For while the others were maybe too far away or too busy conversing, she had heard the cryptic words that Mr. Burnell had spoken to Edward and which seemed to say all that Edward needed to hear, “He has landed.”
Who had landed? She wondered just as she realized that Lady Georgina had spoken to her.
“Forgive me. I’m afraid I was distracted my lady,” she smiled.
“Oh no apologies,” Georgina laughed and fluttered her fan, “That kind of distraction I readily forgive. Why even after ten years of marriage, it’s embarrassing to admit, but Robert can still distract me in exactly the same way.”
Jessy smiled again, but felt a twinge of guilt. Georgina believed Jessy was admiring Edward, when she had really only been interested in the scent of mystery and excitement she had caught.
“We are going on to the Beltram rout shortly. Care to join us? I wouldn’t want Edward to think I didn’t look after you, and I would love the company.”
“Actually I had turned down an invitation since Edward and I were attending this ball. You know he doesn’t usually care for more than one event an evening. Mrs. Whittier and some of her friends have asked me to accompany them tonight. If you won’t think me rude, I believe I will join them after all.” And she would go, Jessy thought, despite the fact that where they were going was not exactly what Edward or Lady Georgina would approve. She caught the faint moue of disapproval Lady Georgina made at the mention of Mrs. Whittier but shrugged it off. The chances Georgina would be her sister-in-law were fading fast so she might as well stop worrying about courting her favor so assiduously.
“If that will make you happy my dear. Remember to take Edward’s carriage; I like to know you are safe. I forget how young you are sometimes, I used to enjoy the company of a faster set myself in my youth,” she sighed. “My lady,” Jessy laughed, “You are barely a handful of years older than me! Don’t speak as if you were in your dotage. I see no decrease in the number of admirers you gather everywhere you go! You are still the reigning beauty of London.”
“Do you have a mirror? I believe I have passed that torch on now,” she frowned in exaggerated anger at Jessamy and everyone laughed politely. “Well, enjoy the last days of your freedom young lady, for if Edward and I have any say in it, you shall be leg shackled before the season is over,” she whispered quietly and slyly as she rose and took the arm of Colonel Leigh.
Jessy stood for a moment marooned at the edge of the room. However would that dear lady feel towards her when she told Edward once and for all that she could not marry him? They had played such an instrumental role in seeing her overcome the stigma attached to being an actress. Tamworth’s suit had become an open secret in London and the gentlemen’s clubs had all laid heavy odds on her accepting. What sane woman would not? This one, she thought rather despairingly. Maybe she wasn’t sane at all. She would be further proving her lack of sense by going with Mrs. Whittier’s set to Bridge House. She knew she shouldn’t but, she was going anyway.
So far she had not been caught out nor done anything that could come back and tarnish her reputation. Sean insisted it was only a matter of time, and he was surely right. David had one great row with her about it and since then had refused to speak of it anymore. The strain of trying so hard to be so correct, so ladylike and to suppress the devil in her had just become too much. She thought of these nights out as a way to release some of the pressure before she burst. For years now her life had been a tight rope walking act and she was heartily tired of it.
Maybe she would be happier to be like the other women she worked with and give up this life trying to pursue complete respectability. Did it really suit her? And did she really need to live up to the standards of the ton? Life did exist outside these rarified circles.
But who was she trying to fool? How often had she felt as if her mother’s ghost was present? Each time she had almost crossed the line, such as when Viscount Darlington had made her first offer of a carte blanche when she had so little and was struggling, there was the shade of her mother. She could not betray her mother and her blood to become a high class whore. No matter that she didn’t think less of her fellow actresses who did do it, she couldn’t do it. She could live with relative respectability outside of society. She had her own house, her own career, true friends, but then she hadn’t worked to be accepted in society all these years just for herself.
Jessy spied Mrs. Whittier walking from the supper room with her usual horde of admirers surrounding her. Rakes, Corinthians, and a few dandies in outrageous colors, vying for her attention. She was a willowy, raven haired beauty who exuded sexual allure as naturally as breathing. It was said that
Byron himself had been love sick for her and that she would have nothing to do with him. “Mad as a hatter and more trouble than he is worth. Now if the man had a dime of his own he might be worth a week or two, but surely no more than that!” she was reported to have said of the infamous poet.
It sounded just like Ellen. Byron, of course, had not been pleased at the characterization or rejection. Ellen did no more than shrug him off. Ellen Whittier always did exactly as she pleased, but that was her prerogative being married to a man rich as Croesus and needing the approval of no one.
As Jessy made her way down the steps and to the coach she couldn’t shake a feeling between her shoulder blades that eyes were following her. It was a prickle of awareness, but seemingly without source as when she turned she could not spot anyone overtly staring at her. She was used to people looking at her, but this felt different and it made her uneasy.
Sebastian had walked from David’s lodging to Grosvenor Square working himself up to an apology. Strategically he knew he was supposed to continue his character of worthless nobleman but the need to find Jessy and apologize overrode all else. After unburdening himself to his friend, David had agreed he needed to try and set things right as soon as possible. It was highly probable the Duke would propose again tonight. David clearly told Sebastian if he had any idea at all of attempting to court Jessy he needed to stop that from happening. When he complained he wasn’t sure he had any future aspirations regarding Jessamy Powers, David had simply stared at him like he had lost his mind and started laughing like a loon.
So, here he was making his way toward the woman who had just earlier made him angry enough to throttle her. He sighed with resentment, why did life have to be so damned complicated? He was a grown man now, but still found she made him want to pull her hair one second and kiss her the next. The thought of hair pulling and kissing put a smile on his long lips. Maybe their childhood play had been nothing more than a prelude to passion.
Turning into the square he saw Tamworth practically leap unto a horse held waiting for him. It was highly odd to see a gentleman in evening wear riding off on a horse with such urgency. No doubt in Sebastian’s mind what the scene meant, but for now he was not in play and his time was his own, at least for tonight. Based on Tamworth’s hurry Sebastian could probably expect this to be his last night to be free to do as he pleased. Tamworth might also not have had time to propose yet again; hopefully. This could actually be an opportunity for a clear field.
He continued up the street toward the brightly lit mansion only to see a coach pull up and Jessy come down the steps. He stopped and leaned against the rail of a neighboring house to watch her. He saw her turnabout and look around her curiously and he knew she had felt him watching her. She didn’t see him and so he was free to follow her with his eyes. She was even more of a feast for the eyes than he had remembered. She had been lovely as a coltish girl but as a woman she was stunning and clearly aristocratic. He had been a simpleton to treat her as anything other than the lady she was. There had always been a sense of imperious self-confidence about her even when up to her knees in mud digging mussels or with a fishing pole in her hand.
He discerned the coat of arms on the coach and suddenly wanted to haul her out. It was a definite feeling of possessiveness and something much worse; he wanted to deny it w
as jealousy but the green eyed monster was roaring. He had rushed here from David’s house intent on speaking with her. Did he follow her or not? Where was she going on her own in that coach when the Duke was obviously off on some pressing business? Was she going home? Should he follow her there or wait until tomorrow? Not knowing when he would have this chance to speak with her again he decided to follow. “You fellow!” he approached a footman. “Where is that coach headed?”
The footman looked a bit furtive and strangely reticent. Sebastian held out a crown and repeated his question. The footman’s eyes nearly popped at the largesse and he glanced about again before speaking.
“The lady is heading to Bridge House milord,” he said as if the words were being dragged from him and were barely audible.
“The devil you say!” he couldn’t contain his surprise. He didn’t believe that place had changed much over the years so just what the bloody hell was she doing going there?
“Get me a hackney fellow, quickly!” he ordered.
“Yes milord, right away!” and the young man bounded off to call one. It arrived almost immediately and Sebastian was rattling away in pursuit.
“If you believe in devils,” a more senior footman pronounced quietly, “I’d say one was after Mrs. Powers as we speak. God help the sweet lady!”
Sebastian found himself in a black introspection as the coach headed closer to the river. He had spilled all the unpleasant truth to David, even the parts the Foreign Office would not want anyone outside their secretive circles to know. It had been painful not to mention embarrassing at certain points. As much as he had shared with David, David had also been highly informative in his own right.
David had made him realize there was much he had not known, much that he had not really considered. She had given, he had taken, and when he had finally got the nerve to do what he had thought the right thing, he had been stopped; forcibly. He hadn’t been good enough for her then, he knew that now, but the last years had changed him deeply, and he hoped, for the better.
It was a miracle she had not only survived, but prospered. Questions remained as to why she felt impelled to run away like that, but he had every intention of finding out. Had his mother confronted her? Threatened to reveal she was no longer a virgin? He could only be grateful she had people like David and the Powers family to act as her guardian angels. That didn’t mean if
Michael Powers were alive he wouldn’t want to wring his neck. The thought of her carrying another man’s name made him ill and he refused to think of another man’s hands on her, no matter how good that man might have been.
All these years he allowed himself to be twisted against her by his own guilt and the lying words of the one person he knew never to trust. It had been too easy to try and wash away love with reckless behavior and bitter arrogance. Not that such knowledge would make a difference now. He should have found a way to get back to her. He had tried once and then given up. David had made the point that both Sebastian and Jessy had done what they needed to survive these last years. What mattered was what they did from here. It was not going to be easy to convince Jessamy to trust him again. He had no idea how to reconcile what he needed and what he was here to do, but Tamworth’s suit made it imperative he win her back before it was too late.
He had made a career of being bad, licentious and self-serving. It was a hard habit to break, an identity not easy to separate from who he might be if given a chance. Jessy had seen what he was beneath and trusted him not to hurt her. She had shown absolute faith in him but, he almost destroyed her. He then had the temerity to blame her for supposedly becoming a courtesan, marrying another man, and not waiting like some nun in her father’s house for the day he would return. She wasn’t a princess in some damn dragon guarded tower waiting to be rescued. Jessy was more the type to grab a sword and slay the dragon herself.
He was a hypocrite and it was a bitter pill to swallow. He had hated her for supposedly doing pretty much what he had been doing; the essence of hypocrisy. Yes, he had amends to make, scores to settle and duties to take up. He knew he would never be quite the kind of man that David was, but he didn’t have to be a total cretin either. He just needed an opportunity to talk to her and then, hopefully, a further chance to prove to her he was the man she had believed he could be, the man he realized he desperately wanted to be.
Jessy was unaware as she rode toward Bridge House that she wasn’t getting rid of Sebastian St. Just. He just hoped the series of events that had brought him home would not take him away again before he had the time to follow through on winning her back. Tamworth’s sudden departure told him that the king had arrived on England’s shores and he knew that meant his work was about to begin.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Still pondering Edward’s sudden departure, Jessy rode through the dark and foggy night to Bridge House. Where in the world Edward could have run off to at this hour, and exactly who had landed, did not distract her long. Tamworth was highly placed in the Foreign Office, and she knew it was unlikely she would ever find out what he had been called to do or who he was meeting. It was best not to be interested when she was sure to never receive any answers. It was only a way to pretend Sebastian was not filling her head with his presence, his scent and his touch.
What she was currently doing did not fail to strike her as idiotic. The growing restlessness that had begun to nag her for the past year would not be satiated by drinking, gambling and dancing. She certainly didn’t even want to consider that Sebastian was the answer. Once, he had been the center of her universe, the answer to every question in her life, her future. She couldn’t afford to allow that to happen to her again. Drowning herself in the slightly wicked pleasures of Bridge House would have to be distraction enough tonight.
Tomorrow, she vowed, she would do her damnedest to not think of him at all.
A part of her relished the freedom, the total lack of constraint that characterized this world versus the one she had left only moments ago. There had always been a wildness in her and it chafed against the rigid and demanding structure of society. Life in the countryside with doting parents, who didn’t raise her terribly conventionally, had offered her a life that was entirely without the constraints that existed in London. She had often thought that if mama had lived, and she had been brought for a Season, she wouldn’t have enjoyed it. The white gowned, simpering, coquettes of the Marriage Mart, and the ungodly strictures that ruled their behavior, was nothing but a way to leave one gilded cage for another.
These excursions were a pale and potentially dangerous substitute for her more youthful freedoms. But she knew if she didn’t have some outlet she would burst with the demands that her life placed on her. Demands she would not wish away, but confused and exhausted her all the same. Tonight she wanted to just be distracted and stop thinking about the decisions weighing her down. She wanted to not think about Sebastian St. Just.
Bridge House was certainly not the worst of the haunts frequented by either of her worlds, but nor was it strictly an acceptable establishment for her to visit when she had marks already against her. It was a place where both her worlds melded together. Owned and run by a woman who had once been the very notorious mistress of a duke, it was a gathering place for the rakes, the high flyers, the bored aristocracy, the merry widows and racy wives of wealth.
Everyone went masked, which only added to the allure, and provided a license for looser behavior. It also allowed everyone to conveniently not recognize one another.
Jessy adjusted her black silk mask and the domino which covered her golden dress. Of course she was still recognizable, but by the code of the house, everyone would pretend otherwise. She felt the little frisson of excitement that her monthly visits elicited and a sense of recklessness. She was feeling decidedly rebellious. Between the scene with Sebastian and her (not unrelated) decision that she would not accept Tamworth, she felt dangerously close to the edge.
Feelings, sensations she had almost forgotten she possessed
had coursed to life again. She had forgotten the intoxication of feeling hot blood beating under sensitive skin, of all her most delicate and secret places blooming to life at a touch, a look. No number of masked flirtations or turns at faro could produce that level of excitement. Is that what drove all this? She wondered. Was her restlessness a product of having known such extreme physical and emotional sensations and then been deprived of them?
For a long while she had feared that what she had known, had felt with Sebastian would haunt her entire life. It was too easy to be addicted, to crave that experience. She knew people, men, who had come back from Waterloo injured and found themselves addicted to opium. She knew the stories of
Caroline Lamb and the obsessive love that drove her mad over Byron. That poor woman had lost all sense of self, and dignity, in the compulsion that drove her. Love, lust, opium or alcohol could all be unbreakable addictions.
There had been a time when she couldn’t get through an entire day without his touch and the sound of his voice. Joy at time spent with him would swing her so high she was transported, only to be followed by despairing lows when he was gone for so much as a day. It had taken years to reach a place in her life where he wasn’t her center, where she could think about him and not want to violently break something. The pain had been unspeakable to have to do without him, and worse to know he hadn’t felt the same when he abandoned her. Living without him she had felt cleaved through the heart and soul. The rare times when the numb fog of misery had taken over were welcomed. Now he was back and so was the urge to smash her hand through the carriage window.
His touch tonight had confirmed for her fears. How could she live on a diet of the bland and ordinary when she had tasted the rich and heady? She had experimented and let other men, a few, kiss her and hold her over the past years and found the moments lacking. She had tried to convince herself she simply was no longer capable of passion, that surely the damage she had suffered had burned all that out of her. She had tried to be glad. Watching other couples she had come to understand that what had burned between them in passion, laughter and shared interests was not common. It was not a love likely to be repeated with another and she didn’t want it back if she couldn’t keep it forever.
ROOK AND RAVEN: The Celtic Kingdom Trilogy Book One Page 6
