The Luckiest Lady In London (11 page)

And he certainly didn’t help matters by moving his thumb in a slow circle around that stylized jaguar head.

“Take your hand off it,” she said.

He looked at her with a half smile that made everything inside her shift and drop, and set the walking stick aside. “Better?”

“No, not really. But what were you saying?”

He smiled again. “That your sister’s new tendency to study herself constantly in a mirror sounds like an affliction.”

“It does, but it is a much better affliction than the one she’d suffered for so long. We are all delighted. My mother especially—she is beginning to speak again of Frederica as the future spouse of a very wealthy man.”

She looked at him sideways. “In fact, she thinks rather wistfully of you as that very wealthy man. I believe she is ever so slightly embarrassed that you will have me instead, when she has so much prettier daughters.”

“Your mother actually thinks that any of her other daughters could possibly hold the slightest temptation for me?”

She ought not to, but she adored the dismissiveness of his tone.

“That is a very smug smile on your face, my dear, dear Louisa.”

“That is a very smug sensation inside my heart, my dear, dear Lord Wrenworth.”

The carriage turned a corner and his walking stick went sliding. They both reached out, but she caught it first.

“Maybe I ought to keep a better grip on it,” he said.

She laid the walking stick across her lap. “There, I’ll make sure it isn’t up to mischief.”

He glanced at the walking stick for a fraction of a second longer than completely appropriate, before he looked up into her eyes. “By the way, our marriage settlement is being drawn up as we speak. When you meet your solicitor again, he will tell you that you will have five thousand pounds a year in pin money.”

She nearly dropped the walking stick. “Five thousand!”

“Don’t be so loud, don’t look so astonished, and don’t, for goodness’ sake, appear grateful. I would not be able to show my face in Society if it became known that my wife managed to squeeze only eight hundred pounds a year out of me.”

“You offered me only five hundred,” she said indignantly.

“And you were the worst negotiator ever, asking for only
a thousand from a man who has two hundred thousand a year. Shame on you.”

Her face heated. “Well, you have always known that I am a country bumpkin.”

“I thought you were ambitious. You were certainly more ambitious where telescopes were concerned.”

“Your proposal caught me off guard.”

“Excuses, excuses, Louisa. Were I less mindful of my reputation, you would have been robbed.”

Hardly, when she would have given him the eleven pounds, eight shillings she’d studiously scraped together for emergencies, just so he didn’t withdraw his offer.

Still, five thousand pounds a year, just for her. She wanted to laugh: She was now her own rich man.

Suddenly she remembered her deception. “Goodness gracious. There was something I was going to let you find out for yourself after the wedding. But at five thousand pounds a year, my conscience won’t let me keep quiet anymore.”

He cast her a sidelong look. “So your conscience was fine at eight hundred a year?”

“Did you really think my conscience was the sort that couldn’t be told to keep quiet when only eight hundred a year was a stake?”

“True, morally upstanding you are not. So what dastardly secret am I going to find out now?”

Was that
fondness
in his voice? Why did she feel as if she were slowly melting? “I employ an array of bust improvers.”

He shrugged, unperturbed. “So do at least half of the ladies in London. God does not make that many perfectly waspish figures.”

“Well, my bust improver doesn’t so much improve my bust as create one where none exists.”

He glanced at her bosom. “So how much of that is actually yours?”

“Twenty-five percent. Thirty-five at most.”

His eyes widened.

“I apologize!”

“Only sorry to be caught, I see.”

“Well, I always did plan to make up for it.”

“How?” Was that a barely suppressed smile in his voice? “Isn’t it a bit late for you to develop a bigger pair?”

“I once heard Lady Balfour talk about her brother-in-law’s mistress. She said the woman was completely flat-chested, but was willing to take part in all kinds of unnatural acts.”

He made the sound of choked laughter. “Sorry, go on.”

“So I thought . . .” She pulled at her collar. “I thought if I would consent to unnatural acts, then perhaps it would not be so difficult to achieve my husband’s forgiveness in this matter. And, well, you are most certainly the sort to incline toward unnatural acts.”

“Am I?”

“Are you not?” She couldn’t tell whether she was asking out of hope or apprehension.

He didn’t answer her. “Suppose you had become engaged to Mr. Pitt instead. Would you have just remained silent on the matter?”

“I would have started putting on progressively less exaggerated bust improvers and hoped that he didn’t notice. But if he did, there were always the unnatural acts.”

“He might never again believe anything you say the rest of your life.”

She was hardly worried about Mr. Pitt. “What about
you
?”

“I have never trusted a word you said, since the very beginning.”

“I do tell the truth
sometimes
,” she pointed out, half pouting. “Besides, now that I have ensnared myself a rich lord and confessed my sins regarding my undergirding, I have no more lies to tell.”

“Is that what you think marriage is, a hotbed of honesty and transparency?”

“Well, no . . .”

“Exactly. If I know you, you will go on lying, bust improvers or no.”

“Then why did you propose to me?”

It always came back to this central mystery, this seemingly benign puzzle at the foundation of her current good fortune.

“Because you will never have headaches,” he answered in apparent seriousness.

“I beg your pardon?”

His lips quivered. “Nothing. Just know that I am looking forward to being the most happily married man in the empire.”

He smiled at her. And it was such a gorgeous smile that a few moments passed before she remembered that she, too, never trusted a word he said.

W
hy
had
Felix proposed to her?

He had not answered her because he was coming to the realization that it was impossible to prevaricate when he couldn’t pin down the truth.

Like affixing the position of stars in the sky—if one didn’t know where one stood, the exercise became futile. An accurate knowledge of the truth was, for him at least, a necessary starting point for any well-crafted lie.

He, who could look people in the eye, smile, and spin a perfect yarn on the spot, was dodging her question because he had failed to find the real reason behind his action.

Was it merely because his conscience itched over what he’d said about Lord Firth? Because he pitied her? Because he’d always planned on marrying a country bumpkin anyway, and she was as good as any rosy-cheeked girl he could have in twenty years?

He was able to become The Ideal Gentleman because he knew every last one of his faults intimately—and therefore understood exactly how he ought to misdirect attention and create illusions.

But now he had based one of the most important decisions of his life on a shifting foundation.

Perhaps more alarmingly, he almost didn’t care—not when there were bust improver–sized revelations to be had. The knowledge gave him a secret elation, an expansive pleasure, so that when they parted that day, he told her, “Go on wearing those bust improvers. In fact, have some bigger ones made.”

Her expression of befuddlement and suspicion was also a thing of joy.

He further misdirected her attention by opening lines of credit at various establishments and gifting her mother a house that had thirty rooms. As if she weren’t busy enough with a wedding breathing down her neck, she was now also required to inspect chairs, drapery, and side tables.

“If you are trying to make me drop dead from exhaustion, you are not far from succeeding,” she accused him the last time they saw each other before the wedding.

No one else spoke to him as she did, with as much frankness and . . . could he call it affection? Yes, he decided, exasperated affection, but affection all the same. “Will you ever stop suspecting me of ulterior motives?”

“Yes, when you stop harboring as many of them as a Medici pope.”

“Then whom will you suspect for fun?” he answered cheerfully. He usually enjoyed himself around people. Her company, however, he
adored
.

And tomorrow they would join in matrimony, for as long they both should live.

He had been trying not to think of the wedding night—no
need to torment himself lusting after what would soon be his. But sometimes he couldn’t quite help the direction of his thoughts.

Dear, dear Louisa was in for a night to remember.

She cleared her throat. “You said you’d come to give me my wedding present.”

So she’d caught him ogling her—forgivable for a man the day before his wedding. “Your wedding present is currently being set up in the conservatory at Huntington. After all your sisters and your mother each told me separately about the telescope, I had no choice but to buy one exactly like the one that slipped from your fingers.”

Her eyes narrowed dramatically. “You mean you wouldn’t have bought it for me on your own?”

“Of course not. I’d have bought you a much better one, but now you are stuck with your heart’s desire.”

Her scowl turned into a smile. “Well, I can live with that.”

People smiled at him all the time, but when she did it, he felt . . . supremely accomplished.

The thought gave him pause. Wasn’t that how he had felt earlier, when he’d made her testy?

He ignored that particular insight. “But it is hugely unsatisfying to be told that one’s present is hundreds of miles away, so I brought you this.” He took out a book from his pocket and handed it to her. “A telescope is useless unless you know what you are looking at.”

The book was a first-edition copy of
Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d’Étoiles
, otherwise known as
Messier’s Catalogue
.

She frowned. And suddenly he stood chest-deep in uncertainty, not knowing how his present would be received, fearing that it would be cast aside as soon as he left the room.

It wasn’t even a real gift, just something he had taken from his study at Huntington on his way out to meet the train, after
he was satisfied that the telescope had been correctly set up, because he thought it would please a girl who loved the stars.

“Don’t worry if you can’t read French.” His tone was stilted and formal. “There are far more comprehensive catalogs and star maps published these days.”

“I’m sure there are better works published these days, but this is the one I have always wanted to have,” she said, her eyes downcast, her fingers rubbing against the binding of the catalog.

He wasn’t sure he believed her. “Then why do you look so consternated?”

She turned the book around once in her hands. “Because it disconcerts me that you can so easily guess my heart’s desire.”

All the apprehension drained away, replaced by a startling buoyancy. How silly he’d been to be prey to such needless concerns. “I am to be your husband. I should be able to read your heart’s desire.”

She looked up, her gaze meeting his. “You are the sort of man who is just as likely to grant a woman her heart’s desire as to torment her with it.”

And she was the one woman who knew that he was the furthest thing from The Ideal Gentleman, yet still wept when she thought he would never have anything more to do with her. “May I remind you that you were willing to take me and my lady-tormenting ways for a measly eight hundred pounds a year.”

That brought a reluctant smile to her face. “I haven’t been able to make a single good decision since I fell in lust with you.”

Her sexual infatuation with him had always gratified him immensely. Yet for some reason, this iteration of the fact didn’t thrill him as much as it usually did. It was as if he wanted more.

What more, he couldn’t say—if the girl was any more willing, they would be copulating in the streets. Perhaps he was simply impatient to at last pin her underneath him, and watch her face as her pleasure gathered.

“I will leave you to study your new book then.”

As he turned to go, she took hold of his hand. They touched as infrequently as they ever did, and the sensation of her skin on his was almost numbing in its intensity.

“I do not mean to imply that I am not grateful,” she said.

“But you are not,” he pointed out.

“I am. I am just also wary, as any woman with half a brain ought to be, when it comes to you.”

And with that, she kissed him on his cheek. “I will see you at the wedding.”

T
he wedding was a tremendous success, not that it was ever intended to be anything else. The bride’s gown, the wedding breakfast, and the greenery that filled the interior of the cathedral—each aspect of the occasion was praised as sumptuous yet tasteful. Everything The Ideal Gentleman’s wedding ought to be.

“I am pleased to have been accessory to one of the most perfectly orchestrated ceremonies of our time,” said Felix’s new wife, when they were at last alone in his private rail coach, speeding north toward Huntington.

It was her way of telling him that this entire ceremony had been all about him—his good name, his stature, his importance.

He smiled. “And thus concludes my reign as the most eligible young man of the realm. It is the end of an era.”

She rolled her eyes.

He smiled more broadly. “The same could be said of you. When did you start preparing for your London Season?”

“Eight years ago.”

“And now that, too, is behind you. What plans do you have for yourself?”

She straightened the sleeve of her new traveling dress, a stylish, yet understated piece in charcoal grey—a garment that did not draw attention to itself, yet upon close examination, proved to be of flawless construction and exemplary fit. He did not believe that it had come by this state of inconspicuous perfection by accident: She would have given quite a bit of thought to how she wished to appear as Lady Wrenworth and must have decided that she preferred to let him have the limelight, but also to present herself in such a way that no one should be able to find fault in his choice of wife.

“Between fittings for my gown and trousseau, shopping with my family, and answering all the questions from Lady Balfour and your secretary concerning the wedding,” she said, straightening her other sleeve, “I haven’t had a minute to think about the future.”

“Liar. You’d stop breathing before you stop preparing for what’s coming next. What is it you are scheming about now?”

Her eyes were wide and limpid as she answered, “I have a thirty-room house, five thousand pounds a year, and a good telescope, not to mention
Messier’s Catalogue
. There is nothing left worthy of maneuvers.”

He rested his head on his palm. “But you are ambitious. I’ll bet you have tried to read astronomical journals, when you could get your hands on them. And I’ll bet you found it difficult, because you have had a woeful education, particularly in the area of mathematics.”

“I am not innumerate.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can calculate a household budget and a man’s wealth very well. But can you solve an equation?”

She looked as if he’d accused her of rampant honesty. “Of course I can solve an equation. I can solve paired equations.”

“What about quadratic equations?”

She flattened her lips. “No.”

“Do you know anything about trigonometry?”

“No.”

“Non-Euclidean geometry?”

“No.”

He set one hand beneath his chin and considered her.

“You make me nervous,” she said quietly.

“Because now I know you would like to be fluent in calculus?”

She sighed. “Because you read me like an open book, when I know I am not. I am no more transparent than a slab of slate—or at least I shouldn’t be.”

With anyone else, he would simply smile and let that be the end of it. But it was his wedding day, he had vowed to cherish her, and he was feeling very charitable.

“Then let me tell you this. Everything I need to know about you, I already learned the first night we met. And yet after I’ve read you like an open book all this while, you still remain something of a conundrum.”

This mollified her enough for the set of her shoulders to relax. “So . . . I don’t trust you and you don’t understand me.”

He laughed despite himself. “No wonder we get along so well.”

A beat of silence passed. She turned her face slightly to the side and glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. “So what should we do now that we’ve established that our marriage is based on ignorance and general misgiving?”

He leaned forward. “Do you play cards, my dear Lady Wrenworth?”

S
he not only played cards, but proved to be one of the best Felix had ever played against.

“Where did you learn to play like this?” he exclaimed after she had taken yet another round from him.

“At home. We’ve no books and no instruments—guess what we did to pass time.”

“Do you count cards?”

“Of course,” she answered, as if there were no other possible choice.

“And you are the best player at home, no doubt?”

“No. I can hold my own with Cecilia and Julia, but Matilda is a terror at the table.”

That surprised him. “Really?”

“Had she been a man, we’d have sent her to Monte Carlo to win a fortune.”

“So what did you use as stake when you played at home?”

“Stake? What sort of question is that?” She shot him a look full of scorn. “We played to
win
. Now will you please let me concentrate?”

He wished it had been possible to capture her expression of contempt. For a poor fortune hunter’s daughter, she could rival a dowager duchess in haughtiness, when she was in the mood. “Certainly, Lady Wrenworth.”

She had already lowered her gaze to her cards, but now she slowly looked up. “You won’t stop calling me Louisa, will you?”

Little things like this made her the conundrum she was: that she would tell him openly that she did not trust him, and then in the next breath demand this intimacy from him.

“There is a time and a place for it,” he told her.

She gestured at the private rail coach, empty except for the two of them. “We are already in private.”

He only repeated, “There is a time and a place for it.”

Her cheeks colored—neither the time nor the place was too far away now.

“Right.” She cleared her throat. “Your turn, sir.”

I
t was rather difficult to concentrate after that, but since Louisa wasn’t the only one distracted, she still defeated her husband soundly.

“Good thing you only play to win,” he teased her. “Remind me to never put any money on the table.”

“As long as you say nothing to your friends. I am not averse to taking
their
money.”

“I’d like to see you go up against Lady Tremaine. She is quite the player.”

She made a face. “Your former paramour Lady Tremaine?”

“My current good friend Lady Tremaine. I lost five hundred pounds to her once. You will be my vengeance and seize the sum from her—with high, compounding interest, of course.”

“Are you sure I am a better player than she?”

“Her advantage over most men is that she has a noteworthy chest, which she displays shamelessly when she sits down to a card table. You, however, will not be distracted by a pair of breasts.”

Louisa suddenly had the image of him with his hands on Lady Tremaine’s noteworthy chest—and it made her feel spectacularly underendowed. “Is she invited to your house party?”

“She is always invited to my house party. But she is out of the country this month, sampling the male species all over Scandinavia.”

“But if she comes, you will be distracted by her breasts?”

“It’s nothing to do with her. I sometimes find myself staring
at sculptures of bare-breasted women around Huntington—speaking of which . . .”

They drove past the gate of the estate.

“Welcome to your new home,” he said softly. “I hope you like it.”

She had, of course, thoroughly studied the passage concerning Huntington in Lady Balfour’s book on the great manors of the realm. But dry, matter-of-fact descriptions could not possibly capture the charm and tranquillity of the place, all rolling hills and green glens.

Then the land opened and there stood the manor, grandly and dramatically illuminated by the rich, golden light of sunset. It was a Tudor house that had, during the course of its long life, acquired a lavish, baroque flair. The once plain stone front now boasted an elaborate cupola and twelve pilasters that rose three stories high from a gorgeous terrace accessed by double-returned flights of steps. Twenty-seven windows, nine to each bay, shone down upon the circular reflection pool in the center of the formal French garden.

“It’s almost unfair,” she told him. “The master of this place should look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”

“Sometimes he does,” said her husband, pulling on his gloves. “When you visit the family gallery, you will see that my ancestors are not the most prepossessing lot.”

There was no time for her to ponder his statement. The carriage had come to a stop before the manor, and it was time for her to meet the staff.

Afterward, she was led upstairs to her apartment, which had a private bath with walls and floor of blue and white marble, and a sunken bath with hot and cold running water.

She made sure to betray little of her marvel as her new maid ran her bath and showed her how to use the faucets. But when she was alone, she covered her mouth and screamed a little.

It was too much, her good fortune.

She stepped into this decadent bath, lowered herself into the perfumed water, tilted her head back, and felt . . . impatient. She smiled to herself. At least in this respect, there was nothing improper about her marriage. She would have married him as long as he had enough money to support Matilda. And if he hadn’t, they would have found a way somehow.

Schemers and schemers alike, the two of them.

And tonight they were headed to a place where she would have complete confidence in him: the marriage bed.

She finished her bath humming.

I
t was becoming more and more difficult for Felix to be objective about his new wife.

If his first impression was correct, then she was just a passably pretty woman who was very skillful at presenting herself to her best advantage. But as she entered the drawing room tonight, glowing, he could not remember a thing about her artifice.

She was stunning.

“You are a vision, Lady Wrenworth,” he whispered in her ear as they walked arm in arm toward the dining room.

“And you would have fortune-hunted most successfully if you’d had to do it, what with your charm, your wiles, and your sweet, Apollonian face.”

He felt an unfamiliar flutter in his stomach. “That’s the best compliment I’ve ever had before dinner.”

“I hope to also compliment you a great deal after dinner. Will dinner be long?”

He laughed softly. “No, dinner will not be long. The kitchen has been instructed to not overtire you with too many courses, as you’ve had a long day and would naturally prefer to retire early.”

“Naturally,” she answered as he pulled out her chair himself.

He would have never considered himself the sort of man who touched his wife while there were others present, but of their own volition, his fingers trailed across her nape, as if the softness of her skin had acted as a magnet.

She expelled a breath.

He walked to his seat with as much nonchalance as he could manage. “If you will look out of the windows, I believe you can see the Greek folly.”

Especially illuminated tonight, for her pleasure.

Her eyes widened. “Dear me, those are some very slender columns. They conceal nothing, do they?”

“They are not quite as slender as that,” he reassured her. “The folly appears closer at night than it actually is.”

“When will your friends be here?” she asked.

“Day after tomorrow.”

There had been no question that they would honeymoon at Huntington and that his summer house party would proceed as usual. How else was he to make her erotic dreams come true?

She sucked in a breath. “It is a
fascinating
pavilion.”

And she was a fascinating woman. He could not imagine now what he had been thinking when he’d believed he’d marry a girl twenty years his junior with a tremendous pair of breasts and nothing upstairs.

“I have a Roman folly, too, you know,” he informed her grandly.

And much to the befuddlement of his footmen, they both burst into laughter.