He sighed.
“Belle, I really must go. Are your accommodations to your liking?” He placed his hands gently on her shoulders and put her firmly from him.
Her mouth drew down in a pout that might have been charmingly childlike, if Baxter had cared for that sort of thing. All her childishness did for him was make him feel like an aging satyr. She turned away, caressing the jeweled collar he had just given her.
“I suppose,” she answered. “But I don’t see why I cannot live with you.”
“Belle, I have explained before. It just cannot be. This is London, not the Continent; things are very different here. I have a reputation to uphold.” He suppressed another spurt of irritation at her importunity. He leaned over and kissed her brow. “Good night, my dear. Tomorrow night I will come to you, I promise.”
Her voice tight with pique, she said, “Good night, Baxter.”
Surely it wasn’t relief he felt, the marquess wondered as he left the side entrance of the theater. What was wrong with him that he did not really feel up to bedding that adorable creature? He realized the feeling had been coming on for quite a while. He felt, in some absurd way, paternal toward Belle. She was, after all, his creation.
He strode down the dark street, the nip of spring air a welcome tonic for his exhaustion. There were no two ways about it, he was going to have to let Belle go as his mistress. But she seemed sincerely attached to him, so how to do it without breaking the poor young thing’s heart? It was a puzzle he would have to solve before long.
• • •
Emily drifted from the refreshment room into the main ballroom of the Jersey mansion. Sally Jersey was always an amusing hostess, but for some reason this evening’s entertainment felt flat. She glanced across the ballroom with some amusement at her companion.
Dodo had quite her own court of aging military gents crowding her. Though she had never complained in the two years they had lived at Emily’s home in Yorkshire, she belonged in London amid the social hurricane of gossip and parties and balls. Her advanced years did not change that fact.
A touch of Emily’s elbow made her whirl around.
“Mr. Lessington!” she cried, seeing that the small, elegantly dressed gentleman was the one who had accosted her.
Lessington made a graceful leg. “Your servant, my lady, though I am hurt that you no longer feel free to call me Less, as you used to do. What a delight to see you gracing the salons and ballrooms of London again. I heard weeks ago that you had come home, but we have not yet chanced to be at the same frivolity. Whatever made you decide to join the land of the living for the season?”
At first Emily had been rather pleased to see the man in front of her, but she abruptly remembered that Lessington and her husband were intimate friends, and that Baxter might be anywhere. Her eyes darted around the room in sudden nervousness.
“Baxter is not here . . . yet,” Lessington said, with the hint of an amused smile on his narrow face.
“I-I was not . . .” A rueful smile crossed Emily’s normally placid face. “You know me too well, Less. How I have missed you these past few years.” She took his offered arm, their heights matching so well their shoulders rubbed companionably, and they strolled around the crowded ballroom, chatting desultorily about absent friends and present enemies, all the tittle-tattle of London life. At least some of the windows had been opened, so the room was not so stifling hot as it might have been. But still, the mingled scents of hundreds of people—their body odor and their perfumes—was overpowering.
Emily squeezed the man’s arm as they paused near a window, and she drank greedily of the fresh air that puffed in past the heavy draperies. Lessington had been a good friend during the worst of her and Baxter’s breakup, and yet he had managed to stay close to her husband as well.
He was an unlikely friend for Baxter, who was lean and saturnine, dark of visage and mind. Lessington was a good-natured fribble, with a rapier-sharp wit and a light, breezy nature. Yet behind his scathing tongue and brilliant eye lay a man of intense human compassion. He understood pain more deeply than others, and offered just the right blend of sympathy, bracing good sense, and humor. Few had had the opportunity to catch sight of that side of him, but he had been a friend to Emily, and she had once ruined one of his best coats crying on his shoulder over her breakup with her husband.
Tonight his sartorial splendor stretched to pale blue breeches, lemon yellow waistcoat, and a peacock blue cutaway coat, nipped in at the waist and shot with silver threads that glittered in the shimmering light from the chandeliers and wall sconces. He looked the perfect elegant peacock, with a variety of quizzing glasses and fobs attached to his waistcoat. Emily looked up into his intelligent, light gray eyes.
“How is he, Less?”
He gazed over at her with a quizzical smile. He did not need to ask of whom she inquired. “And why would you want to know that? Do you care?”
“Of course not, but I may still inquire, may I not? We are still married.” Her voice was low and quiet, barely carrying over the orchestra and chatter of the crowd.
“Of course, my dear,” he said, patting her hand where it lay on his arm. “Baxter is hardened. Embittered. He has come back from abroad even more cynical and jaded than when he left.”
Emily sighed. “Why am I not all amazement at that news? Rumor has stated that he has a child mistress.”
Lessington shuddered. “Annabelle Gudge,” he said darkly, his pale brows drawn down over his gray eyes. “She has been reborn in the person of Belle Gallant.”
“’Twas she in the play last night at your theater, was it not? She was the wood sprite that caught everyone’s attention so. She is lovely. Why the shudder?” Emily slanted a curious gaze over at her companion, then hastily nodded her recognition to a couple who were passing. It would not do to offend anyone, now that she was back among the ton.
“My dear, she is a complete little primitive. Pretty in a very common way, but she is a tart, and has no conversation!”
That last indictment was Lessington’s most severe condemnation. Conversation, and not always just gossip, was his lifeblood. Emily felt that there was much more there but did not want to probe for fear of seeming too curious. And really, what did it matter to her whom Baxter took into his bed? A small frisson of pain shot through her heart and she reluctantly admitted to herself that perhaps it did matter, just the tiniest bit.
She supposed it was partly jealousy that Baxter could expend his sexual energy on someone else, and Emily had never been with anyone but him. She could have had affairs, perhaps, but she still felt very married. She meant the nuptial vows when she spoke them, and only death could end that. She had been such a green girl when she and Baxter fell in love and married. He had introduced her to the world of sensual love, and she would never forget those nights when they were first wed.
She had matured, now a sophisticated society matron, but at heart she was very much still that same naive Yorkshire country girl. Taking a lover would require a level of sophistication and worldliness that she could not even pretend to. She allowed other men to escort her places, for after all, one could not remain in seclusion if one came to London for the season. Lord Fawley was always available to take her anywhere, and was an undemanding companion for an evening. But she still had no desire to take someone to bed.
Or so she told herself. If there were nights when a longing to be held and made love to overwhelmed her, she could ignore it in the daytime. Years of tamping down her sexuality had left her with a great deal of control, and sometimes she wondered if the passionate young woman she had once been was now just a memory. Certainly the bitterness between her and Baxter in the latter years of their lives together had put an effective damper on desire. She had felt nothing the last time they made love, though she remembered it well for the sadness she had felt after, and for the tears that flowed all night after he left her bed to return to his own, something he had never done before.
But it would not do
to get maudlin. She was in London, and she had recovered from her depression, and she was with a good and valued friend. She remembered her mother-in-law’s visit of the day before. Less would appreciate the true hideousness of that little contretemps, and so she told him the story as they continued their slow perambulation of the ballroom. Less laughed in all the right places as Emily described the dowager’s critical eyeing of her figure, question about her increasing, and her pronouncement that Emily must get back together with Baxter and “produce an heir.”
They stood and watched the figures of a country dance for a few minutes, the girls in their white gowns floating like young fairies, the men in their sober hues joining and parting from the ladies. Less glanced over at her again.
He cleared his throat. “My dear, you have gained a little weight, you know.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she asked, with a hint of frost in her voice.
Less squeezed her arm. “It was not meant as a criticism, my dear. Just concern that you are unhappy and are taking out your worries at the dinner table.”
Emily smiled, the quick flare of anger dissipated. She was too happy to see Less again to stay angry at him when she knew he did not mean to interfere or criticize. “Perhaps I am. Food is soothing sometimes. But I have found peace in these last two years, my friend. I have learned who I am inside, and found that I am a good person who didn’t deserve what Baxter did to me, the way he discarded me like an old newspaper.”
She saw her friend’s mobile face shutter, and hurriedly added, “I will not criticize him to you. I know how you feel about him and I would never place you in the middle of us. I didn’t even when the break was new and raw. I certainly am not going to start now that it is old and healed.”
Lessington sighed. “If you have found peace, I am glad, but I wish you could impart the secret to your husband. He is bitter, Em, to the core. He conceals it well, but—”
“Well, what do I see here?”
A familiar drawl sent shivers up her spine and made Lessington’s head whip around. It was Sedgely, standing before them in his crisp, elegant black evening wear. Emily felt the blood drain from her face. There would be no escaping as there had been the night at the theater, no hasty brushing past with down-turned eyes. Perhaps this was inevitable, but that did not make it any easier.
“Baxter!” Lessington recovered first, and greeted his friend more heartily than was his wont.
“Less,” Baxter said evenly. He turned to his wife. “Emily, how are you?”
“Baxter. I am well.”
“You look in exceedingly good health.”
That was her husband’s way of saying she was fat. “I am,” she said, a trifle too loudly. “I am in perfect health thanks to the bracing Yorkshire air.”
A couple beside them watched avidly. All society was aware that the Marquess of Sedgely and his wife lived apart, so they watched to catch any scandalous tidbits of acrimony to spread among society.
Baxter’s gaze sharpened at her words. “You must be careful, or you will have all of society trooping to Yorkshire to test the air as a curative. Would that not disturb the quietude that you so enjoy?”
“There is little threat of that, my lord, as the cure is not for physical ailments, but for those of the mind only.”
“There are enough ailments of the mind in the upper ten thousand to fill the Yorkshire countryside, you may be sure.”
Emily had not another word to offer. She had thought her heart proof against her husband, but she found being in his company torture. What was it about his voice, his eyes, his presence that caused emotion and pain to thrum through her sensation-deadened body?
He was a handsome man, granted. He was lean and dark and compelling, and when dressed all in black evening dress he caused the strangest sensations in her stomach. Unbidden, memories of their nights together tormented her. She knew every inch of his glorious, lean body and her own started a strange vibrating chorus of desires, her hands unconsciously clenching and unclenching and her treasonous body growing amorous at the thought of the fulfillment his had given hers in other times. Desolate, she realized that he still attracted her and his mere presence filled her with yearning.
Aware that he was watching her, waiting for her next verbal parry, she turned to Less. She could not speak. Her composure, of which she had been so proud, had evaporated like the chimera it was.
Less gazed into her eyes, saw the mute appeal in them perhaps, and rushed to speech. “Baxter, I did not think you meant to come to the ball until later. Much later. Did you not have some business to take care of?”
As the two friends chatted, without the need for Emily’s attention, she strove to regain control of her unruly response to her husband’s mere presence. It was easy to calm herself once she thought again of their last meeting. It had been at Brockwith Manor as he requested that she leave, so his mother could live there in peace. As if there was not enough room in that enormous Palladian pile for them both to exist without even seeing each other for months at a time!
They had, as always, fallen into an argument, and Baxter had said, out of the blue, “Perhaps you should sleep in some other man’s bed, Emily. Then if you don’t get with child you will know to stop blaming me for our inability to conceive!”
His voice had been icy, and Emily had been totally at sea as to how that old wound had been reopened when they had not even been speaking of children. Of course she had reacted with anger. How dare he suggest she was at fault for their brangling? Their argument had become even more vicious and had ended in a screaming match. She fled to her room, and he was gone when next she descended, leaving only a note of instructions and the information that in future he would deal with her through his solicitor. That was two years ago. She had departed for Yorkshire, to be joined shortly afterward by her aunt, Dodo Delafont.
Less was addressing her again. “He is gone, my dear. You may emerge from your brown study and tell me where you have been.”
Emily gave a rueful laugh. “Is it that obvious when I do that?”
“Only to those who know you. What were you thinking? I thought I saw anger on your pretty face?”
Rather than reveal her thoughts, she said, “Pretty? Oh, Less! Don’t flatter me, I know I am sadly changed.”
He sighed. “Emily, my dear heart—”
“No!” Emily put up one hand. “It is really not something that concerns me. I have changed outside and in. But I know what Baxter and others see. His own mother called me . . . what was it? Something like ‘a pudding with eyes.’”
Lessington turned to her and said, “My dear, you are still so beautiful, if you could only see yourself as others see you. And that is not empty ballroom flattery, but God’s own truth. You have not gained so very much weight, my dear.” He held her at arm’s length and looked her over critically, his eyes traveling down her body with an assessing gleam. “Not even two stone. I’ll warrant some would say the bounty of your décolletage alone is worth it.”
She flushed and he chuckled, but fell to silence as he glanced across the room. “Oh, Lord, that bore Fawley is coming this way, and there is more yet that I want to say to you. May I call on you, dear heart? I have something of importance to discuss with you, something that requires privacy.”
“What is wrong, Less?” Emily saw the tightening of the man’s jaw and the worried look that marred his normally pleasant expression. “Is it something about your family? Or are you sick?”
“No. It is not myself about whom I would speak with you. It’s Sedgely. Emily, I must talk to you about Sedgely. I am frightened for him, for his life, and I think you are the only one who can help him.”
Chapter Four
For just that barest moment, Sedgely thought, as he walked away from Less and his wife, he had seen her, the lovely girl he married. When Emily first looked at him, her eyes had widened into those twin, pansy-brown pools, her dewy, rosy lips had parted and she had stared at him with something that dressed in
a semblance of the desire he had once awakened in her.
And his traitorous body had responded. At one time Emily could glance at him from across a crowded ballroom, her unspoken ‘I want you’ darting through the heaviest crowd, and he would feel a surge of lust pounding through his veins in answer as he watched her slip away.
He would make some excuse to their hosts and follow her, whispering in her ear what he planned to do to her when he got her alone. They were barely able to contain themselves until they got into the carriage before flinging themselves at each other. On occasion they had not even waited to get home before coupling in frantic need in the dim interior of his sumptuous carriage, only to repeat the experience more leisurely once in the safe haven of his room. The memory of that halcyon period lingered within him still as the happiest years of his life.
How had something so powerful died? It had not been sudden. There had been no unforgivable deed or horrible occurrence to separate them. Through the years a word here, a look there, a pointed criticism, a barbed comment . . . all had conspired to lower the temperature between them until it got frosty, like early autumn descending in August. Lust had cooled. Sexual encounters had become infrequent and less heated.
Others had helped in the disenchantment—his mother and father, well-meaning friends and relatives—and somehow it had all combined to finally end in rows and vituperative recriminations. Their marriage had died on a rack constructed of anger and bitterness.
Sedgely left the Jersey ball and strolled back toward his town house through the odorous city streets. In those first few seconds he had seen all of the embittered detachment fall away from Emily. At first her expression had been naked in its emotional response to his presence, a response compounded, perhaps, of old desire and leftover love. And then he had seen her go off in one of her trances, and the familiar bitterness had marred her expression, lining her formerly smooth brow and darkening her eyes. He had taken his leave of Less, then, and strolled on, a dull ache in his chest.
Married to a Rogue Page 3
