Seducing Mr. Heywood (28 page)

“Yes, I made certain of that,” he whispered huskily, nibbling her neck, feathering kisses on her breasts as he opened the impossibly small buttons that held the bodice of her dress together. He unpinned her hair and ran his fingers through the silken strands, nuzzling its softness, inhaling the almond blossom perfume that was his lady’s unique and special scent.

“I suggest that we ignore all of them. They surely have much better things to do than intrude upon this too-rare private moment. They will eventually give up.” Charles was losing himself in their private moment, and Sophia saw no reason to stop him.

“Shall we ask them to go away, Charles? I do not want to be rude.” Sophia was nipping at his ear now, and pulling apart his cravat.

Charles looked up, his eyes locking onto hers. “Oh, all right, allow me.” He walked to the drawing room doors and rapped smartly. The Greek chorus quieted down immediately. “Now hear this, all of you,” he ordered them, “Lady Sophia and I have a great deal to…to discuss…yes…and we need some privacy.”

A familiar snicker sounded on the other side of the doors. Lewis! He addressed his friend. “Lewis, I promise that you will dance at my wedding, but, for now, please take yourself home. Likewise, John, recite your Homer. William, perform some calculations for Mrs. Walters. I will see you all tomorrow.”

That should be clear enough, Charles thought, even for this rowdy crew of well wishers. He added, “Oh…er…Bromley, you can tell the staff that no one needs to remain on duty for Lady Sophia tonight. We shall see to our own needs. Thank you!”

“Hear, hear!” A clapping of hands—large ones, no doubt belonging to the surgeon—and a whistle erupted, along with a new chorus of congratulations. The Reverend Walters spoke up, “Mr. Heywood, I would be honored to perform the wedding ceremony. I will post the banns for you upon my return to York Minster.”

Charles was dumbstruck at the generous offer. Jesse Walters was waving an olive branch, an apology of sorts, for his earlier remarks about Charles’s intended bride. The vicar accepted it. “Why, thank you, sir. We shall have need of your good services very soon, I think.”

Sophia giggled in confirmation. “Very, very soon,” she whispered naughtily.

Then a scuffle was heard at the keyhole, and a small voice whispered, “We love you, Mama, and we are so glad that you and Mr. Heywood love each other, also.”

Sophia ran to the door, bent down and blew a kiss through the keyhole to her sons. “I love you, too, my darlings, I love you very much. We are going to be one big, happy family, I promise.”

“Amen,” added the vicar, squatting at the side of his wife-to-be and wishing his boys good night through the crack in the doors.

And then there was silence. Sophia and Charles, hunkered at the keyhole, turned to each other and smiled. “We are halfway to the floor again, my darling,” Sophia whispered in a lusty, husky voice.

“So we are, my love, so we are,” said Charles, lowering his lady to that self-same expanse. He experienced a heady rush of
déjà vu
from the last time they were both flat upon the rich oriental carpet, the occasion of their fateful first encounter, and smiled at the memory. But now, methodically, purposefully, he concentrated on the vastly more important matter at hand, both hands, as he
took care of the few buttons that were securing Lady Sophia’s bodice, but not for long.

As Charles undid the last button, Sophia nipped at his earlobe like a mischievous little kitten and purred into his ear, her voice low and husky, “Methinks you would make a fine abigail, Charles, and I do have need of one.”

“I would be honored, my dearest Sophia, to undress you at any time,” Charles responded, “but you will have to find someone else to
dress
you, I fear.” His long, warm fingers spread apart the cloth of her bodice and gently pushed down the top of her silk chemise.

Sophia pretended to be shocked. “Why, vicar! You do surprise me with these brazen words!”

“Ah, Sophia, never forget that though I am a man of God, I am, first and foremost, merely a man, like any other.”

As his mouth moved slowly over her breasts, Sophia thought,
No, Charles, you are not at all like any other man.
She gasped as his tongue slowly licked a particularly sensitive part of her anatomy, and moaned softly.
And I, of all women
, she mused, as her heightened senses took over and she melted under his touch,
should know.

“I do love you so very much, Charles,” she sighed.

Suddenly she sat bolt upright. “Mr. Heywood!” she blurted out, surprised, amazed, and thoroughly delighted.

“Yes, my lady?” Charles’s voice, languid, honeyed, floated up from the region of her gently splayed lower limbs.

“
Where
did you ever learn to—” Sophia’s face flushed, and she could feel the heat traveling south in a great, flooding pool of warmth. In a calmer tone, she said, “You have deceived me, sir. I thought you an innocent in the ways of physical love between man and woman!”

“Do I displease you, my lady?” Charles raised his head, his hair tumbling over his forehead, his lips quirking with pent-up smiles. His gray eyes shone with mirth.

“Hardly, sir, but that is not the point!” She waggled her finger at him and he—
the wretch!
Sophia thought—
playfully bit the tender pink tip. She winced in mock pain. “I fear that there is more to you, sir, than meets the eye.”

“Yes, I think you will soon discover that.”

“You rogue! Where
did
you go on your Grand Tour?”

“Italy, Greece…Turkey,” Charles answered.

“And what did you there, in Turkey, sir?”

“I had many interesting adventures, my lady, among them the opportunity to speak with an elderly man, a eunuch, if I recall, who served many years in the caliph’s harem. But surely we have more important things to do now than to discuss my scholarly interviews in the mysterious east?”

“It is a good thing we are to be wed very, very soon, Charles, for I fear you will ruin me tonight, ruin me utterly and entirely.” Sophia sweetly chastised her lover as her eyes devoured his face, her fingers tracing his soft mouth.

“Ah, my lady,” Charles laughed, “from your sweet lips to God’s own ears!”

Sophia’s voice was muffled as Charles laid her gently back upon the carpet. “And do stop ‘my-ladying’ me, you…you…”

She never finished her sentence.

London, The Little Season, 1811-12

Lady Stanhope’s large drawing room favored the archaeologically inspired decor of Thomas Hope, a style drawn from classical discoveries in furniture, sculpture, and painting during the many excavations of the last two decades. The Etruscans, Romans, Greeks, Turks, Egyptians—all these served to influence Hope’s eccentric ideas of decoration. Sir Isaac Rebow winced at one of the more atrocious of the man’s designs, a candelabrum composed of a lotus flower emerging from an enormous bouquet of ostrich feathers.

Equally hideous was a wine cooler shaped like a lavacrum, an antique Roman bath, which stood on a triangular pedestal of green bronze. Overhead, a massive chandelier of gilt bronze sported large-winged sphinxes and fanciful, exotic plant forms spewing wild, feathery fronds. Rebow shuddered at the excess; he was a conservative gentleman in all things.

“Isaac! I never thought I would see you here. What a lovely surprise!” Lady Sophia Rowley was garbed in a stunning blue high-waisted, low-cut, gown that displayed her charms, its color almost matching the warm blue of her eyes. She beamed happily at her former paramour.

Sir Isaac Rebow blinked. The very last person he had expected to see in Town during this season was his onetime lover, Sophia Rowley. No, he remembered, she was now Mrs. Charles Heywood. She had recently remarried, according to the
on-dits.
Number four! The woman, he vowed, would set a record rivaling that of the Wife of Bath for the greatest number of husbands, before she departed this blessed earth. He took her hand and brushed his lips over her soft fingers.

“My dear, you are looking more beautiful than ever. Marriage seems”—his dark eyes twinkled—“to become you.” Always a beauty, with features of classical perfection, there was now something new that emanated from her. She was stunning, bright, her hair, the color of burnished moonlight, a veritable halo shining around her oval face.

“
This
marriage does, Isaac,” she replied, her voice low. She blushed, the color staining her cheeks pink, emphasizing the perfectly angled bones.

Now Isaac’s eyes were wide open. Never during their long liaison had he seen Sophia blush! He observed her more carefully. She had changed from the inside out, he decided. The brittleness that had always been part of her persona had disappeared. She was warmth and happiness. This Sophia was truly mellowed, softened.…

Had the new husband been the miracle worker? Lord, she seemed at peace! Isaac had regretted the abruptness of the breakup of their relationship. He knew he’d been cruel, uncharacteristically so. In the ensuing few months of his great happiness with his new bride Mary, he had not thought of Sophia often, but when he had…Ah, but he had behaved badly toward her, and he regretted it. She had not deserved such treatment from him.

“Sophia,” he began, trying to make amends, “I regret our last meeting. I was harsh and cruel. You did not deserve that, not any of it. I beg your forgiveness.”

She seemed taken aback. “Isaac…that was so long ago, my dear.…”

Isaac frowned. “’Twas scarce five months, Sophia!”

Sophia smiled benevolently, patting his shoulder affectionately. “A lifetime, my dear.”

“You have changed,” Isaac Rebow told her, assessing her even more frankly. “You are a different person, I vow.”

“Isaac—” she hesitated. She had never been honest with her former lover. The old Sophia rarely told anyone the truth, rarely expressed her deepest feelings. “Isaac, I am in love for the first time. And I never knew before what that could be.” She wet her lips and looked into Isaac’s eyes. “I thought I loved you, my dear, but I did not. I had no idea what true love was.”

She looked across the room, fixing her gaze upon a slim, handsome gentleman with curling brown hair that he was even now running a hand through, tousling it. Sophia smiled, and Isaac further noted that the look in her eyes was one he had never seen fixed on him. Sophia, in love! Remarkable. He gazed at her in wonderment.

The young man caught her look across the wide room and returned a smile of great sweetness. Isaac took a deep breath.
A love match!
All was possible, he realized, all things were possible in this world.

Sophia turned back to Isaac, the smile softening the contours of her serenely beautiful face. “That gentleman with Charles sent him a tract on atheism written by a Mr. Percy Shelley, who was ejected from Cambridge rather summarily for writing it. The fellow is asking Charles his opinion on the subject, I believe, and Charles will tell him!” She laughed.

Isaac looked her up and down, his gaze lingering on her abdomen. Did he see there a slight, soft swelling?

“My dear, are you increasing?” he asked, with the familiarity of a past lover.

Sophia blushed again. “Does it show, Isaac?” she teased, looking down at herself and the contours revealed by the sheer silk gown. “And early days, too! I shall be a behemoth before long!”

Now it was Isaac’s turn to blush, but it barely showed under his tanned skin. He shook his head. “Nay, not at
all, my lady, not at all! I noted it first in your features, where I saw a look I have also seen recently on the sweet face of my lady wife.”

“Oh, Isaac!” Sophia’s answering smile was wide and genuine. “Never say! Oh, I wish you and Mary happy.” It was the first time, Sophia realized, that she’d said the name of her former rival in the game of hearts aloud, acknowledging her. She truly wished her well, her and Isaac both. He deserved to be happy, and she was glad the girl had made him so.

Isaac took Sophia’s hands in his. “I am so happy for you, my dear, so very happy.” His eyes reflected the sincerity of his words. “Your husband is indeed a lucky man.” He looked over at Charles, who was still engaged in animated debate with the other gentleman.

“No, Isaac,” Sophia Heywood disagreed, her voice soft and low, “it is I who am the lucky one.”

Music swelled behind her as Lady Stanhope’s German chamber group picked up their instruments and began to play Mozart’s
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
with exuberance, if not skill. The charming strains flowed about and around the former lovers, who had found the true mates of their hearts and minds and had each made their separate peace with the past.

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Jo Manning
, a native New Yorker, is a graduate of Queens College and Syracuse University. She has worked as a librarian and researcher and currently lives in South Beach, Miami with her husband Nick. They are the parents of two children and grandparents of five. She is the author of My Lady Scandalous, a biography about Grace Dalrymple Elliott.

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