Chapter 18
“Is the first floor really going to be a gentleman’s club?
” Caroline asked, climbing into the freshly made bed.
Gervaise had remained in the sitting room while she had undressed, banking the fire.
She had managed to wash using the cracked wash jug and bowl, and to don her cotton nightgown before he had joined her in the bedroom.
He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Of course. Why do you ask?”
“Well…it’s just the look you gave Mr. Carstairs. I mean Ralph,” she corrected herself as she leaned forward to hug her knees.
Gervaise was removing his cuff links and placing them on the dresser. “What look?” he asked, unfastening his collar.
“Like you didn’t want him to tell me,” she answered promptly. Romulus sprang up on the bed beside her while Remus still lounged in front of the small fireplace.
“It wasn’t that,” he said, shrugging out of his jacket. “Ralph just has rather a tactless way of putting things sometimes. I didn’t want him to shock you. A pointless scruple it now turns out, for you, Miss Halperston, are rather hard to shock.”
“Do you think so?” The notion pleased her. “For a moment I wondered if it might be a house of ill repute and you were trying to spare my feelings.”
“A house of ill repute?” he echoed, turning at the waist to give her a considering look. “Don’t you think there would need to be rather less tables and a good deal more beds for that to be the case?”
“Yes, I suppose there would,” she admitted. “I did say it was only for a moment. Doubtless it was the paintings that led my thoughts astray. Are they always like that in gentleman’s clubs?”
“Like what?”
“So many nudes, I mean.”
“Such things are not confined to gentleman’s clubs. You have visited Vance Park and must have noticed Jeremy’s collection of naked Venuses.”
“Well, yes, that is true,” she conceded. “But that is classical art, is it not?”
He shot her a slanting look. “You believe that Ralph’s artist with his digs in Marylebone is not a true artist?”
“Well, I meant compared to the likes of the old masters,” she said guiltily. “Did I sound very snobby? I did not mean to. In fact, I am very much looking forward to meeting Mr. Bailey tomorrow.”
“Are you?” He did not sound particularly pleased to hear that. “Why?”
Caroline averted her eyes, lying down on the mattress, for he was now down to his underclothing.
It felt wrong to see Lord Atherton stripped down to his smalls.
He was always so impeccably dressed. “Because I have never met an artist before,” she said aloud.
Was it her imagination or was Gervaise a little irritable?
She watched as he donned an exotic-looking banyan of pale green silk. “What a gorgeous wrapper,” she exclaimed, sitting back up to get a closer look.
“Yes,” he agreed. “It’s another effort not to shock you. Let me know if it’s unnecessary.”
“Oh no,” she answered truthfully. “I love it. It’s so much nicer than mine.” She glanced down ruefully, then realized she was not even wearing hers. “Oh, should I put mine on? I am not familiar with the etiquette involved in such matters.”
A smile finally curved his lips and he climbed into the bed beside her. “I think we can dispense with your wrapper,” he said, turning onto his side toward her and favoring her with a scrutinizing look. “Your nightgown covers you entirely from neck to toe.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Sorry it’s nothing much to look at. The priority was always practicality rather than beauty when it came to my clothes. My wrapper is even worse. It is of a sensible brown boiled wool.”
He grimaced. “It sounds hideous. I beg you will dispose of it whilst you are under my protection.”
“But then, what am I to wear first thing in the morning and last thing at night?”
“I will buy you a new one. I will have to buy you a new wardrobe in any case.” Caroline turned her head to look at him. “What? Does that offend you?” he asked with a challenging lift of his brows.
“No, it would be silly to be offended by such a thing now I have agreed to be, well, your mistress,” she said in a rush, to hide the fact she was a little flustered. “It’s just that I think your idea of having no money must differ wildly from my own.”
He nodded slowly. “It probably does,” he conceded, rolling onto his back and reaching up his hands to put them behind his head. “After all, I could hardly keep so many dependents if I was stony broke, now, could I?”
“Dependents?” She turned her head sharply. Does he have others?
“You, the twins…” he continued and she relaxed.
“I am becoming entirely domesticated in my old age. Not having second thoughts, are you?” he asked, his eyes trained on Romulus, who was now walking in a small circle at the foot of the bed, until he finally plopped down and started washing his paws. “It’s not too late to tell me, if so.”
“No,” she answered, surprised by the sudden question. “I’m not. Are you?” He was silent for a long moment and Caroline’s heart quailed. Oh God, it was likely the nightgown that was to blame. It resembled nothing so much as a tent! Should she have climbed into the bed as naked as the Queen of Sheba?
“No,” he answered at last, breathing out. “And it is just as well, for your reputation must surely lie in tatters by now after four days of traveling alone with me.”
“Yes,” she replied. “It must be as ragged as Mama’s best silk shawl. And it’s not even as though this is the first time we have shared a bed, is it?”
Their eyes met and she found she could not look away. “That time you were barely aware of your surroundings,” he reminded her dryly. “And did not feature in the decision-making one bit. You were hardly culpable on that occasion.”
“No, I suppose not,” she admitted before brightening. “I am fully capable now though.”
He paused his hand in the act of reaching for his cigarette case. Apparently, he even brought it to bed with him. “You twist my meaning, Miss Halperston and put me quite to the blush,” he said flippantly. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
Smoke? In bed? Caroline felt quite astonished by such a notion. She was sure Edgar would never dare the risk of singeing his sheets in such a fashion. “No, not at all,” she answered, hastily covering both her sudden surprise and…what? Disappointment?
She felt quite jittery with nerves to be lying so wickedly in bed with Lord Atherton, and here he was blowing out plumes of smoke with his arm twisted behind his head, not making the slightest attempt to divest her of her virtue!
“Are you always this chatty at bedtime?” he asked casually, contemplating the smoking end of his cigarette.
Caroline eyed him uneasily. Was he annoyed with her?
Surely, he could not be bored of her already?
Her heart skipped a beat. She had done nothing to earn four thousand pounds yet!
No, it must be the fault of her dreadful nightgown which had put him off.
Realizing he was waiting for her answer, she scrambled to make reply.
“No. But then I don’t usually have anyone to chat with. ”
“Not even at boarding school?”
“Oh yes, then I did. I roomed with Diana Hipworth. We used to whisper girlish confidences into the early hours.”
He grimaced. “Well, I hope you won’t attempt that with me.”
“Certainly not! Well, unless it was a fair exchange,” she conceded, “and you wish to tell me your boyish confidences.”
“I do not think you would care for them somehow.”
She eyed him sidelong. He was definitely acting colder toward her; she was not imagining it.
They lay quietly for a moment, then he asked, almost begrudgingly, “What sort of confidences did you tell Miss Hipworth? I find myself strangely curious.”
She turned evasive. “Oh, things, you know,” she said vaguely. “Things that seemed important at the time.”
“I wonder you did not tell her about your home life. Your mama’s persecution, I mean.”
Caroline tensed, then shook her head. “That would have made me sound an utter fantasist,” she said lightly. “Despite our reputations, young girls are far from credulous, you know.”
“I would have thought such melodrama would be eaten up with a spoon.”
“Oh no, you’re quite wrong there. A girl in my year used to claim her two older sisters treated her like their maid and were terribly jealous of her beauty. The other girls were very hard on her and did not believe a word of it.”
“I take it she was not terribly beautiful,” was Gervaise’s response.
“Well…no,” Caroline admitted.
“And perhaps her older sisters were alumni of the school, so the girls had prior knowledge of their characters.”
“How did you…?”
He shrugged. “It stands to reason, my dear Caroline.” He smothered a yawn. “I think you should have regaled Diana with your woes. What was the worst that could have happened?”
“She might not have believed me,” she replied promptly, “and thought me a frightful liar. Schoolgirls tend to come down pretty hard on self-aggrandizement, you know.”
“Schoolboys too,” he admitted after a pause. “Yes, they might have thought you self-dramatizing, I suppose. But at least that way, she would have been forewarned. You did not even give her a chance.”
Caroline felt strangely stung by his words. “I do not think she would have withstood my mother’s charm, even then,” she responded quietly. “Mama has always been wholly convincing, you know.”
“And so, exit Diana from stage left.”
“Yes. Though not entirely. Her mother takes in boarders, you know, and Edgar rooms with them during term time. We do not correspond or anything, not since she dropped me as a friend, but she writes to my mother at Christmas.”
“Ah yes, I forgot your brother studies law,” Gervaise replied thoughtfully. He frowned. “Someone mentioned a Diana at your mother’s dinner party. I forget now who it was now. No matter. It will come back to me. I wonder if it could have been the same one?”
“Was it my mother? Though in truth, I cannot think why she should make mention of her.”
“It might have been your brother,” Gervaise said, considering.
“Really? That does not seem likely.”
“Why not? If he rooms at her mother’s house, would it be so unusual?”
“Well, Edgar sometimes mentions Mrs. Hipworth and her arthritic knee. She rubs camphor on it, and he does not like the smell. But he never speaks of Diana.” Caroline turned her head to look at Gervaise.
“He might be being tactful,” she suggested doubtfully.
“Knowing that she used to be my greatest friend.”
“It’s more likely that he is nervous to mention women around your mother for fear of putting her nose out of joint,” he answered dryly.
“Your mother seemed quite proprietary when it came to her darling son. Wait, that was it,” he said, snapping his fingers.
“Your brother let slip that he had been touring a church in the company of one Diana. Your mother was most put out.”
“Was she?”
“If it had not been for your fortuitous appearance at that point, dearest Edgar would have been for the high jump.”
“And you think the Diana he spoke of was my Diana?” Caroline puzzled aloud. “My former friend, I mean.”
“Why not? I like the idea of saintly Edgar keeping clandestine company. And it does seem suspicious, I must say, that your brother makes a point to never mention his landlady’s daughter. Most unnatural when you think about it.”
“Yes,” Caroline agreed slowly. “I suppose it is, though Edgar never really speaks of ladies, except to assure Mama he does not admire them in the slightest. She got the notion last year that he might nurse a tendresse for Blanche Pebmarsh, and he was forced to deny it on several occasions.”
“I’m sure he did,” Gervaise answered wryly. “Most strenuously.”
“How funny it would be, if he does admire Diana,” she pondered.
“I hope the secrets you confided in her were not too damning.”
Caroline considered this. “No, nothing awful.”
“A penchant for the drawing master?” he suggested lightly.
“It was the under-gardener, actually,” she corrected him gravely.
Gervaise’s gaze sharpened. “And what was he like?”
“He was brawny with very tanned forearms,” she answered at once. “When he rolled up his shirtsleeves it gave us all quite a thrill.”
Gervaise contemplated her narrowly. “I see. He looked rather like your new friend Reg in fact.”
Caroline was startled. “Reg? Not at all! Hollings was a small, neat man with curly sideburns and a cheery sort of air. He would whistle a distinctive tune, so you always knew when he was hard at work in the shrubbery. Diana dared me to ask him what it was one time.”
“And what was it?”
“‘I’ve Been Roaming,’” she replied promptly.
“It didn’t occur to you to decline her dare?” he enquired in a silky voice.
Caroline blinked. Surely, that was not disapproval on his face? At this point Remus sprang up on the bed beside him, interrupting them.
“Hello, Remus,” he said, lifting his arm after a small pause. “Is that really where you mean to make yourself comfortable?” Remus rubbed his face against Gervaise’s side. “Apparently so,” he added wryly as the cat settled himself against him, loudly purring.
Gervaise sat up. “Well, I think that might be enough girlish confidences for one night,” he said dismissively. “It’s been a long day and I’m sure you are tired.” He stubbed out his cigarette on a saucer and shrugged out of his green silk robe before extinguishing the light.
Oh. “What about you?” Caroline asked into the darkness.
“I too would doubtless benefit from an uninterrupted night’s sleep,” he replied after a pause.
It had to be the nightgown. It just had to be.