Valentine (48 page)

“Don’t comment on things you don’t understand,” Emily said, coming to the support of her sister and the now beleaguered-looking artist. “It’s very beautiful, Jonathan, and I know you’ll have a host of commissions when people see it. What do you think, Stoneridge?”

“Undoubtedly,” the earl agreed smoothly, increasing the pressure of his fingers as Theo quivered again. “It’s a most accomplished piece of work, Mr. Lacey. Don’t you agree, Edward?”

“Oh, uh, certainly,” Edward said hastily, trying very hard not to look at Theo.

“Why, thank you.” Jonathan looked gratified at these endorsements from those who surely knew better than an impertinent child.

“Oh, I forgot to say that Dennis says nuncheon is ready. There are cheese tarts,” Rosie announced through a mouthful of apple.

“Oh, good,” Theo said. “I haven’t had cheese tarts in ages.”

“I hate to disappoint you,” Sylvester said. “But we have some obligations at Curzon Street.”

“Oh, yes, for a glorious minute I’d forgotten,” Theo said with a groan. “We must go, Mama.”

“Of course, dear,” Elinor said promptly. “Do you accompany us to the Vanbrughs’ rout party tonight. I’m certain Lady Gilbraith and Mary would be most welcome to join us.”

Theo looked up at her husband. Sylvester smiled. “It’s a long-standing engagement, my love, of course you must go. I’m certain my mother won’t wish to accompany you; she doesn’t go about in Society much these days, and Mary is clearly in no fit condition to be gallivanting. I’m sure they’ll both be glad of a quiet evening.”

“Or you could entertain them?” Theo suggested.

“Unfortunately, I’m engaged elsewhere,” he responded without the blink of an eye.

Theo grinned. “How surprising.” She turned to Edward. “Edward, you could come for me. You wouldn’t mind, would you?” She smiled at him, and he had little difficulty reading the imperative message in her eyes. Theo wanted more than his escort. Instinct told him to make some excuse, but the habits of long friendship and the knowledge that someone needed to know what she was up to had him agreeing.

“I’ll come for you at nine.”

Theo nodded her thanks, and Sylvester ushered her out of the house. Instructing Billy to walk Zeus back to Curzon Street, he handed Theo into her curricle and took the reins himself.

Only then did Theo give in to her laughter. “Of all the absurd fantasies,” she declared. “Jonathan’s made Clarry look like some simpering dryad on a chocolate box. It’s the most ghastly piece of stylized pretension. He’ll never make a living out of portrait painting, so we’ll have to do something for them.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Sylvester said. “Those romantic backgrounds and classical allusions are becoming very fashionable. It wouldn’t surprise me if young Mr. Lacey didn’t find himself all the rage in a month or two.”

“You’re not serious?” Theo stared at him in mock horror. “People will
pay
for that rubbish?”

“Most certainly. I wonder how he’d choose-to depict you,” he mused with a wicked gleam in his eye. “Some wood sprite, I’d lay odds. All dark curls and mystery, with a hart or some such pretty woodland creature in the background.”

“Over my dead body,” Theo exclaimed, revolted. “I was toying with the idea of suggesting you commission a portrait of me, just to start him off, you understand, but not even for Clarry would I let him come within a mile of me with a paintbrush.”

“Has he proposed to Clarissa, yet?”

“No, but he’s spoken most sensibly to Mama,” Theo said in accents remarkably like those of the Honorable Mrs. Lacey. “He explained how he didn’t feel able to make a formal offer for Clarry until he’d sold one painting. Then he’d feel his career was really taking off.” She pulled a face. “But that’s never going to happen, so Clarry will have to do the proposing herself.”

“Somehow I don’t see Clarissa taking such a thing into her own hands,” Sylvester said. “Rosie, perhaps. You, certainly. But Emily and Clarissa …?” He shook his head. “Definitely not.”

“Now, that’s where you’re mistaken,” Theo asserted. “Clarry’s found her knight, and it’ll be snowing in hell before she lets him slip away from her.”

Sylvester contemplated this in the light of what he knew of the Belmonts and was forced to conclude that, unlikely though it seemed, Theo was probably right.

They turned onto Curzon Street, and Sylvester was suddenly silent. Theo glanced at his face. His mouth was grave, his eyes cool and serious.

She waited uneasily, but Sylvester didn’t say anything until he drew rein outside the house.

“Look up at the house, Theo.”

Startled, she looked at the redbrick double-fronted facade of the elegant mansion. It looked no different from always.

“Look
up”
he emphasized. “There are two balconied windows up there.”

Theo raised her eyes and looked at her unorthodox route to her husband’s bedside. From the ground it looked utterly terrifying, even more so than when she’d been negotiating it. She cast him a rueful grimace.

“Do you have any ideas as to what we should do about you?” he inquired with mild curiosity. “I confess I’ve run out of inspiration.”

“It looks a lot worse from down here,” she said. “But I needed to get to you. I didn’t really think about anything. I just needed to come to you, and so I did.”

“Yes, you did.” Sylvester agreed with this simple truth. Suddenly there was a warm light in the gray eyes bent upon her upturned countenance. “So you did, gypsy.” He placed his hand against the curve of her cheek. “And you brought me much comfort.”

Theo didn’t answer, but she nestled her cheek into his cupped palm.

“That said,” he continued, flicking the tip of her nose with his forefinger, “I can’t help feeling I’d be failing you and neglecting my marital duty if I didn’t express some legitimate husbandly wrath.”

“No,” Theo agreed. “Shall we agree that you have done so, and I’ve taken it to heart?”

“Incorrigible,” he said, sighing. “Utterly incorrigible.”

They must have been seen from the house, because the bootboy came running down the steps. “Shall I take the curricle to the mews, m’lord?”

Sylvester regarded the lad, who didn’t look more than ten, with a surprised frown. “Can you manage them?”

“Oh, yes, m’lord. I can, can’t I, Lady Theo?”

“Yes, you need have no fear, Sylvester. Timmy’s dad’s the head groom at the vicarage in Lulworth, but his mother
wanted him to be an inside servant, so he’s languishing among the boots instead of with the horses. Which is where he’d rather be, isn’t that so, Timmy?” She smiled at the lad as she jumped to the pavement.

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Timmy said with a heartfelt sigh. “But it’d break me mam’s heart. Leastways, that’s what me dad says.”

“Of course, she wouldn’t need to know what you do in London,” Theo said thoughtfully. “What do you think, sir?”

“I think young Timmy should take himself to the stables and ask Don to put him to work,” Sylvester pronounced, resigned to a role of simple reinforcement when it came to Theo’s household decisions and dispositions.

“But what of Mr. Foster, sir?” The lad’s eyes grew wide with the prospect of a dream fulfilled.

“I’m sure he can find another bootboy.” He ushered Theo up the steps as Timmy, crowing with delight, led the horses away.

“A messenger brought you a letter, Lady Theo.” Foster’s jaw dropped at her ladyship’s altered appearance.

“Oh, thank you, Foster.” Theo smiled at him as she took the wafer-sealed paper.

“You’ll forgive the personal comment, but …” Foster indicated her coiffure. “Most pleasing, Lady Theo.”

“Thank you, Foster.” She patted his arm. “You always do know the right thing to say.”

His elderly face flushed with pleasure. “Get along with you, now, Lady Theo…. Oh, Lady Gilbraith and Miss Gilbraith have gone to the physician on Harley Street. They took the barouche.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful.” Theo’s jubilant eyes flew to her husband’s face. “I mean, I’m sure the physician will be able to help Miss Gilbraith’s sniffles and her ladyship’s liver … or whatever is troubling her.” Her voice faded as she was about to find herself in realms of gross indelicacy.

“In that case we’ll take nuncheon abovestairs in the little parlor,” Stoneridge said into the moment of silence.

“Certainly, my lord. I’ll see to it at once.” Foster took himself off to the back regions with his usual stately tread.

“What if they return while we’re … otherwise occupied?” Theo looked over her shoulder at Sylvester, her eyes now mischievous. Nuncheon in the little parlor could mean only one thing.

“Get upstairs,” he ordered, pushing her ahead of him with a hand on her bottom. “Who’s the letter from?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll open it later.” She skipped up the stairs, wondering if the message was from Neil Gerard. The handwriting was definitely masculine and unfamiliar. She hoped it was confirmation of their arrangement to drive tomorrow. If so, Sylvester mustn’t know about it.

“I’ll join you in a minute,” Sylvester said, turning aside to his own chamber.

Theo hesitated, her hand on her own doorknob. “You’re not still going to insist I go back to Stoneridge, are you?”

He regarded her thoughtfully for a minute before saying, “Can you give me your word of honor that you’ll go nowhere and do nothing without my knowledge?”

Sylvester waited, then said quietly, “You have your answer, Theo.” He stretched out a hand and tugged one of the ringlets clustering around her ears. “Don’t look so disconsolate, love. You’ve been complaining about the boredom in London ever since we got here. I’ll join you shortly, I promise.”

She still had a few days to prove her point. She shrugged, and with relief he took her silence as acceptance.

He ran his fingers upward through the curls, flicking them around her face, saying teasingly, “I’m beginning to get used to this. In fact, it’s quite an appealing little gypsy, one way or another.” Catching her chin, he kissed her. “Why don’t you go and put on a wrapper … make life easy for me for once?”

Playfully she nibbled his bottom lip. “But surely one appreciates what’s hard-won much more than what comes easily.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “So far nothing’s come easily where you’re concerned, so I have no basis for comparison.”

“Unjust!” Her tongue darted into the corner of his mouth.

He put her from him and turned back to his door. “Five minutes, and I’ll expect to find you prepared to smooth my path.”

Theo grinned and whisked herself into her own bedroom, imagining how best to fulfill such a demand. Unbuttoning her jacket with one hand, she broke the wafer on the letter and unfolded the sheet. It was from Gerard, who would do himself the honor of calling upon her at ten the following morning, in the hopes that she would drive with him to Hampton Court if the weather was clement. Until then he was her obedient servant.

Theo refolded the letter and slipped it into a pigeonhole in her secretaire. Gerard couldn’t have chosen a better venue for her purposes.

Throwing off the rest of her clothes, she slipped into a filmy wrapper of apple-green muslin edged with lace. Sitting before her dresser mirror, she brushed her hair, enjoying the novelty of her bared neck and the lightness of her head. Her sisters had given her a small vial of perfume on her wedding morning. She rarely used it because she was always in such a hurry to get dressed that such niceties tended to be forgotten, but now seemed like an appropriate occasion. Sylvester wanted her dressed for seduction, so that was what he should have.

She put a few drops behind her ears, at her throat, and on her wrists. Then, with a little smile, she applied the delicate fragrance behind her knees and on the inside of her thighs. Where else did Sylvester like to play? Her navel, the dimpled hollows in the small of her back, the high, arched insteps of her long, narrow feet.

Deciding she must smell like a whorehouse, she cast one last glance at her reflection before leaving the room and speeding barefoot down the corridor to the small parlor overlooking the rear garden, where they spent time when they wished to be private from the household.

Sylvester was already there, pouring wine into two glasses. “No cheese tarts, I’m afraid,” he said as she came in. “But there’s—” The words died on his lips. Slowly, he set the glasses back on the table, his eyes narrowed as he examined her.

Dark curls clouded around her face, softening her features in a way the plain, uncompromising plaits had never done; her cheeks were aglow, her eyes banked fires at midnight; the wrapper clung to every sinuous line of her body, the narrow girdle accentuating her waist and the slight flare of her hips. London and winter weather had done away with the tanned complexion, leaving her skin the color and texture of clotted cream.

“I really have lost my gypsy,” he murmured. “But just look what I have in her place.”

“What?” she said, stepping toward him.

“A most beautiful woman,” he replied simply. “A wayward and unruly wife, but a most beautiful woman.”

“Oh, don’t scold,” Theo protested, coming into his arms.

“It was a statement of fact, not a scolding,” he said, smiling, running his hands down her body, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath the delicate material, the ripple of muscle in her back as she reached against him.

“Take it off, Theo.” There was a husky rasp to his voice, and he took a step backward from her.

Her eyes fixed on his face, she unfastened the robe and let it slip to the floor.

His eyes ran slowly down her body, devouring every inch of skin, the firm, jutting breasts, the dark nipples, growing hard and erect under his scrutiny, the flat belly, the cluster of dark curls at the apex of her long creamy thighs. Then he
made a little circular motion with his forefinger, and she turned obediently. He gazed at the straight, narrow back, the pointed shoulder blades, the curve of her buttocks, the backs of her thighs, and the softness behind her knees.

He knew every inch of her body, and yet each time it was as if it were uncharted territory.

“Let’s eat,” he said into the silence, where lust quivered so thick one could almost touch it.