Scandal on Half Moon Street Page 4

  That sounded all very well and good, but he’d noticed in the past that Alicia wasn’t the world’s most observant confidante; she tended to see what she wanted to see, not what actually happened. While he didn’t expect any deliberate betrayal from Anne, he needed to observe her for himself to ascertain how well she was holding up to the assault. “You and Anne require an outing to the Pantheon Bazaar, you know. To the conservatory. Tomorrow, after lunch.”

  Her face cleared in a moment and her sudden gleam lit the dim corner. What was it girls enjoyed about shopping? “Oh, indeed, such an excursion is shockingly overdue. You’ve thought of a plan, then.”

  No question in her voice, merely confidence and pleasure in spending her pin money. If he had a penny for every time he’d seen her carrying a new hat box… “Sorry, not a glimmer. But I yearn to see her.”

  And in the conservatory he could hold her, as well, hidden away within the tropical lushness in a private nook. His pulse quickened.

  Alicia made a moue and gathered her reticule. “Well, something will come to you, I’m sure. And I must be off before our tête-à-tête is noticed. Adieu, Frederick.”

  If word ever leaked back to Lady Wotton that he and Anne communicated through Alicia and Gregory, the footman, their clandestine waiting game would be over. Better if her matronly, peaceful complaisance remained intact. “My love to Anne and my usual gratitude to you.”

  With her cheerfulness gone, the corner seemed to dim further around him. Two biscuits left on his saucer, and Frederick snapped one in half. Crumbs sprayed outward in a tiny explosion; perhaps the dryness wasn’t all due to his imagination and temper. He nibbled off an edge and tested it, ginger and molasses melting across his palate. Not dry, just crisper than he preferred. Might as well finish them, and he popped the nibbled half into his mouth.

  Lady Wotton’s intention of marrying her youngest daughter high had never been more obvious, but Cumberland’s motivation, while untrustworthy, remained less clear. Considering Anne’s breeding and delicate beauty, a slender chance of serious interest on his part was just possible.

  No matter that it was more difficult to swallow than the biscuit.

  Neither Cumberland nor Lady Wotton would succeed; he wouldn’t allow it. But he’d feel more confident in the outcome if he could come up with some means of forcing Cumberland to retreat. It wasn’t a question of Anne’s fidelity, but of her mother’s persuasiveness and influence.

  And no use returning to the office. Two more solid evenings of work in his Bell Savage cupboard, tightening and intensifying the otherwise finished story, and he could call it complete and hand it off to the printer. Over the last two days, he’d learned enough regarding jealousy to portray the emotion in a wholly accurate and believable manner, and until he could take the fight to his enemy, pouring out his heart onto his rapidly dwindling supply of foolscap seemed his most productive option.

  Chapter Five

  Friday, December 11, 1812

  Warm, humid air folded around Anne as she entered the conservatory, leaving the Pantheon’s Oxford Street vestibule behind. Ahead, the fountain spouted water both high and low, adding a background music of rippling and splashing to the liquid atmosphere, intensified by the cool winter sunlight pouring through the glass-paned cathedral ceiling. On both sides, tropical plants in pots were arranged to form living walls as motionless as the iron girders and glass panes behind them, with nooks and crannies twisting about like a maze. One small boy dipped his hand in the fountain’s pool, his inattentive nurse knitting on the bench and all but hidden behind the tropical plants. The conservatory was otherwise silent and deserted, the Pantheon’s other patrons attracted more to the merchants’ booths and tables in what had once been the main ballroom.

  Anne shivered, anticipation rising beyond her control. Frederick always picked the most perfect times. And after the awful strain of the last three days, the quiet soothed her overwrought nerves.

  Soon. Her nightmare would soon be over. Frederick would find a way.

  Gregory stopped at the door, folding his tan-gloved hands and slanting so he could watch the vestibule and corridor as well as the conservatory itself. “Be here if you need me, miss.”

  “Thanks, Gregory.” They’d grown up together, and even the difference in their status hadn’t been able to prevent a friendship between them. The time Mama had caught them romping in the windrows! Thankfully, their relationship and his employment had survived the resulting fracas and he remained willing to cover for her now.

  Ivy trailed up the girders overhead and airy ferns waved down from window boxes, embedded within the crown molding between the ceiling’s base and the soaring wall’s uppermost reach. Enormous pots held orange and tangerine trees, ripening fruit still embedded among the leaves and scenting the humid air, and brilliant hibiscus blooms splashed the greenery with scarlet and yellow and pink, some streaked bright and pale. A yellow bird-of-paradise flower balanced high above its olive sword-like leaves, and on its perch in the corner, the tame macaw slept with its head beneath one folded dusky-blue wing.

  And behind the spreading schefflera—

  Frederick opened his arms and she stepped into his embrace, closing her eyes and lifting her face. Before she completed the motion, his lips found hers. Heat surged through her seething delight, more fiery than the intrigue she’d felt during the concert and far, far more immediate. Her knees turned traitor, her hands roved his shaking torso, then she could bear it no longer and opened her mouth. Soft and hard, giving and demanding, possessive and yet without price or ownership; Frederick’s kiss, his hand on her spine and rising, inch by torturous inch, toward her waiting, shivering neck, all conspired to turn her inside out and open her to his least little whim.

  Delicious, naughty thought, that. But until they were one, he’d never ask.

  Then his touch reached her bare skin. She shuddered and her head fell back, unable to support herself without the crush of his arm about her waist. His palm seared her neck, fingers slipping into her upswept hair and gently tugging. He pressed her closer, their bodies melted together and hotter than any sun in the tropics. A kiss beside her ear, another in the angle of her jaw, the next lower, lower still, curving along her pelisse’s neckline with his face buried in the creamy fur and reaching beneath for more.

  “I could never live without you.” His whisper sounded hoarse, ragged, chest panting against hers as if he’d run for miles.

  “Nor I you.” Hers sounded no more composed, and the blaze across her soul threatened to explode again. She shivered and said what he needed to know. “And it doesn’t matter what they say or do. You will always be the only man for me.”

  His grip around her waist, which had started to loosen, tightened again, and he buried his face in her hair. They’d made their vow when she’d been seventeen, when Mama’s growing antipathy had forced Frederick’s move back to London. Anne would wait for his undoubted career success, for him to be able to afford a wife; Frederick would marry only her, once she turned one-and-twenty and Mama’s strictures no longer bound her.

  And he needed to know she would hold him to that vow.

  “I love you, Anne.” His touch slid down her spine, tightening her pelisse around her neck, hesitated at her waist, then stroked higher again. “Is it truly awful?”

  She ached to stay tangled in his embrace, his kisses, his love. But they did need to discuss this and she eased back, resting her hands on his chest. His brown spaniel’s eyes darkened beyond their usual soulfulness into anguish and fire, and through his clothing and topcoat, his heart thumped, hard and fast.

  “Mama blusters.”

  He glanced aside, not quite rolling his eyes. All right, that was hardly news.

  “And His Grace is very handsome, decidedly so.” She stumbled over the words. But her relationship with Frederick had always been open and blatantly honest, and she would not conceal the facts from him now.

  Even though he looked as if she’d ripped a knife through
his heart and twisted it.

  She hauled in a deep breath. “To that I must admit. Also, his manners are charming, his wit sparkles, and his conversation engages one’s attention with ease. There’s a quality to his person that speaks to just that, his quality, and he has a way of speaking, to a lady at least, that casts her as the center of the world.”

  Frederick drooped, rather like an aeronaut’s balloon with the valve released. Beneath her hands, his heartbeat ran ragged and his breathing slowed, deepened.

  “And none of it matters, not a whit. I love you, Frederick Shaw, barrister and solicitor, Anonymous Gentleman of the Inner Temple.”

  His pulse seemed to pause, as if the world stood still for him, as well. He fixed her with a brown stare, flecked with possessive pride.

  “I’ve promised you: you’re the only man I’ll ever marry. To that promise, I hold true.” She stroked his cheek; he reached up and pressed her palm to his lips. “And I hold you, as well. Promise me, Frederick.”

  “Forgive my weakness.” He touched his forehead to hers, and her bonnet’s brim sent his hat sliding back until it tumbled across his shoulder and down.

  Freeing his hair for her hands.

  “Not weakness,” she said, “silliness.”

  He snickered and she couldn’t help it, she laughed, and the too-loud sound bounced from the glass as if the conservatory itself joined in. Tenderness softened his smile, lit his eyes, and he crushed her close, held her, his hand again sliding into her hair, and he kissed her as if he’d never stop. Nothing mattered except his lips on hers, the sensuous awareness of her skin beneath his touch, the shivers that seemed determined to tremble her knees right out from under her.

  It wasn’t all she wanted. But for now, it would have to be enough.

  Finally he eased back.

  But she couldn’t yet steady her voice. “Does it help if I describe him as too beau-idéal for everyday use?”

  “You always knock my hat off.”

  “Your hat is no match for my bonnet.” She could snuggle in his arms and listen to him laugh forever. “So, the story?”

  His face lit again, straight planes polished by winter sunlight. “Yes, the story. I must admit, your beau has been good for my writerly production. One more evening’s work tonight, and it should go to the printer tomorrow morning.”

  “I cannot wait to read it. Your Gothics are always the best.”

  “I’ll have the first copy bound and sent ’round by Alicia as soon as it’s ready.” He pressed his lips to her forehead, gentle and yearning, like a benediction.

  Her eyes drifted closed. It was how he always signaled the end of a rendezvous. It became harder to release him each time, and it had never been harder than now.

  “Be careful, Anne.” Something tightened his voice from within. “Know that, no matter how this ends, you’ll always be mine.”

  “And you mine.” She reached for one last kiss before stepping away.

  At the opening between the pots, where the enclosing greenery released her back to the rest of the world, her heart made her pause and turn. Frederick stood amongst the leaves, his face wretched, happy and miserable. His hat lay brim-up by his shoe, and an airy fern waved above his tousled, spiked hair like some new variety of hair ornament, ridiculous on a man. She laughed again and pointed above his head. With a reaching snatch, he grabbed the fern and pretended to devour it.

  Giggling again, she ducked from the enclosed nook. The nurse dozed over her knitting and the little boy splashed both hands into the whispering fountain’s pool, splattering the floor and himself with gleeful abandon. She ought to join in; it looked like fun. But the world always seemed a kindlier place after her time with Frederick, and she shared her smile with Gregory.

  Onward to the bustling bazaar, a poor second place to Frederick’s arms but holding its own myriad delights. Anne found Alicia at a perfumer’s counter in the floor’s center, wrinkling her forehead at three scent bottles. The merchant’s smile seemed glued on.

  “Oh, good, you’re finally here.” Alicia dragged her closer. “What do you think of these? Lilac, rosewater, and—” she checked the last bottle’s label “—hyacinth.”

  “You’ve worn lilac for ages. Thought you wanted a change?” The hyacinth smelled like an eternal springtime, heady as Frederick’s touch, and as she sniffed it, a dashing young solicitor walked past, not glancing left nor right.

  But she looked. Forgive her traitorous eyes, but she couldn’t resist a stolen glance at his lithe, determined form. He strode through the pale pools of winter sunlight that poured through the curved panes of the barrel roof, splashing on the glass decanter in her hand and flashing across his path. And as she watched him walk away, those lovely tingles danced again over her heart.

  She took up the rosewater, lifting her gaze with her little glass burden, and at a jeweler’s stall across the way stood His Grace, the Duke of Cumberland.

  Chapter Six

  Friday, December 11, 1812 (continued)

  His Grace glanced up and his gaze meshed with Anne’s. His surprise and delight, while brilliantly played, could not be true. And as he approached across the wide bazaar, her heart stuttered out a rhythm every bit as ragged as Frederick’s worst despair.

  He bowed over her hand, greeted Alicia with every courtesy, and someone said something about the perfumes. But the words swept past Anne without penetrating the drumbeat of her heart. Had he followed her from Half Moon Street, or picked up her scent somewhere along the way? Gregory had watched the conservatory door during their liaison and would have made some noise to alert them if a footman had approached, much less a flaming duke. But perhaps His Grace had hovered beyond the glass, in the outer corridor, and peered in between the tropical leaves. There hadn’t appeared to be any breaks in the foliage, but she hadn’t inspected for certainty.

  “An elegant scent.” He turned the little vial in his hands, his keen gaze fastened on the pale sloshing liquid as if he could see its fragrance as well as smell it. The decanter splashed sunlight across his face, her face, back to his. “For all that it seems light and ethereal, there’s a lasting strength beneath the hyacinth notes, something that won’t wear off easily nor tire its olfactory audience. Oakmoss, perhaps.”

  Alicia’s face seemed stiff enough to crack. Controlled, tightly controlled; suspiciously so. “You don’t consider it too heavy?” Thankfully one of them was able to carry on the conversation. A true heroine, her cousin, from the primrose ribbons in her black curls to her kidskin slippers. If only she didn’t give them away.

  “Indeed no.”

  Some underlying tone in his voice, neither good-humored nor mocking but somewhere in between, drew Anne’s glance to his face. His expression was sober, but his pale blue eyes danced in inherent contradiction. He’d seen through their dissembling, but showed no inclination to challenge them.

  But if he knew they dissembled—

  Her head swam. And as she pressed a casual hand on the perfumer’s table, that pale, amused gaze fastened on her, lingered with neither pity nor kindness, flicked down to her anchoring hand before returning to Alicia.

  “And if heaviness is a concern, the rosewater is delicacy itself.”

  —did he know why?

  Droll. He seemed droll, as if willing to humor them, for now, at least.

  She’d seen more than enough. Anne turned her back and fingered whatever was on the perfumer’s table in front of her.

  A chill far colder than the December air awaiting her on Oxford Street shivered up her arms despite her fur-trimmed pelisse.

  Had he seen Frederick?

  ****

  No, even the keenest eyes couldn’t possibly have penetrated the layers of greenery surrounding them, and while indiscreet, her laugh during their liaison hadn’t been all that loud; not even the little boy had paid attention. Foolish, she’d been, panicky and unsteady, and if Alicia’s stiffness in the bazaar hadn’t tattled on them, her own wild eyes had probably proclaimed her
guilt quite adequately.

  Anne warmed up on the grand pianoforte, her hands rippling up the scales and back down again. Around her, the familiar parlor faded away as if vanishing into a fogbank until she hung alone, suspended in a dream of ebony and ivory keys, mirror-bright walnut and mahogany, and the Conrad Graf’s curiously heavy, dampened notes falling into the Axminster carpet. Then Mama’s voice intruded, saying something indecipherable to someone downstairs — she sounded as if she leaned over the banister — and the parlor sprang again into sharp relief, light pouring past the copper-colored curtains onto the empty music rack before her. Sighing, Anne thumbed through the music sheets for something to help her think.

  Of course he’d been droll. He’d likely wondered, not if they’d been caught in flagrante delicto, but if he wanted to learn further details of whatever nonsense they’d clearly been hiding.

  And he’d been a gentleman and not asked.

  Interestingly enough.

  This could not continue. Her reason and understanding would break, if she were forced to rethink her every decision and position. No one could live under such an unnatural strain. And clearly she already faced enough difficulties, what with waiting for Mama’s softening or her own twenty-first birthday, whichever came first.

  And just as clearly there wasn’t much question as to which would first arrive. The day Mama softened her opinion of Frederick would be the day Lady Baldwin hired another artist to paint clothes on her netherworldian subjects.

  It required several hours of playing to calm her rattled nerves, including singing “’Tis in Vain, Alcanzor” in full four times through and “Of Plighted Faith” five times, even though she had no one to take the second line. But when she finally rose to dress for the evening’s entertainment, she remembered Mama had invited His Grace and had to force herself to ignore the yearning to resume her seat and exercises.