The Luckiest Lady In London (13 page)

He clearly recalled the nearly entire hour he’d deliberately whiled away after she’d left the dinner table—he had been cool, calm, and detached. Even after he’d entered her room, he’d retained complete mastery over himself, bantering with her, disrobing her at a most leisurely pace.

He got out of the bed. She made a sound at the loss of his warmth. He pulled the counterpane over her and tucked it snugly around her person.

A sight of her nipples, had that been all it had taken? Did that mean, if he averted his eyes from her bare breasts in the future, he would be safe from such a comprehensive loss of control?

As he looked down upon her, however, with the counterpane up to her chin and not an inch of skin below her face visible, he couldn’t wait to touch her again. To kiss her. To hear her whisper,
You make me willing to do anything
.

He took a step back from the bed, then another. He could deal with an occasional loss of control. What he could not countenance, under any circumstances, was this kind of covetousness.

But how had he fallen into this kind of covetousness in the first place?

He gazed at her another moment and extinguished the lights. In his apartment, he pulled on a pair of shoes, shrugged into a jacket, and stepped out the door. The corridors of the manor were dark and silent. He walked without a hand candle, long accustomed to the shadows of his own house.

He meant to work for some time in his observatory, located inside the cupola he’d added to the manor. But all he did was pace back and forth on the roof, his fingers pressed to his temples, an occasional profanity leaving his lips.

He had been The Ideal Gentleman too long, and his success had annihilated his sense of caution. When he couldn’t stop thinking about her after their first meeting, when he began accepting invitations with the specific goal of being in her vicinity, when he persuaded Mr. Pitt to leave town straightaway after receiving his parents’ cable, so he could take the latter’s place at the Tenwhestle dinner that evening—he could have stepped back at any point and seen his idiocy for what it was.

Even if none of those actions had struck him as outlandish and entirely unlike himself, he should have reined to a full
stop when he began concocting the scheme of making her his mistress. It appalled him now to think he had formulated, let alone tendered, such a proposal. How had the sheer inanity of the idea not struck him like a bludgeon to the head?

Had he recognized it sooner . . .

He had. All along, the saner parts of himself had been issuing warnings that it was a terrible idea to fixate on this girl. And all along, doltishly preoccupied with her, he had ignored all the danger signals.

While telling himself that he was only after a bit of perverse fun, as if Captain Ahab had somehow come to the belief that he was only a recreational angler, even as he pursued his obsession all over the seven seas, a harpoon at the ready.

Obsession. He winced at the word, but there was no denying the truth: He had been obsessed for months.

He stopped midstride, horrified. To assuage his conscience and make sure that she was not forced to marry a man beneath her station, all he’d had to do was settle the thousand pounds a year and the house on her, but without the condition that she repay him in bed.

He would not have missed the outlay. She would not have suffered for knowing him. And he would have been free of her.

But the thought hadn’t even occurred to him until now.

Of course not. There was no idiocy bigger than that committed by a man who believed himself the cleverest creature under the sun.

His head throbbed. He didn’t want to stand here, flogging himself until the sun came up. He wanted to go back to his marriage bed and make love to her again, and let her sweet eagerness make everything better.

Dear God. At this juncture, he still wanted to be closer to her.

What was the distance between obsession and love? And
how near was he to that disastrous tipping point? Would he wake up tomorrow, look into her eyes, and simply accept his fate?

No.

Why not?
asked an insensate part of him.
She adores you. The real you
.

She does not know the real me, you moron
.

A man who wanted nothing had the world at his feet. A man who yearned for something—anything—was doomed to disappointment and heartache.

And he’d had more than enough disappointment and heartache for a lifetime.

He pressed his knuckles into his forehead. He wanted her much too much, but it was not the end of the world. Not yet, in any case. Given time and distance, sexual ardor would cool, both on his part and hers.

Until then, he would stay away from her.

L
ouisa was vaguely aware of the thunderstorm that took place at some point in the night. She pulled the bedcover tighter around her person and let the percussion of the rain lull her into a deeper sleep.

She woke up to a sunlit morning. A few seconds of disorientation followed as she stared first at the unfamiliar canopy, and then around to the unfamiliar everything.

It was the morning after her wedding. And she had been most suitably ravished, if she did say so herself. She covered her mouth and giggled.

The man had such a nefarious influence on her. First he turned her into a nymphomaniac—that was the scientific term for a sexually insatiable young lady, wasn’t it?—now he turned her into a giggler.

She had never been a giggler. She had always been the girl who looked to the consequences, the one who minded the budget and gave admonishments when Cecilia or Julia over-spent their allowance. The boring one—according to Cecilia,
at least—like the middle Bennet sister, except without the mediocre piano playing and the constant sermonizing.

She imagined saying to Cecilia,
At least I am really good in bed
, and giggled anew.

She stopped only when Betsey, her new maid, entered with a cup of hot cocoa on a tray. Then the two of them giggled together at the sight of all the clothes strewn about the room. Then yet again when she had to put on her dressing robe under the covers, so that she didn’t emerge from her bed stark naked.

As she lowered herself into a hot bath, the place between her legs stung rather potently for a moment. But then she was quite all right.

Ready for more.

She was going to need two of him, she thought to herself, which, of course, led to even more giggling.

When she was properly coiffed and gowned, a footman respectfully showed her the way to the breakfast room. She envisioned her husband looking up over the top of his newspaper with a slight leer on his face. She would, of course, leer right back at him. And provided there was privacy, she would tell him her new theory that he would perhaps prove not quite man enough for her.

He was not there in the breakfast room.

The scoundrel. She would bet that it was intentional. It would be just like the man who’d waited an entire hour to come to her last night to tease her with his absence the next day.

But since this was her first day at Huntington, there was much to occupy her. She spent her morning doing her best to stop her jaw from dropping repeatedly: The estate was beyond anything she had known in scope. There were fifty indoor servants, forty gardeners, thirty men in the stables, and a gamekeeper’s staff that took care of the pheasant population—which was somewhere in the vicinity of forty-five hundred, she was told.

It was a good thing she did not have to lead this army of servants directly, her only experience with staff being regularly pleading with Sally, the Cantwell cookmaid, to not abandon them, and taking on some of Sally’s chores—behind Mrs. Cantwell’s back, of course—to lighten the maid’s load, since they couldn’t afford to pay her more.

Here the much more detailed taxonomy of duties and positions gave rise to a pyramid of authorities. Situated at its very top, Louisa needed only to consult the housekeeper, Mrs. Pratt, the butler, Sturgess, and the chef, Monsieur Boulanger, all of whom seemed frightfully competent in their respective domains.

A tour of the domestic offices dazzled her; the belowstairs operation of a great country estate was a thing of military efficiency. The kitchen in itself was bigger than the house she had lived in with her mother and sisters. The laundry department consisted of a washhouse, a drying room, a mangling room, an ironing room, a folding room, and a laundry maids’ room arranged in a smart sequence so that dirty clothes went in at one end and clean clothes came out at the other. Louisa blushed, realizing that her love-soiled sheets were about to make quite a public trip through the facilities.

Mrs. Pratt, after briskly showing off her storeroom, china closet, and stillroom, took Louisa to see the rest of the great mansion. Louisa had been forewarned that Huntington was open to the public, but still it was rather startling to see tourists craning their necks round and round to take in all the architectural details and fine furnishings of the immaculately kept state apartments, whose ornately draped beds had once received crowned heads. The room she had spent the night in, however, was shielded from curious eyes, being situated in the private family wing.

The long gallery was empty of tourists when she came to it. As she viewed the portraits of her husband’s ancestors, she
remembered what he’d said to her the evening before, that sometimes the master of Huntington did look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The thirteen Marquesses of Wrenworth who had preceded him—and a number of viscounts before the family was elevated to a marquessate—were indeed a plain bunch.

The way Mrs. Pratt explained it, though not in exactly so many words, was that the men of the line had more often than not been pragmatic in marriage, and preferred to choose wives with great fortunes over those with beautiful eyes.

“But you can see, my lady, that was not the case with his lordship’s father,” said Mrs. Pratt, stopping before the late marchioness’s portrait.

Louisa could see that indeed. Portraits, in her opinion, rarely did great beauties justice. Even so, one could see that her late mother-in-law must have been quite stunning. “My goodness. Did you ever see her in person, Mrs. Pratt?”

“No, ma’am. I came to Huntington in 1880 as an under-housekeeper, several years after her ladyship had passed away.”

Louisa was surprised—for some reason she thought Mrs. Pratt had spent most of her life in the family’s employ. Was not such more or less the case at the great houses, that the upper servants, with the sometime exception of the French cook, rose up the ranks?

“His lordship asked that I show you the library last, ma’am,” said Mrs. Pratt.

Because he knows it would be my favorite?

But that was not the reason. She had been wondering where exactly was the conservatory, the fabled location of her new telescope. As it turned out, the conservatory was accessed via the library.

And there, the wedding present for which her entire family had begged—very prettily, no doubt. It was worth any
amount of begging, standing serenely at a corner of the conservatory and gleaming with perfect craftsmanship.

“This particular panel can be swiveled open,” said Mrs. Pratt, pointing at the sheet of glass directly before the telescope.

Louisa walked around the telescope, agog at its beauty and, at the same time, confused as to why he had chosen to have it placed in the conservatory. The telescope had an equatorial mount, which allowed the instrument to remain fixed on any celestial object that had a diurnal motion, by driving one axis at a constant speed. That lovely feature would be quite wasted at this particular location, given that once the telescope had turned a few degrees, it would be looking at the fronds of a palm tree.

Next to the telescope was a small bench. On the bench was an envelope marked,
To Lady Wrenworth
. She picked it up and turned it around—it had been sealed with her husband’s signet ring. Inside, a piece of stationery that bore the same crest.

I hope you like what you see. W
.

He certainly possessed much prettier penmanship than hers. And more cryptic intentions. What could she see from here?

She looked at the note again. It was dated three days ago. So he had been here, personally supervising the setup of the telescope, knowing full well it would be completely under-utilized.

And the angle the telescope had been set at was also too low. What could she see, so close to the horizon, except perhaps Venus and a rising moon?

She removed the covers from the eyepiece and the lens and looked—and gasped.

The telescope pointed straight at the Roman folly. At first she thought there were two people on the belvedere, but they were only dress dummies, one covered in a large swath of pink fabric, the other in something that resembled a man’s evening jacket—the way she and Lord Wrenworth had been dressed when they first discussed being naked and up to no good upon that particular belvedere.

She barely restrained herself from laughing aloud. The man’s villainy was adorable.

She walked into the dining room hoping to thank him, only to learn that she would have to take luncheon by herself, too, as his lordship was out inspecting roofs that had been damaged by the storm during the night. She sighed. Adorable villainy and responsible stewardship—could a woman ask for any more in a husband?

After luncheon, she made a dent in the mountain of thank-you notes that she must write, approved menus for the next week, then spent an enjoyable hour in the library, where she discovered an entire dossier of older issues of
Astronomical Register
:
A Medium of Communication for Amateur Observers and All Others Interested in the Science of Astronomy
.

A most pleasant start to married life, she must admit.

Which would only become pleasanter as day turned into night.

F
elix stared at the billiard table.

In his mind his wife was stretched out on the green baize, naked.
Take me
, she would murmur.
I have been waiting all day
.

He struck the cue ball with great violence, scattering the fifteen red balls on the table.

His tenants had been surprised to see him, a man only one day wed, away from his house and his new wife to see to their
roofs. They congratulated him and tried to hide their puzzlement. He explained without being asked, in his best happy-rueful air, that the new missus had taken it into her head to get to the running of the household as soon as possible, without him around to provide distractions.

A lift of the brow that suggested he’d give plenty of distractions later satisfied those simple, deferential folks. They wanted him to be well shagged and happy. But he could not be both, at least not with her, now that he realized the sway he’d allowed her to hold over him.

“You can teach me how to play. Then you won’t need to play alone.”

He looked up sharply. The billiard room was a masculine refuge—that he was inside signaled he didn’t wish to be disturbed by any woman.

She stood by the door in a very pretty pastel blue dress, the expression in her very pretty eyes essentially stating that she would be more than happy to lie down on the table, naked.

“I saw the belvedere from the conservatory, by the way. The dress dummies were a stroke of genius.”

He should have known something was wrong with him when he had driven the dress dummies out to the foot of the hill and then carried them the rest of the way by himself. His excuse had been that he hadn’t wanted to make such strange requests of his servants, but in truth he had enjoyed every step of his silly little gesture.

So much that he didn’t even mind the repeated trips between the house and the belvedere, so that the dummies would appear at just the correct angle when she put her eye to the telescope.

“What do you say we pay them a visit tomorrow?” she went on, her voice husky.

He could see her standing on the belvedere, her elbows braced against the top of the half wall, looking over her
shoulder at him. She would look perfectly respectable from the waist up, her blouse buttoned to the chin, her jacket similarly closed, her hair neat, her hat prim. But the lower half of her would be entirely naked, except for her walking boots and stockings, perhaps. And she would lean forward just a little, angling her round, pert bottom at him.

He was already hard.

“That would have to depend on the weather, don’t you think? It might rain again,” he said.

“Being coy, I see.” She tilted her head. “Are you trying to draw out my anticipation for as long as you can?”

“What do you think?” he asked, his tone carefully non-committal.

“And are you going to make me wait just as long tonight?”

“Longer.” At least that was one promise he could make truthfully.

She wrinkled her nose. “What a way to endear yourself to your bride.”

“I am full of just such winning manners and tactics.”

“Ha. Two can play this game. For your insolence, I shall wear something particularly low-cut tonight—while employing one of my most robust bust improvers.”

Her oblivious cheerfulness drove a stake of pain through his chest. “I shall look forward to an excellent view at dinner then, Lady Wrenworth.”

She left, but the next moment, she was back. “By the way, Mrs. Pratt told me she had been in your employ only eight years. I thought she must have served some twenty, thirty years in this house.”

“No, she hasn’t.”

“And Mr. Sturgess? How long has he been here?”

“Ten years, or thereabout.”

“Monsieur Boulanger?”

“No more than five years.”

“Is that not a little odd, that all your upper servants are so relatively new?”

“My father and my mother died within six months of each other. They both left generous bequests to longtime retainers, which led a majority of them to choose either to retire or to pursue other vocations of interest.”

He did not mention that once he had come of age and gained control of his fortune, he had offered further financial lures for those older servants who still remained to leave service and enjoy a life of ease and security—he had not wanted anyone in his employ who could remember the time before he was The Ideal Gentleman.

“That must have been lovely for those retainers,” she said, smiling at him.

She blew him a kiss before she left for good this time, her footsteps growing fainter and fainter.

W
hen Louisa arrived in the dining room on her husband’s arm, she found the table packed from one end to the other with epergnes and candelabras. When she sat down, she could barely see him with all the obstructions in place.

The sneaky rascal. But still dinner was enjoyable, their conversation centered largely on matters having to do with the estate.