“With very little effort at all actually,” he said, heat rising on his neck. “You certainly didn’t make me beg. Can you deny you wanted this as much as I did?”
She pulled back her arm for another swipe at him, but he caught her wrist this time. Good thing too. Her hand was balled into a fist for a ringing punch instead of a ladylike slap.
“Get out of my coach,” she ordered.
“No.”
“Then release me at once. I won’t remain in your company for another moment.”
“Fine. Leave.” He leaned back so she could climb over him if she wished. “But if you go, you’ll never get your dagger back. I’ll consider it payment for services rendered.”
Her eyes narrowed to glittering slits. “I will scream and the driver will come to my assistance.”
Jacob shook his head. “He’ll be on my side.”
“Blast it all, you’re probably right. Men always stick together.” Her face crumpled. She folded her arms across her chest, quivering with rage. “I can’t afford this kind of distraction. There’s too much at stake.”
A distraction? Was that all their heart-stopping joining was to her?
“You don’t understand. How could you?” she muttered. “You’re a man.”
“A fault for which I cannot be blamed. Perhaps you’d care to take it up with my Maker, since it’s obvious you feel yourself His equal,” he said. “You’ve been reading Wollstonecraft, haven’t you?”
He wasn’t the least surprised when she nodded. The writings of Mary Wollstonecraft put all sorts of odd notions in women’s heads.
“But she didn’t tell me anything about men and my smaller place in the world because of them that I didn’t already know,” Julianne said.
He rolled his eyes. “You’ve neatly damned half the race. I ask you, what’s wrong with being a man?”
“Nothing.” She snorted. “The world believes the sun rises and sets on a pair of ballocks. Don’t you think I’d change my gender in a heartbeat if I could?”
He blinked hard at that. “In God’s name, why?”
“No matter how mean he may be, a man is still captain of his own fate,” Julianne said. “You’ve never had to be at the mercy of others.”
“I fail to see how—”
“Are you treated as if you were an imbecile or a child, incapable of understanding the simplest matters of business or scholarship?”
“No.”
“I am. You saw it for yourself in the way Lord Digory treated me in the King’s Arms.” She spat the words out. “Have you been used as a plaything by members of the opposite sex?”
He might be able to answer yes to that, but since he didn’t begrudge the women who sought him out, it didn’t seem as if he’d experienced the same distress over it she obviously had. Her eyes were wells of hidden hurts, but no tears came. He decided the best course was to remain mute.
What had happened to this woman to make her so bitter?
She sniffed and pressed her palms against her cheeks in an effort to lower her high color. “Are you able to enter into business for yourself without the assistance of others?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I can’t. If I wish to invest my own funds, I have to hire a man to carry out my wishes,” she said. “Suppose you marry. Will you forfeit all rights to your own property?”
“No.”
“A woman does.” She glared at him as if he were the source of all the inequities she named. “And if you do find a way to support yourself, as I did in the theatre, do you know what it is to fear you’ll lose your hard won place to someone younger, prettier, or more willing to spread her legs for the director and his friends?”
She didn’t meet his gaze any longer, though he doubted she saw the tufted velvet seat back at which she stared.
“When you were a child, were you ever—” She stopped herself with a hand to her mouth. Her shoulders quivered and her eyes were unnaturally bright, but she still didn’t cry. She drew a deep breath and mastered herself.
If she’d only continued, he suspected he might have learned the source of her guilty fear.
“That’s not important now.” She met his gaze, her eyes clear. “Here is it, baldly then. I only want the freedom you enjoy merely by virtue of your gender. However, my stepson demands I marry a man of his choosing or he’ll cut off my allowance altogether. I’ll have nothing.”
“Many women find comfort in marriage,” Jacob said. “Your own marriage to the earl does not sound as if it were unbearable.”
“It wasn’t, but the man my stepson expects me to accept is a swine with two feet,” Julianne said. “I will not exchange my freedom for the dubious hope of comfort. I have a buyer for the set of daggers, but only for the full set. It is a sufficient sum for me to keep myself comfortable for the rest of my days. But I must deliver them all by December fifteenth.”
Her shoulders sagged. “The truth is if I cannot find the last dagger and sell the set, I will not even be able to pay you whatever you intend on charging me.”
She stared at the white-knuckled fingers clutching her skirt.
Gently, Jacob took one of her hands and smoothed out the tension in her fingers. “Well, then. That gives me all the more incentive to help you, doesn’t it?”
She looked up at him. “There’s no need to go to the modiste’s. I can’t afford a new ball gown.”
“My credit is good.”
“There, you see. This is precisely what I mean. Things have changed between us already. You feel as if you have to take care of me simply because we ...”
“Because we gave each other a bit of ourselves?”
The words surprised Jacob as they came out of his mouth. He’d always seen sexual congress as an extremely pleasurable, but ultimately animal act. For the first time in his life, he allowed that something else, something much deeper, might have passed between him and this woman with whom he’d joined his body.
He raised her hand to his lips and pressed a lingering kiss on her knuckles. “Julianne, I have no desire to change you. I want you to remain as independent as you wish and I’m committed to helping you acquire the means to do so. If that means a new ball gown, I expect you to accept it in the spirit with which it’s offered. Will you do that?”
She searched his face and nodded. “Thank you, Jacob,” she said, palming the cheek she’d so recently slapped with her other hand. “You do understand, after all. But with all that’s at stake, I’m sure you agree we simply have to make certain this sort of lapse in judgment doesn’t happen again.”
“I can’t promise you that.” He circled her knuckle with his thumb. In fact, he could almost guarantee that now they’d been intimate, it was bound to happen again. Frequently. “I’ve never been particularly sensible about that sort of thing.”
She tugged her hand away with gentleness and pulled on her gloves. One corner of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. “Then I guess I’ll have to be sensible enough for both of us.”
C
HAPTER
7
T
here were myriad things to do before the night of Lord Digory’s soirée. The French modiste Jacob took her to see did miracles with a length of silk moiré. Nevertheless, Julianne had to endure several fittings for her new rose-colored gown before Jacob pronounced it worthy of her. She couldn’t rightly complain since he was paying the considerable bill, but the man certainly believed in getting his money’s worth.
Or perhaps he simply enjoyed seeing how much he could make her blush with merely the heat of his gaze during those fittings. Julianne felt each flick of his gray eyes. When his lingering gaze touched her shoulder, her waist, the curve of her breast with unabashed admiration, he set her skin dancing from across the room.
She suspected the wicked rogue knew full well he was doing it too.
They visited the artisan who’d been hired to create a believable substitute for the real dagger. His work was exceptional and should fool the most skilled examiner. When the replica was finished and Jacob laid it beside the real one, Julianne couldn’t be certain which was the original, though Jacob was adamant that he could tell them apart.
“The fake blade has a magnetic charge, but it’s much weaker than the real dagger,” he’d explained. “It was important to include that feature, in case the members of the Druid Order know to look for it.”
Jacob also took her to meet his fencing coach, an expert in weapons of all kinds, but the man had never heard of the set of Druidic daggers. And he had no notion why anyone would fashion magnetic blades.
When the last day of her half-mourning passed, her stepson sent a missive ordering her to return to Cornwall immediately. She sent the coach back empty instead.
Jacob decided it would be best if Society believed he was courting her. It would explain why they were seen together with such regularity and should distract any who might take an interest in their search for more information about the daggers. So, they attended lectures on Egyptian hieroglyphs and gallery openings for fledging painters. They strolled through the Crystal Palace to view the remains of Prince Albert’s grand exhibition, seeing and being seen by all the right people.
There’d been no repeat of the wild coupling in the coach. Now that Julianne’s equipage was rattling back toward Cornwall, she was careful to insist that she and Jacob hire only open air barouches for their traveling needs. Jacob demanded she allow him to foot the bills for their search, and since she was short of funds, she agreed. She didn’t really feel guilty about this added expense for him. It was his fault for being such a temptation. The man ought to pay for his devastating charm and all-too-amazing sensual skills.
By night, they attended the theatre, and one evening, Julianne arranged to meet the prop mistress, Lily Parks. She’d taken tea with her when she’d first arrived in London and hadn’t expected to do it again. Her life on Drury Lane felt as though it had happened to someone else. She and Lily had run out of conversation fairly quickly.
But even though she and Jacob made the rounds of all the fashionable places and crossed paths with many people she’d met when she’d first wed Algernon, Julianne received no invitations from the
haute ton
. She was lonely for some feminine companionship and Lily’s was a friendly, if unfashionable, face. So they met again in one of the few coffeehouses that allowed unescorted female patrons.
“You made the
London Crier
,” Lily said, shoving the tabloid across the small table. “You and that fancy fellow you’ve been keepin’ company with.”
“Really?” Julianne scanned the short article.
We note, with unconcealed pleasure, the return of Lady C. to London society. This one time actress-turned-countess has always been entertaining, both on and off the stage, and one wonders what new scandals the merry widow has in store for our fair city.
She’s been seen in close company with a certain gentleman, the notorious Mr. P., a fellow with high connections and low sensibilities. Our gentle readers will recall his many amatory exploits and the warnings we have issued about the cad in previous columns. Well-bred young ladies would do well to take warning should Mr. P. decide to desert his current paramour, Lady C., and roam the haunts of the ton once again.
But in light of the Earl of C’s untidy demise, one feels one should sound a note of warning to Mr. P. as well. Let the lessons of the animal world guide you, Sir.
A black widow feeds on her unwary mates.
Julianne flipped the damning paper over with so much force, her china cup rattled in its saucer. No wonder Society’s doors remained closed to her.
“Good review, what?” Lily said between sips of her chocolate.
“It’s absolutely scurrilous. I should sue for defamation of character.”
“Nonsense. They’re talkin’ about you, ain’t they? That’s all a review is good for,” Lily said with a dismissive wave of her heavily veined hand. “Didn’t you always say it don’t matter a fig what they say so long as they talk about you?”
“But this isn’t the theatre, Lily,” she said with a frown. “This is my life.”
“Same thing, dearie. Only difference is when you’re off stage, you can play more fast and loose with the script.” Lily popped a petit four into her mouth, wrapped up three more in her napkin, and secreted them in her disreputable bag, along with one of the silver teaspoons.
Julianne sighed. She should have met Lily in a less posh establishment where the temptation wasn’t so great for one with light-fingered inclinations. Then she wondered if Lily feared for her place in the theatre. Once Julianne sold the daggers and set up her own pension, she promised herself she’d look into providing for Lily and those like her on Drury Lane who didn’t have much laid by for their advanced years.
“And speaking o’ the theatre, when you coming back to us?” Lily asked.
“I’m not coming back.”
“Sure you are. Once a body gets greasepaint in the blood, there’s no way to get it out.” Lily leaned forward confidingly. “I heard rumblings that Mr. Farthingale is hankering to do Othello and word is, he knows you’re in town and thinks as you’d be the perfect Desdemona.”
Wonderful. She could look forward to being strangled by a jealous husband nightly.
“What d’you say?” Lily urged. “Mr. Farthingale says you’d pack the house.”
Undoubtedly, she would. It wasn’t every day a dowager countess trod the boards. The
ton
would come from morbid curiosity, and leave satisfied that Julianne had finally learned her true place.
“You already know the role, I’d wager.” Lily’s wheedling tone was starting to dance on her last nerve.
Julianne knew Desdemona. Every word. During her days in the theatre, when she wasn’t in rehearsal for one role, she was studying others she intended to take up one day. Once, her life onstage had been the only source of truth and beauty, the only real thing in a world of fakes, and she dove headlong into it.
But that was before she met Jacob Preston, she realized with a jolt. Before she started to ... need him.
She groaned inwardly. No. She couldn’t allow it. Her dependence on Jacob was a temporary thing. Once she had the daggers and made the sale, she’d cut him loose with a substantial payment for his time and trouble. She wouldn’t owe him anything.
“O’ course, maybe you’re thinking of taking up another role,” Lily said with a shrewd wink. “Mrs. Preston, perhaps? A good-lookin’ bloke, that and with more than two coppers to rub together in his pocket, I’ll warrant.”
“No, Lily,” she said with firmness. “Mr. Preston is certainly a fine diversion, but I don’t intend to marry again. Ever. Men make women ...”
“Happy?” Lily offered.
“Weak,” Julianne corrected. And she would never be weak again if she could help it.
Contemplating weakness brought something Jacob had said during their first conversation bubbling to the front of her mind. She leaned forward and lowered her voice, lest she be overheard.
“Lily, do you remember when you told me about going to the Hell Fire Club?”
Lily laughed, a rough cawing sound. “I’m not likely to forget it, am I? Lord, that takes me back. Did I tell you the honorable Charles Fox was there? Fancied me, he did. You should have seen ’im when he—”
“Never mind about that,” Julianne interrupted. The couple at the next table had cut their eyes toward Lily for the third time. Julianne continued in a whisper and hoped her friend would reciprocate. It would be too embarrassing to be asked to leave this establishment because Lily had no sense of propriety. “What I want to know is if there are any clubs of that ilk still about in London?”
Lily’s gray brow arched. “The Hell Fire’s gone, o’ course, but there are rumblings of another,” she said softly. “I just hears snatches, you understand. They wouldn’t take an old crone like me in, that’s for sure.”
“What do you hear?”
“Well, the Hell Fire Club was mostly about folk doing what came naturally. Oh, a few were unnatural too, I suppose, but it were all about having a rip snorting time. And there was always a few who fancied a good paddling, which I guess don’t do a body harm if everyone’s agreeable to it. But one of the girls in the chorus—Mina Pitt, it were—she went to this new club and she told me ...” Lily’s voice dropped to such a low whisper Julianne had to lean forward to catch her words. “Well, the further you get into it, the more it’s about whips and chains and some sort of religious mumbo-jumbo instead of a bit of harmless swiving. Not my cup of chocolate, that’s for sure, but it takes all sorts, they do say.”
Lily tipped up her cup and drained it to the flaky dregs.
“But trust me, you don’t want anything to do with this new bunch, dearie,” she said, swiping her mouth on her sleeve. “After she went to this new club a second time, Mina didn’t come back to the theatre. I never saw her again.”
Julianne left a generous tip at the coffeehouse to cover the spoon that Lily absconded with, and returned to the Golden Cockerel. She’d allowed herself plenty of time to dress and prepare for Lord Digory’s soirée. The inn would provide a lady’s maid to assist her for a price, so she’d arranged for one. Since the bodice of her new gown fit like a second skin, she couldn’t lace herself tightly enough to fit into it without assistance.
She’d chosen the Golden Cockerel for its extra amenities and reputation as a haunt of the Upper Crust. After that horrible piece in the
London Crier
, she realized she needn’t have bothered. They’d never accept her no matter where she stayed or what she did.
Since she’d lived hand to mouth a time or two, Julianne knew what it was to squeeze a copper till it squealed. The extravagance of such a high-toned hotel now chafed her thrifty soul. Especially since it meant she’d had to pawn the lovely little ruby ring Algernon had given her in order to pay the bill.
When she entered the opulent lobby, she was surprised to find Jacob there. He was ensconced in one of the wing chairs by the common room’s fireplace. His long legs crossed, he was sipping tea and, much to her chagrin, reading the latest edition of the
Crier
.
“You’re early,” she said, wondering if he’d run across the article about them yet.
“I thought you might require my assistance,” he said pleasantly, flipping the paper to the next page.
“Thank you, no,” she said in an embarrassed whisper, still begrudging the extravagance of hiring a temporary servant. “I’ve already engaged a lady’s maid for the evening.”
He folded the paper neatly and tucked it under his arm as he stood. “I’m not here to help with your toilette, but it’s a charming idea. Wish I’d thought of it.”
Her face heated as if with fever. She could have kicked herself. There was something about this man that made her say the most ridiculous things.
“I daresay, barring the hair dressing, I’d have made an admirable abigail for you,” he said with a grin. “But alas, I’m only here to escort you to your room.”
She blinked in surprise. “That’s neither necessary nor appropriate.”
“Maybe not appropriate, but definitely necessary.” He took her arm and led her toward the staircase. “One of my boys says there’s a fellow snooping about this establishment.”
“One of your boys?”
“I hire a number of them to be my eyes about town. I tasked one to observe you whenever I’m not with you.”
Maybe that accounted for the prickles between her shoulder blades whenever she was out and about. “You should have told me.”
“It might have changed how you behaved. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one interested in your comings and goings. My lad, Gil, says the man he’s been watching sneaked into the hotel this afternoon. Based on his dress, Gil is certain the fellow is not a guest.” Jacob stopped at the landing. “If he’s still in your chamber, I’d rather you not meet him alone.”