Chapter 12
When dawn seeped in through the chintz curtains, Isabella gave up all pretense of trying to sleep. She had lain awake for what seemed like hours, listening to the clatter of hooves on Clarges Street, to voices raised in song as revelers made their way home, to the night watchman’s cry: Four of the clock, and all’s well.
Except that all wasn’t well.
In the space of a few minutes, everything had changed. Her life had turned upside down.
You’ve set your heart against marriage, Major Reynolds had said. Without knowing anything of the pleasures that may attend it.
And he’d been correct: she had set her heart against marriage. But now...
Isabella shifted position inside the twisted nest of bedding. Sleep was impossible; every time she closed her eyes she remembered the major’s kiss, remembered the heat that had washed through her, the spiraling coil of pleasure in her belly.
She hadn’t wanted him to stop. That was what appalled her the most—more than her acquiescence to his suggestion, more than her enjoyment of it. She hadn’t wanted him to stop. She had wanted more.
Am I so sunk below reproach?
It seemed that she was. Every time she closed her eyes she was aware of the heat and the tension still lingering in her body. I want more.
Isabella changed position again. She rearranged a pillow that seemed to have grown lumpier with each hour that passed.
I feel it’s my duty,the major had said, teasing her. And then he’d kissed her. And she’d let him, she’d kissed him back, and now...
I want more.
Isabella closed her eyes and relived Major Reynolds’ kiss. Warmth flushed inside her at the memory of his mouth, the gentleness, the hunger.
It was no longer impossible to imagine the major with Spanish paramours. If he kissed like that—
Isabella opened her eyes. The curtains shone brighter with suppressed sunlight.
Harriet’s grandfather had been correct: the girl was a fool to turn down a man such as Major Reynolds.
And I am a fool for kissing him.
No, not for kissing him—for letting it affect her like this. For allowing a few minutes’ pleasure to disorder her mind.
Isabella uttered an exclamation of annoyance. She pushed back the covers and sat up. Across the room, her reflection glimmered ghostlike in the mirror—pale face, shadowed eyes.
Rufus, in his basket at the foot of her bed, sat up and yawned widely.
“Did you sleep, Rufus? I didn’t.” She touched a light fingertip to her mouth, watching the movement in the mirror.
Major Reynolds had kissed her, tasted her...
Isabella lowered her hand and briskly got out of bed, reaching for her dressing gown. She pulled the belt tightly about her waist and stared at herself in the mirror. A stranger met her eyes: a woman who would consider casting aside the tenet she had lived her adult life by, a woman who would consider exchanging her liberty for a man’s embrace.
Rufus climbed out of his basket, stretched, yawned again, and trotted across the carpet, tail wagging, to greet her with a lick on the hand.
Isabella patted him absently. “No,” she said under her breath, turning away from the mirror. She was not such a fool. A fool to kiss Major Reynolds, yes, and an even bigger fool to enjoy it—but not such a fool as to fail to realize that it wouldn’t be like that with every man. It had most certainly not been like that with Roland.
Isabella drew the curtains back. Sunlight flooded in.
Why hadn’t it been like that with Roland, whom she had loved? Why Major Reynolds? A man who, by his own confession, wanted a bride barely out of childhood. A bride he could mold to suit him. She couldn’t admire him for that. He was either foolish, or arrogant, or perhaps both. And yet...
And yet she wanted him to kiss her again.
When had she come to be so aware of the major as a man? An attractive man?
She leaned her hip against the windowsill, frowning down at the street without seeing it. Memory of Major Reynolds’ kiss tingled on her lips, but the major wasn’t a man she wanted to marry. Any more than he wants to marry me.
Rufus pushed his nose into her hand.
Isabella laughed suddenly, looking down at him. “Your mistress is a fool!” she said loudly. A kiss, one kiss, was no reason for this turmoil of her thoughts.
Rufus pricked his ears, alert. He wagged his tail.
“Yes, you’re quite correct, Rufus. It’s time for breakfast.” She turned away from the window and reached for the bellpull.
* * *
They had formed the habit of meeting in Hyde Park between the hours of five and six. Lady Isabella would take him up in her phaeton and drive around the park and let him down; a flirtation, conducted beneath the ton’s interested gazes.
Except that it hadn’t been a flirtation; it had been businesslike and friendly.
Until I kissed her.
The question was: Would she stop for him today?
Nicholas strolled along the drive. A light breeze ruffled the dark surface of the Serpentine.
“Reynolds!”
Nicholas turned his head.
Lieutenant Mayhew came up alongside him astride a high-stepping gray. “Joining the Grand Strut, I see.”
Nicholas lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He glanced at Mayhew’s companion and blinked in recognition. “Harry?”
“Sir,” his nephew said.
A phaeton swept briskly past with a clatter of hooves and wheels. Perched on the high seat was a dashing young lady with dark ringlets. The glance of her eyes, the slight smile as she passed them, were full of coquetry.
Mayhew turned his head to watch her. “Very nice!” he said. His attention swung back to Nicholas. “And where’s your fair Venus?”
The words brought back vivid memory of the Worthingtons’ terrace: Lady Isabella standing framed in the French window, golden, goddess-like. “Ah...” Nicholas said. He turned to Harry. “I didn’t see you at the Worthingtons’ last night.”
“I dined with Mayhew,” his nephew said. He sounded like a schoolboy trying not to brag: a little too nonchalant.
Nicholas glanced at the lieutenant. “Taken up with this young rattle?” he asked, forcing humor into his tone.
Mayhew grinned. “Someone has to tell him about your exploits.”
“My exploits?” Nicholas said, slightly taken aback.
Harry edged his horse closer. “You never told me, sir, that during the battle at Badajoz—”
Nicholas stopped listening. Another phaeton was approaching. The lady’s elegant posture, her deft handling of the reins, the black-and-tan mongrel at her feet, the middle-aged groom, were all too familiar.
Lady Isabella brought the phaeton to a halt alongside them. “Mr. Reynolds, Lieutenant Mayhew.” She inclined her head in greeting. “Major Reynolds.” Her eyes met his for a mere instant and then slid away.
Nicholas bowed to her, and wished Mayhew and Harry gone. He listened to Mayhew’s cheerful greeting with impatience, to his extravagant praise of Lady Isabella’s skill with the reins with something approaching irritation.
“Prime horseflesh, ma’am! You’re clearly a capital whip.”
The conversation turned to the kittens, and then to Mayhew’s niece and nephew, before the lieutenant finally bowed in his saddle and took Harry off, with a grinning backwards glance at Nicholas.
Silence fell between them. Nicholas cleared his throat. “Lady Isabella...”
“Would you care to drive with me, Major?” It was a familiar question, one she’d asked each time she had halted for him, but this time her eyes didn’t quite meet his.
“Yes,” he said firmly.
* * *
Major Reynolds took the groom’s place alongside her. Isabella set the horses in motion. She sat stiffly, aware of an awkwardness between them where there had been no awkwardness before.
“I must apologize for my behavior last night,” Major Reynolds said. “It was unforgivable.”
Memory of his fingers sliding up her arm made Isabella shiver. “I was at fault, too.”
“It was I who offered,” the major said. His tone was hard to decipher. Grim, with something underlying it that sounded almost like regret.
Does he wish he hadn’t kissed me?
She glanced at him. He didn’t see. He was frowning, his brow lowered, his mouth tight.
Yes, regret.
Mortification flooded her. I passed a sleepless night wanting more, while he’s been wishing it never happened. She gripped the reins more tightly. “And it was I who accepted.”
“Yes, but—”
“Shall we argue over who is most at fault, Major?” Isabella asked, her voice sharper than she’d intended. “It seems a pointless exercise to me.”
Major Reynolds was silent for a moment. “You were gone,” he said quietly. “When I returned to the ballroom.”
“I generally leave after the fireworks.” Isabella encouraged the horses past a slow barouche with a flick of her whip. “The Worthingtons’ masquerade is one of the events of the Season, but it can become a little... a little beyond what is truly respectable.” Like kisses stolen in a garden. The mortification had risen to heat her cheeks. She kept her gaze on the horses, on the road. Anywhere but him.
“I feared I had offended you,” Major Reynolds said. “I thought, when you were gone...”
Isabella glanced at him again. This time he was looking at her. “You didn’t offend me.”
“No?”
“No.”
Major Reynolds held her gaze for a moment, his hand resting on Rufus’s head, and then nodded. His face relaxed into a smile. “I’m glad.”
Isabella turned her attention back to the horses. She felt rather more cheerful. Not regret at kissing me; regret at offending me.
Memory of his mouth, of his fingers stroking over her skin, brought another shiver and a flush of heat. The major had been right: kissing him was nothing like kissing Roland. How ignorant I have been. “I didn’t realize it could be like that.”
“Neither did I.”
Isabella glanced swiftly at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“It must have been the punch,” Major Reynolds said. A meditative frown creased his brow. “It must have inflamed our senses.”
Isabella stared at him. “You mean... it shouldn’t be like that?”
“Not that good. No.”
She wrenched her attention back to the horses. “So last night was... an aberration?”
“I can think of no other explanation.”
Relief flooded through her. An aberration. The feverish pleasure she had experienced, the sleepless night, the heat, the longing, the disordered thoughts, were due to the punch, not Major Reynolds’ kiss. “And how it was with Roland, that is how it should be.”
“Er . . . what?”
A familiar carriage rounded the bend. “Lady Sefton, with Princess Esterhazy.”
She slowed the horses. Lady Sefton’s barouche, with its matching bays, drew up alongside them. They exchanged bows with Lady Sefton and the round-faced, sharp-tongued Princess Esterhazy.
“Major Reynolds!” Lady Sefton cried, reaching across to give him her hand. “How clever you were last night. Bravo!”
“Thank you, madam.”
They finished the circuit of Hyde Park, nodding and bowing to acquaintances, stopping to converse with friends. Lady Sefton wasn’t the only person to congratulate the major on his ogre’s costume. Last week they laughed at him; now they laud him. Isabella’s upper lip lifted slightly in contempt as she glanced around her. Beneath the pomaded hair and the glowing ringlets, the bright silks and crisp linens, the silver buckles and frothy lace, the members of the beaumonde were sheep. Where one leads, the rest follow.
For a brief second she saw the ton as Major Reynolds must see them: frivolous and shallow, full of pretention and gossip. It was a dizzying, disconcerting moment.
Isabella shook her head, banishing the notion. She drew the phaeton to a halt where her groom waited beside a tree. “My cousin and I are dining with Gussie and Lucas tonight. I understand we may see you there.”
“Gussie’s?” Major Reynolds said. “Yes. I’ll be there.” He leapt lightly down.
The groom scrambled up and took his place. Major Reynolds raised his hand in farewell. A twitch of the reins and the horses moved forward.
Isabella hummed beneath her breath as the phaeton swung out of the park. The clop of hooves and the rattle of wheels on stone were momentarily loud as they passed through the Stanhope Gate. An aberration, because of the punch.
The anxiety that had ridden beneath her breastbone all day was gone. In its place was knife-sharp relief. She’d felt... Isabella pursed her lips, searching for a metaphor as she slowed the horses’ pace. It was as if there was a room inside her head where everything was shelved, where she was shelved, all the parts of herself, each neatly in its own place. And Major Reynolds’ kiss had turned that room upside down. Everything had tumbled off the shelves, and the shelves themselves had become crooked so that nothing fitted and things kept sliding off to fall on the floor again.
Now everything was back in its place. She was whole, she was herself, and she knew that the path she’d chosen for herself was the right one.