19. Chapter 19
nineteen
“ I ’ve never worn trousers before, but I think I like them.” Jenny swished her hips back and forth in front of the mirror in her dressing room. The trousers were akin to pantaloons and made of a fine creamy buckskin that clung to her curves.
Lucienne, the young woman who was Jenny’s roommate and also in charge of altering her costumes, dissolved into giggles. “We must make certain your formal coat is long enough to cover your hips. If you do that, it will put the audience in mind of something other than a young duke.”
In the comedic opera, Jenny was singing the role of the fifteen-year-old Duc de Parthenay who had been married to a young woman for political reasons, but the couple fell in love.
Their families planned to keep them from cohabitating until they were old enough to live together.
The young couple balk at the idea of the separation and scheme to find ways to be together.
In Jenny’s first scene, she is to appear with her duchesse in their wedding clothes, only to be forced apart by well-meaning adults.
Jenny shook her hips again and they both laughed until a knock at the door of her dressing room drew their attention.
“You’ve a visitor, Jenny,” a male voice she recognized as belonging to M. Marceau, a singing master who had been brought in to help the singers rehearse, called. Luci perked up at his presence. Jenny suspected the girl was sweet on him, since she turned rosy-cheeked whenever he was around.
“Just a moment,” Jenny called out and shrugged took off the shirtsleeves they’d been using in place of the formal wedding garb. Luci helped her into her robe and Jenny quickly stepped out of the pantaloons.
Folding the trousers over her arm, Luci said, “I’ll tack the hems on the rest of the trousers to match this length and have them back tomorrow morning for you to try. Then we’ll begin fitting the coats.”
Jenny’s poor little duke character would be whisked away to war to keep his mind off his young bride, because apparently his parents preferred the danger of bullets to the danger of young love, so a slew of army uniforms and formal wear was required.
“Thank you, Luci. I trust your capable needle.”
Jenny had been pleasantly surprised at how affable the girl was and how well they got on.
She still didn’t particularly like sharing a room, but if it had to be with anyone, she preferred it to be with Luci.
She was pleasant and funny and liked to keep to herself in the evening before lights out to flip through her fashion magazines and journals.
She was an aspiring singer and was learning the lead roles. Jenny found she enjoyed mentoring her.
Jenny couldn’t ask for a better roommate. The only problem was that she’d grown accustomed to having her own space ever since she’d moved in with Mrs. Wilson, so it was difficult to make the adjustment back to sharing, something she hadn’t done since she’d shared with her sisters.
The quiet knock came again and Luci rolled her eyes playfully. “Shall we walk to the boarding house together later? ”
“If you won’t have to wait too long. I need to dress and then émilie wanted to run through a few questions she had about the first duet. I’ll need at least an hour.” émilie was playing the bride in the opera.
“That’s fine. I have plenty to keep me busy.” Luci indicated the pantaloons and then floated to the door. “But we don’t want to be late for dinner. Mme Bechard might not let us eat.”
Yet another reason Jenny disliked the boarding house. She’d been on her own too long to follow draconian rules. Mrs. Wilson never cared about Jenny’s comings and goings, and now her landlady got herself in a dither whenever a girl was late to dinner.
“I’ll hurry.” Jenny sat at her dressing table and took the pins out of her hair. She’d put it up earlier when they’d been trying on wigs.
“Pardon, messieurs,” Luci said.
The fact that a man was at her door, whom her friend didn’t address by name, drew Jenny’s attention. M. Marceau greeted Luci and he was joined by another voice lightly accented in French. Jenny’s heart catapulted into her throat and she jumped to her feet. She recognized that voice.
Luci and the singing master excused themselves, their voices fading down the hallway. The scuff of a boot told her the other man was still there beyond the cracked open door.
But it couldn’t be him. She wouldn’t believe it until—
David stepped to the threshold, his knuckles rapping lightly on the door. He wore traveling clothes, a dark suit with an overcoat that made his shoulders seem impossibly broad. His dark hair was impeccably groomed and swept off his forehead. “Good evening, love.”
Her stomach flipped and she clutched at the edges of her robe, acutely aware that it was fraying at the hem and cost less than his shirtsleeves. He looked…expensive with his bespoke clothing and thick fabrics. And handsome. And elegant. And so very out of place .
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“May I come in?” There was that damned smile that lingered at his lips and made his eyes light up.
She felt her face heat. She longed to tell him no, but that would only make this even more awkward.
The last time she’d seen him, he’d spent hours inside her, and she could not stop thinking about that.
Every night when she lay in her tiny cot, her mind would replay the entire evening whether she wanted it to or not.
She couldn’t even give herself relief because she shared the room.
She hated that he had such power over her. One night was supposed to be enough.
She nodded and stepped back as if she wasn’t already across the small space. “Yes, of course.”
He stepped into the room and shut the door behind him. He filled the whole space without even trying. Lifting a slim leather case she hadn’t noticed earlier, he said, “I received your contract and request for my signature. My apologies for the delay. It didn’t reach me for some time.”
Alarm had her heart racing. “You didn’t have to come yourself.” She’d barely stopped herself from instructing him explicitly in her brief letter to not come.
“On the contrary.”
His gaze swept down her body, and she lit up inside like an electric light she’d seen at an exhibition in London over the summer.
One press of a button and that bulb had burned so brightly it had generated its own heat.
She gripped the edges of the robe tighter, very aware that she was nude underneath, and she didn’t trust herself not to throw off the garment and confess how much she’d missed him.
She looked away and he placed the case on the table next to the very small settee.
The whole room was made up of mismatched furniture of contrasting walnut and oak wood varnished in various shades of brown.
The pieces had obviously been pulled from various sets and perhaps even other theaters with no thought of how they all fit together.
It was nothing like the magnificent bedchamber she’d left behind in the English countryside.
They stood for a moment, him looking at her and her looking at the surface of the dressing table with its scattered bottles of cosmetics and hair accessories.
Her hair! She ran a palm down the length in horror as she remembered she’d only half finished removing the pins.
Turning back to the table, she discreetly began pulling out the last few pins, so at least it would look consistent if not tidy.
“The contract was sent to Heathercote,” he said as if she hadn’t addressed it herself.
“I know.” Finished with the pins, she faced him again only to fidget with the length as he watched.
She didn’t like encountering him without having herself in order.
She hadn’t even had time to put on her slippers.
Her bare toes peeked out from beneath the hem of her robe.
Absurdly aware of her state of undress, she clenched her toes as if that might make him not notice them and said, “I thought you might still be at Heathercote and if you weren’t, the staff might forward it to you.
” In truth, she had intentionally imagined him there because the pain of knowing he was going back to his old life and all those women was too much.
“And they did forward it,” he confirmed, “but it caused a delay. The deadline given has passed. I reasoned that by delivering it myself I could speak to the gentlemen in charge if they balked at the interval.”
“That’s very kind of you, Lord David, but I’m certain they won’t be very put out.”
He seemed disappointed. His heavy brows came together and she could vividly recall touching him there with her thumb.
He’d been above her in bed, staring down at her with that bemused look, and she hadn’t been able to stop herself from caressing the crease in his skin.
It had been a thoughtless gesture but he’d immediately kissed her palm and nudged his hips to seat himself deeper inside her.
She shifted her thighs, even more aware of her nakedness beneath the robe.
The movement drew his gaze to her hips and his eyes darkened.
It had been well over two weeks since she’d last seen him, but her body responded to him as if they were still in his bedroom and he was pulling the strings of her arousal.
“I stopped by your flat before I came here,” he said. “I was surprised to be greeted by a family from Nice who had no knowledge of a woman named Jenny Dove.”
“I’m at the boarding house with the other female performers and production staff.” At his questioning look, she added, “I returned home to Mrs. Wilson packing up. She’s gone to Austria for the rest of the year and has let the place.”
“Then you’re here all alone?”
“No, I’m at the boarding house with the other performers. I’m hardly alone.”
He ran his fingers through his hair, messing it enough to send one dark tendril down over his brow. She remembered how his hair felt like rough silk. Why did she want to touch it again? This was insanity. He was not good for her and any further contact between them would only be to her detriment.
“You have no one here to care for you and look after you.”
“I don’t need anyone for that. I have myself and you met Lucienne.” She gestured to the door. “She’s my roommate.”
His frown turned into a scowl. “That won’t do at all. You will be a duchess—”
She raised her hand. “Don’t. We both know I am no more a duchess than you are a street performer. Yes, perhaps legally, but not in any other way. If you took me on your arm to a ball, we’d be laughed out of the room. Let us not pretend this is anything more than a matter of convenience.”
His eyes widened in genuine shock. “No one would laugh at you were you on my arm.” He spoke through a tight jaw.
He was likely right. They wouldn’t dare go against him. “Perhaps not to your face,” she conceded.
“You think they laugh at us behind our back?”
She laughed. “I know they do. I’ve spent my entire life being a laughingstock.
” Everyone who was anyone in New York City suspected she and her sisters were the bastard children of Charles Hathaway.
Any misguided attempts Fanny had made on their behalf to introduce them to polite society had ended in disaster.
She forgot David didn’t know that. To cover herself, she added lightly, “You’ve met my mother.
She doesn’t mix well with society folk.”
He stared at her as if he could see under her robe, under her skin, under the mask she wore when things became too serious. “They won’t laugh at you,” he said with quiet conviction.
“That’s easy for you to say. You will be a duke one day and they can’t afford to upset you.”
“My brother is the duke now and anything said against you would anger him.” He stepped closer.
She rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t mean they don’t say it in private.”
“And you care what they say in private?” He came to a stop before her.
“No.” A pause. “Yes,” she said more truthfully.
“I don’t want to, but I do. And it will only get worse once I make my debut in a few weeks.
They already can’t stand that I won you…
if you give credence to their social games…
but to be a performer on top of that…” She shrugged.
The bad jokes in the gossip columns wrote themselves .
The back of his fingers caressed her cheek in a move she was coming to recognize as his way of giving her comfort.
She had to clench her jaw to keep from leaning into his touch.
She hadn’t meant to say all of that. The conversation had been about how she could take care of herself and didn’t need someone to watch over her.
She couldn’t even remember how they had come to this.
“Do you believe you won me?” he asked, his voice low but earnest.
She met his gaze and the shock of it so close froze her breath. Forcing it out again, she said, “No, of course not. We had an agreement. Nothing more.”
His troubled gaze dropped to her mouth but he didn’t remove his touch. Instead, his fingers trailed down to her neck where his hand rested against her pulse as his thumb and forefinger played with a lock of her hair.
“An agreement,” he finally said. She couldn’t make out the emotion behind the words.
“Yes, an agreement.” Then she understood why he’d come all this way when a courier would have worked. Why he was standing so close to her. “You’ve come here to renegotiate terms.” She held her breath…hoping.
His eyes flicked back to hers and they were so intense the air thickened. “I’d like that.”
“I suppose it’s only fair. I have asked for another task.” She gestured vaguely to the leather satchel behind him but neither of them turned their attention away from the other.
“You’ll give me another night?”
“No.” It surprised her how badly she wanted to say yes, but she didn’t think she could take another whole night. She already thought of him way too often every day. “Once more, but not an entire night.”
“Jenny— ”
“I understand what this is,” she interrupted him. “We are to be nothing more and nothing less.” If she could keep this transactional, then she could keep her heart to herself.
He huffed out a breath of air and his hand finally dropped. She was both relieved and distraught. “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”
“Of course.” She would have been shocked by how quickly she agreed if she wasn’t so in tune with how very deeply he affected her.
She told herself she was only being fair, but she knew it was more than that.
She wanted him. She needed him. Apparently, she’d inherited enough of a self-destructive bent from her mother that she was willing to play this dangerous game.