Chapter Four
“I RUINED AN INNOCENT TONIGHT,” ALEXANDER ANNOUNCED, settling in the sitting room of his mistress’s town house, a glass of brandy in hand.
He hadn’t known precisely where he intended to go until the direction to his driver was leaving his mouth.
Tonight wasn’t their usual weekly appointment, but things were rather dire.
Giuliana thought about this a moment, before answering, “That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I do have quite the reputation as a debauchee.”
“Yet not as a despoiler of virgins.”
“I didn’t despoil her.”
“If you would prefer me to spend the next hour teasing this tale out of you, I’m more than happy to do so. You pay me handsomely enough to be perfectly amenable to any sort of evening you wish. However, if you’d rather forget the topic and get to fucking, I’m equally acquiescent.”
“Yes, yes, let’s,” Alexander said, although he didn’t move from the armchair.
Knowing better than to try to converse with a distracted Alexander, Giuliana stood from her own chair, crossed the room, and took the brandy out of his hand, setting it on the side table.
She leaned in close, loosened his cravat, and pushed off his chair to stand before him.
Then she began leisurely unbuttoning her dress.
Alexander’s eyes skittered by habit to her hands, but he found himself unable to focus.
“We were simply together in a library. It was the oddest thing … on her wrist she had written …”
Giuliana shrugged the dress off her shoulders, exposing inches of flawless skin. Skin designed to tantalize the most stoic of men. Alexander had pressed many a kiss to the very décolletage now on display.
“What had she written?” Giuliana asked, smirking just enough to entice him. Then she let her gown fall to the floor with a simple whoosh.
“Quim,” Alexander answered, rather dazed. Giuliana was no longer in focus for him. “Monosyllable.”
As his mistress, she’d heard him say much filthier things over the past two years, but never outside the context of sex.
And despite her best efforts, they were not on the path to having sex.
Giuliana grabbed his brandy glass off the side table, took a sip, and then crossed the room to sit in a chair of her own, understanding that, unprecedentedly, Alexander wanted to talk first.
“She didn’t know what the words meant.”
“I suppose you offered to show her?” His eyes, which had been absently watching his discarded cravat weave through his hands, snapped up to her.
“I did nothing of the sort.”
“Not your usual course with women.”
“With unmarried women it is.”
“Interesting. I don’t recall ever marrying, and you swived me quite senseless just the day before yesterday.”
For the second time that evening, Alexander found himself in the presence of a woman who made him want to growl, who made his head hurt and the bridge of his nose beg for a pinch. He groaned instead, imploring her with his eyes to take this situation seriously.
“She is a lady, then?”
At Alexander’s nod, Giuliana finished off his brandy and stood to refill the glass. On her way back, she stopped to sit on the arm of his chair.
“Are you going to marry her?” she asked, handing him back his drink.
“I can’t.”
“Oh dear, I’m afraid I’m going to hear quite a silly belief a man has about himself. I do so adore when this happens!”
“I’m a bastard,” he answered, draining the glass.
“I’m plenty aware, my lord.” Giuliana took back the glass and went to refill it once more at the sideboard. “You always fuck like you have something to prove.”
Alexander groaned again. It was quite clear that she wasn’t taking this crisis seriously at all. She probably believed there was a simple solution.
“You know, there is a simple solution.”
“Women always think that.”
“Men would be much more attractive if they didn’t view my sex as a monolith, but I suppose that might be too much to ask.”
“What’s the simple solution, then?”
“Break whatever silly little promise you made to yourself about marriage—all men of your status have lofty, self-important ideas about evading the parson’s mousetrap—and marry the girl.”
Alexander leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. His voice was barely audible when he said, “I didn’t make the promise to myself. I made it to my brother.”
Across town, Harriet sat in a similar fashion, although she’d brought a pillow to her face to muffle a scream. On the opposite sofa, Philippa waited patiently for her sister’s episode to finish. All things considered, shouting into a divan cushion seemed like a reasonable reaction.
“Well said,” she commented, attempting to draw Harriet out. “Now, are you ready to make a plan?”
Harriet tossed the pillow aside and tried to shuffle herself up into a more polite posture. The ball gown—which she felt bore some responsibility for the evening’s events—limited her range of motion. “No!”
“All right then, let’s to bed. Tomorrow we can put a notice in the paper that you two are to be engaged. Force his hand.”
“He won’t be forced! The man is far too high in the instep and roguish for that! He’ll simply ignore the announcement and then I’ll be even more than a pariah! I’ll be pathetic!”
“You’re being horribly disagreeable, which is usually my thing, or really Frances’s.”
“Yes, well, I don’t usually end up engaged to an ill-favored rake.”
“I don’t think anyone could claim the man is ill-favored. And you two aren’t engaged.”
Harriet picked up the pillow once more and let out a long, low groan.
“Yes, that does seem rather concerning. We can discuss it at length tomorrow morning. For now, I think it best that you either get some rest, or—” Philippa already knew that this suggestion would be rejected out of hand, which is why she headed to the sideboard to pour herself a glass of sherry.
“Rest?!” Harriet sat fully up, which took quite a lot of work—blast the dress! “Philippa, this won’t be solved in the morning. If anything, the problem will have gotten worse!”
“Indeed. Then back to my earlier suggestion: Shall we make a plan?”
“I don’t see a way at this. I have nothing to entice Lord Alexander. I’m a passed-over wallflower with no dowry and a family on the edge of scandal—don’t argue!” Harriet warned as Philippa opened her mouth to speak. “It’s not just Father, you know! Your little … assignations … draw attention!”
“I wasn’t going to disagree with that part,” Philippa said, rather solemnly. “Only, it’s not true that you have nothing to offer.”
“Please, let us forgo the homily on how lovely you find me. I’m not sure Lord Alexander will be persuaded into marriage with the promise of giggling over needlework or creative accounting to hide Father’s debts.”
“I wasn’t going to do that either. Will you listen for once, instead of guessing what everyone else is going to say?”
Harriet closed her mouth.
“There is a reason Lord Alexander wanted to meet with me in the library tonight.”
“I’m well aware of the reasons,” Harriet said, gesturing with her hand up and down the entirety of Philippa’s being.
Philippa shot her a look and continued. “He’s after Hardwicke.”
“Is that a euphemism for something only married women know about?”
“Harriet!”
“No, then?”
“Hardwicke is part of the land Reginald left me when he died, up north, near Applethwaite.”
“Why does Lord Alexander want that?”
“It abuts his property, or a property he’s trying to purchase, or something. My steward explained it in a long, boring letter that kept me quite warm when I threw it on the fire. Either way, Lord Alexander has been a beast about the whole thing apparently. Dying to buy from me.”
“And you won’t sell?”
“I don’t care one whit about the land, frankly. However, I can’t sell anything entailed or otherwise until Reginald’s infernal long-lost cousin arrives to claim the barony. I’m not to touch a teaspoon until we get the estate settled.”
“I don’t see how this helps me if you can’t sell the land.”
“He doesn’t know that, does he? For all Lord Alexander knows, I’m holding on to Hardwicke for good reason. And maybe I will. I do wonder why he wants the land so desperately, but we needn’t bother finding that out now. All you must convey to him is that, if he doesn’t marry you, I won’t ever sell.”
Harriet mulled this over for a moment, heart sinking. “I didn’t imagine I’d have to threaten a man into an engagement.”
“How else do you think marriage comes about?” Philippa stood then and walked over to refill her glass with sherry. Becoming a widow had erased any desire she previously had, small though it was, to conform to decorum.
“Fondness, courtship … love …?” Harriet murmured.
Philippa returned to the settee and frowned. “Unfortunately, I don’t think Lord Alexander will offer much of those. Fondness, perhaps. He’s said to be quite enthusiastic in”—Philippa paused for a moment—“his interactions with women.”
“I’ve read as much, and I’m well aware that I am not the sort to entice him.”
Philippa’s mouth tugged into a frown, as it did whenever Harriet trended toward self-deprecation. “For all his reputation as a rake, he seems to be rather generous with women. He’s had a mistress for a while who is said to live quite well in St. John’s Wood.”
“Splendid! Shall I head over there now and get some lessons in how he likes to be swived?” Harriet felt frenzied.
Philippa choked on her sherry.
“Harriet! I didn’t even know you knew the word!”
“I’ll admit, I’ve never used it before. I heard one of the Thompson boys say it a few months back and I’ve been anxious to employ it.” Harriet chewed on her lip then, thinking.
“I understand he’s not your first choice—”
“He’s not my 4,485th choice,” Harriet interjected, which Philippa ignored.
“Nevertheless, you must marry him.”
“I agree.” There was no other option; she had to put sentimentality aside. “The question is how.”
“Blackmail, seduction, putting his name in the paper. Hell! Knowing your skill, you might be able to talk the man into it! I haven’t won an argument with you since you were six years old. No one has.”
“You suggest I knock on his door, hand my card to his butler, and hope he’s accepting callers?”
“Well, I don’t think he’ll be coming to you any time soon. And with Father out of town until Lord knows when, it’s not as if anyone else is going to track the man down and force him to the altar.”
Harriet got rather silent then. Philippa was so disturbed by her lack of talking that she went around the rarely used sitting room straightening any little knickknack she could find and dusting off a chair no one had sat in since the 1700s, which had surely been dusted the day before by one of her maids. Finally, Harriet spoke up again.
“Let’s head to bed. Ideas had after midnight aren’t to be trusted.”
“Oh see, those are the only ones I listen to.”
“I know,” Harriet said, with a weary smile. She let Philippa lead her up to one of the many guest rooms kept at the ready. At the threshold, Philippa pulled her into an embrace and kissed the top of her head.
“It will sort itself out, Harriet. I promise.”
Harriet nodded, afraid that if she opened her mouth, she’d tell Philippa precisely what she planned to do.