The Duke's Wager (10 page)

He had not wanted to force her. He had never had to force any woman. The thought appalled him. He had always chosen women for both their beauty and their availability. There was, of course, always that initial coy show of reluctance; he expected it. It was all part of the game. But every initial protest he had ever encountered had always resulted in speedy, joyful participation. But she had gazed at him with those incredibly innocent eyes and spoken in that well-bred careful little voice and he had found that, amazingly, he wanted her good opinion. And though he would have sworn she was no better than any other female he had ever desired, he had hesitated to force the issue. How could he have believed her, he wondered, a chance-met female nonentity who had gone on the prowl for a protector at the Opera? But she had refused him. That was irrevocable fact.

“I am still in control, though,” he brooded. “And the game will be a brief one. And the ending will make it all worthwhile,” he reassured himself. “It will be great sport,” he tried to tell himself. But still he was uneasy. Had she bested him? Was he still in control?

He did not care for uncertainty. He had planned his life to avoid it at all costs. He was not a good gambler. He lived a life free of risks. Or at least any of the risks that he cared about. His body, his reputation, were not things he especially valued in any sense. His inner person was the only untouchable thing he cared for. And he had made sure that that small unexamined part of himself was never threatened in any of the ways he threatened his person.

It had always been so. Even as a boy, when he scaled the tallest trees, took up any outrageous dares that the other boys flung at him, he never worried about the possibility of physical harm. And having no trepidation, and a naturally agile body, he had never come to harm. He had been forced to prove his physical superiority, for even then, his delicate, almost pretty face had marked him as prey to older boys. But once having confronted him, no other boy had ever dared him again. The slight frame concealed a wiry, hard body, and when he fought, he fought full out, with no fear of damage or even death. Even the much older and stronger of his peers quickly learned that he was in earnest when he threatened them. He was never bullied or taunted about his appearance more than once.

He had also learned early on how to conceal his heart. How to conceal it so well that he soon forgot about its existence altogether. His father, a nobleman many years older than his wife, had been a settled bachelor when the young girl whose beauty captivated him entered upon his life. After the birth of his first and only child, his wife had informed him that conception of another child would surely take her life. Confused and torn between desire and suspicion, the elderly Duke had taken refuge in his estates till a lingering disease forced him into seclusion. He had not even lived to see his son’s fifth birthday.

But his youthful wife had no use for seclusion. She dreaded even one waking moment solely in her own company. She was as beautiful a woman as her son was as a boy. Pale and fair-haired, she too had an air of deceptive fragility. But her many lovers soon learned that she had an indefatigable strength. And a bottomless void to fill with compliments, and attentions and flattery. Even when she tiptoed into the nursery on rare occasions to see how her son was growing, she would whisper to him, “Jason, love. Do you like Mama’s gown? Is her hair pretty?” And no comment of his that did not center upon her was attended to.

When the young Duke was let out of lessons early one afternoon in his tenth year, he had run away from his protesting governess and raced unthinking into his mama’s gilded rooms to tell her of his progress in his studies. Paused in the doorway, he had seen for the first time how very much she required personal attention, and also how exactly a man and a woman could find uses for each other. The governess had held his head for an hour until he could retch no more. But he never mentioned the matter to his lovely mama again, and she had never asked him if he thought she was pretty in the head groom’s arms, or if he had admired the paleness of her face against the head groom’s dark groin. She had avoided him after that. And he had been sent willingly away to school.

She avoided him further, in his sixteenth year, when he had begun to show the promise of a radiant manhood even more spectacular than her blooming womanhood had been, when she discovered that the rash that had plagued her for years was, in fact, the French pox. Then she had taken herself off to foreign quacks, and spas and resorts, forcing herself to drink the foul concoctions, be immersed in evil-smelling baths, and have strange scented unguents rubbed into her skin, to alleviate the spread of the disease. In her son’s eighteenth year she had dosed herself, and had drunk one bottle of laudanum and was halfway through the second when the sleep she sought had finally mercifully come.

The young Duke of Torquay had learned, from an early age onward, the uses of strength, the necessity for keeping one’s own counsel, the importance of lacking affections, the frivolous nature of beautiful women, and the importance of living a life that held no surprises. There was only one lesson more that he felt the need of learning.

In his nineteenth year, when he took himself and his assorted servants off on a grand tour, he had made certain inquiries. One soft June night, in Paris, he had found himself in the ornately gilded, perfumed boudoir of a famous courtesan. She was not the first he had visited, nor was she, even then, nearly the first woman he had known. His astonishingly good looks and pleasing manners had already given him entree into many such rooms, redolent of perfumes, rooms so reminiscent of his departed Mama’s. And rooms that even his Mama wouldn’t have dared to enter.

The woman had proven her worth, proven the reliability of her growing reputation, and an hour later, when she had turned to look up into the sweet face of the boy who lay propped up on one elbow, toying with a strand of her dampened hair, she had cooed, “You are satisfied,
mon Brave?
It was all you expected?” And had been shocked when he had merely smiled and, in that hoarse voice that had intrigued her so, had replied in his perfect French, “No,
ma cherie,
no, not at all.”

“But this I cannot understand,” she had cried, shocked. “Where have I failed? Where have I offended?” He had merely laughed and shaken his head.

“No, you misunderstand,” he had said, staring at her intently. “What you do, you do very well. There may well be none better. But that is not what I came for.”

“Well,” she had said, much affronted, “if your taste runs to young boys, you have certainly come to the wrong place.”

“No,” he had laughed, “it is not that. Listen
cherie,
I came for something else, something very simple, that you have not given me. I have a small proposition to make to you,” he had begun.

“No, no, no,” she had cried violently. “If it is pain you want, you must go elsewhere.”

“Listen,” he had said seriously, “this is my request. You are famous for what you do, and, as I said, you do it very well indeed. But be honest, my little French
amie
,”
(and here she smiled, for this little cockerel, with his spare white body, to call her lavish configurations “little” was very amusing, but pleasant), “all that you have done tonight, you have done for me. And it was well done. But, to be honest,
cherie,
I have done nothing for you but enrich your purse and continue your fame. You did all the work, my friend, I have only responded to your excellence. And that is what I have always done. And, with your clients, my dear, what you have always done. Tonight, however, I seek more. I want you to show me, to tell me, to instruct me, as to what I can do for you. How I can make those little sighs and groans reality, how I can please you.”

She had stared at him in incomprehension.

“Try to think,” he had said, a half smile playing about his lips, “of what you like your own lover to do for you…your pander, or your lady friend, I do not care to know. But only think of your own pleasure, and instruct me in the mysteries of your own body. That is what I require. I will pay well for this knowledge. And if you are a good teacher, I will learn quickly.”

The novelty of his request caught her interest, it was the first time—and she had long past forgotten all her first times—she had been offered such a challenge. And he was good looking enough, she thought, to make such a venture amusing.

At first, it had been a novelty for her, almost embarrassed as she patiently instructed him. When she finally showed him, almost as if he were a physician, where the ultimate seat of all her pleasures resided, she had felt a little foolish. But he had been such an eager, pleasant child about it. He had eventually laughed. “After all that, this? This little hidden part? This valiant little imitation is the answer?” And she had, as the long night went on, showed him all, all she knew, till near dawn, exhausted, she understood that there was nothing left to explain to him. He knew her body and her responses now almost better than she did.

Resting her head against his chest, she had whispered, “You have certainly learned quickly. But why did you wish to learn such things?”

“Because,” he had said, planting a kiss upon her dampened brow, “I did not know. Because, it is only good tactics to know your enemies’ weaknesses, and because,” and here he whispered so low that she was never quite sure that she had heard him correctly, “because such knowledge is power.”

She had bade him farewell in the morning, and because he had given her a night that she was not to forget for many years, she had implored him, “Only seek out clean girls,
mon Brave,
do not infect yourself, take care of yourself.” And he had answered quietly, “I always take care of myself, I lead a charmed life.”

Armed with all his various knowledges, he had gone on to lead a daring life. He had gone from excess to excess, and had never swerved from whatever course his talents led him surely to. He had never cared for any opinion but his own. Except perhaps, for the once, on the one occasion of the short-lived marriage he had undertaken. When he had achieved the age of twenty-seven, he had for the first time acted the way a gentleman of title and possessions was expected to. As he had decided that it would be well to ensure the succession, and provide an heir to the fortunes he enjoyed, he had offered for the leading debutante of the season.

She was a pretty enough little thing, he had felt, a bit giddy and light of mind, but during the two times he had conversed and danced with her, her airy little laugh and fine-boned face had pleased him. And her fortune and birth were of the highest available that season.

He had quickly discovered, during the brief months they had together, that there was no commonality of interests between them at all. If her perception was not nearly so lively as her flighty demeanor had led him to expect it might be, he had at least held out some hope that there might eventually be some common ground that they might find so that the union might not be as unendurable as he was fast finding it to be. But all his arts could not move her to a natural, easy communication with him. She seemed, instead, to fear him, avoid him, and merely endure his company.

With all his wide experience, he still could find no way to wrest any real pleasure from the rigid little body she so dutifully presented him with each night. Nor could he, despite his unusual spell of fidelity and concentration, bring her to any enjoyment of the art he had mastered so long ago.

The last night he had tried, he had slipped into her bedroom as usual, after she had dismissed her servants, and quietly approached the wide bed where she lay, wreathed in white lace. As he had gently drawn the covers back, she had, for the first time, smiled as she greeted him. He had responded to that one gesture of friendship with ardor, but she had pushed him away and pouted. “Jason, my dear, that isn’t really necessary any longer.”

He had drawn away and asked, with a teasing note in his voice, “Why, have you found another diversion for these hours?”

“No,” she laughed with genuine joy, “but we really don’t have to…do that dreadful business any longer. I am with child already, you see.” He stood back from her. “Dreadful?” he had asked with genuine surprise.

“Well,” she had smiled, “but not when I understood that you must if you were to have an heir, then I could see that the thing was inevitable. But now that you have accomplished it, what would be the sense of it? I’m not one of your fancy pieces, Jason. There’s no pleasure in such degrading things for me. Oh yes, I do know about all those…females, and I do understand why you must seek them out…now, more than ever, I suppose I do understand. But pray understand that I do not mind, so long as you are circumspect about it. And you needn’t bother with me now that you are to have the heir you desired.”

He stood looking at her for a long moment, and then with that strange half smile he so often wore, the one which frightened her so, he had said, “Needn’t bother with you, my dear?” and had come closer to her. She shrieked and drew up her covers. “Jason!” she had gasped, “you forget, I am your wife! I am to bear your child. Do not attempt that vile business again! It has served its purpose. I am not to be disturbed in my mind, if the child is to be born aright!”

He had not disturbed her again. He had turned and left. He returned to her only when the child, a frail little girl that bore the stamp of her own face, had been born. He had stayed with her all during the time the child-bed fever had raged, and when it had taken her insubstantial body completely, he had stayed for her interment. Then, leaving the sickly child in the care of excellent wetnurses and staff, he had left again. And gone on to live his life as he had begun to live it before the mad notion of marriage had ever crossed his mind. He had gone on to excess, and the pursuit of self-satisfaction, and never again had cared for any other being’s opinion but his own. And this philosophy, he felt, in its own way, had given him whatever happiness he felt he had the right to expect in the world he had made.