Chapter 4
Chapter Four
“You’re going back?”
Farren leaned against the doorjamb of Jay’s chamber, watching him retie his cravat. It was Farren’s door, Farren’s chamber, and Farren’s lodgings where Jay was staying, so he couldn’t complain of the man taking liberty in his own house.
“Just one night more. I told the girl I’d come watch her tableaux.”
“I wouldn’t advise getting smitten.”
“I don’t intend to.”
Farren watched Jay with interest. “You’ve never thrown your heart after a woman before.”
They’d been at school together at King’s Ely, a matched set in a sense, Jay’s bull-headed strength the complement to the other boy’s sly sophistication.
Farren was slender and tall, his frame shaped for drawing rooms and making a handsome figure in the latest fashions.
Farren had been born a baron’s nephew and the heir presumptive, learning early his paces as an aristocrat, and he wore the mantle with careless ease.
Jay had been born a baron’s son and learned the family trade young, needing an outlet for his energies.
“Never been led about by the nose, either,” Farren said with a scowl. “Saved you a great deal of blunt, I don’t doubt.”
“I’m not about to be taken up by a courtesan who works at a pleasure club, no matter how graceful or educated she seems.” Jay finally achieved a satisfactory set of folds to his cravat. He inserted a stickpin to hold his creation in place.
“Oh, they don’t get paid at Hedone,” Farren remarked. “The actors are after the fun, same as we are. So are the musicians, the card players, the ones there for conversation.” He snorted.
“I thought it was a brothel.”
“It’s a place for the well-bred and those who can afford it to play outside the regular rules.
But don’t call it a brothel or you’ll have the watch down on their heads.
Didn’t the lady tell you they are private transactions?
She’s not a madame, and your girl ain’t a bawd.
More likely she just wants a bit of prancing about she can’t do in mum’s parlor. ”
She’d kissed him, Jake reflected, but it wasn’t the kiss of a woman skilled at the matter. More passion than technique.
Good God, the passion. He might be going to Hedone so he could kiss her again. One last indulgence before he became respectable.
“Still, not the girl you’d marry,” Farren added. “Don’t go taking ideas.”
“I am thinking of marriage.” Jay brushed off his hat. “Only not to her.”
“The shackle?” Farren stared. “About time. Your parents will be over the moon.”
“I’ve no more years than you, old man, and you’re not married.”
“About to be.” Farren glared into the glass he held.
Jay had heard of it during nights they stayed in with brandy and smokes in Farren’s parlor. The marriage his family had arranged, some cousin on his aunt’s side. The best Farren could say of her was that she’d be a credit as a baron’s lady and wouldn’t turn a hair if he kept on as he was.
“Is she that much an antidote?” Jay asked, sympathetic.
His parents had never pressed him to wed.
His father hadn’t been raised for the peerage, hadn’t thought to be in line for the Brancaster title and estates, and while the family was now attached to Holme Hall as their seat, Jay hadn’t been subjected to the kind of prosy speeches about lineage, name, etcetera that Farren had been raised hearing.
Jay’s mother had been forced into a terrible marriage with her first husband and was not keen to do the same to her children.
Farren shrugged. “I’ve known the girl from a bawling brat.
Always had muddy skirts from mucking about outdoors and was ever bringing home creatures in jars.
My aunts spruced her up when her father came by his title, but still.
” He stared moodily into the snifter of brandy in his hands, what he termed oiling up for an evening out.
“Can’t expect that je ne sais quoi with a girl you’ve known from the cradle, can you?
She’ll be thinking of her books and the next day’s menu while I try to breed her. ”
Jay thought of his nymph and smiled. Effie. She possessed that ineffable quality in spades. He was quite willing to throw his heart after her, and he rather suspected she would treat it gently. As much a prize as a limpet in a jar, at any rate.
And he was quite certain he could ensure she would not be thinking of treatises on marine life or other aquatic creatures when he took her to bed.
Her hand on his arm that afternoon had been electric, like the sting of those eels found in South America.
She’d felt it, too; he could read that animated face of hers.
When he held her hand, it had taken everything in him not to slide his palm up her arm, pull her to him, and there on the beach, in sight of God and everyone, set out to discover if the rest of her body had the same silken texture.
She was well-bred, intelligent, sweet-natured, and charming. His family would adore her. He could make her love him. He could offer her more than another man would.
And he would not, once he offered for her, go mooning about after masked ladies in pleasure clubs. That would end tonight.
“Will I meet this girl?” Farren inquired. “The future Lady Brancaster.”
“If she accepts me, which I hope she will.”
She’d known him the space of two days. She would be a gentleman’s daughter, and so would know her worth. But he could dangle hopes of a title, and surely that would go some distance toward assuaging any doubts her family might harbor.
“Well, happy hunting tonight.” Farren tossed back the last swallow in his glass. “You can thank me later for introducing you to the place.”
Jay’s hands froze, just a moment, as he selected his hat. He wondered if Farren had met the interesting Erato, or worse, had thrown out lures at her. Farren spoke of Hedone as if he were a habitué, though during Jay’s stay, his friend had been absenting himself elsewhere.
“It will be an interesting evening, I am sure.”
Hedone was a diversion. Jay was glad he’d met the enchanting Erato.
He’d known her one night, but she’d crystallized something his nymph had taught him.
How much he admired a woman with that free spirit, that frank acquaintance with her own desires, that clear way of looking at the world.
Effie had that, along with all the other necessary qualities in a wife.
After going years without meeting a single interesting woman, in Brighton he’d found two.
He hoped Lady Erato would grant him a goodbye kiss. She was, after all, only an unknown girl he’d met once, twice, in a secret pleasure club.
It would be easy to walk away.
Jay didn’t call any of the scenes in their Persia tableaux. Effie wondered if he were less acquainted with Persian history than Greek, or if he simply did not want the play to end.
He sat in shadow in the same peacock drawing room where they had acted last night, with the embers of the hearth flickering behind him, but tonight the room felt different.
Iris brought incense to burn, wild rue and fig and frankincense, and she’d replaced the curtain across their alcove with a fabric in Paisley print.
The rich colors and scents deepened the sensual atmosphere.
Effie felt like she’d drunk too much wine.
Jay, his eyes pools of storm and riveted on her, was intoxicant enough.
He was dressed like a gentleman, yet she sensed a strained power barely leashed by the fine cut of his tailed evening coat, the precise arrangement of his cravat.
She could push aside the shawl collar of his waistcoats and find a fierce heart beating beneath.
That same magnetism that had attuned her to him when she spotted him on the beach kept her fixed to him now, the invisible current binding them from across the room.
The fine muslin of her robe felt unbearably soft on her skin, the silk shawls that Iris had brought intolerably sensuous with their delicious texture and soft rustle each time the women moved.
The sandals on her feet felt decadent, exposing her skin.
And the jewels—Effie hoped they were paste, or else Iris had opened the treasury of some ancient Persian shah and showered its riches upon them.
Bracelets, rings, jeweled collars set with turquoise and lapis lazuli.
She had never been so luxurious in her life.
Cybele had claimed the dagger with its carved ivory handle and curved blade.
She’d also taken the breastplate of leather set with silver scales.
Cybele liked to adopt masculine things. Pandora, languid and smiling as if she’d just risen from bed, took the heavy golden necklace with the falcon symbol, the wide wings extending from a golden disc.
Iris wore the diadem set with white sapphires and carnelian.
The tall crown sat elegantly on her coils of black hair.
Effie contented herself with armlets carved with a snake’s head and a heavy necklace with several strands of pearls and enameled flowers.
The pendant, a yellow diamond set in a sunburst of gold, dangled smaller chains like rays of melting gold.
It was more costly than her entire jewel box put together—perhaps her mother’s, too.
Then again, Sir Porton Stanier was only a diplomat, a favorite of the late George III who had managed to keep his post under the Regent, later George IV.
Lady Iris’s guardian, as he styled himself, was a nabob who had made a fortune with the British East India Company and brought home with him a beautiful widow and her dark-skinned children whom he claimed were wards under his protection.