Jane Feather - [V Series] (39 page)

“I suspect Marcus is turning his interests to politics, now that there aren’t any wars being fought,” Judith said. “And Wellington is certainly turning his attention that way. Marcus says it’s because the duke has a very simple political philosophy: He’s the servant of the Crown and obliged to do his duty by it in whatever way is necessary—on the battlefield or in Parliament. He’s the most popular man in the country and he has such influence in the Lords, he can probably coordinate the Tories in a way that Liverpool can’t.” She frowned. “I wonder if Marcus is looking at a post in any ministry Wellington might set up. Funny, I only just thought of that.”

“My sister a cabinet minister’s wife,” Sebastian said with mock awe. “You’d best hurry home and charm your husband’s guests.”

“Curiously, I don’t find Wellington in the least intimidating,” Judith said. “Maybe because I once spent the night sleeping on a table in his headquarters. And he’s a shocking flirt,” she added.

“Then I’m sure you and he get on like a house on fire,” her brother teased.

Judith arrived home to find a note waiting for her. It was from the Earl of Gracemere, calling in her debt of honor with the request of the pleasure of her company the following night at a public ridotto at Ranelagh. Frowning, Judith took the note up to her bedchamber and rang for Millie. She thrust the invitation to the back of a drawer in her secretaire while she waited for her abigail.

Bernard had chosen a curious location for the payment of her debt. A public ridotto was a vulgar masquerade, one not in general frequented by members of the ton. But perhaps that was the point. Maybe he was considerately ensuring the secrecy of the rendezvous. And then again … What she knew of Gracemere didn’t lend itself to consideration. He was much more likely to be making mischief.

She wasn’t going to go, of course. But how to refuse the invitation without Gracemere’s questioning her good faith in their friendship? If she put his back up this late in the game, she’d have little enough time to repair the damage before the Duchess of Devonshire’s ball, and on that night she would have to stick closer to Gracemere than his shadow.

“My lady … which gown, my lady?”

“I beg your pardon, Millie?” Abstracted, she looked up. Millie was standing patiently beside the armoire.

“Which gown will you wear this evening, my lady?”

“Oh.” Judith frowned, turning her attention to this all important question. “The straw-colored sarsenet, I think.”

“With the sapphires,” Marcus said from the connecting door. He lounged against the door jamb, fastening the buttons on his shirt cuffs, his black eyes twinkling. “They’ll draw attention to the décolletage of
that gown, which, as I recall is somewhat dramatic. The duke will appreciate it.”

Judith chuckled. “And one must please one’s guests, after all.”

“It’s the duty of a host,” he agreed with gravity.

“And of a wife to further her husband’s ambitions,” she said in dulcet tones.

Marcus’s smile was wry. “So you guessed?”

“What post appeals? Foreign secretary … home secretary, perhaps?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know yet. It depends on what Peel and Canning want. Anyway, nothing’s going to happen for a while. I’m just interested in preparing the ground.”

“Well, I’ll charm your guests,” she said. “But Castlereagh’s a dour individual. I’m sure he disapproves of flirtation.”

Marcus laughed. “Never mind. It’s with Wellington that my political future lies, my love.”

Judith put her problem with Gracemere out of her head for the evening, devoting her single-minded attention to her husband’s interests. It was a fascinating evening and she fell asleep in the early hours of the morning, thinking that she might well enjoy a role as political hostess.

It was bright sunshine when Marcus was awakened the next morning by the pretty chiming of the clock on the mantelshelf. It was nine o’clock, but Judith was still unstirring beside him. He hitched himself on one elbow to look down at her.

She lay on her back, her arms flung above her head, her lips slightly parted with the deep, even, trusting breath of a secure child. In sleep, without the usual vibrancy of expression, she appeared younger than her years and definitely more vulnerable. Her skin smelled
warm and soft, redolent of a curious, babylike innocence—an innocence quite at odds with the charming, sophisticated hostess of the previous evening.

Perhaps he should have expected an upbringing spent racketing around the Continent to produce such a poised, well-informed, worldly cosmopolite. But he didn’t think she’d been mixing in the first circles on her travels. And yet she never put a foot wrong; she behaved with all the assurance of an aristocrat, all the confidence of one who’d never gone without anything in her life. And Sebastian was the same. George Davenport must have been quite a character to have produced two such children in such unfavorable circumstances. Not for the first time, Marcus wondered about the Davenport antecedents. Judith always said she knew nothing about her family origins. Their father had insisted they were irrelevant and as a family they had to create themselves. Marcus supposed he could see the reasoning.

He lay down beside Judith again, his thigh resting against the warm, satiny length of her leg. It was impossible to resist the slow, gentle heat rising in his loins at the feel and the scent of her. With a tiny sigh of contented resignation, delicately, as if reluctant to wake her, he turned her onto her side, facing away from him. She murmured, but it was a wordless sound that came from sleep. He fitted his body against hers, and in sleep she nuzzled her bottom into his belly. He slipped his hand between her thighs, feeling for the sleep-closed entrance to her body with a tender, gossamery caress. He smiled as he felt her body responding without any prompting from her mind. She murmured again and drew her knees up, pushing backward in wordless invitation.

He slipped inside her, his hands caressing her breasts, his face buried in the fragrant burnished tumble of her hair, and she tightened around him, the soft, sweet velvet
sheath enclosing him, so that he became a part of her. He felt her body come alive as she returned to full awareness, and it was as if his own body were a part of her waking process. He could feel the blood beginning to flow swiftly in her veins, vigor to fill the muscles and sinews of her body, the sharp clarity of a newly awakened brain. Fancifully he imagined he was giving birth to her, creating her for the new day.

“Good morning, lynx,” he whispered into her hair as the ripples of pleasure filled her body.

She chuckled sleepily. “That was a very thoughtful way to wake someone up.” Rolling onto her back again, she blinked up at him as he hung over her, his black eyes soft with his own pleasure. She touched his mouth with a fingertip. “Did you sleep well?”

“Beautifully.” He swung himself out of bed, stretched and yawned. “What plans do you have for the day?”

Judith sat up against the pillows, enjoying the view. Marcus, naked, was a sight for sore eyes. However, the question brought the day’s main issue to the forefront of her mind again. “Oh, I think I might ride with Sebastian this morning,” she said vaguely. She would take the problem to her brother and between them they would come up with a solution.

Marcus blew her a kiss and left her, and Judith threw off the covers, pulling the bellrope for Millie.

In fact, the solution was remarkably simple. “Go to Ranelagh,” Sebastian said. “And I’ll ensure that I’m there with a large group of my own friends. We’ll all be a trifle foxed, of course, very jolly and quite impossible to shake off. Gracemere will have your company, but you’ll also be in the unexceptional company of your brother. You’ll tell Marcus as soon as you get home, but you won’t need to mention Gracemere, and I’ll lay odds he’ll think nothing
of it. If he objects to your going to such a vulgar masquerade, you can put up with a scolding.”

Judith pulled a rueful face. “Marcus’s scoldings aren’t much fun.”

“In this case, it’s a small price to pay.”

Judith wasn’t so sure, but she said no more.

S
ebastian’s plan worked like a charm. Marcus was engaged to dine with friends and was not in the house to see his wife leave, a cream domino and loo mask over one arm. Awaiting her in a hired chaise at the corner of the square was Gracemere.

Judith greeted him with a brilliant smile. “Such an adventure, my lord,” she gushed with all the enthusiasm of a child being given a treat. “I’ve never been to a public ridotto before.”

The earl bowed over her hand. “Then I’m honored to be the first to introduce you to its pleasures.” He handed her into the chaise and climbed in after her. “I trust you’ll be pleased with Ranelagh. It’s said by some to be prettier than Vauxhall.”

It was a relatively mild evening and Judith would
have been enchanted by her first sight of the gardens, brilliantly lit by myriad golden lanterns, if she hadn’t had other things on her mind. She had to ensure that she and her companion met up with Sebastian’s party before they all became lost in the anonymous throng parading along the gravel walks in dominoes and masks.

“I’d like to dance,” she said. “May we go to the pavilion?”

“By all means.” The earl bowed and took the loo mask from her. “Allow me.”

She endured the feel of his fingers deftly tying the strings of the mask, struggling to hold herself away from him without giving him any indication of the depths of her revulsion. She left the cream domino hanging open from her shoulders, revealing her ball gown of sapphire taffeta. It was a startling color that set her hair on fire, and Sebastian would have little difficulty recognizing his sister in the crowd, despite the mask.

They had circled the ballroom only once, before Sebastian saw them. He was in a group of friends, lounging against the wall, ogling the dancers with the appearance of those who’ve escaped from the restraints of convention and are determined to enjoy themselves in whatever outrageous fashion presented itself. They held tankards of porter and blue ruin, and were imbibing freely as they exchanged indelicate observations on the company.

“Good God, it’s m’sister,” Sebastian declared, his voice slightly slurred, as Judith and Gracemere came within earshot.

Judith felt her partner’s sudden rigidity. “Sebastian,” she called, breaking free from the earl. “What are you doing here? Isn’t it a famous adventure? I’ve never seen such people. Do you know, there were people chasing each other around the lily pond just now. They’d taken their masks off … Oh, my lord, I beg your pardon.”
She turned with a radiant smile to the earl, whose expression was well hidden by his mask. “What a coincidence. My brother’s here, too.”

“So I see.” Gracemere bowed. “Your sister had a great desire to sample the delights of a public ridotto, Davenport. I offered my services as escort.”

“Why, Ju, you know I would have escorted you m’self,” Sebastian said reproachfully. “But let me make you known to my friends.”

A woman in a green domino moved out of the window embrasure as Judith took her brother’s arm. There was no mischief to be wrought here, no tale of tarnished virtue to bear to the Most Honorable Marquis of Carrington. Agnes Barret went home.

From then on, the earl’s carefully constructed scheme of seduction disintegrated. Sebastian, in the merry fuzziness engendered by gin and porter, remained convinced that Gracemere could only be as delighted as they all were at this serendipitous meeting, and nothing would satisfy him but that they should join together and have supper in one of the rotundas, where they could observe the cits and the ladies of the demimonde to their hearts’ content. Several jesting references were made to the Marquis of Carrington’s possible reactions to his wife’s indulging herself in such vulgar fashion, and Judith seemed to become as tipsy as her brother and his companions as the evening wore on.

Gracemere could do nothing but sit amid the rowdy group, waiting impatiently for the evening to end. He felt like an elderly uncle who’d strayed into a party of exuberant youth. Judith’s behavior was certainly inappropriate for the Marchioness of Carrington, but her identity was well concealed behind her mask, should any other members of the ton have also decided to pass such an unconventional evening. But in any event, she could
be accused only of an excess of high spirits. There was nothing of which to make a public scandal, and no capital that the earl could make out of his escort. Instead of a private, intimate supper in a dimly lit box, they were supping very publicly under the full glare of a dozen candelabra in the company of Judith’s brother. If it ever became known, Society’s censure would be slight, tempered with indulgence. Instead of moving flirtation down the paths of overt seduction, he was obliged to watch his prey’s disintegration into a giggling ingenue, leaning against her brother for the physical support she needed so vitally. He assumed Agnes had returned home.

At the end of the evening, he was forced to endure Sebastian’s rollicking company in the chaise. He couldn’t refuse his request for a ride home without it seeming most peculiar, so he sat in the corner of the chaise balefully listening to the brother and sister’s drunken giggles and infelicitous observations.