Chapter 9

9

Isabella's maid had helped her undress with silent efficiency, and she sat in her chamber crossing an item – crossing items , two of them – off her list before she climbed into bed. Her elaborate coiffure had been unfastened, though it still lay in heavy plaits down her back. She should unfasten it and brush it before plaiting it again for sleep, but she wasn't inclined to make the effort. She had an awful lot of hair, which took an awful lot of brushing. These thoughts must lead her to what Captain Winterton had said the other day, of his desire to see her hair unbound. She remembered how, only an hour or so since, he had kissed the back of her neck, and tugged on the short strands of hair there with his teeth. She had lain back in the chair with her eyes closed and he had… handled her with intense focus. Her nipples peaked and her breasts tingled at the mere thought of it. She was conscious of the soft fabric of her nightgown against the sensitive, aroused flesh. What had he said? He wanted to worship them with his mouth.

That, of course, was number four.

There was no denying that everything was proceeding extremely well, and Isabella had to admit that the experience of taking control of her life was even more exhilarating than she had imagined it would be. Her mood in the last few days had been light, even giddy; Blanche had remarked upon it only today, with approval. If this was what it took to finally drag her fully out of the darkness that had enfolded her when Ash had died, then it was well worth the doing.

She put away her list, locked the box, and hid the key among the trinkets on her dressing table, taking up her pen again to add a few lines to her letter to her mother, which she could then send off tomorrow to allay any maternal heart-burnings over her wellbeing.

Mama, tonight we attended a musical evening at Mrs Singleton's house in Clarges Street. I was not previously acquainted with that lady, but she is a friend of Blanche's. Several ladies and gentlemen of great musical ability performed songs for us, including some from the Italian opera, though I am afraid I cannot precisely recall any of the titles of the arias now, and it was all very entertaining and agreeable. I wore my new brown velvet, which you have not yet seen…

She added a few more harmless platitudes of a similar nature, signed off with her love, and set her letter aside. Climbing up into bed – it was a Mauleverer bed and so it was excessively high, and a little dab of a woman such as she was required a set of steps to reach it – she blew out her candle and stretched out under the soft covers, wriggling her bare toes. She had not put on her nightcap – a small act of rebellion, and one she would not have been able to undertake at home in Harrogate, for her mother had developed the habit of coming in to see her and to kiss her every night before she slept, just as she had when she was small, and would no doubt have told her that she would catch her death of cold if she even contemplated sleeping without a cap. In October, too! Reckless madness! It was comforting, to be so fussed over, so deeply loved, and it was also irritating beyond belief. No wonder her letters home were so ruthlessly edited to remove anything that might be the least worrying or shocking, or even excessively interesting, since her mother had once warned her that the interesting could so easily shade into the scandalous before one was aware of it.

Isabella sighed, and let her hands drift down over her body. No – that wasn't what was happening. In her new spirit of taking control and admitting what she wanted, at least to herself, she would own what she was doing. She wasn't finding her hand between her legs by accident. Oh dear. No, she was going to touch herself, to pleasure herself, and she was going to think about Leo Winterton while she did it. She'd done it after he kissed her the other night, and she was going to do it again now. On purpose. She was going to think about – she was thinking about – his hands on her breasts, tweaking at her engorged nipples, and his breath hot on her neck behind her. The feel of his lips and his tongue as they trailed across her skin. She was going to think about, was thinking about, the sight of him, big and hard for her, stretching the black silk of his breeches. She had shocked herself by how very much she had wanted to put her hand on him and stroke him and see how he reacted; well, soon she would. As she touched herself, she thought of things they had done, and things they had not done yet, but would do very soon. Number four, number five, number six…

She had thought that she would float off to sleep afterwards, with the release of tension, but she was surprisingly wakeful. It would not do to delude herself, and there were undoubtedly problems ahead. Not problems – she would not be negative – but challenges. Obstacles to be overcome. It was all very well to kiss in a corner, to slip aside to an unoccupied room and caress each other. Number five, certainly, could be carried out without a great deal of fuss, and probably quite quickly, given the effect he had on her. The thought of his hand sliding under her petticoats, the roughened pads of his fingertips finding the top of her stockings, exploring further… She was halfway there in a matter of seconds. Again.

But number six, number seven, good God, number eight – they would need time, and privacy, and a certain amount of preparation. She hadn't thought that far ahead, and she didn't suppose the Captain had either, but now she must, because it was really happening and she didn't want it to stop.

She couldn't bring him here. Lady Blanche was an easy-going hostess, had told her to treat this elegant house as her own home, and appeared to mean it, but even she would presumably draw the line at her guest sneaking men into her bedchamber. A man. Besides, it gave the whole business an air of sordid intrigue that displeased her. She had an odd sort of feeling that Blanche, who was a widow too and appeared to have no intention of remarrying, might have some sympathy for her situation, but even if she did, she surely wouldn't condone… that. She had her young daughter's morals and reputation to think of. She wondered if Blanche was lonely; if she ever regretted her empty bed, even if remarriage with all its many risks did not appeal to her. It wasn't the kind of thing she could ask.

The thought of going to the grand mansion in St James's where Leo was staying with his cousin – and the woman they both loved, of course – was plainly ridiculous, and she wasted no time on it. That left a rented room, she supposed; there must be rooms that people hired for short periods of time for just such purposes. That was sordid, too, and probably left one at risk of robbery and blackmail. Not to mention fleas. It was most provoking.

If only she knew somebody of great experience who could advise her. She did, of course – her brother-in-law; she thought the Duke was equal to anything, and wouldn't turn a hair at the oddest request, and he had had the most terrible reputation as a rake before he married. He would surely know all a person could about such matters. But although she didn't lay claim to much sensibility these days – she had suffered from an excess of sensibility after she was widowed, and look where that had got her – she didn't find herself capable of asking for an interview with Northriding and explaining that she, his brother's widow and recent patient of a doctor who specialised in the care of lunatics, would very much like his advice on how best to arrange to meet a man in secret for the purposes of engaging in sexual congress. Gabriel could, if he wished, have her incarcerated for such a suggestion. He was her trustee and head of the family into which she had married. The weight of public opinion would surely be on his side in dealing thus with an inconvenient and unruly woman. He wouldn't do it – she knew he wasn't at all that sort of a man – but many another brother-in-law, husband or father would. It wasn't that she feared at all: no, it was hurting him. He had loved his little brother Ash deeply; he too had been devastated by his loss. She had no desire to distress him further. The thought of such a conversation made her feel hot all over, and not in a pleasant way.

She found herself defeated for a moment and then smiled in the darkness as an idea occurred to her. An excellent idea.

Blanche thought it was an excellent idea too, when she raised it over breakfast the next day. ‘I think you should,' she said. ‘You know they leave soon to go back to Yorkshire, and you're quite right, you're barely acquainted with Georgiana, and heaven knows when you will set eyes on each other again. It's not to be expected that they'll be coming to Harrogate once the winter sets in. I dare say they will pull up the castle drawbridge and not emerge till spring, for we know how they are together. Go alone, a little early so that no one else will be there, and you may have a comfortable coze with her and get to know each other better, as you should, being sisters. Please do thank her for Billy for me, too, though of course I will call on them before they leave.'

Billy, it seemed, was not destined to be a kitchen cat, or not exclusively so. Perhaps his taste of milk from a Sèvres china saucer had turned his tiny furry head, or perhaps he was of a naturally haughty nature, having started life as a ducal beast, but in any case, he had taken to spending most of his time above-stairs, and Blanche and Eleanor indulged him shamelessly. He was present at breakfast every day and had his own special plate now. He was already visibly larger than he had been upon his arrival not long since.

Isabella set out for Mauleverer House a little in advance of the correct hour for paying morning calls; she had despatched a note to the Duchess via a footman that morning and received a cordial response.

One of the advantages – and there were not many – of having been mad at an earlier period of one's life was that it gave a person, once recovered, an insight into the real natures of one's acquaintance. There had been the former bosom friends at home who had crossed the street when they saw her approaching, as though losing one's husband at the age of twenty and going crazy with grief over it were contagious. That had stung, but perhaps not so much as the behaviour of the gentleman, for want of a more accurate term, who had decided that her previous indisposition gave him licence to manhandle her at a recent public assembly. There must be a process of thought behind his actions, though she could not fathom it, and did not truly wish to for fear of what it might reveal. Widow, not a year married, loved her husband – went mad – better now – must want me to grope her bottom painfully hard after the cotillion. It remained a masculine mystery, and she had no wish to delve into it further.

Of those people who had not known her before and had been informed of her illness, in Isabella's mind the two people who had acquitted themselves with the greatest credit were Leo Winterton and his cousin Georgiana, Duchess of Northriding. She must presume then that they were a tolerant sort of a family, not prone to judging others. Georgiana, too, had not merely heard of her tribulations but had seen her in a state of great distress on the day of the Duchess's own wedding in York. They had by malign chance encountered each other in the street as the happy pair returned from the ceremony in the Minster, and Isabella had been momentarily overcome by the sight of Gabriel, with his bride on his arm in all her wedding finery, and the extent of his resemblance to Ash. It had been horrible, painful, but only a momentary setback, and the shock had helped her in a perverse sort of a way, for when she became aware that Gabriel had married, and realised from his demeanour and his bride's that they were deeply in love, she had felt a burden lifting from her shoulders. It was a liberation, and not a small one. She need no longer think that she had let everybody down irrevocably by her failure to produce an heir, nor need she believe that the Duke had been obliged to upend his whole comfortable, dissolute life and enter into a marriage of convenience, much against his inclination, because of that failure. No one who saw the pair together for more than a moment could imagine that .

Georgiana had never referred to that embarrassing time, nor had she shown the least sign of resenting the temporary pall that Isabella's reaction had thrown over her happy day. If she felt pity for her new sister-in-law, she did not show it, and Isabella was always on the lookout for pity. The new Duchess treated her just as she might treat anyone else in the family she had just joined, with open friendliness. There was not a hairsbreadth of difference between her manner to Isabella and the way she behaved towards Blanche and Eleanor.

There were, of course, many self-absorbed people in this world who showed no pity to anybody because they thought of nothing but their own fascinating affairs, but Isabella did not think that the Duchess was one of them. She had seen little of Georgiana, but what she had seen she liked. It was perhaps rash to pick her out as a confidante, but she had very little choice, and the risk involved was not enormous; if she were disapproving of or horrified by what she heard today, all that Isabella would ask of her would be not to tell her husband.

But ‘disapproving' was the last word that anybody would think to apply to Gabriel's bride, surely? The gossip in the haut ton said that she had been engaged to be married to an eligible gentleman last year upon her come-out, and had jilted her betrothed on some sort of whim, and further gossip, the sort that was whispered avidly behind hands and fans, would have it that she had been so instantly enamoured of Gabriel upon meeting him that they had been caught in a highly compromising position a mere day or two after they had been introduced. The way their eyes had remained locked together as they danced at their ball, the unavoidable impression of utter physical harmony that their every movement gave besides, made Isabella think that this tale, or some version of it, might easily be true. And if it was, who better to ask for help and advice? Furthermore, the Duchess was known to be close friends with Lady Carston, the poetess, who had been Georgiana's aunt's companion for many years until her recent and entirely unexpected marriage; she was the subject of some most peculiar rumours. Taken together, all this hardly screamed ‘censorious and a stickler for proper behaviour'. It was encouraging.

She was shown into the Duchess's own charming, newly decorated blue sitting room, rather than one of the more formal salons, and Georgiana greeted her with a friendly kiss and a welcoming smile, and poured her tea. ‘I am glad to see you, Lady Ashby,' she said as she did so. ‘We have had so little chance to become acquainted, and I am happy to rectify the omission today, at least a little. You know that we return to Northriding Castle in a few days? Gabriel has had his fill of being stared at by the ton.'

‘I had heard as much,' she said, taking the cup with a word of thanks. ‘Well, not the part about being stared at, though I am sure it is no wonder he should dislike it so, but the fact that you mean to leave. And please, do call me Isabella. Blanche asked me to bear the message that she will be sure to come and see you before you go, and furthermore to thank you in person for the kind gift the other day.'

‘I will, of course, and please call me Georgiana. The kitten? I hope he is not too much trouble. She did say she wanted one, and we have several.'

‘I understand he is supposed to grow to be a famous mouser, though I don't suppose he'll ever rouse himself to show us his skills if we all keep feeding him tidbits from our plates. I swear he sleeps on Eleanor's pillow, though she denies it.'

‘All the Mauleverers have a soft spot for animals, I have noticed, as you must have done.'

‘It's true. Ash was the same,' she agreed with a small smile. She appreciated Georgiana's tact; an opportunity to speak of her dead husband, if she cared to, but something that could easily be turned aside without the least awkwardness if she did not. ‘Thank you,' she said quietly.

‘For what?'

‘People don't usually raise topics that invite me to speak of Ash if I should wish to do so – well, Gabriel and Blanche do, but nobody else. My own father will go to enormous lengths to avoid speaking his name or alluding to the fact that he so much as existed. I know he means well, I know people in general do, but it's not as though I'm likely to just forget about him if he isn't discussed for a sennight or two. You know: "Was I married, and he died horribly? Oh, you did not mention him, so I had quite forgot!"'

‘I don't suppose you are in the least likely to forget him. And why should you? But is it easier for you, being in London? I know Blanche hoped it would be.'

‘Yes,' Isabella said. ‘It is just what I needed, being here. And not just because it is a change of scene. I have a plan, you see.'

‘That sounds intriguing.'

‘I'd like to tell you about it. But I fear it will shock you.'

The Duchess burst out laughing in a most unladylike fashion. ‘I think you can hardly have heard the rumours about me! Did you not know that all the polite world is a buzz with the scandalous fact that Gabriel seduced me within a day of meeting me, and we were caught in flagrante delicto in his garden by the Archbishop of York?'

‘It sounds a little unlikely. I hardly think it can be true,' Isabella said calmly.

‘Oh, it isn't. The Archbishop didn't come into it at all,' said Georgiana wickedly, her bright blue eyes still sparkling with mirth and mischief. ‘In fact, the truth is much, much worse.'

‘Oh good !' Isabella replied with feeling. ‘Then I can tell you!'

‘Tell me instantly!'

They put their heads close together, the blonde and the black, and in a low tone, Isabella poured out all of it, or almost all: her complicated feelings after Ash's death, and her plan. It was an exquisite, unexpected relief to share everything with another woman. When she had done, her sister-in-law looked at her thoughtfully, betraying not the least appearance of disapproval, and said, ‘I do understand, I believe. You want something for yourself, to give you comfort. If you were a man, of course, and widowed and heart-broken, you could play the rake with half the women in England and very few people would have anything but sympathy for you. Perfectly respectable ladies of the ton would sigh sentimentally over your tragic story, and think it terribly romantic. You'd be besieged by women desperate to console you in any manner you chose. But because you are a woman, you must sit quietly at home and cry into your stitchery.'

‘Exactly so. But not too much,' said Isabella with a trace of bitterness. ‘Just the approved amount. Excessive grief is also unwelcome. It makes people uncomfortable.'

‘It's ridiculous. Who among us has not lost loved ones whom we will always mourn? Isabella, I hope I have time before we go to introduce you to my friend Jane Carston – she was at the ball, but I don't think you are acquainted. She has strong views on a woman's place in the world, and she's very good at slipping below the notice of society in order to live the life she wants. I'm sure she would approve of your plan.' Georgiana saw the expression on her guest's face and interpreted it correctly. ‘I know – she knows too – that there has been a certain amount of gossip about her sudden marriage. But then there is always gossip when someone, when a woman in particular, does anything the least bit out of the ordinary. I think she will carry it off. I can't tell you what she's doing now, it's not my story to share. But I promise you she would be sympathetic. And you to her, I think.'

‘I'd like to meet her.'

‘I hope you will. I'm glad you told me, you know,' said Georgiana. ‘Another time I'll tell you my story. I think you of all people might understand. I too have struggled with how I wanted to behave and how people thought I should behave not being at all the same. I've done dangerous and foolish things, and been very lucky not to suffer the worst consequences of them. So don't take me up wrongly when I say that I hope you're being careful – I don't mean that as a criticism at all. I understand what you're trying to do, but I hope you're protecting yourself in any way you can. Men can be… predatory. Untrustworthy. Even men we think we can trust. I had personal experience of this, last year, with someone I thought loved me but most definitely did not.'

‘I've chosen well, I think. No, I know I have.'

‘Do you want to tell me who it is? You don't have to, of course. But perhaps it's a good idea to tell somebody, for your own safety, in case something should go wrong. You could use my knowledge to threaten him, say, if you felt yourself suddenly to be in peril.'

‘I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. I won't insult you by asking you to keep all this secret, because I'm sure it's obvious.' Isabella was silent for a moment, then said, watching her hostess carefully all the while, ‘It's your cousin. Captain Winterton.'

Georgiana's face was a picture of astonishment. ‘Leo? Good God!'

‘You don't approve?'

The Duchess spluttered for a moment, then laughed aloud again. ‘It's… it's not that! It's just that one never imagines one's own cousin… Or at least, I don't. No, of course I don't disapprove. He's a good person, he's like a brother to us. And he's attractive, I suppose. I'm not saying he isn't. I've just never thought of him in that way. I'll stop talking now. Oh Lord, though, Leo!'

‘It is a little awkward, I can quite see that. But you don't think I've chosen badly?'

‘No, I'm sure you haven't. I'm sure he'd never hurt you or take advantage of you.'

‘Well, I don't know him very well…' The Duchess was grinning, a rather wicked twinkle in her blue eyes again, and Isabella could not help but smile in response, her cheeks colouring a little. ‘I don't! I've just danced with him a few times, and conversed a little, and… and so on. So far.'

Georgiana snorted. ‘So far! But the more I think about it, the more I can see that you've chosen rather cleverly. You want to be in control, don't you? That's a large part of the point of what you're doing. And I'm sure that Leo would never… deny you that. Force the pace. If you see what I mean. Goodness, he would have me to answer to if he did, as well as my brother Hal! But he wouldn't. It's very hard to be sure of such a thing about a man. But I trust Leo as I trust Hal, and I don't think I'd say that about many men.'

‘Gabriel, of course,' said Isabella with a sad little smile. Gabriel, and Ash, before she had lost him.

‘Oh yes,' replied Georgiana with complete confidence. ‘From the first time I met him, when I didn't even know his name… But that's for another day. It occurs to me, as it must have occurred to you – how are you going to manage? It's all very well to kiss in a garden or a private room during a ball, goodness knows I've done it myself, as I'd be the first to admit, but when you get a little farther down your list, isn't it going to be excessively awkward? There's a limit – believe me, I know – to what you can get away with while being secure of not being interrupted, and if you were interrupted…'

‘It doesn't bear thinking about,' said Isabella with feeling.

‘You wouldn't enjoy the sensation it would cause, in the first place, and the result of it would be that you'd be forced to marry him, which I collect is just exactly what you don't want.'

‘I don't. And neither does he, for that matter. Which is one of the reasons I'm so glad I chose him, though I couldn't have known it when I did.'

‘Why doesn't he?' asked Georgiana with sudden curiosity. ‘I can see why you don't, of course, after all you have lost, but I'd have thought he might be ready to settle down, now he has left the navy. And he's obviously attracted to you. From what you've said.'

It was unsurprising that Georgiana had no idea of her cousin's secret; Isabella had no intention of sharing it. ‘He is in love with someone else. Someone unobtainable.'

‘Goodness,' said the Duchess. ‘Poor Leo, I had no idea. Did he tell you…? No, I should not ask. Forget I said that, please. And it's a distraction, anyway, and not relevant. How will you manage, that's the question? Finding a place to go to, I mean. I'd say come here, but I don't really think…'

‘Oh no!' replied Isabella swiftly. ‘I wouldn't want that. It would hardly be fair to Gabriel. And I'd rather he didn't know! I'm sorry to ask you to keep a secret from him, it's very bad of me, but I hope you can see why. It might distress him, and I wouldn't want that after he's been so good to me always.'

‘Of course!' Georgiana hastened to reassure her. ‘I promise I won't tell him if you don't want me to, though I don't think he'd disapprove. He's not a hypocrite or one of those tedious people who think men should be allowed to do everything they want and women nothing at all. He was a rake, and I suppose rakes must rather count on women having desires too, or however would they manage? But I can quite see why you feel uneasy… Your late husband's brother.'

‘Exactly. I had thought that there must be places one can hire, couples can, I mean, for a short time…'

Georgiana shuddered slightly. ‘I expect there are. Can you imagine what they must be like?'

‘I keep thinking about fleas,' said Isabella hollowly.

‘Fleas would be the least of it, I should think. You need… I know what you need!'

‘You do?'

‘Yes! You need a place that's safe, definitely without fleas, where you can go and be private and nobody will take the least notice of you, or think to blackmail you or threaten you.'

‘That sounds impossible.'

‘But it isn't! I know just the place, and I can tell you exactly how to go on there!'