Chapter 5
Felix felt exposed.
The strange sensation crept upon him almost as soon as he left the picnic. With every passing hour it intensified, growing stronger and more undismissable. By bedtime he was literally uncomfortable in his own skin.
The nearest parallel in his experience had been as a child, after having offered a carefully prepared present to one or both of his parents, waiting those terrible minutes to see whether his father would pick it up and whether his mother would, this once, after all her theatrical cooing, take it with her to her room or again leave it behind in the tea parlor, to be cleared away the next time the maids came through.
But the comparison was ridiculous. He had not offered Miss Cantwell a gift. His proposition was a monstrosity, an affront to decency, an incendiary missile catapulted inside the very walls of her castle.
How could he, then, the one on the offensive, fall prey to feelings of vulnerability?
Because you have not been so much yourself in a long time. Because you have let her see more of you than anyone else. Because if she were to reject this offer—
He told the voice inside to shut up. If she were to eventually reject his offer, it would have little to do with him, personally. Everything in her upbringing stood in the way. As did their entire social structure, predicated on the purity of the female body.
He would think no more on his secret discomfort. Instead, he would concentrate on those confessions of hers, of being naked and subject to his will.
For good measure, he took himself to his estate for another week, so as not to seek her out and appear impatient. Even after his return, for several days he chose the masculine refuge of his club over garden parties and soirées musicales.
He did, however, bestir himself to attend Lady Tremaine’s ball, as otherwise the latter would have sent him a scathing note—they had been lovers at one point and had since settled into a solidly comfortable friendship.
At the ball, he danced with a half dozen young ladies, played a few hands of faro at the card tables, and spent some time by Lady Tremaine’s side, inquiring after her doings.
“I can tell you have been to one of your factories today,” he told her.
“Why? Do I still have machine grease on my face?” Lady Tremaine laughed. She was a glamorous and confident woman, entirely unashamed of her delight in manufactory and in the making of money.
“You radiate that sense of satisfaction that comes of either a spectacular lover or a spectacular income statement. And since I know you haven’t taken anyone to bed lately…”
“Perhaps your intelligence is faulty.”
“Never. Did you just find out that you are even richer than you were yesterday?”
She laughed again. “Yes. And by a good margin.”
He scanned the crowd below, looking for a now-familiar head of shining dark hair—even though he knew Miss Cantwell would not be in attendance. “Congratulations. How do you plan to celebrate?”
“A Swedish lover, perhaps,” said Lady Tremaine mischievously, “since I have already scheduled a tour of Scandinavia.”
He returned his attention to her. “When?”
“I leave day after tomorrow.” She shrugged. “I’m bored with London. Bored with the Season.”
“In that case, make the most of your trip. Try a Norwegian lover, too. And is Finland on the itinerary?”
“Not this time, but Denmark is.”
He drew back a little. “Lord Tremaine’s sister is married to a Dane, is she not?”
“Yes. In fact, I plan to call on her when I pass through Copenhagen—I have always kept on very good terms with my in-laws,” she answered, her tone defiant.
“Of course you have,” he said soothingly. “I shall expect a full account of your Scandinavian experience when you return.”
“That you will have.” She sounded relieved to move away from the topic of her in-laws—from any topic that might extrapolate to her husband. “And you, any interesting plans of your own?”
“No, I shall simply have to endure the tedium that is London without you. And then the dreariness of throwing the same old house party.”
“Ha. You are the last person to find Society a bore. You are too busy enjoying having your boots licked from one end of Mayfair to the other.”
“If the world wishes to admire me, who am I to stand in its way?”
He gave her a slight squeeze of the hand, let her tend to her other guests, and took himself to the music room for a little respite from the crowd.
He did enjoy the adulation of the masses, but a man needed to breathe, too, and there was nothing like a crush of people at the height of summer to make a house as stuffy as one of the queen’s mourning gowns.
The music room was dominated by a beautiful érard piano, which Felix had always thought must have some interesting story behind it: Lady Tremaine, not at all musical, was not the sort to invest in such a fine instrument for herself.
Nor was it ever used—she had another piano, a much more ordinary one, in the drawing room, for when her friends wished to have a song or two after dinner.
He suspected that the piano had something to do with the husband she rarely mentioned, the one who lived an ocean away in New York City and never visited. The perfect marriage, it had been labeled by Society—civility, distance, and freedom, unencumbered by tiresome emotions.
The truth was probably something else altogether. But he had never inquired. Their friendship rested on a firm respect of boundaries: Neither questioned whether the other was truly what he or she seemed.
Lady Tremaine was happy to be thought of as completely satisfied with her marital situation. And he was happy to be thought of as a man without actual flaws, when he was about as perfect—and possibly as empty—as her marriage.
The door opened, and in stepped the woman whose refusal to give in to his salacious demands was the very reason for his moment of introspection.
She wore a massive confection the color of cooked shrimp, indiscriminately garnished with deep lace flounces, garlands of velvet rose leaves, and puffs of crystal-spangled tulle.
On anyone else, the gown would have been heinous.
But with her seemingly transparent face, she turned it to her advantage—of course a young woman as sweet and unsullied as she should come to a ball in twenty yards of pink silk weighed down with every variety of trimming known to couture.
She leaned back against the door, as if she couldn’t quite withstand the impact of seeing him again.
He had thought often of what she’d said about the telescope she desperately wanted, about the simple fact of carrying on without it. There had been a dignity to her thwarted desire. There never had been any dignity to his once hopeless needs, but only wretchedness.
He became conscious that an entire minute had passed and they’d exchanged not even a word of greeting.
“You are aware, Miss Cantwell, that we have already lost the princess royale’s father-in-law this year and are likely to lose her husband, too, any day now?” he said, his tone more severe than he had intended. “Your frock might be considered inappropriately cheerful in some quarters.”
“I am aware of that. But there is no color like raspberry sherbet for a country girl’s complexion,” she said softly.
And no color like raspberry sherbet for the craving that made her eyes feverishly luminous.
Standing there, the skin of her throat and shoulders gleaming under the bright lights of the music room, her chest rising and falling rapidly, her fingers splayed against the door, as if trying to hold on to something, anything—he would have propositioned her all over again, even knowing how exposed he would feel afterward.
“It’s still a ridiculous dress—but as a piece of costume I will admit it has its merits.” He braced a hand on the piano. “How did you know I was here?”
“We learned while we were at Mrs. Cornish’s ball—guests were leaving to come here and they said you would be in attendance. So Lady Balfour decided to do the same. We didn’t even have invitations, but Lady Balfour told me to hold my head high and simply march in.”
“And you succeeded admirably, of course.”
“I wanted to see you,” she said simply. “And when I came out of the powder room, whom should I spy but you, slipping in here.”
“Have you missed me?”
He didn’t ask such questions. Or at least, he didn’t ask such questions when the answers mattered.
Her left hand closed into a fist. “Of course I have missed you.”
The floor stopped wobbling. He breathed again.
“Every day I wondered whether I hadn’t made the biggest mistake in my life, declining to be your mistress. And every night…” She exhaled shakily. “Let’s just say I had no idea of the range and ferocity of my own imagination.”
“Tell me.”
He wanted to know. He needed to know. That she was fiercely drawn to him was what made his sense of vulnerability bearable.
Her fingers worried a crystal bead at her hip; her gaze was somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.
“You said that you would bring me to your estate. Well, Lady Balfour happens to have a guidebook to the great manors of the land, with three pages devoted to describing Huntington’s every aspect.
So now I know all about the cloistered garden, the lavender house, and the Greek folly across the lake from the manor.
“I can almost see it—the manor ablaze with light at night, the lake shimmering with reflection. I stand by one of the columns of the folly, and you come up behind me.”
He felt strangely light-headed. “You do know that when I entertain, torches are lit near the folly, so that it is visible from the house at night?”