Duchess Quartet - A Wild Pursuit Part 3

"This journal is a disgrace!" Mrs. Cable said, dropping the offending paper to the table. "If Lady Syndenham were indeed foolish enough to run away with her footman-and I see no reason to disbelieve the report-the information ought to be suppressed, so others don't follow her lead!"

Her companion's response was as frivolous as her nature. "Reading of Lady Syndenham's adventures is not likely to prompt one to cast a lascivious eye at a footman," Esme Rawlings pointed out. "At least, not unless one's footmen were better looking than those in my household."

"There'll be no end to it," Mrs. Cable snapped. "Before we know it, impressionable young ladies will be marrying footmen-nay, even gardeners! You may laugh, Lady Rawlings, but 'tis a serious concern." She stood up and gathered her reticule and shawl. "I myself am starting a campaign to weed out incorrigible sinners from my staff, and I sincerely hope you will do the same."

Mrs. Cable made a point of visiting Lady Rawlings, since the poor woman was widowed with a child on the way, but she often found her efforts unrewarding. Lady Rawlings's inclination to levity was disturbing. Mrs. Cable found herself all too often reminded that Esme Rawlings was considered something of a fast woman. Infamous Esme, that's what they used to call her in London.

All the more reason for Mrs. Cable to make frequent visits and impress the wisdom of the Bible on Lady Rawlings. Even looking at her now made Mrs. Cable uneasy. Lady Rawlings was entirely too beautiful, despite carrying a child. There was something about the color of her cheeks that looked feverish, as if she were ill. And that smile curving her lips... Mrs. Cable could only hope the woman wasn't thinking about one of her footmen. Surely not! Even Esme Rawlings would never smile at such a sin.

Mrs. Cable couldn't quite articulate her thoughts, but she knew what she saw, and if Lady Rawlings were one of her maids, she'd turn her off without a reference. She herself had never smiled like that in her life. She must remember to drop off some improving tracts on the morrow.

Mrs. Cable was right.

Esme had not been thinking of her butler, a worthy man by the name of Slope. Nor had she thought of her footmen, a callow group of country lads who suffered mightily under Slope's tutelage. It was worse. She had lost track of the conversation for a moment because she was thinking about her gardener.

Esme bid farewell to Mrs. Cable. Then she sat down in her sitting room and tried to remember all the good reasons she had to be respectable. Mrs. Cable wasn't one of them. She had a sharp nose, the beady, inquisitive eyes of a swallow, and a flock of acquaintances that rivaled that of the Regent himself. Mrs. Cable considered propriety next to G.o.dliness, and if she ever discovered the truth, Esme's reputation would be blackened the length and breadth of England.

Normally, Esme wouldn't be caught within ten yards of such a woman. But these days, she didn't have that luxury. Mrs. Cable led the Sewing Circle, an inner sanctum of ladies dedicated to the virtuous and charitable life. When the Sewing Circle was not hemming acres of coa.r.s.e sheets for the deserving poor, it monitored the reputations of everyone within five counties. Manuevering her way into the circle had taken the diplomacy of a reformed rake aspiring to a bishopric in the Church of England, and Esme found the idea of forfeiting her newly acquired virtue galling.

Yet what was she to do? The gardener refused to leave her employ. Presumably, he was roaming around her garden at this very moment, although it was noon. He had likely retreated to the hut at the bottom of the apple orchard and was sitting there without a care in the world, reading Homer and not even considering the deleterious effect his presence might have on her reputation.

Of course she wouldn't visit him. This was her new life, a principled life, a life in which she would conduct herself in a respectable fashion. She had promised her husband, Miles, as much. Before he died, they agreed that he was going to give up his mistress. Lady Childe, and she was going to become the sort of woman who wore little lace caps and sewed sheets for the poor. And never, ever, thought about gardeners.

She bundled herself into a pelisse two minutes later, explaining to her maid that she wished fresh air. It wasn't as if her child was born yet, she told herself as she headed down the slope into the apple orchard. Once the child was born she would never see the gardener again. In fact, she would have her butler terminate his employment. Esme's pace quickened.

The hut was a small, roughly built structure at the bottom of the garden. It had one of everything: one chair, one bench, one table, one fireplace. One bed. And one gardener.

He was standing by the fireplace with his back to her when she pushed open the door. He didn't turn until she closed the heavy wood door with a thump. Then he whirled around so suddenly that the pot over the fire tipped and its contents cascaded across the wood floor. What appeared to be lumps of carrot and beef dripped into the cracks between the boards. Esme's stomach growled. Pregnancy had the unfortunate effect of making her always hungry.

He looked at her without greeting, so she tried a jaunty smile. "Never tell me that you're learning to cook?"

He still didn't say anything, just took a step toward her. Her gardener was big, with a rider's body, tousled blonde curls, and eyes the blue of a patch of sky in summer. His features were as regular as if they were chiseled from marble. No man had a right to be so beautiful. He was a danger to all womankind, perhaps even to Mrs. Cable. "Did you cook that stew yourself?" she insisted, waving at the pot.

"Rosalie, in the village, brought it to me."

Esme narrowed her eyes. "Rosalie? Who is she?"

"The baker's daughter," he said, shrugging. He took another long step toward her. "Is this a social call, my lady?" Something had sparked in his eyes, something that made her heart skip and her knees feel weak.

She opened her mouth to inform him that he was shortly to be discharged from his position, and found herself saying something entirely different. "How old is this Rosalie?"

"Rosalie is a mere la.s.s," he said negligently.

"Ah," Esme said, realizing that there was nothing she could say to that. She herself was no la.s.s. No, she was all of twenty-seven years old, and huge with child in the bargain.

He was just in front of her now, all golden and beautiful in his rough workman's shirt. He'd rolled it to the elbow, and his forearms swelled with muscle. He was everything the smooth, delicate gentlemen of her acquaintance were not: There was something wild and untamed about him. Esme felt a shock of shyness and couldn't meet his eyes.

"My lady," he said, and his voice was as smooth and deep as that of any marquess. "What are you doing in my humble abode?"

She bit her lip and said nothing. Embarra.s.sment was creeping up her spine. Hadn't she told him last time that she would never visit again?

"You are responsible for the loss of my meal," he said, and his hand pushed up her chin so she had to meet his eyes. He loomed in front of her, the sort of man all young girls are warned to stay away from. The kind who knows no laws and no propriety, who sees what he wants and takes it.

"It was purely an accident," Esme pointed out.

"Then you must provide me with another." She barely caught a glimpse of the hunger in his eyes before his mouth closed on hers.

It was always the same with them. There were no words for it, really. Esme had been married. She'd had lovers. But she clung to Baring, her gardener, as if he were the first man on earth, and she the first woman. As if a smoky little hut smelling of charred stew were the famous Garden itself and she, Eve shaking in Adam's arms. And he held her with the same desperate hunger and the same deep craving.

It was a good ten minutes later when Esme remembered why she'd come to the hut. By then she was tucked in his arms and they were sitting on the bed, albeit fully clothed. "You're sacked," she said against his shoulder. He smelled of woodsmoke, and Rosalie's stew and more, strongly, of a clean, outdoors smell that no n.o.bleman had.

"Indeed?" His voice had a husky, sleepy tone that made her b.r.e.a.s.t.s tingle.

"Mrs. Cable is beginning a campaign to stamp out all incorrigible sinners in the village, and surely you qualify."

"Is she a little woman who wears her hair sc.r.a.ped into a bun?"

Esme nodded.

"She's already tried," he said with a chuckle. "Came around to The Trout and handed out a lot of pamphlets to the lads last week. They were all about G.o.d's opinion of the Ways of the Wicked. I gather

she forgot that reading is not a strong point in the village."

"Wait until she discovers that my aunt Arabella has arrived and brought a houseful of guests with her.

Not a one of them has a decent reputation. Are you listening?"

"Of course." He was dropping small kisses on her neck. "It's not a laughing matter," Esme said crossly. "You of all people should understand how important it is...o...b.. respectable. Why, only last year you were thought of as the most proper man in all the ton."

At that, he did grin. "Yes, and you can see how much that affected me. Here I am, living in disgrace on the Continent, and a very small Continent it is," he added, glancing around his hut.

"Entirely your fault!" she snapped. Esme was starting to feel a wicked temper. "If you hadn't lurched into

my bedchamber in the middle of the night, you'd still be in the judgement seat, p.r.o.nouncing verdicts on all the poor disrepectable souls like myself." She brooded over that for a moment. "I used to feel as if you were always watching me."

She glanced up and found he was indeed watching her. His eyes were a darkish blue form of periwinkle. "I was." "Not just watching. Judging." "I had to," he said cheerfully. "I was so utterly miserable about your married state that it drove me mad." Esme felt a slight cheer in her heart. No woman in the world would dislike hearing that. "Truly, Sebastian, what am I to do? I know you think it's foolish, but I did promise Miles that I would become a respectable wife once we had a child. I can't have one of Arabella's scandalous parties in my house. I'm in confinement! All Arabella will say is that Marie Antoinette was dancing a minuet up to the moment she gave birth."

"Why don't you just accept my proposal? I'll make an honest woman of you, and we'll turn up our noses at the gossips." Esme's heart skipped a beat and then steadied. She scowled at him. "To begin with, I can't marry you because you are even more scandalous than I am. Half the world believes you seduced your fiancee."

"Former fiancee," he put in.

"But that is nothing to the scandal if they discovered your current whereabouts. Arabella, for one, would instantly recognize you, and she's invited any manner of persons, all of whom could also identify you." "Mmmmm." He wasn't paying attention. "I don't understand why you consider my wishes to be so insignificant!" she said sharply, pushing his hand off her breast. He just grinned down at her, all thick golden hair and laughing eyes. "Because I've given up all that respectability you want so much, Esme. I don't have it anymore. And I don't give a d.a.m.n. Do you know that I once actually scolded Gina for trying to kiss me in public?"

Esme pursed her mouth. She didn't like to think about Sebastian kissing his former fiancee, for all Gina was one of her closest friends. "That sounds just like you," she observed. "Holy w.i.l.l.y, always standing on your consequence."

"I'd still have my Sir Sanctimonious credentials if I hadn't gotten mixed up with you," he observed. "My mother will likely faint when she hears of my new position."

"You didn't tell your mother!"

He grinned. "No. But I'm going to visit her tomorrow, and I shall."

"Noooo," Esme wailed. "You can't. You absolutely cannot do that!" She tended to keep well away from the more stiff-rumped members of the ton, such as Marchioness Bonnington. Sebastian's mother was one of those women who prided themselves on the fact that they needn't be magnanimous to lesser mortals. And her son, at least before he'd become a gardener, had been an unexceptional successor to her manifold virtues.

He shrugged. His hand was stealing up toward her breast, and his eyes had that look again.

"It will be a terrible shock for her," Esme said, trying to find a shred of sympathy and instead finding an evil ray of pleasure in her heart. "Aren't you rather old to be growing rebellious? I sowed my wild oats a good ten years ago."

Sebastian snorted. "And your mother still hasn't recovered. She's a bosom beau of my mother's, you know."

"I wasn't aware of their friendship." Esme didn't feel it necessary to add that she and her mother hadn't spoken except in pa.s.sing for three years. She had no idea who f.a.n.n.y's friends were. Her mother communicated only by letter, and that infrequently. "My mother has decided not to attend my confinement," she admitted. Why on earth was she relating that pitiful fact? She hadn't even told Helene.

"Your mother is as foolish as mine, then," he said, dropping a kiss on her nose.

"f.a.n.n.y is not foolish," Esme felt compelled to defend her. "She simply cares a great deal for her reputation. And I've-well, obviously, I've been a great disappointment to her. I am her only child."

"So you are," Sebastian said. "All the more fool she, not to be here when her grandchild is born."

"I'm afraid that my mother has... has quite discarded the idea of our further acquaintance." It was absurd to find that she had a lump in her throat. She hadn't even had a cup of tea with her mother for some three years. Why should she miss her now?

"Is that why you have such a fierce wish to become respectable?" Sebastian inquired. "So that your mother will accept you again?"

"Of course not! It's only because of Miles, as I told you."

"Hmmm." But he wasn't really listening. He was kissing her ear.

"I don't think my mother likes me very much," Esme said dolefully.

To Sebastian's mind, her mother's behavior had made that clear for years, but it didn't seem politic to say so. "I expect she has some affection for you," he said in as comforting a manner as he could manage, given that he had Esme's delicious body on his lap. He felt like a starving man at a feast. "I am almost certain that my mother has some affection for me, although she would never acknowledge such a thing."

"You were a perfect son to her. And you will be again. Once you return from the Continent, everyone will forget the scandal, and you can return to being the very proper Marquess Bonnington. Sn.o.bby old sobersides."

"Never again. Never!"

"Why not?"

"I shall never again believe that it matters a bean whether I kiss the woman I love in a garden or my own bedchamber. All that propriety, respectability, it's nothing but a trap, Esme, don't you see?"

"No," she said. Secretly she was a bit shaken by the vehemence in his voice. "I wish-oh, I do wish-that I hadn't been unfaithful to Miles in the first year of our marriage. Perhaps if I'd been more respectable, we could have found a way to be married again. To live together and raise a family."

She was startled by the look in his eyes. "Why? Why, Esme? Why Miles?"

"Because he was my husband," Esme said earnestly. This was at the heart of all their arguments. "I should have honored our vows," she explained.

"You vowed to love him forever. Yet you didn't even know him when you married him. He was weak, charming but weak. Why on earth are you harboring the idea that the two of you could ever have been happy together?"

"Because it would have been the right thing to do." She knew she sounded like a stubborn little girl, but he had to understand.

"Ah, the right thing," he said, and there was a dark tiredness in his voice. "I can't fight with that. But if you, Esme, were able to fall in love with your husband because it was the right thing to do, you would have been a very unusual woman indeed."

"I could have tried!" she said with a flare of anger. "Instead I flaunted my affairs before him and the rest of London."

Esme was missing the point. The trouble was that Sebastian wasn't sure how to make himself clear without risking her stamping out of his hut in a rage. He tried to put it delicately. "Your husband, Miles, didn't seem to take much notice of those affairs."

"Yes, he did."

My G.o.d, she was a stubborn woman. "You began flirting with other men in an attempt to get Miles's attention," Sebastian said. "Fool that he was, he simply concluded that the marriage was not successful. And to be honest, I don't think he cared very much. He was in love with Lady Childe, these many years before he died." His voice was calm but merciless.

Esme was silent for a moment. "We could have tried," she said finally.

"You did reconcile just before Miles died," Sebastian pointed out. "To my knowledge, you had one night together." He drew her even closer against his chest. "Did it pa.s.s in a blaze of pa.s.sion, then?"

Esme turned her face into his rough shirt. "Don't laugh at Miles," she warned. "He was my husband, and I was very fond of him."

"I would never laugh at Miles. But I would never make the mistake of thinking that the two of you could have had a successful marriage, either."

"Perhaps not. I suppose not. It's just that I'm so... so ashamed of myself!" It burst out of her. "I wish I hadn't done all those things. I just wish I hadn't."

Sebastian was beginning to kiss her again, and his kisses were drifting toward her mouth. Suddenly Esme was tired of whimpering about her miserable marriage and her reputation. "You know when you used to watch me so crossly?" she said huskily. Sebastian's large hands were leaving tingling paths in their wake. He was a beautiful man, with his honey skin and tumbling hair. She couldn't tear her eyes away from him. Why was she even thinking about Miles?

"Of course," he drawled. He was watching her now too, except his eyes were below her chin. He was watching his hand on her breast.

"You had the most arrogant, sulky look," she said. "You used to lean against the wall and frown at me, and I knew you were thinking that I was an absolute tart."

The corner of his mouth curled up. "Something like that, I suppose."

She was getting breathless because of what he was doing, but she wanted to make herself clear. "I used to do some of it for you," she said, pushing his chin up so he met her eyes.

"Do what?"

"Flirting." She smiled and put all the seductive joy she felt into that smile. "You would be frowning at me from the side of the ballroom, with that gloriously sulky mouth of yours, and I'd play for you."

"Play for me?"

She nodded, giggling. "Be even more wanton. Do you remember when I kissed Bernie Burdett on the ballroom floor at Lady Troubridge's house party?"

"Of course," he growled, and he nipped her bottom lip with his teeth. He used to feel half mad, watching Esme Rawlings flirting with her latest conquest, allowing that intolerable Burdett to partner her in dance after dance. While he-he'd rarely danced with her. She'd been married, and he'd been engaged to her best friend. The very memory made him take her mouth with a growl of desire.

"Even as I kissed Bernie, I was wondering what you would do if I simply waltzed up to you and kissed you," she said after a little while, and with a catch in her voice. "I decided you'd probably be up in arms about it, prig that you are, so I kissed Bernie instead."

He raised his head for a moment. "You deliberately-"

"Exactly," she said smugly. Then she ran her lips along the strong, sun-browned column of his neck.