She turned, knowing that her breasts were completely visible through the light fabric of her gown, and understanding for the first time in her life that their sweet, unsteady weight was no drawback in a man’s eyes.
“What if I were a fairy queen?” she said.
“What then?”
“I would command you to stay. Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.”
“I feel a donkey’s head descending onto my shoulders,” he muttered. But he was walking after her.
She didn’t look back, just walked up the step to the little house and pushed open the door.
“That’s supposed to be locked,” he said. But he was following her.
It was a small room, with nothing more than a sofa in the corner. The moon streamed through the small window.
“If I remove your donkey’s head, will you kiss me?” she whispered.
He stood by the door, large, shadowed. She couldn’t see his face.
“There’s no going back from this.”
“I don’t want to.” Exhilaration was running through her veins. For her, there had only been this man, from the moment he kissed her and showed her how to be a woman. Garret turned her, with his desire, from shapeless to shapely. From undesirable to desired.
She would never want anyone else in her bed, or in her life.
35
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Twenty-fourth
For weeks I haunted my Mustardseed’s grave, weeping silently and refusing nourishment. For was I not some sort of pariah, as damaging to a woman’s soul as the gaze of a basilisk? I expect, Dear Reader, that you think I quickly recovered my spirits and felt the flame of lust raise again in my soul.
No! I assure you that days passed…
I must return to my house.”
“No.” He said it sleepily, but with such satisfaction that she almost laughed. But still she struggled to a sitting position.
“I’m sore, and I’m tired, and I’m far too old for this sort of gallivanting,” she told him.
He propped himself up on one arm.
“Marry me?”
Griselda was bending over to pick up a stray stocking that lay abandoned on the bedroom floor. The words drifted over to her slowly, as if they’d been whispered. She straightened, stocking in her hand, and turned. “There’s no need for that,” she said, smiling at him with all the gladness she felt in her heart that her lover was a man of honor. “I am so grateful for you asking the question, though. It always struck me as utterly demoralizing that people carry on affaires when—”
She broke off. What she saw on his face wasn’t the polite relief of a man who has asked the requisite question and been offered a reprieve. She froze in the middle of the room. “Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t.”
“I must. I can’t think of anything but you, Griselda. I dream of you. I smell you when you aren’t with me. I can’t make clever remarks, because the only person I want to speak to is you.”
“You—” she said, and swallowed. “You are suffering an infatuation. It happens to young men.” She said that briskly, to remind herself that he was young. Very young.
He didn’t look very young as he got out of bed and walked toward her. “Age has nothing to do with it.”
“It has everything to do with it,” she retorted. “Everything! I wish I’d met you when I was younger, or you were older, or…or whatever was needed. Truly, I do. I would have pursued you so fiercely you couldn’t see another woman without me smiling over her shoulder. I would have done anything—anything!—to marry you.”
“Then have me.”
“To have is not to take. I won’t take you, with your life ahead of you. You’ll find a wife who’s your age or younger, and she’ll bear you a dozen babies.” She reached out and brushed back a lock of his hair. “I will dance at your wedding, darling, and that gladly. But I will never be your bride, for all that I am honored beyond all measure by your request.”
His eyes burned into hers. “You love me.”
Griselda raised her chin. This was getting entirely too personal. “I do not love you,” she said, keeping her voice steady and gentle. “I appreciate you. I am proud of you.”
He flinched. “Proud of me? For what?”
She saw what he meant and blinked. And almost laughed. “Not that! Pride is not the emotion that comes to mind when I think of your prowess!”
“Then you have no right to feel proud of me, as if—as if you were my mother.” He spat it out.
Griselda reminded herself that young men have fierce passions, but she could feel her own temper rising. “I am not your mother, but I might as well be.”
“Stubble it!” he said, his voice slapping her. “How old are you, Griselda Willoughby? What right have you to act as if you were eighteen years my elder?”
“Perhaps not eighteen years,” Griselda said, trying to remain calm.
“Perhaps not ten,” he said, and there was a distinct edge to his voice. “Perhaps not five.”
“Nonsense!” Griselda said.
“Then I ask you again: how old are you?”
He had kissed her body in its most intimate places. Still Griselda stood motionless, her jaw set. She never talked of her age. Never.
“Griselda,” he said, low and clear. And she could see that he was enraged.
Then he turned away, as if tired of waiting for her to answer. “You, Griselda, are thirty-two. You have more than enough years, if you wish, to present me with half a dozen children. And I am twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. There is, at the moment, five years between us.”
“You knew,” she whispered. And then: “Twenty-seven?”
“You thought I was, what, eighteen? You knew that wasn’t the case.”
“I didn’t look you up.”
“I looked you up. And had you been thirty-nine, my question would be the same. And if you’d been forty-nine. But as it is, Griselda, you can hardly claim to be my mother, given that you were all of four years old when I was born.”
“Five.”
He shrugged. “There are things far more important about me—to me—than my age. In fact, there are many reasons why you may not wish to marry me, and my age is probably the least of it.”
She stared at his back. “Why would I not wish to marry you, Darlington?”
“I am a writer.”
“What?”
She felt disjointed, as if she’d missed part of the conversation.
“I am a writer,” he repeated, turning around. “You asked how I support this house? I write.”
“Novels?”
“No. I write in a lesser genre altogether. I write stories of crimes that have really happened. I have written sensational pamphlets; I have written gallow sheets; I have written accounts that purported to be the confessions of a murderer. I have in fact written down those confessions on occasion.”
“How do you hear the confessions?”
He shrugged. “I have friends among the constabulary. I am generous with guineas when I find a good story. It’s a business that pays remarkably well. I can afford to marry you, if you would even consider such a thing.”
Still she stared at him, until his mouth twisted and he turned away. “I entirely understand that my means of living is not reputable. I am a laborer. In truth, I find it shameful myself, and my family finds it abhorrent. My father literally cannot bring himself to mention my work at all. It’s one of the reasons he is so frantic about my marital prospects. Since I am already prostituting my honor, as he sees it, I might as well engage in a more honorable version of the same.”
Griselda took a deep breath. This was all becoming far too annoying. How dare he act as if she were so shallow as to cavil at the idea of marrying a writer? Was not she the one who confessed to reading those very books? And how dare he consider her such a despicable person as to read and enjoy the genre and not honor its authors?
Meanwhi
le Darlington was still talking. “I write all that sensationalist prose that we were talking of last night. The murderer’s mother invariably swoons on hearing of his capture; the victim’s mother swoons on hearing of the incident. I turn all my victims into sturdy young men who would have made excellent husbands and fathers, no matter how despicable they were in real life.” He stopped.
She still hadn’t replied. It broke his heart that Griselda had nothing to say to him. He stared down at the polished surface of his dressing table, waiting with tense shoulders for the sound of the door opening and shutting again. But no: Griselda was too well bred for that. Too much a gentlewoman. She would make some excuse, she would—
A faint sound was the only thing that alerted him. He turned around to find that Griselda’s hand was on her forehead and she was swaying back and forth, clearly about to faint.
She swooned into his arms with a faint sigh that went straight to his heart. “Griselda!” he shouted. And then realized that he shouldn’t shout at her.
What the hell was going on? Could he have horrified her so much that she fainted? He looked around desperately. One was supposed to apply smelling salts when women fainted, but he didn’t have anything like that around. Could any strong smelling object work? There were onions in the kitchen.
He laid her on the bed. She was limp and still, lying there with her eyes closed. She looked stark white. It must have been a worse shock than he had imagined.
“Griselda,” he commanded, “open your eyes.”
She lay still as death. Water! That’s what he needed. He should dash water in her face. Lord knows, he’d described that scene enough. Of course there wasn’t any water in his bedchamber, so he ran through the door and down to the kitchen.
When he came back, clutching a pitcher, his guest was still limp. Weren’t women supposed to come out of it after a second or two? He began to hoist the jug in the air.
Griselda judged it was time to wake up and uttered what she considered to be an entirely fetching sound of distress. Darlington put down the pitcher, somewhat to her relief.
“Griselda,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
She allowed a slight moan to pass her lips and threw her hand up to her brow in a dramatic gesture. “Oh, can it be?”
He rubbed her hands and she could hear him swearing under his breath. She had to take a deep breath to prevent a smile from erupting. “Can you have said what I thought I heard? Surely…no! It cannot be!” That was a little repetitive, but for someone who wasn’t a writer, she was doing fairly well.
“Griselda,” Darlington said, “I am truly sorry to have caused you distress, but—”
“My lover,” she said, opening her eyes and looking up at him, “my lover is nothing more than—than a common laborer!”
“Well—”
But she didn’t let him continue. “Oh, slay me now!” she cried. “I have soiled myself. My life is ruined. My reputation, my life, my body, my…” She paused and considered whether to faint again. Instead she peeped up at him.
He was grinning down at her, all the boyish roughness of him that she loved. Because she did love that side of him.
“I gather you think you’re an actress?”
“I can write a scene as well as you can,” she told him.
“Clichéd,” he said contemptuously.
“Pot calling the kettle black!”
“My fainting women never moan,” he said.
“More fools they,” she said. “I am hugely enjoying this faint, and I am only sorry that I had to cut off my performance before you drenched me with water.”
“Call me a fool,” Darlington said. “But Griselda, why did you faint?”
“To see if you had any experience of fainting women,” she said, sitting up comfortably and patting her hair. “You haven’t, have you?”
“Well, no.”
“In fact,” she went on, “I’d lay a guinea to a shilling that you simply make up most of what you print.”
“Not most of it.”
“But you embroider it.”
“Well…”
She smiled at him. “Do you think that I am a fool? That I didn’t surmise your career from our conversation?”
“But don’t you—aren’t you—”
“Am I embarrassed to find that my lover is a writer of lively prose, enjoyed by hundreds, if not thousands of people? That he has managed to make himself rich, so he needn’t depend on his father nor marry a young woman for her dowry?” She met his eyes directly. “Had you bowed to your father and married, Darlington, we would never have known each other.”
“Knowledge in the Biblical sense? Yes.” Before Griselda quite knew what had happened, he was on his knees by the bed and he had her hands in his.
“Marry me, Griselda. Neither of us will be good for anyone else after this; you know that.”
“You’re saying I should marry you just because I’m not good for anyone else?”
“I ruined you,” he said, his eyes holding hers and not letting her make another foolish comment. “You’re mine, and no one else’s, Griselda.”
“Oh—”
But he was kissing her, and it seemed that he didn’t need an answer that very moment.
And perhaps they both knew the answer in her heart.
36
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Twenty-fourth
It was all of a week or more before I left my Mustardseed’s grave, and at least a week after that before my faltering steps took themselves to any sort of entertainment. Tho’ I was clad, as you can imagine, in the most immaculate black. Therein lay my downfall, Dear Reader.
For I, poor I, have always looked my best in black.
I don’t know what comes next,” Josie said, laughing a bit. “My novels always stop at the bedchamber.”
He walked over until he stood just before her.
She kept talking because she felt nervous, and that made her want to chatter. “Of course, you would make a prime hero.”
“Really,” he drawled. “Do you think you could write me?”
“After reading so many novels, I could write anyone,” she said with conviction.
He laughed. “Then write me. Go ahead. Describe me in the lush prose of one of those novels you love so much.”
She reached out a hand and touched his eyebrow. Mayne felt a little shudder, as if he were a mere youngster again, faced by his first woman. But somehow in this particular night, it felt like that, as if they were the only man and woman in the world.
“Two eyebrows, midnight black,” Josie said, her finger lightly stroking him. “Eyelashes that are too long for a man, and oh! Eyes dreadfully tired…exhausted by the debauchery of centuries.”
“Centuries?” Mayne said, laughing. “I’m not really a Greek, you know.”
“Centuries,” Josie said, nodding. “A nose, quite noble really, in its original. One cannot but look at it mournfully, to see the gothic greatness with which it was once endowed, but now—dear reader, alas—faded to a mere nose.”
“A mere nose!” Mayne was starting to feel slightly insulted. “What should it be, pray? And what do you mean faded? It’s the same nose I’ve had for years.”
“Lips of a melancholy dark cherry tint,” she said, her eyes laughing at him. “Even with the beams of the moon falling on them, they retain a hint of wildness…a bacchanalian hint that speaks to the—to the—”
He was leaning forward now. He felt as if every inch of his body was alive, every cell urging him toward her. “Those lips,” he said, “are indeed bacchanalian. But what do nice young ladies know of Bacchus? My turn to paint your face. You’ll have to help me, though, for I haven’t read many novels.”
“No,” she said, grinning. “I expect you’ll describe me like one of those horses you’re always reading about.”
“And what a lovely filly that would be.” He felt like Bacchus himself, drunk on the moonlight and his beautiful young wife. “There are
horses with as long lashes as yours, Josie. Did you know that?”
She nodded.
“And horses with a mane of black silk, like your hair.”
“It isn’t black,” she pointed out. “You appear not to know the color of my hair.”
“When we were in the coach on the way to Scotland,” he said, “it would take on a deep ruby glow if the sun was shining in the window. But in moonlight it looks as deep and mysterious as the night sky.” He wrapped a lock around his finger.
“Your lips,” he continued conversationally, “have not the faded glory you give my nose, but a deep red. The kind of red that makes a man feel weak with desire. Do you know why, Josie?”
She shook her head, not taking her eyes from his.
“Because they are plump and luscious,” he said, very close to her now. “Because to look at them is to want to taste them. To look at them is to want to taste you.”
She almost said something about being plump all over, but the words died in her throat. Somehow her disdain for her own body seemed ridiculous in light of the way he looked at her. When he looked at her…
“You look like a fairy queen, Titania from Shakespeare’s play,” Mayne said.
She laughed at that. “A queen!”
“Titania is no ordinary fairy, after all. And you are no ordinary woman.”
“Honesty compels me to admit that I am a terribly ordinary woman,” Josie said. “I’m plump, addicted to novels, and afraid of riding horses.”
“Dear me,” Mayne said, enjoying himself hugely. “Have you no redeeming qualities to offer a spouse? Perhaps I should rethink this.”
“I am fairly cheerful,” Josie told him. “I can be funny if I have a clever moment. I’m very honest, and I’m told that’s a virtue, although it sometimes works to my disadvantage.”
“No beauty?” he said mournfully.
She shook her head. “Not in comparison to other women.”
“Shall I tell you how I see you?”
“Not if you’re going to tell me lies. I really dislike lies, Garret.”
“I won’t bother with your lips, or your hair, your eyes or your skin—though it is the most beautiful skin I’ve ever had the pleasure to be near, Josie. Let’s just start here, shall we?” He pulled her closer. Then he said: “Feel what I’m thinking with my hands.”