Your Wicked Ways

  In point of fact, he was striding after Lina and Tom, but somehow he didn’t think of it that way.

  “I didn’t know that waltzes had a song with them,” Rees said with considerable curiosity. “Where did you get the words from?” He had picked up Helene’s score and was looking it over. Her fingers itched to grab it back. In the middle of the sitting room, Lina was showing Tom the steps of the waltz with a certain hilarity.

  Helene bit her lip. The part of her that was terrified of being exposed as a rank amateur was urging her to dash from the room. “I wrote the words as well,” she said, watching his eyes move over the paper.

  Once he looked up at her briefly, but he said nothing. Then he put the score back down in front of her. “I feel as if I have never understood you.”

  Helene’s eyes dropped to her fingers, waiting on the keyboard to begin playing. “There’s not very much to understand,” she said, embarrassed.

  “Shove over,” Rees said, sitting down.

  “I’m playing the waltz,” Helene protested. But her body traitorously welcomed that broad shoulder next to her, the heat of his body.

  “I’m going to have to sing it with you, aren’t I?” he asked.

  “I can sing it myself,” she said, the color rising even higher in her cheeks.

  “I thought there were two voices!” he said, picking up the score again.

  “Oh, no,” Helene replied. “It’s only one. I never marked a change of voice.”

  “Well, you should have done so,” Rees said. “Look, here’s your first verse, ending with Let me, lovely girl, embrace you, As would a lover his lovable bride. That line repeats, right? As would a lover his lovable bride.”

  Rees never sang things with florid emphasis. Instead his deep baritone took Helene’s rather simple lines and gave them a masculine flair that turned them incantatory. “It seems obvious to me that the next verse should be sung by the bride, not the groom: So surrender ourselves to the delicious deception, Happily imagining what will never come to pass, Happily imagining what will never come to pass. The male voice wouldn’t want to emphasize the fact their embrace will never come to pass. The female voice might, though.”

  “I never thought of making it a duet,” Helene said, staring at the words. “I would have to rewrite the fourth stanza.”

  “If it was a duet, they could sing the final stanza together,” Rees said. “What has wilted once, ne’er blooms again. Never will rosy youth bloom for us, again… That’s a bleak line, but it makes sense to have their voices intertwine.”

  “Let’s try it,” Helene said. Tom and Lina seemed to be ready. In fact, they were holding hands as if they were about to start a country dance, rather than a waltz. “Tom,” Helene called. “Do you feel able to give this dance a try?”

  “Of course,” he said, turning to Lina so quickly that he almost tripped.

  “Right!” Helene said, nodding at Rees. “There’s a musical portion first. The song doesn’t begin until I’ve repeated this section twice. I’ll count to three,” she told Lina and Tom.

  Lina curtsied before the vicar and then his hand settled at her waist.

  “This is dangerous,” Tom said, almost under his breath.

  “Ready,” Helene called, dropping her hands to the keyboard. The music flowed around them sweetly, a languorous, swirling invitation to dance.

  Lina knew exactly why Tom called waltzing dangerous, but she chose to ignore his meaning. “My feet are in little danger,” she told him. “You dance very well, for a man who tries these steps for the first time.”

  “You may regret that confidence; I’m going to attempt a turn.”

  “Do,” she said. “We ought to move right down the room.”

  He misstepped and narrowly avoiding trampling on her toes. “There, Lina,” he said, laughing down at her. “Your feet are in danger!”

  She giggled.

  “I think if I hold you more tightly,” he said to her, “we’ll move better together. Would that be agreeable to you?”

  “All right,” she said, struck by an unexpected wave of shyness.

  “I suspect our bodies are scandalously close,” he murmured into her hair a moment later.

  But she was too taken by the realization that she was—she truly was—in danger to answer.

  Rees turned the page for Helene and gave her a nod, indicating he would begin the song. She nodded back and he launched into the first verse: “Let me, lovely girl, embrace you, As would a lover his lovable bride.”

  Helene could feel her cheeks growing warmer. Could it have been she who wrote of a lover embracing his bride? What was she thinking? It was her turn to sing. Her voice caroled high. She didn’t have tremendous range, but she liked what she had, as the saying went.

  Rees’s darker growl took over again: “Face to face with burning cheeks.” She could feel him watching her, so she kept her own eyes primly on her fingers.

  It was time to sing together. “What has wilted once, ne’er blooms again,” she sang, high and clear, and Rees’s voice twined into hers, in a sweet descant, lowered to his baritone range, “Never will rosy youth bloom for us, again.” And isn’t that the truth, Helene thought, rather sadly.

  Rees took the last verse, repeating: “Let me, darling girl, enfold you, As would a lover his lovable bride, as would a lover his lovable bride.”

  “It’s not darling girl,” she objected, as she played the final coda to the waltz. “I wrote lovely girl.”

  “You want an expression of affection, not a point about her looks,” Rees said. Then he lowered his voice. “Did you happen to notice how much my brother is enjoying your music?”

  Helene raised an eyebrow as she played the final chord. “The vicar sheds his Roman collar,” she said, rather absentmindedly. She didn’t want to think about Tom.

  “Let’s try it again,” Rees said. “This time, every other line with the male and then the female voice.”

  “That won’t work,” she objected.

  “The song could echo the waltz itself, bringing a male and female body together,” he said patiently.

  Helene felt she must be going purple. What kind of an old maid—even if married—was she, writing lascivious songs? “I didn’t think of the waltz that way!” she said.

  “That’s why the waltz is so improper,” he said with a smile that made her uneasy. “It simulates intimacy, Helene. Surely you recognize that.”

  “Well, of course,” she hastened to say. “I mean, the man puts his arm around the woman. That in itself is terribly unseemly.”

  “That’s not the point,” Rees said, sounding rather amused. “You knew exactly what I’m talking about when you were writing that music. Lina!” he called.

  “Yes?”

  “Will you play the waltz this time? Helene needs to get a sense of it in her feet.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Helene said, feeling as if the last thing she wanted to do was waltz with her husband. A moment later, she found herself curtsying to Rees’s bow. “This is too odd,” she whispered to him, taking his hand. His other hand went around her waist as snugly as if they danced together all the time.

  Rees had only asked Lina to play, but she started to sing as well. Helene almost stumbled when she realized what a beautiful voice her husband’s mistress had. It hung in the air like honey, making the words Helene had written sound infinitely better, wiser, more allusive.

  Rees drew her closer to him and let the music move them across the room, his leg advancing, and hers falling back. And all the time his arm pulled her closer and closer until there was no air between their bodies at all.

  “Rees!” Helene hissed.

  But the glint of amusement in his eyes turned her silent. Her gown wrapped around his muscled thigh and then blew free as he turned her with just a touch, in circle after circle after circle across the floor. She felt dizzy. The music pounded in her blood and prickled between her thighs. It danced in her feet and made her press closer to his chest.

>   “Do you see what I mean?” he asked conversationally. “The waltz starts out with a bit of introduction, undressing, as it were. A bow here, a flourish there. Then when the preliminaries are out of the way, the two dancers begin, first rather slowly and then faster and faster—” He spun her as he spoke. “The man holds his partner more and more tightly. They are in a closed position, his arms around her body.”

  Helene frowned at him.

  “You do know the instructions posted at Almack’s regarding the waltz, don’t you?” he asked her.

  “No.” Why would she notice such a thing?

  “The man and woman must be dressed decently.” His eyes had a wicked glint.

  She couldn’t help it: she giggled. He swept her in a great circle. “I think they may be referring to a doublet and coat.”

  “Undoubtedly!” Helene said severely.

  “As would a lover his lovable bride,” Lina sang slowly, and again: “As would a lover his lovable bride.”

  Rees glided Helene to a perfect halt on the last breath of the song.

  “You dance very well,” he said, blinking at her in an almost startled fashion. But he didn’t wait for a reply. “There’s one line that needs changing, Helene.” He dragged her over to the piano and Lina hastily slid off the piano bench. “I don’t think the line about fires of our hearts burning out is right. You should replace it with something more joyful.”

  “But that’s what I meant,” Helene insisted. “You may think the waltz is about bedroom matters, Rees.” She said it in a sharp undertone so that Tom and Lina couldn’t hear. “But I wrote a song about youthful love that fades and dies at the end of the song. So it starts with a great deal of enthusiasm and musical flourishes, but towards the end—”

  “No, no,” Rees interrupted. “That’s far too disheartening. How would it be if you changed that line to something simpler and more cheerful?” He hummed the bar. “Love into air? No, that’s no good.”

  “I don’t want to,” Helene said stubbornly. “I wrote the words, after all. They move from the lover’s exuberance to the loss of those feelings.”

  He paused for a moment, suddenly struck. Then he looked at her sideways. “You wouldn’t have put any of your life into this waltz, would you, Helene?”

  She colored. “Of course not!” she snapped.

  He stared at her for a moment and then put down the score. Of course she’d written it about their marriage, about the fire she felt in the heart—burning out. Suddenly his own heart felt like a charred, blackened cinder. “You’re right. It’s much better as it is.”

  “Shall we plan on Vauxhall tomorrow then?” Tom said, popping up at Rees’s shoulder.

  “Yes,” Helene agreed, moving toward the door. “I’ll send a note to my friends, and see whether either of them might wish to make up a party with us.”

  “I should be working,” Rees put in.

  “Nonsense!” Lina said with a laugh. “You work entirely too much.”

  Because there’s nothing in my life but work, Rees thought. It had never bothered him before.

  Twenty-seven

  Morning Calls

  Lady Esme Bonnington’s Townhouse

  Number Forty, Berkeley Square

  “Darling, tell all!”

  Helene grinned. “I can’t. I have to wait for Gina. You know she’ll be outraged to miss anything.”

  “You can’t wait,” Esme moaned. “She’s always late these days. It’s the devoted mother in her.”

  “As if you aren’t one,” Helene pointed out.

  “I am a perfectly respectable mother,” Esme protested. “I see William at proscribed times, and I do not allow him to overtake my every waking moment.”

  Helene forbore to point out that a set of childish fingerprints, seemingly dabbed with blackberry jelly, had made an imprint on Esme’s exquisite gown. Nor did she remind her friend that only last month Esme had left a dinner attended by the Regent himself, on receiving a message from William’s nanny saying that he showed signs of a cold.

  “Just tell me a few details,” Esme urged, her eyes shining with curiosity. “I have not been able to sleep wondering what’s happening to you.”

  Somewhat to Helene’s relief, Gina burst into the room at that moment. “I’m so sorry to be late,” she cried. “I simply could not get out the door.” She fell into a chair. “Don’t pause for courtesies, Helene! What about the opera singer? What is it like, living in the house? Can you bear it?”

  Her two friends were looking at her with expressions of identical curiosity, as if she were a calf with two heads or some other miracle of nature. “It’s not so terrible,” Helene said cautiously.

  “I’ve done nothing but think about it, and I’m fairly sure that I would have to flay her,” Esme said with frank bloodthirstiness. “Is she simply awful? What does she look like? Is she one of those brandy-faced women whom one sees around the Exchange, or the fancy articles who haunt Vauxhall?”

  “Actually, Miss McKenna is not at all like a common lightskirt,” Helene replied. “She’s quite beautiful, and I have to admit that if I had the faintest particle of feeling for Rees—and of course I don’t—I would be jealous of her looks.”

  “How can you bear it?” Gina asked wonderingly. “I know you’re estranged from Rees, but he’s still your husband. Even if I were separated from Cam for twenty years, I could not see him nuzzle up to some light woman in my presence without feeling murderous.”

  Helene shrugged. “They don’t show any signs of intimacy in my presence.”

  “Well, that’s quite considerate of her,” Esme said, sounding rather surprised. “Frankly, I would think that she too would find this a difficult situation. After all, she’s been living in that house for what, three years?”

  “She knows which side of the bread is buttered,” Gina said. “Why should she feel any distress, considering that she still lives in the house? Helene is obviously a mere visitor—to her own house!”

  Esme nodded. “Have you found a moment to offer her a settlement, Helene?”

  “No,” Helene said slowly. “I’m not sure I would feel comfortable doing so, to be honest. She is oddly ladylike.”

  “Pooh!” Esme said. “She’s no lady!”

  Helene was silent. The awkward truth was that she was only beginning to feel pricks of jealousy now. And they didn’t have anything to do with the fact Lina was sleeping in the vicinity of Rees, either. It was her voice. She had music.

  “I told Sebastian about Rees keeping his mistress in your bedchamber regardless of your presence in the house,” Esme was saying, “and he said that if you would like him to draw Rees’s cork or worse, he’d be happy to do so.”

  Gina was nodding. “I haven’t told Cam, because he hasn’t the self-control. He would set off immediately to pummel Rees. But just let me know.”

  “No, no!” Helene said alarmed. “Rees is going to be the father of my child. Besides, that would lead to someone finding out where I am. Harries has been informing all callers that I am taking the waters in Bath.” She turned a little pink. “Apparently the Earl of Mayne has called seven times.”

  “Didn’t you get the note I forwarded to you?” Gina said, with an impish grin.

  “Yes, and I brought it with me,” Helene said, pulling a note from her reticule. “Listen to this: I understand you are in seclusion, perhaps for as long as six weeks. Surely you are in need of diversion? I am entirely at your service.”

  “What a shame you can’t meet Mayne,” Gina said. “It must be utterly deflating to be in the same room with the opera singer, if she’s all that exquisite. Mayne only stayed in the garden with me for a few minutes, while requesting your address, but I will admit that his compliments were quite amusing.”

  “The man has exquisite finesse in all areas, including the bedroom,” Esme put in. “So Helene, have things improved at all on that front in the past nine years?”

  Helene blinked. She had never gotten used to Esme’s frank discussi
on of matters that she had been brought up to ignore. “I’ve told Rees, as per your instructions, that we have to do it every day, and he doesn’t seem to find the prospect too insufferable.” Then she remembered something. “His mistress made a joke out of his only needing seven minutes of time with me.”

  “You and she are joking together?” Esme said, clearly stupefied.

  Helene felt a flash of embarrassment. “I was rather inebriated at the time.”

  Gina patted her knee. “If I were you, I would stay inebriated for the entire month,” she said. “And if Rees’s mistress is cracking jokes about his poor performance in bed, I think we can assume that his abilities are not going to improve in the next few weeks. It’s a true shame you can’t carry on a flirtation with Mayne. At least he would keep your spirits up.”

  “I don’t see why I can’t meet him if I wish to,” Helene said.

  “It’s not worth the risk,” Esme said. “You would be worse than ruined if anyone discovered the truth. I really can’t imagine the scandal.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Helene said, unconvinced. She was not truly interested in a flirtation with Mayne, but whenever she thought about Lina’s voice it gave her a queasy sensation…perhaps a few of Mayne’s practiced compliments would restore her confidence. “Are you both free to make up a party to Vauxhall this evening?”

  “Alas, no,” Gina said with real regret. “Cam and I are dining with a delegation from Oxford. I’m certain it will be excruciatingly tedious, but Thomas Bradfellow from Christ Church is making my brother a professor, so we couldn’t possibly miss it.”

  “I’ll come!” Esme said. “I wouldn’t miss a closer look at Rees’s strumpet for the world. No one even knows what she looks like, you know. Naturally, we’ve all heard about her, but who has actually seen her? I do believe that her brief appearance at the opera with Rees—and that was some two years ago now—was the first and last time he paraded her before the ton.”

  “She will be wearing a loo mask and domino,” Helene pointed out. “I’m not sure how much you’ll observe. But thank you for coming, Esme. Somehow the idea of the four of us forming a party seemed uncomfortably intimate.”