Page 40 of A Rogue's Downfall
Stupid woman. Idiotic woman. Imbecile.
She had despised Nancy for wanting him when she knew that he was a dreadful, unprincipled rake. Yetnow she was being as bad as Nancy. Horrid, ghastlythought. He was here at the house to court Nancy.He would be married to her before the end of thesummer in all probability. And yet he had tumbledFlossie yesterday morning—Patricia was not so naiveas really to believe that he had merely kissed the girl.And tonight he was feasting upon the almost fat anddefinitely voluptuous Mrs. Delaney—a married lady.And beneath the roof of his future father-in-law’shouse.
Was there ever such an unprincipled rogue?
Yet she was besotted with him because he had asked who she was and then demanded further details.Because he had a handsome face and compelling darkgray eyes and a manly muscular figure and elegantcostly clothes. And because she had felt his lips andhis breath against the back of her hand. Because fora few minutes she had come out of the shadows andhad been dazzled by the sunshine. She made the sunshine look dim, he had said, deliberately teasing herwith the lavishly untrue compliment, knowing that shewould have some answer to amuse him.
Idiot. Imbecile. Fool. She set her mind to thinking of a few other names to call herself. And she fishedthe damp handkerchief from beneath her pillow again.She was going to need it when she had finally scoldedher snivelings to a halt.
She hated him. He could have played the gentleman and pretended not to have seen her up the tree. Hecould have gone away and left her to enjoy the patternthe branches made against the sky. But oh, no, he hadhad to talk to her and make her fall in love with him.
Oh, she hated him. She hoped that he was not finding Mrs. Delaney enjoyable after all. She quite fervently hoped it.
He was finding Mrs. Delaney something of a disappointment. Oh, she was quite as voluptuous without her clothes as with them, and she was quite as skilledas she was reputed to be and quite as eager to givewhatever pleasure he demanded and in whatever manner and at whatever pace he chose. If she had beenable to keep her mouth shut, he might have foundhimself thoroughly contented to bed only her for theremainder of his stay at Holly House and to forgetabout the other three prospects he had in mind.
But the lady liked to talk. While he undressed her and she undressed him. While they were engaged inforeplay. While he had her mounted. And after theywere finished. He never minded a certain amount oferoticism whispered into his ear or even shouted outto him at the most crucial moments of a sexual encounter. It could be marvelously arousing. He liked todo it himself.
What he did not particularly enjoy—what he did not enjoy at all, in fact—was having the events of theprevious day mulled over when his body was clamoring to shut down the workings of his mind or to havegossip repeated and commented upon while he labored to make the lady as mindless as he. He didnot expect love from her—heaven forbid!—but he didexpect a little respect for his famed prowess as a lover.The woman came to lusty climax each time hemounted her body, and it seemed genuine enough, buthe never knew quite where it came from. It was almostas if, like Flossie and her ilk, she needed only the lastcouple of minutes for her own pleasure but was quitewilling to grant him all the extra minutes provided hewould allow her to make free with his ears while shewaited for the good part.
During the second night and perhaps the seventh or eighth encounter all told, he loved her almost languidly in his tiredness and actually opened up his earsto hear what she was saying. She was planning therest of their summer—theirsummer. He was to go toBrighton, where Mr. Delaney was a minor player inPrinny’s court. They would have to be moderately discreet, but Mr. Delaney would not make any great fussanyway. Mr. Delaney, it seemed, had a greater lovefor clothes and gossip than he had for any exertionsof the body. In the autumn they would go to Bath,where Mrs. Delaney had an aged aunt. It was unclearwhere Mr. Delaney would be, but regardless the affairwas to flourish in Bath until the winter drew themback to London. Mr. Bancroft, Mrs. Delaney knew,owned a very superior love nest there where theycould meet once or twice a week. Or perhaps moreoften—she nipped his earlobe with her sharp teeth asan inducement to him to make it three or four timesa week.
He finished what he was doing to her, having the good manners to allow her to shout out her own completion first, disengaged himself from her, reluctantlyshook off the need to try to doze for a while, andpromptly decided it was time for his crisis of conscience.
“It is a dream utopia, love,” he said, regret in his voice. “It cannot be done. Your husband—”
Mrs. Delaney cozied up to him in such a way that if he had not already had her seven or eight timesduring the past one and three-quarter nights, his temperature might have soared. As matters were, it stayedexactly where it was.
“It weighs heavily on my conscience to have usurped another man’s rights,” he lied after she hadprotested. “You are too beautiful for your own good,my dear, and I am too weak for mine. But we mustnot continue. Let it end here, and let me be able toremember that for two all too brief nights I knewheaven on earth.”
The lady, he thought as he tiptoed to his own room in some relief several minutes later, did not know therules of the game for all her reputed experience. Hewondered in some alarm if after all she was smittenwith him. Surely she did not put up this much fussevery time a lover shed her. Or was she more accustomed to doing the shedding?
It did not matter. He was free of her. He would give himself tomorrow night in which to recuperateand then see what he could accomplish with LadyMyron, widow. She was a quiet lady, tall and nicely shaped, older than he at a guess, and unknown to himbefore this week. He had no tangible reason to believethat she was not a perfectly virtuous woman apartfrom certain looks she was throwing his way. Morethan once—he was certainly not imagining them.Come-hither looks if he had ever seen any. Well, hewould try coming thither and see what came of it.
In the meantime he felt as if he had at least a week of sleep to catch up on and only a few hours in whichto do it, unless he slept until noon, as some of theladies were in the habit of doing.
But the annoying thing was, he discovered over the coming hour as he lay in his own bed, at first flat onhis back, and then curled on his right side and thenstretched on his left and then spread-eagled on hisstomach, that sleep just would not come. He was beyond the point of exhaustion. That damned womanwas inexhaustible. She was always ready to settle fora good gossip when his body was screeching for sleep.Of course, she never expended her energy as recklessly as he did. She must have learned that from experience. Now whenever he seemed in some danger ofnodding off, he found that he was bracing himself forher next sally into conversation—even though she wasa few rooms away.
Damn the woman. Damn all women. They would be the death of him. Sometimes he wondered if allthe pleasure to be derived from them was worth theeffort. And he must be exhausted to the point of deathif he was starting to feel that way, he thought, kickingoff the bedclothes and levering himself off the bed togo and stand naked at his window. Dawn was grayingthe landscape already. He ran the fingers of one handthrough his hair and blew out air from puffed cheeks.
Maybe it was just that he was getting old. Twenty-nine on his next birthday, though it was still more than eight months away. Almost thirty. Time to besettling down. He could almost hear his mother sayingthe words in her sweet and quiet voice. He grimacedand wondered if he should stagger back to bed or getdressed and go for a vigorous ride.
And then he leaned forward to peer downward. A shadow flitted out from below him and darted acrossthe lawn leading to the trees and the lily pond. Ashadow that looked as if it was clad in a gray cloakand hood. A shadow that looked female. And small.
He found himself grinning. She had not lied. He must have seen her at least half a dozen times beforehe had caught sight of her up in the old oak tree.Almost wherever Mrs. Peabody went in the house, herlittle gray shadow went with her. The little shadowwas made to carry and fetch—stools and shawls andembroidery and vinaigrettes and a dozen and oneother things. She did it all with a quiet grace anddowncast eyes. And it was true—incredibly true—thatno one else seemed aware of her existence. Just asone could stand in the large hall of a grand house, hesupposed, and think oneself alone when all the timethere were perhaps a dozen silent footmen lining thewalls, waiting to open doors or run errands.
In the day and a half since he had become aware of her, he had not once—not once!—been able tocatch her eye. But knowing that she had eyes and earsand intelligence and a sense of humor and a quickwit, he had set about amusing her by being lavish inhis attentions to Mrs. Peabody and untiring in his flattery of Miss Peabody.
She had brightened that day and a half for him. She was not at all pretty, especially since he could get noglimpse of her eyes, and she was far too small andhad a figure that was trim but not in any way luscious.Her clothes were abominable, and the best that couldbe said of her hair was that it shone and looked cleanand healthy. And yet it amused him to know that hewas one of the few people at Holly House who waseven aware of her existence. And to know that shewas hearing every lying, flattering word he uttered andwas silently scolding him.
And now she was off to her retreat again, fleeing the nest before her day of drudgery was to start. Poorgirl. He felt an unaccustomed wave of compassion forher. He was not famed as a compassionate man.
He looked back at his rumpled bed with some distaste. If he lay down again, he would not sleep, he knew, especially now that daylight was beginning toreplace darkness. And there was nothing worse thanlying in bed, tired and unable to sleep. Much betterto get dressed and stroll down to the lily pond to teasea certain little bird. He remembered her sighing andlamenting the lost hour of solitude—lovelysolitude,she had called it. But he shrugged his shoulders.
He was not famed as a considerate man, either.
He walked through to his dressing room and lit a candle.
Sometimes she walked in the early morning down to the crescent-shaped lake. It was always desertedand lovely at that time of day. But there was something just a little too artificial about it. It had beenconstructed and landscaped to be lovely and it was,but it was a man-made loveliness. Sometimes she tookthe longer walk back to the hill behind the house sothat she could see the surrounding countryside. Sheliked to do that particularly if there was likely to besome trailing mist in the lowland to add drama to thescene. But almost always, at whatever time of day shewas able to get away by herself, she went to the lilypond. It was secluded and rather neglected. It washers.
