In fact, the very thought of what her body liked and didn’t like made her blush.
The door swung open. “His lordship thought you might prefer breakfast in your bed,” her maid said cheerfully. “And a package has arrived for you from London.”
“My book!” Josie said, sitting up and reaching for it. It wasn’t just any book either. It was Hellgate’s Memoirs, that depraved story that everyone in London had read except herself. Now that she was married, she ordered it straight from Hatchard’s.
It was a beautiful edition, bound in red leather, stamped in gold. She opened up the first page. I have lived a life of immoderate passion, she read. Delicious! A little too florid for Mayne, but…
When she reached for her hot chocolate a few seconds later, it had gone stone cold and apparently an hour had passed.
Mayne had no idea how much gossip about his life she knew. She knew everything. The Tatler had reported in detail the affaire that he and the beautiful actress, Octavia Regina, engaged in. From what she could see, Octavia was detailed under the name Titania in Hellgate’s Memoirs. It made it a bit odd that they were both quoting A Midsummer Night’s Dream the previous night…but that was the nature of coincidence. Odd.
An hour later she was absolutely sure. She was holding in her hands a florid, but detailed, record of her husband’s various escapades over the past twenty years.
Josie took Hellgate’s Memoirs with her into the bath, after her maid inquired the second time about hot water. She couldn’t identify all the women. The story of Hellgate’s short marriage was clearly a tarradiddle, placed there to disguise the fact that Mayne’s life was laid bare on the page.
The morning dwindled into luncheon, and when her maid brought word that his lordship was going into Chobham and wished to know if she would accompany him, she merely shook her head.
It was five in the evening before Josie stopped reading. She had reached a terrible chapter, one that had her fingers trembling a little. Hellgate had met an angel, chaste as the snow.
Sylvie.
And he was in love with her, of course.
I cannot live without her…I dream nightly of her exquisite form. Dear Reader, you are thinking that I am a tawdry person indeed. And it is true! I first caught sight of her from the opposite side of the street, and she looked as delicate as any angel, as slim and frail as a piece of china. It has ever been so with me: robust women bounce past me without any notice, but—
Josie stared blankly into space. Sylvie had an exquisite form, all right.Not that he would ever speak in such a florid fashion. He expressed himself simply. That night when Mayne taught her how to walk, he told her twice that he was in love with Sylvie.
After being called a Scottish sausage by most of London, she hadn’t thought that anything could cause her more pain than her figure. But it seemed there were depths of sorrow which she hadn’t thought about.
Because the truth was that her husband thought of her as a bouncing, robust woman. And he thought of Sylvie as a delicate, fragile angel.
No man alive could not fall in love with her, with her charming air that called to every masculine impulse to care for her. Women are indeed the frailer sex, and there is no firmer way to a man’s heart than to remind him of his duty toward the fair sex.
Frail? Frail? No one could say she was frail. She glanced down at her thighs, a tear chasing the first down her cheek.If only she could get consumption and almost die, perhaps Mayne would love her. He would pull her into his arms. Josie could almost see the scene before her. She would raise her delicate, fragile hand to his cheek—so slim that the light shone through her fingers—and press a trembling caress to his face.
He would cry then. And he would be sorry that he ever thought he loved a spindly Frenchwoman.
Of course, there was that other woman he loved as well, Lady Godwin. Another spindly, insubstantial type.
Other than wishing savagely that both Sylvie and Lady Godwin would get the opposite of a wasting disease, Josie couldn’t think what to do about the women Mayne had loved. Presently her maid brought a tea tray. “His lordship is just changing his clothing,” she said, bustling about. “I’ll ask him to join you for tea, shall I? It’s not good to spend the day on your own, my lady.”
She took herself out the door without waiting for a yea or nea. Josie sighed. She should probably scrub her face in case Mayne realized she had been crying, but he probably wouldn’t. Even with the Argand lamp lit, the room was hardly bright enough for that.
The truth was that she had to stop being so tiresome. So her husband wasn’t in love with her, but in love with a brittle Frenchwoman who didn’t have any thighs at all. Josie thought about that. Mayne liked her body. He said so.
Even if it would make Mayne fall in love with her, she didn’t really want to dwindle down to a fragile little set of bones who could drift along the street like an angel. For one thing, what about her breasts?
Mayne liked them as they were.
The door opened and the man himself entered. He stopped and bowed. “You needn’t bow to me,” Josie observed. “We are husband and wife.”
“The day I neglect to treat you with the respect you deserve is the day I shall count myself a base ingrate,” he said, sitting down opposite her and inspecting the teapot.
Josie poured him a cup and found herself leaning forward so he could take a glance at her bosom—should he desire to do so.
Apparently he did, because when she handed him a teacup his eyes had a particular darkness that she was coming to know quite well. And yet, Josie thought to herself, my breasts are not delicate or insubstantial.
“What have you been thinking of all day?” Mayne asked.
“I’ve been reading Hellgate’s Memoirs.”
There was a moment of silence.
“And what, precisely, is your relation to Hellgate?” she asked, when he said nothing.
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly. “I only read about half of the book before I threw it away. I couldn’t read past the chapter where I was supposedly tied to the wall, a pleasure which I am not eager to experience.”
“I am reluctant to think that my husband may have been such a fool as Hellgate.”
“A fool? All of London admires him.”
“A fool,” Josie said. “Who could possibly write a sentence as foolish as that piffle he wrote about wanting not to soil an angel, but to marry her?”
“You’re a harsh critic,” Mayne said, reaching out for another cucumber sandwich.
“Leave me one of those,” Josie said, suddenly realizing there were only two left. “So did you write that sentence?”
“You must be joking.”
Relief flooded Josie’s heart.
“But there’s no avoiding the fact that the author seems to have played ducks and drakes with my life,” Mayne said. “He must be a devoted reader of the gossip columns.”
Josie felt a sick, churning jealousy in her stomach. “He caught the nuances of your engagement to Sylvie,” she said.
“I didn’t read past the middle,” Mayne said. “It’s surprising how tedious one’s life becomes turned into puerile prose.”
“He says that you fell desperately in love on glimpsing her slender figure on the other side of the street,” Josie said. “And that her delicacy brought out a masculine wish to protect and honor.”