He could tell by the butler’s minatory gaze—Slope, wasn’t that his name?—that he probably should have changed his garments before leaping into a carriage. Instead he ran a hand through his hair, doubtless disheveling it more than before. “I’ve come to see my wife,” he said brusquely, heading past Slope and up the stairs. He knew where Helene stayed when she was at Lady Rawlings’s house. Not that he visited her bedchamber, naturally, but he’d noted the room.
Dimly he realized that Slope was calling after him. Impatient, he stopped and glared down the stairs. “What is it, man?”
“The countess is not in her chamber. She can be found in the Rose Salon.”
Rees blinked. Seemed an odd place to stage a dying scene, but who was he to cavil? Perhaps she wouldn’t die until tomorrow. He all but galloped down the stairs, brushed by Slope—and stopped.
A typical scene of English country life greeted him. A stout peer was dozing in a low chair by the fire. A beautiful little tart of a girl was leaning over her embroidery, her lips painted a fantastic red. And there were a few other remnants of English nobility strewn around the room.
But it was the piano that held his attention.
He’d know her playing anywhere, of course. She was seated at the pianoforte, and not by herself, either. They were playing one of Beethoven’s sonatas in E-flat major. And she was laughing. As he watched, her companion leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. Kissed Helene! True, it was just a brush of a kiss. But Helene blushed.
Rees’s body went from cold to burning hot and back to cold again, in the mere moment he stood in the doorway. Suddenly he was aware of the butler standing just at his shoulder, of the wintery morning sunlight making Helene’s pale hair look like strands of silver. Of the very—aliveness of her. They started playing again and she was swaying slightly, her shoulder just bumping her partner’s arm. Her face was glowing with joy, as it always did when she played. Always. Helene and he had only lived in the same house for a matter of months, but he’d never forgotten the way she looked when she played the piano.
It was that joy that had made him fall in love with her. The very thought shocked his senses back into movement. Fall in love? Ha!
“I see that the report of your demise was overhasty,” he drawled in the nastiest tone he could summon. And Earl Godwin was pretty much an expert at giving offense.
Helene looked up, and he saw her mouth form a little Oh. But the next moment she turned to her partner and said saucily, “I’m so sorry; I almost lost my place, Stephen.” And her fingers flew over the keys again, just as if he weren’t there.
Stephen? Who the hell was Stephen?
Rees had a vague sense he’d seen the man before. He was handsome, in a pallid, English sort of way. Damn it, he’d been rooked. Although it wasn’t clear to him why he had been called as audience. Why in the hell had his wife wanted him to jump to her bidding? He wasn’t going to stand around and give her the satisfaction of gloating over his presence. For tuppence he’d turn around and head straight back for London. But he’d been on the road for two days, and his horses were exhausted.
“Excuse me,” an amused voice said, just at his elbow. Lady Withers smiled at him. She was a quite lovely woman of a certain age and Esme Rawlings’s aunt, if he weren’t mistaken.
“Lord Godwin,” she said. “How splendid to have you join us. The countess did mention that you might make a brief visit.” For a moment her eyes danced over to his wife, cozily tucked against her piano partner.
“Who the hell is that?” he snarled, jerking his head backwards, dismissing the fleeting thought that he might actually greet Lady Withers.
She blinked as if the room were so filled with gentry that she might have trouble identifying the pallid Englishman. “Mr. Fairfax-Lacy is the Member of Parliament for Oxfordshire, and such an intelligent man. He also holds the honorary title of the Earl of Spade, although he chooses not to use it. We are all enjoying his company.”
Rees was pulling himself together. He’d be damned if he showed any sort of husbandly emotion before a smirking viscountess. And since he wasn’t feeling any of those husbandly feelings, that should be simple. Unless murderous was considered a husbandly emotion.
Then Helene was before him, holding out her hand and sinking into a curtsy. “Rees. I must apologize for my letter,” she said, as tranquil as ever. “While the midwife in the village did suggest I had pleurisy, it turned out to be something far more innocent.”
“Oh?”
“Well, you see pleurisy starts with a red rash. But I had beard burn, as it turned out,” she said, laughing slightly. “Aren’t I the naive one, then? I suppose you were so young when we married that I never encountered this problem.”
Her laugh was breathy, perhaps a sign of nerves. But Rees wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. Any satisfaction. He just looked at her, and the giggle died on her lips. “You are still my wife—” he began.
She put a hand on his arm. This was not the naive girl he’d married. Not the Helene he woke up with the day after they returned from Gretna Green, a girl who veered madly between shrieking tantrums and sullen tears. She was poised, cool, and utterly unapproachable.
“Only in name, Rees. Another woman shares your bedchamber now.”
He looked over her shoulder. Fairfax-Lacy was practicing chords. He played well. Presumably she wasn’t sleeping alone in her bedchamber. “A gentleman who planned to be at your side during divorce proceedings wouldn’t sit at the piano while you face an irate husband,” he said, his tone polished steel.
“You are hardly an irate husband,” she said, shrugging. “I asked Stephen to remain where he is. I hardly think you are interested in making his acquaintance. And who said anything about divorce?”
“So you’ve taken a lover,” Rees sneered, on the verge of crashing his fist into that sleek bastard’s face. “What is it all in aid of, Helene?”
“Pleasure,” she said, and the smile on her face burned down his spine. “My pleasure, Rees.”
He turned on his heel and then back at the last second. “Who did that arrangement of Beethoven for four hands?”
“I did. I’ve been rearranging all of them.”
He should have known that. The sonata sounded half like Beethoven and half like Helene, an odd mixture.
“Now we have that little discussion out of the way,” Lady Withers said brightly, coming up from somewhere, “why don’t I show you to your room, Lord Godwin? I do hope you’ll make a long stay with us.”
Rees turned like a cornered lion and snarled at her, then strode out of the room. As Arabella described it later to Esme, who hadn’t been in the Rose Salon at the time, Earl Godwin acted precisely like the Wild Man of Deepest Africa whom Arabella had seen once in a traveling circus.
“All hair, and such a snarl, Esme!” Arabella paused, thinking about it. “Honestly, Helene, your husband is quite—quite impressive.” There was reluctant respect in her voice.
“Oh, Rees is very good at snarling,” Helene said. She, Arabella and Esme were cozily seated in Esme’s chamber, drinking tea and eating gingerbread cakes.
Esme looked up from her plate, her eyes sparkling with laughter. “The important thing is he snarled because you managed to tangle his liver—or whatever that phrase is that you keep using, Helene.”
“Curdle his liver,” Helene repeated, and there was a growing spark of happiness in her eyes. “He did seem chagrined by our conversation, didn’t he, Lady Withers?”
“Chagrined is not the word,” Arabella replied, stirring a little sugar into her tea. “He was incensed. Absolutely incensed. Purple with rage.”
“I hope he’s not feeling too violent,” Esme said. “I can hardly have my future husband mangled by your present husband, Helene. It would all be such fodder for gossip if the servants shared what they know.”
Helene thought about the difference between what the servants thought they knew about her and Stephen, and what the truth was. “I do think yo
u could have left Stephen to me,” she told Esme somewhat peevishly. “What if Rees discovers that you have claimed my lover as a future husband?”
“I doubt very much that your husband will raise the subject with Stephen,” Esme replied. “Rees already announced that he will stay one day at most, so Stephen only has to briefly juggle a fiancée and a mistress. He’ll not be the first to do so. I can’t tell you how many times I found myself at a table that included Miles and Lady Randolph Childe. Miles always acted with the greatest finesse, and if my husband could do it, so can Stephen.”
Arabella chortled. “Supper will be an interesting meal. Mr. Fairfax-Lacy will face quite a difficult task. You, Helene, wish him to impress your husband with his devotion, and you, Esme, wish to impress the marquess with Mr. Fairfax-Lacy’s devotion. Hmmm, perhaps I could ask Bea to create a diversion by flirting with Earl Godwin?”
“There’s no need to go as far as that,” Helene said hastily. “And do you know, I have the strangest feeling that Bea might be having some feelings for Mr. Fairfax-Lacy herself? There’s something odd about the way she looks at him.”
Esme laughed. “That would make three of us chasing the poor man. Arabella, are you certain that you have no use for Mr. Fairfax-Lacy?”
“Quite sure, thank you, darling,” Arabella said, carefully choosing a perfectly browned gingerbread. “It seems to me that the poor man must be growing tired. I dislike fatigued men. Still, it seems to be quite enlivening for him,” she continued rather absently. “The man was getting hidebound. He looked so cheerful this morning. And that, of course, is your doing,” she said, beaming at Helene.
Helene hid a pulse of guilt. She was hardly enlivening poor Stephen’s nights, even though the whole house believed she was. Now Esme was smiling at her too. Her sense of guilt grew larger.
“I’m very proud of Helene,” Esme said. “Arabella, you can’t imagine how impossibly rude Rees has been to poor Helene over the years, and she’s never staged even the slightest rebellion until now.”
“Now that you’ve rebelled,” Arabella asked Helene with some curiosity, “what will be the outcome? Are you wishing to continue your relationship with Mr. Fairfax-Lacy? That is, if Esme gives up her rather dubious claim to him?”
“I wouldn’t call it dubious,” Esme put in. “Merely unexpected.”
“No,” Helene admitted. “I don’t wish to remain his friend.”
“I knew that,” Esme said. “I watched the two of you. Otherwise, I would not have claimed him as my own future husband, I assure you, Helene.”
“Stephen Fairfax-Lacy is good marriage material,” Arabella said. “I am never wrong about that sort of thing. All three of my husbands were excellent spouses.” She finished her gingerbread and added, meditatively, “Barring their short life spans, of course.”
“I have to tell you something,” Helene said rather desperately.
“I do hope you are going to tell us intimate details,” Arabella said. “There’s nothing more pleasurable than dissecting a man’s performance in bed. I believe it’s my favorite activity, perhaps even more fun than actually being in that bed.” She looked faintly appalled. “I surprise myself,” she said, picking up another cake. “Ah, well, that’s the benefit of being an elderly person.”
“You’re not elderly, Aunt Arabella!” Esme said. “You’re barely out of your forties.”
“I’m not really bedding Mr. Fairfax-Lacy,” Helene blurted out.
Arabella’s mouth fell open for a second before she snapped it shut.
“I thought so,” Esme said with some satisfaction. “You don’t have the air of a couple besotted with each other.”
Helene could feel her face reddening. “We didn’t suit.”
“I had that happen to me once,” Arabella said. “I won’t bore you with the details, my dears, but after his third attempt, I called for a truce. A laying down of arms,” she clarified with a naughty smirk. “Well, who would have thought? Fairfax-Lacy looked so—”
“No!” Helene cried, horrified by the conclusion Arabella had drawn. “It truly was all my fault. I’m just not—” She stopped.
To her horror, she felt tears rising to her eyes. How could she possibly admit to a failure in bedroom activity when she was seated with two of the most desirable women in the ton?
“You know, I find him quite uninteresting as well,” Esme said quickly. “It’s something about the Englishness of his face. And his chest is quite narrow, isn’t it? Moreover, I never liked a man with a long chin.”
Helene threw Esme a watery smile. “It’s not that I don’t like the way he looks. I do. It’s just that I found myself unable to countenance the prospect of bedding him.” Her voice dropped. “He was very kind about the whole thing.”
Arabella nodded. “There are always men whom one simply cannot imagine engaging in intimate circumstances. Unfortunately, I felt that way about my second husband. But what really interests me,” she said, turning a piercing eye on Esme, “is what exactly you are doing, announcing your engagement to a man with an overly long chin? Or, to put the same question another way, what is Marquess Bonnington doing in this house, Esme?”
Esme almost choked on the gingerbread she was eating. “Expressing his repentance?” she said hopefully.
“Don’t repeat that poppycock story that I fed your Sewing Circle!” Arabella cried. “You managed to evade my every effort at a confidential talk last night by clinging to your new fiancé’s arm, but now I would like to know the truth. Why has the marquess arrived in your house?”
Helene leaned forward. “I would like to know that as well, Esme. I accepted that his mother was likely here due to the circumstances of last summer, although it seemed extremely odd—”
Arabella interrupted, naturally. “Odd? There’s something deuced smoky about Honoratia Bonnington’s arrival.”
Esme sighed.
“You sound like a bellows,” her aunt observed. “Out with it!”
Esme looked up at her aunt for a moment. Arabella looked as delicate and sensual as if a wisp of wind would blow her away, and yet she and the formidable Lady Bonnington were certainly forged of the same steel. So Esme told. “But I don’t wish to marry anyone,” she finished. “Least of all Lord Bonnington. It wouldn’t be fair to Miles, or to the babe.”
After a moment of stupefied silence, Arabella burst into a cackle of laughter. “Want to just keep Bonnington around for those lonely nights, do you? And you had him working in the garden during the day? Here I thought you were bent on a sober widowhood! Lord, Esme, even I never created a scandal akin to this one!”
“What scandal?” Esme demanded. “You stopped the Sewing Circle from even considering the possibility with all your quotations.”
“Which took me a good hour of poring over a Bible, I’ll have you know!” Arabella said.
“Esme, do you think it might be time to give up the Sewing Circle?” Helene asked tentatively. “Things are a trifle…complicated in your life. Perhaps it would be best if you weren’t under quite so close surveillance.”
“It’s part of my new respectability,” Esme said stubbornly. “I rather enjoy it.”
“Not that I noticed,” Arabella commented. “You sewed a miserable seam. Some people are simply not gifted in that department.”
“You know, Mama makes shirts for the poor,” Esme said. “The whole shirt, even the collar and cuffs.”
Arabella was silent for a moment. “Lord, Esme, I never like to think of myself as someone who could say ill of my own sister, but Fanny is dim-witted. She’s spending all that time making up collars for people she doesn’t even know, and her own daughter is alone in the country. She’s got her priorities in a tangle.” She reached over and gave Esme’s hand a little squeeze. “Don’t go changing yourself into your mother. You have always had a merry soul. But Fanny has grown into a rather dreary adult, if I say so myself.”
“That’s not fair,” Esme objected. “Mama has had a great many disappointments
in life.” Obviously her daughter was foremost on the list.
“She’s dispirited,” Arabella said firmly, “although it’s good of you to defend her. Fanny spends all her time gazing at the world and pursing her lips. I’ve always been glad to have one relation with a grain of sense in her head. I can’t afford to lose you to the ranks of straitlaced matrons.”
“Your aunt is right,” Helene put in. “I have only the slimmest acquaintance with your mother. But the idea of you growing as prim and prissy as that Mrs. Cable is simply dispiriting. She’s not a very nice woman, Esme.”
“I know,” Esme said. “Believe me, I know.”
Arabella took a look at her niece and judged it time to change the subject. But while she and Helene chatted about the Venetian lace points that adorned Helene’s sleeves, Esme sat in silence. She had promised Miles that she would be a respectable mother, yet Miles was gone. She thought never to make another scandal, and she could think of no scandal with the explosive force that her marriage to Marquess Bonnington would have.
25
A Taste for Seduction
The next morning Bea stamped down the lane to visit the goat. She’d taken to visiting the devilish creature every morning, from the pure boredom of life. Of course, she could have spent her time flirting with the Puritan. But annoyingly, irritatingly, hatefully, he and Helene were learning to play a four-handed piece. The sight of Helene’s pale braids bent close to Stephen’s dark head as they whacked away on that pianoforte gave Bea a strange kind of longing, the kind that pinches your heart. It wasn’t an emotion that Bea was familiar with at all.
The one time they had been alone together after breakfast, for the merest moment, he had looked down at her with a rather wintery smile and said, “I gather that you have decided not to woo me?”
She had answered, “I never woo,” hoping that he would kiss her or smile at her the way he did at Esme and Helene. But all he’d done was bow and walk away. Bea had realized in that very moment, watching his back, that there was nothing in the world she wanted more than to woo the man. But Stephen showed little desire to secure any sort of relationship with her. How could he, in truth? He had no time. When he wasn’t playing an instrument with his mistress, he was exchanging bawdy jests with his fiancée. Lord knows where he was at night. Bea ground her teeth together. She was making a regular occupation out of thinking about Stephen Fairfax-Lacy and then admonishing herself for doing it. She held out a branch she’d brought the goat and watched him chew it into kindling.