She took her time climbing the stairs, making the pleasurable feelings last as long as possible. When she reached the top of the stairs, she paused to prepare herself for the goodbye, much in the way she might prepare herself to face a difficult customer, or to step out onto a stage in front of half the ton and ask them for money.
She walked to the sitting room. And stopped in the doorway.
Evidently the sounds she’d heard had been Lisburne collecting their clothing from the consulting room on the first floor. He was in the process of sorting their garments into piles of his and hers. He looked up from his work and stared at her.
She lifted her chin and straightened her shoulders and folded her hands at her waist and gave him a devastating DeLucey smile.
He threw down the waistcoat in his hand and said, “I was going to do the sensible thing and go home, but I must have been insane to think I could be sensible when you were about. Cherie, I think you’re drunk.”
“Certainly not,” she said.
“You have almost no clothes on and you’re wearing my hat,” he said. “What do you call that?”
She’d forgotten about the hat. How could she forget the hat? There it was on her head.
“Never mind what you call it,” he said. “I call it fetching. Come here.”
He held out his arms. This time she didn’t argue. She walked straight into them, her heart soaring.
Under cover of night, Lisburne had told himself, he might leave by the back way, sneak out of the court and through the passage out into the street. He’d leave undetected except perhaps by any servants who hadn’t slept through the recent tumult.
Anyone who spied him in St. James’s Street at that hour would probably not recognize him as more than one of the gentlemen making their way to or from Crockford’s Club or any other of the numerous gaming establishments in the neighborhood.
Leaving well before dawn was the wisest course. After that, the fashionable types would be returning from their engagements. In daylight, they’d easily identify him and notice his rare state of dishevelment. They wouldn’t need any more clues to decide where he’d been and what he’d been doing there.
Then Leonie appeared in the doorway, wearing the dazzling smile and his hat and not very much else, and that was the end of being sensible.
She walked into his arms and he closed them about her and held her tight, knocking the hat askew. Once he’d inhaled his fill for the moment, and savored the warmth and softness of perfectly curved body, he drew back and tried to recover his wiser self. But the hat had tipped over one blue eye and she wore such a naughty, teasing smile as she looked up at him.
He picked her up and carried her to the table and set her down there, one arm wrapped about her while with the other he swept the table clear of paper and pens and pencils and inkstand.
Paper flew hither and yon and bottles crashed and he didn’t care. He was pushing the hat off her head and kissing her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. He was kissing her neck and tugging at the dressing gown ribbons. She covered his hands with hers and pulled his away from the ribbons. Swiftly she untied them while he dragged his mouth back to hers, and lost himself in the taste of her mouth and the scent of her skin, while he pushed away her flimsy garments and captured her beautiful breasts. They fit his hands perfectly, the way her mouth fit his perfectly, and the way her kisses answered his with the same teasing and beckoning, tongues coiling in a sinful dance to which only they knew the movements.
She caught hold of his shirt and dragged it up and splayed her hands over his chest, then dragged them down over his belly and hips. She caressed him in the easy way of one who knew what was hers and wasn’t shy about enjoying it. The confident touch of her hands was like the touch of a candle flame to a pile of straw.
She let her fingers slide to his erection, her touch tentative and curious. He reached for her hand to hold her there and to show her how to curl her fingers around him more firmly. She said, “You like that?”
His heart pumped like an over-fueled steam engine, thunderously pushing blood through his veins.
He’d made a mistake, underestimated what she could do to him.
“Yes,” his voice was a mangled whisper.
“Show me,” she said.
“Later,” he gritted out. He was holding on to his control by the thinnest of threads. “I like it too much.” He moved her hand away and thrust into her, and she let out a little cry.
His head was pounding, and everything in him wanted to explode, but he paused.
“No, don’t stop,” she said breathlessly. “It’s very nice.”
Very nice.
In spite of himself he let out a choked laugh. “Leonie,” he said.
“Miss Noirot, if you please, my lord. Or madame.”
“Madame,” he said. He raised her legs in the way she’d found more comfortable before, and it was a wonder he could think of that, a wonder he could remember anything. Yet somehow he did, even while he pushed into her, and his body found a rhythm with hers. This time she was surer—I learn quickly, she’d said—and she lifted herself up onto her elbows and shifted her body to move with him and take him deeper.
She was beautiful, her blue eyes half closed, a half smile curving her lips. She’d learned quickly, as she said, and she was sure of herself and sure of him. The instinctive motion, the quick understanding, the sureness of her—it made him ache and it made him wild and witless and carried him past any thought. What remained was a mad, mad need and his senses’ messages: the scent and softness of her . . . the way it felt to be inside her . . . the way it felt to move inside her, to feel her muscles tighten about him in this most intimate of all lovers’ games.
Intimate as it was, he needed to be closer still. He bent toward her, and she arched up and kissed him boldly and flung her arms about him. She held him as the rhythm of their joining took them to a pulsing crescendo. She held him as the heat of coupling gave way to piercing happiness. And still she held him, while the world slid into darkness.
When Leonie recovered—to the extent she’d ever recover—the first thing she was aware of was his breathing, deep and steady. He’d slumped into a chair and his head rested on her thigh. She trailed her fingers through his hair. Some sound from outside made her look up, and that was when she noticed the change in the light. Her gaze went to the window, and the rectangle showed the darkness fading, promising dawn.
It took her lust-damaged brain time to work out what this meant, beyond morning’s swift approach. Then the busy moments before the debauchery on the sitting room table flooded back into her mind. Tom. The article for the Spectacle.
What time was it?
She had no idea where her watch was, but the insufficiently dark window told enough of a tale. She gave Lisburne a little shake. And when he grumbled and turned his head the other way, she shook him again.
He lifted his head. “What?” Then he seemed to realize where he was because he turned to kiss her thigh. Her entire being seemed to liquefy. But she heard sounds outside, not so much of London waking up as of one part of London heading for bed: the sound of carriages.
“Wake up,” she said. “The sun will be up soon, and you can’t be here.”
“ ‘It is not yet near day,’ ” he murmured, kissing her thigh again. “ ‘It was the nightingale, and not the lark.’ ”
“I wasn’t talking about nightingales,” she said.
“ ‘It was the nightingale, and not the lark,/That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear,’ ” he said. He kissed her knee. “Romeo and Juliet.”
She’d seen the play, more than once. Yet she remembered only snatches of phrases. She was more familiar with the ancient Greeks and Romans, whose stories she’d read in French and English.
“I’m sure it’s beautiful,” she said, “but Shakespeare speaks a version of English I find dif
ficult to understand.”
“I’ll teach you,” he said softly.
“No, you will not. We haven’t time. You must go away, now—before the Spectacle’s messenger arrives. They’re supposed to print the gossip we write for them, not discover and write their own about us.”
He sat back fully then, and shook his head. He raked his fingers through his hair, and somehow managed to make himself even more attractive than before.
But that was all in her head. She couldn’t see him in any other way but beautiful and desirable; witless, hopeless she!
To resist temptation, she slid down from the table. “You must make haste,” she said, turning her gaze to the window. The rectangle had grown a shade lighter than a moment ago.
This was awful. She didn’t want him to go. No one had explained about the way one felt after so deep an intimacy. No one had told her she’d wish to keep him by her, or how a bleak place opened in her heart at the idea of his leaving, and everything being over . . .
She knew about consequences, and she’d worry about that later, no doubt, but at this moment, the consequence was the ache of separation.
Romeo and Juliet . . . the scene he’d quoted from . . . now that she knew where the words came from, she remembered the scene, when Juliet had tried to persuade Romeo it wasn’t morning yet. Now Leonie understood why Juliet couldn’t be sensible, and let her lover go.
It was silly, she knew. Men wanted One Thing, and once they got it, they left.
She knew this. She knew women were the ones who had to deal with the consequences.
It made no difference.
She didn’t want him to go.
She made shooing motions. “Make haste, make haste!” she said. “I hear carriages, and in a few minutes the light will be—”
“I know,” he said.
He rose, and not ten minutes later, he’d made himself something like presentable, and then he was gone.
Later, at Lisburne House
Lisburne was starting up the stairs to his bedroom when he heard Swanton come in.
Only then did Lisburne remember he’d left his cousin to find his own way home from Vauxhall.
Lisburne paused while he tried to decide what to say.
“There you are,” Swanton said. “No one seemed to know where you’d got to, but they didn’t know where Madame was, either, so I assume you looked after her?”
“Yes.”
“How ghastly for her!” Swanton started up the stairs after him.
Lisburne continued upward. “It was,” he said. “Though I might have reduced the damage somewhat. But you? Did you find Gladys?”
Swanton said nothing.
Lisburne looked at him. The poet’s face was scarlet.
“She was not as friendly and forgiving as you’d hoped?” Lisburne said.
“I couldn’t find her,” Swanton said. “Now and again I heard her voice—but so faint and faraway, I might have missed it altogether were it not so distinctive. I’m certain I heard it among some of our acquaintance who were dancing. But I couldn’t find her. All the world was dancing, it seemed, and—” He broke off, brows knitting. “I believe she isn’t as tall as Clara?”
“Not many women are as tall as Clara,” Lisburne said. He thought Gladys broad enough not to be missed in a crowd. On the other hand, she seemed to have lost weight. Either that or her new garb made her seem a degree slimmer. Still, it was only a degree. One could never call her slender.
“In any event, it was impossible to be quite sure which one she was, and after what had happened this night, I hesitated to accost any woman without knowing for certain it was the right woman.” Swanton rubbed his forehead. “And perhaps I had second thoughts about accosting her. And so . . .” He paused, his color deepening. “I occupied myself with listening for her voice, and by and by Crawford stopped to talk. Said the whole scene with the woman was ludicrous. No one would believe it of me. Then Hempton turned up, and he said people will believe anything scandalous. They argued about it, naturally. I vow, they’re never happy but when they’re contradicting each other, because that’s an excuse to bet on who’s right and who’s wrong. Then I lost track of the beautiful voice, and couldn’t find it again. I reckon your cousins left Vauxhall while Crawford and Hempton were bickering, because the next time I saw Bates and Flinton, the ladies weren’t with them. That is to say, they were with other women, and . . . well, it would have been embarrassing to ask about your cousins.”
“They would have roasted you fearfully, I daresay,” Lisburne said.
They’d reached the top of the stairs, and he felt a hundred years old. It was so unfair that Swanton, so sensitive, should be placed in this humiliating position. Had an unknown woman accused any other man of fathering and abandoning a child, the Great World would have shrugged. But the world loved to topple an idol. In Swanton’s case, the ton would break him into pieces, and drag the fragments through the mud.
But worst of all—because Swanton would survive this, and recover eventually—was the damage to Leonie. And her girls. And her shop.
Still, it was no good brooding about that, any more than it made sense for Lisburne to brood over his own breach of honor. Or the fact that he wasn’t as upset about it as he ought to be. He’d wronged her, and yet . . .
He was happy. Her image floated in his mind—nearly naked, wearing his hat—and though he could suppress the smile, he couldn’t squelch the gladness.
In any event, he and Leonie had done what they could to moderate the scandal. Gladys had done her part, too, whether intentionally or not.
There was nothing more he could do at present—nothing intelligent, certainly, until he’d had a good night’s sleep.
“Get some sleep,” he told Swanton. “We’ll all do better for it.”
Chapter Twelve
Ros. There is none of my uncle’s marks upon you: he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes, I am sure, you are not prisoner.
Orl. What were his marks?
Ros. A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye, and sunken; which you have not . . . Then your hose should be ungarter’d, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation.
As You Like It, Act III, Scene II
Tuesday 21 July
Lisburne tried to sleep, but that didn’t go as well as it ought, considering how weary he’d been when he fell into bed. He tossed and turned and now and again came full awake in a sort of frenzy, certain that alarm bells had gone off or the roof was falling in, and he had to run and warn people and Do Something.
Though he gave up hoping for sleep by the time the sun had climbed a short distance from the horizon, he remained in bed. Arms folded under his head while he stared at the canopy, he relived his time with Leonie, especially the last few hours of that time.
Eventually he heard Polcaire creep in as he always did, to make all ready before his master thought of stirring. This morning the master stirred, to the valet’s annoyance. He wasn’t any happier when the master bathed, shaved, and dressed with indecent haste, and went down to breakfast.
Swanton was eating. Foxe’s Morning Spectacle lay folded for easy reading at the edge of his plate.
“The news can’t be completely ghastly, if you still have an appetite,” Lisburne said.
“I’m hoping to find a clue to the truth,” Swanton said. “A name, a word I might have missed—something, anything, that might rouse dormant memories. I’m pretending the Spectacle talks about somebody else. It might as well, since Foxe has included three conflicting reports. The most intelligible one deals in exhausting detail with what everybody wore.” A pause. “Especially what your cousin Lady Gladys wore. And what she said. In this article, she gets more column inches than Lady Clara.” He looked up at Lisburne. “I did wonder whe
ther you’d written the piece, but then I couldn’t picture you rhapsodizing about your lady cousins, even Lady Clara, whom everybody seems to agree is the most beautiful woman in London. Falling into raptures about a woman isn’t your style. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you fall into raptures about anything. And what do you know about women’s clothes, beyond the quickest way to get them off?”
It was true that Lisburne wasn’t inclined to be poetical about women. He hadn’t done so since he was a schoolboy in the throes of his first infatuation.
Yet he’d quoted Shakespeare to Leonie—from a lovers’ scene in Romeo and Juliet, no less.
Not that Swanton needed to know that.
“You aren’t even attentive to your own clothes,” Swanton said.
Lisburne looked down at himself and frowned.
A scene from As You Like It rose in his mind’s eye: Rosalind describing how to recognize a man in love.
Then your hose should be ungarter’d . . . your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation.
But that was drama and poetry—Swanton’s line—and Lisburne was not in love. He’d simply been too tired and irritated to want to spend the usual eternity dressing.
Swanton was saying, newspaper in hand, “You always leave your appearance to Polcaire. Maybe he can translate this for us. ‘Sleeves with double bouffans and lace sabot’? ‘Corsage half high mounting’? Have you the least notion what any of this means?”
Lisburne shook his head and moved to the sideboard. He stared at the covered dishes for a time before he realized his mind wasn’t on food. It held only Leonie. Wearing his hat and some bits of gossamer. Wearing nothing but the half smile . . . caressing him . . . sure of him . . .
Very well. He liked her excessively. He lusted for her, perhaps more than was entirely comfortable. But he wasn’t in love. He was aware such a thing existed. His parents had been deeply in love. But they were exceptions, from all he’d seen.