.
Twenty- six
Bernadette, Lady Paignton, eyed Joel Elliot like the intoxicating cordial he was. He didn’t appear to mind it at all.
The sun had deserted the garden, which was most convenient timing. Bernadette had lifted her skirts before whilst out in nature and at a party of Society’s uppermost, but never before at a party whilst out in nature during daylight hours. If she were going to break the party nature boundary, she’d prefer to do it at deepest twilight, where she might expect a bit more privacy. Bit by bit, all her boundaries were being chipped away, which was the duty of boundaries, wasn’t it? To fall at the slightest push? Or even a determined push?
Joel Elliot looked to be the slightest sort, which was so very pleasant of him.
“A challenge, Captain Elliot?” she said. “But of course it is. Can you manage it, I wonder?”
“’Tis only a bit of muslin, Lady Paignton,” he replied, his fingertip brushing her skin just above her bodice. “I can manage that well enough.”
“Can you?” she whispered, looking up at him.
He was a truly amazing-looking man, all dark curled hair and laughing dark eyes, his smile infectious. He had the barest suggestion of a dimple in the center of his chin and long dimples bracketing his cheeks when he smiled. If life had swept her along in a different direction than it had, she might find herself laughing right along with him.
But it hadn’t, and she wouldn’t.
“Are you so very bored, Lady Paignton,” he murmured, his head dipping down, his gaze on her mouth, “or am I so very irresistible?”
“Kiss me, and then I’ll tell you which,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and gently urging him to her.
His breath was sweet and soft, his shoulders immense beneath the thin weight of her arms. An inch from her mouth, his smile relaxing into something far less jovial, she closed her eyes and waited for sensation to sweep her away. Please God, let it sweep her away.
Nothing happened.
“Joel, you’re needed. It’s Jane.”
Joel released her instantly. Bernadette turned and saw George Blakesley standing in the doorway to the garden, looking quite grim. But then, he normally looked grim in one degree or another.
Joel Elliot offered her his arm and escorted her back into the house. George didn’t spare her a glance. Joel didn’t either, not after his sister’s name had been mentioned.
It was situations like this that reminded Bernadette how very fortunate she was not to be encumbered with a brother. Just think how many back garden interludes would have been foiled by an overanxious brother.
Poor Jane.
She was going to do it! Katherine was going to lure Jedidiah Elliot into her bed and she was going to wring
every lustful action out of him that she could, and certainly she must be able to inspire some sort of lustful action? She was a woman. He was a man who spent months at sea. Was there very much more to it than that?
Jedidiah was such a bold, forceful-looking man, his features neatly chiseled, his nose straight and narrow. Richard had possessed a rather lumpy nose. Nothing hideous, yet not quite lovely. But it was the look in Jedidiah’s eyes, his storm blue eyes, that captured every unspoken fantasy and brought them into daylight. He was so utterly masculine. It was overwhelming, in the best possible way.
“Captain Elliot?” she prompted.
“Am I challenging you?” he repeated, looking quite stern.
Her heart did a fluttery dance. “Why, Katherine, it was not a challenge at all. Merely an invitation. Do you accept?”
Yes!
She didn’t say that, naturally. She wanted to appear far more sophisticated and world-weary than that. She was near
ly certain that men preferred a mild level of ennui in their women, that giggling, gushing girls were for wedding nights and little else.
“I receive invitations often enough . . . Jedidiah,” she said, being so bold as to say his given name. “Challenges, however, are far more intriguing. However, as in this case the result will be the same, then, yes, I will accept your invitation.”
She’d done it! She’d arranged a brief affaire that would change her life forever. Of course, it did seem to her that women who regularly arranged for affaires did so with the expectation that it would not change their lives in any way at all.
This was a muddle. Now she wasn’t certain what she wanted to happen, though she was still entirely certain that she wanted it to happen with Jedidiah Elliot.
“Now?” he said, taking a step nearer.
They were still in the yellow drawing room, still facing the window into the back garden, still talking together as the other occupants of the room changed like the flow
in a tidal pool. She and Jedidiah were rocks in that pool, unmoving, unchanging. She allowed herself to believe that he wanted it that way, that he wanted them to remain alone and apart, for how else could it have happened? It had certainly never happened to her before, not in any gathering.
Jedidiah was the sort of man who could hold back the tide if he wished it; oh, not actually, but he did give off that sort of resolute force. It was a singular experience to be standing next to him, the sole focus of his attention.
What would it be like to share his bed?
She quivered just thinking it.
“Now?” she said. “Now what?”
“Now,” he said, taking another step.
He was truly standing too close. It was utterly inappropriate. Katherine backed up a step. Her heel skidded down the skirting board and her shoulder bumped against a small painting, sending it rocking.
“I want you now. I want to begin now. I want—”
“Jed,” a voice broke into Jedidiah’s list of wants.
Jedidiah turned from her, his eyes a smoky blue that made it difficult to breathe deeply. “Yes?”
“You’re needed. It’s Jane,” Lord Iveston said.
Oh. Right. Lord Iveston. This was his wedding breakfast. Jane was Iveston’s cousin, Jedidiah’s sister.
Katherine’s thoughts arrayed themselves woodenly and with a great deal of stubbornness in her mind. It helped when she looked toward Iveston and away from Jedidiah. The hard, crushing force of his expression as he looked at her one last time before striding across the room with Iveston at his side had been oceanic, like those great waves one heard about.
Poor Jane.
Lord Ruan gave each of the women a hard, searching glance, looked once at the closed door behind him, and then strode through the antechamber and into the music
room. The swell of noise as he pulled open the door washed over the women like a wave and then disappeared upon the closing of the door.
The moment he was gone, Louisa turned to Penelope and Amelia and said, “Did you hear anything?”
“Just mumbling,” Penelope said. “His voice, her voice, but no words. I’m not even positive it was Ruan and Sophia talking, but it seems a logical supposition.”
“I thought I heard her say fornication,” Amelia said. “It could have been fabrication, but—”
“Fornication makes more sense,” Louisa said, finishing the thought.
“There’s a bed in that room,” Penelope said, her dark brows lifting meaningfully.
“As if a bed is necessary,” Louisa scoffed.
“It does make it easier!” Penelope said.
“You were just married this morning, Penelope,” Amelia said. “Have you forgotten that?”
Penelope snapped her mouth closed and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Do you think she needs . . . help?” Amelia said.
Louisa shook her head, puzzled. “It doesn’t seem likely.
Sophia Dalby can manage any man she chooses to. Certainly Ruan didn’t look happy.”
“He’d look happy if they’d been fornicating,” Penelope said. When Amelia and Louisa looked at her, she added,
“Everyone knows that, married or not.”
“True,” Louisa said. “Even a man as jaded as Ruan would likely still have a happy aspect if he’d just been fornicating.
So, what were they doing in the gold bedchamber?”
“Talking, obviously,” Penelope said. “We could hear that much.”
“But what about? And Edenham had just left,” Amelia said. “You don’t suppose . . .” The three women looked at each other in various degrees of disbelief and disappointment.
“No, Edenham was for Jane!” Louisa said. “Sophia wouldn’t snatch Edenham up now, not when he was so besotted by Jane.”
“Perhaps she was jealous,” Penelope said, then shook her head firmly. “No, that’s not like her at all. Still, Edenham has had all day and he hasn’t managed to get any sort of declaration from Jane yet. Men are so slow about these things.”
“How very true. One would think they didn’t want to marry,” Amelia said.
“Oh, he’s had declarations from Jane,” Louisa said, “all in the negative. How long does it take to convince someone that the thing to do is marry? I had thought Edenham better than this. How did he ever acquire three wives with this sort of slipshod behavior?”
“He’s a duke, Louisa,” Penelope said. “There is hardly much more he needs to do than that.”
“Jane is requiring very much more of him, that’s certain,” Amelia said.
“Good for Jane,” Louisa said. “It will be only good for him. Dukes can be entirely too confident, can’t they?”
“And difficult,” Amelia said. As her father was a duke, she spoke with considerable authority.
“Jane shall manage him,” Penelope said. “She seems the sort of girl who can deal very sharply with a difficult man.”
It was upon those words that the door to the music room opened again and Lord Ruan once more strode through the antechamber. He nodded to them, but did nothing to recognize them beyond that.
Without ceremony, he opened the door to the gold bedchamber, leaned in, and said in a low voice, “Something’s gone amiss with Edenham, Sophia. Jane needs you.”
Sophia swept through the room like a dark mist, Ruan at her side. They seemed not at all angry with each other, yet gave no appearance of having recently fornicated. In fact, they seemed oddly united. It was all very confusing.
All but one bit. Jane had mismanaged Edenham and required Sophia’s aid in righting things. As Louisa and Amelia and Penelope had each required Sophia’s help in managing the right man to the altar, they had only one shared response.
Poor Jane.
Twenty-seven
The Hyde House music room was not the smallest room on the first floor of Hyde House, but it was the smallest truly public room. Of course the antechamber, gold bedchamber, and dressing room were smaller, but they were not open to the public for Lord Iveston’s wedding breakfast.
Not formally, anyway. It was becoming clear that the gold bedchamber, and to a far lesser degree, the antechamber had been made use of. By Jane. By Edenham. By Jane and Edenham together.
Molly, the Duchess of Hyde, gave every appearance of being violently displeased.
That the music room, a quite lovely room just recently done up in aqua damask wallpaper, and with a new harp with the most elegantly applied gilding holding pride of place near one of the front windows, was becoming a mass of seething, if well-dressed, humanity, was also contribut-ing to Molly’s nervousness.
No one knew quite how it happened, but there was an altercation in progress involving everyone in the Blakesley family, everyone in the Elliot family, and the Duke of Edenham and his heretofore very retiring sister. The Lords Penrith and Raithby, along with Mr. Prestwick, the brother of the bride, were standing with their well-tailored
backs against the fireplace wall, looking on avidly and, in Penrith’s case, a little sickly. It need not be overstated that anyone not in the above mentioned list who had been in the music room prior to the altercation could not be compelled to leave it now. Hardly that. No, in the place of a good, hearty breakfast a solidly entertaining brawl had been provided.
No one would have thought to complain.
“You are not going to marry Jane,” Jed said stiffly, “no matter what happened, but what did happen?”
“I don’t want to marry Jane,” Edenham said calmly.
“Having spent more time in her company, having shared a few intimacies with her, I find I’ve changed my mind about the whole thing.”
Jane gritted her teeth and said as quietly as she could,
“Don’t listen to him, Jed. He’s making it sound worse than it is simply because I’ve repeatedly explained to him that I don’t want him.”
Trust Edenham to turn everything on its head. She had just decided, by the barest particle, that he just might be slightly lovable, in a completely irritating manner, obviously, and he chose this moment to antagonize her brothers with what was an obvious bid to reclaim his negligible pride?
Edenham turned his gaze upon her and said softly, “Oh, you want me. We both know that. Why lie to your brothers? There’s no point to it. I’ve tasted what I want of you, and now I’m relinquishing you. You get what you want.
And I got what I want.”
“I’ve got a nice brace of pistols,” Henry said in an aside to Jed that could be heard throughout the room, “but they want oiling.”
“Pistols will not be necessary,” Jane said. “Nothing has happened. Nothing will happen. Not even if he begged me.”
Which, of course, he hadn’t, but it would have been a nice touch. He really should have tried begging. She might have listened.
“You aren’t listening, Libby dear,” Edenham said, coming closer to lift her chin with his fingertips. “I am not the one who will be found begging.”
Jed lunged forward and slapped Edenham’s hand aside.
Lady Richard gasped out an outraged sound and reached out to lay a hand upon Jed’s arm.
