Portia Da Costa

by Diamonds in the Rough

  The invitations had been sent, the cake ordered, even Adela’s wedding dress was almost finished. Not from Worth, to Mama’s chagrin, as there simply wasn’t time. But Adela was more than happy with a couturiere beloved of the Sewing Circle ladies, Mme Mirielle. To please her mother, Adela had agreed to a conventional design rather than Rational attire, but she’d put her foot down about the color.

  Silver-gray silk.

  “Out of respect for Papa, I think a more sober costume is appropriate and apt for a smaller, quiet wedding.”

  “If you say so, my darling. You are a very good daughter.” Had there been a sly look in Mama’s eyes? Did she strongly suspect her eldest was not quite as pure as a white-clad bride should be?

  Still, if the wedding gown was not as lavish as Mrs. Ruffington would have liked, at least she had the comfort of knowing her daughter was correctly corseted for the occasion. She was less pleased, Adela knew, with the rest of the trousseau.

  Mme Mirielle was a great exponent of the Rational and Aesthetic couture, and Adela had decided that as Wilson was no great fan of the corseted woman, she would from now on dress for comfort in reformed clothing.

  Finally free of financial constraints as well as the whalebone variety, Adela looked forward to a life spent in lush fabrics, and looser gowns that skimmed the natural form rather than the ferociously corseted and far from healthy shape. Worn with radical new undergarments that clung gently and comfortably to her slight curves, enhancing rather than conquering her silhouette. Madame had a deft hand with imported patterns from France and from the U.S.A., adapting them with her own refinements. Carefully darted and seamed bust bodices with featherlight boning; loose, less heavy petticoats; a little satin belt with dangling suspender clips to hold up her stockings without the need for nasty garters and the red marks they produced. She also had a variety of very slimly shaped chemises and drawers, the latter clinging close to her thighs. Some even had buttons rather than an open vent. Adela wasn’t sure how Wilson would react to having those to negotiate, fond as he was of sliding his fingers into the more convenient old design.

  I’m sure you’ll find a way, husband-to-be.

  Adela patted the large pink dressmaker’s box containing a selection of the contentious new undergarments as her carriage drew to a halt outside the house. Wilson’s generosity now ensured that they had their own carriage again, and several new servants, all from a highly regarded agency. Despite all that was unusual and perhaps problematical about their coming union, to see Mama so happy, and living the comfortable debt-free life she’d so longed for, was enough to make everything worth it. At least for the moment.

  After their new footman assisted her from the carriage, then set out arranging for the many boxes and parcels to be brought in, Adela strode into the hall, abandoning her outdoor jacket, her hat and her gloves to Minnie, who also looked exceptionally cheery now that her load of household chores had been considerably lightened. Trying on garments all morning at Madame’s had been far more exhausting than it had a right to be, and all Adela wanted now was a cup of tea, and some solitude with her pencils and her sketch pad. A little oasis of quiet in the turmoil of bridal preparations.

  But before she could make for the parlor, her mother appeared and grabbed her by the arm. Mama was even more happily agitated than she’d been for the past two weeks, if that were possible.

  “Oh, Della, it’s so exciting! Come along to the morning room.... Sybil’s in the parlor. We mustn’t disturb them.”

  “Disturb who?”

  “Sybil, of course...and Algernon! He’s proposing—at least that’s what I hope!”

  Relief washed through Adela. This was what she’d been hoping for, too. Although she’d clearly tried to rejoice in her sister’s wedding preparations, Sybil had been a little downcast that it was Adela’s forthcoming marriage causing all the excitement and not her own. Adela had been praying that her younger sister would soon have an announcement, too. Both for Sybil’s sake and because a betrothal to the son of a marquis for the younger Ruffington girl would draw interest away from the marriage of the elder to the as-yet-untitled Mr. Ruffington.

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, wonderful,” Adela said, shepherding her mother to the morning room. Mama had been showing a distinct inclination to go and listen at the door of the parlor.

  It didn’t take long. Adela barely had time to sip half a cup of oolong and nibble a fortifying madeleine when Sybil burst into the morning room dragging a pink-faced Algernon in her wake. Sybil’s face was rosy, too, and her hair slightly disarrayed. Adela hid a grin, knowing her sister shared her own predisposition for sensuality, although perhaps not to the same extreme degree.

  “Mama! Adela! Marguerite!” Sybil was dancing from foot to foot. “Algie’s asked me to marry him and I’ve said yes!” She gave a little frown, but it didn’t stand much of a chance, because an eyeblink later she was grinning again. “Please say that that’s all right, Mama. Please say you give your consent!”

  The room dissolved into joyous chaos again, much as it had done not all that long ago over Adela. In the midst of all the hugging and congratulating, she smiled wryly. This time all was as it seemed. Sybil adored Algernon in the simplest, happiest and most romantic fashion, and it was clear from the doting look on the young man’s face that he returned her feelings completely.

  Not a deal, a bargain or an arrangement of convenience. It’s true love, this, not like Wilson and me.

  For a moment, Adela shivered, despite the warmth of the day. For the thousandth time, her mind flitted to different circumstances, to a state of affairs that might have existed if the course of events had not gone so disastrously wrong that afternoon seven years ago.

  Fiddlesticks, Adela, life is what it is. One must make the best of the hand one is dealt, and your hand certainly has...possibilities.

  She stiffened her spine, smiled brilliantly and redoubled the fervor with which she hugged her sister. Sybil was sweet, uncomplicated and loving. Silly, sometimes, but basically good-hearted. And she deserved this happiness, as did Mama, who was both laughing and crying, barely able to believe this new bouquet of good fortune that had been heaped upon her and her girls, even though she’d anxiously anticipated it.

  While their parent began a good-natured cross questioning of the second prospective bridegroom in less than a month, and Marguerite slipped away to read, as usual, Sybil drew Adela aside.

  “Algie and I have talked this over. We won’t announce our engagement officially until you and Wilson are married. I...I don’t want to draw the limelight from you, Della. I want you to have your day in the sun, at the center of attention. I don’t want people to be paying attention to me on your day.”

  Unlike Mama, Adela’s joy for her sister hadn’t expressed itself in tears, but now her eyes grew bleary. She hugged her again, harder than before. “That’s a very sweet gesture, Syb, but it’s not necessary. I know I can speak for Wilson when I say we’d actually prefer less limelight. So don’t hold back on our account. I know you want the whole world to know, really, don’t you?”

  Sybil gave a watery grin. “Oh, Della, you know me so well. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

  Adela nodded, but later in the day she wondered. Would she have preferred to have her own day free of sisterly distractions, with her at its dazzling center? For once in her life, what would it have been like to project at least the illusion of perfect beauty that the bridal aura always bestowed?

  She squashed the questions. Things were better as they were. More honest.

  But there was still one significant flaw in today’s general happiness, all so dramatically wrought by the new announcement.

  Despite the sisters’ thorough and unhopeful search of every possible place where they might have been misplaced among clothes, shoes, handkerchiefs and gloves, Sybil’s incriminating bundle of letters was still missing.

  20

  A Wedded Couple

  I have a wife. I’m a married man. How ver
y odd.

  They were back at Maltravers Road, after a very long day. Adela and himself. Man and wife. A wedded couple.

  A fact, but he could still barely believe it, or how it had come about.

  Wilson had offered to arrange a honeymoon on the Continent because such things were customary, but Adela had declined, insisting it wasn’t necessary. A decision leaving him both grateful and a little disappointed.

  Grateful, because he simply didn’t have the time. His work on the submarine plans for the War Office was at a critical state, with ministers and other functionaries anxious to see results in short order.

  But he was disappointed because the idea of traveling with Adela was strangely alluring. The more he saw of her, the more he had a yen to show her off, and the dining rooms of glamorous European restaurants, or the great opera houses or theaters on the Continent would make perfect settings for her. It was the most bizarre yearning, for a man who’d always preferred the quiet life, but still he wanted it. He longed to share a whole variety of experiences with her, and gift her with pleasures other than those of the bedroom. So that one day, she might...

  Might what, you blithering idiot? Fall in love with you? She might have harbored a tendre for you once, long ago, but not now, not anymore. Her feelings for you now are as pragmatic as yours are for her...supposedly.

  Adela had loved him seven years ago, he knew that. But she didn’t anymore. She tolerated him now. Liked him well enough sometimes, and found him carnally compatible. There were plenty of other men who could have met those criteria for marriage...but he was simply the expedient choice, being the Ruffington heir, and thus a source of security for her, and her mama, and her younger sister.

  And yet, as she’d approached him down the short aisle at Saint Agatha’s, he’d been dazzled, and not only by the sublime diamonds around her throat. No virgin bride, she’d eschewed unsullied white, yet there had still been something as pure and untouchable as the gems themselves about her as she’d seemed to float toward him, her indomitable spirit capturing his mind as well as his body.

  Picturing her slender, silver-clad form, he wanted her fiercely. All day she’d charmed her wedding guests and projected the perfect image of the glowing bride happily anticipating her wedding night, but propriety had decreed him unable to touch her, allowing nothing more than a few chaste kisses and a little hand holding. Now he wanted to plunge into her and claim his prize. Opportunities for intimacy had been achingly sparse during their short engagement, with barely more than a few moments of stolen fondling and a hungry kiss or two to show for their troth.

  Hurry up, Della!

  He lounged on her bed, in the room he’d had quickly prepared for her. Luckily, his house was spacious, so there was a suitable-size chamber for Adela’s personal use. Even more luckily, he and Coraline had always met in hotels and at house parties, so there were no awkward echoes of his former paramour to make his wife feel uncomfortable.

  But perhaps she didn’t even give a damn? Wilson shifted uneasily against the pillows, naked apart from a new dressing gown of blue figured silk, a gift from his bride. A small suspicious devil in his mind goaded him about that, too. Had she purchased it with her small allowance from the Old Curmudgeon? Or from her earnings drawing naked men for the bored matrons of Belgravia? The silk itself was heavy, dense and gleaming. When he closed his eyes, its texture seemed to mimic the very texture of Della’s secret flesh. His cock throbbed, as he imagined exploring her with his fingers. Any minute now he’d be touching her, stroking her...but only if the dratted woman ever emerged from her dressing room.

  Just when he was considering taking himself in hand, the door swung open and there she was.

  Wilson had never seen Adela in her wrapper before, and the sight brought a lump to his throat. How in the name of reason could she not believe she was lovely? The lace-and-silk garment was a soft shade, somewhere between the color of country cream and the bloom on a ripe apricot, and it flattered and illuminated her skin to perfection. With the lamps turned low, and a small fire burning in the grate against an unseasonable chill, the light was mutable and flickering, and it cast an ethereal glow over his bride, imbuing her thick, luxuriant hair with living lights, and making her fine eyes almost supernaturally luminescent.

  “You look very lovely, Della,” he said, rising from the bed, acutely aware of, and also strangely embarrassed by the fact that she must be able to see the jut of his erection through the fabric of his robe. He’d never been bashful about his maleness before. Dash it, she was making a crazy boy out of him again, an idiot in lust.

  Her dark brows arched, and he expected her usual rebuttal of a compliment. But instead she gave a small smile, a pleased little quirk, as if accepting for a change. Unless she simply didn’t want to be argumentative on her wedding night?

  “You look rather dashing yourself, husband.” The smile widened, her gaze glancing toward his nether regions. “That blue looks very well on you.”

  “As does that...whatever is that shade?” Why was she hovering over there by the door? With her robe, handsome as it was, fastened up to the neck and concealing all?

  “Mme Mirielle calls it ‘apricot parfait.’”

  “Sounds perfectly edible, but I’d rather savor what lies beneath, if you don’t mind.”

  She moved toward him, her gait a smooth glide, her hand at the lace collar of her robe, keeping it closed. When she reached the side of the bed, she paused, looking intently at him. For a moment a little frown pleated her brow, then she shrugged. Wilson almost sighed at the way the slight movement made her sleek hair ripple in the firelight. What would those thick, silken strands feel like wrapped around his cock? Maybe by the end of the night, he’d know.

  “Why don’t you take off your wrapper?” He tried to sound leisurely, but he was so wound up that the words came out rougher than he’d intended.

  “Anxious to see the goods again, eh?” The words were combative, but her voice was soft, bordering on laughter. Wilson wondered if he was going to start shaking any second, he craved her so much.

  “I am. I don’t deny it. Come on, Della. Have mercy on me.”

  “Oh, very well, then.” She spoke as if she were an indulgent governess conceding a treat to a naughty little boy. For a moment Wilson imagined a risqué scenario, not a preference he’d ever experienced before, and it was almost his turn to laugh. Adela might not love him, but she could inspire the most bizarre thoughts and peccadilloes. Expand his horizons in unexpected ways.

  But for now, enough of her teasing. He made to move toward her and hurry the silk off her body, but she skipped back, out of reach. Mercifully, though, she pulled on the apricot satin ribbons that fastened the garment.

  Then, slowly, she drew the panels apart, and eased off the deliciously colored, frothy confection, rolling one shoulder after the other and allowing the whole thing to slide into a bundle on the carpet around her feet.

  “Dear heavens...Della!”

  She was naked and magnificent. Infinitely more radiant than she’d been at eighteen, by the river, or even just weeks ago, sunlit in his workroom. Her skin gleamed like milk, a stunning contrast to her dark hair where it streamed over her bare shoulders, a match for the tempting grove between her legs. Around her neck she wore the only fitting tribute to her goddesslike splendor—the Ruffington diamonds, as precious and incandescent as a rainbow.

  “Well, you did tell me recently that you’d like to see me wearing only the diamonds, so here they are.” She touched the gems at her throat, stirring their fire. “They belong to me now,” she added, squaring her shoulders and giving him a firm look. “Mama gave them to me as my wedding gift because that was what Papa always wanted.”

  The slight action made their iridescence ripple and flash, and her breasts lift. The tiny movement was a provocation all out of proportion to its dynamics, and Wilson felt like a wild beast, goaded and straining against its leash. “Exactly as it should be. You’re the Ruffington woman most fit to
do them justice.” He paused, twisting the sash of his robe. “But doesn’t young Sybil have eyes for the diamonds? She wore them at the Rayworths’ shindig.”

  Adela moved ever forward, and to Wilson’s surprise, climbed onto the bed with an unexpected ease and naturalness, and sat down facing him, legs tucked to one side. It was as if she belonged there. Which of course, she did; where else would a wife sit? But it was her complete lack of any apparent embarrassment that took him aback.

  You’re used to being naked with men, though, aren’t you, wife? How in hell could I ever forget that?

  He tried to quell the jealousy. She was with him now, wasn’t she? And the days of her paid stallions were over. Why dwell on the past? He almost laughed at how quickly he’d shaken off his own caprices. Especially the absurd notion of wedding Coraline. That had seemed such a logical idea at the time, and he’d wanted it...but now the Parisienne was as unreal to him as the awkward flickering figures in Lord Rayworth’s squeaky old praxinoscope.

  Only Adela was real. Alive. Greater than life.

  “Sybil isn’t as acquisitive as you’d think. She’s an innocent, really, and just likes pretty things. She knew these were promised to me.” Adela touched the diamonds again, stroking their hard surface with delicate fingertips and making Wilson wish she’d touch his hardness soon. “All she wanted was to wear them once. She knows Algie will buy her a dozen necklaces, even prettier and more costly ones than this...if he gets the chance.”

  A look of profound distress flashed across Adela’s face. Real pain, and sharply intense. Wilson couldn’t bear it. He reached out and laid a hand on her slim shoulder, aroused by its smooth, silky warmth, even in the grip of other, more puzzling feelings.

  “What’s wrong, Della? What is it?”

  She shook her head, making her thick hair fly.

  “I won’t say it’s nothing...because it isn’t.” Her fingers settled over his, squeezing. “But now’s not the moment to discuss it. I’ll tell you some other time.” She prized his fingers from her arm, and with an arch look, settled them on her breast. “Now we have other matters to attend to. We agreed to satisfy each other’s appetites, didn’t we?” Her tongue slid out and delicately circled her lips. “Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry now.”