by Jane Feather
Octavia shrugged, tried to laugh it off. She picked up the hare’s foot, dusting it across her cheeks, peering attentively at her image in the glass.
“Nothing really. I suppose I just feel uncomfortable because I look like every other woman at court. Like some peacock preening my feathers to attract a mate.”
“It’s the male peacock who does the preening,” he pointed out, still frowning.
“Oh, you know what I mean.” She licked a fingertip and smoothed her eyebrows, not meeting his eye in the mirror.
“I’m not sure that I do,” he said quietly. “But I have a faint suspicion, and you’d better hope that it’s incorrect, Octavia.”
He leaned over her shoulders, placing his hands on the dresser, his face close beside hers, his eyes forcing her gaze in the mirror. “I am wrong, aren’t I, Octavia? You couldn’t possibly have been accusing me of preparing you for Wyndham’s bed?”
Her mouth was suddenly dry, her skin hot. This was Rupert at his most intimidating.
“I don’t know why you would think that,” she said, clearing her throat. “And I don’t know why you’re glaring at me in that way. I don’t like being dressed up in this fashion, it makes me feel like a whore. And it doesn’t make any difference that every other woman will look just the same, because I don’t like looking like other women.”
To her relief he seemed to be convinced. He straightened slowly, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. Then he nodded. “Believe me, Octavia, you don’t look in the least like other women. You are unique.”
He let his hands slip from her shoulders, and his eyes now smiled at her in the mirror. “I’ll wager you’ll have even the king at your feet—and you know what a prude he is.”
With sudden briskness he moved back to the door to his own room. “I must finish my own peacock imitation. Don’t disturb my handiwork,” he added, seeing her fingers move restlessly to the patch on her cheek. “Trust me to know what suits you.”
He probably did know. It seemed to be one of his areas of expertise, and she’d been stupid to react like that. It was just that increasingly these days she felt raw, as if she were missing several skins, and then she lost the ability to respond airily, to play the game with the buoyant enthusiasm that she knew he expected of her.
And Octavia knew precisely why she had lost the ability this evening.
She wandered restlessly over to the window. Her gown wasn’t designed for sitting, although she could shift the back pannier sideways to perch on the edge of a stool if she wished. Not that she would be doing much sitting this evening. One didn’t sit in Their Majesties’ presence.
She knew exactly why she’d reacted with such sharp bitterness to Rupert’s lighthearted ministrations. Tonight she was going to accede to any suggestion Philip Wyndham made.
The decision had made itself as she sat beneath the hands of the hairdresser and watched herself transformed into an artificial monstrosity. This creature could tangle in the bedsheets with the Earl of Wyndham and be completely untouched by the experience. There was no Octavia Morgan visible in this guise.
And when it was done, and she had the ring, then Rupert would complete his half of the bargain, and this suspenseful agony would be done. She wouldn’t have to pretend to be carefree and buoyant and untouched by the grim realities of the game. She could crawl into a hole and be as bitterly miserable as she wished.
“Are you ready, Octavia?”
She jumped, closed her eyes for a second until she’d composed herself, then glanced casually over her shoulder.
She gasped at what she saw. Rupert, too, looked very different. He wore his favorite black silk, but with a gold-embroidered waistcoat and black stockings embroidered with gold clocks. A diamond gleamed in the black solitaire neck cloth he wore around his stock, and his powdered wig was as high as her own hair. A beauty patch in the corner of his mouth seemed to accentuate the cynical curve to his lips.
“Is that rouge you’re wearing, my lord?” She stared in disbelief.
“A touch is customary.” His smile was both sardonic and complicit. “One must not fly in the face of custom all the time, Octavia. Sometimes it’s necessary to obey convention in order to achieve one’s own ends.”
He held out his arm. “Come, ma’am. Let us go and set the court on its heels.”
Chapter 15
Queen Charlotte was disposed to notice Lady Rupert Warwick at the reception, although initially Octavia couldn’t think why she should receive particular favor. The queen’s equerry murmured in her ear that Her Majesty wished Lady Warwick to be presented, and Octavia found herself being ushered through the crowded drawing room, aware of the envious looks of the unfavored.
She caught sight of the Prince of Wales, standing close to his mother and her ladies. He nodded and winked pointedly and Octavia understood. Her Majesty wished to interview the woman in whose house her unruly son spent so much time.
She curtsied, low and Queen Charlotte returned the salute with a half curtsy. “Lady Warwick, I believe we haven’t had the pleasure of your acquaintance,” she said, unsmiling as her gaze drifted over Octavia’s gown, skimmed over her décolletage. “Our son is a good friend of yours, I understand.”
“I am honored to be called so, madam,” Octavia said demurely. “But His Highness enjoys the tables, and I confess I am inept at cards and quite fail to see the appeal.”
The queen’s eyes sharpened and some of her hostility faded. “Is that so, Lady Warwick? You must find yourself in the minority.”
“Alas, yes, madam.” Octavia smiled. “So my husband is always telling me. But in truth I cannot imagine why one would want to throw good money after bad on the strength of a card or the fall of the dice.”
She was doing well. The queen looked almost benign, clearly reassessing her opinion of the woman she’d heard ran one of the most frequented gaming salons in the town.
“I wish you could persuade my son of your opinions, Lady Warwick,” the queen said. “Indeed, I wish you would ban gaming tables from your salon.”
Octavia curtsied again. “My husband plays, madam,” she said gravely, a tentative smile suggesting that in common with all women, including Queen Charlotte, she had no influence over her husband’s activities, and no choice but to obey his dictates.
“Ah, yes.” The queen sighed and fanned herself. “Men seem to derive an inordinate pleasure from gaming.” She bestowed a small smile of dismissal. “Are you acquainted with the Countess of Wyndham?”
She gestured to Letitia Wyndham, standing silently to one side, before turning her attention to another lady ushered forward by the equerry.
Octavia curtsied and retreated the requisite distance, careful not to turn her back even a fraction.
“I believe we’ve just been introduced, Lady Wyndham,” she said, smiling at the sallow, dumpy lady in a gown of primrose yellow adorned with puce roses. Puce roses embellished a coiffure so tall, it dwarfed her short stature.
“Her Majesty considers it discourteous to turn from someone who’s been brought to her attention,” the countess said a little stiffly. “She always passes people on so they don’t feel too abruptly dismissed.”
“How thoughtful,” Octavia said.
Lady Wyndham was very nervous, and Octavia felt jumpy just standing beside her. She cast a cursory glance over the countess’s painted face. The powder was thickly applied, bright spots of rouge startling against her cheeks. Octavia frowned. There was something the matter with the woman’s right eye. The eyelid was swollen, and beneath the heavily caked powder could be seen a purple shadow.
“Forgive me, ma’am, but have you hurt yourself? Your eye?”
Color flooded Letitia’s face, spreading beneath the white coating—color so hot, it looked as if it would melt paint and powder alike. She touched her eye with fluttering fingertips.
“I tripped … so stupid of me. On the corner of the rug, caught my toe in a loose fringe. So stupid and clumsy.”
Octav
ia remembered when Letitia had tripped on the pavement outside Almack’s. Philip had been there. She hadn’t heard what was said between them, but she knew it hadn’t been pleasant. Perhaps Letitia Wyndham was incurably clumsy. There were such people.
“We all have accidents,” she said soothingly. “I once tripped all the way down a flight of stairs and ended up at the bottom with my petticoats over my head just as a party of guests arrived at the door.”
Letitia’s mouth flickered in a tentative movement that seemed to imply that she hadn’t made up her mind whether or not to smile. She raised her other hand to pat nervously at her hair.
Octavia looked at the great purpling bruise on the countess’s wrist. It didn’t look like the kind of bruise one acquired by tripping over a carpet. Perhaps Letitia Wyndham was not incurably clumsy, after all. She glanced sideways to where the Earl of Wyndham stood in the circle around the king. Then she glanced back at the countess.
The other woman’s gaze had followed Octavia’s. When she spoke, her voice was very flat and low.
“You are acquainted with my husband, I believe, Lady Warwick.”.
“Yes,” Octavia agreed.
“Quite well, I believe.”
Was she probing? What did she want to hear? Or was the countess simply stating obliquely that she knew what was said about the Earl of Wyndham and Lady Warwick: that if Lady Warwick was not her husband’s mistress at this point, she soon would be.
“He frequents my husband’s gaming tables, ma’am.”
“But my husband doesn’t enjoy gaming. There must be other inducements.” Lady Wyndham now had the air of a woman about to jump off a cliff. Her color had died down and her face was a white mask again, but her eyes, dark green and brilliant, were fixed on Octavia’s face with an almost fanatic intensity.
They were magnificent eyes, Octavia realized. Totally surprising on this insignificant, timid little dab of a woman.
“What are you saying, Lady Wyndham?” she asked directly.
The countess dabbed at her lips with her handkerchief “I hear the rumors,” she said in a low, rushed voice. “Please don’t misunderstand me. I have no quarrel with you. Anything that keeps my husband from my side is welcome. And I am grateful for anything that distracts his attention from my daughter.”
Octavia stared at her. It was an extraordinary conversation to be having in the middle of the king’s drawing room at St. James’s Palace. And yet, she thought, there was almost no risk of being overheard in the babble and general jostling for attention. Everyone was far too self-absorbed to give two chatting women a passing thought.
She glanced across the room again. And met Philip Wyndham’s gray eyes. Her skin prickled, and her scalp crawled as if an entire nest of lice had taken up residence beneath the powder and pomade. Deliberately, she smiled at him, her eyes narrowing. Then she turned back to his wife.
Letitia was now looking wretched, as if deeply regretting her jump from the cliff “Forgive me,” she mumbled. “I don’t know what I was thinking … to say such a thing.”
“Tell me about your daughter,” Octavia invited, knowing she could not respond adequately either to the confession or to this subsequent retraction.
Letitia’s face ht up, and for a moment Octavia could see beneath the plainness and the anxiety, to a radiance that was its own special kind of beauty. For a moment she saw the woman as she would have been if fate had not shackled her to Philip Wyndham.
“Susannah,” she said. “She’s only three months old, but she smiles all the time. Nurse says she’s the sunniest baby she’s ever had in charge. And I know she knows my footsteps. She coos like a pigeon when I—”
Letitia stopped abruptly, again flushing crimson to the roots of her hair. “Forgive me. I do rattle on so. I must return to the queen.”
She turned to go, but Octavia laid a hand on her sleeve. “Your husband?” she said. “He doesn’t care for the child?”
“He has no interest in daughters,” Letitia said. Her eyes met Octavia’s, and a message burned in the brilliant green depths. “My husband despises women, Lady Warwick.”
Then she moved away with an urgent gesture of farewell that contained more than a touch of desperation.
Octavia stepped aside. Philip’s wife had been warning her. But she hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. It was not possible to have any remotely intimate intercourse with Philip Wyndham without sensing his dark potential for violence.
“Pathetic little drab, isn’t she?” A brittle laugh accompanied the soft, malicious voice. Margaret Drayton stood beside Octavia, fanning herself, the gilded plumes in her coiffure nodding in the gentle breeze. “It’s no wonder her husband seeks pastures new.”
“Don’t most husbands?” Octavia asked dryly.
Margaret’s scarlet-painted mouth moved in a smile. Her teeth were not good, Octavia noticed with satisfaction. In fact, she seemed to be missing rather a large number.
“Mine doesn’t, my dear,” Margaret said. “He barely knows what to do in his own pasture.” She laughed coarsely. “Take my advice. Marry a man in his dotage. Pleasuring him is something of an ordeal.” She shrugged her magnificent shoulders, and her nipples peeped above her neckline. “But it’s a small price to pay for freedom. And it does mean one doesn’t have to worry about whom he’s been covering before he comes to one’s own bed.”
Octavia hid her disgust. It wasn’t possible that Rupert could find this coarse creature appealing—although there was something horribly vibrant about her, something almost larger than life.
“It’s a little late for me to take your advice, Lady Drayton.”
“Ah, but you play your own games, don’t you, Lady Warwick?” Margaret smiled over her fan, her eyes darting across the room to Philip Wyndham. “I don’t know what you expect to gain from the Earl of Wyndham, but take my word for it, my dear, whatever your price, it won’t be sufficient compensation.” Her fan snapped shut and her face was suddenly ugly, stamped with a mixture of fear and loathing.
“The Earl of Wyndham despises women … or so I’ve been told,” Octavia said evenly.
Margaret opened her fan again. “Whoever told you that knew what she was talking about.” She smiled, her expression once more all sardonic malice. “I thought I’d drop a word in your ear. Those of us who play these games should look after each other, I believe.” She offered an ironic curtsy. “I’d be grateful for any words of advice in my own game, if you think I might benefit from them.”
Her gaze drifted pointedly to Lord Rupert Warwick and then back again to his wife. Her smile broadened. Then she moved away.
Octavia contemplated hurling her sharp-heeled slipper at that smooth white back. The woman had invited Octavia to give a few pointers on how to seduce her husband. Not that all the pointers in the world would do her any good. Rupert wasn’t a man to be seduced. He preferred the active role in that play.
It was still annoying, however, to watch Margaret bobbing at Rupert’s elbow, touching him, brushing his cheek with her fingers, tapping his wrist with her fan. And to hear his lazy laugh, and to see his mouth curve, his eyelids droop suggestively as he responded to her banter.
He must be enjoying himself, Octavia decided. However useful the flirtation, he clearly didn’t find it unpleasant. And Margaret did have a raw kind of appeal—without subtlety, but magnetic in some way.
Octavia ground her teeth in an annoyance directed more at herself than at Margaret or Rupert. She was beginning to suspect that she had a very possessive nature. A most unfashionable trait, and in present circumstances, a most inconvenient one.
She became aware of Philip Wyndham’s gaze on the back of her neck exerting an almost perceptible tug. She turned her head. There was a distinct command in the unsmiling gray eyes, and once again she had the strangest sense of distorted familiarity. Obeying the command, she moved across the room toward him.
“You were enjoying a conversation with my wife,” the earl stated when she reached
him. “I trust you found her a stimulating companion.”
The vicious derision in his voice made her stomach curl, but she knew she had to respond in like manner.
She laughed—a brittle, mocking laugh. “La, my lord, I’m sure you know better than I the quality of Lady Wyndham’s discourse.”
Philip bowed, raising her hand to his lips. “Indeed I do, madam. Will you walk into the far salon?”
It was couched as a question, but it came as a directive. Octavia curtsied her agreement and tucked her hand into his arm. They walked through the crowded drawing room into an antechamber, where footmen and equerries stood about looking as if they had no useful purpose. A few courtiers were gathered in knots about the gilded chamber, taking a breather from the overheated air in the drawing room.
The Earl of Wyndham made his way to a long window in the far wall. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn tight, as if to keep out the faintest waft of the fresh night air. He drew aside one curtain, opened the French door, and ushered Octavia onto the terrace beyond.
“The air is pleasanter here, I believe.”
“Yes,” she agreed, unable to help a shiver as the breeze rippled across her bare shoulders, cooling her heated skin.
If Philip was aware of her momentary discomfort, he took no notice. Another man would have immediately offered to fetch her shawl, Octavia thought. Rupert would have draped his own coat around her shoulders.
“Let us walk a little way along the terrace.” Her hand was still tucked in his arm, and he now covered it with his free hand. It could have been interpreted as a warm and friendly gesture, but to Octavia it felt as if he’d shackled her.
She said nothing, however, and allowed herself to be drawn away from the French door and the sounds and lights within. In the dark shadows of a group of box trees at the far end of the terrace, Philip suddenly pulled her against him in a rough movement that took her by surprise. His hands circled her neck, thumbs pushing up her chin, forcing her to look up at his face, where the gray eyes, deep-set in dark, shadowed holes, had a metallic glitter.
