The Pleasure of Bedding a Baroness Read online

  “Well, of course you are,” he said.

  “I melt, sir! I melt! I melt like butter beneath the torrid rain of your hot, manly kisses. I surrender to you utterly!”

  Max was beginning to look a little doubtful. “Steady on! It was only a kiss. It wasn’t even my best work.”

  “Only a kiss?” she gasped, her beautiful eyes wounded. “How can you say that? How can you be so cruel? You have rocked me to my foundation, sir! I am toppling, sir! Toppling! I swoon! I die!”

  Trembling, she fell backward into the cloaks hanging against the wall.

  “No, no!” he said, hastening to catch her in his arms. “You mustn’t do that!”

  Taking hold of his lapels, Patience buried her face in his broad chest and began to sob wretchedly, her shoulders shaking. Perhaps she overdid it a bit. He seemed to think so.

  “Very funny,” he said coldly.

  Quite dry-eyed, Patience looked at him, smiling rather nastily. “You conceited ass!” she said. “I suppose you think that is all it takes to make me swoon!”

  “I have no idea what makes you swoon,” he said.

  “Get out of my way,” she said angrily, snatching her bonnet from the shelf.

  “Oh, come now! It’s a bit late to be missish,” he said impatiently. “I already know you’ve been kissed before me—quite often, too, I should think!”

  “When I choose to allow it,” she retorted. “I’m afraid you don’t quite measure up. I only allow gentlemen of sterling character to kiss me.”

  “So just my humble self then, after all,” he said lightly.

  “They do exist,” she told him. “In America they are quite plentiful.”

  “No wonder you want to go home!”

  “Yes!”

  He drew his dark brows together over his gray eyes. “You do realize, of course, that Isabella was lying?” he said sharply. “I am no saint to be sure, but I am not—I am not as bad as that.”

  “Still you are quite bad enough!” she said. “You forget, sir, that I saw you with my own eyes participating in that disgusting orgy!”

  “Here we call it a birth-night,” he said mildly. “Hardly an orgy. You’d almost have to go to the Continent for that sort of thing. Really, I’m no worse than the average fellow.”

  “And no better either!”

  “Quite so,” he agreed.

  The door opened, and Jane stood there. Behind her were several interested ladies.

  Without missing a beat, Max handed Mrs. Bascombe her kerseymere cloak. Red-faced, Patience left the house. She had arranged for Hawkins to return for her with the curricle in two hours, and much to her relief, he was not late. Climbing up, she took the reins, while he scrambled into the groom’s seat.

  “You’re late,” Pru said grumpily to her sister as Hawkins raised the curricle top over their heads. A cold light rain had begun over Miss Godfrey’s Academy for Young Ladies, but, to Patience’s surprise, the streets of London remained as crowded as ever. Everyone, it seemed, carried an umbrella. There was even one kept under the seat in the curricle.

  “I did not want to risk coming early,” Patience replied, urging the grays to a trot as they headed home to Clarges Street. “I know how much you like your dancing lesson. What was it today, the waltz?”

  Pru pulled her cloak tightly around her. “The boulan-gère. I shan’t be allowed to waltz unless the patronesses of Almack’s grant me permission.” She made them sound like the goddesses of Mount Olympus.

  “You have your tickets to Almack’s, don’t you?”

  “Vouchers, Pay,” Pru corrected her wearily. “Vouchers, not tickets. Yes, of course we have our vouchers, but that is no guarantee that the patronesses will allow us to waltz.”

  “Us?” Patience echoed. “Don’t imagine I’ll ever accompany you to Almack’s, Pru. Why, it’s nothing but a marriage market! As for asking permission to dance—permission to dance at a ball, for heaven’s sake!”

  “Only the waltz.”

  “Lady Jemima will accompany you to Almack’s. The carriage is yours whatever evening you wish. But you know I have no patience for such foolishness!”

  Pru smiled suddenly. “Father always used to say that we were very badly named, for you had no patience, and I had no prudence.”

  “Quite right he was, too. Do you seriously suppose you will not be permitted to waltz?” Patience asked curiously. “How does that work exactly? Will you be called before the court and examined? Will the patronesses look at you through their lorgnettes and say: ‘Forsooth, her forehead is too wide; she shall not waltz?’”

  Pru frowned. “If my forehead is too wide, so is yours.”

  “Never mind, Pru. You can always waltz at home. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “If only you had not canceled my ball at Sunderland House!” Pru lamented. “Then my success would be assured.”

  Patience sighed wearily. “I’m afraid I was too late to cancel the ball,” she said, shaking her head sadly.

  Pru stared at her. “Don’t—Don’t tease me,” she faltered.

  Patience shrugged helplessly. “The arrangements have all been made. The invitations have gone out already. To cancel now would be to commit social suicide. People would talk. So ... despite my misgivings, the ball must go on.”

  “Never mind your misgivings,” said Pru, hugging her sister so fiercely that the horses on the other end of the reins rolled back their eyes and whinnied. “I always knew you would relent! You would not be so cruel. Not to me. I cannot wait to tell Max! He has promised me the first two dances, you know.”

  “I’ve already told Max,” said Patience. “I saw him today at Mrs. Drabble’s house. It’s all settled. It was he who told me the ball could not be canceled—not without doing a good deal of harm to your reputation, that is. And to mine as well.”

  “You saw Max at Mrs. Drabble’s house?” Pru repeated incredulously. “Oh, yes, of course,” she murmured before Patience could reply. “I’d forgotten she was his old nurse. Awfully nice of him to visit an old servant, don’t you think?”

  Patience frowned. “I didn’t realize Mrs. Drabble had been Mr. Purefoy’s nurse.”

  “Oh, yes. He was the one who brought her to Clarges Street to attend you. Dr. Wingfield, too. And Lady Jemima, of course. I would not have known what to do, but Max did, of course.”

  “Why did you never tell me?” Patience asked.

  “Tell you? The doctor said not to do or say anything to upset you. Even after you were better, I thought it best to keep mum. You’d boil over even at the mention of his name. But you like him now, don’t you, Patience?”

  Patience parked the curricle at the curb outside their house. “Tell me the truth, Pru. Has he kissed you? Because if he has—”

  “He has not,” Pru insisted. “At all times, he has treated me with the utmost respect. He’s an English gentleman, and that is a very different thing than what we are used to. Remember the man from Boston?” Pru shuddered eloquently. “Max has English reticence. He would never dream of kissing a girl—not a nice girl anyway. Not unless he had quite made up his mind to marry her. I think,” she went on dreamily, as Hawkins jumped down to open her door, “I shall let him kiss me at the ball.”

  The door opened and Briggs came out with an umbrella. Pru was up the steps before she realized that Patience was not with her.

  “Aren’t you coming?” she called out, surprised.

  “I think I’ll take the grays for one last jaunt before I put them away,” she answered, nodding to Hawkins to resume his seat behind her.

  “Patience! It’s raining!”

  “The horses don’t care, and I—I—”

  Patience drove off without finishing her sentence.

  She needed to think.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning, Patience woke up with streaming eyes and a sore throat. Pru showed her no pity. “It serves you right for going out in the rain,” she declared when she looked in on her sister after luncheon. Patience was just
getting out of bed.

  “It was only a light drizzle,” Patience protested. “Anyway, it gives me some excuse for not appearing at court on Monday. If anyone asks, you may say I have a bad cold.”

  “There is no question of your going to meet the queen with a swollen nose,” Pru vehemently agreed. “We could not risk you sneezing on her majesty! Shall I send for Dr. Wingfield?”

  “I’ll be quite all right in a day or two,” Patience assured her. “There’s no need to send for the doctor. No one ever dies of a trifling little cold.”

  “No one ever dies of seasickness either,” Pru retorted, “but you nearly managed it.”

  The next day, Patience was improved, and on Monday, as planned, Pru and Lady Jemima set off for St. James’s Palace in the carriage. Dressing for such an event was a long, arduous process, and Pru had been up before dawn. She was advised to eat little and drink less; no facilities would be available to the young ladies. Along with all the other debutantes making their first court appearance that day, Pru would be required to sit in her carriage with her chaperone until the master of ceremonies sent for them. The wait could be two hours or ten, depending on her majesty’s pleasure, and Pru would be among the last called, for the girls were to be presented by strict Order of Precedence.

  Patience, who could not understand why anyone willingly would put themselves to so much trouble for so little result, kissed her sister good-bye, and spent a leisurely afternoon exploring Bullock’s Museum, where she saw, among other charming artifacts, Oliver Cromwell’s skull and the big green campaign coach of Napoleon Bonaparte. In Hatchards book shop, she bought a copy of Mrs. Godwin’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

  Prudence returned home, well after midnight. Patience was waiting up for her, reading her new book, but, too exhausted to talk, too exhausted even to eat, Pru went straight to bed.

  Letting her go, Patience detained Lady Jemima very briefly. “All went well, I trust?”

  “Oh, yes, my lady,” the chaperone assured her, biting back a yawn. “Her majesty received Miss Prudence with every appearance of pleasure. She made a very pretty curtsy, and, of course, it did not hurt that she was wearing the Sunderland diamonds.”

  Patience frowned. “The what? You must be mistaken, Lady Jemima. I gave Prudence leave to hire some jewels. She told me she had done so.”

  Lady Jemima could not look Patience in the eye. “Well, but one cannot hire such jewels, you know. Mr. Grey had nothing left but topaz! And, of course, Miss Prudence could not be presented in topaz!”

  “Heaven forbid,” Patience said with heavy sarcasm.

  “In any case,” said Lady Jemima, glancing up with a hint of defiance, “there’s nothing to be done about it now. The duke’s man comes to collect them in the morning.”

  Patience angrily started down the hall to her sister’s room, but Lady Jemima stopped her. “Let the child sleep, Lady Waverly, I beg of you. Mr. Purefoy offered the jewels; she did not ask for them. Did you expect her to refuse diamonds, when the alternative was topaz?”

  “No,” Patience answered, with a sigh. “I suppose not. But he should have known better than to send them! He did it behind my back, too!”

  “It was just the touch we needed for a complete success,” Lady Jemima said happily. “It gave Miss Prudence a little something extra. She’ll be mentioned in tomorrow’s paper, I daresay. The queen spoke to her for a minute at least—oh, an eternity!”

  Patience bit back a sarcastic remark. “As you say, there is nothing to be done about it now. Good night, Lady Jemima.”

  The older woman curtsyed to the younger. “Good night, Lady Waverly.”

  The next morning, Lady Jemima wisely pleaded the headache and took her breakfast in her room. Patience went down to breakfast to confront Prudence, only to find her sister in the very best of spirits, dividing her attention between a plate of food and a pile of invitations.

  She glanced up as Patience walked in. “What’s eating you?” she asked. “Never mind! I don’t care! There’s nothing you can do or say to spoil my perfect happiness! I expect you will try anyway,” she added with a sniff. “But you won’t succeed.”

  Patience sat down and drew her napkin across her lap. “I don’t mean to spoil anything,” she said, uncomfortably aware that she was being defensive. “But I must point out the folly of accepting favors from Mr. Purefoy.”

  Pru stared at her blankly. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “The Sunderland diamonds, of course! Lady Jemima told me you borrowed them.”

  “Oh, that! I thought—” She broke off, chuckling.

  Patience’s suspicions were aroused. “You thought what?” she demanded.

  “I suppose I might as well tell you,” Pru said airily.

  “Tell me what?”

  Pru handed Briggs a folded newspaper. “Take this to her ladyship. I’ll let you read it for yourself,” she told Patience as Briggs bore the news down the length of the room.

  “What have you done?” Patience demanded, snatching the newspaper from the butler’s tray. Pru had folded it so that the society page was on top.

  “You needn’t thank me,” said Pru as Patience scanned the lines. “I confess I did it as much for myself as I did it for you. But we will both benefit from it, you’ll see.”

  “‘The American, Lady Waverly, made her curtsy to the queen as if she had been doing it all her life,’” Patience read in outraged disbelief.

  “‘And her ladyship’s sister, Miss Prudence Waverly, was no less graceful,’” continued Pru, having committed the pertinent lines to memory already. “‘It is to be hoped that the raven-haired beauties will grace the Court of St. James with the perfume of their presence on many more occasions.’”

  “You impersonated me!” Patience said hotly.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Pru said proudly. “First, I was presented as you, then I had to hurry to the back of the line to be presented as me. Is it any wonder I was exhausted when I got home?”

  “How could you? You curtsyed! I swore I never would.”

  “Then I have spared you some unpleasantness,” Pru said. “There would have been a great scandal, you know, if you had refused to curtsy. And I would have been tainted by the association. It was for the best, Patience.”

  “You planned this behind my back!” Patience accused her. “You and Lady Jemima—and Max Purefoy!”

  Pru blinked at her. “Max? Max had nothing to do with it. It was all my own idea. You really must stop trying to blame him for everything,” she added sanctimoniously.

  “How can you say he had nothing to do with it? He gave you diamonds to wear!”

  Pru smiled happily. “Wasn’t that ever so thoughtful of him?”

  “You had no right to pretend to be me!” Patience shouted.

  “But it would have looked so very strange if I came out and you didn’t,” Pru protested. “What are you complaining about? I did you a favor. You are out—with no trouble to yourself, I might add. I did all the work! Already the invitations are pouring in! I must ask Max which ones I ought to accept and which I should decline.”

  “I’d decline them all if I were you,” Patience muttered.

  “I’ll be better off without you, I’m sure!” Pru retorted. “You should not go out into society at all if you are so determined to disapprove of everything you see.”

  “Believe me, I won’t! You will have to tell Mr. Purefoy what you did,” Patience went on grimly. “I won’t have him thinking that I accepted this favor from him. I daresay he thinks me a hypocrite, to criticize him one minute, and then accept diamonds from him the next!”

  Pru laughed. “You need not worry about that! When I was presented as you, I wore the topaz we hired from Mr. Grey.”

  Patience stared at her. “You what?”

  “I knew you wouldn’t want to wear Max’s diamonds,” Pru explained. “I think his feelings were a bit hurt, actually.”

  Patience gasped in dismay. “You mean he was ther
e? You spoke to him—as me?”

  “Oh, yes; he was there with his uncle. I hardly had time to talk to them, however; I had to rush back to the carriage to put on my diamonds. Then I had to wait three more hours to be presented as myself.”

  “What did you say to him?” Patience asked, dreading the answer.

  “I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was extremely rude to him, and to his uncle, too, of course. I may have just mentioned to the duke that the French had the right idea about what to do with the aristocracy. Off with their heads!”

  “What?” Patience squawked. “Pru! Tell me you didn’t!”

  “I was pretending to be you,” Pru said innocently. “Isn’t that what you always say?”

  “I have never said ‘off with their heads!’”

  “True. You are content to call them leeches and parasites, but I have always thought that rather hypocritical of you. Everyone knows that the quickest way to get rid of the aristocracy is to kill ’em.”

  Patience’s cheeks were hot. “You did not say that!”

  “No, of course not; there wasn’t time.”

  “What he must think of me!” Patience said, leaving the table without touching her food.

  “If it’s any consolation,” Pru called after her, “I’m sure they don’t think of you at all!” Quite unconcerned about her sister’s embarrassment, she went back to her breakfast and her invitations.

  Isabella Norton read the same society column that morning at breakfast. “Personally,” she sniffed, “I should be ashamed to be presented at court wearing borrowed plumes!”

  “Your gown was hired,” her brother reminded her. “Do you think I have hundreds of pounds lying about to buy court dresses for my sister?”

  “I have my own jewels,” she said coldly. “That is the main thing.”

  “No one need ever know your pearls are glass,” he agreed. “But ... are you quite certain the girl was wearing the Sunderland diamonds?”

  “Quite sure,” Isabella said coldly.

  “And it was the younger girl, you say, not the baroness?”