How to Live Indecently (6 page)

Jamie rubbed an errant tear away with his thumb. “Don’t be sad, Daphne. The adventure isn’t over.”

Chapter Eight

The supper room was deserted. It was just after two and the place was in the process of closing. Waiters cleared tables, a few of them nodding as she and Jamie passed through. John Rhodes’s staff had seen to the phaeton and horses. They’d been watered and fed in the interim and were now hitched, ready to go. Jamie tried to pay the sleepy groom, but the man turned away the money.

“Mr. Rhodes says I’m not to take a shilling from you. There’s a blanket on the seat,” the groom pointed out, “and a swordstick you can borrow, courtesy of Mr. Rhodes. He noticed you didn’t come in with any. He says you and the lady can come back anytime. You’re good for business.”

“We’re good for business,” Daphne repeated, tucking her hand through Jamie’s arm as the phaeton pulled out onto the street. “I wonder how much money a song-and-supper girl makes?”

“If you’re popular you can make enough to live on as long as your standards aren’t too high, and you can always count on one free meal.”

“Let’s do it,” Daphne said firmly. “Let’s run away and be supper-room entertainers. We’ll eat oysters and dance on tables every night.”
And when its closing time, we’ll go home to our one-room flat and make love until the sun comes up not caring a whit for all the trappings of Mayfair we’ve left behind.
She left the last part unspoken. Jamie didn’t strike her as a man who would eschew responsibility permanently. Sooner or later the guilt would eat at him and he’d want to go back. Tonight was about running away; it was about a chance to break the rules, a chance to be free one last time. They both had responsibilities waiting for them. She knew it just as well as he did.

The Strand was nearly empty this time of night. A few people still tottered home from pubs, but no one was interested in troubling them. Daphne unfolded the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. The night was only a little bit cold, but the thin material of her gown wasn’t enough. Overhead, the sky was surprisingly clear, the coal-smoke haze of London had dissolved enough to let a few stars peep through.

Jamie noticed her looking at them. “If it were daytime we could take the train to Greenwich and go to the observatory.” The Euston Station train was a marvel, cutting down the hour-long carriage drive to Greenwich to a mere ten minutes on the new rail.

She laughed. “If it were daytime, the stars wouldn’t be out. I think they should run a night train, then again it might encourage star-crossed lovers to run away from Mayfair balls more often.”

Jamie shot her a wry grin. “Is that what you think we are? Star-crossed lovers?”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Well, what do you think happens after tonight? After we go back to the ball? We’ve already sworn not to see each other again.”

“No, we haven’t. We just decided not to use full names,” Jamie protested.

“But we both know the reason for that. We won’t be able to find one another. You said yourself it would be better this way.”

“So what do you think happens? Do we have an ‘unmasking’ of sorts? At the end of the night I tell you who I really am and you tell me. Maybe we make a pact to meet once a year at the Coal Hole.”

Jamie shrugged his dissatisfaction. She could feel the movement of the gesture where her head rested against him. “Ugh, those ideas are positively horrid. I don’t want to cheapen this night with anything like that. Besides, I already know who you are in all the ways that matter. A name can’t change that.”

She had no adequate response. She let him drive, enjoying the silence and the quiet delight of resting her head against him. They were back in the west end nearing St. James. Gambling establishments and gentlemen’s clubs were still filled with light.

“You pick our next adventure, Daphne. What have you always wanted to do?”

“We can’t do it.”

“Why? Nothing is impossible. Tell me what it is and I’ll see it done.” Jamie sounded supremely confident. And why shouldn’t he? The evening had been made to his order.

“I want to climb St. Paul’s and watch the sunrise, but we have to be back long before then.”

“Unless we can get the sun to rise earlier.” Jamie mused. “Barring that, what else is on your list?”

“That!” She pointed rather suddenly to a space off to his left.

“Green Park? Your great dream is to go to Green Park? It’s open every day, you know. In fact, it’s open now for those who are intrepid enough.”

“No, no, no, not the park itself. I want to go swimming in the Tyburn Pool.”

“You do understand it’s been fenced off?” Jamie asked.

“Yes, and it makes me mad. The model yachters had to move to the Serpentine and now no one can go wading or anything.”

Jamie shot her a bemused look. “It’s only a fence. It can be climbed. A swim wouldn’t be a bad idea. We can get the smell of the Coal Hole off us.”

“Then what are we waiting for? Tyburn Pool it is.”

“This time of night, the park is relatively safe. Thugs have gone home to sleep and duelists won’t show up until sunrise.” Jamie tooled the carriage along the path toward the pool.

“Duellists? You’re joking.”

“Oh, no, my dear, I never joke about duels.” Jamie found a spot close to the pool and parked the phaeton.

“Have you been in one?”

“What a leading question.” Jamie tsked playfully, helping her down. “But yes, only as a second. A friend of mine was called out for some nonsense over cards.”

Jamie surveyed the fence, which was middling in height and made out of wrought-iron spokes. He’d be able to hoist himself up with no trouble. Daphne might be difficult. He turned to find her gone. She’d been standing right beside him. He knew a moment’s fear. She was gone, vanished into the night.

“Daphne!”

“Over here.”

Jamie looked around in the darkness and made out a figure standing fifty feet away. He grabbed a lantern from one of the hooks on the phaeton and carried it toward her. “What in the world are you doing? I thought I’d lost you.” He couldn’t see a thing beyond the sphere of the lantern’s power.

“While you were contemplating how to get over the fence, I found a gate,” Daphne said with a smug little smile on her face. She swung the gate open and they went inside.

Daphne bent and tentatively dabbled a hand in the water. “It’s cold.”

“I prefer ‘bracing’ to ‘cold.’” Jamie hung up the lantern on a fence spike and started removing his shoes and stockings. “Be careful with your hair. We’ll never get it dried in time if it gets wet.”

He helped her with her gown, careful to hang it on the fence. “The night air should help get the smoke from the Coal Hole off it,” Jamie explained while he laid the dress out.

“You think of everything.” Daphne smiled in admiration.

“That’s why I don’t get caught.” Jamie waggled his dark brows. Then he paused and took on a look of extreme seriousness.

“What?” there was a tinge of panic to her voice. “Is someone coming?”

“This will not do.” Jamie shook his head. “You can’t swim in your chemise. We’ll need it afterward. There’s nothing for it. You’ll have to take it off.”

For the first time that night, she seemed genuinely stymied. Out of reflex her hands moved to cover herself over her chemise. “B-but I can’t swim without anything on,” she protested with a little stammer.

“Why ever not? I’ll be in my altogether too,” Jamie cajoled, sensing real hesitation. He gave a wry grin. “It’s not the first time we’ve been nude together, and that turned out all right.” According to a certain part of him, this was turning out all right too. He was naked and growing in obvious proportions right in front of her.

“But this is different. We’re outdoors! Anyone could walk by.”

“At three in the morning?” If he didn’t get in the water very soon, there were going to be consequences. Jamie held out his hand, all teasing gone. “Come swim naked with me, Daphne. I promise it will be an adventure to tell your grandchildren about. You can scandalize them with the night ‘Grandmother Daff swam naked with a gentleman in the Tyburn Pool.’

Chapter Nine

Swimming naked in a public pool was truly the most wicked thing she’d ever done, a perfect finale to an evening of new experiences. It was also the coldest, but once Daphne got moving the bite of the water ebbed. It also helped that she spent the majority of the time in Jamie’s arms, kissing and laughing and occasionally splashing.

“There’s a pond not far from my home in the country that’s ideal for summer swimming. My sister met her husband there.” Jamie smiled as he said it.

Daphne twined her arms about his neck. “Tell me. It sounds like a delightful story. Is her husband a selkie?”

“Just about. He’d live in the water if he could. The first time my sister saw him he was swimming there naked. Now they’re happily married and parents to twin daughters.”

More details without names, Daphne thought. It was a fine story and because it was something more about Jamie, she would treasure it even as she abhorred the absence of the specifics. For all they’d done tonight, he was still being careful, still abiding by the code they’d laid down earlier. But so was she. There was much in her heart she wanted to tell him, but their rule forbade it and they were running out of time unless…unless she decided to break this rule too.

Jamie scooped her up in his arms and carried her to shore where they’d laid down John Rhodes’s blanket. The blanket was wide and they were able to pull one half of it over them for warmth. Jamie’s body cocooned hers, her buttocks nestled against his groin, his arm about her. She would happily stay that way forever, locked in the intimacy of his embrace. In spite of the cold, she could feel him stirring to life and she smiled.

“Can I do for you what you did for me?” Daphne ventured. Surely something similar must be possible.

“Yes. You can put your hand there and stroke it. Only if you want to, though. Some women don’t prefer it.”

Always the gentleman, but she could hear the want in Jamie’s voice, the desire for it and she wanted to do it, wanted to be with him one last time. She knew too they couldn’t risk another bout of lovemaking, to force Jamie to assume all responsibility for pulling out on time while in the throes of passion.

Daphne rolled to face him, gliding her hand along the length of him, feeling him harden. She repeated the journey up and down his length, her grip firm, her stroke coming faster as Jamie gave a harsh groan of satisfaction nearly reached. She reveled in the power and the pleasure of this intimate act, the thrill of feeling him pulse beneath her hand before his seed spent itself on his stomach. Daphne watched the process in amazement. This was what happened when a man came inside a woman. She’d felt as if she’d been initiated into the great secrets of the universe. Next to her, Jamie sighed, a lazy smile on his lips. She bent and kissed him. “Thank you.”

“I’m the one who should be thanking you.” He laughed and sat up, rummaging in his coat pocket for a handkerchief.

“Really, I didn’t know.” Words to describe what she’d witnessed, experienced with him were entirely inadequate. “I haven’t the vocabulary for this although there apparently is one.” Jamie set aside his handkerchief and took both her hands in his. “What will you do when we get back?”

“I will do my duty, maybe not with the gentleman my mother intended for me to meet tonight, but with the next one.”

Jamie’s jaw set with tension and Daphne rushed on, a hand to his lips. He was going to make a stupid offer. “Don’t you dare say you’ll offer me money or set me up in a little cottage. It will only discredit our adventure to think you paid me in the end. I don’t have a price, Jamie.”

He nodded his head in terse consent. She understood: he didn’t like the conditions, but he’d allow them. “Just as long as doing your duty won’t be with the man who took you by force.”

She looked down at their hands where they joined, unable to meet Jamie’s eyes. “How did you know about that? It was years ago.”

“You weren’t a virgin and yet much of what we’ve done together has been new to you. Then there was the knife.” Jamie’s voice was quiet, his facts simple. “Tell me, Daphne.”

“I was eighteen when it happened. My family couldn’t afford a London Season for me, but I had a small country coming-out and there was an older gentleman who thought I would never refuse him. He offered for me afterward, sure he’d be accepted.” She glanced up and gave Jamie a tiny smile. “But he wasn’t. Our circumstances were not as difficult as they are now and my family felt I didn’t have to marry the first man who came along. They felt sure there would be other offers, perhaps even better offers.”

Jamie’s grip had tightened on her hands. “He was no gentleman, no matter what his birth.”

“No, but society hardly looks that closely.” Daphne tossed her hair. “I survived and I promised myself I would not let the episode ruin me and it hasn’t. If anything, it has made me stronger, more determined. Now, what about you? What will you do when we go back?”

Jamie gave a rueful grin. “Like you, I’ll do my duty.”

Chapter Ten

In the end, they’d had to hurry. The London streets were stirring with the sounds of morning, and the darkness that had chaperoned their adventure bore hints of gray. It would be another hour or two before sunrise was in clear evidence, but it was coming. Domestics who didn’t live in-house were already bustling to their posts to lay fires for their masters and start the morning breakfast. The milkmaids were out with milk fresh from the farms outside the city and the early market vendors were pulling their hand carts full of vegetables and produce through the empty streets.

Ahead of them loomed the Folkestone town house. Daphne felt a wave of relief flood her. Light still blazed and a respectable amount of carriages still lined the street, proof that Jamie had indeed been right about the gala’s longevity.

“So far, so good,” Daphne whispered.

“After everything, you’re still worried we’ll be caught?” Jamie chuckled, turning the carriage into the alley that led to the back of the town house. “I have not come this far to get nabbed upon my return.”