Pleasure For Pleasure (3 page)

“Give me their names,” Mayne said between clenched teeth. He'd spent so much time with the Essex sisters over the past two years that he felt as if they were his own wards. Or his own sisters.

“It spread before we even knew of it,” Rafe said. “If Josie had laughed in the face of curiosity, or carried herself with dignity, it would have faded into nothing. But…”

“They've turned on her.” Mayne had seen this sort of thing happen before.

“She's invited everywhere. But she isn't asked to dance, and she has no suitors of her own age. I have no doubt but that there are many men who would like to have greater acquaintance with her—as you say, she is beautiful and funny—but they are not braving the eyes of the
ton
.”

“Fools,” Mayne said.

“I need you to help while we're gone.”

“This isn't as simple as when you asked me to accompany Imogen to Scotland. What the hell can I
do
for Josie?” His voice was rough because he was angry. The very thought of anyone insulting Josie, with her shining eyes and funny, cynical little remarks made him so enraged that he felt breathless.

“Be her friend,” Rafe said simply. “Her sisters have not allowed her to go anywhere alone. Tess and Felton have been going to Almack's every week. Annabel will attend our wedding ball, though her babe is hardly four months old. Her husband told me he would like to return to Scotland, but just that Annabel flatly refuses to leave until the season has drawn to a close.”

“Next year will be different,” Mayne said slowly, remembering the many seasons he'd drifted in and out of balls.
“The pariah of one year can be the belle of the next. Why the
hell
didn't I know about this?”

“You've been with your lovely Sylvie.”

“Sylvie can help Josie. She has a French air of disdain that Josie can copy.”

“Do you think that her sisters haven't tried to teach her to look confident? Why, Imogen drilled her in holding her chin up and not looking miserable until I felt as if Josie were being kitted out for the Royal Fusiliers. But it's not working.”

“These things never last more than one season. Remember how everyone made fun of the Wooly Breeder one year? That was Darlington as well. As if the poor girl was to blame for her father making so much money sheep-farming. The following season she came back as if nothing had happened, and people were tired of the game. She married respectably.”

Rafe sighed. “I tell you, Mayne, I bloody well can't wait until this season is over. I've never seen a girl so miserable. It's enough to make you rethink the whole idea of having daughters.”

“Wards are bad enough, are they?” Mayne said with a grin.

The door opened, and Lucius Felton walked in, followed by Rafe's brother Gabriel. “Forgive us for interrupting,” Lucius said with his usual imperturbable gravity, “but Brinkley asked us to make our own way to you.”

“You're just in time,” Mayne said. “I'm about to lecture Rafe on the trials and tribulations of the wedding night. It's been so long since the man was bedded, I'm afraid he's forgotten the process.”

Lucien smiled and seated himself. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“As do I,” said Gabe with an uncharacteristic chuckle.

And Mayne, looking at Rafe and seeing the smile in his eyes, came to the same conclusion.

 

Not everyone in St. Paul's Cathedral felt the same mixture of anticipation and wild affection that the Duke of Holbrook's wedding inspired in Mayne. Josie, for one, felt nothing other than abject misery. But since that was becoming a way of life for her, and she was well aware how utterly despicable it would be for her to diminish her sister Imogen's pleasure, she pasted a smile on her face.

It was a smile she was getting very good at. She'd practiced it in the glass at home. She curled the corners of her mouth up until her lower lip pouted out a little bit. Her mouth was probably her best feature, although she had no doubt but that anyone who saw her smiling would think of nothing but her round cheeks.

Imogen, of course, looked absolutely exquisite. Of the four sisters, Imogen looked most like her, in a cursory kind of way. They both had dark hair, and the same arching eyebrows.
Meant for laughing,
her sister Tess had told her years ago. But Imogen's face was slender and heart-shaped, whereas her own was pie-shaped and round.
Pie-shaped
.

Josie wrenched her mind away. Tess said she should think about her best features, but to be honest, she was sick of thinking about whether she had good skin or not, when the only thing she really wanted was to see a few bones sticking out under that skin. Imogen was looking up at Rafe in a way that made her even sicker. With jealousy.

At least she was woman enough to admit it. Tess squeezed her hand and Josie glanced at her eldest sister. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Isn't it wonderful?” Tess whispered. “Imogen looks so happy, finally.”

Josie felt a bolt of guilt. Of course, she wanted Imogen to be happy. Poor Imogen had had a horrible few years, what with eloping and then losing her young husband within a few weeks. Josie tipped the edges of her smile even higher. “Of course,” she whispered back. Tess's husband Lucius
was looking down at Tess with precisely the same adoration with which Rafe looked at Imogen.

She didn't even want to look to her right, because the Earl of Ardmore always had that look in his eyes when he looked at Annabel, even when Annabel grew round as a lighthouse. That had made Josie like Ardmore even more than she had before: he seemed just as in love with Annabel as he ever was, even though Annabel's little son was only a few months old and she hadn't lost all the weight.

Too bad most men weren't like him.

But that was veering into a dangerous thought, the kind that led to tears, so Josie looked back at the altar. The bishop was taking an unaccountably long time with his sermon, blathering on about love and forgiveness and such-like topics. The importance of marriage as an institution within which a man and woman loved and respected each other.

For goodness' sake, Imogen and Rafe had already chosen each other. They didn't need the lecture. But the bishop wandered on to the importance of marriage as an institution that cherished harmony in the family and the home.

I would marry anyone, Josie thought desperately. The thought of the little book she'd carefully created over the past two years, a list of all the ways by which heroines in novels made their admirers ask for their hands in marriage, sickened her now. The reality was so much worse than she'd pictured. She had no admirers.

She never thought that a man would have to undergo ridicule if he even danced with her. It wasn't that she was left at the side of the room. Her eldest sister, Tess, if not Griselda and Imogen, would never allow it. She no sooner was returned to her chaperone than a friend of one of her brothers-in-law would bow before her. But she saw through them. They were dancing with her as a favor, and although she quite liked some of them, they were
old.
They were funny, and complimentary,
and one of them—Baron Sibble—even seemed to like her for herself. He asked her for two dances at every single event, and even Tess could not have demanded such devoted service.

“Young men are fools,” Lucius Felton had told her on the way home from her first ball, when not a single man her age asked her to dance. “I was a fool as a youth.”

“Like this?” she had asked, sobbing so hard that she could hardly speak.

There was a moment's silence. “Never like that consciously,” he said finally. “But Josie, young men are like sheep. They follow each other's lead. There were quite likely young men in the room tonight who would have asked you to dance, but they can't quite brave the ridicule.”

“I just don't understand why this happened,” she had whispered, broken-hearted.

“It's Darlington,” Lucius had told her. “Unfortunately, he is dictating fashion this season.”

“Why would he care about me?” she'd cried, from the depths of her heart. “I've never met him, have I? Do I know him?”

“Perhaps it's because he's English and you're Scottish. There are Englishmen who resent the fact that your sisters have made excellent marriages amongst English aristocracy.”

“That's—That's not my fault!” It was the eternal cry of the unjustly accused.

“You are not the only one,” he added gently. “Cecilia Bellingworth will have a difficult time shaking the label Silly Billy, and that's merely due to her unfortunate brother not being right in his head. Darlington didn't make up that label; I'm not sure who did. But who will be brave enough to marry her?”

“I'd rather be silly than fat,” Josie had said flatly.

“No, you wouldn't,” Lucius had said. “And you are
not
fat, Josie.”

But Lucius Felton had no idea of the depths of longing
Josie felt to be thin. To dance around the ballroom, gowned in a diaphanous costume gathered with fragile ribbons under her breasts and floating around her like a cloud of pale silk…The whole world could see that Miss Mary Ogilby never wore a corset; why should she? She was as slender as a reed. But Josie wore a corset. If she could, she'd wear three corsets, one on top of each other, if only they could rein in all the flesh that seemed to pop out wherever she looked.

Not that she looked.

She'd had the mirror taken out of her bedchamber months ago and felt life was better without it. No diaphanous gowns for her. Imogen's
modiste
—the very best in London—had pointed out that seams were needed to construct
an agreeable shape
. The words were emblazoned in Josie's memory.

Well, thanks to that
modiste,
she had an agreeable shape, presumably. She certainly had a lot of seams. The dress she chose to wear to Imogen's wedding was designed to hold her in and cover her up in as many ways as possible.

Josie wrenched her attention back to the altar. Finally the bishop seemed to be droning to a halt. Not that Imogen showed any sign of listening to him. She was just looking at Rafe, looking at him in such a way that Josie actually got a lump in her throat. Beside her, Tess was blotting away tears with a handkerchief her husband must have given her, since it was twice the size of her hand. Josie gritted her teeth. If she cried, there was no one to give her a handkerchief.

Her eyes would turn red.

They would swell and her skin would turn blotchy.

They would—

Rafe leaned down, cupped his new wife's face in his hands, and said quietly, but so that Josie could clearly hear him from where they stood in the first row, “All my life, Imogen.”

In the end, Lucius Felton had two handkerchiefs, which was just like him.

The Duke of Holbrook's wedding fete
15 Grosvenor Square

L
ord Charles Darlington was feeling rather morose. There was no doubt that life was difficult when cravats were so expensive, and the
ton
so tiresome. Of course, there were pleasures in life, although small.

The pleasure of a well-turned retort was one. One might think that Darlington was something of a monster, but he was not. He knew perfectly well that he was a trivial person, and he never failed to promptly acknowledge the fact, as did his friends.

“You are excessively tedious tonight,” Berwick remarked. “At this rate it would be almost more interesting to prance around the dance floor, listening to some chit giggle at me.” Young girls had a tendency to fall into nervous laughter faced
with Berwick's sulky good looks, although his lack of a fortune kept him (in Darlington's opinion) from becoming fatheaded.

“If I sparked wit for you it would be a misuse of precious resources,” Darlington retorted. “Do you suppose that anyone realizes we are here?”

Berwick looked around the crowded dance floor. “Not a chance of it. The butler of Holbrook's practically whispered our names—that is, the names we gave him.”

Wisley and Thurman trotted up to them like eager little spaniels. “By Jove, you did get in, Darlington!” Thurman bellowed. “I bet Wisley here five guineas that you couldn't get yourself invited to Holbrook's wedding fete.”

Darlington preferred not to mention that he had received no invitation. It was the first time that he had been cut from an important event. Hang it, he
was
the son of a duke, albeit the third son. Why his mother had to keep turning out males when there wasn't an estate to keep them in handkerchiefs, he didn't know. But now he carelessly adjusted the line of his coat (a blush-colored superfine wool that he found immensely soothing to the eye) and said, “Of course I had an invitation, you idiot.”

He did too. He had an invitation addressed to one of his brothers.

“Well, she's here,” Thurman said cheerfully. “The Scottish Sausage. Except I'm thinking we should come up with a new name. How about the Scottish Saucepan? How do you like that, eh?” He beamed.

“Like what?” Darlington said, an edge to his voice.

“Scottish Saucepan! It came to me in the middle of the night. I hadn't drunk my chocolate before bed, you see, and I couldn't sleep, and I was thinking about what a clever turn of the tongue you had, and there it was! Came to me in the night, like—like that writing on the wall they talk about in the Bible.”

“Thurman, you are an utter ass,” Berwick said.

Thurman looked mildly offended. He was an English sausage, if sausages came in a peculiar bell shape. He had a dimpled double chin and glinting, small blue eyes. He'd been called an ass so many times that he likely took it as a compliment.

“Don't you think it has a Darlington ring?” he demanded. “He's rubbing off on me. All that cleverness, I mean.”

Darlington turned away. He would be very happy to see the last of Thurman, if only he didn't need an audience. He was honest enough to know that about himself.

“Let's see what she's wearing tonight,” Thurman persisted. “You know all the lads down at the Convent will ask.”

“My wife tells me that if she hears of me at the Convent again, I'm barred from her company,” Wisley said, speaking for the first time. He was a slender man with a discontented mouth traced by a faint mustache that never grew thicker nor thinner. They had all been at Rugby together, and of the four of them, Wisley had done the best. He had married for money, and even Thurman, who had more money than he had need of, admitted that Wisley had fallen on his feet. His bride was fairly pretty; only the most severe of critics would note that her brows met in the middle. Or that her skin was olive. Darlington, who
was
the severest of critics, had kept his opinion to himself.

“Which would be the tragedy?” he asked now. “To be barred from your wife's company, or from the Convent?”

“It's like those old games where there are two doors and one leads to a lion,” Berwick commented.

“I don't see that,” Wisley said languidly. “My wife is no lion, and the Convent, while a perfectly respectable pub, is growing a bit monotonous.”

Darlington eyed Wisley. Unless he missed his guess, Wisley's wife was drawing him away from the group. He knew perfectly well that she didn't like him. Every time she saw
him, her face took on a closed, calm look that spoke of deep hatred.

He should probably let Wisley go free, off to a life of mind-numbing domesticity.

“Well,
I
would never give up the Convent for a wife,” Thurman announced.

“Your wife, should you ever have one, will likely be paying a subsidy to the place to keep you occupied,” Berwick said acidly.

“My wife will madly adore me,” Thurman said, sounding truly huffy for the first time.

The worst was that Darlington could see that he believed it. What was he doing with a pack of fools like this?

Berwick shrugged. “'Tis a tedious subject, but I would warn you, Thurman, that in my experience the only women who engage in mad adoration—other than of themselves, of course—are invariably plain.”

“I could make any woman adore me!” Thurman said shrilly. “It's all a matter of how you treat her.”

“But women are so monstrously attracted to beauty,” Berwick said.

Darlington thought he really ought to intervene. His carefully hewed little circle was disintegrating around him.

“Wicked women are,” Thurman said. “But good women, the ones one has to marry, those women are interested in commercial transactions.”

Darlington recognized that as something he'd said, once upon a time. “I prefer the wicked kind,” he said now. “They're so much more interesting to talk to.”

“But you can't marry someone who's interesting to talk to,” Thurman pointed out, absolutely correctly. “And Darlington, you need to marry.”

Darlington sighed. It was wearisomely true. If only to stop his father's imminent apoplexy.

Thurman never knew when to shut his mouth, and so he
kept going. “I really thought you wouldn't be invited tonight, and you know, if the Essex sisters shut you out, you'd have a demmed hard time finding your way back into society. Those women left Scotland, descended on England like a swarm of locusts and married every title on the market.”

Berwick frowned at him. “Keep your voice down. You're at a wedding ball for one of them, you ass.”

“No one's listening,” Thurman said, looking around. The ballroom at the Duke of Holbrook's town house had ceilings so high that even the chatter of hundreds of overexcited members of the
ton
just floated upward and resulted in a pleasant buzz. The orchestra at one end sounded like the dim hum of caged bees.

“I suppose I should find a wife,” Darlington said, feeling ineffably depressed.

“I certainly mean to,” Thurman said. “I require beauty, a sufficient dowry, and a docile disposition. Oh, and an impeccable reputation. After all, I bring the same to her.”

“What a fortunate woman she will be,” Berwick said. “And you, Darlington? What will you require?”

“A sensible view of life,” Darlington said flatly. “That, and a great deal of money. I am very expensive.”

“Shall we meet in an hour or so and exchange notes?” Berwick said, something of a genuine smile lighting his eyes. “I must say that I am thoroughly amused.”

“Will you be looking for a wife as well?” Thurman demanded.

“I believe not,” Berwick replied. “I was on the edge of that decision, but luckily I have been delivered from penury in the nick of time. And everyone knows that penury is the final step before marriage.”

“So you got some money from somewhere, did you?” Thurman said. “Is that why you've been out of a town for a fortnight? Did your father die? Can't say I heard that. And you're not in black.”

“Tsk tsk,” Berwick said. “I
do
have a black armband, albeit edged in a charming shade of purple. My adored and loathsome Aunt Augusta succumbed to some sort of malady while in Bath. Naturally, she left all her money to her beloved nephew.”

Darlington felt even more depressed, but exerted himself to suitably compliment Berwick on the pleasures of financial stability. Unfortunately, there were no aunts, loathsome or adored, in his family tree. And even if there had been, he was the least likely to be chosen as an heir; his brothers were all eminently respectable in comparison.

Thurman's little blue eyes were shining as he taxed Berwick about his income. Then Darlington noticed that at some point Wisley had slipped away without a good-bye, likely to his wife's side. He wouldn't come to the Convent that night, or ever again. Darlington knew that.

The days of the little circle of friends from Rugby were over. Wisley was gone. Berwick was rich, and Darlington couldn't bear the idea of Berwick picking up a tavern bill. Thurman was a fool, but Berwick was not.

If he didn't change his ways, he'd be left with Thurman to spout his own witticisms back at him, and reflect his bad temper.

Darlington shuddered faintly. “The search is on, gentlemen,” he said. “Wives.”

Thurman and Berwick stopped talking about canal stocks in mid-sentence. Berwick raised an eyebrow. “The season just grew far more interesting,” he said softly.

“I expect I'll choose the right wife by the end of the evening,” Thurman said.

“It may take me slightly longer,” Darlington said. “I have such trouble choosing cravats some evenings. If I dread making mistakes in the selection of a pink versus yellow cravat, who knows how difficult it will be to choose a wife?”

“Wives are like cravats in that you must simply determine
market value, and make your decision accordingly,” Berwick said. “There are only a handful who can support you in the manner to which you will rapidly become accustomed.”

“Damned if you aren't going to be a magnate by the time you're thirty if you keep being this intelligent, Berwick,” Thurman said.

Berwick smiled.

“You
are
a magnate!” Thurman gasped.

“Dear, dear Aunt Augusta,” Berwick said, his usual thin smile somewhat more vivid. “Apparently no one had any idea just how interested she was in all those northern industries. Why, she funded an entire coal mine. Said she liked the shiny black color of it.”

“My God, once that news leaks, you're going to be the talk of the
ton
. Every mama's dream,” Thurman said.

Darlington did what had to be done, what had to be done by any man whose friend has been suddenly elevated into the highest reaches of society, or at least as high as one can go without discovering nobility in the family tree. He slapped Berwick on the back, swallowed his rage. And then: “I have been thinking for some time that we have outgrown our little gatherings at the Convent.”

Thurman gaped at him and Berwick's eyebrow shot into the air.

“The whole business of the Scottish Sausage is growing tedious. I'm having thoughts of morality, which just goes to show that I'm growing stupid in my old age.”

“You ain't old,” Thurman said.

“I shouldn't have done it,” Darlington said. “It wasn't as clever as the Wooly Breeder, though God knows I probably shouldn't have done that either. I can't believe I did anything prompted by Crogan, who has to be one of the more repellent fools on the earth. In truth, I did it for the pleasure of herding about all the witless men who call themselves
gentlemen, and damned if I didn't make myself as witless as the least of them.”

“Witless? Everyone knows we're the clever ones,” Thurman bleated.

Darlington didn't know why he'd spent so much time with such a cretin.

Berwick was as intelligent as they came, and he didn't show a flash of emotion at this sudden parting of boyhood friends. He bowed, as elegantly as any magnate. “It's been a pleasure,” he said, a marked lack of interest in his voice.

They had banded together on a whim, and it seemed they would part with as little ceremony, albeit years later. Darlington nodded at him, and nodded to Thurman.

He turned and walked a few feet before scanning the room for a wife. But what he really wanted wasn't money, a single woman as rich as Berwick's Aunt Augusta.

He wanted intelligence. Someone who was amusing and would talk to him, rather than reflecting back his own empty jokes. It was unfortunate that the task of finding her seemed Herculean.

 

He left behind a couple of dumbfounded men.

“Damned if he didn't mean it,” Berwick said. “I think he means to marry.” And then, after a moment's contemplation, “The poor sod.”

“Perhaps he'll take the Scottish Sausage,” Thurman said, an edge in his voice showing that he didn't take to being snubbed by the man he'd bought so many rounds for. “
She
can afford to pay his tavern bills, by all accounts.”

“Her brother-in-law's as rich as Croesus,” Berwick said.

“She's one that won't be looking in his direction, though,” Thurman said. “The Sausage won't be able to marry until next season, if then. Remember the Wooly Breeder?”

Berwick shrugged. The truth was that whereas a year ago
he hadn't any prospects of marriage, now he was set to become a prime candidate. And he didn't want his chances of gaining the very best to be marred by any unpleasantness resulting from their mockery of the Scottish Sausage.