Private Arrangements (31 page)

In between fulfillment of his inventive—at times highly unorthodox—fantasies, Gigi and Camden talked about the children they would have and all the things they couldn't wait to do together. At Christmas they'd visit his grandfather in Bavaria. Come spring she would show him the gorgeous West Country of England and Wales. And in summer, if she wasn't already too far gone in her pregnancy, they'd sail the Aegean and the Adriatic on the
Mistress.

“Take me somewhere to ride,” she said. “I haven't been on a horse since you walked out on me the first time.”

“I've a country house in Connecticut, on a pretty piece of land. We'll sail up tomorrow.”

Thinking of the arrangements made her remember Beckett. “Your butler . . . do you know that—”

“I was the one who told him to go far away. We were both shocked when three years later he came for a position I'd advertised. He immediately begged pardon and turned to leave. I stopped him. To this day I don't really know why.” Camden shrugged. “By the end of the year, he'll have worked for me for seven years.”

Whatever his reasons, she was grateful. “It's a well-run house,” she murmured. “And what of his son?”

“He was in a Liverpool jail for a year or two, then went to South Africa when gold was discovered. He married last year.”

She breathed a further sigh of relief. It was most agreeably humbling to learn that her sins hadn't stopped the earth from spinning or other people from getting on tolerably with the rest of their lives.

He traced her spine from her neck down to her tailbone and back again. “Tell me about Lord Frederick. How did he take your decision not to marry him?”

“With much better grace than I deserved, to be sure. I only wish I could arrange for him to be happy always. But don't worry,” she added hastily. “I will leave him alone to live his own life. I've learned my lesson.”

“Hmm, have you?” He kissed her shoulder. “That's what you said the last time we were in bed together.”

She turned onto her back and placed his hand between her legs. “Feel for yourself. Nothing there anymore between you and me.”

She lost count of how many times they made love. Too much and still not quite enough. Some time in the small hours of the night, he ran her a bath and laundered her thoroughly, making her giggle and squeal with all the naughty things a playful man could do with a willing woman, a tub of hot water, and a piece of fragrant soap.

When it was his turn to wash, she looted the kitchen for food. He was in his dressing gown toweling his hair dry when she returned, carrying with her a haunch of roasted pheasant left over from the dinner, a half loaf of bread, and a bowl of morello cherries.

“My God,” he said, tossing aside the towel to take the tray from her. “I had no idea you did things other than turning profits and enslaving men.”

She laughed as he set the tray down atop the large cedar chest at the foot of the bed. “Allow me to shock you by knitting you a pair of socks this Christmas, then.”

He smiled, tearing off a chunk of bread. “Then I shall be forced to build you a rocking chair. Alas, my carpentry is quite rusty.”

Tenderness, that most alien and disconcerting of emotions, swelled and billowed in her. She picked up a cherry and stared down at the soft, bright-red fruit. “I love you.”

The last time she'd declared her love he'd thrown it right back in her face. She waited uncertainly for his response. She didn't even have to wait a second. He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. “I love you more.”

All the sugar in Cuba couldn't compete with the sweetness in her heart. “More than you love the grand duchess?”

“Idiot.” He ruffled her already bedraggled hair. “I haven't loved her since the day I met you.”

“But I saw her today, in your automobile. The doormen at the hotel said she's been seen in your automobile every day. And your driver said he was coming back for her at eleven o'clock at night.”

“Incorrect. He is going to meet her and the children at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning, to take them to the train station. She has some relatives to visit in Washington, D.C.”

“Then you haven't been having an affair with her?”

“I last kissed her in 1881, and I don't miss it.” A sly smile curved his mouth. “So that explains your very delectable aggression. Perhaps I should keep her around, to always ensure your prompt ardor.”

“Only if you want Freddie to set up a canvas in our parlor.”

“Won't bother me, as long as I can still have you on the piano.” He grinned. “I can never look at the damned thing without seeing you draped over it in all kinds of lascivious ways, your sweet bum up in the—”

She threw the cherry at him. He caught the fruit and ate it. “I almost forgot,” he said, walking to a writing desk in the next room. “Look what news was delivered to my doorstep this afternoon.”

He brought back a telegram. She wiped her hands on a napkin and took the telegram from him.

dear sir stop his grace has persuaded me to the altar stop we wed yesterday stop will shortly depart for corfu stop yours most affectionately stop victoria perrin

Gigi covered her open mouth. Her mother. A duchess. The Duke of Perrin's duchess, no less. She'd suspected something, of course, but this—marriage— this was something else entirely.

“Do you realize what this means?” said Camden.

“That she'll take precedence over both you and me now?” Gigi shook her head in both delight and stupefaction.

“That the Duke of Perrin will find himself a grandfather in nine months.”

She laughed hard. The image of the Duke of Perrin suddenly becoming anyone's grandfather was much too delicious. She pulled Camden close and kissed him. “Do you know that you are the love of my life?”

“Always did,” said her husband. “But do you know that
you
are the love of
my
life?”

She set her head on his shoulder and rubbed contentedly. “Now I do.”

PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS
A Bantam Book / April 2008

Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Sherry Thomas

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-553-90476-5

www.bantamdell.com

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England
November 1892

I
n retrospect people say it was a Cinderella story.

Notably missing was the personage of the Fairy Godmother. But other than that, the narrative seemed to contain all the elements of the fairy tale.

There was something of a modern prince. He had no royal blood, but he was a powerful man— London's foremost barrister, Mr. Gladstone's right hand—a man who would very likely one day, fifteen years hence, occupy 10 Downing Street and pass such radical reforms as to provide pensions for the elderly and health insurance to the working class.

There was a woman who spent much of her life in the kitchen. In the eyes of many, she was a nobody. For others, she was one of the greatest cooks of her generation, her food said to be so divine that old men dined with the gusto of adolescent boys, and so seductive that lovers forsook each other, as long as a crumb remained on the table.

There was a ball, not the usual sort of ball that made it into fairy tales or even ordinary tales, but a ball nevertheless. There was the requisite Evilish Female Relative. And most important for connoisseurs of fairy tales, there was footgear left behind in a hurry—nothing so frivolous or fancy as glass slippers, yet carefully kept and cherished, with a flickering flame of hope, for years upon years.

A Cinderella story, indeed.

Or was it?

It all began—or resumed, depending on how one looked at it—the day Bertie Somerset died.