A very wicked christmas, p.61
A Very Wicked Christmas, page 61
So she intended dismissing him like an errant schoolboy because she didn’t like the turn of the conversation? He, by contrast, couldn’t be more intrigued. She’d called herself a lady as if once she had been. Digby had assumed she was low-born and clever at aping her betters. It’s what the gossips would have one believe.
But then, perhaps it was all part of the act. The pretended slip designed to place her further up the social scale than she had been before she was, of course, relegated to the demimondaine who couldn’t be received in the public sphere. Digby noted that she seemed unconscious of the scathing looks sent in her direction by some of the ladies who crowded the museum. By contrast, the interested looks many gentlemen sent her way made clear how she stood out among the crowd. Her green and red-striped carriage dress, trimmed with white fox, was tasteful and, of course, the height of fashion yet designed to call attention to her. Some critical ladies who themselves would have been unable to carry off the heavily-plumed bonnet might have called it vulgar. Digby had memories of his own mother who would certainly have deemed it so. And yet, upon Miss Mordaunt’s own sweet head, it appeared flirtatious and fetching.
Her build was slight, but her bosom delightfully proportioned. Digby recalled the way the sheer folds of her evening gown had clung to her thighs the other evening, and was disappointed she wasn’t similarly revealed today. He swallowed past the lump in his throat, and tried to put aside his desire that brought back memories of when he’d been a besotted schoolboy ogling the latest stage offering at Covent Garden.
“I have a similar stone among the collection my father and brother acquired over the past forty years. Perhaps I have told you about it.”
It was a more successful gambit than he’d expected for she swung around, her face animated. She took a step back, and this time she didn’t even glance at Lord Deveril.
“With inscriptions like this? Do you know that this Rosetta Stone shows the same script in three languages? I do not know if that will be sufficient to complete the translation of a certain text in…Lord Deveril’s collection…that intrigues me but another stone with, perhaps, additional scripts could be enough to make sense of the hieroglyphics seen on some of his lordship’s ancient artifacts. Oh, if only I could stay here all day and copy them.” This last was uttered in a tone of longing, almost to herself.
“And what use would that serve, my angel?” Lord Deveril now loomed above her right shoulder, smiling down at Digby. Digby would have preferred it if his smile was chilly, suggesting that he was a threat. And, indeed, Miss Mordaunt hadn’t indicated by more than an initial moment of discomposure that she felt an answering jot of the myriad emotions that assailed Digby each time she came within his orbit.
“I…I think it would be entertaining,” she stuttered, as if she were suddenly embarrassed, or caught out in some misdemeanor, though Digby couldn’t imagine why.
“It would take you a day of ardent study, when you could be entertaining me. No, I could think of much better uses of your time.”
Digby didn’t miss the strange look that crossed her face. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. With just a proud raising of her head, she took the arm Deveril offered her, and they bid him good day. However, barely had they passed out of the room than Digby was aware of some commotion just beyond the doorway. He hurried after them and nearly tripped over Deveril lying on the ground, and a great many people surrounding him with apparently no idea of what to do.
He took charge, purloining the sturdiest of the gentlemen and a rough-looking fellow to help. “Lift him carefully. Miss Mordaunt, can you order his carriage to be brought around. That’s right. We’ll carry him down the stairs. Gently.”
Clearly distressed, Miss Mordaunt obeyed, following the unconscious Deveril out of the building and thanking Digby as they laid him, still insensible, across the seat of his carriage, telling Digby it wasn’t the first time this had happened; that Lord Deveril had been afflicted by such turns since boyhood. They had defied the doctors but they had no lasting consequences. “He will awake with no harm done but it will be less mortifying if he wakes in his own home. He despises such lack of control but it is worse if he has an audience.”
Digby wished he didn’t feel so disappointed by her apparent relief that his lordship would recover shortly. While, of course, he wouldn’t wish him dead, Digby knew he’d be very happy to step up and fill his lordship’s boots.
The postilion was about to close the door upon Deveril and his barque of frailty, as he heard one coarse bystander call her, when Miss Mordaunt put her head out of the window. “Will you come with us?” she suddenly entreated him. “I know it’s an intrusion upon your time, but it would be comforting to have someone strong and commanding on hand when we arrive.”
Ridiculously thrilled by the invitation, Digby climbed into the carriage, only to find himself tongue-tied by the proximity of the angel seated so close beside him in the small, confined space; owing to the fact that Lord Deveril’s large body took up the length of the opposite seat. To his chagrin, it was clear Miss Mordaunt wasn’t similarly beset by the searing awareness he experienced at finding his hand touching her thigh.
She glanced down with a vague look before withdrawing; as if she were too preoccupied to notice properly, yet aware that such straying into her personal space wasn’t acceptable.
“Poor Deveril will be so mortified,” she repeated nervously, biting her lip and glancing up at Digby. “I wonder if I should have asked you to accompany me after all. He may not like it if he wakens now.”
“He must know that I’d have been acting in a most ungentlemanly manner had I simply abandoned you,” Digby was able to respond with self-righteous vigor.
“He may consider that your actions were motivated by something other than interest in his welfare.”
“You surely must know that they were,” he murmured.
Miss Mordaunt blushed a pretty shade and rested her hand on her protector’s cheek, as if to check he was incapable of hearing them. Or to convey to Digby where her loyalties lay. “You must not say that, even in jest, or to pay me a pretty compliment.”
“You must know that you are utterly ravishing and entirely irresistible, Miss Mordaunt. I thought it the moment I clapped eyes on you at Mistress Kate’s. When I thought you were married to that…knave, Mr. Graves—”
She blanched and then fire kindled in the depths of her eyes. “Do not refer to that unfortunate night! How cruel to remind me that it was the last evening I believed myself a respectable…married…woman. The last night I could hold my head up and pretend to the world that I was as good as any other virtuous female. Oh, but I have been brought low. So low! Now I will never again be received in any respectable drawing room by any respectable person—never!”
They’d reached Lord Deveril’s townhouse, and a lackey was opening the carriage door, handing down Miss Mordaunt, and summoning help upon Digby’s instructions. He felt cheated at having lost his opportunity to respond other than with a heartfelt, “You are not lowered in my eyes, Miss Mordaunt.” But it sounded feeble amidst all the haste with exclamations for his lordship’s health. Instead, Digby had to resign himself to overseeing the transportation of his lordship.
In the doorway of Deveril’s bedchamber, he watched the care and concern with which Miss Mordaunt carried out the duties that would have been expected of a devoted wife.
As she came gracefully forward to thank him, and no doubt dismiss him, Digby couldn’t help himself. He wished he could grip her hands and ask the question with the fervor that did justice to his wildly beating heart. Instead, he inquired coolly, “Do you think the future Lady Deveril will permit such tender care of her husband?”
“If you’re referring to a certain young lady whom the gossip sheets predict will soon become Lady Deveril, and that as a result I fear for my security, be reassured I don’t,” she said in clipped tones. “Haven’t you heard him say it? I am his prized possession.” There was grim humor in her words, but she didn’t allow him to respond, nodding briefly before closing the door upon him and the busy domestic scene of making Lord Deveril comfortable upon the massive four-poster with its hanging drapery of woven hunting scenes.
The bed upon which he no doubt enjoyed great sport with Miss Mordaunt when he wasn’t visiting her at the cosy bower he leased for her, not far away.
~ * ~
Jemima tried to contain her restlessness in front of Deveril, who was reading The Times in his armchair by the fire while she worked at her needlework; her mind occupied yet again by the events at the British Museum the previous week. Not Deveril’s collapse. He’d collapsed without warning three times during their five months together. After an hour or so, he’d regain consciousness with no sign that he was adversely affected.
No, it was the hieroglyphics that obsessed her, and feverishly she wondered how she might obtain a copy of every engraved symbol of the three texts on the Rosetta Stone. But her lover was possessive. He didn’t like her away from his side for too long.
She dropped her needlework as she rose and went to the window. Was it a fantasy to imagine she’d somehow find her way back to Lord Griffith’s Blue Room and take possession of the stone tablet, then use it to ultimately secure her own future?
“After I’m married, I will be sending my wife to the country,” Deveril had reassured her yet again, holding her in his arms the night before. “Don’t imagine my marriage changes anything between us.”
Lord Ruthcot’s words had been prophetic. Within three days, news of Deveril’s impending nuptials were splashed over all the gossip sheets and newspapers and a topic of conversation upon everyone’s tongue, it appeared.
Jemima had stared at the ceiling, thinking that a little less physical attention from Deveril would be a nice change, yet she worried about her future.
Now, as she stared through the window and into the sunny piece of garden she could see beneath the plane tree, whose boughs seemed to reach out to her, she spoke honestly. “You’re taking a wife who will have the security I dream of as your mistress who can be discarded on a whim. Would you have married me had I been Mr. Graves’s legal wife, perhaps a widow?” The tree branch brushed against the window, and she fancied that if she were a wood sprite she could nimbly hop from the sill, scamper down the branches, and disappear into the undergrowth below. She fingered the small gold cross at her throat. In its place tonight would be a diamond choker. Deveril would want everyone to marvel at his wealth and generosity when she took her seat beside him in his box at the theater.
“My love, you mustn’t speak so.” Deveril, looking every inch the sartorially elegant creature he was at such pains to present to the world, rose from his chair and came around to stand behind her. He turned her in his embrace, tilting her head with a finger beneath her chin as he affected a fond, chiding tone. “Now you are sulking, Jemima.” His warm brown eyes seemed to drink her in. She knew the power she had over him. As long as he remained in love with her. “It’s not like you, and nor do you have reason to doubt your security. Am I not generous enough with your wardrobe and your jewels? Why, the necklace you’ll wear tonight is worth a king’s ransom. I’ll give my wife paste, but you will wear the real thing. Are you not happy?”
As Jemima was in no position to leave him, she nodded. He was good to her as Roderick hadn’t been. Generous, affectionate, and attentive. In her way, she was as fond of him as she would have been had she been bound to him by way of the arranged marriages that were so common a generation before. “I am happy, but I would be more so with respectability.”
“Highly overrated!” He kissed the tip of her nose and tried to make a joke of it before becoming serious. “And so you will only be satisfied if I made you my wife?” He raised one ironic eyebrow. “You and I have a great deal more fun than we would if we were married. There, let that be your consolation and the fact that you have bewitched me.”
It was no consolation to feel that her soul was blackened by sin. She fully expected she would go to Hell and spend eternity writhing in the fiery furnace. Sometimes she cried herself to sleep thinking of her loving father, her dear aunt and cousin; how it would destroy them if they could see her now.
Deveril kissed the top of her head, and said in brisk tones, “Come, my love; it’s time for you to dress for the theater.”
In a gown of gold tissue, Jemima drew admiring whispers from the other demimondaines, and covetous glances from their escorts as Deveril drew aside the red velvet curtain of his box and settled her upon a seat. Even after so many months of feeling like a prize racehorse on show, she felt nervous. It was rare she was seen in the public arena, for she was naturally not invited into the homes of the respectable, and to the entertainments where she might rub shoulders with real ladies. Any possibility of being recognized was always traumatic. She feared seeing a member of her family. What if her niece should recognize her? On these evenings, she applied paint more liberally than she might otherwise have done, and was assiduous in covering half her face with her fan as she retired as far behind the curtains as she could.
Hamlet was the serious component of the evening, followed by a more frivolous pantomime which was light relief to Jemima, who’d been feeling anything but easy in her mind lately. The months had ticked by, and she was no closer to regaining what she’d lost. Not that it was within her power to regain her lost virtue; however, the lost tablet was another matter. If she could interpret the final letters of the script, she would have options. If wouldn’t matter if Deveril tired of her. She’d journey to find the treasure, and then she could retire into obscurity.
Occasionally, she’d contemplated telling Deveril of the stone tablet. The prospect of such a rare object and the rich rewards it pointed to might have persuaded him to marry her. Now, he was marrying the Honorable Miss Elizabeth Davenport. She came from a good family, her blood was blue, and her virtue intact.
She was sweet, if unformed, and not a great beauty, though with one slightly crooked front tooth, a pert little nose and dimples, Jemima thought her pleasant looking and under different circumstances thought they might have become friends. Her thoughts were idling in this direction when her eyes alighted on a familiar face in the audience, and she gasped.
“My dear, are you all right?”
Jemima tried to water down her shock and pretend she’d seen a mouse, when, in fact, it was her lovely cousin’s daughter she spied among the audience.
How grown up young Lucy looked. And how beautiful. Jemima knew she was likely to be at a multitude of balls and assemblies that she herself couldn’t attend, but she hadn’t thought of the theater.
As she quickly looked away, her eye was caught by that of another interested admirer. One who clearly knew Deveril’s box, which was perhaps the reason he trained his gaze upon her now.
When would Lord Ruthcot give up hope there might be anything between them? It would never come to pass, but the irritation was that she found herself not insensible to his presence. The mild surge of pleasure she had experienced when seeing him at the British Museum, had resulted in her rashly asking him to accompany her back to Lord Deveril’s home. Of course, he’d then insulted her; she mustn’t forget that. But only by revealing he thought just as Deveril did—she was good for dalliance. Beyond the realms of marriageability, as if that went without saying.
Well, arrogance and attraction aside, Jemima could and would give him no reason to hope. With a cool nod in Lord Ruthcot’s direction, she held up her fan and thereafter refused to look in his direction again. In fact, she made an even greater pretence of finding Deveril incredibly amusing company, so that when the actors came on stage for their bows, he put his hand on her thigh, gave it a squeeze, and told her she was utterly irresistible and that instead of the after-theater supper he’d promised her, he intended taking her directly to bed.
Hiding her resignation, Jemima smiled but said nothing. A body. A beautiful shell. That’s what she’d been reduced to.
She was shocked out of these reflections by a gathering of gentlemen who clustered at the curtained alcove, and loudly evinced their desire to pay their respects to Lord Deveril and their compliments to her. The greatest shock, however, came when Lord Ruthcot appeared among them, and taking advantage of the one moment Deveril didn’t have her in his sights, whispered that he had something for her.
She shook her head reprovingly and darted a warning look in Deveril’s direction. “I can’t accept tokens from other admirers, though I do thank you.” Foolish young man, she thought, growing fearful. It would not augur well if Deveril got wind of Lord Ruthcot’s especial interest. And Jemima must curb any tendencies toward romanticizing the situation when Lord Ruthcot’s interest in her was the same as Deveril’s—a pretty face and a body to lose himself in.
“I think it won’t displease his lordship, especially.” His breath was like a sweet caress upon her cheek as he lowered his head. “I’ve merely done a rubbing of the Rosetta Stone, rather than copy it and risk mistakes when I know nothing of hieroglyphics.”
Nothing on earth could have pleased her more, except for the return of her stone tablet.
Clapping her hand to her mouth to cover her excited squeal, she was relieved to see Deveril was still too occupied with the cluster of other gentlemen, before exhaling in gratitude, “Oh, what a wonderful surprise.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have it here with me.” Smiling, he shook his head when she held out her hand. “You see, I’m not so lacking in strategy, for how else will I get you to meet me, alone?”
Her pleasure turned to anger. Refusing to look at him, she instead gazed over the top of her fan at the multitude below. “Do not expect gratitude beyond my thanks. Verbal thanks,” she amended quickly. “How foolish of me to imagine anything comes without cost.”
