The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton (30 page)

“Would a country bumpkin like you know how to untie a lady’s stays?”

“We rustics are equipped with natural ingenuity.”

“Very nice,” he said once she had stripped to her shift, which was made of fine cambric and with the low sun behind her revealed much of her figure.

She puckered her forehead. “There’s something wrong,” she said, reaching for his cheek and jaw. “Too smooth.”

“My apologies. If I’d known I was going fishing I wouldn’t have shaved today.”

“And you’re wearing boots.”

“I cannot believe you mentioned that fact,” he said. “Do I take it you are volunteering to remove them for me?”

“Later, perhaps. How do we fish?”

“Come. Lie beside me.”

She chuckled as she settled down on her stomach, chin propped on her elbows.

“What?” he asked.

“Francis Featherbrain. He consorted with one of his many lady friends on a downward slope. He found it—ahem—enhanced his pleasure.”

“Interesting. Would you like to try it?”

“Another time.”

“Did you get to the end of the book? What happened to our Francis, anyway?”

“It was very sad. The love of his life died.”

“There was only one love of his life? I had the impression there were many.”

“Oh no! He truly, truly loved Nancy. Stricken with grief at her passing, he assuaged his pain by seducing other men’s wives.”

“I think I understand,” Tarquin said gravely after giving the matter some thought. “He was merely sharing in the happiness of those who had married their loves.”

“That’s a line of reasoning worthy of Francis.”

“And did he end up catching a pox and dying alone and penniless?”

“Not a bit of it. He wed a girl with a large dowry, gave up being a dissolute and abandoned rake, and became a sober, honest, industrious, virtuous, and constant husband. I believe those are almost the words he used.”

“A most edifying tale. I wonder if there’s a sequel.”

“I’m glad you carried a great work of literature with you that day.” He was too. “If you’d chosen some lesser opus, like Shakespeare’s sonnets or ‘The Rape of the Lock,’ I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much.”

And Tarquin sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Nicholas Constantine and Joe. Had either of them realized what a treasure they’d been offered in
The Genuine Amours
, he and Celia would have missed out on some excellent experiences.

They lay in silence for few minutes, watching the water flow by. Celia felt the sun on her back and her bare legs. “Tarquin,” she said, “I don’t think there are any fish in this stream.”

“I’m afraid you are correct.”

“If we can’t go fishing we’ll have to do something else.”

“Can you think of anything?”

She flung herself onto him with a joyful laugh, rolling them down into the stream.

Splashing, spluttering, flailing about, they ended up laughing in a shared embrace, barely covered by the shallow water. Tarquin’s mouth scorched her chilled lips, initiating a voracious kiss as they fought to devour one another and their bodies burned, even with the intervention of cold wet garments. She clawed at his sodden smock and felt him try to find his way to her breasts through her clinging shift.

“We have to get out of here,” he gasped, dragging his mouth from hers for two seconds. “It’s not going to work,” he said a minute later, tugging the tangled ribbons at her neck.

“Of course,” she said. “Cold water, tiddly . . .”

“No,” he interrupted, guiding her hand so she could feel for herself. “That is emphatically not the problem. We need to get out of the water and out of these clothes.”

They scrambled up the bank and gazed at each other, dripping wet and grinning like idiots.

“I’m a fool,” he said. “I should have had you remove these damned boots.”

Epilogue

Revesby House, Yorkshire, six months later

C
elia Compton sat with her morning caller in the small parlor. An unseasonably fine February day had brought Mrs. Stewart over from Stonewick.

“I’ll be back from Cheshire in a month,” she said, “assuming all is well with the children.”

A few weeks after their wedding, much to Celia and Tarquin’s surprise, Mrs. Stewart had returned to Yorkshire after an extended absence attending her daughter’s confinement. It turned out she was just who she had claimed: the widow of an East India Company official who remembered both Algernon Seaton and his late wife with fondness, despite Algernon’s later vagaries.

Celia found great satisfaction in her acquaintance with someone who could talk about her mother. Tarquin was so grateful to Mrs. Stewart’s daughter for taking her mother away at that time, and therefore leaving Celia on his hands, that he sent the child a silver rattle.

“We may be in London then,” Celia told her. “The postman brought a letter from Lord Hugo.”

As always, she waited impatiently for Tarquin’s return from the fields, where he’d been checking on the progress of the lambing with his agent. It was hard to believe he’d settled down to be a concerned and contented Yorkshire landowner.

He was also, without doubt, the best-dressed one in all three Ridings. If she’d feared removing to his estate would cure Tarquin of his dandyish ways, she needn’t have worried. It was true, when he came in, his boots were splashed with mud. But his everyday country gentleman’s garb of buckskin breeches, wool cloth coat and matching waistcoat were impeccably cut and his neck cloth almost undisturbed by a morning on horseback.

“How many sheep did you dip?” she asked, putting her arms around his neck and sniffing appreciatively. It was a standing joke. Tarquin hadn’t changed enough that he engaged closely in the messier aspects of farming, certainly not those that would affect his clean scent. She nuzzled his smooth jaw and pulled his head down for a kiss.

“There’s a letter for you from Lord Hugo,” she said after an interval that, as usual, left her rumpled and him pristine. She never could work out how he managed that.

He slid a knife under the seal. “He wants us to come to London for the season,” he said.

Celia had expected it. Since attending their wedding at Wallop Hall, Lord Hugo had written her two perfectly courteous letters. Tarquin insisted his great-uncle was quite reconciled to their marriage. “He wants me to be happy and I am.”

Celia wasn’t so sanguine. Surely, she reasoned, Lord Hugo must blame her for taking his beloved nephew away to live in the wilds of Yorkshire.

“He wants us to stay with him in Bruton Street,” Tarquin said, continuing to read his letter. “It’s a delightful house and very convenient.” Her husband had given up his London rooms which were too small and didn’t allow women.

“How kind of him,” Celia said. “And if we’re going to stay with him, it had better be this year, before the child arrives. I expect Lord Hugo has lots of fragile things for an infant to break.”

Tarquin grinned. “You wouldn’t believe the bibelots he’s amassed in a lifetime of collecting.”

“I’m sure I would.”

He looked at her with concern, not fooled by her effort to sound delighted at Lord Hugo’s invitation. “We don’t have to accept,” he said. “Sebastian and Diana would have us. Or the Chases have a huge house in Berkeley Square. Or we can just stay here. There’s no law says we have to spend the season in London.”

This Celia would not allow. She knew Tarquin missed London and there were aspects of a trip south that appealed to her too. Tarquin had assured her they had no need to attend every assembly of the
haut ton,
and she’d always enjoyed theaters and other pleasures of the capital. How bad could things be when she had Diana and Minerva as friends and Tarquin’s constant companionship and support?

“Nonsense, love,” she said. “You simply must go to your tailor’s. You have nothing to wear but rags.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself. Here.” He handed her a folded sheet. “Hugo encloses a letter for you.”

My dear niece,

I believe you may think I disapprove of you and I wish to assure you that nothing could be further from the truth. Since the day I first saw Tarquin (an occasion I described to you at Mandeville last summer) I have been concerned only for his happiness. I thought I knew what would achieve it, but I was wrong and he was right. He chose the wife he wanted and he chose well. It distresses me that you should doubt your welcome from me. I hope you will make Bruton Street your London home while I live. It will of course be yours afterward, but that is to look ahead. I have no intention of shuffling off the mortal coil until I have met your children and I look forward to entertaining them too. My valet tells me it’s best to put away small fragile objects when there are children in the house. Next season I will do that, but this year I shall enjoy showing you my collections and getting to know my niece.

Yours very affectionately,

Hugo Hartley

She set aside the letter, blinking back tears.

“What is it?” Tarquin asked, drawing her into his arms. “What did Hugo say to upset you?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. We shall go to Bruton Street. I look forward to it very much.”

“I’m glad,” Tarquin admitted. “Once you know Hugo better you’ll appreciate him.”

“How could I not love the man who made you who you are?”

Author’s Note

Q
uite often in historical romance, our innocent heroine learns about sex from a book. How else is a well-bred virgin going to get out of the missionary position? I thought it would be fun to use a real publication of the period.

In researching my series on the Regency book collectors of the Burgundy Club, I read quite a lot of eighteenth-century pornography. (It’s okay, you know, if it’s historic, especially if it’s in French.) I came across
The Genuine and Remarkable Amours of the Celebrated Author Peter Aretin
in the British Library catalogue. I don’t know if it is the only copy in existence, but I’ve found no record of another and I doubt there are many. Every quotation and reference in
The Amorous Education of Celia Seaton
comes straight from this badly written and exceedingly prurient little novel, which bears a publication date of 1796.

Some of the other books in Tarquin’s collection no doubt had greater literary merit. In pre-Revolutionary France a number of distinguished writers wrote erotica as a subversive act. Pam Rosenthal’s
The Bookseller’s Daughter
is an erotic romance set in the world of these illicit publications.
The Genuine Amours
has none of the philosophical pretensions of these French works. It’s smut, pure and simple, with enough outrageously purple prose to make me laugh out loud in the British Library rare book reading room.

As usual, I have lots of people to thank for helping me with this book, more than I will remember to list here. Thanks to these writers for historical research assistance and/or moral support and entertaining e-mails as Tarquin and Celia’s story took form: Gaelen Foley, Shannon Donnelly, Kalen Hughes, Courtney Milan, Alleyne Dickens, Jenny Brown, Janet Mullany, Anna Campbell, Caroline Linden, Pam Rosenthal, Cara Elliott, and Christine Wells. Thanks to Jill and Kathy for being my faithful and perceptive first readers. Thanks to Meredith Bernstein and Esi Sogah, my ever helpful and supportive agent and editor. And thanks to my friends and family for normal life.

Miranda