A Rake by Any Other Name (17 page)

“But I've already told you.”

He frowned in puzzlement.

“The first night we met I told you I was no virgin. Of course, at the time I thought it would discourage you from the match our parents were planning. I didn't realize then that you had already purposed in your heart to resist their machinations,” she said as she removed her riding gloves and folded them on her lap. “You wouldn't have had to know of my disgrace, but I couldn't see keeping it from you. It didn't seem fair.”

“What's not fair is that the man took advantage of you.”

“Nevertheless, like Coleridge's ancient mariner, I arise each morning sadder but wiser, Richard.”

The temper he worked so hard to control simmered inside him. He wished Julian Parrish were readily available for him to pound into a bloody pulp. Seymour wouldn't be able to pull him off this time. “I would happily pummel Lieutenant Parrish for you.”

“And part of me would like to see it, but it wasn't all Julian's fault. You know how I am. When I set my sights on something, I'm difficult to turn. I thought I'd met the One, so I made every effort to see him after that,” she said. “Bombay may be a large city, but the English world within it is small enough. It was a simple matter to befriend the daughter of a general, and I suddenly found myself invited to all the military balls.”

“Women pride themselves on the art of the cut direct, but a man can dissuade a woman from pursuing him as well.”

“Spoken like a veteran of Almack's.”

“You have no idea. An eligible man is no more than a trophy to the matrons and debutantes that hunt there. I learned to step lively.”

She laughed. “Well, Julian was not skilled in evasive maneuvers. In truth, he didn't try all that hard. Of course, the fact that my parents disapproved of him made him all the more attractive. When you're not quite eighteen, love is relentless and all consuming. If it's forbidden, so much the better.”

“So your father had his sights on a titled husband for you even then?”

“No, that came later. After I learned Julian was already someone's husband.”

“The cad.” Richard swallowed back the more vulgar names for the man that threatened to choke him. Anger boiled in him. He couldn't very well beat Julian Parrish senseless as he wished, but Richard had resources to locate him. He was just about to promise he'd find out where the man was, and if he was still in uniform, Richard would bring the full weight of the Somerset marquessate to bear on seeing him cashiered and ruined.

Then a single tear rolled down Sophie's cheek.

Anything he said would only hurt her more, so he clamped his lips tight.

“His wife lived in Surrey. They had two young children, so she refused to accompany him on his tour in the East. He never spoke to anyone about her, so there was no way I could have known I was acting as…as some sort of vile temptress,” she said. “But I was.”

“Don't blame yourself, Sophie. The man made use of your youth and inexperience.”

“Surely you know me well enough by now to realize I could never be that innocent,” she said with a self-deprecating roll of her exquisite eyes. “I know I should be mortified admitting these things to you, but if there's nothing else between you and me, at least there's been honesty, and I would keep that.”

Richard reached over and took her hand, pressing it between his. “Honesty is a rare thing.”

“As rare as an adventurous virgin, it seems,” she said wryly. “Do you know what I regret most of all? It's not the loss of my virginity.”

“What is it then?”

“I regret the loss of that dream man. I'll never find him now.”

“Maybe that's not such a bad thing. No mortal could live up to your imaginings, Sophie. Now that you've lost those illusions, perhaps a flesh-and-blood fellow has a fighting chance.”

“None of them want a chance with me, fighting or otherwise. They're all too quick to form an attachment to my dowry to give me a second thought.” She gently tugged her hand free, stretched her legs out before her, and leaned back on her elbows. Tipping her chin, she tilted her face to the sun and closed her eyes. “Now you know my secret. It's time for you to share yours.”

“I have none.”

“Of course, you do. Men are expected to have a certain level of carnal experience. No man can kiss like you do and claim to have been a monk.” She slanted a catlike gaze at him. “How did you lose your innocence?”

Quite often something is deemed scandalous simply because no one has had the courage to try it before—or admit to it if they did.

—Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset

Richard swallowed hard. “I'm no judge, but I think this may well be the most scandalous conversation ever carried on between a gentleman and a lady in the history of Somerset.”

“Oh, come, Richard.” She gave his shoulder a playful slap. “You can't have lived that sheltered a life. Didn't you say you'd been to Paris?”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. I've heard what goes on in the City of Light, and it doesn't involve much spiritual contemplation,” she said. “I shared mine. Will you have me believe you possess less courage than I?”

“This has nothing to do with courage. It has to do with delicacy.”

“You didn't complain of indelicacy when I was confessing,” she pointed out.

“That's because I was too busy being affronted on your behalf.” He shook his head. “This is not at all the done thing.”

“Nothing between us since we kissed in the gallery has been the done thing, and you know it.” She abandoned the view of the sea to skewer him with a sharp-eyed gaze. “Our relationship, such as it is, transcends the manufactured constructs of being polite or well-bred.”

“Why do you think that is?”

She lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I don't know. I only know I can tell you anything, and while I may shock you, you haven't called me a monster yet. I trust you not to call out the villagers to hunt me down with torches and pitchforks. Even if you do find me
repugnant
on some level.”

“What? Where on earth did you get that addle-pated notion?”

“Oh.” She drew her legs back up under her skirt and seemed to curl into herself, not meeting his gaze. “Never mind.”

“I do mind. You've used that word repeatedly, and I want to know why.”

Her fingers curled into fists at her side. “If you must know, I've done something of which I'm not very proud.”

After admitting so coolly how she lost her virginity, he was surprised she'd be reticent about admitting anything to him.

“What was it?”

“That day your father regained his wits and the use of his legs, I listened at the door of the library while the two of you…had things out. He was still determined that you should marry me, and you said you found the notion repugnant.” She stared determinedly out to sea. “Not that I blame you. I know what I am and so do you—common and damaged.”

“Don't be a birdwit. I think no such thing.” He took one of her hands and uncurled the clenched fingers so he could twine his with them. “I find you absolutely
uncommon
. I've never met anyone like you, Sophie.”

“It's hard to refute the evidence of my own ears.”

“I resent being spied upon, but if you're going to do it, at least have the goodness to hear the whole conversation before you run away with a single piece of it.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and brushed his lips over her knuckles. “What I found repugnant was the notion that anyone should expect to marry you simply for your father's wealth. You are quite enough, all by yourself.”

Her brows lifted slightly in surprise. “Oh.”

Then because he realized suddenly that his words had begun to have the ring of a declaration, he decided to flout convention and tell her about his first time with a woman. It was also the best way he could think of to pull back from this matrimonial cliff.

“Her name was Maddie Wharton.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My first time. You wanted to know, so I'll tell you. Her name was Maddie, and she was an upstairs maid at Seymour's family home.” Richard's voice had still been unsure which octave to settle into that summer, but his body had changed completely. He'd learned to “beat the bishop” as well as any of the other boys at school when he was off by himself. However, the first time he saw Maddie, he feared he might spend on the spot. “It was the summer of my fourteenth year. I was spending a couple of weeks with Lawrence and his family before the Michaelmas term began.”

Sophie frowned at him but didn't withdraw her hand. “I can't believe you're the sort to despoil the help, Richard. Even someone else's help.”

“Who said I was the one doing the despoiling?” He traced lazy circles over the thin skin at her wrist. “Maddie was about five years my senior. Not so old, but she knew perfectly well what she was doing.”

Maddie would slide past him in a corridor, brushing her breasts against him in a seemingly accidental way. The buttons on her shirt were always straining to burst, setting Richard's imagination humming. If she brought something to him, she'd lean low enough he could see down her neckline, to the shadowy hollow between her breasts.

He had nocturnal emissions so often that first week, he washed out his undergarments in his bedroom ewer and was embarrassed for the Seymour maids to make his bed.

Once Maddie happened to graze her hand over the front of his trousers. She tossed him a sly look, licked her luscious bottom lip, and said, “My word, Lord Hartley! You really are a man fully grown.”

But Richard decided he couldn't tell Sophie that. It would seem boastful.

“When Maddie slipped into my room and appeared by my bedside in naught but her wrapper one night, I almost wasn't surprised.”

Sophie stretched her legs out once again. “And now I suppose this is the point at which I'm supposed to say, it wasn't your fault, dear Richard.”

“Well, it wasn't.”

“You tried to absolve me of my guilt over the affair with Julian, but it won't work. I made my own choice, devil take the hindermost. It sounds like you did too.”

“Will you at least allow that I was sorely tempted?”

“Yes, I'll give you that. And this Maddie person was terrible to prey on such a green boy.”

He hadn't felt green. When Maddie was sighing under him, he'd felt like a man. She taught him things. Secret things she liked, astounding things she could make him feel. He took to love play like an otter on the riverbank.

“I didn't think she was terrible,” he said. “I thought I was in love.”

Sophie snorted. “You mean part of you was in love. You didn't know a thing about her character except that she was adept at seducing boys.”

“An attribute for which I did not fault her at the time. Besides, a fourteen-year-old boy can't distinguish between what his body wants and what his heart tells him. As far as I knew, I'd discovered why poets wrote bad verse. I'd never felt anything quite so intense. It had to be love. I was tormented every waking moment, wondering where she was, when I'd see her next.”

They made games of quick joinings in semipublic places. He rutted Maddie with her spine pressed against the wall under the stairwell. Seymour's mother and her Society for the Improvement of Morals in the Lower Classes were having tea in the parlor while Maddie sucked his cock behind the door of the music room just down the hall. That particular time, he'd bitten his fist to keep from crying out and left teeth marks so deep, he had to feign sickness so he could have a tray sent to his room instead of appearing at the dining table.

“I have a feeling this affair did not end well,” Sophie said, breaking into his randy memories. “Did you go off to school and break her heart?”

“No. I caught her in the stable with one of the grooms.” Maddie had been on her knees before the fellow, doing the same heart-stopping things she'd done to Richard.

“And so I suppose you went to Seymour's parents and had her sacked.”

“No. I couldn't do that. I loved her. Or thought I did. So I did what all sufferers of unrequited love do. I plunged into the depths of despair over her,” Richard said with a shake of his head. “Only a fourteen-year-old boy can enjoy misery quite that thoroughly. However, my need for self-flagellation was satisfied in less than a month.”

Sophie laughed. “Boys don't have a corner on the market for self-indulgent pity. Seventeen-year-old girls can beat that drum just as loudly. Whatever happened to Maddie then? Never say she still slips into your bedchamber each time you visit Seymour's family?”

He shook his head. “The next time I went home with Seymour for a brief visit, I learned she and that groom had run off together and were living in sin in Cornwall. My education in matters of the heart was complete. You see, I too am sadder but wiser.”

“Yes but as I said earlier, woman are held to the rules ever so much more forcefully than men. Your youthful indiscretions are winked at. Mine would be enough to doom me forever if they were known.”

He reached over and cupped her chin to turn her to face him. “I'd never betray your trust.”

“I didn't tell you I wasn't a virgin that first night because I trusted you. I didn't you know then. I just wanted out of our parents' arrangement, and shocking you seemed the best way to make sure you found me…repugnant.”

“How very flattering.”

“I'm sorry. It's no reflection on you.” She palmed his cheek for a moment, her touch cool and comfortable. “It's me. I'm such a hoyden. Always have been. I'd settle for obscure spinsterhood if only I didn't have the weight of Father's expectations on my shoulders.”

Richard was vaguely disappointed by her wish for spinsterhood. Evidently, Lt. Parrish had stolen more than her maidenhead. He'd made off with her dreams. “So Mr. Goodnight still wants a titled grandchild?”

“Lud, yes. It's all he talks about. When he talks. He spends most of the time working on his memoirs. Father seems to think the world wants to know how to make a fortune.”

“He wouldn't be wrong.”

“Well, when he stops scritching away in his study, he's hinting about the need to see his grandson before he dies.” Tears trembled on her lashes. “The last time he had a recurrence of his fevers, we thought we'd lost him. Each time it strikes him, he's left weaker.”

“I don't know if there's a cure for your father's illness, but there is a remedy for our situation, you know,” he said as he untied the bow under her chin so her bonnet slid down her back. “We could relent and bow to our parents' wishes.”

“And lie to ourselves? You don't love me.” She went perfectly still as he ran his hand over her tousled head and followed a long curl to its end down the middle of her back.

“You belong with someone like Lady Antonia,” she whispered.

Richard continued to stroke her hair. It was wild and unruly and beautiful. Like her.

“Someone who knows how to behave properly and be a help to you in Polite Society,” she added.

She gave a little shiver when his fingertips brushed the side of her neck. Richard was certain she wasn't cold.

“And I certainly don't love you,” she pronounced.

“I'm that unlovable?”

“Certainly.” But she didn't look away. If anything, she leaned toward him by the smallest of measures. “For one thing, you're entirely too stubborn.”

“Without doubt.” He moved closer by finger widths.

“And you have a temper.” Her mouth went kissably slack.

“A violent one,” he agreed. “But you'll never be in danger from it.”

Her eyes went soft and dark as her pupils widened. Then they fluttered closed as he stroked her cheek. “If I had any sense, I'd flee from you as fast as I could.”

“And yet you're still here.”

Her eyes opened again, only a thin edge of indigo around her pupils. “Guess I haven't any sense.”

“That is my great good fortune.”

“No, I'm the one with the fortune, and don't you forget it.”

“I can't see a single pence of it,” Richard said. “All I see is you.”

Then he kissed her.