Sherri Cobb South (15 page)

Just as he had feared, Lisette stood beside her chair, her bare leg gloriously displayed. The earl took no pleasure in the discovery that his wife possessed one of the shapeliest legs he had seen in quite some time. Her opponent, damn his eyes, was the same Frenchman who had so recently haunted the Waverly parlor. The small card table between them contained—besides the card game in progress—an empty champagne bottle and two glasses (one half-filled, the other, Lisette’s, empty) and a pile of feminine accoutrements, including a fan, a pair of long kid gloves, two dainty dancing slippers, and one filmy silk stocking.

“What the devil is going on here?” Waverly demanded.

“Why, nothing, nothing at all!” protested Étienne hastily. “Just a friendly game of cards,
oui
?
”

“I have played many games of cards, both friendly and otherwise,” said the earl, tight-lipped with fury, “but never have I been obliged to remove one article of clothing, nor insisted that my opponent do so.”

“I did not
insist—
” Étienne objected feebly, quailing before the earl’s thunderous aspect.

“He had no need to,” Lisette concurred, swaying slightly on her perch. “For I had to win back my fan,
alors,
then I must win back my glove, and my other glove, and—”

Waverly could hardly hear her words, so distracting was the smooth white length of her leg. “Have the goodness to cover yourself, madam,” he said crushingly, then turned back to Étienne. “As for you, you Greeking masher, if I ever catch you sniffing about my wife again, we will settle the matter with pistols at Paddington Green. Do I make myself plain?”

Étienne, perspiration beading on his forehead, inched his way toward the heavy gold curtain. “Abundantly plain, milord. No harm was intended. I do beg pardon—” Feeling the brocade folds beneath his hand, he plunged through the curtain to the safety of the ballroom beyond.

Alone with his errant wife, Waverly turned to confront her, relieved to discover that while he dealt with Étienne, Lisette had lowered her leg to the floor, allowing the diaphanous folds of her gown to fall about her ankles.

“As for you—”

“I did not go outside with him,” Lisette said, blinking owlishly at her livid spouse. “That is what you told me,
oui?”

“Good God, do I have to tell you everything? One would think you should know not to wager your clothing on the turn of a card! Surely you must have surmised that any man who would suggest such a thing could hardly have honorable intentions!”

“Jusht—just as I must have surmised that the captain invited me onto the balcony with the intention of kissing me?” retorted Lisette. “No, I did
not
surmise!
Vraiment,
I cannot understand why sensible men should act so silly as soon as they find themselves alone with a lady!”

Lord Waverly regarded her with an enigmatic smile playing about his mouth. “Can you not? Then I had best not tell you, lest you think me silly, also.”

“But if you do not tell me, milord, how am I to know?”

Waverly looked down at the piquant little face raised so trustingly to his, and became vaguely aware that he was fighting a losing battle. Precisely what that battle was, and why it was so important that he should win it, were not at all clear. He knew only that it would be a relief to give up, at least for a moment, an unequal struggle. Gently, so as not to alarm her, he drew her into his arms and lowered his head to hers. He heard the slight catch of her breath as their lips touched, but the sound was quickly swallowed up as his mouth claimed hers. He could feel the pounding of her heart against his chest, but she made no move to escape from his embrace. At last, the sounds from the ballroom beyond the curtain penetrated his brain, and he slowly released her.

Lisette, raising shaking fingers to her lips, regarded him with wide and luminous eyes. “Oh,” she breathed softly.

“That,” he said unsteadily, “is why. Now, if you will put on your shoes, I will take you home.”

Chapter 11

Says he, “I am a handsome man,

but I’m a gay deceiver.”

GEORGE COLMAN THE YOUNGER,

Love Laughs at Locksmiths

Lord Waverly lingered at the breakfast table long past his usual hour, waiting for Lisette to come down. He did not look for this to be soon, given the amount of champagne she had apparently consumed the night before, but he felt the meeting should not be postponed beyond what was absolutely necessary. It was imperative that Lisette be brought to understand that, one kiss notwithstanding, the nature of their marriage had not changed. He frowned, wondering—not for the first time—what had possessed him to yield to that unfortunate impulse.

He had still not arrived at a satisfactory solution to this puzzle when Lisette entered the sunny yellow-and-white breakfast room, squinting her eyes against the sunlight streaming through the windows.

“Good morning, Lisette.” Waverly’s greeting was cordial, but not inviting.

“You need not shout, milord,” complained Lisette, wincing.

In spite of his best intentions, the earl could not entirely suppress a smile. “I beg your pardon,” he said meekly.

Lisette was not deceived. “It is unkind of you to mock me, milord.”

Waverly, seeing where his husbandly duty lay, went to the sideboard and poured her a cup of coffee. “Forgive me, but I seem to recall someone assuring me that wine was as mother’s milk to the French.”

“Oh, but I am half English, so I daresay that accounts for it,” said Lisette, sipping tentatively at the steaming liquid.

“I am humbled indeed.”

Lisette glared at him mutinously. “Say what you will, milord, but I was not nearly so drunk as you were on the day we met, so you cannot scold me!”

“My good child, do not, I beseech you, look to me as your example! I have done a great many things for which I would not only scold you, but probably beat you soundly into the bargain!”

His smile robbed these words of any real threat, but Lisette’s expression grew solemn. “I think you were tempted to do so last night, were you not? Pray, milord, what—what did I do?”

Waverly could only stare at her. “You don’t remember?”

“No. I know that Étienne was there, and you, and that we were playing cards, but the rest, it is nothing but a blur.”

Never had Lord Waverly been so grateful for the debilitating effects of alcohol. And yet, his initial relief at being spared any awkward explanations soon gave way, illogically, to a sense of ill-usage that his kiss had been so easily forgotten. He, at least, had not found it so; instead, he had lain awake for much of the night, trying in vain to find a suitable explanation for his lapse.

“Your memory, such as it is, is accurate, save for one minor detail,” said the earl.  “Having no coins to wager, you apparently conceived the happy notion of staking various articles of clothing.”

Lisette’s pale face grew even paler. “Did I—lose very much?” she asked tentatively.

“Suffice it to say that your luck was not in.”

Her expressive eyes widened in horror. “Was I—was I
naked?”

“Good God, no!” Waverly assured her hastily, banishing with an effort the intriguing image her words called to mind.  “You were certainly indiscreet, but not indecent.”

“Une chance,”
said Lisette, somewhat relieved.   “There is something else, though—I am embarrassed to ask.”

Waverly’s voice was gentle. “You need not be.”

“Très bien.
Did we—” She blushed rosily. “Did you kiss me, milord?”

The earl’s eyebrows arched upward in mild surprise. “My good child,” he said, “did I not assure you, when I asked you to marry me, that I would make no such demands on you?”

“Oui,
but—”

“And since that time, have I done anything to make you doubt that I am a man of my word?”

Lisette’s face fell.
“Non,
milord.” Setting down her cup, Lisette rose from the table.

“Will you not have a bit of toast? Buttered eggs, perhaps?”

“I have not anymore the hunger, milord,” she said sadly, moving dejectedly toward the door.

“Lisette—”

She paused to turn back.
“Oui,
milord?”

“There is one thing that puzzles me. When you and I played piquet, you won almost every hand, and yet that damnable Frenchman was able to relieve you of your fan, your gloves, your shoes, and one of your stockings. I am at a loss to account for it.”

He had all the felicity of seeing her melancholy vanish, and a mischievous smile light her expressive countenance. “Are you indeed, milord? But you knew that I cheated!”

On this Parthian shot, she nipped out of the room, leaving Waverly to address himself to the closed door. “Oh, Lisette,” he murmured, chuckling, “what the devil am I going to do about you?”

He could think of only one possible solution. Abandoning his breakfast, he went to the library in search of pen and paper.

* * * *

Helen,
read the missive delivered by hand to Grosvenor Square some half-hour later,
I
can wait no longer.
Lady Helen, to whose chamber this message was delivered along with her morning chocolate, sat bolt upright in her bed, her heart racing. Alas, a closer perusal of the letter revealed that the handwriting was not that of her husband. Nor, she reflected, frowning, would he be likely to express himself in terms better suited to Drury Lane than to private correspondence. Adjusting the pillows at her back, she continued to read.
Attend the Warburton ball tonight, and we will settle the matter once and for all. I will have a closed carriage waiting at eleven of the clock. I have given most of the servants the evening off, and will instruct the others not to wait up. We shall be quite alone. Yrs., etc., W.

Lady Helen had hardly reached the end of this epistle when the connecting door opened to admit her husband.

“Good morning, Ethan,” she said in a fair semblance of calm, reaching one hand out to him in greeting while, with the other, she deftly folded the missive and tucked it into the bodice of her dressing gown.

“Secrets, love?” he asked, observing this gesture as he took her proffered hand and raised it to his lips.

“Oh, the most tiresome thing! The Warburton ball is tonight. I promised to attend, but had forgotten all about it!”

“If you forgot it that easily, it can’t be that important,” pointed out Sir Ethan, perching on the edge of the bed and taking his wife in his arms. “Can’t you get out of it?”

“Impossible!” declared Lady Helen, wriggling in his embrace in an effort to work Waverly’s note deeper into the recesses of her bodice. “He—they will be expecting me.”

“He, or they?”

“They,
but most particularly
he,”
she said, pleased to be able to cover her slip without resorting to fabrication.   “You see, Lord Warburton is an old friend of Papa’s, and he is giving this ball to celebrate his wife’s birthday. It would be very shabby of me to cry off.”

Sir Ethan abandoned this forlorn hope with a shrug, then came to the purpose of his matutinal visit. “ ‘elen, I’ve been thinking,” he said without preamble. “Let’s go to Brighton,”

They had gone to Brighton on their wedding trip. The memory was like salt in an open wound. “Brighton?” she echoed with a hollow laugh. “In the middle of the Season?”

“Why not?”

On the other hand, she reflected, Brighton was a very long way from Green Street. “I daresay Charles and William would enjoy seabathing—”

“The children are not invited,” said Sir Ethan in a voice that brooked no argument. “They can stay in Town with their nurse, or if you’d rather, we can send them back to Lancashire.”

“But, Ethan—”

“But me no buts! The last time we visited Brighton, we ‘ad Sir Aubrey and Polly
and
the Dowager. This time it’s going to be just you and me.”

The note inside her bodice scratched her tender flesh, an all too painful reminder of how much had changed since their wedding trip to Brighton four years previously. Even if they left for Brighton tomorrow, it would never be the same. “I don’t know, Ethan. I shall give it some thought.”

With this he was forced to be content, so he kissed his wife’s cheek and left her to the tender mercies of her dresser.

“What do you wish to wear today, my lady?” asked this personage somewhat dampeningly. Rose, it seemed, had no opinion of anyone who interrupted her mistress’s toilette, husband or not.

“It doesn’t matter—the lilac, I suppose.”

“Very good, my lady,” said the abigail, retrieving the lilac morning gown from the clothes-press. “And if you can tell me what you will want for the ball, I’ll see that it’s ready.”

The question caught Lady Helen off guard. What did one wear for cuckolding one’s husband? She joined Rose before the clothes-press and considered her options. White? No, virginal white seemed ludicrous, given the circumstances. Besides, she had worn white on that long-ago evening when she had first met her husband. The blue crape? No, for it was one of her favorites, and she wanted no ugly memories to spoil it for her. The jonquil satin with the lace overdress? Perfect! She had never liked it above half, and she was certain that after tonight she would loathe the very sight of it.

By the time Lady Helen returned to her room that evening to ready herself for the ball, the jonquil satin was neatly pressed and laid out on her bed. Alas, there was nothing at all neat or orderly about Lady Helen’s thoughts. She looked forward to the evening with a perturbation of spirits unmatched since she had made her first curtsy eight years earlier. And to think that, upon that occasion, she had no greater fear than that of forgetting the steps of the cotillion or treading upon some gentleman’s toes! How woefully naïve she must have been!

Her sensibilities notwithstanding, Lady Helen knew to a nicety how the game should be played. When the carriage set her down before the Warburtons’ Belgrave Square town house, she joined the receiving line with every appearance of pleasure. When she reached the top of the stairs and the butler announced her name, she greeted Lord Warburton warmly and wished Lady Warburton many happy returns of her natal day. When she entered the ballroom, she accepted a rather foppishly dressed viscount’s offer to lead her into the set just forming. Not once did her gaze scan the crowded room for a glimpse of Lord Waverly, and no one watching her perform the complex patterns of the quadrille would have guessed just how much effort the omission required of her.