“Esme!” Helene said with a huge smile, “would you mind terribly if we invited Rees to make a brief visit?”
Esme blinked. Had she heard correctly? “Rees? Rees, your husband, Rees?”
Helene laughed. “Of course, that Rees.”
“Naturally you may invite anyone you wish,” Esme said. She looked around a bit sourly. Winnamore and Arabella were practicing a duet on the harpsichord. Bea seemed, rather surprisingly, to be embroidering something. “No one else is taking notice of the fact that I am in confinement, so why should you?”
For her part, Helene suddenly brought Esme’s face into focus. For goodness’ sake, what was wrong with Esme? She looked utterly haggard and was obviously out of sorts. “I am being utterly thoughtless,” she said repentantly. “Of course I won’t invite Rees to the house. Esme, what’s the matter?”
Esme ground her teeth. Her nerves were on the edge of total distraction. “I didn’t say you shouldn’t invite him!” she snapped. “Clearly there is a house party occurring, so why not invite one more? At least it would go toward evening out our numbers, and that will make Arabella happy.”
Helene hesitated. “I don’t know if he will come.”
“More to the point, why on earth would you wish him to? I can assure you that these friendships are better conducted away from one’s husband.” Lord knows, she was an expert on that subject.
“Not in my case,” Helene whispered. “Esme, we are going to flaunt ourselves in front of Rees!”
“Flaunt yourself?” Esme repeated. Her back felt as if a carriage had driven over it. That was Sebastian’s fault. Last night had obviously been far too energetic for a woman in her condition. Perhaps she would be permanently crippled.
“He’s agreed to it,” Helene whispered.
“Agreed to what?” Esme asked.
“Flaunting!”
“Oh for God’s sake,” Esme snapped. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Stephen and I are going to demonstrate to Rees that I am not undesirable and frigid,” Helene said. There was a high, startled color in her cheeks, but she looked straight at Esme.
“Rees never said that!” Esme narrowed her eyes. “That reprobate dared to say such a thing to you!”
Helene nodded.
“It’s a good thing he’s not here,” Esme said through clenched teeth. “I’d tear him limb from limb. Men are all the same. Lechers and knaves, all of them!”
“You seem to be in a less than excellent humor,” Helene said, examining her closely. “Didn’t you sleep last night, Esme? You have marked circles under your eyes. How do you feel? Is the baby on the way?”
“No. Once a day the midwife emerges from the kitchen, prods me, and announces that nature must take its course. I’m so tired of that phrase!” Esme put her head on the back of the chair. On the ceiling of the salon, overindulgent-looking gods and goddesses shaped from plaster were eating grapes dangled in the air by cupids. The goddesses were all slim. Very slim. Probably Esme would never be able to shed the extra weight she’d gained.
“What do you think of my plan?” Helene asked.
Esme blinked at her. “Plan? What plan?”
“Esme,” Helene said firmly, “you are not yourself. Would you like me to accompany you to your chamber?”
Esme was trying to think about whether that would make her feel worse—indeed, whether anything could make her feel worse—when Slope appeared in the doorway.
“My lady,” he said, and there was a warning note to his voice that made every head in the room turn. “The Marchioness Bonnington has arrived to pay a brief visit.”
Esme straightened up as if she’d heard the last trumpet itself. She clutched Helene’s arm. “It can’t be!”
Helene obviously sensed danger. “What on earth is Lady Bonnington doing here? Her son is on the Continent. I certainly hope she is not planning to call you to account for his actions last summer! I shall rout her instantly, if that’s the case,” Helene said, bristling like a mother goose sensing danger.
All the blood was draining from Esme’s head, and she felt a curious airiness in her knees. “I’m going to faint,” she whispered.
But there was no time to faint. Lady Bonnington herself was standing in the doorway and surveying the room. Esme forced away her dizziness and stood up. “My lady,” she said weakly, “what a pleasure to welcome you to Shantill House.”
The marchioness was wearing a carriage costume of straw-colored sarsenet lined in white satin. Her gown was trimmed with black and finished with two of the French ruffs that had just come into fashion. She looked formidable and, to Esme’s eyes, utterly terrifying.
“The pleasure is mutual,” she said, surveying Esme from head to foot through a pair of pince-nez with an air of vigorous and personal condemnation. That seemed to be the extent of her polite conversation. “Lady Rawlings, I daresay you’re within a day or so of giving birth. And yet by all appearances you are hosting a house party. How very peculiar.”
“That would be my doing,” Arabella drawled, drifting over. “And what a surprise to see you here, Honoratia. My goodness, how long it has been since we were in school together. And yet when I see you, the years melt away!”
“I suppose that’s a compliment,” Lady Bonnington replied acidly. “One can so rarely tell exactly what you mean, Arabella.”
“Such a failing,” Esme’s aunt replied, smiling. “Whereas one always knows precisely what point you wish to make. So kind of you to clarify your every thought. Now why on earth are you here? Not that your presence isn’t a remarkable pleasure.”
Lady Bonnington humphed and banged her stick for emphasis. “I merely wish to speak to your niece for a moment.” She gave Esme a pointed glance. “In private, if you would be so kind.”
“Of course,” Esme said, leading the way to the door. “If you would accompany me to the library?” She desperately wanted to remove Sebastian’s mother from the vicinity of her closest friend and aunt, both of whom looked likely to burst from curiosity. It was just her luck that Arabella had been at school with Lady Bonnington. Be brave, she counseled herself, walking into the library.
“You’d best sit down,” Lady Bonnington said, waving her stick at the couch. “Good lord, you look as if you’re about to birth a water buffalo.”
“One assumes not,” Esme managed. What an extraordinarily rude old woman. She sat down without waiting for the marchioness to do so.
“I’ve come for my son,” Lady Bonnington said, lowering herself into a chair.
“Am I to assume that you hope to find him here?” Esme said, with an air of disinterest.
“To my vast regret, yes.”
“I am sorry to disappoint you. He is not here. To the best of my knowledge, he is on the Continent.”
“I have information to the contrary. He told me himself that he was working in a menial capacity in your household. I don’t approve, Lady Rawlings. I cannot approve. You may have led a rather imprudent life before this date, but I assure you that this current escapade will result in complete exile from the ton.”
“Escapade?” Esme cried. “He took the position without my knowledge. And then he refused to leave!”
“I thought as much,” Lady Bonnington said, with an odd tone of satisfaction. “I’ve been thinking of nothing else for the past few days. It’s the blood coming out.”
“Indeed? To what blood do you refer, madam?”
“My father’s blood. My father was not a man to be crossed. He had a streak of obstinacy that ran a mile wide. I never thought my son had the least touch of him, but I see it now. Of course he won’t leave. My father wouldn’t have either.”
“Be that as it may, your son is no longer in my employ,” Esme pointed out.
“He tried to pull the wool over my eyes,” Lady Bonnington said. Now her satisfaction was unmistakable. “Gave me fluff and such-and-such about love. I didn’t raise him to pay attention to that kind of nonsense. Naturally, I paid that no
mind. I stayed up half the night wondering whether he’d gone mad as a March hare due to guilt over killing your husband. But it didn’t ring true.”
She leaned forward, gray eyes as piercing as an eagle sighting a rabbit. “You’re carrying his child, aren’t you?”
Esme opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
“Aren’t you!” the marchioness thundered, stamping her stick for emphasis.
Esme narrowed her eyes. “No, I am not,” she said coolly.
“Poppycock,” Lady Bonnington replied, and there wasn’t even a speck of hesitation in her voice. “My son is no fool. The more I thought about it, the more I knew that he would never have entered the wrong bedchamber. He entered yours because you were carrying on an affair with him. Your husband was likely just paying you a courtesy visit. All the world knows they could have found him in Lady Childe’s bedchamber, if they wished.”
“I am carrying my husband Miles’s child!”
“I’ve no doubt but that you wish you were. I expect we all wish you had kept that bedchamber door a bit more securely fastened.”
Flaming circles crept into Esme’s cheeks. “I beg your pardon?”
“The important point is that my foolish son has taken the quixotic notion that it’s his child about to be born, hasn’t he? And he wants to marry you on account of that.”
“The child is Miles’s, and his birth as a Rawlings is utterly appropriate.” Esme’s words bristled with rage.
“Think clearly, girl,” Lady Bonnington snapped back. “Even if you managed to lure Rawlings into your bed, that child was more than likely fathered by my son. Miles Rawlings was as weak as a cricket; everyone knew that. I expect you know as well as I do that Rawlings’s doctor gave him naught more than a few weeks to live. How could he have fathered a child? It takes strong red blood, you know.”
“Miles’s blood was quite red enough for the task,” Esme retorted. “It is unfortunate that Miles died before his son or daughter was born, but this babe will not be the first nor the last posthumous child. May I remind you, Lady Bonnington, that for Miles’s child to be born a Bonnington would be just as much an affront to Miles’s name?”
“So you admit that the child could be my grandchild,” the marchioness said with grim satisfaction.
Esme opened her mouth to reply, but Lady Bonnington thumped her stick.
“In my day, we didn’t spend as much time as your generation does worrying about whose bedroom door was open. I’ll put my cards on the table. I would greatly dislike my son to marry a woman with your reputation. And I want my son out of the woodshed, or wherever he is, and back in the drawing room where he belongs.” She pursed her lips. “Surely I need not articulate my position further?”
Esme felt as if rage were bursting under her skin. “Your son is not here,” she said, punctuating each word with deliberation. “I sent him away. This is my husband’s child, and under no circumstances would I marry your son. You do realize, don’t you, that Marquess Bonnington is responsible for taking my husband’s life?”
“You know as well as I do that Rawlings could have popped off at any time.”
But Esme could see just the faintest hesitation in her face. “If your son hadn’t entered my bedchamber uninvited and grappled with Miles in the dark, my husband might still be alive,” she said flatly. “I cannot marry a man under those circumstances. I could never make that man into my child’s father.”
“It always surprises me that the most flamboyant hussies are the most missish at the core,” Lady Bonnington observed. The whole encounter didn’t seem to have ruffled her sensibilities at all. “Mind you, your own mother is one of the most punctilious women in the ton.” She stood up, leaning heavily on her stick. “But it’s all well and good that you refuse to marry him, no matter your reasons. My only remaining concern is the parentage of that child. Don’t underestimate my son, Lady Rawlings. If he feels the child is his, he’ll likely take you to Gretna Green without permission or delay. It’s my father’s blood coming out.”
“I won’t marry him,” Esme said. “Neither in Gretna Green nor in St. Paul’s Cathedral. And may I point out again: he did leave my estate, Lady Bonnington. He shows rather less resolution than you give him credit for.”
“Miss him, do you?” Lady Bonnington asked.
Esme colored. She was hideously observant, this awful old woman. “Not at all!”
“In his absence, I shall remain until the birth and ascertain whether the child is indeed a member of my family,” the marchioness said. “If the child is Rawlings’s, this whole debacle will be quickly forgotten by all of us.”
“How on earth are you going to know that? Newborn children look remarkably similar, you know,” Esme said, nettled beyond all patience. “From what I’ve been told, they’re all equally red and wrinkled.”
“If he’s a Bonnington, he’ll have a spangled mark at the base of his spine.”
“No!” Esme gasped. Sebastian did have a small brown mark at the base of his spine.
Lady Bonnington gave a little cackle of laughter. “Don’t be a fool! My son has a blemish, but it’s his alone. What do you think this is, a fairy story? I’ll look at the child and see whether it resembles our side of the family or your huband’s. And then I will inform my son of my observations. Since you do not wish to marry him, you might hope for red hair. We have no redheads in our family.”
She stumped to the door and then turned. “You’re not the daughter-in-law I would have chosen, as I think I’ve made clear.”
“The feeling is mutual,” Esme said with scathing precision. “I would prefer that you put the notion from your mind immediately.”
“But you’re surprisingly acceptable,” the marchioness said, not heeding Esme at all. “Mind you, you’re related to Arabella Withers, and she and I have been at loggerheads since we were at school together. And that was a donkey’s age ago, for all she tries to act as if she’s got no more than thirty years to her. You may have the reputation of a coal scuttle, but you seem to have some backbone too.”
Esme literally saw red. She dropped into a faint excuse for a curtsy. “If you’ll forgive me, I shall retire to my room in order to recover from that compliment. I can occupy myself by praying for red hair.”
The corners of Lady Bonnington’s mouth curled upwards. “I am rather reminded of myself, as a matter of fact.”
And that comment, as Esme later thought to herself, was the cruelest stroke of all.
17
Playing at Billiards
There are certain times in a man’s life when the only thing he wants is the company of other men. After a dinner marked by an incomprehensible female subtext and a ballet of barbed comments, Stephen wanted nothing more than an evening of hard drinking, cards, and bawdy jokes. Alas, the sole male in the household other than himself, Winnamore, rambled off to his bed directly after the meal. Still, there were two places in the house likely free from women: Stephen’s own bedroom and the billiards room.
But when he pulled open the door to the billiards room, he saw a trim little bottom lean over the woolen cloth covering the table as Beatrix Lennox stretched to make a shot. Stephen decided on the spot that perhaps one female was acceptable company.
“Good evening, Mr. Fairfax-Lacy,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as the shot caromed one of the red balls off two walls and directly into a pocket.
He paused as if transfixed. The oil lamps suspended above the table turned her hair into a flaming gold. She straightened with exquisite grace and deliberation, as if she were conscious of precisely what that little movement had done to his loins.
“Do you play billiards?” she asked, pulling balls from the corner pockets.
Stephen nodded. Blood seemed to be thundering through his body, every beat speaking to the sultry rhythm of her body.
She pulled the fifteen balls together. “Pyramids?”
He nodded. “Where did you learn to play?” Stephen said, walking over to pick up a c
ue stick and trying to appear utterly natural.
Bea shrugged. “I found one of the footmen secretly playing on our billiards table when I was no more than twelve. He would have been instantly dismissed had anyone found out. I’m afraid that I coerced him into giving me lessons.”
“Do take the first turn,” Stephen said, wanting her to bend over again.
She looked at him, and there was a little smile playing around her mouth that made his face burn. Then she slowly, slowly bent over the table. She was wearing an evening dress so slim that it reminded him of a chemise. It was a faint pink that should have looked awful with her hair but didn’t. Around it billowed an overdress of transparent washed silk, embroidered with fleur-de-lis. All that transparent cloth emphasized the trim curves of her body every time she moved.
She broke the triangle, and balls scattered in all directions like drops of water falling on a plate. Three caromed into corner pockets.
Stephen looked at the table. “That footman must have been a remarkable player.”
“Why do you say so?” she asked.
“Because you are obviously an excellent player,” he said, trying to decide which ball to take down.
“The implication is that a woman can only reflect the skill of her teacher. As it happens, Ned was a mediocre player. I could beat him within four months.”
“There,” Stephen said, indicating the far right pocket.
He bent down and chose a ball. With casual precision he sent the ball on a voyage from one side to the other, into a collision with another ball, and finally into the pocket he designated.
“You would seem to be a much more formidable opponent than my footman,” Bea observed.
He straightened. “I apologize for the inference regarding female skill. You are, as a matter of fact, the first female player I have encountered.”