The Luckiest Lady In London (20 page)

She kissed him, lips, teeth, and tongue. Climbing atop him, she opened his shirt to the waist, nibbling each inch of torso she uncovered. But her eyes were on him, watching.

Could she detect it on his face, his need to intermingle their molecules and meld their atoms? Could she see through to all the deep, secret, cobwebbed places in his heart?

She undid his trousers. Her lips followed her hands, her tongue swirling about him in scalding, indecent ways. His hips flexed involuntarily, even as despair swamped him. She took him deep into her mouth; his grunt of pleasure echoed against the walls.

“I love the size of you,” she declared, “the texture of you, the taste of you.”

And the rest of me?

He shut his eyes tight against the pleasure, against the pain, against the possibility of betraying all the yearning in his soul.

L
ouisa did not gain access only to the Stargazer; her husband also issued her carte blanche to visit his study anytime she liked.

Huntington had a library worthy of its stature, but the true treasures of its collection were to be found in his study. There were scientific classics from the age of antiquity, first-edition copies of Newton’s great works, and every issue of the journal
Nature
from the past fifteen years. The study also boasted a wealth of astronomer’s aids, from
Uranometria
and
Atlas Coelestis
to the just-arrived
New General Catalogue
, an exhaustive survey of 7,840 star clusters and nebulae. And last, but certainly not least, copious volumes of his own notes, and cabinets upon cabinets of photographs he had taken of the Stargazer’s view of the sky.

Until now, they’d spent most of their waking hours apart, time in bed and before her telescope notwithstanding. But with the study at her disposal, that changed. When she had discharged her own duties, she took to reading in a corner of
the study, a pile of books in her lap, another pile on the floor, writing down anything she didn’t understand in a notebook.

When the weather was fine and at times even when it rained, they went for walks in the afternoon. After dinner each night he apprenticed her in the operation of the Stargazer—the levers and pulleys used in changing the beast’s direction and angle required both muscle and delicacy. She learned how the prism attached to the Stargazer split the incoming light into its rainbow patterns, with bright lines corresponding to emission of light by atoms and dark lines corresponding to their absorption. And he taught her the steps involved in photographing the patterns onto silver-coated daguerreotype plates, to be developed for detailed analysis later.

Sometimes she found herself thinking that she was a happily married woman: both on the surface and quite some distance beneath the surface.

If she kept digging down, of course, at some point she came into contact with a barrier and signs that warned,
This close but no closer
.

And not just from her side of the barrier.

As kind and helpful as he had been of late, the way he sometimes looked at her, it was almost as if he didn’t trust
her
.

“Finding anything in my notes?”

She looked up to see the man too much on her mind closing the door of the study behind himself. He was still in his riding clothes, having gone out to inspect the new roofs on the tenant houses that had recently been completed.

“They are excellent notes,” she said. “Very detailed. Very legible.”

He had teased her about the near illegibility of her handwriting, warning her that when she solved mathematical problems under his tutelage, her penmanship had better not give him trouble, or he would mark everything as incorrect and then rap her on the hand with a ruler.

“What do you think of my prediction of the ninth planet’s position?”

She moved a finger down the smooth edge of the pages. Despite the clear readability of his letters and numbers, she didn’t know enough mathematics or physics to understand much. She just liked to huddle with his notes because
he
had set them down in his beautiful hand. Because if he loved nothing else, he loved his work. And if she could become part of his work . . .

“It’s absolutely wrong. Should be at least another half astronomical unit farther out.”

“Really, my young virtuoso of Newtonian mechanics?”

“Find the planet and prove me wrong.”

“I will, tonight itself.”

She smiled, closing the notebook, only to remember that she was practically covered in them. There were notebooks on her lap, next to her on the chair, on both armrests, behind her head, and at her feet—she’d wanted to feel as if she were in his embrace. “You won’t. It will rain tonight. You will better spend your time in my bed.”

He looked at her oddly, almost as if he were displeased by that invitation. “Still haven’t tired of me yet?”

His question unnerved her. “Any day now,” she said, deliberately flippant. “So you’d best take advantage of my lust while it lasts.”

He picked up a newspaper that had been set down on top of a low shelf and brought it to his desk. She gazed at him as he began to read while still standing—the beautiful profile, the strong shoulder, the long, sinewy arm—but only a moment; she didn’t want him to catch her staring.

So she stared at the cover of the notebook instead.
Planet IX, volume 2
. After a few minutes, he left the paper and returned a book to its place on the shelves just behind her chair.

Her heart began to pound as his hand cupped her face and turned her enough for him to kiss her. “Finally,” she murmured. “I was wondering whether I’d expressed my carnal needs forcefully enough.”

“Worry not. You always express your carnal needs loud and clear.”

It further unnerved her that she couldn’t tell whether he wanted to reward or punish her for being so forward.

He rounded to the front of her and shoved aside all the notebooks from her person with a carelessness that was completely at odds with the thousands of meticulous hours that must have gone into the work. Next thing she knew, her skirts were bunched at her waist. He sank to his knees, pushed her thighs apart, and pulled her to the edge of the seat.

She began to tremble almost from the moment his mouth descended on her. And she did not stop trembling until long after he was finished.

Only to tremble again when he rewarded—or was it punished?—her the exact same way that night.

S
he was recovering from a case of sniffles brought on by a sudden onslaught of autumnal weather. Her nose was red. The rest of her face, too, was somewhat ruddy. And the somber blue of her cloak did her complexion no favors, making her appear even more splotchy.

All this Felix perceived. But he could
see
only loveliness, endless, endless loveliness.

Love was not blind, but it might mimic a deteriorating case of cataracts.

“No luminiferous aether?” she asked, half frowning, smoothing the thick blanket on her knees with her gloved hand. Outside the carriage, the day was cold and drizzly, as it had been since the middle of October. “But that’s the
medium in which light travels, isn’t it? What next, no gravity either?”

Sometimes he wondered what she’d made of him lately. He was afflicted with a deep possessiveness intermingled with an equally deep frustration that he could not move an inch closer to her heart, even with the help of his telescope. She might not be able to identify exactly what ailed him, but as much as he tried to keep it to himself, she had to have sensed, to some degree, his inner disequilibrium.

“You can verify gravity,” he answered, “even if you cannot see, hear, or touch it. Luminiferous aether, on the other hand, is entirely conjecture. Why can’t light simply travel through a vacuum?”

They were approaching the nearest town: The renovation of the schoolroom was almost finished and she wanted her own supply of notebooks before her lessons began. He was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of those lessons: In his vanity, he had wanted to be the one to reveal to her the scope and majesty of his favorite disciplines, but now the lessons seemed simply the next thing that would not garner him her heart.

“So that’s what your correspondence with the American professors is about, disproving the existence of aether?”

He had familiarized her with his various scientific inquiries and correspondences in the hope that she might yet fall in love with what he did, if not who he was. When had he come to be made of foolish hopes? Or perhaps more accurately, when had he come to be once again made of foolish hopes?

“We discussed the specifics of their experiment. If aether exists, then one should be able to measure its relative motion to our planet as it moves through all the surrounding aether. If you are interested, there is a lecture coming up in London on refining the measurement of the speed of light, and that
should address some of the issues surrounding whether aether plays a—”

The carriage had slowed to a crawl as it neared the high street. Her attention was squarely on him. Then it wasn’t.

She stared beyond his shoulder, her expression one of both confusion and consternation. He turned around to see what had caused such a reaction on her part.

His gut tightened. Miss Jane Edwards, Lord Firth’s sister, emerged from a milliner’s shop, arm in arm with a man. The man opened an umbrella, his face turned toward Miss Edwards and away from Felix. But Felix didn’t need to see the man’s face to know that he could not be Lord Firth, unless Lord Firth had added two stone in weight and four inches in height.

“That is Miss Edwards,” said Louisa, as their carriage began to pull away.

“So it is,” Felix replied, hoping he was as good an actor as he used to be. “I wonder who is the man—not Lord Firth, to be sure.”

Louisa, her lips curled in distaste, still stared after Miss Edwards and her companion, who climbed into a carriage of their own that drove off in the opposite direction.

“I suppose he could be a cousin or an uncle,” she answered. “Wait—Lord Firth once told me that neither of his parents had siblings who survived childhood.”

Felix could almost hear his heart plummet.

Her brow furrowed. “But then again, Miss Edwards had a different mother. And her mother could very well have living male relatives.”

He nodded, trying to look only marginally concerned.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry; what were you saying about London?”

“That there is a lecture that we can attend that might address the paucity of proof for the existence of aether.”

Could this really be the end of the matter?

“That does sound interesting,” she said, her tone making it plain that her thoughts were still largely preoccupied with something else.

He held his breath. Should he say something to distract her, or should he absolutely refrain from such a tactic, lest he appear to be deliberately changing the subject?

She stared out the window for a few seconds. They passed an ironmonger’s shop, a penny bazaar, and a bakery.

Abruptly, she looked back at him. “By the way, I never asked you, but how did you come to know that Miss Edwards and her brother are lovers? I would imagine it isn’t something they would let anyone, even the servants, witness.”

Now he prayed that he was as good a liar as he believed himself to be. “When I was still at university, years ago, I was invited to shoot grouse in Scotland one year. Lord Firth and Miss Edwards happened to be at the same shooting party.

“You know I keep a somewhat irregular schedule. So at half past three one morning, I opened my door, intending on an hour or so of observation outside, with a portable telescope I’d brought. And whom should I see stepping out of Miss Edwards’s room down the hall, still fastening his trousers, but her half brother.”

She grimaced. “Right, of course.”

Then, unexpectedly, she kissed him on his cheek. “Thank you,” she said, with a rather weak smile. “I would hate to have married him.”

O
nce upon a time, all he wanted was to reduce her to a state of unbearable sexual arousal.

Then, possible revelations on Miss Edwards’s part would have earned a shrug from him, plus a redoubled effort to cheat, lie, and steal his way to what he wanted. The Felix
Wrenworth of that era would scarcely recognize himself today, a man in love, a man who blanched at the thought that his bride would think less of him.

Yet it was now that Miss Edwards cropped up, a reminder from the gods that acts of hubris never went unpunished.

By the next afternoon he had collected various intelligence concerning her reason for being in Derbyshire. He didn’t particularly like what he learned, but the silver lining was that Miss Edwards was expected to leave the country before the end of the year.

He didn’t anticipate that Miss Edwards would call on his wife, but he didn’t want to take that chance. Nor did he want to take the chance that Louisa might run into Miss Edwards again, this time without him. Thank goodness he had happened to mention the lecture in London. He would bring that up again. It should not be too difficult to persuade Louisa to attend an astronomical lecture. And once they were in London, he’d keep her there until they must return to host the Christmas house party.

By then Miss Edwards would be gone and he would be safe.

T
he travel plans fell into place with surprising speed, once Lord Wrenworth recommended that they could first visit the Cantwells in their new house before heading off to London.

Louisa could not turn down such an opportunity. She missed dear Matilda. She missed everyone. She even missed Julia’s indignant yowl as Cecilia dragged her by the ear from one room to the next.

She anticipated a wonderful time with her family, and perhaps a wry amusement watching her husband resume the mantle of The Ideal Gentleman, a phenomenon she had not witnessed in weeks upon weeks.

She did have a wonderful time with her family at the bright, tastefully furnished new house. And she did derive a wry amusement watching The Ideal Gentleman take the Cantwell women by storm again, leading Cecilia to opine that while she believed women the far superior gender, her brother-in-law made an outstanding representative for his sex.

What Louisa had not expected was the butterflies in the stomach that she experienced watching him wield that glossy allure of his, with an occasional sidelong glance at her as if to say,
Remember this?

She did remember this feeling of being a coconspirator, of being in on a delicious secret that she would always keep to herself.

But he didn’t stop there. Even when they were in the privacy of their own room, he remained utterly winsome—droll, naughty, and faultlessly considerate. It made her realize that she had never experienced a direct charge of his monumental charm. Gone was the undercurrent of tension that had made her just slightly nervous since the night of the telescope. This particular incarnation of her husband wanted only to show her a marvelous time.

Part of her realized that his charm was being deployed with military precision, and the rest of her didn’t care. He’d been so good for so long; why should she cling to those most awful of memories? Why shouldn’t she stop doubting and let herself enjoy her good fortune?

London made it even easier to have a marvelous time. The great metropolis provided endless diversions. Besides attending the Royal Astronomical Society lectures and purchasing Christmas presents for her family, they spent long, leisurely afternoons at book dealers’, explored a fascinating exhibition of adding machines, and frequented music halls, the newer venues where a man could take his wife without worrying about her respectability.

Apparently her husband had, in his younger days, been to music halls of the more risqué variety, too.

“There was this one particularly memorable song. Do you know, according to its lyrics, what English gentlemen like to do?” he asked mischievously as they lay in bed together one night.

Louisa moved her head closer to his on the pillow. “What?”

“Play cricket, box, and torture cocks,” he said with a straight face.

“Oh, that is horrible!” she exclaimed. “Tell me another one.”

Which made him kiss her, chortling. And they stayed up deep into the night, laughing over all manner of naughty things.

When he got up to go to sleep in his own bed, she almost told him to stay. She didn’t, though she did take hold of his hand when he leaned down to kiss her good night—and only slowly let go.

At some point, she must think of the future. It was all very well and good to wall off her heart and plant signs that said,
This close but no closer
. But what if her husband had reformed? He had said nothing one way or the other, but his actions spoke loud and clear for themselves. In every sphere of their life together he had become an admirable partner; it seemed almost unfair to continue to withhold her greater affection from him for choices during one aberrant fortnight months ago.

It would be so much easier to thrive in this marriage without the constant weight of her cautions and suspicions.

Deep down, she
wanted
to trust him.

And always had.

O
utside, wind howled and rain lashed at the window shutters. But inside, Felix and Louisa were warm and snug under the covers. The lamps and sconces of the room had been extinguished, but a fire still roared in the grate and its coppery light danced on the walls and glowed upon her smooth cheeks.

They lay on their sides, facing each other. He caressed the indentation of her waist. Her hand had been roving over his buttocks only a minute ago, quite freely and greedily, but now
those same fingers played with her hair, making her look sweet and girlish.

“It’s been a while since I asked you this question, but I’m in the mood for it again,” she said. “So . . . why did you marry me?”

With a thud of his heart, he recognized the significance of the question. Much of her distrust must have arisen from the fact that from her point of view, he appeared to make major decisions for no logical reason—the foremost of which being, of course, his marriage.

Asking him to explain himself meant that she was willing to reexamine her prejudices against him.

If only he didn’t actually deserve those prejudices.

He pushed away the thought—some things she didn’t need to know.

“I didn’t want you to have to marry your butcher,” he began with a partial truth. “You didn’t sound as if you were too thrilled with the idea.”

She made a face. “So you were just being charitable?”

“Hardly. Every day of my bachelorhood, women married for reasons that did not thrill them and I did not make them my concern. You mattered because I didn’t want you to be nice to the butcher in bed. And since you insisted only a man who married you could have the privileges I wanted . . .”

She grazed the ends of a strand of hair against her jawline. “What if I tell you that you showed your hand far too soon? If I couldn’t find another means of support, eventually I would have agreed to your initial offer—it was hardly certain that Mr. Charles would have been willing or able to take in Matilda.”

He had her brush the palm of his hand with the same strand of hair; it tickled pleasantly. “I took that into account. If not the butcher, there would still be a lawyer, an accountant, or a greengrocer waiting somewhere in the wings, with matrimony on his mind. What man with an ounce of sense wouldn’t want to marry you?”

She looked away for a moment, as if embarrassed by his compliment. “If I understand you correctly, you married me because you wanted me too much to take the risk that someone else might come along and waltz me to the altar.”

“And if your next question is why, if I wanted you so much, I stopped sleeping with you right after our wedding night, the answer is, I didn’t like realizing just how much I wanted you.”

It was the closest he had ever come to admitting this particular wrinkle of his psyche.

She considered his confession, her index finger resting against her cheekbone. “Does that mean you’ve since learned how to want me less?”

He took a deep breath—it still went against every grain of his temperament to concede such knowledge. “No. I became mortal and learned to live with it.”

She bit a corner of her lower lip, then reached out and touched his cheek. “Thank you, Felix.”

His breath caught. He had asked her to use his given name, but she never had, until this moment. He placed his hand over hers. “What for?”

“Now things actually make sense. I prefer a husband whose actions I can interpret and understand—at least somewhat.”

She nestled closer to him and kissed him on the mouth.

Later, when he kissed her good night upon leaving her bed, she reached up and touched his cheek once again. “Sweet dreams, Felix.”

T
hey had meant to slip in and out of London undetected by Society, but Louisa could not refuse an invitation from Lady Balfour, who also happened to be in town, for an afternoon tea party held to celebrate a niece’s birthday.

Louisa arrived at the party by herself, with a promise from
Felix to come as soon as he was finished with his solicitors. Not five minutes after she sat down, she looked up and saw someone she had never seen under Lady Balfour’s roof: Miss Jane Edwards.

“I do believe you have already met Miss Edwards, Lady Wrenworth?” Lady Balfour loved to call Louisa by her new honorific. “Miss Edwards and Mrs. Summerland have become rather fast friends, you see, since they met in the Ladies’ Literary Club.”

Mrs. Summerland was another one of Lady Balfour’s daughters. Louisa pulled together a stiff smile for Miss Edwards. Miss Edwards, however, shook Louisa’s hand most amiably. And she didn’t stride off after that convivial greeting, but stayed by Louisa’s side.

Lady Balfour left after a few minutes to greet a pair of late arrivals.

Miss Edwards leaned forward. “My congratulations on your marriage, Lady Wrenworth,” she said warmly.

Louisa had trouble believing this was the same icy woman she had once fancied for a sister-in-law. But then again, now that Louisa was married, she was no longer a competitor for Lord Firth’s affection.

“Thank you,” she said carefully, trying not to imagine what Miss Edwards and her half brother did in private.

“I would like to take this chance to apologize,” Miss Edwards said with great sincerity, “for my earlier rudeness. I hope you will forgive a sister’s protective instincts.”

Louisa kept her expression bland. “I’m sure I do not understand.”

“Please excuse my bluntness. But you see, Lady Wrenworth, for much of the past Season, I was worried that you might be after my brother only for his income, and not because you cared particularly for him. And for that reason, I’m afraid my conduct was less affable than convention dictated.”

Louisa didn’t quite know what to say, given that Miss
Edwards was largely correct in her conjecture. “Well, I did think Lord Firth a very fine, upstanding man.”

She had, but no more.

“Yes, that he is,” Miss Edwards concurred proudly. “The finest man and the best brother there is.”

Louisa could only nod.

“The poor darling.” Miss Edwards sighed fondly. “He was heartbroken over your engagement, Lady Wrenworth. For days on end he lamented that he should have been more out-spoken with regard to his sentiments and that he should not have decided to wait until the end of the Season to propose to you. And that was when I became terribly ashamed of my behavior. Perhaps he would have had a better chance with you had I been more civil.”

Louisa was less shocked by the revelation of Lord Firth’s matrimonial intentions than by Miss Edwards’s regret that they never came to pass. She didn’t sound the least bit jealous that her brother was in love with someone else. “I’m . . . I’m afraid I had no idea.”

Miss Edwards shook her head. “He can be too taciturn at times, my brother.”

She was about to say something else when a tall, handsome man came up to her with a cup of tea.

“Oh, thank you, my dear.” Miss Edwards clasped his hand. “Lady Wrenworth, may I present my fiancé, Mr. Harlow.”

Miss Edwards, engaged? But of course, he was the man Louisa had seen with Miss Edwards earlier. Louisa coughed up a line of congratulations.

“My aunt lives not very far from Huntington,” Mr. Harlow said. “In fact, we were in the area recently, visiting her. Beautiful place, but alas, the rain never let up the entire time we were there.”

While he spoke, Miss Edwards gazed upon him with what could only be termed rapture—a sight that made Louisa queasy.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Edwards said with a broad smile after her fiancé retreated. “I must look so idiotic. I have been in love with Mr. Harlow since we were both toddlers. But it has taken him a while to realize I’m the right girl for him. We became engaged only last month.”

Louisa tried to remember the loverlike gestures on Miss Edwards’s part that had sealed her belief that the woman was indeed her brother’s mistress. Had there not been lips-to-ear whispers and other touches that had indicated a far greater intimacy than was normal between siblings?

To her horror, she realized that she had never actually seen Miss Edwards’s lips touch her brother’s ear: Miss Edwards had whispered to Lord Firth behind her fan, and Louisa, fresh from Felix’s shocking revelation, had convinced herself that there must be unseemly physical contact behind those ostrich plumes.

And as for Miss Edwards standing with her breasts pressed into Lord Firth’s arm—to Louisa yet another piece of evidence—dear God, but hadn’t there been a large party moving through the crush that was the Fielding ball? It had been the crowd squashing Miss Edwards’s chest into her brother’s person, not a gesture on Miss Edwards’s part to exhibit ownership over the latter.

Louisa began to hurt between the eyes, a severe pain that radiated across her forehead and spiked deep into her cerebrum. She tried not to think, but the inevitable conclusions tumbled into place one after another, like a chain of dominoes.

If Miss Edwards was telling the truth . . . if Miss Edwards had been in love with Mr. Harlow her whole life . . . and she thought that her brother was the best man there was . . . and Lord Firth thoroughly regretted not having made Louisa his wife . . .

Many, many times she had told Felix she did not trust him. But never had she suspected him of such an egregious, utterly immoral fabrication that could have ruined the reputation of two innocent people, had Louisa been any kind of a tattletale.

And he had lied again the day they had seen Miss Edwards and Mr. Harlow together. He had once again slandered Lord Firth’s and Miss Edwards’s good names—and she had believed him, because he had looked her in the eye while he lied.

She stared at Miss Edwards’s happy countenance, barely able to concentrate on her moving lips as the latter enthusiastically furnished Mr. Harlow’s myriad virtues and accomplishments.

So that was why Felix had ushered her away from Huntington. How stupid of her not to understand it for the manipulation it had been. How stupid of her to even think of doing away with her defenses. And how stupid of her—even in her state of numbness she felt the pinch in her chest—to have begun to look forward to a future in which she never needed to doubt him again.

And there he was, being shown into the parlor, searching for her. He even smiled. The moment he realized to whom she was speaking, however, his expression turned into a rigid mask, as if he were a defendant facing an adverse verdict. Or a patient awaiting a fatal diagnosis.