Chapter Four
Garrick didn’t know which was more frustrating: trying to get information from his French contacts, or trying to woo Madelina Moisenay.
The taste of her lingered on his lips, all these days later. Her throaty gasp echoed in his ear, the sign of the desire which he guessed she was experiencing for the first time. He’d be the one to introduce her to passion. She had saved that for him.
He’d known she would. He had been determined to wait until he could do justice to a woman like her.
He was ready, at long last. But was she?
He was not in the habit of seducing innocents, Garrick reflected as he arranged his cravat for the evening.
Not even Cassandra Beane, the woman who made him a rake, had been untouched when she came to him.
Cassandra had been clear from the start that she wanted a husband more important than Garrick, and she was using him to gain the experience to land a bigger prize.
Garrick imagined few seventeen-year-old boys would have declined the opportunity to let a young woman like Cassandra practice her wiles on him.
Unfortunately for Miss Beane, her bid for the bigger prize had left her with naught but a babe that required a hastily arranged marriage—not, thank God, to Garrick. He’d escaped that noose at least.
Garrick had decided at a young age that Madelina was not to be toyed with.
First, she was his chum, as aggravating as young girls could be, and a bloke didn’t do poorly by a chum and permit other boys to taunt her.
When she’d turned twelve and developed breasts, Garrick had been obliged to put his fist in the face of the gamekeeper’s boy, the cooper’s nephew, and the young groom who had begun teasing her in a far different fashion.
When she hit fourteen and shed her gawkiness for swan-like grace, Garrick had found it necessary to relieve the fever of desire burning him like a roast. Expending himself with other women left him with enough clarity to exchange words with Mad in her new feminine form. Sometimes even full sentences.
He tied and tucked the ends of his cravat, then reached for his evening coat and worked the double row of buttons.
University was accepted as a time for a man of a certain age to sow his wild oats, and Garrick had.
He didn’t repent of it. But the summer he took his degree and returned home to put the estate in order after his father’s death, Madelina had been eighteen and ready to marry.
His fingers fumbled on the bronze buttons, recalling.
He hadn’t been ready then. His father, a respected barrister who had circulated through various cabinet and government posts, left enough money for Garrick to take his Grand Tour, which he desperately wanted to do.
He wanted the polish and sophistication that came from such a tour; more than that, he simply wanted to see the world.
He knew if he put down roots anywhere about Milton Keynes he would grow into a dull, sturdy, stunted shrubbery and never see anything of the broad, magnificent globe.
But Mad, that summer. Mad with those lips and those heavy-lidded eyes, the body of a courtesan, the seductiveness she didn’t know she possessed. He’d been unable to speak when he was around her.
And she had proposed that he marry her. Mad, so serious as she stood in the parlor of her family home, a neat linen apron over her muslin daygown, her mass of dark hair bound into a crown around her head when he was used to seeing it flow like a cloak down her back.
Mad, her eyes such a wide and frightened blue as she said, quite reasonably, that if they married, they would please their parents and spare them being thrust on anyone else.
She would be a tolerable wife, she said, and he…
Here she had faltered, rallied, bright embers burning in her cheeks. He would never forget her look, her words. She wouldn’t fault him for his ways, nor say a word about them.
He’d been angry. He remembered that, too.
That she regarded herself as a bolt of cloth or a loaf of sugar on the shelf, to be selected and used and depended upon to perform its function.
As if she weren’t a woman worth fighting for.
As if she didn’t deserve so much more, then and now. So much better than him.
She belonged to him. He knew that even as he spurned her proposal, deferring his promise of a kiss. Madeline Moisenay was destined for him, a reward for his future, better self, the only future he wanted. He simply needed to grow into the man worthy of her.
But had he? He’d been foolish on Christmas Eve. He’d sprung on her too soon, forced her into a position where she couldn’t say no and save face before his mother and hers.
She was his. But he’d never had to pursue her before. How could he persuade her to yield?
On the third day of Christmas, the Feast of St. John, his mother invited guests over for the traditional sharing of the wassail bowl.
Town was quiet, with so many families gone down to their country estates before Parliament sat and the Season commenced.
Garrick was the reason the Lockrams and Moisenays had stayed in town.
He’d told his mother he had business to conduct, and so here they all were, entertaining with the remnants of their usual social circle while Garrick watched for the post. Watched Mad.
He’d cornered her by the wassail bowl of mulled wine and she shared a drink with him, exchanging wishes for luck and good health. He brushed her fingers as he handed her a cup, giving her the look of smoky regard that had sent more than one miss tumbling into his lap.
“When shall we set our wedding date, Mad? Will you make me wait three weeks for the banns to be read, or shall I procure a license?”
She gulped her wine like a trull in a tavern, then touched a finger to the side of her mouth, dabbing as a last drop. Garrick had wanted to catch it with his tongue.
“Let me ask Maman,” she said, and walked away. Walked away from him to talk with his brothers, Judah, who was her age, and Giles, five years younger, both of them on holiday from school. The boys gawped and stuttered as if they’d never beheld an entrancingly beautiful woman before.
Garrick, brooding by the wassail bowl, had to field his mother’s endless suggestions about where to hold the wedding—St. George’s, of course—who to invite to the wedding breakfast—everyone—and if it would insult their French cook to ask Mrs. Bird to prepare some of her pastries.
He’d managed to involve his mother in a heated debate with Victoire about whether it was safe to send to Paris for articles for Mad’s trousseau, and thereafter escaped, only to catch Mad laughing as Judah kissed her cheek beneath the kissing bough.
The fourth day of Christmas, Garrick escorted the ladies on a shopping trip along Bond Street, which was as much as social excursion as retail expedition.
They avoided the Bond Street Loungers, who never took a holiday from crowding the streets and disrupting traffic and commerce, and he felt like a knight of old guarding his queen as she went about her business of beautifying the world.
As her husband, this would be his duty: to shelter her path through the fraught world, and to ease her way wherever he could. For the first time, it seemed like a privilege to be responsible for the happiness of another person, and not just his sorry old self.
Madelina took such care with the gifts she selected for her family and his, and Garrick realized, for the first time, how perceptive she was about people.
She observed everything, yet rarely put herself forward.
She let her lively sister, Georgette, and Garrick’s shy younger sister, Edina, choose the shops and lead them to and fro inspecting every shiny object they spotted in a window and tasting every twelfth cake they saw on display.
She nodded in agreement as Garrick’s mother freely opined on everything that came through her notice, and she bore with good cheer her own mother’s continued corrections.
Finally, Garrick took her hand and pulled her aside, tucking her gloved fingers in the crook of his arm. He drew her to the bow window of a jeweler’s shop, where an assortment of silver jewelry sat nestled in white velvet boxes and cushions of silk.
“The brooch in the shape of a peacock? Or the rivière necklace with garnets and rubies?” He had a feeling it would take more than riches to buy this woman, but he was willing to try.
He tried peering beneath her pert hat with its feathers and flowers. He wanted so desperately to read her. Know her. Understand this defiant, energetic girl who had grown into such an enigmatic and appealing woman.
Her eyes lingered on the jewels shining in their settings of delicate silver cannetille. “Just think how long Polly might support herself and her children on that piece.” She pointed to a carnelian ring in a cabochon cut.
“I’ll shower you with jewels, Mad. Pin money. Gowns. Your own carriage, if you wish it.” That was a great expense, but he’d find a way. He’d do whatever it took to win her heart.
He hoped that note in his voice was not pleading.
He’d vowed, long ago, never to beg for love.
He’d spent his boyhood trying to win his father’s blessing and approval, and would never have it now that the man was dead.
He’d learned early that his mother moved in her own world and was not to be fretted with her children’s demands; that was why she employed a nurse.
He'd won admiration from his friends by perfecting his single skill, that of using his looks and charm to bend people to his will. But he’d always thought—clung to the hope, actually—that there must be some good and decent thread at the core of him, if Mad loved him.
If she did not love him anymore…what did that make him?
Her gaze slid away from his, back to her family, and a small line appeared between her brows.