“Are there?” It was not really a question he expected her to answer. “Why did you not marry?”
She recoiled slightly before recovering and looking beyond him to smile briefly at someone he could not see. “Perhaps,” she said, “no one asked.”
“That is nonsense,” he said. “And untrue.Iasked.”
Her eyes focused fully upon him again. “Perhaps there was no one I wished to marry,” she said.
“Not even me?”
He watched her draw a slow breath. “Your son—Gil—was born a mere year or so later,” she said. “Whether I wished to marry you is not the point. The point is that I was wise not to do so.”
That was inarguable. He had been known as wild even before he met her. But it had been the wildness of a very young man testing his wings and sowing a few wild oats, if that was not a hopeless mingling of metaphors. His real notoriety as an unsavory character and a rake came afterward. Would it have happened if he had married Matilda? He could not know the answer. He had not married her.
“It was wise, then,” he said, “not to marry anyone else either?”
“Perhaps,” she said.
“But perhaps not? Do you regret remaining unmarried?” He could not seem to leave the matter alone.
“Regrets are pointless,” she said.
“Yes.” She did regret it, then?
“The tea tray has been brought in,” she said, looking beyond him again, “and Wren is pouring. I must go and add the correct amount of milk and sugar to my mother’s cup and take it to her. She likes her tea just so.”
And no one else was capable of doing it quite right? No one else knew the exact number of grains of sugar or drops of milk? He did not ask aloud. He stood aside and let her pass. As she did so he got a whiff of her perfume, so subtle that it could not be detected unless one was close to her. He was rocked by the memory of that same perfume and a shared kiss behind a potted aspidistra on the balcony outside a ballroom where they had danced a minuet together. A brief, passionate kiss. Lady Matilda Westcott had always—almostalways—been carefully chaperoned by her mother.
Why would he remember that kiss when he had surely forgotten hundreds of others and the women with whom he had shared them? She had pressed her lips to his and brought her bosom against his chest, her spine arching inward beneath his hands. And he had smelled her perfume and been lost in sensual bliss—and an intense sexual desire that had never been fully satisfied.
Why was he remembering? Just because of that whiff of perfume?
Three
Matilda took her mother a cup of tea, made just the way she liked it, as well as a piece of cake, and stayed close even though there was no need to. Both her sister Louise and cousin Althea, Alexander’s mother, were seated close to her and engaging her in conversation. The younger women were agreeing that this evening’s gathering had been a good idea of Alexander’s and that it was encouraging that Viscount Dirkson had come and had even brought Mr. Sawyer, his son, with him.
“Well, I donotlike it,” Matilda’s mother said. “All I can say is that I hope it is not a case of like father, like son. Viscount Dirkson was a crony of Humphrey’s, which isnota great recommendation even though Humphrey was my son.”
“Mama, do not upset yourself.” But when Matilda would have handed her mother the smelling salts she always kept in her reticule, her hand was pushed aside.
Mr. Adrian Sawyer spoke up at that exact moment. He was addressing his father, but loudly enough to draw everyone’s attention.
“Bertrand is getting up a party to go out to Kew Gardens tomorrow, Papa,” he said. “He wants me to go with them. Will you mind terribly if I do not after all accompany you to Tattersalls, as I promised I would? May we make it next week instead?”
“And who is to be of this party, pray, Bertrand?” Louise asked, raising her voice.
“Well, my sister and Adrian for sure, Aunt,” Bertrand replied. “And Boris.”
“And me,” added Jessica—Lady Jessica Archer, Louise’s daughter. “I may go, may I not, Mama, instead of going visiting with you?”
“And my particular friend, Charlotte Rigg, to make numbers even,” Estelle, Bertrand’s twin sister, said. “I am sure her mama will let her come. I believe she has designs upon Bertrand.” She laughed as he grimaced. “Her mama, that is, not Charlotte herself.”
“Oh bother,” Louise said. “That will mean I ought to accompany the party in order to reassure Mrs. Rigg that it is properly chaperoned. There are some ladies I particularly wished to call upon tomorrow.”
“Oh, Mama,” Jessica protested, “we will all be cousins and siblings. There will be absolutely no need of a chaperon. Besides, I am twenty-three years old.”
“A veritable fossil,” Avery, Duke of Netherby, said on a sigh, looking with lazy eyes at his half sister through his jeweled quizzing glass.
“But Miss Rigg is neither anyone’s sister nor anyone’s cousin,” Louise pointed out. “Nor is she twenty-three. I doubt she is even nineteen. And her mother will not be able to accompany her. I heard just this afternoon that she has taken to her bed with a nasty chill.”
