Love and Scandal, page 12
“Shall we go?” she said pointedly, indicating the entrance to the box.
Jameson, who had been as motionless as Collette and had stared just as steadily into her eyes, moved finally, and bowed for them to precede him from the box. They exited the box into the dim hall that led to the stairs.
“Will you go for a drive with me tomorrow?”
Collette jumped. The words, in Jameson’s deep baritone, were almost directly into her ear, and his warm breath teased at the tendrils escaping her severe bun. She gasped and said, “I…I…I…”
“Say you will,” he murmured. “We do need to talk and we cannot with a third person nearby unless Mrs. Bertrand is in on your little secret?”
He left the question dangling, and Collette shot a worried glance at her friend’s back. It was true Philoxia did not know, and even though they were going on to a ball after the opera, she and Jameson would not be able to talk about such an intense subject without it looking most peculiar. “I am staying at the Chapter Coffeehouse,” she whispered over her shoulder. “I will be in the coffee room at ten in the morning.”
London in summer. The upper crust deserted it in droves for Brighton or Margate, or went to their homes in the country for shooting. But there was a part of society that existed for London, and so even after the end of the season, in late August, into September, there were enough people of adequate class to still hold parties and the occasional ball, but more often breakfasts and teas, literary salons and excursions to the countryside, to Surrey or Richmond.
Jameson always had invitations to country houses. Acquaintances with eligible daughters inundated him with casual and sometimes frantic invitations to “come to the house, come down and shoot for a week or two, get out to the countryside, do you some good!” After which hearty phrases they usually gave a weak laugh. Their real business was to find a rich, eligible husband for their Lucy or Alice, Beatrice or Anne. But Jameson was not, nor had he ever been, in the market for a wife, not even the most obliging, biddable kind.
Why should he marry? He was rich but not titled, and so he had no duty to sire an heir of his flesh. The Jameson name lived on in other branches of the family, even if he had cared for such things as lineage. Pleasures of the flesh he could satisfy easily enough by taking a mistress, his preferred route, or by attending houses maintained for the sexual needs of wealthy men. His habitual boredom, he had always thought, would only be intensified by some clamoring wife, always wanting his attention, restless from her lack of inner resources, looking to him to supply her with entertainment.
And so, with no family to think of, he lived in London throughout the year. He had occasionally thought of purchasing a country house. He vaguely pictured a mellow red brick manse in a park with a verdant roll of green land and bucolic scenery where he could stroll about, wearing brogues and carrying a shooting stick over his shoulder.
Inevitably he would awaken from his daydream, shudder and dismiss it.
At the ball the previous evening he had questioned Collette about her home in Listerwood-on-Sea. He was fascinated by her paradoxical nature and interested in what kind of landscape would birth such a conundrum as she presented to him. He had visited Kent and rather liked the seaside. If he were to settle in the country, perhaps it would be in the Kentish countryside. He could picture a home on some high cliff, overlooking the lonely coast, with seabirds wheeling and screeching about the uppermost towers. That would be a home in which he could be happy. And so he had probed her for information about her village.
But Collette had answered absently, her eyes brightly taking in all the sound and chatter at her first London ball. It had been a poor affair, an attempt by a friend of Philoxia Bertrand’s to revitalize London society in the summer. And yet, as he tried to engage Collette in conversation about her home, her eager gaze darted this way and that as she watched it all, commenting sometimes on this woman or that man.
After a time, interested despite himself, he began to see a pattern in her observations. The people she found fascinating were often the ones least likely to attract notice on their own. Through her eyes he noticed that Sally Debinham, a wallflower, was languishing with love for Walter Ponsonby, a silly calf enamored of his tailor more than any lady. And old Lady Naunce, a baroness, attended the ball to relive her youth, watching with vague eyes the figures of the dance, as she beat out the time of the music with her cane.
Jameson, who supplied the names to her, had to admit that when Collette looked at people and spoke of them, they suddenly became more interesting to him. They gained a life under their glazed eyes and dull manners. He was used to watching the first figures of society, the coquettes and men about town. Collette’s pointed observations had opened his eyes, though, and he started to see the subtle tones and shading, the underplay that went on beneath the brittle surface interaction even of the haut ton. It was as if one glanced beneath the glittering surface of the ocean to find the teeming life underneath. His ennui, a persistent affliction usually only dispelled by drink or gambling, never plagued him in Miss Collette Jardiniere’s company.
He was taking Collette out for a drive in the park at an unfashionably early hour and looked forward to it as if it were the grandest treat. He must be going quite, quite mad.
He strode down the hall and began to whistle as he bounded down the steps two at a time. Gardiner, his uniform immaculate as always and his expression habitually dour, was startled into staring, gape-mouthed, at his employer’s cheery tune.
“Good morning, Gardiner. Is my carriage ready?”
“Y-Yes, sir, I did as Mockley asked, even though… Pardon, sir, but you do know it is only nine-thirty in the morning?”
“I do know that, Gardiner, yes. Early drive. See London before the heat of the day, don’t you know.”
Silent, Gardiner bowed from the waist, handed him his hat and opened the front door for him.
As he descended the front steps two at a time toward his waiting carriage, Jameson realized with a start that he must call off Dick Murphy. There was no point in scouring the countryside for Colin Jenkins when he…or rather she…had plopped right into his lap, so to speak! He laughed out loud and his groom gaped at him. Time to leave before his staff thought he had lost his senses.
Miss Collette Jardiniere was punctual and was actually waiting on Paternoster Row for him as he drove up, his smart equipage rolling to a halt directly in front of her. He gazed disapprovingly at the shabby exterior of the Chapter Coffeehouse. Could she not afford better lodging than this dingy old place? Her royalties should be adding up nicely, enough to afford her a stay in one of the better hostelries. She was neatly dressed in the brown traveling dress she had worn on the train, he noticed. Of course, she could not have brought much in the way of clothing, as she had only had the one valise.
“Good morning. I hope you slept well.” he said as he leaped down to help her up into his open carriage.
“I did, sir, or as well as can be expected in London.” Once seated, she looked around her with eager interest.
“Are you ready?” he asked, taking up the ribbons and smiling over at her.
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I am ready!”
An hour later they had briskly toured Hyde Park and Regent’s Park, and Collette had settled in her seat a little. They headed back to Hyde Park and trotted more slowly. The day was warm, with a suggestion of building heat, though a sprightly breeze still tossed the treetops. He would have noticed none of this if it had not been for her commentary. She noticed everything in nature just as she did with people, and he began to think how much more alive she seemed to him than any other person he had ever met.
Gazing at her lips, curved up in a habitual smile, he remembered their kiss, or rather kisses, on the train. He now knew her to be a very proper young lady, and he could not reconcile the demure miss at his side with either the writer of The Last Days of a Rake, or the sweet mystery woman on the train. How could she be all those women at once?
He pulled into a shaded area and the horses stopped. It was unfashionably early, still, and so the park was peopled mostly by servants on their half day, nannies with their young charges and one young man with papers under his arm, cutting through the park on his way to deliver them.
“You look a little flushed, Collette. Would you like to walk a bit, cool down?”
She smiled as an answer and he leaped to the ground and held his hands up to take her down after him. She needed little help and seemed strong rather than fragile, as most young ladies at least pretended to be. Stretching her arms out, she turned in a circle, embracing nature and giving a little skip.
“What a glorious day! I am so happy we came here. I have been longing for green space, and this is ideal.”
He was entranced by her joy in so simple a thing as the park in the morning. He glanced around, seeing for the first time the mist rising off the grass and the ducks waddling off in a row toward the pond. Then his gaze returned to her, and the sight fed him in some way, stirring him from his dilettante’s ennui, his customary indifference. Did every new experience invigorate her so? Would she bring the same verve, the same joy, to everything, even the bedroom? Would she be as restless and energetic, voraciously devouring fresh sensations?
In the dappled shade of a grove of birch trees he gave in to temptation and closed the distance between them, capping her shoulders with his large hands. For one breathless minute she looked up into his eyes with a look of barely concealed anticipation.
As sweet as a meadow wildflower, she was just as artless and unspoiled, with no brittle London crust. Would she taste as honeyed as he remembered if he dipped into her mouth? He felt a tremor of some strong emotion course through her, a shudder that beckoned him, inviting him to a kiss. With a stifled exclamation he moved to claim her lips, warmed to berry-sweetness by the sun.
My God, he thought as he touched them, suckling the plump, tender flesh. His eyes were closed and he trembled with yearning. So much sweeter than I remembered.
“Jameson, you devil, who is this latest conquest?”
Jameson froze at the familiar voice. Sain! Sainsbury Ellice, the last person he would like to meet. The last person he would expect to meet in the morning in the park! Unless the fellow was just going home from a night of carousing. Jameson realized what it would look like, his arm around Collette now, holding her close to his body, her face upturned to his, in the protection of the shade trees. It would look like what it was; he was kissing her in public, an unforgivable sin with a young lady of lily-white reputation.
“I wondered why you deserted me at Madame Peléron’s night before last, but now I see why,” Sainsbury said with a low chuckle. “Got another delectable bundle?”
Jameson, shielding Collette from his wastrel friend’s view, turned. “Go away, Sain. I am attempting to have conversation, something that should bore you to no end.”
“Conversation! Would that be a criminal conversation? Come on, let’s have a look.” Sainsbury prodded Jameson’s shoulder with the end of his stick.
“Leave us alone, Sain. Just go away!”
Collette popped her head around Jameson’s arm. “Why do you not introduce me to your friend, Mr. Jameson?”
Jameson groaned. Did the girl not have a particle of sense? Had she never heard of a compromising position?
“Yes, Jameson, introduce me!” Sain said, mockery heavy in his voice as he stared at Collette with interest.
Jameson stepped aside and delighted in his friend’s look of astonishment. Collette Jardiniere, dressed in a sober brown gown of antiquated style, slight and unfashionable, unadorned by jewels or feathers or rich fabrics, was no one’s idea of a “soiled dove.” Maybe that would end the misunderstanding.
Sain stepped forward and looked Collette up and down. His brows raised and he turned to say something, but then stopped and looked back at Collette.
“Sainsbury Ellice, Miss Collette Jardiniere. Miss Jardiniere, Mr. Sainsbury Ellice.”
It was the barest of introductions, but Sain did not regard it. “I recognize you,” he said, pointing at her with one long, white finger. He strolled around them, taking in her entire figure. “You were at that literary swansong the other night. Talking to that horrible bore, Trollope.”
Collette bridled and her green eyes darkened. “Mr. Trollope is not a bore! I found him absolutely fascinating!”
“What? That pathetic old pest? He makes my head hurt just looking at him!”
Jameson stepped forward to interrupt, but Collette surged past him and stood in front of Sain, hands on her hips, gazing up at him with her face screwed up into an expression of outrage.
“He is not old and he is not a pest! It just so happens he has a brilliant mind and is an author—”
“I know he’s an author. Doesn’t he go on and on and on about it to anyone cracked in the brain enough to listen? The best thing that ever happened was when he got that stifling job with the… What is it, the naval office? They shipped him off to Ireland.”
“It is the Post Office,” Collette exclaimed. “I must say a man never shows the poverty of his mind better than in the judgments he makes of the truly brilliant.”
Sain looked nonplused, and Jameson, thoroughly entertained now even against his own common sense, stood back, arms crossed over his chest, and let Miss Collette Jardiniere fight her own battle. It was a war of wits and she was fighting an unarmed combatant. She clearly recognized that. Her dimpled chin lifted, and she said, “I always find it interesting that those who criticize writers are the very ones who never read. Pick up a book some time, Mr. Ellice.”
“I haven’t read a single book since I was sent down from Oxford. Not all the way through, anyway. Just skim them for the naughty bits.”
Her face registering a disdain so cold Jameson wondered that Sain wasn’t shivering, she said, “And you say it as if it were something to boast about! I cannot fathom a society that will allow a boor like you to attend the most hallowed of English universities and yet argues that women’s wits are too weak to make learning safe.”
Sain finally realized he was being insulted. He turned to his friend and with a haughty lift to his brow, said, “If you are bedding this little strumpet, Jameson, I would gag her mouth, or you will lose the will to fornicate, my friend.”
From amusement, Jameson flashed to dark anger, for his friend’s words were unforgivable when applied to Collette. “Sain,” he said, through gritted teeth. “If you do not apologize to the lady for that inexcusable insult, you shall have a challenge on your hands and this one shall not be who can get to the bottom of a bottle first!”
The look on Sain’s face was compounded of hurt and rage. “I will not apologize to—”
“If you do not,” Jameson growled, fists balled, “you will accept my challenge and I shall be forced to run you through. I am deadly serious.”
Baffled fury in his blue eyes, Sain turned to Collette. “A thousand pardons, miss. I did not mean to disparage you or your honor. Forgive me.”
Collette, staring at Jameson with something like horror, weakly replied, “Certainly, sir. I am just sorry I… I apologize. I, too, was unforgivably rude.”
For an answer Sain bowed, then turned and stalked away, returning to his horse, which a groom was holding along with the groom’s hack. In the brush near the river there was a rustle of movement, and a figure moved away from the trees to follow the man remounting at that moment.
Turning to Jameson, a quick blaze of anger in her eyes, Collette said, “Why did you have to challenge your friend? I don’t care what he said about me!”
“Perhaps I care what he said about you!”
Fists planted on her hips, Collette said, “It is not your right to care. We are here merely to discuss if you will do the right thing and tell the reporter for that journal that you are not Colin Jenkins.”
Perplexed by her anger, Jameson replied, “I would have intervened for any lady whose honor he had impugned. Good God, Collette, did you not realize that he saw us ki… That we were in each other’s arms? Do you not know what he thought?”
Collette’s brows knit together. “What did he think?”
“He thought you were my latest… He assumed you were a…” He could not finish. It was not right to say such things to a gently bred young lady, even one as infuriating as Collette Jardiniere. He wanted to strangle her! He wanted to—He wanted to kiss her again. And as shocking as it was, he wanted to take her home and make love to her.
But it was out of the question. Or was it? It would teach her a lesson, show her what it was that made women fall, as had happened in the pages of Last Days, first to Susan and then a series of other young ladies of previously impeccable reputation, who succumbed to the devastating charm of her hero, Lankin. She was so receptive, so…so willing and trusting—He tussled with his conscience and his conscience won. He pulled himself up to his full height.
“Miss Jardiniere, will you please get back into my carriage?”
He finally met her eyes, having won a war of wills with his own desires and his own body, only to see a mischievous glint in her green eyes, the color intensified by the green canopy of leaves. From bafflement she had moved swiftly to knowledge.
“He thought I was your latest conquest!” She laughed out loud, the sound ringing through the warm summer air like a church bell. “Oh, how rich!” she cried. “How absolutely hilarious, that he should mistake me for a…a fallen woman!”
He was mortified. Good God, she did not have to take such glee in being mistaken for a whore! Any other lady would be outraged, but she was giggling as if it were the most diverting joke. He watched her convulse in laughter and found his lips tugging up, then parting, and then a huge burst of hilarity broke free and he was laughing. He laughed until his sides ached and he held his ribs against the pain, trying to catch his breath and then leaned against the tree, finally, gasping for air.
