“He’s too old for you.”
Her lip curled. “Mayne is in his early thirties. Since he was engaged to my own sister, I know all about him. And believe me, in all the pertinent facts, he’s in prime working order!”
“He’s not old in years, in other things,” Ewan said, knowing the truth about Mayne without hesitation. It was written on his face…a man didn’t reach thirty and above without leaving his scandals in his eyes. “Mayne’s a rakehell, a man who’s slept with far too many women. He’s tired.”
“Ha!” she said. “Tired may be how you’d excuse yourself, but I assure you that Mayne has never disappointed a woman.”
“And there’ve been so many of them.”
“Which means it will be all the more pleasurable for me,” she said defiantly. “If you don’t let go of me, I’m going to scream.”
“In that case, you’ll have to marry me,” he said, and finally the words were easy enough. This poor girl needed rescuing more than any waterlogged kitten he’d ever pulled from the millpond. She was in a desperate way. “Marry me, Imogen. Marry me.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll never marry again, so would you please let go of my hand?”
“Not until you promise to consider marrying me.”
“Absolutely not. Release me, if you please.”
“I’ll release you if you come to my chambers at eleven o’clock tonight,” he said.
Her eyebrows rose. “Have you changed your mind, then?”
“A woman with such spirit is always worth a second thought,” he said, hoping she would fall for that nonsense. Which she did. A more naive scrap of a girl he’d never met. Now the only question was whether he could keep her from doing herself some sort of injury to her soul from which she’d never recover.
“I’ll come to your chambers, but I’ll never marry you,” she said clearly.
He let go of her wrist. “I’m staying at Grillon’s Hotel. Is this your first tryst, Imogen?” As if he didn’t know the answer to that.
She raised her chin. “Yes, it is.”
So he was as crude as he could be, to shock her into thinking about what she was doing. “Affaires aren’t like marriages, you know. You needn’t bring a nightgown, because we’ll sleep naked, of course. And I do hope that your husband taught you how to pleasure a man.”
Color crept into her white cheeks, but he was remorseless.
“I’m fond of the coney’s kiss, if you catch my meaning, lass. Of course, a woman of the world, such as you are, won’t need any instruction in such matters.”
But she had more courage than he gave her credit for. “I don’t know everything about pleasuring a man, or perhaps I know nothing,” she said.
He could have cried at the look in her eyes.
“I’m willing to learn.”
“Then say it: coney’s kiss.” He bent toward her, knowing how large he was, deliberately looming over her. “Say it, why don’t you?”
“No.”
“Do you know what a coney is?”
“No!”
“Then why won’t you say it? Go on: coney’s kiss. Say it.” He shaded his voice with a dark erotic desire, giving her a liquorish smile, the kind the villain in a melodrama always gives to the poor serving maid. “Coney’s kiss.”
She stared at him, all anger, confusion, and revulsion.
“If you’re embarking on a life of ill repute, you’ll have to learn many such a phrase.”
She jumped away and flew up the slope, so fast that her slippers hardly touched the ground.
Had that worked or not? And if not, what the devil was he to do at eleven o’clock? A stupider idea he had never had.
What the devil was he to do?
The Herb Garden
Common wisdom had it that there were few things more disagreeable than coming face to face with a woman whom one has jilted.
But the Earl of Mayne had never felt that reluctance when it came to Tess Essex, now a happy Mrs. Felton. In fact, he considered himself quite the injured party, given that he had traded in the shreds of his reputation after Felton told him to get out so he could marry Tess himself. Now everyone thought him a despicable rake, who had left a woman at the altar, whereas Felton was hailed as the knight who stepped in to save a lady’s reputation and future.
And considering that the Feltons were nauseatingly happy, he rather thought he should take credit for the match. In fact, it was amazing how he seemed to leave a trail of happily married women in his wake. First there was Countess Godwin—and he counted it quite a success that he could think of her without wincing, a full year later—and now there was Tess. Both of them were, by all accounts, blissfully happy, and never mind the fact that he was turning into a permanent bachelor.
Since the countess had rejected him, he hadn’t had even a simple intrigue. Nor a mistress. People didn’t quite realize it; sometimes he couldn’t believe it himself. At this point, he hadn’t been in a woman’s bed in a year, and given the apathetic state of his interest in the female sex, it was likely to be years more.
Tess smiled at him as he kissed the tips of her fingers, and that made him think about how well they would have got along as a married couple, if only his best friend hadn’t decided to take her away.
“Feeling sorry for yourself again?” she suggested sweetly.
“I could have been a happy man,” he grumbled.
She smiled at that and walked on, her fingers light on his arm. “I need to ask a favor.”
In his experience, when a married woman asks you for a favor, it’s often something that leads to pistols at dawn. Still…“Has Felton been misbehaving?” he asked with some surprise. It was positively unnerving to sit about with his old friend, the way that smile kept creeping onto his face.
“Not yet,” she said. “No, it’s about Imogen.”
“I met her Scottish beau last night. Rafe was doing his best to persuade the man to marry elsewhere, but I gather Imogen has her own plans. What’s the matter, don’t you care for him?”
“It’s not him that I’m worried about,” Tess said. “She would do better with you.”
Mayne blinked. “With me?”
“Yes.”
“Are you talking about marriage or something other?”
“Other,” she said, just as calmly as if she were discussing raspberry syllabub.
He cleared his throat. “I’m not quite sure how you missed this pertinent fact, m’dear, but I’m not exactly a proper matron’s first choice. And, more to the point, your sister hasn’t chosen me for that honor.”
“Yes, but you’re quite experienced in all that…” She indicated that with a wave of her hand. “And Imogen—”
“Does your husband have any idea you’re speaking to me on this matter?”
“Of course not,” she said tranquilly. “Lucius is much occupied with affairs of business.”
“I think he would still be interested to know that you’re—you’re—” But he couldn’t think of a polite way to phrase exactly what she was suggesting.
“Let me be more clear,” she said. “You haven’t had a mistress since the Countess Godwin returned to her husband, am I right?”
He waited for that sour twinge of bitterness, but it didn’t come. “I have not.”
“Imogen does not truly wish to take a lover. But she seems willfully self-destructive at the moment…I’m not sure why. At this rate, she will bankrupt her reputation and ruin herself. She’s throwing herself out of the ton. Perhaps so she’ll never be eligible for marriage again.”
“Ah,” Mayne said. He could almost understand that kind of grief.
“But hardly anyone takes notice of your affaires, and if they do, the scandal seems to wear off within days.”
“Humph.” It wasn’t an attractive picture.
But she didn’t stop there. “I’d like you to dislodge the Earl of Ardmore, if you please. You can reuse some of those compliments you wasted on me.”
“Tess—”
Quick as a cat, she turned on him before he could even voice all the reasons why this plan of hers would never work. “You owe me.”
He opened his mouth, but she raised her hand to stop him. “I know that you were merely obeying Lucius when you jilted me, but the truth of it is that you acted as you did from loyalty to your friend, and not loyalty to me, your betrothed. And when Lucius asked you to say nothing to me, you simply galloped away without a second thought. What if I hadn’t wished to marry Lucius? What then?”
“That’s an absurd line of questioning, because you did.” But he didn’t need her frown to see that she had a good point. “All right,” he muttered. “I’ll cut out the poor Scot. He probably thinks to marry her, you know. I rather liked him last night, and I’m fairly sure that he said he has to marry well.”
“He’ll find someone.”
Another thought struck Mayne. “What about Rafe? He’ll slay me.”
“I’m sure you two can work it out between yourselves. Perhaps a fistfight?” She needn’t sound so condescending.
“Right. A fistfight. Maybe I can get Rafe drunk first and just trip him up.”
She patted him on the arm. “You males know precisely the best way to solve these little problems amongst you.”
“Tess. You do realize what this is going to do to my reputation, don’t you?”
She cocked her head to the side and looked at him thoughtfully. “Imogen is an extremely beautiful young woman, but also a grievously sad one. If you could see your way to having this affaire without engaging in any intimacies, I’d be very grateful.”
“That’s off the subject. I was pointing out that my reputation is going to be destroyed by first jilting one Essex sister, and then having a highly improper affair with a second, widowed Essex sister.”
“Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “But darling, if you were going to miss your reputation, you should have noticed years ago, when it first went missing. Now, if you could get right to work, I’d be very grateful. Because so far today Imogen hasn’t shocked anyone, but she has a gleam in her eye that I don’t like.”
Mayne sighed. “And just how do you interpret that gleam?”
“She had just this look when she went riding over to the Maitland house, and the next thing I knew she had sprained her ankle, and a day after that she’d eloped with Draven Maitland, and the devil take the hindmost. Imogen simply doesn’t consider reputation very important. You two should get along very well.”
That was another slur, but Mayne let it pass. Obviously, he was being pointed like a bullet in the direction of Imogen, and since there was no way to escape it, he might as well give in.
Eight
Mayne found Imogen was sitting at the banquet next to her sister Annabel. There was a strange sense of isolation about her. Mayne had seen that time and again; he knew precisely what was happening. Imogen was being given the cold shoulder by the ton.
He walked over and sat down next to her. She was eating pigeon pie, and (thankfully) looked unperturbed. Some women dissolved into tears at their first snub; others felt deprived if they didn’t receive at least one cold shoulder of an evening.
“May I join you?” he said, giving her the special smile he reserved for future chères amies.
“Of course.” She looked indifferent.
“I am so happy to see that you are out of mourning,” he said softly.
“In that case, you’ll be disappointed to learn that the fact I’m wearing black means I’m still in mourning.”
“Black suits you like no other woman,” he said, gazing soulfully into her eyes. She did have beautiful eyes, with bewitchingly long eyelashes. In the old days he would have been after her like a hound scenting a fox.
“Actually, black makes me sallow,” she said. “But once I told my modiste to lower my bodice as far as it would go, every man I meet seems to find it a satisfactory color.”
Of course, his gaze automatically shifted to her breasts, and then flew back to her mocking face. “There was no need to call my attention to such a lovely aspect of your figure,” he said, with just a touch of asperity.
“Actually, there was,” she said, taking a deep draught of wine. “You hadn’t noticed, had you?”
“I was entranced by the cupid’s bow of your mouth,” he said.
“Nice phrase,” she said, obviously unimpressed.
He suppressed a sigh. Apparently he’d lost his touch, but he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn. He could report failure to Tess, and this little episode would be over. After all, in his experience a woman bent on sending her reputation into flames usually succeeded. There was no reason for him to burn to a crisp with her.
But then Imogen glanced at him over her shoulder and said, “So who put you up to my seduction?”
“What?”
“You don’t know Annabel well enough, so my guess would be Tess.” She must have read the truth in his eyes. “Tess! Who would have thought that she could stop thinking about her delectable husband long enough to give me a thought?”
The thought of Tess and her husband seemed to give her a pang, because she got a queer look on her face, like a little girl lost in a storm, and Mayne felt some of his resolution to walk away slip.
“Thank you for the letter you sent after Draven died,” she said, abruptly changing the subject.
“I was sorry to miss the funeral. Maitland was a good man with a horse. And a humorous story,” he added.
“He was funny, wasn’t he?” Imogen said. “I—” She looked away from him and drank some more wine.
Someone brought him a plate of food. He took a bite and choked on its sweetness. Imogen looked back at him, all mocking again, and said, “In the Renaissance, spices were the only way to preserve meat. I think there might be quite a lot of nutmeg in this food. The recipes are all authentic.”
“God.” He signaled the waiter for wine. Which wasn’t quite normal because there were strange, small objects floating about in his glass, but he could live with that.
“How well did you know Draven?” She asked it very casually, as if the answer meant nothing to her, but Mayne hadn’t spent his twenties sleeping with married women without learning the ins and outs of a casual question. Imogen very likely knew the answer; she just wanted to talk about her husband. His mother had been the same, after his father died.
“I didn’t know him well,” he said, wracking his brain for some sort of story he could tell her.
“How did you meet?”
“We met at the Ascot in ’12,” Mayne said. “Maitland was racing…” He paused, trying to remember.
“Seashell,” she said. “Remember? He was a chestnut who ran like a dream.”
“That’s right,” Mayne said. “Excitable, wasn’t he?”
“He should have won, but he bit his jockey in the ear just before the race, and Draven said it put the jockey off.”
“But that was long before you married.”
“I had known Draven for years,” she said with a lopsided little smile. “He trained his horses at my father’s stable.” Then she looked directly at him, and he felt as if he were being struck by her eyes: they were that passionate. The thought drifted through his head that no one would ever look as unbearably sad when he was dead.
“So shall we have an affaire, then?” she said, as if the question followed rationally from their talk of her dead husband. “I would guess that Tess placed your jilting of her against your seduction of me,” she said, as cool as a icehouse in July. “It’d be a pity to waste her request. And as it happens, I had initially considered you as a companion.”
Mayne repressed a wish to laugh. He was used to choosing his own partners, a fact that the Essex sisters seemed to discount. “Yes. Well—”
“Moreover, I’ve gotten myself into an entanglement that I would quite like to end,” she said. “As a man of the world and one who, as I understand it, has had hundreds of these little trysts, I’m sure you understand what I’m saying.
”
She was already involved with another man?
Suddenly he felt rather glad that he hadn’t married Tess. Scottish girls were too much for his hidebound English soul. “Of course, I’d be happy to aid you in any fashion whatsoever.”
“Good. In that case, why don’t you take me home, because this food is inedible. Tomorrow I should like to start looking at townhouses. You may escort me.”
“Escort you?” The very idea was inconceivable. Didn’t she have any idea of the implications of him accompanying her on such an errand? He had never, in all his misspent years, engaged in something so scandalous.
Then she turned to him and said softly, “You didn’t think that having an affaire with me was going to be a matter of a few rides in the park, did you?”
He cleared his throat again. This woman had such a way of drying up one’s words that she should be in the House of Lords.
“Tess likely informed you that I am determined to ruin my reputation,” she said, tasting one of the small objects floating in her wine and then spitting it out. Come to think of it, he’d never seen a lady spit in public. “I’m not. I’m simply going to the devil, and if you wish to come along for the ride you may. I’m going to buy a house, and then I’m going to live there, and I don’t give a damn what this whole tedious pack of people who call themselves the ton has to say about it.”
He opened his mouth and closed it again. Suddenly he saw one thing clearly: he did owe Tess something. But this task was Herculean. He had to save Imogen from herself, somehow.
And if he did that—if somehow, by hook or by crook, he saved this woman—perhaps he wouldn’t feel so…tarnished.
Because he did. He felt tarnished, shabby and dirt cheap, and not worth his own time in speaking to. And if he were honest with himself, he’d been feeling like that for quite a while now. Deep down, it didn’t surprise him that Countess Godwin—the one woman he’d ever truly loved—had rejected him and returned to her husband, even though that husband had a mistress and God knows what other terrible habits. In the balance, he, Mayne, wasn’t any better than her husband. But perhaps, just perhaps, he could do amelioration. Was that the right word? Penance.