Beguiling the Beauty

CHAPTER 8

The baroness was right: Anticipating her arrival was pleasant, even enjoyable. Christian felt young and excited, a boy who’d been let out of school early.

The day was cold but bright. Passengers thronged the promenade deck, watching pods of dolphins leap and cavort. Lacy parasols bobbed; walking sticks swished and pointed; the mood was as buoyant as the sea.

She appeared like the embodiment of spring in a walking dress of green silk overlaid with a diaphanous film of gauze. The gauze, light and fluttery, caught sunlight much as the sea did, in tremors and bobs, an ever-changing pattern of light and color.

Everyone turned to look: It was easy to see that they had become the juiciest item of gossip on board. He had always been a man of discretion. Now, however, he was conducting an affair in plain view. And not only did he not mind it in the slightest, he felt absurdly cocky that this gorgeously dressed woman was headed for him and him alone.

“I would have come sooner,” she said as she drew up beside him, “but I was delayed.”

“Oh?”

“Thank you for your present. It is far too generous.”

“Not at all. It had never given me as much pleasure as it did when I sent it to you.”

“You have thrilled me thoroughly, Your Grace.”

He smiled at her. “Call me Christian.”

He’d never offered any other lover the familiarity of his given name. She tilted her head. “Are you?”

“Christian? Sometimes. And what should I call you?”

“Hmm. I believe you may call me darling.”

“My darling.” Mein Liebling. “I like it. Adorable.”

She leaned back. He had the distinct impression that behind her veil, she was grinning. “Adorable? I’m shocked the word made it past your lips, sir. I thought you were a stern man.”

He returned her grin. “So did I.”

She tsked. “How the mighty has fallen.”

“When I was little, I sea-bathed off the coast of the Isle of Wight, the Bristol Channel, and sometimes Biarritz, depending on where my father wanted to sail in August. The year I turned sixteen, however, I swam in the Mediterranean for the first time. I spent a week in that gloriously warm water and it spoiled me for the Atlantic forever.” He kissed the back of her gloved hand. “And you, baroness, have ruined for me whatever charms being a stern man once held.”

“My, a lavishly generous gift and a comparison to the charms of the Mediterranean—are you sure you were ever a stern man?”

“I am quite sure. I didn’t know what I was missing.”

She kissed him on the cheek through her veil and said the words he’d been longing to hear. “Well, let me spoil you some more.”

No!” Venetia giggled, both shocked and delighted.

“It was true. I hit him—and not a slap with my glove, either. I thought he was forcing himself on her. So I pulled him off the bed, slammed him into a wall, and nearly broke my hand punching his face.”

She snuggled closer to him. They were back in his bed, spending the afternoon doing what lovers did best. “Then what happened?”

“Chaos. My stepmother pulling me off Mr. Kingston, me frantically throwing sheets to cover her, Mr. Kingston bleeding and swearing. It was a proper fiasco.”

“I love fiascos, especially when there is a happy ending attached.” She ought to be more worried for herself—a fiasco was headed her way without a happy ending attached. But if she were to pay for her lack of sense later, she might as well wring every drop of lightness and joy from the scant days that remained on the voyage. “Were you properly embarrassed when you found out you were not the hero you thought you had been?”

“Deeply mortified. I offered Her Grace a portrait of mine for the two of us to throw darts at.”

She placed her hand over her heart. “That is so very sweet.”

He smiled. So young and winsome, her blindfolded duke. How she wished she could see his eyes, too, at moments like this.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” he said. “But she absolutely refused. We threw darts at a tree instead.”

“And what of poor Mr. Kingston?”

“I sent him a foal from my prized mare. We had a very civil conversation that did not involve either my stepmother or the incident. And that was my apology offered and accepted. They married a month later.”

She sighed. “A most satisfying story.”

He turned more fully toward her. “You should marry again.”

“You should be glad I haven’t—or I wouldn’t be having affairs on ocean liners.” Perhaps because he was so candid, she felt the need to tell the whole truth. “Besides, I was married again—a mariage blanc.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “His lover was another man and he was afraid there were those who would use that to destroy him.”

“And why did you enter into it?”

“The usual reasons. My first husband had left me quite destitute and I didn’t want to be a burden to my brother.”

He raised his head on his hand. “You have a brother?”

“A brother and a sister—twins—both two years younger than I am.”

“And how old are you, my darling?”

She huffed exaggeratedly. “Now that is a question I refuse to answer.”

“I am going to be twenty-nine in two weeks,” he said.

“My, you are practically an infant.” She was relieved: He was only a few months younger than she was.

“You’ll give me a present, won’t you? Children adore presents.”

“I suppose I can find it in my heart to send you an engraved pen.”

“I’d dearly enjoy an engraved pen, provided that you present it to me in person.”

He was never afraid to express his desire to further their acquaintance beyond the confines of the Rhodesia. She marveled at his willingness to lay himself bare. Tony, in hindsight, had held back from the very beginning, content to let her love him more and to wield that power over her.

She traced the lower edge of his blindfold, across the ridge of his nose, across his cheek. The next thing she knew, she’d yanked him to her, her leg over his waist, her tongue in his mouth. She wanted this. She wanted him. She wanted to absorb his fearlessness through touch, until she, too, was open and brave and worthy of this closeness that lifted her like a tide.

It was the third night aboard the Rhodesia. Christian felt like Ali Baba, standing in the mouth of the Forty Thieves’ cave, agog at riches beyond his imagination. She was riches beyond his imagination.

He was almost unnerved to be this happy. To listen to the beat of her heart and hear the meters of a sonnet. To hold her hand and know he would never again want for anything. To look upon an impenetrable darkness and see a future of unlimited possibilities.

Was he sitting atop a house of cards? A castle made of air and foolish wishes? Was this happiness but the gluttony that invariably preceded a bout of violent regret?

Her fingers combed through his hair.

“I thought you were asleep,” he said, kissing the palm of her other hand.

“I’ve decided to not waste any more time sleeping.”

The Rhodesia rocked gently, like a lullaby. But he, too, was wide awake, all too acutely aware of time slipping away. Usually a few days into a crossing he’d have become insensible to the rumble of the ship’s engine. This time, however, he was ever mindful of its restless thrum. Each turn of the twin propellers brought him closer to the other shore.

“Tell me what was it like, being in a mariage blanc.”

“Nothing like this, to be sure—no young, hard-bodied lover to pleasure me nightly.”

He couldn’t help smiling. “Right. You must have sprained your own wrist to make up for the lack.”

She laughed and punched him on the arm. “I should be ashamed to confess this but oddly I’m not,” she said, rubbing the spot she’d hit. “I did come close to spraining my wrist a time or two.”

“My God, what a waste of such a juicy—”

She clamped her hand over his mouth, giggling.

He removed her hand, laughing. “What? I’ve said much worse and you’ve liked it.”

“It’s different when we are midcoitus.”

He rolled atop her. “Then I’ll say it midcoitus.”

He said that—and much worse. Judging by her reactions, she liked it all.

Was your second husband good to you otherwise?” he asked afterward, his head in her lap, her fingers again combing through his hair.

“Oh yes. He was a longtime family friend—a very distant cousin on my mother’s side, in fact. Someone I’d known all my life. My father passed away early, so he was the one who taught me how to use a shotgun and how to play cards.”

“An older man?”

“Older than my parents and quite wealthy. When he proposed, it was the best of all possible worlds. I would be solvent. I would be the mistress of my own household again. And I would not have to deal with a man who might make my life miserable. We drew up our plans—”

“Plans?”

“Yes, it would have looked odd if his lover were constantly at our house. So we decided to pretend that I was the one having an affair with him. We shook hands on the plans and took ourselves to the altar.”

“And lived hand-sprainingly ever after?”

She chortled. “Not for him—he had his lover, remember?”

“You envied them.” He realized.

“And how. They were so engrossed in each other. At times I felt quite unnecessary, like a chaperone who didn’t know when to leave—even though I was in my own home, so to speak.”

He understood her exactly. When he visited his stepmother and Mr. Kingston, their fulfillment made his lack of hopes for the future all the more acute.

“Have you become less lonely in the years since?”

“My brother gave up the love of his life to marry an heiress. His wife, I suspect, has been in unrequited love with him all along. And my sister, God help us all, loves a married man. Compared to them, my loneliness seems terribly tame, something to be borne cheerfully.” She drew little circles on his arm—or were those hearts? “What of you? Have you ever been lonely? Or have you been too self-sufficient to notice?”

He reached up and played with the lobe of her ear. “I don’t think anyone has ever asked me such questions.”

She stilled. “I beg your pardon. I did not mean to pry. Sometimes I forget that of the two of us, only I enjoy the luxury of anonymity.”

It was easy to forget a great many things in the intensity of their affair. Sometimes he felt as if he’d never known anything but the sea, the Rhodesia, and her. “Please don’t apologize for taking a personal interest in me—it reassures me you are not merely exploiting me in bed.”

The sound of her laughter registered as a burst of brightness in the night. It still amazed him that she not only laughed, but laughed often. It amazed him even more that he’d been the one to elicit the laughter. When she laughed, nothing was impossible. He could climb Mount Everest, cross the Sahara, and raise the lost realm of Atlantis all in a day.

“The English aren’t in the habit of inquiring into one another’s happiness,” he said. “Not that we do not know what is going on; we simply do not speak of it. My stepmother, for example, has never asked why I am sometimes in a black mood. But she makes sure to invite the best company for dinner and uncork Mr. Kingston’s finest bottles from the cellar. Or we go for a long walk and she tells me all the latest gossip among her circle of friends.”

“You like gossip?”

“Half of the time I have no idea who she is talking about, and most of the time her stories go in one of my ears and out the other. But I like being made to feel that she’s been waiting for my return so she can tell me everything. I like remembering that even though I can’t have everything I want, I’m still an extraordinarily fortunate man.”

“Would you mind if I asked what it is that you can’t have?”

He couldn’t tell her before, but now that barrier had come down. “When I was nineteen, I fell in love with a married woman.”

“Oh,” she murmured. “So … when you said being with other women made you wish you were elsewhere, she was that elsewhere?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Easterbrook had been the miasma of an opium den, calling out to an old addict.

“Do you still love her?”

“I haven’t thought of her once since I met you.”

In the silence there was only the soughing of the sea and her quickened breaths.

He put the question to her once more. “Are you sure you must disappear when we touch land?”

And she, bless her, at last spoke the words he’d been longing to hear. “Let me—let me think about it.”

Millie, Countess Fitzhugh, stared at the disappearing American continent.

Once she reached England, hardly any time remained before she was at last to become Fitz’s wife. In truth.

How had the years gone by so fast? Eight years. To a sixteen-year-old girl, eight years comprised half a lifetime, a stupendously long span that would end in a future as distant as the stars. And yet here it was, close enough to breathe on her.

She did not regret the pact: Theirs had been a complicated and unhappy situation; postponing the consummation of their marriage had simplified their lives and allowed them to deal with each other on practical, friendly terms.

What she did regret was the length of their agreement. Had it been seven years, the bedding—and whatever its aftermath—would have been behind her. Had it been nine years, she’d still have more time to become accustomed to the idea.

But they’d shaken hands on eight years, and eight years was expiring fast.

Fitz trusted her. He liked and respected her. On some days, she’d even venture to say that he admired her. But he did not love her. If a man hadn’t fallen in love with a woman after almost eight years together, was there any chance that he ever would?

“You must be cold,” said Helena, coming to stand next to Millie on the aft rail of the promenade deck. “You’ve been out here a long time.”

“Can’t be that long—I’ve not frozen solid yet,” said Millie, with a smile for her sister-in-law. “How are you, my dear? How is the article coming along?”

“Not too well,” said Helena.

Would Fitz forget about their pact altogether if the situation with Helena proved too trying? He had no calendar on which he’d marked the date. He had plenty of women to keep his carnal urges satisfied. And by and large he treated her as if she were another one of his sisters. What if the day came and went and she remained alone in her bed?

Would that please her or would that break her?

Millie laid a hand on Helena’s arm. “Don’t worry too much about Venetia.”

“I can’t help it. I hope she is not all alone, hiding in her stateroom.”

“She could be having a torrid affair, for all we know,” said Millie.

That was perhaps not the right thing to say—not when she had no intention of insinuating anything about Helena.

Helena’s face took on an obdurate cast. “I hope she is. She is a grown woman who has made too little use of her freedom.”

And are you a grown woman who has made too much use of her freedom?

But what did Millie know of love that was ardently returned, love that yearned with a burning intensity across space and time, she who’d only ever been the destroyer of such love?

What she did know was that Fitz would never have compromised an unmarried lady, as Mr. Martin had. Helena was galloping unchecked toward a precipice, from which none of them could pull her out, if she were to fall.

She did not want anything to happen to Helena, who like Venetia had only ever been kind and accepting of Millie, especially in those days when Fitz could barely bring himself to speak to her. She wanted Helena to be happy. And if not that, at least safe from ruin and ostracism.

She took Helena’s arm. “If you can’t concentrate on your article, what say you we take a long, bracing constitutional?”