Your Wicked Ways

  “You do not have the manner of a common woman,” Esme commented.

  “No,” Miss McKenna admitted.

  “How many of Lord Godwin’s acquaintances have you met frequently, since becoming his mistress, enough so that they would recognize you instantly?”

  Miss McKenna’s face washed with color. “Almost none,” she whispered. “Mr. Darby. Mr. Forbes-Shacklett. Oh, and Lord Pandross, but he hasn’t been to the house in months.”

  “Simon Darby and Pandross won’t present a problem; Rees can shut them up. Are the Forbes-Shackletts in town?” Esme asked Gina.

  “I don’t think so,” Gina said slowly. “Lady Forbes-Shacklett was going to present her daughter this year, but then the family went into mourning, and I believe they remained in the country.”

  Esme drew a deep breath. “I think it’s possible.” She turned back to Lina. “I am sure you are aware how remorseless society will be to Lady Godwin. Her children will be shunned, should she have any. She will have to live in the country. She will lose her friends. How can we risk the reputations of our own children, by continuing to fraternize with a woman of her sort?”

  Gina opened her mouth indignantly, but Esme silenced her with one glance.

  Lina was trembling. “I am sorry,” she said miserably. She had never felt so wretchedly ashamed in her entire life. “I’ll leave the house immediately. I’ll never—”

  “I should like you to do something for Lady Godwin first,” Esme interrupted. “There is only one way we can overcome this scandal. We must be so brazen that no one could possibly believe the truth.” Esme turned to the others. “May I present to you Rees’s third cousin, four times removed, recently widowed and come to London for peace and quiet?”

  Gina’s mouth fell open; Helene flinched; Griselda said, “Of course!”

  “Third cousin?” Lina gasped. “Of Lord Godwin?”

  Esme nodded. “From this moment on, you are a little-known relative from the country. No one has seen you as yourself, remember. No one is at all clear about what Rees’s famed mistress actually looks like. We will announce that the mistress long ago departed. Rees had a distant connection staying here, and Helene joined the household temporarily, to act as a chaperone.”

  “Are you certain that everyone will believe us?” Helene asked, dawning hope in her voice.

  “Obviously, we have to parade Miss McKenna before the ton. But I think that one occasion, if well handled, will suffice to silence the gossip. No one could possibly believe that the four of us”—she nodded to Lady Griselda—“would ever countenance being in the presence of Rees’s mistress, let alone bring about the presentation of such a woman to the ton.”

  A little smile curled Griselda’s lips. “And I know precisely who would best effect the presentation of this distant relative. My brother may have acted the fool last night, but now he can put his dramatic ability to work in our favor.”

  Thirty-seven

  Siblings Are Sometimes Quite Similar

  Naturally, Rees was pounding away at one of his pianos when Tom found him. He seemed to be playing the same set of chords over and over again. Tom walked over to the piano and stood next to it until Rees looked up.

  “Where’s Helene?” Rees asked, by way of greeting. “I haven’t seen her this morning.”

  “I have no idea,” Tom said. “I shall be leaving for St. Mary’s tomorrow, Rees.”

  His brother blinked up at him and his hands finally slowed on the keys. “I had gotten used to having you in the house.”

  Tom thought to sit on the couch, but it was stacked with paper. He pulled over a stool and sat on that instead. “I need to return to my parish. I intend to speak to the bishop about leaving the priesthood.”

  Rees was caressing the piano keys with long fingers, although he made no sound. “I would surmise that your change of profession is due to Lina?”

  Tom lost his blaance and almost toppled from the stool. “I—that is, yes.”

  “How does Lina feel about you?”

  “She refuses to marry a vicar,” Tom said, wondering if he should apologize for taking Rees’s mistress and decided that he needn’t. “Perhaps I will be able to change her mind. It will take me some time to extract myself from the church, but I would like to marry her immediately.”

  Rees raised an eyebrow. Tom had the unnerving sense that their father was sitting before him. He’d never realized before how much Rees took after the old earl.

  “I had the impression,” Rees said slowly, “that although you were enjoying a glimpse of life outside the parish, you would return to your church.”

  “I miss my congregation, and I miss being a priest,” Tom said, feeling almost as if he were confessing to a weakness. “It’s who I am, after all these years. But Lina doesn’t wish to marry a man of the cloth.” He tried not to sound as if he were defending a weakness. Rees was not their father, only an elder brother.

  “What will you do if the Bishop grants your request and removes you from the parish?”

  “Likely work with abandoned children,” Tom said promptly.

  “You’re a better man than I am,” Rees said. “You know, Father was proud of you, for all he didn’t express that particular emotion.”

  “Expressing contempt came far more easily.”

  Rees was silent for a moment. Then he said: “I’m proud of you, Tom. You’re a good man.”

  Tom watched him scowl down at his keyboard, and felt a rush of affection, although it would never do to express it. “So will you forgive me for stealing your mistress?” he asked.

  “It was her voice, as I expect you’ve realized,” Rees said, ignoring his frivolous question. “I heard her sing, and I couldn’t think about anything except getting that voice into the house so that she could sing for me.” He smiled in a crooked kind of way. “I was a right bastard. It only took me a month or two to realize it, but it was too late.”

  “I wouldn’t have met Lina if you hadn’t brought her here,” Tom said, and the very idea chilled him. He did want to stay a vicar, but only if he had Lina to keep him laughing, and warm his bed, and stop him from turning into a sanctimonious ass.

  Rees played one key. The sound hung on the air, melancholy and fading. “I suppose I can lure Madame Fodor from the Italian Opera House to play Lina’s part. It will suit her voice very well.” And then, looking at the keyboard: “I am going to ask Helene to remain in the house.”

  “To remain in the house—or to stay with you?” Tom asked gently.

  The smile on Rees’s mouth was rather grim. “She has a great deal to forgive me for.”

  “You’re lucky she loves you so much, then,” Tom said.

  Rees’s eyes flew to Tom’s, and then he looked away without comment, standing up. “I need to find Helene and play this phrase for her.”

  Tom stood up as well and then, to his utter surprise, Rees pulled him into a rough hug. He didn’t say anything; Rees was never one to use words when there was no need. Tom followed his brother from the room without another word between them.

  He was free. Free to tell Lina that she had to marry him. Free to take her away.

  As Rees stepped into the hallway, Leke came out of the library. “The countess has just asked for you,” he said, holding open the door.

  Tom stopped. “Where may I find Miss McKenna, Leke?”

  “In the library,” he replied.

  They strode into the room looking, had there been a mirror appropriately placed, extremely like their father. Yet another glance would have revealed that they were far more like to each other, than to their father.

  Thirty-eight

  Snippets of Conversation Overheard in London During the Week

  “It’s your penance,” Lady Griselda Willoughby told her brother with some satisfaction. “If you have to endure a month or so of wretched bibble-babble, it will teach you to be more particular in your attentions. For goodness’ sake, I may find Helene Godwin rather tedious, but I grow faint with ennui
if I am unlucky enough to drift into the sound of Felicia Saville’s voice. And believe me, you can hear her voice halfway across a ballroom!”

  Her brother’s answer was unintelligible; Griselda just smiled to herself. She had no need for an interpreter when it came to males and their childish dependence on profanity; after all, she had been married for all of a year, God rest his soul.

  “You cannot leave the Church. I won’t allow it!”

  “For you. Only for you.”

  “I won’t allow it!”

  “But you said you didn’t wish to marry a vicar.” The said vicar’s eyes burned down at his companion. “It never occurred to me that I could be anything other than what I am. But I could do so, for you. The only person I would ever give up my vows for is you, Lina.”

  “My name isn’t Lina,” she said, stumbling a little. “It’s Alina. But my mother always called me Lina.”

  “You’re my Lina now,” he said into her ear. “And if what I do for a living would come between us, I’ll do something else.”

  “I don’t want you to relinquish your vows. You wouldn’t be happy.”

  “The only thing that would make me unhappy is losing you.”

  “Then make me a vicar’s wife, Tom.”

  There was nothing to overhear for a while and then, “You will keep me from becoming as perfect as your father, won’t you, Lina?”

  “I don’t think that’s a problem,” she said with a giggle. “Take your hand away!”

  He groaned. “Lord, I wish Rees would return with that Special License.”

  “Are you sure?” There was a hesitancy in her voice that rung his heart.

  “I’ve never been surer of anything in my life,” he told her. “Never. Listen—I’ll make a vow so that I can break it for you!”

  “Don’t be silly!” she scolded, laughing.

  “I vow to God himself that I will never kiss your breast.”

  And she, whispering, with a rosy blush, “You won’t?”

  “God will forgive me for breaking my vow,” he said, his lips tracing the very edge of her bodice. “He can see into my heart and knows that I love you with every bit of my soul. That’s the most important vow.”

  “I love you the same,” she said, and then his lips did slip below her bodice—but only for a moment or two.

  Mr. Holland, vicar of St. Mary’s, was a man of considerable self-control, and considerable patience.

  The portly Bishop of Rochester viewed the young couple before him with keen interest. “I only have the slimmest acquaintance with your father,” he said to Miss McKenna. “I knew him at Cambridge, oh, many years ago, that was. He was quite the rapscallion, your father!”

  That seemed to surprise Miss McKenna.

  “Indeed,” Bishop Lynsey assured her, with a belly laugh that made his vestments shake as if a tempest had struck the environs of Rochester Cathedral. “They do say that rascals make the best churchmen, you know! Well, mum’s the word on that. He’s an excellent man, your father, an excellent man. And you couldn’t do better than marry Mr. Holland, my dear. I can see your father’s influence in your choice. I’m only sorry that your family can’t be with you. But I do understand the urgency of young love, even such an oldster as I.”

  He gave the bridegroom’s elder brother a sapient look. It would be nice if that ne’er-do-well, Lord Godwin, were moved by the words of the marriage ceremony into conducting his own affairs with more propriety. It was surprising to see the earl and countess standing beside each other; Lynsey had heard gossip that suggested the two hadn’t even spoken for years. But here they were, looking as married as can be. Well, the ways of God are mysterious indeed.

  Still, he beckoned the married couple closer. It would do them good to hear the words of the ceremony since, if he remembered correctly, they had trotted off to Gretna Green in a harum-scarum fashion and married over the anvil. Likely two or three words in the whole ritual, if one could even call it that.

  “Dearly beloved,” he began with a fine flourish in his voice, “we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation”—he smiled encouragingly at Earl Godwin and his wife—“to join together this Man and this Woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable estate…”

  “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “That was a very sweet ceremony, didn’t you think?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “I believe I shall retire to my chamber.”

  His hands stopped. “Weren’t we going to work on the étude before bed?”

  “Rees!”—rather exasperated—“I’m exhausted. We can think of this in the morning.” And then, “What are you doing?”

  “Taking you upstairs,” he said. “I’m going to carry you over the threshold.”

  “What?”

  “I never carried you across the threshold of the house ten years ago, Helene, so the bedchamber door will have to do. I have a mind to pretend that I’m going to walk into an inn bedroom and find you there.”

  She had her arms around his neck, and he was climbing the stairs. “Are you going to laugh at my bosom then?”

  He stopped. “What?”

  So, in the way of wives, Helene reminded the earl that on seeing his wife’s breasts for the very first time, he had suggested that she might have shrunk in the rain.

  Repentance is an emotion that can be expressed in many different ways. Rees was not eloquent. He wasn’t good at tossing off debonair little phrases or comparing his wife to roses or jewels.

  So he did the very best he could. He took his wife into his bedchamber, pulled her gown over her head, revealing a pair of breasts whose pale pink perfection instantly fired his loins, and then fell backwards, flat on the floor.

  “What’s the matter with you?” the countess asked with some curiosity, walking over to peer down at him.

  “I’ve fainted from the beauty of your breasts,” he said, grinning up at her lasciviously.

  And then, as she giggled, large hands circled her ankles and crept up her legs. “I’ll make up for my stupidity, Helene,” he said, kissing his way up a slender thigh. “I’ll make it my daily chore to praise your breasts. Even before I touch the piano.”

  As one musician to another, Helene could tell when she’d received the greatest compliment of her life, although nary a rose nor a jewel was mentioned.

  Thirty-nine

  The Plot Unveiled

  Lady Felicia Saville gave one, and only one, ball each year. The night before the event she often couldn’t sleep. There was so much to worry about: would Gunter’s deliver half-melted ices, would the champagne punch be sufficient, would her husband appear reasonably sane or utterly cracked? The last question was the most pressing. The year after they married he informed a large and amused audience that he was actually the child of a black-tipped ewe, and then there was the occasion when he insisted that his horse was a blood relative. Over the years, she had realized that his particular form of mania was less disagreeable than it could have been, but it did require forethought to make certain that he did not regale the ballroom with tales to rival those of Aesop.

  But this year was different. Last night she had slept like a baby. The ball would be easy, because Mayne would be by her side.

  Contrary to his usual custom, and quite contrary to what she herself would have expected, he was still showing her marked attention. It was the most delightful and unexpected pleasure of her entire life. They had been intimates, as one might say, for exactly one week, and his ardor showed no signs of cooling. Felicia had to hug herself for the pure joy of it. Everyone wanted to know her secrets. How could she, Felicia Saville, hold the attention of a man known to flit from woman to woman like the proverbial butterfly?

  Felicia frowned over her morning hot chocolate. Frankly, she hadn’t the faintest idea how she was keeping Mayne’s attention. It wasn’t as if they shared scintillating conversation. Nor were they terribly intimate with each other in private, if the truth were known. He
certainly kissed her with a great deal of finesse, but then he muttered phrases about respecting her too much to overstep, and carried the business no further.

  Which was rather disappointing. Felicia’s marital partner, after all, was past hope in that area. After one night in which he shouted tally-ho! in an intimate moment, she banished him from the bedroom.

  She was beginning to think that perhaps Mayne had never slept with any of the women he accompanied. Perhaps the women in question were so enchanted by his attentions—and their reputations so enhanced by his presence at their side—that they told no one their relationship was unexpectedly chaste. If that was the truth of it, Felicia was perfectly happy to continue the tradition. In fact, in the last week, when her friends kept noting that she was looking particularly becoming, she had given one and all a twinkling glance that put her renewed looks at Mayne’s bedstead. The truth, after all, was hardly important in these situations.

  With a shrug, she finished her hot chocolate and dismissed perplexing thoughts about Mayne’s continued attentions. She was beautiful enough, wasn’t she? Or at least, she would be, once she finished the four-hour dressing process that would ready her for the ball tonight.

  She was three hours into the ritual, bathed, perfumed, painted and powdered, but only half-dressed, when a footman informed her maid that the Earl of Mayne wished a brief word, if she were available. A smile curled on Felicia’s lips. Oh, this was even better than she could have imagined! She cast a look at herself in her dressing room mirror. She hadn’t yet put on her evening gown. She was wearing stockings of the palest rose silk, tied above the knee with a silver garter. Her chemise certainly covered her flesh adequately, and its edging of rose lace would entice any man alive.