The Scandalous Life of a True Lady (20 page)

“Why doesn’t he go, then? He and Claire could live happily together.”

“Unwed? No society is that forgiving. And he has responsibilities here: tenants, dependents, investments, Parliament. And sons in school.”

“Then I do not see why Claire cannot stay here. She adores being hostess, and they seem perfect together.”

“His wife has suffered a great deal of scandal over the years. I suppose she is tired of being the discarded female, when it is she who holds the purse strings. Or perhaps she worries about when her sons are old enough to be out on the town. Or she may simply be a woman scorned, getting revenge. If she is not happy, why should Gorham be?”

“After twelve years? I’d think she’d be happy to see him in Jamaica, or Hades.”

“Yes, but he won’t go, to Jamaica, that is. I doubt Claire would, either, to give up her singing career. He wants me to consider taking over the plantation instead. A man could go far there, according to him. In the government, in shipping, in agriculture.”

“Is that what you would like to do? For that matter, would your family give up their land to see you go?”

“Hell, no. They don’t want to be rid of me at all, it seems. Lord Royce is hoping I’ll go into the law. Or stand for one of the seats in the Commons he controls. Rex believes I ought to help establish a nation-wide police investigative force. Daniel, well, Daniel sees nothing wrong with my being a wastrel, watching his back in fights, going bail for him.”

“That is no way to live, for either of you!”

“No, but in Jamaica, I could accomplish much. They are still struggling with the slavery issues, repatriation, reparations. There is a lot of intermingling between the British and the natives whether the starchiest swells approve or not.”

She knew what he was saying: A bastard could wed a half-caste more easily there. She could never leave England, though, or her brother. Trying to sound encouraging, she said, “It sounds like an opportunity you’d enjoy.”

He still held her hand, absently rubbing his thumb over her palm. “An adventure without subterfuge or danger or disguise. It has been a long time since I have known such tranquility.” Life was hard for a baseborn child, even if he was loved and cared for. He was always a bastard in British eyes, except when he was someone else.

Simone tried to picture Harry in the tropics, surrounded by brilliantly colored birds and bright flowers hanging from vines. She couldn’t put him in the landscape. The man she saw in her mind was short and square and sweating, a lot like Lord Comden, with whom she’d danced a waltz tonight, since pregnant Alice wasn’t feeling up to the activity. Still, that was her imagination. Harry could decide to leave England. She shivered.

“Feeling cold?”

“No.” Except in that same corner of her heart.

“I am,” he said. He shoved aside his coverings and slid beneath the blankets, her blankets, with her. He pulled her close into his arms. “Ah, that is much better.”

He had his robe on; she had a gown and a robe. He was honorable. That’s what Simone told herself as she returned the embrace, as if her arms could keep him from leaving the country. She knew she could not hold him after this week, but somehow London would be a lonelier, emptier place without so much as a chance of seeing him. She rested her head against his chest. His arms enclosed her, like a waltz, with the beat of their hearts as music. He caressed her back, her neck, the side of her ribs. “Much better. What was it I promised?”

“That my virtue would be intact, even if my reputation was blown to smithereens.”

He kissed her, with a smile. “Intact is intact, but there are vast ranges of virtue, you know.”

She did, from the illustrations in the book.

“May I show you?” One of his hands was already caressing her breast, with the other one reaching for the hem of her nightgown.

“Yes, please.”

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but Harry’s touch was worth a thousand broken hearts.

*

Simone was trapped. A hot, heavy burden lay across her legs. She could never escape the heat or the weight! She jerked awake, only to realize the weight was Harry’s leg, his bare leg, over hers. His arm, his bare arm, was across her chest, pinning her to the bed. He hadn’t… ? She hadn’t… ? She’d wanted to, for certain, and thought she might have begged. Why, she was no better than the other courtesans, maybe worse because she knew he hadn’t gotten his money’s worth. Except that’s not what he was paying her for. Maybe she ought to be paying him for last night. What a muddle, and, blast, could he feel that her nipples were tightening at the scandalous thoughts? She shoved him away.

“You cheated!”

He was awake and smiling, watching her as if he knew the thoughts going through her mind, the guilt and the remembered glory. “I did not. Your maidenhood is as intact as ever. You can go to your husband without a qualm.”

“You took off your robe.”

“Zeus, Noma, you are concerned about that, after I made you moan with a woman’s pleasure?”

She blushed as only a redhead could, like a tomato. She was mortified at what she’d done, at what she’d let a practiced seducer do.

Harry explained, “I got too warm in my robe so I took it off.”

No apology, no regrets? “Put. It. On.”

He started to pull the covers down, exposing his chest and every muscle that rippled when he moved. Then he put a foot out.

“Not now!”

He grinned at her. “When?”

“After I leave.” She got out of bed and marched toward the door to her dressing room. She’d forgotten her apparel was entirely transparent until he said “Thank you.”

*

Harry knew he ought to feel guilty. Damn, he was playing with fire, and semantics. She’d been an innocent, by Jupiter, and she sure as hell wasn’t anymore, except technically. It was her clothes, he told himself, a doxy’s wardrobe. No, her hair, a siren’s beacon. Her dark chocolate eyes that burned so sweetly, her breasts that begged to be cradled in his hands, her caring, her mind, her breasts. Lud, he was getting aroused just thinking about her breasts. Guilty? He felt like a king for giving her pleasure, like a beggar for wanting more, but he did not suffer a shred of regret. Hell, this was government business. And he was only a man. He’d do it again right now if she hadn’t scampered out of the room. He’d pleasure her again tonight if she let him, even if his unsatisfied condition almost killed him.

Since none of the others would be up for hours, Harry suggested they ride into the village for breakfast with Daniel. His stallion needed exercise. Lud knew he did, too. He also wanted her to become more familiar with the bay gelding before the coming race. And he had to hear Daniel’s news.

Simone decided to enjoy the sunny morning, the horses, and Harry’s company. That way she would not have to think about the night. Last night, this night, all the nights to come.

The ride to the village was short, but fast and glorious. The grooms who watched them take off decided to make side bets of their own. The bay could never catch Harry’s black Fidus, of course, but Miss Royale rode like the wind, and didn’t she look a treat in her red and black habit? Harry almost fell behind watching her, wishing her hair was undone and flowing behind her. Hell, he wished she were riding him with that look of ecstasy on her face. Damn, now he was jealous of a horse!

Daniel was not happy to be awakened so early. He was done with his disguise, he said when Simone asked, after she threatened him with her riding crop for deceiving her. “A bunch of other chaps have come down from town to see the race and watch the scramble in the maze. I’m here to support my cousin, don’t you know, nothing untoward about my being in Richmond.”

He was annoyed the maze event had been cancelled, because his money had been on Miss Royale.

Harry was annoyed when Daniel sat close beside her at the breakfast table in the private parlor Harry’d paid for. First a horse, now his hulking cousin, damn. He decided he had to get his mind back on business. “Has Danforth’s apartment been searched?”

Daniel stopped filling his plate with enough food to serve the entire inn. “They didn’t find any letters or journals.”

“Who went?”

“Inspector Dimm and two of Bow Street’s reformed burglars. One to pick the lock, the other to help search, and Dimm to make sure they didn’t take anything else.”

“Dimm wouldn’t miss anything. Damn, then either Danforth is not our man or he has the evidence with him.”

Simone stopped marveling at how much food the cousins could consume to ask, “You think Lord James Danforth is a blackmailer? A duke’s son?”

Harry answered while Daniel kept eating. “He’s the black sheep of the family, and he’s come into too much money for anything honest. He was already on my list, having, ah, visited the house where the documents went missing.”

“Lots of chaps visited her, I’d wager,” Daniel said between mouthfuls. “She’s a popular woman, that one. Too bad she’s too old now, or I’d pay her a call myself. I like spring better’n summer. And autumn— Ouch. Why’d you kick me? Oh. Sorry, Miss Royale. I forget you aren’t family.”

“Just don’t forget she’s a lady,” Harry said with a growl. “As for that other female, it’s too bad she didn’t burn her lovers’ letters and her journals, instead of letting them get stolen.”

Simone thought of how openly the gentlemen at Griffin Woods showed off their mistresses. “Would it be so terrible if people discovered the gentlemen were her lovers? Most of the wives must know by now, no matter what the husbands think or hope. We all know how fast gossip travels, and how far.”

“With those wives, yes, it matters. With those men, so high in the government, yes. And it’s not just the written proof; the woman’s journals recount how much her lovers spent on jewels and horses and furs for her.”

“Royal exchequer money, maybe, or army funds,” Daniel added, reaching for the last slice of beefsteak. “There’d be hell to pay if that got out.”

“There ought to be,” Simone said, in indignation. “That’s misappropriation of funds if I ever heard it.”

“True, but Prinny and his brothers are unpopular enough as is. And she might have exaggerated.”

“Are you certain she isn’t the one collecting the blackmail money?”

“She swears not,” Harry said.

“And you believe her, an immoral woman who has had that many lovers? A whore?” Simone forgot for an instant that a whore was precisely the role she was playing.

The cousins looked at each other, blue eyes to blue eyes.

“Tasted right to me,” Harry said.

“No prickles,” Daniel said.

Simone looked from one to the other, wondering where she had lost the thread of the conversation, or if the Royce men were all lunatics. “Not the beefsteak or the tongue. Did you believe her?”

They both said yes and went back to their meals.

When they were done, Harry said, “I’ll have to search his rooms. Lud, what a row there’d be if Danforth caught me near his concubine, and it’s not like we are friends, visiting back and forth. He’s always been a snob about my birth.”

“He’s a jackass.”

“And he treats Sandaree poorly.”

When Daniel volunteered to conduct the search, Harry turned him down. “You’re too big to skulk in corners, and you don’t belong in the house, not as Harold, not as yourself.”

“Sure I do, at the ball, leastways. I’ve been invited, don’t you know. I can trot upstairs while everyone’s dancing.”

“The servants will know you don’t belong anywhere but the ballroom or the refreshments room.”

“They’ll be too busy serving. And I could say one of the ladies invited me up. That’s not too farfetched at Gorham’s party.”

Harry looked at his large cousin’s rumpled shirt, shaggy hair, and spotted kerchief. “You’ll throw spots, telling that tale.”

“I could do it,” Simone offered, ignoring the nonsense she supposed was cousinly banter. “I can say I am calling on Sandaree to return her book if anyone catches me.”

Daniel wanted to know what book.

“Just a picture book from her country.”

Harry dipped his finger in the honey jar and licked it. Daniel rubbed his ear. They both said no, she could not become a thief.

“It is too dangerous and not your job.”

“I am supposed to be helping, aren’t I? All I’ve done so far is ruffle Claire’s feathers. I still haven’t decided on a performance, either.”

“Your role is to be noticed, and you’ve done it in aces. Metlock can come up with something for me. He always does.”

“Lud, I’d give anything to see you dressed as a house maid!” Daniel laughed so hard tears came to the big man’s eyes. Then he decided to ride back to the manor house with them to scout out the lay of the land.

That almost made Harry weep. He’d had plans to lay Simone down in a secluded glen he’d found. He’d even tied a blanket behind his saddle. Maybe he’d use it to smother his cousin.

Chapter Seventeen

Claire announced over another ample spread at luncheon that the afternoon’s contest was watercolor painting on the lawn. Several of the women groaned. Claire frowned them into silence and explained that they could not hold the archery or billiards contests, card matches, or the horse race, not without the gentlemen’s presence. Most of the men were riding out in search of a rabid dog seen in the neighborhood.

Two women, who could not draw at all, feigned horror at the thought of being outdoors with a mad animal and no one to protect them.

“The servants will be nearby, and those gentlemen who do not wish to ride.” Claire looked down her nose as if such a man was beneath contempt, ensuring that anyone who could, would aid Gorham in ridding the countryside of the danger. “We will all paint Griffin Manor from the front of the house, but affix our initials to the back. The paintings will be displayed in the drawing room before dinner, and the gentlemen will vote for the best. Do you deem that fair, Miss Royale?”

“Exceedingly,” Simone replied to the snide question, unsurprised. Besides being a vocalist of professional caliber, Claire must obviously be a superb artist.

She was. Not many of the other women were, however, so the competition was not fair at all. Only a handful of the ladybirds had been reared in gentility, with the training and education of a lady. Drawing lessons were hard to come by in Seven Dials, or on the farm. Sketching maybe, but watercolors in the poor house? Not likely. The females who plied this trade were lucky if they could read and write, although they all could add their incomes and knew the value of their jewels to the last shilling.