She had changed into a tight costume made of green velvet that buttoned down the front and made a man’s hands itch to stroke it. A green velvet hat nestled on her glossy brown curls. All in all, she looked like an enchantingly naughty wood elf.
“I gather you like my walking costume?” she said, as he remained silent.
“It’s delightful,” Tom barked, embarrassed. Meggin had inched forward and was stretching one dirty finger toward the white fuzzy stuff that edged Lina’s jacket. “I came to request your assistance.”
Lina raised an eyebrow. “You’d better come in, then. These shoes are the very devil to stand in, and ’tis against the nature of my sex to stand, anyway.”
Tom followed her, trying to sort that out. Why not stand? Could she possibly have meant a joke on a man standing? Or rather, parts of a man, standing? Surely not. He must have misheard. Perhaps she was simply referring to her shoes.
Meggin followed Lina into the room as closely as she could, still touching her jacket. “It’s swansdown,” Lina told her briskly. “You may touch it as long as you don’t soil it.”
“May I borrow your lady’s maid until Leke hires a temporary nursemaid?”
“I don’t have a maid,” she said, slipping into a seat next to the fireplace.
“You don’t?” His mother had employed two personal maids.
“I had one when I first arrived, but I decided I could do without her. She didn’t really approve of my situation.” She wrinkled her nose. Her eyes were merry, and not at all bitter. “I always managed to dress myself at home, after all.”
“Where is home?” Tom asked. “Do you mind if I seat myself as well?”
“A long way away, alas,” she said, and it was as if a curtain fell over her face. “Now how can I possibly help you, Mr. Holland?”
“Meggin needs a wash, and I don’t think she’ll feel comfortable with me.”
“Probably not,” Lina murmured. She looked down at the little girl. “I suppose I could supervise a bath.”
Tom was looking around the chamber. If he hadn’t known it was his mother’s bedchamber, he’d have never recognized it, hung with rosy silk as if it were the inside of a sea shell. It didn’t look like a strumpet’s boudoir, not that he had personal acquaintance with such a room. There weren’t any portraits of naked gods and goddesses, or anything else to signal that Lina was a kept woman. Damn his brother, anyway.
Lina stood up, unbuttoning her jacket and tossing it on the bed. She wore a shirt of thin muslin, which made it obvious that she was graced with one of the most glorious bosoms Tom had ever seen, with a sweet little waist that curved in and then out. He had to take a deep breath. He hadn’t had a woman since he became a vicar. It wasn’t for want of desire, either, for all his father used to call him a molly. But a vicar who happened to be the younger son of an earl, and possessor of a large private income inherited from his mother, learns very quickly to avoid conversation with unmarried women unless he can countenance marrying them. He had a deep-down, abiding respect for the vows of marriage, and the vows he had made when he entered the churchhood, which prevented him from frivolous flirtations—or worse. I’m not in tune with the age, he thought ruefully. Lina’s breasts strained in the thin muslin of her shirt as she bent toward Meggin and said something into the little girl’s ear.
“Perhaps I will leave,” he suggested. He had to get out of the room. One glance at his breeches and the oh-so-experienced Lina would know exactly how he was reacting to her presence. “I’ll send a footman with a tub of hot water,” he said, hand on the door.
He turned to watch, just for a second.
Lina had managed to coax Meggin’s dirty pinafore over her head by giving her a swansdown tippet to hold. Meggin was stroking the tippet with an expression of utter bliss, and rubbing it against her face. Lina didn’t seem to mind. She had got out a brush and was making a determined assault on Meggin’s tangled curls. And all the time she talked, a low stream of chattering, joking conversation that continued even though Meggin didn’t reply.
Her accent was unmistakable. Rees’s little songbird, as he called her, was indeed from a long way away: Scotland. Tom stored away that scrap of information, and went to order a tub and buckets of hot water.
It was to be a council of war, if held in Helene’s mother’s elegant drawing room. Something along the lines of the Council of Vienna, Helene thought to herself, and Rees was their renegade Napoleon. If only Rees would go live on an island somewhere…Elba would be perfect.
She moved a plate of gingerbread cakes away from the edge of the table and fussed with the linens for a moment. At least she didn’t have to tell her mother. Of course, she didn’t have to tell anyone. She could change her mind.
Too late. Esme rustled into the room. She was supremely elegant, wearing a morning frock of Italian crepe with a painted border of shells. An exquisite little reticule decorated with the same shells dangled from her wrist.
“Darling, you just caught me!” she said. “I am on my way to Madame Rocque’s establishment. And I mustn’t miss my appointment; I have nothing to wear, and from what I hear, Madame Rocque is being barraged with requests, entirely due to your successes! I have no doubt but that half the women in London are hopeful that a gown fashioned by Madame Rocque will ensure them attention from the Earl of Mayne.”
“That’s a lovely gown,” Helene said.
“I had to dress to impress,” Esme explained. “I’m afraid that if I don’t appear a veritable blaze of fashion, Madame Rocque will fulfill other requests before mine.”
At that moment Gina rushed in. She looked the opposite of Esme; her hair was rather more disarranged than fashionable, and she was wearing a Pomeranian mantle that was supposed to be worn over a ballgown, rather than a walking costume. “I’m here!” she called. Then she collapsed into a chair. “Barely. I’m afraid that I find child-rearing a detriment to the normal business of paying morning calls.”
Helene poured her a cup of tea. “I do apologize for summoning you both to my house at such short notice,” she said apologetically.
“Never mind that,” Esme said. “Tell us all!”
“Rees arrived after you left yesterday morning. He frightened away all my callers—”
Esme’s deep chuckle punctuated the sentence.
“And told me that he wants me to move back into the house.”
Esme’s laughter stopped. “Really?”
“He wants me to move back into the house,” Helene repeated, well aware that she hadn’t exactly told the whole truth…yet.
“Oh, my goodness,” Gina said with fascination. “What has happened to the rakehell husband himself?”
“He must be feeling his age,” Esme said. “Perhaps he was infected by that odd malady called respectability.”
“Not exactly,” Helene said.
“What do you mean?” Esme raised an eyebrow. “I should tell you that Miles’s reaction was just the same. When I asked him for a child, he said that he would move back into the house, and he would bid Lady Childe farewell. Which he did do,” she added conscientiously, “although he and I never had the chance to live together again.”
“Well, once again Miles and Rees are shown to be not precisely of the same caliber,” Helene said, twiddling with the delicate handle of her teacup rather than meet her friends’ eyes.
“How do you mean?” Gina asked. “I don’t follow. How does Rees’s request differ from Miles’s?”
“Rees wants me to return to the house,” Helene said, raising her chin. “But his mistress, Lina McKenna, will remain in the house as well. And those are the only circumstances under which he will father a child.” She had decided to keep Rees’s offer to engage in the business nine months in the future to herself. Her friends would undoubtedly argue for waiting, and if there was one thing Helene knew for certain, it was that she could not wait months.
A second later she took a deep breath and hoped that Harries was a good distance from the front hall
so that he wasn’t shocked out of the few strands of hair he had left by the shrieks issuing from the drawing room.
On the surface of it, Gina was the more furious. She literally turned red and spluttered, unable to put a complete sentence together.
Yet Esme was, in her own way, more dangerous looking. There was something positively terrifying about her expression. Helene wouldn’t have been at all surprised if her black curls suddenly turned into snakes and she transformed into Medusa herself.
“The dissipated fiend!” Esme said between clenched teeth. “How dare he even suggest such a revolting thing to you. How dare he even say such a thing in a lady’s—in his wife’s—presence!”
“He dared,” Helene said calmly. Having thought of nothing else all night long, she no longer felt any surprise over the occurrence. “Actually, it’s quite like Rees, if you consider the proposition at length.”
“There’s no word to describe him!” Gina screeched.
But Esme was looking at Helene, and something in her eyes made Helene shift uneasily in her seat. “And just what did you tell him in reply, Helene?”
“That’s hardly the question, is it?” Gina said. “The question is—The question is—” But she stopped and blinked at Helene. “Of course you said no.”
Helene stirred her tea with a small silver spoon and then put it precisely to the side. “Not exactly.”
“You cannot enter that house under those circumstances!” Esme said, her voice low and fierce. “I will not allow it.”
“While your concern is endearing,” Helene replied, “I am a grown woman.”
“You wouldn’t!” Gina gasped. “You’ll be ruined. Absolutely ruined! And that’s not to mention that the very idea is revolting.”
“I agreed to his proposition, with certain conditions.”
“Let’s hear them,” Esme said grimly.
“I shall enter the house for one month only, and no one is to know of my presence.”
“Unlikely,” Esme said. “It’s bound to get out.”
“Rees has few servants, and no callers. I shall take a hackney to the house and live as a recluse.”
“This is all irrelevant,” Gina said. “You can hide in the attics if you want to, Helene, but you’re still entering the house—living in your own house—with a nightwalker!”
“She’s not quite so repellent. I did meet Miss McKenna, if you remember. I judged her remarkably young, and certainly not practiced in her profession, if you can call it that. I do believe that she was, in fact, merely an opera singer before Rees debauched her.”
“Yet a brief encounter with the woman was enough to send you fleeing into the country,” Esme reminded her. “And now you are considering sharing a house with her? With your husband’s mistress? Have you gone raving mad, Helene?”
“Perhaps. Sometimes I think so.” Helene bit her lip hard. “I want that child. I will go to any lengths to have a child. Any lengths.”
“Every sensibility must revolt against the notion!” Gina said, shuddering.
“True. I know it’s a horrifying proposition. I would not have told either of you, except I could not imagine how I was to explain my ensuing delicate condition.”
“Of course you had to tell us!” Esme said, crossly. “Lord knows, I certainly engaged in some deranged behavior myself in the past.”
“Nothing like this,” Helene said.
“True.” Esme gazed at her in wonderment. “How you’ve changed, Helene! Just consider your customary severe attitude towards my wicked ways. Why, I’ve never had to develop much of a barometer of societal opinion because I could count on you to know precisely how little the ton would approve of an action. But now—”
Helene smiled. “Perhaps I’m doing this for the sake of our friendship. Now you need no longer feel like the wicked one between us.”
“I think you’re both missing the point,” Gina broke in. “How are you going to get rid of her, Helene?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the strumpet, of course. How are you going to get rid of her?”
“Why should I?” Helene said, shrugging. “I did force Rees to promise that he wouldn’t frequent her bed—”
“Ug!” Gina wailed. “I don’t even want to think about that!”
“I apologize,” Helene said calmly. “I am rather used to considering the whereabouts of my husband’s mistress. For all I know, she’s sitting at my dressing table as we speak.”
“Gina’s right,” Esme said. “You’ll have to get rid of the woman. It’s the only way to protect your reputation. The moment she’s out of the house, your presence there is acceptable. The gossips will, no doubt, be fascinated to learn that you’ve returned to the house, given the very public state of your separation from Rees, but reconciliation is certainly acceptable.”
“And how on earth am I to dispense with Rees’s mistress?”
“Perhaps she’ll just leave,” Gina said hopefully. “After she meets you, I mean.”
“Nonsense,” Esme said. “You’ll have to buy her off, of course. How long has she been in the house?”
Helene put down her cup with a little clink. “Two years and three months.”
“Oh,” Esme said, clearly taken aback by Helene’s precision. “Well, you will make her a persuasive offer. Monetary, of course.”
“I suppose I could do that,” Helene said, biting her lip. “I could use my allowance. I rather like the idea of using the money Rees gives me, as a matter of fact.”
“And she will accept it,” Gina put in. “No woman in her right mind would choose to live with Rees.” She broke off. “That was inexcusably rude, Helene, please forgive me.”
“True, none the less,” Helene said with a smile.
“If you give her a goodly sum,” Gina continued, “she’ll likely return to whatever village she was from, and you need never think of her again.”
“That would be…pleasant,” Helene said. “Very pleasant. I will try to find an occasion to make such an offer.”
Esme shuddered. “How you will survive in that house, I don’t know. I think I would succumb to the vapors, and I don’t have a sensitive constitution.”
“I will not succumb to the vapors,” Helene said, and the clear determination in her voice rang like a bell. “But I will return to this house in a delicate condition. I have made up my mind.”
Esme shook her head. “I just can’t get over how much you’ve changed, Helene. I feel like a character in that Shakespeare play, the one where the Bottom appears out of the woods with a donkey’s head instead of his own: “Oh Helene, thou art changed! Bless thee, thou art translated!”
Helene smiled at her. “You’re lucky that we are old friends, otherwise I should take exception to being likened to an ass.”
“Well, if the head fits!” Esme said, laughing as she dodged a small cushion thrown in her direction.
Seventeen
Trouble Comes in Many Guises
It wasn’t until evening of the next day that Tom truly understood just how much trouble he was in. The butler’s errant niece had returned, thank goodness, and Meggin was tucked away in the nursery, still clutching Lina’s tippet.
“She seemed to like it so much,” Lina told him, “that I gave it to her. I remember quite well the joy I felt on first feeling silk next to my skin.” The smile that curled her lips sent a stab of pure fire down Tom’s legs.
He was indeed in trouble.
Rees had appeared only briefly at supper, laconically announcing that Helene would return to the house in three to four days. He bolted his food and went back into the salon, from which they could hear discordant fragments of piano music emerging.
That left Tom and Lina together. It was, literally, the first time he’d been alone with a woman in six years, since the night before he took his vows when he’d said good-bye to a certain Betsy Prowd. He looked up from his almond custard to find Lina’s brown eyes fixed on him. Sh
e bewildered him. One moment she was a little brandy breasted songbird that looked as if it would nestle sweetly in one’s hand; the next she was like a scarlet redbreast, shaking her feathers with all the insouciance of a très-coquette.
“What made you decide to become a priest?” she asked. Her voice was as clear and fluting as a bell. It made him wonder how it would sound calling his name, if they were in bed together.
Tom dragged his attention back to her face. “There was never really any question but that I would,” he explained. “My profession was established long before I can remember. The church is a common occupation for the younger son of a nobleman.”
“You wouldn’t have chosen to go into the church on your own?”
“I don’t know that I would have,” he said slowly. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m not happy now.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Drafty old vicarage?”
“There are a few drafts, but—”
“Leaky roof in the springtime?”
“There is—”
“Far too many rooms to keep clean, and just one little maid, trundling about with blue fingers, and not enough money to buy coal!”
“No,” he said startled. “It’s not at all like that.”
Her mouth curled into a teasing smile. “Have you heard the jest about the vicar who wandered into a bawdy house, Reverend?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me by my title.”
“I apologize. In that case, Mr. Holland, have you heard the jest about the misinformed vicar?”
“No,” he said in a measured voice. “Would I like it?”
Lina looked at the man before her. He was like a younger version of Rees, without the barbed tongue. He had the same tousled hair, and the same broad shoulders, but without the sharp edges. “Don’t you like jests?” she asked, picking up a slice of hothouse peach and slipping it slowly between her lips. He was watching. This was more fun than she’d had since she left the stage.
“Yes, but not those that you’re wishing to tell me,” he said, calmly selecting an apple from the dish before them.