The Scandalous Life of a True Lady (16 page)

Simone stepped away before he noticed she was trembling. “You’ll muss it and Metlock will be furious and we will be late for dinner.”

He smiled. “We cannot have that, can we?” He fastened the chain around her neck, then turned her around to adjust the large pendant to rest in the valley between her breasts. He kissed there too. Simone gasped.

“Is it cold against your skin?”

No, it was on fire.

*

Their hostess was sulking after dinner. The men, after much argument and a few bottles, had convinced Gorham to change the singing portion of the tourney to a talent show. The ballet dancer could compete against the trick horse rider. One of the actresses could perform after Miss Althorp, who fancied herself a poetess, and so on. A few of the women would provide the entertainment each evening, with all of the men, not merely their host, voting for the winner.

No one wanted to be first, not without practice and preparation, so this night was declared a holiday from the competition. Claire refused to sing, saving her voice for her actual performance, but someone suggested music anyway. Two of the women sang country tunes while Noma and a few of the others took turns at the pianoforte. Several gentlemen joined in the choruses, and soon the drawing room was resounding with rollicking tavern songs.

“Would you care for cards?” Harry asked Simone when the verses turned risqué and the wine turned to potent punch. “They are getting up tables in another room.”

Two couples seemed to be playing for articles of clothing, instead of points, to bystanders’ inebriated hilarity. Harry led Simone to a quieter corner, facing away from the outrageous exhibition. They played piquet, and after three games, Harry warned her not to count on winning that round of the competition.

She hadn’t been counting on anything, not the cards in her hand or the points on the score sheet, only the number of garments tossed onto the floor with each raucous outburst. She knew her face must be scarlet enough to clash with her hair.

“Shall we call it a night, my dear?” Harry asked, gallantly coming to her rescue. “It’s been a long day.”

It was going to be a longer night, sharing a bedroom with a man who’d betrayed her trust, and whose kisses turned her mind to mush. “How about a chess match?”

Chapter Thirteen

“You are still angry at me, aren’t you?” Harry asked later that night.

“What gives you that idea?” Simone answered from within the tightly drawn curtains of the canopied bed.

Harry looked at the closed hangings surrounding the bed, then at the stack of pillows and blankets on the floor near the hearth. A familiar velvet box rested on top of the pile. “Oh, a lucky guess, I suppose.” He sighed loudly enough to be heard from within Simone’s draped cocoon. “The floor covering is not very thick, you know.”

“Your skin cannot be all that thin, not with the barbs that bounced off you tonight. Harry the Heartbreaker, humph. There are extra blankets in the dressing room. Put another down over the rug.”

He sighed again. “I’ll wake up with a stiff neck and a sore back.”

The silence from the direction of the bed told how much Simone cared about his comfort.

“What if Metlock or Sarah comes into the room early and sees me sleeping on the floor? Worse, what if one of Gorham’s servants enters to rekindle the fire and trips over me? How will we explain that?”

“We won’t need to explain anything if you simply lock the door. I’d suppose, in this household, the servants are used to waiting until they are called.”

He didn’t bother sighing another time, realizing he’d get no sympathy. “You are a hard woman, Miss Noma Royale. And a cheat. I think you moved your king while I helped pick Sir Chauncey Phipps off the floor.”

“I won.”

“Too bad we were not playing for kisses like some of the others.”

“I would not do such a thing!”

“I know, and I apologize for exposing you to the unseemly behavior, but it’s part and parcel of this affair.”

A loud sniff was the only answer.

He kicked at the pile of blankets, muttering about how far a man had to crawl for a decent night’s sleep. He tried flattery this time. “You looked magnificent tonight and played your part well. Not overacting, not overreacting to my loverlike attentions. Those little cooing sounds you made were just the right touch.”

He’d heard them? Simone groaned, but tried to hide the sound in the bedcovers.

Harry went on: “No one would know that you are a respectable female.”

“I am not a proper lady. I’m here, aren’t I? I am an actress, or worse.” The worst was how she enjoyed it, his hand on her shoulder, his arm brushing her breast as if by accident, the whispers in her ear. “I am not respectable at all.”

Harry thought he heard a fist pound a pillow. So much for flattery. “You are performing a role, remember that, not living a life of moral turpitude. We need to talk about that role before we go any further. We have to get our stories straight, before anyone catches us in a discrepancy. I brushed the questions aside with vague answers tonight, but a few of the worst gossips are persistent. So were two wantwits thinking to take my place in the middle of the house party. I do not want them looking for answers on their own.”

Simone had to agree, since she’d met with more questions over sherry in the drawing room, then pointed queries from the gentlemen on either side of her during dinner, and the women again afterward. “We should have talked days ago.”

“You are right, but that was impossible. May I come closer to the bed, so we can converse now? I’d hate to have to shout, not knowing how thick Gorham’s walls are.”

“I do not trust you.”

Rightfully. He was already opening the hanging bed curtains. Simone pulled the covers closer to her chin because the nightrail she wore covered her as well as a spider web might have.

Sarah had not bothered to pack her old flannel gown or robe, claiming they were fit for the fire, not even the poor box. The new garments, ones Simone had never selected—she prayed Mr. Harris had not, either—were all equally as sheer, silky, and siren-like. Simone was not letting anyone, least of all the handsome man at the foot of her bed, think she was acting the seductress in her own chambers. The role stopped at the bedroom door. That was the deal they’d made.

She had not bargained on Harry by candlelight, by all the saints and stars. He looked magnificent in his brocade robe, with the sash tied low enough to reveal the vee of his bare chest, with the faintest covering of dark hair. His shoulders were broad, his waist narrow. His lower legs were muscular, well-formed, and also bare. So were his feet, which was worse. “You are not wearing a nightshirt or slippers,” she accused, pointing to the opening in the draperies. “Go. I cannot talk to a half-naked man.”

“I am sorry, but I could not find where Metlock hid my slippers, and I only wear a nightshirt in the dead of winter, to avoid chills.”

The chill emanating from the bed right now ought to have sent him back to the fireplace. Instead he asked if he could lie next to her on the mattress, the better to converse.
A
I promise not to remove my robe.”

Simone reached for the fireplace poker she’d stuck under the top blanket.

“Right, I’ll just sit at the foot of the bed. And keep my feet on the floor and my eyes averted.” He’d try anyway. Between the firelight let into the cavernous bed and the candle on the nightstand, her hair gleamed like molten lava, flowing down her shoulders. Her bare shoulders, he noticed when she reached for the weapon. He took a deep breath and turned to stare at the embers in the fireplace. “I promised your virtue was safe from me.”

But was it safe from her own wayward thoughts? Simone ignored the traitorous little voice in the back of her mind. She pulled her feet to one side, giving him more room, and more distance. “I am not worried about my own virtue, which I firmly intend to protect, promises or not. But I worry about young Sally. Sarah, that is. I do not wish this kind of life for myself, or for her. After one night, I am more certain than ever.”

“As I am certain you do not belong among the birds of paradise.” Simone’s quick gasp gave him pause. “No, not that you are not as beautiful or accomplished as they are, but that you are made of finer stuff. Bringing you here was like setting a Thoroughbred among cart horses, serving Champagne in an earthen jug. You should not have heard half the conversations tonight.”

Simone was so pleased by his comments, his estimation of her worth, that she decided to be generous. “Oh, proper ladies can be just as scandalous. At my last place of employment, the baroness entertained her friends in a sitting room directly below my bedchamber. The sounds carried up the chimney.”

“And you listened? My, my. A cheat at chess and an eavesdropper. I am disappointed, madam.”

She knew he was teasing, but still defended herself. “I could not avoid hearing them. They did not simply gossip about others like Mrs. Olmstead did, but they recounted their own affairs and immoral intentions. I accidentally heard of this one’s cicibeo, that one’s new under butler. Thank goodness the children did not hear them, except for when the baroness requested their presence in the drawing room during tea. Those titled ladies did not cease discussing one wife’s plans to leave her husband because of his lack of…of…”

“Vitality?” Harry supplied, flashing a wicked grin that signified he’d never suffer such a deficiency.

Simone ignored him. “And other improper conversations. I prayed the children did not understand and hustled them out of there. So no, I was not shocked by the women’s talk tonight. Their actions were more lewd, perhaps, but allowances must be made because of their desperate situations.”

“Desperate? They are some of the highest paid courtesans in all of England.”

“But for how long before their lord tires of them? They are all as beautiful as you said. Of course that are. No man chooses a homely mistress, does he? Well, he might if he liked her, but he would not bring her to this gathering.”

“No, a less attractive female would only feel inferior.”

“Precisely. What happens when the
jeune filles
, the
filles du jour
, grow into matrons of middle years? Their complexions less rosy, their figures less firm? How well paid will they be then? I believe every female here feels the sands of time running out, so they all strive to keep their beaus happy as long as they can. Mostly, they all want to win some of the prize money from the contest. They fight for their futures, the same way I do.”

“You do not blame them for choosing the
demi-monde
? For breaking every law of society?”

“Many of them had no choice. I would be in their shoes right now, and in some gentleman’s bed, except for your kindness.”

“You are in some gentleman’s bed,” Harry pointed out, disgruntled that his feet were getting cold. “Mine.”

“But we have a different arrangement from Claire or Mimi or Madeline. Becoming a harlot for hire was their only choice. Did you know that Captain Entwhistle’s lady friend Daisy came to London to find work to support her family in the country? An abyss met her at the posting house and offered her a room until she found a seamstress position. The room was in a brothel!”

“That is all too common a story. Country girls have always been duped into prostitution. The government does not do enough to protect them from unscrupulous procurers. And no, Lyddie would never resort to waylaying innocents.”

Simone nodded. “Mrs. Burton’s employees appeared content. Daisy was not. If the captain had not found her and been charmed into buying her contract, she’d be there still. She says she might be forced back into that business when he moves on to another pretty girl. And Miss Morrow is breeding. What happens to her and her child if Lord Comden does not support her? He gave her a diamond ring, when what she needs is a gold band. And the Indian woman who’d been a slave? She knows no one in London and barely speaks the language. What happens to her if her protector gambles his new fortune away and cannot win another, as was whispered tonight? The women doubt Lord James Danforth will permit her to keep any of the money, if she wins the contests.”

“The duke’s son? I did not know he was below hatches, or recently come into money. I will have to look into his finances to see how he can afford a concubine and this house party. That is just the hint I hoped to gather, a lead to follow.”

“Then at least some good will come from this wretched house party. I regret thinking I could be content with this kind of life.”

“I regret the necessity of bringing you here.”

“It was my choice.”

“I could have found another way, another woman.”

“No, for you are giving me the chance to better my prospects. Why should you regret anything? This is the life you live, by your own choice also.”

“I live many lives, not all of them by my wishes or preferences. I do what I have to. Soon enough I hope to put all that behind me. I’ve been thinking of asking Lord Royce to sell me that land. I don’t want him leaving me anything in his will that should go to Rexford and his son. Thanks to him and his advice, I have the funds to invest.”

“I cannot picture you as a country squire.”

“A horse breeder, maybe. I have not decided. Perhaps I’ll travel now that it is possible, but a place to come home to sounds appealing. A house that is all my own, where I do not have to hide my identity.”

“With a wife and children?”

“For one such as I? That is harder to imagine.”

Not for Simone. She could almost see three children scampering across a wide lawn while young colts frolicked on a hill in the distance. The children were two dark-haired boys and one red-headed girl who chased her brothers while the proud parents held hands in a gazebo.

Harry’s hand? Simone was holding Harry’s hand? She dropped it quickly. Gads, when had he climbed up beside her to rest against the pillows? “I knew I could not trust you!”

“I haven’t done anything! We’re only talking, aren’t we? I was getting a cramp in my leg, that’s all. And, look, you are under the covers and I am not. I’ll fetch those blankets so my toes don’t turn blue, all right?”