The Spinster's Secret (18 page)

“I’m glad he listened!” she said, forcing a note of heartiness into her voice. “I’m sure that you’ll be extremely happy together.”

…

Dusk had fallen by the time Edward reached London. The seventy miles now lying between him and Creed Hall had done nothing to improve his mood. Shame heated his face every time he recalled his attempt to persuade Mattie to marry him. A village simpleton could have done a better job.
How could you have been such a cod’s head, Ned? As if your wits had dribbled out your ears.

But yesterday’s proposal hadn’t been his first act of stupidity. It had merely been the culmination. His very
first
mistake had been in accepting Mattie’s offer to bed her. A smart man would have walked away at that point. A smart man wouldn’t have put himself in a position where he felt obliged to offer marriage.

Edward pulled up outside his lodgings in Ryder Street and handed the reins to Tigh. He rubbed his thigh.

“Take it round to the stables,” he said, grabbing his valise and climbing down.

His rooms were on the second floor, above Gareth’s. Edward limped up the stairs. As he unlocked his door the clock on the landing struck six. At Creed Hall, they’d be sitting down to dine.

Edward dropped his valise just inside the door, threw his hat down on the table, and pulled off his gloves, then made his slow, limping progress around the room, lighting candles.
How the devil do I fix this mess?

He could accept Mattie’s refusal of his suit and continue his life as he’d planned, down in Cornwall, while she ran her boarding house. After all, Mattie was right. No one but the two of them knew that her virtue had been compromised.

The door swung open behind him and Tigh came in, whistling. The bâtman set down his valise alongside Edward’s and headed for the fireplace.

Edward rubbed his forehead and watched as Tigh knelt to light the fire. Mattie had said that she didn’t need rescuing…so why was he convinced that she did? Why did he feel that he was abandoning her?

The fire, once it was burning, filled the grate. Heat spread through the room. Edward shrugged out of his caped driving-coat and flung it over the back of the nearest chair. He unwound the thick muffler from around his throat and imagined Mattie in the draughty, under-lit dining room, wearing her ugly grey gown. To his dismay, he realized that he missed her. He missed the dimples in her cheeks. He missed her grey eyes, sometimes brimming with laughter, sometimes alarmingly astute. He missed the frank utterances and the sense of humor—and he missed her ripe, beautiful body, the heat and passion of sharing her bed.

Tigh materialized at his elbow. “Sir? Would you like to change?”

What I would like is to…

To what? Marry Mattie?

The answer was an instinctive
No
.

What then? Should he walk away from her? Abandon her to the future she’d chosen for herself?

The answer to that question was an equally instinctive
No
.

Edward rubbed his forehead again and followed the bâtman into the bedchamber. He sat stiffly on the edge of the bed and extended one leg.

Tigh eased the boot off. “Leg hurting, sir?”

Edward grunted, not really paying attention.

Tigh pulled the other boot off and then helped him peel out of his riding coat. Paper crackled in the breast pocket. Mattie’s letter. Edward pulled it out. Mrs. Thos. Brocklesby, Lombard Street.

“Tigh, take this round to the receiving office, please. See if you can make the last collection.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and Tigh,” Edward fished in his pocket for a guinea and tossed it to the bâtman, “get a copy of Chérie’s latest, will you?”

…

Edward read the confession over a meal of roasted capons and ale sent around from the nearest inn. The beginning was familiar. He’d read it first in Arthur Strickland’s study and a dozen times since. He skimmed to where Lord S. began disrobing Chérie in the folly and slowed to read with his full attention.

He forgot his dinner as Lord S. tupped Chérie in the folly, and then in the brook, and then again on the grassy bank, where they lay bathed in warm, afternoon sunlight. Except that it wasn’t Chérie and Lord S. that he saw in his mind’s eye, it was he and Mattie. He could imagine the coolness of the water, imagine Mattie splashing him, teasing him, laughing, drops of water glistening on her skin, could imagine the smell of grass and damp earth and the sounds of birdsong and running water. And—vividly—he could imagine the taste of Mattie’s kisses, the scent of her skin. He could almost feel her clutching him, her fingers gripping his shoulders as passion took her.

Edward put down the confession. He reached for his tankard and took a long swallow of ale. The room had grown uncomfortably hot while he read.

His food, on the other hand, had grown cold.

He ate, shoving aside thoughts of sparkling brooks and naked goddesses and re-read the confession with an academic eye, searching for any clues to Chérie’s identity. He didn’t find any.

Edward pushed his plate away and read the confession yet again. Lord S. was an energetic man. He’d tumbled Chérie three times in the space of a few hours.

Edward’s thoughts turned to the discreet establishment that he patronized whenever he was in London. He drained the tankard and pushed back his chair. Now that his desire for sex had returned and his body was cooperating, it seemed a shame not to pay Mrs. Suffolk and her girls a visit.

…

Edward had forgotten the scars disfiguring his face. He remembered them as soon as the doorman bowed him into Mrs. Suffolk’s establishment. The matron herself bustled into the entrance foyer to greet him, improbably golden curls piled high on her head. Her smile froze when she saw him.

Edward felt his own smile stiffen into something as false as Mrs. Suffolk’s. His impulse was to turn and leave, to plunge back into the dark streets of London, where no one would notice his face.
Don’t be a fool
, he thought, and handed his hat and gloves to the doorman.
You’re here now
.

“Captain Kane! How delightful to see you again.” Mrs. Suffolk said, her eyes fixed on what remained of his right ear. “It’s been too many months since you last visited us!”

“Mister,” Edward said. “I sold out after Waterloo.”

“You were at Waterloo? Such a dreadful engagement!”

Edward returned a noncommittal grunt. He didn’t want to think about Waterloo tonight, didn’t want Toby’s ghost riding on his back.

“Only the smaller salon is open tonight,” Mrs. Suffolk said gaily. “Winter, you know!”

She personally escorted him into the salon. Edward blinked and halted momentarily in the doorway. The contrast between this salon and the drawing room at Creed Hall was immense. Instead of a few feeble candles, cut-crystal chandeliers glittered overhead. The walls were painted a fashionable shade of primrose, not paneled with dark wood. The furniture was in the Grecian style, gilded and scrolled and upholstered with crimson velvet. A fire filled the fireplace. Flowers and perfume scented the air. In one corner of the room a musician played, the notes a tinkling background to the hum of voices and lilt of feminine laughter.

Mrs. Suffolk glanced up at him. “Mr. Kane?”

Did she think that he’d halted because he was shy of his scars? It wasn’t that. It was the jarring sense that in stepping into the salon he was passing from one world into another.

Edward shook off the sensation and advanced into the room.

The company was sparse, only three other gentlemen vying for the attentions of the half-dozen girls present. But then, the night was young. By midnight, the room would be thronging with men looking for carnal entertainment.

Mrs. Suffolk escorted him to a sofa near the fireplace and gave him a white silk handkerchief.

“I don’t need to remind you what to do with this,” she said coyly.

No, she didn’t need to remind him.

A footman in wig and livery proffered a tray. “Champagne, sir? Claret?”

Edward chose claret. He sipped the wine as he ran his eyes over the girls. They were all new since the last time he’d visited, but that wasn’t unusual. Mrs. Suffolk prided herself on the cleanliness of her wares.

He caught one of them staring at him, a flaxen-haired girl with the rosy-cheeked buxomness of a milkmaid. He saw horror in her widened eyes, in her parted lips, before she hurriedly averted her gaze.

He felt his face tighten.
Coming here was a mistake.

But Mrs. Suffolk’s girls were professionals. Less than half a minute after he’d sat down, one of them approached.

“Mr. Kane.” She settled herself alongside him, plump and pretty, with rosebud lips and glossy brunette curls and a gown cut low over a lush bosom. “Mrs. Suffolk tells us that you were at Waterloo.”

“Yes,” Edward said, and wondered how much of the admiration in her eyes, the warmth in her voice, was false.

Probably all of it
.

The girl placed her hand on his thigh.

She glanced at him through her eyelashes. “How long are you in London, Mr Kane?”

“A couple of days.”

Her pink mouth formed a moue of disappointment. “Such a shame.”

She began to stroke teasing circles with a fingertip. If his scarred face horrified her, she was too professional to show it.

“Are you familiar with Chérie’s
Confessions
?”

Edward blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Chérie’s
Confessions
.” The brunette leaned across him, her hand sliding further up his thigh, and reached for something on the nearest side table.

It was a closely-printed broadsheet.

“Here.” She proffered it to him.

Edward recognized it as the latest confession. He experienced a brief and dizzying moment of dissonance, as if Creed Hall and Mrs. Suffolk’s parlor tried to occupy the same space for an instant.

He shook his head to clear it. “Er, yes. I’m familiar with them.”

“We have them all,” the girl said.

The teasing circles that she was tracing with her fingertip crept higher up his leg. “If there’s one in particular you like, I can read it to you…”

Edward took a gulp of wine and forced himself to focus.
Forget Creed Hall.

The brunette had the type of ripe, womanly figure he most liked, but her height was diminutive. He outweighed her by a good ten stone. He’d have to be careful not to be too vigorous or he’d hurt her.

When he’d bedded Mattie, he’d not had to hold back. Her body was strong and voluptuous, perfect. Venus to his Goliath.

Edward shoved the thought aside.

The girl moved even closer to him on the sofa. The soft swell of her breasts pressed against his upper arm. Her hand moved higher up his thigh, a teasing, creeping progress toward his groin. Her dimples seemed designed to seduce him.

Mattie hadn’t used her dimples to entrance him. When she’d touched him it was because she had wanted to, not because she’d been pretending. Everything about her had been utterly genuine—her innocence, her shy curiosity, her delight in his lovemaking.

Edward looked at the brunette. He didn’t want her. The woman he wanted was a day’s ride north.

The girl’s hand was almost at his groin. Edward caught it, halting her.

She giggled and pouted, pressing her breasts against his arm. “Is something wrong, Mr. Kane?”

Edward released her hand.

“Uh…I…” He looked around the salon.
What the devil am I doing here?

“Excuse me.” He stood, placed the wine glass and handkerchief on the nearest table, and left.

It was freezing outside. Edward’s breath billowed in front of him as he strode back to his rooms. What the hell had just happened at Mrs. Suffolk’s establishment?

He wasn’t sure.

He crossed Fitzmaurice Place and began to list the things that he
was
sure of.

One, he wanted to have sex with Mattie again. Mattie and nobody else.

Two, if anyone ever read him Chérie’s
Confessions
, he wanted it to be Mattie.

A scene blossomed in his mind. Candlelight, a wide bed, the warmth and softness of Mattie’s body pressed against him, the sound of her voice, that warm, rich contralto, as she read aloud from Chérie’s latest confession . . .

Edward shook his head to clear it.

Three, he wanted to be with Mattie. No sex, no confessions, he simply wanted to
be
in her company.

Edward frowned as he turned into Berkeley Street. Had he managed to fall in love with Matilda Chapple? Did he want to marry her? Spend the rest of his life with her?

The answer appeared to be
yes
.

Edward strode down Berkeley Street, considering what this meant.

He conjured his estate in Cornwall in his mind’s eye and imagined strolling through the park with Mattie, imagined her teasing him, imagined her laughing. He imagined sitting in the cozy parlor with her curled up on the sofa alongside him, reading aloud from a novel. He imagined undressing Mattie in the master bedchamber upstairs, imagined making love to her, and imagined sleeping with her in his arms.

These visions gave him a feeling of deep contentment, of
rightness
.

Edward’s frown deepened. He waited while a carriage clattered slowly past and then crossed Piccadilly. How the devil had this happened? How had he managed to fall in love with Mattie and not realize it?

Because I’m a cod’s head
.

Edward grunted, puffing a cloud of white vapor. Yes, he’d proved that without doubt, yesterday. He recalled his proposal and Mattie’s reaction to it and grimaced.

The question was, had Mattie refused because of how he’d phrased his offer or because she didn’t like him enough to marry him?

Edward had no answer to that question by the time he reached Ryder Street. He mulled it over while he sat in front of his fire drinking brandy, he mulled it over while he prepared for bed, stripping off his clothes, brushing his teeth, washing his face. Mattie liked him—liked his company, his lovemaking—but did she love him?
Could
she love him?