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Chapter One
Three Months Earlier
Lady Josephine and Lady Hermione had planned their London escape for at least six months in advance. Every detail was considered. From afar, they wrote each other confidential notes daily: Lady Josephine a senior student at Saltonbury’s, and Lady Hermione, an alumna of that fine institution, now beginning her second London Season.
His Grace the Duke of Clover had been right in assessing that Lady Hermione, on her own, would not have had the gumption to come up with such a plan. Most found her a shy, insipid girl, ultimately rather dull, although at first glance a beauty of the first water like her mother. She had the silver-blonde hair, the angelic blue eyes and the pink-and-white prettiness so worshiped in society. But it was only in Lady Josephine’s vivacious company that Lady Hermione came alive.
The escape to London was Lady Josephine’s scheme, of course. But Lady Hermione threw herself into the planning like the faithfulaide-de-campshe was.
Lady Hermione told her friend, “Jo, I have my own reasons for wanting to escape from the London Season for a few weeks. My mother, Lady Adeline Glastonbridge, has become quite notorious among thehaut ton. I can’t bear all the whispering going on around me.”
At first the infamous Lady Jersey’s bosom friend, now Lady Adeline had become Lady Jersey’s successor in the Prince Regent’s bed. Between personally pleasing the Prince Regent and amusing his courtiers all night at balls and gaming tables, Lady Adeline had no time for a nubile young daughter—nor did she wish any comparisons to be made between their ages. Lady Hermione’s absence, explained or otherwise, would no doubt be a relief to her busy mother.
And the older woman’s reputation was equally an embarrassment to the daughter. She did not wish to be thought of as a similar sort of woman. She wanted to escape completely from thehaut ton, if only for a while. So Lady Hermione joined in her friend Lady Josephine’s plans with gusto.
* * *
Lady Josephine, on the other hand, longed for adventure. As she had told her lord father, she wanted to know something about life. And increasingly, she wanted to know something about men.
There were very few men at Miss Saltonbury’s Academy: a sweaty-palmed dancing master, an elderly art teacher with whiskers and ear hair, a handful of foolish stable boys and kitchen churls.
And I knew no suitable boys at home. An only child, I had no brothers bringing friends to Cloverdene to ride my lord father’s horses, to play lawn tennis or to picnic in the grassy meadows. My cousins were of no help either. They were half a generation older; and they tended to ignore me when they visited the ducal estate.
So men are a mystery to me.
Then, a year or so past, one of the girls brought to school several French novels, taken secretly from the bookcase of an older sister at home. That the novels were in French was itself no obstacle to the small cabal of girls who began to translate them to each other at night. One of Saltonbury’s few academic boasts was the quality of its instruction in foreign languages.
But there were strange romantic scenes in the novels, odd euphemisms about things men and women did to each other. The girls had to puzzle out this new vocabulary. When they did, it was a revelation to them.
Lady Josephine was astounded. She had had no idea that men and women could so set each other on fire with their hands, their mouths and their loins. Did such things really happen? Did the men and women one met every day, who seemed so proper and decorous in polite company, really become such animals once the bedroom door was closed? And did it feel good?
Night after night, she would go to her private chambers—her rank and wealth assured her of privacy, and even Miss Duckworth had to sleep separately in an adjoining little room—and mentally review what she had heard or read.
Then she would become inflamed with desire for some unknown man who would be able to satisfy her. Her hands would slip over her skin, which she knew to be soft and creamy to the touch. They would tease her own nipples until hard. They would reach between her own thighs and cause her to climax, bringing her to that peak of satisfaction that the women in the French novels calledle petit mort—the little death.
But where was the man who could make her feel this way? Lady Josephine could picture him sometimes, as she made love to herself. He would have dark hair, deep blue eyes and sharp, chiseled facial features. He would be strong and muscular, with broad shoulders and arms that could hold her down while he pleased her. Sometimes just these images were enough to drive her to arousal.
Yet Lady Josephine had not lied to her lord father. She was no light-skirt. She was still a virgin—indeed, no man had so much as kissed her. She was waiting for the “right man.”
Not the man who would walk her down the aisle, who would give her children and grow old beside her. There would, inevitably, be such a partner for her. But she knew enough, from closely observing all the loveless marriages around her, that physical passion was rarely to be found in an arranged aristocratic match.
No, the “right man” was the one man out there who would prove that physical passion could exist for her. He would arouse her and satisfy her. And then, when required, she would give him up and return to do her marital and family duties, comforted by her own secret memories.
* * *
So the girls meticulously planned their London escape.
“Your sister works in London, doesn’t she?” Lady Josephine casually asked one of the Academy’s young parlor maids.
“Oh, aye, m’ lady,” the girl replied. “She makes ladies’ gloves for a shop. Ever so excitin,’ she says the life is, seein’ all the London sights wi’ ‘er friends.”
“Does she live right in the heart of London?”
“Aye, she an’ a few other girls share a room in a boardin’ ‘ouse. They ‘ad to look about a bit at first, to find someplace cheap but respectable-like.”
And the parlor maid mentioned the neighborhood where her sister had settled, and Lady Josephine took note.
* * *
