Midnight Pleasures (29 page)

“Not at all,” Patrick said, meeting Alex’s eyes without flinching.

“Nonsense,” Alex retorted. “You don’t think I dragged Charlotte all the way to London in this weather just to have you shrug me off, do you?”

Patrick stared at him in frustration. “I didn’t ask you to come up,” he pointed out.

“You didn’t have to,” Alex reminded him, getting an edge in his voice. Oddly enough, although the twins were unable to sense each other’s physical pain, one knew instantly if the other was emotionally wounded. When Alex’s first marriage went gravely awry, Patrick suffered for months from an anxious stomach. “Cut rope, Patrick.”

There was a moment of silence. “All right,” Patrick finally said, turning his back to Alex and walking across the room to stare out the window. March snow was wearily drifting into puddles of rainwater. “I’ve bollixed up my marriage in proper Foakes style, but I don’t think there is anything you can do about it, thank you.”

Alex waited for him to continue.

“We’re no longer sharing a bed,” Patrick said, turning around, “and I don’t know how to remedy the situation.”

“Was it your choice or hers?”

“Mine, damn it! But that’s just it. I didn’t make a choice. I don’t know how it happened. We had a fight over something absurd, and I didn’t come home that evening—”

“A heinous error,” his brother interrupted.

“I went to my warehouse, not to a brothel.”

“My advice regarding marriage is never to leave the house until a quarrel is resolved,” Alex remarked. “Women never forgive you for it. Charlotte would tear me limb from limb.”

“That’s just it,” Patrick retorted. “Sophie didn’t even seem to have noticed. So I stayed away the next night.” He glanced at Alex, who was looking surprised and thoughtful. “It’s absurd—but I was waiting for some recognition on her part that I had avoided her bed. But she’s as cordial as a duchess at a damn party and, frankly, I don’t think she gives a toss whether I ever come to her chambers again.”

Alex frowned. “Did she enjoy being in your bed?”

Patrick looked bewildered. “That’s just it. I thought she did. No, I know she did. And Lord knows, I did. But now … it’s been over two weeks. She greets me as sweetly as if we were spending every night together. Sophie is perfectly
pleasant
, no matter what I do.”

“You will have to broach the subject then,” Alex observed.

Patrick threw him a disgusted look. “How does one ask a perfectly contented woman whether she has noticed that her husband has deserted her bed? She shows no signs of being inconvenienced!”

“You don’t know that,” Alex objected. “Find out. Go to her room. You don’t need to discuss the matter necessarily. Simply go.”

Silence puddled in the room for a moment. “I could try it,” Patrick said slowly.

“You’ve nothing to lose.”

Patrick grimaced. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Have you told her that you’re in love with her?”

At that Patrick flashed him an irritated look. “Of course I haven’t!”

“Well, you are,” Alex assured him. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in such a pother over the fact that Sophie doesn’t seem as enthusiastic about marital pleasures as you are.”

“Enthusiastic! You don’t understand,” Patrick snapped. “She’s happy living the life of a damned nun. Hell, I don’t know why she didn’t enter a convent.”

“You won’t know until you enter her bedchamber again,” Alex said. Then he grinned. “As for myself, I shall begin planning to spend my five hundred crowns. And you had better accustom yourself to the idea of sleeping in a frilly nightshirt.”

Patrick frowned. “What the devil—”

“You didn’t even make it a year,” Alex said mockingly. “Remember? I bet you five hundred crowns and a lace nightshirt that you’d be desperately in love with your wife within the year. We’re only a few months into the marriage, and here you are.”

Then he sobered. “Why don’t you tell Sophie? Tell her that you love her.”

Patrick looked up from the carpet, his heart in his eyes. “The feeling is not mutual, Alex. She doesn’t give a toss whether I’m around or not. She’s perfectly happy spending most of her time with an assortment of men who hang around the house at all hours. Braddon practically lives with us.”

It did sound bad. Alex wound an arm around his twin’s shoulder. “We should be moving the household to London sometime in the next few weeks, but you can visit Downes anytime, you know.”

Patrick gave him a wry smile. “Thank you.”

“I have to fetch Charlotte,” Alex said. “She wants to do some shopping before we return to the country. She will be visiting her parents tonight—will you join me for a game of billiards?” At Patrick’s nod, Alex walked toward the door, then paused.

“Marriages aren’t always successful, Patrick.” Between them stood the knowledge that Alex’s first marriage had been an unmitigated disaster from which he had barely escaped. “One cannot blame oneself.”

As the door closed behind his brother, Patrick threw himself into an armchair. Consciously he relaxed his jaw. Alex was both right and wrong. The idea of discussing bedroom matters with Sophie was inconceivable. But he could simply walk into her chamber. Ay, that he could do. Tonight he was bound to have dinner with Petersham and then billiards with Alex—but tomorrow night he would enter that room. It was that or go slowly mad, Patrick realized. Whatever his cool little wife thought of the business, her bedlamite husband was burning to topple her beneath him on a bed—any bed.

Unknown to Patrick, up on the first floor that same cool little wife was shedding hot, inconvenient, and passionately angry tears.

Henri bounced through the door of Sophie’s sitting room only to stop in dismay. “Lady Sophie! What is your concern?” Henri still spoke a queer, broken English, but Sophie insisted they avoid French so that Henri would be fluent enough to enter school in a few weeks.

Sophie brushed away the tears on her cheeks. “It’s nothing, Henri. I’m turning into a watering pot, that’s all.”

“A watering pot?” Henri frowned.

“Someone who cries frequently,” Sophie explained.

Henri hesitated. Even he knew that such a subject was delicate. “Do you weep because you are—you are …
séparée
from Monsieur Foakes?”

She might have known that the whole household would be discussing Patrick’s desertion of her bed. Of course, the servants would know with whom Patrick was spending his nights—they always knew that kind of detail.

“Do they say, downstairs, who Patrick’s friend is?” she asked baldly.

“What?” Henri was perplexed.

“Whom … Patrick spends his evenings with?”

Henri’s face took on a knowing sympathy that was far older than his age. He shook his head negatively, not trying to hide the fact that the household believed in the existence of Patrick’s mistress. But he did keep silent about the household’s opinion of Sophie’s frequent drives with the Earl of Slaslow.

Sophie’s eyes prickled. She took a deep breath. This was a
most
improper conversation to have with Henri. For a moment she fought to keep her composure.

“I could discover,” Henri offered eagerly. “This afternoon I will follow Monsieur Foakes, as—as a Bow Street runner might do. And I will see where he spends his time.”

“Absolutely not, Henri,” Sophie replied, looking at the boy with affection. “I think we shall pretend that this conversation never happened. Weren’t we planning to see the lion at the Exchange?”

And Henri agreed. But in the early evening he sidled into the drawing room in such a way that Sophie knew instantly that something was wrong.

“What happened,
chéri
? Are you all right?”

Henri walked over and stood next to her. Then he burst out, “I did follow him, Lady Sophie. Although you instructed me not to do so. He has … I thought I had lost him on Bond Street, and then he came out of a building. And oh, Lady Sophie, Monsieur Foakes does have a lady friend.”

Sophie’s stomach heaved. “Henri,” she said, “that was not the correct thing to do. It was monstrous improper for you to have followed Patrick anywhere.” Dimly, she listened with amazement to her unshaken voice.

In Henri’s eyes was a confused sense of betrayal. He adored Sophie, and Patrick’s behavior went against his sense of loyalty.

“It’s not right!” he said furiously. “I shall tell him so! This … this black-haired woman … bah! She is a—a pig compared to you!”

Sophie almost smiled at that. But her heart was hurting too much. So Patrick had a black-haired charmer. Likely the woman was his mistress before they married, and he’d never broken off the relationship.

“Henri, it was not proper of you to follow Patrick anywhere,
especially
in order to observe him with … with his friend.” Her eyes commanded Henri’s attention.

He felt a prickle of shame. “But I didn’t believe them,” he burst out. “When they said, downstairs, that Monsieur Foakes was with a courtesan, I didn’t believe them!”

Sophie’s heart wrung. Henri’s pointed little face looked so unhappy. “‘Tis the way of the world, Henri,” she said gently, putting an arm around the boy. “It means naught for a marriage … it’s just the way of things.”

Henri went in to supper unconvinced. Sophie went in to supper miserable. She had never had a chance at Patrick’s heart. A black-haired woman was there before her. And Patrick was likely sharing an intimate meal with his mistress, because he didn’t appear at all.

That night Sophie lay in her bed awake until three in the morning, hoping, praying that tonight Patrick would come to her bed. But at last she heard him come in, dismiss his valet, and fall into his own bed.

Patrick slept so soundly that he hardly even turned over in the night. Sophie knew how well he slept, because she left the door between their rooms open, just a crack. He must be exhausting himself. But Sophie couldn’t drum up any real anger over Patrick’s activities.

Instead of anger, what she felt was a trickle of fear. While she hadn’t wanted to discuss her monthly schedule with Patrick when they were onboard the
Lark
, even she couldn’t help noticing that she hadn’t bled once since Patrick climbed the ladder to her room. It seemed that she took after her mother in all things, Sophie thought bitterly: in immediate pregnancy, and in failed marriages.

The baby was already changing her body. Her breasts were larger and more tender; her stomach had a tiny, sweet curve that she cherished in private. She had begun to sleep longer and longer in the morning, but there was no one to notice except her maid.

Soon she would grow fat and unpleasing, and then Patrick, who was already amusing himself elsewhere, would never come back to her bed. So Sophie wept huge, wrenching sobs into her pillow, not precisely because Patrick was cavorting with other women, but because she was so shamefully lustful that she wasn’t even happy about the babe she thought she had wanted. It didn’t seem fair for it to come so soon. Patrick had already lost interest in her body, and he wanted only one child. Now he would have no reason to return to her bed,
ever
.

That meant years of marriage spent exactly like her mother’s, meeting one’s husband at dinner and parting immediately thereafter, going to house parties and having hostesses automatically separate your bedroom from your husband’s bedroom, putting you at opposite ends of the corridor or, even worse, on separate floors.

Part of the problem was that whenever she saw Patrick, a prickling warmth blossomed in her stomach and spread down her legs, a dizzying, hungry heat that was all the more shaming for being so clearly unshared. That night Sophie lay in bed, the blood pulsing in her veins, and it was all she could do not to creep next door and throw herself on Patrick’s sleeping body.

But pride came to her rescue. Would she go to a man who was exhausted from being with another woman? What if he flatly rejected her? What if he smelled of another’s perfume? What if he said … The possibilities were endless, and equally terrible. Sophie stayed where she was, in her own bed.

Chapter 19

T
he next morning, Sophie forced herself to think through the situation. Yes, her husband had deserted her bed for that of a courtesan. But the important thing was to stay on good terms, because otherwise the unborn babe would be doomed to the kind of childhood she had had. And it would be best if no one guessed that she cared a fig about Patrick’s whereabouts. A show of jealousy on her part would start the kind of loathsome gossip that trailed after her parents.

“Dearest
Maman
,” Sophie wrote on her best stationery. “I trust that you and Papa are enjoying a pleasant sojourn in the country. Your account of Mrs. Braddle’s spring fête was very amusing. Patrick is remarkably busy these days, and so we cannot join you, but thank you so much for your invitation. London is still rather thin of company, but I have been spending a good deal of time with Madeleine Corneille, who is the daughter of the Marquis de Flammarion. You must meet Madeleine as soon as you return to London. I am persuaded that you will find her as delightful as I do. Henri is very well, and I thank you for asking about him. He is excited about beginning the term at Harrow. Patrick will drive him there next week. I will do my best to find the glassware that you desire and have it sent immediately.” She signed the letter, “Your loving daughter, Sophie.” It was not without a qualm that she sealed the letter and gave it to a footman. If her mother had any idea that she was carrying a babe, she would arrive in London by nightfall.

Eloise read the letter with a tiny frown. Sophie rarely mentioned her husband in her frequent missives, and Eloise couldn’t decide whether she was simply getting a bee in her bonnet about it, or whether her daughter’s marriage had somehow gone awry.

“George,” she said that night at dinner, “what
do
you know about Patrick Foakes?”

George gaped at her. “Eh, my dear?”

“Does Foakes frequent the muslin company?”

Eloise always could be counted on to call a spade a spade, George thought to himself. He chose his words carefully. “Foakes got up to some shenanigans when he was young, m’dear.”

“I’m not interested in his youth,” Eloise replied impatiently. “Do you think that he has set up a mistress on the side?”

Given George’s knowledge of the
ton
, it would be a very unusual thing indeed if Patrick was not supporting a mistress. His pause answered Eloise’s question.

“Well, I knew it,” she said, half to herself. “I advised Sophie to marry a rake, didn’t I? What a fool I was!”

George jerked his head at the footman, and then appeared at Eloise’s elbow, drawing her up. “Eloise, love, perhaps Sophie takes after her mother.”

Eloise looked up at him, perplexed.

George bent his head, brushing his lips across hers. “Her mother has all those courtesans beat to flinders,” he whispered.

Eloise’s expression grew annoyed. “Now, George,” she said reprovingly. “Don’t you think that I can be lured off to the bedchamber in this harum-scarum manner. Your doxies might have missed their dinner in order to … to frolic with you, but I shall not.” She lowered herself back into her chair, back straight as a marble pillar. “And ring the bell, if you please. Philippe appears to have deserted his post.”

George grinned and circled the table back to his chair. Damme, but he was enjoying this endless fencing match with his marchioness. She was as obstinate as a mule.

“I don’t think we should worry about young Sophie,” he said comfortably, taking an apricot tart from the platter before him. “She’s got her head screwed on right.”

“You’re a fool, George,” Eloise replied. But her eyes were tender.