A Wild Pursuit

  “Mr. Fairfax-Lacy,” she said, turning to him, “did you find a poem that you liked in my library?”

  “I did. And I’d be most pleased to read it,” he said, getting up. “Now as it happens, mine is also supposedly written by a shepherd.”

  “Who would have thought,” Arabella said in a jaundiced voice, “that sheepherders were quite so literary?”

  Helene’s heart was racing with humiliation. How could she have read those words aloud? Why—why—hadn’t she read the poem before accepting it from Bea? She should have known that any poem Bea chose would be unacceptable. Finally she drew a deep breath and looked up at Stephen.

  She met his eyes. They were utterly kind, and she felt imperceptibly better. In fact, he grinned at her.

  “I’m afraid that my poem is far less interesting than was Lady Godwin’s,” he said with a little bow in her direction, “but then, so am I.”

  That’s a compliment! Helene thought. Mr. Fairfax-Lacy had a lovely voice. It was deep and rolled forth, quite as if he were addressing the entire House.

  Ah beauteous Siren, fair enchanting good,

  Sweet silent retoric of persuading eyes…

  He paused and looked directly at Helene. She felt an unmistakable pang of triumph. He’d understood her! She stopped listening for a moment and wondered which of her night rails she should wear. It wasn’t as if she had any luscious French confections such as Esme presumably wore when she embarked on an affair.

  But slowly she was drawn back into listening, if only because Stephen’s voice was truly so beautiful. He made each word sound as if it were of marvelous meaning.

  Such one was I, my beauty was mine own,

  No borrowed blush, which bank-rot

  beauties seek,

  The newfound shame, a sin to us unknown,

  The adulterate beauty of a falsified cheek…

  “I’m not sure I like this one any more than the first poem,” Arabella said grumpily to Lord Winnamore. “Feel as if I’m being scolded. Falsified cheek indeed! And what’s a bank-rot beauty? We’ve none of those in this room.”

  “It was not so intended at all, Lady Arabella, I assure you,” Stephen said, glancing down at Bea to make sure she was listening. She was curled up on a stool like a little cat. He could see a bewitching expanse of breast. Naturally her bodice was the size of his handkerchief.

  The adulterate beauty of a falsified cheek,

  Vile stain to honor and to woman also,

  Seeing that time our fading must detect,

  Thus with defect to cover our defects.

  “Enough of that!” Arabella said briskly. “Last thing I need is a lecture about what time is doing to my face, and you’ll be lucky, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy, if I don’t take it amiss that you’ve even mentioned fading in my presence!”

  “I’m truly sorry,” Stephen said. “Naturally I viewed this poem as utterly inapplicable to anyone in this room.” He bowed and kissed Arabella’s hand. “I certainly detect no fading in your beauty, my lady.” He gave her a look of candid repentance, the one he used when his own party was furious because he had voted for the opposition.

  “Humph,” Arabella said, somewhat mollified.

  He’d made his point; he was fairly certain that he saw a gleam of fury in Lady Beatrix’s eyes. Now he intended to pursue the more important goal of the evening.

  Helene found with a start that Stephen Fairfax-Lacy was drawing her to her feet. “May I show you a volume of poetry that I discovered while searching for a suitable text for this evening?” he said, nodding toward the far end of the room.

  Helene rose lightly to her feet. “I’d be most pleased,” she said, steadying her voice. She put her fingers on his arm. It was muscled, as large as Rees’s. Were all gentlemen so muscled under their fine coats?

  They walked across the room until they reached the great arched bookshelves at the far end. Once there, Helene looked up at Stephen inquiringly, but he didn’t pull a volume from the shelf.

  “It was merely an excuse to speak with you,” he said with an engaging smile. “You seemed startled by the content of your poem, and I thought you might like to escape the company for a moment.”

  Helene felt that traitorous blush washing up her neck again. “Well, who wouldn’t be?” she said.

  “Lady Beatrix Lennox?” he said, and the note of conspiratorial laughter in his voice eased Helene’s humiliation.

  “She did give me the poem to read,” Helene admitted.

  “I thought so.” He took her hand in his. “You have lovely fingers, Lady Godwin. Musician’s hands.”

  Her hands looked rather frail in his large ones. Helene quite liked it. She never felt frail.

  “And I thought your waltz was truly exquisite.” He was stroking her fingers with his thumb. “You have an amazing talent, as I’m sure you know.”

  Helene’s heart melted. No one ever praised her music. Well, she rarely allowed her music to be played in public, so no one had the opportunity. But she melted all the same. “It’s rather a daring piece,” she murmured, watching his fingers on her hands.

  “How so?”

  “Because it’s a waltz,” she explained. He truly didn’t seem to understand, so she elaborated. “The waltz is considered unforgivably fast, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy. You do know that it hasn’t been introduced to Almack’s yet, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I haven’t been to Almack’s in years, and I count myself lucky.”

  “Respectable women seldom dance the waltz, and they certainly don’t write them.”

  “I enjoyed it.” He was smiling down at her, and she felt a little thrill all the way to her toes. “Was that the very first waltz that you have written?”

  “No.” She hesitated. “But it is the first to receive a public airing.”

  “Then the fact that I danced it is truly one of the greatest honors of my life,” he said, with another elegant bow.

  Mr. Fairfax-Lacy was truly…truly all that was admirable. “Would you consider,” she asked impulsively, “coming to my chamber tonight?”

  He blinked, and for one dreadful moment Helene had an icy sense of error. Horror swept up her spine.

  But he was smiling and bowing. “You anticipated my own question,” he said, kissing the very tips of her fingers. “May I pay a visit to your chambers later this evening?”

  “I’d like that very much,” Helene managed. His smile deepened. He really is handsome, she told herself.

  “I believe it is time to retire, Lady Godwin. Our hostess appears to be taking her leave.”

  “Yes, lovely,” Helene said breathlessly. So this is how it was done! How simple, really. She invited; he accepted. She almost pranced back across the library on his arm. Esme twinkled at her. Bea kissed her cheek and whispered something Helene couldn’t hear. Probably advice. Arabella frowned a little; she had probably only just realized that her scheme to marry Esme to Mr. Fairfax-Lacy was in danger.

  Helene felt a surge of triumph. She had just taken the most eligible man in the house and summoned him to her room! She was not a frigid, cold woman as her husband had told her.

  She had a lover!

  12

  Beds, Baths, and Night Rails

  He wasn’t in her chamber when Esme opened the door. Of course, she was glad of that. What would her maid think, to find the gardener in her bedchamber? It sounded like a tidbit from a gossip rag: “A certain lady widow, in the absence of a husband, seems to be relying on her staff.” Tomorrow she’d start her new life as a respectable mother. Of course she wouldn’t take lovers once her baby was born—for one thing, she could never risk having another child, since she had no husband.

  But she couldn’t seem to concentrate on her future respectability. Her whole body was humming, talking of the night to come. She felt almost dizzy. She and Sebastian had never had an assignation before. They’d made love once in a drawing room last summer. Then she had visited him in his gardener’s hut a few times, but always on the spur of the
moment. He had never come to her. Well, how could he?

  She had never known beforehand that he would enter her room at night. That she would watch him undress. That he would lean over her bed with that smoldering look of his. Her inner thighs pricked at the thought.

  “I feel particularly tired,” Esme told her maid, Jeannie. “A bath immediately, please, with apricot oil.” Jeannie chattered on about the household while Esme tried to ignore the fact that merely washing her body was making her feel ripe…aware….

  Suddenly a tiny movement caught her eye. Her windows were hung with long drapes of a rich pale yellow. And under one of them poked the toe of a black boot. Not a gentleman’s boot either. A gardener’s boot.

  A great surge of desire sank right to the tips of Esme’s toes. He was watching. Her whole body sung with awareness of those hidden eyes. Jeannie had bundled her hair atop her head to keep it dry; Esme reached up as if to ascertain that no hairpins fell. Her breasts rose from the bath, drops of water sliding over her sleek skin. The curtain moved again, just the faintest twitch.

  Esme smothered a grin and lay back against the edge of the bath. “My skin is so dry these days,” she said to Jeannie, hoping that the maid didn’t notice that her voice seemed deeper. “May I have the oil, please?”

  Jeannie poured some into her hand and slowly, very slowly, Esme opened her hand and let the sweet-smelling oil trickle first down her neck, and then down the slick curve of her breast. Jeannie was darting around the room, folding up clothes and talking a constant stream as she did so. Esme spread a hand across the swell of one breast. The oil sank into her moistened skin, turned it satiny smooth. The curtain moved again, and Esme smiled, a smile for him. For the man waiting for her. Those unseen eyes made a simple bath feel scandalous, forbidden…made her feel sensuous and erotic. She raised her arms to her hair again, a ballet of tantalization.

  The curtains swayed. He was watching…

  “Now, that’s odd,” Jeannie said, starting toward the windows. “I could have sworn I shut that window, but there must be a draft.”

  “There’s no draft!” Esme croaked.

  “I’ll just make certain, my lady.”

  “No!”

  Jeannie stopped short of the windows. “My lady?”

  “I think that I shall take a longer bath than I expected. Why don’t you go downstairs and”—her mind was utterly blank—“help Mrs. Myrtle with something?”

  Jeannie looked utterly astonished, but at least she turned away from the windows. “But my lady, Mrs. Myrtle doesn’t need my help! She’s far too grand to ask me to do aught for her!”

  That was likely true enough. Esme’s housekeeper was a formidable sort of woman. “I would like to be alone,” Esme said bluntly.

  “Of course, my lady! I’ll just return in ten minutes and—”

  “No! That is, I shall put myself to bed tonight.”

  Jeannie’s mouth actually fell open. “But my lady, how will you rise from the bath? And if you fall? And—-”

  Jeannie had a point, but Esme could hardly say that she had an assistant at hand. “Help me up,” she said, reaching out a hand. Jeannie brought her to her feet, and Esme stepped onto the warm rug next to the bath, grabbing the toweling cloth Jeannie held out. The last thing she wanted to do was give Sebastian a good look at the enormous expanse of her belly. He’d probably run for the entrance. Then she waved toward the door in dismissal.

  Jeannie was obviously bewildered. “Shall I just return in—”

  “I will be quite all right,” Esme said firmly. “Good night.”

  Jeannie knew a command when she heard one. She stood blinking for a second and then curtsied. She ran down the back stairs, utterly confused. She was that distracted that she actually told Mrs. Myrtle what had happened, although in the normal course of things she would never share an intimacy with that dragon of a housekeeper.

  Mrs. Myrtle raised her eyebrows. In the old days, of course, such behavior would have meant that the missus had other plans for the evening. But obviously that wasn’t the case. “Pregnant women are like that,” she advised Jeannie. “Irrational as the day is long. My own sister ate nothing but carrots for an entire week. We all thought she’d turn orange. Never mind, Lady Rawlings will be as right as rain in the morning.”

  If Jeannie had but known, the very experienced maid, Meddle, who attended Helene, Countess Godwin, was just as bewildered. Her mistress had also ordered a bath. And then she had tried on all four night rails she’d brought with her, seeming to find fault with each. One wasn’t ironed correctly, another had a pulled seam…Obviously her mistress had an assignation that evening. But with whom?

  “It’s plain as a pig’s snout,” Mr. Andrews said, waving his fork about. “She must have an assignation with my gentleman, Lord Winnamore. He’s had no success with Lady Withers, and he’s decided to cultivate greener fields.” Andrews was a boisterous Londoner who had only served Winnamore for a matter of days.

  “I do not agree,” Mr. Slope said magisterially. As the butler, he never allowed even the mildest discussion of their mistress, but he had been known to lend the benefit of his expertise when it came to the foibles of other gentlepersons. And his expertise was considerable; everyone had to agree to that. After all, as butler to one of the most notorious couples in London for some ten years, he’d seen every sort of depravity the peerage got up to.

  Mrs. Myrtle raised an eyebrow. “You’re not suggesting Mr. Fairfax-Lacy, my dear Mr. Slope? And do have a bit more of this pickled rarebit. I think Cook has outdone herself.”

  Mr. Slope chewed and swallowed before replying; his manners were an example to the understaff. “I am indeed suggesting Mr. Fairfax-Lacy.”

  “My gentleman a partner to adultery? Never!” Mr. Fairfax-Lacy’s valet was on the naive and elderly side. Mr. Fairfax-Lacy had rescued him from near destitution, when the poorhouse had been staring him in the very face.

  “It would be an act of kindness,” Meddle pointed out. “What’s poor Lady Godwin to do, then? Her husband left her ten years ago. If the stories be true—it was before my time—he put the missus out on the street. Made her take a common hackney to her mother’s house. Didn’t even allow her to take the carriage with her when she left! That’s evil, that is.”

  “Ah, if it’s an act of kindness you want, then Mr. Fairfax-Lacy is the one to do it,” his valet said, leaning back satisfied.

  “I think Lord Winnamore is an excellent choice,” Andrews said stubbornly. “My master is known the breadth and length of London. And he’s rich as well.”

  “He’s known for faithful courtship of Lady Withers,” Mr. Slope pointed out. “Now you, Mr. Andrews, have admitted to all of us that you are still green in service.” A few of the younger footmen looked blank, so he explained, “Mr. Andrews has not served as a gentleman’s gentleman for a great period of time.”

  “That’s so,” Andrews said. “Came to the business from tailoring,” he explained. “I finished my apprenticeship and found I couldn’t stomach the idea of twenty years of sewing. So I found this position.”

  “When you are further along, you will learn to read the signs. Now Mr. Winnamore…where is he at this very moment?”

  “Why, he’s in bed, I suppose,” Andrews said. “In bed with the countess!”

  “You undressed him?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Andrews had found to his great relief that his master didn’t need any personal assistance. He didn’t think he was up to pulling down another man’s smalls, even for the sake of a steady wage.

  “That proves it,” Mr. Slope said with satisfaction.

  “Why?”

  “A gentleman doesn’t undress before he visits a lady’s chamber. What if he were seen in the corridor? He makes pretense that he is fetching a book from the library or some such.” He chuckled. “There have been nights in this house when the library would have been empty of books, if all the stories were true!”

  Andrews had to accept that. It s
ounded like the voice of experience. And Mr. Winnamore certainly hadn’t looked as if he were planning an excursion down the hallway when Andrews left him. He’d been reading in bed, the same as he always did.

  “Mr. Fairfax-Lacy, eh? He’s a Member of Parliament, isn’t he?” Andrews said, throwing in the towel.

  “That’s right,” Mr. Slope nodded. “An esteemed one at that. Lady Godwin couldn’t have chosen better. I wouldn’t mind another bite of that shepherd’s pie, Mrs. Myrtle, if you would be so good. Now, perhaps we should all discuss the proper manner of exiting a room during dinner, because I happened to notice this evening that young Liddin barged through that door as if a herd of elephants were after him.”

  13

  In Which Countess Godwin Learns

  Salutary Lessons about Desire

  Helene was battling pure terror. If she could have thought of a way to send Mr. Fairfax-Lacy a note without creating a scandal in the household, she would have done so in a second. The note would have said that she had come down with scarlet fever and couldn’t possibly entertain callers in her chambers.

  She felt like…like a bride! Which was incredibly ironic. She remembered distinctly waiting for Rees to walk into their room at the inn. They hadn’t even married yet; they’d still been on their way to Gretna Green. But Rees had guessed, correctly, that her papa wouldn’t bother to follow them, and so they’d stopped at an inn the very first night.

  If only she had had enough character to walk out of that inn the very next morning and return, unmarried, to her father’s house. She had waited in that chamber just like any other giddy virgin, her eyes shining. Because she’d been in love—in love! What a stupid, wretched concept. When Rees had appeared, it had been immediately clear that he’d been drinking. He’d swayed in the doorway, and then caught himself. And she—fool that she’d been!—had giggled, thinking it was romantic. What was romantic about a drunken man?