She spread out the colored sheets, then removed some and set them aside, leaving only three. “These three were the ones from around the time I was conceived. I think one of these represents my father.”
They all gazed down on the expertly rendered heraldry. Verity’s pale finger pointed to one. “This is the coat of arms of the Marquess of Enderby, Celia. He is of the right age.” She touched another. “This is the Baron Barrowleigh. This final one, I believe, is the Earl of Hartlefield. He is no more than forty-five now, but he inherited when very young.”
“I cannot eliminate him on account of his youth. At the time, Mama was not much older.”
“How do you know all this heraldry, Verity? I recognized Enderby, but not the others,” Audrianna said.
Verity’s mouth pursed. “I was required to memorize many of them. It was part of my education. My cousin’s wife wanted to be sure I did not miss any opportunity regarding my betters due to ignorance.”
“How will you find out which one it is?” Daphne asked. “Three are still two too many. Nor do you know for certain that the correct man knows that he fathered you.”
“I believe he does. I think he made Alessandra promise to keep it a secret.” She put the other drawings back in the portfolio and closed its cover. She faced her friends. “I thought perhaps you could help me a little, however.”
“Of course we will do what we can, Celia,” Audrianna said.
“I am relieved that you in particular are agreeable, Audrianna. Summerhays’s mother likes to gossip, and she was a formidable woman in society back then. She may have heard things that she will share with you, if prompted.”
“She does not think of it as gossip, but instruction,” Audrianna said. “It will mean planning whole days with her, and suffering her company in the effort to create intimacy. However, if she remembers any rumors, she will share them, to help her son’s common wife chart a proper course in society.”
“I will see what emerges when I mention these names among ladies who call on me too,” Verity offered. “Also, Hawkeswell’s aunt will be coming to town to order dresses for the season soon. She may know something.”
“I regret that I will be useless,” Daphne said. “I have no female relative to pump for old gossip.”
Celia hugged each friend in turn. “It may all come to naught, but it is a start. I am optimistic for the first time in my life about identifying him.”
“And when you do?” Daphne asked.
“I don’t know.” Except she did know, in her heart.
The excitement in her, born of this small progress, would allow only one outcome after she knew his name. This man might be lost to her for the rest of her life. He might repudiate the connection for all time. But she would have one conversation with him, as daughter and father, before that happened.
I
t just is.
The words kept returning to Jonathan’s head as he moved through the day. They chanted while his mind saw Celia last night, opening that gown to expose her breasts, her eyes glistening and her arousal both innocent and wicked.
He risked going mad waiting for the night to come. Forcing some control on his thoughts, he sought diversion without much success. In the early evening, however, diversion found him.
He was walking down the Strand, giving his body something to do rather than torture him, when a grand coach suddenly careened out of the flow of carriages and made a difficult stop just ahead. He noted with annoyance that in the hands of any other coachman, the equipage might have missed its mark in that broad swerve and killed him.
As he approached alongside, the door to the coach opened.
“Get in.”
He peered in to see Castleford sprawled on the seat with a woman wrapped around him.
“Perhaps another time, Your Grace.”
“Oh, hell, get in. We are done, if you are going to become a vicar on me today.” Limbs and garments jostled in the dark. Some coin flashed. “Here you go, little dove. My man will see you into a hackney.”
“You said you would take me home,” a woman’s voice complained. “You promised me a ride in your coach.”
“And you have had one. I must speak with this fellow here. You will still go home in style.”
A pretty face emerged from the coach, followed by a voluptuous body dressed for evening. A footman slid past Jonathan to help the woman down.
Once out, she turned and spoke into the darkness. “You promised I’ll be in that book, remember? You aren’t going to forget?”
“You are on your way to having your own chapter, dear lady. Now, off with you. I will see you soon.”
Satisfied with whatever bargain she had struck, the whore marched away with the footman. Jonathan climbed inside the coach.
“Convenient seeing you on the street just now,” Castleford said by way of welcome. “I have news.”
The duke still sprawled, slouched low, barely awake from the looks of him. What had happened in here scented the carriage enough that Jonathan reached over to open the blinds and glass.
Castleford noticed. “How rude of me. I should have let her stay so she could—”
“That was not necessary.” The vague reference was enough to make him hard. But then, he had been at half-mast due to memories and anticipation all day. “Your news?”
Castleford scratched his head, which only mussed his hair even more. No valet had attended him today. He looked like he had slept in his clothes. Three empty wine bottles rolled on the floor.
He noticed Jonathan’s raking glance and laughed. “I have been in here all night and day, in case you are wondering. It is research for my book. Did you know that you can swive a woman six different ways in a coach without hurting yourself or causing anyone much discomfort?”
“Six, you say. I am impressed. I can only think of three, and four if we are very liberal in our meaning of swiving.”
“I thought so too. She told me she had done it six ways, though. Of course I had to know if it were true.”
“Of course.”
“Do you disapprove, Albrighton? You looked a little like my tutor just then.”
“I have sinned enough in my life to have no right to disapprove of most men, and least of all if they swive women.”
It was the truth, especially on the latter point. He could not ignore that the man across from him might spend twelve hours fornicating in his coach, but he had never seduced an innocent. Which, for all intents and purposes, Jonathan had now, and planned to continue doing.
Nor, he suspected, had Castleford, for all his use of whores, ever been the man who set a woman on the path to selling herself. Which, perhaps, Jonathan had also just done last night.
None of which would matter tonight, or the next night, or for as long as Celia opened her bedchamber door to him. But if he appeared a little like a tutor right now, it was not due to Castleford’s behavior.
“The news?” he prompted again.
Castleford yawned, and closed his eyes. “Why were you walking? Imagine my surprise to glimpse you out the blinds at the crucial moment of ecstasy. Where is your horse?”
“I left it at a tavern up the Strand. I wanted to take a turn for exercise. What were you doing looking out the blinds at such a moment?”
“Making sure she was not pretending. They do that sometimes. Oh, yes, they do. Seeing you was a complete accident. The blinds moved a bit.”
Jonathan laughed. “Forgive me, but I am imagining you in your climax, seeing something despite the considerable distraction, and yelling to the coachman to stop the horses.”
Castleford appeared startled at the notion. “No wonder she shifted like that at the last moment, then went still like she had died. Damnation, she thought I was yelling at her.” He doubled over laughing. “Over, man, over!”
“Rein it in at once!”
“Stop immediately, damn it!” He wiped his eyes. “Poor woman. She definitely gets a chapter. I may have to write this in the form of a memoir to do her justice.”
He called to the coachman to move on. “We will turn around and bring you to that horse.”
They rolled forward. Jonathan waited a minute before prompting again. “The news? Is it about Thornridge?”
“Not yet. The fellow is slippery. He went down to the country again. That may have to wait a few weeks. This is about something else. Now, what was it?” He frowned while he picked through the sober half of his mind. “Ah, yes. Dargent.”
“Father or son?”
“Both. Father Dargent was indeed talking to the military during the war, advising them on terrain. The news is that Son Dargent often accompanied him when he did so. The father knew he was sick and was handing things over the way it is done, and wanted any future appreciation of his help to fall to his heir along with the estate.”
“Was this well-known?”
Castleford shrugged. “I expect it was known to anyone paying attention. It was not a secret, but it was not published in a broadside either.”
So Anthony had heard those questions being posed to his father. That had been careless of the government, but not entirely surprising. Father and son were honorable and loyal, and who would expect any trouble to come of it? It was not as if the military laid out its strategies through those questions.
All the same, it was not news that Jonathan wanted to hear. How much better if Alessandra could have had no ulterior reason for throwing her daughter at Anthony. He reminded himself that the suspicions and talk had been that and nothing more, but his soul and his instincts—the parts of him that he ignored at his peril—took a big step away from that belief now.
He had assumed his investigation would exonerate Alessandra, or at least leave the question open. He did not think that would happen anymore.
Chapter Seventeen
H
e decided he would wait until eleven o’clock before going down to Celia that night. He made it until ten.
He heard Marian and Bella going to their chamber. He listened for their door closing. After that every minute felt like an eternity.
The discretion was perhaps unnecessary. Marian clearly knew what had happened last night. The way she offered to prepare that bath in the morning with her bland, blank expression, had said it all. He wondered if she had scolded Celia for recklessness. Perhaps, having been a whore, she did not think she had any standing to do so.
He went down the back stairs and walked the hall to Celia’s chamber. He had been burning all day, and with each step he cast off his normal restraints. Desire was slicing him into pieces by the time he reached her door.
He did not have to knock. Her voice quietly said his name as soon as he got there. He opened the door to see a scene of alluring comfort.
Celia sat near a high fire that warmed the chamber, wearing one of her special satin gowns. Its lovely shade of pink gave her skin a rosy hue. The bodice consisted of a filmy, transparent fabric and her breasts were visible through its hazy mist. Her hair was down and brushed, her face washed and glowing. Another chair waited near hers, and a bottle of wine rested on a small table.
“Sit,” she invited.
He did not want to sit. He wanted to grab her and throw her on the bed and—
He sat. She poured him some wine. He drank. Submitting to the domesticity of the situation dulled the most ragged edges of his need. He realized, as they sat there sipping the dark liquid and the fire danced, that she had intended just that. He kept forgetting that the knowledge of centuries regarding men had been passed to her.
She seemed to know when the tempest became more manageable. She set aside her wineglass and stood. He began to reach for her, but with a gentle gesture she stopped him. “Stay there, Jonathan. All that you want will be yours, and more.”
She stepped back, out of her slippers. It was, he was sure, one of the most erotic things he had ever seen a woman do.
She unbuttoned the gown’s two fastenings at her shoulders, watching him boldly as she did so. Her gaze carried a frank acknowledgment of what she was doing to him, and of the teasing pleasure her slow movements created. Finally loose, the shining fabric slid down her body until she stood naked in front of him, washed in the fire’s golden light, her eyes large, as if the moment amazed her.
Again that erotic step of her pretty bare feet, forward this time, not back. She stood right in front of him, beautiful and ready with the subtle scent of arousal too close to ignore.
“I have sat here two hours, thinking of nothing except your being here tonight,” she said.
“I spent most of the day thinking of nothing else.” He reached up and slid his fingertips from her shoulder down her body. To his surprise she covered his hand with hers, and moved it to her mound.
“Just a little,” she said, parting her legs. “Just enough.”
He turned his hand and stroked her slowly. Pleasure trembled through her, transforming her expression. She allowed him to watch, demanded he do so, and his own arousal built until the storm howled in him again.
She surprised him then, for the last time perhaps. Gracefully, elegantly, she knelt in front of his chair and his legs. Her fingers plucked at the buttons of his shirt until she bared his chest. She leaned forward, with her lovely breasts nestling in his lap and her naked back curving down to the alluring flare of her hips. She kissed his chest, then caressed and licked while he turned taut and hard and mindless.
Her caresses moved lower and her fingers worked again, at the buttons of his trousers. A flash of hope turned to ruthless determination and single-minded need. Her first caress sent him careening into pure sensation. Then her kisses lowered too, and her mouth enclosed him, and he closed his eyes and submitted to her perfect torture.
“H
ow did you come to know her? My mother.”
She propped herself on one arm while she asked the question. Jonathan was naked now, his garments discarded in the lazy aftermath of his pleasure. They lay in her bed beneath the bedclothes, skin to skin. The fire burned low, sending dancing pale lights through the shadows.