The Study of Seduction: Sinful Suitors 2 (28 page)

“Go on, darling,” Yvette said to Jeremy. “I’ll be along in a moment. I just need a few words with my brother.”

That didn’t sound good. Edwin braced himself for anything as she came around the desk. When she merely gave him a kiss on the cheek, he let out a relieved breath. “I’m glad you’re back in England,” he admitted.

“So am I. I missed you. And Clarissa.” She seized his hand. “Be careful with her.”

“Of course,” he said tersely. “Why would I be anything else?”

“Because you can be a bull in a china shop sometimes, and despite all her boldness, Clarissa is the finest Wedgwood. So treat her with kid gloves, will you?”

He bristled. “How I handle my wife is none of your concern.” When her eyes narrowed, he regretted speaking so sharply, but blast it, the idea of her and Clarissa talking over his . . . inadequacies made his blood boil. “What nonsense did she tell you about me, anyway?”

Her gaze grew shuttered. “Nothing of any consequence.”

“I am not some monster, you know,” he grumbled.

“Of course you aren’t,” she said soothingly. “And
she
certainly doesn’t think you are.” Her gaze grew steely. “All the same, if you ruin things with her by being your typical blunt self, I shall never forgive you.”

As usual, Yvette thought everything was
his
fault. “Didn’t you say something about returning to London?”

Perversely, that made his meddling sister laugh. “I’m going, I’m going.” She headed for the door. “I understand that Lady Margrave is throwing a grand fete to celebrate your wedding, and Jeremy and I are invited. So I’ll see you there in a week.”

The thought of how extravagant an affair Clarissa’s mother was probably planning made him shudder. “I can’t wait,” he said sarcastically.

Yvette paused in the doorway, her eyes gleaming
at him. “And here Clarissa was trying to tell me that you could be fun. I should have known better than to believe her.”

By the time her words registered fully, his sister had already waltzed out into the hall.

“Wait!” he called out as he hurried after her. “Clarissa really said I was
fun
?”

Having reached the entrance door, Yvette paused to blow him a kiss. “See you next week!” Then she was gone.

By the time he got outside, the carriage was already pulling away, with her waving at him out the window.

After watching the equipage disappear onto the road, he walked slowly back into the house. Damn. What else had Clarissa told his sister? Had she spoken of their intimate relations . . . or lack thereof? Had she revealed what he’d blurted out about Mother?

God. There was no telling. Those two were as thick as thieves.

As he stood in the foyer, he glanced at the clock. A couple of hours until dinner. He had half a mind to tell a servant he was unwell, and retreat to his bedchamber to drink himself into oblivion for the rest of the day.

But he was no coward. Surely he could endure an evening of polite chitchat with his wife. He would simply put from his mind the memory of how soft she’d been earlier, how sweetly scented, how silky the skin along her thighs . . .

Damn it to hell. Now he wished Keane and Yvette had chosen to stay.

He returned to his study to deal with some correspondence. Perhaps that would take his mind off
her until she came down to join him for a drink before dinner, as they’d begun the habit of doing.

Or would
she
play the coward and not come to dinner at all? He wasn’t sure which he wanted.

Some time later, he was immersed in writing a letter to the board of the Preston Charity School when a voice sounded from the doorway.

“They’ve gone, I take it?”

Clarissa was here. “Yes, they’ve gone.” He forced a polite smile to his face as he rose. “They were—”

He forgot whatever he was saying, just stood there slack-jawed. Because standing in the doorway was his wife in a pair of his old evening breeches from when he was a lad of twelve.

Over them, she wore his old white shirt without a cravat, unbuttoned almost to the vee in the placket; his old embroidered waistcoat, unbuttoned; and his old tailcoat. It was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen in his life.

God save his soul.

“Don’t stand there with your mouth open, Edwin.” She smiled hesitantly as she entered. “You’ll attract flies.”

He couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t stop imagining what lay behind the fall of those breeches. “What are you doing?” he barked.

“Paying my debt. You
did
win our challenge this afternoon. Or have you forgotten?”

“I . . . I . . . Yes.” He swallowed hard. “I did.”

Oh, God, what had he been thinking? He must have been out of his mind. Now he had an evening of torture ahead of him.

After their disastrous picnic, he hadn’t expected her to “pay her debt,” especially with things so uncertain between them.

He scowled. Unless she had done it on purpose, to arouse him. Which didn’t make sense. He’d been very clear about why men liked women in breeches, and she’d been very clear about not wanting him to bed her.

As if she followed the train of his thoughts, her expression turned self-conscious. “I . . . um . . . would have buttoned the waistcoat, but it simply wouldn’t close over my . . . er . . .”

“Fine attributes?” he said dryly.

She blushed. “Exactly. I could barely get the breeches on, either. You grew into such a tall, broad-chested fellow that this was all I could find that I wouldn’t be swimming in, unfortunately.”

“Yes, very unfortunately, indeed,” he mumbled. Every inch of her attire was tight enough to show . . . several of her “fine attributes.” “No cravat, I see.”

“I gave up on figuring out how to tie one.” A coy smile touched her lips. “Besides, I figured you would like the ensemble better without one.”

“Can’t imagine why you would think that,” he said hoarsely as he fixed his gaze on her shirt. She didn’t appear to have a corset on underneath. Or perhaps he merely imagined that he could see her nipples. “Where on earth did you find the clothes?”

“In an old trunk.”

She strolled over to the wine decanter near the window, giving him a full view of her luscious backside. Those breeches were so tight, he could bounce
a shilling off them. Had she even been able to get them on over her drawers? Or was she actually
naked
underneath?

Glancing back at him, she asked, “Shall we have our usual glass of Madeira?”

“Yes.”
With a side of carnal relations, if you don’t mind.
Damn. How would he ever make it through tonight?

She poured two glasses. “You don’t mind that Yvette and Jeremy left so soon, do you?”

“No.” He watched as she came toward him. “Why? Do
you
?”

“Certainly not. Though I did enjoy my chat with Yvette.”

That arrested his attention. As she handed him his glass, he said, “And . . . er . . . what did you two discuss?”

Staring down into her glass, she said, “I told her all about Durand and why we had to marry. She thinks he’s mad.”

“He is. Though it’s a crafty sort of mad.”

She nodded. “Yvette agreed to write to me about whatever gossip she heard of him.”

“That’s good.” Edwin downed his wine, then went to fetch himself another. It was the only way he was going to get through the next few hours with her looking like that.

Clarissa didn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t mention the blackmail aspect to her. I wasn’t sure if you’d want her to know of it. Was that right?”

He forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand. “Yes. I’d rather not worry her over it until it becomes necessary.”

“It did occur to me, though, that . . . well . . .” She toyed with her glass. “I wondered if perhaps the blackmail had something to do with what you mentioned this afternoon. About your mother. And her assault.”

He froze in the midst of pouring himself more wine. God, he hadn’t even considered that she might think that. “No. Not at all. Something else entirely.” Down went his second glass of Madeira.

When he said nothing more, she asked, “Will you tell me about it?”

Damn. The last thing he wanted to explain right now was his father’s spying. “The blackmail, you mean?”

“No. Your mother’s assault.”

That threw him off guard. He faced her, eyes narrowing. “Why?”

She swallowed. “Because . . . well . . . it seems to have affected you profoundly, and I should like to know what happened.”

It occurred to him that there might be deeper reasons for her request. What had Yvette said?
Treat her with kid gloves.

Perhaps this was the way to do it. Show her his darkest secrets, so she might show him hers. He stepped nearer. “If I do, will you tell me why you shy from me?”

She blinked, then bobbed her head.

“Very well.” He gestured to the chair in front of the desk. “But you’d better sit down. It’s not a pretty story.”

At those words, Clarissa felt a sudden queasiness in her stomach. But this was what she’d wanted, to know what had happened to his mother and how it
might bear upon his feelings toward what had happened to her. Which she’d now promised to tell him, and wasn’t at all sure she should.

But this couldn’t go on. She might as well get it over with.

Edwin went to close the door to the study, probably so the servants wouldn’t hear, and then to pour himself a third glass of Madeira. Clarissa frowned. She’d never seen him take more than one before, and it worried her. At least he only sipped this one, as if buying time.

When he spoke again, his voice was carefully measured. “It happened when I was eight and Samuel six. Father had just left to go to town one afternoon, so we were playing in the coat closet downstairs, having escaped our napping nurse. Father’s oldest friend came to call, and we watched from our hiding place as Mother invited him to visit with her in the drawing room while he waited for Father to return.”

His back stiffened. “We didn’t know the man very well—he’d just returned from a long trip to America. But Mother knew him from before she and Father married, and they seemed cordial.” He sipped some Madeira. “Anyway, Samuel and I got into a silly argument about something, and since we knew Mother was in the drawing room, we ran in there to have her settle it.”

A shuddering breath escaped him. “It took a moment for us to register what we were seeing. At first, it looked like the man and Mother were playing some game on the settee, tussling like Samuel and I were wont to do.” His voice grew choked. “But
then I realized that the man’s mouth was smothering Mother’s, and he was holding her down while he dragged up her skirts. She beat on his back, but though she wasn’t exactly a small woman, she couldn’t get him off her.”

Clarissa knew firsthand what that was like, having a man who was stronger and fiercer on top of her and not being able to get free. Just hearing Edwin’s account made her hands clammy and her mouth dry.

He cleared his throat. “Samuel just stood there, unable to comprehend what was going on, but I wasn’t about to let Father’s ‘friend’ hurt her, so I cried out for him to stop.”

Pivoting to face her, he stared blindly past her with a haunted expression. “The bastard clamped his hand over her mouth and told me they were playing a grown-up game, and I should go back to my nurse. But I saw the stark terror in her eyes, the tears running down her cheeks. So I launched myself at him, determined to get him off her.”

His hand shook as he lifted his glass to his lips and drank deeply. “He had to abandon his assault of her to fight me, and then he had to fight both of us, and we made such a ruckus that our old butler came running. That ended it.” Ice glittered in his eyes. “Or rather, that ended the
physical
assault. The assault on her character lasted the rest of my parents’ marriage.”

Her heart sank. “What do you mean? The man tried to rape her!”

“But he told our butler that Mother had encouraged his advances, and then had grown embarrassed when I came in upon them. That I’d misunderstood what was going on. And our damned butler, who’d never
really approved of Mother, believed him and agreed to keep quiet about it. Then Father’s friend took me and Mother aside and said that if we told anyone else about it, he would paint her to be a whore.”

With an ugly oath, Edwin threw the wineglass into the fireplace, startling her with his anger. She watched with her heart in her throat as he paced before her, his jaw tight. “Mother, however, wasn’t standing for that. As soon as the bastard left and Father returned home, she tearfully related what had happened. So Father went off to confront his friend, who apparently elaborated on his Banbury tale by claiming that Mother had tried several times previously to seduce him.”

“That scoundrel!” The thought of poor Lady Blakeborough being falsely maligned made her stomach roil. “But . . . but surely your father didn’t believe that awful man.”

“I wish I could say he didn’t.” Edwin scrubbed his hands over his face. “But they’d been friends all their lives, and the man was clever enough to play on Father’s jealousy, and the fact that Mother had always drawn men’s gazes. So Father marched back home and questioned the butler, me, and Samuel.”

He snorted. “Samuel was useless—he kept saying the two had been playing a game. I told Father that it hadn’t been a game, but an assault. That didn’t matter much when our butler said he’d come in upon my mother standing there in disordered clothing, looking flushed and agitated, while I screamed at Father’s friend. All of it was true. But all of it could also corroborate her attacker’s account.”

“If one was predisposed to believe the wretch—
which your father certainly should not have been.”

“Unfortunately
he
did not agree with you.” Edwin’s voice went cold. “He believed the butler. Father said we were children and didn’t understand that our mother had been playing the whore. Why else had she invited the man into the drawing room alone, after all?”

“Because she was being a courteous hostess?” Clarissa said, irate on his mother’s behalf. “Because the man was supposedly your father’s friend?”

“Father didn’t see it that way. He saw it as her fault, and their marriage was never the same. Though he cut off his friend because the man had ‘accepted his wife’s advances,’ he also withdrew from Mother and claimed that they’d both betrayed him. If she hadn’t already been in the beginning stages of pregnancy with Yvette when it happened, I suspect my sister would never have been born.”