Cristobel was wanton: genuinely wanton. Her eyes warmed every man in the room, told him a secret story that promised he was the one.
Every inch of Rafe’s body was conscious that Imogen’s warm body was just above his on the wine barrel. But he wasn’t exactly unaware that Cristobel kept stealing looks in his direction. And she wasn’t drifting around the room aimlessly either. Soon she had visited all areas of the room—except theirs. A table had overturned when a young stripling leaped forward in the hopes she would smile at him; she gave him a night of happy dreams by kissing her finger and placing it on his lips.
But still she was moving steadily toward Rafe. Damnation.
“What is she doing?” Imogen asked, above him.
“Singing,” Rafe said, watching Cristobel the way one watches a curious bear cub to make sure it doesn’t come too close.
Cristobel had started a new song about a phoenix who rose, and rose again. Imogen was laughing. “She’s astounding. But why is she—”
She stopped. Rafe guessed that Imogen had just realized why Cristobel was drifting around the room. He turned his head. “She chooses one man.”
Imogen’s mouth fell open inelegantly.
“One man, a different man?”
He nodded.
“Every night?”
“Only one.”
“No wonder men come from three counties,” Imogen breathed, looking, to his relief, more interested than scandalized. But then her eyes narrowed.
“She’s coming in this direction,” Imogen pointed out.
Rafe was quite aware of that. What’s more, he had the distinct impression that every man in the room thought that Cristobel was about to take away that yellow-haired little crumpet’s customer.
“Our Grandam Eve before the Fall,” sang Cristobel, “Went naked, and shamed not a whit.”
“I’m getting down from here,” Imogen said suddenly.
“Wait!” he said, but at that moment Cristobel and her escort of former pugilists swept up to them. Her guards formed a little circle around them. And Cristobel was staring at Rafe, a little liquorish smile playing around her mouth.
Rafe suddenly realized that if Cristobel had, indeed, looked past his mustache—and it certainly looked that way—she was about to blurt out his name. But instead she drifted up to him as if she was about to give him one of the little kisses she’d handed out so liberally.
Except that he was suddenly pulled back, away against the cask of wine.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Imogen said. She was smiling, but there was a little edge there.
She had draped a slender arm around Rafe’s neck and she was resting her cheek against his hair. “You see,” she said to Cristobel with a sweet persuasiveness that was at utter odds with her costuming, “my friend is occupied for the night.”
The crowd was absolutely silent. Cristobel didn’t seem to have even heard Imogen. She came a step closer, and now he could see that though she was still beautiful, she was tired. She was lovely—likely would always be lovely, if she didn’t catch the pox and lose a nose. But what struck you, up close, was not the fact that Cristobel had an attractive face. It was the force of her languorous sexuality. The fact that whatever else was in her eyes when it rested on the faces of the men around them, there was a genuine invitation there.
At the moment that invitation was clearly directed at Rafe.
“I remember you,” she said, her voice husky.
“That’s all right then,” Rafe heard a young farmer say to the right. “She never takes the same one twice.”
“I don’t think so,” he said evenly.
“Ah, but I do. You and your friend—he was a lovely man. What was his name?”
He met her eyes with a secret warning.
“He was an earl,” she said. “What a night I had with him! Your friend is a man among men.” She gave him a dewy-eyed smile. “A man worth returning to.”
“We shall surely let him know,” Imogen said.
Cristobel’s eyes raised to Imogen, and this time they didn’t flick away. “Aha,” she said sweetly, “what have we here? A little canary-bird, are you? Because you look far too delicate to be common ware, my dear.”
Rafe was thinking frantically about what to do. They were surrounded by five of the biggest, burliest men he’d seen outside a boxing match. Moreover, the path between the door and their corner was blocked by at least fifty customers. At any moment Imogen might faint. She was being insulted by a prostitute, for goodness sake. That was not the kind of thing that happened to gently bred young ladies. Wards. Wards of dukes.
“And you look too common to be Bartholomew-ware,” Imogen said sweetly. “But appearances are so deceiving, and now that we’re closer I can see…” She let her voice trail away.
Cristobel’s eyes narrowed. “I’m no Bartholomew-ware, child, though I doubt you know the meaning of the word.”
“Oh dear. Perhaps I meant some other word. Did I, Gabriel?” She turned to Rafe and he realized with a pang of deep surprise that Imogen was thoroughly enjoying herself. Her eyes were shining, and even with those tumbled, frowsy curls around her head, no one in his right mind could think she was a chipper. Not with those laughing eyes, laughing even now at Cristobel who—Rafe noticed with a similar shock of surprise—was laughing back.
“Try très coquette,” Cristobel said in a ravishing French accent. She turned to one of her guards. “Now, darling, if you would just do me a favor?” Before Rafe knew what was happening, one of the burly men had hoisted Cristobel directly onto the wine barrel next to Imogen.
Who gasped and straightened, automatically giving Cristobel more space on the top of the cask.
Cristobel laughed down at the crowd. “Aren’t we the prettiest ladies for leagues around?”
They roared their approval.
Rafe looked up at Imogen, judging how quickly he could pull her down and bust their way out of the room. He could take those bodyguards if he had to. If Cristobel said one indecent thing—
“Now my young friend isn’t as ripe in the business as I am,” Cristobel was saying. The whole room was listening, of course.
Rafe cursed under his breath. Imogen didn’t look scared. She had a hand on her hip and a little smile on her lips. But even though she was wearing a wig, and a satin dress as gaudy as a parrot’s feather, there was no real comparison between the two women.
Imogen was bone-deep beautiful and glowing with the kind of laughter and sensuality that would take a man a whole lifetime to get tired of.
Cristobel’s laughter was of a harder sort, still laughter, but deeper, more calculated, jaded by life.
“In honor of my young friend!” Cristobel shouted. The room quieted instantly. She wrapped an arm around Imogen’s shoulder, took up a saucy pose, and began to sing. “A Puritan of late, and also a Holy Sister…”
And that’s when Rafe had the greatest shock of the evening. Because Imogen shook out her skirts and with an impudent smile for him, joined Cristobel’s husky alto with a clear soprano: “She, a Babe of Grace, A child of the Reformation, Thought kissing a disgrace!”
The men watching were beside themselves. The two women stood next to each other on the cask, both of them with one hand on a hip and the other curled over each other’s shoulder, both of them laughing as they sang. As soon as this song is over, Rafe thought, she comes down and we leave. Before someone in the room decides to challenge me for my night’s companion.
Imogen and Cristobel were trading every other line now.
“He laid her on the ground.” Imogen’s clear soprano sang. “His spirits fell a-ferking.”
She doesn’t know what ferking is, Rafe thought. But damn, every man in the place certainly did, and every man of them was longing to play Puritan to her Holy Sister. The women were swaying in unison as they launched into the last verse. Rafe saw Hynde fighting his way across the room, frowning. At this rate, they’d be lucky if the night watch didn’t get called. He turned around
to grab Imogen the very moment the last word left her lips.
But just as they rounded into a rousing last line, there was a sharp crack, like a mast breaking at sea.
He caught a glimpse of Imogen’s face, her mouth forming a perfect little O, like a child seeing a birthday pony for the first time.
Then a tide of red wine reared out of the barrel as the top cracked and flipped to the side and with simultaneous—and very loud—screams, Cristobel and Imogen plunged down in the wine barrel up to their waists.
There was a moment of astounded silence in the room. Soaked to the skin, Rafe reached out to pull Imogen from the rocking barrel. She was laughing, gasping, and smelled like rotgut red wine. He pulled her up in the air, droplets of red wine flinging in a semicircle, and then against his chest, if only to stop every man in the room from ogling her breasts. The wet, gold satin gown appeared to have been made for a small child.
He felt like licking all the wine off Imogen’s body, and it wasn’t even for the alcohol.
Cristobel was still inside the barrel, leaning against the side and laughing. She was surrounded by strong arms, leaning in to rescue her. With sudden decisiveness she leaned forward and chose a sturdy young man in a weather-beaten white shirt.
He looked clean, muscled, and his eyes, Imogen noticed, were a beautiful green color. “I choose you,” Cristobel said, drawing his head toward hers.
Imogen’s mouth nearly fell open. She’d never seen a kiss like that. The young farmer was devouring Cristobel, pulling her against his strong chest, heedless of the splashes of red wine that instantly stained his shirt. She leaned back against his arm, her long red hair almost trailing the surface of the wine. Without another word, he plucked her from the wine and carried her from the room.
The men fell back as he strode toward the door. Cristobel had a sleepy, languorous smile that promised the young man would have a night such as he never knew before.
Imogen suddenly shivered.
“Shall we retire to our carriage?” Rafe asked. The men were laughing now, slapping each other and talking about how next time they would be the one chosen by Cristobel. Without waiting for her reply, he began drawing her toward the door. The comments echoing on all sides were enough to make a nun faint, but naturally Imogen showed no signs of such ladylike behavior.
Hynde was holding the door open with a look on his face that signaled a wish to be paid for a barrel of wine.
“Who was the man whom Cristobel chose?” Imogen asked suddenly. “He was no simple farmer, was he?”
There was a clink as Rafe’s hand met Hynde’s and then he pulled her out into the velvet black night, looking for their carriage. Finally, he saw it, backed against a stand of trees.
“Who was he?”
“I believe he’s her husband. At any rate, he has an actor’s way with costumes. When I saw her perform in London, he was dressed in the garb of a student at the Inns of Court.”
“Are you certain of that? What happened?”
Rafe yanked open the door of his hackney carriage and shook the driver awake. “What do you think happened?”
Imogen smiled at him. “Unless she was blind, she chose you.”
“Wouldn’t that bother you?” he asked.
Her smile didn’t waver. “Why should it?”
Why should it indeed? Theirs was merely a passing affair, after all.
20
The Kind of Thing Rafe Would Say
The carriage was bright with moonlight because Rafe opened a window to let the smell of wine blow away. He had a rug wound around Imogen, but she was still shivering, so finally he pulled her onto his lap.
Her only response was a small gasp.
“I have to ask myself,” he said after a time, “whether you’ve had what you came for, Lady Maitland.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I expect I offer all the charms of forbidden pleasure to a young widow. Here I am…illegitimate, almost invisible in society.”
“Don’t say that!” Imogen said.
“Why not?” Rafe realized he’d forgotten to lower his voice and brought it down to a professor-like timbre. “The illegitimate children of great men are invisible to the ton. We exist in the shadows, sometimes remembered in wills, often forgotten.”
“Very poetic,” Imogen remarked. “I must say that I find it hard to regard a Doctor of Divinity as living in the shadows. Rafe told me that only eight men hold the title in the whole of Cambridge University.”
“But I still represent those shadows to you.”
“Not really. I have very little interest in the ton and its opinions.” There was a ring of genuine disinterest in her voice. “I will say, though, that it is remarkably easy to speak to a man who is both a member of the ton and yet not.”
“In no way am I a member of the ton.”
“You are the beloved brother of the Duke of Holbrook,” Imogen said flatly. “Whether you wish to be or not, you are now a member of society. And unless I misunderstand Rafe, your daughter will be raised firmly within the ton. So we are your fate, Gabriel, wish it or no.”
“Surely you might call me Gabe, after we shared a wine barrel?” Rafe asked.
“We did not share that wine barrel; I shared it with the lovely Cristobel.”
“Gabe,” Rafe said. Though why he was insisting that she call him by another man’s name, he would never know. But he wanted the intimacy between them. He had kissed her, for God’s sake.
“What do you think of Rafe?” he asked, telling himself it was only to hear the sound of his own name on her tongue.
“Rafe?” she repeated. And then no more.
“Do you wish to see me again?” he asked, schooling his voice to a slow darkness. “May I escort you to your chambers?”
There it was: the question out in the open.
“No.” She moved, a little rustle that he first heard in the dark and then felt with a shock all the way down his legs. “I am drenched in wine and rather uncomfortable. But perhaps we might go to Silchester again. This evening has been so different from my normal life…I realize that I am bored.”
“Tomorrow night?” he asked lightly, as if her refusal had meant nothing. How did he think he could keep his real identity from her once in her chamber? The mustache would presumably have to go with his trousers.
“Will you ask again tomorrow to escort me to my chamber?” she asked. “Because I feel I should be honest with you, Gabe. I am not certain that I am as ready to be a depraved woman as I had thought.”
And there were the words he thought she’d say earlier, but she hadn’t. Yet now that she had said them, the only thing he wanted was to sweep her off to that bedchamber. Even the rounded shape of her bottom—through a blanket, and a cloak, and all those undergarments—was driving him mad.
“I think that I may have been wishing to hear that I was desirable,” she said.
“You are,” he growled. And cleared his throat. “Why don’t we allow that part of tomorrow evening to take care of itself?”
She laughed. “That’s just the kind of thing that Rafe would say.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, scowling because she couldn’t see him in the dark anyway.
“You know Rafe.” She gave a little shrug that sent her bottom in a small but delicious slide across his lap. “He thinks that foreplanning is a waste of time.”
Unjust, he thought, but bit his tongue. Foreplanning, foreplay, it was all the same.
It was only at that moment that Raphael Jourdain, Duke of Holbrook, realized that he was playing for keeps. That he meant to seduce his own ward, whether under another man’s name or not. And he meant to keep her for life.
Not only did he like foreplanning, he had been indulging in a form of it without bothering with forethought.
It was such a shocking realization that he lapsed into total silence and didn’t even notice until he got home that wine had soaked through Imogen’s gown, her cloak, and her blanket and was dampening h
is crotch.
21
In Which Holbrook Court Welcomes an Unexpected Visitor
The following day
Around noon
Imogen sat straight up in bed. “Josie! What on earth are you doing here?”
“I arrived an hour ago,” Imogen’s youngest sister said. “I was tired of the Highlands. It’s a boring place, so full of snow and stupid Scotsmen.”
Josie loved the Highlands. “Is Annabel all right?” Imogen asked. “How is the baby?”
Josie plopped down on the end of her bed. “Annabel is as round as a smallish lighthouse. Ewan spends most of his time rubbing her shoulders and her back and her toes. And she sleeps so much! It was like watching ice melt. I grew tired of it.”
Josie didn’t sound like…Josie. She sounded deflated, somehow. “What’s the matter?” Imogen demanded. “What happened?”
Josie shot her an annoyed look. “Absolutely nothing. Am I not allowed to grow tired of watching lovebirds coo?”
“When I left Scotland, you were quite determined to return to England only for the season.”
“Spend the winter in the Highlands? What would I do in a godforsaken castle with no one for company but a pair of lovebirds, a few old monks and—”
“Josie,” Imogen said, cutting into this miserable tirade. “You have a letter for me from Annabel, I trust. May I have it, please?”
“I haven’t concealed it from you,” Josie said irritably. She pulled open her reticule and handed over an envelope.
“She says you’re unhappy,” Imogen said a moment later, putting the note to the side. “Why doesn’t she know the reason?”
Josie chewed on her lower lip.
“Josie.”
“I didn’t like it there!” she burst out. “I ceased to enjoy the company.”
“What company in particular?”
Josie waved her hand. “The—the whole lot of them.”
“Come here,” Imogen said, holding out her arm. Josie came, but unwillingly.
“You smell like wine,” she said, her voice quivering a little.