Lady Windermere's Lover (11 page)

Chapter 11

D
amian leafed through a dozen miniatures, each about a foot tall, depicting soaring Eastern palaces, marble arches, and exotic gardens. The graphic nature of the central action of the paintings contrasted with the elegance of their settings. Amid divans and cushions painted in vibrant colors enriched with gold leaf, dark-skinned, almond-eyed beauties disported, pleasured by the personal weapons of bearded warriors. Portrayed with the greatest artistry, the focus of each scene was the same: penis in vagina. Or in one case, mouth. The positions varied, as did the backgrounds, but the point was the same: to illustrate the act of love and incite the viewer to participate.

Damian was feeling quite excited, an inconvenience since he was due at a meeting with Radcliffe in half an hour. Not that he’d had the chance to forward the wooing of his wife, who was still indisposed. For two days she’d barely left her room and was very ill indeed, according to the reports from her maid when he punctiliously inquired after her. The monthly condition took some women that way, he had heard somewhere.

He’d unpacked the portfolio to give to Lady Belinda, as promised. An adventurous lady, she had initiated him into some of the delights portrayed therein and would doubtless be happy to try any that had somehow eluded her experience. Damian looked back over their affair and felt a measure of disgust, both with her and with himself. As a lustful youth he’d accepted what she had to offer; his mature self recognized that he didn’t much like the lady.

Then a Radcliffe footman had delivered a note changing the location of his rendezvous. Since he was summoned to the Foreign Office instead of the Radcliffe’s Grosvenor Square house, there was no point taking the drawings with him after all. He set out for Whitehall at a brisk walk, enjoying the nip of frost that cut through the smoke and odors of London.

He reached his destination in a suitably sober frame of mind and was shown into an elegantly furnished sitting room. The holders of high government places knew how to make themselves comfortable. Sir Richard, short and impeccably dressed in a manner appropriate to his sixty-odd years, arose from a desk that was almost certainly the work of a famous French
ébéniste.

“Come in, my dear boy, and tell me how you are enjoying being back in London.”

“Very well, thank you.”

They settled in front of the fire, beneath a beaming portrait of a young King George III.

“Not missing the warmer climes of Persia?” Radcliffe asked with a faint whiff of distaste. When Damian first turned down the Persian mission it had been on Sir Richard’s advice. The latter claimed the posting outside Europe would do nothing to advance Damian’s career and had urged him to find a wife and establish himself in London, while waiting for a less distant ambassadorship to come available. He had been distinctly annoyed when Damian changed his mind at the last minute.

“As it happens, it often snows in Tehran.”

“I leave the details of conditions on the ground to the envoys.” Having dispensed with the weather, the topic that no conversation in England could proceed without, Radcliffe got down to business. “How are you getting on with Denford?”

“I wasn’t aware that you knew about that business.”

“Grenville has no secrets from me.” Radcliffe no doubt hoped that was so. Damian guessed that the foreign secretary played his cards close to his chest when dealing with a man who aspired to replace him in the near future. Damian’s own ambitions were, of course, for the longer term.

Whatever the relations between Grenville and Radcliffe, since the latter was cognizant of the negotiations with Denford over the Alt-Brandenburg matter, Damian was glad for the opportunity to consult his mentor. “What do you think of the business, sir? Will the sale of the art collection really seal the alliance with the prince? It seems tenuous to me.”

“Your instincts are always excellent, Windermere.” Damian’s chest swelled at the nod of approval. “Prince Heinrich’s demands are capricious and who can say what will finally persuade him to place his seal on the treaty. But we must try everything and it never hurts to have an extra string to one’s bow.”

“We can’t even be certain that Denford has the Falleron collection.”

“Our intelligence indicates otherwise.”

“I’d like to know about that.”

Radcliffe waved a sere but well-tended finger at him. “We don’t reveal our sources to every member of the diplomatic corps.”

Considering the sacrifice to his feelings that the pursuit of Denford demanded, Damian thought he deserved some leeway. But he knew from experience that Sir Richard was a wily old dog who would say and reveal exactly what he wanted and no more.

“Tell me,” Radcliffe continued. “Have you spoken to Denford?”

“I invited him to dinner. He denies possession of the pictures.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Probably not.”

Radcliffe’s thin smile graced a face sleek with satisfaction. “Aha! I knew you were the right man for the job and I told Grenville so. You were wasted in the uncivilized Levant.”

“I’m obliged to you, sir.”

“You know Denford well enough to see through his lies.”

“I knew Julian Fortescue, as he was then, when we were mere youths. I haven’t been on terms of friendship with him for years.”

Radcliffe stood up. “I haven’t offered you refreshment. I like a glass of hock in the morning.” Damian accepted the offer, sipping the fruity German wine as he waited for Radcliffe to get to the point.

“How old are you now, Windermere? Twenty-eight? And Denford about the same. Old enough to get over a youthful quarrel. That, for the sake of your country, is what I expect you to do.”

Even to his mentor, a man who had been like a father to him when relations with his own sire had been strained beyond mending, Damian hesitated to confide the present conflict with Denford, one that couldn’t be attributed to youthful folly. He didn’t wish to confess himself a cuckold, and he wanted to protect his wife. There was no need for Sir Richard to know what she had done.

And yet he remembered Lady Belinda’s amusement when he failed to recognize Cynthia at Drury Lane. She knew. If she knew, Radcliffe knew. And if Radcliffe had proposed Damian for the task of persuading Denford, Damian had been manipulated in a way that left a nasty taste in his mouth.

“Very handy that Denford is living next door to you. Couldn’t be more convenient. And then there’s his friendship with your wife.”

“I beg your pardon? What can you mean?”

“Why nothing.” Radcliffe responded to Damian’s sharp tone with a bland smile. “It is common knowledge that Lady Windermere is a member of the Townsend set, that disreputable and no doubt highly amusing group that you yourself once belonged to. She and Denford have been seen together all over town. Not surprising that a beautiful young woman left alone by her husband should seek entertainment. Another unfortunate result of your Persian adventure. You should ask her to exert her influence over her
friend
.” It was impossible to miss the stress on the last word.

“My wife is not aware of my diplomatic work.”

“Make her so, my dear boy. Lady Belinda and I are as one when it comes to affairs and I find her of inestimable use.”

He imagined encouraging Cynthia to discover Julian’s secrets over pillow talk, and the idea made him absolutely furious.

“I can manage Denford on my own,” he said firmly.

“Make sure you do, dear boy. It isn’t the first time I’ve placed my reputation behind your competence and you haven’t yet failed me yet. Drink up and let’s proceed to business.”

“Has the last quarter of an hour been small talk, then?”

“No need for sarcasm. I wish to speak to you about the Spitalfields Act.”

“I told Mr. Joseph Chorley, my wife’s uncle, that I would oppose it. I don’t see what it has to do with the Foreign Office.”

“I have other interests, as do many members of the government, even to the highest levels.”

“Are you in favor of the act? I’m afraid I don’t know as much as I should, but I am, of course, eager to hear your views.”

“I’m with your uncle-in-law—Chorley, is it?—in this matter. Renewal of wage protection for the silk workers is nothing but injurious to the wealth of the nation.”

“Then we have no difference.”

“I had feared Lady Windermere might have convinced you of the opposite view. In this case I shall be glad to see her excluded from your affairs.”

The topic had come up at dinner and Cynthia hadn’t said anything, beyond a question about women’s wages. He thought it proper for her to care about the welfare of the gentler sex, and even more proper that she had deferred to George Lewis’s explanation.

“Why on earth should Lady Windermere have an opinion?” he said. “If she did, she would surely listen to her uncle.”

“So I would hope. But the Townsend set was always notorious for its radical views. I fear Lady Windermere may have fallen under the influence of those artists who used to frequent Mrs. Townsend’s salon.”

Damian thought of Oliver Bream’s single-minded pursuit of solid refreshment. “I’m not too worried.”

“And what of such firebrands as Denford? He spoke well of the French Revolution long after it was either fashionable or wise. If Lady Windermere should speak to you of supporting the act, you may be sure it comes from him. Your, goal, my dear boy, is to persuade Denford to produce those paintings and counter any influence he may exert in other areas.”

In the seven years since Radcliffe had taken him under his wing and guided his career, Damian had never been so out of sympathy with the man. The whole business made him feel grubby. Being polite to Julian had seemed possible, barely, when Ryland had first handed him the task. Ignoring the fact that Denford was involved with his wife had seemed bearable, just, when he’d regarded Cynthia with indifference.

Whatever his feeling for his wife now, they were far from indifferent. His stomach roiled at the very notion of her intimacy with Denford. If he’d ever thought himself a sophisticated man of the world in a fashionable marriage where fidelity came second to statecraft, he wasn’t any longer.

“I don’t want to deal with Denford.”

Radcliffe frowned at this rash statement, blurted out without forethought. “I’m disappointed to see you lose control of yourself. I thought I had trained you better. How often have I told you that revealing your feelings is to give the other party an advantage.”

Damian swallowed and tried to present his case rationally. “The whole business with the pictures seems a long shot. Surely there must be another way of getting at the Prince of Alt-Brandenburg. Or of persuading Denford, for that matter.”

“You forget yourself,” Sir Richard said in tones of deep displeasure. “It is not for you to question the judgment of your superiors as to the value of your mission. Can you so easily dismiss your duty to your country and your own future usefulness as an agent of the Foreign Office? On a personal level, let me remind you that seven years ago you came begging for my help to establish yourself and recover from the consequences of your youthful folly. Walk away now, and you let me down. You also show that you have learned nothing. Think what your father would say if he was still alive.”

Radcliffe had found the one argument he couldn’t ignore.

Chapter 12

R
ecovered from her indisposition, Cynthia spent the day in her parlor with Oliver and their sketchbooks. He was planning a series of giant canvases depicting the women of Troy, to be executed in oils just as soon as he found a wealthy patron with large walls. She couldn’t remember precisely what philosophical point Helen, Hecuba, and Andromache were supposed to illustrate. She had, however, told him quite firmly that Beaulieu Manor was far too small for such a grand production.

“Are you quite sure?” he coaxed. “Look at this composition. I’ve managed to combine the sacrifice of Hector’s and Andromache’s daughter and the murder of their son in one painting.”

“For God’s sake, Oliver,” she said with unwonted acerbity. “Could you possibly come up with a more gruesome subject?” She was in no state to find any kind of nobility in the death of children. “Why don’t you paint something cheerful for a change, then perhaps you’d actually sell a picture.”

“Doesn’t Windermere have another estate, in the north somewhere? I shall speak to him about commissioning my Trojan women for that house.”

“I don’t know much about Amblethorpe,” she replied, “but I doubt Windermere would be interested.”

“I don’t see why not. He used to be a painter himself.”

“Who told you that?”

“I don’t know. Just an impression I had. If he had to give up his own art, it stands to reason he’d be interested in other people’s.”

Setting aside the illogic of Oliver’s hopeful conclusion, Cynthia was intrigued by another possible insight into her husband’s character. “I don’t think you can be right, Oliver,” she said shaking her head. “Someone would have mentioned it to me.” She returned to her drawing of the new kitten. “Stay still, Pudge. Why can’t you go to sleep?”

Oliver looked with disfavor on the little creature, who was chasing a pencil around the floor. “Just as bad as dogs. I hate painting animals, and for some reason old ladies always want to be pictured with their lapdogs.”

“Poor Oliver.” Cynthia smiled at what was an old complaint. “It’s a hard life being a working artist.”

“I’m hungry,” he said, to no one’s surprise.

“Give me five minutes to finish this and I’ll ring for tea.”

Oliver restlessly examined the ornaments on the mantelpiece, then, thankfully, wandered out of the room. She could hear him rummaging in the library across the passage, a room she rarely entered. Whoever had purchased the books did not share her taste and she preferred to borrow novels from the subscription library. He came back into the parlor carrying a small portfolio of the kind used to carry collections of drawings and prints.

“What do you have there?” she asked.

“A most interesting collection. They are Indian or Persian, I think. I’ve occasionally seen such things but never had the opportunity to examine them up close. I wonder how they mixed the colors. It looks like some kind of distemper. The gold is very finely applied.” He squinted and pointed at the richly gilt details of a Moorish arch, apparently oblivious to the fact that, beneath the arch, an almost naked woman appeared to be about to swallow a man’s private member.

Cynthia shrieked, blushed, and closed her eyes. “Do you think you should be showing pictures like this to a lady, Oliver? Really?”

His boyish features creased in concern. “I’m sorry, Cynthia. I suppose they are a little warm.”

“A little warm” was one way of putting it, “totally indecent” another. “Put them away at once,” she ordered.

Oliver obeyed, but while he finished off a plate of cakes, her thoughts kept drifting away. Having driven him out of the house more abruptly than usual, she stole into the library. Dreading interruption, whether from a servant or, heaven forbid, her husband, who had been absent all day, she leafed through the richly painted parchments, eyes ready to pop out of her head. Page after page depicted men and women in amorous congress in the most blatantly graphic fashion—and in ways utterly unlike her own experience of intimate relations.

Her aunt Lavinia Chorley had described the marital act as horrifying and painful and recommended she close her eyes and try to think of something else until the dreadful business was over. Though Cynthia had been hopeful things would go better for her with the young and handsome Windermere, she was nonetheless terrified as she waited in bed the night of her wedding.

He’d entered the room, blown out the candle, and got into bed with her. No kissing, of course, but he had, she supposed, made some effort to show affection. He’d gathered her in his arms and she had enjoyed that, though she was far too bashful to relax or return his embrace. When he stroked her breasts she’d been utterly embarrassed, having no notion that those feminine appurtenances would actually be touched by gentlemen. But that insult to her privacy was nothing to what followed, when he raised her nightgown to her waist. She’d felt she would surely die of mortification. Wishing only to be done with it, she’d counted the slow, agonizing, endless seconds when he’d settled between her legs and taken her, quickly and painfully. At last, after he made a curious noise between a cry and a grunt and she felt an alien rush of warmth deep inside her, he rolled off her. Another cursory embrace, a quick kiss on the temple, a muttered “Thank you,” and he was gone.

What he’d thanked her for she didn’t know, because he showed no more evidence of pleasure than she had. In the light of the next morning she’d found it quite impossible to meet his eye. She was actually grateful that they spoke only in French. She understood scarcely a word he said and spoke only in monosyllables herself.

So the scene was set for the short period in which they had shared a house, their daytime discourse as awkward as their brief nightly couplings. Cynthia had blamed herself when Windermere left. Only later did she learn that it didn’t have to be like that. In the liberal circle surrounding Caro Townsend, she’d heard that both men and women took great delight in the business.

The dusky-skinned ladies in her husband’s wicked pictures—they must surely have come into the house with him as a souvenir of Persia—accepted the attentions of their men with wide-eyed serenity. Some of them even appeared to be taking the more active role in couplings. Was that woman really about to put that thing in her mouth? The very idea seemed utterly outlandish. All the activities varied considerably from the one she and Windermere had shared under the blankets in bed at Beaulieu. Perhaps they didn’t have beds in Persia, or if they did they were only for sleeping. These startling acts were performed in gardens, on verandas, on cushions, or just on the floor.

The shocking pictures stirred a longing that must be lust. She pressed a hand against the mound between her legs and rotated her hips to set up a friction, feeling both relief and a heightened ache. Beneath her gown and petticoats she was growing wet.

A noise outside the room broke into her trance. Horrified, she snatched away her hand. How dreadful to be discovered touching herself so indecently! Ellis might appear at any moment with a letter, or to light the lamps. She slammed shut the portfolio and tied the laces with trembling fingers. As she retreated to her parlor the passage was empty except for Pudge, chasing a little ball of woolen yarn Cynthia had given her.

Amid the delicate paneling and gilt furnishings of her favorite room she felt alien, savage, no longer the perfect domestic lady with her cat. She wanted to burst out of her skin, or at least out of her clothes, and rub herself against something in the most indecorous fashion. She was a wild thing with a yawning appetite, but not for food or drink. Hard as it was for her to admit, she wanted a man.

Well, she thought. She had one. She had a husband. While he hadn’t been much good in the past, his kiss the other night promised improvement. Perhaps he had acquired these pictures for educational purposes. If he wanted to learn how to please a woman, better that she should be the beneficiary of his studies than another woman. Lady Belinda Radcliffe came to mind.

With a forefinger she traced the rim of her lips, reliving that all too brief union of breath and heat. She’d enjoyed Julian’s kisses but she could no longer remember them. Yet every moment of Damian’s was imprinted on her skin.

She hadn’t forgiven him for the past, but he was her husband, the only one she was ever likely to have. While she might not trust him with her heart, there was no reason she couldn’t enjoy his body. It was time to let him back into her bed in the full meaning of the word.

C
ynthia dined alone, her husband having an engagement at his club. Now she was alone in bed, listening to unidentifiable sounds filtered through the connecting door, muffled thuds whose cause she couldn’t guess. Wearing her prettiest, thinnest nightgown made her feel a fool. Since it seemed she would not have the company of a large, warm body for the night, she might as well wear flannel. Having been ejected from her room three nights ago, Damian apparently needed to be told the exile wasn’t permanent. To the indignation of Pudge, whose small, warm body was curled up in the crook of her neck, she pushed aside the covers just as the door, finally, opened.

Her husband stood in the doorway dressed in his Persian banyan and slippers, looking softer and less sure of himself than usual. Or perhaps the sleek mask appeared to have slipped because his dark hair was slightly damp and all awry. Illusion or not, the slight air of disorder suited him. Her heart danced a jig.

“Good evening, my lord,” she said breathily. “Is there anything I can do for you?” She essayed an alluring smile and felt even more foolish.

Whatever the result of her own effort, his smile allured her all right. “I came to extend an invitation. I thought you might like to try my new mattress.”

Now her heart raced in earnest. “Mine is very comfortable,” she managed to murmur.

“I have no complaint about the quality of bedding in either room, only the company.”

“Is it me or Pudge you object to?” She sent him an arch look and her confidence grew. Flirtatious nonsense she could manage.

“The question barely merits a response. I should have said the lack of company is what irks me.” His voice dropped. “I have missed you.”

“Oh?”

“I have something to show you in my chamber,” he said, crossing the room and extending a hand. “Will you honor me with your presence?”

The intensity of his gaze robbed her of her voice again. It dropped from her face to rake the length of her semi-recumbent body. Considering this attention was exactly what she wanted from the evening, her shyness was absurd. Instead of the unruffled confidence of those well-pleasured Persian ladies, she felt stiff and gauche, as though she were the old Cynthia waiting in terror for a disagreeable marital duty. With a jerk she withdrew her exposed knees into the shelter of her nightgown, alarming Pudge, who jumped off the bed and scampered into the adjoining chamber.

“If you want your cat back you’ll have to come and get her.” His grin turned gleeful, almost boyish. She’d never seen Damian so little the polished diplomat.

“Since you put it that way,” she said with dignity, “I accept your invitation, my lord.” She slid off the bed, straightened her skirt, and placed her hand on his arm with mock formality.

“I must remember, my lady, that extortion and kidnapping work with you where a polite request fails.”

The earl’s dour bedchamber was transformed. The dark red velvet counterpane had been torn from the bed and laid on the floor, covering the rather ugly Wilton carpet. Cushions, taken from all parts of the house, were arranged in careless heaps in a semi-circle, creating a sort of nest. Soft lamplight flickered over the scene, and an exotic and totally unfamiliar scent pervaded the room.

“I thought I’d offer you a little taste of Persia,” he said.

Her body thrummed with nerves and excitement. Damian had brought those wicked pictures home with him. Did he intend to imitate them with her? Some of them? All? Her cheeks heated violently as she remembered certain activities. He didn’t know she had seen them. Of course it was possible he intended merely to entertain her with traveler’s tales of the East, but she didn’t think so. She might still be relatively innocent, but she recognized a setting for seduction when she saw it.

“Take a cushion,” he said.

She sat primly, tucking her legs beside her, her back scarcely touching the wall of pillows. Through the fine cambric of her nightgown she could feel velvet under her bottom and thigh. In those pictures the couples had been naked. She lowered her eyelids and imagined the caress of velvet on bare skin, the heat of his eyes on her utterly exposed body. Her wanton thoughts shamed and thrilled her as a wet heat flooded her privates. She took a deep, calming breath and felt a strange herbal smoke fill her nostrils.

Pudge’s little head butted her knee. As she lowered her hand to respond to the demand for attention, Damian swooped in and removed the kitten. He carried her gently but firmly out of the room, placed her on Cynthia’s bed, and returned, shutting the door behind him. “What we are about to do is not suitable for the sight of children,” he said.

“And what would that be?” she asked with delicious anticipation.

“Eating and drinking and talking, and so forth.”

“That sounds innocent enough.”

“ ‘So forth’ covers a multitude of sins.”

D
amian would have liked to use the erotic miniatures as an aid in the seduction of his wife, but he feared such explicit portrayals of amorous behavior would drive her into a fit of the vapors. She might have entered into an adulterous affair with Julian Fortescue, but he was certain that she was neither brazen nor highly experienced, nothing like Lady Belinda Radcliffe.

He made himself remember what he’d tried to forget: the joyless nature of their previous couplings. As the man of experience he should have done better, made greater efforts to soothe the frigidity of her frightened virgin body. Now he would spare no trouble to dispel their own past, as well as any desire to return to her lover. But to make her entirely his, she would need to be softened up, gentled into his bed like a shy mare. Luckily, indecent pictures were not all he’d brought back from Persia.