Vanity (32 page)

“I am honored to be called so, madam,” Octavia said demurely. “But His Highness enjoys the tables, and I confess I am inept at cards and quite fail to see the appeal.”

The queen’s eyes sharpened and some of her hostility
faded. “Is that so, Lady Warwick? You must find yourself in the minority.”

“Alas, yes, madam.” Octavia smiled. “So my husband is always telling me. But in truth I cannot imagine why one would want to throw good money after bad on the strength of a card or the fall of the dice.”

She was doing well. The queen looked almost benign, clearly reassessing her opinion of the woman she’d heard ran one of the most frequented gaming salons in the town.

“I wish you could persuade my son of your opinions, Lady Warwick,” the queen said. “Indeed, I wish you would ban gaming tables from your salon.”

Octavia curtsied again. “My husband plays, madam,” she said gravely, a tentative smile suggesting that in common with all women, including Queen Charlotte, she had no influence over her husband’s activities, and no choice but to obey his dictates.

“Ah, yes.” The queen sighed and fanned herself. “Men seem to derive an inordinate pleasure from gaming.” She bestowed a small smile of dismissal. “Are you acquainted with the Countess of Wyndham?”

She gestured to Letitia Wyndham, standing silently to one side, before turning her attention to another lady ushered forward by the equerry.

Octavia curtsied and retreated the requisite distance, careful not to turn her back even a fraction.

“I believe we’ve just been introduced, Lady Wyndham,” she said, smiling at the sallow, dumpy lady in a gown of primrose yellow adorned with puce roses. Puce roses embellished a coiffure so tall, it dwarfed her short stature.

“Her Majesty considers it discourteous to turn from someone who’s been brought to her attention,” the countess said a little stiffly. “She always passes people on so they don’t feel too abruptly dismissed.”

“How thoughtful,” Octavia said.

Lady Wyndham was very nervous, and Octavia felt jumpy just standing beside her. She cast a cursory glance over the countess’s painted face. The powder was thickly applied, bright spots of rouge startling against her cheeks.
Octavia frowned. There was something the matter with the woman’s right eye. The eyelid was swollen, and beneath the heavily caked powder could be seen a purple shadow.

“Forgive me, ma’am, but have you hurt yourself? Your eye?”

Color flooded Letitia’s face, spreading beneath the white coating—color so hot, it looked as if it would melt paint and powder alike. She touched her eye with fluttering fingertips.

“I tripped … so stupid of me. On the corner of the rug, caught my toe in a loose fringe. So stupid and clumsy.”

Octavia remembered when Letitia had tripped on the pavement outside Almack’s. Philip had been there. She hadn’t heard what was said between them, but she knew it hadn’t been pleasant. Perhaps Letitia Wyndham was incurably clumsy. There were such people.

“We all have accidents,” she said soothingly. “I once tripped all the way down a flight of stairs and ended up at the bottom with my petticoats over my head just as a party of guests arrived at the door.”

Letitia’s mouth flickered in a tentative movement that seemed to imply that she hadn’t made up her mind whether or not to smile. She raised her other hand to pat nervously at her hair.

Octavia looked at the great purpling bruise on the countess’s wrist. It didn’t look like the kind of bruise one acquired by tripping over a carpet. Perhaps Letitia Wyndham was not incurably clumsy, after all. She glanced sideways to where the Earl of Wyndham stood in the circle around the king. Then she glanced back at the countess.

The other woman’s gaze had followed Octavia’s. When she spoke, her voice was very flat and low.

“You are acquainted with my husband, I believe, Lady Warwick.”.

“Yes,” Octavia agreed.

“Quite well, I believe.”

Was she probing? What did she want to hear? Or was the countess simply stating obliquely that she knew what was said about the Earl of Wyndham and Lady Warwick:
that if Lady Warwick was not her husband’s mistress at this point, she soon would be.

“He frequents my husband’s gaming tables, ma’am.”

“But my husband doesn’t enjoy gaming. There must be other inducements.” Lady Wyndham now had the air of a woman about to jump off a cliff. Her color had died down and her face was a white mask again, but her eyes, dark green and brilliant, were fixed on Octavia’s face with an almost fanatic intensity.

They were magnificent eyes, Octavia realized. Totally surprising on this insignificant, timid little dab of a woman.

“What are you saying, Lady Wyndham?” she asked directly.

The countess dabbed at her lips with her handkerchief “I hear the rumors,” she said in a low, rushed voice. “Please don’t misunderstand me. I have no quarrel with you. Anything that keeps my husband from my side is welcome. And I am grateful for anything that distracts his attention from my daughter.”

Octavia stared at her. It was an extraordinary conversation to be having in the middle of the king’s drawing room at St. James’s Palace. And yet, she thought, there was almost no risk of being overheard in the babble and general jostling for attention. Everyone was far too self-absorbed to give two chatting women a passing thought.

She glanced across the room again. And met Philip Wyndham’s gray eyes. Her skin prickled, and her scalp crawled as if an entire nest of lice had taken up residence beneath the powder and pomade. Deliberately, she smiled at him, her eyes narrowing. Then she turned back to his wife.

Letitia was now looking wretched, as if deeply regretting her jump from the cliff “Forgive me,” she mumbled. “I don’t know what I was thinking … to say such a thing.”

“Tell me about your daughter,” Octavia invited, knowing she could not respond adequately either to the confession or to this subsequent retraction.

Letitia’s face ht up, and for a moment Octavia could see
beneath the plainness and the anxiety, to a radiance that was its own special kind of beauty. For a moment she saw the woman as she would have been if fate had not shackled her to Philip Wyndham.

“Susannah,” she said. “She’s only three months old, but she smiles all the time. Nurse says she’s the sunniest baby she’s ever had in charge. And I know she knows my footsteps. She coos like a pigeon when I—”

Letitia stopped abruptly, again flushing crimson to the roots of her hair. “Forgive me. I do rattle on so. I must return to the queen.”

She turned to go, but Octavia laid a hand on her sleeve. “Your husband?” she said. “He doesn’t care for the child?”

“He has no interest in daughters,” Letitia said. Her eyes met Octavia’s, and a message burned in the brilliant green depths. “My husband despises women, Lady Warwick.”

Then she moved away with an urgent gesture of farewell that contained more than a touch of desperation.

Octavia stepped aside. Philip’s wife had been warning her. But she hadn’t told her anything she didn’t already know. It was not possible to have any remotely intimate intercourse with Philip Wyndham without sensing his dark potential for violence.

“Pathetic little drab, isn’t she?” A brittle laugh accompanied the soft, malicious voice. Margaret Drayton stood beside Octavia, fanning herself, the gilded plumes in her coiffure nodding in the gentle breeze. “It’s no wonder her husband seeks pastures new.”

“Don’t most husbands?” Octavia asked dryly.

Margaret’s scarlet-painted mouth moved in a smile. Her teeth were not good, Octavia noticed with satisfaction. In fact, she seemed to be missing rather a large number.

“Mine doesn’t, my dear,” Margaret said. “He barely knows what to do in his own pasture.” She laughed coarsely. “Take my advice. Marry a man in his dotage. Pleasuring him is something of an ordeal.” She shrugged her magnificent shoulders, and her nipples peeped above her neckline. “But it’s a small price to pay for freedom. And
it does mean one doesn’t have to worry about whom he’s been covering before he comes to one’s own bed.”

Octavia hid her disgust. It wasn’t possible that Rupert could find this coarse creature appealing—although there was something horribly vibrant about her, something almost larger than life.

“It’s a little late for me to take your advice, Lady Drayton.”

“Ah, but you play your own games, don’t you, Lady Warwick?” Margaret smiled over her fan, her eyes darting across the room to Philip Wyndham. “I don’t know what you expect to gain from the Earl of Wyndham, but take my word for it, my dear, whatever your price, it won’t be sufficient compensation.” Her fan snapped shut and her face was suddenly ugly, stamped with a mixture of fear and loathing.

“The Earl of Wyndham despises women … or so I’ve been told,” Octavia said evenly.

Margaret opened her fan again. “Whoever told you that knew what she was talking about.” She smiled, her expression once more all sardonic malice. “I thought I’d drop a word in your ear. Those of us who play these games should look after each other, I believe.” She offered an ironic curtsy. “I’d be grateful for any words of advice in my own game, if you think I might benefit from them.”

Her gaze drifted pointedly to Lord Rupert Warwick and then back again to his wife. Her smile broadened. Then she moved away.

Octavia contemplated hurling her sharp-heeled slipper at that smooth white back. The woman had invited Octavia to give a few pointers on how to seduce
her
husband. Not that all the pointers in the world would do her any good. Rupert wasn’t a man to be seduced. He preferred the active role in that play.

It was still annoying, however, to watch Margaret bobbing at Rupert’s elbow, touching him, brushing his cheek with her fingers, tapping his wrist with her fan. And to hear his lazy laugh, and to see his mouth curve, his eyelids droop suggestively as he responded to her banter.

He must be enjoying himself, Octavia decided. However useful the flirtation, he clearly didn’t find it unpleasant. And Margaret did have a raw kind of appeal—without subtlety, but magnetic in some way.

Octavia ground her teeth in an annoyance directed more at herself than at Margaret or Rupert. She was beginning to suspect that she had a very possessive nature. A most unfashionable trait, and in present circumstances, a most inconvenient one.

She became aware of Philip Wyndham’s gaze on the back of her neck exerting an almost perceptible tug. She turned her head. There was a distinct command in the unsmiling gray eyes, and once again she had the strangest sense of distorted familiarity. Obeying the command, she moved across the room toward him.

“You were enjoying a conversation with my wife,” the earl stated when she reached him. “I trust you found her a stimulating companion.”

The vicious derision in his voice made her stomach curl, but she knew she had to respond in like manner.

She laughed—a brittle, mocking laugh. “La, my lord, I’m sure you know better than I the quality of Lady Wyndham’s discourse.”

Philip bowed, raising her hand to his lips. “Indeed I do, madam. Will you walk into the far salon?”

It was couched as a question, but it came as a directive. Octavia curtsied her agreement and tucked her hand into his arm. They walked through the crowded drawing room into an antechamber, where footmen and equerries stood about looking as if they had no useful purpose. A few courtiers were gathered in knots about the gilded chamber, taking a breather from the overheated air in the drawing room.

The Earl of Wyndham made his way to a long window in the far wall. Heavy velvet curtains were drawn tight, as if to keep out the faintest waft of the fresh night air. He drew aside one curtain, opened the French door, and ushered Octavia onto the terrace beyond.

“The air is pleasanter here, I believe.”

“Yes,” she agreed, unable to help a shiver as the breeze rippled across her bare shoulders, cooling her heated skin.

If Philip was aware of her momentary discomfort, he took no notice. Another man would have immediately offered to fetch her shawl, Octavia thought. Rupert would have draped his own coat around her shoulders.

“Let us walk a little way along the terrace.” Her hand was still tucked in his arm, and he now covered it with his free hand. It could have been interpreted as a warm and friendly gesture, but to Octavia it felt as if he’d shackled her.

She said nothing, however, and allowed herself to be drawn away from the French door and the sounds and lights within. In the dark shadows of a group of box trees at the far end of the terrace, Philip suddenly pulled her against him in a rough movement that took her by surprise. His hands circled her neck, thumbs pushing up her chin, forcing her to look up at his face, where the gray eyes, deep-set in dark, shadowed holes, had a metallic glitter.

“I want you,” he said. But there was no ardor in the statement of passion. It was a cold statement of fact. “I want you, and you want me.”

His mouth came down on hers, crushing her lips against her teeth, then his tongue pushed into her mouth, drove to the back of her throat, making her gag and bringing tears to her eyes. But she was growing accustomed to these assaultive kisses and swiftly brought her hands around his body, slipping beneath his coat, stroking and patting across his torso.

And then she felt it. Her fingers stilled. Beneath the tight-fitting waistcoat there was something small and round and hard. But it was beneath the waistcoat. A pocket on the inside? A pocket in his shirt? Impossible to tell. And impossible to explore without removing the waistcoat.

Her hands dropped from his body and fell to her sides. Her head fell back beneath the pressure of his mouth. She held herself still and submissive as he ravaged her mouth and his fingers tightened for a second on her throat, then moved down to her breasts. Instinctively, Octavia knew that he
liked her passive submission. That it excited him more than a vigorous response. And in many ways it was easier to do.

Her mind raced on its own course. How was she to extract that little pouch from beneath his waistcoat? Perhaps if she did throw herself onto him in an orgy of moaning ardor, scratching and scrabbling at his clothes in her eagerness to get at him, maybe she could reach it. But she couldn’t do that here. Not on the terrace of St. James’s Palace in the middle of a royal reception.