The Luckiest Lady in London

by Sherry Thomas

  “In fact”—she pushed on before she could stop herself again—“I lie awake at night, imagining you watching me in the darkness. And when I finally fall asleep, I dream that I am naked before you, unable to stop you from . . . many liberties.”

  This time it was he who stopped in his tracks, though he did not need any reminder from her to resume moving. “Miss Cantwell, are you trying to arouse me?”

  Her heart had been beating fast for a while, but now blood roared in her ears. “I only speak the truth. I quite despise myself for these desires that run amok. But run amok they do. I daresay for the rest of my life I will dream of being fondled by you.”

  His eyes darkened; his hand tightened on the top of his walking stick. Her innards shook. With nerves, yes, but also with something that was almost exhilaration.

  This was how she played the game.

  “What do you have against making your dreams come true?”

  “My entire upbringing, needless to say. But there is also something else, something that you, with your vast wealth, cannot possibly understand.”

  “Do please shed some light on the matter.”

  “We are poor, you see. Not indigent, as my mother still employs a cookmaid and has one-third share of a gardener—so we get by. But getting by means not buying much of anything beyond food, tea, and coal.

  “There is a shop in Cirencester that had a telescope in its shop window. Every month for ten years, I stopped before the window to admire the telescope. I wanted that telescope more than I had ever wanted anything else in my life—I dreamed of it by night and I schemed for it by day.

  “The telescope had been put there on consignment. The shopkeeper secretly revealed to me the lowest price he was allowed to accept for the instrument. But I couldn’t afford it—any spare penny we had went into an emergency cache for Matilda. Then one day the telescope was gone. It had been bought by a gentleman for his ten-year-old son, for the original owner’s full asking price.”

  Belatedly she noticed that they had both come to a stop. He watched her, his gaze unwavering.

  “And?” he prompted.

  “And nothing. I carried on. I was so accustomed to not having it that my life changed not at all. And so it will be with you. No matter how much I might want you, I will manage to endure it. And I will carry on as if nothing is the matter.”

  Melodramatic. But it was good melodrama, if she said so herself. He certainly seemed riveted.

  She began walking again—they were beginning to attract attention from the blindman’s buffers, standing there like that. A few steps later, he caught up with her.

  “Why did you want the telescope?”

  It was not the comment she had been expecting—not that she knew anymore what to expect from him. “That is of no relevance to the discussion at hand.”

  “I’d like to know.”

  “I will tell you when we are in bed together, but not before.” She flushed with the image that brought to mind.

  “And we will be in bed together only after I have pledged my name and protection before a man of God.”

  “Precisely.”

  “You are a devious woman, Miss Cantwell,” he said.

  She felt the warmth of his tone all the way to the pit of her stomach, as if he had licked her. “Only by necessity,” she answered, feigning modesty.

  “You would have been wasted on Mr. Pitt. And even more so on Lord Firth—that man would ask for a divorce were he to realize who you truly are.”

  “I would have made sure he didn’t.”

  “And is that any way to be married?”

  “It is how you will be married, with your lady wife never knowing who you truly are,” she pointed out, to another surprised look from him. “So please don’t say what you consider an excellent idea for yourself isn’t good enough for me.”

  “Touché,” he admitted.

  He said nothing else. The silence was at once nerve-racking and electrifying. Had she been convincing? Or had she been too convincing? Had she further piqued his interest or merely managed to give him second thoughts?

  Lady Balfour was all smiles upon their return. “I could see that it was an intense and intensely interesting conversation between the two of you.”

  “Miss Cantwell was fascinated by the house parties I give,” Lord Wrenworth said smoothly. “She didn’t realize gentlemen without wives or sisters entertained, both grandly and respectably.”

  Lady Balfour pounced. “Well, then, it behooves you to issue an invitation to Miss Cantwell. You cannot dangle such a lure before a young lady and then deny her the experience.”

  Louisa sighed inwardly as Lord Wrenworth said, with much innocence, “Oh, I do not intend to deprive Miss Cantwell of the experience at all. But she has declared that she intends to head back home at the end of the Season and recuperate for a good long while, without setting foot beyond her front door.”

  “Bosh, Louisa. I know you miss your family, but one should never pass upon a chance to enjoy the master of Huntington’s hospitality, if one at all could.”

  “Indeed. My hospitality is the stuff of legends,” said Lord Wrenworth with a seemingly guileless glance Louisa’s way. “But the end of the Season is still far away and there is plenty of time for Miss Cantwell to change her mind.”

  “And change her mind she will,” Lady Balfour said gruffly.

  “I am sure you will prove prescient, my lady.” He bowed. “Good day, Lady Balfour. And good day, Miss Cantwell.”

  • • •

  It was not until Louisa was back in her room at Lady Balfour’s town house, flipping uselessly through her notebook, that the enormity of what Lord Wrenworth had proposed fully struck her.

  The man was playing with dynamite. And should things go awry, he had just as much to lose as she did. No, more.

  He was the one with income in excess of two hundred thousand pounds a year. He was the one with the pristine, lofty reputation. And he was the one who had skillfully avoided the entanglement of eligible young ladies all these years.

  If they were discovered, he would have no choice but to marry her.

  The very idea of it emptied the air from her lungs. For a man who was neither impulsive nor stupid, this kind of recklessness was nothing short of stunning.

  And stunningly telling.

  Until this moment, she’d had no idea what he felt toward her, besides an inclination to toy with her for his own amusement. But now she could safely assume that he not only wanted her, but wanted her with an intensity that matched the fervidness of what she felt for him.

  It was . . .

  She rose from the desk and walked about aimlessly in her room, until she found herself at the edge of her bed. She sat down again, holding on to the bedpost.

  It was . . . reassuring.

  Of course, it was also immoral, depraved, egregious, abhorrent, appalling—and all the other synonyms one could find for absolutely dreadful.

  But at least she knew now the madness that had descended on her had not spared him.

  Not entirely, in any case.

  CHAPTER 5

  Felix felt exposed.

  The strange sensation crept upon him almost as soon as he left the picnic. With every passing hour it intensified, growing stronger and more undismissable. By bedtime he was literally uncomfortable in his own skin.

  The nearest parallel in his experience had been as a child, after having offered a carefully prepared present to one or both of his parents, waiting those terrible minutes to see whether his father would pick it up and whether his mother would, this once, after all her theatrical cooing, take it with her to her room or again leave it behind in the tea parlor, to be cleared away the next time the maids came through.

  But the comparison was ridiculous. He had not offered Miss Cantwell a gift. His proposition was a monstrosity, a
n affront to decency, an incendiary missile catapulted inside the very walls of her castle.

  How could he, then, the one on the offensive, fall prey to feelings of vulnerability?

  Because you have not been so much yourself in a long time. Because you have let her see more of you than anyone else. Because if she were to reject this offer—

  He told the voice inside to shut up. If she were to eventually reject his offer, it would have little to do with him, personally. Everything in her upbringing stood in the way. As did their entire social structure, predicated on the purity of the female body.

  He would think no more on his secret discomfort. Instead, he would concentrate on those confessions of hers, of being naked and subject to his will.

  For good measure, he took himself to his estate for another week, so as not to seek her out and appear impatient. Even after his return, for several days he chose the masculine refuge of his club over garden parties and soirées musicales.

  He did, however, bestir himself to attend Lady Tremaine’s ball, as otherwise the latter would have sent him a scathing note—they had been lovers at one point and had since settled into a solidly comfortable friendship.

  At the ball, he danced with a half dozen young ladies, played a few hands of faro at the card tables, and spent some time by Lady Tremaine’s side, inquiring after her doings.

  “I can tell you have been to one of your factories today,” he told her.

  “Why? Do I still have machine grease on my face?” Lady Tremaine laughed. She was a glamorous and confident woman, entirely unashamed of her delight in manufactory and in the making of money.

  “You radiate that sense of satisfaction that comes of either a spectacular lover or a spectacular income statement. And since I know you haven’t taken anyone to bed lately . . .”

  “Perhaps your intelligence is faulty.”

  “Never. Did you just find out that you are even richer than you were yesterday?”

  She laughed again. “Yes. And by a good margin.”

  He scanned the crowd below, looking for a now-familiar head of shining dark hair—even though he knew Miss Cantwell would not be in attendance. “Congratulations. How do you plan to celebrate?”

  “A Swedish lover, perhaps,” said Lady Tremaine mischievously, “since I have already scheduled a tour of Scandinavia.”

  He returned his attention to her. “When?”

  “I leave day after tomorrow.” She shrugged. “I’m bored with London. Bored with the Season.”

  “In that case, make the most of your trip. Try a Norwegian lover, too. And is Finland on the itinerary?”

  “Not this time, but Denmark is.”

  He drew back a little. “Lord Tremaine’s sister is married to a Dane, is she not?”

  “Yes. In fact, I plan to call on her when I pass through Copenhagen—I have always kept on very good terms with my in-laws,” she answered, her tone defiant.

  “Of course you have,” he said soothingly. “I shall expect a full account of your Scandinavian experience when you return.”

  “That you will have.” She sounded relieved to move away from the topic of her in-laws—from any topic that might extrapolate to her husband. “And you, any interesting plans of your own?”

  “No, I shall simply have to endure the tedium that is London without you. And then the dreariness of throwing the same old house party.”

  “Ha. You are the last person to find Society a bore. You are too busy enjoying having your boots licked from one end of Mayfair to the other.”

  “If the world wishes to admire me, who am I to stand in its way?”

  He gave her a slight squeeze of the hand, let her tend to her other guests, and took himself to the music room for a little respite from the crowd. He did enjoy the adulation of the masses, but a man needed to breathe, too, and there was nothing like a crush of people at the height of summer to make a house as stuffy as one of the queen’s mourning gowns.

  The music room was dominated by a beautiful Érard piano, which Felix had always thought must have some interesting story behind it: Lady Tremaine, not at all musical, was not the sort to invest in such a fine instrument for herself. Nor was it ever used—she had another piano, a much more ordinary one, in the drawing room, for when her friends wished to have a song or two after dinner.

  He suspected that the piano had something to do with the husband she rarely mentioned, the one who lived an ocean away in New York City and never visited. The perfect marriage, it had been labeled by Society—civility, distance, and freedom, unencumbered by tiresome emotions.

  The truth was probably something else altogether. But he had never inquired. Their friendship rested on a firm respect of boundaries: Neither questioned whether the other was truly what he or she seemed.

  Lady Tremaine was happy to be thought of as completely satisfied with her marital situation. And he was happy to be thought of as a man without actual flaws, when he was about as perfect—and possibly as empty—as her marriage.

  The door opened, and in stepped the woman whose refusal to give in to his salacious demands was the very reason for his moment of introspection.

  She wore a massive confection the color of cooked shrimp, indiscriminately garnished with deep lace flounces, garlands of velvet rose leaves, and puffs of crystal-spangled tulle. On anyone else, the gown would have been heinous. But with her seemingly transparent face, she turned it to her advantage—of course a young woman as sweet and unsullied as she should come to a ball in twenty yards of pink silk weighed down with every variety of trimming known to couture.

  She leaned back against the door, as if she couldn’t quite withstand the impact of seeing him again.

  He had thought often of what she’d said about the telescope she desperately wanted, about the simple fact of carrying on without it. There had been a dignity to her thwarted desire. There never had been any dignity to his once hopeless needs, but only wretchedness.

  He became conscious that an entire minute had passed and they’d exchanged not even a word of greeting.

  “You are aware, Miss Cantwell, that we have already lost the princess royale’s father-in-law this year and are likely to lose her husband, too, any day now?” he said, his tone more severe than he had intended. “Your frock might be considered inappropriately cheerful in some quarters.”

  “I am aware of that. But there is no color like raspberry sherbet for a country girl’s complexion,” she said softly.

  And no color like raspberry sherbet for the craving that made her eyes feverishly luminous.

  Standing there, the skin of her throat and shoulders gleaming under the bright lights of the music room, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her fingers splayed against the door, as if trying to hold on to something, anything—he would have propositioned her all over again, even knowing how exposed he would feel afterward.

  “It’s still a ridiculous dress—but as a piece of costume I will admit it has its merits.” He braced a hand on the piano. “How did you know I was here?”

  “We learned while we were at Mrs. Cornish’s ball—guests were leaving to come here and they said you would be in attendance. So Lady Balfour decided to do the same. We didn’t even have invitations, but Lady Balfour told me to hold my head high and simply march in.”

  “And you succeeded admirably, of course.”

  “I wanted to see you,” she said simply. “And when I came out of the powder room, whom should I spy but you, slipping in here.”

  “Have you missed me?”

  He didn’t ask such questions. Or at least, he didn’t ask such questions when the answers mattered.

  Her left hand closed into a fist. “Of course I have missed you.”

  The floor stopped wobbling. He breathed again.

  “Every day I wondered whether I hadn’t made the biggest mistake in my life, declini
ng to be your mistress. And every night . . .” She exhaled shakily. “Let’s just say I had no idea of the range and ferocity of my own imagination.”

  “Tell me.”

  He wanted to know. He needed to know. That she was fiercely drawn to him was what made his sense of vulnerability bearable.

  Her fingers worried a crystal bead at her hip; her gaze was somewhere in the vicinity of his feet. “You said that you would bring me to your estate. Well, Lady Balfour happens to have a guidebook to the great manors of the land, with three pages devoted to describing Huntington’s every aspect. So now I know all about the cloistered garden, the lavender house, and the Greek folly across the lake from the manor.

  “I can almost see it—the manor ablaze with light at night, the lake shimmering with reflection. I stand by one of the columns of the folly, and you come up behind me.”

  He felt strangely light-headed. “You do know that when I entertain, torches are lit near the folly, so that it is visible from the house at night?”

  Her fingers dug into the fabric of her skirts. “Of course, you would do something like that, wouldn’t you? Now I will be awake all night, thinking of how frightened I would be, even if I’m hidden behind a column. And I will wonder why, since it is an imaginary scenario, I don’t simply stop you. Why I don’t ask to be taken someplace less dangerously exposed—but let you continue to do everything you want.”

  Objectively, he had heard far better love banter, steamy words accompanied by a great deal of nakedness and no inhibitions at all. Miss Cantwell, with her reluctance and her inability to go into greater details than “let you continue to do everything you want,” should have struck him as awkward and amateurish. But her inexperience, contrasted against her immediate embrace of being made love to in a semipublic place . . .

  He could see it, too, now. Except he saw it even more perversely. His guests would not be in the house, but on the grounds for the bonfire party that always marked the last night of his summertime hospitality. Most would remain near the manor, but some would venture farther afield and almost stumble upon them, hidden in the shadows, still fully clothed, but with her skirts pushed up above her waist, and him hilt-deep inside her.