Casriel left off studying the buffet line—or the ladies in the buffet line—long enough to flick a glance over Sycamore. Something he saw must have caught his notice, for his inspection acquired a puzzled air.
“Is that my coat?”
“No. This is my coat. Yours are too narrow in the shoulders.” A plain fact that made all those frigid mornings on the river a joyous memory. “Jonathan Tresham owns The Coventry Club, or owns a significant portion of it. You will please alert him to the fact that somebody is out to undermine his establishment.”
Casriel ambled deeper amid the greenery under the minstrel’s gallery, leaving Sycamore no choice but to follow. “One doesn’t discuss such a topic in public, Cam. For shame.”
“One has more privacy while the good folk of Mayfair are circling their feed trough than one has at our own breakfast table. I said something to Anselm more than a fortnight ago, and I can’t see that he acted on my warnings.”
“You expect not only a lowly earl but a duke to report his doings to you?”
The urge to smack Casriel on the arm, to shove him in the chest, was almost overwhelming. “To have this discussion here, where any gossip might lurk six feet away amid the ferns, is foolish. We had more privacy in plain sight.”
He sauntered off, in the direction of the music room, batting aside fronds with a gloved hand. With the buffet set up, the music room would be empty, unless a canoodling couple was putting it to use.
Sycamore would certainly like to be canoodling with somebody, though doing his gentlemanly duty toward an acquaintance had to come first. An honest club was a thing of beauty, and all true gentlemen were bound to protect its good name.
Or some such twaddle.
The music room was empty, the quiet a pleasant shock to the ears. Casriel closed the door save for a few inches.
“Either leave it open,” Sycamore said, “so we can hear and even see any who approach, or close it, so we have privacy of a sort.” Something or somebody was distracting Casriel. As the eldest of a herd of rambunctious siblings, he ought to know about half-open doors, dense greenery, and eavesdroppers.
Casriel closed the door. “Say what you have to say, Cam.”
“Tresham’s club is using marked cards again. The decks were all changed out, but last night, I spotted another one. He has three new waiters, which is unusual for The Coventry, and one of them finds it necessary to pick up every used glass and plate left anywhere on the premises. I can’t figure what he’s about, but he makes that unreachable spot in the middle of my back itch.”
Casriel ran a bare hand over the strings of the great harp. Once upon a time, he’d been an accomplished harpist. Cam hadn’t heard him play for years.
“Isn’t that what waiters do? Clean up the tables?”
“He marches around with an empty tray, doesn’t seem to do much else besides that, unless he’s setting the tray down and piling dirty dishes on it. He has a perfect opportunity to swap out a deck of cards or a pair of dice at the unused tables early or late in the evening. He’s older, blond, skinny. Looks like a former footman down on his luck.”
Casriel took the stool at the harp and bowed his head, as if recalling a tune. “Say something to Tresham. I’ll pay your physician’s bills, and you will have, as usual, created a great stir where none is warranted. People wear rings, Cam, they have sleeve buttons and other jewelry that can nick a card. You are imagining things, but be warned that Tresham is dangerously good with his fists.”
A few delicate notes sang out from the harp, and Sycamore longed to sit as he used to and watch his brother play. The grace Casriel could summon with his hands—hands that spent too much time with the abacus and the ledger book—created an ache in Sycamore’s chest and a sense of unnamed regrets.
He’d never be able to play like that, not if he studied for ten years.
“Use your imagination,” Sycamore said over the ethereal beauty of some lament. “The cards don’t have to be marked. They only have to feel marked. A slur on The Coventry’s reputation will bring the authorities down in force. A raid will set the place back enormously. Of all the clubs, only The Coventry seems to reliably avoid entanglement with the law. And if you don’t believe me about the cards, I suspect somebody is using a spotter.”
“What’s a spotter?”
How could Casriel play the harp and conduct a conversation? What sort of mind could do that?
“Somebody to assist a cheat by signaling the cards an opponent elsewhere on the table has in his or her hand.” To speak when music like this was filling the air was blasphemy.
“Say something to Tresham. Try to use a bit of finesse. Drop questions, hints, suggestions, and stay out of punching range. I hope we taught you that much at least.”
Sycamore’s brothers had taught him to hit harder and faster than he’d been hit, though Casriel was leaving this challenge to Sycamore, which was a compliment.
Fancy that. “Shall I bring you a plate?”
“I’ll drop by The Coventry later. This is a gorgeous instrument. It wants playing.”
If the ladies of Mayfair could see the impoverished, staid earl romancing that harp, they’d beg him to strum and pluck any part of their persons he pleased to touch.
“And you do that instrument justice,” Sycamore said, heading for the door. He left it open, the better to entice the ladies away from the buffet.
The Countess of Canmore was the only female in the corridor. “Who is playing?” she asked.
She was pretty, canny, and had a sly sense of humor. Sycamore liked her, but then, he liked most women.
“Lord Casriel. He sounds lonely to me, but that’s just a baby brother’s opinion. I do believe he’s in want of an audience, poor lad. Playing all by himself seems a waste of his talent.”
She wafted down the corridor and slipped into the music room, pausing only long enough to blow Sycamore a kiss. He caught it and tucked it into his breast pocket, then bowed and went in search of his hostess.
A goodnight was in order. The food was better at The Coventry than at Lady Tottenham’s buffet. Then too, Jonathan Tresham had no younger brothers to look out for him, had no siblings at all, in fact, and even inheriting a dukedom could not redress that sad poverty.
Chapter Twelve
* * *
A great weight had fallen from Theo’s shoulders. She hadn’t told Jonathan every last appalling detail of Archie’s passing, but she’d told him enough, and he’d vindicated her trust.
She kissed him with all the relief and rejoicing in her, with all the hope and delight.
“Do I take it,” he asked, framing her face in warm hands, “that I have permission to court you, Mrs. Haviland?”
“If you stop at simply courting me, I will be disappointed.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, tucking his nose against her cleavage. “I have been disappointed before. I don’t care for it.”
He laughed, his breath warm against her skin. “We’ll miss the buffet.”
How she loved his laughter. “We’ll share a menu of rare and special pleasures, while the other guests content themselves with mere truffles and champagne.” Joy made her reckless, as she’d never been reckless with her husband. The few times Theo had attempted some creativity in the bedroom, Archie had scolded her for having a naughty imagination.
“You’re sure, Theo? I cannot guarantee much finesse in my current state. You’ve haunted me day and night.”
He was aroused and growing more so. How she reveled in the unmistakable intensity of his desire. How many times had Arche’s arousal been unequal to anything but hurry and frustration?
“That I should haunt your dreams is only just,” she said, nuzzling his ear. “I’ve stabbed myself with an embroidery needle more than once because some look you sent me across a ballroom intruded into my thoughts. I want you naked, do you hear me? Not a stitch on you, broad daylight, a bed to ourselves—”
He kissed her, and the rest of Theo’s long list of plans for hi
m flew from her head.
“We’ll have all of that,” he said, settling a hand over her breast. “For now, let us have a consummation of desire too long denied.”
He spoke a greater truth than he knew, for celibacy had befallen Theo months before Archie’s death. They’d stopped arguing. They’d stopped even speaking for the most part. Occasionally, he’d reach for her in the darkest hours, but his abilities often weren’t commensurate with his aims. The sadness of that, for him and for herself, had driven Theo to keeping her hands to herself no matter how much she might miss marital intimacies.
“I can’t guarantee you finesse,” Theo said, arching into his hand. “I can promise you passion.”
Jonathan wrapped his hand around the back of her head, the gesture both possessive and protective. For a moment, they remained thus, a tableau of desire that Theo could for once simply enjoy. Jonathan would not leave her unsatisfied, embarrassed, ashamed, and alone. They would share intimate, mutually gratifying pleasure, and as a couple, develop an even greater vocabulary of connubial joys.
Theo untucked her fichu from her bodice and let her sleeves fall far enough that she could wiggle her stays down. She was intent on untying the bow of her chemise when Jonathan’s hands covered hers.
“May I have the honor?”
His question was curiously solemn. Theo responded by dropping her hands, though remaining passive was excruciating.
She meant to say: The pleasure is entirely mine. “Hurry, Jonathan.”
“That, I cannot do.” He untied the bow and brushed aside her chemise, leaving her breasts not only bared, but pushed forward by her stays. Theo was torn between arousal and self-consciousness, until Jonathan stroked a thumb over each nipple.
Self-consciousness fled, routed by shameless yearning. “Again, please.”
He paid homage to her breasts, and Theo bore it. His caresses, his mouth, his breath on her wet flesh, varying pressures, and teasing kisses. His skills were many and diabolically expert.
“You,” she managed. “Your falls. The buttons.”
“Scoot back.”
She did, though he kept a grasp of her left nipple, and the added pressure was exquisite. Then she was bereft of his touch, while he extracted a handkerchief from a pocket and laid it on the sofa cushions beside them. Next, he undid both sides of his falls, lifting his hips to rearrange his clothing.
Theo moved closer, a smooth, warm length of male flesh brushing against her sex. The wanting was a pleasure in itself, sensation to be savored rather than an anxiety to be assuaged.
How lovely to enjoy desire. To delight in longing, secure in the knowledge that satisfaction would come soon and thoroughly. Theo kissed her lover lingeringly, her frantic yearning coalescing into a pledge of mutual pleasure.
Jonathan must have understood her intent, for he sank lower against the cushions and guided himself to her sex.
The joining began without any other touching, Theo sinking down, Jonathan lifting up. His timing was perfect, her pleasure enormous. They teased each other, feinting and parrying, until Theo braced her hands on his shoulders and took him fully into her body.
“A moment,” he whispered, holding her by her hips when he was hilted inside of her.
Without moving, without even kissing, pleasure welled for Theo. She could not have stopped the oncoming tide if she’d commanded the powers of heaven, nor did she want to. She purely surrendered to gratification, letting it lash through her like a scouring summer cloudburst.
“I am sorry,” she said, dropping her forehead to Jonathan’s shoulder. “I hadn’t planned that.”
“I planned that. Hold me, Theo.”
She held on to him, while he moved, and she endured more of his planning. He knew exactly how to gauge tempo, depth, intensity, kisses, caresses, even stillness to render Theo panting, pleasure-glutted and utterly relaxed.
“I could do this until dawn,” he said, moving lazily, “but you’d be sore, and our hostess would be scandalized.”
Until dawn … Oh, marriage to Jonathan would be unbearably lovely. Theo wanted to weep, for all the lonely years, for the awkward moments she’d known as a wife, for sheer glee at having found Jonathan at last.
Jonathan, who was, in his indirect way, posing a question.
“If we must conclude this interlude,” she said, “then use the next five minutes well. I can’t be the only person to leave this encounter grinning like an imbecile.”
She was giving him permission to spend. That he’d leave the decision to her was grounds to fall in love with him all over again. For she surely had—when he’d lectured Diana in the park, when he’d sent Seraphina the perfect book of French poetry, when he’d dutifully danced attendance on women whose consequence had been raised by his notice.
Theo offered him that love as he held her close and breathed with her, gave him that love as satisfaction bore down on her again. She hadn’t thought pleasure could be more intense than what she’d already experienced, but with Jonathan intent on gratification, the joining became wild.
Not a wrestling match, for Jonathan’s passions were measured and silent, but so intimate, so consuming, that Theo’s past, her disappointing memories, her last regrets fell away in incandescent moments of oneness with the man to whom she’d given her future.
“Did I pleasure you all the way to sleep?” Jonathan asked, stroking her back in slow circles.
“Not to sleep, but to a place of perfect peace and joy.” A holy place, one Theo had never visited with her husband. “The rest of the Season will be interminable.”
She should sit up. She should sit up and tuck herself up and let Jonathan put himself to rights too. She bundled closer on a sigh.
“If you think I’ll wait until July to speak my vows, Theodosia, you are much mistaken. A special license will suit. We can be married next week.”
So fierce. She loved that about him too. “I have a household, a daughter, a sister, loyal servants. They all must be dealt with. You need to call on your solicitors. Besides, you haven’t proposed. You must pay me your addresses first, and I must write to the viscount.”
Theo wiggled to her feet, though Jonathan stole a last kiss before she rose. He remained on the sofa, tousled, casually exposed, and luscious.
“The viscount can go to Jericho, for all I care,” he said, passing Theo the handkerchief. “Anselm will negotiate settlements for you, or his duchess will, and he’ll carry out her orders.”
Theo used the handkerchief and passed it back, which should have been awkward, but wasn’t. “I barely know Their Graces.”
Jonathan rose and began doing up his clothing. “That doesn’t signify. Anselm’s a duke. He’ll meddle. If I didn’t prevail upon him to advocate for your interests, then Bellefonte’s countess would intercede on your behalf, or Her Grace of Quimbey would find some marquess or other to bedevil me, but it won’t matter, Theo.”
He gently moved her hands aside and gave her stays a firm upward tug, which was what they’d needed.
“I have my competence,” Theo said, while Jonathan retied the bow of her chemise. “The settlements don’t need to be much.” She hadn’t even thought that far ahead. Hadn’t seen beyond confiding in Jonathan regarding the viscount’s accusations.
“You are to be my duchess,” Jonathan said, stepping close. “You will want for nothing, Theo. If you develop a craving for peaches, they’ll be served to you daily. If you’d like Seraphina to attend a Swiss finishing school, you’ve only to choose which one. If Diana needs a pony, or Williams a pension, then that too can be—”
She laid a finger over his lips. His hair was a tempest, his cravat a mass of wrinkles. He had one shirttail out, and half his buttons were yet unfastened.
A wave of desire threatened to have her undoing the buttons he’d fastened. “Diana needs a step-father who can show her firm guidance and unwavering love. Seraphina needs an older brother who can help her navigate polite society upon her come out. I need a husband to love
and esteem greatly. The rest will work itself out.”
A stray thought intruded: She still did not know the source of Jonathan’s wealth, though he’d reassured her he had ample means. For now, that was enough.
They argued as they adjusted each other’s clothing, the bickering another form of intimacy. As Theo finger-combed Jonathan’s hair into order, they agreed that she’d write to Viscount Penweather by express, and Jonathan would have the banns cried at St. George’s.
Within a month, she would be a married woman again, but a happily married woman this time.
“Will I do, Mrs. Haviland?” he asked, fluffing his retied cravat.
“You will do splendidly, Mr. Tresham.” They smiled at each other, a pair of cats who’d swilled the last drop from the cream pot. “Will you see me home?” Though truly, that was a rash idea. To be alone with him in that luxurious, roomy carriage… very rash.
“Alas, not tonight.” He tucked her fichu more securely under her bodice. “The press of business calls. In fact, I’ll make my farewells to my hostess and be on my way, though expect an early call from me tomorrow.”
“I’d like you with me when I tell Diana.”
“Shall I bring a dog?”
“Yes, please, but make no mention of ponies. Diana is nigh incorrigible, and a pony should be exhausted as a source of bribes before you consider purchasing one.”
“No ponies, no puppies. Yet.” He leaned in to kiss Theo’s cheek. “Until tomorrow.”
She clasped her hands behind her back rather than embrace him, because that too had become a rash act.
“Until tomorrow, Mr. Tresham.”
She let him leave first, marveling that they hadn’t thought to lock the door—though what would that have mattered? She was marrying him in a month or so, and engaged couples anticipated their vows from time to time.
My Own True Duchess Page 18
