Midnight Pleasures (33 page)

Patrick looked over at his wife in bewilderment. Her face was relaxed, even pleasant. But she stood by the door looking expectantly at him, so he stamped out. It was hard to maintain rage in the face of such utter … pleasantness. Every step he walked down the stairs peeled off his anger, leaving cold, bitter fear at the base.

Pulses of rage and fear ran through his body like charges of lightning. He jerked open the front door, brushing past the footman who had moved to open it.

Then he stamped down the front steps and hailed a passing hackney without pausing for breath. He had to get
out
. Out of the house, away from the house.

Two hours later, the central stage in Jackson’s Boxing Salon was lined with curious, cheering gentlemen, watching Patrick Foakes demolish yet another partner.

“Coo!” One of the professional boxers said to Cribb, as they stood at the corner of the ring. “He’s not bad for a swell, is he?”

“Strips well,” Cribb said absently, his eyes watching Foakes’s arms intently. “Lead with your right, sir,” he shouted.

“He don’t need any advice,” the boxer said, half resentfully. Sure enough, with a final solid thunk, Foakes had knocked out yet another of Cribb’s boxers.

Foakes looked over at Cribb, panting, and gestured. Cribb shook his head.

“Thank ye, Lord,” the boxer next to him murmured. It was his turn in the ring next, to face whichever of the paying gentlemen wished to strip down and fight before an audience.

“Fightin’ when you’re angry,” Cribb said to Patrick, “is not a good idea.” He turned away, focusing on Reginald Petersham, who was just climbing into the ring.

Patrick stood next to the ring, letting compliments swirl around his head as he rubbed the sweat from his face and chest.

What’s done was done. Sophie was pregnant. Treacherously, an image crept into his mind of a little girl with her mama’s curls and beautiful smile.

He dropped the towel and headed for the dressing room. Unless he missed his guess, Sophie hadn’t seen a doctor. He needed to find the best doctor in London—someone from the Royal College—and Sophie must see him tomorrow.

Patrick scrawled a note on Jackson’s Boxing Salon stationery. He gave a boy a crown to deliver it to the house of his lawyer, Mr. Jennings of Jennings & Condell.

A half-hour later, Jennings looked at the message perplexedly. “Determine who is the best doctor for birthing babies in London,” it said. That was it, barring Patrick’s characteristically bold and scrawling signature.

Why was it delivered tonight? What on earth did Foakes think Jennings could do about a doctor that couldn’t wait until tomorrow? And why had he sent it from a boxing salon rather than from his own house?

Jennings jiggled uneasily in his high-backed library chair. He would greatly dislike it if Foakes had taken to fathering children outside his own home. Messy financial transactions, those were, the ones dealing with illegitimate children. He, Jennings, should know, given that Jennings & Condell had the honor of being lawyers to the royal family.

So far, Foakes and his small household had been a joy to represent, with nothing more intricate to establish than a generous settlement on his wife. But now look: only married a few months, and already Jennings & Condell was being made party to some sort of immoral doings.

Jennings pursed his lips disapprovingly. He was a fierce Methodist, and although he unhesitatingly fought bitter lawsuits on the side of his dissolute, aristocratic clients, he saw no point in privately condoning their behavior.

It was only on the way home that Patrick remembered the unpleasant way he had parted from his wife. Lost my temper again, he thought. At least Sophie didn’t get angry. Or did she?

The memory of her smiling face as she held open the bedchamber door flashed into his mind. Something about his wife’s eyes. She had said he was cruel. He remembered that. And then suddenly she was smiling at him, as if they were about to go to a garden party. But her eyes weren’t smiling. I should remember that in the future: Sophie’s eyes speak the truth.

He climbed the steps and walked into Sophie’s bedchamber cautiously. It was a wet evening, just cold enough that there was a fire lit in the fireplace. Sophie was sitting next to the fire, wearing a nightdress of thin lawn.

Patrick walked over and dropped into the other rocking chair. He stretched his legs out before him and then looked up. Sophie smiled at him, but her eyes were a dark, wary blue. Patrick felt a small pulse of triumph. He’d learned how to read his wife: that was good. An unknowing male might think she was perfectly happy, but Patrick knew better.

“I apologize,” he said.

Sophie nodded. “I would have told you, Patrick, if you had asked.” Her hands were twisting in her lap.

Another way to read Sophie, Patrick thought. Her face looked sweetly placid, but her hands were anxious. She said nothing, shifting her gaze to the flames trotting along the logs in the fireplace.

In fact, Sophie was stiff with rage. But what could she say? If she opened her mouth, she would scream reproaches at him for being so callous about their unborn child, so
stupid
in general. Better to say nothing. She clenched her hands together so tightly that her knuckles turned white.

“Have you consulted a doctor, Sophie?”

At that she looked up, startled. “No.”

Patrick frowned. “I’ll find one, then.”

After a moment he stood, took one large step, picked Sophie up, and plopped into her chair. His wife’s body tensed, then relaxed against his chest.

“A wife and a baby,” Patrick whispered against her neck. He wound his arms around her, as if he could always keep her safe. They sat like that, together, for a long time.

Chapter 22

I
n the beginning of May, the gentry began to flood back into London. Knockers appeared on formidable oak doors, and dust covers were pulled from damasked furniture. Housekeepers anxiously checked the number of wax candles and the state of the linen.

Butlers complained among themselves over the irresponsibility of the young, and sent desperate messages to employment agencies: “Lady Fiddlesticks
must
have four experienced footmen by next week.” “Without two good upstairs maids—and we would prefer girls from the country, mind you—Baron Piddlesford’s housekeeper will surely lose her mind.” “Lady Brimticky searches for a matched pair of footmen, with the same hair color, weight, and height, to wear her livery and stand behind her carriage. She would prefer dark hair; redheads are not invited to apply.”

The season was due to begin. Having spent the last month poring over the pictures in
La Belle Assemblée
, ladies summoned the mantua-maker of their choice to the house, and spent uncomfortable hours being pricked by pins. Gentlemen visited their tailors, or bought new pairs of hussars, so highly polished they could adjust their intricate cravats in the shine of their boots. The more intrepid, or perhaps the more vain, tried out the newest leg and shoulder pads, acquired by their valets in circumstances of great secrecy. With calves swollen to a fashionable size, they strolled by White’s or visited the House of Lords.

Within a week carriages crammed Piccadilly and the Royal Exchange. High-perch phaetons tooled around Hyde Park, only occasionally spilling their inhabitants onto the damp ground. The fruit merchants of Covent Garden grew cheerful; lavender sellers began trotting down the streets of Mayfair and around Hanover Square, hoarsely selling sweet bouquets.

Henri was packed off to begin the spring term at Harrow, sporting a new wardrobe and a sprinkling of English oaths, learned from Patrick’s stableboys. He left with his dark eyes shining; with the effortless resilience of youth, Henri had put the traumas of war behind him and was ready for the excitements of a gentleman’s schooling. And Sophie and Madeleine were drawing their lessons to a close. Madeleine had become far more than just “ladylike.” She absorbed knowledge like a sponge. After one afternoon with
Debrett’s Peerage
, Madeleine knew more about the noble families of England than Sophie had ever bothered to learn.

The most difficult aspects of ladyhood came naturally to Madeleine. She knew to an inch how to depress a presumptuous servant, and she wielded her fan like a dangerous, if delicate, weapon. She took to dancing like a duck to water. Dressed in the height of French fashion, she looked like a member of the royal family, and not in the least like a horse trainer’s daughter.

So why am I not happy? Sophie asked herself. Her project was a success. In Sophie’s estimation, Madeleine would make a countess
par excellence
. Tonight Sophie and Patrick were hosting a dinner at which Sophie would launch Madeleine on the
ton
.

But Patrick … Patrick never mentioned the baby. Not once after he delivered the name of a doctor.

“His name is Lambeth,” he had said. “He will visit you tomorrow.”

Sophie had looked numbly at her husband. “I thought we might use Charlotte’s doctor.”

“Charlotte’s doctor! Are you addled? Charlotte almost died giving birth to Sarah.”

Sophie jumped at Patrick’s retort and said nothing. In her memory, it wasn’t exactly the doctor’s fault that Charlotte had trouble delivering Sarah, but what was the use of arguing? She didn’t really mind which doctor she saw.

“How did you choose Dr. Lambeth?”

“I didn’t. My lawyer checked maternal death rates. Lambeth is quite successful in that regard.”

Sophie shivered and didn’t say anything else.

After Dr. Lambeth had paid her a visit, she obediently told Patrick that the doctor saw no cause for alarm. He nodded and said nothing.

They ate dinner together, they ate breakfast together—but they never spoke of the child Sophie carried. Once or twice Sophie knew that Patrick
must
be thinking about the babe, because he abruptly spanned her growing waist with his large hands, almost as if he was measuring it. But he said nothing, and every time she brought it up, he changed the subject or left the room.

“He doesn’t want our baby,” Sophie whispered to herself, her eyes anxious. She crossed her hands over her stomach. There was nothing new in that, after all. Patrick had made his feelings about children clear long ago.

Perhaps he resents the fact that we can’t make love, Sophie told herself hopefully. Her mother had stated that when a woman is in a delicate condition, a couple may not have marital relations. When she mentioned this idea to Patrick, he merely nodded, and from that day he had hardly touched her. Sophie didn’t know how to confess that she hadn’t meant to follow her mother’s advice. At the very least, she thought they ought to ask Dr. Lambeth.

But she was too shy to broach the subject. Instead they slipped easily back into the limbo state in which they had lived after returning from Wales. Patrick took her arm on the way in to dinner. He guided her up the stairs. He looked at her appreciatively, but not hungrily. They said decorous farewells at the door to Sophie’s room.

For her part, Sophie found herself thirsting for her husband, surreptitiously looking at his long legs, longing to touch his back. She dreamed of his kisses, of the way he used to brush her whole body with butterfly touches. Sophie was too bashful to instigate a caress. After all, she had been the one to report her mother’s opinion of marital relations during pregnancy. And Patrick seemed as indifferent to her as he had when they had stopped sleeping together before. He had certainly returned to the embraces of his black-haired courtesan; once or twice each week he returned to his bedroom in the early hours of the morning.

Perhaps, Sophie thought unhappily, perhaps Patrick dislikes the fact that I am growing plump. For a moment she looked at herself and saw extra flesh everywhere … breasts, cheeks, stomach. Disgusted, she dropped her hands and turned away from the mirror.

In the park, the carriages of high-flung courtesans mingled with the carriages of the nobility. Sophie searched the faces of those with black hair, comparing their slender elegance to her rounded form, their dark beauty to her tedious blondness.

But I am clever, Sophie told herself stoutly, in moments of desperation and shame. I am not stupid.

Resolutely, she turned her not inconsiderable intelligence to orchestrating dinners with her husband. She read
The Times
and
The Morning Post
, she read plays and the satirical ballads you could buy on the street corner. She turned the supper table into an engaging and lively encounter during which she and Patrick would fall into minibattles over the success of Napoleon’s military campaigns in the East, or brisk arguments over the morality of the new labor laws protecting apprentices in factories. They discussed Patrick’s imports, and at night Sophie dreamed of tall-masted ships, pushing off from the West India docks in London.

The only subjects they never discussed were children and the gossip pages of
The Morning Post
. The paper seemed obsessed with adulterous couples. Sophie read those pages only in order to find out where Patrick went at night. His name was never mentioned, which meant he was far more discreet than her own papa had been.

Sophie had no illusions about what she was doing. Her husband might be spending his nights with a courtesan. She was trying to ensure that at least he came home for dinner.

Never having left London, Sophie needed to do nothing in preparation for the new season. Madame Carême had already delivered a number of elegant maternity gowns, designed to conceal the babe growing within. But given Sophie’s small stature and her rapidly expanding girth, not even one of Madame’s gowns could conceal the truth at this point.

Sure enough, Charlotte knew the instant she saw Sophie. She shrieked with delight. “Sophie! Look at you! Why didn’t you write me?”

Her tall, beautiful friend swept her into a hug. A minute later Alex strolled into the room to find his wife seated on a narrow settee against the wall, talking nineteen to the dozen to his sister-in-law. One look at Sophie and he swung about to face his twin.

Despite himself, Patrick’s mouth quirked into a grin as he met Alex’s eyes. He didn’t mean to be pleased about the baby—he wouldn’t let himself be pleased. But he couldn’t help being just a trifle proud.

Alex gave his brother a rough hug. “Are things improved?”

“We’re still not sleeping in the same room,” Patrick said with a shrug. “But now it’s because of Sophie’s condition, so that’s an improvement.”

Alex looked appalled. “Sounds like an insufferable idea to me. What does your doctor say?”

“I didn’t ask,” Patrick replied. “After all, Sophie’s pregnant. If she doesn’t want to, I can’t make her.” Patrick’s voice was so tense that Alex felt a knot form in his stomach.

“I think it’s an absurd old-wives’ tale,” Alex said. “What’s your doctor’s name? I’m damn sure that other couples don’t have this idea.”

“David Lambeth,” Patrick replied. “He’s supposed to be the best in London.”

“Let me get this straight,” Alex said resignedly. “Last month you and Sophie weren’t sharing a bedroom. Now it seems you’re having a fit of the blue devils over her pregnancy. For God’s sake, Patrick, I was under the impression that your marriage was about to flounder.”

Alex hesitated. “Not sleeping together can draw a man and woman apart. If you ask me, that rule is rubbish.”

“It is Sophie’s prerogative,” Patrick said shortly. “At any rate, this will be our only child. I won’t allow her to go through this a second time.”

“Sophie is a young, healthy woman. I am certain that she will deliver the baby with no problem.”

“The way Charlotte had no problem?”

Alex’s body went rigid. He knew as well as Patrick did that Charlotte’s being near death while delivering their daughter had nothing to do with her size or build.

“All I’m saying,” Patrick continued, “is that even a very large woman like Charlotte is in grave danger when pregnant. Sophie is a little scrap … like Mother.”

Alex looked over at his lovely, slender wife and almost smiled to hear that she was “very large.” But he picked his way carefully. He knew, better than anyone, how bitterly Patrick had taken their mother’s death in childbirth.

“Sophie is not Mother,” he said firmly. “Don’t you remember the fragile air that Mother had? Sophie is small, perhaps, but not fragile.”

Patrick opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment Clemens paused in the large doorway of the drawing room and announced the arrival of the Marquis and Marchioness of Brandenburg.

“Maman!”
Sophie hurried to the door.

Eloise met her with a stream of rapid French; her father merely smiled affectionately and strolled over to the other side of the room. Although Eloise had seen her daughter only two days previously, she was full of reminders, rejoinders, suggestions.

“Oh,
Maman
,” Sophie said, half laughing, “a milk bath? Pooh!”

Eloise switched into English. “A milk bath is vital to a woman’s constitution and you must keep your constitution up while
enceinte
. Think of Marie Antoinette! She had a milk bath once a week.”

“I don’t want to think about that poor woman,” Sophie said with a shiver, dismissing the idea of King Louis XVI’s wife. “And I don’t want a milk bath,
Maman
. It sounds horribly sticky. Besides, I think that Marie Antoinette took those baths to improve her skin, not her health.”

Clemens appeared in the doorway again. “Lady Skiffing; Lady Madeleine Corneille, daughter of the Marquis de Flammarion, and Mrs. Trevelyan; Mr. Sylvester Bredbeck; Misters Erskine and Peter Dewland.”

Sophie’s heart beat a little faster. It was unfortunate that Madeleine happened to arrive at the same time as a group of guests. Sophie had hoped to introduce her to Eloise without an audience. But Sylvester Bredbeck was one of Eloise’s dearest friends, and so Eloise greeted her daughter’s new friend quickly and then settled into a cozy talk with Sylvester.

Madeleine, for her part, felt nothing but gratitude when the terrifying marchioness dismissed her with a kindly smile. She turned to greet the gentleman at her elbow, but her brown eyes immediately softened when she saw that Erskine—Quill—had difficulty standing.

With all her innate gentility, she instantly broke one of the rules she had learned from Sophie—a young lady never asks to be seated when her elders are standing—and announced that she was a bit tired after the carriage ride. In mere seconds, she and her chaperone were seated, with Quill relaxed in an armchair and breathing a silent sigh of relief.

“That’s a pretty-behaved gal,” her father said to Sophie in passing. “Saw what she did for the elder Dewland chap, the one with the ridiculous nickname—Quill, isn’t it?” He snorted. “A man shouldn’t be named after a writing tool, if you ask me. Pretty behaved: pretty gal, too. Too many young girls don’t have any meat on their bones, these days.”