“Poem,” someone shouted. The call echoed around the room.
“Dear God in heaven,” Giles prayed. “Please deliver me from this hell of my own creation.”
The others roared and stamped in approval. Charles Aubury took to the floor, his cheeks as flushed as a tart’s pudenda. Aubury flapped to subdue the noise and slowly unfolded a sheaf of papers. “The Honeybee” he announced.
My bee alights on gossamer wings, a lady’s things, to me she sings.
Upon the flower, this midnight hour, my stamen in her power.
Her quick and silver tongue, collecting dew, I am undone.
My nectar she needs, but honey to me feeds, no sweeter than her sting.
While the poem captivated most of the audience, Giles inched his way out of the room.
“Fortuna.” He scuttled across the hall and into the drawing room, taking care to close the door behind him. How long ago had he left her? Forty minutes, perhaps? An hour? She had her nose buried in his newspaper. Giles paused with his back to the door and took in the graceful lines of her body. Wisps of golden blonde hair framed the slender bones of her face, and fell like tendrils of honeysuckle across her back. Her skin smelled of honeysuckle too. She raised her head, and her smile lit her pale face.
“Have your guests departed?”
He crossed the room in a three strides and swept her up into his arms, so that her lithe slender body pressed close to his. Startled, she gasped at the embrace, then relaxed against him.
“I’m sorry. No they haven’t. But you need to go upstairs. We can’t risk somebody stumbling upon you in here.”
She blinked at him, before nodding. “Is the passage clear now?”
Giles led her to the door. He stuck his head into the hall. All his guests remained in the library, but he had made the mistake of leaving the door ajar. “Quickly,” he prompted.
Heedless of their footsteps on the creaking stairs, Giles hurried them upwards. At the top they jerked in opposite directions, Fortuna towards the guest room, and he towards the master bedroom.
“My room.” He tugged her right. “No one will attempt to enter there without permission.”
Her smooth brow immediately crumpled. “Do your guests routinely come upstairs?” Wariness washed further hint of blue across her irises. “Has someone come seeking me?” she asked nervously.
“No, no, Fortuna.” He squeezed her hand tight. “It’s not that. It’s simply that there are rather a lot of people here. I’d completely forgotten, but I am hosting a poetry recital today.”
He couldn’t tell if she doubted him. Truthfully, he had no wish to lie; he only wished he had time to properly explain.
Free love—love without restriction. Not sex without restriction. Most of his ‘guests’ failed to comprehend the difference, but she would understand, assuming he could keep her out of sight. The failure of his friends to perceive the difference generally meant these meetings ploughed to the depths of orgiastic devilment once the political talk was done.
“Dovecote. Where are you hiding, man?” Oxbury’s deep voice rumbled up the wide staircase. “Show yourself. I’ve a nice leg o’mutton here and I thought you might like a bite.”
“Poetry?” Fortuna mouthed, but despite the lack of sound, her disbelief rang in his ears. “This is no recital. You’ve a whore awaiting your pleasure.”
“No, Fortuna. I swear it.”
“Liar!” Pain streaked her expression. She drew her hand from his and crossed her arms across her chest. He wanted to explain, but there was no time. Oxbury’s footsteps thudded upon the stairs. Giles bustled her into his room. He shut the door between them and turned the key in the lock. He winced at her shriek of outrage, but hurried towards the landing, reaching Oxbury as he mounted the top step. “There you are, sir.” Oxbury clapped a pudgy hand upon his shoulder. “Miss Rosie’s awaiting.”
Giles glanced back at the solid white wood of the door of his bedchamber, seeing Fortuna’s image as if it were burned into the paintwork. Disappointment shone in her unbearably blue eyes, and in the vexed press of her pink lips. He tore Oxbury’s hand from his shoulder. “I am not interested in your whores. The aim of this society is to pursue the ideals of free love, emphasis on love. It is not an excuse for an orgy.”
Instead of backing away, Oxbury foolishly stood his ground. He gave Giles a toothy grin. “Aye, of course it is, lad. We all know that.”
Giles clenched his fists so hard his knuckles throbbed. Several other faces appeared upon the stairs, seemingly drawn by their voices.
“Whatever is going on?” asked Edward Littleton. He propped his elbow on the top of the banister and beamed at them from beneath his mop of brown curls, clearly intrigued.
“Nothing much. Dovecote here’s just feeling a little addled. Seems we’re only supposed to talk about sowing our wild oats, not actually do it.”
Several guffaws of laughter echoed around the stairwell.
“Is that truly what you think?” Littleton asked, peering slyly at Giles. “We’ve always celebrated the things we advocate up until now. Damn me if that’s not the whole point. If I want a debate I can sit in the Commons.”
“I’ve said it before,” said Giles, wondering how it was he came to be friends with these rogues, “paying a bunch of whores to serve you is not free love.”
“It is if you don’t pay ‘em,” quipped Oxbury.
Giles smashed his fist into the man’s face, sending the man spinning towards the banister. Littleton caught him. The pair gaped at him in astonishment.
“I say, Giles. That was rather uncalled for.”
Giles massaged his bruised knuckles. “Get out. All of you leave my house now.”
“Giles,” soothed Littleton.
“Leach,” Giles yelled, bringing his valet running. “Show these gentlemen the door.”
“We’ll vote on your membership,” snarled Oxbury into the handkerchief he had pressed to his nose. “Don’t expect to be accepted among us again.” He turned and, shielded by Littleton, made his way down the staircase. “I believe it is time for a change of venue,” he said to the onlookers in the hall. “We’ll adjourn to Littleton’s. Dovecote’s lost his mind.”
* * * * *
“Finally.” Fortuna, roused from lethargy by the sound of the key turning in the lock, positioned herself on the end of Giles’s canopied bed. Hands in her lap and feet pressed together, she faced him primly. Her anger, which had subsided over the length of her confinement, surged again on seeing his face.
“Is your orgy over?” she snapped.
Giles folded his arms and rested his bottom against the back of the door. “They left over an hour ago.”
She’d expected a denial, or some form of wheedling from him, nothing quite so straightforward.
“Did I mean nothing to you? I know I shouldn’t expect anything of you, but I thought the pleasure you showed me meant something. But then you ran straight into the arms of a whore.”
“Fortuna, it did mean something.” The floorboards creaked as he moved towards her. “I couldn’t explain earlier. If Oxbury or Littleton had found you...” He shook his head. “That thing...gathering, was not an orgy. I didn’t embrace any whores. It was a meeting of the Society of Free Lovers. If they’d seen you here, they’d have assumed you intended to be part of it.” He stretched out a hand towards her, but didn’t touch her yet. “Some of them stop listening when a pretty girl is within their grasp. Having them find you here would have put you at risk of far more terrible things than their simply revealing your presence to your family or Macleane.”
She stood. Vexation made her nose tingle. When he’d first shut her in here, she’d wanted to rage, but hadn’t dared make any noise after her first yelp of outrage. Now all that pent up anger needed an outlet. “Yet you call such men your friends. What kind of man are you?”
“They’re acquaintances, not friends. And the Society was never supposed to be what it turned into. They’ve distorted it.”
/> Fortuna read sincerity in his face, and now within touching distance, the musky scent of his body teased her senses. She realized to her chagrin that she wanted to forgive him, just accept him as he was, and forget the past two hours, but how could she? Did she even dare trust him? He’d locked her in here.
She clenched her fists, but the desire to lash out had vanished. “Very well.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’ll hear you out. Explain what this Society of Free Love is supposed to be about, if it’s not just a love of fornication.”
“Thank you.” Giles perched on the end of the bed, on top of the swathe of blue damask. Fortuna also resumed her seat, but kept a good distance between them. She wasn’t ready to accept his touch yet.
“It’s as it sounds,” he said, fidgeting with the tassel on the bedspread. “The idea is that one’s ability to love isn’t restricted by society’s skewed morals and values. We grant ourselves the freedom to explore the affections we feel without unnecessary guilt for the consequences. We eschew all marriage, because it’s absurd to bind yourself to one partner for life, and because all marriage is slavery anyway.”
Fortuna frowned. That was the second time he’d expressed that opinion. “Slavery?”
“Yes, especially for women. You bind yourselves to a man, who can then do with you as he pleases. People should make love because they desire one another, not because the man is invoking his conjugal rights.”
“Yes, but...” She blinked, certain she ought to contradict his claims—he was blackening the very foundations of society—but quite at a loss over what to say that wouldn’t make it sound as though she cherished the idea of being bought and sold and ruled over by a series of tyrants .
“Fortuna, marriage is all about virtue, about women as possessions. Wouldn’t you rather be a whole person, responsible for yourself, than the asset of some fool husband?”
“I don’t see how these things go together.”
Giles clasped his hand before him and tapped his thumbs to his lips. “All right, tell me this. Why should I find a woman any less desirable as a companion because she’s no longer a virgin? Laying aside the issues of disease and such like.”
“Because...” She paused, fishing for words.
“Because some pious vicar says so, or the matrons at Almack’s? There’s no reason for it.” He splayed his palms, punctuating the assertions with jabs of his fingers. “It’s just to keep you in your place as a plaything.”
“But I still don’t understand how that relates to loving freely.”
He clasped her shoulders, tugged her up off the bed, onto her feet. “What would happen now if I were to kiss you and your mama walked in?”
“Merry hell, I should think.”
“She’d expect a proposal. But that’s ridiculous. You might think I’m the most awful kisser imaginable, and that you never want me to touch you again. You might think a similar thing if we were found in bed together.”
“Yes—s,” she said cautiously.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we could simply say we’re not suited and each find someone else, without it carrying any slights to our characters?”
“I suppose.”
His frown deepened, and she realized she sounded dubious.
“I say we should abandon the whole concept of wives and mistresses, and allow people to love freely instead. Let them bond to one another for as long as their mutual affection lasts, whether that’s the length of a lifetime or just one night.”
“So in your opinion we should all engage in sexual acts with whomever we choose, whether that be the prime minister or the boot boy, and that I should be entitled to kiss all the rakehells of the ton and not be thought any less of for it?”
“I might baulk at the boot boy, but in essence, yes.”
Mirth rumbled in her throat. She pressed her fingers to her lips but failed to stop herself loosing the explosive laugh. “Giles, that would never work. You’d simply make whores of all women. Men have all the power and money in the world. We’re dependant. Maybe if all were truly equal.” She shook her head.
His eyes downcast he turned away from her and strode across the room to where an oriental lacquered chest stood against one wall. He scratched at his neck. “Of course I don’t expect everything to change over night.”
Fortuna cautiously followed him, drawn by his idealism. What he was suggesting was alien to everything she’d ever been taught. It was a vision of utopia, one that would never exist.
She reached his side and curled her hand over his where it worked at the tension in his neck, and rubbed a little, loving him for his desire to have love and happiness for all. His shoulders stayed raised even as she worked her thumbs into the muscle.
“Giles, why didn’t you come straight up after your guests had left?”
“They didn’t leave. I had them thrown out.”
Fortuna slid her hands down his back to his waist. She thought of fanning her fingers across his bottom, but that seemed overly forward. How could she justify touching him, when she’d just repudiated his beliefs? And how did she feel about earlier, knowing that while he’d grant her his affections, they would never amount to anything more formal?
Of course, he’d never promised that. He’d only offered her protection and an adventure.
She noticed his hand clenched into a fist, and uncurled his fingers. The knuckles were mottled with blue and brown bruises, from where he’d punched the urn last night.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but I just don’t see things in quite the way that you do.”
Giles turned her around, so that her back pressed to his warm torso and they faced the window that overlooked his snow-covered garden. “I’m asking too much. I know it. It’s a lot to comprehend. I just wanted you to understand how I see things.”
Fortuna nodded. She knew what he was saying. He wasn’t the settling down type. She mustn’t let herself think he was offering anything permanent. As such, it would be wise not to fall too much in love with him. His passions might be intense but fleeting, but she wasn’t so sure about hers.
Chapter Five
Giles had held her, overlooking the garden, for a long time the previous night, but there’d been no deeper show of affection between them. They’d eaten dinner early, and then he’d read to her for a while, something about the rights of women. How crazy we are, she’d thought, as she’d lain awake in bed, hoping he’d come to her. We want each other, and yet we’re apart. She fell asleep with her hand pressed to her puss and the memory of his touch sharp in her mind.
“Where’s Mr. Dovecote?” she asked his servant the next morning, when Giles failed to show for breakfast.
“Taking his customary turn about the park, Miss. He doesn’t want no one suspecting that he’s harbouring you.”
Ah! “Oh! Of course.”
When two o’ clock came and went, and Giles still hadn’t returned, Leach provided her with short boots and a woollen pelisse and ushered her into the walled garden. “You can pace out there, Miss. He’ll be back before long. Nothing will have happened to him. He’s not generally home much during the day.”
Outside the frosty air stung her cheeks. Already, the daylight had begun to fade, leaving the sky a muggy shade of grey.
Fortuna crossed the square lawn and headed beneath the archway cut into the towering rhododendron hedge. She’d been out twenty minutes and her fingers and ears were turning numb, when a voice startled her from her thoughts of home and husbands.
“Miss Allenthorpe.”
Fortuna shielded her eyes and peered back towards the house. A man, not Giles, was jogging towards her. His hat slipped off, half way across the lawn, revealing a flash of vivid-red hair. Neddy Darleston skidded onto one knee before her. He seized her hand and raised her icy fingers to his lips. “Good afternoon.”
“Mr. Darleston.” A lick of heat spread across her icy cheeks at the attention. “Have you brought me some news?”
Neddy rose and laying her arm upon his sleeve,
tucked her close to his side. “Just expressing my relief at finding you so well.”
Fortuna blinked at him, finding it difficult to look at him and not imagine him sprawled before the drawing room fire, as she’d seen him last: muscled, naked and perfect.
“Why, if your mama and sisters were to be believed, you’re virtually at death’s door, having succumbed to the most terrible sore throat.” He grinned. “In short, I regret to inform you that not only has your absence gone unrecorded, your reputation is also safe.”
She didn’t want her reputation to be safe. “They are claiming I’m ill.”
Neddy squeezed her hand where it lay upon his sleeve. “I believe one or two other families have used that ploy before. A disobedient daughter doesn’t show the family in terribly good light, you know, and you do have rather a lot of sisters for your parents to auction off.”
“Yes, but I want Sir Hector to think I’m ruined.”
“I concede that is a problem. Of course, your family are probably expecting you to turn up again at some point as Mrs. Something or other.”
There was sense in that. They probably did think she’d eloped, not just run off to save herself from Sir Hector. Her family had never been able to see that she hated him because he was vile, not because she wanted someone else. “Actually, I ran away to escape marriage, not to make one.”
Neddy patted her arm, his customary easy grin plastered across his face. “How very wise. I’ve never much fancied the matrimonial coif myself.” He squeezed her tight as they strolled on a little further, following the high boundary wall, over a lumpen rockery, to a set of trellising hung with the remnants of last years’ peas.
“Giles isn’t much of a gardener,” Neddy observed, as he plucked one of the blackened shrivelled pods from the stalk. He balanced it above his lip like a moustache, making her laugh. “Do you know what I think this garden needs?”
Three Times the Scandal (Georgian Rakehells) Page 8
