Don’t worry, he thought. With those lips of yours, there will always be someone willing to take care of you.
Perhaps it would be him. He would see where she lived, learn who paid for her niceties, and see if they might pass her off to him in the near future. Though, how could any man tire of such a lovely specimen of femininity, who was also, apparently, possessed of a marvelous voice?
“You’ll sing again.” He embraced her, doing his best to hide his engorged cock beneath the tails of his shirt. If she didn’t let him up soon, he’d lose control and bed her a second time, and a third. Perhaps that was her aim in clinging to him.
No, she was truly upset, and truly bereft of voice.
“Don’t try to speak,” he said again. “My voice has roughened too.”
“I—I must speak,” she whispered. “I— Please— I cannot inconvenience you to see me home.”
“How else will you get there? You’ve no money, no manner of conveyance, and, I dread to mention, no reasonable clothes.”
She gazed in dismay at her outlandish costume. Perhaps she could hide her face within the wig, if she was so ashamed to be seen in his company. Was she worried her special patron, or one of his friends, might glimpse them near Grosvenor Square, and make trouble for her?
“If you like,” he said, caressing her arm soothingly, “I can take you to your place and explain to your...your relations...exactly what has happened.”
“Oh, goodness, no.” The vehemence of her denial clearly hurt her voice further.
“Well, I’ll not leave you here, mute and penniless, to fend for yourself. Not after the, ah...” How to put it without causing her to blush deeper? “The affectionate encounter we enjoyed last night.”
“Take me to Hyde Park then,” she whispered, her gaze troubled. “If you deliver me to the east side of the park, near King Street, that is very close to my home.”
“If that’s what you wish, I’m happy to comply.”
She clearly did not want to flirt or reminisce, and he was tired of arguing with her. That part of town would be safe enough, if she would not allow him to see her to her doorstep. “Now, please, Miss Layton, we must ready ourselves to depart.”
And I must find a private place to relieve this pressure in my cock before I climb atop a horse with you, he added in his mind. Or you’ll find yourself having an entirely different sort of ride.
* * * * *
Mr. Drake was a rumpled mess in the daylight, but somehow appeared twice as attractive, with the sun glinting off his gold hair and striking eyes. She could hardly look upon him without coloring deeply. She was so befuddled from the night before, so confused and ashamed she could barely focus her thoughts. Seeing the virile shape of him in the day’s light only upset her more. The man was determined to make her ride home with him. She’d wear the costume and wig, yes, but if one of her Mama’s friends recognized her from the performance, she’d be ruined beyond repair.
Not that she wasn’t already ruined.
She couldn’t remember now when she’d lost control of herself the previous evening. She’d been tired, yes, and light-minded from hunger, but to let him do such things to her... Why, she hadn’t just let him, she’d participated fully. If only it hadn’t felt so exquisite, so free and adventurous, she could have gathered her wits and implored him to stop.
As it was, she feared she only implored him to go further, and further, until things went too far. She was reasonably certain he’d breached her maidenhead, an expression she’d not understood until she felt the sharp pain of his thrust between her thighs. So, there was her maidenhead, it seemed, and that maidenhead had been breached repeatedly, causing both consternation and pleasure.
What now? She tried to recall what happened to young ladies whose maidenheads had been breached. She’d only ever been told it was a bad thing. She wasn’t told of the consequences of such. Mr. Drake had said he’d protect her, that there would be no consequences, but he’d been breathless with lust at that moment, so who knew if he spoke truth?
She sighed and put on the smoky-smelling costume, which looked far less elegant away from the theater’s lights. It looked farcical, in fact. She didn’t want to don the long, black wig, but she knew she must, to disguise herself as well as she could.
There was no question of lingering at the inn to take a meal, even though she felt weak with hunger. Anyway, her throat hurt too much to tolerate anything but tea and custard. As soon as she got home, she’d beg her Mama for sweet, hot, comforting foods.
Oh, Mama, if you knew what I’ve done, you’d be so disappointed.
She could never, ever tell her proper, God-fearing mother the truth of last night. She risked a glance at Mr. Drake as he lifted her atop his horse. He was so very handsome, yes, but so common. His shirt was filthy, and his boots scuffed. He’d probably done what he did with her to other women, seducing them with his whispers, and his intent green eyes. How else could he be so skilled at it?
She straightened her shoulders and held herself stiff as he settled behind her. She would not perch on his lap like a wanton, even though she must look scandalous in her wig and costume.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
She nodded, since it hurt to speak. Her dress provided ample padding for her riding muscles, which were sore from last night. Or perhaps she was sore from...
Oh, no. She couldn’t think about it. She arranged her skirts to cover her soft-soled stage slippers and bowed her head. She intended to ride all the way to Hyde Park with her eyes down, but there were so many novel sights in London that she was hard-pressed not to lift her head and stare now and again. Busy streets, carriages and merchant carts, animals and children and all manner of signs to read.
She’d been so sheltered in Grosvenor Square, and Vienna too, so focused on her vocal studies. At home in the summers, she was kept quietly in the parlor, to do ladylike things. She’d been so constrained her whole life, compelled to be proper and perfect. Maybe that explained her lapse in behavior last night.
She stared down at Mr. Drake’s hands. They, at least, were not dirty and common. In fact, his nails were clean and clipped, his fingers strong and sure as he guided the horse through the streets with subtle movements of his knees. How competent he was, how utterly manly and—
For all that was good, she could not still be dreaming about Mr. Drake! She’d be a lucky girl indeed if she suffered no consequences from this adventure, as he promised.
In time, they arrived in quieter and more fashionable streets. The lingering smell of smoke grew thicker and sickened her. The terrifying fire would be difficult to forget.
“We’re almost there,” he said, tightening his arms as if to comfort her. She tried her best to shield her face. There were too many people out and about, any of whom might recognize her. “Are you sure you don’t want me to take you to your doorstep, Miss Layton? It’s no difficulty at all.”
She tried to picture uncouth, seductive Mr. Drake escorting her into her father’s courtyard, and knocking at the Earl of Halsey’s door. She shook her head hard to banish the thought.
“The park, please,” she whispered. “You’ve been too kind already.” She remembered, cringing, that she’d offered him repayment for the lodgings. He could not expect that now; she didn’t want any connection to him after today.
When they reached the lane beside the park, she wished she might leap from his horse, but he prevented any quick escape by seizing her hand. “Miss Layton, there is something I must tell you,” he said, holding her startled gaze. “If there is any...any result from our time together, or any need of...anything, you need only inquire of your friends at the theater after Mr. Jack Drake. One of them will surely recognize the name and tell you where to find me.”
She nodded, taken aback by the gravity in his tone. “I’m sure I shall be fine.” She blinked, pushing back the black wig to get a better look at him this last moment. His hair was so golden and wild. “Thank you for rescuing me,” she whispered. �
��I would not have enjoyed perishing in a fire.”
“Few enjoy such things,” he said with a charming smile. His quick, impassioned kiss caught her by surprise, then he jumped down to assist her from his horse, being careful not to disorder her wig or dress.
“You must go now,” she said in a begging rasp, and he complied, swinging back atop his great black stallion and wheeling away, toward the other side of town. He did not look back, even though she stood there a full minute watching the man who had breached her maidenhead disappear forever. She must forget all that now, forget such an ill-advised adventure had ever happened, or she’d be ruined in truth. When he turned onto Mount Street, she gathered her gaudy skirts and hurried toward her father’s stately home.
* * * * *
Wescott arrived at his town house to find it in an uproar. The street was clogged with carriages, the horses stamping impatiently. His groom took his exhausted stallion, promising to bathe and rest the panting mount. His butler, renowned for his never-changing demeanor, looked visibly relieved when he let him in the door.
“My lord, we thought—” Color rose in his sunken cheeks. “Indeed, welcome home.”
“Thank you, Jensen. Sorry it took so long. There was a fire.”
The servant trailed behind him as he headed for the stairs. “My lord, there was some fear that you had come to harm. If you please, your parents are here, as well as Lady Hazel and Lady Elizabeth. Lord Augustine, Lord Marlow, and Lord Townsend have been awaiting your arrival as well. Shall I announce you in the front parlor?”
Wescott turned from the stairs with a sigh. A proper hot bath, shave, and change of clothes would have to wait. “How long have they been here?” he asked.
“Since early morning, when Lord Marlow alerted your family that you hadn’t returned home after the fire. Have you taken any injury? Shall I call for a physician?”
“I’m perfectly well,” he assured him.
His mother, hearing his voice, burst from the doors of the parlor before the butler could announce his arrival. She threw her arms around him, her copious dark hair in disarray, as if she’d dressed just out of sleep.
“My darling son,” she cried, hugging him close. “We feared the worst when your friends came to see us. I’ve been so terrified.” He held her as she shook against him. “Oh, Jack, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
The Duchess of Arlington was no shrinking woman, so it pained him to see her weeping. Hazel and Elizabeth, his two youngest sisters, flung their arms around him also, crying and wailing that they’d been too worried for words, so he was momentarily stuck in the doorway, enveloped by three of the most precious women in his life.
“That’s enough,” said his father, arriving to rescue him. “You see he’s fine, my loves. Let him sit with us and take some refreshment. He looks as if he’s spent a trying night.”
Wescott smiled at him in gratitude and took a seat on the divan, nodding to his three gentlemen friends as they greeted him. August, Townsend, and Marlow looked as haggard as he felt. His mother sat beside him, still sniffling, while his friends brought their chairs near. August and Marlow looked particularly peaked. He wondered if they’d slept at all.
“So where’ve you been?” asked Marlow with typical bluntness. “We thought you were coming behind us when we left.”
“I stopped to talk to my groom. It took some convincing to get him to leave the carriage.”
“The carriage did not survive,” his father confirmed. He waved a hand. “But it’s replaceable, and your groom arrived safely home.”
“I hoped he would. The fire advanced quickly once the winds started up. I tried to go around it to come home, but I got caught up in the crowds near the theater, so I headed east. I rode with the fire at my heels for some time before we—I—came to a place I could rest.”
He decided he wouldn’t tell them about Miss Layton. Rescuing an actress, and proceeding to seduce her in the middle of the crisis, wasn’t an act of which to be proud.
“The horse was too tired to return amidst the smoke, as was I,” Wescott continued, “so I took a room at an inn near Buxton Street and spent a restless night.” He squeezed his mother’s hand. “I’m sorry for your worry.”
“Oh, Jack.” Elizabeth insinuated herself between him and their mother, and leaned into his arm. “I cried when you didn’t come home. Your friends said you’d only gone the wrong way and couldn’t get back, but I worried you had burned alive.”
“Elizabeth,” chided his father. “There’s no need for such dramatics. You see your brother is well.”
“I cried too,” said Hazel. His sisters were a full decade younger than him, the babies of the family, though, at seventeen, Hazel would be coming out the following year. He kissed them both and thanked them for their tears of concern.
“Did you see or hear anything of Lady Ophelia Lovett?” Townsend interrupted the siblings’ affection, his voice tense with worry.
Before Townsend could say anything else, his father cleared his throat, looking at Elizabeth and Hazel. His mother sent the two girls on an errand to the kitchen to fetch their guests some sweets. Once they were gone, his father paced to the window with a somber expression and looked out into the street.
“The Earl of Halsey’s daughter went missing in the fire as well, Wescott. Our search parties encountered one another near the theater, where she was separated from her family. No one’s seen or heard from her since last night.”
Townsend started pacing, which wasn’t like him. He was typically the calmest and most level-headed of their group. Wescott sent a questioning glance at Marlow and August. Could this missing Lady Ophelia be the woman Townsend had been mooning over the past few months? Wescott had never heard of her, but Towns seemed beside himself. Horrible, to think she might have gone to the theater with her family, then been lost in the roaring, spreading fire.
His father turned from the window, his imposing air of authority lending even more gravity to the discussion. “Now that you’re found,” he said, “we must let the Halseys know, so the searchers can focus on Lady Ophelia alone.”
“I’ll go,” said Townsend, his face pale with lack of sleep. “Then I’ll head down to search the area of the fire again.”
“We’ll go with you,” August offered.
Marlow agreed. “Yes, three are better than one. We’ll find her.” He gave Townsend a fortifying nudge on the shoulder. “She might have turned up at home now that it’s morning, just as Wescott’s done.”
“Yes,” said August. “It’s likely the lady found shelter and was waiting for morning’s light.”
The men saw themselves out, leaving Wescott alone with his parents. Their expressions were grim.
“Poor child.” His mother blinked back tears. “She’d only just returned to London from abroad. Lady Halsey must be worried sick for her safety.”
“I didn’t know the Halseys had a daughter besides Lady Nanette,” Wescott said. Nanette had been courted by scores of bachelors the year before. Halsey had money, lots of it, as well as a respected and distinguished title, which brought out the ton’s marriageable men in droves. If Halsey had another daughter, she’d be an apt match for Townsend, especially since he seemed full gone with love.
“There were so many people fleeing the theaters when the fire came,” he said to his mother. “They must have swept Lady Ophelia along with them. Surely they wouldn’t leave a fine lady to manage on her own.”
“She’d just come from the stage,” his father said, “and the opera house is so large. There are so many doors letting out this way and that. Perhaps, being new to the theater, she got lost finding her way out.”
“How awful.” The duchess shook her head. “How will her parents forgive themselves if the worst has happened?”
Her voice trailed off as his sisters returned bearing sweet buns and biscuits, which they dumped onto the tea tray in front of their brother.
“Thank you,” he said, but his
mind was turning on other things. “She’d just come from the stage...?” he echoed. “Lady Ophelia?”
“Yes, she performs in operas. Society is changing, isn’t it?” his mother said, glancing at her daughters. “There was a time no cultured woman would appear on stage, no matter how talented. Now, titled ladies perform regularly in the salons in Bath. And Lady Ophelia’s voice is surpassingly lovely, I hear. The coloratura soprano of a generation, if gossip is to be believed.”
“Gossiping is bad, Mama,” said Elizabeth. “You’ve told me many times that I’m to pay gossip no heed.”
“This is good gossip,” her mother said. “Lady Ophelia apparently sings so much more beautifully than...well...” She cleared her throat delicately. “Than the other women of the opera company, that she was invited to sing with Domino Nicoletti in Armide, and well as another opera later this fall.”
“I don’t know that I would have allowed it, no matter how lovely her voice is,” the duke said, displaying the famous Arlington frown. “Ophelia is Hazel’s age, not even out yet, and making appearances onstage. And now...”
His mother gave a quick shake of her head, wishing the topic dropped, but Wescott was thinking back over the night’s events with rising anxiety.
“What does she look like?” he asked. “What does Lady Ophelia look like?”
“You might ask Townsend,” his mother said. “He’s carried a torch for her ever since she returned from her Viennese music school this spring.”
How had his mother known of Townsend’s love, when none of the rest of them had? Probably because she attended the society balls they didn’t deign to appear at.
“Please, what does she look like?” His voice gained urgency, enough to capture his parents’ notice.
“Do you believe you’ve seen her?” his mother asked.
“She is petite in stature, I believe, with pale coloring. But she would have been in costume last night,” said his father. “She is blonde, isn’t she, dear?” he asked his wife. “Quite blonde, like her mother?”
Rival Desires Page 4
