Vanity (31 page)

The scull bumped gently against the steps, and a waterman peered over the top of the embankment. He came down the steps to take the painter as Rupert tossed it to him. “Growin’ chilly on the water, guv.”

“Aye. It’ll be a week or two yet before the day’s warmth lingers after sunset.” Rupert sprang onto the step and handed the man a shilling. The sound of voices and tramping feet came from the embankment above. “What’s that?”

“Oh, it’s that there Protestant Association marchin’ agin the papists, guv,” the waterman said, securing the painter to a ring in the wall. “Full of ale and bluster they be, ready to follow that Lord George Gordon into ’ell’s inferno.”

He followed Rupert up the steps. “Not that I ’olds
with papists meself. An’ I don’t ’old with no Catholic Relief Act neither. But that Lord George talks a lot of nonsense too. I was jest sayin’ to the missis—”

“Good night, waterman.” Rupert cut off his loquacious companion in full flood and hurried down the street.

A small crowd of apprentices moved ahead of him, chanting “No popery,” but without too much venom. They turned aside into the courtyard of a tavern, distracted by the smell of ale, and Rupert continued past, wondering if this growing anti-Catholic movement was going to prove a nuisance. For some reason Catholic emancipation seemed to touch a raw nerve with the populace, and Lord George Gordon’s fanaticism was an effective bellows.

Of course, one always needed to believe there was someone worse off than oneself, and the worse one’s own situation, the more one needed to, he reflected. And the worse one’s own situation, the more one needed someone to blame. London’s underclass was learning to blame Catholics for its every ill under the fiery persuasion of Lord George and his fellow rabble-rousers. They painted the prospect of Parliament’s relieving a small part of the legal discrimination against Catholics as an edict straight from the devil’s heretic mouth.

Rupert hastened up the steps to his own house as a nearby church clock struck seven. The royal family had come from Windsor Castle for the day to conduct a drawing-room reception at St. James’s Palace. It was unthinkable for anyone who laid claim to the higher echelons of society not to put in an appearance. Octavia had grumbled mightily. Since one couldn’t be seen in the queen’s company with undressed hair, she had to submit to the attentions of a hairdresser in the powder closet.

Rupert, expecting the worst, strolled up the stairs, entering Octavia’s bedchamber without ceremony. She was still swathed in a powder gown, examining herself in the cheval glass. “Oh, there you are,” she said crossly. “Where have you been since dinner, while I’ve been enduring this torture?”

“Business,” he said calmly, bending to kiss the exposed nape of her neck. “And don’t exaggerate. Let me look at you.”

“Don’t, it’s hideous.” She pulled a face at her reflection. “I don’t look in the least like myself.”

“No, that you don’t,” he agreed, absorbing the towering white edifice that swayed above her small face. “But it’s de rigueur, my dear.” He strode to the door that connected his apartments with hers.

“What business?” Octavia stood up and followed him. She leaned against the doorjamb as he began to throw off his clothes. “Shall I ring for Jameson? Will you need him to dress your hair?”

“No, I shall wear a wig. It’s a lot easier.” He splashed water on his face from the basin on the washstand.

“It’ll take all night to get this muck out of my hair.” Octavia pulled disconsolately at a white ringlet on her shoulder, forgetting her earlier question. “But my own hair’s too long to fit under a wig. Perhaps I should shave it all off.”

“Don’t you dare even jest about such a thing!”

“Who’s jesting?” she taunted, cowering in mock terror as he glared ferociously.

“Lady Greerson has shaved her head … or so I’ve heard. And most of the ladies at court wear theirs shorn very close to their heads,” she added mischievously. “It seems very sensible to me. Men shave their heads all the time. It helps the itching, as I understand it … nothing for the lice to nest in, I imagine.”

Her eyes sparkled with amusement, her irritation forgotten as rapidly as it had arisen. Rupert’s presence generally had that effect. When she was with him, she found it very hard to hold a grudge or maintain ill temper.

In fact, his presence was becoming absolutely vital to her. In fact, she couldn’t imagine living life outside that presence.

She turned back abruptly to her own chamber, where Nell was waiting with her corset. There was no room in
their present life to indulge in such maudlin fancies. Of course, she could—would—live life without Rupert Warwick … or whoever he really was. Just as he would live life without her. In fact, she would lay any odds that the prospect of not doing so had never entered his head.

She gave the maid her back, seizing the bedpost and breathing in grimly as Nell tugged on the laces.

“That’s enough, Nell!” Rupert’s voice spoke from the connecting door. “Hell and the devil, Octavia, what are you thinking of? You’ll break your ribs.”

Octavia realized that in her fierce reverie she’d completely forgotten to breathe. She let out her breath with a gasp and squeaked in pain. “Ow! Let them out, Nell!”

“I was waitin’ for you to say something, madam,” Nell said in hasty defense, releasing her death grip on the laces.

“I was thinking of something else,” Octavia mumbled, massaging her aching ribs.

“Like what?” Rupert frowned at her.

You.
“Oh, just about the evening,” she said, stepping into the petticoat Nell held out for her. “How long do we have to stay at this drawing room?”

“Until Their Majesties retire. You know that.”

He was still puzzled. Somewhere between her mischief in his bedchamber and now, something had disturbed her. He could see it in the little lines of tension around her eyes and the set of her mouth.

Octavia stood still as Nell fastened the three whalebone panniers at her waist; then she stepped into the straw-colored taffeta
robe a la polonaise.

Nell hooked it up, then stood back admiringly. The ruched skirt was drawn up by cords beneath to fall in three draped swags over the panniers, revealing a flounced petticoat of bronze taffeta short enough to show the turn of an ankle and slender feet in straw-colored satin slippers. The décolletage was daringly low, and Nell dipped a hare’s foot into a tub of powder and patted it across the swell of her mistress’s breasts.

Rupert forgot his puzzlement in this new Octavia.
He’d never seen her dressed with this formality. He found the sight mesmerizing, and the thought of the simple beauty that lay beneath the frills and ruching was powerfully arousing.

To distract himself, he opened a small box of beauty patches and selected two black silk crescents.

“Allow me, my dear.” Delicately, he placed them on her breasts, just above her barely concealed nipples. “That should draw the eye nicely.”

He was presumably thinking particularly of Philip Wyndham, Octavia reflected, looking down at his fingers making a minute adjustment to the patch on her left breast. He was dressing her up to entrap and seduce his enemy. In her present costume she certainly rivaled Margaret Drayton for daring flamboyance. Everything she had to offer was on display.

Rupert was picking through the box of patches again and selected a small circular one. Taking her face between finger and thumb, he turned it this way and that, trying to decide where to place the piece of silk.

“I think the roguish.” He placed a circular patch high on her cheekbone in the appropriate position.

“Anything else you wish to add?” Octavia asked. “Any further piece of artifice to enhance my attractions for those who must be attracted?”

There was a moment of silence in which she wished twenty times over that she hadn’t spoken and most particularly not in that tone.

Rupert dropped his hand from her face. Anger and puzzlement flashed across his eyes at the sardonic bitterness in her voice.

“What are you talking about?” He glanced pointedly behind him to where Nell was busy at the armoire.

Octavia shrugged, tried to laugh it off. She picked up the hare’s foot, dusting it across her cheeks, peering attentively at her image in the glass.

“Nothing really. I suppose I just feel uncomfortable because I look like every other woman at court. Like some peacock preening my feathers to attract a mate.”

“It’s the male peacock who does the preening,” he pointed out, still frowning.

“Oh, you know what I mean.” She licked a fingertip and smoothed her eyebrows, not meeting his eye in the mirror.

“I’m not sure that I do,” he said quietly. “But I have a faint suspicion, and you’d better hope that it’s incorrect, Octavia.”

He leaned over her shoulders, placing his hands on the dresser, his face close beside hers, his eyes forcing her gaze in the mirror. “I am wrong, aren’t I, Octavia? You couldn’t possibly have been accusing me of preparing you for Wyndham’s bed?”

Her mouth was suddenly dry, her skin hot. This was Rupert at his most intimidating.

“I don’t know why you would think that,” she said, clearing her throat. “And I don’t know why you’re glaring at me in that way. I don’t like being dressed up in this fashion, it makes me feel like a whore. And it doesn’t make any difference that every other woman will look just the same, because I don’t like looking like other women.”

To her relief he seemed to be convinced. He straightened slowly, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. Then he nodded. “Believe me, Octavia, you don’t look in the least like other women. You are unique.”

He let his hands slip from her shoulders, and his eyes now smiled at her in the mirror. “I’ll wager you’ll have even the king at your feet—and you know what a prude he is.”

With sudden briskness he moved back to the door to his own room. “I must finish my own peacock imitation. Don’t disturb my handiwork,” he added, seeing her fingers move restlessly to the patch on her cheek. “Trust me to know what suits you.”

He probably did know. It seemed to be one of his areas of expertise, and she’d been stupid to react like that. It was just that increasingly these days she felt raw, as if she were missing several skins, and then she lost the ability to respond airily, to play the game with the buoyant enthusiasm that she knew he expected of her.

And Octavia knew precisely why she had lost the ability this evening.

She wandered restlessly over to the window. Her gown wasn’t designed for sitting, although she could shift the back pannier sideways to perch on the edge of a stool if she wished. Not that she would be doing much sitting this evening. One didn’t sit in Their Majesties’ presence.

She knew exactly why she’d reacted with such sharp bitterness to Rupert’s lighthearted ministrations. Tonight she was going to accede to any suggestion Philip Wyndham made.

The decision had made itself as she sat beneath the hands of the hairdresser and watched herself transformed into an artificial monstrosity. This creature could tangle in the bedsheets with the Earl of Wyndham and be completely untouched by the experience. There was no Octavia Morgan visible in this guise.

And when it was done, and she had the ring, then Rupert would complete his half of the bargain, and this suspenseful agony would be done. She wouldn’t have to pretend to be carefree and buoyant and untouched by the grim realities of the game. She could crawl into a hole and be as bitterly miserable as she wished.

“Are you ready, Octavia?”

She jumped, closed her eyes for a second until she’d composed herself, then glanced casually over her shoulder.

She gasped at what she saw. Rupert, too, looked very different. He wore his favorite black silk, but with a gold-embroidered waistcoat and black stockings embroidered with gold clocks. A diamond gleamed in the black solitaire neck cloth he wore around his stock, and his powdered wig was as high as her own hair. A beauty patch in the corner of his mouth seemed to accentuate the cynical curve to his lips.

“Is that rouge you’re wearing, my lord?” She stared in disbelief.

“A touch is customary.” His smile was both sardonic
and complicit. “One must not fly in the face of custom all the time, Octavia. Sometimes it’s necessary to obey convention in order to achieve one’s own ends.”

He held out his arm. “Come, ma’am. Let us go and set the court on its heels.”

Q
ueen Charlotte was disposed to notice Lady Rupert Warwick at the reception, although initially Octavia couldn’t think why she should receive particular favor. The queen’s equerry murmured in her ear that Her Majesty wished Lady Warwick to be presented, and Octavia found herself being ushered through the crowded drawing room, aware of the envious looks of the unfavored.

She caught sight of the Prince of Wales, standing close to his mother and her ladies. He nodded and winked pointedly and Octavia understood. Her Majesty wished to interview the woman in whose house her unruly son spent so much time.

She curtsied, low and Queen Charlotte returned the salute with a half curtsy. “Lady Warwick, I believe we haven’t had the pleasure of your acquaintance,” she said, unsmiling as her gaze drifted over Octavia’s gown, skimmed over her décolletage. “Our son is a good friend of yours, I understand.”