A Rogue's Downfall, page 15
“I was in London,” she said.
“But were not brought out with her?” he said. “Why are you not mingling with your aunt’s guests now?”
“I live in greater luxury here than I knew at the parsonage,” she said. “All my needs are seen to. Mrs. Peabody is to find me a suitable husband.”
“Ah,” he said. “That must be a delightful prospect.”
“Yes,” she said firmly, “it is.”
The trees were thinning. He was not sure he wanted to be seen with her any more than she wished to be seen with him. He stopped, took her hand from his arm, and raised it to his lips.
“My dear little bird,” he said, “we must not be seen consorting in clandestine manner like this. With the greatest reluctance I must part from you. Your beauty makes the sunshine seem dim, you know.”
“Oh.” She fluttered her eyelashes. “I was dreadfully afraid you would not have noticed, sir. I shall go this way. You may go that. So much for my lovely solitary hour.” She sighed and turned to hurry across the grass toward a door at the side of the house.
He watched her go before strolling off in the direction of the terrace at the front of the house. Her step was light, her stride rather long. He could almost picture her with a basket over her arm, delivering food and clothing to the poor in her father’s parish.
What a very amusing and refreshing little creature, he thought. There appeared to be no artifice in her at all. He felt no sexual stirring for her, but he stood and watched her nonetheless, a half smile on his lips. He rather believed he liked her. Liking was something he rarely felt, or thought of feeling, for a woman.
It was very true what she had always thought about the relative merits of dreams and daydreams. Dreams could not be controlled, and they were not always pleasant. Sometimes they were quite the opposite.
She woke up in the middle of the night aching with grief, and she realized that she had actually been crying in her sleep. Her cheeks were wet, she found when she touched them, and her nose felt in dire need of a good blowing. She felt beneath her pillow for a handkerchief, blew hard until she could breathe more comfortably, and tried to remember what had made her so miserable. That was the trouble with dreams. They were often hard to remember even when they had aroused such a real and deep emotion.
Mama’s death, perhaps, and Papa’s following it a scant year later? The contrasts between her life then and her life now? The almost total absence of love from her life now when it had used to be so filled with it? No. She turned back the sheet neatly to her waist and crossed her hands over her stomach. No, she would despise herself if she ever allowed self-pity to rule her. It was such a negative, such an unproductive emotion. She had long ago done all her crying and tucked her memories away into the past. That was the past; this was the present. Perhaps the future would be different again. That was life. In her twenty-two years she had learned that life was unpredictable and that all one could do was live it one day at a time, always refusing to give up hope when times were bad, always consciously enjoying the moment when times were good.
Except that these days there were so few good times. It was a thought not to be dwelled upon. It was too bad that dreams could not be controlled, that one must wake up in the middle of the night bawling like a baby and not even knowing exactly why one wept.
He would be in Mrs. Delaney’s room now, she imagined, her thoughts flitting elsewhere, either sleeping the sleep of the justly exhausted in her arms or else doing with her what would make him exhausted. Was that what had grieved her and then awoken her—the fact that he was not doing either of those things in her bed?
What a strange, shocking thought! And yet her breasts felt uncomfortably taut, and when she reached up one hand she could feel that the nipple she touched was hard against the cotton of her nightgown. And there was an aching throbbing down between her legs.
“Oh, dear God,” she whispered into the darkness. It was a prayer. She followed the introduction with confused apologies for sin and pleas for forgiveness. And then she apologized for her insincerity and promised to enter the Presence again when she was truly sorry and could truly expect forgiveness.
“What must you think of me?” she asked God.
God held his peace.
For the first time in a long while she had stopped being a shadow. Just for a few minutes. He had talked to her and looked at her and laughed at her and insulted her and kissed her hand and mocked her with that silly compliment about the sunshine and called her his little bird. And what had she done? She had talked back and matched wits with him and scolded him and set her arm through his and—oh, yes, she might as well admit the ultimate humiliation.
She had gone and tumbled headlong in love with him.
Stupid woman. Idiotic woman. Imbecile.
She had despised Nancy for wanting him when she knew that he was a dreadful, unprincipled rake. Yet now she was being as bad as Nancy. Horrid, ghastly thought. He was here at the house to court Nancy. He would be married to her before the end of the summer in all probability. And yet he had tumbled Flossie yesterday morning—Patricia was not so naive as really to believe that he had merely kissed the girl. And tonight he was feasting upon the almost fat and definitely voluptuous Mrs. Delaney—a married lady. And beneath the roof of his future father-in-law’s house.
Was there ever such an unprincipled rogue?
Yet she was besotted with him because he had asked who she was and then demanded further details. Because he had a handsome face and compelling dark gray eyes and a manly muscular figure and elegant costly clothes. And because she had felt his lips and his breath against the back of her hand. Because for a few minutes she had come out of the shadows and had been dazzled by the sunshine. She made the sunshine look dim, he had said, deliberately teasing her with the lavishly untrue compliment, knowing that she would have some answer to amuse him.
Idiot. Imbecile. Fool. She set her mind to thinking of a few other names to call herself. And she fished the damp handkerchief from beneath her pillow again. She was going to need it when she had finally scolded her snivelings to a halt.
She hated him. He could have played the gentleman and pretended not to have seen her up the tree. He could have gone away and left her to enjoy the pattern the branches made against the sky. But oh, no, he had had to talk to her and make her fall in love with him.
Oh, she hated him. She hoped that he was not finding Mrs. Delaney enjoyable after all. She quite fervently hoped it.
He was finding Mrs. Delaney something of a disappointment. Oh, she was quite as voluptuous without her clothes as with them, and she was quite as skilled as she was reputed to be and quite as eager to give whatever pleasure he demanded and in whatever manner and at whatever pace he chose. If she had been able to keep her mouth shut, he might have found himself thoroughly contented to bed only her for the remainder of his stay at Holly House and to forget about the other three prospects he had in mind.
But the lady liked to talk. While he undressed her and she undressed him. While they were engaged in foreplay. While he had her mounted. And after they were finished. He never minded a certain amount of eroticism whispered into his ear or even shouted out to him at the most crucial moments of a sexual encounter. It could be marvelously arousing. He liked to do it himself.
What he did not particularly enjoy—what he did not enjoy at all, in fact—was having the events of the previous day mulled over when his body was clamoring to shut down the workings of his mind or to have gossip repeated and commented upon while he labored to make the lady as mindless as he. He did not expect love from her—heaven forbid!—but he did expect a little respect for his famed prowess as a lover. The woman came to lusty climax each time he mounted her body, and it seemed genuine enough, but he never knew quite where it came from. It was almost as if, like Flossie and her ilk, she needed only the last couple of minutes for her own pleasure but was quite willing to grant him all the extra minutes provided he would allow her to make free with his ears while she waited for the good part.
During the second night and perhaps the seventh or eighth encounter all told, he loved her almost languidly in his tiredness and actually opened up his ears to hear what she was saying. She was planning the rest of their summer—their summer. He was to go to Brighton, where Mr. Delaney was a minor player in Prinny’s court. They would have to be moderately discreet, but Mr. Delaney would not make any great fuss anyway. Mr. Delaney, it seemed, had a greater love for clothes and gossip than he had for any exertions of the body. In the autumn they would go to Bath, where Mrs. Delaney had an aged aunt. It was unclear where Mr. Delaney would be, but regardless the affair was to flourish in Bath until the winter drew them back to London. Mr. Bancroft, Mrs. Delaney knew, owned a very superior love nest there where they could meet once or twice a week. Or perhaps more often—she nipped his earlobe with her sharp teeth as an inducement to him to make it three or four times a week.
He finished what he was doing to her, having the good manners to allow her to shout out her own completion first, disengaged himself from her, reluctantly shook off the need to try to doze for a while, and promptly decided it was time for his crisis of conscience.
“It is a dream utopia, love,” he said, regret in his voice. “It cannot be done. Your husband—”
Mrs. Delaney cozied up to him in such a way that if he had not already had her seven or eight times during the past one and three-quarter nights, his temperature might have soared. As matters were, it stayed exactly where it was.
“It weighs heavily on my conscience to have usurped another man’s rights,” he lied after she had protested. “You are too beautiful for your own good, my dear, and I am too weak for mine. But we must not continue. Let it end here, and let me be able to remember that for two all too brief nights I knew heaven on earth.”
The lady, he thought as he tiptoed to his own room in some relief several minutes later, did not know the rules of the game for all her reputed experience. He wondered in some alarm if after all she was smitten with him. Surely she did not put up this much fuss every time a lover shed her. Or was she more accustomed to doing the shedding?
It did not matter. He was free of her. He would give himself tomorrow night in which to recuperate and then see what he could accomplish with Lady Myron, widow. She was a quiet lady, tall and nicely shaped, older than he at a guess, and unknown to him before this week. He had no tangible reason to believe that she was not a perfectly virtuous woman apart from certain looks she was throwing his way. More than once—he was certainly not imagining them. Come-hither looks if he had ever seen any. Well, he would try coming thither and see what came of it.
In the meantime he felt as if he had at least a week of sleep to catch up on and only a few hours in which to do it, unless he slept until noon, as some of the ladies were in the habit of doing.
But the annoying thing was, he discovered over the coming hour as he lay in his own bed, at first flat on his back, and then curled on his right side and then stretched on his left and then spread-eagled on his stomach, that sleep just would not come. He was beyond the point of exhaustion. That damned woman was inexhaustible. She was always ready to settle for a good gossip when his body was screeching for sleep. Of course, she never expended her energy as recklessly as he did. She must have learned that from experience. Now whenever he seemed in some danger of nodding off, he found that he was bracing himself for her next sally into conversation—even though she was a few rooms away.
Damn the woman. Damn all women. They would be the death of him. Sometimes he wondered if all the pleasure to be derived from them was worth the effort. And he must be exhausted to the point of death if he was starting to feel that way, he thought, kicking off the bedclothes and levering himself off the bed to go and stand naked at his window. Dawn was graying the landscape already. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair and blew out air from puffed cheeks.
Maybe it was just that he was getting old. Twenty-nine on his next birthday, though it was still more than eight months away. Almost thirty. Time to be settling down. He could almost hear his mother saying the words in her sweet and quiet voice. He grimaced and wondered if he should stagger back to bed or get dressed and go for a vigorous ride.
And then he leaned forward to peer downward. A shadow flitted out from below him and darted across the lawn leading to the trees and the lily pond. A shadow that looked as if it was clad in a gray cloak and hood. A shadow that looked female. And small.
He found himself grinning. She had not lied. He must have seen her at least half a dozen times before he had caught sight of her up in the old oak tree. Almost wherever Mrs. Peabody went in the house, her little gray shadow went with her. The little shadow was made to carry and fetch—stools and shawls and embroidery and vinaigrettes and a dozen and one other things. She did it all with a quiet grace and downcast eyes. And it was true—incredibly true—that no one else seemed aware of her existence. Just as one could stand in the large hall of a grand house, he supposed, and think oneself alone when all the time there were perhaps a dozen silent footmen lining the walls, waiting to open doors or run errands.
In the day and a half since he had become aware of her, he had not once—not once!—been able to catch her eye. But knowing that she had eyes and ears and intelligence and a sense of humor and a quick wit, he had set about amusing her by being lavish in his attentions to Mrs. Peabody and untiring in his flattery of Miss Peabody.
She had brightened that day and a half for him. She was not at all pretty, especially since he could get no glimpse of her eyes, and she was far too small and had a figure that was trim but not in any way luscious. Her clothes were abominable, and the best that could be said of her hair was that it shone and looked clean and healthy. And yet it amused him to know that he was one of the few people at Holly House who was even aware of her existence. And to know that she was hearing every lying, flattering word he uttered and was silently scolding him.
And now she was off to her retreat again, fleeing the nest before her day of drudgery was to start. Poor girl. He felt an unaccustomed wave of compassion for her. He was not famed as a compassionate man.
He looked back at his rumpled bed with some distaste. If he lay down again, he would not sleep, he knew, especially now that daylight was beginning to replace darkness. And there was nothing worse than lying in bed, tired and unable to sleep. Much better to get dressed and stroll down to the lily pond to tease a certain little bird. He remembered her sighing and lamenting the lost hour of solitude—lovely solitude, she had called it. But he shrugged his shoulders.
He was not famed as a considerate man, either.
He walked through to his dressing room and lit a candle.
Sometimes she walked in the early morning down to the crescent-shaped lake. It was always deserted and lovely at that time of day. But there was something just a little too artificial about it. It had been constructed and landscaped to be lovely and it was, but it was a man-made loveliness. Sometimes she took the longer walk back to the hill behind the house so that she could see the surrounding countryside. She liked to do that particularly if there was likely to be some trailing mist in the lowland to add drama to the scene. But almost always, at whatever time of day she was able to get away by herself, she went to the lily pond. It was secluded and rather neglected. It was hers.
There had been no dew last night. She tested the grass with one hand, brushing it hard back and forth. Her hand remained dry. She sat down on the bank, drew her knees up, wrapped her cloak more closely about her for warmth, and clasped her legs with her arms.
It was the time of day she loved most—early dawn, even before the sun rose. She was not quite sure why she liked it, since it was a gray time of day. Perhaps it was the knowledge that there was a whole new day ahead. Perhaps it was the hope that the sun would rise to a cloudless sky and that the whole day would be correspondingly bright. Perhaps it was just that she knew this early in the day that there were still several hours to go before her aunt would summon her and begin the constant demand for service. Not that that in itself was something to be dreaded—Patricia had always led a busy life and did not enjoy endless idleness. But she could never please. There was always irritability in her aunt’s voice when it was directed at her. If she set the second cup of chocolate of the morning on the left side of the bed, she should have set it at the right. And if she set it at the right, then it should have been placed at the left. It never failed. And the rest of the day always proceeded accordingly.
Patricia sighed and rested one cheek on her up-drawn knees. She had had that dream again last night, whatever it was. She had woken up again with wet eyes and aching heart. She would be glad when all the guests were gone. Though of course then there would probably be a wedding to prepare and the certain knowledge that soon Nancy and he ...
She closed her eyes. No, she would not think of him. How very amused he would be if he knew ... And how irate her aunt would be. And how contemptuous Nancy would be.
He was quite shameless in his flattery of both her aunt and Nancy. It amazed her that they both seemed to lap it all up as a cat would cream. Could they not see that the man was all artifice, that he never spoke a true word? And had they not seen the complacent looks of Mrs. Delaney yesterday? The fact that she had spent a very satisfactory night in bed with Mr. Bancroft seemed to be written large over her whole person. And had they not noted the looks Lady Myron and Mr. Bancroft were exchanging? They were lascivious looks, to say the least.
Was he spending half a night in each lady’s bed? And devouring Flossie for breakfast? Patricia hoped that he would drop dead of exhaustion. Oh, yes, she really did. Men with such low morals ought not to be allowed to live on to enjoy them. And any woman who allowed herself to fall into his clutches was quite as bad as he and quite as deserving of a bad end.
