His heart dropped into his boots. Reverend again. He was Tom no longer.
“My name is Tom!” he said, and the roughness in his voice would have been, again, unknown to his flock.
“If I call you Tom,” she whispered, finally opening her eyes and looking at him, “will you kiss me all night?”
He froze, his hands on her back. He was pretty sure that the agony in his body was echoed on his face. “I can’t sleep with you,” he said harshly. “Never mind the fact that you belong to my brother—”
“Your brother hasn’t entered my bedchamber in months,” she said, tracing his cheek with her fingertips. Her very touch burned his skin. “And not very often even before that.”
“That’s not the crucial issue,” he managed. “I couldn’t sleep with you, because I don’t”—he gathered strength because it was truly one of the hardest things he’d ever said—“I don’t believe in engaging in intimacies outside of marriage.”
Could Salome have ever been so beautiful?
“Are not kisses intimacies?” she asked, her eyes searching his.
“Not inadvisable ones,” he managed. Now her small hands were wandering across his chest. “But you are touching me inappropriately, Lina.”
Her hands flew away, although she didn’t look chastised.
He nodded and put her away. She didn’t hear him say “God help me,” because he was already halfway down the corridor toward his bedchamber.
Nineteen
In Which the Household Gathers
Helene arrived at the house in a hackney. This time she didn’t even bother having her maid knock on the door; she simply told Saunders to push it open. Saunders had been dumbstruck from the moment Helene informed her that she intended to return to her husband’s house. Now she stared around the antechamber of the house as if she expected the devil himself to make his presence known by waving a forked tail around the corner.
“Where’s the butler?” she finally asked in a hushed tone, for all the world as if they were visiting the Regent himself. Helene had taken off her pelisse and was looking around for somewhere to put it that didn’t appear to be too dusty.
“Lord knows,” she said. “His name is Leke, and he’s not a bad sort. But I can’t imagine how he manages to run this house with virtually no staff.”
Saunders was beginning to see the dirt clinging to the corners of the entryway. Her lip curled. “Harries would keep the house clean, if he had to do it on his own hands and knees.”
“No doubt we’ll have to do a thorough cleaning of my room,” Helene said grimly, heading up the stairs.
When they reached the next floor, Saunders paused, but Helene turned without a word of explanation and kept climbing. She hadn’t told Saunders the unpleasant truth about Rees’s refusal to dislodge the strumpet. It caused enough commotion when she announced she was returning to her husband. The truth was demented. She was demented.
No one seemed to understand that she wanted a baby more than anything else, more than her dignity. If she had to trade a brief period of humiliation for a lifetime with a child, then so be it. Besides, she was hopeful that the presence of Rees’s brother—a vicar, after all!—would anoint the household with some level of dignity.
The chamber next to the nursery wasn’t terrible. It was large, with windows from which one could just glimpse the trees of St. James Park. “Look at this, Saunders!” Helene said, looking out, “I didn’t have this view on the second floor.”
“I don’t like it,” Saunders said, stumping around the room and looking with distaste at the furnishings. “I don’t understand why you’re not in the countess’s bedchamber, my lady.”
Leke had obviously made an effort to fit out the room as befits a countess; Helene recognized the beautiful Turkish rug that used to adorn the back sitting room. The bed had obviously belonged to the nanny, but he had found a dressing table and a rather motley collection of furniture and arranged them into a lady’s boudoir. Helene sat down on a velvet sofa. “There’s another lady in that chamber, Saunders.”
“Another lady?” she said. “Is it the earl’s mother, then?”
“No. She is a friend of Lord Godwin’s,” Helene replied.
Saunders generally offered any comments in a consciously genteel tone of voice. But shock brought out her Bankside origins directly. “He never has that singer here while you’re in residence!” she gasped. And when Helene nodded, she pulled open the door so violently that it slammed against the wall. “I’ll find a hackney on the corner, my lady!”
“I’m staying,” Helene said quietly.
“Never! You’re addled!” Saunders stared at her, eyes large. “Your mother doesn’t know of your husband’s depravity!”
“I trust you not to tell her.” Helene took a deep breath. “Saunders, I need to be here, and Rees’s mistress is really irrelevant. We will stay only until I find myself with child. Do you understand? Then we return to my mother’s, and no one the wiser. Remember, no one except my closest friends knows I’m in this house. Callers will be informed that I am indisposed.”
She looked directly at Saunders. “Obviously, the scandal that would ensue from people knowing of my presence here would be staggering.”
“I can’t even imagine,” the maid said, gasping a bit.
“I trust you. There’s no one else I could entrust with the truth.”
Saunders blinked rapidly and straightened her shoulders. “Well, my lady, of course I should never wish to fail your confidence in me. You can trust me, naturally, but—”
“I am counting on you,” Helene said earnestly.
“But it’s impossible!” she protested. “How on earth are you to speak to each other? How will you take meals?”
“I shall take most of my meals in my room,” Helene replied. “And since I have promised to help his lordship with his current opera, I doubt that I shall have much interaction with Miss McKenna at all.”
Saunders slowly closed the door. “Thank goodness we packed all those gowns from Madame Rocque.” Madame had delivered a season’s worth of gowns in the past two weeks, all constructed with the same principles in mind: weightlessness and a vivid display of Helene’s slender form.
“I hadn’t thought to wear them here,” Helene said, startled.
“That you will,” Saunders stated. “I’m not having a light-heeled wench come out more elegantly dressed than the countess herself.”
“I’ve met Rees’s friend, Saunders. She’s very young.”
Saunders narrowed her eyes. “Face paints as well.”
Helene sighed. “In that case, we should probably begin unpacking, because Rees generally eats the evening meal at an earlier hour than we’re used to.”
In truth, she was only barely ready when a dull gong downstairs signaled the dinner hour. Helene looked at herself in the slightly cracked glass of a dressing table that Leke had obviously found in the attic and slung into her bedchamber. She had chosen a simple gown of white muslin, embroidered at the hem and around the sleeves with gold thread. Its great secret was that the muslin was as light as thistledown and constructed in such a way that the hem rippled out around her ankles, and even fell to a small train in the back that floated behind her. The bodice wasn’t low, nor were the sleeves uncomfortably small. It was comfortable, airy, dignified—and yet, ravishing, as the Earl of Mayne might say.
Helene smiled at herself. Thinking of the way Mayne had called her enchanting, and then touched her cheek, she found the courage to go downstairs.
If the truth be told, Helene had had very little contact with strumpets. She knew they wore garish colors on their cheeks, and gowns that barely hid their nipples. She knew that they pleasured men. She had met Rees’s opera singer two years ago, when Rees brought her to the opera and to their box. Helene shuddered at the mere memory. She had made stilted conversation with Rees, while Major Kersting conversed with the singer.
As Leke opened the door to the sitting room, Helene had to pause to col
lect herself. Lina McKenna had changed. This was no untried green girl.
Sitting next to Rees’s brother was one of the most beautiful women Helene had ever seen in her life. Her hair was swirled on top of her head in a gleaming mass of brown curls; Helene felt an instant stab of pain for the loss of her own hair. Her eyes were glowing with intelligence, curiosity and laughter. And her evening gown was neither outrageously revealing nor did it exhibit more décolletage than might any young woman in polite society. But she was obviously endowed with a bosom that rivaled Esme’s.
Helene nearly turned and ran straight back to her room. How could she sit in the same room with this ravishing creature—she, a dried up old stick? Why, if Miss McKenna were brought out as a debutante, she would have been judged a diamond of the first water.
But then Rees looked up and saw her. It was just a glance, but his eyes dropped from her hair to her toes. Helene couldn’t read his reaction, but she didn’t have to. He would be disdainful. Why should she care if she presented an unappetizing contrast to his mistress? After all, in comparison to the Earl of Mayne’s sleek beauty, Rees’s shaggy hair, great burly body, and all those heavy muscles were most unattractive.
She walked into the room and Rees’s brother jumped to his feet and came toward her, holding out his hands. “Helene,” Tom said, kissing her hand quickly, “you look exquisite.”
She beamed at him. He had the same sweet brown eyes that she remembered from the first year of her and Rees’s marriage. Truly, he was a very good-looking man: rather like Rees, except he was groomed and civilized. “It’s lovely to see you again, Mr. Holland.” And she really meant it.
“Please call me Tom,” he said, squeezing her hands. “Are you quite certain that you wish to be here under these circumstances?”
She smiled again, but knew that this smile didn’t reach her eyes. “Rees and I have an understanding,” she said, turning to the couch.
Miss McKenna had risen as well. The better to show off her remarkable figure, Helene thought to herself sourly. “Lady Godwin,” she said, dropping into a curtsy that would have sufficed when meeting the Queen, “may I say that it is a surprise to meet you?”
Helene nodded in reply. “I find myself in the grip of something like amazement as well.” She could not curtsy to her husband’s mistress; she simply could not. Instead she sat down and found that she was shaking. She gripped her hands tightly, in her lap.
“I’ll bring you a brandy,” her brother-in-law said in a low voice. “I’ll be right back.”
Helene never drank spirits, but she swallowed the whole glassful and concentrated on the burning liquid running down her throat. If she had had any idea that Miss McKenna was so beautiful, Rees would have had to drag her on the back of his horse before she agreed. When she met Rees’s opera singer two years ago, Miss McKenna was a mere lass, a tongue-tied girl, whereas now she was formidable.
The brandy settled in her stomach, giving her Dutch courage. I can do this for one month, Helene told herself. One month, that’s all. One month. She and Esme had decided that Rees had to be recruited to do his husbandly duty once a day. For a month.
Tom brought her another glass of brandy, and Helene drained it, sending another path of raw fire blazing down into her stomach. “Steady now,” he said in a vicarish type of voice.
He truly was a sweet man. “What a shame that I didn’t marry you,” she said, with a little hiccup. “You have the same dark hair and eyes as my dissolute husband over there, and you would never—never—”
“Probably not,” Tom said, patting her hand again. “But I don’t know a thing about music either.”
“Oh,” Helene said. “That’s a shame.” She was beginning to feel altogether more cheerful. So what if her husband had a ladybird next to him on the couch? Why should it bother her? She could have had the Earl of Mayne or any number of others offering her compliments, if she so wished.
She got up with just the slightest stumble and walked back over toward the fireplace. “I forgot to say hello to you,” she said to Rees.
“Helene,” he said. Far from cuddling up to his mistress, he was scribbling on a piece of paper and looked utterly unaware of the tensions circling through the room.
Helene seated herself next to Lina, ignoring Tom’s little gestures of anxiety. “We probably should discuss a few things,” she said, trying very hard to remember what they were.
Lina’s eyes were bubbling with amusement in a way that reminded Helene of Esme. Not that Esme was an improper woman. No. No indeed. She’d lost track of her thought again.
“I believe we should have supper now,” Tom said, rather desperately. “Rees, why don’t you summon Leke and tell him that we must eat?”
Rees shook his head without looking up. “Cook and Cook alone determines when the household sits to a meal. Leke will fetch us when the food is ready.”
“That’s a very nice gown you’re wearing,” Helene told Miss McKenna.
Miss McKenna blinked. I suppose, Helene thought to herself triumphantly, she expected me to be outraged, and now she doesn’t know what to make of me.
“I think we should discuss Rees,” Helene added, without waiting for a response. The brandy was giving her a lovely warm feeling of confidence. “If it is quite all right with you, I would like to borrow him once a day.”
Tom was scolding his brother in an undertone. Helene heard him say, “Well, why didn’t you tell me that she never drinks spirits?”
“From what I remember, I only need around five minutes of Rees’s time,” she told Miss McKenna. “That truly is a lovely gown, by the way.” It was an odd color of orange that gave Lina’s skin a tawny glow.
“Sometimes Rees is good for seven minutes,” Miss McKenna said with just a hint of laughter in her voice. “I would give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Seven minutes!” Helene exclaimed. “How nice to know that one’s husband has matured a whole two minutes in the past nine years.”
“I like a man to have ambition, don’t you?” Miss McKenna said, taking a sip of wine.
Suddenly Helene’s eyes met those of her husband’s mistress and they broke into laughter. Tom made a gulping noise. Rees looked up from his paper for a moment and shrugged.
“It shouldn’t discompose your day at all,” Helene said.
“I doubt that it will,” Miss McKenna replied. “Your gown is also very lovely. Is it from Madame Rocque?”
“Indeed,” Helene said. She decided not to nod again because it made her head feel quite dizzy. “I think I may have tried on your gown, but I looked a veritable scarecrow in it.”
Miss McKenna’s eyes had lost the sharp edge they had when Helene first entered the room. Helene found that now that she was used to Miss McKenna’s startling beauty, she was taken aback by her composure. She was almost ladylike in her demeanor. If she hadn’t known to the contrary, Helene would have assumed she was a rather formidable, if young, member of the ton. How very peculiar.
“How is your mother, Lady Godwin?” Tom said.
“Oh, she’s very well,” Helene said, with just the tiniest, ladylike hiccup. “But you might as well call me Helene. I am your sister-in-law, and after this, no one can say that we’re not on intimate terms!”
Leke arrived at that moment. “Dinner is served,” he said, in a voice of deep gloom. He had rather enjoyed the martyrdom of remaining in Earl Godwin’s employ when the rest of the servants fled a house of sin. But even he was wondering whether this situation was too much for his sense of propriety. It just didn’t suit his nerves to find a mistress and a wife sitting next to each other and chatting, for all the world as if they were bosom friends.
Twenty
Inebriation Is Sometimes a Wise Choice
Helene sobered up slightly during the meal. But only slightly. At some point she realized that even another sip of red wine was going to leave her with a pounding headache in the morning, but she ignored the thought. Best to get through the evening, and let the
morning worry about itself.
Rees sat at the top of the table, scowling at a score he had carried into the room. The conversation, such as it was, was carried by Lina, Tom, and Helene. After Leke had removed the pudding, even that chatter seemed to finally wilt. Helene took a deep breath and turned to Lina.
“If you will excuse us,” she said politely, “I shall return him in five minutes.”
“Please, take seven,” Lina said with a twinkle.
A little smile wobbled on Helene’s lips. Was it too, too odd to feel respect for her husband’s mistress?
“Rees!” she said, standing up.
He stuffed the paper into his pocket. “Right,” he replied. He showed no sign whatsoever of giving a damn about Lina’s and Helene’s remarks about the brevity of his bedroom activities.
But instead of heading up the stairs, he walked across the hall into the music room—well, the room that used to be their sitting room and was now occupied by three pianos.
“Rees,” Helene said, trailing after him, “what on earth are you doing?”
“I need to show you this score,” he said impatiently, running a hand through his hair. “We’ll get to the rest of it in a few minutes.”
“I would rather do the rest, as you put it, now,” Helene insisted. She certainly didn’t want to lose the little curtain of inebriation that was making the whole evening seem rather funny. And she particularly wanted to blunt the experience of bedding Rees, even if it was only a matter of seven minutes.
But Rees had strode to the piano and was leafing through sheets of paper. Helene walked cautiously into the room. Paper swirled around her feet with the same dancing motion as the hem of her skirt. She tried kicking a few in the air. “How do you live with all this mess?” she asked.
“It only appears messy,” Rees said with an obvious disregard for the truth.
Helene laughed. “There’s no method in this madness.” She kicked a few more papers into the air.
“Don’t do that!” he said sharply. “And it is organized. Drafts are on the floor. The various acts of the opera are arranged on the sofa.”