I am exhausted by the constant round of parties in London, the letter continued. Mayne could just imagine. Sylvie couldn’t say no to an invitation; there were nights when they had attended three parties in a row, one after the other. I have decided to take a small trip with my close friend, Lady Gemima. She has persuaded me that Belgium is as delicious as France, and we are determined to recover ourselves. To be honest, Mayne, I am hesitant, but I do long to leave London for a short time. Somehow, I miss my Paris more than ever these days, and a change will be beneficial.
Mayne thought about that for a moment. Gemima was a great gun, as everyone called her. She would take care of Sylvie. Or rather, all those attendants she carried about with her would do the chore. In fact, Sylvie would likely have the time of her life.
I did not want to leave without saying farewell to you, best of friends. But I am saddened by the thought that you might have suffered some loss of esteem that drove you into a hasty marriage. I have come to believe that I myself am not made for marriage. But I shall always carry the greatest regard for you in my heart, dearest Mayne. You are the only gentleman of my acquaintance with whom I could have countenanced such an undertaking, and I am only troubled at the thought that you might carry a lingering sense of insult, given the graceless way by which I ended our affections.
She was a good little thing, was Sylvie. A good, sweet lady who didn’t want him—or anyone else, as it seemed. But loving her hadn’t been a shameful waste, as Josie described his affaires. In fact, it had been a fairly decent thing to do, on the whole. He wasn’t always a fool. Just once in a while.
Adieu, she wrote. I wish all the greatest happiness for yourself and Josie. I think you shall find it together. At that, a ghost of a smile touched his lips.
He raised the letter to his lips and smelled, one more time, the complicated French scent that symbolized Sylvie—all her femininity, her delicacy, her Frenchness. Her wrongness for him.
Then, with one sharp twist of his wrist, he threw her letter in the fire.
And walked out of the room to find Josie. He had a mind to make Josie laugh. To see her crinkle her nose at him and maybe—just maybe—he would snatch her up and throw her on the bed, just to hear her deep chuckle, the one she gave when she was excited, and giving in, and about to kiss him as if she would never stop.
43
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Twenty-seventh
I lay awake at night, Dear Reader, wrestling with the fragments of my conscience. All that was good in me told me to let her continue to walk in the pure and delicate light of her chastity. But my heart sobbed and wept for her. Finally I decided to ask for her hand. How did I ask, you may wonder? I used Shakespeare, of course.
J osie sank to the floor as if her knees were made of water. She’d known it, hadn’t she? She knew Mayne loved Sylvie. He’d told her that he loved Sylvie, back when he first made love to her. He’d told her again, in so many words, when he offered marriage and said that love wasn’t important.
But it was more cruel to see him kiss a letter from Sylvie. What had she done? Oh, what had she done?It wasn’t just Mayne’s feelings for Sylvie that she’d overlooked when she married Mayne under false pretenses. Apparently she’d underestimated Sylvie’s feelings as well, because otherwise why would she write him?
Perhaps Sylvie was the sort of woman who fought with her loved ones, who threw rings back at her fiancé, and didn’t mean it. Now she thought of it, Frenchwomen were notorious for that sort of drama. Sylvie probably thought that Mayne would come around in the morning, ring in hand, and beg for her hand again.
And she, Josie, with her foolish notebook full of schemes about how to win a husband, and how to arrange a marriage: she’d overlooked the most important thing of all. That a husband who loves another, no matter how enthusiastic he is in bed, is a heartbreaking companion.
None of her quips and her cleverness mattered in the face of this. She could make Mayne laugh. She could make him pant in bed. But she could never supplant the sweetness of the love he felt for Sylvie.
She could no more imagine him kissing a letter that she wrote him than she could imagine him kissing a saddle. Which was probably about where she mattered in his life: as a lusty, buxom saddle that he could ride on at will.
Josie rose, but discovered that her knees were weak, and she had to cling to the curtain for support. Finally she straightened up feeling ragged and destitute, like an ancient beggar woman.
How could she have been so stupid as to think that she wanted a husband under any circumstances? Her heart was burning like a coal in her chest.
Outside of the room she was greeted by Cockburn, who informed her that his lordship wished to leave for London within the hour.
The letter. Sylvie must have summoned him.
She walked into her bedchamber and allowed her maid to change her into a traveling costume. Blood thudded in her ears. Her eye fell on the little crimson book in which she had so carefully written down the complicated and fascinating ways by which heroines of the Minerva Press found their husbands.
Useless. She had a husband, and none of those books told how to make someone fall in love, or more important—fall out of love. For that she needed the drug Shakespeare talked about in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Love-in-idleness, it was called. The fairy dropped it in a gentleman’s eyes, and he promptly fell out of love with Hermia.
How could Mayne truly love Sylvie? Truly? She was lovely, of course. But he thinks my body is lovely too, Josie thought. Sylvie didn’t care for horses. And she didn’t, really, care for him.
I do, Josie thought, with every drop of longing in her body. Oh, I do. I love my husband.
She was clutching the book so hard that her fingernails made marks in its leather cover.
There was a scratch at the door. “His lordship is ready to leave for London, my lady, whenever you’re ready.”
Josie got up numbly. Tess would help. Annabel was presumably on her way back to Scotland with her husband and child, and Imogen was on her honeymoon, but Tess would help.
As she left the house, Mayne came toward her. “I received a note from Sylvie,” he said, smiling as if it was of little import. “She’s leaving at five o’clock on the Excelsior, so I thought we might see her off.”
She almost choked. “Perhaps you might say farewell for both of us. I would like to be taken to Tess’s house, if you please.”
He bowed. “Of course.”
“I have a terrible headache,” she told him.
He bowed again. “My condolences.”
She climbed into the carriage, snuggled into the corner and closed her eyes. She had all of two hours on the way to London to figure out what to do.
Since no King Oberon was likely to offer her a handy dose of love-in-idleness, she would have to come up with Mayne’s cure by herself.
44
From Hellgate’s Memoirs,
Chapter the Twenty-eighth
I knelt at her feet. “I burn for you,” I told her. “I pine for you. I perish…thinking of you. If you will not have me, I shall throw myself into the frigid Thames and die, thinking of you. To me, you have the purity of a cloud, the clarity of ice, the whiteness of snow.“Marry me.”
D on’t argue with me,” Josie snapped. “I know it’s a complicated plan, but it’s the only one that I can think of.”