“You never showed—” she said, her voice a gasp.
“I would no more risk your reputation than I would rob a bank.”
“Oh,” Imogen said rather foolishly. And then: “You’re a very good actor.”
The theater was packed now, every seat filled with someone’s bottom. The noise of voices kept crescendoing and fighting with the musical cacophony coming from the pit.
“They’ll be starting soon.” He was still holding her hand.
Had she really considered not coming to meet him? Imogen felt as if her blood were inflamed, shivers kept going down her spine, and her companion’s decadent eyes knew precisely what he was doing to her.
Seducing her, that’s what he was doing.
She’d known, Imogen realized suddenly. Of course, she’d known. Why had she taken a long bath? Dressed so carefully, if ostentatiously? Why else but that she could be seduced, and her companion allowed the liberties he would have had the night before if she hadn’t fallen into a cask of wine?
What’s more, she was going to allow it to happen. It was an adventure, a change from all the grief and sobriety of the last year.
One night, she told herself. One night and then she would return to being a sober widow, care for Josie, care for her reputation, and stop this wild adventure.
Meanwhile, he had started a slow massage of her hand.
“Mr. Spenser!” she gasped.
“Gabe,” he said.
“Gabe,” she repeated slowly.
He bent forward and whispered in her ear. “A Whitefriars nun is on intimate terms with her friends…Imogen.”
She licked her lips nervously. The orchestra was actually playing in tune now. He smiled, and in his eyes were all manner of unholy things that a nun of any sort—nay, a proper lady—and certainly a divinity professor should know nothing of.
“I thought you studied the Bible,” she said.
“People remind me of that all too frequently.”
At that moment the boys standing beside the gaslights at the side of the theater doused them. There was a roar from the crowd. And Gabriel’s lips took hers. There was none of Rafe’s gentle approach, sweet humor, sideways proposal. This was a punishing kiss that pushed her head back and sent an instant wave of heat over her body. This was an erotic friction that had nothing to do with the taste of sun-warmed grass or gentle brushings: this was a deep merciless possession. And she—
The curtain snapped up as the boys standing at the gas lamps relit them.
Imogen found she had her hands clenched in his hair, holding him close. He eased away, smiling at her.
From the row before her she heard a scandalized, “Well, I never!” and guessed that the matron in the purple bonnet had ventured to turn around in her seat.
Two seconds later, the stage exploded with a group of whooping, screaming actors, and Imogen forgot about her offended neighbor.
Two minutes later, she leaned over and said, “Are all the women’s parts played by men?”
“Oh no,” he whispered into her ear, “the Principal Boy is generally played by a woman. See, there she is.”
Imogen blinked at the stage. Sure enough, there was a young woman, scandalously dressed in breeches with her legs in tights that made them visible to everyone. “My goodness,” she said. “I was sorry that I didn’t bring Josie, but—”
“It’s all nonsense.” But his lips left a caress on her ear that had nothing to do with the nonsense on the stage.
Gradually the show became more and more boisterous. Imogen’s favorite character was called Widow Trankey. She kept prancing onto the stage and commenting on Cinderella’s terrible manners and her long nose (for in truth, one could not say in all honesty that the man playing Cinderella had precisely delicate features).
By the time Widow Trankey had decided that the ugly stepsisters were a terrible lot, and really ought to be disciplined—and she was the woman to do it, since Cinderella’s stepmother had failed in the task—Imogen was laughing helplessly every time she opened her mouth.
Finally, Widow Trankey announced that the audience needed to hear about what happened to her the night before, a tale that she would sing to them. “I went to the Alehouse as an honest Woman should—” she sang.
And to Imogen’s astonishment, the audience uniformly opened their mouths and roared “So you should!”
“And a Knave followed after, as you know Knaves would,” she said, swishing her skirts in a flirtatious manner.
“So he would!” roared the audience, and Imogen shouted it too. She was acting precisely like the lightskirt she was pretending to be, screaming out the lines with abandon.
“I went into my Bed as an honest Woman should,” said Widow Trankey with many wagglings of her fingers and eyebrows.
“So you should!” roared the crowd, and now Imogen saw that the lady in the purple bonnet was crying out the refrain too and that almost, not quite, stopped Imogen from noticing something her companion was doing.
Because he—he—
“And the Knave crept into it, as you know Knaves would,” said the Widow.
“So he would,” Imogen said, her voice dying. Because he was licking her ear. It felt hot, gliding against her skin. Teasing and slow.
She risked a look sideways. His laughter was husky and suggestive, not at all like the excited guffaws coming from the rest of the audience.
“Stop that!” she said, and turned back to the Widow, who was berating the wicked Stepmother for her unkindnesses.
But he didn’t stop it. A few seconds later she actually felt his teeth nip her ear, and it felt so extraordinary that she found herself shifting in her chair, and once she gasped.
Not that anyone could have heard, because just then the Principal Boy snuck onto the stage and stolen all the pies that Widow Trankey meant to sell in the market. She was squealing, he was running, and suddenly a pie flew across the stage.
Imogen screamed as the pie sailed across the stage. At the very last second, Widow Trankey ducked—but the pie hit one of the evil stepsisters!
The theater alternately screamed and moaned as pies flew about the stage. Most of them were adroitly caught by either the Widow, the thief, or (on occasion) Cinderella. Within a few minutes, their costumes, faces, and the stage were generously festooned with crumbs and splatters of pie.
“They’re such good jugglers!” Imogen cried, turning to her companion.
Rafe had seen the panto a hundred times before, and had never seen Imogen Maitland like this…like a delicious cherry pie that he couldn’t wait to eat. He took one look at her shining eyes and those beautiful, deep lips and couldn’t wait anymore.
He swooped on her, swallowing her excitement and her joy, turning it in one spellbinding second to something else.
There could never be a thrill of dominion like the one he felt when Imogen tensed, startled in his arms, but a second later fell into the kiss, her eyes closed, her breathing labored. She was his, his for the evening, his for life, if only she knew it, and if only he could pull it off.
“Imogen,” he growled at her.
“Yes,” she said, her voice catching.
“I’ll be taking you back to your chambers tonight.”
Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him. “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh—yes.”
Rafe stared unseeing at the stage. He had the night to convince her that they were suited in the most important of ways. Then, after she was his in all the ways that counted, he could tell her who he was. A slow smile spread across his face. Rafe may not have had much practice in the last few years, but if there was one thing in his life that he had no doubt about, it was his ability to make a woman happy. Thinking about it, he reached out and pulled Imogen closer, as close as those red velvet chairs would allow.
Meanwhile, the panto continued unabated. Widow Trankey had most of her pies back now. She’d decided that since she no longer had enough to sell—and to her lamentation, they didn’t look quite as fres
h as they used to—she would use the rest to dispense with the wicked stepmother and her daughters. Because, as she announced, the prince was a bit on the slow side. The glass slipper had been sitting around the palace for a day or two, and the lummox didn’t seem to have a plan. He should be out trundling around in a glass coach and finding Cinderella but—just like a man—he was slow. Slow!
Doesn’t know what side his bed is buttered on, she said.
“Yes!” roared the crowd.
“Now if he were a man with a nobler…flame,” Widow Trankey shouted.
“Yes!” roared the crowd. Rafe didn’t even hear it. Imogen’s mouth was so sweet, so soft, and so delicious that he could have stayed there all night.
“If he were a man who felt no shame,” the Widow declared.
“Yes!” roared the crowd.
“He wouldn’t need me to help him out, would he?”
“No!” cried the lady in the purple bonnet, and all her immediate neighbors.
And then, though neither Rafe or Imogen saw it, Widow Trankey’s eye was caught by a pair in his audience: by a sailor and his moll, so taken up with each other that they really ought to be charging a peeper’s fee.
Widow Trankey’s real name was Tom, and he was a clown from a clowning family: a man whose clowning was part and parcel of his makeup and his inheritance. Mischief had been his middle name since he was a scrap of a lad and, besides, he knew a crowd pleaser when he saw it.
Indicating with the tiniest waggle of his eyebrows to his friend Carn (playing the evil stepmother for the evening) that he’d found a wonderful diversion, he changed the rhythm of the song a bit to suit the present circumstances.
“These days modesty has scarcely room to breathe,” he bellowed.
The crowd happily followed along.
“Young girls are skilled in all sorts of debauches.”
“Debauches!” roared the crowd.
“Even when they’re supposed to be sitting in their Glass-Coaches.”
The crowd affirmed his thought.
Slowly, slowly, he spun a finger around the room. “And the Widow must delouse the debauches wherever they may be…”
“Yes!” howled the crowd.
And that was when Tom let fly a very nice cream pie, one of the very best he had left. He gave it a little spin, so that it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Up, up, up it arched.
The crowd gasped and screamed (depending on their proximity to the pie).
Only Rafe and Imogen said nothing, noticed nothing, heard nothing.
The pie spun lazily, and then (Tom sighed in relief: he had had a moment’s fear that the pie would land on a nasty-faced matron a row too short—she was the type to get him keelhauled)…it came to rest, almost gently, on top of the two embracing lovers.
In fact, on the very top of their heads, as if the pan were a special sort of roof.
Tom wasn’t a man without mercy. Before the couple could recover their wits, he had three other pies spinning into the audience, enlivening the shrieking, delighted crowd.
26
Loving Fools are Created Every Day
Gabriel Spenser was in a restless frame of mind. He had gone up to the nursery to check on Mary and all was as it should be. She was lying facedown in her crib, with her round little bottom humped in the air.
“Won’t that injure her neck?” he asked Mary’s new nursemaid, as he tried to rearrange his daughter into a better sleeping position.
“Never has,” Mrs. Blessams said, her knitting needles clicking in the quiet. She was everything that a nursemaid ought to be: cheerful, efficient, and all-knowing. “I’ve raised babies that slept on their faces, and those that slept on their little bums.”
Gabe felt useless. He had enjoyed carrying Mary around in the crook of his arm, and she seemed to like it. But today he’d come up twice to find her playing quietly on the floor, and although she instantly brightened and crawled over to him, he hardly felt that she needed him.
So he didn’t bring her down to lunch, because likely Mrs. Blessams would think it was an odd thing to do. Everyone knew that fathers didn’t belong in a nursery. Nor did they carry their daughters around the house. Children stayed in the nursery and made occasional, formal visits to the drawing room.
Of course, his mother had been different. He could only suppose it was because her position kept her isolated from society. She used to come to the nursery and read him books. He did remember a nurse, but what he mostly remembered was his mother.
He couldn’t seem to pull himself away from Mary’s crib. “Mrs. Blessams, you may fetch a cup of tea from the kitchen,” he said, over his shoulder. “I’ll wait here with Mary.”
Mrs. Blessams blinked up at him. “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Spenser, but that nice girl Bess will bring me a cup on the dot of ten, so there’s no need to worry yourself.”
The image of himself snatching Mary out of her crib and holding her faded from Gabe’s mind.
She was damnably efficient, this Mrs. Blessams.
“Of course,” Mrs. Blessams said, coming to her feet, “if you really wouldn’t mind watching the babe for a matter of a few minutes, I would be grateful for a small respite.”
“I’d be happy to,” Gabe said.
The moment the door was closed, he picked up Mary as carefully as he could, making sure that all her little blankets came with her. Then he sat down before the fire and arranged her in the crook of his arm. She stirred a little and threw a tiny arm over her head. She was so beautiful that she made his heart ache.
Mrs. Blessams came back long before he wished to put Mary back in her bed.
“She’ll be waking up for a bit of a feed soon,” Mrs. Blessams said. She didn’t flicker an eyelash at seeing him there with Mary, and Gabe was grateful for that. “I’ll just wake her night nurse. That young woman sleeps as soundly as a log.”
So he handed Mary over, still sleeping, and closed the door behind him. He didn’t feel like sleeping. Rafe was out somewhere, festooned in a mustache and pretending to be him. One could suppose that therefore he, Gabe, should pretend to be the duke. In reality, he had retired to his room directly after the evening meal.
He wandered down the great staircase, wondering what it would have been like to have been born legitimately into the house of Holbrook. Gabriel Jourdain rather than Gabriel Spenser.
The great entryway was shadowy and empty, but for a dozing footman who jerked himself upright, and said, “Good evening, sir.”
Gabriel nodded. Would his life feel different if the footman had said, Good Evening, my lord? He thought not.
There was a light showing under the library door, so he walked in. Rafe’s library was of the ancient, tired, and slightly moldering type. The carpets were almost as threadworn as Rafe’s own clothing. The books were expiring slowly into powdery heaps of dust that marked the fingers and collected in the corners of the bookshelves. There wasn’t much of luxury about the room, and yet it spoke of years of Holbrook dukes, reading or not reading, sitting here smoking pipes and cheroots until the ceilings were blackened and the books smelled vaguely like wood fires.
She was seated at the library table, her head bent over a sheet of foolscap. His heart hiccuped. He’d made a promise to himself to stay away from this enticing and proper young lady. She was too cool, too out of reach, and entirely too beautiful for him.
“It’s late, Miss Pythian-Adams,” he said, breaking all his own promises.
She looked up and rubbed her eyes unself-consciously, as if she were a mere girl of five or six. Tendrils of bronze hair curled about her neck and temples, fallen from an elegant, winding arrangement on her head.
“I must send the actress taking the part of Mrs. Loveit her role. She seems quite anxious about it. Rafe gave me a note from her today.”
“Loretta wrote Rafe a note?” Gabe asked without thinking.
Miss Pythian-Adams didn’t miss anything. She glanced up at him, and then said: “Yes, Miss Hawes inquired about the play,
so Rafe passed the letter on to me.”
Gabe stared at her face. She had the chiseled perfection of a saint, the kind of clear beauty that one saw in statues—not lush Italian statues, but the ascetic northern saints. He’d forgotten that she knew that Loretta had once been his mistress.
“May I help with the copying?” he said, sitting down without further ceremony. He was a degenerate man who was bringing a former mistress to the house of a nobleman. It could hardly be worse.
“Actually, I would be grateful for the help,” she said, with a little, exhausted sigh.
“You read the lines, and I’ll write them down.”
She read, and he copied all the impertinent, silly lines of the hysterical Mrs. Loveit.
“He shall no more find me the loving fool,” Miss Pythian-Adams said.
Gabe looked up to find that her eyes were on his face. Her mouth was set in a line of deliberate composure as if she would—she would what? Laugh?
“She was never my loving fool,” Gabe said conversationally, blotting the foolscap. “We had a brief, if foolish, encounter. And I truly did knock her down with my coach, Miss Pythian-Adams.”
“I have no need of these details, Mr. Spenser. Surely I would never ask you to clarify.”
“I think those eyes of yours see many human foibles, do they not?”
“These are the only eyes I have, and there are certainly many foibles to be seen,” Miss Pythian-Adams said with some dignity.
Gabe couldn’t help it. He liked baiting her, this self-contained gentlewoman. “And what do you think of my foibles?”
She looked like a cat in the light of the candles on the table. “I think…” She closed her book. “I think you are a beautiful man, Mr. Spenser.”
His mouth fell open.
“I expect that you use your beauty to make your way into delightful situations. If I understand the matter correctly, Miss Hawes is unlikely to have suffered by your attentions, be they ever so brief.”
Gabe felt as if he had been struck to the ground by a large rock.
Miss Pythian-Adams composedly opened her book and read the line again: “He shall no more find me the loving fool he has done.”