Virtue

24

"I can't understand how you can be so nonchalant about Gracemere's attentions to Harriet." Judith clasped her gloved hands tightly within her swansdown muff. It was a bitterly cold afternoon, not a comfortable one for walking at the fashionable hour in the park. However, Society's dictates always won out over comfort, and there were almost as many promenaders today as on the most clement afternoon.

Sebastian swished at the bare hedgerow with his cane. "Harriet detests him, you said as much yourself," he replied. "And she loves me," he added with a touch of complacence. "Why should I concern myself with Grace-mere? If it were anyone else, I might even pity him on such a fruitless quest."

"Agnes Barret is his accomplice."

"Oh, Ju, don't be so melodramatic. Accomplice, indeed. What kind of conspiracy are you imagining?"

Judith shook her head. She didn't know, she just knew she sensed that Agnes and Bernard were pure evil. "They're lovers," she said.

Sebastian shrugged. "Maybe so. So what?"

Judith gave up and abruptly changed the subject. "You will come to Carrington Manor for Christmas?"

"Where else would I go?" He laughed down at her.

"You might prefer to spend it with Lord and Lady Moreton," Judith declared loftily. "I'm sure they'll make an exception for Christmas and put something other than gruel and weak tea on their table."

"Stuff!" her brother responded amiably, well aware that Judith intended to invite Harriet to Carrington Manor, while delicately excluding the parents.

Judith waved at a passing laundelet in response to the vigorous greetings of its passengers. "There's Isobel and Cornelia." The laundelet drew up beside the path.

"Judith, that is the most divine hat," Isobel said. "Good afternoon, Sebastian… I saw a hat just like that in Bridge's, Judith, but it didn't look like anything at all. I didn't even try it on. I thought it might make me look bald or something."

Sebastian noticed the hat in question for the first time: a tight helmet that completely enclosed his sister's head, hiding her hair, leaving the lines and planes of her face to look upon the world unadorned. It wouldn't suit everyone, he decided.

"Bone structure," Cornelia commented. "You've got to have bones in your face." Her nose was reddened with the cold and she dabbed at it with her handkerchief. "I do wish I hadn't let you persuade me into this, Isobel. It's freezing and I'd much rather be beside my fire with a book."

"Oh, it's good for you to get some fresh air," Isobel said. "You can't spend all day buried in some Latin text, can she, Judith? Sebastian, what's your opinion?"

Sebastian regarded the red-nosed and distinctly disconsolate Cornelia. "I think there's much to be said for firesides and books… although I can't say I'm a great one for the classics."

Cornelia sniffed and blew her nose. "As it happens, I wasn't reading Latin, I was reading Guy Mannering. Have you come across it, Judith?"

Judith nodded. "I have a copy, but I haven't yet read it. It's said to be by Walter Scott, isn't it?"

"Yes, it has the same touch as Waverley … although he won't admit to having written that either."

A gust of wind set the plume in Isobel's hat quivering, and the coachman coughed pointedly as the horses stamped on the roadway.

"Your horses are getting cold, Isobel," Sebastian said, stepping back onto the path. "It's no weather for standing around."

"It's no weather for walking either," Judith declared, huddling into her pelisse.

After waving the laundelet on its way, she turned back to her brother. "Sebastian, I think it's time to step up the play for Gracemere. We should aim to have the business over by Christmas."

Sebastian nodded. "We've got him exactly where we want him. I'll begin taking increasingly heavy losses to whet his appetite for the last night."

"I trust we still have the funds we need?"

He nodded. "Enough."

"Has he cheated again?"

"Twice. I lost carelessly, of course. He has no idea I know why I lost."

"The Duchess of Devonshire's ball is in three weeks," Judith said thoughtfully. "A week before Christmas. It would be the perfect occasion for exposure- everyone will be there."

Sebastian thought for a minute, then nodded briskly. "I'll play mostly piquet with him from now on. Winning a little, losing a lot. The night before the ball, I'll lose so heavily he's bound to think I'm on the verge of ruin. On the night, he'll move in for the coup de grace."

"And on that night…" Judith shivered, but not with cold. On that night, together, they would destroy Bernard Melville, Earl of Gracemere.

With a resumption of briskness, she continued. "I'll become involved in the 'duel' you and he are engaged in -a playful thing, you understand. He'll think I'm wonderfully naive, to be seeing it as a game, not realizing that my brother is a fat pigeon that he's going to pluck clean."

"You'll have to make sure Marcus is somewhere else that night," Sebastian said matter-of-factly.

"Yes," Judith agreed. Then she said in a rush, "I don't know how much longer I can keep up this deceit, Sebastian. I feel such a traitor, so disloyal."

"Three more weeks," Sebastian said quietly. "That's all. I can't wait much longer either, Ju."

"No, I know that." She caught his hand, crushing his fingers in a convulsive grip. A minute later she spoke cheerfully, diminishing the intensity of the last few minutes. "Have you thought how you're going to manage Letitia?"

Sebastian groaned. "I'm hoping Yorkshire will prove too far for frequent visitations."

"Is Harriet able to stand up to her mother?"

Sebastian considered. "Yes, with support," he said finally. "She hasn't done so yet, of course, but I think, when we're married, she'll prefer to upset her mama than me."

Judith went into a peal of laughter. "Such a sweet, accommodating creature she is, Sebastian. It's fortunate she's fallen in love with someone who'll never injure her." That graveyard shiver ran across her scalp again and her laughter died as the twinned images of Agnes and Gracemere thrust themselves forward.

"I must go home," she said as they reached the Ap-sley gate. "Lord Castlereagh, Lord Liverpool, and the Duke of Wellington are dining with us."

"Such exalted circles you move in," Sebastian declared with a chuckle. "The prime minister and the foreign secretary no less."

"I suspect Marcus is turning his interests to politics, now that there aren't any wars being fought," Judith said. "And Wellington is certainly turning his attention that way. Marcus says it's because the duke has a very simple political philosophy: He's the servant of the Crown and obliged to do his duty by it in whatever way is necessary-on the battlefield or in Parliament. He's the most popular man in the country and he has such influence in the Lords, he can probably coordinate the Tories in a way that Liverpool can't." She frowned. "I wonder if Marcus is looking at a post in any ministry Wellington might set up. Funny, I only just thought of that."

"My sister a cabinet minister's wife," Sebastian said with mock awe. "You'd best hurry home and charm your husband's guests."

"Curiously, I don't find Wellington in the least intimidating," Judith said. "Maybe because I once spent the night sleeping on a table in his headquarters. And he's a shocking flirt," she added.

"Then I'm sure you and he get on like a house on fire," her brother teased.

Judith arrived home to find a note waiting for her. It was from the Earl of Gracemere, calling in her debt of honor with the request of the pleasure of her company the following night at a public ridotto at Ranelagh. Frowning, Judith took the note up to her bedchamber and rang for Millie. She thrust the invitation to the back of a drawer in her secretaire while she waited for her abigail.

Bernard had chosen a curious location for the payment of her debt. A public ridotto was a vulgar masquerade, one not in general frequented by members of the ton. But perhaps that was the point. Maybe he was considerately ensuring the secrecy of the rendezvous. And then again… What she knew of Gracemere didn't lend itself to consideration. He was much more likely to be making mischief.

She wasn't going to go, of course. But how to refuse the invitation without Gracemere's questioning her good faith in their friendship? If she put his back up this late in the game, she'd have little enough time to repair the damage before the Duchess of Devonshire's ball, and on that night she would have to stick closer to Gracemere than his shadow.

"My lady… which gown, my lady?"

"I beg your pardon, Millie?" Abstracted, she looked up. Millie was standing patiently beside the armoire.

"Which gown will you wear this evening, my lady?"

"Oh." Judith frowned, turning her attention to this all important question. "The straw-colored sarsenet, I think."

"With the sapphires," Marcus said from the connecting door'. He lounged against the door jamb, fastening the buttons on his shirt curls, his black eyes twinkling. "They'll draw attention to the decolletage of that gown, which, as I recall is somewhat dramatic. The duke will appreciate it."

Judith chuckled. "And one must please one's guests, after all."

"It's the duty of a host," he agreed with gravity.

"And of a wife to further her husband's ambitions," she said in dulcet tones.

Marcus's smile was wry. "So you guessed?"

"What post appeals? Foreign secretary… home secretary, perhaps?"

He shrugged. "I don't know yet. it depends on what Peel and Canning want. Anyway, nothings going to happen for a while. I'm just interested in preparing the ground."

"Well, I'll charm your guests," she said. "But Castle-reagh's a dour individual. I'm sure he disapproves of flirtation."

Marcus laughed. "Never mind. It's with Wellington that my political future lies, my love."

Judith put her problem with Gracemere out of her head for the evening, devoting her single-minded attention to her husband's interests. It was a fascinating evening and she fell asleep in the early hours of the morning, thinking that she might well enjoy a role as political hostess.

It was bright sunshine when Marcus was awakened the next morning by the pretty chiming of the clock on the mantelshelf. It was nine o'clock, but Judith was still unstirring beside him. He hitched himself on one elbow to look down at her.

She lay on her back, her arms flung above her head, her lips slightly parted with the deep, even, trusting breath of a secure child. In sleep, without the usual vibrancy of expression, she appeared younger than her years and definitely more vulnerable. Her skin smelled warm and soft, redolent of a curious, babylike innocence -an innocence quite at odds with the charming, sophisticated hostess of the previous evening.

Perhaps he should have expected an upbringing spent racketing around the Continent to produce such a poised, well-informed, worldly cosmopolite. But he didn't think she'd been mixing in the first circles on her travels. And yet she never put a foot wrong; she behaved with all the assurance of an aristocrat, all the confidence of one who'd never gone without anything in her life. And Sebastian was the same. George Davenport must have been quite a character to have produced two such children in such unfavorable circumstances. Not for the first time, Marcus wondered about the Davenport antecedents. Judith always said she knew nothing about her family origins. Their father had insisted they were irrelevant and as a family they had to create themselves. Marcus supposed he could see the reasoning.

He lay down beside Judith again, his thigh resting against the warm, satiny length of her leg. It was impossible to resist the slow, gentle heat rising in his loins at the feel and the scent of her. With a tiny sigh of contented resignation, delicately, as if reluctant to wake her, he turned her onto her side, facing away from him. She murmured, but it was a wordless sound that came from sleep. He fitted his body against hers, and in sleep she nuzzled her bottom into his belly. He slipped his hand between her thighs, feeling for the sleep-closed entrance to her body with a tender, gossamery caress. He smiled as he felt her body responding without any prompting from her mind. She murmured again and drew her knees up, pushing backward in wordless invitation.

He slipped inside her, his hands caressing her breasts, his face buried in the fragrant burnished tumble of her hair, and she tightened around him, the soft, sweet velvet sheath enclosing him, so that he became a part of her. He felt her body come alive as she returned to full awareness, and it was as if his own body were a part of her waking process. He could feel the blood beginning to flow swiftly in her veins, vigor to fill the muscles and sinews of her body, the sharp clarity of a newly awakened brain. Fancifully he imagined he was giving birth to her, creating her for the new day.

"Good morning, lynx," he whispered into her hair as the ripples of pleasure filled her body.

She chuckled sleepily. "That was a very thoughtful way to wake someone up." Rolling onto her back again, she blinked up at him as he hung over her, his black eyes soft with his own pleasure. She touched his mouth with a fingertip. "Did you sleep well?"

"Beautifully." He swung himself out of bed, stretched and yawned. "What plans do you have for the day?"

Judith sat up against the pillows, enjoying the view. Marcus, naked, was a sight for sore eyes. However, the question brought the day's main issue to the forefront of her mind again. "Oh, I think I might ride with Sebastian this morning," she said vaguely. She would take the problem to her brother and between them they would come up with a solution.

Marcus blew her a kiss and left her, and Judith threw off the covers, pulling the bellrope for Millie.

In fact, the solution was remarkably simple. "Go to Ranelagh," Sebastian said. "And I'll ensure that I'm there with a large group of my own friends. We'll all be a trifle foxed, of course, very jolly and quite impossible to shake off. Gracemere will have your company, but you'll also be in the unexceptional company of your brother. You'll tell Marcus as soon as you get home, but you won't need to mention Gracemere, and I'll lay odds he'll think noth-

ing of it. If he objects to your going to such a vulgar masquerade, you can put up with a scolding."

Judith pulled a rueful face. "Marcus's scoldings aren't much fun."

"In this case, it's a small price to pay." Judith wasn't so sure, but she said no more.