Chapter 20 #3
“Then I look forward to meeting him,” she said in a quiet voice, and the bleak look in his eyes eased.
He pressed her palm to his cheek, his skin firm and warm and freshly shaven.
The rancor between them was gone, dissolved in a moment, and in its place was a low harmonic hum, like a struck chord that resonated through both of them.
“So the child is here.” His voice was a low rumble.
“Safe. Do you want to meet her?”
He hesitated, his eyes a cloudy violet hue. “No.”
Henrietta nodded. If he wasn’t ready, she wouldn’t press him. And if he didn’t see her, there was less chance he would try to take the babe away.
“I named her Celestina.”
“Little heaven,” he said softly, rubbing his jaw along her knuckles. The gesture seemed uncalculated, comforting, and yet it rattled her. “I will have my solicitor find a suitable family, perhaps someone on my estate. You may interview them if you like.”
“I intend to keep her.” Her lungs heaved for want of air, and she steeled herself against his response. But nothing could induce her to give up this child. Not even Darien.
He scowled. “An unmarried woman? You cannot. It would mean your ruin.”
“I think you know I am already ruined. You recall where you found me this morning?”
She tried to tug her hands from his grip, but he refused to release her.
He held to her as if she were the one thing keeping him tethered to Earth.
He held her as if he could be her shield.
And, in fact, she did not wish to let go of him either.
That clear truth still flowed through her, dazzling, iridescent.
Everything inside of her shifted to make room for it.
Darien held her arm when Dearbody announced the coach was ready.
He sat beside her on the short ride to Great Russell Street and the British Museum, his thigh brushing her skirt, their shoulders touching.
He held her hand on his arm as their group passed through the gateway and into the great, high-ceilinged hall of Montagu House, and she let herself fall into step with him.
Nothing had been resolved, and yet they allowed the current to bear them together in its silent, inescapable pull.
At the top of an enormous staircase, they met Miss Forsythia Pennyroyal and her mother admiring the figures that were floating across the frescoed ceiling.
“So much bare skin,” Mrs. Pennyroyal said with a sniff of disapproval. “One hardly knows where to set one’s eyes.”
“Oh dear. We cannot escape Miss Wardley-Hines anywhere we go.” Forsythia turned from a line of broadsides tacked to one wall and wrinkled her nose as she saw Henrietta approaching.
“We have heard of nothing but you all day, you and the Minerva Society. The Times estimated there were a thousand people come to hear your radical ideas.” She avoided looking at Darien.
“Equality for women will not seem radical when it is an accepted truth,” Henrietta said. She made no move to step away from Darien; if she was ruined already, why bother? “I wish you would attend a meeting of the Minerva Society, Miss Pennyroyal. You might enjoy our discussions.”
“It sounds far too fast a set for me,” said Miss Pennyroyal. “I have my reputation to consider.” She lugged her mother away, Mrs. Pennyroyal’s nose in the air in an attitude identical to her daughter’s.
Darien took down the broadsides, and Henrietta considered the cartoon.
In it, she stood on the dais of the London Tavern, a flaming torch in one lifted hand, the red Phrygian cap of the French revolutionaries atop her curls.
Her other hand was lifting a sheer skirt to show a set of men’s pantaloons like those of the so-named sans-culottes, the Frenchmen who were agitating for liberty.
The ornate script of the caption read “Lady Revolution Lights the Way.” Among the melee of fighting men, Thomas Hardy had his fist planted in the face of a King’s officer, James was cracking his whip, and Mr. Equiano lofted a second torch inscribed “Abolition!”
Henrietta shook her head. “At least my gown is fetching in that one. Has it come out yet that I was taken up by the watch?”
“It will. Not even your uncle can hush the reporters. Pitt has certainly found he can’t.”
“How glad I am Marsibel’s future is secure.” She looked wistfully across the room to where Marsibel and Rutherford stood with their heads bent over a terra cotta vase, cooing like turtledoves. How sweet to see Marsibel so adored, but it made her feel melancholy too.
“There’s a certain freedom to being ostracized,” Darien remarked. “One may do as one likes.”
She squeezed his arm, understanding. “I should find it terribly lonely, having only myself to please. I always appreciated my responsibilities. They suited my talents.”
“Putting your nose into other people’s business?”
“I believe you, sir, put your nose rather pointedly into my affairs this morning,” she answered. “So I consider us square.”
Lightly he brushed a finger over the tip of her nose. Everything inside Henrietta melted.
“You incited a riot in the London Tavern, spent the night in the watchhouse, and have taken in the illegitimate child of a duke’s daughter. I look a paragon compared to you.”
She gave a watery laugh, grateful for his levity. “Yes, I’ve tied my garter in public, to be sure. Perhaps you ought to take refuge with the Pennyroyals. Staid, respectable people who might reform you, as your friend Perry suggested. Not a sad rattle like me.”
He steered her into a side gallery, empty of people, and paused beside a waist-high pedestal.
The painted vase bore a muscled warrior wearing nothing but a short cloth about his hips, offering his helmet to a stately lady who held a shield and spear.
Minerva again, accepting the homage due her as a powerful woman.
Henrietta would never be a Daughter of Minerva now.
“I haven’t thanked you.” Darien drew her closer to him, his smile full, his eyes gentle. “For charming my child from Celeste. She might have been lost were it not for you.”
She thrilled as he stroked a thumb over the arm of her jacket. Oh, this man. She was lost to sense around him. “Do you forgive my meddling, then?”
“On the contrary, I am glad to know she is in good hands, in the event that—I mean, if anything were—”
Had the thought of fatherhood left him speechless? His baffled look made something light and airy bubble in her chest, dislodging the tight lump of loss.
Entirely against all strictures of propriety, as if he were hers that she might make such an intimate gesture, Henrietta placed her hands on either side of his face. She felt the warmth of his skin through her gloves.
“Lord Darien Bales,” she whispered, falling into his violet eyes. “Lord Daring. If only the world knew the man I see.”
She would remember later that she had been the one to lose her head. She would remember, later, how his gaze flicked past her powdered hair before he bent his head, meeting the lips she raised to his. At the moment, all she could do was quiver with relief.
She had wanted this since that morning, when he carried her through the watch house in his powerful arms. She had wanted this, truth be told, since the moment outside St. James Palace when she looked up from her torn skirts into his gentle, laughing eyes.
She tumbled headfirst into their first real kiss. He was not trying to scold her, or teach her a lesson, or master her. He desired her, took delight in her, and they stepped into that enchanted world together.
His thumbs brushed her ears as he cupped her cheeks, his fingers reaching into the soft hair pinned at her nape.
It was a slow, hot, blossoming sort of kiss.
His whole mouth was in play against hers—his firm lips, his nipping teeth, his exceedingly agile tongue.
The rest of the world swirled away as if whisked behind a velvet curtain.
Her body came alive, heat and light traveling down the taut, alert cord forming at the center of her body. The kiss was a sweet dance, full of wonder and invitation, and she followed his lead as trustingly as she had followed him across the floor at the Bicclesfield ball.
After a long while they surfaced for air, and she found herself anchored by his hands around her face.
Her own hands twined around his shoulders as if to pull herself up to meet him.
Heat radiated off his body, and his scent, spicy and familiar, swamped all thought.
His expression mirrored her own, warm, astonished.
Who knew a kiss could be like that? Playful, molten, intoxicating enough that she had forgotten who she was, that they were…in a broad museum gallery with any number of people in the next room, examining the Egyptian mummy.
A cold shock rushed to every part of her body, quenching the soft echo of his kiss. He looked around, and she forced her head to follow his gaze.
They were not alone in the room.
Marsibel wore a blank look, her mouth parted in shock.
Rutherford looked nervous and appalled. At least half a dozen people stared with expressions that ranged from stupefaction to unholy glee, with murmurs, chuckles, here and there a hiss.
Miss Forsythia Pennyroyal put a hand to her mouth with a cry.
“You!” she choked. “You! But you’re—you’re—” She turned and rushed from the room, her heels clacking on the floor.
“D-D-Darien?” Rutherford stuttered.
Darien smiled with triumph and determination and something else, something Henrietta might have called satisfaction if she were not still, stupidly, trying to conceive that she had just been caught with an infamous seducer in a very public kiss, a kiss that would leave her reputation thoroughly and utterly in tatters unless he—
“Rufie.” Darien’s arm curved possessively about her waist. She felt the heat and solidness of him through her stays. “Miss Pomeroy. You may be the first to congratulate us. Miss Wardley-Hines has consented to become my wife.”