Wicked, My Love (12 page)

So, there was more to his dislike of Harding than the railroad issue. A woman stood between them. The viscount kept his eyes safe from Isabella's, his head slightly bowed. She felt a weakening in her heart for him, an odd protectiveness for her old enemy. No one could hurt Randall but her. Everyone else had to love him. That was the natural order of things.

“But this one…” The housekeeper began circling Isabella. “She needs some help, I agree, but—” The woman's hand shot out and patted Isabella's waist.

She jumped back. “Don't touch me!”

“—I'll wager she has a lovely figure underneath t
his mess.”

Randall winked. “Oh, she does.” He picked up his housekeeper's copy of
Poor
to
Prosperity.

“How dare you!” Isabella snatched a newspaper from the table and threw it at him. He held up her book, shielding himself from the oncoming paper. “I'm leaving,” she announced. “I would rather buy clothes from a ragman. And…and…stop reading th
at book.”

“Why, she's a regular lioness,” the housekeeper cried, unfazed. “Rrwwoer.” She giggled. “Just let me get rid of this unfortunate bonnet and see what can be done with her mane.”

The woman snatched one of Isabella's ribbons and, in an easy move, untied her hat and pulled it free. Isabella's rebellious hair, seeing its chance to escape, leaped from its remaining pins and tumbled around her shoulders.

The housekeeper caught her breath. “Look at t
hose tresses.”

“Hand me my hat back, please.” Isabella yanked it from Mrs. Perdita and shoved it on her head. “I'm really leaving now!” She stomped to the hall.

“Wait!” Mrs. Perdita chased after her. “I've never seen such lovely, luscious locks. I know
exactly
what to do with them.”

Isabella's hand gripped the doorknob. She hesitated. “Y-you do?”

Could the woman really do something with the tangled weeds growing from her head?

“You should wear it high,” Mrs. Perdita suggested, letting her hand flow from the top of her head and down her neck. “And let it fall in long tendrils to accent your graceful cheekbones and beautiful lips.”

Graceful cheekbones? Beautiful lips?
Is
Mrs. Perdita nearly blind too?
“My—my hair doesn't do tendrils or spirals or curls or anything except what you see.”

The woman's eyes narrowed. Her high, sweet voice dropped an octave. “It will,” she growled, like a general commanding his troops.

Again, Isabella hesitated. If she had any sense, she would shout her outrage at Randall, making a huge scene, reminding him that she was a gently bred woman and he had no right tricking her into his den of
amour
.

But could Mrs. Perdita really make her hair fall in lovely tendrils?

“Very well,” she heard herself say. Inside her, another voice waged war.
I
can't believe what you just said. How many servants have tried and failed to subdue your hair?

“I have a wonderful feeling about this one,” the housekeeper called to Lord Randall as she clasped Isabella's hand. “So much better than that dreadful Cecelia. I just need to educate her a bit, and she will suit quite nicely.”

“A little taming of the shrew,” he replied from t
he parlor.

“I am not a shrew,” Isabella protested, stepping forward so she could get a view of Randall, who was now reclined on the sofa, legs crossed, one hand behind his head, the other holding her book. “And I told you not to read that. Put it down this instant. It's for women.”

“But poor Georgina's wayward husband's ship just went down, and she has seven children to feed, including little blind Nellie,” he cried. “I must find out how Miss St. Vincent would wisely invest the meager bit of the Lloyds' money. So brilliant and wise, that Miss St. Vincent. You should be more like her! Well, except not rickety and withered.”

“Pfff,” Mrs. Perdita whispered to Isabella. “Don't listen to his teasing. When I'm done with you, he will do anything you ask, dearie.
Anything
. Just leave your gloves and bonnet down here.”

Mrs. Perdita led her to a chamber on the second floor. Still no exotic Arabian drapes or beaded pillows in sight, but there was a large canopy bed covered in a deep burgundy spread.
Is
this
where
Randall
“takes” his mistresses?
Involuntarily, the memory of his tongue swirling against hers, his thumb flicking across her wet breast, flared in her imagination. Except this time she was under him, reclining on that bed.

“I just want to remind you that I don't care to be Lord Randall's mistress,” she said, more for her own benefit than Mrs. Perdita's.

“Well, you should,” the housekeeper replied. “He needs one. Cecelia treated him atrociously. My poor boy is always working late and worried about this country. He is far too serious.”

“Serious? Lord Randall?”

Mrs. Perdita flicked her wrist. “Oh, pooh, he will tease like all men, but behind the laughter, he is quite serious, sensitive, and vulnerable. All men are vulnerable creatures, more than women. We are resilient, doing what we must to survive. Read that Miss St. Vincent's book. She understands.”

Isabella made a strangled, humming noise.
I
can
assure
you
that
Miss
St. Vincent doesn't understand people at all. And men baffle her, especially your employer. He is the most confusing one of them all.

“My dear, will you help me?” Mrs. Perdita asked. “My knees are doing so poorly these days. Under the bed is a trunk. If you pull it out, open it, and kindly remove the books on the top—I put them there to trick Cecelia because she was always complaining about Lord Randall reading late into the night. Below them are clothes that you may use. You and Cecelia are almost the same size, but you have more curves. He will like that—something to hold on to in bed.” She released a few bubbling giggles as she crossed to the vanity table. She opened the drawer and started pulling out hairpins, brushes, and bottles.

Meanwhile, Isabella was frozen by the bed. She couldn't wear clothes from Randall's former mistress, but she was aching to see how he adorned his lady.

“Well, go ahead, my dear,” the housekeeper said.

Isabella obeyed, sliding out the trunk, opening it, and removing books of speeches and old parliamentary sessions. Below the literature lay a silk petticoat trimmed in fine lace. And beneath that, even more silk—exquisitely made gowns in luminous shades of blue and red. She couldn't wear these clothes; aside from the taint of having been worn by an ex-mistress, they were for beautiful ladies, not her. Still, she couldn't contain her curiosity and dug even further, pulling out a lace chemise so fragile and beautiful it looked like it had been created by aesthetically sensitive spiders.

“That's from Brussels,” the housekeeper said. “Cecelia never wore it. Complained that it didn't flatter her. But it would look lovely on your curves and ample bosom. Imagine how you could tease and torture him if you tied him to the bedposts and danced before him in that.” She emitted a few more giggles.

Isabella didn't understand. Why would she want to tie Randall to a bedpost? Wouldn't that defeat the purpose? How could he possibly kiss her body beneath the lace and do things with his manly part if he w
ere bo
und?

“Now, come sit and let's style your lovely hair.”

Isabella dropped the gown and rushed over, desperate for diversion from the visions of lace and lust. She sat and studied her reflection in the vanity mirror, but didn't see any lovely hair—just her usual recalcitrant mop. Mrs. Perdita splashed something from a blue bottle onto the bristles of a silver brush. “Why don't you remove your glasses and rest your eyes. How they must burn under those heavy lenses.”

“I can't see without them.”

“Oh, but you don't need to see right now. As you might say to milord in bed, ‘just close your eyes, relax, and let me do all the work.'” More giggles. The housekeeper pulled out a long strand of Isabella's hair and brushed it. “Of course, I'm not being wicked when I say it.”

Isabella cautiously removed her spectacles, folded them, and set them in her lap. With her outer world a blur, she sank into her mind. What was she doing in a man's pied-à-terre, ogling his ex-mistress's undergarments? She needed to leave immediately. But a lurid desire to know more about this other Randall held her rapt.

“We don't have time to put your hair in papers or heat up the irons, so I'll style it in a nice, easy coiffure that we can use when he has stayed the night, and you must go out the next morning. Just look at your hair now. Even though you two wildly frolicked all night, you don't need to advertise your abandoned lovemaking. You must be more discreet.”

“You mean my hair made people think that he and I…that we…you know?”

“Come now, don't be shy. We both know how this works.”

One
of
us
doesn't.
Nonetheless, Isabella kept her mouth shut, paralyzed in her seat with dark curiosity.

“I don't know what men you've experienced before my boy, but he's not like others. He treats his ladies with respect and tenderness, draping them in jewels and finery.” Isabella felt a pin slide along her scalp. “You have to understand his work in Parliament is the most important thing to him. It will keep him away many nights and out the door early in the mornings when you just want another cuddle. He has obligations that you must respect.”

Mrs. Perdita was describing a man she didn't know. She made Randall sound responsible and dedicated. Almost attractive—
very
attractive
—to her. “I don't…I don't want to be Lord Randall's mistress,” she managed weakly.

“Oh, but he likes you. He is just wild for you.”

He
isn't. He couldn't be.
He liked those other women, the lovely, shiny, perfect, younger kind. Again, Isabella's gaze roved to the blurry bed. She remembered listening to his heart under her ear, his comforting rhythm and his strong, warm arm holding her snug in the train station. How easy it would have been to raise her head and kiss his lips, let her fingers undo his shirt. “No!” she cried, trying to hold back the tide of her lurid thoughts.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Perdita countered. “He doesn't know the extent of his feelings yet. He just has an inkling. All it would take is a little sign from you.”

“W-what kind of sign?”
Stop! Stop asking questions. Stop imagining you and Randall and that lacy chemise. Why are you torturing yourself?

“Well, I'll put out candles tonight and you must don that dear little lace chemise. Then, when you're alone, you can slowly undress him, whispering to him how much you desire him, how wonderful he makes you feel when he holds you. Cecelia never understood that these little things are the most important ones.”

“Just talking to him?” Isabella asked in a tight voice, because at this moment she didn't want to talk anymore, but rip off his clothes and “take him.” Now.

“Oh, yes, my lord is an emotional, sensitive, and intelligent man. To captivate him, you must seduce his mind and body. Whisper in his ear your wildest fantasies of him as you undo his collar. Remark how powerful he is as you caress his nipples—they are almost as sensitive as yours, my dear.”

Isabella released a high squeaking sound, shaking the chair, remembering just how sensitive they felt under his thumb.

The housekeeper gently separated another lock and slid her brush down its length. “Tell him how you imagine pleasuring him every minute of the day just before you unbutton his trousers and take him into your mouth.”

Isabella gasped. Did Mrs. Perdita just tell her to put Randall's manly dangling part in her mouth? Judith left out
that
significant part in her lecture.

“And, if you are a good girl, he might just give you a little wiggle back.”

“A wiggle?” Judith didn't say anything about a wiggle either. Isabella should have known her companion would get the details wrong.

“You poor dear. Have you never had a proper wiggle?”

Isabella wanted to lie, a breezy “Yes, of course. Proper wiggles every day.” Instead, she stammered the sad truth. “No.”

Mrs. Perdita sighed a knowing “ohhh,” that ran on for several uncomfortable seconds. “Well then,” she said. “I shall leave that for Lord Randall to remedy. But mind you, don't wake the neighbors in the height of your wanton climaxes.” She broke into her g
iggles again.

No!
Isabella wanted to scream.
Tell
me! Enough with this mystery. Can't you see I'm about to come undone? I need to have one of those blessed climaxes.

“There now, put on your glasses and tell me what you think of your new coiffure.”

Isabella cautiously obeyed, suddenly nervous.
You're just going to be disappointed
, she told herself.
You
were
stupid
to
agree
to
this.
But her mane, which just minutes before had resembled a wiry, tangled bush, had been styled into shiny, tame puffs with tiny braids running between. One long lock flowed from the top of her head and curled about on the side of her neck. “That's—that's my hair! My hair did that?”

“Do you like it?”

Never mind the woman's scandalous job in Randall's pied-à-terre, her history, or her shocking conversation; Isabella adored her. “It's gorgeous,” she burst. “You have such a talent. Women would pay a great deal for…for your help.” Isabella saw the entire plan in her head. “You could be an advisor to ladies on their appearance and other relevant, um, love things.”

The woman's face lit up. “Such as I could give them practical advice on how to please and tempt their man.” She nudged Isabella and winked. “Or how their man should please them.”

“All confidential, of course. While Lord Randall is busy or hasn't a mistress, you could create a nice little nest egg that you could invest in Argus Gas Light at four percent.”

Mrs. Perdita clapped and bounced on her feet. “It's just like in that book
Poor
to
Prosperous
. You must have read it too?”

“I'm—I'm a little familiar with it.”

“Hmmm,” the woman said, as she put away a hairbrush. “I should do as Miss St. Vincent says and write a plan for my little business; think of my potential customers. Not just mistresses, but married people because they want the most help but are afraid to ask. Many men think the pleasure is all theirs and that their wives should just lie there. Then they wonder why their spouses are angry and frustrated with them all the time. I tell you, you want one of those sweet, angelic wives who adores you? Well, sir, you have to keep her pleasured.” She wagged her finger at Isabella. “But you needn't worry about that with Lord Randall. I understand that he knows exactly what to do. Such a thoughtful man.”

Isabella's gaze roved over to the bed again, her skin heating at the shocking scenes playing out in her mind—slowly undressing, tying to bedposts for some mysterious reason, and wiggles, whatever they were. Her frustrated body ached. And just a floor below waited a man who knew
exactly
what
to
do
about it.

“Now let's find you something nice to wear,” Mrs. Perdita said, but the only thing Isabella wanted to don was that lacy chemise and then tiptoe downstairs. “My dear, root about in that trunk until you find a gown the color of twilight. I shall turn you into a regular moonlight seductress.”

***

Thirty minutes later, the regular moonlight seductress clutched the banister. Her sleeves sat slightly off her shoulders and formed a line that made a dramatic, breath-catching plunge about the bodice. The hard bones of the tiny corset were rigid, holding her waist in tight and pushing her breasts high. A cough or a bit of laughter and her nipples might pop out. Even so, she never felt lovelier in her life. She shivered at what Randall might think or where he might look.

“I'm a moonlight seductress,” she reminded herself. Inside, another little voice whispered back,
No, you're an idiot. What woman visits a stockbroker in this silly dress? He will think, “No wonder the addle-brained moonlight seductress bought fraudulent stock.”

***

Randall lay on the sofa reading Isabella's book. Her volume wasn't weighed down with the usual moral preaching that accompanied ladies' writings. After wading through the bombastic stories, he concluded that the solutions were as straightforward and analytical as Isabella herself. He enjoyed basking in the landscape of her mind, so different from his. His brain was like a cluttered attic, everything shoved together with no rhyme or reason, from which he could pull out dazzling words and shiny objects as needed to persuade an audience. She used cool, thoughtful logic, taking in a situation, stripping it to essentials, and applying that thing he feared most at Cambridge: math. What he called “how things were,” she called “normal distribution.” What he called “people's choices,” she called “the unknown factors.” How different they were. She needed time and distance to shear off all the pesky human sentiment and nuances that confounded her in order to find the numbers and patterns underneath. Meanwhile, he loved swimming in the swirling, irrational seas of emotion and passion, seeing no order or meaning beneath anything. When things got too quiet or unsure, he needed those pesky, unpredictable people around him and to make a huge wave.

Like now.

And unlike Isabella, he hated to be alone, so he took advantage of her weaknesses: her inability to think on her feet and decipher people's emotions. What he was doing was selfish. He couldn't take her as a mistress, and he surely couldn't marry her, so why had he kissed her? Why did he want her to sleep against him? Why did he bring her to his flat where he kept his mistresses? Was he addled with unacknowledged passion and desire for her? Or desperate for female contact? Or just scared and wanting comfort—any comfort? For a man with a reputation for reading people, he didn't understand his own mind. All he knew was that she had been gone for over forty-five minutes and he was feeling restless.