It was five in the evening before Josie stopped reading. She had reached a terrible chapter, one that had her fingers trembling a little. Hellgate had met an angel, chaste as the snow.
Sylvie.
And he was in love with her, of course.
I cannot live without her…I dream nightly of her exquisite form. Dear Reader, you are thinking that I am a tawdry person indeed. And it is true! I first caught sight of her from the opposite side of the street, and she looked as delicate as any angel, as slim and frail as a piece of china. It has ever been so with me: robust women bounce past me without any notice, but—
Josie stared blankly into space. Sylvie had an exquisite form, all right.
Not that he would ever speak in such a florid fashion. He expressed himself simply. That night when Mayne taught her how to walk, he told her twice that he was in love with Sylvie.
After being called a Scottish sausage by most of London, she hadn’t thought that anything could cause her more pain than her figure. But it seemed there were depths of sorrow which she hadn’t thought about.
Because the truth was that her husband thought of her as a bouncing, robust woman. And he thought of Sylvie as a delicate, fragile angel.
No man alive could not fall in love with her, with her charming air that called to every masculine impulse to care for her. Women are indeed the frailer sex, and there is no firmer way to a man’s heart than to remind him of his duty toward the fair sex.
Frail? Frail? No one could say she was frail. She glanced down at her thighs, a tear chasing the first down her cheek.
If only she could get consumption and almost die, perhaps Mayne would love her. He would pull her into his arms. Josie could almost see the scene before her. She would raise her delicate, fragile hand to his cheek—so slim that the light shone through her fingers—and press a trembling caress to his face.
He would cry then. And he would be sorry that he ever thought he loved a spindly Frenchwoman.
Of course, there was that other woman he loved as well, Lady Godwin. Another spindly, insubstantial type.
Other than wishing savagely that both Sylvie and Lady Godwin would get the opposite of a wasting disease, Josie couldn’t think what to do about the women Mayne had loved. Presently her maid brought a tea tray. “His lordship is just changing his clothing,” she said, bustling about. “I’ll ask him to join you for tea, shall I? It’s not good to spend the day on your own, my lady.”
She took herself out the door without waiting for a yea or nea. Josie sighed. She should probably scrub her face in case Mayne realized she had been crying, but he probably wouldn’t. Even with the Argand lamp lit, the room was hardly bright enough for that.
The truth was that she had to stop being so tiresome. So her husband wasn’t in love with her, but in love with a brittle Frenchwoman who didn’t have any thighs at all. Josie thought about that. Mayne liked her body. He said so.
Even if it would make Mayne fall in love with her, she didn’t really want to dwindle down to a fragile little set of bones who could drift along the street like an angel. For one thing, what about her breasts?
Mayne liked them as they were.
The door opened and the man himself entered. He stopped and bowed. “You needn’t bow to me,” Josie observed. “We are husband and wife.”
“The day I neglect to treat you with the respect you deserve is the day I shall count myself a base ingrate,” he said, sitting down opposite her and inspecting the teapot.
Josie poured him a cup and found herself leaning forward so he could take a glance at her bosom—should he desire to do so.
Apparently he did, because when she handed him a teacup his eyes had a particular darkness that she was coming to know quite well. And yet, Josie thought to herself, my breasts are not delicate or insubstantial.
“What have you been thinking of all day?” Mayne asked.
“I’ve been reading Hellgate’s Memoirs.”
There was a moment of silence.
“And what, precisely, is your relation to Hellgate?” she asked, when he said nothing.
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “I only read about half of the book before I threw it away. I couldn’t read past the chapter where I was supposedly tied to the wall, a pleasure which I am not eager to experience.”
“I am reluctant to think that my husband may have been such a fool as Hellgate.”
“A fool? All of London admires him.”
“A fool,” Josie said. “Who could possibly write a sentence as foolish as that piffle he wrote about wanting not to soil an angel, but to marry her?”
“You’re a harsh critic,” Mayne said, reaching out for another cucumber sandwich.
“Leave me one of those,” Josie said, suddenly realizing there were only two left. “So did you write that sentence?”
“You must be joking.”
Relief flooded Josie’s heart.
“But there’s no avoiding the fact that the author seems to have played ducks and drakes with my life,” Mayne said. “He must be a devoted reader of the gossip columns.”
Josie felt a sick, churning jealousy in her stomach. “He caught the nuances of your engagement to Sylvie,” she said.
“I didn’t read past the middle,” Mayne said. “It’s surprising how tedious one’s life becomes turned into puerile prose.”
“He says that you fell desperately in love on glimpsing her slender figure on the other side of the street,” Josie said. “And that her delicacy brought out a masculine wish to protect and honor.”
“Well, Sylvie does play a fragile womanhood role very well.”
Josie pushed away the sick, churning jealousy in her stomach. What could she do? Her husband was in love with Sylvie. But he was married to her, and there was nothing worse than a woman who sat about moaning about things that couldn’t be helped.
Mayne didn’t seem to be on the edge of tears at the thought of his former fiancée. In fact, he had managed to eat the last cucumber square while she wasn’t watching. His face was carved, degenerate, just like one would imagine a man named Hellgate to look.
But then he flipped back the lock of hair over his eyes and smiled at her, and Josie forgot everything she was thinking. Hellgate or not, when he smiled, she would do anything for him.
Yet he was a fool. All men were fools.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, watching her so intently that she felt as if he were undressing her.
“That men are fools,” she told him.
He reached out and took her hand.
“True,” he said, and with a twist of his wrist, she ended up on his lap, so he said it into her ear. His palm spread across her breasts, spanning her. “Alas, so true. Tell me, do you think I am particularly foolish, or is it a general characteristic?”
“I don’t know very many men well enough to categorize them,” Josie said, thinking about it. “I think you are certainly remarkably foolish to have—well—” She shrugged.
“Wasted my life?”
“Not your life, your substance.”
“As a matter of fact,” Mayne drawled lazily, “my estate is about the only thing I haven’t wasted.”
“I didn’t mean that. Your—Your spirit. Like that Shakepeare poem, about spending his spirit in a waste of shame.”
He was smiling at her. “I always thought he was talking about semen. Nothing spiritual about it.”
“I know that,” she said tartly. “He’s talking about spending spirit in a waste of shame. Frankly, I can’t help but think that someone as tedious as that Mustardseed is a waste of shame. Or a shameful waste.”
He was nuzzling her neck. “You’re right.”
“What?”
“You’re right,” he repeated. “It was a waste of spirit and a shameful waste, and anything else you want to call it.”
Josie felt that kind of queer urge, as if one of her teeth was aching and she couldn’t stop touching it with her finger. “And when Hellgate fel
l in love? Was that a waste?”
“Falling in love is never a waste,” Mayne said. His hands were straying now, making her squirm in his lap. But she couldn’t not ask.
“Do you still love Mustardseed, then?” she asked.
“Who?” He raised his head. His hair was disheveled, falling around his face, and his eyes had that intense blackness she was coming to love.
“Is love a feeling that just disappears, like desire?” she persisted.
For a moment he looked confused and then he said, “Love, no. Love stays. Don’t you agree?”
She stroked his hair. “Yes. Love stays with you. It’s irritating but persistent.”
“Are you in love?”
She couldn’t see his eyes and so for a moment she toyed with the idea of telling him she had a hopeless passion for someone. It would even the scale so he didn’t feel sorry for her. Being as she was in love with her husband, she meant. The husband who was in love with someone else. “Absolutely not,” she said, steadying her voice. “I’m not the sort to fall in love.”
He grinned at her. “All honey-sweet wives are in love with their husbands.”
“No, they’re not.” The more she thought about it, the more annoyed she felt. What had he been doing, scrambling from bed to bed like some sort of tomcat on the prowl? Didn’t he have anything better to do with the last twenty years of his life?
“Why not?” he asked. His voice was a little guarded now, though.
She didn’t feel like anyone’s honey-sweet bride. She felt like a woman stupid enough to fall in love with a man who was in love with a Frenchwoman. Everyone knew that Frenchwomen were perfect—and Sylvie was a prime example—so she had no chance of shaking that image free from his heart. “I just wish that you had made some better choices.”
His jaw tightened. “Hellgate’s life is not mine, for all there may be resemblances.”
Josie stood up and looked out the window, her back to him. “Did you or did you not trot from the bed of one married woman to the bed of another, for all the world like a child looking for sweets?”
“That seems unnecessarily critical,” he said.
“I don’t think so.” She turned around again. “I married a man whose inability to stay in one bed is notorious enough that a version of it becomes a best seller. I think it’s quite a fair, if not gentle, description. A mean description would—” She stopped.
“Would be what?” he snapped.
“Would describe you like some sort of untamed dog, hopping onto one woman for a sniff and then wandering off to another!”
“Truly vulgar,” he said slowly.
She slapped the red leather book. “And this isn’t? Vulgar?” She couldn’t read his eyes at all, but her blood was racing through her veins. “You know what I think the most vulgar thing of all is?”
“Do inform me.”
“That when you fell in love, you fell in love with such angelic women, to use Hellgate’s words. Chaste. Nothing like yourself.”
“True.”
“It makes it worse, somehow.”
“Because they were so chaste that I shouldn’t have touched their palms with my debauched kiss?” His voice sounded perfectly even but he was obviously angry.
“That’s not it exactly,” she said. “It’s that you liked bedding women enough that you—you had your hundred women. But when you decided to fall in love, you fell for women who weren’t even interested in the act.”
“Chaste doesn’t mean—”
“I don’t know about Lady Godwin,” Josie cried recklessly, “but I do know about Sylvie. I know that she didn’t feel desire for you. All the women who did feel desire for you were only good enough for a week, and then you left them. You saved your emotion for the women who never wanted you at all.”
He just stared at her.
“You told me that about Lady Godwin. You said that she wanted her husband, not you.” She was beginning to feel bitterly ashamed; sweet wasn’t a word she could ever apply to herself.
Mayne cleared his throat. “I suppose you could be right.”
“I am right,” Josie snapped. “I suppose you played the voluptuary’s role because you enjoyed it.”
“One does.”
“According to Hellgate’s Memoirs, all those women lusted after you. Why did you fall in love with a chaste angel figure? Why didn’t you just marry one of those hurly-burly Jezebels?”
“I rather think I did,” he said silkily.
She looked away. If he didn’t know that she wasn’t akin to those married woman who played their debauched games with him…there was nothing more to be said. She couldn’t think how to begin the conversation over, to stop what had started, to take back her own words.
“You’re right,” he said suddenly. “I haven’t had an affaire in two years because I came to the same conclusion you did. I threw away years of my life on tawdry little encounters with doxies, married or not. I’d even agree with Shakespeare about the wasteland of shame, or whatever that phrase was.”
She pressed her lips together. What sort of victory was this?
“But you oughtn’t to make fun of my love for Sylvie, nor for Lady Godwin either,” he said. “Probably they were too chaste for the likes of me, but they showed me a way out of the dissipation. Desire is always there, after all. There’s always another pair of beautiful eyes, or an alluring smile…”
He was talking more to himself than to her. Josie had a metallic taste in her mouth that suggested she might lose the tea she just drank. One could only suppose it was her own future he was describing, married to a man who found the world full of alluring smiles and endless desire.
“But after I fell in love with Lady Godwin, I suddenly saw how stupid all that pleasure was. How pleasureless, in a way. And then it was the same with Sylvie.” That wasn’t anger in his eyes; it was self-loathing.
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?”
“In what way?”
“Honestly, I don’t think pleasureless is the right word to describe your experiences. Or for that matter, the experiences of your inamoratas.”
“What?”
She had to chase away that look in his eyes. “I don’t think bedding you is pleasureless or stupid. I could easily become addicted to the practice. I can see why you spent twenty years doing it. The truth is that I would probably throw away my life doing exactly the same, were it only permitted for women.”
He threw up his head and stared at his young wife, startled. She looked unbearably young and desirable. “You don’t understand,” he said slowly.
“For the kind of pleasure you’ve given me in the last week, Garret…I would do anything for that. Throw away my life, my reputation, anything you asked for. Partly, I got so angry because I am so jealous of all those other women.”
“You are?”
She nodded. “I want you to make love to me in secret chambers at the palace. And in the kitchen garden at a ball. And—”
“I never made love to anyone in a kitchen garden,” he snapped. “That was made up by the author.”
“Wherever. The truth is that I hate every one of those hundred lovers you had. I covet every moment they spent with you.”
A harsh laugh came from his chest. “You were likely in your cradle when I made love for the first time.”
“I do have to take into account that it’s a good thing all those women came before me, because I’m sure they taught you many things about pleasuring a woman.”
The bleakness was out of his eyes. “So what you’re saying is that there was a good side to all my debauchery.”
“Am I thinking too much of myself?” she asked, sinking back onto the bed.
He followed her, of course. “A woman has to look out for her own pleasure.”
“A thought I’ve had many a time,” she said with satisfaction.
“You’re making a mistake, though,” he said. “There’s a difference between the kind of pleasure you and I share and that—
”
But she was tired of this conversation. It made her heart stop when she saw that look of self-hatred in his eyes. So she covered his mouth with her hand and told him, quite severely, that men should always obey their wives without the slightest objection. She didn’t take her hand away until she was quite certain he understood what she was saying.
And then she lay back against the pillows and told the Earl of Mayne precisely what it was that he should do.
He seemed to understand all right, because he said in a jaded tone, “I’m sure I’ve seen this bedchamber before. It’s time for me to flit on to another bed.”
Josie smiled at him and then put one finger under the little sleeve of her afternoon gown. It was a pale lemony yellow, with a glorious strip of lace running just under the breasts. She played with the little scrap of fabric as if it were too tight. “I might let you go tomorrow,” she said.
His eyes were getting that wild look again, so she snuggled even farther back against the pillows, which meant that the delicate yellow fabric strained over her breasts. She didn’t need to look down to know that her nipples were framed against the fabric. She could feel them longing for his touch.
“No lady can hold a rake for long.” But his voice didn’t sound convinced.
She felt as if someone should be caressing her breasts, and he wasn’t, so she did it herself. She could hear his breathing. “But I’m no lady,” she told him. “Not an angel.”
“No,” he breathed.
“Not a chaste scrap of the cloud either.”
For a moment he was distracted and frowned at her.
“As Hellgate describes his dearest love,” she clarified.
“I can’t see a cloud in this room,” he promised.
“In fact, I’m a bit of a reprobate,” she said, coming up on her knees. “A strumpet.”
A strumpet would take her own pleasure, and Josie was enjoying that. In fact, her own hand felt almost as good as Mayne’s—
But maybe he saw that thought in her eyes, because a second later he pushed her hand away, and then…
40
From The Earl of Hellgate’s Memoirs,
Chapter the Twenty-sixth