In the Den of the Lioness
Drawing room at Lady Shackley’s residence
“I
wasn’t sure that you would come, Wycliff,” Althea purred as she swept into the drawing room where he waited for her. He wasn’t sure that he would either. And yet one devastating kiss and shocking, unbidden thought had driven him here. Wanting something—someone—more than Timbuktu, his lifelong dream, was utter madness. The more he thought about it, the more he confirmed that yes, his heart beat for this adventure.
He pictured Burke leading an army across the wide-open African plains. It burned.
He imagined himself discovering the city under a hot and fast African sunset. He could not give that up for a woman. For a housemaid.
Thus, he called upon Lady Althea. She had written, requesting he come, for there was some matter that could not be committed to print. He was curious, of course. And then there was the siren’s lure of Shackley money.
Wycliff was shown to the drawing room, and avoided the settee where she might slink up against him and work her wiles upon his person. He wasn’t in the mood to rebuff her advances, or to discover he did so out of some misguided notion of loyalty to his housemaid. Instead, he sat in some dainty, rickety, spindly leg chair and prayed it wouldn’t collapse.
He was surprised to find himself there, too, because until the other day he was content to take that slap and leave it at that. But Burke and the Royal Society changed his mind. He had shockingly thought he might earn his way through his own merits.
Lady Althea ought to thank them, truly.
“And here you are. Here we are together, again. Mmmm.” Althea tapped one dainty finger against her rouged lips. There was nothing worse than kissing a woman with a painted mouth. He declined to mention this. They would not be kissing. But at one point in time . . .
Wycliff smiled politely at her. So much had changed since they were lovers. He had changed. He’d gone from being a wild and reckless rake to . . . a wild and reckless but
wiser
adventuring duke. The self-control and brains he’d inherited from his mother were asserting themselves on his Wicked Wycliff self.
“How long has it been?” she purred, lasciviously eyeing him from her perch on the settee opposite. He was glad to be risking the chair, rather than her.
“Just about a week or so,” he said, being deliberately obtuse and referring to the ball where she had slapped him, and not their violent parting ten years ago. He added: “Sufficient time has passed for your temper to have cooled enough to offer me an apology.”
She bristled openly. That was the problem with them: he could not resist provoking her, and she had a temper like a keg of gunpowder.
Perhaps nothing had changed at all.
“You deserved it and you know it,” she retorted.
“Aye. You are right,” he said, because it was true and because judging by her dress, jewels, and home, she seemed exceedingly wealthy and he was in the market for a rich wife. He ought to have sat next to her on the settee. There were worse ways to earn an expedition.
“You did. But my manners were deplorable,” she said, which was likely the closest thing to an apology he’d get. In a softer, more reasonable tone, she continued: “But to see you again after all these years brought back such strong memories, especially about the way you left . . . I was angry, Sebastian.”
He’d taken one thousand pounds from her husband to leave the country. He deserved the slap. Especially since he did not regret his actions.
“I am sorry to hear about Lord Shackley,” he said consolingly. The old codger had done him a favor he could never begin to repay. That one thousand pounds set him up for the life-changing voyage and the fresh perspective on the world he had needed—and that his own father could have never supplied. Not the wisdom, or the cash.
“You are not, neither am I, and we both know it,” Althea replied sharply, revealing that her understanding of life, or anything, really, was as shallow as ever.
“Tell me how you really feel, Althea. I’ve come all this way.” He risked leaning back in the little chair.
“I myself have also returned to London after an extended stay . . . elsewhere. The Outer Hebrides, in fact.” She had practically draped herself across the settee. Her long, birdlike arms stretched along the back, her back arched and bosoms thrust forward. It looked deuced uncomfortable—but tremendously flattering, he had to admit.
She wore a necklace with a small, gold, heart-shaped locket that nestled perfectly between her breasts. He looked, of course, and looked away.
“That must have been a peaceful holiday for you,” he said politely. The Outer Hebrides had to be one of the duller places on earth.
“Oh, it wasn’t a holiday, Wycliff,” she said, laughing bitterly. “Shackley sent me away, just after we were caught. While you’ve been cavorting all over the world on an expedition my late husband funded, I’ve been serving penance.”
His jaw fell open. He quickly shut it. A worse punishment for a social butterfly like Lady Althea he could not imagine. She fed off of the energy of soirees, of social intrigues, and off the lust of men.
In South America, one had to be wary of bloodsucking bats. In England, there was Althea.
“In the
Outer Hebrides,
” she repeated for emphasis. Or had she gone a touch mad? Solitude could do that to some people.
“You must be thrilled to have returned to the social whirl.”
“With one yearly visit from Shackley,” Lady Althea said, and she punctuated it with a delicate shudder. The sleeve of her dress slipped off her shoulder.
“What would you like, Althea? An apology?” He was suddenly irritable. He wanted to be back at Wycliff House, of all places, so he could catalogue insects with his maid. The implications of this strange desire were not to be examined at present.
“To start, yes, I would like an apology.”
“I’m sorry things did not work out as you’d have liked them to, Althea, but that whole damned mess between you, me, and Shackley was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“But I have waited for you all this time, Sebastian. Does that not mean anything to you?” Her lips formed a pout. Her eyes glistened. She fingered the locket she wore around her neck. It was a cheap trinket, at odds with the rest of her. It seemed familiar . . .
“What did you wish to tell me, Althea? What is the grave matter that could not be committed to print?”
“The Outer Hebrides, Sebastian,” she said again, and he sighed impatiently. But his heart started to pound. The air crackled with danger, with warning. His skin tingled hot, then cold.
“We have established that, Lady Althea, and I’m assured your banishment was no secret.”
She treated him to a scowl.
Dolt
, her look seemed to say.
Viper
. His look betrayed his thoughts of her.
“Why do you think Shackley sent me there?” she asked.
“To punish you for loud, blatant adultery in the marital bed,” he said flatly. It had been a magnificent afternoon. All her wild, evil passion was unbearable out of bed, but in bed . . . he had the memory. He felt no desire to relive it. But it had been glorious.
“Yes, Wycliff. But there was
something else
.” Her lips curved into the kind of smile that foretold doom.
She told him what that
something else
was. His heart stopped beating. He had sought her out in search of an expedition, when this news she delivered all but assured him he wouldn’t leave England for quite some time.
He thought of Eliza, too, and how it all was a tangled knot he could not possibly unravel. His Wycliff blood rang true, and fate had snared him despite his best efforts to avoid it.
Sensational Novels
The housekeeper’s parlor
“P
lease keep reading, Eliza. It makes this sewing less tedious,” Jenny said, heaving a sigh and looking at the endless yards of white fabric gathered on her waist and spilling to the floor. All of it required hemming and sewing to turn it into bedsheets for the household.
Eliza was more than happy to read, rather than sew. She despised sewing.
“The reading and the tea livens things up,” Mrs. Buxby said, happily taking a break from her sewing and sipping her special afternoon blend. Jenny and Eliza shared a smile. They too indulged, but not to the same degree as the seasoned housekeeper. Who could blame her after all her decades in service?
“The tea certainly makes things . . .” Jenny held up a sheet with a row of crooked stitches. “Well, I’m not quite sure what the word is.”
“ ’Tis perfectly straight, my dears,” Mrs. Buxby said, squinting at the sheet in question. Eliza and Jenny shared appalled glances. “But do carry on with the reading,” she said with a wave of her hand.
Eliza was reading from a tattered old copy of
Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded.
It told the story of a maid who was relentlessly pursued by the lord of the manor. Virtue prevails, and he marries her. It was one of those novels that had been devoured voraciously by ladies for decades, in part for the love story, and likely in part for its more titillating aspects.
The parallels to her present situation were not lost upon Eliza.
She found her page and began to read in a calm voice, hoping not to betray her own tortured feelings:
“ ‘He has a noble estate; and yet I believe he loves my good maiden, though his servant, better than all the ladies in the land; and he tried to overcome it, because he knows you are so much his inferior; and ’tis my opinion he finds he can’t . . .’ ”
Jenny sighed. She, Lord help her, did as well.
“Skip ahead to the part where he ravishes her,” Mrs. Buxby urged. “It’s much more exciting than this romantic nonsense.”
“Very well,” Eliza said, turning only a page ahead. When she skimmed the words, heat suffused her cheeks. A fortifying sip of whiskey-tea was most certainly in order. She continued reading.
“ ‘I screamed and ran to the bed and Mrs. Jervis screamed, too, and he said, “I’ll do you no harm, if you forbear this noise, but otherwise take what follows.” Instantly he came to the bed; for I had crept into it—’ ”
Jenny paused in her sewing and looked up with a frown. “If his lordship is about to ravish her against her wishes, why does she run to the bed?” she asked. “That seems like the worst possible place, if one is so very concerned about her virtue.”
“It is remarkably stupid. But the housekeeper is there to protect her,” Eliza pointed out.
“Aye, but later in the book the housekeeper is a wicked procuress,” Mrs. Buxby said, calmly sipping her tea.
Jenny and Eliza paled.
“Oh, lords above, ladies,” Mrs. Buxby said, exasperated. “ I’m no evil Mrs. Jewkes. I’ve been with this family a long time and if anything I’ve spent countless hours protecting my girls
from
those Wycliff rogues. Now what happens after they’re in bed? I’ve read this before but I can’t recall, although if I suppose if virtue is rewarded, nothing much occurs.” The housekeeper’s disappointment was clear.
Eliza took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before continuing to read about the late night ravishment of virtuous Pamela by the nefarious rake, Lord B.
“ ‘I found his hand in my bosom, and when my fright let me know it, I was ready to die; and I sighed, and screamed, and fainted away. And still he had his arms about my neck. I knew nothing more of the matter, one fit following another, till about three hours after, as it proved to be . . .’ ”
Good Lord, she thought, pausing to sip her tea.
Three hours?
Looking up from the pages, she happened to see that Harlan was leaning in the doorway, with a patch over his right eye, one arm in a sling and the other holding a book.
“Shocking behavior, ladies,” he said. “Whiskey. Tales of debauchery. This is absolutely the place to be.”
“Have you come with more respectable and morally improving literature?” Eliza asked.
“If you did, you can do us all a courtesy and not make us suffer through it,” Mrs. Buxby ordered.
“Fear not. I overheard you reading
Pamela
and was inspired to bring, instead,
Shamela
.”
“What is that?” Jenny asked.
“It’s the parody of
Pamela,
written by Henry Fielding. Any relation?”
“None that I am aware of,” Eliza answered.
“I thought writing might be a family pursuit,” Harlan said pointedly. Thanking the Lord that she was born to an actress and raised in the theater, Eliza merely sipped her tea and asked, cool as you please, “Whatever leads you to that conclusion?”
But her heart was pounding.
“Wycliff enlightened me about your family. Your father, I believe, is a playwright.” Harlan’s one eye was trained intensely upon her.
Her heart was now booming like one of the tribal drums Wycliff had shown her.
She forced a smile and replied, “He is. A very fine one, too.”
Harlan shifted his weight and stepped further into the room. The interrogation continued. Or was it polite conversation? It felt like an interrogation.
“And your mother is an actress. It seems your family has a talent for theatrics.”
The insinuation was bold and unflattering on so many levels.
“They do,” Eliza said, adding pertly, “And I have a knack for dusting.”
“While that is all rather fascinating,” Mrs. Buxby cut in, “I should like to hear from this
Shamela
book.”
“I shall oblige you, happily, as thanks for this exceptional tea you provide every afternoon,” Harlan said, with a wink at the housekeeper, who harrumphed in return. Then he began to read.
“ ‘The young squire hath been here and as sure as a gun he hath taken a fancy to me . . .’ ”
All eyes shifted to settle upon Eliza. She merely shrugged and focused intently upon her stitching. But inside, her insides were all aflutter. They had noticed! That made it real, somehow. She wasn’t prone to flights of fancy, but with matters of the heart, one could never be sure.
“ ‘He took me by the hand and I pretended to be shy. Laud, says I, sir, I hope you don’t intend to be rude; no, says he, my dear, and then he kissed me, till he took away my breath—and I pretended to be angry, and to get away, and then he kissed me again and breathed very short and looked very silly, and by ill-luck Mrs. Jervis came in and had like to have spoiled sport. How troublesome is such an interruption.’ ”
“How clever,” Eliza remarked. “Shamela’s virtue is a sham.”
“Oh, that’s a handy old trick,” Mrs. Buxby said. “I like this version of the story much better.”
“I as well,” Jenny added. “Please do keep reading.”
Eliza carried on with her sewing, burning up inside as she listened to Harlan read about Shamela’s affair with the parson while feigning virtue and decency to claim the hand in marriage of the idiot Lord Booby, as he was called in this version.
Even with her focus intent upon the fabric, and tight, taut stitches in her hand, she stole glances at Harlan, reading with his one good eye and holding the book in his one good hand.
“ ‘Young gentlemen are taught that to marry their chambermaids and to indulge in the passion of lust at the expense of reason and common sense is an act of religion, virtue, and honor, and indeed the surest road to happiness,’ ” he read in a gravelly voice, pausing to level a stare at her. “ ‘All chambermaids are strictly enjoined to look out after their masters; they are taught to use little arts to that purpose. And lastly, are countenanced in impertinence to their superiors and in betraying the secrets of families.’ ”
The revelation struck her suddenly, clearly, undeniably: he knows.