His Mistress by Morning (3 page)

She stopped before the painting, her eyes lighting on the signature at the bottom.

E. Arbuckle.

Ephram Arbuckle? Her eyes swung up to the painting with a newfound awe. Arbuckle was
the
portrait painter of the
ton
. It was said that to have Arbuckle paint you was to live immortal, for he captured the very soul of his subjects.

She looked up at the lady and blushed at the sight of her, so natural and relaxed, her breasts thrust upwards as she reclined, the look on her face so smugly content, as if she’d just been…

Charlotte turned away, embarrassed to even think such a thing, let alone have a sense of jealousy that this scandalous creature probably wouldn’t have wasted the morning ducking out of Lord Trent’s eager embrace.

Now, Sebastian. Oh, please now…

She opened her eyes and found herself staring at a long mirror standing in the corner.

“No,” she whispered, her eyes widening at the image
of a woman with ruffled hair and sultry eyes staring back at her. “No, it can’t be—”

She turned around and glanced at the Cyprian in the portrait.

Then she turned back to the mirror and considered what she had to do. Biting her bottom lip, she took hold of either side of the wrapper she wore and flung it open.

“Oh, dear heavens.” She glanced over her shoulder and then back at the mirror. The same breasts, same tousled locks, same long limbs.

She was the woman in the Arbuckle painting.

Her knees wobbled beneath her and she thought she was going to topple over, that is, until the sound of footfalls in the hallway jolted her out of her shock. Snapping the wrapper closed again, she turned toward the door.

Her body tensed, not in a frightened way but in a manner she had to imagine her twin in the painting would understand.

Sebastian…he’s come back.

The door handle turned and Charlotte held her breath.

To her disappointment, an older woman bustled in. A wee bit of a thing, she barely came to Charlotte’s shoulder.

A plain apron covered a dove gray gown, while her white hair seemed to glow above her dull clothes.

Yet it was her eyes that startled Charlotte—as green as moss and sparkling with a lively light that belied the deep wrinkles in her face or the stoop to her shoulders.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” she said, as she went about the room picking up discarded clothes and unmentionables, clucking at the general disorder of the place.

Instead of the usual odors of a charring woman—those
of hard work and coals and bedpans—this woman smelled of something fresh and clean. As if she’d brought the first flowers of spring into the room with her.

“Who are you?”

“Quince,” the maid told her, having picked up a pair of smallclothes that were decidedly masculine.

Charlotte blushed, for she could well imagine who they belonged to.

This Quince didn’t seem nonplussed in the least by the sight of them, for she simply tossed them onto the growing pile of laundry.

“What are you doing here?” Charlotte asked, dodging out of the woman’s path as she bustled around the room, now putting the pots and paints on the dressing table in order.

Quince turned around and stuck her fists on her hips. “Straightening things out, what else would I be doing this morning?”

There was a challenge in her eyes that suggested to Charlotte that her answer was twofold.

“Where am I?” she asked cautiously.

“Your room, of course.” Quince gathered up the pile of clothes and headed toward a door Charlotte hadn’t noticed as yet. She flung it open and disappeared inside.

Curiosity assailed Charlotte—as to how this room could be hers, and where this Quince was going—so she followed, only to find herself in the most glorious closet she’d ever seen. Suddenly the hundred other questions she wanted to ask vanished.

Sunshine streamed in from the narrow windows high above them. Two walls were lined with racks of gowns—and not just ordinary gowns, simple muslin things that respectable girls wore, but gowns of brocade, of velvet, of
rich, iridescent sarcenet that enticed one to come closer, if only to touch them.

To touch the wearer.

Quince seemed singularly unimpressed by this lavish collection and instead was methodically putting everything in its place.

She pulled open a drawer and tossed inside a pair of silk stockings. For an instant Charlotte could see other intimate items—in vibrant colors and rich with fancy lace. Whatever sort of lady spent so much money on her undergarments?

Quince snapped the drawer shut with a thump, and the noise was enough to wake Charlotte out of her distracted reverie. “You’d best be quick about it,” Quince told her as she left the dressing room, Charlotte trailing along after. “I’ve other tasks to attend to this morning and can’t spend it dawdling about your room.”

Charlotte shook her head. “This isn’t my room.”

Quince snorted. Loudly. The sort of noise a fishwife would make if you offended her by offering too little for her wares. “Of course it is your room.”

“But Finella would never allow—”

“What has she got to say about it when this is your house.”

My house?
“I haven’t a house.”

Quince was already over at the mantel rearranging the flowers in a vase. “You do now.”

“A house? This is nonsense. How can I have a house?”

“It was a gift.”

“From whom?”

Pausing in her labors, Quince bit her lip and considered the question for a moment. “That’s always been a matter
of debate. Some say it was the Duke of Chesterton, while most think it was the old Earl Boxley, trying to steal you away. Since they are both dead now, I suppose you’re the only one who can settle that debate.”

The Duke of Chesterton? Earl Boxley? “How could I receive a house from men I’ve never met?” Ridiculous notions both. That is until that odd whirring noise started to buzz in her head again, as it had the day before, and the room started to spin.

Quince must have seen her distress, for she took her by the arm and led her to a chair by the window. “Easy there, my dear girl. ’Tis a lot to take in on the first day. But you need to understand that some aspects of your life have changed.”

“This isn’t my house,” Charlotte insisted, feeling childish for continuing the point.

“Now, there, don’t fret over it. Of course it is your house,” Quince told her, patting her hand with a practiced air. “And this is your room, and this is your life. Exactly what you wished for.”

Wished for.

The buzzing returned, and a jumble of images competed across her thoughts like the tangled jumble of traffic that had clogged the street the day before in front of the Marlowes’ town house.

Flowers for the lady, milord?

Sebastian striding down the street.

The saucy Mrs. Fornett in her smart carriage.

Quince sat down beside her, catching up her hand and patting it reassuringly. It wasn’t the lady’s kindly gesture that struck Charlotte as odd, but the way she smelled. Like a bouquet of posies.

“You!” Charlotte whispered, as she made the connection. “You were selling flowers yesterday in Berkeley Square.”

Quince nodded, smiling at her, encouraging her to think harder.

Aunt Ursula’s ring grew warm, tightening around her finger, while the buzzing in her ears became nearly piercing.

“Yes, that’s it,” Quince encouraged.

Charlotte found herself in front of the Marlowe house anew, gazing at Sebastian and giving voice to the one thing she desired above all else.

I wish I could be the woman he loved.

“I wished,” she whispered.

“That you did,” Quince said, letting go of her hand and wiping her palms across her apron. “And here it is.”

“Here is what?”

“Your wish!” The lady sat back and grinned, as if she expected Charlotte to start lauding her with high praise.

“But how?”

Quince nodded at her hand. “The ring. The one your dear aunt left for you. Gave careful thought to whom she was going to leave it, and I’m so glad Ursula found someone so bonny. Someone who knows how to wish so grandly.” She waved her hand about the splendid room.

Charlotte wanted to get more to the point. “You knew Aunt Ursula?”

“Of course,” Quince said matter-of-factly. “Since the day she received the ring.” The lady bit her lip again. “Oh, dear me, when was that? Fifty, no, sixty years ago. She knew how to wish, your aunt did.” The lady sighed. “But she understood the dangerous nature of an imprudent
wish and kept the ring locked up all these years. Don’t think I didn’t pester her to pass it along, but she was too fearful of what might happen if—” The lady snapped her lips together and forced them up into a smile. “Oh, what do you care about all that? What is important is that you’ve made your wish and here we are.”

Charlotte looked down at her inheritance with no small bit of wonder. “And this ring—”

“Grants the bearer one wish,” Quince said, getting up from the bed and pulling a rag from her pocket. She glanced around the room, then took a few swipes at a chest of drawers. “But only one wish, and I must say, yours is the most romantic wish I’ve heard in…well, let’s just say, a long time.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “‘To be the woman he loves.’ Oh, such a fine wish. And here you are,” she said, gesturing about the room. “The woman Sebastian Marlowe loves.”

Charlotte tried to breathe. It couldn’t be true. Lord Trent loved her? Just like that. In one simple wish, she was the woman he loved.

Her heart filled with a sense of wonder and joy. Sebastian loved her.

Lottie, my love.

Her hands went to her lips as she remembered his kiss, so possessive, so enticing. So full of…passion and desire.

All because he loved her.

It explained so much. That was why she was in his bed. He’d fallen in love with her and now they were…

She rose to her feet. “Married.” The declaration gave her an enormous sense of relief. “I’m his wife.” For heaven’s sake, that was the only explanation for why she’d woken up beside him.
Naked.

However, the bubbling bit of laughter spilling from Quince was anything but reassuring.

“I’m his wife,” Charlotte insisted. “Lady Trent.”

“Lady Trent!” Quince waved a hand at her before she clutched her stomach with it, which did very little to hold back the gale of laughter that rose within her. “His wife? Oh, that is a fine one.”

“But I have to be his wife if I am the woman he loves.”

Quince hiccupped through a few more guffaws and then went to the door. She pulled it open and laughed once more. “‘His wife,’ she says.” Then she wiped at the tears in her eyes and leveled a deep, serious glance across the room. “You’re not his wife, Charlotte. You’re Lord Trent’s mistress.”

H
is mistress?

Before Charlotte could even utter the scandalous words, make sense of what Quince had just told her so matter-of-factly, like it was perfectly normal that she, Miss Charlotte Wilmont, would be some man’s mistress, before she gathered her wits about her enough to demand an explanation (and a retraction), the woman was gone.

“Quince,” she called, scrambling up from the chair she’d collapsed into when the lady had revealed the truth of her situation. “Come back here!”

She yanked the door open, not caring what she was going to find beyond it or that she was wearing nothing beneath her wrapper.

But instead of seeing Quince, she found herself nose-to-nose with Cousin Finella.

The sight of her mother’s strict relation took a measure of haste out of her steps.

Gracious heavens! Of all the people to see her thusly, why did it have to be Cousin Finella?

Charlotte braced herself for the hysterics. Which would be second only to her mother’s wrath.

Yet none were forthcoming. At least not the ones she expected.

“You aren’t dressed!” Finella complained, the familiar disapproval in her voice, though that was the only thing familiar about the lady before her. “Then again neither am I.” She flounced, actually flounced, into Charlotte’s room, with not one bit of her usual ramrod-straight posture.

“Where is she?” Charlotte said, looking down the empty and unfamiliar hallway.

“Where is who?” Finella said, on her way to the closet.

“Quince.”

Finella stopped at the door. “Quince? Who’s Quince?”

“The maid,” Charlotte insisted. “The one who was just in here.”

Her cousin snorted. “If you mean the new maid, her name is Prudence. And I don’t think that lazy chit has even made it above stairs yet. Probably too afraid she might see Trent in his altogether again. Gads, she nearly quit the other morning when he came down early looking for a pot of chocolate.” Finella shrugged. “I thought she might be too young for this house, but you and your softhearted ways. Afraid she’d be picked up by some abbess or worse, and made to work the streets.”

“No, not a young girl. An old woman. About this high,” Charlotte said, putting her hand at her shoulder.

Finella laughed. “Heavens, Lottie, and here I thought I was the one who’d had too much to drink last night. Quince, indeed! When you start seeing little fae maids, then you need to give due consideration to how much you are drinking—or give up brandy and switch to claret.”

She winked at Charlotte and flung open the door to the closet, disappearing inside.

No Quince?
Charlotte pressed her fingertips to her brow. Finella had never heard of her, and now she’d disappeared as quickly as she’d materialized.

Oh, this couldn’t be happening.

From inside she heard Finella sorting through the gowns and continuing on as if nothing was amiss. “You promised him you’d be over by two and here it is half past one already.”

Charlotte moved toward the dressing room and peeked inside.

Finella held a green day gown in one hand and a blue sprigged muslin in the other. The blue one went back on the rack while she held the apple green silk up to light for a closer inspection. Yet when the sunshine caught her eyes, she closed them quickly and rubbed her temple. “Gracious, I feel dreadful today. And here I am giving you a wigging about your drinking when I was corned, pickled, and salted last night.” She laughed and shook her head as if it had been a grand lark all the same.

Charlotte stepped back. Certainly she hadn’t heard that correctly.
Cousin Finella? Admitting to being drunk?

“Was it obvious?” she asked, looking up from where she was poking through one of the drawers. “I fear it showed when Trent came in last night. I think I even flirted with him a bit. But who can remember or care when you’ve spent a better part of the evening tossing back a good portion of old Kimpton’s cellars.”

Charlotte caught hold of the doorjamb to keep her knees from buckling.

Lord Kimpton? The most pious man in all the
ton
? Drinking with Cousin Finella?

She certainly didn’t recall wishing for that, but it appeared that her simple wish had turned everything about her life, her world, upside down.

You need to remember,
Quince had said,
that some aspects of your life have changed
.

Some? That had been an understatement. Just look what she’d done to Finella!

And not just the admissions to drunkenness and the flighty nature: Cousin Finella
looked
different. Her hair, usually pulled back into the most painful of tight knots at the base of her head and dutifully covered in a starched white cap, fell in a long braid past her shoulder, untidy and…lush.

Why, Charlotte couldn’t imagine that she’d ever seen Cousin Finella’s hair released from its practical pins, and here it was, beautiful.

And without it pulling her face back, she looked softer, younger, more relaxed. In place of the modest gray wool gown that she wore from dawn to dusk, she was wearing a wrapper just as rich and expensive as the one Charlotte wore. The red fabric wrapped around her figure to reveal a curvy silhouette that the old Finella had never possessed.

Why, she must weigh a good stone more, perhaps two, Charlotte wagered. And the added pounds were all well placed, for suddenly the always stick straight Finella, who disavowed sweets and any indulgences lest they give way to licentiousness, had a full bosom and hips.

And saucy manners to match.

“Now why don’t you put on these,” she was saying, pressing a feather-light green corset and lacy garters to match into Charlotte’s hands.

She gaped at the unmentionables in her hands. A green corset?

Finella was plucking about in a drawer for stockings and came up with an expensive lacy pair of the same hue. “Arbuckle loves you in green, and it will inspire him when you arrive—not that you’ll need any of it for long, but it will get the man in the mood.”

“Arbuckle?” Charlotte said absently, looking back over her shoulder at the lush painting on the wall. She still couldn’t imagine how any man could have painted her thusly, known such details about her.

That is unless she’d been…

“You haven’t forgot about your appointment with Arbuckle, have you?” Finella said, hands going to her now ample hips. “You promised him most sincerely that you would go over to his studio so he could put the finishing touches on the new portrait. None of us will get paid until it is done.”

Paid? She was being paid to model for Arbuckle?

Finella pulled off Charlotte’s wrapper and began dressing her as if she were nothing but a recalcitrant child. “When you finish at Arbuckle’s, I daresay you should go down to Madame Claudius’s for a fitting. She sent a note around yesterday that your new evening gown is ready. And then you’ll need to be home by seven if you are to have enough time to dress before you go on to the Opera with Lord Rockhurst.” She pulled the green silk over Charlotte’s head and pinned and tugged it into place, then pressed her into a chair before the dressing table, where she began to arrange her hair.

Rockhurst? Charlotte stared at her reflection, the shock in her eyes matching the trembling fear running down
her spine. She was to eat dinner with the Earl of Rockhurst? One of the
ton
’s most notorious rakes?

She didn’t know how to dine with such a man. Why, hadn’t Hermione once told a group of curious friends that she had overheard her brother Griffin saying that the earl could entertain several ladies.

At once
.

And what sort of lady was she that she consorted openly with such a disreputable man—especially when she had the love and protection of a man like Lord Trent?

Yet something niggled in the back of her mind that said there was more to all this than met the eye…and that she couldn’t merely judge her current situation by her old frame of reference.

For hadn’t everything changed in one night? With just one wish? Everything but her sensibilities, she told herself. She was still the same.

“There you are!” Finella said, patting the last curl into place.

Charlotte looked up and barely recognized the woman staring back at her. This was her hair?

She’d never done her hair any other way than the same unyielding chignon her mother and cousin wore, yet what Finella had composed was like something from one of Hermione’s French fashion plates.

“Oh, gracious, it is so beautiful,” she whispered, bringing her fingers up to her curled and pinned tresses with an almost reverent adoration.

Finella, already fixing her own hair, smiled approvingly. “You do look pretty as a picture. Seems a shame that Arbuckle will want you to take it all down when we get there, but at least you will look good for your admirers.” She tipped her head and gazed at her work, then
began making a few minor adjustments to the arrangement. “Not that any of those loungers will care what your hair looks like.” She sighed. “But this style does become you, if I do say so myself, and it will ensure you’ll get your mention in the
Post
tomorrow.”

Admirers? Loungers? Mentions in a gossip column?

Charlotte looked again at the lady in the mirror. What sort of woman was she? Unwittingly, her gaze fell on Arbuckle’s painting yet again.

Dear heavens, how could
she
ever be such a creature?

Another wave of anxiety washed through her, twisted her stomach into a tight knot, for what had Lord Trent said, promised really?

I’ll be devising the perfect seduction for later
.

Later? As in tonight? He’d return here and want to…With her. Naked.

Her hand went to her belly, and Finella, noticing her, said, “Go on downstairs, and see if Prudence has at least gotten your tray right this morning. I told her to serve it to you in the front room.” She prodded Charlotte out of her chair and pushed her toward the door. “I’ll go get dressed, and by the time I get down, the carriage should be here. Eat something, dearling. You look rather peaked this morning.” Finella shook her head. “And Lottie?”

“Yes?” Charlotte said, almost afraid of what her cousin would say next.

“Have a care with the brandy, child. You’ll lose your looks drinking too much, and then where will we be?”

Thus warned and prodded yet again, this time toward a stairwell, Charlotte made her way downstairs, where she found what she suspected was the front room, since a pretty tray sat on a small table by the wide bow window. Flowers were tucked in vases throughout the room, and
there was a tremendous pile of notes and letters on the salver beside the tray.

Charlotte glanced at the missives, but didn’t know what she should do with them. Rather, she ate a roll and some strawberries—done up nicely with cream—and wandered about the room, unable to settle down in this unfamiliar setting, so unlike Finella’s house on Queen Street.

Cozy and warm, the room was filled with whimsical bric-a-brac. A long settee sat in one corner, and two overstuffed chairs were placed in front of the window. On the mantelpiece sat a blue-and-white Chinese vase filled with tulips. Beside it sat a miniature that, when Charlotte got closer, she realized was a decent rendering of Lord Trent.

Her fingers traced over the frame, her mind still trying to grasp how this all could be.

She was his mistress. And Cousin Finella seemed quite content with that arrangement.

Shaking her head, and casting one last glance at the rakish fellow in the portrait, she made another loop around the room, discovering another Arbuckle hung in the corner, this one of a small girl with a basket of puppies, along with several small landscapes and one of a gorgeously gowned woman who Charlotte thought resembled a younger Finella.

In a matter of steps she found herself back in front of the overflowing salver and unable to resist, she picked up the first letter, turning it over in her hand.

Mrs. Townsend, No. 4, Little Titchfield Street

Mrs. Townsend? Charlotte set it down. It must have been misdirected, for any lady who lived on Little Titchfield Street could only be…

Hastily, she picked up another.
Mrs. Lottie Townsend
.

Lottie. No longer Charlotte Wilmont, Quince’s magic had not only gained her Sebastian’s love, this house, but also a new name. She bit her lip and looked again at the letter.
Mrs. Townsend
. As in married?

Her knees quaked, and she sought the refuge of a chair, her hand shaking as she glanced again at the seemingly innocent looking correspondence in her hand. Even worse, there was something vaguely familiar about the handwriting.

The click of heels echoed down the stairs, announcing Finella’s return, and with it, Charlotte’s gaze jerked upward to find her mother’s cousin parading into the room, gloriously gowned in burnished gold, an outrageously large hat perched atop her head, aflutter in plumes and silk flowers.

“Come along,” she ordered, starting to shoo Charlotte out of her seat. “You can read those idiotic verses from your would-be poets when we—” Her words came to a breathless halt as she too spied the handwriting. “Harrumph,” Finella sputtered, snatching the note up and tossing it into the fireplace. “Aurora! I suppose that prosy bitch wants more money.” She swiped her hands over her skirts and made another disgruntled noise. “You haven’t been paying her debts again, have you?”

Charlotte shook her head, shocked not only at her cousin’s reaction to a note but also the animosity she displayed.

“Well, make sure you don’t!” Finella made the most unladylike snort as she bustled her from the room, catching up a wondrous hat from a young maid, the aforementioned Prudence, Charlotte guessed. The pretty confection was deposited atop Charlotte’s curls with a great huff.
A pelisse and gloves came next, and Charlotte found herself rushed out the door, down the steps, and into a waiting open carriage. A liveried driver and tiger snapped to attention at the sight of them, and soon they were being whisked away.