Jane Feather (12 page)

Esther couldn’t help her amusement despite the tension. Even when Imogen had broken off the engagement, Esther had not really believed these two could simply walk away from each other without a backwards glance. There was a connection between them that all the differences of opinion in the world could not sever. Admittedly, a stray mistress was rather more than a difference of opinion, she amended, but the issue had never really been debated between them. Imogen hadn’t given Charles an opportunity to explain himself or even to try to make amends, and as a result, she had been left swinging in the wind as much as he had. If they were to live in the same social world, they had to reach some kind of resolution. Charles, by taking matters so firmly into his own hands at this point, possibly had a chance of achieving that. Gen would not allow herself to be bullied, but she could perhaps be forcefully persuaded at least to come to the table.

Imogen finally looked up from her plate. “Do you care for some Stilton, Charles?”

“Thank you, no.” He leaned back in his chair and twirled his glass by its stem. “But please don’t let me hurry you.”

“Of course not,” she agreed with a tranquil smile that made him want to shake her. But he maintained his composure.

Imogen knew she was buying time as she marshaled her resources to deal with this unambiguous challenge. Charles intended to confront her with what had happened on the lake last night. She could not deny those moments under the moonlight. She still loved him. And he felt the same for her. It didn’t matter that they were poles apart in so many important ways: This love was a visceral connection that existed on a plane of its own. But one could not live a normal, rational existence on that plane alone. In the real world, they had to find common ground where their differences could exist side by side or somehow be overcome.

A common ground where she could forgive his betrayal?

Chapter 12

The stilted attempts at conversation finally unnerved Imogen. Charles had made no attempt to ease the situation, merely sitting toying with his port glass, his eyes resting with seeming benevolence upon Imogen. Except that she could feel his mounting irritation like an impending tidal wave building beyond a smooth tranquil shoreline. She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and tossed the cloth to the table beside her plate.

“If you’ll all excuse us . . .” She pushed back her chair and Charles was on his feet instantly, coming around the table to place a solicitous hand beneath her elbow to help her up. She moved away from him towards the door, which a footman jumped to open for them both.

“Let’s go into the library.”

Charles followed her into the comfortably shabby room, where commodious leather armchairs squatted like old men dozing in their clubs after a good luncheon. He ignored the chairs, choosing instead to stand by the fire, one arm resting along the mantelpiece, one foot on the fender. Imogen debated whether to sit or stand. While sitting would put her at something of a positional disadvantage, it would indicate a composure that she was far from feeling.

She took a wing chair, one in which she could sit upright, unlike the squishy armchairs into whose depths she would sink too comfortably for comfort in the present situation, and regarded Charles with an interrogatively raised eyebrow, waiting for him to speak.

Charles looked at her in silence for a long moment, and it took very strong nerves to maintain her own silence. Finally he said, “I’m not going to accept it, Imogen.”

“Accept what?”

His nostrils flared. He said tightly, “Don’t be obtuse. I am not going to accept this situation. You cannot deny what happened last night—you cannot deny what we feel for each other. And a few hours later you’re stalking out of my house as if I’ve committed some heinous sin. Now . . . no, let me finish . . . I can see that inviting you this morning might have seemed like a trap, but it wasn’t intended as such. I tried to explain that to you. It was thoughtless of me, but no worse than that.”

“As thoughtless, I suppose, as letting me discover accidentally that you’re keeping a mistress and child on the eve of our wedding,” she threw at him.

“Oh, for crying out loud, Gen. I’ll grovel for that if I must.” He ran his hands distractedly through his hair. “Yes, it was thoughtless, criminally thoughtless, if you like. But that was
all
it was. I don’t have any feelings for Dorothea at all.”

“And that makes it better?” she demanded, jumping to her feet. “You admit to having no feelings for a woman you’d been making love to for at least two years, a woman with whom you have a child. Do you even have any feelings for the child?”

“Oh, now you’re twisting everything on its head,” he exclaimed. “In one breath I’m a dastard for having a mistress and in the next even more so for not having any great emotional attachment to her. What do you want from me, Imogen?”

She took a deep breath. Things were getting muddled and she was as responsible for that as Charles was. She needed to separate the issues clearly in her mind, even though on one level they all had the same root. A lack of emotional consideration, a lack of sensitivity where the feelings of others were concerned.

“I want you to think about other people once in a while,” she said slowly and clearly. “Did you think once about how I would feel if I discovered about Mrs. Symonds and the child . . . your child . . . in essence my stepchild, if we were married? Did you
ever
think about that?”

Charles looked down into the fire, watching the orange flickers in the yellow flames. “I suppose,” he said slowly, “that I thought once we were married, what had happened in the past could stay in the past.”

“Your child is not in the past. The boy is very much in the present,” she responded quietly. “Oh, I know it’s considered good manners to turn a blind eye to a man’s illegitimate children, and it’s always been expected of a good wife. But the world is changing, Charles, and I belong to that changed world. And I don’t have those kinds of manners. I will not tolerate a marriage where I must stay at home and be loyal and loving and giving while my husband has the right to philander, father children at will, and treat me like a good or a chattel—oh, don’t laugh. It’s not funny.”

“The expression is,” he said, looking up from the fire, his eyes alight now with warmth and amusement. “But I accept what you’re saying. And I promise, Gen, I will never consider you to be either a good or a chattel. And I will try, really try, to be more sensitive, more aware about the effect on other people of what I do.”

“And what of the child?”

“Jamie,” he said, so quietly she could barely hear him.

“Jamie . . . that’s his name?” Her own voice was soft.

He looked up with a slight smile. “Yes. He was . . . a surprise, I think you would say. Oh, the pregnancy wasn’t planned, of course, I don’t mean that, but I didn’t expect to feel as I did—do—about the child, Gen. I never had siblings, and I’ve never had any dealings with babies . . . small children . . . oh . . .” He shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it . . . the rush of feeling when I first held him.”

Imogen was silent for a long time. The image his words conjured, Charles with a baby in his arms, was startling, startlingly wonderful. She had assumed they would have children, of course. And she had assumed that theirs would be a modern enough marriage for her to have some say in the timing of their production. But she hadn’t thought about the emotional aspects of such an addition to their union. And now she could see Charles as a father, and that added a whole new dimension to this burgeoning reconciliation.

She spoke finally. “Your liaison with Dorothea is over . . . truly over?”

He sighed a little. “Yes, truly over. It has been for many months. But I could never give up seeing my son.” He looked at her closely. “I see the child every week, and of course I see Dorothea. She
is
Jamie’s mother, Imogen.”

“Of course,” she said swiftly. “I wouldn’t expect otherwise.” She looked down at her lap, twisting the fringe of the paisley shawl between her fingers. It was time to let it go. The man she loved, loved his child. It was a simple enough fact and one that warmed her to her core.

A little gleam appeared in her eyes, and her tone was considering as she said, “Supposing . . . just supposing we were thinking about marriage again, you wouldn’t object to how I choose to spend my money?”

He closed his eyes briefly. “That again?”

“Yes, I know we haven’t discussed it in detail, but I know how you feel and it rankles. And if we were to start all over again, I think we should renegotiate all the terms. I want your agreement that you will not make any attempt to direct how I choose to spend my own funds.”

Was she prepared to start all over again? Was that what this was all about?

“So you want to start from the beginning again?” he asked, frowning.

She shrugged, trying to sound casual and matter-of-fact. “Well, we are no longer engaged. It’s a publicly known fact, and I see no reason to change that at this point. If, somehow, we can see a way to changing it, then I’m willing to try. But nothing has altered how I feel about what happened.”

“I see.” He tapped his mouth with his fingertips. “So you’re saying
I
have to change for you to agree to resuming our engagement? Or do you bear any responsibility at all?”

It was a challenge and he was entitled to throw down the glove, Imogen thought. She knew she wasn’t perfect. “All right,” she said. “Tell me how
I
need to change.”

Charles thought for a moment. The truth was, he didn’t want her to change one iota. He loved her passion, the intensity of her convictions, even if they were inconvenient sometimes. He loved her wicked sense of humor, her intelligence, the speed and keenness of her wit, her warmth. “Only in one way,” he said. “I would like you to try to understand
me
better. I would like you to try not to filter your view of me through your own convictions about the way this imperfect world should be. I’m not against women’s suffrage, I’m not against women’s legal and social equality, but I think I can see more clearly than you the difficulties in achieving those goals, however righteous they may be. It’s going to take a very long time, my dear, and I would like you to see that, to recognize that not everything can happen when you want it to. And sometimes I am going to do things, because that’s who I am and the work that I do, that will not help to advance your causes. I need you to accept that and, at the very least, not hold it against me personally.”

Well, that was honest enough, Imogen thought. He had really laid it down, the as-it-was and as-it-will-be. But could she agree to do that? Simply rely on the power of love to carry her over the times she would want to stick a knife in his heart and leave?

“I don’t think I can promise not to fight with you,” she said.

At that he laughed, a great peal that filled the room. He crossed to her in two strides and swung her through the air. “Oh, my darling spitfire, if you promised never to fight with me again, I’d know we could never ever survive married life. I love to fight with you . . . as long as we are always honest about
why
we’re fighting.”

He held her up against him and she put her hands on his shoulders, her own laughing eyes looking into his. “A pact, then,” she said. “We will always be honest. Even when I hate you and want to throw a coal scuttle at you, I will be honest.”

“And whenever I want to wring your neck and throw your body off Tower Bridge, I will be honest with you,” he returned. He let her slide down his body until her feet touched the carpet; then he cupped her face between his hands and kissed her. Her mouth opened for him and their tongues danced as each tasted the other’s sweetness. His hands gripped her bottom and pressed her to his loins. She felt his erection, hard against her lower belly, and her own instant arousal, the sudden jolt in her belly, the moistness of her sex, the swiftness of her breath.

He took a step towards the sofa, lifting her slightly so her feet were off the ground, and when the seat caught her behind her knees, she fell back and he fell with her. A hand beneath her knees lifted her legs adroitly onto the sofa and he moved to kneel astride her. He glanced once towards the door and Imogen murmured, “Don’t worry. No one would venture in here unless one of us screams.”

“Then try not to be your usual noisy self,” he said with a soft chuckle, bending to kiss the hollow of her shoulder. He moved back a little, closer to her ankles, and slowly began to slide her skirt up her silk-stockinged legs. “We need these off,” he said practically, undoing the waist buttons of her lace drawers. “Lift up.”

Obligingly, Imogen lifted her hips a little and he slipped the garment down her legs to tangle at her ankles. Her stockings were fastened to her chemise with suspenders, and for a moment he looked down at her body, so enticingly revealed, and so enticingly covered. “No need to go any further,” he observed, bending to kiss the tops of her thighs in turn. One hand pressed against the mound at the cleft of her body, fingers twisting in the soft tangle of dark curls, tugging gently until a soft moan escaped her. Smiling, he bent and stopped her mouth with his own, fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. She arched up, her thighs parting to receive him as he pressed within her, and she sighed a little sigh of satisfaction, a desire held too long in abeyance, as he filled her in the remembered way, and began to move as only he knew how, bringing her ever closer to the edge.

Imogen bit down hard on her lower lip to control the little cries that ordinarily she did not have to suppress as her pleasure grew. He knelt over her, watching her, his glowing eyes narrowed with his own pleasure as he increased his speed. The old leather sofa creaked in protest as her body lifted to meet his rhythm and they moved in synchrony, just the sounds of flesh meeting flesh and little gasps and swift breathing, and then Charles put his hands beneath her and held her tight against him as he pushed deep into her and the pleasure exploded around them. He pressed his mouth to hers, forcing her silence, and the waves of delight came over and over, the culmination of so many weeks of deprivation, of frustration, of longing, and of fury.

And when it was over, he let her drop to the sofa and fell heavily on top of her, his legs tangled with hers, their half-discarded garments twisted hopelessly around them. After a while, their breathing slowed, and Charles pushed himself up on his elbows and looked down at her as she lay, dazed still, awash still in the afterglow of passion.

He struggled off the sofa and adjusted his clothing before turning his attention to Imogen. He pulled up her drawers and she lifted her hips again, still with a slightly dazed smile, so that he could button them at her waist. He made a halfhearted attempt to pull down her skirt and then shook his head. “You’ll have to stand up, sweet.”

She reached out her hands and he pulled her to her feet, her skirt falling into place as she did so. She smoothed it down and went to the mirror over the mantel. Her hair was escaping from its pins, her cheeks were flushed, her lips slightly swollen, her eyelids heavy. She glanced at Charles. He looked almost as disheveled as she did. “We can’t show ourselves in public looking like this, darling.”

“No,” he agreed. “Well,
you
can’t. Slip upstairs and I’ll tidy myself quickly and then make a discreet departure. With luck I won’t meet any of your guests.” He drew her against him and kissed her lightly on the corner of her mouth. “We are agreed, then. We start from the beginning?”

“I think maybe we just jumped the gun,” Imogen said with a grin. “Quite a few steps from the beginning, that.”

“True enough.” He returned the grin. “Hurry up now, before they send out a search party.”

She nodded, blew him a kiss, and hurried from the room, running across the hall and up the stairs. She could hear the men’s voices in the billiard room, but the hall was deserted. Esther was presumably in her own room now. Probably waiting for her sister’s report. But Imogen decided she was not yet ready to talk to anyone, not even Esther. She was still suffused in the afterglow of lovemaking, and she still had a great deal to think about before she could marshal her thoughts accurately enough to share them with her sister.