Vanity (22 page)

The blackness filled his head as it always did when he thought of his criminal idiocy, and he turned from the knowledge. To confront it did no good and merely destroyed any chance for peace of mind.

Octavia was happy. That was all that mattered. Oliver shook himself awake and returned to his books.

“Y
ou ’ve never said exactly how you intend to accomplish my revenge,” Octavia said, raising her arms to unpin her hair. She was naked, and the movement lifted her breasts, drew the skin of her back taut.

Rupert, shoeless but otherwise still fully dressed, lay back on the bed, arms linked behind his head, watching with leisurely pleasure as she disrobed. “The plan is not fully formed as yet.”

“But you do have a plan?” She took off the high pads over which her hair had been piled and shook the cinnamon tresses free.

“Most certainly.”

“And you’re not going to tell me?” She picked up her hairbrush and studied his reflection in the mirror.

Rupert laughed and swung off the bed. “Let me brush your hair.” He crossed the room, his stockinged feet sinking into the Turkey carpet, and stood behind her.

The silk of his clothes brushed against the bare skin of her back, a skin suddenly so sensitive that the silken caress was almost abrasive. Octavia shivered, watching in the mirror as her nipples grew hard and erect.

He took the brush from her and began to draw it
through her hair, placing one hand on the top of her head as he pulled through the long, tangled curls.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“As yet there’s nothing to tell. Now, don’t distract me because I’m going to count to a hundred.”

Octavia gave up for the present under the seductive strokes of the brush. Her eyes closed, her head drooped; she slipped into a sensuous trance, her body swaying gently as if she were a willow tree in the wind.

When he stopped brushing, her eyes fluttered open again, meeting his in the mirror. His expression was serious and attentive. Gravely, he placed the brush down on the dresser and lifted her hair off her shoulders, letting it fall forward over her breasts. Reaching over her shoulders, his long white fingers parted the strands of hair, revealing her nipples and the pale circles around them. All the while, he held her gaze in the mirror, his eyes now deep and dark as coal.

His hands slipped around her waist, cupping her breasts before sliding down over her ribs, his palms flattening on her belly.

Her body in the mirror was white as alabaster against the black silk at her back. Soft and vulnerable in its nakedness. Her heart beat faster as his thigh moved against her buttocks, his knee nudging her thighs apart. The silk of his britches rustled across the delicate skin of her inner thighs, his knee pressed upward, creating an exquisite friction that made her catch her hp between her teeth. She watched her eyes grow large and misty, her skin pinken, as her excitement grew. She watched herself grow closer to the peak, and she watched Rupert watching her.

He smiled, a long, slow smile of satisfaction, enjoying her excitement as the pleasure built in her belly in ever-tightening spirals, and at the instant before she could bear no more, he used his hands on her and the coil burst asunder. She fell back against him and he wrapped his arms around her, laughing softly into her hair.

“I do love playing with you, sweeting. You’re so supremely responsive.”

“Obedient to your every touch,” Octavia mumbled with a weak chuckle. “I’m as clay in your hands, my lord.”

“In matters of loving,” he qualified with mock solemnity, tightening his arms around her waist, resting his chin on the top of her head. “I’m not so certain about other matters.”

“And just what does that mean?” She tried to look and sound indignant but failed miserably at both.

“Oh, you know quite well.” He swung her off her feet and over to the bed.

“If you mean I don’t accept your mastery without question, yes, I do know what you mean.” She lay on the bed where he’d dropped her, her hair a glowing fan around her.

“Well, perhaps I’ll just settle for the areas in which I have undisputed mastery,” Rupert declared cheerfully, throwing off his clothes with an unseemly haste. “At least for the moment.”

Naked, he leaped onto the bed beside her and straddled her thighs. “Now, madam, you may await further dissolution and tremble!”

“Oh, I do,” she said, running her tongue over lips, reaching to grasp the erect shaft as it brushed her belly. “Even my toes are trembling.” The pad of her thumb danced over the moistening tip of his flesh as her fingers moved behind, stroking the hard globes.

“What did you mean, ’At least for the moment’?” she inquired, a gleam in her eye as she deepened her caress. His only response was a sigh of pleasure.

“Oh, never mind,” she murmured, her thighs shifting beneath his weight. “I think I’ve lost interest in both the question and its answer … at least for the moment.”

The clock on the mantel chimed four. The fire hissed and crackled. A gust of wind raided the windowpane. From behind the bed curtains came low murmurs of delight as they moved in the darkness, their bodies blending in a fusion so complete, it denied the possibility of any dissonance.

“
F
our o’clock and all’s well.” The watchman’s repetitive cry faded down the corner of King’s Street as Margaret Drayton emerged from Almack’s among the last of the evening’s revelers. She was slightly tipsy, leaning on the arm of a stalwart young gentleman whose glazed eyes and somewhat rigid features indicated his own lack of sobriety.

“Where’s my carriage, Lawton?” Margaret demanded, staring down the now rapidly emptying street. “I sent you to call for it.”

“Oh, but I did, ma’am. I assure you I did.” Her escort peered around intently, as if expecting the missing carriage to materialize from thin air.

“Then why is it not here?” her ladyship demanded peevishly, huddling into her cloak as the wind whistled around the alley leading to King’s Place.

“My carriage is at your service, Margaret.”

Margaret turned at the smoothly considerate tones of the Earl of Wyndham. “Oh, I thought you’d gone home hours ago, Philip.”

“I’ve been playing at Mount Edgecombe’s,” he said, taking snuff. “But the party broke up a trifle suddenly when one of her ladyship’s watchmen believed a troop of Runners was about to raid the house.” He laughed, the sound clear and hard in the frosty air. “A false alarm, of course, but it did rather dampen enthusiasm.”

“Yes, I can imagine. Lawton, you’ve proved yourself singularly inept. I suggest you take yourself home to bed.” Margaret dismissed the hapless young man tartly.

“I did call your carriage … I do assure you,” her erstwhile escort protested. “Can’t think where it could have disappeared to.”

“I daresay it turned into a pumpkin,” the earl said. “Ma’am, my carriage awaits your pleasure.” He offered his arm to Lady Drayton, and the two went off, leaving the Honorable Michael Lawton gazing disconsolately and in some bewilderment after them.

“You do know how to ensure a lady’s comfort, Wyndham,” Margaret observed appreciatively, as the footman spread a rug over her knees and adjusted the position of a
hot brick beneath her feet. “In your company a woman would never find herself standing in the rain without an umbrella, or waiting for a chair in the wind, or finding herself seated at a bad table in the Piazza. Unlike that poor fool, Lawton.”

“Setting up another flirtation, are you, Margaret?” the earl inquired casually. “I can’t help feeling sorry for the infant. He clearly doesn’t know you could eat him for supper.”

Margaret laughed. “Oh, I was just amusing myself, Philip. There was a dearth of entertaining companions this evening … at least after the prince left. Indeed, I don’t know why I persist in going to these insipid affairs.” Delicately, she adjusted a beauty patch high on her cheekbone. “Of course, one must be seen.”

“Of course,” the earl agreed. “And were you amusing yourself similarly with Rupert Warwick?” The deceptively smooth, amused tone had vanished. He threw the question like a knife.

“La, Philip, what is it to you?” Margaret said with an artificial and uncertain laugh. “Warwick’s a most entertaining gentleman.”

“I like to know who else plays in the same garden,” the earl said coldly. “I’m a trifle fastidious, my dear, in some areas. But I daresay that’s quite a novel concept for you.”

Lady Drayton whitened with anger beneath the rouge, taking on a garish almost clownlike appearance. “I don’t believe I understand you, my lord.”

“Oh, come now, Margaret, you’re not such a fool,” the earl said, leaning forward, catching her chin on his forefinger. “I thought I’d made it plain that I wish for exclusive rights to your body. Apart from whatever demands your husband might make, of course,” he added with a careless gesture of his free hand. “I do accept that, as an obedient and loving wife, you must accommodate Drayton in whatever manner he wishes.”

He smiled, an angelic smile of benign understanding, but his fingers now grasped her chin painfully.

Margaret gasped and tried to pull back. The carriage
jolted in a pothole, and she was thrown forward against the earl’s knees. He caught her wrist with his free hand and held her in that position even as the carriage moved smoothly again. “I’m perfectly content to end our little arrangement, if you so wish. We understand each other, I’m sure.” He released her abruptly and gave her a push that sent her back onto her seat. “I don’t use whores.”

Margaret stared in shock at the pale glimmer of his face. His possessive streak had become more pronounced of late, but she hadn’t taken it very seriously. Her fawning courtiers were always too eager for her attentions to risk annoying her. She knew that Philip Wyndham was different, it was part of his attraction—that and his generosity. But she had always believed she could control him as she controlled the others. This was something new and frightening. She’d been frightened by men in her time in the King’s Place nunnery, but there had always been a bell to ring and a muscular footman on call. Here, in this warm, swaying darkness, in Wyndham’s carriage, driven by Wyndham’s servants, there was no protection.

“Rupert Warwick means nothing to me,” she whispered, her eyes darting to the window, looking for some familiar landmark in the darkness. The distance from Almack’s to her house on Mount Street should have been accomplished in no more than fifteen minutes at this time of the morning, with no traffic. And yet they seemed to have been journeying for hours.

Her companion made no response to this assertion. He leaned back against the velvet squabs and regarded her, his eyes vacant, expressionless, like gray holes in the serene planes of his face.

Margaret began to shiver. It was as if she were in the presence of the devil. “Why are we not at Mount Street yet?” she managed to ask, shrinking into the corner.

“Oh, are you in a hurry to be home, my dear? I beg your pardon, I thought you might enjoy a little tête-â-tête.” He smiled.

A suspicion popped into her head, became certainty. “What happened to my carriage?”

His smile broadened. “As I said, I thought you might enjoy a little tête-à-tête.”

“You sent it away?” She felt like crying in bewilderment.

“An accurate deduction,” the earl said dryly. “I’m surprised it took you so long to come to it.” He reached up and knocked on the roof of the carriage. The coachman responded to the knock by swinging the vehicle to the right.

Margaret clutched the strap above the window. “Take me home.”

“But of course,” he said, raising an eyebrow as if surprised. “Where do you think I’m taking you? You should be at your door in about two minutes. By my estimation we should now be turning onto Audley Street.”

Margaret huddled in her corner, nibbling a gloved fingertip. She was too frightened to speak, and when the carriage came to a halt and she recognized her own front door under the oil lamp, she flung open the door and tumbled to the street without waiting for the footman to lower the step.

The earl leaned out of the open door. “Forgive me if I don’t walk you to your door, my dear.”

“I don’t ever wish to speak to you again,” Margaret declared, her voice trembling but her courage returning with the safety of her own front door a mere three steps away.

The earl inclined his head in courteous acknowledgment. “You desolate me, ma’am.” Then he withdrew into the carriage, pulling the door closed.

Margaret ran up the steps to her own front door and hammered on the knocker until the night porter sleepily stumbled to open it.

Philip smiled to himself as the coach took him home to St. James’s Square. He’d been tiring of Margaret, although he hadn’t realized it until he’d seen her flirting with Rupert Warwick. It was time for a new adventure. And who better to have it with than the young, fresh, and very spirited wife of a man he instinctively detested?

He jumped from the coach with a surge of energy more appropriate for the middle of the morning than the cold, dark hour before dawn. The front door opened before he could knock. The night porter in the Earl of Wyndham’s house knew better than to sleep on duty and had been holding himself in readiness for the sound of the carriage throughout the night. He didn’t lock the door behind the earl, however, since for the household the day’s work had already begun.