Wife Errant (20 page)

“Did you not? With two ladies to entertain, it is not to be wondered at. I just arrived. The butler was busy, and I did not have myself announced.”

“Lord James is going to call on me in London,”
Esmée said, unwittingly revealing that she had already had words with him.

Revel and James exchanged an amused look.

Marchant drew out his watch and said, “Well, it is getting pretty late.”
When he noticed the crown in place, to give the lie to his tale, he covered it with his thumb, but not before Revel’s sharp eyes had seen it.

“Indeed it is. We shall leave you in peace now, Mrs. Gardener,”
Revel said. “I wish you every happiness in London. And you, James,”
he added, with a lifted brow.

“Do drop in when you are in town, Revel,”
James said. “Always room for one more at Berkeley Square.”

“Not for long, though,”
Revel said, but he said it in a low voice and with a smile.

Mrs. Gardener went to the door to speed the three parting guests.

It was a clear, cold night. Moonlight silvered the cobblestones and a cutting wind blew a few stray snowflakes through the still air.

“Thank God you have the carriage, Tess,”
Marchant said. “You have the bracelet?”

She handed it to him. “You have some explaining to do, Papa,”
she said.

“Not in this filthy wind. Meet us at the Pelican, Revel. Or will you go with Revel, Tess?”

“I shall go with you, Papa,”
she said, and marched to their carriage.

“Papa, what were you doing there?”
she demanded as soon as they were alone.

“Why, I went to get your mama’s bracelet, to be sure, same as you, Tess. What should I be doing at Mrs. Gardener’s?”

“Revel said
he
went to pick up the bracelet.”

Invention was not yet at an end. Marchant searched his mind and said, “He was to go with me, in case your mama did not like my going alone, but he was late. I was so eager to have the matter sewn up that I went along without him.”

“It seems very strange,”
she said, dissatisfied.

“What seems a deal stranger to me, miss, is your going to such a house. That was completely uncalled for.”

“If you had to live at Bartlett Street with Mama in the boughs you would not ask why I went.”

“How is she?”
he asked in a softer voice.

“How do you think she would be, when you have been carrying on with that woman? This must stop, Papa. She has had more than enough of your chasing after lightskirts. If it happens again, she shan’t have you back. She really means it this time. You have hurt her very badly, and Dulcie, too. And me, Papa,”
she added, with a wounded look.

“It won’t happen again, my dear. I am through with all that. You’ll see. And now let us speak of your future, my dear. You have done pretty well, nabbing young Revel.”

“I have not nabbed him, and don’t you
dare
suggest to him that he must marry me.”

“I suggest it? Did I not hear him with my own ears tell Esmée he plans to marry you, if you’ll have him?”

“Did he say that?”
Tess asked in a trembling voice.

“I heard him plain as day, when I was
—harumph—
looking for my crown. Found it in my pocket, after all that searching. Heh, heh.”

Tess’s bemused state let him get away with that awful plumper. They met Revel at the Pelican, but there no longer seemed any necessity to go inside. Reconciling with his wife was more important to Lyle than packing up his belongings and paying the reckoning. He would do. that tomorrow. They decided to drive directly to Bartlett Street.

Marchant said, “Just leave me alone in the carriage, Tess, so that I may work up a pretty little speech to make to your mama. You can go with Lord Revel.”

“We’ll give you some time alone before we go in,”
Revel said.

He directed his groom to drive west, toward the Crescent Gardens. While they drove through the city, Revel said, “There was something very strange about that visit to Esmée’s. I felt I had fallen into a French farce, with people popping out from nowhere. I fully expected a screen to fall over, revealing your mama and Dulcie.”

“Except there was not any screen. Did Papa ask you to go with him?”

“I had no idea he was going. Nor that he was there, hiding behind the sofa. What can account for it? And James ... Where the deuce did
he
pop up from?”

“He did not come in at the front door. He came from the other end of the hall.”

Revel automatically assumed James came from the bedchamber and was impressed with his cousin’s celerity. “Powdering his nose, perhaps,”
he said facetiously.

“Papa said you and he were to go to Esmée’s together, but you were late, so he went on alone. I do think he went to ask Esmée for the bracelet, though. I shan’t pester him with questions. I think he really means to reform this time.”

“And if he does not, I shan’t pull his chestnuts from the fire again. Let him smoke in the private little hell of his own devising.”

“What do you mean,
you
shan’t pull his chestnuts from the fire? I don’t see why it was necessary for you to be asking favors of Esmée. Why were you there, Revel, if Papa did not ask you to go?”
She gasped as realization dawned. “You were putting a diamond bracelet on her wrist when I came in! You gave it to her!”

“So you noticed that. I thought as much. You were looking hard enough. And you think I gave it to her. Actually, I did, but—”

“You, too! Oh, really, Revel. You are as bad as Papa!”

“My dear idiot!”

“Don’t call me an idiot again!”

“You
are
an idiot, if you think what you are thinking ... I mean what I think you are thinking.”

“A lady is not given diamonds for no reason,”
she said angrily.

“I had a very good reason ... to get your papa’s bracelet back. I bought it for an exchange.”

“But why should
you
pay?”

“Because, dear genius, your papa’s pockets were to let, and I wanted to have the matter finished.”

“Why were you kissing her wrist?”

“Because it was there.”
Her chin thrust forward in annoyance. “So were her lips, but I was not kissing them,”
he pointed out.

“It was all a hum that she would not take gifts from her patrons.”

“Perhaps she felt that accepting the bracelet would nudge your father into a proposal. Or perhaps she just decided her standards were too high. I daresay standards do tend to lower as a lady’s age rises.”

“It certainly looked as if you were making up to her,”
Tess said, unconvinced by his speech.

“How can you think I was making up to Esmée when I am in love with you?”
he said angrily.

The declaration robbed her of argument. She looked shyly at him, and said in a thrush-like voice her mama would have approved, “Are you really, Revel?”

“I must be. I can’t eat; I can’t sleep. I keep seeing you at Revel Hall, at the foot of my table, scolding me. It must be love.”

“It sounds more like the megrims,”
she said doubtfully. Yet similar sensations had been bedeviling her, and she knew she was hopelessly in love with Revel.

“There is only one way to be sure,”
he said, pulling her into his arms. By the wan moonlight, he gazed at her upturned face a long moment before lowering his lips to kiss her. How had he lived next door to Tess for decades without realizing she was the perfect wife for him? It shone forth now, blinding him with its inevitability.

His heart swelled, and he was suffused with a golden rush of tenderness as the kiss deepened. He knew he had found something precious, something too rare and valuable to risk by any future dalliance with lightskirts. How could men be such savages as to hurt the thing they loved and cherished?

He kissed her long and passionately, as if he would never let her go.

Oh, yes, it was surely love. When a man took the idiotic notion life was not worth living without that one special person, he was in love. Eventually he lifted his head and gazed at her, while a bemused smile tugged at his lips. “Well, I think that settles it.
I
certainly hear bells ringing,”
he said softly. “The music of the spheres.”

“It’s the night watch, actually,”
she said. Echoes of “Ten of the clock, and all’s well”
came through the window.

“That is one of the many things I love about you, Tess Marchant. You always keep one foot firmly planted on the earth,”
he said in a voice choked with emotion.

“Do I?”
she asked from the comfort of his shoulder. “How very odd. I feel as though I am floating on air.”

“We call it cloud nine,”
he said, and kissed her again.

**

At Bartlett Street, the Marchants were also on cloud nine. “You did not have to do that, Lyle,”
Lou said, locking the diamond bracelet on to her wrist. “Good gracious, as though I cared about a silly old bracelet. It was just your giving it to her that hurt me.”

“Giving diamonds to Esmée Gardener? Nothing of the sort. She just helped me select the thing.”

“You already knew which one I wanted, dear,”
she reminded her beloved.

“Oh, very well then, there was another reason. Esmée has an in with the fellow who runs the shop. She told me she could get a discount.”

This was a perfectly feasible excuse and was not questioned further, except for, “How much discount?”

“Ten percent,”
he lied promptly.

“Why did you give it to her in the Pump Room? Admit you did that to make me jealous.”

“Fair is fair, Lou. I was jealous as a green cow about Lord James. He has taken up with Mrs. Gardener, by the by.”

“You never mean it! Now there is a perfect pair. They will lead each other a merry chase.”

“Serves them right,”
he said severely. “Isn’t it about time Revel was bringing Tess home?”

“If it is to be a match, he may keep her out till midnight tonight, with my blessing, for he knows I have always been a very strict mother in the past. You may be sure that had a deal to do with his offering for her. Those rakes always choose a well-behaved lady when it comes to marriage. Imagine, Lyle. Tess a countess.”
She clapped her hands in delight.

“Dulcie will be a duchess, certainly.”

“And Tess was courted in Bath, like me. There is romance in the air in this town, I swear.”

Marchant thought silence the best reply to that troublesome speech.

Soon Revel and Tess entered, wearing the telltale smiles of two people in love. Revel’s asking Marchant for his daughter’s hand was a mere formality. The gentlemen had more interesting things to discuss. The whoops of laughter coming from the study as Marchant confessed his predicament behind the sofa were taken for paternal joy by the fond mama, and went unheard by Tess, who had soared in her mind to cloud nine, where she was above mere mortal considerations.

**

At Bridewell Lane, Lord James was also making headway with his inamorata. “Sorry I stumbled in on that fracas,”
he said. “I was beginning to think you had forgotten all about me.”

“Forget you, Lord James?”
she asked, smiling tenderly. “I thought they would never leave. But we are alone now.”
Her dark eyes looked an invitation.

“I did not mean to stay so long, on the first call. I ought to be running along, too. I daresay Revel can put me up for the night. I have given up my room at the hotel.”
He peered hopefully at Esmée for her reaction.

She smiled softly. “It is only ten o’clock. Have another drink, and keep me company awhile.”

She poured her brandy. Neither of them had any intention of Lord James sleeping anywhere but at Bridewell Lane. What did she care what a bunch of Bath quizzes thought of her now, when she was about to take London?

Lord James was worried about how he would later explain having to leave the family mansion on Berkeley Square. Esmée, who knew perfectly well who owned the house, was only concerned to be married from that prestigious address and launch her career amid the ton with one fine party.

“Just a small one then,”
James said, and allowed her to fill his glass.

Copyright © 1992 by Joan Smith

Originally published by Fawcett Crest (ISBN 044922015X)

Electronically published in 2014 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.