Vanity (35 page)

P
unctually at two o’clock Philip Wyndham’s carriage arrived before the door at Dover Street. Octavia had been watching from the window of the first-floor salon, and for all her mental preparation, her belly lurched as the vehicle drew up. The footman jumped from the ledge at the back, opening the door, letting down the footstep, before ascending the steps to the front door of the Warwicks’ house.

She felt sick, her skin clammy. Rupert was out but expected to be back for dinner at four-thirty. How long did afternoon assignations take, as a rule? Was two and a half hours an adequate length of time? Philip had experience of these matters and he had set the time, so presumably he considered from two to four to be perfectly sufficient for the satisfaction of an afternoon lust. But how would she greet Rupert over the dinner table? Would she casually give him the ring and continue with her roast partridge as if
nothing significant had occurred? Would he take it with a nod of thanks and drink his claret as if nothing significant had occurred?

Octavia drew on her gloves, smoothing the fine York tan leather over her fingers, and went downstairs. Griffin was waiting with her cloak. She responded automatically as he wished her a pleasant drive, and went out into the warm sunshine to be greeted by the Earl of Wyndham’s impassive footman.

She entered Philip Wyndham’s coach. The man put up the footstep and closed the door. The coachman’s whip snapped, and the horses broke into a trot down Dover Street.

No,
Octavia thought with a cold and miserable finality. Once this business with Philip Wyndham was done, then her relationship with Rupert Warwick was done too. There could be no repetition of such a loving as last night’s once she had been in the bed of another man. Even when she’d yielded with the consent—nay, the encouragement—of her lover.
Even
…
?
Or did she mean,
because?

She let her head fall back onto the squabs and closed her eyes. It didn’t matter which she meant. Once she had the ring, she would have fulfilled her side of the bargain. She would not be able to bear Rupert’s touch again.

The coach drew to a halt and she waited, her heart thudding, a faint mist of perspiration on her skin, her hands wet in her gloves. The door opened, and the square of bright sunlight made her blink.

Octavia drew up the hood of her cloak. She alighted in St. James’s Square before the imposing facade of Wyndham House. The front door opened as the footman escorted her up the short flight of scrubbed white steps. Her hand ran lightly over the wrought-iron balustrade, and she resisted the urge to cling to it, to curl her fingers around the slender railing and cling like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood.

She stepped into a marble-paved hall. A butler bowed. A maid curtsied. No one said anything. It was almost as if
maid gestured to the double staircase that curved gracefully upward to meet on a circular landing at the head. Then the girl hurried ahead of Octavia up the stairs.

As she put her foot on the bottom step, Octavia caught the rustle of silk out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head sharply. Letitia Wyndham stood unmoving in the shadow of a doorway. Her luminous eyes were emeralds in a pale face.

Octavia turned away from those eyes and followed the maid. She felt now as if she inhabited a void—a cool, still vacuum in which she moved, making no impression on her surroundings. Her feet weren’t really touching the stairs, her hand wasn’t really running along the banister. Her steps weren’t now really taking her along this carpeted corridor, weren’t bringing her to these white and gilded double doors. Doors that opened at the maid’s touch.

The girl stood aside with another curtsy, and Octavia moved past her into the room, her skirts brushing against the door frame.

It was a bedchamber. A large, elegant apartment. Philip Wyndham sat in a deep armchair beside the empty hearth, a book on his lap. He rose and bowed as Octavia entered.

“My dear, you are come.” There was a huskiness to his voice she hadn’t heard before.

Octavia curtsied. “As you see, sir.” She drew off her gloves.

He came toward her, his step as light as a dancer’s, his willowy frame moving gracefully. He pushed the hood from her head, then clasped her face with both hands and brought his mouth to hers in a rapacious assault that filled her anew with the terror and revulsion she thought she’d learned to overcome since the first time he had kissed her.

He released her head and unhooked her cloak, throwing it onto a chair, then stood back, regarding her unsmiling, his eyes harsh with hunger. His gaze ran over her, taking in her dress, the pale-blue silk caraco over the skirt of dark-blue figured cotton. His eyes lingered for a minute on the laced bodice; then he moved one hand in leisurely fashion, twitched at the lace with a deft twist of his wrist.

Octavia’s breasts moved freely under the loosened bodice, and her heart beat hard and fast as she waited for him to make the next move.

His mouth curved in a tiny smile of satisfaction; then he turned from her and crossed to a pier table where stood a decanter and glasses. “Madeira.”

It was a statement, not a question, and Octavia merely inclined her head in assent. She took the glass he gave her and sipped the mellow wine, hoping it would give her courage.

Philip was in dishabille: no coat or cravat, a loose dressing gown of brocaded satin over his waistcoat, shirt, and britches. Octavia’s eyes were riveted to his waistcoat, almost as if she could see through the beige-striped silk to the pocket and the little pouch beneath.

She put her glass down on a small table and stepped up to him. Delicately, she slipped her hands beneath the dressing gown, pushing it off his shoulders.

He stood still, sipping his wine, his eyes narrowed. She ran her hands over his torso, and her fingers immediately detected what they sought. Her heart jumped. It was so easy to locate now that she knew where it was.

She began to unbutton his waistcoat, very slowly, button by button, praying that if he detected her anxiety, he would attribute it to passion.

Then he suddenly grasped her wrists. “No. I don’t care for women to take the initiative in such fashion.” His voice was oddly cold and his eyes were arctic gray.

Octavia let her hands fall to her sides. She felt like a whore who’d offended her client. “Your pardon, Philip, but I find myself most eager,” she murmured, catching her lower hp between her teeth, looking up at him through her eyelashes.

He smiled, and a wild rage filled her so that she wanted to hurl something at him to wipe that complacent, triumphant smirk from his lips.

One-handed, still holding his glass, he began where she’d left off, unbuttoning his waistcoat, shrugging out of it with a graceful movement of his shoulders. The garment
fell to the floor, and he kicked it aside with the toe of his shoe.

Somehow she had to be able to pick it up. Maybe a little domestic tidying…. If she smoothed it and folded it …

“Remove your gown.” The rasped command shattered her frantic speculations. Her fingers trembled on the loosened laces of her bodice, the hooks of the skirt, the ties of the panniers beneath.

He pulled her to him, his hands hard as they explored her body beneath her chemise and petticoats. Octavia was numb. She took herself out of her head, concentrated only on the waistcoat on the floor, on the moment when she could casually pick it up, brush her fingers over the lining, palm the little pouch.

She became aware that he was pushing her backward. She felt the bed behind her thighs; then she was toppled over until she lay sprawled on the coverlet and he stood over her, his hands on the waist of his britches.

This was to be no dance of love, no leisurely preparation, no stoking of the flames.

She tried not to look as he pushed his britches to his feet and kicked them aside. He tugged at the buttons on his shirt, and for the first time she detected urgency in his movements. Shirtless, in only his woolen drawers, he knelt on the bed. He pushed up her petticoat, revealing her silk-clad thighs. His fingers were on her garters. Another inch, and she would be exposed to those cold gray eyes, her body bared and vulnerable for the assault of that hard, bulging flesh pushing against the wool of his undergarment….

There was a sudden violent crash followed by a cascade of noise, a high-pitched scream, a long, drawn-out wail of pain and terror—and the room was engulfed in a cloud of thick black soot.

“By Christ!” The Earl of Wyndham was suddenly as limp as a drowned hen, his face a picture of astonishment and chagrin. Then he hurled himself off the bed and Octavia struggled up, choking as the thick, greasy black flakes rained down on the bed. A bubble of almost hysterical
laughter rose in her throat, and her eyes watered with the effort to control it as she struggled to work out what had happened to shatter the earl’s lust with such devastating effect.

The earl was standing over the fireplace, his face suffused with rage. Cowering on all fours at his feet was what appeared to be a small black animal, whimpering pitifully.

Octavia sprang to the floor, shaking down her petticoats, ignoring the scene at the fireplace. She had thought only for the waistcoat. She was bending to snatch it up when the violent impact of leather on flesh was followed by a heartrending shriek that was unmistakably human.

“No!” she exclaimed, whirling round to the fireplace. The earl, arm upraised, was about to bring down a riding crop for a second blow across the back of the shrieking scrap at his feet.

“No, it wasn’t his fault!” She jumped across the room, grabbing the earl’s arm. “He’s just a child. He must have become lost in the chimneys.”

The earl furiously shook off her hand and brought the crop down again. The child screamed, covering his head.

Octavia forgot why she was there. Forgot the waistcoat lying neglected on the floor. Forgot she was wearing only her chemise and petticoat. Forgot that the earl was only in his drawers. With every last fiber of strength, she wrenched the crop from his hands.

“No! I won’t let you do this, Wyndham!”

Philip stared at her. Her face was smudged with soot, her eyes golden fire. She held his riding crop as if it were a weapon she would happily use on him. The undignified absurdity of the situation finally occurred to him. Together with the fact that for this afternoon his plans were at an end.

He turned with a vile oath and grabbed up his clothes. Octavia, with a dull thud of resignation, saw him put on the waistcoat again. Then she dismissed the disappointment and bent to examine the pathetic scrap of flotsam still weeping bitterly in the hearth.

He couldn’t have been more than four or five, she reckoned, although he was so thin it was hard to be sure.
His vertebrae showed through the tears in his ragged, filthy shirt. Philip’s riding crop had raised dark red welts across the already lacerated skin. His knees and elbows bled sluggishly through the caking black soot, and when she tried to lift him and set him on his feet, he cried out in pain. The soles of his feet were raw with burns and cuts.

“Poor baby!” she said softly. She’d seen climbing boys in Shoreditch, and she knew how their chimney-sweep masters Ht fires in the hearth to drive the frequently terrified children up into the rat-infested darkness; how they sent older children up with sharp sticks and needles to poke at the soles of their feet to keep them moving. She’d known about these horrors, but she’d never really seen the results of them so closely before.

She looked up to find Philip, once more dressed, regarding her with an expression of acute distaste.

“Leave him alone,” he said. “And get dressed. I can’t summon his master with you in your petticoat.”

The child’s wails increased in volume at the mention of his master. “’E’ll kill me. ’E’ll kill me ’cause I got lost agin,” the mite sobbed. He knew that he’d committed the unforgivable sin of coming down in a room where he risked being seen by the inhabitants of the house. A risk that in this case had turned into hideous reality.

“He’s not going to harm you,” Octavia said firmly, fastening her panniers and stepping swiftly into her gown. “My lord, I’m going to take the child away with me. If his master complains, he may come to Dover Street, and I’ll settle the affair with him there.”

Philip Wyndham looked as he felt—for once in his life totally dumbfounded. He stared at Octavia, his jaw dropping. “Take him with you?” he managed to exclaim. “Gad, woman! You have windmills in your head. He’s a sweep’s urchin.”

“Precisely,” Octavia said, lacing up the bodice of her gown.

“And just where will you say you found him?” demanded Philip thinly, taking a step toward the child, who now sat in the hearth looking between the man and the
woman, the whites of his eyes almost dazzling in his black, tear-rilled face.

“I don’t see that matters,” Octavia responded, lifting one foot to slip on her sandal.

“Of course it matters!” Philip seized the child’s bone-thin arm and yanked him off the floor, holding him in the air by one arm. The child screamed again, and the earl dropped him with a shudder of disgust.

Octavia suddenly understood what was worrying Philip. An adulterous liaison was one thing in society, one not necessarily socially damaging to the participants, but to have one’s passionate interlude interrupted by a climbing boy and a volcano of soot would have people weeping with laughter. The Earl of Wyndham would be the laughingstock of London in ten minutes, and he’d never live it down.

That bubble of laughter rose to her lips again, and she dropped her eyes to the floor, slipping on her other sandal while she struggled for control.

“My lord, you need have no fear your name or this house will ever be mentioned. I’ll say I found him in my own house.”

“And when his master comes banging at your door demanding his property?” The earl dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief. “What then, madam?”

“I’ll deal with his master,” Octavia said confidently as renewed wails came from the hearth.

“And what of your husband?” Philip couldn’t seem to believe what he was hearing. “How does he view such acts of philanthropy?” His voice was pure acid.