Pleasure For Pleasure (27 page)

A whisper of chill wind touched Josie's back. “You were in love…or you still are? Would you prefer to win her back, Garret? Because if you have that hope in your heart, we should not continue.” And she looked at the ground, because she couldn't bear to see love for another woman in his eyes.

“Sylvie and I have no future together,” he said.

So he was still in love with her. But Josie took the pain of that and pushed it away. She, Josie, wasn't in love with
him,
so why should she care?

“All right, then. You can take the mementos of your brief engagement and put them in a box. In the attic.”

She could feel him laughing before she heard his response: “Would I be allowed to visit them now and then?”

“Yes,” Josie said. “I'll find you occasionally, in the twilight of the attic, turning over a faded blue ribbon that Sylvie wore in her hair.”

“What a lovely picture,” Mayne said.

“Actually,” Josie said, getting into the spirit of the thing, “you might want to take a ribbon of hers, perhaps the one she wore the night you first kissed her, and wear it next to your heart, Garret. Then when you die and we're laying you out in state, I'll find the ribbon, and almost throw it away, but then—”

“With sobs that would break the heart of Beelzebub himself, you'll tuck it back next to my heart and go to your grave knowing that your husband loved another.”

“I like that,” Josie said, thinking about it. “Especially the part where I almost throw your ribbon away but stop myself.”

He pulled her a little closer and she could feel his body, hard against hers. “There is one problem.”

Josie was rethinking about the heartrending scene at the coffin. “I think I will throw away that ribbon, Garret, so be warned. I may even burn it.”

“I don't have any ribbons,” Mayne pointed out. “Not even from the first night I kissed Sylvie.”

“You must have something.”

“Nothing.”

“A shame,” Josie said. He was looking at her now, and there was something in his eyes that made nonsense of the idea of Sylvie's ribbons. Yes, he was in love, but…

“I've often thought that desire and love are very similar,” she said, telling him because he might as well know now how scandalous she was. “Who's to say that desire is not the same as love?”

“I've felt many a stroke of desire, Josie, and only a few of love.”

She shook back her head, letting her hair fall behind her, free and wild. “I suppose you're right. If desire were love, there'd be no unmarried streetwalkers.”

He laughed, but she could feel him drawing even closer. His hands were spread on her back, their bodies just a hair's breadth apart.

“Do you desire me, Garret Langham, Earl of Mayne?”

His eyes were dark in the moonlight. “You're no streetwalker, Josephine Langham, Countess of Mayne.”

“If I were, I would be more practiced at seduction,” she said. “Shan't you give me lessons?”

“In seduction?”

“You are an expert.” She raised her hands to her hair again, feeling as pagan as any fairy queen. “If you return to the house, I will take it that you do not desire me enough for this marriage.”

She turned her back and began walking toward the small house nestled into the corner of the garden.

“Josie!” His voice was like liquid velvet, wild and sweet.

She turned, knowing that her breasts were completely visible through the light fabric of her gown, and understanding for the first time in her life that their sweet, unsteady weight was no drawback in a man's eyes.

“What if I were a fairy queen?” she said.

“What then?”

“I would command you to stay.
Out of this wood do not desire to go. Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
”

“I feel a donkey's head descending onto my shoulders,” he muttered. But he was walking after her.

She didn't look back, just walked up the step to the little house and pushed open the door.

“That's supposed to be locked,” he said. But he was following her.

It was a small room, with nothing more than a sofa in the corner. The moon streamed through the small window.

“If I remove your donkey's head, will you kiss me?” she whispered.

He stood by the door, large, shadowed. She couldn't see his face.

“There's no going back from this.”

“I don't want to.” Exhilaration was running through her veins. For her, there had only been this man, from the moment he kissed her and showed her how to be a woman. Garret turned her, with his desire, from shapeless to shapely. From undesirable to desired.

She would never want anyone else in her bed, or in her life.

I
must return to my house.”

“No.” He said it sleepily, but with such satisfaction that she almost laughed. But still she struggled to a sitting position.

“I'm sore, and I'm tired, and I'm far too old for this sort of gallivanting,” she told him.

He propped himself up on one arm.

“Marry me?”

Griselda was bending over to pick up a stray stocking that lay abandoned on the bedroom floor. The words drifted over
to her slowly, as if they'd been whispered. She straightened, stocking in her hand, and turned. “There's no need for that,” she said, smiling at him with all the gladness she felt in her heart that her lover was a man of honor. “I am so grateful for you asking the question, though. It always struck me as utterly demoralizing that people carry on
affaires
when—”

She broke off. What she saw on his face wasn't the polite relief of a man who has asked the requisite question and been offered a reprieve. She froze in the middle of the room. “Don't say that,” she said. “Don't.”

“I must. I can't think of anything but you, Griselda. I dream of you. I smell you when you aren't with me. I can't make clever remarks, because the only person I want to speak to is you.”

“You—” she said, and swallowed. “You are suffering an infatuation. It happens to young men.” She said that briskly, to remind herself that he was young.
Very
young.

He didn't look very young as he got out of bed and walked toward her. “Age has nothing to do with it.”

“It has everything to do with it,” she retorted. “Everything! I wish I'd met you when I was younger, or you were older, or…or whatever was needed. Truly, I do. I would have pursued you so fiercely you couldn't see another woman without me smiling over her shoulder. I would have done anything—anything!—to marry you.”

“Then have me.”

“To have is not to
take
. I won't take you, with your life ahead of you. You'll find a wife who's your age or younger, and she'll bear you a dozen babies.” She reached out and brushed back a lock of his hair. “I will dance at your wedding, darling, and that gladly. But I will never be your bride, for all that I am honored beyond all measure by your request.”

His eyes burned into hers. “You love me.”

Griselda raised her chin. This was getting entirely too personal. “I do not love you,” she said, keeping her voice
steady and gentle. “I appreciate you. I am proud of you.”

He flinched. “Proud of me? For
what
?”

She saw what he meant and blinked. And almost laughed. “Not that! Pride is not the emotion that comes to mind when I think of your prowess!”

“Then you have no right to feel proud of me, as if—as if you were my mother.” He spat it out.

Griselda reminded herself that young men have fierce passions, but she could feel her own temper rising. “I am not your mother, but I might as well be.”

“Stubble it!” he said, his voice slapping her. “How old are you, Griselda Willoughby? What right have you to act as if you were eighteen years my elder?”

“Perhaps not eighteen years,” Griselda said, trying to remain calm.

“Perhaps not ten,” he said, and there was a distinct edge to his voice. “Perhaps not five.”

“Nonsense!” Griselda said.

“Then I ask you again: how old are you?”

He had kissed her body in its most intimate places. Still Griselda stood motionless, her jaw set. She never talked of her age. Never.

“Griselda,” he said, low and clear. And she could see that he was enraged.

Then he turned away, as if tired of waiting for her to answer. “You, Griselda, are thirty-two. You have more than enough years, if you wish, to present me with half a dozen children. And I am twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. There is, at the moment, five years between us.”

“You knew,” she whispered. And then: “Twenty-seven?”

“You thought I was, what, eighteen? You knew that wasn't the case.”

“I didn't look you up.”

“I looked you up. And had you been thirty-nine, my question would be the same. And if you'd been forty-nine. But as
it is, Griselda, you can hardly claim to be my mother, given that you were all of four years old when I was born.”

“Five.”

He shrugged. “There are things far more important about me—to me—than my age. In fact, there are many reasons why you may not wish to marry me, and my age is probably the least of it.”

She stared at his back. “Why would I not wish to marry you, Darlington?”

“I am a writer.”

“What?”

She felt disjointed, as if she'd missed part of the conversation.

“I am a writer,” he repeated, turning around. “You asked how I support this house? I write.”

“Novels?”

“No. I write in a lesser genre altogether. I write stories of crimes that have really happened. I have written sensational pamphlets; I have written gallow sheets; I have written accounts that purported to be the confessions of a murderer. I have in fact written down those confessions on occasion.”

“How do you hear the confessions?”

He shrugged. “I have friends among the constabulary. I am generous with guineas when I find a good story. It's a business that pays remarkably well. I can afford to marry you, if you would even consider such a thing.”

Still she stared at him, until his mouth twisted and he turned away. “I entirely understand that my means of living is not reputable. I am a laborer. In truth, I find it shameful myself, and my family finds it abhorrent. My father literally cannot bring himself to mention my work at all. It's one of the reasons he is so frantic about my marital prospects. Since I am already prostituting my honor, as he sees it, I might as well engage in a more honorable version of the same.”

Griselda took a deep breath. This was all becoming far too annoying. How dare he act as if she were so shallow as to cavil at the idea of marrying a writer? Was not she the one who confessed to reading those very books? And how dare he consider her such a despicable person as to read and enjoy the genre and not honor its authors?

Meanwhile Darlington was still talking. “I write all that sensationalist prose that we were talking of last night. The murderer's mother invariably swoons on hearing of his capture; the victim's mother swoons on hearing of the incident. I turn all my victims into sturdy young men who would have made excellent husbands and fathers, no matter how despicable they were in real life.” He stopped.

She still hadn't replied. It broke his heart that Griselda had nothing to say to him. He stared down at the polished surface of his dressing table, waiting with tense shoulders for the sound of the door opening and shutting again. But no: Griselda was too well bred for that. Too much a gentlewoman. She would make some excuse, she would—

A faint sound was the only thing that alerted him. He turned around to find that Griselda's hand was on her forehead and she was swaying back and forth, clearly about to faint.

She swooned into his arms with a faint sigh that went straight to his heart. “Griselda!” he shouted. And then realized that he shouldn't shout at her.

What the hell was going on? Could he have horrified her so much that she fainted? He looked around desperately. One was supposed to apply smelling salts when women fainted, but he didn't have anything like that around. Could any strong smelling object work? There were onions in the kitchen.

He laid her on the bed. She was limp and still, lying there with her eyes closed. She looked stark white. It must have been a worse shock than he had imagined.

“Griselda,” he commanded, “open your eyes.”

She lay still as death. Water! That's what he needed. He should dash water in her face. Lord knows, he'd described that scene enough. Of course there wasn't any water in his bedchamber, so he ran through the door and down to the kitchen.

When he came back, clutching a pitcher, his guest was still limp. Weren't women supposed to come out of it after a second or two? He began to hoist the jug in the air.

Griselda judged it was time to wake up and uttered what she considered to be an entirely fetching sound of distress. Darlington put down the pitcher, somewhat to her relief.

“Griselda,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

She allowed a slight moan to pass her lips and threw her hand up to her brow in a dramatic gesture. “Oh, can it be?”

He rubbed her hands and she could hear him swearing under his breath. She had to take a deep breath to prevent a smile from erupting. “Can you have said what I thought I heard? Surely…no! It cannot be!” That was a little repetitive, but for someone who wasn't a writer, she was doing fairly well.

“Griselda,” Darlington said, “I am truly sorry to have caused you distress, but—”

“My lover,” she said, opening her eyes and looking up at him, “my lover is nothing more than—than a
common laborer
!”

“Well—”

But she didn't let him continue. “Oh, slay me now!” she cried. “I have soiled myself. My life is ruined. My reputation, my life, my body, my…” She paused and considered whether to faint again. Instead she peeped up at him.

He was grinning down at her, all the boyish roughness of him that she loved. Because she did love that side of him.

“I gather you think you're an actress?”

“I can write a scene as well as you can,” she told him.

“Clichéd,” he said contemptuously.

“Pot calling the kettle black!”

“
My
fainting women never moan,” he said.

“More fools they,” she said. “I am hugely enjoying this faint, and I am only sorry that I had to cut off my performance before you drenched me with water.”

“Call me a fool,” Darlington said. “But Griselda, why did you faint?”

“To see if you had any experience of fainting women,” she said, sitting up comfortably and patting her hair. “You haven't, have you?”

“Well, no.”

“In fact,” she went on, “I'd lay a guinea to a shilling that you simply make up most of what you print.”

“Not
most
of it.”

“But you embroider it.”

“Well…”

She smiled at him. “Do you think that I am a fool? That I didn't surmise your career from our conversation?”

“But don't you—aren't you—”

“Am I embarrassed to find that my lover is a writer of lively prose, enjoyed by hundreds, if not thousands of people? That he has managed to make himself rich, so he needn't depend on his father nor marry a young woman for her dowry?” She met his eyes directly. “Had you bowed to your father and married, Darlington, we would never have known each other.”

“Knowledge in the Biblical sense? Yes.” Before Griselda quite knew what had happened, he was on his knees by the bed and he had her hands in his.

“Marry me, Griselda. Neither of us will be good for anyone else after this; you know that.”

“You're saying I should marry you just because I'm not good for anyone else?”

“I ruined you,” he said, his eyes holding hers and not
letting her make another foolish comment. “You're mine, and no one else's, Griselda.”

“Oh—”

But he was kissing her, and it seemed that he didn't need an answer that very moment.

And perhaps they both knew the answer in her heart.