His At Night

Chapter Fourteen

“What a lovely garden,” murmured Aunt Rachel.

Lord Vere’s house was backed by a private garden to which only the residents in the surrounding houses had access, a situation that was both fortuitous and uncommon in London, according to Mrs. Dilwyn.

Several elegant plane trees grew in this enclosure, their wide canopies thrust sixty feet in the air to offer fine shade to those who strolled the flagstone path that bisected a smoothly clipped lawn. A three-tiered Italian fountain burbled agreeably nearby.

Mrs. Dilwyn had advised a daily intake of fresh air. Elissande, who was determined to do the right thing by her aunt, had steeled herself for a long bout of wheedling persuasion in order to extract Aunt Rachel from her bed. To her surprise, Aunt Rachel had agreed immediately to be put into a simple blue day dress.

Elissande had helped her into a chair and then, a pair of impressively sized footmen had carried the chair, with Aunt Rachel in it, down to the garden.

A leaf floated down from the canopy above. Elissande caught it in her hand and showed it to Aunt Rachel.

Aunt Rachel stared reverently at the very ordinary leaf. “How beautiful,” she said.

Elissande’s reply was forgotten as a teardrop fell down Aunt Rachel’s face. She turned toward Elissande. “Thank you, Ellie.”

Panic engulfed Elissande. This shelter, this life, this green haven in the middle of London—the safety Aunt Rachel believed they’d found was as fleeting as a soap bubble.

For love, there is nothing I do not dare. Nothing.

Love was a petrifying word coming out of her uncle’s mouth. He was quite ready to wage hell’s own vengeance to regain his wife.

I fear something terrible might befall the handsome idiot you claim to love so much.

The handsome idiot who had claimed her thoroughly in the darkness before dawn.

Except he hadn’t been at all an idiot, had he? He’d been angry, discourteous, and his language had been downright appalling. But he hadn’t been stupid. He’d known very clearly what she’d done to him, which begged the question: Had he been, like her, pretending to be someone he wasn’t?

The thought was a hook through her heart, yanking it in unpredictable directions.

The golden glow of his skin. The electric pleasure of his teeth at her shoulder. The dark excitement of his flesh firmly embedded in hers.

But more than anything else, the raw power he exuded.

Take off your clothes.

She wanted him to say it again.

Her hand crept to her throat, her fingertip pressed into the vein that throbbed rapidly.

Was it possible—was it at all possible that she could come out of her most desperate choice with a man as clever as Odysseus who looked like Achilles and made love like Paris…?

And her uncle had threatened irreparable harm to him.

Only two days remained.

Needham came, rebandaged Vere’s arm, and left with both the packet of letters Vere had taken from Palliser and the bundle of bloodied clothes under Vere’s bed. All without a single word. Good old Needham.

By the middle of the afternoon Vere was able to get up from his bed without immediately wanting to put a rifle to his head and pull the trigger. He rang for tea and toast.

When the knock came at his door, however, the person who entered was his wife, a smile on her face.

“How are you, Penny?”

No, not the person he wanted to see, not when the only thing he could remember of his predawn hours at home was his desperate release into her very willing body. He could deduce that she must have helped him with his wound, and that he must have instructed her to get Needham, but how had they gone from an activity as distinctly uncarnal as dressing a gunshot injury to the sort of untrammeled coupling the memories of which came near to making him blush?

Well, there was nothing to do but to brazen it out.

“Oh, hullo, my dear. And don’t you look ever fresh and charming.”

Her dress was white, a pure and demure backdrop for her guileless smile. The skirt of the dress, fashionably narrow, clung rather ferociously to her hips before dropping in a more seemly column to the floor.

“You are sure you feel well enough to eat?”

“Quite. I’m famished.”

She clapped her hands. A maid came in and set down a tray of tea, bobbed a curtsy, and left.

His wife poured. “How is your arm?”

“Hurts.”

“And your head?”

“Hurts. But better.” He drank thirstily of the tea she offered, making sure to spill some on his dressing gown. “Do you know what happened to me? My arm, that is. My head always hurts after too much whiskey.”

“It was rum you drank,” she corrected him. “And you said a hansom cab driver shot you.”

That was stupid of him. He should never have mentioned a gun. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I can hardly stand rum.”

She poured herself a cup of tea. “Where were you last night?” she said softly, with wifely interest. “And what were you doing out so late?”

She’d come to interrogate him.

“I can’t quite remember.”

Very deliberately she stirred in her cream and sugar. “You don’t remember being shot at?”

Well, this would not do. He was much better on the offensive. “Well, you should know firsthand the deleterious effect the consumption of alcoholic beverages has on the retention of memory.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Can you recall anything from our wedding night?”

Her stirring stopped. “Of course I remember…some things.”

“You told me my lips dripped beeswax. No one had ever told me before that my lips dripped beeswax.”

To her credit, she raised her teacup and drank without choking. “Do you mean honeycomb?”

“Pardon?”

“Honeycomb, not beeswax.”

“Right, that’s what I said. Honeycomb. ‘Honey and milk are under thy tongue,’ you told me, ‘and the smell of thy garments is like the smell of…’ Hmm, let me think, what was it? Sinai? Syria? Damascus?”

“Lebanon,” she said.

“Exactly. And of course, once we disrobed you”—he sighed in exaggerated contentment—“you were far better to look at than even the lady in the Delacroix your father stole. Do you suppose we could have you pose like that for Freddie? And not for a minuscule canvas either—life-size, I insist—and can we hang it in the dining room?”

“That would border on public indecency.”

Her smile was beginning to assume that over-brightness he’d come to know so intimately. Good, he must be doing something right.

“Dash it. Would have been grand fun showing you off to my friends. How they would slobber over you.”

He made moon eyes at her.

“Now, now, Penny,” she said, her voice just the slightest bit tight. “We mustn’t rub our good fortune in our friends’ faces.”

Happier, he ate four slices of toast. When he was finished, she said, “Dr. Needham told me your dressing should be changed in the afternoon, and again in the evening before bed. So shall we?”

He rolled up the sleeve of his dressing gown. She examined his wound and changed the bandaging. As he rolled down his sleeve, she stopped him and asked, “What are these?”

Her fingers pointed to a series of small half-moon marks just above his elbow.

“Look like nail marks to me.”

“Did the cabdriver get his hand on you too?”

“Hmm, they seem more like they have been left by a woman. In the heat of passion, you see. She grabs on to the man’s arms and her fingers dig into his sinews.” He smiled at her. “Have you been taking advantage of me while I was mentally incapacitated, Lady Vere?”

She flushed. “It was you who wished it, sir.”

“Was it? My, could have been disastrous, you know. When a man is that drunk, sometimes he can’t get it up. And sometimes he can’t finish it off.”

She touched her throat. “Well, you didn’t have any problem on either account.”

He preened. “That is a testament to your charm, my lady. Although I must say, if we keep going at it like this, the family size will be increasing very soon.”

A thought that rather petrified him.

“Do you wish to increase the family size?” she asked, as if it were an afterthought.

“Well, of course, what man doesn’t? For God and country,” he said, as he scanned the letters that had come with his tea and toast.

When he looked up again, she wore the oddest expression. He immediately worried he’d said something that had given his act away, but he could not think what.

“Oh, look, Freddie invites us for tea this afternoon at the Savoy Hotel. Shall we go then?”

“Yes,” she said, with a smile he’d never quite seen before. “Do let us go.”

The terrace at the Savoy Hotel commanded a panoramic view of the Thames, with Cleopatra’s Needle thrusting skyward just beyond the hotel’s gardens. A steady traffic of steamships and barges traversed the water lanes. The sky was clear by London standards, but nevertheless seemed dirt-smudged to Elissande, who had yet to grow accustomed to the great metropolis’s perpetually tainted air.

Lord Frederick had brought along Mrs. Canaletto, a childhood chum of the brothers, both of whom called her by her Christian name. She was several years older than Elissande, worldly, not given to the same sort of limitless enthusiasm as Miss Kingsley and her companions, but nevertheless friendly and approachable.

“Have you been to the theater yet, Lady Vere?” asked Mrs. Canaletto.

“No, I’m afraid I’ve not had the pleasure.”

“Then you must have Penny take you to a performance at the Savoy Theatre right away.”

Elissande’s husband looked at Mrs. Canaletto expectantly, then said, “Only one recommendation, Angelica? You used to like to tell us how to do everything.”

Mrs. Canaletto chuckled. “That’s because I’ve known you since you were three, Penny. When I’ve known Lady Vere twenty-six years, rest assured I will tell her how to do everything too.”

Elissande asked Mrs. Canaletto whether she’d visited the Isle of Capri during her stay in Italy. Mrs. Canaletto had not, but both Lord Vere and Lord Frederick had, on a continental jaunt the two had taken together after Lord Frederick had finished his studies at Oxford.

Lord Vere talked about the sights they’d seen on the trip, with Mrs. Canaletto correcting him good-naturedly alongside: the fabled Neuschwanstein Castle in Bulgaria, built by the mad Count Siegfried (“It’s in Bavaria, Penny, built by King Ludwig II, who might or might not have been mad”); the Leaning Tower of Sienna (“Pisa”); and on Capri, the Purple Grotto (“The Black Grotto, Penny”).

“It was the Black Grotto, really?”

“Angelica is teasing you, Penny,” said Lord Frederick. “It’s the Blue Grotto.”

Undaunted, Elissande’s husband went on. As he held forth, he dropped his handkerchief into the jam pot, knocked the contents of a slender flower vase onto the crumpet plate, and had one of his biscuits leap ten feet to land amidst the pink ostrich feathers of someone’s extravagant hat.

Lord Frederick and Mrs. Canaletto seemed to think nothing of either Lord Vere’s loquaciousness or his clumsiness. But his words and actions seemed excessive to Elissande, as if he were trying to make up for the flash of incisive intelligence he’d displayed during their predawn encounter by making himself appear especially inane.

And inept. To dilute the memory of his absolute mastery over her body, perhaps?

He had come to within an inch of convincing her that it had been a fluke—within an inch. And then he’d gone too far and directly contradicted himself—probably because he sincerely did not remember recommending, strongly, that she take measures against just such a possibility as the expanding of their family.

The lady in the pink ostrich hat, after recovering the biscuit from the depth of her millinery plumage, approached their table. For a moment Elissande thought she might have harsh words for Lord Vere, but Lord Vere and Lord Frederick rose, and both men plus Mrs. Canaletto greeted her familiarly.

“Lady Vere, may I present the Countess of Bourkes,” said Lord Vere. “Countess, my wife.”

It was the beginning of a parade. The Season was over, but London was still an important hub for the upper crust traveling between Scotland, Cowes, and the therapeutic spas of the Continent. Elissande’s husband seemed to be acquainted with everyone who was anyone. And as Lady Avery must have lost no time in trumpeting her latest exposé, the whole world wanted to see what manner of woman had been caught with him in a most scandalous manner.

He introduced her with absurd pride. Lady Vere has devoted herself to the well-being of her aunt. Lady Vere is as knowledgeable of modern art as Freddie. Lady Vere is certain to be one of London’s great hostesses.

It took her a minute to align her reaction with his. She discarded the moderately warm smiles she had thought appropriate for the situation and went for the full teeth-and-dazzle.

Lord Vere shines a precise and all-encompassing light upon the current Anglo-Prussian relationship. Lord Vere discusses the architectural history of Europe with aplomb and flair. Lord Vere’s deep and detailed reading of Ovid has provided us with hours of enthralling conversation.

They made a stunning pair, in the most literal sense. People left their table agape, barely able to totter back to their own seats. Who’d have thought that the talents she’d honed to defend the integrity of her soul from her uncle would one day be put to such public theater? If it weren’t so bizarre she’d almost find it funny.

“I rather enjoyed eloping, on the whole. I should have done it sooner. But of course I did it as soon as I could with Lady Vere,” said her husband, once he was able to sit down again.

“Well, I do think we could have done it one day sooner,” Elissande said with a giggle.

“That is true,” he concurred. “I did not think of that. Why did I not think of that?”

“But that is quite all right. We are here and we are married and it couldn’t be more wonderful.”

Across from them, Lord Frederick and Mrs. Canaletto exchanged looks of good-natured incredulity, as if marveling that such a perfect match could and did exist for Lord Vere. Lord Vere leaned in for another slice of sultana cake and—what else?—overturned the creamer in the process.

Elissande was beginning to see an adroit choreography to his ungainliness, the carefully chosen angle of his arm, the precise path of his reach, the calculated sweep of the back of his hand.

There was no such thing as a man who was more lucid when drunk, only one who was less careful, and therefore less hidden. For him, who had expressed his potent displeasure only hours ago, to then take on the part of the dizzyingly happy husband—he was nothing if not a superb actor.

It took one to know one.

There was a note for Vere from Mr. Filbert when he arrived back at his town house—Mr. Filbert being one of Holbrook’s aliases. Vere changed into his evening clothes, told his wife he was going out to his club, met Holbrook and Lady Kingsley at the house behind Fitzroy Square, and worked feverishly. He did not return home again until nearly midnight.

His wife was waiting for him in his room. “This is much too reckless of you,” she declared irately. “May I remind you that you were injured only last night from staying out too late?”

He paused in the removal of his necktie. “I, ah, well, I forgot,” he answered with an appearance of sheepishness.

She came up to him, undid the buttons on his evening jacket, and pushed it off his shoulders. “You shouldn’t be going about on your own in the dark. I don’t trust my uncle; he doesn’t play fair. When he says three days, he’d be quite happy to abduct you on the second day and then force me to trade my aunt for you.”

“Would you?”

She glared at him. “Let’s not talk about such unpleasant hypotheticals.”

“But you brought it up just now,” he said earnestly. “I thought you wished to talk about it.”

She took a deep breath and two steps back. “May I ask you a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Can we dispense with the pretenses?”

Alarm flooded him. He regarded her with wide eyes. “Beg pardon?”

“We are home. The servants are abed. There is no one else about but the two of us,” she said impatiently. “You don’t need to continue with your act. I know you are not as oblivious as you pretend to be.”

Surely he hadn’t given that much of himself away. “But this is preposterous. Are you implying that I come across as oblivious, madam? I will have you know that I have the brightest mind and the keenest wit. Why, people are often astounded by the perspicacity of my discourse and the subtlety of my insight!”

He’d done everything he possibly could this day to reinforce the impression of the idiot. Shouldn’t that have been enough?

“This morning I visited the chemist’s you recommended,” she said. “Mrs. McGonagall taught me how to cleanse after lovemaking to minimize the chance of being in the family way. I did it after I came back home.”

Christ. He told her all that? What else had he said to her? “But—but you can’t do that. A woman is supposed to—she is not supposed to interfere with Nature in such matters.”

“The whole history of civilization is one of interference with Nature. Besides, I was but following your instruction, sir.”

“But I could never have given such instructions. Why, contraception is a sin.”

She passed her hand over her face. He had never seen her in such an open state of frustration. It shocked him to realize what this meant: She had dropped her pretenses.

“Fine, then. Keep your charade,” she said. “But tomorrow is the last day of grace my uncle allowed me. He is a dangerous man and I’m afraid. Is it possible for the three of us to vacate England for a while?”

“Good Lord. Where shall we go?”

She hesitated briefly. “I’ve always wanted to visit Capri.”

At least he didn’t seem to have told her anything about the investigation. “But there is absolutely nothing to do on Capri: It’s a rock in the middle of the ocean. Minimal society, no sports, not even a music hall anywhere in sight.”

“But it’s safe. Come winter boats from the mainland will have a hard time getting to it.”

“Precisely. The horror! I shall move us to my country house in a few days, but other than that, I’ve no intention of going anywhere else. This Season has been long enough already.”

“But—”

“You should trust my luck,” he pressed on. “Some people say I’ve a fool’s luck. Of course, I take exception to that because I’ve always been a man of highly developed intelligence, but there is no denying my charmed luck. You’ve done well, Lady Vere. You’ve married me. Now my luck will rub off on you too.”

She tightened the sash of her dressing gown, her motion ungentle. “It’s maddening to talk to you.”

He was only trying to reassure her. Things had been set in motion this night, but he could not tell her any more at the moment.

“But you insist on peppering me with such nonsense, my dear.”

“In that case, don’t be surprised to find yourself drugged and shanghaied. I will do whatever it takes to keep all of us safe.”

He should be irked, since her whatever-it-takes stance was what had married them in the first place. But it was difficult to be too upset when it was his well-being that had her vexed and anxious.

“Ah, come, sweetheart,” he coaxed. “We are only on the third day of our honeymoon and we are already bickering.”

She threw up her hands. “Fine. Let’s just change your bandage.”

She assisted him in the removing of his waistcoat. He was only going to roll up the sleeve of his shirt but she wanted that gone too. “If I don’t take off the shirt, how will I put your nightshirt on you?” she said, her ire still hot. “You will pull at the wound if you do it yourself.”

Evidently the thought of his going to bed naked never occurred to her. He acquiesced.

After she changed his bandaging, she went into his dressing room and returned with a nightshirt. Something about his person caught her attention and made her frown. She pointed to the left side of his rib cage. “What are those?”

He looked down at the scars. “You’ve never noticed them before?”

“No. How did you get them?”

“They are from my riding accident.” With his good arm he made the trajectory of someone being thrown high in the air and then falling sharply. “Everybody knows about my riding accident.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“That’s very strange, considering that you are my wife. Well, it happened when I was sixteen, not long after I came into the title. I was at my great-aunt Lady Jane’s summer place in Aberdeenshire. Went for a ride one morning, took a tumble off my horse, broke some ribs, suffered a concussion, and had to stay in bed for a few weeks.”

“That sounds quite serious.”

“It was. It was,” he reassured her. “Of course, some stupid people believe that I fell directly on my head and damaged my brain. But that is an utter fabrication. I have been, if anything, a sharper thinker since my accident.”

“Hmm, I wonder why they would believe that,” she said. “Were there any witnesses?”

Smart woman. “Witnesses? What do you mean?”

“I mean, I can see you suffered an injury on your torso. But where is the evidence for the concussion? Who was your attending physician?”

His attending physician had been none other than Needham. But he was not about to tell her that.

“Ah…”

“So it’s your word and your word alone that there was a severe concussion.”

“Why would I lie about something like that?”

“To pass yourself off as a credible idiot if you hadn’t been one before.”

“But I just told you, I suffered no ill effects. I was a brilliant boy then and I am a brilliant man now.”

She cast him a still-incensed look. “Indeed, your brilliance dazzles.”

“Then don’t worry when I tell you not to worry,” he said softly.

She sighed and lifted her hand. Her fingers traced along one scar, her touch burning.

He yawned and walked away. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m falling asleep on my feet.”

Behind him she murmured, “You don’t need me to make it up to you tonight?”

Her words went directly to his privates. He clenched his teeth against the upsurge of desire. “Pardon?”

“Never mind,” she said after a moment. “Good night.”

“Good night, my dear.”