“Of course.” She stared down at the hands she always kept gloved. “But it’s not that easy to find a suitable husband. He’d have to be the sort to put up with my charity work and not expect me to be always at home.”
More important, he’d have to accept the truth about her past. She doubted such a man existed. Once any respectable man learned who she really was, he’d never want her.
He might even be unscrupulous enough to reveal her secret to others. If the truth became widely known, how would she ever convince anybody to contribute to the charities ever again? They listened to her because she was Henry’s wife—a viscountess. They’d never listen to poor Isobel Smith, no matter how many deportment lessons Henry had purchased for her and how much French she knew.
“Some men would tolerate your involvement with Henry’s charities. Lord Warbrooke, for example—”
“Don’t even think such a thing! His lordship might have a passion for charitable causes, but I can guess the sort of wife he’d want—one better suited to a politician. He’d want me to stay at home and entertain while he did the real work.”
“Well, I think you’re wrong, but it needn’t be him. Choose some other gentleman. You’ve pined after Henry long enough. He was thirty years your senior—he wouldn’t expect you to mourn him all your life. And don’t you miss the intimacies of marriage?” A faraway look crossed Phoebe’s face. “God knows I do.”
Isobel blushed. “I don’t understand why. I suppose that the kissing can be nice, but the rest of it—” She gave an involuntary shudder. “It’s embarrassing and uncomfortable and not the least pleasant.”
Phoebe gaped at her. “Do you mean to say…that is…from the way you spoke of Henry, I’d thought—So you find it unpleasant, eh?” She settled back against her chair with narrowed eyes. “Tell me something, Bella. When Henry…er…came to your bed, how long did he take to do his business?”
“Phoebe!” She couldn’t believe her friend was even talking about this!
“Just answer the question.”
She hesitated, yet she found it curious that Phoebe would ask such a thing. Curious enough that she answered her. “I suppose…five minutes. Fortunately, Henry was a considerate husband, for I don’t see how a woman could endure more than that.”
Phoebe burst into laughter. “Oh, Bella, you have no idea! Trust me, when a man does it right, you want it to last forever.”
Isobel gazed at her friend, truly perplexed. She couldn’t imagine wanting the dreadful act to last forever. Still, hadn’t she often wondered if there were more to it? She’d heard married women giggling over their lovers and seen many a country girl go astray. And for what? If lovemaking were as awful as it had been in her experience, why did they even do it when they didn’t have to?
She wanted to ask Phoebe to explain, yet she was almost afraid to know more and be disappointed yet again. After all the sly remarks at her and Henry’s wedding breakfast, she’d eagerly anticipated their time together, only to find it sad and awkward and painful. Perhaps it was simply her. Perhaps she was made wrong.
“Phoebe?” she heard herself say. “You said, ‘when a man does it right,’ but…well…how do you know if he’s doing it right?”
“When it makes you feel as if the heavens have rained joy all over you.”
She’d certainly never felt that. “Perhaps some women just don’t—”
“If a woman doesn’t, it’s usually because her lover is inept. And while bumbling males do abound, you can find the competent ones if you look hard enough.” Phoebe’s voice filled with sympathy. “Have you truly never enjoyed…I mean…wasn’t there anybody besides Henry?”
Isobel shook her head. “He’s the only man I’ve even kissed.”
“Then you don’t know what you’re missing, Bella. It can be so very lovely when it’s with a man who knows what he’s doing.”
A lump of longing caught in Isobel’s throat. She gazed down at the table. “Or perhaps I’m just…well, flawed somehow.” Though the thought that she’d failed Henry in that respect struck her to the heart.
“I’d lay odds that you’re not.” Phoebe’s face brightened. “And I know how you can find out for sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come with me tonight to the Widows’ Auction.” Scooting her chair closer, Phoebe glanced furtively out the open door, then lowered her voice. “It’s held at the Mayfair Bachelors’ Club every year. Respectable widows offer themselves in an auction for one night of…well…passion. The bachelors bid and the widows receive three-quarters of the auction price. The other quarter goes to the club.”
Isobel’s shock knew no bounds. “You’re not…You don’t mean to—”
“Oh, I certainly do. I’ve done it before, you know. At last year’s auction, I met the most marvelous—” She broke off with a smile. “Let’s just say that once you’ve enjoyed the sweets, it’s difficult to abstain. And Mr. Chambers has been dead quite a while.”
“But, Phoebe, I know you’ve had men interested in marriage.”
“Yes, but I don’t want another husband, just a little…er…taste of pleasure from time to time. For all his faults, Mr. Chambers could lay out a feast for a famished woman, and I miss that.”
Isobel gnawed on her lower lip. She didn’t know what the feast was like. She hadn’t even realized until this moment that there might be a feast at all. “What about your reputation and your future?”
“The auction is entirely anonymous. The women are masked, and no man may remove a woman’s mask without her permission. Otherwise the widows would balk at participating every year. It allows the gentlemen to have their fun, and the women to supplement their income—”
“You mean, to sell themselves like whores.”
Phoebe shrugged. “If you wish to see it that way. I don’t. They don’t make a profession out of it. Some of the women even give the money to charity. And it’s not as if they have any virtue to lose.” A pleading note entered her voice. “It’s just one night for a lonely woman, Bella. One night of pleasure free from any dire consequences.”
“Oh? What about the possibility of children?” she snapped.
Phoebe flashed her a smug smile. “There are ways to prevent that.”
And she hadn’t known? Oh, but why should she? Henry had wanted children. That had been his primary reason for marrying her. It had been one of her great regrets that she’d been as unable to give him a son as his previous two wives.
With a saucy tilt of her head, Phoebe surveyed Isobel critically. “You could do it, too, you know. For a night with you, a man would pay substantially. With that mass of blond hair and your rosy lips and fine form—”
“I am not putting myself up for auction to the highest bidder! I’m certainly not spending the evening in the bed of a perfect stranger.”
Still, the idea of being desired by a gentleman just for her body and naught else had a strangely enticing appeal.
Oh, Lord, how could she even think it? It was the most wicked thing she’d ever heard of!
Phoebe tsked at her. “You can’t go all your life moldering away in your lonely town house. You’re barely twenty-seven. It would be a crime for a woman like you to never truly experience the pleasures of the flesh.”
“There’s no guarantee that the man who bids on me will be any better able to show me…um…the pleasure of the flesh than Henry was.”
“True, but they’re all experienced gentlemen or they wouldn’t participate. It takes a jaded man to bid on a widow when he could simply pay a common whore. These are men who find excitement in pleasing a woman who’s been long without.” A glint of mischief entered her eyes. “Besides, you could use the proceeds to fund your educational endowments for the boys.”
A pox on Phoebe for knowing exactly how to tempt her. The idea took hold, much as Isobel tried to banish it. Wouldn’t it be grand to go into that meeting next week and throw that money in Lord Warbrooke’s face? With all of Henry’s estate tied up in hi
s charities except for the modest living allowance given to her, she had no other way of raising the funds.
Much as she hated to admit it, she was even more intrigued by the possibility of finding out the truth about lovemaking. Throughout her marriage, she’d wondered why Henry’s perfectly pleasant kisses always ended in such a miserable act. If Phoebe were right, and it had naught to do with her…
She sighed. “If only it didn’t sound so…so…”
“Exciting? Thrilling?”
“Dangerous. If I’m found out, think what would happen!”
“You’d risk far more with any other method of tasting the fruits of the flesh.”
Phoebe did have a point. To engage in a typical love affair would mean exposing herself to some man who might use the knowledge to ruin her if he liked. But Phoebe had done this before, and nothing had happened. Besides, she’d be masked.
“I–I don’t know…” she began, even as she felt herself weakening.
“Come now, Bella, it will be fun, and we’d be doing it together. Don’t you think it’s high time you learn what you’ve been missing in the bedchamber?”
When Phoebe put it that way, the bleakness of Isobel’s life stretched before her—a wasteland of duty and long, lonely days followed by even longer, lonelier nights. She wanted to marry, truly she did, if only for companionship. But first she needed to know if she was too flawed for the act of lovemaking.
“All right,” she heard herself saying. “If you’re sure no one will find out.”
“It’ll be our secret,” her friend responded.
But the cat-in-the-cream smile Phoebe tendered made Isobel wonder if she wasn’t making an enormous mistake.
2
That evening, Justin did something he wouldn’t have considered under any other circumstances. He agreed to join the odious Lord Bradford for dinner at the Mayfair Bachelors’ Club.
Justin had never had a desire to join or even visit Bradford’s club. The organization was made up of young rascals, all of whom competed to see who could be the more debauched. But thanks to this morning’s disastrous meeting of the governing board, he needed the young earl’s vote. If Bradford voted with Lady Kingsley, others might be swayed to their side and that simply wouldn’t do.
Lady Kingsley. He snorted. If not for that bloody woman voicing her unfounded opinions this morning, he’d be having a nice dinner at home instead of having to endure some undoubtedly inedible meal in Bradford’s company. He still smarted over her parting jabs about his motives for serving on charitable boards. The lady had to be the most annoyingly superior creature in Christendom.
And it was a pity, too. Because beneath her lofty airs lay a pretty woman whose good taste, fine breeding, and intelligence would make her a very good wife for some man. That is, if any man could put up with her high-minded nonsense long enough to marry her.
Bradford met him at the door as he arrived, then quickly led him into a cavernous room packed with gentlemen. A stench of sweat and tobacco and brandy hung in the air, exacerbated by the summer heat. Justin surveyed the mob with distaste. “Is it always this crowded on a Friday evening?”
“Only tonight. It’s the Widows’ Auction.”
That’s when he noticed the dais erected at the front of the room for the occasion and the array of masked females lined up to one side of it. Good God, the infamous Widows’ Auction. That explained the smell of lust permeating the room. He should’ve guessed Bradford would frequent a club notorious for such nonsense. “Perhaps we should go elsewhere—”
“No, indeed!” Bradford nudged him in the ribs and winked madly. “Where’s your spirit, man? I never miss this. You’ll like it. It’s great fun. Who knows? You might even find a lady worth having for an evening.”
Justin shot Bradford a skeptical look, but Bradford missed it in his eagerness to assess the “goods” being offered. Justin sighed. If he wanted Bradford’s vote, he’d have to endure this. At least until the man bid on some hapless female and took her off.
“Very well,” Justin said, though the whole thing disgusted him. He supposed it wasn’t any different than taking a mistress or bedding a soiled dove, both of which he’d done often enough in his salad days. The act of love was a viable tender in all levels of English society. But an auction made it seem so much more blatant.
As they took seats at a back table, a servant scurried over to offer them wine and take their order for dinner. At the front of the room, an auctioneer barked attributes of women as if they were horses on the block at Tattersall’s. Justin shivered involuntarily. What woman in her right mind submitted to such a bloodless description of her fine qualities? And then to go off with the highest bidder…
But a glance around the room told him no one else shared his distaste. The other men cried their bids with regularity, heedless of the lewd comments and jesting of their companions. Even the woman presently on the dais seemed to revel in the attention, for when some balding fellow won the bid and went to claim her, she smiled as sweetly as a schoolgirl.
Justin shook his head. There was no accounting for human behavior, was there? He turned back to Bradford, whose attention was fully engaged by the activity on the dais. “Now about this proposal of mine—”
“Give it a rest, won’t you, old fellow?” Bradford interrupted. “We can talk about all that later. Don’t know why you even care what happens with that damned school anyway. A man like you dabbling in all this reform nonsense…I tell you this—once I inherit the title and I’m not on Father’s leash anymore, I’ll flee that governing board at once. Boring stuff, all of it.”
“Some of us see it as our Christian duty,” Justin said tightly.
“Well, I’m not one of them.” He flicked his hand toward the dais with a smug grin. “That’s my Christian duty—looking after the widows and orphans. That’s what the Bible says to do, y’know.”
If Bradford had ever read one word of a Bible, Justin would be much surprised. “Somehow I don’t think this is what the writers of the Bible had in mind.”
“Don’t be so sanctimonious. You’re not exactly immune to lust yourself. I’ve seen how you eye Lady Kingsley in those meetings.”
Justin started. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“Lofty Kingsley of the governing board. Personally, I think Mrs. Chambers would be a bit warmer in bed, but I wouldn’t kick Lady Kingsley out if she showed up in mine, to be sure. And judging from how fiercely you two spar, I’ll wager you wouldn’t kick her out of yours either.”
“That’s absurd. I’ve never thought of Lady Kingsley in that way.”
“Not even when she wears that dark blue gown that’s a little too smug? The one that makes her bubbies stick out in front, and her bottom look plump enough to make a man want to sink his teeth—”
“Not even then,” Justin snapped. “And you shouldn’t talk so crudely of Lady Kingsley. She’s not that kind of woman.”
Devil take Bradford. Bad enough that Justin had indeed thought of her “in that way” from time to time. Hearing that Bradford did, too, annoyed him in the extreme.
It was ludicrous anyway. The woman would never countenance attentions from either of them. She filled out her gowns well, but so did cold marble. And her rigid morality was surpassed only by her worshipful adoration of her late husband.
Those two must have made quite the dull pair. Justin had barely known the viscount, but Lady Kinglsey spoke of him as if he were a saint. No doubt her background was equally colorless and respectable, or Saint Kingsley would never have married her. And she wouldn’t be continuing his legacy with such single-minded determination.
Not that he didn’t admire what she’d done with Kingsley’s charities. But a young woman ought to have more of a life than a short marriage and a long widowhood, locked away from the world like some pharaoh’s wife in a sarcophagus, waiting to join her lord and master in the afterlife.
He looked at the dais. Then again, some widows ought to be locked away. He�
�d never seen so many gaudily dressed, overpainted females in all his life, tittering and gabbling in their low-cut gowns and feather-trimmed masks. He wouldn’t pay a farthing for the lot of them.
Except perhaps for the one being led onto the dais now.
“Deuce take it, would you look at that blonde,” Bradford broke in. “What a fine wench. A damned beauty, I’ll bet. It’s a pity about the masks—stupid rule, if you ask me, though easily got round if the woman agrees. Most of ’em do…given a little persuasion.” He winked at Justin, who shot him a baleful glance in return.
But Justin couldn’t keep his gaze from the dais for long. He hated to agree with Bradford, but that was indeed a “fine wench.” Her freely flowing blond hair stood out among the indeterminate brown and hennaed coiffures of her companions. Her simple white satin mask covered the upper part of her face, allowing only a glimpse of her eyes through the slits, though it did expose a generous, soft mouth and flushing cheeks. Like Bradford, he wished he could see the rest, but he had to admit that the mask heightened her allure. Beneath it lay the mysteries of a woman, mysteries any man would want to explore.
Especially when coupled with her gown, a classical Roman sort of thing, probably a leftover costume from some masquerade ball. The white satin draped her curves suggestively, skimmed her breasts and hips so snugly that it drew a man’s eye inexorably to her attractions.
Which were ample and unmistakably female. He cursed when his loins grew heavy. But he wasn’t made of stone, after all.
“What’s your name, luv?” the auctioneer asked the woman.
“Now see here,” she said in an oddly imperious voice, “I thought this was supposed to be anonymous.”
Everybody laughed at her haughtiness, including Justin. Where had they found this impudent chit?
Strange, but her voice sounded familiar. He’d swear he’d heard it before, and recently, too.
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