Midnight Pleasures (16 page)

As the color in Sophie’s cheeks deepened, Charlotte’s dark eyes widened. “Sophie! He
didn’t
!”

Crazily, Sophie was caught between an impulse to laugh and one to blush even harder. So she quickly rose and took a few steps back from Charlotte, brushing her curls behind her shoulders.

At her silence, Charlotte caught and forcefully held her gaze. “Sophie York,” she demanded, “I want to know
everything
!”

At that very moment Patrick was looking anywhere rather than at his brother’s face, as he tried to figure out how much to tell him. Damn! Why hadn’t he asked Sophie what she planned to tell Charlotte? He had the hazy sense that women told each other everything. Did that mean that Sophie would regale Charlotte with all the details behind their hasty marriage?

Alex and Patrick were sitting in the changing room of Jackson’s Boxing Salon, relaxing after a punishing bout of sparring practice with Cribb himself. They had washed, and an attendant now stood alertly at each of their sides, waiting to aid them with their attire. Gentlemen who padded their garments, for example, invariably needed a final twitch here or there to make sure that their calf pads were lying evenly.

Granted, little Billy Lumley had figured out with one glance that these two particular men had no need of padding anywhere, but there was still the possibility of a tip, so he waited patiently, holding one of their coats. Damned if he knew which one the coat belonged to, since their lordships looked as much alike as those heathen Indians he’d seen, the ones imported from America. In fact, they didn’t look so different from the Indians, given that their skin was an odd golden color, not pasty white like most of the men they had in there.

But Patrick stretched out his long legs, drew in a long breath, and waved Billy and his fellow attendant off to a safe distance. Alex looked at him inquiringly as he pulled a fresh shirt over his head.

“I’m getting married in six weeks,” Patrick said, a smile biting at the corner of his mouth. “I thought you might like to be there.”

There was a moment of silence. “Daphne Boch?” Alex finally offered, his tone noncommittal.

“No. Your wife’s choice, in fact. Sophie York.”

Alex’s mouth curled in a smile uncannily like his twin brother’s. “I like Sophie, not that it matters. Mother would have liked her too.”

“She would, wouldn’t she?” For a moment both men thought of their effervescent mother, and the way she would run laughing into the nursery, gathering them up in a hug that smelled like bluebells. Until she died giving birth to a stillborn brother, and they were left with a taciturn, gouty father who promptly sent them away to school, and shipped them to whomever would agree to take two small boys during school vacations.

Alex was the first to stand up. “Why so soon?” he asked mildly.

“I have a fancy,” Patrick drawled.

“A fancy?” Alex’s tone was meditative.

He waved Billy over and took the coat from his hand, slipping into it without a bit of trouble, to Billy’s sorrow.

“Well, you’re a fine one to talk,” Patrick retorted. He put on his own coat, absentmindedly giving both attendants a healthy tip.

A smile lightened Alex’s eyes. “And then?”

“We’ll take a trip down the coast on the
Lark
.”

Alex looked at him sharply. “Down the coast?”

Patrick nodded. “From the
Lark
I can discreetly check Breksby’s fortifications in Wales. This seems as good a time as any.”

Alex grimaced. “The whole notion that Napoleon might invade Wales is absurd. Napoleon—if he got the boats together to do it—is sure to head for Kent or Sussex. For God’s sake, he only has flat-bottomed boats! He’ll go straight from Boulogne to Kent.”

Patrick shrugged. “It’s a good excuse for a wedding trip.”

“One doesn’t need an excuse, Patrick.” Alex hesitated. He had destroyed his own wedding trip by falling into a desperate fit of jealousy. “Don’t repeat my mistakes,” he added lightly.

Patrick grinned. “I’m not such a lobcock as that. I’m looking forward to it. Besides, I’m not planning to have the same kind of marriage that you have, Alex. Oh, I’m not saying it won’t be a good marriage—but remember, Sophie wanted to marry Braddon Chatwin. I shouldn’t think we’ll share the paroxysms of emotion that you and Charlotte indulge in.”

Alex looked at him silently, one eyebrow raised.

“I told you. She wanted Braddon’s title.”

“What did she say about your becoming a duke?”

“I haven’t told her.” Patrick’s calm answer admitted no questions.

But twin brothers are not known for reticence. “What do you mean, you haven’t told her? Are you waiting until you’re married?”

Patrick’s shoulder lifted in a tight shrug. “Not particularly. The subject never came up. I will travel to Turkey by myself. I can’t imagine that Sophie would be very interested in an event almost a year in the future.”

Alex slanted his brother a glance under black lashes. “Are you certain you wish to be married, Patrick?”

“If I have to get leg-shackled, why not to Sophie? I like her, and she’s—”

“Unbelievably beautiful,” his brother broke in.

“There is that.” Patrick smiled as a vision of Sophie’s sun-dusted curls drifted through his mind.

“And remarkably intelligent,” his brother prompted.

Patrick shrugged again, looking back over his shoulder. “Yes, in a flirtatious sort of way. She’ll be good company.”

“Flirtatious?” Alex seemed to be choking on a private joke. “Sometime, little brother … sometime you must ask her about languages.”

“I must go.” Patrick was so edgy that he was barely listening. It was nearing time for dinner with his bride-to-be and her parents. He wasn’t looking forward to an evening with offended parents, but it would be nice to find Sophie clinging to him, her lips cherry-sweet, her breath caught in her throat. He wanted to remind himself why he was committing the heinous act of getting married. He had always sworn never to go near the parson’s mousetrap.

“So you picture your marriage along the lines of a calm affair that just happens to last sixty years or so,” Alex said with a twinkle as they strolled out the door of Jackson’s and onto Piccadilly. “In fact, this marriage is going to be so civilized that Sophie won’t even notice if you wander off to Turkey for a few months. And you will wave goodbye as happily as if you were off to a hunting lodge for a week.”

“Hearts and beauty have nothing to do with each other,” Patrick replied. “Believe me, I’ve been dealing with beauties for years, and my heart has never been in danger.”

“Well, aren’t you a knowing one,” his brother said mockingly. “We’ll see, shall we? Care to make a small wager?”

“A wager on what?”

“Your heart, naturally. I’ll bet you five hundred crowns that a year from tomorrow you’ll admit to being desperately in love with your wife.”

“I’d hate to take money from a washed-up jack-pud-ding like yourself,” Patrick said with a dry chuckle. “Having fallen into a sloppy state, you’re eager to persuade your own brother that he will share your affliction.”

“Then you’ll have no qualms accepting my wager,” Alex retorted.

“I’ll hand the five hundred crowns to charity, in your name,” Patrick replied in a devilishly sweet tone. “Because, by God, you’re as likely to find me sleeping in a nightshirt as to see me hand over a tuppence.”

Alex’s eyes brimmed with laughter. “You forget, dear brother, that I have seen you around Sophie. You want her so much that you pant when she walks within a fingertip of you. If—no,
when
—you give me five hundred crowns, I’ll buy you a nightshirt trimmed with the finest Brussels lace.”

Patrick took the reins of his low-slung phaeton and swung up on the step. “May I give you a lift back to Grosvenor Square?”

“No, thanks. I think I’ll drop in at White’s and see what the betting books are saying about Lady Sophie’s new betrothal.”

Patrick cast him a keen glance. “Dress it up with frills and bows, won’t you?”

“Of course.” The Earl of Sheffield and Downes set off down the road, swinging his mahogany cane with a jaunty air. His demeanor indicated that he was far from indifferent about the fact that his dearest relation had consigned himself to the ignominious fate of leg-shackling, to take place at three o’clock in St. George’s chapel, precisely—and scandalously—six weeks from today.

Chapter 12

S
ix weeks later, Sophie still felt the wedding was due to arrive too soon. Her bridal gown had just been fitted for the umpteenth time. Five seamstresses had scurried off to the upper regions of the house, bearing the gown as if it were an altar cloth embroidered by the pope himself. Sophie sighed. If this were an ordinary afternoon, she would sit down and work for an hour or two. She drifted over to her desk and stared down at the book of Turkish grammar that waited invitingly.

But just as she picked up the book, which sat precisely where her billets and bills would have reposed had the desk belonged to another lady, the door opened and her mother entered the bedchamber.

“Sophie, I think—” Eloise stopped. “Sophie, are you holding one of those language books?”

Sophie looked down at the small brown book in her hand. “Yes,
Maman
.”

“How did I raise such a featherheaded daughter?” Eloise ignored her own question. “Don’t you yet understand that childish things are put aside once a woman is married? Languages are the—the flummery of your childhood, and must be left behind, like all subjects of the schoolroom.”

Sophie hesitated. “Perhaps Patrick would not mind if he knew I spoke a few languages. He seems to be most amiable.”

“Don’t be a twit, Sophie. Men naturally find fault with bluestockings, and rightly so; overeducated women are the most boring creatures alive!”

Sophie bit back the obvious rejoinder. Eloise’s daughter probably ranked among the foremost bluestockings in London and yet not one gentleman had called her boring.

“Lord, I wish I had never let you continue in this silly vein of behavior,” Eloise said pettishly. “There’s something so dreadfully commonplace about studying languages.”

Sophie watched Eloise rustle about the bedroom, pushing small ornaments into straight lines. Her mother didn’t really care one way or the other about Sophie’s unexpected brilliance at languages. Other than decreeing that Sophie was never to be tutored by a male, Eloise had allowed Sophie a free hand at French, Italian, Welsh, Gaelic, and then German and Turkish in tandem, given that Sophie had had the good luck to hear about a Turkish immigrant’s wife from the German woman who visited the house every morning.

“I’m not a complete widgeon,” her mother said curtly, as she pulled open Sophie’s wardrobe and frowned at the gowns. “Your father is trying to pull wool over my eyes, but I have as good an idea as the next person about why this marriage is happening so hastily. So we can dispense with an explanation of wedding nights.”

Sophie’s heart began pounding in her throat with pure shame and embarrassment.

But her mother continued, with more difficulty. “That isn’t truly important anyway, Sophie. I would like to give you advice that would make your marriage different from mine. But I don’t know what to say.”

Tears pressed at the back of Sophie’s eyes. “It’s all right,
Maman
.”

Eloise swung about and sat down in a high-backed chair by the fireplace. “It is
not
all right, Sophie. I ruined my marriage somehow. After all the years of finding fault with your father, I am beginning to wonder if there was something I could have done differently. Perhaps I was too bitter.”

Sophie sank into the chair opposite. Her mother had reached the same conclusion that Sophie had: that if only her mother had overlooked her father’s mistresses, they would have had a happier life together. Certainly Sophie would have had siblings.

“I couldn’t do it,” Eloise said in a harsh whisper. “I wasn’t made that way, and I was barely eighteen when I married. You are almost twenty years old, and lighter of heart, Sophie. Please, please, I beg you, turn your eyes away when your husband courts other women. Welcome him back into your bed without a word. Don’t do anything that will give him a dislike of you, such as flaunting your ability to speak languages.”

Sophie took a deep breath. “I will try,
Maman
.” She strove to make her tone reassuring. “I won’t allow Patrick to know I can speak anything but English. And I won’t be angry when he sleeps with other women. I know that I am marrying a rake.”

“Turn the other way,” Eloise said. She was leaning forward now, looking earnestly into her daughter’s eyes. “Ignore it. The real pleasure—the delight—in marriage comes from children.”

Sophie gave her a crooked little smile.

“I longed to give you the siblings you wanted so much, Sophie!” her mother cried passionately. “Do you remember? You used to beg and beg for a sister. But what could I do? Your father and I had stopped speaking to each other, and I didn’t know how to mend it. The only thing we have in common now is you, Sophie. We both love you. Believe me, children can be a link between you and Patrick, if pride does not sour the marriage.”

Sophie swallowed again and then blurted, “Patrick wants to have only one child,
Maman
.”

Eloise was silent for a second. “I am very sorry to learn that. I know how much you love children. Guard your one child then. Did you ever wonder why I was so stern with regard to your playmates?”

Sophie nodded. She was never permitted to visit other children, and her nanny was strictly instructed to chase off anyone who approached them on their brief, supervised walks.

“I had to protect you, Sophie. You are my only child.” Eloise visibly regained her composure. “But what is important is not the number of children you have, but the pleasure you are able to take in your marriage. A marriage like mine—of bitterness on one side and disinterest on the other—is worse than having no children at all.”

Eloise looked faintly embarrassed. “To be blunt, never refuse your husband in bed. I have thought for years that perhaps I shouldn’t have rashly ordered your father from the bedroom. I was a capricious little fool. Now that I’m almost forty, I would give anything to take back those words. Don’t do it, Sophie. No matter how angry you are, never let Patrick know.
Never
banish him from the room. Unless you’re with child,” she added.

Sophie nodded silently.

“I won’t,
Maman
,” she whispered.

Just then Sophie’s maid, Simone, entered the bedchamber followed by a small phalanx of maids. Simone’s arms were full of crackling tissue paper.

“Begging your pardon, my lady,” Simone said, curtsying in the marchioness’s direction, “but we are ready to start packing Lady Sophie’s trunks now.”

Eloise nodded and stood up, then paused, looking at her daughter. She ran her hand over Sophie’s hair. “He cannot help but fall in love with you,
mignonne
. I am sure all my advice is for naught.”

Sophie smiled at that, but after Eloise left the room she sat for a moment, hands clutched around the small leather book she held. Her mother was right. Eloise’s blunder as a wife had been to deplore behavior over which she had no control. In other words, Sophie thought, if Patrick’s eye wanders, I must appear never to notice.

Lord Breksby drummed his fingers on his desk in an unusual display of agitation. “This is infamous!”

A little man, dressed in a thoroughly insignificant fashion, flashed Breksby an amused look. “Napoleon always has been an inconvenient sort of chap,” he agreed.

“He’s beyond the pale,” Breksby said, almost choking with annoyance. “How on earth does he think to get away with it?”

“Pure luck that we found out,” his guest pointed out.

Breksby sighed. “I suppose I’d better tell Patrick Foakes.”

“M’understanding is that Foakes is setting off on his wedding trip … down the coast.” With a mere twitch of his eyebrows, the small man conveyed that he was perfectly aware of the reason why Patrick was sailing toward Wales.

“Yes, well. Damnation.” Breksby drummed his fingers again.

“Why tell him?” The small man’s eyelids drooped.

Breksby eyed him. His guest knew more about the inner workings of several governments than he himself did. It galled him, but it was the truth.

“How can I not tell Foakes? He may be walking into danger. What if we slip up and the scepter does explode?”

“The scepter will not explode unless we allow a substitution of the original scepter,” the small man pointed out. “The scepter is the key and Foakes doesn’t have it—we do.” He drifted to the door, indicating that his brief visit was over. “Better not to risk Foakes dropping a hint to his wife,” he murmured as he left. “Men in love are dangerous.”

Breksby stared at the closed door. The man had shown himself out, and Breksby had let him go. Lord only knew what secret documents he would be riffling through in the next hour or so. Breksby shrugged. There was no stopping him anyway.

Breksby sat down and pulled out a sheet of paper. But a moment later he tore up the elegantly written note, addressed to Right Honorable Patrick Foakes.

He was right, the little man. It was damnable that he was always right, but … Perhaps the best idea would be to send the scepter out incognito, as it were. If the scepter wasn’t delivered to Foakes until a mere hour before it was due to be presented to Selim, the risk would be minimized nicely. An exploding scepter! What an absurd notion. But—and Breksby sobered, thinking of it—if Foakes did bring such a device to Selim’s coronation, and it did blow up, the resulting imbroglio would be a disaster for England. Selim’s delicate sensibilities would be insulted, if indeed his royal person survived the explosion. He would undoubtedly side with Napoleon on the spot, and declare war against England.

“Damn and blast,” Breksby muttered to himself. He summoned his attendant and clapped a hat on his head. The Treasury would have to know about Napoleon’s little scheme.

That evening the Marquis and Marchioness of Brandenburg found themselves alone in the drawing room, awaiting the arrival of their daughter. They were having a family dinner. The last family dinner, Eloise thought, with a lump in her throat. Tomorrow her child would leave the house for St. George’s chapel and never return, except as a visitor.

She took the glass of sherry Carroll handed her and walked to the large window looking over the gardens. Something about the conversation with Sophie … Eloise had never, ever said out loud the things she had told Sophie. It made her feel subtly embarrassed even to be in the same room with her husband.

But if George noticed the faint feeling of constraint in the room, he said naught. He cheerfully strolled to the window as well and stood at her shoulder.

“I think it’ll be a pretty match, don’t you, my dear?”

Eloise felt unwontedly short of breath. Now that she’d seen George naked again, the image of his chest and legs superimposed itself onto his ordinary presence. He stood there, fully clothed, at her shoulder, and she shivered as images from early in their marriage drifted through her mind.

A sudden memory came, unbidden: how George used to kiss the back of her neck again and again. Eloise turned and looked up at her husband. He was gazing out over the garden and apparently hadn’t even noticed her lack of an answer.

“George,” Eloise said. She felt herself flushing.

George looked down at her. His gray eyes sobered. Then he reached out and curled his hand around the nape of her neck, precisely the spot she had just thought of. He hadn’t touched her so intimately in years.