Carola swallowed hard. “Am I that obvious?”
“Am I your closest friend?” Neville asked.
Carola nodded.
“Besides, you never showed any interest in me,” he went on, “so I knew within moments that you must be still attached to your husband.”
“Oh, Neville.” She laughed.
“The point is,” Gina broke in, “that Carola needs to court her husband. He’s only likely to stay at the house party two to three weeks, Esme, so we haven’t much time.”
“I don’t foresee any particular problems courting your husband,” Esme said.
“Can you—could you seduce anyone you pleased?” Carola asked, rather awed.
“Men are like children. You can’t take their claims to independence seriously.”
Neville laughed. “I knew I would find out some home truths if I remained.”
Carola ignored him. “I have to tell you that Tuppy pays me no attention whatsoever. In fact, he didn’t even greet me when he arrived last night. I’m not certain he remembers that I exist.”
“If he doesn’t know you exist now, he will soon,” Esme said reassuringly. “Now, Lord Perwinkle appears to me to be the sort of man who will respond to—well, to put it bluntly—to a woman desiring him.”
Gina nodded. “That’s what Carola and I thought as well.”
“I can’t do it,” Carola whispered. “It would just be too humiliating!”
“There’s nothing obvious about it. The man won’t even realize what’s happening,” Esme explained. “Now—here’s what we’re going to do.” She paused and cast a glance at Neville. “Off with you! You’ve heard enough.”
He acceded to a greater authority and rose. “You may be right,” he said with mock gravity. “This is a conversation that would strike fear in any man’s heart.” He bowed and kissed Carola’s fingertips. “The first minuet?” She nodded and he strolled off.
12
In Which the Marquess of Bonnington
Suffers an Insult
Cam entered the Long Salon after eating supper with Tuppy, Stephen having fled back to London in the afternoon. He spotted Gina immediately, standing with the poker-faced man she wanted to marry.
She was fingering the sticks of her fan in a dissatisfied sort of way while the marquess lectured her about something or other. Cam felt a low simmer in his belly that he had no trouble identifying. He wanted the chit. Unfortunately, she was his wife and un-haveable. But perversely he meant to torment her for being so desirable.
Gina’s face lighted up as he approached. “Cam!” she exclaimed.
Bonnington had screwed his mouth into a line again. “I think it inadvisable that Your Graces should overly associate.”
“I am quite certain it is of no concern,” Cam remarked.
“Rounton writes me that annulments are alarmingly easy to achieve. In fact, he intimated that they are growing as common as divorce.”
“Divorce is not common in England,” Bonnington pointed out. “I am certain that you would not wish any unpleasant rumors to sully your wife’s reputation.”
Cam frowned. “That reminds me,” he said. “What the devil is going on with your tutor, Gina? Rounton told me some nonsensical tale that people believed you were dallying with the poor man.”
Gina laughed, but Bonnington interrupted, scowling. “Such matters are inappropriate for Her Grace’s ears,” he said heavily. “While I share your concern, naturally, perhaps we should discuss it at a later time.”
Cam met the marquess’s eyes with a raised eyebrow. “Damned if you aren’t the most poker-faced type I’ve met since my dear departed father,” he said. Then he turned toward his wife. “Gina, what the devil did you do to poor Wapping? The man couldn’t throw his leg over a lady if you paid him, and here you are, ruining his reputation.”
She giggled. “I told everyone that. He is quite the shyest man I’ve ever met.”
“Damned if I’d send some Lothario to hang about my wife,” Cam said.
“It was all a mistake. A horrid gossip column printed something about us, and then we were surveying a meteor shower in the conservatory, and we were seen by Mr. Broke and his wife.”
“A meteor shower?” Cam looked skeptical. “What the devil did you want to see one of those for?”
“There was a meteor shower the night that Florence fell to the Medicis,” Gina explained. “Mr. Wapping thought it would be salutary for me to experience it, since the meteors had a marked effect on public opinion. But the almanac was mistaken and it was a dark night.”
The corner of Cam’s mouth quirked up. “Thought you’d like Wapping,” he said. “I had the idea from your letters that life was beginning to pale a little.”
Gina met his eyes and found complete understanding. “Are you ever bored?”
Cam spread his large hands and looked at them briefly. He wore no gloves, unlike the rest of the men in the room. “I would be if all I did was dance and change my clothing,” he said, dropping his hands.
The Marquess of Bonnington was not having a pleasant evening. First he had been tempted into rash words by that witch of a woman, Esme Rawlings. Then, when he tried to explain his entirely justified attitude, his future wife disagreed. Finally, Gina was discussing her tutor with her husband as if he didn’t exist. And as if his feelings about her tutor were of no account. He forgot that he didn’t give a hang about Gina’s tutor.
“I am happy to say,” he said, staring down his patrician nose, “that Her Grace and I do not engage in menial labor as a pastime.”
The duke looked back at him from heavy-lidded eyes. “Quite so,” he said with a drawl. “I declare I almost forgot that Gina neither weaves, nor does she spin. One of the lilies of the valley, aren’t you, my dear?”
Gina glanced at her husband-to-be, who was sporting a dangerous flush high on his cheeks. “Sebastian,” she said placatingly, “May I speak to you for a moment?”
But fury was growing inside Cam. “It’s admirable that you are such a modern fellow, Bonnington,” he remarked. “To look at you, I’d never think that you were the type to marry an illegitimate woman. By-blow of a French countess, aren’t you, Gina?”
Bonnington’s eyes narrowed. “And you, sir, are no gentleman even to mention such a thing in a public setting!”
“I see,” Cam said. “Trying to pretend it’s all hum, are you? Well, it isn’t, Bonnington. I’ve been meaning to tell you,” he said, turning to Gina who was standing frozen at her fiancé’s side. “I have something for you from your mother. Your real mother, that is.”
She gasped. “You have?”
He nodded. “No idea why it was delivered to me; I expect her estate made some sort of mistake. Remind me to give it to you tomorrow.” He turned away.
“Wait!” Gina said, catching his sleeve. “What is it? A letter?”
He met her eyes and suffered a shock. “I’m sorry, Gina,” he said. “I didn’t think you would care much about the gift, and so I forgot to mention it.”
“Is it a letter?” she repeated.
“There might be a letter inside,” Cam said. “It’s a box, about yea high.” He sketched a smallish box with his hands.
“I’m a selfish ingrate. I should have known that the gift would be meaningful to you. I’ll go get it now, shall I?”
“No!” Sebastian said sharply. “You will not give my future wife the object sent by that disreputable woman. Act responsibly for once, and discard it as the trash it is.”
Gina looked at him incredulously. “You’ve making fun, aren’t you, Sebastian? You would never keep my mother’s present away from me?”
“Your mother,” he said between clenched teeth, “is Lady Margaret Cranborne. And naturally I would never limit any correspondence between you and your mother. But as for this disgraceful woman, yes! No husband would allow his wife to receive letters—gifts—from an infamous highflier, countess or not!”
Gina swallowed hard. “The question is not whethe
r my mother was a countess, Sebastian. She was…she was my mother, and she left me something.”
“In my opinion, she gave up the title of mother when she discarded you on your father’s doorstep,” he said icily. “And I cannot emphasize how utterly inappropriate I think it is to have this conversation in an open room!”
Cam shot Gina a swift glance under his lashes. Two tears were standing on her cheeks. A swell of rage almost led to the self-righteous bastard stretching his length on the floor. But he caught Gina’s eyes just as another tear snaked its way down her cheek.
He bowed instead. “Bonnington, your servant. Gina.” He held out his hand.
But she didn’t take it.
In that moment, it was absolutely clear to Gina that if she walked off with Cam, her engagement was over. She looked up into her betrothed’s furious blue eyes, and knew that he recognized it as well.
“Sebastian,” she said shakily, “I find I am not as composed as I might wish. Will you accompany me on a brief walk in the gardens?”
Not even a flash of triumph appeared on his face. He held out his arm. “It would be my greatest pleasure,” he said.
Cam stepped backward and bowed again. Then he watched until Gina’s slender, naked back disappeared into a crowd of overdressed aristocrats. He uncurled his hand and looked at it. His fingers were shaking slightly with the strain of not hitting the pretentious, stiff-rumped snob whom his Gina wanted to marry.
He caught himself. His Gina? Only in the legal sense, he told himself.
And it wasn’t as if she gave a damn about him anyway. She had walked off with her marquess without a backward glance.
Cam’s jaw tightened. His fingers instinctively curled into a large and dangerous fist once again.
13
Tasting Rain
A summer rain shower began just as Gina and Sebastian walked out the wide doors of the Long Salon. They watched for a moment as water splattered the terrace into dark gray and made fat red roses tremble with tiny blows. Gina took a deep, unsteady breath and tried to calm herself. Logic was what was needed here.
Sebastian shifted his weight from leg to leg. “It’s come to rain,” he said.
He’s not sure of me, Gina thought. He knows I almost left him. “I still want to marry you,” she said, diving straight to the point. Although to be honest, she wasn’t quite certain of the truth of that statement.
She felt a tiny jerk in the arm she held, a small instinctive reaction. “That is,” she added, “if you want me to.”
“Of course I do,” he answered rather roughly, and without his usual sangfroid.
Chattering voices approached from behind. They moved to allow a cluster of damsels in diaphanous gowns to peer at the plump drops falling to the ground.
“Isn’t that a shame?” one of the girls cried. “It’s all wet!” They all laughed and retreated quickly back into the warmth of the room, with just a curious glance or two at the Duchess of Girton and her companion.
Gina heard one clear voice, louder than her owner meant it to be. “She’s not so old, Augusta. I don’t believe she’s yet twenty-five…”
“Would you like to go for a walk?” she asked, looking up at Sebastian.
He frowned. “You would take a chill, dressed as you are.”
“Oh no, the air is warm. I promise you, I never take a chill. Why, I believe I haven’t been sick a day since I was a child.”
He was looking at her with a speculative concern that made her bristle inside. “It’s raining, Your Grace,” and then, catching her eyes, he corrected himself. “Gina.”
She opened her mouth but he wasn’t done yet. “We do not go outdoors in the rain.” He said it slowly, with attention to each word.
Gina felt such a fillip of rage in her chest that she almost slapped the man. He stood there in the glow of torches lighting up the wet terrace, so rigid, so—poker-faced, came an unwelcome memory of Cam’s remark.
He saw something of her thoughts in her face because he held out a hand to the sky. There on his hand were two, or perhaps even three, silvery raindrops. “It will destroy your gown,” he said. “Water stains silk.”
She sighed and gave up the idea. “I should retire for the night. Would you accompany me to the library, Sebastian? I left Much Ado About Nothing there.”
He turned readily enough and offered his arm. They walked to the library without saying another word. Gina was trying her best to think logically, a difficult task when one felt like bellowing one’s anger to the skies.
She wanted to marry Sebastian. She did. He was calm and steady. He had stood at her side, offering welcome advice in the difficult years when she was a young married woman without a husband. He would be a responsible, loving husband and father. And he was handsome too, a pleasure to look at. Of course she wanted to marry him.
It was simply that he was so rigid in his morality. So absurd in his insistence that she reject her mother’s gift. Perhaps it’s a good thing that Countess Ligny died before I married Sebastian, she thought, remembering the letters she had hopefully written and sent to France. None of them were ever answered. But she had kept writing, up until the day Rounton informed her of the countess’s death.
“Do you truly wish me to reject the gift from Countess Ligny?” she asked.
They were in the library now. The fire had burned down. He picked up a poker and struck at the blackened logs. “Disgraceful. Lady Troubridge’s servants are taking advantage of her, most certainly due to her widowed status.”
“Sebastian?”
He leaned the poker back against the fireplace brick and turned about. “I think it would be best.” But his eyes were troubled. “Yet she was your mother, Gina. And she is dead. Perhaps there is no harm in accepting her final gift.”
She breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Thank you,” she said, the two words tripping over each other.
“I am disappointed by your husband’s readiness to discuss such a subject in public.” Sebastian’s face had a look of disdain, almost of contempt. “He seemed to have no concern for the extreme delicacy of the situation.”
“Cam has always been at loggerheads with propriety,” Gina explained. “His father was rigidly observant.”
He nodded. “From everything I know, the duke acted precisely as he ought in every situation.”
Gina drifted over to him and lifted her hands to rest lightly on the front of his black evening coat. “And you, Sebastian? Do you always act precisely as you ought?”
He stared down at her as if she’d asked him an obscenity. The half-born, half-acknowledged hope that she had kept with her all evening flickered and died. She let her hands slide from his chest.
“Gina, are you feeling all right?” he asked, finally. There was nothing but kindness and affection in his eyes.
“I believe so.”
“Ever since your husband has returned, you have not been yourself.”
“Cam only arrived yesterday.”
He nodded. “And you’ve not been yourself: the Gina I know.” And love hung in the air between them.
“You mean that I have tried to make you kiss me,” she said in a high, clear voice that masked the tears crowding the back of her throat. “But I also tried to tempt you into unsightly behavior at the picnic, before Cam arrived, if you remember. That’s what you called it—unsightly behavior.”
He hesitated and looked quickly over her shoulder.
“We’re quite alone,” she said with a touch of scorn in her voice. “There’s no reason to worry about your reputation.”
“I worry about your reputation, Gina.” What she saw in his eyes was disarming, and made her rage drain away.
“Your reputation is fragile, being a married woman. I would hate to see you punished by society for your husband’s childish lack of consideration.”
“Is that what you think of Cam?” she asked, startled.
“As does every right-thinking gentleman. The man’s an irresponsible cad, leaving you her
e for years at the mercy of every rakehell who strayed across you. If you weren’t such an inherently virtuous woman, there’s no telling what might have happened to you, living without a husband’s guidance.”
“I had no need of male guidance!” she flashed back.
“I agree,” he said, blue eyes meeting hers steadily. “You are a most unusual woman. Truly. Many of the young women of the ton never had the untouched, innocent air you have, even when they debuted. They would have fallen into some man’s bed long before now. Just look at Lady Rawlings.”
The last thing Gina wanted was to get into another argument on that subject. “Esme’s situation is entirely—”
But Sebastian jumped in. “I blame Rawlings. If rumors are true, he deserted her bed within a month. He stands responsible for leaving a beautiful young woman to the mercies of fribbles like Bernie Burdett.”
“I’m not certain this is an appropriate subject,” Gina said. Sebastian’s eyes were flashing and he was showing a good deal more passion than she’d ever seen from him.
“Rawlings should be hanged,” he snarled. Then he seemed to remember where he was and turned back to Gina.
“Only a woman with your extraordinary chastity could have preserved her virtue intact.”
Gina sighed. At least she had a clearer understanding of why Sebastian repudiated her every effort to further their intimacy.
“That’s why it doesn’t overly concern me,” and he lowered his voice, “that your mother was unmarried. And why I pay no mind to foolish rumors about your tutor. As a true gentlewoman, you are untouched by the low and dissolute emotions that rule so many women these days. I shall be proud to make you my marchioness.”
“I have no extraordinary virtue,” Gina said. “I simply never wished to be akin to my mother.”
“I should think not,” Sebastian huffed.
She touched his sleeve. “But do you love me, Sebastian? Do you love me, or just the idea of me?”
He stared down at her. “Of course I love you. Haven’t I always said so?” Then his eyes brightened. “Is that the problem? You’ve been worrying that I don’t love you? Well, I do.” He beamed at her as if he’d handed her the moon and the stars.