A Gentleman Undone

by Cecilia Grant

  Bitter laughter seized him like a coughing fit: he was helpless to stifle the sound. “That was a resounding error on your part, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m finished discussing this.” Smaller and tighter her voice went, and beneath it, a silken rustle that must be her fastening up the overdress of her gown. “I’m going to go get my cloak.”

  “Wait.” His hand shot out and found her arm, every bit as soft as he remembered. “You can’t. You’re not …” God, could this get any crueler? “I left you unfit to be seen. I’ll get the cloak for you.”

  She twisted from his grasp. “Believe me, Mr. Blackshear, I’ve survived worse indignities than a damp spot over one nipple.” Another rustle and the muffled clink of coins; she’d bent to sweep up her discarded reticule. “Save your pangs of conscience for your graver wrongs.”

  Her words speared straight through him. She didn’t know, of course. There wasn’t any way she could. But for a moment, there in the darkness, she sounded like an incarnation of his own tireless self-reproach. Indeed he had such grave wrongs on his conscience as could make her want to scrub raw every place on her body where he’d put his hands.

  He didn’t say so. She didn’t wait for a reply in any case. The purposeful tread of her slippers announced her retreat and he had a glimpse of her silhouette as she reached the faint light of the main corridor and turned left.

  He waited the agreed-upon ten minutes, and made his way outside to the agreed-upon meeting place a block away. And it took another ten minutes of waiting, and five more of casting about the neighboring streets in search of her, before he understood she wasn’t coming. She’d gone back to Somers Town on her own, and left him behind.

  STUPID. WEAK. Gullible. Ineffectual. Nearly twenty-four hours since the disastrous event, and she hadn’t yet found the word harsh enough to describe a woman who tossed away the singular opportunity of her life, and in such craven fashion. Deficient. Contemptible. Fraudulent.

  “Hell and damnation, Lydia.” Edward lay beside her, his bare chest heaving. “I vow you’ll be the death of me.”

  If only it could be the other way round. A woman might destroy her soul by whoring, but for all her most ferocious efforts her body still lingered, with its appetites and its aches and its power to drive her into jaw-dropping folly.

  Her knuckles skimmed absently over Edward’s near arm. He was damp. She’d worked him to the point of exhaustion, and not once had she permitted herself to close her eyes and imagine other hands. He was her penance and her punishment for having cried, last night, from the minute she got into that hackney to the minute it stopped at her door.

  If only he had not kissed her! If he’d set her down from spinning, and stepped away, and asked if she could guess how much money they’d won. Or if she’d stopped him when he’d pressed for sixty seconds: It’s better we don’t. Think of how you’d regret it. She would have gone home warm and fizzing as if she’d downed a glass of champagne on an empty stomach, and she would have recalled the exhilaration of that spinning embrace with pure untainted pleasure. She would have felt full, where now she felt so empty. And their partnership would have remained intact.

  “Some men swear by two women in a bed.” Edward had more to say. “But I vow you’re like two all by yourself.”

  “You flatter me.” Her voice came out lifeless. This inanity was precisely what she deserved.

  What had she accomplished in the past two years? Very little, it seemed. Sold herself to a succession of men and learned to despise them. Invited disaster—the pox, prison, an inexorable descent to life on the streets—and met with nothing graver than the unimaginative ill-use any harlot occasionally bore.

  She’d sought to eradicate herself and she’d failed to even wipe out the witless, useless part that wept in a hackney when a man didn’t want her.

  “I’ve had to invite that Blackshear fellow to my house party, you know. The one who was at Waterloo.” Edward’s voice yanked her out of reverie and back into the bed. “Your friend Eliza insisted upon it. Mischief in mind, I suspect.” He stretched his arms up overhead and brought his hands back to where he could have a good look at the nails. “It’s not a true house party without a bit of that business, eh?”

  “That’s unseemly. She oughtn’t to have asked it of you.” Her stomach felt as though it were filling up with lead. “I’m sure Lord Randall wouldn’t like it.”

  “For all we know, Randall’s got some intrigue of his own planned. Regardless, she insisted. Only now the gentlemen outnumber the ladies by three or four. I might need to procure a few Cyprians, just to keep it sporting.”

  Better and better. Maybe she could feign an attack of some illness a week hence and avoid the house party altogether. At the very least she would not bring Jane. The girl could have a week off, and go visit her family. No need to expose her to such sordid things as would surely go on.

  She felt for the edge of the sheet, and pulled it up to her collarbone. He wouldn’t come, would he? He wasn’t sociable with anyone in their set besides that viscount, really. What would he want with a week in Essex among people for whom he didn’t care? Disrespectable people, at that. Given to mistresses and scandal. Exactly the sort of people he didn’t want to be, if she was to take him at his word.

  He wouldn’t come. He mustn’t. Because for all the trials she’d learned to bear, she might not have it in her to bear seven days under the same roof with Mr. Blackshear.

  WILL LOOKED away from the invitation card, and tossed it back onto his table. It skipped off the stack of mail there and cleared the table’s edge to tumble end over end to the floor.

  Splendid. He bent to scoop up the bit of malignity, the last mocking punctuation on the mess he’d made of everything, and set it atop a letter from that clerk Grigsby. More mockery. There’d be no need for the man’s services if Miss Slaughter never won her two thousand. No need, either, for him to invent some forgotten investment George Talbot had made, because without the capital to entrust to Fuller, there’d be no return with which to benefit Mrs. Talbot.

  Abruptly he left the table, reaching the opposite wall in three paces. No escaping one’s mistakes in the modest confines of bachelors’ lodgings, or probably anywhere else. He turned and leaned against the wall, pushing restless fingers through his hair. A cold wind, yet another cold wind in this dismal pretense at a spring, whistled round the edges of the windows across the room.

  She hadn’t been at Beecham’s last night. He’d gone there, intending to … intending to what? Say “I’m sorry” yet again with the expectation that this time she’d be grateful to hear it? Pretend nothing had happened, and ask when she’d be free for another night in the hells? Lure her away from the company, and abandon every dictate of decency to finish what they’d begun?

  At all events she hadn’t been there. Five days of April gone, and he was near a thousand pounds short of what he needed. He ought to tell Fuller to look for other investors.

  But he’d wait. Maybe she’d prove able to put aside her dissatisfaction with him in order to continue in their scheme. He must hope, with all he had, that her heartless determination would come to the fore.

  I DID it for you, ninnyhammer.” Eliza muttered this behind her fan, leaning in with a dash of jasmine scent. “And perhaps a bit for the gentleman. It’s been obvious from the start he’s interested, and what other chance is he likely to have?”

  “I wish you’d had the goodness to ask me first whether I wanted any such thing.” Lydia, too, sank her voice and screened it with a fan. Edward and Lord Randall were guffawing over the play, in particular over that tedious old lady having once again said a word that was not at all the one she meant, and between this, and the usual hubbub of an inattentive audience, the men weren’t likely to cast a look over their shoulders to where the ladies sat. Still, she kept an anxious eye on them. “He’s never had a chance. He can’t afford to keep a mistress. And Mr. Roanoke keeps me very well.”

  “Ha. Keeps you busy in the libra
ry, you mean.” Eliza’s fan fluttered, scarlet plumes dancing in a gleeful taunt. “We barely have your company for an hour together at Beecham’s of late.” Again, the whiff of jasmine as she leaned close. “Captain Waterloo is despondent. I saw his face, the last time he watched Mr. Roanoke drag you from the ballroom.”

  “He doesn’t drag me anywhere.” And Captain Waterloo had excellent reasons for despondency. If he hadn’t kissed her, if he hadn’t laid hands on her and then recovered his conscience, they’d be venturing out to another hell tomorrow night. But he had, and as a result she could scarcely look at him, let alone remain in the same room and risk a conversation. “I’m happy to go with my protector when he wishes.”

  “Only it strikes me you were happier stealing upstairs to play cards. And in any case, why should you object to the gentleman’s presence at Chiswell? It’s not as though I’ve obligated you to an assignation.”

  That was true. She ought not to mind whether he was there or not. She ought to come up with a reason, credible to Eliza, that would explain why she so clearly did mind.

  Too late. Eliza’s face whipped left as she perceived the hesitation. “Devil take you, Lydia. You do have some particular objection. What has he done?”

  “Nothing.” Another quick look at the gentlemen. “For Heaven’s sake try to be discreet. We’ve ceased to be friendly, that’s all.”

  “Did you quarrel?” A considering tilt of the head. “Where and when would you have had the chance to quarrel? I begin to suspect this has all gone further than any of us knew.”

  “It doesn’t signify. None of it signifies. I doubt he’ll even come to the party. It’s no concern of mine.” Every statement seemed to incriminate her worse than the last, so she clamped her teeth together and gazed down at the stage, where the tedious lady was delighting the easily amused with her substitution of alligator for allegory.

  Eliza could try all the machinations she liked. Even if the gentleman appeared at Chiswell, he wouldn’t consent to having his puppet-strings pulled. But that was nothing to the purpose, because he wasn’t going to come.

  OF COURSE you’re going to go.” Cathcart sawed vigorously at the roast goose. “Who am I to talk to otherwise?”

  “May I suggest your wife.” Will took a long draught of ale. Not enough ale in the world to make him forget the mistakes that just seemed to compound one upon the last.

  “Lady Cathcart? You must be joking. I wouldn’t dream of letting her mix with this lot.” The viscount speared a slice of the tender meat and transferred it to his plate. “Eat this. You’ll turn morose otherwise.”

  Turn morose? When had he last been anything else?

  Eight days now since he’d kissed Miss Slaughter. This was his fourth visit to Beecham’s in that span, and he had yet to exchange so much as a glance with her. His hopes of resuscitating their scheme had dwindled like a millpond in an August drought.

  Worse than that—he missed her. Missed her teasing and her temper and oh, Lord, though he’d only had it on one occasion he missed the taste of her mouth. And the way her body fit his hands, the way she swerved and twisted to accommodate whatever he did.

  But no, that wasn’t really worse, was it? The loss of their scheme was far worse. Ale was trifling with his brain.

  “What are you to do in London, anyway, with everyone else gone?” Cathcart had served himself with goose, potatoes, and peas, and was now tucking in. “Sit in your rooms, drinking your meals?”

  That sounded as reasonable as anything else, at the moment. Nevertheless he put down his ale and took up the knife and fork.

  “There’ll be chances to win money up in Essex. All the regular cardplayers will be there, and I hear the house has a billiard room with two tables.”

  “I haven’t played billiards in years.”

  “I’ll stake you a six-point lead, then.” The viscount reached over to stab a few potatoes and load them onto Will’s plate. “I don’t believe you’ve been in my newest carriage yet, have you? Excellently sprung. Just the thing for a journey of forty miles.”

  He made a noncommittal sound, and forked a bite of goose into his mouth. Were any of Cathcart’s arguments compelling? Difficult to determine, through the fog of too much ale.

  He chewed and swallowed. He would consider it. He’d leave off drinking for the night, and fill his stomach with victuals, and in two or three hours he’d have the necessary faculties to give the question some thought.

  Chapter Thirteen

  HOW DIFFERENT Chiswell had looked on her first visit! There’d been a harvest in progress then, and weather suitable for walking from the manor to the village to the remotest of the tenant farms. So she’d done each morning, half dazed with the novelty of a gentleman who strove to please his mistress in bed.

  Lydia caught the windborne edges of her cloak and tugged them together in front. Two nights she’d been here now, and the guests had come in yesterday. She hadn’t wanted him to touch her either night. The rash mauling hunger that had possessed her, that last week in London, had apparently not made the journey to Essex. And so she’d gone to bed ahead of him both nights and feigned deep sleep when he’d crawled in alongside her. Little chance of pulling off that ploy a third night. A man didn’t keep a mistress to watch her sleep.

  Her stockings were damp above her half-boots. She’d walked the opposite direction from last September’s rambles, out across the lawn that fronted the house and into tall grass wet with last night’s rain. The hem of her gown, too, hung heavy and waterlogged already. Never mind. When Edward had got up and gone to church she would go back to their room, take off all the wet things, and sleep.

  The ground rose up into hills at some distance from the house. Gentle hills and then more rigorous. She went over one and the next, pushing on as though she had some destination, filling her lungs with air that carried a hint of salt from the coast. Farther and farther from the house she forged, into bold terrain with unfamiliar foliage, until she crested one last hill to find the figure of a man on a ridge some fifty feet distant.

  She stopped. She would have sworn no one but herself would be up and out at this hour, let alone so far afield.

  He stood with his back to her, hatless, one side of his unbuttoned greatcoat furled out on the wind. He faced east. Toward the sea. Toward Belgium and Waterloo, if you kept going. It could have been any tall, dark-haired man at this distance, but it wasn’t. She knew.

  How impossibly far away he looked. Lonesome and unreachable, not even bothering to shelter from the wind as he gazed out into something she couldn’t see. He’d arrived late yesterday afternoon with the viscount and her heart had somersaulted to earth like a fledgling bird pushed from the nest too soon.

  Not her heart. Something else. A few of those balled-up remnants of anger that lived in that space now, no doubt.

  A stronger wind kicked up. Her cloak slipped her grasp and flew out sideways in imitation of his coat. He turned.

  If he felt any surprise at the sight of her, it didn’t show from this distance. He only considered her, as though she were but one more feature of the landscape he’d been studying. Then he lifted one hand and mimed tipping a hat.

  She’d gone out hatless too, in spite of the clouds that threatened more rain. They made quaint mirror images, both of them underequipped for the weather, their coats whipping out to the south.

  They hadn’t spoken in eleven days. She gathered her cloak round her again, and went to him.

  “You can smell the ocean here,” he said when she reached him. No greeting. He pivoted again so they stood side by side, both looking eastward to where the sloping green met a curtain of mist.

  “It’s not far. In pleasant weather it makes a fine excursion.” Did that sound frivolous, to a man who’d crossed the Channel to fight in a war?

  He didn’t say so. After a moment he angled his head. “Are you not going to church with the others?”

  A rush of laughter threatened. “No, Mr. Blackshear.” She folded her arm
s tight across the lapped edges of her cloak. “A harlot is still a harlot on Sundays.”

  “Other ladies are going, I’m sure. And the gentlemen who keep them.” He kept his eyes on what could be seen of the horizon.

  “That’s their affair. I take it you won’t be among them.”

  He shook his head. “I’m less fit for it than you.”

  “How do you say so? You’re the most upright man of this whole company.”

  “Forgive me for hearing that as faint praise.” A smile caught at his mouth. He didn’t turn to share it with her, and in another second the wind chased it away. “A murderer is still a murderer on Sundays.” With careful precision he formed the words. “I believe my sin would trump yours if we came to reckoning up our hands.”

  “Murder! Do you refer to what you did in the war?” One heard of it sometimes, soldiers who never came to terms with taking lives. The reasoning wasn’t entirely without logic. Young Frenchmen left grieving mothers and sisters too.

  “I do.” His jaws moved just enough to let those syllables out. He continued to stare into the distance, but she could feel him waiting for her response.

  They were speaking again. By some miracle of the Essex air, they were finding a way to leave every difficult thing behind and just converse.

  And she knew what response to make. “You did your duty. You preserved your life and the liberty of England, and I doubt you took any pleasure in killing.”

  “No pleasure at all.” One shoulder flicked, as though he were shaking off a memory.

  “There is the difference between us.” She set her feet to face him. “Repentance. I contend you’d be more welcome than I in any church.”

  His head turned and he looked at her with an expression she couldn’t read. And all at once there was something she needed to say.

  “Will, I’m sorry. For that night at Oldfield’s,” she added when his look went quizzical.

  “Don’t.” He shook his head, a tight, minimal motion, and his eyes stayed fast to hers. “I’m the one who began it.”