He studied the man who poured him something from a decanter. He wore no coat, and his waistcoat stretched over the expanse of his back. A horseshoe of graying hair ringed his head, and the overgrown sideburns at each cheek failed utterly to compensate for the missing hair at his crown.
“May I presume you to be the earl?”
The man chuckled. “No, I’m not the earl.”
“Might I ask your name, sir?”
“Straiter. Jules Straiter. Now, what is this about the countess’s fortune?”
“Mr. Straiter, I don’t wish to appear rude, but this is a matter of great delicacy. What I have to say is for the countess’s ears alone. May I be permitted to see her?”
Once again, the man looked Marshall up and down, sizing him up. He upended the glass into his mouth and swirled the liquid around before swallowing it. “You’re here about the book.”
“Why . . . yes, I am.”
He snorted derisively as he served himself another drink from the decanter. It seemed to Marshall that the man had already had a few before Marshall knocked on his door.
“You may as well tell me what you have to say. There is no Countess Cavendish.”
Marshall’s brows drew together. “I’m so sorry. I’d heard she was ill, but I was unaware that she’d passed on.”
“She didn’t ‘pass on.’ The bitch never existed.”
He blinked in disbelief. “I beg your pardon?”
A sheen broke out on the man’s face. “Do you have children?”
“No, but—”
“Don’t bother. Enjoy women as pleasurable pursuits. But don’t saddle yourself with a wife and children, especially when those children are girls. They represent a loss of time, money, and above all, peace.”
“Mr. Straiter, you’re not making any sense.”
“Neither do women. I proved it by writing that joke of a book. But now, it seems, the joke is on me.”
“Wait . . . you wrote Countess Cavendish’s book?”
The man gave a sarcastic smile. “I am Countess Cavendish. I, a landowner from the country, am the one who’s decreed how women in polite society should act and talk and think. How’s that for a lark? I’ve become the ideal of female comportment, and I’m not even a woman!”
“Why?”
Mr. Straiter’s glass rattled the tray as he set it down roughly. “Because young girls today don’t know how to behave! They’re lazy, vain, self-indulgent, and disrespectful. Women today are not being taught to recognize the superiority of our sex. We treat them like porcelain dolls—we pamper them, flatter them, and show self-restraint around them. And what do they do? Flout us. Disobey us. Make demands. And God forbid they reproduce. Insubordinate wives inevitably bear insubordinate daughters.”
He went to a drawer in a desk and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “You see this? This is how that book started. As a long and scathing letter to my daughter, that bitch-in-heat who went off and married some Irishman against my express wishes. So I told her. A decent woman would be modest. And virtuous. And parsimonious. She should respect her father and obey him in all things. I outlined to her in no uncertain terms how proper women should behave.” He began to pace the floor, his unsteady voice booming across the room. “And after I had written that long letter, it occurred to me. This is something every woman should learn. Wives, mothers, daughters . . . every woman should be made to follow these precepts! So I sat down and expanded that letter into a manual, a book for the instruction of all women. I knew as soon as it was finished that it was perfect. But I also knew no one would buy it if it came from Jules Straiter. So when I sent it to London to be published, I signed the manuscript ‘Countess Cavendish,’ knowing that every rattle-pated goose out there would do whatever some skirt with a title told them to do.”
Marshall’s reaction shifted from disgust to bafflement to anger. Athena, that little trickster, was herself tricked. She and every other female who thought they’d profit from the opinions of an “expert.”
Mr. Straiter wiped his face with his shirtsleeves. “I’d hoped the book would sell well, but I certainly didn’t want it to become as successful as it did. Just now, I had a woman over—some widow that lives outside the village. We shared a few drinks. I spent the entire afternoon feigning interest in all the insignificant minutiae of her life just to get her into the mood. I almost had her on her back, when all of a sudden she gets up and spouts off some platitude about purity being the hallmark of a woman’s character, and how without it no man would want to marry her. ‘A woman must imagine herself a tightly furled flower, its petals protecting her delicate heart with a fragrant blush of beauty,’ she said. I wrote that! That antiquated hausfrau, who should be glad of my attentions, actually used my own words against me! As if I would marry a troglodyte like her.”
Marshall had heard enough. He set down his glass, untouched.
“Sir, you’re a charlatan and a hypocrite. You expect women to be ladies—or not—only when it suits you. You’re right about purity being a hallmark of a woman’s character, but you don’t know a thing about what makes a lady.” Marshall picked up his hat and headed for the door.
“Wait! You told me you had something to tell me about my fortune.”
Marshall turned around. “Countess Cavendish is about to be defrocked as the fountainhead of feminine virtue. My advice to you is to take a page from your own book and start implementing some parsimony. In other words, act like a lady.”
Armed with the knowledge that there was no Countess Cavendish, Marshall marched back to the school ready to wage war. His adversary was none other than one feisty, intractable—and foolish—woman.
He shouldered past Gert at half past ten. The evening lecture was still in session, the ladies all assembled in the parlor listening to a young American poet. The man was freshly handsome, with a youth’s smooth face and dark eyelashes surrounded sparkling hazel eyes. But his unkempt brown hair and eccentric clothes lent him a rakish, Gypsy quality that held the ladies in thrall.
His deep voice was smoky. “Her twisting body to his manhood pin’d, like a tulip’s stem tossed to and fro in the wind.” His smoldering eyes alighted on each of their faces, as though he were wooing each one in turn. “A fire stirred by stroking flesh, his thrusts provoked her pleasure afresh.”
Marshall strode to the lectern and closed the young man’s book. “The reading is over. Class dismissed.”
“Who the devil are you?” the poet demanded.
“No one to be trifled with.”
“Do you know who I am? I am Clint—”
“I know who you’re going to be—one sorely bruised American. Take your salacious limericks and get out.” He took the book and shoved it into the poet’s chest.
“This is an outrage! I’ll have an explanation from Miss McAllister.”
Marshall seized him by his red neckcloth. The young man, dwarfed by Marshall in both height and breadth, had the sense to tremble.
Marshall muttered into the wide-eyed face, his words meant only for the younger man’s ears. “I shall give you just one moment more to take your soft words and hard cock and get the hell out of here.”
The terrified man nodded vehemently, then flew out the door when Marshall released him.
Holding a cream-colored letter in her hand, Athena pushed her way through the students. “How dare you come in here and disrupt my class! Who do you think you are?”
He met her fiery gaze. “I want a word with you.” Without giving her a chance to respond, he turned to the students. “The rest of you . . . to bed. Now!” His command had the effect of a gunshot in a room full of startled cats. They bolted up the stairs.
She whirled upon him, her eyes blazing hot fury. “Why, you despicable Visigoth! You’ve got a bloody cheek coming in here and spouting out orders like some deranged schoolmaster.”
“Sit down. I want an explanation from you.”
Her eyes squinted with venomous rage. “You asked for this. I’m sending for th
e constable.”
“Good. Then perhaps you can explain to both of us why you stole Countess Cavendish’s name.”
Athena froze halfway through the doorway. “What?”
“You heard me. You brandished the name of Countess Cavendish to give your ‘School for the Womanly Arts’ some credibility. But the truth is, Countess Cavendish has no earthly idea what you are up to.”
“What are you talking about? I have a letter from her lending her patronage to the school.”
“A forgery.”
“How dare you,” she repeated in indignation, though it was said with significantly less vehemence.
“You’ve defrauded dozens of prominent families. Charged steep tuition under the false pretenses that the renowned Countess Cavendish oversaw the education of their innocent daughters—when in fact, Countess Cavendish has patronized this school about as much as Napoleon patronized Buckingham House.”
Athena’s face flushed to the color of her hair. “That’s not true.”
“Oh, but it is,” he countered, walking steadily toward her. “You’re a swindler and a cheat and a liar. A magistrate will hold you accountable for operating under the auspices of Countess Cavendish without permission. It is a crime punishable by hanging.”
Her chest caved, but she steadied herself. “Nonsense. Countess Cavendish will be flattered by the homage.”
He smiled wryly. “I have a feeling he won’t.”
“Yes, he w—He?”
Marshall walked around behind her. “A lesser known fact of your exemplar. Countess Cavendish is, in fact, a rather embittered old man with an ax to grind against women. I met him this afternoon. He authored that book of yours to prove his premise that women are not only stupid, but brainless. And after discovering your orchestration of this farce of a school, I’m tempted to agree with him.”
Athena’s jaw dropped. “It’s not possible. I don’t believe you.”
Marshall leaned his frame upon the back of the settee. “Kingston Lodge, Shepherds Green, Surrey. Feel free to pay him a visit.”
Athena began to pace the room, the cream-colored paper strangled in her fist. “Oh, I ought to take that book and bash that man’s head in!”
“Just a moment, my little hypocrite,” he said, stopping her in her tracks. “Before you go exacting retribution from someone who cheated you before you cheated others, perhaps you’d be good enough to explain to me what made you decide to peddle the countess’s teachings in the first place.”
She jerked her arm from his grip. “I don’t owe you any explanation.”
“The hell you don’t! Was it just a sham to cover up for these lessons on being a demimondaine?”
Athena straightened. “In the first place, they’re informative practicums on relations between the sexes. And in the second, I may have been exposing these ladies to sexual matters, but at least I was equipping them to face the real world . . . a world where husbands are permitted to keep a bit of fluff on the side, but a woman who does so would be disgraced, divorced, or beaten. I had to teach them that they didn’t have to resign themselves to sitting at home in a corner like some ruddy spider, waiting for their husbands to return from the beds of their kept women. I had to teach them how to steal their husbands back from their mistresses.”
“You should have taught them to be their own person, not a harem seductress.” His mind turned to Hester. “Sex holds a man’s interest only so long. We want a companion, a friend, a consort, and a love. Are you so uninformed that you do not understand what we desire?”
Athena shook her head as her chest rose and fell over the bodice of her turquoise dress. “Men desire a skilled lover.”
“Yes, Athena, but not a tutored one. If a woman is to know how to pleasure me, it is in my bed I want her to learn it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If I didn’t learn how to please a man, he wouldn’t notice me in the first place.”
His expression blackened with jealousy. “You little fool. No matter what you do, Calvin Bretherton will never want you back.”
The earnestness was struck from her face as if by some invisible hand. But the shock was quickly replaced by fury. “Is that so? Well, here!” she cried, throwing the rumpled parchment at him as her eyes misted over. “See for yourself! Who’s the fool now?”
He picked up the paper off the floor. “What is this?”
“It’s a letter from Calvin Bretherton,” she crowed, “begging for my forgiveness and asking me once more for my hand in marriage. He wants to publish the banns at the earliest opportunity. What do you think about that?”
Bewilderment overtook his features. His brows drew together as he read the letter.
“Ha! That’s done you white!” she continued, swallowing back the tears. “Where’s your grand talk about men now? You posture and pose, boasting about how much you know about love and courtship, and you’re nothing but a fraud yourself. That’ll put you in your place!”
It was as she said. Bretherton was proposing marriage all over again. Marshall should have been happy for her, but he wasn’t. The thought of seeing Athena as some other man’s wife set off an alarm inside him that he found impossible to silence. But there was something else that disturbed him, and it made him anxious not just for his own sake, but for hers.
“What about his love, Athena?”
A kink appeared in her self-satisfied expression. “What?”
She snatched the paper from his hand and pored over it. “I . . . he . . . it’s implied.”
“Is it? Or is his offer of matrimony enough for you?”
She was silent.
Marshall shook his head, a weak chuckle shrugging his shoulders. “He won you over with just a few words.”
“No! He loves me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because why else would he—” Her voice disappeared like smoke.
“Why else would he what? Bretherton can’t express his love even in words, which are far easier to offer than actions, and you assume that he must love you because he asks to marry you?”
Though her eyes were still glued to the paper, her expression mercuried into something he’d never seen before—vulnerability. “He loves me because I became the woman he wanted.”
He shook his head, his eyes shutting to the meaning behind her words. “How can you value yourself so cheaply? Athena, can’t you see that despite your flaws—legion though they are—you are worth all a man can give and more? You don’t have to buy his love with saucy words or furtive touches . . . you already deserve it.”
She turned her face to the parchment in her hands, her eyes glassy with tears.
He lifted her face with his fingers, and the look in her eyes wounded him deeply. Her eyes were searching for the truth . . . pleading for it. He was sorry she’d experienced such unscrupulous men. As he looked deep into her expectant eyes, he saw the hazy expression of a young girl, disappointment distorting her pure heart. He wanted to restore her faith in men. He wanted to bring hope back to that dreamy young face.
Slowly, his face lowered until his mouth hovered within a hairsbreadth of hers. If she had the audacity to hope again, he would show her that it would be worth it.
SIXTEEN
She had been towering with confidence only moments before, and now she felt as if she had fallen off her own shoulders.
Please, her heart cried, but she didn’t know what it was asking for. She was in freefall, and there was nothing to grab onto.
He was offering her something she wanted desperately—faith. She wanted to believe in the possibility of Cinderella’s prince again. And here was a man promising her that the ideal still existed, a man who would love her and not hurt her, and never deceive her.
A kiss. He wanted to seal the promise with a kiss. She wanted that promise. And his lips were so tantalizingly close . . .
Their lips met. The kiss was gentle and earnest, and in it he seemed to declare feelings she never thought to receive from a man. Truth, strength, affection, commitment. The clenched fist her heart had become began to unfurl.
He inhaled sharply, as if being infused with new life. She neared him, her hands gripping his lapels. Closer she drew, taking the step he asked of her. In response, his arms enfolded her in his embrace, so close that the light between their bodies disappeared.
His kiss grew more insistent, more desperate to explain. His tongue darted out to taste her lips, and this time, she was ready for him. Her tongue stretched out and met his, answering his need with an admission of her own. The wet hotness of his mouth called to mind another organ that also cried for attention, and she felt it taking on a life of its own.
The hands that caressed her back awoke a sleeping craving she felt unable to control. Her hands lifted to the crown of his golden head, and she curled her fingers through the silken strands. The intimate gesture seemed to send him into a fury of want. He groaned, and his mouth broke free of her lips. His lips began a descent down the column of her neck, and the erotic sensation pulled her toward a descent of her own into uncharted depths of pleasure.
Farther down his kisses went, and she arched her back to let him pass. A large hand cupped her breast, lifting it to his hungry mouth. It mounded over the neckline of her gown, like a ripe fruit stretching to fullness. She buried her cheek into the soft waves of his hair, inhaling the warm scent. The kisses on her tender skin were scratchy from the day’s growth of beard, but when his hot tongue licked at her breast, pleasure exploded over her entire body. Her fevered mind begged him to show her what she had been missing all these years. She didn’t know if words came out of her mouth, but somehow he understood her wishes. He bent down and snaked his forearm under her knees.