‘Of course it is. Would you expect any less of me? Don’t stop, by the way.’
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘I promise I won’t. Please, tell me.’
‘I would like to see you in this almost transparent gown with nothing at all underneath it.’
‘I’m sure that could be arranged.’
‘I’d like to see you, every precious inch of you, in this gown with nothing at all underneath it, leading me – possibly on a leash, I’d have to think about that – into that house where first I laid eyes on you.’
He saw her expression, half shocked and half intrigued, and said, smiling, ‘There’s no need for us actually to do it. I don’t mean the dress – I must insist upon that, my love – but the public display, the house and all the rest of it. It’s just a fantasy that perhaps we might both enjoy.’
Georgie did not answer him directly, though she was sure that he was right; he had given her delicious food for thought. She said instead, tangling her fingers in the whorls of soft dark hair that covered his chest and tugging on it a little, ‘Everyone is always talking about your reputation – you, too. But that’s one of the first things you have ever said to me that truly makes me understand how you gained it, if you have ever really done sucha thing as that. And you make me realise now that you never told me why you went to that house. Perhaps you were, you are, a regular visitor? I asked you then, but you said only that I would not believe you if you told me. Is it so very terrible, your reason? We should have no secrets now, Gabriel, and if there is anything more you want from me that you are afraid to ask?—’
He laughed. ‘Oh, my love! The truth is quite different. I had no intention of telling you my guilty secret then; I was too busy painting myself as dangerous, mysterious, intriguing – all for your benefit. Telling you that I had gone there to look for my idiot nephew and bring him home to his anxious mama would hardly have produced the desired effect.’
She raised her head and looked at him in surprise. ‘Truly?’
‘Truly. You have noticed, I dare say, that he is of an amorous disposition. He attempted to flirt with you more than once, as I recall, but you gave him the cold shoulder. Yes, I was watching, of course I was watching, I was always watching… But I am straying from my point. He led a very sheltered life as a child on FitzHenry’s estate in Ireland, and it is fair to say that London went straight to his head. He has no father now, and I am hardly in a position to lecture him on morality. But Blanche did call on me to restrain him from his more desperate activities when she heard of them. I spoke to him, I made sure he knew how to protect himself and others. And when she discovered from something he had let slip to his sister that he intended to pay a visit to that house, she asked me to go there and remove him, if I could find a way to do so. She was right: it is no place for the inexperienced, as I recall saying to someone else.’
‘You did say that. But you did not find him?’
‘No, he was not there. He told me later that he had thought better of it, that he realised he was in dangerous territory, and becoming carried away with the idea of being a terrible sort of a fellow. God knows I understood what he meant bythat, since itwas precisely the path I followed. I was impressed that he was wiser than I was at the same age. He is really not unintelligent, when he thinks with his head and not another part of his anatomy.’
She chuckled. ‘I’m sorry I did not know that sooner – why you were there, I mean.’
‘Because you would have told the Aubrey woman of it? I fear she would not have believed you: my terrible reputation again, you know. Avuncular concern does not fit with how the world sees me.’
‘Is any of it true, though, Gabriel, your terrible reputation?’
‘Oh, yes. Much of it is. Too much. I will not have you put me on a pedestal, my love. I was expelled from Oxford for my atrocious behaviour, then caught in flagrante at eighteen with a married woman several years my senior; I fought her husband in a duel and wounded him, and was obliged to flee abroad. I lived a rackety sort of life across Europe after that, and only came back when I was forced to take on my father’s responsibilities during his illness. I was a constant worry to him, and to my poor mother, and I regret that most of all, but it is far too late to mend.’
‘Blanche told me of your estrangement from your father.’
‘Did she? I am glad. That is a sorry tale, with faults on both sides. I was fired up with righteous anger towards him at the time, young idiot that I was, and of course when I saw what a sad mull he had made of running the estates towards the end of his life I was angrier still. But I have talked about it a great deal in recent years with Mr Summerson, and he has helped me to see things in a fairer light. We are none of us perfect, me least of all. I do regret that my father died before the breach between us could be mended, but do not be thinking of me as a tortured, mistreated soul. I am just an average sort of sinner, worse than most, not as bad as some.’
Something occurred to her that had not so much as crossed her mind before. Now that it struck her, she did not understand why she had never thought to ask what was surely a crucial question. With a sudden icy chill on her, despite all his declarations of love and fidelity, she said, ‘Did you have a lover, Gabriel, when you met me? Is there some woman whom you have written to tell of your marriage, who received the news with distress and who is wondering even now if you will come back to her, and hoping that you will?’
With a fluid movement, he shifted their bodies so that they were looking each other full in the face, and said earnestly, ‘There is not. There has not been anyone for a long time. And after my brother’s death and all that followed it, I was… I don’t know how to put it. Frozen, I suppose. Uninterested in physical contact for the first time in forever, aware that I must marry, reluctant to do so, a little revolted by the prospect… Trapped. Until I entered that house and saw you huddled in your corner, fascination warring with fear on your lovely face. Until I went down on my knees in front of you. Then I began to wake up. God knows, I’m awake now.’
His hands were on her, hers on him, and she could see that he was telling the truth. He was wide awake, every part of him, and as for her… ‘I think you might undress me now after all,’ she said, rolling onto her stomach so that he could reach the buttons that ran from waist to hem of her gown. The beautiful, crumpled fabric had been dragged up around her thighs, and she was, she realised, still wearing her stockings and her garters. Perhaps he would remove them, perhaps he would not. Either way had its advantages. She looked over her shoulder and smiled teasingly at him.
He smiled too, a wolfish sort of a smile, and trailed a line of butterfly kisses from the nape of her neck, across her shoulder blades and down the deep vee of her bodice. ‘Whata delicious picture you present,’ he murmured between kisses. ‘If only Boucher were alive to paint you. Being fully and most delightfully occupied, I had not until now noticed the back of this extraordinary confection. A shocking omission, I know you agree. It is just as glorious as the front, I see now, and merits just as much attention.’ And he began to undo her, in every possible sense, as very slowly with lips, tongue and clever fingers he worked his way down her body.
44
LONDON, AUTUMN 1816
Mauleverer House is being opened up! was the whisper around the ton. Everyone agreed that this was excessively interesting news. It had been many years indeed since the grand mansion in Mayfair had hosted a ball or a rout party, and nobody much under the age of forty could boast of having even set foot inside. The late Duchess had been a notable hostess in her early married life, and had brought out her stepdaughter Lady Blanche in fine style some twenty years or more since, but Her Grace had lost her taste for society during her husband’s long illness, and in later years spent most of her time in Yorkshire. Of course, the current Duke resided at the mansion when he was in London, but as a single man he had naturally not given any parties – or, at any rate, not the sort of parties that respectable people attended. Or admitted they attended. Young people, therefore, scarcely knew him, and it had been left to their elders to use him a species of bogeyman, a dire warning to incautious damsels of the wicked hands they might fall into if they failed to observe the proprieties at all times. (Whether such warnings had had the desired effect was entirely another matter.)
But now the other residents of Grosvenor Square could see for themselves that there was a great bustle of activity: decorators and other workmen went to and fro, furniture was removed and other furniture and furnishings delivered, and everyone agreed that the Duke and his bride must be planning to take up residence as soon as the work was done.
A handsome, wealthy gentleman with a dubious reputation, one who almost never showed his face in society but was known to have fought a duel and wounded his mistress’s husband, then fled abroad to escape the consequences of the scandal he had created, was bound to be the subject of a great deal of gossip and speculation. This was particularly the case when he had so recently married a young and beautiful lady several years his junior. The currenton ditsaid that His Gracehadrecently ventured into polite society for the first time in many years: several perfectly reliable people who had known him in his youth claimed to have seen his tall, unmistakeable figure at balls and parties during the season, and he had even obtained vouchers for Almack’s – how? Why? – and penetrated between the august portals of that most respectable of institutions. While there he had not danced nor conversed with any young lady – no debutante had felt her virtue even slightly threatened, which was a sad disappointment to more than a few of them – and he had left quite soon after his arrival, having barely spoken to anyone at all during the duration of his stay and behaved in a manner discourteous, uncivilised, and undeniably thrilling. He had appeared, one fanciful and sharp-eyed matron had declared, to be looking for someone. His silver gaze had searched the room with electric intensity, seeking one particular person and evidently not finding them. Not findingher– surely, with his reputation, it must be a woman he sought, and for some amorous purpose. He had put the watching lady in mind, she declared, fanning herself vigorously, of a caged panther.Goodness, her auditors had murmured, taking up their own fans and plying them. They could all too easily picture it.
From this tantalising suggestion, this tiny nut of gossip, had sprung forth a whole forest of speculation. It was whispered that the Duke had set eyes on Lady Georgiana Pendlebury in some accidental way – in the street, perhaps, nobody was entirely sure, and it could hardly signify – and instantly conceived a violent passion for her. He had instituted enquiries and discovered her identity, then scoured the ballroom and drawing rooms of fashionable London in search of her. What, ladies asked each other, would he have done if he had found her? Asked for her hand in marriage directly – when they had never even been introduced – or carried her off a helpless captive, in thrall to his desperate obsession?
Many ladies shared an unvoiced regret that nothing quite so shocking had in fact occurred, but what had come next was in truth almost as exciting. The Duke had instituted an entirely fictitious search for a bride – for it was clear that he had with steely resolve already made his choice – and invited the cream of society to his sinister lair… that is to say, to his castle in the wilds of the North. Many ladies and their mamas had attended in innocent expectation, unaware that they were mere dupes, and, as the satanic nobleman had designed, Lady Georgiana had been among the party, entirely unaware of the danger into which she was placing herself. As soon as he had laid eyes on her once more, his passion had redoubled, and he had used all his considerable charm and experience of seduction in wooing the poor girl, to such good – that is, very bad – effect that the pair had been caught in a highly compromising situation, positively in the act, a mere day or two later by a large, horrified group of persons of rank who were attending a ball at his ducal seat. Possibly the ball had been organised with diabolical ingenuity for that sole purpose. It had all been a trap! The guilty lovershad announced their betrothal on the spot – Lady Georgiana’s guardians were not consulted, and could have done nothing to prevent the match even if they wished to do so – and the Duke was triumphant, his wicked scheme having met with complete success.
But there was more! That Northriding had succeeded in mesmerising the young lady and putting her entirely in his power was made all too plain by the fact that when a deranged woman – undoubtedly, it was considered, a spurned mistress of the Duke’s, one among many – had attempted to shoot him the very day after the wedding, his bride had flung herself in front of the weapon and risked her young life to save him, and been hideously wounded as a result. Her survival had been despaired of for many days, and the Duke was distraught at the thought of losing the prize he had so recently gained. Nothing half so intriguing had happened inyears.
