Her body arched up, and a powerful body reared behind her. For a moment she tried to pull away; the situation felt oddly vulnerable, for all she couldn’t see his face. But those hands held her hips, and he was holding her, forcing her to yield, pulling her up so that…
And then her body decided of its own accord. She cried out, aloud, and didn’t even register that it was her own voice. She was frantic, pushing back against his every stroke, and the only sound in the room was his groan of pleasure and her own soft pants in her ears. He was bent over her now, braced on muscled arms that came down beside hers, as sturdy as if those long, heated movements of his body weren’t happening at all.
But they were, they were, and Imogen was greedy for them, aching. And then suddenly he straightened his back, and his hands caught her in the hips, and he began to thrust harder, high and deep, pounding.
It wasn’t until later that she even felt the pressure of his ten fingers on her hips. It wasn’t until later that she remembered hearing his hoarse voice, telling her—nay, commanding her—to come, and even though she had no idea what he meant, her whole body had clenched around him and then turned to heat, a sobbing, pulsing kind of heat that was like nothing she could have imagined.
Nothing.
30
It Doesn’t Take Shakespeare for a Man to Make an Ass of Himself
Rafe woke the next morning, in his own bed, with a distinct sense of shame. It had been the most wonderful act of his life, and why on earth he’d let it pass without asking Imogen to marry him, he didn’t know.
Except, as he stretched and started at the ceiling (the plaster really was starting to flake; he’d have to have that fixed before inviting a bride into his chambers), he knew why. He’d run scared. Coward that he was.
Imogen had been so laughingly dismissive after he kissed her in the field. What if—what if she’d said yes, I’ll marry you. But she meant, Yes, I’ll marry Gabe?
So then what if he’d said first, I am Rafe, and she’d been as indignant as she had every right to be?
He groaned. The fact of the matter was that he was a bad bargain. He was a half-pickled duke who was only just picking up the jumble of his affairs again. Thanks to God—and his old friend Felton, who had pretty much told his man in London what to do—the Holbrook estate seemed to have ballooned in the past few years. He could afford a wife. Hell, he was a duke. He could afford fifteen wives.
But he had never been any good at fooling himself. It all sounded good: a sober duke with a great deal of money and land to spare.
Peter had been true nobility, and if he’d lived, Imogen would likely…Except he, Rafe, would never have let Peter even take a look at Imogen. He’d have had to slay his own brother.
He got out of bed, buck naked, and walked to the window. The memory of the previous night was in every satisfied inch of his body. She had to acknowledge that.
A rich duke might sound good in a fairy tale, but he knew that Imogen saw him for precisely what he was: a man who no longer drank and never would be able to again. A man who had neglected his estate for years. A man who had no real passions in the world other than riding horses, watching yellow cow parsley bloom, and making love to his wife.
And the last was only true if somehow he managed to make Imogen into his wife.
Perhaps his own desire would be enough to persuade her. After all, by her own account that ass Maitland hadn’t really wanted her, Gabe didn’t, and, thank God, Mayne hadn’t either, because Mayne was not a man a woman ever forgot. There was no one in Imogen’s memory but himself.
He leaned against the window, looking again at the sweep of cobblestones and knowing that in truth, he only had one significant thing of value to offer her: last night. But even thinking of it made his breathing hitch. His breath fogged the panes, and he turned away.
Rafe tried not to look at Imogen during breakfast. She was involved in a long conversation with Miss Pythian-Adams about a scene that they had rehearsed the previous afternoon. She didn’t glance at him; of course he noticed that. She looked briefly at Gabe, but apparently she had taken the scolding of the previous afternoon to heart. No one could have told from her glance that she thought she’d passed a delightful evening with him.
So Rafe ate eggs, and corners of toast, and whatever else Brinkley put before him, and tried to discipline himself. He would not stare at his ward like a lovesick calf.
Miss Pythian-Adams was planning a full-length rehearsal for the afternoon. “Miss Hawes arrived yesterday,” she explained.
“Where is she?” Rafe asked, waking belatedly to the conversation.
Miss Pythian-Adams glanced at Gabe for a moment and then looked toward Rafe. “She will join us for the rehearsal. Apparently she finds Mrs. Redfern congenial company. She has chosen to stay belowstairs.”
Rafe was stunned. He looked immediately at Gabe, only to see that his brother looked as poleaxed as he felt.
“Didn’t Brinkley tell you that Miss Hawes feels she would be more comfortable taking her meals below stairs?” Miss Pythian-Adams asked Gabriel.
“Of course,” Gabe said, and closed his mouth like a trap. “I shall make certain that Miss Hawes is entirely comfortable.”
“I’ll come with you,” Miss Pythian-Adams said, leaping from her chair. “I am most anxious to meet my Mrs. Loveit.”
“Miss Hawes can be found in the theater,” Brinkley announced.
“In that case I shall come as well,” Griselda announced, adjusting her shawl. “I will admit to being quite curious about our guest.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow. Apparently the entire household was desperate to meet the young actress who had so aroused Gabriel’s sympathy. Of course, now he thought of it, he would quite like to meet Mary’s mother as well.
He stood and saw that Imogen was finally looking at him, an eyebrow raised. Without thinking about it, he grinned at her. Her eyes were laughing, and she obviously agreed with him that the rush to the theater was ridiculous.
For her part, Imogen was in a state of what felt very like pure joy. She’d been there from the moment she woke up and stretched, feeling a delicious warmth all down her limbs. Life was…life was good.
It wasn’t a thought she had entertained for years. Not, she thought, since the moment she saw Draven Maitland. Because the moment she saw his sweet, petulant face, and his sleek, yellow hair, she’d fallen into a muddled pit of longing and desire that had hardly been satisfied by marrying him. In truth, not satisfied at all.
She liked to tell herself that it might have been, had they years together. But she was beginning to wonder about that optimistic idea.
She’d woken this morning without feeling sharp longing for Draven, and without the anguish that replaced it when they married, and without the grief that replaced the anguish when he died.
In fact, she felt like laughing. All the time.
“Your mother loved theatrical productions, didn’t she?” she asked Rafe, smiling up at him.
“I believe that ‘obsessed’ would not be too strong a word,” he said reflectively. “She created the theater, of course. There used to be a supper room off the ballroom”—they were walking through that gracious, cavernous space now—“but she enlarged it into a theater shortly after marrying my father. Unfortunately, he showed no theatrical talent whatsoever, and less interest as the years passed.”
The double doors at the end of the ballroom stood open. Imogen paused for a moment on the threshold. “It is beautiful,” she said, awed.
“She had it fashioned after the theater at Blenheim,” Rafe explained. The walls were entirely covered with vivid murals, bedecked with a frieze of laughing antique masks along the ceiling. The proscenium stage was faced by rows of chairs upholstered in a deep red stripe.
Just then a young girl with a face like an eager flame appeared from stage left. She ran toward them, calling an eager greeting. Then Miss Hawes—for surely it was Miss Hawes—dropped a very pretty curtsy to Griselda, who had just been i
ntroduced by Mr. Spenser. And now Miss Pythian-Adams and she were exchanging courtesies.
Rafe was staring at the actress intently. “She’s no lady,” he whispered to Imogen.
“No,” Imogen replied. “She’s so pretty.” She was the prettiest girl Imogen had ever seen: from her shining curls, to her little triangular face, to her large eyes and trim figure. She seemed the essence of femininity, wearing pink the color of blush roses. It was a costume nicely calculated to be entrancing and yet not vulgar.
“Yes,” Rafe said thoughtfully, “a fortunate attribute for an actress.”
Miss Hawes was beaming at Miss Pythian-Adams and talking nine to a dozen about the part of Mrs. Loveit. She was apparently illustrating a point about the character she would play because suddenly she fell into a world-weary posture.
“Don’t you think so?” she cried, dropping Mrs. Loveit as if it were a cloak she shrugged off.
Imogen blinked. It was the oddest thing she’d ever seen. One moment, Miss Hawes was a rather tiresome, petulant, desirous beauty who was on the verge of losing her delectable lover, and the next she stood before them as a fresh-faced young girl.
“Don’t you agree?” she asked Miss Pythian-Adams, who seemed rather stunned by the energy that flowed from Miss Hawes.
“Of course,” she said faintly. “You’re absolutely right. I’m afraid I have a small headache. Shall we resume this discussion when we begin rehearsal after luncheon?”
Miss Hawes beamed at her. “I am available whenever you would like me.”
“Of course,” Miss Pythian-Adams murmured.
“My mother,” Rafe said to Imogen, “always stiffened up the amateurs with a good dose of professional actors. You can see why she did it. We will just fumble around and likely fall over ourselves, but Miss Hawes, young though she is, will straighten us out.”
“Yes,” Imogen said, “although I’m not certain that Miss Pythian-Adams likes being straightened out.”
Then Gabe brought Miss Hawes over to them. Her curtsy was a beautifully calculated mixture of welcome and respectfulness.
Only Miss Pythian-Adams didn’t seem to like Miss Hawes. Her tone was rather sharp as she ascertained that Miss Hawes knew her entire part. Her voice grew a little sharper when Miss Hawes said that, in fact, she knew the entire play and would be happy to act as a prompter, although—as she said—she had no doubt but what all the gentlemen and ladies knew their parts.
“Not I!” Griselda said cheerfully. “You’ll have to help me, my dear.” She had obviously realized that Miss Hawes was far from being akin to the kind of immoral actress who lured the Duke of Clarence into setting up an establishment and spawning near to a dozen illegitimate children.
Rafe drew Imogen away from a discussion of where the prompter might stand when she wasn’t on the stage to show her the theatrical paintings that lined the walls. “My mother,” he said, “was very fond of murals. In fact, she had the hunt of Diana painted in her bedchamber.”
“Goodness,” Imogen said, staring at a vivid rendering of Prince Hamlet on the battlements. At least she assumed it was Prince Hamlet because the man in question was clutching a shining skull and a dagger at once. “Is the painting still intact?”
“My father painted it over when she died,” Rafe said cheerfully.
Imogen frowned. “Why?”
“The picture showed Acteon surprising Diana while bathing,” Rafe said obligingly. “If you remember, Diana promptly turned Acteon into a stag, and his own hunting dogs brought him down.”
“Your father—”
“Apparently felt that my mother was issuing a veiled warning.”
“Your parents must have been interesting,” Imogen said.
Since it was Imogen, he told her the truth. “My mother was in love with the theater, of course. But my father was, by all accounts, in love with Gabriel’s mother.”
She glanced up at him. “That must have been difficult for your mother.”
“Holbrook was always stiff and cold,” he said, remembering it. “I do believe that he disliked her…and us as well. Although perhaps he tolerated my brother Peter better than me.”
“How remarkably selfish: to dislike your own children for coming from a marriage you regretted!”
“Yes,” Rafe said slowly. “I’m afraid that my father was a rather selfish man, in many respects.”
He led her to the next panel. A plump Bottom was looking around quizzically while Puck was in the very act of lowering an ass’s head onto his shoulders.
“Who is this?” Imogen asked.
“Have you read A Midsummer Night’s Dream?” Rafe asked.
“I suppose so…oh, that’s the workman who is given a donkey’s head.”
“Only then does Bottom dare court the Queen of Fairies,” Rafe said, feeling rather queer. “When he wears the ass’s head. He has to be disguised because she’s so beautiful.” He looked down at Imogen. Her hair was shining, sleek, as if he had never rumpled it in his hands, drawn it across her breasts, and then replaced that caress with a rougher touch of his own. She was looking up at him, amused, her eyebrows arched.
Slowly the amusement faded from her face, and after a moment she wrenched her eyes away and fairly ran back to the group.
Rafe just stood there a moment. He could almost feel the weight of the ass’s head on his shoulders.
31
In Which Several Parties Warn of Ruined Reputations
Gillian marched out of the theater and straight into her bedchamber. She stood there for precisely one moment, her fists clenched. Then, solely because her chest was compressed and for some reason she couldn’t even take a breath, she marched back out of her chamber and into the nursery.
Mary’s new nurse was sitting comfortably by the fire, and Mary herself was lying on a blanket, kicking about and talking to herself.
The nurse launched herself to her feet and bobbed a curtsy with some creaking of knees. “It’s Miss Pythian-Adams, isn’t it? I’m Mrs. Blessams. I remember your name, of course, because it sounds just like a heroine in a novel. I don’t suppose you read them, but I’m fair addicted to Minerva Press.”
“Oh, I have read them,” Gillian said, trying hard to shape her mouth into a smile. A heroine she wasn’t. Because a heroine—
Even in the most degraded of situations, a heroine never found herself—
She knelt next to Mary. The baby gurgled and smiled and made a swipe at one of Gillian’s curls. She was a darling. “Mamammmmmma,” Mary sang.
Gillian had seen Mary’s large eyes before and that delicate pointed chin.
The baby had just reached out again, when the face looking down at her suddenly disappeared. Mary’s little face crinkled with rage, and she let out a shriek.
Gillian looked down at Mary, kicking her fat little legs in disapproval, as Mrs. Blessams hoisted herself out of her chair.
“She’s that dramatic,” Mrs. Blessams said. “As good as an angel, but if you cross her in the smallest way, you’d think she was being murdered. There you are, lovely. She likely just had enough time on the blanket. It’s good for them, but of course they might take a chill.” She said it importantly, and Gillian again tried to summon the kind of smile required: a complimentary smile. Then she walked out, closing the door quietly.
He was there, leaning against the wall, waiting for her.
She tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm.
So she looked, chin high. There was no point in pretending. “It’s none of my business,” she said.
He looked at her. “Mary is mine.”
She just couldn’t stop herself. “Yours and—and that—”
“Mine.” He said it fiercely.
She nodded and pulled her arm away. “Good afternoon, Mr. Spenser.”
She walked most of the way down the corridor, but she could feel his eyes on her back, and so finally she looked back. He was looking after her, and there was something in his eyes that she—Gillian Pythian-Adams—had n
ever seen in any man’s eyes. So she turned around and walked back to him.
It was despair.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said, gentling her voice. “It is irregular, but I respect the fact that you are raising Mary yourself.”
He moved so fast that she didn’t even see him, just pulled her shoulders to him and kissed her, hard and despairingly.
He was worse than Dorimant.
She should let him know in no uncertain terms that she, Gillian, was no woman to be manhandled by a rake.
But the flood of exhilaration that filled her chest had nothing to do with rakes.
“Are you having an illicit affair with Lady Maitland?” she asked, pulling back just far enough so that she could see his face.
He looked down at her, and the confused, bewildered man look of him made her smile deepen.
“No, you’re not,” she said to herself. “And you are not currently having a relationship with Mary’s mother, are you?”
“I doubt you’ll believe this, but such things are not in my normal course of life.” He sounded so earnest that she almost giggled. “You think me a Dorimant, but I assure you that I’m tediously sober in my daily life. Although—” he said it haltingly—“I don’t precisely regret that night with Loretta.”
“Of course not, because Mary came of it.”
This time it was she who drew his head down to hers. And she whose tongue touched his lips, in that daringly mad kiss that he had taught her.
“You must not,” he said, after a few minutes.
She felt as if her heart would burst, hearing the pain in his voice. It was perverse, really, how much she felt like crowing with delight merely because—because—Mr. Gabriel Spenser was in love with her.
“I must,” she said simply.
“No. I’m—”
“You’re illegitimate. You’re raising a child from an illicit liaison with an actress. You are Mr. Dorimant to the life,” she said severely.