Midnight Pleasures (35 page)

He turned to Eloise, only to find that their ten minutes had passed and she was briskly talking to Peter Dewland. Apologetically, he turned back to Lady Skiffing, who was kind enough to forgive him for his inattention.

“Your wife is looking particularly radiant, given her condition,” Lady Skiffing observed.

Patrick silently groaned.

“I expect she will go into confinement in the near future,” Lady Skiffing continued. “I must say, it is quite unusual for a lady to give a dinner party when she is in an interesting condition. In my day, we remained on a couch for a good six months. But nowadays it seems that young women gallivant around the streets as long as they wish.”

Patrick nodded. In fact, he’d completely forgotten that women stopped going into society in the last few months of their pregnancy. Again he looked at his wife. Sophie happened to look up at the same moment.

Color raced delicately up her cheeks as her clear blue eyes met his black ones, down the length of the starched linen tablecloth. Silently Patrick raised his wineglass in a salute. She was his wife; she was carrying his child; she was unbearably beautiful.

A tiny smile hovered on Sophie’s lips and she raised her wineglass in return. Patrick was gazing at her with the same suggestive look he used to have, before her mother announced that sex was forbidden.

They would sit together at dinner, talking innocently of the state of the war with France, and all the time Patrick’s eyes would lazily slide over her face and down her shoulders, lingering on her breasts until she felt like fireworks about to explode. Every pulse in her body would be pounding by the time Patrick rose from his chair and held out his arm so that they could leave the dining room.

Thinking of it, Sophie put her wineglass down with a soft thump and wrenched her eyes from Patrick’s. This was no time for seductive games. She turned decisively to Patrick’s brother, Alex, to her right, only to find that he was grinning at her. Sophie blushed again. I suppose he caught Patrick’s look, she thought to herself.

“Do you know,” Alex said conversationally, leaning close to her ear, “I am very glad that you married my brother, Lady Sophie.”

“Thank you,” she said hesitantly.

Much later that night, Patrick and Sophie were finally left alone in the drawing room. Sophie dropped into a chair, with an exhausted sigh.

Patrick stood looking down at her for a second. “It was a great success, Sophie my wife,” he said quietly.

She looked up and smiled. “Thank you. I thought Madeleine did very well, didn’t you?”

Patrick looked a bit surprised. “Naturally. She is a lovely young woman.”

Sophie couldn’t explain that she was proud of Madeleine because she carried herself to perfection. Not a soul at the party, Sophie would be bound, even considered the possibility that Madeleine was not born into the French aristocracy.

“Has your stomach been indisposed, Sophie?”

It was Sophie’s turn to look startled. “No, not at all.” Then she grinned. “I placed you next to my mother, didn’t I? Did she mention milk baths, by any chance?” And, at Patrick’s answering grin, “Bitters?” Sophie gave a melodramatic shiver. “I
hate
bitters.”

Patrick laughed and put out a hand, helping her to her feet. “It was Lady Skiffing who said that you ought to be resting.”

Sophie paused and looked up at him sympathetically. “It sounds as if they talked your ears off, and just on a subject you dislike. I am sorry.”

Patrick looked down at his wife, then took her arm and led her toward the stairs. “Time for bed.”

His voice was resonant, almost seductive, Sophie thought. But when she looked up, Patrick’s face was impossible to read.

She paused in the doorway of her bedchamber and turned around, saying rather uncertainly, “Good night, Patrick.”

Out of the blue, Patrick smiled at her, a suggestive, sweet smile.

Sophie almost jumped, she was so surprised.

“Why don’t I act as your lady’s maid tonight?”

Sophie opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. Patrick walked toward her, stopping so close to her that she could feel the heat of his body.

“But Mama …” Sophie whispered.

“Didn’t say we couldn’t
kiss
,” Patrick said. He lowered his head, opening her lips with fierce hunger. He backed her into her bedroom before he broke the kiss, gently pushing Sophie onto the stool before her dressing table, and dismissing Simone with a nod.

Sophie’s hair was pinned up in a simple, smooth twist. Patrick found the end, carefully tucked under by Simone, and pulled it free. Then he shook it briskly. Gold-tipped hairpins flew in all directions, tinkling against the glass of Sophie’s dressing-table mirror, plunging into the thick rug, falling into her lap.

She laughed. “I feel like a pony—and you’re shaking my tail!”

Patrick’s eyes darkened as he met Sophie’s in the mirror. He lowered one hand and stroked her neck in a whisper-soft caress. She shivered uncontrollably. “If you were my pony,” he said, his voice a velvet whisper, “I would take you for a ride.”

Sophie blushed, rosy pink stealing up from the low bodice of her gown. Patrick’s eyes drifted down and he almost groaned out loud.

“Oh God, Sophie, I don’t know if I can make it!” One of his hands stole, willy-nilly, to her bodice and cupped the soft curves of a breast.

Sophie couldn’t help grinning. It was so wonderful to discover that Patrick hadn’t been indifferent the last few weeks.

“Then you don’t mind the fact I am getting plump?” she said, just a trifle anxiously.

“Plump! You have put on flesh in all the places designed to drive a man mad, Sophie.” Patrick’s other hand now possessed her other breast.

Sophie looked at herself and her husband in the mirror for a moment, then threw her head back, like a true wanton.

“Kiss me, please, Patrick.” Her voice came from her throat in a husky murmur.

He dropped to his knees next to the stool and drew her face to his, capturing her lips. She wreathed her arms around his neck.

After a long time, Patrick drew back, pushing Sophie back onto the stool. Somehow she had ended up on his knee. His eyes were sooty, wild, full of desire. His heart pounded in his throat.

For a moment, husband and wife just stared at each other.

“I’ll probably die before this is over,” Patrick said conversationally, recovering himself.

Sophie worried her lower lip, with her small white teeth, eyes anxious. “I’m sorry, Patrick. Mama was quite insistent about it.” There was a moment’s silence. “Perhaps we could simply think of this particular idea as akin to milk baths and bitters?”

For a moment his heart beat a surprised
Yes
! “We’d better not,” he said heavily. “After all, it’s only once. I can survive.”

Sophie bit her lip before she admitted that
she
couldn’t survive.

“Well,” Patrick said with a sigh, “I’ll be off to my lonely bed.”

Sophie stood up so quickly that she almost knocked over her stool.

“Would you—perhaps you could sleep here,” she said in a rush. “We could just sleep together.” When Patrick didn’t answer immediately, hot embarrassment flooded up her face.

He moved a step closer. “Sophie,” he said, “you don’t understand, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Sophie, my love, look at the front of my breeches for a moment.”

Obediently, Sophie looked. He was wearing the skintight breeches demanded by fashion. Instantly her eyes dropped and her flush deepened.

“I can’t sleep next to you, Sophie, because I wouldn’t sleep a wink. Instead I will lie over there”—he nodded toward the door that connected their two rooms—”and wrestle with an urge to break down the door. If I were sleeping with you I would probably ravish you in my sleep, I want you so much.”

Sophie grinned. Never mind the fact that Patrick sometimes spent an evening with his mistress. It seemed he wasn’t altogether bored with her body yet.

“God!” Patrick half whispered, looking at the honey silk of his wife’s disheveled hair, the sultry smile in her eyes, the rosy beauty of her fading blush. “I’d better leave now.” He snapped around and slammed the door behind him.

Left standing alone in the bedchamber, Sophie broke into a fit of giggles. She hugged her rounded tummy, swinging in a lopsided circle. He wanted her! He still wanted her!

As a lady’s maid Patrick left a good deal to be desired. He may have uncoiled her hair, but he had left intact the hooks running down her back. Giddy with delight, Sophie rang the bell for Simone.

Down in the kitchen Simone registered the ringing bell with a disgruntled frown. Danged if she’d ever understand the ways of the gentry. In the bed, out of the bed. It was a new story every week. With a sigh, she began trudging up the back stairs.

Chapter 23

Y
ou may not stop,” Braddon insisted, with a note of panic in his voice. “Why on earth not, Braddon? Madeleine was an undoubted success last night, and I can’t think of anything else that I might teach her.” Sophie unfurled her parasol. Braddon had picked her up in his phaeton, and the sun was entering the carriage at a slant.

“We won’t know which invitations to choose without you.”

“Nonsense!” Sophie said a bit sharply. “We already discussed this. In the next few weeks Madeleine will attend eight or nine public events, and you will pay your addresses to her at each one, and then you will announce your engagement at Lady Greenleaf’s ball.”

Braddon looked at her desperately. “
Why
don’t you want to?”

“Well,” Sophie said irritably, “if you must know, I would like to stay home from now on. I would like to see my husband.” Patrick invariably absented himself in the evening when Sophie spent the afternoon with Braddon, and she had made up her mind to see whether she could lure Patrick away from his black-haired strumpet.

“I told you Patrick wouldn’t like it,” Braddon retorted. “Got his back up about all these carriage rides with me, hasn’t he? Now I think of it, he’s been devilish sharp-set with me in the last few months.”

“He hasn’t said a word about them. Frankly, I don’t think he’s noticed.” Sophie’s voice was quiet but resolved.

“In that case,” Braddon said, remembering the more important agenda, “you don’t have any reason not to see Madeleine.”

Sophie pulled down her parasol and turned squarely to face Braddon. They were tooling their way down Water Street making, she thought with some irritation, straight for Vincent’s Horse Emporium, although she had clearly said no. “Lord Slaslow, pull the carriage over, please.”

Braddon hunched his shoulders and thought about how glad he was that he hadn’t married Sophie.

“Braddon!” The word had all the icy force of her mother’s commands.

He pulled over and hooked up the reins.

“Why do you want me to continue seeing Madeleine every week?” Sophie asked.

“She won’t see me unless you’re there, Sophie. Damme, she never even gives me a kiss anymore!”

“You will see Madeleine in the evenings. If you wish, after this week, you could invite her to go for a ride in the park with you, or to attend an afternoon entertainment. Suitably chaperoned, of course,” she added.

Braddon looked mutinous.

“Don’t be foolish, Braddon. I should like to go home now.” Sophie picked up her parasol again.

“I’m afraid, Sophie.”

She turned her head. Had she heard correctly? It seemed she had. Braddon’s sad beagle eyes were miserable, and fixed pleadingly on her face.

“We need you to help us, Sophie, right to the end. It’s only three weeks,” Braddon urged. “All this doesn’t come easily to me, you know. I’m afraid I’m going to make an ass of myself, and everyone will know that Madeleine is who she is, and—oh God, Sophie, when I thought up this scheme, I was thinking only of myself and Madeleine. I didn’t realize until a few days ago what it will do to m’mother if the truth gets out.”

Sophie sat silently for a moment. “I still don’t know what else I could teach Madeleine,” she said.

“You can give her a top-up on the manners front,” Braddon replied. “My mother is a nasty old battle-ax. You know that. But she doesn’t deserve a dunderhead like me for a son, either. And if I try to pull the wool over the eyes of the
ton
, and it doesn’t work out, she’ll never be able to show her face again.”

Sophie had to acknowledge the truth of Braddon’s summary. “Perhaps you should have thought of that before,” she pointed out.

“I know it,” Braddon said wretchedly, “but I never was the best at thinking out schemes afore time.”

“Oh, all right,” Sophie finally said with a sigh.

The next morning she woke with a sense of happy satisfaction. Madeleine had appeared with Mrs. Trevelyan at a champagne musicale the previous evening, and no one could have missed the fact that the Earl of Slaslow was greatly taken with her. He sat next to Madeleine during the second half of the program and assiduously plied her with champagne. Given that the
ton
had been privileged to see Braddon single-mindedly pursue a suitable wife for some three years, no one had any difficulty in surmising that the pretty young Frenchwoman, Lady Madeleine Corneille, was now the target of Slaslow’s marital ambitions.

Bets were immediately laid in the betting book at White’s as to whether Madeleine would take him, and (for larger amounts of money) whether she would jilt him at the last moment and marry another, as Lady Sophie Foakes had done. Braddon read through the bets with a frown, but with secret relief. He hadn’t heard a shard of gossip suggesting that Madeleine Corneille was not exactly what she seemed to be, the daughter of a French marquis.

In fact—although the
ton
didn’t know this yet, of course—Madeleine and Braddon were planning to cause an even greater sensation tonight. They were going to a ball being held by Lady Eleanor Commonweal, in honor of her daughter Sissy’s engagement, and Madeleine was going to allow Braddon to take her in to supper.

By nine o’clock Patrick had not appeared to escort Sophie to the Commonweal ball, so she drifted around the house by herself until she finally summoned the carriage and went alone, head held high.

It happened just as she entered the ballroom. The Duke of Cumberland happened to be at the door. He looked at her with his usual lustful kindness. He was very much the royal duke this evening, wearing a large swath of royal blue wrapped around his shoulders and held in place by a medal of honor granted by the king some years ago.

“Hear you’re a duchess now, m’dear,” he said, plastering his wet lips against the back of her hand.

“Excuse me, Your Grace?”

“You’re a duchess, aren’t you? Let me see, Duchess of Gisle, that’s it! They don’t tell me much,” he said, stepping as close as he possibly could to the beautiful new duchess, “but they couldn’t keep it from me. Heard it passed the Parliament this afternoon.”

Seeing her look of complete bewilderment, the duke smiled. Obviously the rumors did not underestimate the discord between the lovely Lady Sophie and her husband. As soon as she dropped the brat she was carrying, he would make his move, the duke thought.

“Parliament has granted your husband a title,” he explained slowly. “They’ve made him the Duke of Gisle. That makes you the Duchess of Gisle.”

Sophie instinctively stepped backward, away from the royal duke’s hot breath on her neck.

“Oh, of course,” she murmured, dropping into a deep curtsy. “For a moment I had forgotten. Thank you for reminding me, Your Grace.”

She read in Cumberland’s eyes the humiliation she felt deep in her bones. He’d never be able to keep it to himself—the delectable news that the Duke of Gisle hadn’t even bothered to tell his wife that he was being made a duke. A duchess who didn’t even know her own title!

Patrick never appeared at the ball. After an hour or so Sophie went home. Cumberland’s gossip had spread like wildfire. She couldn’t bear any more people addressing her as “Your Grace,” their carrion eyes bright with curiosity. (“Where
is
the duke tonight, Your Grace? Such an honor he received! One might think he wasn’t interested in his new title.”)

At the house she had a word with Clemens and then walked into the library.

Patrick was seated comfortably in front of the fire, reading a book.

Sophie flushed a deep, furious red. “How dare you not arrive home in time to escort me to the Commonweal ball?”

Patrick looked up and politely rose to his feet. “As it happens,” he said nonchalantly, “you didn’t tell me where we were going, m’dear, or that we had accepted an invitation. Had you informed me that you wished my company, I naturally would have accompanied you.”

Surely she had told him about the ball. Although she
was
forgetting all sorts of details these days. She might have forgotten after all.

“You should have assumed that I needed your escort,” Sophie retorted.

Patrick’s eyes were shadowed, black with reserve. “In that case, I apologize.”

“Well,” Sophie said impatiently, suddenly remembering why she was furious, “that doesn’t matter. You—you didn’t tell me that you’re a duke!”

“Oh, did Breksby push it through so soon?”

Sophie looked at her husband as if he were a visitor from a foreign land. Patrick seemed mildly interested, as if he’d heard that his favorite horse had won the Ascot.

“Are you entirely deranged? What are you talking about?” Her voice rose nearly to a shriek.

“I’m talking about the title,” Patrick said with a touch of hauteur. “I hadn’t realized that Lord Breksby managed to get it through Parliament.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to
tell me
?” Sophie was in a fine rage now. “Do you know how embarrassing it was to have the Duke of Cumberland inform me that I am now a duchess? Do you have any idea how dreadful it felt to have no idea why one has suddenly been made into a duchess, and to find a roomful of people tittering because my husband had obviously not bothered to tell me about it?”

Patrick’s face took on a wry, unreadable look. He moved over to his wife and took her arm, leading her to a chair. “I can see that it upset you very much,” he said soothingly. “To be frank, it slipped my mind.”

“It slipped your mind!” Sophie stared up at her husband as he stood before her. Then she erupted back out of her chair. “It slipped your mind that you were becoming a Duke of the Realm! It slipped your mind that you might want to tell your
wife
that she was becoming a duchess!”

“I don’t see why you are so irritated about it,” Patrick retorted, starting to lose his temper now. “You always wanted to marry a title, as I recall. Well, now I outrank your precious Braddon!”

There were a few fiery moments of silence. Sophie tried to think of ways to answer Patrick’s attack, but it was so outrageous that she couldn’t think of a response.

“What makes you think that I wanted to marry a title?” she asked, finally.

Patrick shrugged. “I always knew you did.” He certainly wasn’t going to sound like a pompous ass by declaring that Braddon was plump and foolish. Besides, he suspected more and more that Sophie actually had had a true affection—if not love—for that blunderhead. Truth be told, Braddon was rather lovable in his own way.

Sophie felt a huge, desolate emptiness pressing on her heart. Her husband’s reasoning processes were utterly incomprehensible to her. “Would you care to inform me,” she said, her tone dangerously gentle as she sat down again, “why the Parliament made you a duke? The Duke of Gisle, I believe?”

“I’m off to the Ottoman Empire as an ambassador in the fall,” Patrick said with a shrug. Now he really felt like a muckworm.

“You are going to the Ottoman Empire … something to do with Selim III?” Patrick registered his wife’s unusual knowledge without surprise. Sophie was a remarkably intelligent woman. At least he’d learned that about her during their marriage. “In the fall?”

Sophie looked at him. In the candlelight, her eyes were as black as his. “Well, you needn’t worry about
us
,” she said, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “I shall move back with my mother.” Her hands compulsively caressed her stomach.

“Of course you won’t move back with your mother,” Patrick retorted irritably.

“Why on earth not? I will be giving birth to my child in early autumn, as I believe you have forgotten.”

Patrick registered with a pang that Sophie talked of
her
child. “You won’t move back with your mother because it wouldn’t look right,” he said dismissively.

Sophie narrowed her eyes. “It wouldn’t look right.” Her tone was glacial. “I gather you spend a good deal of time worrying about how our marriage looks to outside eyes,
Your Grace
.” She punctuated the title with an awful irony.

Patrick flushed. “I apologize for not informing you about the title, Sophie.” But he couldn’t see the point of going into further explanations. What was he supposed to say? Admit that he had entirely forgotten about the useless title? His wife didn’t think titles were useless! Look at all the fuss she was making because she had been made a duchess.

“You’re a duchess now. Can’t you just be pleased about it?”

Sophie stared at her husband’s back as he looked down into the fire. Pleased? Her marriage was a disaster, worse than she had ever pictured in her youth.

“Perhaps it would be better if you did stay with your mother,” Patrick said now, kicking the logs with his foot. “I shall likely be gone for several months.”

This is the end, Sophie acknowledged to herself. Even her own mother had never been sent home by her husband. Patrick cared so little about her that it seemed he’d forgotten she existed. How else could he have neglected to tell her that he was becoming a duke? And he certainly had ignored the forthcoming birth of their child. It appeared he wouldn’t even be in the country at the time.