Sinful in Satin (20 page)

She glanced down the street. His carriage waited fifty feet away.

“Too much a coincidence, Anthony. I think that you have had someone follow me today, and perhaps other days. I will not tolerate that.”

“I would never be so rude. I merely called on Mappleton, and learned that he expected you today.” He smiled the smile that she had once considered warm. “I thought to call on you again at Wells Street, but after the interference the last time—I do need to talk to you, Celia. I also want to show you something.”

“It looks to rain, Anthony. I really must return to—”

“I want to show you the little contract your mother signed with me. I have not given it to Mappleton, or pressed for repayment yet. I thought you and I should talk about it first.”

She had been enjoying her day, but now he had ruined it. She wanted to walk away, but if he spoke the truth, she dared not.

He swung his arm toward his carriage, by way of invitation.

“I have my own, thank you. I would prefer to follow you, so retrieving it does not inconvenience either of us.”

“As you wish. I will tell the coachman to proceed slowly, so you do not get lost.”

 

 

T
he coach stopped on a street of tall houses just north of Grosvenor Square. Celia pulled up her carriage behind it. One of Anthony’s footmen hopped down and came to take her reins.

“Do you live here now?” she asked Anthony, angling her head so she could gaze up the pale façades.

He half smiled and half nodded, and escorted her to a door. He used a key to enter, which she thought odd.

She understood as soon as the door swung open. The house was empty. Its high-ceilinged chambers echoed with their footsteps.

“It is a fine house, in the best neighborhood. Your wife will find it very suitable,” she said.

“She does not care for town much.”

“Then you will find it suitable.”

“I hope to.”

She strolled through the library, then on to a chamber that would make a good morning room. It was not a huge house, but large enough for entertaining. One would not host balls in it, but dinner parties would work well, or more intimate gatherings. Its arrangement of chambers reminded her of Mama’s house on Oxford Street. It even had a chamber near the drawing room that would serve for a music room.

She felt Anthony watching her reactions. She paused by windows with good prospects of a nice garden.

“Have you purchased it?” she asked.

“It is my intention to.”

“Please do not on my account, if that is your thinking.”

He did not respond. He did not move. She dared not look at him. The atmosphere in the chamber stilled in the worst way, as if the whole house held its breath.

“Are you expecting me to pursue you, Celia? I remind you that I have already done so.”

She turned to face him. “I expect nothing from you. I want nothing from you. I explained that.”

“This house will be in your name, Celia. I will be settling a good deal of money on you as well.”

Her gaze drifted to the ceilings and walls. She wished the proposition held no allure, but it was a very fine house, worth a good deal, and she was a very practical woman.
Property, jewels, and money, Celia. Always demand things that last.

“Why, Anthony? You could set up a mistress in style for much less. There are many women who would be happy to play the role, I am sure.”

He advanced on her in that intense way he had. She stiffened and stepped back. He must have seen her caution, and it checked him. He stopped ten feet away and looked at her face as if he had to memorize every inch.

“You were my first great passion, Celia, and still my only one. I have imagined our first night together for years, and time did not quench that desire. Rather the opposite. I said we would be together forever, and that is still my hope and intention—to be your first lover, and your only lover.”

Pretty words again. She heard each one, and many more not spoken that were much less loving. “And if you are not my first lover?”

He reacted as she guessed he would. His expression flexed in a vain attempt to hide his anger. It mattered to him a great deal, that
first and only
part.

Mama had told her about men like that. In fact, Mama had counted on their competing to have the daughter of Alessandra Northrope. Only now this one had become rather fanatical about her virginity. That might not bode well for either his affection or his treatment of her after that first night.

“Are you saying that there has been another?” His voice sounded more dangerous than mere anger could explain. “I asked at your house, and you avoided the question.”

“As I intend to avoid it now. Does it truly matter, Anthony? You spoke of love when you called on me. If I am your only great passion, surely this is a little thing.”

His lips folded in on each other. “I have a right to know.”

“No, you do not, because I am not swayed by this house or the settlement.” She should have said that right away, of course. Only it was a good house, and considering his zealous ardor, she could have arranged a very handsome settlement before she accepted him. One had to give such things at least a little thought before rejecting them. She had even promised Mama that she would.

He did not see it her way. Face flushing from insult and anger, he reached in his coat and withdrew a folded vellum page. He snapped it open with a sharp flick of his wrist, and handed it to her.

“You are not responsible for it, of course. Your mother was, however, which affects her estate.”

She took the page and read the scribner’s elaborate penmanship. She sickened at the words, and silently cursed Mama’s carelessness.

It was not a bill of sale. Anthony had been too clever for that. Instead it took the form of a loan to Alessandra, for eight hundred pounds to be repaid in coin or in kind. Celia’s favors no doubt would be the “in kind.”

“It appears you are not above coercing me to get your way, Anthony.”

“It has nothing to do with you. I will go to Mappleton and settle it with the estate.”

She imagined telling Marian and Bella that the house was lost. Marian would survive, and return to the lanes she knew so well, and perhaps to her whoring. And Bella—they could both go to Daphne, she supposed. Two homeless, helpless women looking for sanctuary among The Rarest Blooms.

She had been happy there, and probably could be again. She should tell Anthony to do his worst. She should tell him to go to Mappleton, and then to go to hell.

She looked at the vellum, then at the fine moldings on the chamber’s ceiling. She pictured the years passing in Daphne’s home, while other women came and went but she stayed there, suspended like an insect caught in amber.

“I need to think about this, Anthony. Give me a week to do so, please.”

J
onathan turned the last page of the journal he read. As soon as he did, the shadows closed in again.

He did not doubt that Castleford would find a way to put him and Thornridge together. Uncle Edward would be furious, but it was time to settle that matter one way or another.

The expectation of that meeting kept conjuring up memories of the last time he had seen the earl. He had been hungry and tired and chilled to the bone by the time his cousin had agreed to see his mother.

In a library of massive size, Thornridge had listened to his mother’s demands and threats, looking much older than his twenty-one years with his hard expression and cold, dark eyes.

Jonathan set aside the journal and walked to the window. Most of that meeting was a blur now. A few other things remained vivid, however. He remembered all the books in that library, their bindings like so many jewels, row upon row. He recalled the earl agreeing to provide the education his predecessor had promised. And he remembered some of those threats his mother made, which had made no sense until he thought about them years later.

So now he would force his way into another audience with his cousin. He had not decided yet if he would issue his own threats this time.

Weighing that choice occupied him as he stood in the light of the window. It distracted him enough that he barely noted the movement in the garden until Celia was almost at the house. Once he did, all thoughts about the pending meeting with Thornridge flew from his head.

He could not see her without wanting her. Even now, from this distance, memories of her joyous passion made him hard. He was not accustomed to the incomplete sensuality they had shared, and she was driving him mad.

She appeared to be thinking as hard as he had been, and about something just as difficult to decide. He doubted she noticed any of her surroundings as she walked slowly, almost stiffly, down the path toward him.

She stopped, and removed her bonnet as if its bow constricted her. She raised her head and looked at the house, inspecting it with a sad expression.

Then her gaze drifted down. A profound distraction claimed her. She did not move. She just stood there, and, instead of the light finding her, it seemed that the garden’s shadows did.

He watched, waiting for her to reclaim herself, looking for the joy of living that transformed her face even when she did not smile. Instead she remained immobile, looking more like her mother than she had ever looked before.

T
he house and garden appeared strange to her. Foreign. The sense of home that she had experienced in it had disappeared.

She did not belong here. The decision to make this her residence and join Daphne in trade had been an act of confusion, not clarity.

She was not like Daphne Joyes or Audrianna. They did not share the same history or upbringing with her. Daphne’s elegant frugality had been learned over half a lifetime. Her good birth and breeding elevated even a penurious existence to something genteel.

The daughter of Alessandra Northrope had been raised for other things, and with different expectations and values. Her gaze took in the house’s proportions. She thought of the slightly worn upholstery. For a year or so all of this might satisfy her. The excitement of independence would sustain her for a while.

She had been schooled for a different kind of life in other ways besides material things, and their promise had always proven to be stronger lures. Even infamy was a kind of fame. The last five years she had experienced a virtuous nonexistence in obscurity. She had tolerated it because it was temporary.

Now, as she looked at the house, she wondered if she might not be better off fulfilling Mama’s plan and accepting Anthony as her first protector. She imagined herself ten years hence, moving plants around inside this house while she wondered if Mr. Albrighton might return to London this year.

It had been an easy promise to give a dying mother. She thought that she had fulfilled the pledge too. Only now, with the gain and loss so clearly defined for her, she realized she had not.

“You appear lost, Miss Pennifold.”

She startled and turned. Jonathan stood not far from her. She had not even heard him approach.

“Perhaps I am,” she said. “The bishops would say my thoughts might lead to the worst kind of lost, even if I believe they would be wrong.”

“Are you wishing that you believed they were right?”

“It would perhaps make my choices easier.” She had to smile as she admitted that. If she could believe that Anthony represented damnation of her soul, she might not be debating her path.

The warmth in his eyes beckoned her to confide. She felt the words swelling inside her. He did not really have a friendly face. She would even describe it as harsh, in a sharp way that had not been softened by the effects of too many society feasts the way it was with many men his age. A handsome face, to her at least, but perhaps too seasoned by life for a man who could not be much older than thirty.

Those eyes, however, changed his general countenance. She saw friendship in them, and the promise of discretion, and true interest, as if her next utterance would be all that he heard in the world.

“I am thinking about my legacy, as I promised my mother I would. It is past time to do so. Before I go too far down one path, I should give fair judgment to them all.”

A few shadows gathered around the edges of those eyes. “I hope that my inexcusable behavior is not the cause of this.”

“Hardly inexcusable. We both know that I gave you the best excuse. I promise that you have not led me astray. However, your words the day Anthony came here do cause me some confusion.”

“Which words?”

“
Sometimes it just is
, you said. You revealed a man’s view, I think. A man’s preference. My mother’s patrons probably just wanted it to be, many of them. Others, of course, wanted to play out a great love affair on the world stage. But she would never let it just be. She insisted there be a story that required all those expensive gifts. Without a story of some kind, a woman gains nothing.”