Pleasure For Pleasure (7 page)

Josie shook her head. For her, going to a ball was an agonizingly tedious process of strapping and lacing and wiggling into clothes that felt too small. Being worried that she would sweat in them, that she would have to bend over, that she wouldn't be able to survive without a trip to the privy.

She could feel Mayne eyeing her corset again, but thankfully he didn't say anything.

“As it happened, the Queen was receiving that afternoon. So I went to the Drawing Room. There was the usual flock of debutantes waiting to be received, and there, just in the middle, was an exquisite woman. I knew immediately that she was French, of course. It wasn't her voice, but the way she carried herself. There's nothing
common
about a Frenchwoman, do you know what I mean, Josie?”

Josie had probably read a few too many French romances for her own good. “Do you mean that Frenchwomen aren't loose?” she asked dubiously.

“Oh, they misbehave with true
joie de vivre.
But they never look at a man with an invitation in their eyes,” he said, stretching his feet out. His legs went so far across the small floor that his feet almost touched her slippers. “They wait for a man to approach them, or they shrug them off. Do you see the difference?”

Josie thought about the eager way that Lady Lorkin's eyes had skated over Mayne's face. She took another swallow of champagne. It was a vastly improper thing to say, but: “Lady Lorkin, one must assume, is not of Gallic origin.”

She was rewarded by a snort of laughter. “Not a bit of it.”

“Are you carrying on an
affaire
with her?”

The laughter died in his eyes immediately. “I am affianced to Sylvie.”

“I didn't mean to imply—”

But he wasn't angry anymore. “I did have a tryst with her, some three years ago now. I'm afraid that she may have built it into a treasured memory.”

“Yes, I can see that.”

He looked faintly embarrassed. “I feel like an ass even saying such a thing in front of a young lady.”

“I may be young, but I'm not stupid. And if you remember, one of my sisters was engaged to you, so I'm fully aware of your scandalous background.”

His eyes fell and he was studying his boots again. “I should never have stood up Tess at the altar—”

“Not only that but you almost had an
affaire
with my other sister,” Josie interrupted. She was feeling blissful, for the first time since the season began. She grinned at him. “You spell nothing but trouble for the Essex sisters. We shall all be very glad when Sylvie ties you up nice and tight at the altar.”

“Unfair!” he protested. “All the Essexes have married without a protest from me. And I did not have an
affaire
with Imogen.”

“I know that,” Josie said smugly. “Though not for lack of trying on her part.”

He looked startled at this but said nothing.

“Why
didn't
you allow her to seduce you?” Josie asked, holding out her glass so he could fill it again. “Imogen is very beautiful. She was widowed, so there wasn't a husband to worry about. What on earth stopped you?”

“Do you think that I just gallivant around London, sleeping with any woman who throws me a lure?”

Josie thought about it for a moment. “Yes.”

“Well, I don't.”

“If you'd had world enough and time…” she said mischievously.

“No, you little devil, that scrap of poetry won't work. Marvell says his lady might remain coy if they had world enough and time—”

“The coy Mayne,” Josie said, interrupting him again. “Ah Mayne, how the
ton
has misjudged you! Why, you'll hardly credit it—” she opened her eyes wide—“but they seem to think you are the greatest seducer of women ever to grace the
ton.
”

“Well, I'm not,” Mayne said sharply, draining his glass and filling it again.

He seemed a bit peevish, so Josie dropped the subject. There was nothing worse than being nagged about one's bad traits. It was so much more pleasant to pretend they didn't exist. Like overeating. She was going to eat one of those delicious sandwich squares, even given that she had sworn that very morning never to eat again.

She leaned forward from the waist, carefully, reached out for a sandwich and bumped Mayne's hand. He was smiling
at her, and suddenly Josie knew to the bottom of her toes why all those London ladies made fools of themselves over him. He must be well over thirty years old, but his eyes had a devilish smile in them that made her feel—

She dropped the sandwich as if it stung her.

Mayne was already sprawled back in his chair, but he bent forward and picked it up for her. “I'm afraid of what would happen if you tried to lean farther forward,” he remarked.

She scowled at him and edged back in her chair.

“So are you going to tell me what you're wearing?” he asked, eating half the small sandwich in one bite.

It was all so easy for him. Women falling at his feet, and not a bit of guilt no matter what he ate. It just wasn't fair. “No, I am not going to talk about my undergarments.”

“You look absurdly uncomfortable,” Mayne cheerfully observed.

Josie ate a bite of her sandwich. It was wonderful, a burst of salmon flavor with a touch of cucumber. “Your chef is marvelous,” she said when she finished.

Mayne leaned forward, grabbed two more for himself and one for her. “Don't forget your champagne,” he said. “Champagne was designed by God to go with smoked salmon.”

There was a moment's reverent silence while they both ate. Then Mayne emptied the last of the champagne bottle into Josie's glass. “Have we drunk all that?” she asked, slightly alarmed.

“No, it was half empty when opened,” he said sarcastically. “If you won't talk to me about your undergarments, will you talk to Sylvie about them?”

“Certainly not!” Josie squeaked, picturing his slender fiancée.

“One of your sisters, then?”

“Naturally, Imogen took me to her very own
modiste
, a
Frenchwoman,” she added pointedly. “Madame Badeau. I have entirely new clothing for the season, and while you may not approve, I assure you that Madame Badeau is the very best
modiste
in London.”

Mayne's eyes narrowed and he was staring at her again. Josie would have straightened, except she couldn't be any straighter than she was. She drank her champagne and then broke the silence. “I might as well say what I'm sure you're thinking,” she said, putting her glass down on the table with a little click. “The only thing that gets me into this gown at all is my corset. It works miracles. I love it.” She finished the last sentence bravely.

Mayne wasn't looking at her anymore; he was cutting the string around the cork of a bottle of champagne that Josie hadn't seen before.

“Are we going to drink more?” she asked, with a little gasp.

He shrugged. “Why not? At this point, we've missed most of the party. I shouldn't like to return you to Rafe's until we are quite certain the crowds are gone and no one will see us. I don't suppose you've drunk much champagne in the past?”

“I had a glass once before,” Josie said, looking lovingly at the bubbles in the bottle. “It's much more interesting than I thought.”

“Don't develop a passion for it,” he advised her. “Look at Rafe and how long it took him to become sober.”

“Oh, I won't.”

He lifted his glass and held it up to hers. “To the future, Josie?”

“Why do you call me Josie, and I call you Mayne?” she asked, taking a deep draught of champagne. It was making her feel brave and reckless.

“You can call me whatever you like,” he said with a shrug.

“Then I'll call you Garret. We
are
friends, after all, and I think that a gentleman who has the gall to question a lady about her undergarments should be on intimate terms with her, don't you think?” A thought struck her and she plunged straight into another question. “Do all those women whom you slept with address you as Garret, or Mayne?”

He was grinning at her, a lazy, beautiful grin with a touch of the devil in it. He looked like nothing in the world so much as a slightly wicked Bacchus crafted by a master sculptor. It made her feel audacious. After all, it wasn't Lady Lorkin in this chair. It was she, Josie, the most scorned debutante of the year. “I love champagne!” she added.

“I begin to think I should ring for a sobering cup of tea,” Mayne said. And then: “No, you little witch, I have never asked the women with whom I had
affaires
to address me by my first name. It isn't done.”

“Why not? If I were going to—to unclothe myself in front of a person, I would certainly wish to be familiar enough to call him by his first name!”

He laughed at that. “There's more intimacy involved than unclothing,” he pointed out. And then looked a bit appalled at himself. “I shouldn't have said that.”

“We're talking about bedding,” Josie said impatiently. “You can pretend I'm your younger brother, if you wish.”

He eyed her. “I don't wish.”

“Well, my point is that if I were ever to take my clothing off before someone, I certainly wouldn't do so in an atmosphere of such formality.”

Mayne was staring at the bubbles in his champagne, turning the glass so the golden wine caught the light. “Most ladies undress with the help of their maids and then slip under the covers.”

Josie thought about that. It sounded like a very good plan to her. That way one's husband would never be unnerved by the sight of one's flesh. “Where does the gentleman undress?”

“Of course, ladies and gentlemen never share a bedchamber,” he said, looking through his glass at her now. “No one could imagine such a thing; that sort of intimacy is left for the lower classes. No, the squire strides into his wife's bedchamber, admirably covered in a striped dressing gown of sturdy linsey-woolsey. Then he drops his dressing gown…”

Josie had a sudden vivid image of what Mayne would look like without a dressing gown, or anything else.

“…but not before he turns down the lamp,” Mayne finished. “No promiscuous looking among the aristocracy. Absolutely not.”

“And she never uses his first name?” Josie said, wrenching her mind away from the gutter.

“Never. In fact, she says little, in my experience.” Mayne rested his head on the back of his chair and gazed at the ceiling. “And this is truly something you should
never
repeat to your intimates,” he said. “I should not tell you, but I will anyway. The truth is that I can't imagine why women go to such lengths to anger their husbands by having
affaires,
when most of them don't particularly enjoy the intimacies themselves.”

“Then you,” Josie said, thrilling with the daring of this desperately improper conversation, “must not be very good at bedding women. Perhaps Imogen had a lucky escape.” She grinned at the low growl that came from his throat. “Tess and Annabel gave Imogen a wedding night talk,” she told him. “And this time they finally allowed me to stay because I was supposed to be getting married this season.”

Mayne's jaw clenched. “And they said something about
me
?” There was stark disbelief in his voice.

“Why on earth would they be interested in you? You should be careful that all this adoration from foolish women like Letitia Lorkin doesn't go to your head.”

“Josie, you witch”—and it didn't sound like an endearment anymore—“can you kindly inform me precisely how
my name came up during this oh-so-delicate conversation?”

“As I said,
you
didn't come up. But the fact that many men are unable to make women happy in bed did.”

“Don't tell me your sisters were worried about Rafe.” He sounded horrified; it was likely a question of insult my friend, insult me.

“No. But—” Josie stopped. It was one thing to be indiscreet with Mayne, and it was another to reveal that Imogen's first marriage had not been entirely satisfactory in that respect.

He didn't say anything, just stared at his glass. “I seem to have no problem providing a suitable experience.”

Josie sipped her glass a bit more cautiously. She was feeling definitely tipsy. It was agreeable, but a native cautionary streak was advising her to stop drinking.

“Bravo for you,” she said.

He looked at her, and she felt the impact of his wild black eyes to the bottom of her toes. “'Twas I who found it unsatisfactory,” he said to her. “And I can't tell you in what respect, because it's not the kind of thing you talk about with virgins.” Saying the word seemed to startle him and he snatched up the bottle. “Damn it. I'm three sheets to the wind,” he growled. His voice had darkened to a champagne-drenched growl. Josie thought it was the most sensual thing she'd heard in her life.

“Why'd you keep doing it, then?” she asked, watching him through her lashes so he wouldn't know how curious she was.

But he didn't even glance at her. “I haven't,” he said. “Haven't had a woman, if you'll excuse the vulgarity, since Lady Godwin, and—” He stopped.

Josie knew who Lady Godwin was. She was a brilliant musician who wrote waltzes with her husband. Lady Godwin had created that bewitching waltz that she had danced
around and around Rafe's ballroom, in the days before this horrible season started. Now Josie couldn't dance a waltz because she didn't want anyone putting a hand on her corset. A man could feel every spike through the thin silk of her gowns.

“You mean,” she said carefully, “the countess?” Was that misery in Mayne's eyes?

“The very one. If you'll believe the foolishness of this, I fancied myself in love with her. Hell, I
was
in love with her.”