The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (28 page)

“Like fire,” he said.

“Huh?” She basked in the compliment, however absurd. “Ginger, you mean.”

“You. You warm me.”

She grinned in delight and was rewarded with a quick kiss. Then a frown creased his brow. For a moment she saw his familiar haughtiness then realized it was something different, an expression she’d never seen on the stern features of the leader of the
ton
: doubt, anxiety even.

“Do you forgive me?” he asked.

“What for?”

“For comparing you to a vegetable and ruining your life.”

“You haven’t ruined my life,” she said softly.

By asking for her pardon, she believed, he offered his own. But she’d wait until he was ready to speak it.

His smile sent her heart into its usual somersaults. “Good. Let’s go to bed.” Pulling her up with him, he stood, and tossed her onto the mattress. Instead of continuing the conversation she gave a half-suppressed shriek that was still, she feared, loud enough to awaken the deaf cousin in the next room. The pillows from the floor landed beside her, followed by Tarquin himself.

H
e’d forgiven her, completely, but he didn’t say so, perhaps because he wasn’t entirely sure why. Her greatest offense had been allowing him to lie with her under the illusion they were engaged. Under the circumstances he could no longer summon even the memory of his previous anger. He was too happy and lazy after the best lovemaking he’d ever experienced. After disposing of her nightgown, which was rucked up and half falling off, he stripped off the covers and they stretched out on the sheets, on their sides facing each other.

“It’s too hot for blankets,” he said, ogling her from neck to toe.

She ogled him right back, her gray eyes delightfully lascivious. Idly she trailed her palm along the route from his collarbone to navel. “We still never finished the rat scene.”

“Give me a little time.”

“Oh, right. Tiddly pillock.”

“It won’t stay tiddly for long if you look at it like that.”

She ran a playful finger along its gradually stiffening length.

“Or touch it.”

“You told me you have many books like that.” She gestured in the direction of the discarded volume.

“A good number.”

“How did you come to collect such things?”

He put an arm about her waist and drew her close, her head rested on his shoulder. “I suppose it started by accident. As boys grow up they speculate about these things among themselves. A school friend lent me a volume ascribed to Aretino’s nephew.”

“Who is this Aretino, anyway?”

“An Italian poet who wrote some obscene sonnets and a very smutty book called
The Dialogues
.”

“And the
Genuine Amours
.”

“Definitely not. There are dozens of books ascribed to Aretino’s authorship but written by others. His name on the title page tells the reader what kind of book to expect.”

“The kind you like.”

“I’ll never forget that first book. It had the most amazing illustration of a couple on horseback, fully joined.”

“You cannot be serious! Could one do that?” He loved the awed eagerness in her voice.

“I wouldn’t like to try, but I wish I could show you the book. I lost it and never found another copy.”

“How did you lose it?”

“The nursery maid discovered it hidden under my mattress and gave it to the duchess.”

“Trouble?”

“I can still remember the beating,” he said with feeling. “After that I started to buy as many such books as I could, just to get back at her. A foolish defiance, I admit. And it became a habit. At Cambridge I became friends with Sebastian Iverley, who was already a bibliophile. I discovered a taste for poetry and started to collect early editions. But I continued to add to my collection of ‘curious’ books.”

“The contrast is an odd one.”

“Between poetry and profanity? You are not the first to point that out.”

“I meant between your exterior elegance and more . . . earthy activities.”

He was surprised that had never occurred to him, but also a little offended. “Do you find me disingenuous, then?”

“Does anyone ever present the whole truth to the world? I shouldn’t think there’s a soul on earth who doesn’t have things they prefer to hide.”

“Isn’t that dishonest?”

“How can it be? Are you telling me that you are the way you look and your clothes represent your essential being? If that is so, then you are nothing and nobody without your valet and your tailor, a puppet in fact.”

The words shook him because he feared they might be true. He removed his arm from her waist and withdrew a little. “You’re very philosophical all of a sudden, Miss Seaton.”

She twisted her neck to meet him eye to eye. “Let me tell you something, Mr. Compton. I prefer you without your clothes. I liked you in a farm laborer’s smock and I like you even better naked.”

He hadn’t known how wound up he’d become until he felt the tension snap like an over-tuned fiddle string. With a crack of laughter he rolled her over onto her back. “I like you naked too.”

She smiled back at him. “You told me it doesn’t matter what I wear so I suppose I may as well wear nothing.”

“When I said that, I meant it as a compliment.”

“It didn’t sound like one.” Though her pout was mocking, she sounded cross.

“When I look at you, I see only Celia. Your exterior trappings are of no importance.”

She blinked. “Thank you. That may be the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”

He’d offered her the truth and found the response alarming. She sounded moved and he wasn’t used to communicating with people on terms of emotional candor. Irony and detachment were his usual currency.

He watched her face as a look of understanding dawned. Had she read his ambivalence correctly? Even Celia’s expression couldn’t be read infallibly and it occurred to him that he could just ask her what she was thinking. But as he pondered this novel way of dealing with uncertainty, she turned the weighty moment into a light one. “So it won’t matter if I get dressed again.” She pushed at his chest to escape but a saucy smile sent the opposite message.

He laughed with relief and gratitude and with . . . something unacknowledged. Snatching her wrists he pinned them to the mattress above her head. “Don’t you dare,” he said into her lips and swooped in for a kiss that grew long and deep and went on and on until he found himself hard again. Celia shook off his restraining hands, reached between their bodies and grasped his pillock, far from tiddly. Fatally weakened by her touch, he let her reverse positions, straddle him, and ride St. George into mutual oblivion.

S
he swam in warm waves of happiness as the night passed in talking, dozing, lovemaking. She didn’t know what would happen on the morrow, but for the first time she felt a timid optimism about her future. She knew just what she wanted. And, if she sensed Tarquin hadn’t quite reached the same point, she was willing to ignore the warning in the back of her mind that she deluded herself, believing she knew his feelings better than he did.

In the weeks they’d passed in varying degrees of intimacy, she’d always been—or felt like—the follower. Poor plain, untidy, helpless Celia, trailing in the glorious wake of Tarquin the tall, the strong, the clever, the moneyed, the well-dressed, the witty, the monarch of society.

But not tonight. Tonight she was in charge because she knew something he didn’t: that they loved each other and belonged together. And if it turned out tomorrow that she was wrong, at least she’d had this night.

“What did the duchess do with that book?” she asked idly as they lay entwined, bodies damp. “Do you suppose she acted out the scenes?”

Tarquin’s body shook with mirth. “I would love to think so. On the other hand, have you seen the duke?”

It was impossible to imagine Parrot Lady doing
any
of the things so enthusiastically described by Master Featherbrain, not with her fat little nobleman husband, anyway.

“With someone else, perhaps. I thought all great ladies of the
ton
took lovers.”

“It would need a very brave man to take her on.” He grew serious. “I don’t believe most ‘great’ ladies are faithless and if so I do not condone it. For myself I believe in fidelity after marriage.”

“And before?”

“As I believe I told you when I couldn’t even remember, I have had other women. It isn’t at all proper for me to discuss them with my future bride.”

“It’s isn’t at all proper for us to be naked together in my bedchamber.” Celia couldn’t leave it alone. “Did you love them?”

“I’ve never been in love, but I’ve never bedded a woman I didn’t like.”

She was overcome with loathing for an unknown number of likable ladies and tortured herself by picturing them—beauties to a woman—with Tarquin. “Have you tried all the different things suggested in your books, apart from the horseback one?”

“All of them! What an idea. Some of them sound downright painful, if not anatomically impossible. However, I’m always ready to experiment. And since it looks like you’re going to be my bed partner for the rest of my life, I’m delighted to find you equally adventurous.”

Feeling much better, she decided to find out what it was like to bite his neck. Tasty.

“Is there anything particular you’d like to try?” he asked.

“Well, there’s this thing in a chair . . .”

Chapter 32

Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but large sums can be very nice.

T
arquin left her room at first light, recommending she catch up on her sleep and remain in bed until noon. After a few short hours, wide awake, she joined the house party for the eleven o’clock breakfast. She saw by his absence he’d taken his own advice.

This morning invisibility seemed a particularly desirable quality. She quietly sipped tea and stared at a plate heaped with ham and eggs and buttered muffins. Lovemaking had famished her but, after two bites, she found love had stolen her appetite. She both longed and dreaded to learn how the next days would play out.

Her best hope was a happy wooing followed by a blissful betrothal. Yet the possibility remained that all the things that made her doubt her happiness as Tarquin’s wife would come flooding back. Naked he was loving, vulnerable, and entirely at her service. Clothed in the midst of the beau monde, he might revert to the terror of the
ton
. She reminded herself that more of life was spent clothed than naked, more of the day abroad than in bed.

For the tenth time Celia checked the reticule hanging from her wrist. Carrying a ruby worth fifty thousand pounds tended to prey on her mind, but she dared not leave it upstairs. The sooner she handed it over the better.

At each new arrival at the table she looked up. Longing for Tarquin, hoping for Julia, and dreading the Duchess of Amesbury, the guest who claimed her attention was Lord Hugo Hartley.

She stood at the venerable old dandy’s approach.

“Lord Hugo,” she said. “May I summon a footman to help you to a seat?”

“Thank you, Miss Seaton, but I breakfasted in my rooms. I hoped for your company but I see you are still eating.”

Apprehensive about his motive for seeking her out, she glanced at her plate. “I’ve had enough, thank you. I have little appetite this morning.”

Might as well find out what he wanted and get it over. She prepared to be compared to a pair of pantaloons, or some other garment in dubious taste. Hosiery, perhaps this time.

“Excellent. Perhaps you would join me for my morning constitutional. My doctor insists I exercise every day.”

Lord Hugo refused to take her arm. He made his own way to the terrace, assisted by an ebony walking stick with a polished ivory handle. He kept up a steady stream of gossamer small talk and she couldn’t fault his courtesy, but in his company Celia was unable to appreciate the impeccable summer day. Despite his great height and erect posture, she worried the slender figure would be blown away in the light breeze. Taking tiny steps to match his slow ones, she watched him anxiously, ready to step in if he tottered.

“Thank you for your forbearance,” he said. “It must be dull for such an
active
young lady to be restricted to an old man’s pace.”

Somehow she didn’t feel complimented. She was not looking her best that morning. When Chantal complained her hair was uanageable she couldn’t offer the excuse of a busy night. Quite
active
come to think of it. She choked back a laugh that she would be quite unable to explain to Lord Hugo.

“It’s a pleasure, my lord. I’ve heard much about you from Mr. Compton.”

“And I heard of you before I came here.”

“You surprise me, sir. I thought I was quite obscure.”

“I’m acquainted with Lady Trumper,” he said. “In fact I saw her the day before I left London.”

“I see.” She did indeed see. She had no doubt that her former chaperone had left Lord Hugo in full possession of every fact she knew about Celia’s history.

He said nothing more on that head, but there was no need. “Has my great-nephew told you how we met?”

The phrasing stuck her as odd. How did one meet ones relations? Of course, having none she wasn’t in a position to know. She shook her head.

“He came to London as a boy, to live under the guardianship of my nephew, the Duke of Amesbury. Since I rarely set foot in Amesbury House, being unable to abide the duchess, I never saw Tarquin until he’d been there two years. A sadder sight I’d rarely encountered than the gawky beanpole of a lad, hunched in the corner of the duchess’s drawing room. He’d just finished his first half at Eton and he had no idea where to put his oversized feet. And naturally no notion of conversation. I don’t know why I noticed him, except he seemed to have attracted the especial venom of the duchess.”

“I’ve met her,” Celia said.

“So we understand each other completely. I have every confidence we shall continue to do so.” A hint of emotion rippled through Lord Hugo’s urbane tones. “I decided on a whim to do something about the boy, so I took him to be measured for a coat. Thinking back on it, taking an eleven-year-old to visit a tailor might not have been the greatest treat. I daresay he would have preferred a confectioner’s shop or a menagerie. But it was what occurred to me.” He paused and his face shone with affection.

“I think it was very thoughtful of you,” Celia said. She felt a little choked up. “And Mr. Compton proved a worthy pupil.”

“He is like a son to me. There is nothing I will not do to ensure his happiness.”

And having thrown down this elegant gauntlet, Lord Hugo proceeded to the duel.

“I’m a very old man, born the same year as the old king, you know. I’m over eighty and in my life I’ve known almost everyone.”

Everyone from a certain stratum of society, he meant of course.

“And though I’ve never married,” he continued, “I have observed numerous marriages. People wed for many different reasons. Often they are worldly goals: dynastic needs, money, or social advancement.” He’d reverted to his languid conversational style, as though his observations were no more momentous that a comment on the weather. “Then there are the marriages formed for reasons of sentiment: companionship, passion, or love. Not all marriages are successful.” He paused and looked at her.

“I would imagine not,” she said, since he seemed to expect a reply.

“I have given the matter a good deal of thought and I believe I know the most important ingredient of a happy lifelong union. It is certainly not passion, neither is it love. The most important thing is for a couple to understand one another. And understanding comes from a common background, an equality of position.”

“Do you not believe in love, Lord Hugo?”

He stopped walking and placed a hand on the stone balustrade. “Love matches can be the best of all, but not without that shared experience.” His eyes met hers, perceptive and not without sympathy. “I do not believe that a marriage between a prince and a beggar maid, however much they love each other, will succeed. I’ve seen too many unequal matches end in unhappiness to believe in fairy tales.”

He looked out over the rolling parkland of Mandeville, then behind him to the soaring pillars of the mansion’s south front.

“What a beautiful morning,” he said. “I very rarely leave London these days but this is a magnificent spot. I’m glad to see it again. Perhaps I should visit Amesbury Park again, too. I grew up there, you know. Very different from Mandeville, being Elizabethan. A shade smaller? Perhaps not.”

And this, he meant but didn’t say, was Tarquin’s milieu. As a duke’s nephew he was miles above Celia Seaton.

She had to hand it to Lord Hugo, in fifteen minutes of excruciatingly polite conversation he’d managed to enumerate every reason she was utterly unsuitable to be Tarquin Compton’s bride.

He’d be gratified to know she agreed with him, or almost. She did not believe that she was unworthy. None of his reasons had anything to do with her character and her value as a person. But she was, by any worldly definition, unsuitable. Instinctively she knew Lord Hugo was right about a couple needing something in common besides love. He only repeated her own concerns.

Tarquin might belong in a ducal mansion but she did not and she was leaving, that very morning. Leaving the field to Lord Hugo was a risk, but one she needed to take.

A
rriving at Wallop Hall in one of the Mandeville carriages, she was greeted with affectionate delight by Minerva and dragged off to the nursery to visit the baby, who was little changed. So much had happened since she last saw him, he might have grown old enough to be breeched. She duly admired him and agreed with his doting mother that he showed signs of uncommon precociousness. It might even be true, if a red face and lusty squall were indicators of intelligence.

The Iverleys showed her the rattle Tarquin had broken into to retrieve the ruby.

“We’ll have it repaired, of course,” Sebastian said. “And we’re anxious to know what happened.”

At the end of the tale they all exclaimed and applauded her decision to give the jewel to Countess Czerny. “The Duchess of Amesbury is an impossible old harridan,” Diana crowed. “I wish I’d seen her face. And the countess sounds quite fascinating. I hope I’ll meet her sometime.”

“You may get the chance this very day,” Celia said. “I haven’t had a chance to give her the jewel so I sent word that she could come here for it. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not in the least. Is she very beautiful?”

“I think we’re about to find out.” Minerva spoke from the window embrasure. “There’s a lady in an absolutely gorgeous bonnet getting out of a carriage.”

Celia and Diana joined her at the window. “Oh goodness,” said the latter. “Where did she find that pelisse with the ruffed collar? I’ve never seen anything so elegant.”

“I’m told all her clothes come from Paris,” Celia said. “I suppose I’d better go down and see her.”

She received Julia in the Montroses’ small morning room.

“Here,” she said. “No, wait.”

The box in which Tarquin had sent her the ruby, a simple affair of polished blue leather, rested on her palm. She carefully removed the lid, stamped in gilt with a crest and a curly letter
C
. The huge red stone sat in a nest of linen that emitted a faint hint of Tarquin’s unique scent. Celia inhaled appreciatively then extracted the jewel, held it up, letting it catch the sunlight pouring through the window.

“I think I’ll keep the box,” she said and tossed the gem to the countess.

“My God!” Julia cried, clutching it in her fist against her chest. “You almost gave me an apoplexy. Do you have any idea how valuable this little rock is?”

“I know almost nothing about precious stones. A fact that strikes me as ironic since I gather my father was not so ignorant. Will you do something for me, Julia?”

“Anything in my power. You could have sold the ruby to the duchess and I might have ended up dead like your father.”

“Will you tell me what you know of my father? I’ve never understood why he decided to leave India.”

“He was recommended to me as a man who could get things done. Unfortunately for me that wasn’t the whole story, or I would never have used him for this commission.” She paused at Celia’s flinch. “I’m sorry to have to say that about your father.”

“It’s all right. I’d rather know the truth at last.”

“From what I learned later,” Julia continued, “he’d offended too many powerful people and it was time to get out. He decided to use the gem to make a fresh start. In England I supposed, but who knows what he planned?”

“Do you know what happened to the household?”

“I’m going to speak bluntly. His bibi and children and their servants had already left the house when he was killed.”

“Do you know where they went?”

“I never learned that, but I gather he raised as much money as he could for them. When his killers searched his body he had almost nothing left. That’s why I was so certain you had the ruby.”

“Were they safe?”

“My informant believed that they were.”

“Thank you. I’ve always wondered and worried about that. It means a great deal to me to know.”

“Is there anything else I can tell you?”

“What will you do now?”

Julia gave a knowing little smile. “I haven’t quite decided what I shall do once I restore the ruby to the owner’s agent in London. As we discussed before, I’ve been considering marriage.”

“You’re still interested, then?”

“Perhaps. However, I’m not sure Mr. Compton is still interested in me. If that should change, who knows? He’s such a terribly intriguing man. What do you think?”

“I have no opinion.”

“If you say so, my dear Celia, of course I believe you. And what do you intend to do with yourself?”

“If nothing better comes up, I expect I shall seek another position as a governess. But I fear the whole world is about to be privy to the fact that I spent my formative years living in the same house as my father’s mistress and my two Indian brothers.” Even if Lord Hugo kept quiet about the tale he’d heard from Lady Trumper, the Duchess of Amesbury must also know the truth.

Julia nodded. “That kind of narrow-mindedness is one of the disadvantages of English life. You may be sure I will never mention it.”

Celia believed her. Though she still had reasons to resent this woman, she also felt kinship with one who had an understanding of her own checkered experience. Unlike Lord Hugo who’d made no secret of his disgust with her background.