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He groaned, seeing her sway. “Lady Wessex, perhaps you should sit down,” he said as he reluctantly came around the chair.
She put her hand out to him, leaving him no choice but to take it. “I am feeling a little light-headed.”
He helped her sit down on the settee.
“I…don’t know what to do. It’s untrue, of course.” She wiped her mouth with her handkerchief. “But I would never want you to think our family, my daughter Camille—”
“What in God’s name has your daughter Camille got to do with this?” he interrupted.
“My lord, if you’re serious concerning your interest in my eldest daught—”
“Interest in your eldest daughter!” He stared at her. “Madame, I don’t mean to insult you or your daughter, but I don’t believe I have ever even spoken to her. I’m quite sure she hasn’t spoken to me and I’m not even sure which one she is.” Then he thought about the fact that Stowe had mentioned Camille, too. Was this more gossip being spread, that he was calling on Lady Wessex’s daughter? Exactly what did Lady Wessex think she was doing?
“My lord, I know this is a delicate matter,” Lady Wessex went on, seeming not to have heard what he said. “But I assure you there is no truth to this young woman’s claim. She’s merely out to see what she can gain from my husband’s leavings.”
“Of which there are none,” he said wryly.
“But I want you to know, this should in no way alter your feelings for my daughter. Any intentions you might have—”
“I have no intentions for your daughter! Would you listen to me, woman?”
Lady Wessex began to cry. “Such a scandal, even if it is a lie. I just knew it would be the ruin of us. I just knew—”
Blake turned away and walked toward the door.
“My lord, where are you going?” she cried, rising to her feet.
“I don’t know,” he shouted back. “Just away from here.”
12
“Ah, hell and fire,” Angelique muttered as she gazed at the Irish case clock standing against the wall. “I should go.”
“Don’t go,” Henry said sleepily, draping one arm over her waist and kissing her bare shoulder.
“If I don’t, Sapphire will be up all night worrying.” She ruffled his hair and started to climb over him to get out of the high tester bed.
“Are you leaving us?” A hand reached out to clasp her arm and she glanced over her shoulder to see Charles lift his head from the rumpled pillow and gaze up at her, red-eyed, his voice scratchy with too much drink and not enough sleep.
“Charles,” she said impatiently. Though the man had a great deal more money than Henry, she simply didn’t like him as much. He was positively a goat in bed. “I told you I couldn’t spend the entire night.” She glanced down at her arm and he released her. “You really could use a bath.”
“But I want to make love with you again,” he whined.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re so greedy, Charles.”
“But I want to make love with you again, too,” Henry joined in, trying to catch her around the waist as she climbed over him.
> She slapped his hands away playfully, landing barefoot on the worn Safavid carpet. “Then you’re both greedy little boys, greedy little piglets who are never satiated. You know what we do with greedy piglets in Martinique, don’t you?” She stood beside the bed, naked in her glory, and poured herself some sherry from a nearly empty decanter. “We put them in the stew pot and eat them for Sunday supper.” She took a long drink and passed it to Henry, who drank, then passed it to Charles.
Henry flopped onto his back and watched Angelique walk across the room to gather her clothing. Henry and Charles both rented rooms in the same boarding-house in the Temple Gardens district of London, run by a Mrs. Talbot, who Angelique knew for a fact was willing to accept sexual favors in return for missed rent payments. The young university men all thought she was crazy, and though most of them had sired themselves out to her on at least one occasion to prevent her from contacting their fathers, they all scorned her privately. Angelique rather admired her; she was a woman who could financially take care of herself and gain a little pleasure in the task. How could any independent woman not love her?
“Did you speak with Sapphire about the ball?” Angelique asked, turning up the flame on the oil lamp beside the chair she had perched on. When Charles didn’t answer, she turned toward the bed as she rolled up one pink silk stocking. “Charles, did you ask her?”
“A hundred times,” he groaned, drinking to the bottom of the sherry glass before dropping it on the floor beside the bed. He lay back, closing his eyes. “I must confess, Angie love, my patience is wearing thing. I’ve spent a fortune dining, attending plays, buying her trinkets, and I’ve got nothing out of her but a taste of her lips.”
“I told you,” Angelique said impatiently. “I told you from the beginning, she isn’t like me.”
“You can say that again,” Henry chuckled, adding a sexually explicit phrase under his breath.
