He shrugged. His hand was stealing up toward her breast, and his eyes had that look again.
“It will be a terrible shock for her,” Esme said, trying to find a shred of sympathy and instead finding an evil ray of pleasure in her heart. “Aren’t you rather old to be growing rebellious? I sowed my wild oats a good ten years ago.”
Sebastian snorted. “And your mother still hasn’t recovered. She’s a bosom beau of my mother’s, you know.”
“I wasn’t aware of their friendship.” Esme didn’t feel it necessary to add that she and her mother hadn’t spoken except in passing for three years. She had no idea who Fanny’s friends were. Her mother communicated only by letter, and that infrequently. “My mother has decided not to attend my confinement,” she admitted. Why on earth was she relating that pitiful fact? She hadn’t even told Helene.
“Your mother is as foolish as mine, then,” he said, dropping a kiss on her nose.
“Fanny is not foolish,” Esme felt compelled to defend her. “She simply cares a great deal for her reputation. And I’ve—well, obviously, I’ve been a great disappointment to her. I am her only child.”
“So you are,” Sebastian said. “All the more fool she, not to be here when her grandchild is born.”
“I’m afraid that my mother has…has quite discarded the idea of our further acquaintance.” It was absurd to find that she had a lump in her throat. She hadn’t even had a cup of tea with her mother for some three years. Why should she miss her now?
“Is that why you have such a fierce wish to become respectable?” Sebastian inquired. “So that your mother will accept you again?”
“Of course not! It’s only because of Miles, as I told you.”
“Hmmm.” But he wasn’t really listening. He was kissing her ear.
“I don’t think my mother likes me very much,” Esme said dolefully.
To Sebastian’s mind, her mother’s behavior had made that clear for years, but it didn’t seem politic to say so. “I expect she has some affection for you,” he said in as comforting a manner as he could manage, given that he had Esme’s delicious body on his lap. He felt like a starving man at a feast. “I am almost certain that my mother has some affection for me, although she would never acknowledge such a thing.”
“You were a perfect son to her. And you will be again. Once you return from the Continent, everyone will forget the scandal, and you can return to being the very proper Marquess Bonnington. Snobby old sobersides.”
“Never again. Never.”
“Why not?”
“I shall never again believe that it matters a bean whether I kiss the woman I love in a garden or my own bedchamber. All that propriety, respectability, it’s nothing but a trap, Esme, don’t you see?”
“No,” she said. Secretly she was a bit shaken by the vehemence in his voice. “I wish—oh, I do wish—that I hadn’t been unfaithful to Miles in the first year of our marriage. Perhaps if I’d been more respectable, we could have found a way to be married again. To live together and raise a family.”
She was startled by the look in his eyes. “Why? Why, Esme? Why Miles?”
“Because he was my husband,” Esme said earnestly. This was at the heart of all their arguments. “I should have honored our vows,” she explained.
“You vowed to love him forever. Yet you didn’t even know him when you married him. He was weak, charming but weak. Why on earth are you harboring the idea that the two of you could ever have been happy together?”
“Because it would have been the right thing to do.” She knew she sounded like a stubborn little girl, but he had to understand.
“Ah, the right thing,” he said, and there was a dark tiredness in his voice. “I can’t fight with that. But if you, Esme, were able to fall in love with your husband because it was the right thing to do, you would have been a very unusual woman indeed.”
“I could have tried!” she said with a flare of anger. “Instead I flaunted my affairs before him and the rest of London.”
Esme was missing the point. The trouble was that Sebastian wasn’t sure how to make himself clear without risking her stamping out of his hut in a rage. He tried to put it delicately. “Your husband, Miles, didn’t seem to take much notice of those affairs.”
“Yes, he did.”
My God, she was a stubborn woman. “You began flirting with other men in an attempt to get Miles’s attention,” Sebastian said. “Fool that he was, he simply concluded that the marriage was not successful. And to be honest, I don’t think he cared very much. He was in love with Lady Childe, these many years before he died.” His voice was calm but merciless.
Esme was silent for a moment. “We could have tried,” she said finally.
“You did reconcile just before Miles died,” Sebastian pointed out. “To my knowledge, you had one night together.” He drew her even closer against his chest. “Did it pass in a blaze of passion, then?”
Esme turned her face into his rough shirt. “Don’t laugh at Miles,” she warned. “He was my husband, and I was very fond of him.”
“I would never laugh at Miles. But I would never make the mistake of thinking that the two of you could have had a successful marriage, either.”
“Perhaps not. I suppose not. It’s just that I’m so…so ashamed of myself!” It burst out of her. “I wish I hadn’t done all those things. I just wish I hadn’t.”
Sebastian was beginning to kiss her again, and his kisses were drifting toward her mouth. Suddenly Esme was tired of whimpering about her miserable marriage and her reputation. “You know when you used to watch me so crossly?” she said huskily. Sebastian’s large hands were leaving tingling paths in their wake. He was a beautiful man, with his honey skin and tumbling hair. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. Why was she even thinking about Miles?
“Of course,” he drawled. He was watching her now too, except his eyes were below her chin. He was watching his hand on her breast.
“You had the most arrogant, sulky look,” she said. “You used to lean against the wall and frown at me, and I knew you were thinking that I was an absolute tart.”
The corner of his mouth curled up. “Something like that, I suppose.”
She was getting breathless because of what he was doing, but she wanted to make herself clear. “I used to do some of it for you,” she said, pushing his chin up so he met her eyes.
“Do what?”
“Flirting.” She smiled and put all the seductive joy she felt into that smile. “You would be frowning at me from the side of the ballroom, with that gloriously sulky mouth of yours, and I’d play for you.”
“Play for me?”
She nodded, giggling. “Be even more wanton. Do you remember when I kissed Bernie Burdett on the ballroom floor at Lady Troubridge’s house party?”
“Of course,” he growled, and he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth. He used to feel half mad, watching Esme Rawlings flirting with her latest conquest, allowing that intolerable Burdett to partner her in dance after dance. While he—he’d rarely danced with her. She’d been married, and he’d been engaged to her best friend. The very memory made him take her mouth with a growl of desire.
“Even as I kissed Bernie, I was wondering what you would do if I simply waltzed up to you and kissed you,” she said after a little while, and with a catch in her voice. “I decided you’d probably be up in arms about it, prig that you are, so I kissed Bernie instead.”
He raised his head for a moment. “You deliberately—”
“Exactly,” she said smugly. Then she ran her lips along the strong, sun-browned column of his neck. “You were so disdainful of me and yet—something—I thought I saw something in your eyes.”
He growled again, that deep male sound that made her thighs tremble. “So you were longing to kiss me, were you?”
It was frightening to hear it aloud. Esme chose to keep silent, turning her cheek against his shoulder so he couldn’t see her eyes.
“So kis
s me now, then,” he said. And his voice had that dark, insistent throb that she couldn’t disobey. It made her feel ravishing rather than pregnant. She didn’t know why she’d ever thought he was priggish: He kissed her like a wild man. With one last gasp of rational thought, she said, “But Sebastian, I meant it when I said you have to leave. Tomorrow. It’s too dangerous now that a house party is arriving.”
“And what shall I do for a living, eh?”
“You’ll have to go back to what you did before.”
“Before…” His voice was dark now, velvet dark, muffled against her skin. “I spent all my time before arguing with a certain lady.”
“You were extremely vexing,” Esme said. “You were always scolding me because I was brazen, and—”
He bent and kissed her shoulder. “Brazen,” he agreed. “Improper.” He dropped another kiss on the little juncture between her neck and her collarbone. “Strumpet. I’ll have to lend you that pamphlet on the Ways of the Wicked.”
“And all because I was having a wee flirtation with Bernie Burdett,” she said, grinning up at him. “Ravishing man that he was. How I miss—”
“That Bertie,” he said against her mouth.
“Bernie!”
“Whatever,” he growled. “The pain he caused me!”
She reached up and put her hand to his cheek. “Bernie and I never had an affair. It was a mere flirtation.”
“I know that.” He smiled down at her then, a lazy, dangerous smile. “Bertie would have made a tedious lover.” He dragged his lips over the sweetness of her cheek and the long delicate stretch of her neck. “And you, my darling Esme, are not a woman to tolerate tedium in your bedchamber.”
“And how would you know, sir?” she said, sounding a little breathless. “You have something of a lack of experience in these matters, wouldn’t you say?” It was one of the most joyous memories of her life when the beautiful Marquess Bonnington threw off his cravat in Lady Troubridge’s drawing room, announced he was a virgin, and proceeded to lose that virginity.
“It would be no different if I were Adam himself, and you Eve,” he said. His eyes were burning again. “No one can make love to you the way I do.” His hands slipped from her shoulders to her breasts, shaped their exuberance in his hands. She arched up with a gasp. His knee nudged her legs apart, and with one swift motion, he pulled her to the end of the bed, where he would put no weight on her belly.
Then he was there, bending over her, and she was laughing, and to him, it felt as if there were only the two of them in the world. He and his intoxicating, ravishing mistress, his very own Esme, his infamous lover…
As if his garden were the first garden itself.
As if his Esme, with her plump mouth and her seductive wit, were the very first woman in the world. She moaned, and he shook with desire. Took up a rhythm that he knew drove her to distraction, made her whimper and grow incoherent. Standing there, making sweet, slow love, he was the only man in the world…or the first…it didn’t matter.
Marquess Bonnington was well and truly ravished.
5
Anticipation
Stephen had made up his mind to approach—not seduce—Lady Godwin. One couldn’t use a disreputable word of that sort in respect to such a delightfully ladylike woman. He organized his campaign in the same orderly fashion with which he approached all important arguments undertaken in Parliament.
First, Helene Godwin had eloped at age seventeen, which surely indicated a certain unconventionality, even if she showed no signs of it now. Second, the lady’s husband proved to be a reprobate, tossing his wife out the front door and establishing a changing show of young women in her bedchamber. Nonetheless, third, the lady had maintained an irreproachable reputation. She would not be an easy woman to win. But, finally, he fancied that he did have a chance of winning. A long shot, perhaps, but that blush…. She blushed whenever she saw him.
Stephen grinned to himself. He was used to assessing the odds of any given victory in the House. He gave himself a forty percent chance of victory over Helene. Sufficient odds to make it a challenge. Already he felt much more himself than he had in the last few months. Enclosure Acts just weren’t enough to keep a man’s interest. He had been suffering from a healthy dose of lust.
A deliciously bashful countess, intelligent, musical and neglected by her husband, would solve all his problems.
He strode into Lady Rawlings’s Rose Salon and paused for a moment. The house party had apparently been augmented by neighbors of Lady Rawlings; country gentlefolk drifted around the room in little groups. The countess was sitting next to the fireplace, talking to their host. Her skin was so pale that it looked translucent. Frosty, almost. Like snow or ice. Stephen loved ices, sweet and cool to the tongue.
He was far too adept a campaigner to approach Lady Godwin immediately. Instead he walked over to greet an old friend, Lord Winnamore, whom he knew well from various skirmishes between the Houses of Lords and Commons.
Winnamore was as amiable as ever. “Another escapee from matters of business, I see,” he said, greeting him.
“I should be in London,” Stephen admitted. Come to think of it, what was Winnamore doing in the deeps of Wiltshire?
“Life has a way of creating distractions,” Winnamore said. He was watching Lady Arabella.
“Thank goodness!” Stephen was startled by the vehemence of his own exclamation. It certainly wasn’t as if he ever would consider deserting the House before his term was up. Or even at that point. There was no threat to his reelection, after all.
“This isn’t the sort of party where I’d have thought to meet you,” Winnamore said, giving him a shrewd glance over his spectacles.
“I am finding it quite enjoyable,” Stephen said, checking to make certain that Lady Godwin was still in the corner. In another moment, he would stroll in that direction.
“Enjoyable, yes. Respectable, no. Have you met Lady Beatrix yet?” Winnamore said cheerfully, looking at the door to the salon. Stephen looked as well. Lady Beatrix was making what she clearly considered a spectacular entrance. Apparently the curls of yesterday had been compliments of a curling iron; today her shining copper hair was straight as a pin. Yesterday, her skin had been sunkissed; tonight it was pale as snow. Yesterday her lips had been ripe as a cherry; tonight they were a pale, languid pink. Even her pert expression of the previous night had been replaced by a faintly melancholy gaze—except if one looked very, very closely, mischief brewed.
“That young woman is a work of art,” Stephen said, not without admiration.
“A lovely child, in fact,” Winnamore said. “She is a great comfort to Lady Arabella.”
Stephen could think of no reason why Lady Arabella, known far and wide for her three marriages and various other dalliances, would have need of comfort, but he kept prudently silent. Besides, Lady Arabella herself swept up to them that very moment.
“Mr. Fairfax-Lacy,” she cried, taking a grip on his elbow, “I must insist that you greet my niece. Dear Esme is not as nimble as she is normally, and so I have appointed myself the duty of bringing sufficient conversationalists to her side.”
It was suddenly quite clear to Stephen why he had been invited to this particular house party. Lady Arabella had selected him as a prospective husband to her niece. Well, there was nothing new in that. Matchmaking mamas had been chasing him for years.
He bowed to Lady Rawlings but sought Lady Godwin’s eyes as he did so. She was just as lovely as he remembered, pure and delicate as a—he couldn’t think. Poetry was hardly his forte. She was blushing again and looking rather adorably shy.
Too shy. A moment later she jumped to her feet like a startled gazelle and fled across the room. He’d have to go even slower than he had planned. He didn’t look over his shoulder at the countess, but sat down next to Lady Rawlings.
For her part, Esme was watching Stephen Fairfax-Lacy with a good deal of interest. Unless she was mistaken (and she was never mistaken when it came to men),
the man was attracted to Helene. Marvelous. Poor Helene had suffered so much from the cruelties of her careless husband. A kindly, handsome, respectable man such as Mr. Fairfax-Lacy would do wonders to restore her sense of confidence and allow her to hold her head high before that reprobrate of a husband.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked, remembering rather belatedly that she was nominally, at least, a hostess. Arabella had taken over all the duties of running the house, the better for Esme to concentrate on her supposed confinement. “Is your chamber acceptable?”
“Truly, it has been all that is comfortable,” he said. And then changed the subject. “I much enjoyed Countess Godwin’s waltz. Her husband is not invited to this gathering, I presume?”
Yes! Esme felt all the exuberance of an old friend. Helene appeared to have made a remarkable impression on Fairfax-Lacy. “Absolutely not,” she hastened to say. “Helene and Rees have had little to do with each other for years. He has other interests. She and her husband have an entirely amiable friendship,” she added. One wouldn’t want the M.P. to be frightened off by the notion of an irate husband.
Stephen was watching Helene talk to Bea on the other side of the room. Esme didn’t quite like the contrast that conversation presented: Bea was such a vividly colored young woman that she made Helene look pale and washed out. “If you’ll excuse me,” she said brightly, “I must confer with my butler.” She allowed Fairfax-Lacy to haul her to her feet and then trundled off toward the door, stopping next to Helene and Bea.
“He was just asking for you!” she whispered to Helene.
Helene looked adorably confused. “Who was?”
“Fairfax-Lacy, of course! Go talk to him!”
Helene looked across the room, and there was Stephen Fairfax-Lacy smiling at her. But she felt a strange reluctance; it was all she could do to hover next to the door and not flee to her bedchamber. Her life, to this point, had not been easy. In fact, although she only admitted it to herself in the middle of the night, sometimes she felt as if she must have been cursed at birth. It had only taken one foolish decision—the foolish, foolish decision to elope with an intoxicating man by the name of Rees—to ruin her entire life. But in the last year she had realized that if she didn’t do something about it now, the rest of her life would follow the pattern of the past seven years. The years hadn’t been unpleasant: She lived with her mother and she was welcome everywhere. But she had no life, no life that mattered. No child.