Misery threatened to swallow her, but there was an insistent, sweet ache that she hadn’t really noticed.
There was a lot she hadn’t really noticed.
Darby had pushed her bodice so low that her breast—her naked breast—was visible. And he had his hand cupped around it, holding it as if it were some sweet fruit he meant to devour.
As she watched, so shocked that she couldn’t even summon a response, he lowered his head and lips drifted across the creamy surface of her breast, rubbed across the nipple, drifted to the other side.
Henrietta’s entire body went rigid. A sharp wave of pleasure shot through her midsection.
He brushed his mouth back and scraped gently over her nipple again.
Henrietta found she was going light-headed from not breathing, but when she let out her breath, it sounded awful, a hoarse noise, as if she were getting ill.
The sound just seemed to encourage him. He cast her a glance, a wicked, laughing glance, and then brushed his head back and stayed…stayed at her nipple, sucked, stroked, nipped, and Henrietta couldn’t catch her breath at all. She couldn’t move either. She just sat there, trying to catch her breath, and feeling as if pleasure jolted through her body with every move of his lips, with every touch of his hands.
And Darby feasted on her. Discovered that her breasts had a curve as exquisite as he’d seen in his life, that she was as delicious as he had imagined. Listened, in the back of his mind, to a small voice saying: this is what you want. Relief bloomed in some remote part of his heart.
“I want you,” he said against the smooth cream of her breast. “Damn it, Henrietta, I even like you.”
At that, a tiny smile grew in those beautiful eyes.
“I’ll marry you,” he said, and his voice had a little rasp. “Oh yes, I’ll marry you.”
31
Motherhood Is An Ideal State…Sometimes
Henrietta hadn’t seen her husband-to-be since Esme’s dinner party, five days earlier. The following morning she had received a note saying that he would obtain a special license from the Bishop of Salisbury; Darby hadn’t been seen since.
“Darby is adjusting to the shock,” Esme advised. “Men can be foolish when their routine is upset. Just remember that once you’re married you need to keep him on his toes by changing your mind—and plans—once a week or so. You don’t want to nurture this type of impoliteness.”
Henrietta lay awake at night thinking about how devastated Millicent’s face had been when she realized that her stepdaughter had done such a loathsome thing as bed a gentleman without the benefit of marriage.
Her stepmother hadn’t said much about it since. In the carriage on the way home, she said, “I am sure you are aware of how disappointed I am, Henrietta. We need not refine upon the subject.”
Henrietta tossed and turned in her bed, thinking that she would tell her stepmother, that she had to tell the truth. But Millicent had a firm grasp of morality, and Henrietta was quite certain that her stepmother would feel it necessary to inform Darby about Esme’s deliberate revelation of the letter. It was one thing to admit to Darby that she, Henrietta, wrote that letter. But it was another to admit that she was part of a plot to force him into a marriage proposal. As it was, he had assumed that the letter had been mixed up with the note she sent him about hiring a nursemaid.
Was it terrible to start a marriage with such a falsehood? But what if she told the truth, and he denounced her as a scheming woman and refused to go through with the marriage?
The problem was that she desperately wanted to marry him. Desperately. With every inch of her body, and it didn’t have that much to do with Josie and Anabel either. She had to face that cold truth in the middle of the night. She was manipulating a man into marrying her because she coveted him, and that was a despicable thing to know about oneself.
He desires me, she thought, but she knew it was a weak defense. Darby—the elegant fashion leader of the ton—would never marry a mere nobody from the country if he weren’t forced to do so. If only he weren’t so rich! She had little problem with the ethics of the plan when she and Esme thought that Darby had no money, and that he needed her inheritance. She had even thought, rather smugly, that he must marry so that Anabel and Josie would have dowries. But Darby didn’t need her inheritance. He didn’t need her.
She had overheard a conversation between Darby and his friend Rees Holland that confirmed her assessment. It was after the dinner party, when everyone was putting on their wraps and preparing to return home. She was kissing Esme good-bye when Holland’s bellow floated from the drawing room: “Why in God’s name would you marry the woman if you haven’t even tupped her yet?” She couldn’t hear Darby’s reply.
But the earl hadn’t stopped there. “Don’t do it merely because the woman has a bloody fortune. I shall dower Josie. The baby as well.”
Henrietta paused in the very act of pulling on her gloves. Esme raised her eyebrows but they both stayed absolutely still.
“The devil you will.” Darby’s voice sounded calmly uninterested to Henrietta.
“Didn’t say I can,” Rees retorted. “Said I shall. Got more than enough blunt for myself, don’t I? And since my wife is unlikely to give me an heir—”
“Their dowries do not present a problem.”
“Wasn’t Rawlings’s estate entailed?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Then…You can?”
“Fallen into the common belief that I’m good for nothing but clothing, Rees?” He said it gently, but there was an edge there. Henrietta could just imagine the look in Darby’s eyes.
“Don’t be an ass,” Rees snapped back. “I think you are exactly what you’ve appeared to be since we were both in short-coats. A dandified nib with a pretty face and a prettier way with the rapier. Don’t tell me you’ve been making music on the ’Change? I would have heard about it.”
“The lace, Rees, the lace.”
“I thought the lace was nought more than a hobby. And didn’t you import most of that from France? Must be impossible these days.”
“Since the war cut off supplies from France, I’ve become the foremost importer of lace from Belgium. In the last five years, I’ve extended my reach. I own Madame Franchon’s on Bond Street. Madame de Lac’s in Lumley—”
“Franchon’s,” he interrupted. “You own that place that sells lingerie? Purveyed your lace cuffs into a fortune, have you?”
“Precisely.”
“Hell, the way women spend money on clothes, you must be worth more than I am. You, the very glass of fashion, dabbling in trade.”
“Money would have naught to do with my decision to marry,” Darby said, and silence fell in the library.
Esme had looked at Henrietta, eyes alight with laughter. “Rees is probably contemplating murder, merely to save Darby from himself,” she whispered. “Lord, but the man hates marriage!”
“I don’t think Darby thinks much more of it,” Henrietta had mumbled.
“I wouldn’t be too sure,” Esme had replied.
But Henrietta knew the truth of it. Darby was getting a bad bargain in this marriage. No children. And no money, because he didn’t need it.
Approximately fourteen times a day Henrietta resolved to write Darby a letter and break off their engagement, if one could call it that.
And fourteen times she changed her mind, metaphorically bared her teeth at the future, and thought: I will take what I want. It’s hard enough that I can’t have children; I deserve to have Josie and Anabel. She longed for them with an ache that sank into her very bones. She couldn’t help dreaming of teaching Josie how to read, or singing Anabel a lullaby before she slept. They need me, she told herself.
That proved to be a soothing thought. Josie and Anabel did need a mother. And she was quite sure that no one else would love them the way she would, because another woman would likely have children of her own. And then that woman might neglect Josie and Anabel, or favor her own children over them.
<
br /> The very thought made Henrietta shudder. Having been lucky enough to grow up with a loving stepmother didn’t blind her to the possibilities.
She went every day to Esme’s nursery and played with the girls. Anabel was a perfect cherub, always toddling around with her arms stretched out for a hug.
Josie was not a cherub by even the most generous assessment, but she was interesting. She divided the day between screaming tantrums and playing with the tin soldiers that had belonged to Esme’s brother.
The problem was that while Josie and Anabel needed a mother, Henrietta herself was beginning to lose confidence in her own mothering abilities. Oh, she hadn’t thrown any more water on Josie. But that wasn’t saying that she hadn’t had the impulse. She had. And it was a terrible thing to contemplate. Would Josie be better with a different mother?
Esme’s nanny had a placid way of simply patting Josie on the shoulder whenever she started shrieking, and saying, “I’ll speak to you when you feel a wee bit calmer, my duckling.”
Henrietta tried to copy her. But she could feel her teeth starting to clench whenever Josie broke into the “I’m a little motherless girl” routine. What if she actually turned out to be a bad mother to Josie?
She frantically leafed through Bartholomew Batt’s advice about governing children in their younger years, but it was disconcerting to find how useless his advice seemed to be in the face of Josie’s tantrums. Who cared if Mr. Batt believed that wet nurses had a tendency to drink too much, thereby passing on alcoholic tendencies to children? She wasn’t nursing Josie, but spending time with her was likely to drive her to drink.
Josie did like it when she told fairy stories. Perhaps it was just a matter of their growing accustomed to each other.
On the fifth afternoon following the dinner party, Henrietta was seated on a short stool, surrounded by tin soldiers in battalions, trying to fight off the excursions of an enemy spy who kept sneaking over the battlements (her skirts) and attacking her troops, when Darby walked into the room.
He was wearing a single-breasted sage-colored morning coat with double-gilt buttons, and his pantaloons were of a pale, clinging fawn. His waistcoat was of dark green striped silk, and he was carrying an amber-headed cane that was the precise color of his pantaloons.
Josie leaped up and shrieked, “Simon!” She dashed across the nursery. Darby looked enormously relieved and gratified as she skidded to a halt a mere inch from his pantaloons.
“Thank you very much, Josie,” he said, stooping down. “I appreciate your forbearance.”
She scowled, not seeming to know what to do next.
With a sigh, Darby reached down and scooped her up, carefully avoiding his pale trousers. His sister seemed to be taller than she had been last week, if that was possible. A lanky leg dangled in front of him, one little pointed boot dangerously close to his crotch.
She stared directly into his eyes in a most disconcerting fashion. “You’re my brother Simon,” she announced.
“We are both aware of that.” Darby looked over at Henrietta. Why wasn’t she coming to rescue him? What was he doing, holding a child? He disliked children. In fact, what was he doing in the nursery?
“I’m a poor motherless—”
“I know that too,” he said, interrupting her.
Josie’s lower lip quivered.
“Why do you need a mother?” he demanded. “You have a brother.”
Her forehead crinkled as she tried to figure out whether that made any difference. He could see that it didn’t.
“Fine. Lady Henrietta will become your mother. How does that sound?”
Josie twisted her head to see Henrietta, who was still seated on the little stool, looking rather taken aback. Though what Henrietta had to be surprised about, Darby didn’t know. The concept was hardly a revelation.
“Lady Henny threw water on me,” Josie reminded him. Then she leaned closer to his ear and whispered noisily, “I’m not sure that Anabel likes her very much.”
Darby considered Anabel’s propensity to kiss total strangers and address them as Mama. “Anabel will get used to her,” he advised Josie.
“She did throw water on me, Simon. Don’t you remember?”
“You deserved it.”
“Why don’t you make Aunt Esme my mother?” Josie whispered loudly. “Nurse says she’s going to have a baby. Then we’d have a new baby in the nursery. One that doesn’t throw up!” She gave Anabel a baleful stare.
Anabel was headed toward Darby in a staggering kind of way. She looked clean enough, but one never knew. His valet was pessimistic about the removal of vomit stains from boots.
“Well,” he said briskly, “I must go.” He placed Josie back on her feet. “Good afternoon, children. Lady Henrietta, may I have a word with you?”
Henrietta followed him reluctantly. He escorted her downstairs to the sitting room, and all she thought of as they made their way down the stairs was whether her leg was dragging. He held her arm as if he didn’t notice the roll in her step. The moment they entered the sitting room, he said, without ceremony, “I have obtained a special license. We can have the ceremony whenever you wish.”
But Henrietta had known the moment he walked into the nursery that she couldn’t go through with it.
He was too beautiful. Simply too beautiful. He looked like some sort of Greek statue, and she was nothing more than a short country girl with a limp. Just his cheekbones, and the way his cheeks hollowed beneath them, were simply too much for her. Too beautiful, too golden, too perfect. There wasn’t a trace of a limp, or anything deformed about him at all.
He needed to find a flawless person, just like himself. Someone who would bear him children who shared his elegant, lean form and deep eyes.
She sat bolt upright on the settee and ignored the pain shooting through her hip. It had been a mistake to sit on a stool in order to play with Josie. But the pain lent her a certain clarity of mind. She was deformed. He was not. That very fact spoke for itself. She had to set him free to find someone as perfect as himself.
“I am going to tell my stepmother the truth,” she said. She cut off the rest of her statement because her tone had an unbecoming edge to it.
He didn’t seem to notice. “That would be pleasant. I shall feel much easier if my mother-in-law didn’t growl at me each time we met.”
“I mean to say, I will tell her the truth, and that will remove the reason for this marriage.”
His brows knit. “We have an arrangement. I have obtained a special license. Why are you reneging on your word, Lady Henrietta?”
“Because you don’t deserve this.”
He was standing in the last rays of the afternoon sun as it crept through the windows. Henrietta didn’t want to think about his beauty. She really didn’t. He was tiresomely attractive; well, he could go off to London and find himself someone who would suit.
“I fail to see what you mean,” he remarked. He lifted his amber-topped cane and examined the top, seemingly looking for scratches. There were none.
“We will not suit,” Henrietta said.
“I believe we shall.”
What was she to say to that? She said nothing.
He strolled over to her, a model of self-possession. “You made a bargain, Henrietta. I expect you to live up to it.” He jerked his head toward the ceiling. “Those two little creatures are yours, from the day we rattle off our vows. You said you want them: you’ve got them.”
“You might want children of your own someday.”
“I believe I am the best judge of that. I have decided that I rather like the relationship you sketched out. It seems to me that we both have a good deal to gain. Appearances to the contrary, I am quite fond of my stepsisters.” He hesitated.
“I can see that.”
“We shall, I suspect, learn to be frank with each other,” he said. “My mother had a devil of a temper, Henrietta. She was most famous for an attack of choler while dining at Buxton, in the company of the Regen
t, you understand.” He paused as if she would surely know the incident to which he referred.
Henrietta tried to look inquiring but not overly curious.
“She threw a piece of roast beef across the table at my father. Unfortunately it had been scraped with horseradish,” Darby said unemotionally. “The horseradish flew into the right eye of a gentleman named Cole, a younger son of Archbishop Cole. His vision was severely hampered for some time after.”
“Ah,” Henrietta said.
He rocked back on the heels of his boots. “My mother was a remarkably uncomfortable person to live with. She could not moderate her temper, and threw objects around the room on a regular basis. Apparently this did not disturb my father, as shortly after my mother’s death he married yet another bad-tempered woman with a strong arm. The last Christmas season of my stepmother’s life was enlivened by her throwing a tureen at the vicar. I am worried about Josie in that respect. She is in a fair way to growing into her mother’s temperament.”
Henrietta swallowed. “Recall, sir, that I am the person who dropped water on Josie’s head. I very much doubt that I will be able to teach docility.”
“On the contrary. You seem to maintain a sense of decorum without problem. You might simply teach Josie some more restrained ways to achieve what she desires. Witness your graceful faint at dinner, for example.” He gave her that slow smile that made her insides melt.
She blushed. “It seemed appropriate at the time.”
“Teach Josie a few noiseless techniques. I will be grateful if I only have to hear the poor motherless child refrain once or twice a year.”
“I can try.” Luckily Bartholomew Batt had just published a new book, and she meant to order it the very moment she could. Perhaps this one would be a bit more informative when it came to fits of temper.
“Good.” His expression brightened so quickly that Henrietta suddenly wondered if he was, indeed, as uncaring as he appeared.
She was still trying to sort out the justice in the situation. “Are you quite certain that you wish to marry me, Mr. Darby? It doesn’t seem fair to you. After all, by marrying you, I gain the children. But I’m quite certain that you could hire a nursemaid to teach your sisters manners, and she would likely do a better job than I.” She looked down at her hands. “I have quite a temper too.”