WANTON (19 page)

“About what?”

“About his being up in my bedchamber.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s precisely where I’ve wanted him all along. Now that he’s been there, and I helped to bring it about, I can hardly complain.”

Though Amelia was trying not to be embarrassed by her risqué behavior, her cheeks flushed. “I’m not used to all this relaxing of morals.”

“You’ll
get
used to it. Actually, after you’ve carried on like this for awhile, you’ll likely never be able to live any other way.”

“I don’t think so,” Amelia said. “This flaunting of convention is very out of character for me.”

“We’ll just change your character.”

“Can a person change her innate qualities? You truly suppose it can happen?”

“Absolutely. You were bottled up at that blasted school, so you never had a chance to stretch your wings and fly.”

“My life was very circumscribed.”

“Who was the owner? Miss Peabody? Gad, even her name sounds tedious.”

Amelia smiled. “She was very stern and dull, but she meant well.”

“You were her captive audience, so you absorbed all she taught you, even if it was silly or wrong, even if it completely strangled your best traits.”

Amelia had never assumed she had any traits to strangle. She’d always viewed herself as being very modest and unpretentious. It had taken flamboyant Barbara Middleton to rattle loose Amelia’s more robust tendencies. But Amelia wasn’t sure the transformation was genuine or that it would remain once she was no longer around Barbara and subject to her whims and impulses.

“Miss Peabody was big on decorum and manners,” Amelia said, “and I agree that they’re important. She felt that a woman’s reputation had to be guarded at all costs, that if she lost the good opinion of others, she was destroyed.”

“Reputation, bah!” Barbara spat. “The whole concept is naught but a ploy to keep females in their place.”

“Did you ever wish you’d been born a man?”

“Many, many times. I couldn’t abide the strictures under which I was expected to labor. And don’t forget: All those stupid rules were invented by men to make us behave.
They
never follow any of them.”

Amelia thought of Lucas and his many paramours, how he dabbled and caroused and seemed proud of his degeneracy.

“They certainly don’t,” Amelia concurred.

“They’re free to rampantly fornicate and sire bastard children. They can gamble away all the family’s money and property. They can become drunkards and create public spectacles—and the dear wife has to put up with all that nonsense. I wasn’t that noble.”

“Which of those sins were committed by your husband?”

“None of them,” Barbara breezily said. “He just bored me to tears. I was choking on his lectures and sanctimony. One day, I decided I’d had enough, and I ran away.”

She hadn’t returned for three decades. Her husband had been dead by then, her son—the one she’d abandoned when he was a baby—was an adult and installed as earl of Penworth. Barbara had few regrets about any of it, and with her having earned her son’s forgiveness, she didn’t rue her choices.

Amelia refused to have a history similar to Barbara’s. She would never engage in scandalous affairs where her name would be hurled in a derogatory way by all who knew her—and all who didn’t.

Currently, she was listening to Barbara, acting as Barbara would act, and heeding Barbara’s advice to win the estate Lord Sidwell had promised. But once Amelia’s goal was accomplished, she intended to be a happy, satisfied wife in the country. She would befriend the neighbors, volunteer at church, host the harvest festival and Christmas celebration.

She would be boring and dull and tedious—as Miss Peabody had been—and in the future, she’d reflect warmly on her London adventure. Then, gradually, it would come to seem as if it had happened to someone else, someone wilder, freer, and more exotic than herself.

“I have a question,” she murmured.

“What is it?”

“Do you think Mr. Drake could ever...well...”

“Spit it out, darling,” Barbara urged.

“Could he ever...ah...fall in love with me?”

Barbara studied her, and the shrewd assessment made Amelia feel young and unsophisticated.

“Is that what you’re hoping now?”

“No, I was just wondering.”

“Are you perhaps falling a bit in love yourself?”

“No,” Amelia hastily scoffed.

Barbara leaned across the table and patted Amelia’s hand.

“Don’t walk down that road, Amelia. We talked about it, remember? You need to separate your emotions from what’s occurring with him.”

“I know.”

“If you don’t, and we can’t get him to propose, he’ll break your heart.”

“I realize that, but he can be very charming. When I spend such intimate time with him, it’s hard to remain detached.”

“But you must,” Barbara insisted. “He’s a rake and a bounder. Even if he becomes your husband, the chance of sentiment developing is highly unlikely.”

“He could grow fond though, couldn’t he?”

“You shouldn’t count on receiving much from such an unreliable cad.”

“I feel sorry for him,” Amelia blurted out. “He seems lost and alone to me—as if he doesn’t have any friends or focus in his life.”

“That’s the motherly instinct in you,” Barbara said. “Save it and use it on your children should you have some someday. It’s a waste of energy to let it blossom over a man like Lucas Drake. You’ll only humiliate yourself in the end.”

They were silent, Amelia drinking her chocolate as Barbara finished eating.

Amelia knew Barbara was correct, that Amelia shouldn’t permit herself to like Lucas very much, but in actual practice, the notion was extremely difficult. He’d turned out to be incredibly
likeable
.

She didn’t want to have a marriage of convenience, didn’t want to snag Lucas into matrimony merely to have him trot back to his dissolute world in London the minute the ceremony was over. She wanted him to love her. So he’d be content in her company. So he’d be glad they’d wed. So he’d stay with her and never leave.

Yet with Barbara so vehemently opposed to the possibility, Amelia had to keep any burgeoning feelings to herself, and she wouldn’t mind if she didn’t share what she was sensing. Something fine and amazing was flourishing between her and Lucas, and she’d hide it, like a special treasure in a locked box.

Once in awhile she would take it out, would hold it and rejoice over it, then she’d squirrel it away so no one could see.

“Remember the letter I mentioned?” Amelia said. “The one Lucas delivered from my friend, Rose?”

“Yes. What did she want?”

“She’s getting married at an estate near the Scottish border. She’d like me to join her so I can help with the preparations.”

“I don’t suppose Lucas will be there, will he?”

“I asked him if he’d accompany me, but he refused.”

“He’ll be in London?”

“Yes.”

“Then you, my dear, have to remain in London too. As long as he is here, you can’t be anywhere else.”

* * * *

“I’ve been thinking,” Aaron said.

“About what?”

“About Priscilla.”

Aaron stared at his father who was dressed to go out for the evening. It was just the two of them for a change, with no guests to entertain or interrupt. They were in the main parlor, having a brandy as Lord Sidwell waited for his carriage.

Aaron had cried off from the nightly round of balls and soirees. The previous evening, he and Priscilla had had a bit of a row. The quarrel had been so inane that he didn’t recollect how it had started or what it had even been about, but it was another shining example of how awful their life would be.

His father frowned. “What about Priscilla?”

“Are you positive I should marry her?”

“Of course you should. Why would you pose such an idiotic question?”

“She’s so young and immature.”

“What has that to do with anything?”

“It just seems that a husband should...
like
his wife.”

“What ever gave you that idea?”

“Our union might last for fifty or sixty years. I’d hate to imagine it would all be horrid.”

Lord Sidwell shrugged. “If you don’t get on, you live separately. It works for other couples; it will work for you.”

“I don’t want to live separately. I want to be happy.”

“Happy in marriage?” Lord Sidwell laughed nastily. “No man is ever
happy
in his marriage.”

“Some men are. It can happen, and I wish it could happen to me. I’m not asking for the moon. I’d simply like to have a sane relationship with my wife.”

“You’re not wedding Priscilla for her attributes.”

“Why am I again? I can’t ever recall from one minute to the next.”

“It’s to bring us an enormous amount of property, especially that tract on our southern boundary. I’ve had my eye on that parcel for two decades.” Lord Sidwell gleefully rubbed his hands together. “And it’s about to be mine.”

Aaron studied his father, wondering what kind of person he actually was on the inside. It was so difficult to guess what went on in his head.

For most of Aaron’s childhood, his father had been absent, choosing to reside in London, while Aaron and Lucas were at the estate and raised by nannies and other servants.

Whenever Lord Sidwell would deign to return, he was treated like a king. As a small boy, Aaron had been in awe of him. It was only when Aaron grew up a bit that he started to understand his father was a miscreant and a dunce. He was also extremely vain and had a massive cruel streak that he regularly exhibited in his punishments of Lucas.

Aaron suffered colossal guilt that he’d never protected or helped Lucas, and he’d swallowed his father’s lectures about status and rank for so long that he didn’t have much of his own character remaining.

While he didn’t possess his father’s malice, he was an exact replica in most other ways. He pompously viewed himself as being very grand. He owned his own properties and carried a lowly courtesy title of viscount, and when his father passed, he’d become an earl.

He reveled in his station and flaunted it to put others in their place, to make sure people recognized how magnificent he was. Yet if he was so elevated and amazing, but had to wed Priscilla despite his misgivings, what was the use of any of it?

“You had a terrible marriage,” Aaron dared to mention.

“I did not. I had a very typical, very ordinary marriage.”

“I’ve never heard you say a kind word about my mother.”

“She didn’t deserve a kind word. She was flamboyant and brazen and loose with her favors, but that doesn’t mean my marriage was awful.”

The comment was so strangely convoluted that Aaron couldn’t wrap his head around it.

“How would you describe it then?” Aaron pressed.

“I told you: typical. By my wedding day, I had talked to her precisely three times. I knew she was pretty and vivacious and she had a soothing voice.”

“And that was it?”

“We learned a few others things. Before we settled on her, my father commissioned a report that listed some of her attributes and skills. She could sing and play the harpsichord quite well. She’d been trained in running a large household, and she’d been highly educated—too educated, I later thought—at an excellent boarding school. There wasn’t much more I needed to know.”

“You and she didn’t get along at all.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Which you discovered early on.”

“She possessed none of the composure or deference required in a wife. She never listened or obeyed.”

“It sounds as if you mostly hated each other.”

Lord Sidwell considered, then nodded. “That’s a fair assessment.”

“Then why on Earth would you subject me to the same sort of misery?”

His father meticulously evaluated him, and under the intense scrutiny, Aaron could barely keep from squirming. He felt as if he was ten again and about to be quizzed on his mathematics lessons.

“What is this really about, Aaron?” his father finally said.

“I can’t abide her—or her mother.”

“You just decided this?”

“No, it’s been brewing for awhile.”

“I see.”

His father scowled at Aaron, drank his brandy, scowled at Aaron some more.

“First of all”—his father spoke in his most officious tone—“let me be clear about the dowry.”

“Yes, please be clear.”

“Claudia paid me a substantial sum when the contracts were signed.”

“And...?”

His father flushed with chagrin. “I’ve spent it, Aaron! I don’t have the money to pay her back.”

“It’s supposed to be
my
money,” Aaron hotly retorted.

“No, it’s the estate’s money, it’s the earl’s money, and as I am still very much alive, it’s mine.”

“I don’t get any of it?”

“When Claudia tenders the last disbursement, you can have some of it, but you’ve been taught how to read an estate ledger. You know the extent of our expenses.”

“Let’s not forget to add in your gambling and clothing bills.”

“Of course I have significant bills. I’m a peer of the realm, Aaron. I’m not a pauper, and I won’t gad about looking or acting like one.”

“So what are you saying? Are you telling me that I have to shackle myself to Priscilla because you already squandered their down payment?”

“No, I told you about it so you remember what you’ve chosen to ignore.”

“What is that?”

“Marriage is a business arrangement. It always has been and always will be. You’re not wedding Priscilla for her beauty or her youth or her personality. We picked her for her property and her money.”

“It sounds to me as if we picked her so
you
can have her property and her money.”

“Don’t be smart with me,” his father snapped.

“I apologize.” Aaron dipped his head. He never quarreled with his father. It was pointlessly fatiguing.

“These girls like Priscilla are all the same,” his father claimed.

“High praise indeed.”

“If you jilted her, you’d have to select another one just like her.”

“Probably,” Aaron grumbled.

“This match is bringing a sizeable store of wealth to the family. That’s what you need to recall. You must focus on how you’re benefitting both the estate and me, which means you’re benefiting yourself and the life you’ll have after I’m deceased.”