Chapter Twenty-One
Amanda learned that Langford left the house early the next morning. Vincent told her they would not have to check the mail drop because His Grace intended to do so before he returned. That had happened a few times in the past.
She was in the garden when he returned midday. He found her there and held out his hand. “Come with me.”
He led her up the stairs and into her chamber. She waited for the embrace and kiss that would initiate their passion. Instead, he kept leading her, into her dressing room.
Muslin bundles covered the divan. Confused, she went over and poked at one. It squished and gave out a subtle sound.
“What is this?”
“Open it and see.”
She pulled the muslin apart. A lovely cream day dress fell out. She held it up to admire it. “It is delicious.”
“It is yours. So are the others. Did you know that some modistes make dresses without a commission? I had no idea.”
“I expect they hope to entice a client with a dress already made when she comes to commission others. Or have a few for emergencies.” She opened another bundle. An evening dress this time, in the palest gray, richly decorated with silver-toned lace.
“There are shoes in that one, and a reticule, and a rather practical carriage ensemble in this one here.”
“How did you find all of this?” She pulled out the shoes and reticule and laid them with the evening dress. The carriage ensemble might be practical, but she almost drooled when she saw the superfine blue wool mantle that formed part of it.
“I have a friend who makes an art of discretion. He knew the names of modistes who do not share the names of their patrons even with their seamstresses. I paid them some early calls.”
She gazed down on the gifts, still stunned. “Why?”
“I have wanted to do this, but there was no time to order a wardrobe, nor a way to send you without your being seen.”
No time. “You wanted me dressed thus?”
“Ever since you showed up in those pantaloons at Harry’s.”
“Thank you. They are all perfect. Beautiful.” She had never owned dresses like these. She probably never would again. It was the sort of wardrobe that made a woman more beautiful than nature decreed.
“You can wear the evening dress tonight at dinner. I will enjoy seeing you in it.”
She embraced him. She showed him with her kiss how much she appreciated this surprise.
Her reaction pleased him. “I will leave you to do whatever women do with new garments.”
He left her to play with her new toys. She sat with the dinner dress on her lap, fingering the lace.
She wondered if he had given all of this to her for reasons besides his own enjoyment or her delight. Perhaps he wanted her to have better than her remade garments when she left England. Maybe he wanted to give her the sort of advantage that fine clothes create.
His thoughtfulness touched her deeply.
She dressed for dinner with great care. She had her woman do something new with her hair. She pinched her cheeks to bring up their color.
When she entered the dining room, she saw he had done the same. His cravat gleamed with stark precision. He examined her in the dress with a scandalous gaze, looking down slowly, then up again until he stopped at her neck. “It needs something more. Something to set off the color just so. Perhaps this will do.” His hand emerged from his pocket with a little velvet sack. He took her hand and poured out the contents.
She stared, speechless. A necklace of gold filigree draped over her palm. The fine lines expanded their loops and swirls toward the center until they supported a clear stone there. A diamond.
He took it from her and stepped around to fasten it on her neck. Then he led her to a chair at the table.
She fingered the necklace. “You are too generous.”
“I found myself regretting that you have asked nothing of me. It was an odd reaction to have. Normally I regret a woman’s lack of subtlety in reminding me what gifts she thinks she deserves.”
“I’m sure I could be as avaricious as anyone in the right circumstances.”
Champagne arrived. He set a glass by her hand. “I know why you did not. I know why you left the locket on the carpet that night. Things are different between us now, so I decided you might agree to accept a few gifts from me.”
Gifts given in affection. She did not doubt that. His delight in giving them said as much. Yet she suspected this necklace, like the wardrobe, was also a way to ensure she would not be impoverished when he sent her off to America.
There had been no letter today. There might be none tomorrow. With each day that passed, the likelihood of it arriving the next increased, however. That meant each night might be the last one of freedom, when only the anticipation of “someday soon” shadowed her.
He admired the champagne after he drank some. “You will have to sing tonight. A happy song, though. Not that sad ballad from last time.”
“I will sing if you promise not to fall asleep.”
“I won’t fall asleep.”
“You can’t be trusted with champagne. You enjoy it too much.” She pretended to ponder the matter.
“I will find a way to make sure I stay awake.” He lowered his voice because a footman arrived with some food. “A wonderful way.”
She laughed. “That probably means a naughty way.”
“I am not sure naughty does it justice.”
* * *
She held the looking glass so she could see the necklace again. She had spent half an hour admiring herself in it. Normally she let the woman help her into her nightdress before sending her away, but tonight, upon retiring, she had told her to leave at once.
It was a diamond, she was almost sure. A real one. In this light, it gave off blue sparks. Mama had taught her the difference between real jewels and paste. That she had seen few real jewels during the last ten years did not mean she could not still see the difference.
She moved the looking glass so she could see how the dress looked on her too. The fine fabric hugged her form. It felt almost as though it had been made for her. She wondered how he had known it would.
They had shared a wonderful dinner and evening. One of laughter and joy. He’d regaled her with stories about the trouble he and his friends had made when young men on the town. She’d told him about leading midnight raids on the kitchen at school to steal cakes from a tin that held them. The trick was to take one from each layer, not grab all the ones right on top.
Not all was laughter. He’d confided that he resented that he’d inherited when only twenty-three. I thought that very unfair, that I should be saddled with those obligations so early, long before any of the others in my generation. So I ignored them as best I could. She could tell that he knew that had been wrong. He had been born a duke’s son, after all.
She reached behind her neck to unclasp the necklace. Firm hands joined hers and took over. She lifted the looking glass to see him in the reflection. He wore the brocade banyan, buttoned at the waist.
He had grown familiar to her, so she did not think so much about his beauty anymore. If he possessed a face far less handsome, she did not think she would notice that either. Now, however, in the odd objectivity created by the looking glass, she saw his features as if for the first time.
An astonishing face, with firm jaw and chiseled planes, and sapphire eyes as deep as the sea. His reckless dark curls softened him, as did his ready smile. She had seen him angry, though, and knew his good humor could not be taken for granted.
He spied her watching him while he concentrated on the clasp. It released just then, and he allowed it to drip down into her waiting palm. “You were beautiful in it,” he said. “And in the dress.” He raised her up and turned her. “It is time to remove it, however.”
He released the tapes, then took her hand and led her into the bedroom. He threw himself into a chair and sprawled there. “I will let you do the rest, so I do not ruin the fabric in my clumsiness.”
“Somehow I don’t think you are clumsy in the task. I think you had much experience and are an expert in handling fine fabrics.”
“I am all thumbs with it. Truly.” He flashed a devilish smile. “It would be better if you did it yourself. You can sing one of your songs while you do, so I don’t get bored.”
“A woman undressing bores you? You are jaded, aren’t you?”
She lowered the bodice, then eased the silk down her body. She stepped out with great care. While she laid it on a chair, she began a song popular in London, a rather bawdy one.
Used to doing for herself, she managed the stays on her own, but it took some time to release the laces. Hole by hole, she slid them out.
It became a performance with her dropping garments at the suggestive lyrics. He watched closely, laughing at her antics. He clapped when the chemise went down, leaving her in only her hose.
The laughter stopped with the last garment. She stood naked in front of him. He gazed at her the way he had earlier in the dress, slowly.
“Come here.”
She walked to him, excited from the eroticism of the game. She resisted when he tried to pull her onto his lap. “There is one more verse,” she admonished. She sang it slowly, quietly, while she unbuttoned the banyan. Its sides fell away, revealing his body.
She leaned over him and kissed his lips, then his neck, then his chest. She lost herself in the way all her senses dwelled on his presence. His scent filled her head. She heard nothing but his breathing. She tasted his skin and touched his chest and held his head for the deepest of kisses. He touched her too. When he stroked her breasts, it increased her arousal.
Lost in the sensuality, lost in him, she kissed and licked and tasted the skin on his chest. She dropped to her knees and continued on the hard planes of his stomach. Not thinking, not choosing, she ran her tongue up the length of his arousal. All of him tensed, but not in surprise. Rather, he braced himself and she knew that he wanted more. His voice, so perfect in the night, quietly told her what to do to vanquish him entirely.
* * *
He threw on his banyan and returned to his chambers. He washed and dressed slowly, stoking the last embers of the night’s fire with memories. A long night. An astonishing one. Again and again they woke and came together until, finally, at the first sign of dawn breaking, he had held her while she fell into a deep sleep.
Still in that bed in his mind, still in her embrace and in her body, he went below for coffee and food. He barely saw the letters he read or the words in the newspaper. Finally, he checked his pocket watch. He would prefer to let her sleep for hours, but it was time to wake her.
He returned to her chamber. She lay in abandon, her legs bared to the knees and the sheet hardly covering her breasts. He pulled the drapes open at the windows. An overcast day meant gray light found her, making her appear ethereal.
He hated waking her. He sat on the bed and stroked her face until her lids moved, then rose. “You should be up. You need to dress.”
She closed her eyes and looked ready to sleep again. “Why?” she murmured.
“You need to pack. We will leave today.”
A good minute passed before she understood. Her lids rose again, this time in surprise. “Have you already checked if a letter came? It is early still.”
“It came yesterday.”
“And you did not tell me.”
“No.”
She did not ask why. “You are right and we must leave.”
“I will return in an hour. The carriage will be ready soon after. I told your woman to bring breakfast to you here. She should arrive with it soon.”
He left her to go below where his horse waited. He would not apologize for delaying this departure a day. The dresses, the necklace, the dinner, the whole night had been expressions of the rebellion he’d experienced in his spirit when he’d seen that letter yesterday morning.
He had decided he would not tell her right away. He would have one more day, one more night, before the end began.
* * *
Amanda threw off the bed linen as soon as the door closed. She padded into the dressing room and grabbed her nightdress and pulled it on, then set her valise on the divan and opened her trunk.
He’d had the letter yesterday. He had not told her. She tried to work up some anger at his deception, but her heart refused to upbraid him, even silently.
She lifted the necklace off the dressing table. He had known when he’d bought this, and the dresses, and given her champagne. He had known all of last night.
She closed her eyes and was in his arms again, her separateness melted away so that she felt a part of him in all ways. She had not thought it possible for a man and a woman to go on and on like that, hard and furious, then sweet and poignant, then shocking and scandalous, then—
She’d never objected. Never questioned. She’d accepted and taken and given, enthralled again and again. It was if he could not get enough and he made sure she could not either.
He had known it would be the last night. Not together, but in this chamber. The last before they turned a page and began the last chapter of this story they were writing together.
She was glad he had not told her and that this last night had not been shadowed for her by what was coming.
* * *
Brentworth read the letter, then handed it to Stratton. “You are not making this easy, Langford.”
They all sat in Stratton’s library, sprawled comfortably on chairs and divans.
“I am not making it anything. I did not write that letter.”
“The difficult part will be delivering the dagger, not following it. We will be conspicuous in that area of town. There will be no good reason for our entering that establishment. Men rarely purchase at bakeries.”
“We will have my footman, Vincent, deliver it. You will only have to watch to see who picks it up.”
“We will be even more conspicuous loitering on that street.”
“Wear an old, unpressed coat and no cravat. Borrow clothes from a servant if you have to. Smear soot on your face. Hell, have some imagination.”
“He said it would not be easy. He did not say it would be impossible,” Stratton said. He tapped the letter against his head while he thought. “Ah, it has come to me. We all know this Culper Street, gentlemen. From our university days. Surely you remember.”
“Damned if I do,” Brentworth said. “Langford?”
Gabriel mentally paged through an autobiography full of disreputable behavior, searching for mention of Culper Street.
“Mrs. O’Brian,” Stratton prompted.
His mind skipped back several more chapters to a page with a lifelike illustration of Mrs. O’Brian. “I’ll be damned. You are right. That house was on this street.” Mrs. O’Brian had been celebrated among the students of Oxford and Cambridge. Scandalous poems were written about her. “You remember her, Brentworth. Black hair. Plump. Voracious.”
Brentworth frowned. Then his brow cleared. “Now I remember. She damn near killed me.”
“That brothel is probably still there,” Stratton said. “It should not be hard to find out. There was a tavern beside it. We could sit there and watch through the window. Anyone who saw us would assume we awaited the opening of that house.”
“I think I would rather wear rags and soot,” Brentworth said. “I do not frequent brothels these days, let alone so eagerly that I wait for one to open.”
“This is not a time for delicacy or pride,” Gabriel said. “No one is going to recognize you. If you worry for your reputation—and in my view a little scandalous gossip would enhance it—here is another way. For a few shillings, Mrs. O’Brian would probably let you watch from her window. You could take turns at the panes and she could take turns too. She is not so young now, but then neither are you.”
Stratton bit back a smile. “He actually presents a very good idea. That window will be high enough so seeing who enters or leaves this bakery will be easier. As would seeing what is carried in and out. If we spy our man, we could be down on the street before he reaches the crossroad.”
“It is not a bad idea,” Brentworth admitted. “We will have to go today and see if Mrs. O’Brian is even there now. For all we know, she is back in Ireland.”
“If she is not there, some other woman is,” Stratton said. “Unless the house is closed completely.”
“It is not closed,” Gabriel said.
Two pairs of eyes turned on him.
“I have not been there in years, but I have heard talk of it,” he clarified. “They still have that chamber with the whips and such, and references are still made to it in some circles.”
“I find myself warming to the rags and soot all the more,” Brentworth said. “If I am going to do this, you will come with me, Stratton.”
“Are you afraid if you go alone Mrs. O’Brian will tie you down again and have her way with you?” Gabriel asked.
Brentworth turned red, which for him was so unusual that Stratton howled with laughter.
“She swore the bonds would not be secure,” Brentworth muttered. “Stratton, devise some deception so we can ride over this afternoon. Tell your duchess that you are needed for some secret meeting in Westminster. She is sure to question why suddenly you do not spend hours in the nursery.”
“I do not lie to Clara.”
“Perhaps you should, just this once,” Gabriel said.
“No, no, do not lead him astray, Langford. Forgive me for suggesting that you introduce deception into your marriage, Stratton. I will correct myself. Tell your duchess that you must go with me to an infamous brothel populated by women who do things with men that decent women have never even heard about. I am sure she will understand.” He stood. “In fact, Langford and I could use a lesson in such honesty with women. I am sure you won’t mind if we watch this.” He strode to the door and asked a footman to request the duchess’s attendance.
Gabriel sat up and made himself comfortable. Even at her most pliant, the duchess was formidable. This promised to be some excellent theater.
She entered, curious and a little annoyed at being summoned. She greeted them, then gave Stratton a look that said I hope this is very, very important.
“Darling, Langford requests my help in a matter most urgent,” Stratton said. “It requires that I go out this afternoon, and be absent from the house indefinitely, beginning tomorrow.”
“Does it indeed?”
“It does.”
She looked at Gabriel, who tried to appear worried and grateful. She looked at Brentworth. “You are involved too, I assume.”
“I would prefer not, but the obligation of friendship demands it.”
“May I ask what this is about?”
“Discretion forbids me to tell you,” Stratton said. “It will require I spend some time in unsavory parts of town, but it is not dangerous. I only tell you so, if you should hear reports of my presence in unexpected places, you will know it is part of the mission. I will leave a sealed letter in my dressing table with my expected locations, to be opened if you need to find me.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Mission, no less. A sealed letter. My, that all sounds important. Almost official. Except the friend in need is Langford, so I suspect this is unofficial in the extreme.”
“I will ensure that Adam remains safe,” Brentworth said.
“How good of you. Well, my dear, do what you must. Try not to let Langford bring scandal down on your name and title if it can be avoided.”
She excused herself and started to leave. She paused beside Brentworth. “Do not act as if you are above it all. You cannot wait for the Decadent Dukes to ride into trouble again.”
Stratton waited for the door to close behind her. He sat back in his chair, stretched out his legs, and smiled. “And that, gentlemen, is how it is done.”
“Impressive,” Gabriel said. “I see only one small problem. If she accepts such ambiguity from you, she will expect a similar trust if her own plans can’t be explained fully.”
“True, but it has never happened since we married. Clara is very forthright. She does not keep secrets from me.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Brentworth said, dryly. “So, the first step is plotted. Let us complete the plans for the rest of the scheme.”