by Cari Hislop
“Sébastien is my middle name. Call me John.”
“I’d rather call you Smirkie. It’s a term of endearment like Johnny only not so dull…”
“You will address me as either John or Mr Smirke and that’s final.”
Joan’s heart shrank from the unloving despotic tone. “How can you be horrid when you nearly lost me forever this morning? If I hadn’t shoved my fingers up Neilson’s nose and he hadn’t forgotten to lock me in you wouldn’t have a wife. He’d have kept me his prisoner until I agreed to worship him, the great ugly brute.”
“I didn’t lose you, you were momentarily misplaced. And if you’d let Frederick tell Neilson’s servant to go to hell you wouldn’t have ended up in The Hell-hole needing to be rescued by the devil. Next time…why aren’t you touching me? Joan, why aren’t you looking at me?” Joan sat up straight and majestically ignored the beautiful man suddenly pressing a fervent cheek to her bosom. “Joan, my lark, don’t be angry with me it makes my chest ache worse than hell…Joan…”
Joan sighed loudly and continued to look over his head, “What should I do this afternoon? I could go down to the kitchens and make my new Mamma some biscuits. She did say she was leaving in the morning. She might get hungry on her travels.”
“Joan, please look at me and tell me you think I’m beautiful…”
“I shall miss my new Mamma. She…is never horrid.”
John groaned as his heart threatened to burst from the pain, “I’m sorry I was horrid.” John’s groans turned into tears as his beloved remained silent. “Talk to me…Joan, my heart is dying.”
“That’s how I feel when you’re horrid.”
“Don’t punish me just because I hate being called Smirkie. I wasn’t trying to horrid.” John trailed teary kisses up to her ear, “You can call me anything, anything but Smirkie.”
“Very well, I’ll call you Valentine because I love you and I’ve never had a valentine.”
John jerked back and stared at his wife in horror, “Valentine? No! You can’t call me that.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with Valentine? It’s romantic…it’s…”
“It’s the title of a drunken Galahad who thinks he’s Don Juan.”
“What’s a dawn wan? Are you sure you don’t mean a wan Don?”
“Don Juan is the name of some dead cavalier who fathered half of Spain.”
“Dawn Wan…it brings to mind a pale winter sunrise shot through with crimson and gold. I shall call you Dawn Wan and imagine that you’re a Spanish villain…how would a Spanish villain say I love you?”
“How the devil should I know? I’m not Spanish…”
“I love you Dawn Wan.”
“I absolutely forbid you to call me Don Juan.” John’s lower lip trembled as he imagined the whole of London laughing. “Forget I mentioned the poxy libertine. My name is not Jean, Juan or Johann no matter what my mother calls me. My name is John. I don’t want to be laughed at.”
“I didn’t mean to make you cry Smirkie. I’m sorry I upset you. I’ll call you John Wan.”
“No. I beg you…no Juans. Please, please just call me John.”
“I know…I’ll call you Fragonard because you make me feel like I’m in a painting and you are half French which I find very exciting. It’s almost like being captured by the enemy, except I don’t think you’d chop off the King’s head. But there’s a possibility that any moment you might do something wild, something exciting, something French…what’s wrong Smirkie?” John slid off the window seat onto his knees and pressed his frustration into his wife’s skirt. “Oh Smirkie, I won’t call you Fragonard if it makes you cry, even if it does make your black eyes shimmer like polished obsidian.” Joan suddenly shivered as the temperature dropped, “It’s getting cold in here; I need a kiss.”
The hair stood up on the back of John’s neck as he remembered locked doors could only keep out the living. “John Sebastian; if I were you I’d just be grateful she doesn’t want to call you Eliphalet and keep in mind that if you lose Joan’s love you’ll probably end up Don Juan’s neighbour. Take my word, that’s a highly undesirable end. He’s been weeping and wailing so long he’s forgotten any social niceties.” John leapt to his feet and turned around to find his Probationary Agent lying on the bed, his arms crossed under his neck. “My wife calls me Don Juan when she wants…”
“Get off my bed.”
“The ghost is on our bed? Smirkie, I refuse to share my marriage bed with some dead man…is he even English? Where was he born?”
“Who cares where the dead wretch was born?”
“I was born in Ditchley, Oxfordshire. It’s a magical little corner of the…”
“I don’t care where you were spawned, get off my bed.”
“Where was he born?”
“Oxfordshire.”
“Really? My mother was born in Oxfordshire…ask him if he knows my mother.”
“How would he know your mother?”
“He might have met her at a ball or in the park or…”
“The dead don’t go to balls or saunter around parks in the latest fashions.”
The Probationary Agent flung his long legs over the side of the bed, “Not where you’re going John Sebastian if you keep talking to your wife in that vile tone. I was allowed to attend a ball just last night. I enjoyed it immensely, even if I did have to wait to dance with my wife. There’s nothing worse than watching the woman one adores laughing in the arms of a better man.”
John clenched his fists, “Get your dead derrière off my bed.”
“Ask him if he’s seen my mother in heaven.”
Agent 1680 stood up and tipped back his wide brimmed hat, “I doubt Lady Pelham will end up in heaven, though I’m not technically qualified to judge.”
“Lady Pelham?” John’s head jerked towards his pretty smiling wife whose wide cornflower eyes looked into his soul with a suddenly familiar gaze. “You’re not telling me that…?
Joan tipped her head to the side, “Whose Lady Pelham?” John tried to breathe as his mind filled with an awful thought. He’d worshiped the married Lady Pelham’s charms his first season. What if his wife was his daughter? Pain tore through his chest. Could he have fallen in love with his own offspring?
“Calm yourself John Sebastian; you’re not old enough to be Joan’s father by Lady Pelham. The Reverend Lark fell in love with his employer’s wife while he was tutoring the eldest son. When she gave birth eight months after the beginning of their affaire she told him the child was his. She procured him a good living in Bath and forced Lark to take Joan as his own, but of course Lark knew he wasn’t the father. Anyone with eyes can see she’s a Grayson, not that she takes after her father. Unless he’s an idiot, Lyndhurst must suspect she’s his daughter. Why else did he refer to himself as Devil-father?”
“Smirkie? Why do you look so horrified? Is my mother in hell?”
John’s head snapped back towards his wife, his mouth hanging open. The agent was right; Joan was almost a typical blonde female Grayson except she was of slighter more delicate build, her hair was lighter and her eyes were cornflower instead of sky blue. John clenched his teeth at the smiling dead man, “Hell! My life is hell…did you have to tell me? Did you? Lyndhurst? I hate Lyndhurst. He’s…he’s ugly.”
“You’re not the only one who hates him. Why do you think you were chosen to be Joan’s guardian?”
“Obviously because that hypocrite, Lark, wanted me to suffer.”
“Lady Pelham chose you.”
“Why? Why me?”
“Imagine Lyndhurst’s feelings on learning he has a daughter in your power. If I was the man I’d be ill.”
“Smirkie? What is he saying about Mr Lyndhurst?” Joan pressed her cheek to John’s heaving chest. “You look pale Smirkie; shall I fetch the smelling salts? Is the dead man being horrid?” Large adoring eyes made John’s innards hum with sweet pleasure as he wrapped her in his arms and pulled her close.
John snarled at the smiling agent, “Wh
o cares what Lyndhurst feels, she’s mine.”
“You underestimate your ugly father-in-law. Don’t be shocked when he shows up on your doorstep with his mother in tow. Joan will want to be a part of his family. You’ll be the fly in the ointment, the grit in the oyster, the eyelash that has fallen into the eye and can’t be found. Lady Pelham is a fiendishly clever woman.”
John’s eyes went wide with indignation, “Are you saying Lady Pelham planned all along to use me as some sort of irritant?”
“Personally, I’d find your wife sufficiently irritating…”
“How dare you insult my wife?”
“What is he saying? Tell me. Who is Lady Pelham?”
“She’s a heartless slut who lost interest in me when she discovered I wasn’t a virgin. I was naked with a woman used by Lyndhurst? Yuck. Thank goodness Peter bought me those shields.”
“I don’t care who shared Lady Pelham’s bed, is my mother in heaven or hell?”
John gingerly sat down next to Joan. “How should he know where your mother is?”
“She’s in Bath taking the waters. It was a miracle you didn’t run into her the other day.”
“Blast it, why did you have to tell me that? Go away; you’re ruining my wedding day.”
“Why did he have to tell you what?”
John put a possessive arm around his wife’s waist and sighed, “Your mother’s in Bath.”
“Where else would Father bury her? Do you think she attended my wedding?”
“At least one of your parents was there, now can we forget the poxy past? I need my wife.”
An exquisite dose of pleasure coursed through John’s veins as the buttons on his red dressing gown fell prey to his wife’s eager fingers. “If you were any more beautiful Smirkie, I’d think I was in heaven.” Joan blushed as she untied John’s cravat and carefully unwound it from his neck before attending the two buttons on his shirt collar. “Has the dead man left the room?”
“Who cares?” John’s lopsided grin lit up black eyes as his wife pulled his robe open, wrapped her arms around his chest and warmed her lips on his naked neck. “This is Heaven.”
Agent 1680 smiled with satisfaction as he pulled his hat down over one eye. The lovers on the steaming window seat were entangled in a close embrace, lost in a passionate kiss. Turning away, he headed for the door. His next assignment was going to require more finesse and patience. Peter Augustus Smirke, the widowed Viscount Adderbury, was a deeply private man who found comfort in thinking his despair at finding love a second time was a secret known only to his broken heart.
