The Luckiest Lady in London

by Sherry Thomas

  He found Lady Tremaine and led her down to the lawn, out of earshot of the others. “Regretting it yet?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You do know what I mean. You were wondering whether to have a headache or pretend to be too drunk when I showed up at midnight.”

  She sighed. “Why must you know me so well?”

  “I assume it’s not anything your Scandinavian lovers said or did.” He doubted that she’d had any lovers at all; she was not the sort to sleep with a man on a short acquaintance.

  She looked away. “Tremaine was in Copenhagen.”

  Her permanently absent husband. “At his sister’s house?”

  “No. I mean, I’m sure that’s where he was staying, but we ran into each other quite accidentally.” She exhaled. “And he had a woman with him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “It’s just the shock of it. I will be all right in no time.”

  He touched her on her arm. “Come back at Christmas. I’ll pack the house with handsome men and you can have your pick.”

  She laughed rather valiantly, her hand reaching up to adjust the scarf his valet had draped about his neck against the eventual chill of the night. “That’s right—instead of the ugly men you usually host.”

  Her barely-beneath-the-surface pain reverberated inside his own chest. He was feeling too much these days—and no longer knew how to stop.

  He squeezed her hand. “I will even get rid of the homelier footmen, just for you.”

  They both laughed rather valiantly at that. She kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Felix.”

  And of course his wife would choose that moment to look his way, her gaze hardening into daggers.

  • • •

  At ten minutes to midnight, Felix walked into the folly.

  His wife was already there, her hand on a pillar, looking toward the bonfire on the opposite shore of the lake. He still couldn’t quite believe it—that she had arranged a rendezvous with a man she actively disliked, just to spite him.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it, this house?” she said without glancing behind her. “I used to study a tiny picture of it, and imagine how it would look in person, lit up like this, impossibly majestic against the night.”

  He had come to tell her that he had already dispatched Drummond—by letting it be known that a man to whom Drummond owed a large gaming debt would be among those coming to watch the fireworks at midnight. Drummond had fled almost before Felix had stopped speaking, rather to Felix’s disappointment. He would have preferred to enjoy the man’s panic for a bit longer.

  Her head tilted up. “And such stars. Have I ever told you of my interest in astronomy? I have always been intrigued by the night sky, ever since I was a child. To think that there is a vast universe out there, full of deep, marvelous unknowns.”

  She had never told him, directly, of her fascination with the stars. Never allowed him to share her sense of wonder.

  “But you didn’t come to hear me prattle on. Please proceed with what we’ve agreed upon.”

  He felt a burning in his throat. What we’ve agreed upon.

  What had they agreed upon?

  He meant to speak, to let her know that Drummond had vacated the premises. Instead, he found himself standing directly behind her, his hands on her cool, bare arms.

  She trembled. With disgust—or desire? How could she feel anything for that dunce, whom Felix tolerated only because he was nephew to Felix’s former guardian?

  He kissed her hair, the lobe of her ear, the side of her neck, his fingers spreading over her collarbone.

  “Such a workmanlike approach, sir. No praise for my slender throat or my velvety skin?”

  He bit her shoulder in response, not hard, just enough for her to emit a sob of arousal.

  “Did you bring the blindfold?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

  His hand tightened. That, too, was a fantasy that belonged to them. She couldn’t have displayed a little originality and found something different for Drummond to do?

  He took off his scarf and used it to blindfold her.

  She turned around. A little hesitantly, her hand lifted and felt its way to his jaw. Could she not tell that it was him?

  “I used to dream of riding in a glass carriage, naked and blindfolded. There was a man in the carriage with me. It doesn’t matter who the man was. All that matters is that—”

  He silenced her with a hard kiss. He could take no more of her cruel words; nor could he care anymore that he was giving in to his obsession.

  She kissed him back almost as bruisingly, her hands gripping his hair. He pushed her against the pillar as she dragged his shirt up, her hands hungry for his skin.

  He had no recollection of either shoving aside her skirts or freeing himself from the encumbrance of his trousers. The next thing he knew was a desperate upward plunge as he entered her—and the gasps that echoed between them.

  The ferocity of her lips, the avarice of her hands, the sheer, agonizing scorch of her person. He didn’t know how he remembered to clamp a palm over her mouth—perhaps only when he heard someone calling, from no more than fifteen feet away, “Quick. The fireworks are about to start.”

  Their own fireworks ignited first. He barely protested before surrendering to the demonic pleasures of her body clenching and shuddering about his.

  She was heavenly. Her hair smelled of chamomile, her skin was paradise, her hips beneath his hands sweetly pliant.

  But reality seeped back, winding a cord of dismay around his heart, softly, nearly imperceptibly. Then there came a sharp, cruel yank.

  She’d let Drummond touch her. Invade her. Spill his seed inside her.

  He stumbled back a step. Then another.

  Her breaths were still erratic, but she calmly shook and rearranged her skirts. Just as calmly, she took off her blindfold.

  The hour was late and the torches that lit the pavilion were guttering. But he could see her face clearly, and she must see his just as well. He waited for her shock and outrage. Neither came. She only cast him a look halfway between desire and loathing, turned, and walked away.

  He reached out and grabbed her by the arm. “I was never going to sleep with Lady Tremaine.”

  She pried his hand from her person. “And I told Drummond to stay away from the pavilion, because of the wasps.”

  And then she was gone, marching to the explosion of fireworks overhead.

  • • •

  It was not long after Louisa lay down in bed that her husband joined her. He didn’t speak, but only kissed and caressed her in the darkness, until she could no longer remain still and silent.

  He spread her arms to the sides, linked their fingers together, and drove into her, wreaking havoc with every thrust.

  She lost count of the number of times he brought her to pleasure. Enough to make tears roll down her face, when she was once again alone, sometime in the small hours of the night.

  CHAPTER 13

  Late in the morning, as they waved good-bye to successions of their guests, Felix studied his wife.

  He could not stay away from her—that much had become obvious. Everything else, however, was pure chaos. With so much injury inflicted and only a fortnight into their marriage, how would they carry on? How would he carry on, knowing that a part of him was now at her mercy?

  Before he climbed into bed with her last night, he already knew he would have to make amends when the sun rose. A simple matter, he’d told himself: When a man behaved badly, he admitted to his mistake and tendered an apology. Nothing to it.

  But now, in the light of day, with her demeanor cool and opaque, he could not completely suppress his inner agitation. It felt as if he would be seeking her approval—and he had always adamantly refused to seek anyone’s approval.

  When th
e house had at last emptied, he said to the woman who had not looked at him once the entire time they saw off their guests, “Well done, Lady Wrenworth. Word will spread now of your brilliance as a hostess.”

  “And of our general domestic felicity, no doubt,” she countered, with that grande dame haughtiness she sometimes used with him.

  He remembered how amusing he’d found it before, but now that capacity for sangfroid unsettled him.

  Now she knew how to punish him.

  “I have given the staff the rest of the day off, but there is a picnic basket that has been packed for us. Would you care to join me?”

  “You are too kind,” she said coldly. “Five thousand a year is all I require from you, sir, nothing more.”

  “Five thousand a year is the bare minimum of what I should do for you. I would be quite remiss as a husband if I left it at that.” A phaeton, with the picnic basket already in the boot, arrived. “Now, shall we?”

  She shot him a brief, hard look. She knew he was exploiting the fact that she guarded her public image carefully and would not turn her back on him before the coachman who had brought the carriage: Even his gesture of apology was not free of manipulation.

  It made him feel less vulnerable to be up to his old tricks.

  He dismissed the coachman and took the reins himself. They drove in near complete silence. Had he felt more in charge of the situation, he would have wheedled and cajoled her, until she laughed despite herself. But he was as hesitant as he had ever been in his adult life, an uncertainty that smothered any lighthearted words that might otherwise have emerged.

  For the picnic, he had selected one of his favorite spots in the surrounding countryside, atop a high bluff overlooking a panorama of hills and valleys. She made no comment on the beauty of the place, though she did help him weigh down the corners of the picnic blanket on a patch of lush, soft grass.

  “Thank you,” he said, from the opposite corner of the blanket, down on one knee.

  She made no reply, but rose to her feet and walked to the edge of the bluff to inspect the view, the hems of her skirts fluttering in the breeze.

  He unloaded the contents of the picnic basket, setting out three salads, four meat pies, five bottles of beverages—and the basket was far from emptied.

  “I said to pack what you like,” he told her. “It would seem the kitchen staff put in everything for which you’ve ever expressed a preference. We’ve enough to last us in a siege.”

  She turned around and glanced at the laden picnic blanket. He was still extracting ever more foodstuff from the basket: a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, a bowl of fruit.

  “If you want to bed me outdoors, you have but to say the word.” Her tone was uninflected. “No need to go to so much trouble.”

  “When I wish to bed you outdoors, I will but say the word,” he answered. “But now I’d like to feed you.”

  Her jaw worked. He could not tell whether she also blushed.

  When she came and sat down at the edge of the picnic blanket, her features were quite composed. Ignoring all the prepared dishes, she reached instead for a cluster of grapes.

  She’d done the same at a different picnic, the day he suggested that she become his mistress. An era of blissful ignorance, that, when he had no idea just how deeply he was already mired in his obsession.

  “Did you and your family picnic?” he asked, uncorking a bottle of raspberry wine.

  She studied him. He realized that she considered the picnic a Machiavellian game of power on his part, with every move intended to undermine her. He could not blame her for thinking so—he’d always enjoyed his upper hand in all their dealings.

  His current motives, however, weren’t quite so despicable. He wasn’t callous enough to use her body when he needed to and ignore her the rest of the time, so he must make amends for his earlier cruelty. And he would like to do so while keeping his pride intact.

  “Occasionally,” she said at last, rolling a single grape between her fingers. “But we didn’t have such fine foodstuff—for us it was tea and sandwiches.”

  He poured a glass of wine for her. “How are they getting on without you?”

  She peeled the skin from the grape in small strips. “Matilda has taken to directing the big move and my other sisters complain she is more draconian than I ever was.”

  “She is the one who shared a room with you, is she not? She must have absorbed some of your generalship.”

  The grape was now naked. She looked down with a frown, as if vexed that she might actually have to eat something.

  “Do you want to give that to me?”

  She didn’t. She put the grape in her mouth and wiped her hand with a napkin. As she was about to toss the napkin aside, her face changed.

  Between them hung the moment he’d thrown his handkerchief into the wastebasket.

  “I’d like to repair matters between us,” he said impulsively.

  She yanked another grape from the bunch. “Why, I did not know relations were strained.”

  Her words were full of condescending bite. He realized with more than a little startlement that she might be mimicking him, rather than some imaginary dowager duchess.

  “I behaved abominably and for that I apologize.”

  She fixed him with a flat stare. “Why?”

  “Why apologize?”

  “Why did you behave abominably? You never do anything without a properly thought-out reason.”

  If only that were, in fact, the case. He had been going from one ill-thought-out reason to the next ever since he first laid eyes on her.

  “I wanted to preserve our interest in each other. Since we are to be married a long time, God willing, it seemed prudent to not erode our delight in each other too soon.”

  An easy lie, since he knew precisely why he stayed away from her: to preserve the fortress that he had made of himself, the foundation of which was sliding into an unseen abyss even as he spoke.

  She snorted. “I’m disappointed, sir. You can lie better than that.”

  He could not help smiling a little. “I love it when you take me to task.”

  She served herself some cucumber salad and rammed her fork rather forcefully into the mound on her plate. “So this is how you repair relations then, by feeding me more lies.”

  “No, this is what happens when you ask too many questions,” he said. “You should let my action speak for itself.”

  • • •

  Louisa set aside her plate. “What action?”

  His hand, the one on which he wore the carnelian signet ring, toyed with his glass. She was reminded of the night she first saw him, of her—in hindsight, especially—utterly justified hesitation to lift her eyes to his face. As if her instincts had already sensed that he would prove to be the bane of her existence.

  He rose with the grace of a big cat and came toward her. Quietly and efficiently, he removed her hat and maneuvered her onto her back.

  “You’ve done this before and it doesn’t prove anything,” she said.

  He gave no reply, except to push up her skirts.

  “The crudeness of your method is excruciating,” she went on, keeping her tone clipped.

  The grass was cool and fragrant beneath her, the sun warm on her face and the exposed band of skin above her stockings. She ought to feel a certain mortified titillation from the fact that he was making a spectacle of her where anyone could chance upon them, but she only felt like a very small raft on a very turbulent sea, buffeted from every side by both need and fear.

  He had a powerful, effortless hold on her and he knew it.

  The only thing he didn’t know was the exact strength of this sorcery he wielded.

  He removed her drawers and parted her thighs. There had been a time when she would have gladly opened her legs to tantalize him, when the pleasure he brought
her did not immediately touch off a cascade of pain in her heart. But now she had to bite down on her lower lip in order to not clamp her limbs together again.

  “And the grapes were too tart,” she said when he still didn’t reply.

  He pushed her legs farther apart, kissed her on the inside of her thigh, and made love to her with his lips and tongue. The wickedness of it shocked her, as well as the intimacy. The pleasure made her gasp and moan. His tongue was so clever, so demanding, and he knew exactly where to stroke with his fingers and when to apply the pressure of his teeth.

  The peak he took her to was sharp and voluptuous. But he did not stop. As if that initial burst of pleasure were but a foundation on which to build ever bigger climaxes. And he created those ever bigger climaxes, until they came right on the heels of one another, until she was but one sustained vibration of extraordinary pleasure.

  Afterward she kept her eyes shut, unable to face him. He rearranged her skirts so she was decent—if one didn’t inquire too closely into the whereabouts of her drawers. And when the heaviness of her breaths no longer blocked out all the other sounds, she heard the soft pops of several grapes being detached from the bunch.

  “You are right,” he said half a minute later. “The grapes are too tart, especially compared to the sweetness of you.”

  Her face, already warm, turned hot.

  “I will also concur that my method is crude. And if you still feel this proves nothing, let me know, and I will gladly repeat the experiment and see if we can’t generate better results.”

  She forced herself to open her eyes and sit up—she had to face him at some point. He was on the far side of the picnic blanket, reclined with his weight on his elbows, studying her from beneath his eyelashes in just such a way as to make her heart thud. Reminding her that even when he seemed somewhat humbled, he was still every inch the predator.