Lessons of Desire (24 page)

Phaedra stepped out of the hackney cab, clutching a thick package in her arms. She waved to the women she had sat with. She had learned long ago that with a little boldness one could find strangers with whom to share the hire of a conveyance. Her visit to the City had not taken long at all as a result.

She had delayed retrieving the manuscript for several days. She needed to rest after her voyage, of course. Then she needed to resettle herself and call on some old friends.

She had also waited for some old friends to call on her, Alexia, in particular. She hoped the absence of Alexia's letter or card meant a visit to the country and not a repudiation of their friendship due to the package that she now carried.

She could not blame Alexia if it was the latter. Not one bit.

Honesty was a virtue that she tried to practice, especially with herself. And so this morning she had faced the truth while she dressed. She had a duty that she did not want, but it was time to get on with it. Those letters that had waited for her on her return made that clear. The other one that arrived yesterday sounded the trumpet.

People besides Elliot wanted the memoirs destroyed and were willing to pay dearly for it. The anonymous letter yesterday had gone beyond offers of bribes. It had been a veiled threat, but clear enough to raise the hairs on her neck.

If she had not made that promise to her father she might give them all what they wanted. She would burn these pages and let the press go bankrupt. She almost did not care that she would be left penniless if it did.

She turned a corner onto her street and approached her door. She stopped and gave a few pence to Beggar Bess.

"Them cats know you are here," Bess said, cocking her head to the building behind her.

Phaedra did not hear the mewing the way Bess did. She saw the cats, one black and one white, at the wavy glass of the house next to her own, however. An old woman petted one and a little girl the other. Her neighbors had taken the cats when she left for Italy. It was supposed to be temporary, but little Sally's attachment meant it would now be permanent.

"A carriage came by earlier," Bess said. "Big one, from the sound of it. It didn't stop, just rolled past real slow. No one's been to your door before that one there."

Bess had taken this spot for her trade five years ago. Although blind, the old woman had realized that Phaedra's visitors had more money than most of the people who came to this street and that proximity to Miss Blair's door could be profitable.

One of those visitors waited now. He lounged against the door. A large portfolio rested against his leg and he held open a little book in which he drew.

Harry Lawrence, a young artist whom she had befriended the past winter, awaited her return. She had clearly forgotten his letter that arrived yesterday saying he would come by. That other letter had obliterated her memory of it.

"My apologies" she said after their greeting. "My visit to the City took longer than I expected."

"I do not mind. I sketched the beggar and also the whore at the window across the way. An artist is never bored."

She settled him in her sitting room. She put the manuscript on a table beside the divan to wait until she finished playing the hostess. She and Harry spent the next hour looking at his drawings. She much preferred his sketchbook's expressive jotting to the careful studies he had made in preparation for a large painting that he intended to submit to the Royal Academy.

Another caller interrupted her explanation of why. She opened her door to find Elliot waiting.

Her heart rose at the sight of him. Joy paralyzed her. She could only gaze at him, stunned anew by how he stirred her. For a long count they just looked at each other.

He presented his card. "I hope that Miss Blair is at home today."

She took the card and examined it critically. "Well, perhaps she is, just for you" She held the door wide and pecked his cheek when he stepped over the threshold. He closed the door and embraced her in a less proper kiss.

"You did not write," he said. "I could not wait any longer."

She had not written because she did not know what to write. She only knew that she did not want their affair to die in sadness, and she feared it would if it continued here at home.

Her joy now, in his kiss and his warmth, in his mere existence near her, warned just how sad it might be. That could not diminish her happiness, however. It had only been four days but she had missed hint badly. She had not realized how badly.

She guided him to her sitting room, feasting her eyes on his face. He stopped at the doorway. His smile firmed into a line less friendly.

She followed his veiled glare to where Harry still pored over his sketchbook.

"It appears Miss Blair is not home just for me," he muttered. "One of your friends, Phaedra?"

She was so happy that she actually found his jealousy flattering, even though it heralded all that would be wrong between them here in London. She introduced the two men. Harry, dear innocent that he could be sometimes, all but danced over his good fortune in meeting a member of the ton here in Phaedra's humble home.

Elliot was nothing if not gracious. He sat and pretended interest in the drawings. Phaedra sensed his impatience with a visit that was not going the way he intended.

"I believe that I will let you both boast my safe return," she announced. "I will return shortly with the necessary spirits."

She slipped away while Harry explained his artistic intentions regarding a large image of a general on horseback. She retreated to her kitchen, poured two good measures of brandy, and made her way back to the sitting room.

Harry was gone, along with every sketch and drawing. Elliot stood by the wall studying her Piranesi etching of a macabre prison. He came over to take the glasses. He placed one on the table beside her divan and sipped the other.

"Mr. Lawrence had to leave," he said.

"Abruptly, it appears."

"I have probably seen a man move faster, but I can't remember when."

"What did you say to him to make him depart in a run, Elliot?"

"I admired his prodigious talent and alluded to the possibility of purchasing his new painting for Easterbrook's art collection. Oh, yes, and I also told him to leave or die."

She swallowed a giggle as she pictured Harry's reaction. "That was very wrong of you."

"I do not feel the least bit contrite." He looked around the sitting room. His gaze lingered on the worn upholstery of the divan. The strewn
Venetian
shawls could not entirely hide its thinning fabric.

"Was tins your mother's home?"

"She let chambers in Piccadilly. I bought this house when I began my own life."

"When you were sixteen. The poor choice of neighborhood can be explained by your inexperience, but you live here still."

"It is my home. I know the people now. I am content here."

"There is a beggar outside your door and a woman exposing her breasts at the window across the way."

"They are both harmless and either one would risk her the to pull me out of a fire."

"I am hardly reassured by your mention of fire, considering the condition of the buildings on this street. I want you to allow me to find a better place for you."

She sat on the divan. Elliot no longer wore the friendly face of his arrival. The Roth well sternness had claimed him. She knew why, but she wished they could have delayed this conversation for at least an hour or so.

"Did you come here to offer to keep me, Elliot?"

He sat beside her. "I came because I could not stay away."

"So the offer of a better home was an impulse?"

"I had not noticed how poor this street was when I left you here the other day. My thoughts were only on our parting and how I did not want it. Nor did I expect to find you entertaining another man so soon after—" His jaw squared. He drank more brandy.

"Elliot, men call on women all over London. In the best houses. Even in the houses of women being kept by another man. No doubt you have done so. A visit from a man does not mean a love affair is under way."

"Are you saying that artist was not the lover who awaited your return?" He tried to keep it from sounding like a demand for an explanation. He also tried to hide his relief at the possibility of that explanation. She thought both reactions very sweet.

"I am saying he is not now my lover, and I do not expect him to be anytime soon. Since you are not married, no other woman has ever given you more reassurance than that. I cannot imagine why you would need more from me."

His expression suggested he was not happy with the lack of definite denial. "I would still like to have you live elsewhere."

"I am not a courtesan, Elliot."

"I do not speak of keeping you. I want to see to your safety."

"First my safety, then my comfort, then my security. Call it what you will when it starts, it will end the same place." She placed her hand on his face. The sensation of his skin under her palm made her heady. "Do not make me regret the little support I accepted from you in Italy. You had to know I could not allow that to continue here. If you let a house for me, I become a whore no matter what philosophy I claim."

"At least then I will not find you alone with other men, Phaedra. I near thrashed your artist today." He took her caressing hand and kissed her palm. "I do not want you less because we have returned to London. It appears my desire was not caused by the southern sun after all, but I greatly regret losing the few rights that circumstances gave me there."

She understood what he meant. His kisses revived the excitement too fast, but more than pleasure had survived their return. She had been swimming in nostalgia for days as memories and feelings invaded her head and heart

"I will not allow you to be my protector. I will not be your mistress. We cannot live together like we did in Italy. However, we could be friends, Elliot. We can continue our lives as we know them and still share that with each other."

His lips pressed her palm again. He closed his eyes. "If we do this, there can be no other man. I am not enlightened enough for that."

"If I ever want another, I will tell you. I am sure that you will give me the same courtesy. We will end that part of our friendship with dignity* if the sun sets on it."

He kissed her. She sensed a debate in him, as if he weighed what he lost and what he received in such an arrangement. He gazed in her eyes too seriously.

A terrible fear shook her heart. He might refuse. He was considering doing so right now. She just knew that he was.

Pain sliced through her heart. It burned worse than grief. Sorrow poured out the gash it made. Sorrow and dread and panic and fear.

She kissed him hard. Desperately. She spoke to his desire with her own so he would remember why he wanted her.

He reacted hard, grabbing her in his arms and holding her head to a punishing kiss. It reminded her of the fevered embraces on the ship, full of demands unspoken. She felt anger within the pleasure but she did not care now. Her heart knew such relief, such incredible joy.

"Where is the bedroom?" he asked hoarsely.

"Come with me." She took his hand and led him up the stairs lo her bedchamber.

He did not notice the poor furnishings up there. She did not give him time to. She released the tapes on her dress and let it drop to the floor.

He began reaching for her. She held him off with both hands on his chest. "Get on the bed," she said.

He showed surprise at the command, so like his own in Portici. She gave a little push. With a laugh he allowed himself to fall back on the bed.

"Should I worry for my virtue?" he asked.

"Most definitely." She climbed up and straddled his body with her knees. His fingertips played at the hem of her chemise. She gave his hand a little smack. "I am doing the ravishing here, sir."

"Then remove it yourself, Phaedra. Let your beauty ravish me."

She pulled it off and sat back, looking down at him. His smile charmed her. His eyes appeared very deep.

"You are a goddess, Phaedra. That is what I thought that night in the tower when I came up the stairs and saw you. I had never seen such a confident and beautiful woman in my life. I am sure that I never will again."

She tried to smile, but her mouth trembled. His words moved her. She bent down to kiss him, then began to undress him. "While my beauty ravishes you, I will ravish your beauty."

He kept trying to caress her while she worked at his buttons. It became a game where she fended off his wicked hands while she tried to finish the job. Finally amidst laughter and fumbles and a good deal of trouble with his boots, he lay naked beneath her.

She sat back on his thighs again. Their mirth drifted away, leaving a sweet peace in which their desire and spirits were joined. He reached for the ends of a strand of her hair. He wove it amidst his fingers, watching. Then his gaze returned to her face.

The mood still glowed with their joy, but the special knowing and intimacy that they shared was in his eyes.

"Do you even know how to ravish a man, Phaedra'' For all of your boldness. I do not think that you do."

She felt her face warming. "I do know. But knowledge and experience are not the same thing. I expect that I can manage it, however." There were reasons she had never ravished a man before. Her past friendships had not been like this one.

He gently pulled at the strand of hair. Her head followed the invitation. She kissed him. She sensed his impulse to take over, to make the ravishment mutual at least. Instead he submitted to her mouth and tongue.

She kissed lower, to his neck and chest. Reactions stirred in her, new ones that fascinated her even while her own arousal purred. She had been an active participant before, but this was different. She began to understand how her pleasure gave him pleasure.

She caressed him fully while she kissed and licked. She savored the feel of his body and the signs of her effect on him. Her power entranced her. It seemed the most natural thing to kiss all of him, his hips and thighs and stomach, and even the erection that her hand encircled.

He touched her head ever so lightly. It was a gesture of encouragement and request. She used her mouth to thoroughly ravish him, as best she could figure out how.

He could not contain his own abandon. He relinquished control of himself in ways he never had before. When she again straddled him and look him into herself, she could see his surrender.

It was not the first time she had been on top of him, but it was different this time. She allowed him to caress her but her attention was on their joining. Her awareness filled with his hardness inside her and her body's demands and the movements of her hips as she absorbed him.

Even her release felt different, more powerful and hard. She insisted that he accept that it was time for him too. She never lost herself, not for an instant. She experienced every pleasure with the fullest alertness.

She collapsed on him much as he would on her. His arms wrapped her, holding her close. Their breaths merged in their exhaustion. She turned her face on his shoulder so his profile rose just beyond her nose.

His eyes were closed but he felt her attention. The vaguest smile formed. "You do not believe in half-measures, Phaedra."

She wondered if he was shocked that the experiment went so far. "Did you only want half-measures?"

"Hell no." He turned his head and looked at her. "I am selfish enough to be glad you had the knowledge, but I am also glad you did not have the experience before."

There was no way she could have had the experience before, nor many of the others she had allowed with this man. There was a difference between a friend and a lover.

"It is said that is not something that normal decent women do," she said.

"I suspect that many normal decent people lie about it"

"Have you ever done that with a normal decent woman?"

"Do you mean before today?"

He startled her She might qualify as decent, but the normal part.
..

He chuckled. He tapped her nose with his finger. "You were so enthralled by your power that I hesitate to say this, but
...”

She waited.

"I too had the knowledge, but not the experience."

If the sun sets on it
.
He trailed his fingers down Phaedra's chest and along the silken valley between her breasts.
If
.
He marveled at the way that word had affected him. Not when, but if. His joy had been complete. Boyish. Ridiculous.
Mine
.

He wondered what would happen if that twilight never came. It astonished him that he found contentment and not concern in the idea. Perhaps Phaedra's philosophy was correct and the very lack of legal binds helped desire to survive.

Only she did not believe that herself, at least not with him. She spoke of forever in one breath but the end in the next. She may have said
if
but she did not expect any part of their friendship to survive the publication of that manuscript, least of all this part of it.

Would it? Could it? He did not know. He should not see her duty as a betrayal. He did not even want her to compromise for his sake. This passion possessed a clarity that he did not want to obscure with such base negotiations.

Still, he owed his family his loyalty as surely as she owed her family hers. He even owed his fattier more than he wanted to admit.

Christian did not want to know. He had, perhaps, taken great pains to remain ignorant. Yet knowing the truth might be the only way to solve the dilemma.

"I must ask something of you," he said.

"I can deny you little. Elliot. If you must ask, I probably must give."

That was not true. She reserved much that she did not give, which was why he petitioned now for a half loaf at best. Which was why he would be riding across town to this poor street in order to receive what she did give. Perhaps with time he would accommodate himself to his total lack of rights, to what she did not give, but he doubted he would ever be free of wanting more.

"In Naples, Merriweather could not deny that the dinner your father describes took place. Nor that the conversation was held. However, he does not know that his suspicions are correct. If I find evidence he was wrong, or that the death in the Cape Colony did not touch on my family, will you delete that memory?"

She appeared to find the suggestion interesting. "Since I assumed it did touch on your family, as indeed I think my father did
...
My father charged me with seeing his true words were printed. If I know they are not true, or might cast untrue assumptions on someone—yes, Elliot. I could delete it." She smiled ruefully.

"Perhaps I should lake out an advertisement in the
Times
offering that to others. You are not alone in trying to bribe me to play free with Richard Dairy's memoirs. My letter basket below is full of threats and pleas. It is clear that my old partner tried his scheme on others, and that they have all learned who now owns both the memoirs and that press."

"If you were less honorable you would soon have the means to buy a better home all on your own. Easterbrook alone would settle a fortune on you."

He did not intend it to sound as if he reopened those negotiations, but if she expressed the slightest interest in the size of that fortune... A good argument could be made that she should be practical. He would not mind having this problem go away if she were.

"A fortune now? From Easterbrook alone! My goodness, I had no idea blackmail was so profitable." She made an exaggerated display of pondering and wavering. "How big a fortune?"

"Five thousand." The amount had been given to him this morning. It arrived on his breakfast tray on a piece of paper, written in his brother's neat hand. No words, no pound sign, just the numeral five and the requisite zeros.

He had understood it for the command it was, and also for a warning that Christian had not accepted that Phaedra should be left alone to decide her own course.

"That is a ridiculous amount. I fear Easterbrook is indeed half mad. Fortunately I will save him from such ruin because I will not accept it."

So there it was. Christian was wrong. A big bribe did not sway everyone. Phaedra was not insulted but she also was not calculating what she could buy.

"If I received such a fortune, I would then have lo live accordingly." she mused. "Think of the results. A new wardrobe, of course. All those stays and tapes and hooks. Then I would need servants to care for my luxuries and to dress me."

Evidently she had begun calculating after all. It was annoying that Christian was correct. "You would learn to love the luxuries." And he would love to see her have them. She deserved better than tins house and the penny-pinching she must endure.

"Ah, but all those servants would be such a nuisance. It would be difficult to lay abed like this all afternoon and all night, only to rise briefly for a simple dinner that I cook myself."

"Are you asking me to stay for dinner? One that you cook yourself?" The idea called forth charming, domestic images. Almost as charming as the ones having to do with the night following dinner.

And she was the one who worried about becoming enslaved. If only she knew
...

"Certainly. Are you hungry?"

He moved his hand slightly. Her breast firmed beneath it.

"I am always hungry when I am with you. Phaedra."

He dressed in the fading shadows of the chamber. He looked down on Phaedra's body, pale and lovely amidst the tumbled sheets. She lay on her stomach with her face half covered by the pillow she hugged. Her legs remained parted and her round bottom exposed, just as she had been when he took her the last time, a mere hour ago.

He could have stood there looking at her for hours. Since that would make him even more of a fool for her than he already was, he left her sleeping and went down to the chambers below.

The kitchen still held the remains of the dinner she had served on the plank table near the fireplace. Since they were both naked it would have been ridiculous to set out china in the dining room.

The sitting room, with its motley collection of furniture and art, showed more of dawn's light than the other rooms. He walked over to the divan, and the table beside it. The second glass of brandy still sat there untouched, right beside a good-sized package wrapped in paper.

He had noticed the package yesterday when he arrived. It was about the same dimensions of a ream of paper. Just the right size for a book manuscript.

He broke the seal of the wrapping. It fell away. He gazed down on the first page of Richard Drury's memoirs.

He assumed the memoirs were presented chronologically. If he wanted to find the offending pages it would not be difficult to dig them out.

Silence surrounded him in the house. Phaedra slept soundly above. The street outside barely gave signs of life. He could not resist touching the pages stacked so neatly. He ran his thumb up their edges, letting them fan down with a gentle
thwap.

He doubted there was a copy. It had been very careless of Phaedra to leave this here.

It entered his mind that she wanted him to give in to temptation. If the manuscript, or even those pages, went missing she would be relieved of her promise to Richard Drury. She could not violate that promise herself, but she might not be sorry if she had no choice in the matter.

What if she saw it as a betrayal instead? Christian would think the end of his brother's love affair a small price to pay. Christian would also find a way to compensate Phaedra without her realizing it, if Elliot demanded it.

She would have some security then. She would not have to live so frugally. If she dressed fashionably and moved west, she might take her mother's place among the literati, not be the lovely but odd daughter of Artemis Blair who dwelled in London's fetid east neighborhood.

One small theft and her life would change for the better. His duty would be finished. No one would whisper that the last Lord Easterbrook had paid a man to kill his rival. His sons could go back to pretending that they did not know that maybe he had.

He did not miss how ruthlessly he weighed and calculated. His better half was not even surprised or shocked anymore. Nor could it offer much argument besides sentimental ones about trust and affection. That counted little in the world. He was not even sure it counted much with Phaedra.

He ran his thumb up the paper edges again.

Phaedra woke in late morning to find Elliot gone from her bed. His clothes had been removed too, so she assumed that either he had left or he had gone below.

She slid her hand to where he had last lain. She imagined she still felt him there, sated like she, no longer hungry although it had taken several meals to fill them both.

She slid her hand up the sheet to the pillow where his fine head had been. She touched something other than muslin and down. She rose up on her elbows, curious.

Her father's manuscript rested on the pillow, roughly wrapped in the brown paper. The seal of the wrapping had been broken but the pages stood in military precision forming their thick block.

Her breath caught. She had left this on the table when she came in with Harry, then forgotten about it. Of course Elliot had guessed what that paper covered. The size and shape all but screamed ''manuscript."

He had risen early and checked. He had opened the package to be sure.

He had probably taken the pages he did not want her to publish.

Relief burst in her. Deep, grateful relief. It overwhelmed her until her eyes misted.

She sat up to fix the wrapping. She would not speak to him about it. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever. It was wrong of him to steal the pages, most wrong, but she would not upbraid him. Nor would she ever speak of the pain he had spared her. Perhaps now, maybe—