Lady Skiffing sniffed disapprovingly. As someone who spent her days spicing gossip with an intonation, giving faint blame and even fainter praise, she thoroughly understood the language of the undertone.
Smiling graciously, she inclined her head. “You put me to shame, dear sir,” she crooned. “One should remember, of course, that when your brother was abroad for such a long period of time, many people believed that you would inherit his title, and yet here you both are.” She smiled happily at Patrick and turned to the Marquis of Brandenburg, seated on her left.
Touché! Patrick thought appreciatively. She managed to remind me that I am a younger son and untitled.
And he wondered for the fortieth time why Sophie had assembled such an odd group for their first dinner as a married couple. True, Quill seemed happy talking to Sophie’s friend Madeleine, and that was splendid, given that Quill rarely left his house. It was a pleasure to see Will Holland and his lovely wife, Chloe. And at least Braddon hadn’t been invited.
But why on earth had Sophie invited that dried-up old prune, Lady Skiffing? And why, in God’s name, had she invited Lady Sarah Prestlefield, the woman who had walked into the salon at the Cumberland ball and caught them kissing?
With a sigh he turned to Sophie’s mother. Eloise was picking at her stuffed capon in an unsatisfied sort of way.
Patrick bent toward her. “May I summon a footman to dispatch with your capon?”
Eloise jumped, just slightly. A true lady, of course, is never startled because she is never lost in thought. All her attention is directed to her dinner partners.
“I was thinking about Sophie’s babe,” Eloise said forthrightly.
It was Patrick’s turn to be startled. He and Sophie had achieved a sort of calm equilibrium. They did not discuss the subject, and there were days when he forgot that his wife was with child. Certainly he hadn’t thought about it tonight. Sophie sat at the bottom of the table glowing like the fairy on top of a Christmas tree. She didn’t look pregnant. She looked as delectable as spun sugar.
Eloise continued. “I am not convinced that Sophie is adhering to a correct diet.”
“She seems to be eating regularly,” Patrick said lamely.
“I believe that bathing in milk would strengthen her constitution.” Eloise looked at Patrick, her eyes shadowed with worry. “She refuses to do so. And when I recommended that she add oranges to her diet—oranges soothe the stomach, you understand—she refused to do that either.”
“But her stomach has not been indisposed, has it?” Patrick asked cautiously. It was a bit shameful to find that he did not know if his own wife had been ill.
“I believe not,” Eloise replied. “But I still could wish that she would eat an orange a day, and perhaps a glass of bitters once a week.”
“Bitters!”
Eloise nodded. “Drinking bitters is extremely salutary for the health. It strengthens the blood, you know.”
“I didn’t know that,” Patrick replied gravely.
There was a moment’s pause broken by the clamor of sixteen well-bred voices chattering of this and that. The marchioness launched into an explanation of her recommendation that Sophie should eat partridges on a regular basis. Patrick looked down the table at his wife.
Tonight Sophie looked very much the grande dame, a far cry from the sensual little sprite who had frequented his bed on the Lark. She was wearing diamonds at her ears and around her throat; their chilly brilliance perfectly suited the creamy luster of her gown.
Suspended from the dining room’s arched ceiling was a chandelier that Patrick had shipped from Italy, long before that country had been swept into Napoleon’s net. Its crystal shards hung, sparkling, far above their heads. A draft caused by footmen moving silently in and out of the dining room caused the crystals to turn and gleam. They caught the reflection of Sophie’s diamonds as they twinkled in the candlelight.
But the diamonds didn’t turn her into an icy reflection of themselves. If anything, they made the rosy, creamy tint of her bosom look even warmer, softer, more delectable.
Patrick swallowed. If there is one thing a gentleman must never do, at his own dinner party in particular, it is to stare at his wife until his breeches are uncomfortably tight.
Patrick tried to look at his wife objectively. Why had he never enquired whether Sophie’s stomach was upset by her condition? Apparently it was a common occurrence. Why had they never talked about the child she carried?
For an instant he listened again to Eloise’s monologue. She seemed to have returned to the beneficial qualities of milk baths.
“I shall recommend it to Sophie,” Patrick said with perfect gravity, then stopped listening again.
He was very conscious of the distance growing between himself and his wife. He was caught in a web of his own making. Strangled by fear, he didn’t want to think about the baby because that meant thinking about its birth. Strangled by jealousy, he didn’t want to think about what Sophie did with Braddon on their long afternoon excursions, and yet he couldn’t help thinking about Braddon some twenty, thirty times a day. So he ended up walking the streets for hours at night, fighting against dual foes: his fear and his jealousy.
He knew, rationally knew, that Sophie and Braddon were not indulging in an affair, although sometimes he persuaded himself otherwise. It was just that his wife greeted Braddon with an affectionate smile whenever they met him, and they seemed to meet that blighter everywhere. If they went to the theater, there he was. If they attended the opera, the Earl of Slaslow was certain to attend. The only explanation Patrick could find was that Sophie informed him of their plans.
Why? So that she could greet her ex-betrothed with an insufferably intimate smile? So that Braddon could linger next to them, his hand on Sophie’s arm, until Patrick was ready to burst with rage? Red heat rose in his ears, and he forced himself to calm down. If gentlemen don’t stare lustfully at their wives at dinner parties, they also don’t work themselves into fevers over unanswerable questions.
He turned to Eloise, only to find that their ten minutes had passed and she was briskly talking to Peter Dewland. Apologetically, he turned back to Lady Skiffing, who was kind enough to forgive him for his inattention.
“Your wife is looking particularly radiant, given her condition,” Lady Skiffing observed.
Patrick silently groaned.
“I expect she will go into confinement in the near future,” Lady Skiffing continued. “I must say, it is quite unusual for a lady to give a dinner party when she is in an interesting condition. In my day, we remained on a couch for a good six months. But nowadays it seems that young women gallivant around the streets as long as they wish.”
Patrick nodded. In fact, he’d completely forgotten that women stopped going into society in the last few months of their pregnancy. Again he looked at his wife. Sophie happened to look up at the same moment.
Color raced delicately up her cheeks as her clear blue eyes met his black ones, down the length of the starched linen tablecloth. Silently Patrick raised his wineglass in a salute. She was his wife; she was carrying his child; she was unbearably beautiful.
A tiny smile hovered on Sophie’s lips and she raised her wineglass in return. Patrick was gazing at her with the same suggestive look he used to have, before her mother announced that sex was forbidden.
They would sit together at dinner, talking innocently of the state of the war with France, and all the time Patrick’s eyes would lazily slide over her face and down her shoulders, lingering on her breasts until she felt like fireworks about to explode. Every pulse in her body would be pounding by the time Patrick rose from his chair and held out his arm so that they could leave the dining room.
Thinking of it, Sophie put her wineglass down with a soft thump and wrenched her eyes from Patrick’s. This was no time for seductive games. She turned decisively to Patrick’s brother, Alex, to her right, only to find that he was grinning at her. Sophie blushed again. I suppose he caught Patrick’s loo
k, she thought to herself.
“Do you know,” Alex said conversationally, leaning close to her ear, “I am very glad that you married my brother, Lady Sophie.”
“Thank you,” she said hesitantly.
Much later that night, Patrick and Sophie were finally left alone in the drawing room. Sophie dropped into a chair, with an exhausted sigh.
Patrick stood looking down at her for a second. “It was a great success, Sophie my wife,” he said quietly.
She looked up and smiled. “Thank you. I thought Madeleine did very well, didn’t you?”
Patrick looked a bit surprised. “Naturally. She is a lovely young woman.”
Sophie couldn’t explain that she was proud of Madeleine because she carried herself to perfection. Not a soul at the party, Sophie would be bound, even considered the possibility that Madeleine was not born into the French aristocracy.
“Has your stomach been indisposed, Sophie?”
It was Sophie’s turn to look startled. “No, not at all.” Then she grinned. “I placed you next to my mother, didn’t I? Did she mention milk baths, by any chance?” And, at Patrick’s answering grin, “Bitters?” Sophie gave a melodramatic shiver. “I hate bitters.”
Patrick laughed and put out a hand, helping her to her feet. “It was Lady Skiffing who said that you ought to be resting.”
Sophie paused and looked up at him sympathetically. “It sounds as if they talked your ears off, and just on a subject you dislike. I am sorry.”
Patrick looked down at his wife, then took her arm and led her toward the stairs. “Time for bed.”
His voice was resonant, almost seductive, Sophie thought. But when she looked up, Patrick’s face was impossible to read.
She paused in the doorway of her bedchamber and turned around, saying rather uncertainly, “Good night, Patrick.”
Out of the blue, Patrick smiled at her, a suggestive, sweet smile.
Sophie almost jumped, she was so surprised.
“Why don’t I act as your lady’s maid tonight?”
Sophie opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. Patrick walked toward her, stopping so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body.
“But Mama …” Sophie whispered.
“Didn’t say we couldn’t kiss,” Patrick said. He lowered his head, opening her lips with fierce hunger. He backed her into her bedroom before he broke the kiss, gently pushing Sophie onto the stool before her dressing table, and dismissing Simone with a nod.
Sophie’s hair was pinned up in a simple, smooth twist. Patrick found the end, carefully tucked under by Simone, and pulled it free. Then he shook it briskly. Gold-tipped hairpins flew in all directions, tinkling against the glass of Sophie’s dressing-table mirror, plunging into the thick rug, falling into her lap.
She laughed. “I feel like a pony—and you’re shaking my tail!”
Patrick’s eyes darkened as he met Sophie’s in the mirror. He lowered one hand and stroked her neck in a whisper-soft caress. She shivered uncontrollably. “If you were my pony,” he said, his voice a velvet whisper, “I would take you for a ride.”
Sophie blushed, rosy pink stealing up from the low bodice of her gown. Patrick’s eyes drifted down and he almost groaned out loud.
“Oh God, Sophie, I don’t know if I can make it!” One of his hands stole, willy-nilly, to her bodice and cupped the soft curves of a breast.
Sophie couldn’t help grinning. It was so wonderful to discover that Patrick hadn’t been indifferent the last few weeks.
“Then you don’t mind the fact I am getting plump?” she said, just a trifle anxiously.
“Plump! You have put on flesh in all the places designed to drive a man mad, Sophie.” Patrick’s other hand now possessed her other breast.
Sophie looked at herself and her husband in the mirror for a moment, then threw her head back, like a true wanton.
“Kiss me, please, Patrick.” Her voice came from her throat in a husky murmur.
He dropped to his knees next to the stool and drew her face to his, capturing her lips. She wreathed her arms around his neck.
After a long time, Patrick drew back, pushing Sophie back onto the stool. Somehow she had ended up on his knee. His eyes were sooty, wild, full of desire. His heart pounded in his throat.
For a moment, husband and wife just stared at each other.
“I’ll probably die before this is over,” Patrick said conversationally, recovering himself.
Sophie worried her lower lip, with her small white teeth, eyes anxious. “I’m sorry, Patrick. Mama was quite insistent about it.” There was a moment’s silence. “Perhaps we could simply think of this particular idea as akin to milk baths and bitters?”
For a moment his heart beat a surprised Yes! “We’d better not,” he said heavily. “After all, it’s only once. I can survive.”
Sophie bit her lip before she admitted that she couldn’t survive.
“Well,” Patrick said with a sigh, “I’ll be off to my lonely bed.”
Sophie stood up so quickly that she almost knocked over her stool.
“Would you—perhaps you could sleep here,” she said in a rush. “We could just sleep together.” When Patrick didn’t answer immediately, hot embarrassment flooded up her face.
He moved a step closer. “Sophie,” he said, “you don’t understand, do you?”
She shook her head.
“Sophie, my love, look at the front of my breeches for a moment.”
Obediently, Sophie looked. He was wearing the skintight breeches demanded by fashion. Instantly her eyes dropped and her flush deepened.
“I can’t sleep next to you, Sophie, because I wouldn’t sleep a wink. Instead I will lie over there”—he nodded toward the door that connected their two rooms—”and wrestle with an urge to break down the door. If I were sleeping with you I would probably ravish you in my sleep, I want you so much.”
Sophie grinned. Never mind the fact that Patrick sometimes spent an evening with his mistress. It seemed he wasn’t altogether bored with her body yet.
“God!” Patrick half whispered, looking at the honey silk of his wife’s disheveled hair, the sultry smile in her eyes, the rosy beauty of her fading blush. “I’d better leave now.” He snapped around and slammed the door behind him.
Left standing alone in the bedchamber, Sophie broke into a fit of giggles. She hugged her rounded tummy, swinging in a lopsided circle. He wanted her! He still wanted her!
As a lady’s maid Patrick left a good deal to be desired. He may have uncoiled her hair, but he had left intact the hooks running down her back. Giddy with delight, Sophie rang the bell for Simone.
Down in the kitchen Simone registered the ringing bell with a disgruntled frown. Danged if she’d ever understand the ways of the gentry. In the bed, out of the bed. It was a new story every week. With a sigh, she began trudging up the back stairs.
Chapter 23
You may not stop,” Braddon insisted, with a note of panic in his voice. “Why on earth not, Braddon? Madeleine was an undoubted success last night, and I can’t think of anything else that I might teach her.” Sophie unfurled her parasol. Braddon had picked her up in his phaeton, and the sun was entering the carriage at a slant.
“We won’t know which invitations to choose without you.”
“Nonsense!” Sophie said a bit sharply. “We already discussed this. In the next few weeks Madeleine will attend eight or nine public events, and you will pay your addresses to her at each one, and then you will announce your engagement at Lady Greenleaf’s ball.”
Braddon looked at her desperately. “Why don’t you want to?”
“Well,” Sophie said irritably, “if you must know, I would like to stay home from now on. I would like to see my husband.” Patrick invariably absented himself in the evening when Sophie spent the afternoon with Braddon, and she had made up her mind to see whether she could lure Patrick away from his black-haired strumpet.
“I told yo
u Patrick wouldn’t like it,” Braddon retorted. “Got his back up about all these carriage rides with me, hasn’t he? Now I think of it, he’s been devilish sharp-set with me in the last few months.”
“He hasn’t said a word about them. Frankly, I don’t think he’s noticed.” Sophie’s voice was quiet but resolved.
“In that case,” Braddon said, remembering the more important agenda, “you don’t have any reason not to see Madeleine.”
Sophie pulled down her parasol and turned squarely to face Braddon. They were tooling their way down Water Street making, she thought with some irritation, straight for Vincent’s Horse Emporium, although she had clearly said no. “Lord Slaslow, pull the carriage over, please.”
Braddon hunched his shoulders and thought about how glad he was that he hadn’t married Sophie.
“Braddon!” The word had all the icy force of her mother’s commands.
He pulled over and hooked up the reins.
“Why do you want me to continue seeing Madeleine every week?” Sophie asked.
“She won’t see me unless you’re there, Sophie. Damme, she never even gives me a kiss anymore!”
“You will see Madeleine in the evenings. If you wish, after this week, you could invite her to go for a ride in the park with you, or to attend an afternoon entertainment. Suitably chaperoned, of course,” she added.
Braddon looked mutinous.
“Don’t be foolish, Braddon. I should like to go home now.” Sophie picked up her parasol again.
“I’m afraid, Sophie.”
She turned her head. Had she heard correctly? It seemed she had. Braddon’s sad beagle eyes were miserable, and fixed pleadingly on her face.
“We need you to help us, Sophie, right to the end. It’s only three weeks,” Braddon urged. “All this doesn’t come easily to me, you know. I’m afraid I’m going to make an ass of myself, and everyone will know that Madeleine is who she is, and—oh God, Sophie, when I thought up this scheme, I was thinking only of myself and Madeleine. I didn’t realize until a few days ago what it will do to m’mother if the truth gets out.”