It was that easy.
And it was easy enough to find themselves in a bedchamber too, a beautiful one all hung with rose and pale green. Cressida kept laughing, and saying sarcastic funny little things, and somehow Fletch found he was kissing her.
It was all different from kissing Poppy. Of course. Her mouth was—well, bigger and wet and—
Fletch knew it wasn’t going right. But of course, she didn’t know that. And somehow it grew imperative to him that she not guess. So every time she reached out toward his breeches, he pulled back. He kept kissing her, though, and caressing her.
Somehow she had only her chemise on a short time later, and he was still kissing her, and caressing her.
He was miserable.
Sick feeling, really. Poppy had left him months ago.
By all rights, he should have been congratulating himself. All those nights when he’d worried that he’d never be able to satisfy a woman again were proven wrong. But finally Cressida reached out and he didn’t roll to the side fast enough and her body stilled because she knew exactly what she was feeling. Or wasn’t feeling, as the case may be.
“Odds bucket,” she said, pulling her hands back. “What are you doing, then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I wish you wouldn’t play your games with me,” she said, staring up at the ceiling. “I was having fun with you, and now you’ve made me feel shabby. What’s the matter with you?”
“It’s nothing to do with you.”
“I suppose you’re one of those that prefer men,” she said gloomily, sitting up and pulling her stays toward her.
“No.”
The twist in her mouth showed that denial was a common event.
“I—I’m married,” he said.
“You’re a fool.”
“That too.”
“And I suppose this is the first time that you’ve considered being unfaithful.” Cressida was pinning up her hair now, sounding more resigned than angry.
“Practically.”
“Amazing. Most of the gentlemen I’ve met are unfaithful before the ink’s dry on their marriage lines. What’s gone wrong, then?”
“Wrong?”
“You must have been in love,” she said, looking at him with a strange combination of pity and sharpness in her eyes.
“She doesn’t like bedding me.” It actually felt good to say it out loud. “She doesn’t say no, but she only suffers it.”
“Some women are like that. Mind you, every woman feels like that sometimes. Touch me and I’ll scream.”
“She never says that.”
Cressida took the pins out of her mouth and said, “Some women never like the act. We had one girl here like that. She just couldn’t tolerate it after a while and then one day she ran away.”
“But this isn’t a brothel,” Fletch said. “Why did she have to run away?”
She didn’t answer that. “If you change your mind and decide that you would like a woman in your bed who can really plea sure you, you know how to find me. And I’m a bargain compared to some of those trollops out there.”
“But you said—”
She turned around and laughed at him. “You believed me?”
He saw her with different eyes.
“Duke,” she said to him, “how would a woman like me support myself in my old age? Do you think I can just traipse back to my husband any day of the week and he’ll take me in? Oh, I go there for Christmas because he has to let me in as it would disappoint the boys too much.”
“Boy—”
“Two of them. Smart little poppets.” Her smile faded. “They’re starting to ask questions, though. I need to find a protector, one like Fox. One who will support me and buy me a house. Then maybe the boys could come to me, or I could visit them in a carriage. My husband would respect that.”
Fletch thought it was unlikely that her husband would ever let his sons visit their fallen mother.
Perhaps she read it in his eyes; she turned away and poked the last pins in her hair. “You’re not the one, I can see that.” She was gone before he could craft an offer. Did one give guineas? Or send jewelry later, by messenger?
He sat in the bedchamber and thought about jewelry. One sent jewelry, and had it arrive the next day, he decided. Even, or perhaps especially, when intimacies were disrupted.
He went home before he remembered that Lady Flora would be waiting. She rustled forward to greet him. “Your Grace,” she said, holding out her hand. He bent to kiss it.
“Hmmm,” she said. “You smell like roses, a woman’s scent.”
He straightened hastily. But she was smiling at him as if he’d achieved something. Fletch cautiously moved backward.
“I hope I do not insult by my candor,” she told him, her blue eyes glinting in the candlelight. “It is my opinion that every young gentleman should find a female libertine who will entertain him. Some gentlemen seem to take longer to come to this realization than others.”
Fletch gulped. Could she possibly be saying what she appeared to be saying? She was wearing a grotesquely high headdress, with ostrich feathers stretching feet above her head and brushing the candlelabra hanging from the ceiling. Alas, the candles were only lighted for formal occasions because otherwise she might have caught on fire.
An unkind thought, he told himself, and bared his teeth in an approximation of a smile.
“I am glad to see some evidence that you’re not one of our”—she tittered—“less than virile men. Every gentleman should have an Amazon of his own.”
He clenched his jaw.
“You do understand me, don’t you, Your Grace?” she smiled at him and Fletch thought he’d never seen a woman who more resembled a wolf. “My daughter should not have to bear the burden of your dissolute desires. Perhaps the lady who scented her person and thus yours can become a regular habit for you. That might be enough to persuade my daughter to return to your side.”
Fletch swallowed his rage and bowed again. “I had no idea that my wife was quite so anxious for me to find female company.”
“Ah, but men are so selfish, are they not?”
She paused, which seemed to imply he was supposed to answer. “Not to my knowledge.”
“No?” She raised a delicately arched eyebrow. “Of course, those who are most selfish generally do not see themselves as such, do they?”
“I couldn’t say, madam. Would you consider yourself to be selfish, for example?”
She smiled at him. “In every sense of the word. To be selfish is to be self-interested. There is only one area in which I would not consider it a weakness and a distraction to think of another above myself: and that is where my daughter is concerned. For her sake, and only for her sake, do I put myself to such discomfort as to reside with you.” She paused, and added, “Your Grace.”
She hates me, Fletch thought. Well, the feeling is mutual. “I presume that your Herculean sacrifice is not intended to last forever?”
“For my daughter, I put my own comforts to the side.” She dropped into a chair, giving an excellent imitation of a lady overcome by cruel exigencies that had her living in a ducal mansion with some fifty-four servants at her beck and call.
“Then do allow me to know how I could persuade you to return you to your former comforts,” he said.
“Why, is it not obvious?” she said, smiling at him as genially as if they were at a tea party. “Your marital intimacies are distasteful to my daughter. You appear to be incapable of producing an heir, but I strongly suggest that you leave that little problem to the side for a year or so. Poor Perdita has done such an excellent job of servicing your disordered desires. It’s too much to ask her to pick out a suitable gentleman to play your part in the marital saddle at this point. Goodness,” she said, looking rather pleased with herself, “that was harsh, wasn’t it? I find that I am divided between the strongest pity for poor Perdita and the naturally homicidal feelings that any mother must feel in this situation.”
<
br /> “Homicidal?” Fletch said, sitting down and crossing his legs. “Dear me, I see that the situation is rather more urgent than I thought. I gather that my embracing of a courtesan would be a positive interest to my wife. I wonder that she didn’t tell me this herself.”
“Perdita?” Lady Flora said, raising an eyebrow. “You think that dearest Perdita could bring herself to tell you? I call a spade a spade, Your Grace. My daughter is a weak-kneed fool, with a soft heart. She could not bear to tell you how disgusting you are to her. I consider it my prerogative as her mother to tell you of her feelings. I told her that you simply didn’t realize the truth.”
Fletch couldn’t bring himself to reply. All those nights…he knew Poppy wasn’t enjoying herself, but he never thought she was discussing things with her mother. The very idea made his skin crawl.
Lady Flora was not one to allow silence to grow. “Men rarely understand these things,” she said. “Of course your bodies disgust those of the delicate sex. Our sensibilities are sweetly tuned; our bodies beautifully curved, as all the poets celebrate. How could you think that a lady would honestly desire intimacy with a hairy…Well. I leave Poppy’s feelings to your imagination.”
Fletch rose and bowed. “If you’ll forgive me, Lady Flora, I find that—”
She was looking at him with amusement. “You’ll have to beg her.”
“I—”
“Beg her to come back. Tell her you finally found yourself a courtesan and you won’t use her like a common washer-woman any more.”
“I shall certainly speak to my wife,” Fletch said, resisting the impulse to commit homicide. Though who he wanted to kill—his mother-in-law or his wife—he didn’t know.
“When Perdita agrees to return to your house, I shall naturally return to my own,” she said sweetly. “That should provide you with some impetus, should it not? I expect you wonder why I am so active in Perdita’s behalf?”
“In fact,” he ground out, “given your self-proclaimed selfishness—”
She didn’t let him finish, of course. “I don’t believe Perdita should reside much longer with the Duchess of Beaumont. You do remember how my poor daughter fancied herself in love with you, don’t you?”
He didn’t move a muscle.
“Don’t you?” she said impatiently. “It wasn’t that long ago. At any rate, she’s a trifle weak in the head, my daughter, though it pains me to say it. If I leave her with that light-heeled duchess in Beaumont House, she’ll fall in love again—and it won’t be with you, Duke. Do you understand me?”
He nodded.
“She’s a romantic. Forever thinking that men are more interesting than they could possibly be. You know that strange hankering she has to attend meetings at the Royal Society?”
“She has?”
Lady Flora smirked at him. “I gather you aren’t spending much time talking to Perdita? You didn’t know of her utter fascination with naturalists? Why do I even ask?”
Fletch shook his head. He felt cold from head to foot. “Are you implying—”
“Not yet. But there’s no saying now that she’s moved out of your house into Beaumont House where God knows adultery is merely a fashionable vice, and one much indulged in.”
“I shall speak to Poppy.”
“As soon as she moves back into this house, I shall return to my establishment,” Lady Flora said brightly. “Although I might point out that the dearth of children produced by you in the past four years implies that the offspring of a young scientist might be just the thing to revitalize the family tree!”
Fletch had never hated anyone so much in his entire life. The feeling went through his head like a wildfire. His fingers shook slightly with the wish to—to—
She rose and walked rather quickly to the door. “I wish you good night, Your Grace,” she said. And paused, turning her head in such a way that one of her ostrich plumes bent against the doorframe. “I trust that you will not inform Perdita of our conversation. She, poor angel, hopes to drift through life without talking about unpleasantries. But relations between men and women are always unpleasant, don’t you think? I find that candor is a healthy way to cope.”
She walked through the door, finally, and from where he stood Fletch could see two feathers proudly rearing to the ceiling and one hanging drunkenly over one ear. Which served her right.
Chapter 27
Back at the Duke of Villiers’s town house
“You ought to be sorry,” Charlotte said, hiccupping. “You are unkind, and the fact that you’re dying is no excuse. I don’t believe that you are, anyway. Dying people think of their immortal souls and speak kindly.”
“I told you,” he said, “my brain has turned to rubbish. Likely my soul has given up, knowing that I’ll be shoveling coal down in Beelzebub’s furnaces.”
She sniffed and wiped her nose with her handkerchief. “Well, I must be leaving,” she said. “This has been utterly charming, and I’m so grateful that I was able to succor you in your last hours.”
“Here,” he said, “you can’t go yet.” He actually started to struggle up in bed.
“Stop that,” she snapped. “You’re too weak to sit up. I certainly shall leave. I don’t know you very well. I am sorry you’re dying, but you obviously don’t want me to read you Bible verses—”
“You haven’t offered,” he put in.
“Well, that is the comfort generally offered to patients in your condition.” She stood up. “I wish you the very best, Your Grace.”
“No, you must stop.”
“I made a huge mistake coming here, and you never wanted to see me anyway. Then I made a greater fool of myself and I think that I really have had enough humiliation for the day. Goodbye.”
Charlotte got herself out the door and down the stairs before he could say another word. “A hackney,” she told one of the four footmen in the hallway.
She occupied herself until the footman returned by staring at the marble statues strewn around the entryway.
Villiers was strangely appealing. Perhaps all dying people were. But appealing or not, he had no call to make her feel so wretched.
Though he said nothing that wasn’t the truth.
She almost turned to go back and tell him so when the front door opened and she left. It was better anyway.
Chapter 28
September 20
The Royal Society met at Somerset House. Jemma and Poppy arrived before its welter of brick archways and white marble walls, Jemma still protesting.
“You’re going to find it fascinating,” Poppy told her. “I’ve read about Mr. Moorehead for years. He’s travelled to the very edges of the world.”
Jemma groaned. She groaned even louder when the first person they saw was Miss Tatlock, who was greeting people at the entrance to the society’s chambers. Miss Tatlock smiled at them quite as if she wasn’t notoriously in love with Jemma’s husband.
“This is such a plea sure, Your Graces,” she said. “I am certain that you will find Mr. Belsize’s talk incantatory.”
“Incantatory?” Jemma whispered as they made their way into a large room, already crowded with people. “What a jackass she is.”
“Jemma!” Poppy exclaimed.
“Honestly, Poppy, didn’t you think that she’s revolting?”
“No,” Poppy said. “She looks like a most intelligent young woman to me.”
“Revolting,” Jemma said with a shudder. She sat down and unfolded the paper Miss Tatlock had handed them. “The evening opens with a discussion of male tamarin monkeys. Excellent. I’ve always been fascinated by short, hairy males.”
“Hush,” Poppy said, elbowing her.
“And then a lively debate between Mr. Brownrigg and Mr. Pringle regarding the question of whether Adam and Eve had bellybuttons. Poppy!”
“Well, it’s an interesting question,” Poppy said. “But look, after that Mr. Moorehead will talk about his recent travels in Africa. That will be fascinating.”
“Hump
h,” Jemma said. “Goodness, there are a lot of people here. There’s Lord Strange. Do you think I ought to ask him to sell me the rest of the chess set?”
“Where?”
“By the window. Talking to that exquisite young woman.”
Sure enough, leaning against a beautifully arched stone window was a hawk-faced man, lean and excitable looking. He was talking to a young woman whose hair was more gold than Poppy’s and whose lips were definitely redder.
“Hmmm,” Poppy said.
“I did warn you,” Jemma said cheerfully. “So, do you think that he would sell me the rest of the chess set?”
Just then Strange turned away and looked over the room. His eyes slid over Poppy and Jemma without hesitating, as if they were no more than potatoes waiting to be planted.
Poppy turned to Jemma. “No.”
“No, he wouldn’t sell them to me?”
“Not unless you are prepared to bargain intimacies.”
“Poppy, you surprise me! I thought you were such an innocent.”
“I am not blind to the fact that some men are uninterested in respectable women.”
“By all accounts he loved his wife dearly. She died after the birth of their child.”
“He had a wife?”
Jemma nodded and turned away to greet a friend, so Poppy sat there and thought about the fact that a nobleman notorious for his illicit liaisons had apparently desired his wife and loved his wife. But she was learning that this wasn’t a fruitful way to think—so she banished all thought of Fletch, at least until he bowed before her.
For a moment she just gaped up at him. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“I could say the same for you,” he said. “I had no idea you were interested in scientific matters, Poppy.”
She rose, finally, and dropped a curtsy, wishing that Jemma would return, but Jemma had drifted away into a cloud of chattering noblemen. “This is my first visit,” she said. And then: “Could you leave, Fletch. Please?”