Chapter Sixteen

Like so many other things in life, inhibition at The Grand Palace on the Thames seemed to have an ebb and flow.

"This might sound odd, but I'm a little wistful that the Dawsons have gotten so quiet." Angelique said this to Lucien while

she sat at her dressing table, pinning up her hair, getting ready for the day. Lucien was sitting on the bed behind her, pulling

up his boots.

"Oh, yes. I, too, am wistful that they now feel constrained from making love with the noisy abandon of barnyard animals,"

he said gravely.

Angelique laughed. "Lucien, don't make me laugh when I'm trying to be profound. It's always a little sad when we lose a bit

of our innocence, don't you think? Or maybe the word I want is ‘naivete.' They may never make love with that kind of abandon

again. And while I don't particularly want to hear them do it..."

"I do know what you mean. It's that Garden-of-Eden type of innocence, as if they were the only man and woman in the world, and now they've been cast out for being loud. But the loss of innocence is the price of wisdom, I fear." Lucien stood and kissed the top of her head. "At least they were among kind people when they discovered that they're loud."

"We're both profound this morning."

"And I'll miss you profoundly for the next few days." Lucien and Captain Hardy were compelled to go back to the shipyard,

but word had it the repairs were nearly done. "Know that I carry you with me in my heart, always."

"Likewise, love."

And they went down to breakfast together.

No moaning was heard in the hall.

But they thought they heard giggling behind the Dawsons' door, and that was good, too.

The unprepossessing Dawsons would likely have been shocked to learn they'd sent philosophical ripples through the lives of

all the guests and inhabitants of The Grand Palace on the Thames. Ruminations on mortality and marriage, lust and innocence,

courage and seizing fleeting pleasures, had indirectly led to things like lovemaking behind a ballroom stage curtain and Mrs.

Cuthbert getting tipsy on sherry and Colonel Brightwall taking a chance that a door ajar five inches was an invitation for

him to enter.

In other words, the Dawsons' spirited intercourse had ironically inspired all manner of spirited discourse, even if it wasn't

in the sitting room.

Mrs. Cuthbert's blossoming seemed to be underway. Last night her lips had seemed significantly less compressed; she hadn't once sucked in an audible, bracing breath when Mr. Delacorte opened his mouth to speak.

"I think old friends are precious, even when you grow apart," Mrs. Pariseau reflected to Delilah and Angelique as they paused

to chat on the third-floor landing that morning. "There's something comforting in knowing that someone else in the world shares

your memories and remembers your earlier self. It reminds me of how far I've come, and sometimes I feel like a girl again,

for better or for worse."

And then there was the couple who had checked into The Grand Palace on the Thames as Colonel and Mrs. Brightwall, but would

be departing as the Earl and Countess of Montcroix when they decided to leave. They certainly weren't the first of their guests

to feature both on the front page and in the gossip portions of the newspaper. They were, however, the first guests who had

appeared as Rowlandson illustrations... twice.

The first had of course depicted Mrs. Brightwall battling soldiers over a stolen carriage.

As newspapers were expensive, it was Dot's habit to bring one from room to room so every guest would have an opportunity to

read it, but the previous evening Colonel Brightwall had given her six pence to buy an additional copy meant specifically

only for him the following morning.

Dot spread the newspaper out on the kitchen table so the staff, as well as Angelique and Delilah, could have a look, and everyone gazed down at the second Rowlandson illustration. This time it featured both Mr. and Mrs. Brightwall as well as a vivid little paragraph about the Scottsbury ball they'd attended the previous night. The earl and countess had looked ravishing before they departed The Grand Palace on the Thames.

"Well, then," Delilah finally said, speaking for all of them. "This is... this is quite something."

Dot lowered her voice. "When I went to bring his newspaper up to them early this morning, Colonel Brightwall was the only

one awake. He was staring out the window, wearing a smile. A bit like he was remembering a beautiful dream."

Delilah, Angelique, and Helga exchanged glances. They had a very good idea about what would put that sort of smile on a man's

face.

"Did you sleep well?" Magnus asked Alexandra politely over scones.

It was officially the day before she was meant to leave England forever and live in New York. Tomorrow morning at this time

Alexandra was meant to be rolling down the road in a stagecoach bound for Liverpool.

Magnus, still in his shirtsleeves, was already awake and dressed when she emerged from her room. He'd stood up politely from

the little table when he saw her. He sat down again as she settled in across from him.

"I did. And you?"

"Yes, thank you. The beds here are so comfortable."

"They certainly are."

Neither one of them had slept a wink.

Yet they did not precisely feel tired, either.

One wouldn't think that making love standing up in an alcove at a banquet would be a sobering experience, but it proved to

be.

After they had done exactly that, Alexandra had lowered her dress, and he had matter-of-factly tucked in his shirt and buttoned

up his trousers, and they had smoothed each other's hair. They had both returned to the banquet flushed and a trifle dazed,

but by then everyone attending was a trifle flushed and dazed thanks to the champagne, so the aftermath of their reckless

passion had been camouflaged.

They had departed the gathering soon after. The carriage ride home had been mostly quiet, and the polite retreat to separate

rooms tacit.

Each had spent their respective nights staring at their ceilings, enmeshed in a peculiar, almost dreamlike blend of euphoria

and tension and fear and nerves, which had lingered into this morning, along with a bit of a champagne headache (for Alexandra).

"Dot brought the newspaper up," he said.

He pushed it over to her.

It was open to the gossip page.

The Magnificent Montcroix and his bride captivated a captive audience of London's cream at a banquet held by the Earl and Countess of Scottsbury, but the two had eyes only for each other. It seems this beautiful bride of his hath charms to sooth a savage beast.

An illustration was included.

"Good heavens," she said faintly. "Are those meant to be turtledoves around our heads?"

"I believe so," he said mildly.

She couldn't quite bring herself to look up yet. Judging from the heat in her face, she was blushing, exactly as the illustration

had depicted her, if the shaded circles on her cheeks were an indication.

She cleared her throat. "It isn't precisely dignified, but hearts in my eyes are perhaps better than swirls about my nose.

Although the swirls make me think of Brightwall the Donkey now."

He made a soft sound. Almost a laugh.

In the illustration, Brightwall hovered over her like a behemoth. His hair was impressive, too.

And his pupils were drawn in the shape of hearts.

"Does this conclude our bargain, Magnus? Are you satisfied that dignity has been restored to your besmirched name?"

"I should think so," he said gently.

She nodded without looking up. She took a moment to compose herself. Then cleared her throat.

"Very good then. Well! Everything is ready. I'll set out for the stage tomorrow before the maids are up—you likely already know this since Mr. Lawler submits my expenses, but I've reserved a spot on the coach departing from The Elk she could sense it. It might be devastating or extraordinary. Either possibility would transform her life completely. After today, she would never be the same person, and she could not say who that person would be. This kind of exquisite torture was unprecedented in her life.

But last night's lack of sleep on the heels of risky, outrageously pleasurable lovemaking proved a godsend, nearly as good

as laudanum for blunting that razor-edged anticipation. She drifted hazily through the hours, somehow both dazed and enervated.

She lingered in the little garden in front of The Grand Palace on the Thames, marveling at its quiet beauty and resilience

in a tiny, gritty patch of London. She visited with Gordon, their fat striped cat, who had been sleeping in the flowerbeds

when she'd intruded upon his nap.

She returned to the room, drowsy, and thought she might indulge in a nap.

As the weather was warm, Magnus had left behind his greatcoat, and it hung from a hook near the door.

She buried her face in it and breathed. As if she could pull him into her lungs, into her blood, keep him with her forever

that way.

Feeling only slightly guilty, she felt in his pockets again. With trembling fingers removed the little silver box. Superstitiously,

she was afraid to open it, as if it contained some sort of verdict.

But the ribbon scrap was still inside.

She was reading Robinson Crusoe in front of the fireplace when the key turned in the lock of the door of their suite.

He smiled when he saw her.

She held up the book. "I was reading ahead to find out whether he befriends the cannibals." She hadn't yet napped.

Magnus didn't reply. He hovered in the doorway regarding her. He doffed his hat, and pushed his hair behind his ears. He shook

himself out of his coat, and loosened his cravat.

He swiftly closed the distance between the two of them and stood before her a moment, his gaze fixed, as if memorizing her.

How could she ever have thought his eyes were icy or remote? He could have ignited a thousand candles with the heat in his

eyes.

Gently he reached down and lifted her hand from her book. He threaded his fingers through hers.

He drew her to her feet.

And she let him lead her into his room.

Wordlessly, he set to work at once loosening the laces on her dress; she raised her arms so he could lift it from her. She

stepped out of her slippers. She peeled off her stockings while he stripped himself of his shirt and trousers and boots and

stockings, all the things that covered up his extraordinary, hairy, scarred, muscled magnificence. They did this with deliberation,

as if they had all the time in the world.

The first time had been a reckless catharsis. The second time—silent, and in the dark—they could almost pretend was a dream. The third, they could, if they wanted to, blame on champagne, though it hadn't been the culprit at all.

This time they left all pretenses and defenses on the floor with their clothes and surrendered themselves to each other.

With a sigh, he gathered her up against his hard, hot body, one hand fanning the small of her back, the other cradling her

head. He softly, slowly kissed the pulse in her throat, and then, lingeringly, her mouth. And then he lowered her into the

bright rectangle of light the afternoon sun had laid on the bed, as if she was a banquet he intended to slowly, decadently

devour.

He stood for a minute before her, and his huge, hard, shambling, scarred beauty flooded her senses and sent such a torrent

of blood to her head it was like a blow: the dark hair curling over a torso carved into segments of muscle, like furry tree

trunks, and the one in which a musket ball had dug a channel, leaving behind a gnarled, thick white scar that she blessed

because it meant he'd lived.

His cock was already curving up toward his belly.

His eyes had gone dark. His faint smile and his dark eyes told her he'd read and understood her expression, and she understood

his: she had never felt so beautiful, so alive, so naked in every sense of the word. She had never wanted anything more than

she wanted him now.

The bed sank beneath his weight when he joined her there. He stretched alongside her, propped up on his elbows, gazing down. She stroked his hair out of his eyes. Smoothed a finger across one of his woolly brows.

He shifted down the bed, flicked his tongue against her already bead-hard nipple, and when he closed his mouth over it gently

sucked. She drew her knees up on a hybrid gasp-moan as the pleasure coursed through her. She threaded her fingers through

his hair as he languidly, skillfully sent ripples of bliss through her body with his tongue and lips. And as he did, his hand

smoothed across her belly, over the round contours of her thighs, as if committing the shape of her to memory.

Like this he marked her body out in slow, hot kisses, leaving a trail from her breasts, down the seam of her ribs, to the

mound of her belly, until he reached the curls at the crook of her legs. And then he parted her thighs, ducked his head between

them, and with shocking deliberation and skill slowly drove her to the brink of madness with his tongue and lips and fingers.

She writhed, curling her fingers into the counterpane as exquisite sensation poured through her and emerged as moans and soft

oaths and his name, first muttered in shocked appreciation, and then as a plea, because surely no person was designed to withstand

so much pleasure.

But he knew what he was about. He led her right up to the edge and over the brink and then suddenly her mouth was open on a silent scream, her body bowing toward heaven, racked by bliss.

And she looked up from her haze of ecstasy to find him looking down at her, his expression all masculine satisfaction and

soft wonder and fierce intent.

She shifted beneath him and he rose up on his arms over her, and she thought how beautiful and strange that it was instinctive

now to position herself beneath her husband so that their bodies could join, when mere days ago she hadn't known the heady

feel of her thighs gripping his back, or how it felt to cling to his shoulders as he moved inside her, as though the two of

them were travelers on a rough sea.

Magnus tried to keep this pace leisurely, as if he wanted to ramp and bank his pleasure, to draw out the moment, to make it last forever. She gazed up at him, to find him gazing down at her with the same rapt, wondering absorption, illuminated as he was in raw daylight. But she could see how the pace cost him in the sweat beading on his brow, and in how his arms quivered with tension and leashed desire beneath her gripping fingers. She took advantage of the pace to sweetly madden him a little with pleasure, to savor him: she dragged her palms, then her nails, over his chest in a slow caress; she circled the little brown discs of his nipples with her fingertips, and was rewarded when he hissed in a breath of pleasure. She drew her fingertips over the hard ridge of his collarbone, along his strong throat. You are beautiful and perfect as you are and I want you , was what she hoped to show him. She let him see the truth of this in her face. He briefly closed this eyes, as if she was

the sun. When he opened them again, they were shining. And if they were tears, he wouldn't let her see; he closed them again.

She slid her hands down to his hips and rose up to take him more deeply and saw the cords of his neck go taut, and his eyes

go nearly black, and his control unraveled and his hips moved ever more swiftly until he cried out.

She held him as his body shook with his release.

She lay in the curl of his arm, her naked body half draped over his. He softly, soothingly stroked her hair.

Presently, she could feel him pull in the breath to ask the question she'd been anticipating all day.

"Why did you do it?"

And there it was.

She knew what he meant was: Why did you kiss another man on our wedding night?

Why did you break your vows? was the unspoken accompanying question.

She knew the answer might devastate him. She understood, as did he, that her answer would break this spell.

But there was no hope for it. There was no going forward without saying it. And it needed to be the truth.

She wanted him to hear the truth.

She breathed in, and prepared to say aloud words she'd never spoken to another soul.

And she turned so she could watch his face as she told him.

"Because... the point of my life has been... it seems it has been to make others happy. From the time I was very small,

it seemed all my choices were made for me, because I loved my family and I wanted above all for everyone to be happy, and

this determined everything I did, and everything I chose. And I was, for the most part, content to please everyone. But when

I chose Paul... I knew it would not be a forever love, but it was the first time I'd ever chosen something or someone just

for me . I didn't know he would come to the garden gate that night. I thought he had already left the country. And when he kissed

me..." She swallowed. "I didn't know that he would kiss me. I truly didn't know. He had never yet kissed me. And I didn't

know that I would... that I would kiss him."

She could feel that Magnus's breathing had gone shallow.

"...except that it seemed to me at that moment that kissing him... might be the last time in my life I would ever be

able to choose who I wanted to kiss."

Magnus closed his eyes slowly.

His lips shaped a silent oath.

He could feel his chest contract beneath her cheek as if she'd shot an arrow right into him.

He pulled in a long, shuddering breath, and pressed his palms over his eyes.

"And I think, Magnus, that you knew that I would have no choice at all but to say yes to your proposal. Because you see things

so clearly. You are known to be such a clever strategist. But what I wanted didn't seem to matter. You never even asked. I'm not certain you ever gave it any thought. You just assumed you could

have me for a price. You were right, of course. You could have me for a price."

She felt more brutal than a firing squad aiming at a deserter.

How odd that she could feel his pain in her own body. His suffering radiated from him into her.

She could scarcely breathe for hurting him.

But some pain simply needed to be felt, she had learned.

"And I am ashamed to have hurt you. I am ashamed of what I did. I had never thought of myself as a person who would ever break

a vow. But the question you asked was ‘why?' And I think... I think that was the reason, above all, that I kissed another

man on our wedding night. It was a chance to choose one final time."

And she wasn't sorry to have at last said those words out loud.

"But I choose to be in your bed now," she said softly. "And I will, as we agreed, depart tomorrow."

She didn't know whether she wanted his absolution. She didn't ask for it.

She loved him anyway.

So utterly and completely. He had been right about the two of them from the beginning.

Did he know she loved him?

Could he tell? If you were raised without love, did you recognize it when it was in front of you?

The ragged saw of his breathing told her he was suffering.

Finally, he swallowed slowly.

"I'm sorry." His voice was a rasp.

He didn't contradict any of it, because it was all true. It was precisely what he'd done. It was precisely what she'd done.

She didn't reply.

Finally, she laid her head back down on his chest. She listened to the precious, steady thump, thump, thump of his battered,

stubborn, vulnerable, flawed, foolish heart.

Her own foolish heart beat in time with his now.

After a moment, his arms closed around her instinctively. They lay together, naked at last in nearly every sense of the word,

in silence.

His chest rose and fell in a sigh.

How odd it was, she thought, to feel safest with the one person capable of hurting you the most.

How odd it was to be willing to risk breaking her own heart for the chance to finally, at last, win his.

Because there were a few things left to say.

And he wasn't the only strategist in the room.

The Earl of Montcroix, Magnus Brightwall, held his sleeping love in his arms.

No matter what happened to him in life, this moment was real, and he would have this memory forever: her warm, satin skin against his hands, her back lifting and falling with the soft tides of her breath.

His insides felt scoured raw, but the truth will do that to a person.

A wound had been exposed to the light of day.

Had he suspected the truth of what she'd told him? Perhaps he'd somehow suspected it all along?

He believed he had. He just hadn't wanted to think of himself as a man so powerfully, desperately, selfishly afraid of being

hurt, so terribly afraid that no one would love him, that he had nearly crushed her precious spirit in order to get what he

wanted.

But he trusted himself to plan now, because the truth had been laid bare, and he could plan from a place of absolutely clarity.

It was suddenly simple:

In order to get what he wanted, he needed to give her what she wanted.

How ironic to realize that it was what he wanted, too.

He'd in fact spent the first half of the day preparing for a possibility, because she was right: he was a clever strategist.

Still. He might have once taken a bullet for General Blackmore.

But what he planned to do next would be the biggest risk of his life.