Pleasure For Pleasure (6 page)

“But surely you have not enjoyed your widowhood entirely alone?” Sylvie said, looking rather appalled.

“No, no,” Griselda said, “there have been small attachments here and there, but I have never deliberately planned anything of this nature.”

Josie just stopped herself from gasping.

“Therein lies the difference between the two of us,” Sylvie said. “For you are half French, and I am fully French. Consequently, I cannot imagine embarking on any sort of romantic adventure without a good deal of planning. I would owe it to myself.”

Griselda laughed. “You sound so sophisticated, Sylvie,
and yet I have observed you with my brother. The two of you are remarkably chaste, are you not?”

“I am always chaste,” Sylvie remarked. “I have yet to see the reason why I should allow any advance in intimacy on the part of a man. I'm afraid that planning does tend to reduce one's tendency to be reckless.”

Griselda paused in the door.

Sylvie grinned at her. “
Avance pour vaincre!”

“I shall report on my conquest later this evening,” Griselda said. “Josie, may I remind you that you have several dance partners waiting for you, when you choose to emerge.”

Tess was tucking an errant curl high on her head. “I must return to the floor as well.”

“Lucius will be looking for you,” Josie said.

“It is an excellent thing to have a husband looking for one, rather than the other way around,” Sylvie said. “I shall emulate you.”

Tess smiled at her. “I have been remarkably lucky in that regard.”

T
hurman walked up to the Sausage as if he'd been introduced. In a way, he felt as if they were old acquaintances. Surely if he, Thurman, actually talked to the Sausage, Darlington would come to the Convent to hear his tale. He could send him a message, telling him that he had a story Darlington couldn't miss. Thurman felt panic at the idea of not having Darlington at his side. Not having Darlington's witticisms and cutting observations to pass the time.

“I'm a friend of Darlington,” he said by way of invitation.

The Sausage blinked at him and then looked away, staring at the wall over his shoulder. “I would rather not be reminded of your friend's ill-bred phrases.”

“Ill-bred? He ain't ill-bred,” Thurman protested.

She still didn't look at him. But: “Despicable Darlington,” she said mockingly. “I vow the phrase is quite appealing.”

Thurman scowled. What he should do is dance with the piglet. That way he could make a great story out of how she trod on his feet with her little hooves and squealed in his ear. “Would you like to dance?”

She glanced at him for a second and then turned her entire head so she was staring at the wall again. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not? You're desperate, aren't you?”

“You're some sort of fiend,” she said. “Why on earth are you being so impolite? To the best of my knowledge, we've never met.”

The disgust in her voice gave him a thrill of power. It wasn't just Darlington who could come up with cutting phrases. He could too. “I don't mind being a fiend as long as you don't cast me into a swine,” he said.

“You are swine,” Miss Essex said, glaring at him instead of the wall. “Oink, oink, Mr. Whatever Your Name Is. Why don't you trot back to whatever vulgar little pen you came from?”

Somehow his little jest hadn't come across with the same aplomb that Darlington achieved. She was looking at him so that he—
he
—felt uncomfortably aware of his rounded stomach. Everyone knew that weight in a man was a good thing. Made him strong and long-living.

But Thurman had the same quivering sense of failure that he used to have when he was called before the class to do the multiplication tables. Miss Essex had a powerfully nasty gaze. In fact, he hated her.

She wasn't done talking. “You are the sort of man who pinches maids,” she was saying. “I can't imagine how you found your way into this ball.”

Thurman felt that in his gut: he was sensitive about the
fact that his family's wealth came from running a printing press. He always laughed it off as his grandfather's intellectual fling, but he knew his claim to the title of gentleman was fragile.

“You are the sort of woman who will never be so lucky as to be pinched,” he said, tasting Darlington's acid tones on his tongue. He could be as cutting as Darlington. He moved a little closer. He really loathed this plump Scottish girl. If he had his way, fat Scottish girls would never be allowed into a
ton
party at all. “You'll never be lucky enough to be tupped either,” he said.

Then he just stood there, watching her. To tell the truth, he was rather surprised at himself for voicing such a thing in the midst of a society affair.

She got a little red in the face, so she must have known what tupping was. “You are—filth,” she said.

Her voice was shaking. He rather liked that. She turned and darted away, and Thurman didn't move. He could feel rage swelling in his chest the way it used to when the schoolmaster flogged him for not knowing his tables. It was all tangled together in his mind: Darlington was gone, the Convent was gone, what would he do at night? Without Darlington, people would think he was stupid. It was all the Sausage's fault, because Darlington didn't drop him until he had those thoughts of morality.

That was
her
fault.

The Sausage's fault.

J
osie turned away, rather blindly, and walked straight through the crowd, heedless of anyone who might see her face without its rigid smile. That was a horrible, disgusting swine of a man. Without warning, Mayne loomed before her.

“Hello there,” he said, grinning at her. Then his face changed in a flash. “What's the matter, Josie?”

She swallowed hard and before she knew what was happening, Mayne was leading her out onto a marble terrace
that lay white and shining in the light of the torches placed at its edges. He walked her to the broad balustrade that lined the terrace, turned her around and then stood directly in front of her so that no one could see the tears snaking down her face. “What happened?” he demanded.

The torches were throwing glinting lights onto Mayne's tumble of black curls. His eyebrows were drawn into a perfectly straight scowl. “It was a horrid man,” Josie said, hiccupping ungracefully, although it didn't matter because it was Mayne. “He said—He said—” But she couldn't say what he said, because Mayne was so beautiful and it was all so humiliating.

He had a large white handkerchief in his hand. “Steady on,” he said, patting her cheeks dry. She tried to smile at him but her mouth wobbled. She turned away and leaned over to look at the borders below. The bushes were all in shadow.

“Who was it?” Mayne asked conversationally, but Josie heard the clash of steel in his voice.

“Is that sweetbrier or southernwood?” she asked. “It smells enchanting.”

“Josie.”

She turned back and shook her head. “I don't know. Some acquaintance of Darlington's.” She took the handkerchief from him and wiped her eyes again. Mayne was looking thoughtful, like a man who was about to pummel half the male population of London.

“What did he look like?”

“I hardly noticed. The room is poorly lit, and he is nondescript, really. It's not that important,” she said shakily. “I know what they think of me. I know—” Her eyes filled with tears again and she groped for the handkerchief, forgetting she had it. It fell to the ground, and without thinking she bent to pick it up. And stopped with a small
oof
as her corset almost sliced her in half.

Mayne plucked it from the ground with an easy sweep.
“What on earth?” he said, and then glanced about. “We're far too public here.”

“Could we possibly leave the ball altogether?” Josie said. “I—I am not having a pleasant evening.” But then she remembered his fiancée. “Yet Sylvie will wonder where you are.”

Mayne's whole face lit up when he smiled. “May I say how happy I am to hear you use her first name? And of course I shall take you away. Sylvie is, as I'm sure you recognized immediately, a singularly self-sufficient woman. She actually came to the ball with another party. My only fear is that she has little use for me at all, and she certainly won't notice if I disappear.”

“That can't be true,” Josie said. If Mayne were her fiancé—though the thought was inconceivable, because of course he was far too old—she would never let him out of her sight. The thought made her feel a little queer in the stomach, so she allowed Mayne to tuck her hand under his arm and concentrated on making her smile as rigid as her back.

They walked through the crowd at a leisurely pace. They were only stopped once, by Lady Lorkin, who put a thin hand on Mayne's arm and crooned something to him.

She glanced once at Josie, but didn't bother to greet her. Mayne bent toward her and she breathed something in his ear. Her eyes were bright and avid, like a child who sees a puppy running free on the lawn.

Mayne laughed a low, intimate kind of chuckle and murmured something. Then he gently removed Lady Lorkin's hand from his sleeve and they walked on. After that Josie noticed the way women kept turning to look at Mayne, their eyes dancing over him in a manner that made her acutely aware of how prized he was. And yet Sylvie, who had won him, didn't mind if he disappeared for a while. It was an odd fact of life, she had to suppose.

“We should find Griselda,” Mayne said, looking about.
“After all, she is your chaperone and I must tell her that we are fleeing.”

“No!” Josie said, remembering suddenly that Griselda was presumably carrying out Sylvie's order that she seduce Darlington. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?” Mayne said. “Isn't my sister a good chaperone?”

“Of course she is. I simply wouldn't wish to bother her,” Josie said weakly.

“There's a great deal that I do not understand about you, Miss Josephine Essex,” Mayne said. “I suppose I can send her a note. A young lady should not trot away from a ball without informing her chaperone, you know. The chaperone might well assume the worst.”

“Not if I'm with you,” Josie pointed out.

“While your confidence in me is touching, I can assure you that there is many a mama in the room who would not wish her daughter to gallivant out of a ball by my side.”

“Don't be foolish, Mayne. I'm the woman least able to be compromised at this ball.”

He raised an eyebrow but scratched a note on his card and told a footman to give it to Griselda. “Where would you like to go?” he asked once they were seated in his carriage. It was a gorgeous little vehicle, a dark glossy red picked out with his coat of arms on the door.

“Anywhere.”

Mayne was eyeing her in a peculiar way. “It would be thoroughly improper, but—”

“No one will believe I'm doing anything improper.” She said it flatly, because it was true.

“In that case,” Mayne said with a wolfish grin, “welcome to my parlor, young lady.” He rapped on the roof, shouting “Home, Wiggles!”

“Wiggles?” Josie said, feeling better the moment the carriage started to move away from the ball.
“Wiggles?”

Mayne grinned at her. “Presumably the son of Papa Wiggles…one day the proud father of William Wiggles, Wilfred Wiggles, and perhaps even a Wilhelmina Wiggles.”

Josie smiled back, rather wanly. “Your house?” she asked. “Do you live in this vicinity?”

“All of two blocks away,” Mayne said, and even as he spoke the carriage slowed. “You will be unchaperoned, but I assure you that my house is absolutely awash with servants.”

“More to the point, you're in love with Sylvie,” Josie said.

“That fact will likely curb any fiendish plans I have for your ravishment,” Mayne agreed.

She scowled at him. “Don't you dare make fun of me, Garret Langham.”

“I didn't mean to.”

She stared at him a moment, eyes narrowed, but his face looked genuinely surprised. “I know that I am not to anyone's taste when it comes to ravishment. There is no possible way anyone would ever think that you had such plans—
you,
the man who has slept with every beautiful woman in London—so we can dispense with worries about my reputation.”

A butler was holding the door open, and Mayne swept her up and into the house without a word. “Ribble, we'll have champagne in the turret. Veuve Clicquot-Ponsardin, old and cold, if you please.”

“The lamps aren't lit, my lord,” said the butler.

“Not a problem, Ribble. I'll see to it.”

Josie was struggling out of her pelisse. Mayne scowled at her again and then snatched it from her shoulders, handing it to a footman.

“Do you have a turret? How lovely!” she said, trying to avoid questions about why she was so awkward.

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“I'm feeling peckish, so you'll forgive me for eating something, I trust. I'm afraid that Rafe made a mistake by asking Fortnam and Mason to cater his wedding ball. Did you see the sandwiches stamped with huge H's for Holbrook?”

Josie shook her head again. She never allowed herself to eat in public, thinking it would simply fuel the talk about her waistline.

“Stamped in liver paste,” Mayne said, taking her arm and heading up the stairs. “Looked as terrible as they tasted. Bring us something delicious for a light supper, Ribble, if you would.”

They walked up the stairs, past the main floor and through a small door. Mayne pulled a tinderbox from a small shelf, and so Josie saw the room in the flickering light of a small flame. The ceiling was domed and painted deep blue with faded gold stars. The walls were paneled, and painted with curious winding vines on which grew an occasional rose. The only furniture in the room was a small chaise longue, two cozy chairs, and a tea table. High on the walls there were small windows, eight of them for each of the eight sides. Moonlight filtered down into the room in a lazy kind of way that made the vines on the wall look charmingly mysterious.

“Oh, this is lovely!” Josie said, clasping her hands. “It's utterly magical.”

Mayne was lighting one of the Argand lamps attached to the wall. “You've discovered its secret,” he said, laughter running through his voice.

“It must be the only turret outside the Tower in the whole of London,” Josie said. “How on earth did it survive the great fire?”

“Oh, this house isn't that old,” Mayne said. “My grandfather had a daughter whom he loved very much, by the name of Cecily. Aunt Cecily was born early, before she should have
been. Apparently she was lame from birth and had weak lungs as well. She loved nothing more than to read books. She fancied herself a princess, you see, and this was the perfect chamber from which to be kissed into wakefulness.”

“She was absolutely right. Was she wakened?”

“Unfortunately, Cecily died before I was born.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“There were no other children in the family for years, until finally my father arrived. He loved her more, he said, than his own mother, because he spent hours and hours of his boyhood here, listening to her tales of knights, dragons, and fanciful monsters. You see, she had some of her stories painted on the walls.”

He held up a lamp, and sure enough when Josie looked closely at the twining vines, a small unicorn with a curious smile was dancing up the vine, and hanging insouciantly from one hand was a small boy. “My father,” Mayne said, touching the little imp. Josie recognized that mop of wild hair and the aristocratic nose, even in a youthful version.

Josie longed to ask when his father died, but didn't dare.

“He died some ten years ago,” Mayne told her.

“Oh dear,” she said, taking his arm.

“He told me many of Cecily's stories,” he said. “And Griselda remembers even more than I do.”

He put the lamp down rather abruptly on the small table. “Are you able to sit down in that contraption you're wearing?”

Josie felt a flood of pink coming up her neck. “Yes, of course,” she said, striving for a casual tone. But she could hardly mention the word
corset
in front of him.

“Is it a corset?” he asked.

“That's none of your business!” she snapped, sitting on the edge of her seat. She couldn't sit back; the corset was let in with clever little grommets around her bottom so that she
had just enough space to sit elegantly, as long as she kept her legs close together.

Mayne threw himself into the chair opposite her. He was all broad shoulders and strong legs, and he looked utterly comfortable. “How can you stand that?” he asked with some curiosity. Before she could answer, there was a scratch at the door and he shouted, “Enter!”

Josie bit her tongue as footmen brought in champagne and a tray of food. In fact, she waited until she had a glass of cool, apple-bitter champagne in her hand to give her courage, and then she said, with just the right air of sophistication, “Ladies never discuss their undergarments with gentlemen, Mayne.”

“But you and I are friends.”

“We are not friends!”

“Yes, we are.” He was grinning at her, and there was something in his eyes that was very hard to resist. “I assure you that you are the only lady of my acquaintance ever to ask me to take part in a farce like that you arranged in Scotland. You must be a friend, because I'd be afraid to make you my enemy.”

“You mean when Annabel's horse bucked?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Annabel's horse didn't just buck, you little witch! You put something under that poor nag's saddle to make it dance in the air.”

“It was in a good cause,” Josie protested, feeling a smile curl her lips. “I merely thought that if Ardmore was scared for Annabel's life, he might realize that he was in love with her.”

“He had realized that all on his own,” Mayne said. “A man comes to that sort of insight slowly, believe me.”

Josie felt the champagne slide down her throat. It was reckless, delicious, sitting here in a gorgeous little jewel-box of a room with one of the most desired men in London for
company. It made her feel sophisticated. As if she, Josephine Essex, weren't the least desirable debutante on the market. She pushed the thought away and drank more champagne. “How did you realize you were in love with Sylvie?” she asked boldly.

His face changed the moment she said Sylvie's name. Naturally, she felt a fierce pang of envy; who wouldn't? To tame a man of Mayne's reputation, and to tame him so thoroughly that his eyes almost changed color when one's name was mentioned…what a feat.

“I walked into a ball in Terence Square,” he said. “I had no intention of going, to be truthful. Lucius was out of town, and Rafe was rusticating in the country. I had just returned from our trip to Scotland—and if my sister lost her breakfast one more time in my company, I had vowed to disown the family and flee to Moscovy. At any rate, I came straight to London, and of course there were a hundred invitations. I'd lived so long in those benighted rags that Rafe calls clothes that I felt like being splendid. Do you know what I mean?”