“She has only been in the chair for two hours. We have been trying to spell each other. But you’re right, it would be better for her to sleep the night through in her own bed.”
“Yes.” Then, “No one need stay with me any longer. I won’t do myself an injury. And I don’t think I will cry anymore.”
And she didn’t.
The men in the family continued to mutter amongst themselves that they should know the name of the man in question. He was clearly a blackguard since there had been no marriage proposal.
But Catherine and Arabella kept their mouths closed and would not tell. Mary and Harry did not ask.
Catherine breathed a sigh of relief when Arabella’s monthly flow arrived.
Now, Arabella could rise above this horrible experience and begin to heal. In time, Arabella would find real love.
Seven
How foolish she had been. How gullible, how rash, how exceedingly stupid. She had behaved as a child when she had most longed to be a woman.
Arabella passed her days sitting in a chair in her room, with her embroidery in her lap, but she never threaded a needle.
Yes, how foolish. To mistake desire for love. To think that the throb of her flower meant she had met her soul mate. To believe the novels and poetry that said her heart and her desire would always align and would guide her unerringly to her true love.
And whyshouldlust and love be so entangled that she could have mistaken one for the other? Surely, it was a rarity that the two actually went together.
Her mother and Middlewich, her sisters and their husbands—how fortunate they all had been, Arabella saw now. How exceptionally fortunate that their hearts and minds and loins had all agreed on a mate.
But she had not shared their good fortune. Twice now, she had imagined she had been in love. One man had not reciprocated. The other had not reciprocated either, but she had thought he had. Because of what he had done to her body. Her wetness, her thrill, her licking flames of desire—she had thought these things meant Giles was her destiny, when, in truth, these things were merely of mechanical genesis.
Simply friction and pressure.
Meaningless.
Except in a world where female desire made you a whore and male desire was indiscriminate.
Rumors began to circulate. James heard stories at his club of a coterie of gentlemen. They called themselves the Pluckers.
David, the Viscount Tregaron, was confused. “What does the name mean?”
James exchanged looks with Thomas, the Earl Drake. David was slightly older than they were and had never been part of a circle of young rakes who roamed from gaming hell to brothel to private club and back again. His brother Rhys was the wild one. In fact, David prided himself on the fact he had been just “this side of priggish” before Mary took him in hand.
Six years ago, an idea for a group similar to the Pluckers had been mooted about among James and Thomas’ band of rakes. Thomas had clouted the man who had brought it up. “It’s not my idea, I just heard the other fellows talking, Drake!” the man had whined, holding his ear. The proposal had withered on the vine, James had thought at the time.
But now, like the Hydra, it had reared its head again.
“It’s to do with virgins,” James explained to David. “Plucking, you know? Deflowering?”
“Oh.”
“The villains rape virgins,” Thomas said, scowling. “Or seduce them. They collect tokens of their despoiling. Whoever despoils the most prominent or most virtuous or the most noble virgin, wins.”
“Repugnant,” David said.
Thomas grunted in agreement. As far as James knew, Thomas’ only sexual scruple before he married his wife was that he would not bed a virgin. Thomas had strong feelings about virgins.
James cleared his throat. “The rumor is that on Guy Fawkes Day, the tokens of the Pluckers are to be pinned to the wall with the dartboards at our club. The former virgin’s initials are to be carved into the wall next to the token.”
“Reprehensible,” David said.
A growl from Thomas. “I’m of a mind to sit there all day and batter anyone who attempts it.”
