The Perils of Pleasure (13 page)

It was quiet for a time.

“I’ll send a gift on,” Eleanor announced at last, dreamily. “To Wills and Lizzie.”

“Now, Nor, ye mun be careful,” he warned. “Ye canna be sending expensive gifts.”

The countess said nothing for a tick.

“What good is all of this to anyone?” The words were a pout. “If I canna share it?”

Well, then, Colin thought. “Canna,” is it? Though it had seemed only a matter of time before the countess’s carefully cultivated London accent gave way to country cadences. A story was starting to come into focus here. Odd how his mind could be alert, focused on the tableau before him,
when his body seemed to have another objective entirely.

“What good?” Harry sounded gently amused and pragmatic. “Money’s rather nice, ain’t it, Nor? Better than no money, I reckon.”

There was a brief silence, followed by a conciliatory snort from the countess. She sounded accustomed to Harry taking all the fun out of her melodrama, but it didn’t sound as though she minded.

“You did what ye needed to do, and what’s done is done,” Harry added gently. “And ye’ve given the job ’ere to me, and I’m well paid. And I send the money home. I’ll buy the gifts, Nor. You know ye canna risk it.”

Another sigh from the countess. “Sometimes I truly miss them all, Harry. Everyone in Marble Mile.”

“It’s been many years, Nor. They think fondly of ye, but they dinna speak of ye anymore. Ye’ve gone to London and ne’er came back, and they all like to think ye’ve done summat grand. They dinna ken of your time a’ the Sweet Apple Theater. And they nivver will, if I’ve me say in it.”

“I do know,” she conceded softly. “I’ve a fi ne life here. I am lucky, indeed, and Malmsey is kind to me. I’m sorry. I shan’t complain, Harry. How is the house
keeper treating you?”

And thus ensued a seeming eternity of low conversa
tion interspersed with occasional snorts of soft laughter. The housekeeper was a tyrant, Harry confi ded—she’d shouted at a maid and made her cry—and the butler, of whom Harry was fond, might be nipping the brandy because his gout troubled him. As for Eleanor, she won
dered whether she ought to get a new carriage, perhaps a clever little
dormeuse
—Harry, being a footman, had an opinion about this (no)—and she was concerned that the earl was eating too much rich food, and she worried
over his health. The conversation was homely and frag
mented and excruciatingly dull and excruciatingly in
timate. It had the singular rhythm of any conversation between any husband and wife who had been married to each other longer than not married to each other.

Except they were not, of course, husband and wife. They were countess and footman.

Colin listened, his arms around a warm, very alive woman, utterly at a loss as to how he felt. Hilarity? Wounded pride? After all, the countess preferred a foot
man to
him
. Sympathy? Perhaps. Since time began, rela
tively few people had ever been free to love where they wished, and people who loved each other were often destined to live apart, for reasons of money or class.

Or Newgate, for that matter.

But who knew? Perhaps the Earl of Malmsey had chosen to marry a woman who made him laugh, a woman who was like looking out on springtime from the vantage point of his winter years, who was a credit to him in public and could make his pole rise rather smartly when he was in bed, who was genuinely grate
ful to and fond of him, and he was willing to look the other way regarding a footman for all of these reasons.

Colin thought about Malmsey in Manton’s, and somehow didn’t think so.

At last the conversation between the countess and footman seemed to be stuttering to a halt. Colin craned his head and through the cracked wardrobe door saw why: Harry had propped himself up on his elbow and spread a big brown palm over a muslin-clad breast.

He began lazily circling the countess’s nipple with one finger. Round and round it went.

Breathing in the wardrobe all but stopped.

The nipple circling was positively mesmerizing.

“Oh, I do like that, Harry.” Eleanor’s voice had the husky detachment of a woman quite willing to be seduced.

“It’s been a while, Nor,” Harry said softly.

He could have spoken for everyone in the room.

Madeleine’s breathing was
decidedly
uneven now; Colin felt the shuddering rise and fall of it beneath his hand. He began to feel a bit light-headed. Following a suspicion, he dared to duck his head and rest his chin very lightly against Madeleine’s temple. He felt the rapid trip of her pulse there.

It wasn’t fear, if he knew this woman. She was, as any human with blood in their veins would be, aroused.

And knowing he was mad to do it, and a devil to do it, and a
man
to do it, Colin pulled Madeleine ever so slightly closer to his body and made sure his every quiet, warm exhalation fell softly, over and over, on her ear. He made himself wild imagining what this might do to her: the gooseflesh rising over her throat, the fl ush warming her skin, the pleasure spiking through her body, the heat and damp gathering between her legs.

Following another hunch, he shifted his arm up from where it banded her waist, just enough for his thumb to
accidentally
brush, oh, so lightly . . . across one breast.

He encountered a bead-hard nipple covered in soft muslin.

Madeleine’s breathing stopped.

Colin bit the inside of his lip to stifle a groan.

Pretending to shift his arm back to where it had been around her waist, he brushed his thumb down over her breast again.

Which was when Madeleine’s head tipped—almost imperceptibly—back against his shoulder, her back arched ever so slightly into his touch, and her buttocks pressed into his groin.

Dear God
.

Which was when it began to make a sort of feverish sense to slip his hand inside her bodice. He could imag
ine the slide of his fingers over her pale skin, the knot of her nipple against them, and God help him, he was growing hard, and in a moment Madeleine would know it and the game of pretense—this game comprised of little accidents that weren’t accidents at all—would have shifted into an entirely different realm. It was madness. It needed to stop.

Stopping, however, had never been one of Colin Eversea’s strengths.

And all the while, his eyes remained on the tableau on the bed, and the figure eights the footman’s fi nger made over the Countess Malmsey’s bosom became a more determined and thorough caress. His fi ngers van
ished into her bodice.

Lucky bastard
.

“Oh, Harry. We must be careful.”

But the countess’s words were languid, and even as she said them, Eleanor’s hand went up to cup the back of the footman’s head, and as she pulled his face down to hers, Harry’s hands had dropped to bunch the yards of her muslin gown upward.

The rest happened with almost businesslike alac
rity, making it clear they’d done it before. The countess wriggled to give Harry better access to all that lay be
neath her dress, then a slim, silk-stockinged calf came into view, and her knees bent—and wasn’t
that
a pretty garter up high on her thigh—and Harry’s face dropped to give her cleavage the thorough attention due it—

Which was when Madeleine pushed out of Colin’s grasp and out of the wardrobe.

nm

eprived of her balance, Colin nearly stumbled out of the wardrobe after her. For all of that, the thick carpet took their landing so softly they hardly made a sound, and all those silky dresses sighed as they swung back into place behind them.

For a ridiculous moment Colin and Madeleine merely gazed studiously away from each other and across the lake of rose and cream carpet toward that island of a bed, upon which the footman and countess writhed.

Mercifully, Lady Malmsey was just shifting to get her thighs more decisively about Harry. Something— the glint of Madeleine’s pistol, which nicely caught the lamplight?—must have caught her eye. She went still.

And slowly, slowly, lifted her head up.

She froze. Her blue eyes dinner-plate-sized with horror.

Colin touched the brim of his hat politely.

“Nor?” The muffled question came from between the countess’s breasts.

When Lady Malmsey didn’t reply, Harry lifted his
head from her bosom to her face. Then spun his head to follow her horrifi ed gaze.

And then the countess and the footman exploded away from each other in opposite directions, Lady Malmsey toppling from the bed to the floor to the left and the footman spinning off to the right to land on his knees. He half dragged himself to the dressing table, snatched his wig and held it over his groin, then stood to glare at Madeleine and Colin while his other hand flapped behind him over the dressing table behind him in search of a weapon. He came away with nothing but a pomander.

He swore disgustedly, dropped the pretty thing with a clatter, and settled for glaring.

Colin stood there feeling a bit dazed, knowing if he’d stayed in the wardrobe one second longer he would have benefited from a groin wig, too. He glanced, to ascertain, in a way, that he hadn’t been deluded: Mad
eleine Greenway’s nipples were still peaked beneath the fine muslin of her bodice, and her face was washed with pink. She was busying herself with fully unlocking the pistol and aiming it, a faint frown tugging at the cor
ners of her mouth, and she was very determinedly not looking at him.

Colin jerked his eyes away from her, half regretful, half embarrassed, as though she’d shaken him awake from an erotic dream. Thank God
she’d
had the pres
ence of mind to do it.

He took in a deep breath, an attempt to fully van
quish the dream. He needed a clear head.

The petite countess’s hand appeared on the counter
pane, and then her blond head appeared and she used the bed to pull herself to her feet. She stared at Colin and Madeleine, a terrified, disheveled little cloud of white.

And then recognition set in and her eyes snapped sparks. “Colin
Eversea
!”

She actually sounded indignant. As though he’d spilled ratafia on her dress at a ball.

Doubtless when shock gave way to sense she would scream, as she wasn’t stupid. Footman in her bed notwithstanding.

So Colin was behind her in a thrice with an arm clamped about her waist and a hand clapped over her mouth, carefully steering clear of her little white teeth. She was so fragile it was like trapping a songbird. He felt a right bounder.

He noticed that Madeleine was already doing what Madeleine did very well: aiming a pistol at the foot
man, whose face had blanched to the color of his wig. At which point Colin assumed the footman no longer needed a groin disguise.

“Lady Malmsey,” Colin said very quietly and quite reasonably, “if you promise not to scream, I’ll release you. And if you intend to say my name again, do lower your voice. We are old friends, are we not? I need your help, but I need you to be quiet.”

“Cowin? IsitreawyYOU?
” came indignantly from behind Colin’s hand. “Yer
awive?”

The wig slipped from the footman’s grasp and plopped to the fl oor like a dropped lapdog.

“Are you
truly . . .
Colin Eversea?” Harry looked at Colin hard—peered at him, really. As if reconciling the human in front of him against all those vivid broad
sheet images.

Colin did some peering of his own. Harry had blue eyes and a dimple in his chin.

Obligingly, Colin slowly removed his hat.

“You
are
Mr. Eversea!” Harry stared a long moment.

And then he glanced down at his shoes, and shuffl ed his toes diffidently. And then glanced up again. “’Tis just that ye’ve been to the ’ouse before, sir, and I would know ye anywhere and . . . Well, sir! Well, I’m . . .
well
, sir!”

And then he bowed, a low and proper one, the sort he’d offer to the earl. “’Tis an honor, Mr. Eversea,” he said when he was upright again. His voice was all melt
ing admiration.

Madeleine made a tiny incredulous sound in the back of her throat.

Colin thought it was looking less likely that the foot
man had arranged for his murder by the minute.

“But . . . why are you here?” Harry continued. “You don’t mean to . . . ” His forehead bunched in confu
sion. “ . . .
rob
us?” He surreptitiously peered behind Colin, looking, perhaps, for sacks filled with silver can
dlesticks. Colin Eversea had been an accused murderer, not a robber, according to the broadsheets and scandal sheets and newspapers, so this was baffl ing.

“I’m here because I need your assistance, Harry. And I’ll release you if you promise not to scream, Eleanor. Do you promise? After all, we’re friends, are we not, and the four of us are rather in an equivalent amount of trouble at the moment, wouldn’t you say?”

A heartbeat’s worth of consideration later, the count
ess bobbed her golden head rapidly.

Colin slowly lifted up his hand from her mouth.

The words rushed out. “What in God’s name were you doing in my wardrobe, in my
chambers
, Colin Eversea? And my
goodness
, you need a wash! And I
am
glad you’re alive. Did you stab that man?”

“I’ll ask the questions, Lady Malmsey, and I’ll ask them of Harry. Why did you go to the Tiger’s Nest, Harry?”

Well. This question was clearly an even bigger shock than an escaped murderer bursting forth from a ward
robe. The footman’s complexion evolved a green under
tone, and his hands reached back to grip the edge of the dressing table for balance.

Colin knew very well what women’s dressing tables held; he’d been in any number of women’s chambers, from the proper to the deliciously improper. Pellets of rouge for the faster young ladies, for the others, little cut crystal glasses of lavender water or clove water per
haps or pomades, and, in the case of his sister, “curling fluid,” an elixir that promised to make her hair stay curled.

It had not. Genevieve had quietly wept.

Harry the footman waved a dismissive hand. “It’s just . . . she don’t know about it. Eleanor don’t know.” He said faintly. “I wanted to protect ’er, ye see.”

Lady Malmsey turned abruptly. “Harry . . .
what
don’t I know?”

“Why don’t the two of you sit down?” Madeleine made it sound like a kind invitation, but she gestured with the barrel of the pistol, which lent the invitation an altogether different fl avor.

The countess and Harry the footman reconvened obediently side by side on the bed:
squeak, squeak.
Their eyes were riveted to the barrel of Madeleine’s pistol. Harry’s big brown hand crept out across the counterpane and found Lady Malmsey’s, and her fi n
gers twined in his. He brought her hand back to his lap, a show of solidarity, of comfort, of ownership. Colin suspected the gesture had been nearly unconscious.

Colin saw an odd shadow pass over Madeleine’s face. A trick of the light? A pistol cramp? But her aim never wavered.

“Where is Malmsey? Is he in London?”

“Malmsey is in Dover. He has business there, and told me I’d find it dull. He’s thoughtful of me that way. Most places are dull compared with London.”

Dull.
Colin had a sudden yearning for “dull.”

“
Must
she point that pistol?” Lady Malmsey added resentfully. Clearly she was gaining confi dence now that her shock had ebbed.

Colin shot her a repressive glance.

“Harry, if you would please answer my question. We’re in a bit of a rush, you see, and this is very impor
tant. And I’ve been remiss. And allow me to introduce my . . . ” He considered choosing a devilish word, then decided they needed the respect of these two. “ . . . as
sociate, Mrs. Green.”

Colin took a closer look at Harry. The footman was certainly tall, and looked as though he’d been plucked off a farm only yesterday, his brawn a bit at odds with his finery. He had the face of a man possessed of bless
edly little imagination but of solid character. Colin had seen that face countless times in the pub and the church in Pennyroyal Green on people who were too busy working their land and tending animals to become complicated. This suited Colin. He enjoyed—but never trusted—those who possessed lively imaginations.

Primarily, of course, because he was one of them.

“’E came to me on me day off, ye see,” Harry began haltingly. “I was polishin’ the silver in the morning. And as I finished early, I ’ad a ’alf day, thought I’d go into town, post a letter to me mum. I walked—’tis a good ways, but I’m accustomed to walking, ye see, back at home in Marble Mile, and dinna do as much as I’d like these days. And all of a sudden like, a man fell
into step beside me. ’E called me by name, but ’e didna introduce ’imself. ’E merely said . . . ’e said . . . ” Harry stopped and swallowed hard. “Said ’e knew about . . . about me and Nor.”

The countess made a tortured sound, and her head swiveled for the first time away from that compelling pistol.

“Oh, Harry! You should have told me! What if the earl . . . what if that man was a spy for Malmsey? I hon
estly do not think Monty
would
—but what if—”

“I dinna think ’e was a spy, Nor,” Harry said gently. “If ’e was a spy, why would ’e tell
me
’e knew about us? ’E would go to the earl, would he not? The earl ’as the money. And if ’e wanted blunt, ’e would ’ave gone to ye instead, Nor, is my way of thinking, not me. The thing is . . . ’e didna ask fer blunt. ’E wanted a ‘messenger,’ is ’ow ’e put it. And I wanted to protect ye, ye see. Ye’ve already a few secrets to keep. I didna want to burden ye with another.”

Colin glanced at Madeleine and saw that shadow again; there was something tense about her mouth, as though she was suppressing some emotion. But her dark eyes were curiously soft.

Lady Malmsey looked away from Harry and studied Madeleine, taking in her clothes, her pistol, her lovely and interesting face.

“Is she your doxie, Colin?”

Women and their bloody
curiosity
and hairpin changes of topic.

“Well, are you, madam?” There was a sharp glint in the countess’s eyes. Very like mischief and pique. She was a woman who’d grown accustomed to having con
trol and now suddenly found herself without it.

“I am no one’s doxie, Lady Malmsey.” Madeleine’s words were very, very patient. “But thank you for inquiring.”

“There are worse things one can be called, love,” the countess countered with acerbic practicality. Harry gave her hand a quelling squeeze and shot Colin an apologetic look
: you know how women are
.

“Back to Harry,” Colin interjected, lest Madeleine succumb to a temptation to snatch the countess free of hair. But Madeleine looked surprisingly composed.

“Well, I admitted to nothing,” Harry continued. “I said I knew naught of what ’e spoke, and wished ’e wouldna say such disagreeable things of the countess. But I said I’d be ’appy to act as a messenger in order to do a
kindness
for the gentleman, as I was acquainted with Mr. Croker of the Tiger’s Nest, an’ I meant to go there after I posted me letter.”