by Eloisa James
There was a second’s silence, and then Rafe’s voice, as deep and tender as any man’s could be, “Sweetheart.”
She shook her head, looking fiercely at the pleated sheet. A tear slid down her cheek. “I know that’s the case.”
He tipped up her chin. The dark eyes that she loved so much were smiling. “You are indeed a fool. There’s not a man in all this country who wouldn’t bed you if you asked. But would you have preferred that Gabe enthusiastically said yes?”
“At the time, yes.”
He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have gone through with it.”
“I would!” Imogen said fiercely. “You don’t know how much—”
“How much you wish to be desired,” Rafe said, for her.
She swallowed. He plucked her hand away from the sheet and turned the palm to his mouth. “You and I are birds of a feather, you know. So much did you long to be desired, so much did I. I wanted you to desire me, from the very moment I saw you. But you never seemed to look my direction: first there was Draven, and then Gabe. I hadn’t your courage. I played the role of a coward in all this, Imogen. I should have thrown away that mustache and lusted after you under my own name.”
“Why didn’t you?” Her question sounded shy, almost hesitant.
His laugh was a bark. “I dreamed of it. I almost—the words were on my lips a hundred times. But I couldn’t. What did I have to offer you, Imogen? Nothing. Gabe is—”
“Gabe is in all ways a worthy gentleman, but he bores me, and you know it.” She spoke to the question in his eyes. “From that moment in the carriage I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t let myself bring it into words. The thought was too painful. Later, I asked you to take me to Draven’s house. We kissed in the field, and I kept comparing the way the man I thought was Gabe kissed, to the way you had kissed me, and trying to convince myself that I could feel . . . that . . . for two men practically on the same day.”
“Vixen,” he muttered. And: “But, Imogen, when did you look at me and say, this is Rafe?”
The desperation in his voice filled Imogen’s heart with joy once again. She rolled just next to him and put her arms around his neck. “Five minutes ago?”
He growled at her.
“Yesterday?”
He blinked down at her. “I thought . . .”
She ran her hands through his hair, smiling up at the male foolishness of him. “You took my hand at the theater, just before the pantomime began.”
“So?”
She said it patiently. “Gabe is a scholar.”
He didn’t seem to understand, so she sat up and pulled him upright as well. Then she took his hand and turned it over. Callused from holding the reins, large and powerful, it looked nothing like the soft hand of a scholar. Something lightened in his face.
“So when we made love—”
“Rafe, did it never occur to you that I might have recognized your body from that bath I gave you?”
“My body?”
“Well, parts of it?” There was a husky tone to her voice that made all parts of his body spring to attention.
“But I was wearing a towel,” he said.
She laughed.
“So you recognized my hands before my . . . other parts.” He looked down at them. “I do read books, sometimes,” he observed.
“So do I,” she said demurely. “When there’s nothing else to do.”
“I think I shall keep you too busy to read.”
She raised her eyes to his. “It will take a great deal of children, Rafe, to keep me too busy for you.”
He smiled but—“Are you sure you love me?” It burst from his chest. “I can’t help feeling that I don’t deserve you. I’m like a—a worn-out shoe, Imogen. I daren’t drink champagne at our own wedding! I’m—”
“You are one of the most loving, most responsible, and most generous men I’ve ever met. In fact, I didn’t think your kind walked this earth. And you—you are for me, Rafe. Just you. Not Draven, not Gabe. Just you.”
There was a moment of silence, one of those moments that pass between a husband and his wife and change the way they live together, the way they laugh together, the way they argue together . . . forever.
“I hated you for drinking,” she said, putting her lips to his palm. “I wanted to kill you for it. I hated you . . . and I loved you. And I was too much of a fool to see that the only thing that really mattered to me was keeping you alive.”
Rafe’s eyes shone—perhaps with tears, perhaps with a fiercer emotion. “I know I’m a half-literate dolt.” He said it huskily. “But if you’ll allow me to be Dorimant for a moment, I agree with him: my passion knows no bounds, and there’s no measure to be taken of what I’ll do for you.”
She took his face in her hands. “I don’t want poetry, even pretty bits of foolishness from the play. All I want from you is your heart.”
A moment later he was holding her so tightly that she could hear that heart beating against her cheek. “It’s yours,” he said. And cleared his throat. “This body, my hands, my heart: they’re all yours . . . forever.”
The Duke of Holbrook never returned to his chambers that night. But thereafter, though his fiancée teased and tormented until the very night before they wed, he stayed to his own rooms. If he couldn’t sleep at night, he spent the hours planning one of the largest, most lavish, and most quickly organized weddings that had ever been solemnized in St. Paul’s.
Introduction to Essex Sisters Series Extra Content
This section consists of a short romantic novella that I wrote just for the companion, followed by a bonus chapter that takes place ten years after Pleasure for Pleasure, written for the fans on my bulletin board.
In the years since I wrote the last words of Pleasure for Pleasure, I realized something important: Josie’s miserable experience on the marriage market, singled out and ridiculed for being a “Scottish Sausage,” struck a special chord with readers around the world. I got heartfelt letters from as far away as Slovakia and Indonesia, written by women who sympathized with the pain of a young woman who had to fend off devastating insults at an early, vulnerable age.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this section, I decided that I wanted to write about the two other women mentioned in Pleasure for Pleasure for being singled out with shaming nicknames: the “Wooly Breeder” and the sister of “Silly Billy.” Neither woman actually appears in the four books of the series.
The latter comes up when Lucius Felton tries to comfort Josie by telling her that she is not the only young lady ostracized by so-called polite society.
“You are not the only one,” Lucius added gently. “Cecilia Bellingworth will have a difficult time shaking the label Silly Billy, and that’s merely due to her unfortunate brother not being right in his head. Darlington didn’t make up that label; I’m not sure who did. But who will brave enough to marry her?”
A Midsummer Night’s Disgrace answers that question. It takes place one year after Josie and Mayne marry, so I had the fun of bringing them back as a married couple.
That left the “Wooly Breeder,” a label attached to a young lady whose father made a fortune farming sheep. When I created the ugly nickname, I was trying to portray English high society as a bully culture in which clever comments ruled. At the same time, I wanted to rehabilitate Darlington without minimizing the pain he had caused. He confesses his sins to Griselda, who reminds him that the Wooly Breeder is happily married.
While I could have written a romance for that heiress, now Lady Windingham, I decided instead to explore the long-term effect of being the name caller, rather than the victim. A Gentleman Never Tells features a hero—the Honorable Oliver Berwick—who first appears in Pleasure for Pleasure as one of Darlington’s close friends. He did not invent the terms “Wooly Breeder” or “Scottish Sausage,” but ever since, he has felt guilty for repeating them.
In A Gentleman Never Tells, Oliver decides to attend a house party hosted by Lady Windingham, us
ing the opportunity to apologize. Catrina, formerly the “Wooly Breeder,” is happy to accept, but demands a boon: he must make her sister laugh. That’s no easy task, as Lizzie Troutt is only a few months out of mourning and has herself been scarred by cruel gossip. She doesn’t even want to leave her room, though Oliver is more than up to the task of luring her out. The story turned into a rollicking tale of stolen kisses and indoor croquet—along with a visit by Josie, Mayne, and their young daughter, who was born at the end of Pleasure for Pleasure.
A Gentleman Never Tells is being published separately from this companion, in e-book form. An excerpt can be found in the Appendix. I hope you enjoy the way the extra story and the new novella portray all three young women—Josie, Cecilia, and Catrina’s sister Lizzie—happily married. I suppose you could say that the stories together make up my version of the encouraging phrase that one finds all over the Internet: “It gets better.”
Following A Midsummer Night’s Disgrace, you’ll find another bonus: a chapter I wrote to cap the entire Essex Sisters series. It takes place ten years after the end of Pleasure for Pleasure, allowing us to catch up with each of the sisters, hearing about babies and husbands, with a small anecdote from each. It begins with a beautiful Essex Sisters family tree, designed by the brilliant minds at Wax Creative. Trace all the marriages and babies yourself, then launch into one last glimpse of my favorite sisters.
A Midsummer Night’s Disgrace
A Brand-New Story in the Essex Sisters World
Chapter One
June 21, 1819
A House Party
Kent
Seat of the Duke of Ormond
“I don’t understand what I did wrong,” Lady Bellingworth moaned, wringing her hands. “You had the best governesses money could buy, and I took you to church often, and certainly every Easter!”
“You did your best, Mama,” Cecilia replied. She spun in place, causing her new gown to swirl around her feet. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
The gown was better described by what it wasn’t: it wasn’t white, demure, or ruffled. It didn’t have the new gathered sleeves; in fact, it didn’t have any sleeves. There wasn’t much of a bodice either.
A fold of strawberry-colored silk wound around Cecilia’s bosom and draped over her arms. Rather than following the line of her narrow skirts—made from a darker shade—the transparent overskirt clung to her hips before belling out around her toes. A row of embroidered strawberries around the hem weighted the overskirt so it swirled around her as she moved, emphasizing her curves.
And she had them.
Cecilia considered her curves to be her best feature, with golden hair the color of old guineas a close second.
Coaxed into tight ringlets by a curling iron, her hair took on an oddly metallic gleam. But tonight her maid had styled it in a frothy pile of natural curls, stuck about with ruby-tipped hairpins.
“What are you wearing on your feet?” her mother cried, sounding rather like a kettle coming to boil.
Cecilia lifted her skirts and looked happily at her toes. “New shoes.”
Lady Bellingworth turned purple. “Those are your great-aunt Margaret’s diamond buckles!”
Her shoes were made of strawberry silk embroidered in a silver crosshatch pattern that went splendidly with diamond buckles. But the pièce de résistance was her heels. They were covered in strawberry-colored silk and guaranteed to catch the eye.
Generally speaking, ladies drifted around the ballroom in soft slippers, just as Cecilia had throughout the season. But she had carefully planned—in collusion with a brilliant modiste—to change her appearance from head to toe.
In the past two seasons, she had dutifully worn white (which didn’t suit her), sat demurely at the sides of ballrooms (which didn’t suit her), and smiled rather than spoke (which really didn’t suit her).
But she had arrived at the Duchess of Ormond’s house party this afternoon without a single white gown in her baggage. When a Bellingworth decides to change her appearance, she doesn’t hold back.
She was not going to drift around the ballroom: she would sway, and her hips would sway right along with her.
“You won’t be able to dance in those shoes,” her mother moaned.
“I shan’t need to dance,” Cecilia said, adroitly avoiding the issue, because in her opinion, the shoes turned a simple country dance step into an invitation. “The duchess announced a musical evening, remember, Mama? By the way, if we don’t go down to the ballroom immediately, we shall be late for the concert.”
Lady Bellingworth was slumped against the high back of the settee, hand over her heart. “I feel ill, positively ill. I cannot believe that my daughter is so lost to impropriety that she would consider wearing this . . . this costume better suited to the demimonde than a house party given by one of my oldest friends.”
“If I were one of those ladies,” Cecilia pointed out, “I would take off this corset, which is horribly uncomfortable.”
“Do you think to find a husband this way?” her mother demanded. “To entice a gentleman to wed you because your gown is small enough to cram into his pocket?”
“Marriage would be desirable outcome, don’t you think?” Cecilia asked. “My second season as a wallflower was more than enough.”
She was tired of being ignored, tired of sitting at the side of the room watching other girls curtsying. She was tired of pity dances with male relatives, and whispered advice from girls younger than she was.
She had an idea that gentlemen didn’t bother to look very closely at the rows of debutantes, because every young lady was dressed precisely the same. Swathed in white and trained to docility, they were no more distinct than one sheep in a flock.
“I know why you’re doing this,” her mother said, reaching up to pull Cecilia down onto the settee at her side. Her eyes had turned misty. “It’s because of that dreadful nickname, isn’t it? It’s because poor James is called ‘Silly Billy.’ It’s all my fault! There must have been something I could have done.”
There was no question but that Cecilia’s failure on the marriage market was wrapped up with the cruel, persistent jest about her brother, Lord Bellingworth, who had been dropped on his head as a baby. No one believed the truth about his injury. They thought that the Bellingworth blood was tainted and her babies would be silly as well.
She had a respectable dowry, excellent lineage, and even better teeth. She had shining hair, a slender waist, and slightly larger breasts than were normal for a young lady. But her second season had just drawn to a close, and she had had no suitors, not even one.
“It’s all just so foolish,” her mother continued, mopping her eyes. “Poor James was perfectly normal until he suffered that terrible blow. Perfectly normal!”
“There’s nothing you could have done, Mama,” Cecilia said, wrapping her arm around her mother. “You have no control over the fools who rule the so-called Beau Monde. Darlington and his ilk.”
“Charles Darlington didn’t create that despicable nickname. It came from a horrid fellow known as Eliot Thurman, who was part of his circle a few years ago.”
“I’ve heard as much,” Cecilia said absently. She caught sight of her gown in the dressing table mirror and eased her bodice a bit lower, tugging down that blasted corset while she was at it.
It was French and hoisted her breasts in the air like a gift, but it was deucedly uncomfortable.
Luckily, her mother didn’t notice what she was doing. “Thurman dropped out of society, and then of course, Darlington married Lady Griselda . . .”
Lady Bellingworth kept talking and talking until Cecilia finally intervened. “I think that people are fools to pay attention to people like Darlington. He published that fictional memoir about Josie’s husband, the Earl of Mayne, after all. Josie says the earl doesn’t mind, but I think it was rude.”
“I know Josie, I mean the Countess of Mayne, is one of your closest friends, darling, but you should also remember that Lady Griselda i
s married to Darlington, and she is something of a stepmother to Lady Mayne,” her mother said, tracing the twisty paths of society connections. “Besides, I like Darlington. He’s apologized to me a hundred times, if not more, for having brought Thurman into society.”
“Thurman may have invented ‘Silly Billy,’ but it took a whole herd of simpletons to repeat it over and over, turning my brother into a pariah.”
“I am not defending Thurman,” her mother said. “I loathe the man. Someone told me that he’d been shipped off to the Antipodes, though I don’t know how accurate the rumor is.”
“Mama, if we don’t go downstairs, we’ll be late,” Cecilia said again, drawing her mother to her feet. She picked up a wisp of silk tulle and wound it around her shoulders.
“You’re not pretending that scrap of fabric is a shawl!”
Cecilia put on an innocent expression. “Whatever can you mean? Madame Rocque fashioned it specifically for this gown.”
“I recognize that look, you know,” her mother said suddenly. “You had the same expression when you stole out of the house at twelve years old and begged that violin player to take you with him to Vienna.” Her mother shuddered. “I’ve never forgotten the horror of it.”
All Cecilia remembered was the disappointment. The violin player in question was Franz Clement, one of the best violinists in the world. Her attempt to persuade him to take her with him, back to Europe, had been the only time in her life, before this, that she had attempted to live life on her own terms.
She had failed, and in retrospect, she had to agree that the whole idea had been mad. Clement allowed her to play a Beethoven adagio and then promptly escorted her back to their London townhouse. “She’d be good enough if she were a man,” he had told her mother.