Temptations of a Wallflower (14 page)

With his father's threat hanging over him, Bloomsbury remained Jeremy's most concrete lead toward finding the Lady of Dubious Quality, who might also be the Golden Woman. So many secret identities, so many disguises.

But she wasn't the only one perpetuating a role. He led more than one life, inhabiting more than one persona. Ever since he'd kissed the Golden Woman, that was even more true. A part of him that he'd kept hidden had been loosened, freed, and now protested being forced back into its cage.

As he mounted the steps to the Bloomsbury house, he glanced around quickly. Making certain that no one was watching, he quickly donned his borrowed blue leather mask. With his disguise in place, he knocked on the front door.

After a few moments, the door opened, and the woman who'd called herself Amina appeared. She
wore a mask, though her sumptuous red gown had been replaced by an ordinary muslin dress. She frowned at him as she held the door open.

“There's no gathering of friends tonight,” she said, eyeing his mask.

“I haven't come for that.” He looked up and down the street. A few pedestrians were out, along with a cart heading home from market. “May I step inside?”

Wordlessly, Amina held the door wider, permitting him to enter.

Once inside, he was struck anew by how typical the house appeared without its exotic, sensuous guests, dim lighting, and music. Any younger son or well-to-do brewer might call this place home. Yet the specter of the Golden Woman haunted this place, as well as the ghost of his other, more liberated self.

That self could not be allowed to stretch and breathe. What would Lady Sarah think if she knew there was some lascivious, lecherous vicar panting after her?

“What is it that you want?” Amina asked without preamble. “We never permit guests inside unless it's the selected night.”

“There was a woman here,” he answered, cutting to the chase. “Wore a gold cloak and gold mask. It might have been her first time.”

“What of her?” Amina folded her arms across her chest. She was really quite lovely, but her eyes held far more knowledge than one would expect in a woman so young.

“I need her name.”

At once Amina said, “Absolutely not.”

“It's a matter of some urgency,” Jeremy pressed. It
felt bitter in his mouth to speak again, but he had to. “I can . . . make it worth your while.”

But Amina only shook her head. “Names are never given here. It's one of the reasons why our friends return. They need the security of absolute anonymity.”

Though he felt considerable discouragement, he urged, “There's nothing I can do to change your mind?”

“Nothing,” she said flatly. “And if that's all you wish to discuss, I must bid you good evening, sir.” She gestured toward the door.

Seeing that there was nothing further to be gained by pursuing this line of inquiry, Jeremy bowed and turned to open the door. He felt compelled to add over his shoulder, “As I said, it's an urgent and serious matter. If you change your mind—”

“I will not.” Amina's voice was cold. “Now go. And you are not welcome back here again.”

“As you wish.”

With that, he went out to the stairs and shut the door behind him. Removing his mask, he started down the steps, taking them slowly, wondering what his next move was to be. He clung to a precipice. If he found the Lady of Dubious Quality, he'd have the autonomy he longed for. But if he did not . . . his world would become thimble-sized, strangling him.

Steps sounded from the mews that ran alongside the house. Jeremy turned to see a servant hastily edging forward. “Oi, governor,” the man whispered, waving him forward. The man looked around, over his shoulder, and up and down the street. “You want to know about that lady in gold?”

Jeremy hurried over. “I do.”

The servant's eyes narrowed. “Information don't come without a price.”

“Why would you tell me?” Jeremy demanded.

The man scowled. “She docked my pay for taking something from the wine cellar. Got to earn my blunt back somehow.”

Jeremy produced several coins from his pocket, which he held up for the other man's inspection. Bribery wasn't entirely virtuous behavior, but hopefully the end justified the means in this case.

The servant quickly grabbed the money and tucked it away. “I heard,” he said in a barely audible voice, “the woman call herself Mrs. Chalbury. That was it. Just Mrs. Chalbury.”

Jeremy nodded and wrote the name down in his notebook. A tremor worked through him just to hear it. The mysterious woman had an actual name. It made her more fantastical, but yet more real. “Anything else?”

“She came on foot,” the man said hastily.

An interesting detail. Perhaps it meant that she lived nearby.

“Thank you,” said Jeremy.

But instead of answering, the servant scurried away.

For a moment, Jeremy simply stood there, absorbing the information. His first real clue in this chase.

His future hung in the balance.

We disported ourselves with a heat and energy unlike anything I had ever known. We were mythical in our need, ageless in our desire.

When he stripped me of my garments, he did so with an uncommon reverence, as though revealing something precious. His hands and mouth possessed extraordinary talent as he ravished my body and plundered my mind. I, too, worshipped his body, using my many skills and considerable experience to show him that I was a woman he would not soon forget.

I could not resist the allure of his body, and eagerly tasted his . . .

The Highwayman's Seduction

J
eremy searched for Mrs. Chalbury from one London parish to another, yet she eluded him, not appearing on any documentation. The curates and vicars were very gracious, and gave him space in their rectories to peruse the large tomes. Ever hospitable, his colleagues offered him refreshments at each stop. Jeremy drank more tea in a morning than he'd had in a week.

After visiting three churches in the area near the masquerade house with no success, he nearly gave up. But at the fourth church, he found it at last. “Mrs. Mary Chalbury” resided on Gower Street, only a handful of blocks away from where Jeremy was at that very moment.

Right within his grasp. The Golden Woman—and the Lady of Dubious Quality. His goal had almost been achieved. Was he relieved? Disappointed? Perhaps both.

“Find what you're looking for?” the curate asked him as he strode out of the rectory.

Yes, he'd gotten what he was after, but it was a bitter accomplishment. Now he was going to have to reveal her identity to his father.

She'd be exposed, her books coming to an end. And he'd be the instrument of her destruction.

Jeremy immediately headed toward the address on Gower Street, his heart both pounding with excitement and heavy with regret. He hadn't known he could feel both emotions at the same time, yet he did. He barely knew himself anymore, torn as he was between so many different desires.

He wanted freedom. He wanted Lady Sarah. He wanted so many things but had no idea how to attain any of them. If anyone would understand what it meant to be uncertain of one's self, it would be Lady Sarah. She grasped life's ambiguity.

Yet they would never have the kind of intimacy he desired, and so he had to keep his many questions, his many uncertainties, locked away.

A few short minutes later, he found himself standing
in front of the address taken from the parish register.

And stunned everyone around him by laughing aloud.

It was a shop selling women's undergarments.

By God, she'd fooled him. The Golden Woman, the Lady of Dubious Quality, had tricked him. She must have known that someone might go looking for her, and she'd worked hard to obscure her trail.

Still, he had to be certain. He entered the shop, the bell ringing cheerfully as the door swung open.

His face flamed. Mannequins were laced into ribbon-trimmed stays, and countless trays were filled with filmy stockings and sly, satiny embroidered garters. He'd never been confronted with so many underthings. They were everywhere. On countertops, in glass-fronted drawers, draped across tables and display stands.

A pretty redheaded clerk, slightly older than Jeremy, approached him with a bemused expression.

“Is there something I can help you with, Vicar?” she asked. “No one here's in need of saving.”

A young girl behind the counter giggled.

“I'm not here on matters of doctrinal concern,” he said.

“Then what brings you to my fine establishment?” she pressed.

“Are you Mrs. Chalbury?” he asked.

“I'm Mrs. Hart,” the woman answered.

“Does a woman by the name of Mrs. Chalbury live above this shop?”

She shook her head. “There's a tailor above us. No one named Mrs. Chalbury.”

“Nor any employees who answer to that name, either?”

“Just myself and Jeanette,” the clerk said.

“I see.” He turned to go.

“Is there anything else I can assist you with? Something for your wife, perhaps?” She held up a pink garter worked all over with tiny roses.

He could just picture that wrapped around the silken flesh of Lady Sarah's thigh. But then Lady Sarah melded in his imagination with the Golden Woman, and he couldn't tell if he was aroused or confused. “Uh . . . no thank you.”

Hurrying outside, he paused to collect his breath. His head spun, and he looked up at the pale gray sky, gathering himself.

She'd led him on a dance, the Lady of Dubious Quality. One where she knew the steps, and he stumbled over his own big feet. Admirable, really, that she'd thought so far ahead, anticipating his moves, knowing how to outwit him. Respect for his intended target grew.

He'd have to find another way of tracing her—though he'd have to ponder the how of it later. If only it was late or early enough for him to go for a swim that he might clear his mind. Instead, he walked with a wide stride back toward his father's house, letting the movement and momentum override the thoughts that crashed against each other.

Two women filled his mind: the Lady of Dubious Quality, also known as the Golden Woman, and Lady Sarah. They were forever apart, yet they occupied his every thought, the beat of his heart and movement of
his body. He wanted all of them in different capacities. And he could have none of them.

E
verything fell into place when Sarah picked up her quill—the external world dissolved, all questions and concerns evaporated like morning mist the moment the pen was in her hand. She had no doubts about herself or what she wanted out of life. Energy and purpose flowed through her as she sat at her desk, a blank sheet of paper in front of her. The stories were her stories, her breath and pulse.

She'd sequestered herself in her usual spot in the Green Drawing Room. It was an old-fashioned chamber that had been neglected when her mother had remodeled and redecorated the house ten years ago. Few ever came in here. So Sarah had claimed it for herself, setting up a little desk and a goodly assortment of quills and paper to feed her compulsion to write. Her mother always assumed that Sarah spent her time in here either writing letters or keeping extensive journals—never suspecting that the locked bottom drawer of Sarah's desk contained manuscripts for Lady of Dubious Quality books.

Her mother was out shopping today, leaving Sarah in blissful peace. Wasting no time, she'd immediately gone in to work after breakfast. This latest story was coming together nicely, with Lady Josephina
and her university professor engaged in a torrid affair. They had made love in his study, as well as in a library.

Would Lady Josephina stay with the professor? Did she settle down with one man? Or would she move on to another lover? The idea of her heroine forever
searching for a specific man to satisfy her desires, always on the hunt, never finding a true companion . . . it didn't sound as appealing now as it once had. Perhaps she would find completion in the arms of a single person. The most unlikely man. The professor perhaps, a scholarly man, serious but witty, insightful and thoughtful . . .

A tap sounded at the door.

Sarah quickly sanded her sheet of paper, then slid it underneath the blotter of her desk. “Come in,” she called when the evidence of her writing was secreted away.

“A letter for you, Lady Sarah,” said a footman, appearing with a silver tray.

“Invitations go to my mother first,” she answered.

“This looks like a regular letter,” the servant said. “If a trifle big. And it's addressed to you, not Her Grace.”

Sarah took the large envelope, frowning. She seldom received much direct correspondence. Nearly all the letters went through the duchess before Sarah looked at them, since most that came to the house during the Season were generally invites to one social gathering or another.

She recognized the handwriting on the envelope as her third-party intermediary who carefully routed all her Lady of Dubious Quality letters to her. The intermediary was a crossing sweep who collected mail for her from a pub in Bishopsgate, and he was well versed in keeping anyone off his trail.

“Thank you, Paul,” she said, dismissing the servant.

As soon as he bowed and left, she was on her feet at once, breaking the wafers on the envelope.

One was from her publisher. The other was from Mrs. Hart. She read them both in quick succession. The first alarmed her. The second terrified her.

The coded letter from her publisher informed her that Amina, of the masquerade house, had let him know that a man in a blue mask had been looking for a woman in gold, a woman, he seemed to intimate, who was also the Lady of Dubious Quality.

The second missive came from the proprietress of the shop that served as “Mrs. Chalbury's” residence. Mrs. Hart informed Sarah that, per her instructions, she kept track of anyone searching for a woman by that fictitious name. And a man had, in fact, been in recently, asking after Mrs. Chalbury. What should Mrs. Hart do if anyone was to return and ask more questions?

Sarah immediately hurried to the fire and threw the letters on the blaze. She watched the paper blacken and flake, but it was a futile hope to wish that the fire could erase the danger.

For danger it was. Fear clawed at Sarah, climbing up her throat as she paced the length of the room, back and forth. Someone was searching out her true identity and was coming so close, so terribly close, to discovering the truth.

God—if that was the case? What was she to do? If anyone found out who she was . . . She would be ruined. Cast out from polite Society. Her parents' reputations would be in tatters. Everything would be ripped apart, never to be repaired again.

She had to do something to fix this. But what?

She couldn't think while trapped within the walls of her family's home.

In a moment, she'd rung for her maid and announced that they would be heading to McKinnon's. She'd no desire to peruse books, but it gave her a destination, an objective, since she couldn't just wander the streets of London in a panicked fog.

After donning her bonnet and redingote, and with her maid keeping pace behind her, Sarah quickly made her way down the front steps.

“The carriage, my lady?” her maid asked.

She shook her head. “On foot today.”

Her servant didn't look particularly happy with the news that they would be walking, especially since McKinnon's was at least two miles away, but Sarah was too distracted and fearful to do more than allow herself to move. So she strode with long, unladylike paces toward the bookshop, her mind in a fury of agitation.

What was she to do? How could she protect herself with danger lurking so close? Even if she were to abandon writing—which she could never do, since it was so much a part of herself that she might as well cut off her hands—it wouldn't stop the threat that prowled near. As a single woman of good name and sterling virtue, her position was desperately precarious. She had nothing to protect her. Only her parents and their title, but a young woman without a husband was still all too vulnerable.

Was that the answer? Marriage?

If she did take a husband, she would have the protection of his name.

There was one girl who'd been out a few years ago—Miss Crane, the daughter of a country gentleman. Miss Crane had been a bit wild, given to trips to
Brighton and Bath, associating with soldiers and fast company. Rumors had flown about her . . . until she'd taken a husband. She'd been a wild bride, too, but the gossip had almost completely stopped as soon as she'd wed. Miss Crane, now Lady Beauchamp, was never turned away from any door. She was whispered about, but with more amusement than shock and revulsion. Amusement was far less damaging than horror.

In some ways, a wife had more freedom than an unmarried woman. Though she was her husband's possession, she traded one kind of liberty for another. She didn't need to shelter her reputation as much. She wasn't looked at as though she was in constant danger of having her chastity assailed or challenged.

Wives had power that unmarried young women did not.

As Sarah hurried from the west toward the commercial center of London, her thoughts kept spinning, traveling leagues in a second when her feet could only take her a few miles an hour.

Perhaps Sarah would be protected from slander by the asset of being someone's wife.

“My lady,” her maid huffed behind her. “Please . . . slow down . . . I can't keep . . . up.”

“Sorry,” Sarah answered distractedly, trying to shorten her paces.

If she did marry, whom would she pick?

None of the available men that had been presented to her held any appeal. They were shallow, dull. Fortune hunters who wanted nothing more than her substantial dowry. And not a single one of them made her feel anything like her heroines felt with her heroes. No
passion. No blaze of need. She couldn't imagine spending fifty years in her would-be suitors' beds. She'd expire of boredom within a decade.

She wanted passion. And she wanted a man who made her feel . . . everything. Alive. Intelligent. Wanted. Was that impossible?

It wasn't impossible with Jeremy. He made her feel all those things. He appreciated her mind, her intellect. And there was no denying that she felt herself powerfully aware of him as a man, and herself as a woman, whenever they were together.

Was he what she needed? Was he the prospective husband she was looking for?

She
was
highly attracted to him. Desired him as she'd desired no one else before. He was witty, scholarly, perceptive. Kind and honorable, but he was no one's easy prey. He'd stood up for her when she'd been insulted, and blazed with barely restrained anger in her defense.

Yet . . . he was beneath her in station. A country vicar with a decent, but still relatively small, living. She was a duke's daughter, expected to marry one of the highest-ranking men in the country.