Midnight Pleasures (37 page)

Patrick’s teeth ground together as he stopped himself from slugging Alex on the spot.

“You tell me,” he finally said, “you tell me what is senseless about thinking that the odds of one in five are not good.”

“Those odds include women giving birth without doctors, without midwives, when they are ill or dying. How many gentlewomen can you think of who have died in childbirth?”

“Plenty,” Patrick said with quiet force. “And so should you, given that your wife almost joined their ranks.”

For a moment neither man spoke. Then Alex’s voice emerged raw, half strangled. “Charlotte was having no problem with the birth until I appeared, Patrick. You know that. You know it was my fault. Are you trying to break my heart?”

The silence was broken only by the rattle of carriages passing.

“Oh God,” Patrick said quietly. “I should just shoot myself, shouldn’t I?”

At that, Alex smiled a little. “Not without giving me a chance first.”

The two men came together in an improvised, unfamiliar hug. Patrick swallowed hard. Alex roughly patted him on the back. He didn’t know what to say.

“There’s only what—two or three months left?”

Patrick looked at his brother helplessly. “I don’t know. Sophie and I do not discuss the child.”

“The whole town is chattering about the fact that you didn’t tell Sophie that she was being made a duchess. What in the bloody hell were you thinking, Patrick?”

“I forgot. I just forgot.” He shrugged. “You know how little titles mean to me. I thought Sophie would be happy to be a duchess, but she’s furious because I didn’t inform her. We don’t really talk much anymore.”

Alex nodded, accepting silently what he had already sensed. His brother’s marriage was in a dangerously fragile state.

“I believe Sophie is beginning her seventh month,” Alex said, no trace of judgment in his tone. “She told Charlotte that she was going to stop attending public events after Lady Greenleaf’s ball tomorrow night.”

Patrick had had no idea that Sophie was giving up the rest of the season. “I’ll accompany her,” he said quietly. He knew that Sophie often joined Charlotte and Alex in the evening.

Alex nodded. “I don’t suppose it will do any good to say that you might have a conversation with your wife?”

Patrick winced. “I shall try, Alex.”

That night Clemens scratched on Sophie’s bedchamber door and informed Simone that the duke had announced his intention to eat supper at home. The master hadn’t eaten in the house for two or three weeks, and Clemens thought, rightly, that the duchess ought to know that she would be eating with her husband rather than alone.

Sophie stopped short in the middle of fastening a bracelet on her wrist. Simone’s eyes flashed to her mistress’s face, then dropped to the floor. The whole household knew, of course, that the master and mistress were estranged.

In fact, Simone and Patrick’s man, Keating, were engaged in a flaming battle over the master’s whereabouts at night. Keating maintained that the master was not up to hanky-panky; Simone scoffed and said the duke was spending time with a fancy lady somewhere and that Keating ought to be ashamed. The battle had grown so heated that Keating actually brought one of Patrick’s coats down to the servants’ quarters, the better to demonstrate its utter lack of female perfume or face powder.

Sophie finished fastening the bracelet, quite as if Clemens’s message hadn’t arrived. She was wearing a loose sea-green evening gown, constructed with an extra panel in the front to accommodate her growing belly.

For a moment she hesitated in front of the mirror. She felt ugly these days, an ugly, unwanted wife.
Pregnant
wife, she thought savagely. Perhaps I should just take a tray in my room.

Then she steadied her courage and walked down the stairs. She walked slowly, concentrating on balancing the extra weight that jutted out before her. Patrick met her at the bottom of the stairs.

Sophie smiled at him politely and took his arm as they walked into the dining room.

Automatically Sophie forked pheasant into her mouth.

“Isn’t this the second time this week that Floret has served pheasant?” Patrick asked.

“Yes, it is. I’m afraid that my mother managed to bribe him.” Sophie suffered through two more bites, wondering how Patrick knew that Floret had also served pheasant on Tuesday. That evening he hadn’t come in until long after she fell asleep. These days she had stopped waiting for his return. She needed sleep more than she needed the confirmation that her husband rarely arrived home before dawn.

Sophie ate another bite. The pheasant tasted like sawdust.

“I will accompany you to Lady Greenleaf’s ball tomorrow night, if I may,” Patrick said. “I believe that it promises to be a great crush.”

Sophie nodded. Her husband had come home for supper, and now he was going to take her to a ball?

In the face of Sophie’s silence, Patrick kept talking. “You might be amused to hear that there are bets at White’s on whether Braddon will announce his engagement to your friend Madeleine in the next week or so.”

Sophie said nothing. Patrick cursed silently. What was he doing? Sophie was unlikely to be thrilled to hear that Braddon was getting married to someone else, given her feelings for the man.

“Perhaps we might take a picnic to the countryside, if the weather stays fine this weekend,” he said, suddenly inspired. Surely it would be a good deal easier to talk to Sophie if they were alone, rather than sitting at the table flanked by two footmen.

Suddenly Sophie’s head swung up, and Patrick saw to his astonishment that her eyes were narrowed, blazing.

“I’ll be
damned
if you can just waltz into this dining room as if nothing happened in the last month and ask me on a picnic,” she said furiously.

Patrick looked up and nodded to Clemens, who directed the footmen out of the room with a wave, then quickly followed them.

“Why not?” Patrick looked at his wife with stupefaction. This was a new Sophie. There was no difficulty reading the fury in her eyes.

Sophie stood up and threw her napkin on the table. “I never complained when you went off with your mistress. I didn’t reproach you—
once
. If you want to go, go! But don’t come back to me as if I were a fish that you could reel in when you pleased. I suppose you think I will smile gratefully and go on a picnic with you, now that you’ve decided to grant your wife a bit of your time?”

Patrick stared at his wife, his face imperturbable.

“I’m going to my chambers,” she said abruptly. “I will accept your escort tomorrow to the ball, but I must decline your kind invitation for a picnic. I don’t feel like a wanton trollop today, and I don’t expect to feel like one tomorrow either. Therefore,” she said with savage irony, “I’m sure you wouldn’t be comfortable in my company!”

And with that she walked out of the room and up the stairs, as quickly as she could manage in her state.

The Duke and Duchess of Gisle lay in their separate bedrooms that night, both staring at the ceiling. If an angel had happened to look through the roof of the mansion on Upper Brook Street, he would have seen separate, sleepless figures. Patrick was, perhaps, the more despairing; Sophie, having rediscovered anger, was finding it a not unpleasant emotion.

Had the same angel bothered to peer through the elegant silk roof of the Gisle carriage as it inched its way to a halt before the entrance to Lady Greenleaf’s mansion in Hanover Square the following night, he would again have seen two separate, silent figures, but with one difference: Sophie was staring at the wall, and Patrick was staring at her.

Sophie was dressed in a ball gown that deliberately emphasized her newly lush figure. Gossamer silk in a pale, pale blue, more lucid than a robin’s egg, wound its way around her bodice, playing hide-and-seek with the curves of her breasts.

Oblivious to Patrick’s gaze, Sophie adjusted her cashmere wrap as the carriage drew to a halt, an action that unconsciously caused her breasts nearly to topple from their frail cover.

I am not lustful, Patrick thought to himself. I am not jealous. The small hope that reiterating those statements would make them a fact died a quick death. All right, he thought, I am lustful. He jumped down from the carriage and automatically held out a hand to help Sophie from the carriage. And I
am
jealous, he thought fiercely, seeing the widened eyes of the London populace that had gathered to watch the swells go to a party.

If only … if only Sophie would throw him a laughing glance and accidentally brush against his arm. If only she had toppled from the carriage into his arms, rather than dropping his hand the moment her feet were safely on the pavement. But she was obviously merely tolerating his presence. For a moment, agony clutched Patrick’s heart. He was better off walking the streets of London than being in the presence of his so-beautiful, so-desirable, so-uncaring wife.

The minute they passed Lady Greenleaf’s receiving line, a flock of gentlemen descended, arguing over the privilege of dancing with the beautiful young duchess. Patrick stood there silently for a moment, then rudely interrupted an impudent young whelp and claimed the supper dance.

Sophie looked at him, briefly, but said nothing. As Patrick well knew, she would never cause a scene in a ballroom. He bowed and sauntered off.

Sophie watched him go, ignoring the prattling crowd around her for an instant. Somehow all her righteous anger was starting to fade away, just when she needed it. She took a deep breath. Tonight was the last of these agonizing public appearances. After that, she would retire for the season. A pregnant woman’s “confinement” was sounding better every moment. And, in fact, it was just as well that she dance with Patrick. She was getting tired of thinly veiled, solicitous comments about her husband’s frequent absences.

The supper dance started, and Patrick appeared at her side. But just as he began to bow before her Sophie shook her head, nodding at the other end of the ballroom. Patrick turned around. Braddon was standing at the top of the room, holding Madeleine’s hand.

Lord Greenleaf cleared his throat importantly, and said loudly, “I have the honor to announce that Lady Madeleine Corneille has agreed to marry the Earl of Slaslow.”

Braddon’s mother stood beside them, smiling happily. As the strains of a minuet fell into the quieted room, Braddon turned and thanked Lord Greenleaf. Then he took his new betrothed in his arms and swept into the clear space. The newly engaged couple remained a demure three inches apart. Braddon Chatwin did not allow his legs to brush Lady Madeleine’s gown, nor did he touch her in an overfamiliar fashion.

But when Braddon smiled so sweetly at his Maddie that she lost her fear of dancing in front of the
ton
and returned his smile, Sophie wasn’t the only woman in the room who got a lump in her throat and a shine in her eye.

The tightness in Patrick’s chest had nothing to do with Braddon. That bounder had obviously played fast and loose with Sophie’s emotions. There she was, almost crying in public because Braddon was engaged again.

But it couldn’t be called Braddon’s fault, could it? Patrick’s conscience was uncomfortably awake. Sophie would be married to Braddon right now, he thought with dogged self-hatred, if I hadn’t slept with her first.

He swept his wife into the dance. If nothing else, I can protect her from curious eyes, Patrick reasoned. Sophie would be ridiculed for crying over a man she had jilted.

They danced silently. Sophie kept her head turned away, afraid that Patrick would be able to read in her eyes that she had lost her anger. She was too humiliated to face the fact that she would probably always welcome back the rake she had married, no matter how far he strayed. She loved him too much.

They were swept in to dinner in a wave of babbling dancers and found seats around a large round table. Halfway through the meal Sophie excused herself from the table, not coincidentally when Patrick had gone to fetch another cup of syllabub.

“Please, Sissy, do tell my husband that I will be in the ladies’ retiring room,” she said to her friend.

Sissy Commonweal looked at her with the sympathetic eyes that seemed to greet her everywhere in the
ton
these days. I’m sure she knows where Patrick spends his nights, Sophie thought tiredly. It’s a wonder that no one has told me the black-haired woman’s name. She walked away from the table without looking back, not even seeing Patrick weaving his way back to the table with her syllabub.

She couldn’t stay in the retiring room forever, however, and Patrick found her later and claimed a second dance. Thankfully, it was a country dance, which meant there would be little intimacy. Sophie was mechanically going through the figures when suddenly, through a gap in the crowded room, she saw something that made her heart thump sharply in her throat. Her mother, Eloise, was smiling sweetly and drawing Madeleine over to speak to an elderly Frenchwoman—undoubtedly Madame de Meneval, famed for her ability to expose fraudulent French aristocrats. Without a second’s hesitation, Sophie snapped out of the steps, dropped her husband’s hand, and set out across the dance floor.

Patrick looked after her in stupefaction. Daughters trained by the formidable Marchioness of Brandenburg did not abandon their partners on the dance floor. Mentally shaking himself, he hurried after his wife.

But Sophie got there too late. Even as she dodged around a last cluster of people, she saw Madeleine sinking into a dulcet curtsy before Madame de Meneval.

“Merde!”
Sophie whispered, and stopped running. Eloise looked up and held out a welcoming hand.

“My dearest, do come meet Madame de Meneval. I have just introduced her to dear Madeleine.”

With a sinking heart, Sophie walked to her mama’s side. In another second, Madame would declare that Madeleine was an impostor, bringing Braddon’s whole scheme crashing down around their ears.

Patrick appeared at her side and touched her arm. Sophie cast him a frantic glance.

He frowned in confusion. What in thunder was going on? Here was Sophie, apparently quaking with fear to meet an old Frenchwoman dressed in rusty black silk. True, the woman had a beak that could grace an eagle, but there was nothing intrinsically terrifying about her. In fact, she looked to be a bit of a soft touch to Patrick. Wasn’t she crying?