Pleasure For Pleasure (8 page)

“How dare she reject you?” Josie cried. “I shall never think well of her again.”

He grinned at that. “She stayed with her husband, you little witch. She loved him, more than she loved me, and since she didn't love me even an iota, that was easily done.”

“Sylvie is far more beautiful,” Josie said stoutly.

“Yes.” And, after a while: “Sylvie is a painter, did I tell you that? Both of them artists.”

“I wish I had a talent for something like that.”

“What do you have a talent for?”

Josie shrugged. “Nothing ladylike, nor artistic either. I can't even embroider, and all I really like to do is read.”

“Reading is an estimable pursuit.”

“Not what I read,” Josie said with a burst of reckless honesty. “I like to read books published by the Minerva Press.”

He laughed at that.

“They're really very good.”

“Adventures, escapes, damsels in peril—why Josie, I hardly know you! Aren't you the one who's afraid of riding, even though you love horses?”

“It's impolite of you to mention it.”

“Well, I'm about to get even more impolite,” he said, with just the faintest slur in his words. “You need to take off that blasted corset. Don't slay me, but you never looked like that before.”

“Like what before?”

“Now you sound like my mother,” he told her. “My mother could—”

“What did I not look like before?” she interrupted. “You might as well finish. I am ready for a grossly uncomplimentary remark.” She wasn't, really, but it sounded courageous.

“When we were on the way to Scotland, I noticed several times that you had developed a really lovely figure,” he said, waving his glass in the air.

“Oh,” she said, taken aback.

“When I first met all four Essex sisters, you understand, you had a perfectly charming little figure for a girl of your age—damn it all, what
is
your age?”

“I was fifteen when you first met me,” Josie said with dignity.

“Bit lumpy, back then,” Mayne said, “but all girls are. On the way to Scotland, I remember telling myself several times that you were developing the kind of figure that was going to break men's hearts and make them grovel in your wake. You didn't quite have it yet, and you certainly didn't know how to walk.”

“Then I got fatter.”

“No! Then you showed up wearing this contraption that makes you look—you look—well, you look stuffed.”

“Like a stuffed sausage.”

“Take the damned thing off.”

“What are you talking about?” Her blood was pounding through her veins.

“Take it off,” he said. He stood up, and to his credit, he wasn't even unsteady. “I'll help.”

“You must be drunk,” she said with horror. His face didn't appear to have the cruel ravishing power of the heroes in her favorite novels, but how would she know? He was standing before her looking helpful and just slightly drunk.

“For God's sake, Josie,” he roared, “I don't want to seduce
you! How can you think such a thing. I'm thirty-four, in God's name. Thirty-
five
in two days. And you're what? Eighteen?”

“Almost nineteen,” she said, tight-lipped.

“Well I am almost thirty-five. And in the course of my long and misspent life, I have never yet taken up cradle-robbing. Finally, as I think you are quite aware, I am in love with Sylvie!”

“Then what—what do you want?”

“If you won't talk to Sylvie, and your own sisters colluded in stuffing you into this despicable garment, then I'll have to show you myself.”

“Show me what?”

“Show you how to walk so that you make a man slaver at your feet, of course. Isn't that what you want?”

“Of course that's what I want!” she cried. “But I can't—I can't unclothe myself.”

“Not all the way,” he said, pained. “You just need to take off that cravat thing and put your gown back on.”

“It's not a cravat, it's a corset! And you're drunk.”

“So are you,” he said, laughing a little now. “We are both drunk in the starlight room. That's what my aunt used to call this: the starlight room. When she was very ill, toward the end of her life, she would lie on this couch all night and watch the stars on the ceiling, and the stars through the window. Sometimes my father would stay with her through the night.”

“It must have broken his heart when she died,” Josie whispered.

“He always said that without her, he wouldn't have known how to love. My grandparents were as stiff as if they'd been carved from wood.”

Josie's eyes filled with tears. “That's so lovely. My sisters taught me how to love, because my mother died before I was born.”

His eyebrow shot up. “Before?”

“Well, on the same day. But she never even held me, so I think of it as if she was gone before I arrived.”

“I suspect that Lady Godwin taught me how to love,” Mayne said. “Damned annoying that is.”

“Annoying why?”

“Because she dismissed me without a second's thought. But I couldn't stop thinking of her.” He shrugged.

“You love your sister,” Josie pointed out.

“Of course I do. But I meant a truly passionate love.” He shook himself and suddenly his eyes snapped into focus, staring down at her, and before she knew what had happened, he'd pulled her to her feet and nimbly turned her about. Then he was unbuttoning her gown down the back.

Josie felt as if the champagne had dulled her responses. This particular impropriety had never been covered by her governess, Miss Flecknoe. Mayne didn't want to seduce her. He thought she looked like a stuffed sausage. So did it matter that he was about to see her corset?

“God almighty,” he whispered as the dress fell open.

He'd seen her corset.

“What in the hell
is
this thing?” He sounded almost angry. “It looks like the underpinning of a ship.”

“It's a special corset they sell in Paris for larger ladies,” Josie explained, feeling a burning flush rise up her neck. “Would you
please
button my gown back up?”

But he was pulling at the strings.

“You can't just pull at me,” Josie said, breathless. “You have to unhook at the top and bottom. And then you can start to unlace, but you have to do it slowly. Very slowly.”

“Why?” he asked, and she heard the sound of a little hook being torn apart.

“Don't do that!” she cried, agonized. And then: “Because I might faint if it opens too quickly.”

“Damn.” He said it flatly.

She didn't faint, even though the pressure released so quickly that she swayed forward. He grabbed her, large hands holding her shoulders. He steadied her, and then pushed her gown forward over her arms. As it fell to the floor, the corset followed. Of course it didn't fall with a gentle swish, the way her gown did. It clanked because the whalebones were capped with special little tips of lead, so they wouldn't dig into her skin.

The tighter, the better, Madame Badeau had said, showing her how her maid should brace herself against the bed and force the lacings closed. And then she'd said the magic words: You won't be able to eat while wearing this, of course.

In Josie's mind, that had been the moment when The Corset, as she thought of it, moved to sacred status. The Corset would give her a successful season. The Corset would stop her from eating, and give her a slender, refined shape, and give her a husband.

It hadn't worked out that way. And besides, Josie found herself perfectly able to eat while wearing it.

Mayne was staring at the ground, where the corset had fallen. “It looks like a bizarre kind of chrysalis that hatched a butterfly,” he said, picking it up by one of its many straps. “What in the devil were you wearing this for, Josie?”

He wasn't even looking at her, but Josie slung her arms across her thin chemise and tried not to think about all her unbounded flesh. “It made me thinner,” she snapped.

“You don't need to be thinner,” he said. Then he glanced at her. “Are you cold? Put your gown back on.”

There was a moment's silence and then Josie said in a stern little voice, “I can't, not without the corset. It won't fit.” That was one of the gifts of The Corset. She was able to wear gowns that were almost—not quite—the same measurements as those worn by Imogen.

Mayne tossed the corset to the side, where it fell with a dull clang and a tinkling of lead-covered tips. “I'll get you
something to put on,” he said. Before she knew what happened, he was out the door.

Josie spread her arms. It was…glorious to have the corset off. Glorious. She was wearing a chemise of the lightest lawn. It felt like air, billowing around her.

G
riselda's first husband had been handed to her on a platter by her father. “I've had an offer for your hand in marriage,” he had said.

“Who?” she had gasped, thinking of Lord Cogley, with whom she'd danced the night before.

“Willoughby,” Papa had said, impatient as always. “I accepted him. Decent family, very nice settlement, you're not likely to do better.”

“But—” she had cried. And cried.

It was over.

Ever since poor Willoughby had died, facedown in a plate of jellied fowl, Griselda had looked to men for an occasional, discreet amusement. Only twice, if the truth were
known. And neither of those
petites affaires
lasted over one night. She considered those two a judicious distraction from the round of visits, balls, and events that made up her life.

One more flirtation…and then she would put her mind seriously to the question of matrimony. She was frightfully aged: almost thirty-three, although she would rather expire than admit it. And she didn't look that age.

Finally she saw him. Darlington was on the other side of the room, talking to Mrs. Hotson and her daughter. Griselda paused thoughtfully for a moment. Mrs. Hotson was, of course, famed for the large amount of money her husband had made investing in some sort of machinery that produced lace, of a crude nature and fit only for undergarments. Not Griselda's undergarments, naturally; she prided herself on wearing chemises as beautiful as her outerwear. Just because there was no one but a maid to see did not mean that a woman should relax into slobbery.

Darlington was quite handsome. He had those tossed curls that all the men were affecting these days, from the Bishop of London (who should have known better than to have curls peeking out from under his hat) to her own brother Mayne. Mayne's were, at least, natural, and Darlington's appeared to be as well. There was nothing more unappetizing than the thought of a man patiently waiting while a servant crimped his hair. Darlington was lean and tall, and beautifully dressed, for all she knew that he didn't have a penny to his name. Well, perhaps he had a penny or two. One had to think that the Duke of Bedrock wouldn't toss off his youngest son to live in the gutter.

But Darlington needed to marry well. He was obviously trying to interest himself in Letty Hotson. Letty was standing next to him, her mouth slightly ajar, listening closely as he bent his head to tell her something. Even from across the room she could see the trace of self-loathing in his face,
almost hear the detached sound of his voice. Dear me, Griselda thought, I shall be doing the man a favor by extracting him from that company. If there was one thing she knew about, it was marriage between incompatible persons. He and Letty would never share an intelligent conversation.

A moment later she was standing beside Mrs. Hotson, complimenting her on her daughter's dress; Letty was swathed in lace from head to toe. And two minutes after that, Griselda was strolling away with Darlington's hand under her arm, having cut him from the herd.

“Aren't you going to regale me with a clever phrase about Letty's lace?” she asked a moment later. “Lacy Letty?”

“I am too busy trying to ascertain why you wish to speak to me, Lady Griselda,” he said. “I fear that my sins have come home to roost.”

“Calling Josie a sausage was indeed a sin,” Griselda said, and her voice came out harder than she meant it to be.

“I vow never to do so again.”

She turned to look at him in surprise.

“I've been an ass, and I'm sorry.”

He had queer gray-green eyes with thick eyelashes. The odd thing was that he actually did look rueful. Why on earth hadn't she thought of speaking to him before? Perhaps she could have cut off poor Josie's miseries after the very first ball in which they heard giggles about the Scottish Sausage. “You've made her season a horrendous trial,” Griselda observed. Again her voice was more critical than she meant it to be, given that she was supposed to coax him into a flirtation and then extract a promise of better behavior.

It was a trifle disappointing to realize that she could simply walk away right now and consider their flirtation at an end.

“If you had asked me to close my mouth, I would have.”

“Why?” she asked, and then: “Not that there should be any reason for stopping behavior so cruel and—” She stopped.

“Ill-bred?” he put in, with an odd twist of his lips.

Griselda felt like saying the truth, so she did. “Aye, ill-bred. It is ill-bred to mock those who are less fortunate than you.”

“You're right in every particular.”

“Although,” she added, “obviously you are not truly ill-bred.”

“One would hope not,” he said, but there was something sardonic in his voice that suggested that he, at least, felt that a father's title as duke did not necessarily constitute good breeding. “May I ask you to dance with me?”

Griselda knew she probably should go back and report victory. If she hurried, she might even find Sylvie, Tess, and Josie still in the ladies' retiring room. Rather oddly, Sylvie seemed to enjoy herself far more in seclusion than she did circling the ballroom floor. Earlier, Griselda had seen her circling the floor with Mayne, and Sylvie had looked almost—
almost
—bored.

But Griselda was never bored on the dance floor. “I shall dance with you, but only if you treat me to a taste of this oh-so-precious wit that I hear about.”

He shook his head. “I've decided to stop making my reputation at the expense of others.”

“It's all very well to eschew unpleasant comments about defenseless girls,” she said tartly, “but surely you're not planning to enter a monastery?”

The strains of a waltz began, and he smiled down at her as she put a hand high in his. “I thought perhaps I would become a truly boring person now. One of the ones whom everyone looks up to.”

He was a beautiful dancer. “I see precisely what you mean. There
is
something about you of the Puritan. I suppose you have a sweet and modest disposition, and you've merely been pretending to be wicked these past few years.”

“Precisely. I have had to put away my ardent desire to
become a bishop, but perhaps I shall still give up the world and its vanities.”

“I shall have to test you,” she said, giggling a little. “You know all good men go through some sort of temptation.” His arm was warm and strong around her waist as they danced.

“In the desert, I believe,” he said, looking around in a way that made her break into laughter. She caught the startled eyes of a friend, Lady Felicia Saville. Felicia had never quite recovered from a bout of lovesickness she suffered over Mayne, and Griselda tried to avoid her as much as possible. But now she gave her a laughing smile. She was dancing with one of the handsomest, most intelligent young men in the
ton,
and she was enjoying herself.

“There's no desert in England,” Griselda observed.

“That's a good thing.”

“Why?”

“Because I've heard tell that people go quite unclothed in the desert.” His eyes danced with laughter. For a moment she thought
he
was trying to seduce her, but that was ridiculous. “Consider Lady Stutterfield in that state, for instance.” He nodded toward a rawboned woman who moved by in a stately fashion, clothed in great quantities of starched taffeta.

“Perhaps it is just as well that England has no desert,” Griselda agreed.

“One never knows, of course, when the earth's magnetic poles will change their position and turn this country into a sandy wasteland,” he observed. “I learned very little in school, but I do remember that.”

“I'm quite certain that I've heard it said that you took a First.”

“Firsts are so easy to obtain these days,” he said. “Especially if one is partial to gossip, as I am. History is nothing more than a large collection of such tales, and my First is
in that subject, which should qualify me in your esteem.”

“History is made up of gossip? I thought it was made up of grand events and grander people. And dates. My governess quite despaired of my ability to keep dates in my head. I could never see the point of it.”

“Neither can I,” he said companionably, and she could tell he meant precisely what he said. “But think about gossip. What do you most prefer to gossip about?”

“People, I suppose.”

“Yes, but people doing things. I think that there are three truly interesting sources of gossip. One is eccentrics, and another is financial failures. One can practically sum up the history of the world in those terms. Alexander the Great? An eccentric, and then a financial failure. Napoleon, Charlemagne, our own English Henry IV…all make interesting history, and each of them is either an eccentric, a financial failure, or both.”

“You haven't told me the third category,” Griselda observed.

“Shouldn't you like to guess?”

She thought for a moment. “Adultery…or possibly murder. But on the whole adultery is so much more interesting to discuss; murders have a dreary similarity at the base.”

“One could argue the same of adultery, but I won't,” he said, laughing. “You see, Lady Griselda, you would have had a top First, if only the universities weren't such fools about allowing women to attend.”

“I'm sure I wouldn't want one.”

“Why on earth not?”

“So that I could predict at what year England would turn into a desert? And pray, sir, what possible use would that news be to me?”

“You could prepare the
ton
for the eventuality of waltzing with no clothes,” he said.

He
was
flirting with her. Really, she thought that as a
woman who was ten years older than he, she would have to carry this conversation all by herself. But he was surprising her. First he swore to cease his talk of sausages, and now he was engaging in a flirtation.

“I'm afraid,” she said in a melancholy type of way, “that I would have to leave the
ton
if that became the normal way of things.”

“Couldn't stomach it?” he said sympathetically. “Whenever I have to visualize something of an unpleasant nature, I think about muffins.”

“Muffins?”

He twirled her around the bottom of the room and their legs brushed together. “Muffins are very helpful in these situations,” he said gravely. “For example, if I think of Lady Stutterfield without her support garments, not to mention all that taffeta, I might feel faint. So I think of a hot, buttered muffin and I feel much better. On the reverse side, if I think of you, Lady Griselda, without your garments, I also feel faint, though for different reasons.”

“So you think of muffins?” she asked, her eyes caught by his intent ones.

“Dry, horrid muffins,” he said.

“I think you show a remarkable attachment to nursery food.” She drew back as the music came to a close, and curtsied.

“Will I see you tomorrow in the park?” he asked.

“Shall you be there, pursuing a marriageable young miss?” she teased.

“Yes,” he said baldly.

She was a bit surprised, but then realized that Darlington was presumably the sort who could flirt with a willing, presumably available widow and blatantly pursue a wife at the same time. She kept smiling and withdrew her hand. “Perhaps I shall see you there,” she said.

“Lady Griselda—” he began.

But she turned away with a dismissive flutter and a polite smile. While he was a most enjoyable man to share a waltz with, she had no particular desire to watch him hook poor Letty Hotson and her dowry of lace.