The Slightest Provocation

Chapter Seven

The lamplight in the library of the Park Lane house was too bright and the fire needed stirring.

I could ring for assistance, Kit thought. But the real problem was the clamor of accusatory voices ringing in his ear. A late-night seduction at a remote inn-indeed and indubitably the worst strategy ever chosen for a lovers’ reunion, and what the devil could I have been thinking anyway?

He pulled a plush pillow from beneath his head, tumbling it down over his eyes to screen out the glaring light. Too bad he couldn’t similarly muffle the cacophony in his head. But then, he was used to being hectored, lectured, and otherwise belittled, having grown up under the tutelage of the old Eighth Marquess of Rowen.

Which didn’t mean that she should have sneered at him from behind spectacles that should have looked spinsterish but that he’d found oddly fetching. Needn’t have proclaimed herself so bloody certain that he was still the boy she’d run off with. The old, shallow, callow Kit, most ungoverned personage she’d ever met.

He’d caught a pleasanter sound now, of someone stirring the fire. The light seeping under the pillow had grown mellower as well.

The room set swiftly to rights, the butler suggested a light supper.

“Thanks, no. My stomach… rather in a knot from traveling all day. A cup of tea, though-send Belcher in with it, won’t you? He can pull off my boots while he’s here.”

The dowager marchioness wouldn’t think kindly of how he and his boots had been treating the settee he’d flung himself onto. And of course she’d soon know (for Thomas would tell her, Kit thought) about how he’d failed with Mary…

Well, he hadn’t failed in all ways.

If only they hadn’t fallen into argumentation. Had he really needed to regale her with all his most cherished plans when he’d barely got his buttons open?

Such a promising beginning. When he’d lain on top of her, when he’d entered her. And afterward, her voice in its throaty lower register. I want you again. Soon.

Then you bloody well shouldn’t have started in on lecturing me.

The Channel had been choppy, his hours on the packet boat anything but soothing. He’d had a bad night in Dover and his bones ached from being banged about in the post chaise up to town. The words of their last confrontation still rang in his head, in nagging counterpoint to the recurrent cadence of hooves, traces, and springs.

How many times between Dover and London?

“I didn’t”-clippity-“think…”

“No”-squeak and jingle-“you didn’t.”

Unfair. He’d thought of nothing but her since several weeks ago, when he’d glimpsed her at the theater in Paris. In truth, he’d thought about her for all the nine years of their separation. Not every minute; he’d had orders to follow, duties to attend to. But her image, her voice…

En route to Spain, he’d entertained himself far into the nights by imagining how awful and guilt stricken she’d feel when he met his heroic death in battle.

And when he’d left off thinking about death-when he’d begun instead to live in the service of responsibility and obligation-he’d taken to wondering what she might think of the man he’d become.

People sometimes spoke admiringly of him. Might she have heard any of that?

Because he’d heard about her. Englishmen abroad knew each other’s business. Impressive, how she’d managed to please herself and still maintain a margin of respectability. All but the narrowest people seemed to accept her.

All very well for them. The bargain Kit had finally struck with himself was to rage against her infidelities (as he called them-his affairs of course being only affairs) on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, while reserving the majority of the week (four days was the majority, was it not?) for a measure of toleration, and to congratulate himself on his liberality in this, late at night, with the baroness curled against his flank in satisfied slumber.

A game. An abstraction. He hadn’t actually seen her yet, even while they’d both been resident in Paris. His duties had taken most of his attention, his responsibilities shifting to what one might call intelligence (though she’d likely call it delivering secret messages to Britain’s despotic allies). Call it what you would; it had been his job to help keep the information flowing. He’d enjoyed it, even while planning for his future.

Military discipline had done him good, but he’d had enough of it and he wanted to come home. Obtaining the letter of introduction to Lord Sidmouth had been a good first step.

And then he did see her.

In the course of his work, as it happened, in the lobby of the Théâtre des Variétés. He’d been in evening dress, fading into the crowd, ready to retrieve a message from the bewhiskered gentleman, and-as invisibly as possible and at exactly eleven minutes after nine-to brush against the blond dandy in the black moire neckcloth, passing the folded piece of paper along to him.

After which his time would be his own. The baroness was at home in the Faubourg St-Germain.

The crowd in the lobby was beginning to thin. He’d already completed the first part of his assignment; it would be more difficult to do the second part discreetly.

Or so he’d been thinking when she appeared. He’d almost taken her for an illusion, an apparition stirred into being by fleeting memory. If an apparition could be breathless and distracted, an illusion so patently annoyed at itself for being late.

There’d been nothing apparitional about her hurried steps across the marble floor. The rose pink evening cape fluttering over pale ivory silk, pink-and-green-striped bandeau holding a sprig of lily of the valley in her hair, had all been wonderfully matter-of-fact and palpable. A light drizzle was falling outside; tiny drops of moisture clung to her curls like scattered sequins.

Under their dusting of rouge and powder, her cheeks were less plump than he remembered; he thought he might have discerned a touch of weariness. But her peremptoriness was exactly what he would have expected. He’d found it hard to keep from smiling, harder still to wrest his eyes from the swirling cape, stop himself from trying to ascertain the changes time had wrought upon the body beneath it. He couldn’t see very much; he found he didn’t care. She was Mary still and Mary completely.

Odd that it had happened in the line of duty. Though you could argue that it was only on duty that he hadn’t been free to avoid the theaters, restaurants, and parks that were always so irritatingly thronged with British tourists.

She’d entered the lobby at eight minutes past nine and disappeared by the time he’d handed over his message. She must have run upstairs to join her companions. A few white blossoms, too small to shed their scent, lay scattered on the stairway carpet.

He’d wanted to scoop them up in his fingers. Alas, he’d been obliged to maintain his invisibility. Which it seemed he’d done quite adequately. Well, she hadn’t seen him, had she? Which was just as well for the discharging of his duty. Shocking, to think of the disruption any display of recognition would have effected in the flow of critical information between England and the other forces of order and legitimacy in Europe.

He’d continued to follow his orders. To leave the theater and to make a tour of some of Paris’s darkest and most circuitous alleys until absolutely certain he hadn’t been followed.

After which he’d proceeded to the baroness’s apartments, to explain that he wouldn’t be visiting her anymore because he’d fallen back in love with his wife. She’d laughed, cried, slapped him, and informed him he was no gentleman to invent so crude and fantastical a story. If he’d tired of her, well, c’est la vie. But he shouldn’t insult her by telling fairy tales.

Following her advice, he said very little when he resigned his commission the next day. Keeping the fairy tales to himself, it seemed, in the service of a bloody stupid romantic scenario of instant reconciliation at a remote country inn.

Just see what that got you.

His tea was cold. The fire had burnt down in the grate. His irritating, peremptory, irresistible wife wanted nothing to do with him, and could still spout radical claptrap like a Jacobin. Doubtless she thought him as inflexible and autocratic as the old Eighth Marquess, not to speak of wild and stupid… The most ungoverned personage…

Which was neither true nor to the point.

He blinked, pleasantly surprised to hear himself think that. Nice to know that his thoughts weren’t all self-belittling ones. That he had a few things to be proud of, chief among them having earned the respect of the common soldiers under his command. Not immediately, sad to say-but he wouldn’t think about that right now.

Still, he’d been a good soldier, and now he’d like to be a good civilian. Work for the good of the public order, for everyone’s good, including hers. Was that really so terrible?

Amazing, even now, how much he cared about her good opinion. Not that it would make much difference, when she had a lover who was willing to be sued as an adulterer, so keen was the man on releasing her from their marriage. She must be pretty keen on Bakewell herself.

And it seems I’ve agreed to set the divorce engine in motion. Set informants on her, as a magistrate might upon the rebellious men in his district.

Damn her for goading him into agreeing to it.

For he could hardly have admitted to a measure of affection that she manifestly didn’t feel.

Even if they could still make each other laugh. Finish each other’s sentences. Make each other respond in other wonderful ways as well. One time only. Damn.

He ducked his head back under the pillow, hearing once more the sighs-hell, the screams-he’d drawn from her. Remembering what he’d intended they’d be doing next. Imagining things they’d never done that they might have tried…

Instead of sniping at and insulting one another for an hour. Raking up old memories. Morrice. That half-wit of an actress. Apology evidently not a possibility; where would one even begin?

Leave it alone. What did it matter? If they’d managed to apologize, they would have found themselves butting heads on… oh, trivial matters, like the proper way to govern the English nation.

One’s thoughts did seem to go around in circles when the lady in question had a brain as well as a body to be reckoned with.

When the lady… but he could remember further back, to an implacable young girl in pigtails and pinafore who’d caused a certain angry thirteen-year-old boy to boast and to puff himself up most absurdly.

Much (to his shame) as he had when he’d shambled down the stairs to remind her that he had a letter of introduction from Wellington. To insist that she hear the part he’d memorized and most wanted to repeat, informing Lord Sidmouth that the Home Office could do a lot worse than to take on Major Lord Christopher Stansell.

Any woman in Britain (except the one he was still married to and still wanted to do… well, all sorts of things to) might find it a bit of an honor.

Forget her. Get past this muddle of past and present, aching memory and sharp-fanged desire. He had work to do. No, Mary, not ceremonial puffery, but real work in the service of the domestic order-if, in fact, the Home Office agreed to take him on.

He should move his aching bones and get himself upstairs to sleep.

He should… but he didn’t.

He sank back into the vortex of memory. Voices, glances exchanged…

Quite the dandy…

The French… expect an English gentleman…

And you, you kept your hair short…

He’d cut it himself, the first time, with a pair of little silver scissors he’d found on her dressing table in Curzon Street. He could remember the coal fire popping in the grate, even while the slender bones and muscles had trembled beneath her skin.

The scissors were shaped like a hummingbird, with fine steel blades for a beak. He’d barely breathed as he snipped and clipped, the blades so close to her bent nape, her spine like a string of pearls, his bare arms and torso held carefully away from her body. If he touched anything but her hair, he’d be certain to lose all control of himself.

Her shift hiked up around her naked hips, she’d sat backward in a little gilt chair; the chestnut curls, falling to the parquet floor of her dressing room, piled up around her bare feet.

Glancing at herself in the mirror, nodding with satisfaction. “There, you see, I’ll make a perfect boy.”

He’d had to laugh.

“No, really, Kit. In one of your coats and a cut-down pair of your breeches. And a neckcloth, a big bright one, like the ones those ridiculous coaching bucks wear.”

Squinting at her, trying to imagine her in disguise.

She’d responded by squaring her shoulders and twisting her facial expression into a sly simulacrum of his when freshly shaved and prepared to meet a new day.

“I’ve been studying you,” she whispered.

He’d had to work to keep his countenance. “I expect we could pull it off.” Shrugging in an offhand manner. “A beardless youth in ill-fitting, rumpled clothing-yes, it’s just possible. I’ll call you Ned, introduce you as a distant cousin just up from the country; all you’ll have to do is nod and gawp at the wonders of the metropolis. And Morrice can help us. If anyone tries to engage you in conversation, he’ll just barge right in with a stream of his endless claptrap.”

Oh yes, Morrice had been a very big help indeed.

“And so you’ll take me to a boxing exhibition? And a gaming hell too?”

“The pugilists first: everybody’s attention will be fixed on what’s happening in the ring. Yes, all right. We’ll try it.”

Surprisingly circumspect at routs and assemblies, she’d been brazen and curious about his gentlemen’s pursuits, demanding so strenuously to see for herself that he’d finally agreed to take her, show her everything he found thrilling and fascinating.

Not only because she’d been so adorable behind her crimson neckcloth, but because it allowed him to see everything twice, first in his own way and then through her brave, clear eyes. Wonderful to have her beside him, out in the exciting world beyond Mayfair and St. James, Rowen and Beechwood Knolls-to show off for her, present the raffish companions he’d made during earlier forays.

As though he’d known anything, really, about the world-except that he cherished a taste for risk and danger, for chance, change, and harsh, shocking contrast. And that (mostly thanks to Joshua Penley) he could afford to pursue his tastes in a leisured, gentlemanly fashion. No demands upon his time except pleasure… nor, for that matter, on her time either.

In Calais, he might have asked her if she hadn’t sometimes found herself bored during that aimless first year of marriage. Impossible to confide such a thing back then-any admission of imperfection was as bad as a betrayal when you were young; better to go out and betray each other instead.

Which was exactly what he and his wife had done.

So young, so stupid. At twenty-one and -two it had felt a queer thing even to have a wife. He’d repeat the word to himself, whisper it silently: wife, or (even more strangely) my wife. Waking up at night, he’d wrap his lips about the reedy little syllable and shake his head in private astonishment-that his wife was sleeping beside him, close by and yet secreted away, tiny movements so familiar and dreams so unknowable, her body curled as in a nest of voluptuous murmurings and smells.

If he wanted, he’d think, he could simply wake, touch, enter her. But no matter if he did or didn’t, she’d still be there in the morning.

At which point in his meditations he usually would wake her, to lose his confused self within her.

It hadn’t been true, of course, that she’d always be there. He and she-and both their families’ solicitors-had found a way around that.

It was years since he’d let himself feel these things. Well, you couldn’t when you were responsible for people besides yourself. Anger-like anarchy-needed to be kept in check.

Yes, right. A word or two from her, and the angry boy he’d been had emerged from hiding like a fox poking his head out of a hole after the hunters had gone by.

Even as he’d wanted to show her the new, responsible Kit, who’d won his men’s respect, who wanted a real career, and who’d even rather enjoyed exchanging letters with his dullish brother-the old Kit had stomped out the door of her bedchamber, given it a thumping loud slam behind him, and to hell with any lodger who’d still be trying for a little sleep. To summon the little serving girl Mary had glared at in the dining room-Good, he’d thought, give her something to glare about.

One woman as good as another for certain things-or so he’d been instructed, long ago, by a group of gentlemen at White’s. The French girl would have been perfectly good at what the Old Kit had wanted. Except for one problem. The New Kit hadn’t wanted her. Hadn’t wanted anyone (Lord, how his London cronies would have hooted at him) except the woman who no longer wanted to be his wife.

At this moment, however, in the library at Park Lane, both Kits had had enough of painful reminiscence-as well as of wondering where one Kit left off and the other began. Pull yourself together, man. Summoning his valet, he got himself neatly and cozily put to bed.

A book he liked lay on the nightstand. Good for times like this. But tonight he didn’t require anything but a few easily summoned images. A curve of her lips, the slope of her nape, even (or perhaps especially) the angry flash of her eyes above that absurdly wonderful threadbare shift.

Reminding him, quite suddenly, of a night when Cousin Ned had rather misbehaved. A ragged shirt, perhaps, unbefitting even a country cousin.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Ned.”

“Have I, sir?”

Her eyes very round, dimple flickering into sight, even as her hands crept toward the buttons of her breeches.

“You need a bit of a punishment, my boy. Come here; it’ll be the making of you. A touch of… discipline. Yes, bend over…”

A challenging week lay ahead of him. Meet with Sidmouth, finally find out what the letter of introduction was worth. Apply himself and his abilities, one way or another, in the service of the public order. Duty, discipline…

Surely tonight he could allow himself a few small private pleasures.

“That’s right, Ned. You can rest your head on the desk.”

Breeches around her ankles. Her legs parted, toes barely touching the floor. He’d raised the ragged shirt, pulled down the boy’s drawers she wore beneath the breeches.

Indecent.

Hands on himself now, the tightening now, the pulling, the… ah, the release. From desire (at least for the moment), from responsibility, from duty and from his own ambitions as well.

And from the pull of memories so carefully suppressed for so long, and now, it seemed, so constantly, confusingly, and overwhelmingly present.