Regency Scoundrels And Scandals
Her body thrummed, lighter than air, yet so heavily relaxed it felt she might sink through the mattress. She felt wonderful, although she knew that in the morning she was going to be stiff and perhaps a little sore. It had been a miracle. Ashe had been a miracle. Bel’s lids drooped. As sleep took her again she thought hazily, This is so perfect. So perfect…
Bel floated, blissful, through the next morning. The fluffy pink clouds still enveloped her, the sun shone, just for her, the birds were singing, just because Ashe had made love to her. At lunchtime she received a bouquet of yellow roses with a note that said simply, ‘One? A.’ and rushed out to purchase two new nightgowns, a pair of utterly frivolous backless boudoir slippers, a cut-glass vase for the roses and pink silk stockings. She then went and took refuge in Ackermann’s, browsing through the latest fashion plates until her maid was nodding with boredom and she could hand a note and a coin to the doorman without being noticed.
‘Please see this is delivered,’ she said brightly, without any appearance of secrecy. ‘I should have left it with my footman and quite forgot.’
The man touched his hat respectfully and snapped his fingers for an errand boy. The note, hurried away in the lad’s firm grip said only, ‘Yes. B.’
She, Bel Cambourn, respectable widow, was having an affaire. She had a lover. She was living out her fantasy and it was utterly perfect. Bel drifted round the end of a rack of maps, wondering vaguely whether she was going to exist in this happy blur for the duration of the affair or whether it would wear off. There were doubtless all kinds of things she should be doing, calls she should make, business she should attend to, but she could not concentrate on a single thing other than the image of Ashe, nakedly magnificent—
‘Ouch!’ The pained voice was familiar.
She found herself almost nose to nose with her Cousin Elinor, who had been browsing through a stack of small classical prints. Elinor’s right foot was under Bel’s left. She hastily removed it and apologised for her abstraction.
‘I have decided to create a print room in my small closet,’ Elinor explained, once they had finished apologising to each other for not looking where they were going. ‘I think I have enough now. Do you?’ She regarded a pile of prints doubtfully.
‘How big is the room? I would take a few more if I were you. And you will need borders,’ Bel pointed out, wrenching her mind away from erotic thoughts. ‘I did the same thing at Felsham Hall and bought everything here. They sell borders by the yard.’ She picked up the top print, discovered it was a scantily clad Roman athlete with a physique almost as good as Ashe’s and hastily returned it to the pile. Ashe did not have a fig leaf.
Elinor had found a shop assistant while Bel was recovering her composure and he returned with a selection of borders for the ladies to chose from. ‘You look very well, Cousin.’ Elinor glanced up from fitting a length of black-and-white paper against a print of the Forum. ‘Excited,’ she added, rejecting that border and trying another.
‘I do? Oh.’ Bel bit her lip; she had no idea that her inner state would be obvious. ‘How?’
‘Your colour is better and—I do not know quite how to describe it—you are glowing somehow.’ Elinor put her head on one side and frowned at her cousin.
‘It’s the lovely weather, and I am enjoying being back in London. I did a lot of shopping this morning.’ Although shopping was not a reason for excitement that Elinor would recognise.
‘I wish I could have come with you.’ Unaware she had startled her cousin, Elinor made a decision on the borders and handed her choice to the assistant.
‘Really?’ Thank goodness, her cousin was taking an interest in clothes at last.
‘Yes, I need some stout walking shoes, some large handkerchiefs and tooth powder,’ Elinor said prosaically, dashing Bel’s hopes of fashionable frivolity. ‘Mama is meeting me with the carriage—would you care for a lift home?’
Bel sat on one of the stools at the green-draped counter. ‘No, thank you, I will walk, I need the exercise.’ If truth were told, she was more than a little stiff from last night’s exertions and would have welcomed the ride, but the thought of enduring Aunt Louisa’s close scrutiny was too alarming. If Elinor could tell something was changed, Aunt Louisa most certainly could.
She walked out with Elinor, the porter hastening behind with the packed prints. Sure enough, drawn up at the kerb side in front of the shop, was Aunt Louisa’s carriage with the top down, and there, walking towards her along the pavement, a willowy lady on his arm, was Ashe.
‘Belinda!’ Aunt Louisa.
‘Lady Belinda.’ Ashe. ‘Miss Ravenhurst.’
‘Lord Dereham.’ That was Elinor. Her mama, startled by the novelty of her daughter addressing a man in the street, turned with majestic slowness and raised her eyeglass. Ashe bowed gracefully.
‘Lady James, Lady Belinda, Miss Ravenhurst.’ Ashe raised his hat. ‘Are you acquainted with Lady Pamela Darlington?’
‘No, I am not. Good afternoon, Lady Pamela.’ Bel shook hands with a politeness she was far from feeling. What she did feel, shockingly, was the urge to push Lady Pamela into the nearby horse trough. The pink clouds of happiness vanished.
‘Ha! I remember you.’ Aunt Louisa was regarding the very lovely young woman severely.
Bel found she could not speak. Lady Pamela was pretty, beautifully dressed, totally confident. She shook hands with Lady James without showing any alarm at her ferocious scowl, smiled at Elinor and Bel and chatted pleasantly while, all the time, keeping her hand firmly on Ashe’s arm. From time to time she glanced up at him with a proprietorial little smile that widened as he smiled back. He had all the hallmarks of a man receiving the attentions of a lovely woman, damn him, Bel thought savagely, smiling until her cheeks ached. Behind Lady Pamela stood a maid and a footman laden with packages.
Bel did not know where to look. She did not dare meet Ashe’s eye, terrified of showing some emotion her aunt could read. With her insides churning with what she had not the slightest difficulty in recognising as violent and quite unreasonable jealousy, she did not want to look at Lady Pamela and all the time she knew that simply by standing there, dumbstruck and awkward, she risked making herself conspicuous.
‘We have been purchasing prints for a print room,’ she said suddenly, into a lull in the conversation. Lady Pamela smoothed an invisible thread off Ashe’s sleeve with a little pout of concentration on her face. Bel gritted her teeth.
‘How very artistic of you, Lady Belinda,’ Ashe remarked, the first words he had addressed to her since his greeting.
‘Miss Ravenhurst is the artistic one, my lord, I am merely helping her choose some images,’ Bel replied, her lips stiff. She made herself meet his eyes. There was not the slightest sign in his expression of anything other than good-mannered interest in what she was saying. How could that be? Bel had felt it would be obvious to everyone who passed—let alone her aunt—that the two of them were lovers; she felt as though it must be emblazoned across her face. But no one seemed in any way suspicious and all Aunt Louisa’s attention appeared to be focused upon Lady Pamela and Ashe.
And just what was he doing with the lovely Lady Pamela? Why were they smiling at each other like that? Pamela was hanging on to his arm in a manner that was positively clinging and Ashe was doing nothing to distance himself. He seemed to know her well. Very well.
‘Belinda!’ She jumped. Aunt Louisa was gesturing to the open carriage door and the groom waiting patiently beside it.
‘No, thank you, Aunt, I will walk back, I have my maid with me.’
‘Join us, Lady Belinda,’ Ashe suggested, proffering his other arm. Lady Pamela’s smiling lips compressed into a thin line. ‘We are going to Hatchard’s bookshop, so I imagine our ways lie together.’
‘Thank you, no, my lord,’ she said coolly. ‘I have more than enough foolish romance to be going on with, just at the present, without buying any to read.’ She bowed slightly to Lady Pamela, smiled at her relatives and set off briskly westwards.
‘My lady?’ Millie scurried to keep up. ‘Are you all right, my lady?’
‘Yes, of course I am.’ Bel blew her nose fiercely but slowed her pace for the girl’s shorter legs. The smoke and the dust must have got into her eyes, there was no other explanation for the way they were watering.
How could Ashe be so…? She wrestled for the word. Deceitful. That was it, horrid as it was. He had told her he had no attachments, no commitments, yet there he was, strolling along, giving every indication that he was on the very best of terms with one of the most eligible young ladies in the Marriage Mart. And that was a highly risky thing to be doing if a man was not serious. It led to gossip at best and to interviews with enraged fathers at worst.
If she had known he was on the look-out for a bride, nothing would have led her to make her outrageous proposition, Bel thought angrily, the low heels of her shoes clicking on the pavement with the force of her steps. He had only needed to pretend to misunderstand her, as he had done at first, and there the matter would have ended. She would have been embarrassed, yet probably relieved once she had time to think things over, and Ashe would have neatly extricated himself from a tricky encounter, as doubtless he had many a time before.
But he had not extricated himself, and she had slept with him. They had made love and while it probably meant nothing to him, Bel told herself, piling on the misery, she was never going to be the same again.
Half an hour ago she had thought her life was perfect. Perfect.
Chapter Ten
‘It is very nice, my lady. Will you be going in to see if they have it in a different colour?’
‘What?’ Bel found she was standing in front of a milliner’s shop, regarding a hat on a stand, and Millie was waiting patiently at her side.
‘You said it was perfect, my lady. But I don’t think you usually wear that shade of blue, do you, ma’am?’
Now she was talking to herself. Bel took a long, steadying breath. She was a grown-up woman, if a naïve and inexperienced one. Now she knew about Lady Pamela Ashe would not come to her again, not after having found himself in public between his lover and the object of his more permanent attentions. One just had to put it all down to experience. And at least she had experienced physical pleasure. She knew what all the fuss was about now.
All she had to do was to stop aching with desire for Ashe. Surely that would happen naturally after a few days? One simply could not exist as she was now, feeling like this, not without going mad.
Bel pushed open the shop door and stepped in. Shopping as a cure for misery was shallow, but she did not care. Tomorrow she would find something worthwhile to do. Today she was going to buy a hat.
The soothing qualities of a new hat, even an outrageously frivolous one that an unmarried girl like Lady Pamela would not be allowed to wear, were predictably short lived. Bel knew perfectly well that she could shop until she dropped, dance her slippers through, read the most frivolous journals and gossip until she was hoarse—but the empty ache would still be there. It did not help to tell herself that by the very nature of their relationship there could be no emotional commitment. Ashe had made none. What she felt now was too close to that for either safety or comfort—perhaps it was better that it was ending now.
Bel found herself at half past midnight unable to sleep again. She sat up in bed, her arms wrapped round her knees, her books discarded on the table and tried to think.
She was twenty-six. She was never going to marry again and she would never dare entangle herself with another man. That left a considerable number of years stretching into the future to be filled with something other than domestic duties or passion. Bel knew that while she was perfectly intelligent she would never be a bluestocking like her cousin, so retreating into some form of intellectual study was out of the question. Parties and shopping were fun, but hardly the basis of a fulfilling life.
Which left good works. Bel contemplated the idea. When she had been married she had undertaken charitable activities on the estate and in the surrounding parishes as a matter of course, but now there was no estate to provide her with a ready-made supply of children to educate, elderly and infirm persons to support or fathers of large families to find work for. She was going to have to find a cause of her own.
Throwing back the covers, Bel slid out of bed and padded across to the table, the voluminous skirts of the plain cotton nightgown she had chosen flapping about her ankles. She found paper and ink and settled down to make a list of causes. It would need to be something engrossing and worthwhile—she was not going to play with this like so many society ladies did.
Children, widows, animals, the elderly, she wrote, biting the end of her quill. Education? Employ…
The door opened. Bel swung round on her chair and stared. ‘Ashe?’
‘You were expecting someone else, Bel, my sweet?’ He strolled in and dropped his hat and gloves on a chair. Tonight he was elegant in evening dress. ‘Lord, my great-aunt’s parties are a bore, bless her. I love the old darling, but her entourage of geriatric swains is quite another matter. I have just sat through at least six elderly gentlemen telling me how Wellington should have deployed his troops at Waterloo and one who was confused enough to think he had been at Quatre Bras personally.’
‘I was not expecting you,’ Bel said, her pen dropping unheeded and spattering ink spots across her list.
‘Why not?’ Ashe shed his jacket and waistcoat and began to deconstruct his elaborate neckcloth. ‘You sent me a reply to my note.’ He walked towards her, the ends in his hands, then stopped, frowning. ‘Aren’t you well, sweetheart? Do you have a headache? I’ll go, of course.’
‘No, I do not have a headache and I am quite well. Don’t sweetheart me.’ Bel stood up and saw his expression change as he took in the exceedingly chaste nightgown and the sharp tone of her voice. ‘And I replied to your note before I saw you with Lady Pamela. If I had had any notion that you were involved with someone else, I would never have embarked on this…liaison.’
He looked as tempting as sin itself standing there, those gorgeous blue eyes fixed intently on her, the thick gilt of his hair slightly tousled, the neck of his shirt open just enough to give her a glimpse of the skin beneath. And that was precisely what Ashe was: sin. Highly experienced, completely unprincipled sin.
‘Lady Pamela? You think I am in some way committed to Lady Pamela Darlington?’
‘Yes, Lady Pamela. Is there anyone else I have missed? So far she is the only one I have seen hanging on your arm, exchanging little smiles with you, generally behaving as though she has proprietorial rights over you and getting doting looks in return. And as Lady Pamela is a well-bred, single young lady and the leading light of this year’s Marriage Mart, there is but one conclusion to be drawn from such behaviour.’
‘You are jealous.’ Ashe said it with a hint of a smile. She glared and the smile vanished. ‘But that’s ridiculous Bel.’
Bel took two rapid steps forward and jabbed him in the chest with one sharp finger. Ashe swayed backwards a trifle, but did not retreat. ‘Yes, I am jealous, and do not tell me I have no right to be because I know that perfectly well. But don’t you dare tell me I am being ridiculous either; you told me you had no commitments and I would not have dreamed of…of…’ she waved a hand towards the bed ‘…that if I had known.’
‘Ah.’ Bel narrowed her eyes at him. He did not look the slightest bit chastened, not the remotest bit guilty. ‘I have known Lady Pamela since she was six. She is a minx and as much of a hussy as a well-bred girl can be and, despite her father’s adamant refusal to consider the suit, she is head over heels in love with a very good friend of mine.’
‘That makes it worse!’
‘Head over heels,’ Ashe persisted, removing himself to the relative safety of the fireside. ‘And set on persuading me to invite both him and her to a house party.’
‘Which house party?’
‘The one she expects me to host for the sole purpose of allowing her and George to moon about in the shrubbery out of sight of her chaperon.’
‘If that is the case, why was she spreading herself all over you like butter?’ Bel demanded, provoking a grin from Ashe at her language.
‘Because she is one of the prettiest girls in London, used to being the acknowledged star in any firmament and, when she comes face to face with another lovely woman, her instincts are to lay claim to any male in the vicinity between the ages of sixteen and seventy. I happened to be handy.’
‘Oh.’ Bel swallowed, clenching her hands. Lovely woman? Her? ‘I have made a fool of myself, haven’t I?’
‘A bit.’ He smiled affectionately. ‘I suppose I helped. But, given the basilisk eye of your Aunt Ravenhurst, I thought it best to play up to Pamela and to treat you with polite indifference.’ Bel bit her lip and focused her gaze on the point where his shirt opened over golden skin. ‘Were you truly jealous? That is very flattering.’
‘Flattering? It was horrible. Jealousy was a thoroughly reprehensible reaction in the first place, and I know I have absolutely no right to feel it. I felt mean and miserable.’ Bel sifted through her emotions, then added honestly, ‘But it hurt, and I do not like you telling me I am being ridiculous.’
‘I am sorry.’ Ashe stepped over Horace and gathered her in against his chest. Bel gave a little sigh and clung to as much of him as she could get her arms around. ‘I forget you are very new to these intrigues. It is not in your nature to dissemble, but we cannot afford to look at each other and have our closeness show, you know that.’
‘I know.’ Bel nodded, rubbing her cheek against the warmth of his shirt front. ‘It is all right now.’ She had dissembled for all the years of her marriage, feigning interest and obedience. But that was a very different thing to hiding desire and the intimate knowledge of another person.
‘I am not sure that it is all right,’ Ashe said gravely, running his hands up and down her back. ‘What on earth are you wearing, Bel? I thought I had strayed into a nunnery.’
‘I did not think you would be coming and this is the most boringly respectable nightgown I have. I didn’t want to think about you, you see.’
He gave a snort of laughter and stepped back to study her. Then he frowned. ‘We have a problem. You want to make love, I imagine, but I am very much afraid that garment has killed my passion quite dead, which was obviously the intention of the designer. There is only one thing for it, unless you wish me to leave or to spend the night reading poetry with you.’
‘What?’ Bel enquired, heat pooling inside her. Ashe was teasing her, of course. No man wearing thin skintight knit breeches could pretend he was not aroused when he was.
‘You will just have to seduce me.’ He looked rueful.
‘Seduce you?’ Bel heard her voice squeak. Me? How?
‘Yes, seduce me. On the bearskin rug, I think. The novelty will, perhaps, arouse my jaded appetites.’ Ashe leaned negligently against the bedpost and waited for her reaction.
Jaded appetites, indeed! This was a game. Bel suppressed her immediate reaction, which was to blush and stammer that she did not know how. He probably expected her to do that, but she would not. The sight of him, elegant and hard and all of him—every inch—hers, made her blood sing and her breath come short. She wanted him desperately, she wanted to learn more about lovemaking, she wanted to please him, and herself.
‘Very well, but you must promise to do as I say,’ she ordered boldly. She waited for his nod, noticing with interest the effect her agreement had on him. The pulse under the sharp line of his jaw was very visible, the skin at the base of his throat was flushed and his pupils had begun to dilate, turning the deep sea blue a darker, stormier purple.
Very deliberately Bel undid the top two buttons on her nightgown, but that was all. Then she folded her arms, knowing the action pushed up her breasts, and stood there, considering. If Ashe thought she was going to drape herself all over him like a cat begging for caresses, he was mistaken. ‘Take off your shirt.’
He pulled it over his head, giving her a view of the muscles of his back rippling as he bent right over, then stretched upright, magnificently unselfconscious. Bel stood looking, studying the way his muscles strapped over his ribs, the way his chest hair changed texture as it narrowed down towards his navel. She saw his nipples harden under the caress of her gaze. Power. Such power.
‘And now the rest of your clothes,’ she said, making her voice indifferent. He kept his eyes locked with hers as he undressed and Bel toyed with one more button on her gown. He was so beautiful she found it desperately hard to keep her hands off him. Her own nipples were peaking painfully against the thick cotton, her breasts ached into heaviness; the intensity of his gaze seemed to bore through her to hit at the base of her spine.
‘Now lie down,’ she ordered, gesturing towards the thick white fur at her feet. Seduce him? As if he needs it! If he becomes any more aroused, I will refuse to believe it physically possible.
Ashe stretched out on the great pelt of fur, a magnificent barbarian in his shameless nudity. He moved sensuously on it, his broad shoulders shrugging into the softness, the movement of his hips a demonstration of lithe masculinity.
‘Am I arousing your interest yet?’ Bel enquired huskily.
‘Mmm? This is very comfortable, I may go to sleep.’ He was watching her like a hawk from beneath hooded lids, his very focus a contradiction to his words.
Bel moved to stand at his feet and let her gaze wander up the length of him from the high arches, up the straight shin bones, up the trained muscles of his thighs, up—lingeringly—past the slim hips. She let her tongue tip run over her lower lip and saw him shift restlessly as she did so. Bel stepped forward so her feet were either side of Ashe’s knees and started to undo the rest of her buttons.
Despite the expression of languid uninterest he was maintaining the heavy lids rose, dragged up to follow her slowly moving hands. Bel fought her own eagerness as she made herself free each button with finicking care until the entire gown to below her waist was open. Then she shrugged one shoulder free. Ashe’s tongue slid between his lips and she saw his hands fist into the fur at his sides. Another shoulder, then she let go and the entire garment slipped down to pool around her feet.
She kicked it aside as Ashe came up on to his elbows. ‘No, my lord, I am sorry if you are bored, but I must insist you lie down. Do try to sleep if you wish.’
He fell back with a growl as Bel knelt, her knees either side of his hips. The power of what she was doing felt incredible. It was like sitting astride a thoroughbred horse; she could feel the leashed strength beneath her, knew she could not control it, that only his will was keeping him tame, biddable to her.
Her hand slipped between her thighs, found him, hot, hard, impossibly aroused, and positioned herself. ‘Now,’ she whispered and slowly sank down, taking him within her, stroking every inch of him with her heat and her slickness and her desire.
He growled, reached for her and she caught his wrists, leaning into him so she pressed them to the ground on either side of his head and the tips of her breasts caressed his chest. ‘Awake yet?’ she teased, her lips hovering an inch above his.
‘Ride me.’ And he surged up against her. Bel heard herself cry out, knew her body was responding, plunging, demanding, but it all became a blur, a wonderful, intense, heated blur with the only reality the deep blue-black eyes holding hers, the beat of his pulse under her fingers, the musk of their lovemaking as potent as drugged incense in her nostrils.