For once the ride was quiet. Normally Mother would have asked her how she found the evening, if she’d seen any intriguing fashions or met any gentlemen or heard any interesting on dits. Tonight, though, she leaned on Papa’s arm and closed her eyes. Papa met Joan’s gaze across the dark carriage and he gave her a smile.
“Did you enjoy yourself?” he asked quietly.
She nodded. It was safer than saying anything.
“I thought I saw you dancing,” he added. “Who was the gentleman?”
“Just a friend of Douglas’s,” she said, hoping he really hadn’t seen who it was and praying he wouldn’t ask more. “I saw Douglas dance twice with Felicity Drummond,” she went on, trying to keep the subject off herself. “He looked halfway besotted. Mother’s plan may come to fruition after all.”
Eyes still closed, Mother smiled. “I knew he would like her, if he could only be made to meet her.”
To Joan’s intense relief, no one said anything more of dancing. They reached home and Papa all but lifted Mother down from the carriage and helped her into the house. Joan was left to herself, which suited her perfectly. She didn’t wish her mother ill, but tonight of all nights she was glad for a respite from her mother’s usual keen eye. She bade her parents good night and wished her mother well, then hurried up to her own room, where Janet, her mother’s abigail, was waiting for her.
“Go to Lady Bennet. She is unwell,” Joan told her.
Janet had been with her mother for almost thirty years. Her eyes widened in alarm. “I’ll send Polly to help you, Miss Bennet,” she said before whisking out the door toward Lady Bennet’s rooms.
The instant she was alone, Joan reached for the lacings at her back. If Lord Burke hadn’t tied them too tightly, she should be able to find the string and get the pamphlet out before Polly arrived to help her. Not even her imagination could conjure up a suitable explanation for the most infamous story in London finding its way down the back of her dress. For several minutes she twisted and squirmed, both arms bent behind her in a silent, frantic ballet. Finally she located the string—he hadn’t knotted it, thank heavens—and pulled, loosening the bodice. With a heroic stretch she crossed one arm over her shoulder and groped as far down her back as she could reach. Just as Polly tapped at the door, her fingers closed on a corner of paper and she yanked it out.
“Just a moment,” she called, running across the room to shove the pamphlet under her pillow. “Come.”
“La, miss, I’m sorry,” gasped Polly as she bustled into the room and saw Joan with her gown sagging off one shoulder. “I came as soon as Janet told me, but if I’d known you were that eager to get undressed—”
“No, it’s fine,” said Joan hastily. “My stays were a little tighter than usual and I thought I could untie them myself, that’s all.”
“Oh.” Polly clucked her tongue and hurried over to finish unfastening the gown. “I see what you mean, miss, these are tight,” she said a moment later. “Shall I bring a cool cloth?”
“No,” said Joan, fidgeting as Polly took the gown away to fold it. “Just unlace me. I’m sure I’ll be fine once they are undone.”
And she did feel better when the constricting stays came off. She took a deep breath and held it a moment, beginning to think she would escape without serious repercussions from this evening’s adventure. It was only a matter of time before Mother learned she had danced with Lord Burke, but now that she was away from him and that infuriating, unsettling gleam in his eye, Joan was sure she would think of some safe story to explain everything. Casting blame onto Douglas would be a central part of it, she decided; she would say Douglas had made a wager with his friend, and that was the only reason he’d asked her to dance. Mother wouldn’t believe Douglas’s insistence that he’d done no such thing—Mother might not want to know how wild her son was, but she wasn’t a fool—and Joan would add that she only accepted the invitation to avoid a scene. If Mother asked about Lord Burke’s behavior, Joan would say he had no manners and was boring. There would be no mention whatsoever of potted palms.
“Shall I brush out your hair, miss?” Polly asked.
She looked at her ringlets, the result of over an hour of painstaking work by Janet, and sighed. Unlike the sleek curls in the Ackermann’s illustration, her hair stuck out in all directions, making her look like a poodle. “Yes.”
As Polly tugged the comb through her hair, undoing all that effort, Joan studied her reflection. She really wasn’t beautiful, but Lord Burke had kissed her anyway. She tried to tell herself that he had only said it because he was a notorious rake and no female was safe around him, but at the same time ... he had called her bosom delectable. She shifted in her seat a little and inhaled deeply, trying to see what he could mean by that. Like the rest of her, her bosom was full and round. Janet had laced her stays particularly tight this evening to try to minimize it, but it hadn’t worked. Joan just felt trussed like a goose, and short of breath all evening. Ever since she turned sixteen, she had viewed her rounded figure with dismay. As if it weren’t bad enough to be tall, she had to be plump, too. It wasn’t a fashionable figure for young ladies, who were supposed to be slim and delicate so they could wear the latest fashions to advantage. Was it possible some gentlemen might like it?
Not that she cared what Tristan Burke thought. No, she reminded herself, he was a rake. A scoundrel. A rogue. No one she ought to think about. If he was the only sort of gentleman who admired her figure, she didn’t want to know, let alone care.
Although if he thought her bosom delectable, perhaps some other man would as well.
When Polly had finally gone and Joan was alone, able to take out her hard-won copy of50 Ways to Sinat long last, she couldn’t keep her mind on it. She turned the pamphlet over and over in her hands. It looked innocent enough;50 Ways to Sin, it read in plain letters that might have graced any theological tract. The story inside, though, was anything but sober and edifying. Every issue chronicled the flirtations of the rather wrongly named Lady Constance, a woman of the ton. Beyond the shadowy details of being a widow of some social standing, Constance told little of herself or her history, but a great deal about the gentlemen who pursued her. And instead of coy phrases that left a great deal to the imagination, Lady Constance described every intimate detail of her amorous encounters.
That alone would have sufficed to make the stories scandalous. What made them the most sought after publication in London, though, were the gentlemen Constance took to her boudoir. Statesmen, officers, men of science and men of letters, they all bore striking resemblances to actual gentlemen. If one took Lady Constance’s word for it, she consorted with the crème de la crème of English society, right under its nose. Part of society was appalled at such indiscretion; the gentlemen themselves protested their innocence of such carnal activities and offered rewards for the author’s identity; and everyone else seethed with delight at the challenge of unmasking each of Constance’s lovers.
Joan even knew her own mother read them, from overheard snippets of conversation with other matrons. That hardly meant she would excuse her daughter reading them, of course; if anything, knowing what was in50 Ways to Sinonly assured Lady Bennet how thoroughly inappropriate it really was. Which, naturally, only intensified Joan’s desire to read it, in spite of all obstacles. It was published in a mysterious, almost covert way, with irregular distribution. One had to know which booksellers sold it, and then one had to approach at the right time. New issues appeared without warning, and were sold within hours. This was the first issue Joan had been able to locate on her own. Previously Penelope had stolen her mother’s copies and shared them with her and Abigail. All three girls were avid followers of the series.
But somehow tonight ... Joan flipped open the cover with one finger, though she kept seeing palm fronds instead of words. Tonight she had been kissed by a true rake, and reading about fictional kisses and embraces paled in comparison to the real thing.
She wondered if Lord Burke had read any of it. She wondered if he even knew what it was. It seemed unlikely that he would have resisted making some comment about it, after the way he’d teased her in the bookshop about buying prurient poetry. But then, she never would have thought he’d buy it for her, even if his only goal was to torment her.
She pressed one hand to her temple, trying to force Lord Boor physically from her mind. Of course he hadn’t read it; why would he need to, when his own life was probably ten times more debauched than anything in these pages? Assuming one could possibly be more debauched. Some issues made her blush scarlet and lie awake wondering if the acts described were even plausible. Was there a man alive who could bring a woman to such heights of ecstasy that she almost fainted? It made for a thrilling story, so thrilling that it seemed incredible. But tonight, for the first time, she began to think maybe it was possible—wildly exaggerated, most likely, but slightly, remotely, possible.
With renewed interest she smoothed open the front page. The previous issue had featured a taut scene at the opera, where Constance’s lover had stolen into her box and knelt on the floor behind her chair to pleasure her. They had almost been discovered when Constance’s sighs reached a pinnacle at the exact moment the music suddenly stopped. The description of the scene proved the author had been there, and everyone in London was sure they had had the box next to hers. The issue had ended with Constance’s vow of greater propriety, which no one believed—or wished to believe. Joan plumped up her pillow and settled in to read how wickedly that vow would be broken.
It was exceptionally shocking. Lord Everard, described as a large beast of a man, let Constance know he had overheard her passions at the opera. It seemed to have made her attractive to him; their assignation was fixed for that very night. Joan’s eyes grew wide as she read the method of their pleasure: Lord Everard spanked Constance! And then he begged her to whip him with a crop as he made love to her. By the time she reached the end of the story, Joan’s mouth was hanging open. She immediately flipped back to the beginning and read it again before falling back into her bed, self-consciously wriggling deeper into her pillows.
Thanks to some books of poetry she had managed to filch from her brother, Joan knew far more than most young ladies about the ways men and women coupled. It had all been wasted knowledge, of course, for a spinster, but she hadn’t given up hope yet. Perhaps someday there would be a man who found her attractive enough that he would want to marry her, and then she would be free to explore all these sensual delights—and if the acts were this stirring when she read about them, how much more so would they be when experienced in the flesh?
