Midnight Pleasures

  “Then I order you to return to your own seat.”

  “Alack, I cannot.” Lucien thumped his chest theatrically. “I am an apostle to your beauty, Lady Sophie. I fear for my life if I stray from the source of my bliss.”

  “Fustian!” Sophie giggled. “You lie!”

  “I would you did, within my bedcurtains.” Lucien laughed back.

  Sophie involuntarily glanced at Patrick, who was frowning at his program. She was not yet accustomed to the level of suggestiveness common in conversation with married women. It was disconcerting to find herself embarrassed. Before she married Patrick, she had a reputation for racy language. But that was when she was a mere girl and didn’t, she realized now, have any real idea what she was talking about most of the time.

  And, to be honest, she wasn’t concentrating on Lucien’s flirtation. Every particle of her being was focused on her husband—although Patrick seemed not even to notice the way other men looked at her with desire.

  Lucien gently took her wrist in his hand. “I spoke only in jest, Lady Sophie.” His eyes met hers. “I flatter and flirt because it is the mode. But I do not wish to shock your sensibilities.”

  Sophie smiled. “You are saying that you would show this kindness to any lady, are you?”

  “Precisely,” Lucien confirmed. “I like you too much to offer you Spanish coin, my lady. And your blush reveals that you are still new to this kind of game.”

  Sophie’s blush deepened.

  Patrick happened to look up just then. He scowled. Knowing what he did about Sophie’s predilection for being seduced in French, he didn’t trust Lucien. Bloody hell, he groaned inside. If I don’t watch it, I’m going to end up like Sophie’s mother, allowing only elderly and decrepit Frenchmen in the house.

  Sophie was whispering sweetly with Lucien. Just stay sensible, Patrick thought to himself. Everyone knows that Lucien is faithful to his dead wife, so he is only amusing Sophie with a flirtation.

  Irritably Patrick got up and strode out of the box. Why should I sit around and watch other men make love to my wife? I am possessed, he thought, walking quickly down the theater corridor … possessed by irrationality and jealousy. For example, where did Sophie go yesterday afternoon? Braddon had picked her up at precisely two o’clock and hadn’t returned her to the house until seven o’clock, barely in time to dress for the musicale they attended together. And the same thing had happened on Friday of the week before.

  Striding down the dirty alley that ran beside the Drury Lane theater, Patrick’s heart raced with anger. He felt unable to demand what his wife was doing all afternoon with her old beau.

  Sophie, Patrick kept reminding himself, is like a drop of water: clear, honest, true. Her response to his lovemaking, for example, was unashamedly delighted. She had not erupted with false declarations of love, based on desire alone. Although Patrick had to admit that he didn’t particularly care for that aspect of her truthful nature.

  The worst of it was that Patrick had wound himself into such a tangled inner mess that he couldn’t bring himself to enter his wife’s bedroom, couldn’t gather her into his arms … his own small, sweetly scented wife was lying alone at night.

  If only Sophie showed some anger, or distress, or recognition of his absence from her bed, it would be easier to broach the subject. But she was ever pleasant, ever friendly.

  “Doesn’t give a damn whether I’m in her bed or not,” Patrick mumbled to himself. He turned around to retrace his steps to the theater. It was bad enough that he was out roaming the streets of London at night or staying in his offices until the wee hours of the morning; Sophie shouldn’t sit alone in the theater while her husband walked about, looking for a calm he never seemed to find.

  Patrick emerged from the heavy velvet drapes lining the back of the box to find it empty but for Sophie and Braddon. The Christian must finally have turned Turk, since there was an enthusiastic swordplay going on, and the ex-Christian was using a scimitar.

  Braddon and Sophie made a good-looking couple, Patrick had to admit. Sophie’s curls were almost exactly the same color as Braddon’s. They had a comfortable air of companionship, of old friendship, that Patrick did not like.

  Patrick strode forward and sat down to the right of Sophie. Braddon looked up, saw him, and rose. For a moment he loomed behind Patrick’s chair, giving him a friendly cuff on the shoulder.

  “I’ll be off, then, Patrick. M’mother is waiting for me.”

  Sure enough, Patrick saw the Countess of Slaslow, who was sitting in a box directly across from theirs, give her son a piercing glance.

  “She’s as angry as a bear because I haven’t found a wife,” Braddon said glumly. Before Patrick remembered how much he disliked Braddon, he gave him a sympathetic grimace.

  As the play continued, with much clanking of tin swords, yet another fragment of rational thought trickled into Patrick’s consciousness. Braddon never was any good at keeping secrets. If nothing else, Braddon’s utterly un-self-conscious attitude suggested that his relationship with Sophie did not include improprieties. But that realization brought Patrick no closer to understanding Sophie’s blithe attitude toward his desertion of her bed.

  What the devil were Sophie and Braddon doing on their long drives, if they were not conducting an affair? Patrick’s stomach twisted. No man and woman spent that quantity of time together without … And Sophie had such a contented air about her.

  Later that week, Patrick looked up from his shipping accounts to see his twin standing before him.

  “Alex!”

  If Alex was a little surprised to have his normally undemonstrative brother almost knock over the table in order to give him a hug, he said nothing.

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” Patrick said lamely.

  Alex arched an eyebrow, a smile hovering around his mouth. “Let me guess … you’ve bollixed up your marriage, in the style of a Foakes male, and now you would like me to help you sort it out.”

  “Not at all,” Patrick said, meeting Alex’s eyes without flinching.

  “Nonsense,” Alex retorted. “You don’t think I dragged Charlotte all the way to London in this weather just to have you shrug me off, do you?”

  Patrick stared at him in frustration. “I didn’t ask you to come up,” he pointed out.

  “You didn’t have to,” Alex reminded him, getting an edge in his voice. Oddly enough, although the twins were unable to sense each other’s physical pain, one knew instantly if the other was emotionally wounded. When Alex’s first marriage went gravely awry, Patrick suffered for months from an anxious stomach. “Cut rope, Patrick.”

  There was a moment of silence. “All right,” Patrick finally said, turning his back to Alex and walking across the room to stare out the window. March snow was wearily drifting into puddles of rainwater. “I’ve bollixed up my marriage in proper Foakes style, but I don’t think there is anything you can do about it, thank you.”

  Alex waited for him to continue.

  “We’re no longer sharing a bed,” Patrick said, turning around, “and I don’t know how to remedy the situation.”

  “Was it your choice or hers?”

  “Mine, damn it! But that’s just it. I didn’t make a choice. I don’t know how it happened. We had a fight over something absurd, and I didn’t come home that evening—”

  “A heinous error,” his brother interrupted.

  “I went to my warehouse, not to a brothel.”

  “My advice regarding marriage is never to leave the house until a quarrel is resolved,” Alex remarked. “Women never forgive you for it. Charlotte would tear me limb from limb.”

  “That’s just it,” Patrick retorted. “Sophie didn’t even seem to have noticed. So I stayed away the next night.” He glanced at Alex, who was looking surprised and thoughtful. “It’s absurd—but I was waiting for some recognition on her part that I had avoided her bed. But she’s as cordial as a duchess at a damn party and, frankly, I don’t think she gives a toss wh
ether I ever come to her chambers again.”

  Alex frowned. “Did she enjoy being in your bed?”

  Patrick looked bewildered. “That’s just it. I thought she did. No, I know she did. And Lord knows, I did. But now … it’s been over two weeks. She greets me as sweetly as if we were spending every night together. Sophie is perfectly pleasant, no matter what I do.”

  “You will have to broach the subject then,” Alex observed.

  Patrick threw him a disgusted look. “How does one ask a perfectly contented woman whether she has noticed that her husband has deserted her bed? She shows no signs of being inconvenienced!”

  “You don’t know that,” Alex objected. “Find out. Go to her room. You don’t need to discuss the matter necessarily. Simply go.”

  Silence puddled in the room for a moment. “I could try it,” Patrick said slowly.

  “You’ve nothing to lose.”

  Patrick grimaced. “I suppose you’re right.”

  “Have you told her that you’re in love with her?”

  At that Patrick flashed him an irritated look. “Of course I haven’t!”

  “Well, you are,” Alex assured him. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in such a pother over the fact that Sophie doesn’t seem as enthusiastic about marital pleasures as you are.”

  “Enthusiastic! You don’t understand,” Patrick snapped. “She’s happy living the life of a damned nun. Hell, I don’t know why she didn’t enter a convent.”

  “You won’t know until you enter her bedchamber again,” Alex said. Then he grinned. “As for myself, I shall begin planning to spend my five hundred crowns. And you had better accustom yourself to the idea of sleeping in a frilly nightshirt.”

  Patrick frowned. “What the devil—”

  “You didn’t even make it a year,” Alex said mockingly. “Remember? I bet you five hundred crowns and a lace nightshirt that you’d be desperately in love with your wife within the year. We’re only a few months into the marriage, and here you are.”

  Then he sobered. “Why don’t you tell Sophie? Tell her that you love her.”

  Patrick looked up from the carpet, his heart in his eyes. “The feeling is not mutual, Alex. She doesn’t give a toss whether I’m around or not. She’s perfectly happy spending most of her time with an assortment of men who hang around the house at all hours. Braddon practically lives with us.”

  It did sound bad. Alex wound an arm around his twin’s shoulder. “We should be moving the household to London sometime in the next few weeks, but you can visit Downes anytime, you know.”

  Patrick gave him a wry smile. “Thank you.”

  “I have to fetch Charlotte,” Alex said. “She wants to do some shopping before we return to the country. She will be visiting her parents tonight—will you join me for a game of billiards?” At Patrick’s nod, Alex walked toward the door, then paused.

  “Marriages aren’t always successful, Patrick.” Between them stood the knowledge that Alex’s first marriage had been an unmitigated disaster from which he had barely escaped. “One cannot blame oneself.”

  As the door closed behind his brother, Patrick threw himself into an armchair. Consciously he relaxed his jaw. Alex was both right and wrong. The idea of discussing bedroom matters with Sophie was inconceivable. But he could simply walk into her chamber. Ay, that he could do. Tonight he was bound to have dinner with Petersham and then billiards with Alex—but tomorrow night he would enter that room. It was that or go slowly mad, Patrick realized. Whatever his cool little wife thought of the business, her bedlamite husband was burning to topple her beneath him on a bed—any bed.

  Unknown to Patrick, up on the first floor that same cool little wife was shedding hot, inconvenient, and passionately angry tears.

  Henri bounced through the door of Sophie’s sitting room only to stop in dismay. “Lady Sophie! What is your concern?” Henri still spoke a queer, broken English, but Sophie insisted they avoid French so that Henri would be fluent enough to enter school in a few weeks.

  Sophie brushed away the tears on her cheeks. “It’s nothing, Henri. I’m turning into a watering pot, that’s all.”

  “A watering pot?” Henri frowned.

  “Someone who cries frequently,” Sophie explained.

  Henri hesitated. Even he knew that such a subject was delicate. “Do you weep because you are—you are … séparée from Monsieur Foakes?”

  She might have known that the whole household would be discussing Patrick’s desertion of her bed. Of course, the servants would know with whom Patrick was spending his nights—they always knew that kind of detail.

  “Do they say, downstairs, who Patrick’s friend is?” she asked baldly.

  “What?” Henri was perplexed.

  “Whom … Patrick spends his evenings with?”

  Henri’s face took on a knowing sympathy that was far older than his age. He shook his head negatively, not trying to hide the fact that the household believed in the existence of Patrick’s mistress. But he did keep silent about the household’s opinion of Sophie’s frequent drives with the Earl of Slaslow.

  Sophie’s eyes prickled. She took a deep breath. This was a most improper conversation to have with Henri. For a moment she fought to keep her composure.

  “I could discover,” Henri offered eagerly. “This afternoon I will follow Monsieur Foakes, as—as a Bow Street runner might do. And I will see where he spends his time.”

  “Absolutely not, Henri,” Sophie replied, looking at the boy with affection. “I think we shall pretend that this conversation never happened. Weren’t we planning to see the lion at the Exchange?”

  And Henri agreed. But in the early evening he sidled into the drawing room in such a way that Sophie knew instantly that something was wrong.

  “What happened, chéri? Are you all right?”

  Henri walked over and stood next to her. Then he burst out, “I did follow him, Lady Sophie. Although you instructed me not to do so. He has … I thought I had lost him on Bond Street, and then he came out of a building. And oh, Lady Sophie, Monsieur Foakes does have a lady friend.”

  Sophie’s stomach heaved. “Henri,” she said, “that was not the correct thing to do. It was monstrous improper for you to have followed Patrick anywhere.” Dimly, she listened with amazement to her unshaken voice.

  In Henri’s eyes was a confused sense of betrayal. He adored Sophie, and Patrick’s behavior went against his sense of loyalty.

  “It’s not right!” he said furiously. “I shall tell him so! This … this black-haired woman … bah! She is a—a pig compared to you!”

  Sophie almost smiled at that. But her heart was hurting too much. So Patrick had a black-haired charmer. Likely the woman was his mistress before they married, and he’d never broken off the relationship.

  “Henri, it was not proper of you to follow Patrick anywhere, especially in order to observe him with … with his friend.” Her eyes commanded Henri’s attention.

  He felt a prickle of shame. “But I didn’t believe them,” he burst out. “When they said, downstairs, that Monsieur Foakes was with a courtesan, I didn’t believe them!”

  Sophie’s heart wrung. Henri’s pointed little face looked so unhappy. “‘Tis the way of the world, Henri,” she said gently, putting an arm around the boy. “It means naught for a marriage … it’s just the way of things.”

  Henri went in to supper unconvinced. Sophie went in to supper miserable. She had never had a chance at Patrick’s heart. A black-haired woman was there before her. And Patrick was likely sharing an intimate meal with his mistress, because he didn’t appear at all.

  That night Sophie lay in her bed awake until three in the morning, hoping, praying that tonight Patrick would come to her bed. But at last she heard him come in, dismiss his valet, and fall into his own bed.

  Patrick slept so soundly that he hardly even turned over in the night. Sophie knew how well he slept, because she left the door between their rooms open, just a crack. He must be exhausting
himself. But Sophie couldn’t drum up any real anger over Patrick’s activities.

  Instead of anger, what she felt was a trickle of fear. While she hadn’t wanted to discuss her monthly schedule with Patrick when they were onboard the Lark, even she couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t bled once since Patrick climbed the ladder to her room. It seemed that she took after her mother in all things, Sophie thought bitterly: in immediate pregnancy, and in failed marriages.

  The baby was already changing her body. Her breasts were larger and more tender; her stomach had a tiny, sweet curve that she cherished in private. She had begun to sleep longer and longer in the morning, but there was no one to notice except her maid.

  Soon she would grow fat and unpleasing, and then Patrick, who was already amusing himself elsewhere, would never come back to her bed. So Sophie wept huge, wrenching sobs into her pillow, not precisely because Patrick was cavorting with other women, but because she was so shamefully lustful that she wasn’t even happy about the babe she thought she had wanted. It didn’t seem fair for it to come so soon. Patrick had already lost interest in her body, and he wanted only one child. Now he would have no reason to return to her bed, ever.

  That meant years of marriage spent exactly like her mother’s, meeting one’s husband at dinner and parting immediately thereafter, going to house parties and having hostesses automatically separate your bedroom from your husband’s bedroom, putting you at opposite ends of the corridor or, even worse, on separate floors.

  Part of the problem was that whenever she saw Patrick, a prickling warmth blossomed in her stomach and spread down her legs, a dizzying, hungry heat that was all the more shaming for being so clearly unshared. That night Sophie lay in bed, the blood pulsing in her veins, and it was all she could do not to creep next door and throw herself on Patrick’s sleeping body.

  But pride came to her rescue. Would she go to a man who was exhausted from being with another woman? What if he flatly rejected her? What if he smelled of another’s perfume? What if he said … The possibilities were endless, and equally terrible. Sophie stayed where she was, in her own bed.