Nothing sells like love scandal…

Collette Jardiniere writes of passion and seduction but has experienced neither. Her pseudonymous novel, The Last Days of a Rake, has shocked Victorian society and become a runaway bestseller. Infamous roué Charles Jameson is “revealed” as the author, and Collette is outraged when the cad does little to curtail the gossip.

Intrigued by the book the tabloids claim is his thinly veiled autobiography, Jameson tries to find the real author. Returning to London after an unsuccessful hunt, he is pleasantly distracted by a plain country miss reading the wicked book.

Collette is dismayed when she learns the identity of the devastatingly handsome man who kissed her senseless. And Jameson cannot believe that she wrote The Last Days of a Rake. As Collette tries to convince him of the truth, their mutual attraction reaches a fever pitch, and soon they find themselves in a real-life scandal!

Dear Reader,

Thank you for purchasing this Carina Press launch title. During our journey these past months to acquire manuscripts, develop relationships with authors and build the Carina Press catalog, we’ve been working to fulfill the mission “Where no great story goes untold.”

If you’d asked me what I’d be doing a year ago, I never would have conceived I’d be working with the brilliant team behind Harlequin’s digital program to bring you a new and exciting digital-first imprint. I have long been a fan of Harlequin books, authors and staff and that’s why I’m so pleased to be sharing these first Carina Press launch titles with you.

At Carina Press, we’re committed to bringing readers great voices and great stories, and we hope you’ll find these books as compelling as we do. In this first month, you’ll find a broad range of genres that showcase our promise to Carina Press fans to publish a diversity of content. In the coming months, we’ll add additional genres and continue to bring you a wide range of stories we believe will keep you coming back for more.

We love to hear from readers, and you can e-mail us your thoughts, comments and questions to generalinquiries@carinapress.com. You can also interact with Carina Press staff and authors on our blog, Twitter stream and Facebook fan page.

Happy reading!

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Executive Editor, Carina Press

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Love and Scandal

Donna Lea Simpson

To my readers: Thank you from the bottom of my heart for ten years of wonderful letters, lovely compliments and unending support. I raise a glass and toast to the next ten years!
With love and appreciation,
Donna Lea Simpson

Contents

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

About the Author

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

Henry Fielding – from Love in Several Masques – IV.xi

One

Collette Jardiniere, swaying from side to side with the rhythm of the train, pushed up her wire-framed spectacles, struck a match and tried to touch it to the wick of her candle. Professor Stiltson’s invention, a candle holder with a spring-loaded clip, should have made it easy, but to clip it to the arm of the train seat would put it too low to read her book by, and so she was holding the awkward little metal holder and trying again to strike a match. Infernal inventions, both of them! To be successful seemed to require the many arms of Kali, a Hindu goddess she had read of in a fascinating book on the Indian colonies. Kali embodied destruction and rebirth, and thus the power of the feminine capacity for giving life. Collette contrarily felt the urge for destruction in that moment as she struggled with the idiotic candle.

“May I be of assistance?”

The deep voice at her elbow startled her and her match went out. “Oh, carruthers and botheration!” she cried, nursing the burnt tip of her finger.

“I beg your pardon, miss?”

Collette lit another match and glanced up, intending to send the impertinent fellow on his way and then make another attempt to light the wick. But her gaze caught and held. She found she could not look away. At her shoulder stood a gentleman of impeccable dress and dashing looks. In her mind she was scribbling madly—

He had the powerful good looks of any man about town, but there was something more elemental in the deep charcoal gray of his eyes and the intensity of his gaze. He was a man one could not overlook, a man of such masculine vigor and subtle—

“Miss?”

She snapped back to attention as the match burned down and touched her fingers with blistering heat yet again. “Carruthers and botheration!” she exclaimed, tossing the match down hastily and touching her burnt finger to her tongue to soothe it.

“Allow me.”

The handsome stranger reached for her other hand and Collette experienced a tingle of anticipation as he touched her. She went perfectly still in the dim light. Well, how fascinating! It was true after all, what all the other women writers wrote! There were some men who exuded a powerful aura of magnetism, and this was one of them. He took the candle from her, lit a match and touched it to the wick. Light flared between them. He extinguished the match. Every movement was elegant and controlled, exquisitely composed, perfectly planned.

As she gazed at him in the flickering candlelight, Collette could see she had not been mistaken. Not only was he good-looking, there was something in the set of his broad shoulders and incredible eyes that made a woman want to reach out and touch his face, caress his hand, perhaps even… Yes, well, some things were better left unthought. Her heart thumped an erratic beat. What an opportunity! Never had she been this close to a man of such charisma and commanding force. She had only ever imagined him and she was beginning to feel that the creation of her imagination might be just a pallid shadow of the real thing.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, with all the composure she could muster. “Such a long trip becomes boring and one needs a distraction.” She spoke quietly, as the others seated nearby in the train carriage were asleep or at least resting.

There was no one in the seats directly across from her, but behind her was a worn-looking matron with two little boys in short pants who, after plaguing their black-veiled mother for the last several hours, were finally dozing. The poor woman, now deeply asleep at long last, must be a widow, Collette had thought earlier, judging from her black bombazine gown and jet jewelry, and left with two little boys both under the age of six! In front of her was an elderly couple, the woman, who was not well, Collette thought, resting her head on the man’s shoulder, both their eyes closed, snuffling softly in their rest. At the last stop the husband had gallantly rushed from the train and purchased fruit for his wife.

There were not many more people around her, really, as most people crowded onto the “parliamentaries”, one train on each route in each direction that was required by Parliament to charge no more than a penny a mile. This trip was such a monumental undertaking to Collette that she had gladly paid for a first class ticket.

The stranger smiled and indicated the empty seat beside her with a sweep of a strong hand and an uplifted eyebrow. He was being terribly forward. She should tell him to leave her alone or she would tell the attendant he was bothering her.

“Please, have a seat,” she said. A little trill of excitement made her heart beat faster.

He sat down and said, “I could not agree more, you know, that such a long trip becomes monotonous. I was just thinking that, in fact, when I saw you trying to bring light to the darkness. Yes, certainly one needs a…distraction. You are a delightful one.”

His slow teasing smile riveted her attention on well-shaped lips beneath a neat mustache. Unlike most men he did not sport bushy sidewhiskers; it was as if he disdained the artifice seemed designed to hide a weak jawline or receding chin. And since he had no need of them for that reason, being blessed with a strong jaw and a chin with a devilish cleft—

A blush of mortification rose to her cheeks when she realized the import of his words. “Oh, no, sir, I didn’t mean that kind of—that is, I meant to read! That is my distraction.”

“What exactly did you think I was implying?”

Collette, confused by his tantalizingly wicked smile, ignored his question and merely lifted her book from her lap.

He glanced at the title. His fine gray eyes widened and his eyebrows went up. “My, my, aren’t you a naughty young lady! The Last Days of a Rake, hmm? I had not thought a young unmarried lady would be interested in a novel some in London society have condemned as wicked and lewd.”

“Wicked? Lewd?” Collette felt her ire rise and she bridled. “If that is what they say then it has been defamed. And I’m not naughty. Good heavens, you make me sound like a child. I merely think for myself, sir! It is time women were not bound by the patriarchal ties that strangle free thought. Are we chattel, then, in truth as well as in law? I think…”

She trailed off when she saw the patent amusement on his face. Vexed that this man, with whom she had felt some instant kinship, was just like other men, she determined not to amuse him with her “prattle”. Men! The minute a woman began to talk, they assumed that indulgent air, that patronizing, condescending—

“Why did you stop, miss?” he said, raising one thick eyebrow. “I would be fascinated to hear your thoughts on the women’s suffrage movement.”

She glanced over at him in the flickering candlelight with suspicion. “I do not believe I caught your name, sir.”

He hesitated, glanced at her eyes, then down at the book in her lap. “I am called Jamie by friends. I think that is informal enough for the manner of our meeting. Formal introductions are for the salon or ballroom. Do you not agree, Miss…?”

Collette’s thoughts raced in time to the clack-clack-clack of the rail car. This was the genuine article; for once she had met a real rake, she was sure of it. Everything from his impeccable tailoring to his audacious manners shouted it to her. What did he think? How did he act? What would he talk about? Did he have a mistress in keeping? Or two, or even three? Did he drink until dawn, moving from one den of iniquity to another, or was his life more prosaic? She would never have another opportunity to find out, perhaps, what inspired a rake, and so she would take this chance, this gift of opportunity. As a woman traveling alone she should certainly have discouraged his attentions.

But she wouldn’t. “I think Collette is informal enough for this manner of meeting, do you not agree?” She smiled up at him.

What on earth had driven him to use his childhood nickname instead of his real name, he wondered. Perhaps it was the book on her lap and the recent article in Wilson’s Gazette. He did not want to talk about his authorship of The Last Days of a Rake, and certainly not with this intriguing, spinsterish country-woman, who gazed at him so seriously from behind spectacles that glinted in the candlelight, occasionally obscuring her eyes from his vision.

Who was she that she read scandalous novels openly on the train to London? Even those few women he knew who did read serious books read them in secret. Who was she going to meet? She surely did not live in London. The English countryside was bred into her bones and she carried with her the scent of hedgerow and meadow, primrose and night-scented stocks. He had not even noticed her at first, having spent hours reading while it was light. But when darkness fell, he looked up and saw her trying to light her candle against the swaying motion of the train, and had thought she looked…interesting. And now, having spoken to her, he thought she was delightfully absurd, but winsome in an unexpected way. The remaining miles to the city could be entertaining.

“And so you are going to London,” he said, gazing down at her with more curiosity than he could reasonably explain.

“I am. I need to straighten out a little error on the part of gentlemen with whom I do business.”

“Business?” What business could this young woman have? He looked her over with a critical gaze. She was thin, one might even say frail, without the deep bosom and luscious curves that adorned his usual flirts. And yet her slenderness had an interesting quality, as though constant thought and unstoppable activity had worn her to a wraith. She was quick of movement, and perhaps even of mind, too. That was one attribute his lady friends did not possess. An intelligent mind in a woman’s body was a waste, in his thinking. One did not want one’s mistress to be constantly talking. There were far better things for a man and woman to do than talk politics or literature.

“Yes, business. You speak, sir, as if you had never heard the word.”

He chuckled, amused by her forthright manner. She spoke as if possessed of an original mind, though if pressed he would say that not only was intelligence not to be desired in a woman, he had rarely found it there. In his considerable experience, though some women exhibited an apparent quickness of thought—this young lady belonged to that group—most were merely parroting the opinions of the men in their lives with no more originality than a mynah bird saying “hello.”

Yet for a half hour on a dark train, perhaps this little country bird would do for an unusual flirtation, as refreshing to the jaded palate as a long draught of water from a well in the woods. He looked her over with more interest, intrigued by the thought of what her plain dress might conceal. The delicacy of her slenderness might be a piquant contrast to the overblown beauty of his usual London roses. Her body was confined by a corset, certainly, but her waist would have been tiny even without it. She was willowy, of average height, mousy at first glance, with steel-framed spectacles that glinted in the candlelight.

Ah, but behind those spectacles were eyes of a deliciously cool pale green, like moss, and her hair glinted in the wavering candlelight, a rich wavy auburn with gold lights that danced. She wore a drab brown dress of outdated style, and at her neatly booted feet was a black valise, enormous and bulging. Jamie doubted he had ever spent so much time examining a woman of her type in his life. Staring so long was impolite, though she had made no demur, nor had she so much as colored, as she should have under such frank scrutiny. She was examining him just as he was taking in her figure, and her gaze was bolder than most of the covert examinations women conducted. Did she like what she saw? He smiled down at her and crossed one leg over the other. “Business,” he said, again. “What business, may I ask?”

“You may ask, but I need not answer.” Her tart reply was not hesitant and seemed practiced, almost.

He was amused. This was much better than sitting in idleness in the dark rail car that rocked from side to side in dreary rhythm. “True. Let us talk of other things, then, such as…of what would a young lady like yourself enjoy speaking? Perhaps the women’s suffrage movement?”

She gave him a surprised look, her green eyes wide in the flickering light of her candle. “What discussion would we have on that subject, sir?”

Yes, he had thought that topic would engage her interest. “First, do you agree with the tenets of the movement?”

Her swift glance was as incisive as a surgeon’s scalpel. “I do. It seems to me mere logic that women should have the same rights as men when our minds are just as strong and our reason somewhat better.”

“Better? Your reason is better?” Oh, this was delicious. There was nothing more stimulating than finding a woman who thought herself the equal of a man. “Do you mean to imply that men are illogical?”

“I do not imply it, sir, I state it outright. Only men could entertain the notion that fighting would solve anything, as in the current conflict in the Crimea. You can force people to give you land or acquiesce to your demands, but it doesn’t solve anything at all. It only creates a whole new set of difficulties, which following male generations will attempt to solve with more violence. Men create war, and women must solve the problems left by it.”

“That is surely an over-simplification of the worst kind!” he exclaimed, stung by her absurd air of contempt. It was one thing for women to spout such nonsense, but when they truly believed it—

“Perhaps, sir, but I have learned through experience that gentlemen sometimes need things stated simply for them to grasp a concept.”

He gasped in outrage and was ready to demolish her absurd statement with a well-reasoned argument but then caught a wicked little grin on her narrow, bespectacled face. Was she having him on, or was she serious? She had said almost the exact thing that men often claimed about women.

“I shall disregard that blatant attempt to bait me,” he said, intrigued now as he had not been before, “and merely ask how you can say what I think you are saying, that it is left to women to clean up the problems created by men?”

“That is an adequate interpretation of my statement,” she said with an air of contemplation, “given your probable inexperience at listening with attention to a woman’s views.”

“And how would you know that? Perhaps I am a veritable John Stuart Mill.” He leaned closer and gazed deeply into her eyes.

She raised her eyebrows, thought for a moment and then said, “You’re right, sir, that was unworthy of me.” Her long lashes swept downward behind her glinting glasses, and then she looked up again. “In answer, though, to our original discussion point, my assertion that women are left to tidy up the messes made by men, and that the conflict in the Crimea was an example, I should think it was self-evident. Men created this war, is that not true?”

“Yes, in the sense that men are responsible for governing all people and must occasionally make such grave decisions as to declare war.”

She gave him an inscrutable side glance, her spectacles glinting again in the candlelight. “Yes, men govern all people, and men declare war upon one another. Such a good job men have done of governing our own nation so far! That is why there is no poverty in England, no hunger or want, and why all little children receive an education, making them fit members of a loving, caring society.”

He was surprised at the bitterness in her words and could not respond. This had swiftly devolved from a lighthearted flirtation to a lecture on parliamentary reform. He opened his mouth, unwilling to remain speechless in the face of such absurdity, but then closed it again. He truly, for once in his life, had no answer.

“And then,” she said with satisfaction, lifting her chin and gazing off into the distance, “there are women like Miss Florence Nightingale, who pick up the shattered pieces of lives destroyed by the ravages of that war.”

He shook his head. This was something he could tackle, an argument he could dissect. “You see, that is just the kind of leap in logic that defies the rational man to understand. It is so typically female and so very specious. You move from a broad concept like war, blaming it on men, and then move to a specific person, a woman, as if she were proof that women, given the reins of power, would do better at avoiding armed conflict. Women are not formed for deep thought. Your absurd statements just confirm that.”

Behind her spectacles her eyes glittered emerald with sparks of gold, he noted, fascinated by the deepening color. How could such an unfeminine woman, such a maddening, shrewish, plain bluestocking, intrigue him so?

“Women are every bit as capable as men of deep thought, sir, but they are not educated, and that failure to provide a comprehensive education is responsible for every difference in understanding. Women in England suffer the same plight as the slave in the United States. Did you know it is illegal to educate a man or woman of African descent there?”

He wanted to clutch at his hair and tear it out by the roots. “Surely,” he said, turning almost completely around in his seat to stare at her in the wavering light, “you are not equating your lot in life with the abomination of slavery?” He was incredulous that this woman, probably pampered and protected her whole life by her father or uncle or brothers, would dare to put forth such a false argument.

“You see? You have the same lamentable tendency as all men, it seems, of leaping to conclusions, the very thing of which you accuse women. I mention that women’s plight is similar—”

“You did not say similar, you said the same.”

“And it is clear that I am talking about the failure to educate women in any useful subjects, and the similarity of that lamentable fate to that of the slave in America. The lack of education in both cases is the crux of the argument. How can you have missed that?” she said, her voice rising in volume. “Instead you accuse me of equating women’s role in English society to slavery. I did not do that at all.”

How could she misunderstand him and mislead him like this? He felt like he was wandering down a garden path, her arguments were so circuitous and confusing, and then for her to accuse him of illogic? It was outrageous! It was infuriating! And perversely, he was enjoying himself more than he had in any conversation in the past twelve-month or more. He stared, entranced, into her eyes, forgetting entirely that he did not find her the slightest bit attractive.

Collette suppressed the smile that teased at her lips. The gentleman was quite ready to scream with frustration, she thought, and that in itself was highly entertaining. No, she did not have experience in Oxford debating rules, and perhaps she was as guilty as he of leaping to conclusions.

But—and this was the main problem—how could she think rationally with him so close, his male heat warming her? Her thinking was being muddled by the very real and tangible attraction she was feeling toward him. His hand brushed her arm and he leaned into her, his slate eyes dark and mysterious in the wavering pale light from the single candle. She felt like they were alone in that weak pool of light. Even the snuffling and snoring of passengers around them sounded just like the sighing of the wind to her addled brain.

I will feel foolish later, she thought, when I recall my words, but I don’t care. Despite the serious subject matter, she allowed a smile to turn her lips up, hoping it did not look like she simpered. Yes, she was enjoying herself immensely. He had not said another word, and his expression had changed as his eyes wandered over her hair, her eyes and finally her lips. He settled back in his chair, but still was turned toward her. He cast a quick glance around at their sleeping traveling companions.

“I think, Collette,” he said, quietly, “that you mean to deflect me with your absurd arguments. Let us not talk about the suffrage movement, then. Let’s talk about a far more intriguing subject—you.”

“Me?” She blurted the single word, caught off guard by his abrupt change. “Th-there is nothing intriguing about me, sir.”

“Hush… Keep your voice down. And remember, you are to call me Jamie.”

She looked him over in turn, deliberately taking her time, from his dark, almost black hair, sparkling gray eyes, nicely trimmed mustache, cleft chin, down to his broad shoulders under a well-cut coat, trim frame and immaculate boots. Never had she allowed her eyes to linger in such an unladylike way upon a man’s body, and it left her breathless, even as she acknowledged that viewing, say, Professor Stiltson’s frame would never affect her this way. “I don’t think you suit that name, ‘Jamie’, at all. It is too slight and jocular a name. A bootblack may be named Jamie. An urchin in the street may be named Jamie. But not you, sir.”

He moved closer again. “What would you call me then?” he asked, his voice silky and deep.

She gazed at his lips, the bottom one full, the top one thinner but well-shaped. She would call him—

Dangerous man, mystery man, man of every foolish woman’s dreams. He exuded waves of some potent virility that made women think forbidden thoughts and created needs that could never be satisfied without his own powerful ardor. He had the devastating ability to make the most chaste woman dream of nighttime fantasies and unsated lust. He was hazardous to feminine virtue, and she could not help but fall, just as every other foolish woman must in his presence. Was he wise in wielding this dangerous power, or did he use it recklessly and with abandon to scale the walls of maidenly virtue?

“I asked what you would call me.”

Devil man, sweet enticement, harbor of hopeless dreams—

She shook herself. She really must curb her tendency to daydream in others’ presence. “I don’t know,” she murmured, looking away. “But not Jamie.”

“Then you shall call me whatever pleases you,” he said, still in that low tone, leaning toward her.

He reached out to her and turned her face back toward him. For one brief moment she thought he meant to lay his hands upon her and kiss her. She swallowed past a lump in her throat and tensed, waiting for the first touch of his lips, the tickle of his mustache, the inevitable melting sensations she foresaw from the intimate touch of a man such as she had never met before.

Instead he simply took her spectacles off and gazed into her eyes. She felt the most abject disappointment and took a deep breath. Buck up, you silly girl, she scolded herself. She met his gaze, allowing her eyes to linger on the tiny lines under his and the sooty color of his lashes, luxuriantly thick and long. His eyes, she thought, were not just gray. They were slate, with coal inclusions that radiated from large black pupils. Deep-set and shadowed by thick brows, they were the most attractive feature on a devastatingly handsome man.

“You, on the other hand, are well-named, my dear,” he whispered, taking one of her hands in his. “Collette. Did your mother know what an unusual young woman you would become, I wonder? Did she foresee that you would never be merely Jane, or Fanny, or Anne?” He folded her spectacles with his free hand and laid them on the book on her lap.

“I have never thought of myself as especially unusual, sir. I am a rather plain young woman, a spinster with little money and no prospects, and the only thing I possess of value to myself is my mind.”

His gaze sharpened. Were her words meant to draw a contradiction from him, meant to provoke a compliment on her person? He thought not. Her gaze was level, her eyes wide and sincere. Plain? Well, yes, he had thought so himself when first he laid eyes on her. But her great attraction lay not in the arrangement of nose and mouth and eye, but in her mind, which flashed and glittered intelligence, and her heart, which radiated courage and a sweet sensibility.

He must be losing his own mind to think that of this absurd bundle of contradictions. She was argumentative, but that did not mean intelligent, and she was daring, but that did not equate with courage. What was a young lady like this doing on her way to London, anyway? He began to feel agitated at the strange way his mind was working as he stared into her eyes. He would have given much to know her “business”, but must respect her privacy, of course, as he expected her to respect his own. It would be dangerous waters to demand an explanation from her when he was unwilling to tell her his own secrets. And he was enjoying thoroughly this interlude, this brief respite from his London life and the boredom that often plagued him.

They were a ways from London still. Once he and this fascinating little creature arrived in the city he doubted if they would ever meet again, and so he must hasten his flirtation, deriving every second of enjoyment from it. She was probably headed for an employment agency. Likely her business with some London gentlemen consisted of berating them for her current post as…hmm, nanny? No; she did not have the cloying air or the harried look of a woman who dealt with infants all day. Governess? Perhaps, though what the children would learn from such an unexpected lady might not be what their parents would prefer.

He abruptly released her captured hand and sat back. “Where are you from, Collette?”

She fingered her spectacles and touched the book, her fingers stroking the leather binding like it was a familiar friend. He watched those ink-stained fingers, noting the blunt, square nails and smooth pale skin.

“I live in a very small village, Listerwood-on-Sea. It is on the north shore of the Kent promontory, midway between Margate and Herne Bay.” All her directions were delivered in the same matter-of-fact manner, with no excess verbiage, no female intrusions or meandering down wordy lanes.

She was a Kentish spinster, then, used to seaside walks and such ladylike pursuits as bird-watching or sketching. Some part of him wanted to find that she was dull and prosaic. It would make forgetting her much easier once they had reached London. That thought startled him—forgetting any particular woman had never been a problem—but he forced himself to continue the conversation rather than ponder on what he thought would make her difficult to forget.

“I am returning from there myself. I was near Margate looking…er…looking to buy from a dealer a rare Henry Fielding manuscript for my collection,” he said, hastily making up an innocuous reason for his Kent sojourn. “I was disappointed though. There was no… It was, uh, a mere copy, a rather bad forgery.” This was impossible, constantly editing his words, continually remembering his story. He rushed to deflect any possible inquisition, for she looked as though she had questions for him and he did not want to speak of his disappointing excursion. “And what do you do to pass the time in Listerwood-on-Sea?”

Her eyes shadowed and she glanced down at her spectacles. “I live in very quiet circumstances.”

She sounded evasive. Was she perhaps not employed then, being a young lady of independent means? He gazed at her steadily as she busied herself spilling wax into the little saucer in her odd candle-holder. She rotated the hinged clip until it was vertical from the candle and clipped it on the back of her own seat. The flickering light danced across her pale skin.

“You’re not married. Do you live with your parents?” How old was she anyway? One must not ask a lady her age, but perhaps this odd packet of contradictions would offer it.

“I live with my Aunt Nettie.”

Paid companion? Pug-walker to a smelly old trout?

“And you are traveling to London for some unnamed business with some unnamed men.” He inched closer until his arm was almost brushing against one small breast. His breath became oddly constricted and he damned his high collar.

He noted with amusement that she moved away, just a tiny bit, perhaps a few inches. There wasn’t much room on the black leather upholstered seats of the train, even though she was so slim, but she took advantage of the swaying movement to move away from him as much as she could manage. Was she afraid of him? He wouldn’t have thought she was afraid of much. Or was she just now realizing how unorthodox was this conversation, in the gloom of night, on a train bound for London with a stranger who would not give her his full name? She must know she was physically safe, but was she perhaps as affected by his nearness as he was by hers? He certainly hoped so.

Since his last comment was not a question, he could not complain that she did not answer. She fidgeted with her book, opening and closing it, tracing the gold lettering on the binding with a delicate finger.

“Have you read this book yet?” He asked, indicating the slim volume in her hands. “Or have you only just started?” He watched her eyes.

They widened and he noted, too, the smile that lingered on her delicate rose lips. “Oh, I have read it, sir, several times over.”

Had she really? “What think you of it? It set London on its ear with its publication. It is considered racy in the extreme, and considerable vituperative reviews have been published in the more religious of journals. Queen Victoria herself condemned it as immoral in tone and unsafe for women and young people, though she admitted she had not read it.”

“Racy? I think it merely honest, sir. Do you not consider that the author’s treatment of the reformation of a rake, and then his eventual decline in the face of his denial of his true nature to be honest?”

How happy he was that he had not given his real name! It would have complicated this straightforward assessment of the novel.

“I think it is honest to some degree. Rather gloomy in tone at times, but not out of keeping with its subject. How else does one treat death, after all?” He watched her eyes, wondering whether she had considered who the author really was of this scandalous novel. “I could not decide though, on the viewpoint of the author, this…uh…Colin Jenkins,” he continued carefully. “I have heard that is supposed to be a nom de plume, though I am not convinced of that. Does he condemn the rake’s lifestyle, or rather his reformation? That is ambiguous.”

“I think the author would have the character be true to himself,” Collette said softly, so softly that he had to lean forward even more to catch her words. “Do you not think the world would be a better place if we were all true to ourselves?”

His gaze narrowed. What did this little country wren know about the true nature of a rake? Surely Listerwood-on-Sea was not prime stalking ground for the species. He was considerably more equipped to comment on both the nature of a rake and the truth that lay behind this book. “So we should be true to ourselves, our desire and needs, our wants and impulses?”

She looked up at him and nodded.

And so he took her face in his hands and kissed her.

Two

Whirling in a dark, bay rum-scented dream, eyes instinctively closed, Collette felt softness and a moist, delicious pulling on her lips, and then a tickling sensation below her nose. Her head was locked in place by two strong hands and it irritated her, not because she wanted to draw away, but because she wanted to lean into the kiss, taste it, feel it vibrate through her body, memorizing every minute sensation. She longed to tilt her head, move under him to make the most of their intimate contact. She should be shocked, but instead felt a luxurious certainty that she had gone to heaven and landed on a soft, puffy cloud where she wanted to stay for quite a long while, surrendering all will to luscious desire.

And then it was over. He drew away from her and Collette knew she should open her eyes, but maybe if she kept them closed, maybe if she didn’t break the spell, he would—

…ravish her delectably, dancing his fingers over her sensitive skin, bringing to glorious life every fleshly desire her innocent heart had ever imagined. He was experienced, and so this would be nothing new or exciting for him, but for her it would be nothing less than the fulfillment of midnight longings, needs she knew the common world would consider disgraceful, but that she could not find it in her heart to disdain. He could take her body and take her innocence, but more than that, he could take her soul to new heights, and she longed with a wild, desperate yearning…

Her eyes opened at last when she realized there would be no repeat of that sweet moment of ecstasy. Goodness, if he could induce that wild flight of fancy merely by touching his lips to hers, what would she experience if he touched—She slapped him hard across the cheek.

“Ow!” He reared back, dark eyes wide in shock.

“Oh!” she cried, shocked by her own action as much as he was. “I’m sorry!” She reached out and cradled his reddening cheek with the hand that had just slapped it. What was wrong with her?

He was watching her face with an odd, intent expression on his own, his eyes still wide, his mouth slightly open, even as he caught her hand in his and held it against his red cheek. Collette felt a hideous telltale blush rising to her own and knew that he would misinterpret her blush and slap as maidenly alarm, when really it was her secret acknowledgment of what she had been thinking and wishing.

“Why did you kiss me?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“Why did you slap me?” he countered, indignant.

She tried to pull her hand away, but he held onto it. “I’m so sorry!” she said. He finally released her hand from his iron grip. She shook her head, cleared her throat and checked on the candle holder clipped to her seat back, making sure the wax was not going to spill and that the wick was trim, more for something to do than anything, more to avoid his eyes so he would not see the consciousness in hers. But she found she could not keep her gaze from returning to his face. “Why?” she repeated. “Why did you kiss me?”

His dark, thick brows drew down over the smoldering ash of his eyes. “One must never ask a gentleman why he kisses a lady. One might hear something that would shock or alarm.”

The truth was, he thought, he wasn’t sure why he had done it himself. He was responding to some signal, the permission she gave him with her confirmation that every man and woman must be true to themselves. He was being completely true to his nature and to a craving for her touch. The other passengers, the surroundings, all had melted away in the exquisite taste of lips, soft and yielding, plump and delicious like ripe summer berries from the vine. He tamped down his very earthy physical response to parting her lips with his tongue, as he had been on the verge of doing when he regained his sense of where they were and pulled away.

Think of something more abstract, his mind demanded, or you shall be unfit company. Even her resounding slap, delivered with a startled look of shock on her delightful face, had been enjoyable in some odd way.

“If I kissed you again, would you slap me again?” he asked, and licked his lips.

“I might,” she said, staring at him, watching his mouth.

“Why? Did you not say that men and women should be true to their desires? Or were you not aware of where that kind of thinking could lead?” He well knew because his life had been spent heeding the desires of his flesh and following his passions. And that vast experience led him to believe that, despite Collette’s evident innocence, within her burned a hot, scorching pool of molten desire. It had blazed forth in her kiss, searing him with intense sweetness until he could almost smell sugar burning. He had pulled away before she left him a charred cinder. He spent another long moment quelling his body’s physical responses, but with only partial success. He shifted, uncomfortably aware of the first pulse of arousal and how fortunate he was that gentlemen’s trousers were much less form-fitting than they had been in an earlier age.

Did she know anything at all about desire and where it led? Had she ever truly thought about what went on between a man and a woman? Virtuous ladies had cast discretion to the winds and ruined themselves for one moment of bliss. Governments had been brought down, holy men had renounced vows. Murder, mayhem and all manner of violence had been done for that primal, raging urge to find rapture.

She could not know and still be the innocent he took her for. She could not know that even her slap had made him think of delicious romps, of slap and tickle and sweet abandon, of playful spankings followed by amorous exercise. He bent his most seductive gaze her way.

“Collette, I kissed you because I wanted to and because you wanted kissing, whether you knew it or not. You invited it, initiated it, even though you said not a word. Women and men communicate on a much deeper level than with mere words. You were begging me to kiss you. Were you shocked? Did I disgust you? Be honest with me. And with yourself.”

“No,” she said, her voice a breathy whisper that threatened to shatter his willpower. “No, I was not disgusted. I liked it. I liked it very much indeed. I found it…invigorating.”

He raised his eyebrows. Invigorating? Well! “And so you slapped me?”

“I think it was reflex,” she said, with a tiny frown and furrowed brow. “I can’t imagine what else it could have been.”

It was worth the risk of another slap to kiss those lips again. He gazed steadily into the piercing emerald of her eyes and lowered his face to hers again, but this time, instead of slapping him she put her hands on either side of his face and leaned into the kiss, sealing his lips to hers with the sweet wetness of her delectable mouth. He felt his pulse accelerate as a rush of blood pounded through his veins in the age-old surge of procreative drive.

Her lips moved in a soft dance over his and her fingers threaded through his hair, tickling the small hairs on his neck until his body was screaming with desire. All the awkwardness of leaning over the arms between their seats melted away and he enfolded her in his embrace, pulling her slender body to his, finding in her kiss a blissful oblivion he had not experienced for years, since his first rapt encounter—

“London! All passengers alight at London!”

The loud nasal accent of the porter rang through the car, and Collette broke away from him, her eyes glazed and her lips moist and pouted from their joined passion. All around them people were awakening, their own glazed looks the expression of sleep interrupted abruptly. And so Collette and the man who called himself Jamie did not stand out a bit, even as they stared into each other’s eyes, the knowledge of what was pulsing in a torrent though their veins shared in that gaze.

“London,” she said, laughing softly. She licked her lips and he swallowed hard, bewildered by the thrum of sensations singing through him. “I have never been here, you know. This is my first time. A night of many firsts, I think.”

There was no other way to interpret that but that he had given her her first kiss. Had he ever done so before, ever given a lady her first kiss, or her first anything? He thought not. A night then of firsts for himself, too. He watched as she bent over and slipped her book into the heavy black valise at her feet, wishing they had had another few minutes alone in the dim pool of light cast by her candle. He would have given much to know how she would have reacted to other unforgivable liberties, a leg pressed against her thigh, a hand on her breast, a tongue thrust into her open, enticing mouth. Damn the timing of the trains! He wished London distant by another ten miles. Or twenty, or thirty.

The rhythm of the train shifted. She put her spectacles back on, blew out the candle and smoothed the skirt of her full, plain traveling dress. She pulled her valise onto her lap, snapped the candleholder into its own metal carrying case and assumed a serious expression, glancing out the window as they ground to a halt in the station, brakes squealing and steam engine releasing a chuffing hiss of pent-up power.

What should he say? What could he do? He had intended to flirt a little and then say goodbye to Collette, but he was curiously loath to follow the dictates of rakedom. She stood and began down the aisle. After retrieving his own valise he followed her, admiring the sway of her bottom, wondering how it would look with a filmier covering, or no covering at all, the rounded, smooth, pink cheeks naked to his gaze and his hands.

Damn!

They exited among the passengers from their carriage, down to the platform, little boys leaping down as their weary mother followed, an elderly couple clinging to handgrips and accepting the help of the taciturn conductor.

Jamie turned to Collette. “My man will be here somewhere. He will have come to meet me with my carriage.” That wouldn’t do; he sounded anxious, eager even. He forced a more casual tone into his voice and said, “May we carry you somewhere?”

She hesitated. The crowd swirled around them, two still figures in a moving, heaving mass of humanity. Summer heat had made the scent of humans in a hurry pungent, and the odor competed with the earthy fragrance of horse and smoke, sewage and river. His curiosity sparked. Surely the young woman who advocated following the dictates of desire would not balk at being seen accepting a ride from a fellow passenger?

She bit her lip, but then nodded, decision made. “Certainly, sir. Indeed, I would be immensely pleased to accept a ride to a hotel.”

He quirked a pleased grin. He would know where she was, and the choice of whether to follow up on this extraordinary night would be his. He would make his man, Mockley, sit atop with the driver so he could have her alone in his dark carriage for a precious half hour. Much could be accomplished in half an hour, even a complete seduction. He had done it before, from fully dressed to naked and fait accompli, though never in a moving vehicle. And never with a virginal country lass. He bowed. “I shall find my man. If you would stay right here, Collette, I will come back for you when I have located Mockley.”

He disappeared into the crowd. Collette set her valise down at her feet and watched him go, wondering if she should be allowing him to escort her like this. He was a stranger, and if her aunt knew about her behavior, the poor woman would be suffering palpitations of the most alarming kind. But this was not Listerwood-on-Sea, and she was anonymous in her scandalous behavior. The only one to suffer would be herself, and she had found an exhilarating sense of freedom in doing exactly what she wanted to do.

She might never again meet a man like Jamie, and she intended to allow fate to have its dance with her. It might be too late for her observations of a real live rake to do her any good, but it was still fascinating, and there was so much more to learn…and to experience, perhaps. Just a hundred miles or so from home, but already she had changed, metamorphosing from a village damsel into…into what?

“Miss Collette Jardiniere?”

A well-modulated voice designed to carry through the din of the London station sounded behind her, and she whirled. A young man, bespectacled and mild of countenance, stood a few feet away.

“I am she,” Collette said.

“I thought so. You had that lost look of a newcomer to London. I am David Stuyvesent, Mr. Bellringer’s assistant. You know, Mr. Bellringer, of Rosewood Publishing? I have come to escort you to your hotel. We have arranged a room for you.”

“How kind of Mr. Bellringer, and of you, Mr. Stuyvesent. I…” Collette looked around.

“We must go, miss. I have a hansom waiting and someone else is likely to bribe the driver if we do not hurry back. May I take your bag?” With youthful vigor he grabbed her valise and lugged it off, throwing over his shoulder, “Follow me, Miss Jardiniere.”

She had no choice. Jamie would not know where she had gone and she did not even know his real name. Carruthers and botheration, but that was irritating! What was he hiding? Was his reputation so very alarming? He must be a seducer and a scoundrel, but… She glanced around again and Mr. Stuyvesent was already disappearing, being swallowed up in the crowd that swirled around him in the weak light thrown from station lamps. Collette trotted after him. London was a huge, frightening city, and if she lost sight of the young man she would not have her luggage, her money, nor did she know at what hotel they had bespoken a room for her.

And what a pace he was setting!

She heard her name being called.

“Collette! Collette!”

She whirled. Jamie! There he was, standing quite a distance away with a genteel-looking gentleman’s gentleman. But Mr. Stuyvesent was disappearing, with her luggage, her money, her life! Her gaze swung back and forth between rational behavior and abandonment. She shrugged, feasted her eyes on Jamie’s face one last time and then whirled again, racing after the young assistant in the dim gloom of the gas-lit station.

“Damnation! Mockley, she is leaving, running away from me!”

“There is a first time for everything, sir, so they say,” the valet said, shifting his employer’s bag from one hand to the other.

“But I told her to stay right where she was. I told her I would come back for her!”

“It appears she is not accustomed to doing what she is told, Mr. Jameson.”

She was gone, Jameson thought, a strange desolation overtaking him. Why did she leave like that, running away? He had thought at the very least to kiss and cuddle her in the carriage, maybe even scandalize her with a little fondling, and then escort her to a hotel and perhaps take her to dinner one evening. If he found that the piquancy of her conversation needed the clacking noise and sway of a rail carriage to give it zest, he could drop the acquaintance. Or if he found, after all, that her sylph-like body was unpleasing to his sensual desires, then he could put an end to his seduction. Now the decision had been taken out of his hands and that was intensely irritating.

But then his accustomed mood of boredom settled over him once more and he shrugged. Did it really matter? He should not bed her after all. If he did there would surely be one of those horrible, squalid scenes at the end of their affair. Young women who did not have the required experience and degree of sophistication could be annoyingly emotional, he had heard, and he could not abide scenes and tears. It would have been interesting to be her first lover, but in the end this was likely for the best.

A bell clanged and the train pulled away from the station to be cleaned and stoked with fresh coal, but “Jamie”, as he had introduced himself to Collette stood, still staring, as the platform emptied. His manservant, used to his odd moods, perhaps, waited nearby.

No, thought Jameson, nodding to himself, he had ample reason for confining his affairs to mistresses—though he did not have a woman in his keeping at that moment, which might explain his strange fixation on a drab spinster of slender build and modest attributes—finding it more trouble-free to release himself, when bored, with money and gifts than arguments and tantrums, though he had occasionally had to endure both.

And so with some women he stopped at flirtation: a little kissing, a little cuddling, a caress here and there. Flirtation was not merely a means to an end with him. He had been called a rake and a wastrel at times, but a genuine enjoyment of women—looking at them, talking to them, kissing them—was not a crime in his philosophy. It seemed to him that with the advance of the century a growing seriousness was driving all of the playfulness out of relationships between men and women. It was all labored discourse with a view to marriage. Even widows and married women who in another age would have been free to engage in some lighthearted lovemaking were expected now to be serious and upright, morally correct, tediously virtuous. Men of his ilk were forced to resort to prostitutes or other women of easy virtue when he would have enjoyed a romp with a more elevated class of lady. Avoiding the insidious invasion of diseases transmitted by sexual pairing was a preoccupation—he was fastidious about such things—and it kept him chaste far more often than any moral worries ever could have. He had been careless but lucky in his youth. With his thirties had come more caution and fewer love affairs. The result was an occasional period of unwanted abstinence when no woman of appropriate habits and health was available. Such was his current state.

He sighed heavily. Unfortunately the lust that had been inflamed by the odd attractions of the spinsterish Collette would not be satisfied by any woman of easy virtue. It would be a cold and lonely bed for him that night. One night would suffice to erase her from his memory, though, he had no doubt.

The huge station reverberated with the sound of another train coming in, and he idly watched as more people poured onto the platform. Black-coated men, cinch-waisted ladies, squalling children. But not one who held his gaze as Collette had. Oh, for his grandfather’s time, when flirtation was a respected art and affairs considered no one’s business but the participants’! Earnest morality might be good for the moral health of the nation, though he would dispute that, but he felt sometimes as though humanus rakus was a vanishing species. The Last Days of a Rake had seemed to him to capture society’s relentless hunting down and eradication of men of pleasure.

He remembered Collette’s odd comment that she believed the author was condemning not the rake’s lifestyle, but his society-driven need to reform against his own inclination, against even his own nature. How did she understand that? He had expressed to no one his own interpretation, that the author’s point was that the hero’s reformation was an unfortunate capitulation to the prudish forces of the time rather than a true change in character brought about by inner transformation. He had thought that particular thread lost in the general outcry and titillated excitement aroused by the overt sexuality of the text. Though couched in the most delicate of phrases, it was evident to all readers that the central character enjoyed a robust freedom in his bedroom activities. The author had the delicacy to stop before detailing any of those activities in prurient detail, and he thought it saved the book from becoming mere smut. It was a wise artistic decision.

“Sir, are we going home or shall I secure you a bench upon which to lay your weary head tonight?” Mockley asked, his tone as close to exasperation as a good servant would ever allow. He stood close by, awaiting his master’s pleasure with apparent patience even as he hefted the valise from hand to hand.

“What? Oh, yes, certainly. Back to the carriage, Mockley. And home. It has been a long and frustrating journey.”

“You did not find what…or whom…you were looking for, sir?” he asked, unbending enough to speak now that he knew they were heading home.

“No. I certainly hope the young man whose services I have retained is having better luck in the search than I have had, for this lead was false. The road to Kent was a dead-end street, you might say. It turned out to be a disappointment in every single way…or almost every way.”

His valet turned and began threading through the crowds, and Jameson followed. His mind returned to Collette. Where did Collette come by her attitudes and understanding, and more important, her behavior? Surely her comportment was unusual for a gently-bred female; she had kissed back the second time with a surprising degree of enjoyment and vigorous lack of restraint. She learned quickly too, moving from lack of skill to finesse in the short period from first kiss to second. It was common knowledge that sexual feeling was incompatible with female morality, but was she one of those rare young women to whom sexual feeling was not anathema? The more he thought on it, the stranger her passionate response to a kiss—in an occupied rail carriage no less—became. And yet, the memory stirred his body to response. Jaded he might be, but one poky little country wren had heated his blood to the boiling point. He had sensed that he was giving her a treat, and that pleased him and made him think of other delightful experiences one could introduce a young woman to.

He shook himself out of his stupor as he paced through the station, catching up with Mockley and elbowing his way through the throng. Angry that his thoughts had returned once again to the elusive young woman, he made a noise of impatience in his throat and strode past his bemused valet. He pushed his way to the entrance, cutting a path through the departing crowds with his height and commanding stride. By tomorrow night he would have forgotten her, he promised himself. Or at least the night after that.

He told himself that, but still he glanced around sharply when he reached the street outside of the station, looking for a slender, quick-moving figure dressed in a drab brown dress.

Collette had luckily caught up with Mr. Stuyvesent. There had been no time to talk as they raced at his frenetic pace from the building and out to the cobbled road where a hansom awaited. Collette wanted to pause, to look around and familiarize herself with the eerie gas-lit miasma that drifted through London at night, but Mr. Stuyvesent was impatient. Grateful to the gentleman for guiding her through the intricacies of hiring a cab, retaining a room and threading through London streets—all things she had expected to have to do for herself—she did not want to keep him too long, and so she allowed herself to be hustled into the cab.

He lit the oil lamp inside the hansom as she took a seat, and then yelled to the driver to go. To the steady clop-clop of hooves on cobbles, he told her she would be staying at the Chapter Coffeehouse on Paternoster Row, near Rosewood Publishing.

“I am grateful, sir, to you and Mr. Bellringer. I would be lost in this great city if I had to find my own way and obtain a room.”

The young man pushed his spectacles up on his nose and stared at her across the gloom. “Indeed, Miss Jardiniere, Mr. Bellringer is more than happy to provide any accommodation you could wish, though he is a little puzzled as to your purpose in coming to London at all. Have you not received your quarterly royalties?”

As answer, Collette bent down, fished through her black valise, which Mr. Stuyvesent had placed on the floor, and pulled out a folded and much-abused newspaper. She glanced over it, and then handed it to the young man opposite her. She pointed at a particular article.

“I have not received yet a satisfactory answer to my repeated queries concerning this infamous article, and why Mr. Bellringer has not vigorously refuted the information within it. I will straighten this absurd confusion out myself if necessary, but I had hoped for the aid of my publisher.”

Mr. Stuyvesent glanced at the offending article. The headline was in half-inch lettering, and stated Author Exposed! Mr. Charles Jameson, Man About Town, Author of The Last Days of a Rake! Well Known Gentleman Will Not Deny His Authorship.

“Now you tell me,” Collette said, her voice steely, “why Mr. Bellringer has not demanded a retraction. After all, I am the author, and though I published using a pseudonym, I will not have it attributed to some vacuous Lothario! If I do not have his help in doing just that, I will track down Mr. Charles Jameson and demand he tell this infamous rag sheet that they are wrong!”

Three

Collette lay awake late into the night considering Mr. Stuyvesent’s answer to her complaint. It seemed that as a woman novelist writing under a man’s name, she was in a peculiar predicament. If Mr. Bellringer would agree to give a statement to the reporter saying that Mr. Jameson was not the author, it would take care of everything, but if he would not do that, she could not just come out and refute the author’s identity without proclaiming herself the authoress, perhaps causing a scandal. This would never have happened if there weren’t such a stigma attached to writing novels, especially for women, she fumed.

She crossed her arms behind her head and stared up at the ceiling in her small attic room at the Chapter Coffeehouse. It was not unheard of for a woman to write and become a published author under her own name. There were many precedents, after all. Late in the last century and earlier in the current one Maria Edgeworth, Mrs. Radcliffe, Fanny Burney, and of course the greatest of them, Miss Jane Austen, had all published, though Austen had merely been published as “a Lady” until after she died.

But the social climate had chilled toward women who dared be something other than wives and mothers. It was ironic that one of the chief progenitors of that change was herself a working woman of ultimate power, Queen Victoria.

How Collette longed to belong to that earlier, more open time! Instead, as the layers of clothing had increased in numbers, so had the restrictions on a woman’s freedom. Not in a real sense, she supposed. After all, a woman’s property still became her husband’s on marriage, as she was considered thereafter to be a part of him; they were one in a very legal sense. That was true of earlier years, too. Young unmarried ladies had never had much freedom to move around as they wished, or take employment other than in a few restrictive professions, and that was still the case.

But it seemed to her that women in a previous age breathed freer, and their opinions were not so ridiculed. Maybe that was just an unhealthy longing for an idealized past, but women now were not taken very seriously as to their ideas or thoughts.

Jamie, or whatever his name really was (for she had no doubt it was not really Jamie), had talked to her about women’s suffrage but with a joking, teasing tone that told her he didn’t consider her opinions in earnest. It was infuriating! And yet, as she lay there sleepless, tossing and turning in her uncomfortable bed, Collette could still feel his thrilling, dangerous, memorable kisses pressed upon her lips like a brand. It was maddening that she was as weak as any woman, and that a man who did not respect her mind could still find his way into her soul. Or at least affect her body.

Her body. It was lean, stringy even, she thought, certainly more so than the fashion, which favored bosomy, doll-like blondes with tiny waists and voluptuous hips. And yet she had secretly gazed at it naked in a full length mirror. Scandalously, she had touched her small breasts and run her hands over her flat belly and smooth thighs. Her body did not feel repulsive to her, nor did it look unpleasant, and the sensations her own hands caused were faintly pleasurable. Yet so much of her religion was invested in the sinful nature of physical pleasure. When she was younger she had just accepted the vicar’s admonition that she was wicked by nature. Women, after all, were the cradle of original sin. Responsible for the eviction from the Garden, woman was doomed to suffer in childbirth. It sounded absurd to her. If God behaved in any logical fashion, he would certainly not condemn every woman in the world for the failings of just one. There were theologians who agreed with her that the doctrine of original sin was an example of fallacious reasoning.

And yet, for all of her robust conviction that women were put on earth for a greater purpose than just to be subjugated by a man, she was fascinated by the earthier reality of relations between men and women. She had for years watched, in her little village, the subtle dance of attraction. It was like the magnets she had played with in Professor Stiltson’s laboratory; some were repelled and could not be put together no matter what, while others were irresistibly attracted. What was it that commanded such reactions? Was it purely physical, or was there something deeper, more spiritual, between some men and women?

She remained untouched herself, having spent her youth on books and unsuitable intellectual pursuits which, she had been assured by the ladies of her parish, would never capture a husband. The end result of her protected, insulated life was that at twenty-seven she had never been kissed. She supposed that labeled her as some kind of oddity. Most of the girls she had known at school had given and received kisses in their teen years, but she had been dedicated to reading and writing from such a young age that it seemed as though her whole being was alive only to produce words, that her brain was preternaturally large, stuffed with letters and commas and exclamation marks, and that the pressure on her skull could only be eased by writing copious amounts of prose on paper, spilling words like wine from a brimming glass.

It had left her no time for thinking about boys, or later, men.

The result had been The Last Days of a Rake, and she could not regret her lack of experience in worldly pleasures because having her novel published had given her such an intense wave of gladness and gratification that she would not have foregone the experience for any amount of earthly fulfillment. It was ironic that she wrote of feelings and deeds, desires and wants that she had never experienced, nor been tempted to fulfill in reality. Every scene in the book in which her hero’s amorous activities were recounted had ended before any encounter. Inexperience had forced her to stop outside of the bedroom door, not that she would have been able to write further and have it published, but still—something was lacking, but she wasn’t sure what. She had watched, she had pondered, but she had never experienced any of it, and she would therefore never know if personal knowledge would have changed the book, made it better. That doubt nagged at her, leaving her convinced she had doomed the book to a level of inauthenticity despite its success. She was sure of the themes and the morality, and that it reflected her own sturdy core of beliefs, but in a physical sense she was not sure of her hero’s feelings. In writing The Last Days of a Rake, she had created a man the likes of whom she had never met…until perhaps that very night.

She turned over in her bed and hugged the lumpy pillow. She wistfully recalled every word and every nuance of his voice. The mysterious Jamie had given her a real glimpse of what a rake was like, what a man who attracted women with a magnetism that seemed almost a natural force looked like and sounded like. And now she wished she could go back and rewrite whole sections of Last Days. She now understood much more about such things as a rake’s expressive use of his eyes and his voice, how he exuded an aura of raw virility in the face of which a woman was helpless.

Yet there was still so much she didn’t understand. Did every woman react thus, or only some? Or did different types of men attract different women? She had been fortunate in her writing, she thought, and indeed, it had taken her a long time to create Lankin, her central character. Since finishing she had been plagued by the notion that whatever temporary ability allowed her to create the book had fled. She hadn’t finished a single bit of work since.

She must keep trying. She must write. Maybe now, with the invigorating experiences on the train still fresh in her mind, she would defeat the awful barriers that kept her from writing a new novel. She tossed the musty pillow aside and slid out from under the covers. Settling herself at the small desk by the window on a hard chair, she lit a candle and took out her ink and paper.

She had been trying to start another novel for some time and had made some inroads, but it all felt flat and unnatural. Meeting Jamie had started that inner dialogue she usually maintained—though it had been ominously silent lately—flowing again. She must see where it led her. Perhaps it was not a good idea to write another book about a rake, but at this moment she must write what she could.

She unclipped the pressure closed cork on her ink bottle—another of Professor Stiltson’s revolutionary designs—dipped her pen and wrote:

His kiss was said to induce a languor over the receiver, and more than one young lady had swooned, so overpowering were the sensations he occasioned in the impressionable female breast—

“Carruthers and botheration!”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Mockley exclaimed, pausing with the clothes brush in mid-swipe.

“Sorry, Mockley,” his employer said, picking a bit of lint from his sleeve. “Novel pattern of swearing I have taken up after hearing a very unusual young lady indulge in it.”

The valet lifted one well-shaped eyebrow, a form of questioning disdain he might have learned from his master. He continued brushing down Jameson, who had not yet regained his equanimity after the unusual experience of having a young lady run away from him. Even a full night’s rest—if one could call tossing, turning and writhing among the scented sheets on his soft feather mattress rest—had not restored him to his usual bored attitude.

Jameson caught his employee’s expression reflected in the mirror. “What are you grinning about, Mockley?” he growled, wondering if his valet would dare tell the truth.

Though haughty and proud of his position, Mockley was not above regaling the rest of the staff in the servant’s hall with stories of his employer’s uncomfortable moments. Jameson, prowling the kitchen the night before, looking for some comforting nourishment to help him sleep, had witnessed his valet’s brilliant mimicry of his expression when Collette ran from him, with just one lingering look thrown over her shoulder.

Every servant, even the stuffy butler and phlegmatic cook, had laughed. Jameson suspected it was the memory of his performance for the below stairs staff that caused Mockley’s unusual display of good humor.

The valet resumed a more serious expression. “Grinning, sir? I don’t believe I was grinning.”

“That was a grin for you, you damned solemn jackanapes.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jameson gave him a fierce look, then broke down and chuckled. Abusing his servants would not bring back that singularly infuriating young lady, Miss Collette Whoever-she-was. His sleepless night had been spent cursing in turns his own determination never to run after a woman, nor run at all—it was ungentlemanly to break into a sweat like a racehorse—and his slowness in thinking of having Mockley run after her. Or of inquiring of the ticket agents if they knew the young lady’s name. Or, simplest of all, of having established her last name when he met her by the simple expedient of giving her his own and asking hers.

Now, the morning after, he was dressing to go out to his club where he would promptly forget her very existence and go on with his life. Surely that would not be so very difficult a task for a man about town, a man with so many varied interests and occupations? To forget about one bookish spinster with gold and green eyes ought to be the work of an hour.

He descended the stairs to find his butler, Greenwell, standing at the bottom with a worried expression.

“What is it?”

“Sir, it is that writer from Wilson’s Gazette. He is waiting on the stoop. He wanted to come in, said you had made an appointment to tell him about the inspiration for your novel, sir, but I wasn’t taken in by such a sham. I told him to take himself off, but he said as how he was a free man and could stand where he wanted, where he wanted to stand was your stoop.”

“Carruthers and botheration! Damned jackass is like a burr.” Jameson turned his hat in his hands and considered whether the man was enough of a bother that he should slip ignominiously out the back servant’s entrance to avoid him.

When the fellow, a Mr. Randall Proctor, had first approached him with the insinuation that he, Charles Jameson, was the true author of the pseudonymously published The Last Days of a Rake, he had thought it a joke. But the fellow enumerated his reasons, being the same initials, a reputation as a rake and a man of letters, and some seemingly autobiographical features of the novel. There was a girl in his past named Susan—in the novel one of the hero’s conquests—and he had lived for a time in France. Such was the slight premise upon which Proctor had constructed his entire argument. It seemed ludicrously slim to Jameson, but Proctor was not joking. He wanted a statement, he said, to confirm or deny that Jameson was the real author, and he would bother him until he got what he wanted.

Jameson had read the book with admiration and envy. So much talent, and so much more promise, was expressed in every line and paragraph of that novel, that he felt it was the finest prose work of the year and perhaps of the decade so far. It was not perfect by any means—there was more that could have been done by an editor with imagination and talent, for the author required some guidance and advice. But there was something about the glowing prose and the authentic morality of it, so far removed from the preachy, false righteousness of most current novels, that he had read the book several times over and found something new to admire each time. He had tried in vain to search out the real identity of the author, only to be met at the publisher’s office by a solemn statement from Mr. Bellringer that, “Mr. Colin Jenkins lives in retirement and has expressed a wish not to be identified to anyone.”

All that might change if he were wrongly identified, Jameson had reasoned. The fellow might be forced out of hiding if his masterwork was attributed to someone else. And so within moments he had composed his response to the reporter’s earnest query: “I suppose if I deny being the author you will not believe me, so you must print what you will.”

Part of that was merely the truth, but part was a desire to flush the real author from his hiding place. He would like to become the fellow’s patron, perhaps, or introduce him into society. But the little joke he had allowed himself had become a feverish flurry of attention. That simple statement led to triumphant headlines that trumpeted the mystery as solved. Jameson had been highly entertained that Proctor had dared to go so far with that simple cagey refusal to commit himself.

Though vaguely bothered by the mistaken attribution of a work he admired, he reasoned that surely such a strongly worded article would bring a stinging rebuttal by the true author and his publisher. No author would stand for such a misidentification.

But that was weeks ago, and so far no letter of refutation had been received or printed in Wilson’s Gazette, nor in any of the more serious journals. Even the publisher had been curiously silent. Jameson was sick to death of the sly winks and nudges he got from all and sundry who believed the damned article. He had carefully and strenuously denied it to his friends, but many of them persisted in the belief that he was just being modest.

It had become tedious and boring, as so much in life was wont to do, but he could find no way to change the course of the gossip. He hoped that by ignoring it, he could make it go away. These things had a tendency to die in the face of obdurate resistance to further comment.

For his own part, though he had no intention of validating Proctor’s absurd claims by any contradiction—he knew enough of public opinion to know that occasionally contradiction only served to cement in people’s mind the truth of a piece of gossip—he had become more vigorous in his search for the real author, even haring off to Kent after careful dissection of the text, certain the author had some unique connection with a part of that seaside county. And still…nothing.

So, to avoid contact with the miserable scribbler who had penned the scurrilous article, he supposed he would have to slip out the back door of his own home like a naughty footman going off to the pub for a pint. His current discomfort was his own damned fault.

Mr. Bellringer steepled his hands and gazed at Collette across the desk. “Miss Jardiniere, there is really nothing I can do. The papers will print what they like, and unless you are willing to expose yourself as the author—which, by the way, I do not advise. The attention you would receive would not all be of the most flattering kind—then… Where was I? Ah, yes, well then, if you are not to identify yourself as the author, we cannot positively refute the paper’s article. In a way, this is very flattering and can only help sales of the book, which had started to drop off before this bit of controversy.”

Collette fumed in silence, but her hands were folded in ladylike submission and she sat very still and upright in the office of her publisher. That was the real reason behind their refusal to act on this outrage, she thought, staring angrily at the papered wall behind the publisher. She was determined to allow no sign of her anger to show, but it was extremely difficult. The rumor that this Mr. Charles Jameson, a notorious rake, was the author was reviving sales. She was happy to sell more books, but she did not want them to sell just for titillation’s sake. She had poured her heart and soul into her novel, and it should sell on its own merits.

“Have you spoken to this…this bounder?” she asked, dropping her gaze from the wall behind the desk to meet the man’s eyes. “Have you asked him to put forth a more positive retraction?” She gripped her reticule on her lap and worried at the string.

Mr. Bellringer looked alarmed, his balding head breaking out in beads of perspiration and his pale, almost colorless eyes widening. “I would not dream of approaching Mr. Jameson and suggesting such a thing. Why, that would be tantamount to calling him a liar.”

Fury bit into Collette and she could no longer restrain her ire. She leaped to her feet and leaned on the desk so that her face was just a foot from Mr. Bellringer’s. “But he is a liar! He could have said he was not the author! He could have put it in such a way that the reporter would have believed him. But instead he smirks and says they may print what they will. Why did he do that, if not to claim responsibility for my novel? I will not have it!”

“Miss Jardiniere,” Mr. Stuyvesent said, breaking onto the conversation for the first time.

Collette whirled around, having forgotten the pale young man was in the room.

“Miss Jardiniere,” he repeated, standing from his chair in the corner, pushing his spectacles up on his nose. “We will not contradict Mr. Jameson. This is for your own good as well as ours. The book has had sales rebound forty-three percent, and this could continue for quite some time now that it is thought that Jameson is the author. Having come from your…village,” he said, making the word sound like an unspeakable horror, “you will have no idea that Mr. Jameson is a very very popular man about town. He is scandalous and reprehensible, and the thought that he might be pouring his own life and feelings out on paper has society all atwitter. And so our advice to you, miss, is to go back to Listerwood-on-Sea and enjoy your royalties.”

“You do not understand at all, do you?” she said, refusing to be defeated. “It is quite clear to me that neither of you is a writer. As long as there was a fictional Colin Jenkins as the author, it was still my name. I was Colin Jenkins, and even if I was the only one who knew that, it was enough. But now my identity as creator of this work has been usurped by that…that rogue! I will not have it, do you hear me? I will not have it.” She stood to her full height, admittedly not very impressive, but still she looked down on the seated publisher and was not so very much shorter than the publisher’s assistant.

“If I have to track the man down myself,” she said in her most forceful tone, “and coerce him to make a definite statement, I will do it. That is my book—my book—and I will not have people reading it and trying to fit it to this lecher’s life. I will not have people tittering behind their hands as they assume it is written from a rake’s experience. It is a work of fiction and meant to be read as such. It loses much of its meaning—the allegorical meaning—if it is seen as mere autobiography.” She picked up her bag and marched to the door. “I shall be staying in London until I sort this out, gentlemen. Thank you for all your generous—or should I say grudging—assistance.”

She left.

Mr. Stuyvesent glanced at Mr. Bellringer behind the desk. “She’s going to create trouble, you know.”

Bellringer nodded, his expression bleak and without hope. “But what can we do? It is her book, and she has a right, I suppose, to do what she will about it.”

“Do you really want her to go to Mr. Jameson? It could ruin everything if that gentleman does come out with a definite retraction. His ambiguous statement was the best thing that happened to the book!”

“I know that.”

“The Last Days of a Rake is the best seller you have, but if it comes out that Miss Jardiniere is the real author, you could lose everything. Men will be appalled. No man is going to read a book by a woman! And the ladies will be scandalized, though not in a manner that will aid sales, as this scandal is doing.” Stuyvesent paused, his mouth set in a grim line. “You could be ruined, you know, if it is decided that by knowingly publishing such a book by a young lady authoress, you have contributed to the moral decay of society.”

Bellringer began to tremble. “David, what shall we do?”

The assistant, his pale face twisted in a thoughtful grimace, stared at the floor for a minute. His expression, when he again looked up, was one of deviltry mingled with spite. “Leave it up to me. I have an idea that just might work. That is, if you don’t mind a little dirty business.”

Bellringer’s pale eyes narrowed. “David, do not say another word to me,” he said, putting up his hands, palms out. “Do not tell me anything, and do not keep me informed! If you can figure some way to keep the mystery going…well, I will trust you to take care of this little mess so that young lady does not kill the goose laying all those lovely golden eggs.”

Stuyvesent nodded and pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “I will be happy to do you that service, Mr. Bellringer, if you will guarantee me certain compensation.”

Suspiciously, Bellringer gazed at his young assistant. For months he had been thinking there was something more going on in that young man’s mind than being of service to him; perhaps now he would find out what. “What compensation did you have in mind?”

“I’ll tell you when I am successful.”

Bellringer shook his head. “No. Surely you do not think I will acquiesce to anything without first knowing the cost?”

“It will not be out of your reach, sir, I promise you that. You will be happy to give me what I want. It is a very modest request.”

He still wasn’t sure, but Bellringer nodded slowly. A forty-three percent leap in sales, and that was just in the first week after the story broke. Sales had risen even more in the last week. Surely that was worth a lot. Then his eyes narrowed again. “You do not mean to… You wouldn’t hurt the young lady, would you?”

Stuyvesent looked shocked. “Of course not, sir. I will not touch a hair on that young lady’s head, truly!”

“Good. That’s good, then. Go ahead, David.”

He went back to his paperwork and Stuyvesent left the office to set his scheme underway. He very much feared it would be necessary. Miss Collette Jardiniere did not seem the type of young lady to indulge in empty threats.

But David Stuyvesent was a match for her. More than a match. He found Miss Collette Jardiniere nauseatingly self-assured and annoyingly competent. A real lady would not act as she did. But then again a real lady would never have written the scandalous and obscene book The Last Days of a Rake.

His first act must be to follow her and find out her intentions. Despite his assurances to his employer, his plans were only tentative. He had a hazy strategy in mind, but he was willing to improvise if he found out something about her that would help things along.

Stuyvesent spied Miss Jardiniere at some distance marching down the sidewalk and hurried to follow.

Four

She would find the man herself, Collette had determined. She was not entirely without friends in London; she would track down Charles Jameson and confront him with his wicked deed and demand that he enlighten that writer for Wilson’s Gazette. How she was going to convince him to do that without revealing she was the writer she did not know, but something would occur to her.

She was taking the first step now. She paced the length of the stuffy parlor the pretty Dancey household parlor maid had shown her to. Henrietta Pope, now Mrs. Henrietta Dancey, had been one of her two closest friends in school. Collette’s parents had died overseas when she was very young, and for a time she had no home but school. She was a lonely little girl with nowhere to go on school holidays until Henrietta Pope and Philoxia Woodham had befriended her. For a few years her Christmases had been spent at Philoxia’s palatial home near Brighton and summers were spent at Henrietta’s more modest abode in Bristol.

But then her Aunt Nettie had returned from India and life had changed forever for the better. Aunt Nettie was a sweet, dizzy widow of modest means, and she bought a cottage near the Kent shore for the sole purpose of raising her older sister’s only child. She had no children of her own and lavished all the love and care in her ample bosom on her orphaned niece. From the time she was fourteen until she left school at seventeen, Collette spent every holiday with Aunt Nettie.

But she never lost a deep sense of gratitude to Henny and Loxy, as her two friends were called, for the times they had stood in as family to her, and for the friendship that had gone deeper than mere school chums.

They had all been destined for such different paths in life, though. She hadn’t seen or even written to her friends in too long. She was going to change all of that now. Though Collette had a selfish motive for looking them up, it would serve to reunite them, too, and she hoped they would be as happy to see her as she would to see them.

“Colly! Oh, Colly, it has been simply years!”

Collette was engulfed in a smothering embrace. The young lady who had sailed into the parlor and clasped her to her bosom was rotund and swathed in layers of soft, clingy fabric.

“Henny, it is so good to see you,” Collette said, her voice muffled against the larger woman’s bosom. Where Collette was short and slender, Henny was tall and larger framed. Henrietta Dancey—formerly Miss Henny Pope of Miss Grant’s School for Young Ladies—released Collette and held her away from herself and looked her over critically.

“Colly,” she gasped, shaking her, “you have not changed a bit in all these years. Still as slender as a reed. I can’t say the same!” She laughed merrily and gave a rueful glance down at her ample form. Even a corset could not give her a waist. In school she had been tall and big-boned, but angular, too. Now she was decidedly fat.

“Nonsense, Henny. The added pounds do you well.” Collette cocked her head to one side and gazed at her friend. “You look…comfortable.” There was something else different about her, but Collette could not quite put her finger on what it was that had changed.

“You are sweet to say so, dear,” Henrietta said, shaking her head. “Five children, you know. It does things to a woman’s body.”

“Five children!” Collette shook her head in awe. While she had been busy, head bent over paper, pen in ink-stained hand, Henny had certainly proceeded with real life. The life men from their pulpits and women from their parlors ordained was correct and suitable for proper ladies. Five children! She glanced around the comfortable home: overstuffed sofa, bric-a-brac shelves, ornate fireplace with just a dried floral arrangement in it on a late-August afternoon, and adorning it on the mantle a pair of large, handsome photographs of Henrietta and Herbert Dancey. They gazed solemnly out at the world from their marital portraits while Henny prattled about her husband, at his “very important” job at the bank, and her children, the pride of her life.

In school, Henrietta had been a romantic, silly, but entertaining girl, dismally bad at spelling and even worse at science and arithmetic. They had not kept track of each other in the years after school, despite earnest vows to the contrary. Henny had been a poor correspondent, and had married Herbert only a year after leaving Miss Grant’s academy. She was very soon with child, and Collette had had nothing to say in reply to her infrequent letters, not being able to sympathize with dastardly nursemaids, swollen feet and morning sickness.

“Come, sit down,” Henrietta commanded, taking Collette’s hand. “I have been on my feet for an hour supervising the turning out of Herbert’s library. Such a difficult task. He will be most put out if anything is the slightest bit disarranged. If I don’t watch every move my girls make, they will crumple his papers and he will be completely discommoded.”

Collette sat on the overstuffed horsehair sofa and folded her hands on her lap, watching her friend, who twitched the curtain into the perfect folds and fussed with the dry arrangement of flowers. Henny seemed happy and Collette smiled, glad everything had worked out well for the sweetest of girls. After all, Henny had not been the brightest student at Miss Grant’s. It was fortunate she had found a husband who, like most men, preferred a woman with few pretensions to intelligence. Collette stopped that train of thinking, uncomfortably aware of how smug she sounded even to herself. Henny had always made up for any lack of intelligence with an overabundance of sweetness and she must not forget that.

“Our lives have changed so since school,” Collette said, shaking her head in wonder.

“My, yes.” Henrietta eased herself down into a chair and surreptitiously slipped her shoes off under the skirts of her morning gown. “I was going to marry a pirate, if I recall, and live on the high seas!” She emitted a high peel of laughter. “A life of adventure and romance. How uncomfortable that would have been, now when I think about it. Children and ships do not mix well, I think. Instead I married a banker.”

Collette chuckled, remembering their late night whispered conversations and ambitious future plans. “I was going to go to Canada and chronicle the lives of the Indians, if I remember correctly. Instead I live with my aunt in Listerwood-on-Sea.”

Henny gazed at her. “Did you never do anything about your writing, then?”

Shifting uncomfortably under a gaze she did not remember to be so perspicacious, Collette shrugged and said, “Oh, of course I still write.”

“But you always said there was no point in writing if you were never published. Have you been published?”

“Have you seen my name on any book cover?” Collette asked, equivocating.

“No, but what is that to anything?” With a weary chuckle, Henrietta confessed, “I rarely pick up a book, dear. I am so busy with the children and the house.” She waved a hand at the room. “One would think with a houseful of serving staff one would have a few minutes to oneself during the day, but if I don’t supervise, nothing is done correctly. Herbert is most particular.”

Herbert sounded a perfect prig, Collette thought, eyeing her friend’s tired face. Henny had the beginning of lines creasing her mouth, even though she was still just in her twenties. Collette did not envy her the necessity of keeping such a man happy. It was time to change the subject, and that meant getting down to the purpose of her visit.

“Henny, do you still see Loxy?” Collette asked, of their mutual friend Philoxia Bertrand. She sat forward on the sofa and clasped her hands together, feeling a nervousness build, a twist of anxiety deep in her stomach as she finally got down to the business at hand. “I saw her name in a journal one day as holding a literary tea, so I know she lives in London. I thought to look her up while I was here.” For some reason Henny had seemed easier to approach, which was the reason behind Collette’s plan to approach her first. Henrietta never looked to discover a person’s deepest feelings, nor did she question anyone’s motives. She simply accepted one without asking any awkward questions.

Henny gazed at her steadily. “So now we get to the real reason for this sudden fit to see London? You never would accept my invitations in past years, dear.”

Reddening, Collette looked down at her folded hands, trying to hide the ink stain on the thumb of one of her gloves. Just as she had been ready to dash out the door to come to Henny’s, a thought had occurred to her and she simply had to write it down so it would not disappear, and of course the ink had stained her glove. She pulled at the thumb, doubling it over and pushing it into her palm.

She had not counted on Henny questioning her sudden interest in London and her old friends. It was true that many years before, when Henrietta was a young wife with just one child, she had issued many invitations to Collette; her husband was indulgent, she said, and wanted his wife to feel free to invite friends. But Collette had said no repeatedly. She had thought the hustle and bustle of London would fatigue her brain, leaving no room or energy for the outpourings of her heart and mind onto paper.

Perhaps that was not true, though. Last night she had written until the pearly light of dawn had crept over her window sill, starting its path across her room. She had no idea if what she had written would ever fit into anything, but she had poured every ounce of her being into a deep exploration of a woman’s heart when faced with a man who stirred her as no other had. Where it had all come from she did not know, but she rather thought her next novel would be about a woman’s journey of the heart, a road she had never traveled, but thought she was beginning to understand. It was so fragile, this spurt of writing, and she was terrified that the urge and ability might disappear as suddenly as they had come.

“I…I just saw her name, and it made me think of you both, and the good times we had. A little nostalgia, I suppose, for our youth.”

Henrietta leaned forward and took Collette’s hand in her own. “You do not need to explain, dearest. It doesn’t matter if what you really want is to see Philoxia now that she is a famous literary hostess. I understand. I am just so happy you’ve come, and if it took that…” She smiled and raised her eyebrows as she released Collette’s hand and sat back in her chair. “Shall I give you her address? Or…” She thought a moment, her blue eyes wide and fixed. She clapped her hands. “I can do better than that. Loxy is having a soirée tonight. She sent me an invitation. She always sends me an invitation, even though I have never gone to one of them. Not my usual type of event, dear, don’t you know? All intense young writers and gloomy artists. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to surprise her? I am sure…well, almost sure that Herbert will give me permission since it will be a favor for an old school friend.”

Collette leaped to her feet and threw her arms around Henny. “Thank you, dear, thank you! I would adore that above all things.” She released her and stood staring down at her plump friend. “I’m so happy to see you. Something has precipitated this sudden visit to London, you know, and I shall tell you all very soon, I promise.”

“You make me curious, but I’ll not pry. It is so good to see you! I haven’t been so happy for some time… Not that I am unhappy, but life is not easy, and…” She shook her head. “Listen to me chattering! Whatever brought you here, I’m happy for it. I shall pretend you are on a secret mission.” Henrietta struggled to her feet.

Collette jumped and clapped her hands. “Oh, Henny! Do you remember our secret missions at the school?”

“Do I?” She laughed again and folded Collette in a cozy embrace. “We would raid the kitchen for cream cakes and buttermilk. Roast beef sandwiches and strawberries! To this day I cannot taste strawberries without remembering you and me and Loxy in the kitchen at Miss Grant’s, our mouths stuffed with red berries and Miss Grant herself standing at the door with a switch!”

Collette gathered her reticule and straightened, sighing and smiling at Henny. “Those were happy days. Some of them, anyway.”

“Some of them,” the plump matron repeated, hand to her back as she stretched. “Not when we were being switched. And not when Loxy ran away with the music master and came back…”

She trailed off, not needing to continue. They both remembered Loxy’s misery when it was discovered after her misadventure that she was with child. It had been kept quiet and Loxy had been taken out of school and sent to a maiden aunt in the country. Fortunately, shortly thereafter she had lost the child. Or was that good fortune? Collette remembered their friend’s devastation, expressed in almost incoherent, rambling letters. Collette had already left school when Philoxia returned, and they had only written a few times before Loxy left school for good and went to the Continent to study art in Italy. She had seemed to recover, but who knew what was in her heart?

Collette and Henny embraced again. Shared fun, shared misery, shared secrets. She and Henny and Loxy had been inseparable in school, and yet their friendship had mellowed into a distant correspondence, and then to nothing, as life took them in divergent directions. She was beginning to think she had missed much by not making the effort to maintain contact. No friend in Listerwood-on-Sea had ever taken the place of the bosom bows she had lost.

Perhaps she was being given a chance to start anew.

“And so you still have not been able to track down this Colin Jenkins,” Jameson said to the enterprising young man he had hired to find out what he could about the elusive author. They sat in his office, the suite of rooms he had leased to keep his work separate from his home. There was much he did that he did not wish bandied about London, and his search for the author was one of those things. Having an office outside of his home kept this part of his life private.

“I have talked to any number of Colin Jenkinses. There are twenty-three Colin Jenkinses in London alone,” Dick Murphy said. He pushed a thatch of sandy brown hair out of his eyes. “Very common name, you know, sir. But all deny any knowledge of writing and one gave me a perishing hard time for even suggesting he had done anything so filthy as write a bleedin’ novel.”

Jameson grimaced as he noted the purplish bruise on the young gentleman’s freckled cheek and pointed chin. “That has to hurt.”

“Aye, sir, that it does. But I gave as good as I got,” he said cheerfully. “He looks a deal worse than me, sir. I’m a cracker with me fists.”

“At your age I often sported similar proof of a feisty night life. Boxing was a passion for a while, though I seldom spent time in the ring.” Jameson sighed and leaned back in the chair. Perhaps he would have to give up this mad search for an author who obviously did not want to be known. He couldn’t understand it himself. If he had written The Last Days of a Rake, he would have trumpeted it from the rooftops, regardless of the slightly unsavory reputation such a writer might gain. Poetry was an acceptable literary outlet for a gentleman, but novels had not yet gained that cachet. Not yet, Jameson thought, but they would. They had to.

Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli. All were lionized in the literary community but viewed with suspicion among the public. Even as the common folk devoured their work they cast a mistrustful eye toward them, wondering if anyone who delved into the conditions of human misery and the secrets of the soul could ultimately be safe company. It was dangerous to be so curious and much of what such authors implied was radical. If one read Dickens, for instance, one might begin to believe that the poor often did nothing to merit their awful lives, that work houses were despicable places and even that jail was, perhaps, not the best solution for insolvency.

Young Dick Murphy moved restlessly in his chair. “So, what now, sir?”

Jameson sighed and twisted his mouth, pondering any remaining avenues. So many novels were still published under pseudonyms, and that, he concluded, must be the case with The Last Days of a Rake. He had not wanted to think it because it made the chance that he would discover the author slim, but he must now conclude it to be so. Perhaps the writer was even titled. No nobleman would risk his name by owning up to novel writing.

“Well,” he said, sliding a small cloth bag of coins across his desk toward the young man. “You have done well, but perhaps this search is at an end.” He had pictured being the one who would, as the author’s patron, bring the man to the notice of the literary community and sponsor him in society as such a talent deserved. But it appeared that it was not to be. “I must admit I did not want to believe that Colin Jenkins was a pseudonym since it will make it impossible to find the chap. However, I can accept defeat gracefully.”

The young man hesitated as he put a slim hand over the bag. “Sir,” he said diffidently. “I thought you’d say that, and it’s true. We haven’t gotten the chap yet, but might I continue to try, just for another week? I have not exhausted all of my leads yet.”

Jameson smiled. “All right, Dick. One more week.”

The young man slid the bag back across the desk. “Thank you, sir. I will give it my best.” He leaped to his feet and departed.

Jameson sighed. “Oh, to have that much energy and enthusiasm for anything,” he said, and immediately he thought again of Collette. Energy. Enthusiasm. Those words certainly characterized her as well. What was he missing that he had never been able to summon that much—well, the French had a phrase that fit. Joie de vivre. Collette was filled with joie de vivre, and he had very little. Where did one get it?

Wearily he stood, exited his office and, since his secretary was home with a cold, locked the door after himself. Perhaps he would go to his club. Or maybe just home.

Five

“I did not think I would get into this dress,” Henny said. She gazed down at her deep green evening dress in the dim lamplight of the carriage. “If it were not for a very strong maid and the best corset money can buy, I would not have.” She twisted the fringe of her patterned silk shawl, knotting it with fretful fingers. “I have grown fatter since last I had any occasion to wear it. I’ve become so dreadfully maternal of late that I rarely attend any evening events.”

“You sound so mournful, dear.” Collette laughed, the sound dying away on a ghostly chuckle. She swallowed hard, clamping her hands together. “And yet,” she went on, hastening back into speech. “I know you would not trade Herby, Livvy, Loxy, Colly and Edward for the slimmest of figures.” She had been introduced to the children and Herbert Dancey that evening at the Dancey residence before proceeding to the literary party. She had been touched to find that she and Loxy both had their tiny namesakes, little Colly being a blue-eyed, doll-faced toddler with blond curls who looked just like her mother.

“You’re right, my dear,” Henny sighed. “But I really should lose some of this weight. Little Edward is now one, and yet I weigh more, I think, than when I carried him.”

“Herbert doesn’t seem to mind.” Indeed, her husband, Collette thought, had seemed absurdly fond, watching Henny with a light in his pale gray eyes that only true love could place.

Henny dimpled and her round cheeks pinked. “He says he chose me knowing I would come to look like my mother, whom he always said was a very handsome woman.”

Collette remembered Mrs. Pope as large and grim. Ah, well, who was she to argue with a man who found a way to compliment his mother-in-law while reassuring his wife? “Your Herbert seems very…pleasant.”

“He’s wonderful,” Henrietta exclaimed, still fretting at the edge of her shawl. “I think… I think I may be going to have another child,” she said, her voice breaking slightly.

“Henny! How happy you must be,” Collette said, watching her friend’s face.

“Oh, I am. I’m so very happy.” Her tone was feverish and her knotting became frenetic. The shawl would soon be frayed beyond rescue. “What woman would not want a big, happy family? And I’m so fortunate, all so healthy, my babies are. Not a one gone, like poor, poor Loxy.”

Collette was silent, hearing the undertone of something like envy in Henny’s voice and wondering at it. Was her friend truly happy to be having a sixth child? Scandalous to question it, but it must be difficult to manage, even with domestic help. Philoxia, Henny had told her, had been wed and widowed, but had no children, having lost two before and at birth, besides the one she had lost before wedlock. She was a very rich widow who dabbled in the literary scene, just as Collette had surmised from occasional notices in papers. Henny had confirmed her guesses.

Her mind turning to their other friend, Collette asked, “Why have you never been to one of Philoxia’s affairs before?” She glanced over at Henny in the dim carriage. “I know you are not literary, dear, but you used to love any kind of party.”

The other woman appeared uneasy. “Well, I have been so busy.”

“Too busy for a party? I know Philoxia. Her soirées must be top-notch.”

Henny gazed down at her reticule and fussed with the silk strings that tied it closed. She knotted them over and over. “I never told Herbert about Philoxia’s fall from grace.”

“Of course not!” Collette said. “That is no one’s business but Loxy’s.”

“But he found out about it somehow. For a while he would not even allow me to have her over.”

“What? How could he stop you?”

“It is his house, dear, his home,” she said, her tone surprised, her blue eyes wide.

“And what are you, just the housekeeper?”

“Of course not,” Henny said. “But I do like a peaceful home. I found a way around it, though. I was so clever! You will be proud of me. I made sure he heard about how much money she has, for her husband left her a very wealthy woman in her own right, you know, and then I met Loxy at the dress shop and convinced her to invest her money with Herbert’s bank, telling them it was all Herbert’s idea. After that, the bank manager was so pleased with Herbert, and he was given a promotion, and I talked him into allowing me to have her over. But until now I have not raised the idea of going to one of her soirées. I could not believe he allowed me to go tonight.”

Collette was appalled. Of course she knew a man was always considered the head of his household, but she had never lived within that construct and had no idea that a woman must wheedle for what she wanted. It was demeaning. “Allowed you to go? How could he stop you?”

Henrietta gazed at her open-mouthed, at a loss for words, it appeared, and Collette stared back. For the moment it was as if they were speaking different languages. They could not bridge a gap neither could see across. Collette finally shook her head. “I have never been married. Perhaps now I know why.”

“But Colly, dear,” Henrietta protested earnestly. “It is my duty as a wife to be obedient. I am only doing what I should. I am his wife!”

There was silence for a few minutes. Collette tried to imagine having a husband. What would have happened if she had announced she was going to London? For that matter, there would have been no need, because she likely would not have written Last Days. There would have been no time, no energy, no thought. She forced her mind away from that topic. It would only lead to dissent between her and Henny. She could not help thinking that in her friend’s shoes, she would have behaved differently toward Philoxia instead of having to manipulate and wheedle just to be allowed to see her. And yet… Collette looked down at her beaded reticule. She, with all her freedom, had lost communication with their old friend. Henny, restricted and penned by her marriage, had fought to maintain that contact.

Ashamed of herself, Collette sat back in her seat and turned her attention to the party she was going to. “Never mind. We are going to have a splendid time tonight.” Trying to let the steady clop-clop of the carriage calm her thudding heart, she wondered why she was so nervous. This was just Loxy, and Henny was taking her to this soirée to surprise their friend with Collette’s appearance.

Something else was bothering her, then. She had felt, the moment she stepped up onto the train in Listerwood-on-Sea, that everything in her life was going to change, and that momentous journey had held such a surprise in her first kiss and flirtation with her mystery man. What other change was in the stifling summer air of London? Perhaps her experiences on the train were the entirety of the change in store for her. It wouldn’t be so bad if that was it, she supposed, because in truth she felt transformed in some ways. She longed to get back to the seaside, back to fresh salt breezes blowing off the channel and long walks to help her think about her next writing project. She felt like she was on the verge of breaking through her long writing drought, but still felt the urge to walk as she thought, which was not possible in the crowded, noisy, messy streets of London.

She sighed and gazed out the carriage window. It was still light outside, but the sky was beginning to tinge with cobalt and sulfur as the sun descended toward the horizon. The carriage pulled up before a tall, narrow townhouse, one of a block of eight in a long curved row, with ornate wrought iron fences and a gate before each one. They waited behind another carriage that disgorged a tall beaver-hatted gentleman and two ladies. When it clopped away, Henny’s carriage pulled up, and a footman helped them down. They stood together on the walk in front of the house, Collette fingering her evening bag with trembling fingers.

Henny laughed nervously. “Loxy will be bowled over backward to see me, and totally overturned to see you, my dear. I hope I do not appear foolish with all these literary types and artists. I haven’t read a single book since I left Miss Grant’s!”

“My dear, don’t be apprehensive,” Collette said, grabbing her friend’s plump arm and giving it a good squeeze. “Just listen and nod. Everybody loves a good listener, and writers especially so. They will think you the brightest person in the place if you listen and agree with whatever they say.”

“But how shall I know to what I am agreeing?”

“It won’t matter. Nobody will hold you to your opinion, and you will likely not see the person again anyway.” Collette smoothed her indigo gown, the best she owned, pulled her patterned shawl about her shoulders and straightened her gloves. She felt like she was going into battle for some absurd reason, and hoped her callow naiveté did not show. At least Henny had the advantage of having lived in London for the last ten years, and had not been buried in some tiny seaside town.

They ascended the wide granite steps and Henny gave her card to the butler at the door and whispered Collette’s name. The hallway was brilliantly lit with a gas chandelier and beeswax candles that glowed bright in wall sconces, flickering with the puff of air from the door opening and closing. Collette had never seen such a dazzling sight as the ornate gilt furniture and figured wall-coverings. The whole room—and that just an entranceway—was a confusion of ormolu and Aubusson, gilt and gewgaws, and she stood for a minute gaping in wonder. Henny nudged her and they walked forward, arm in arm, and were ushered into a large salon where black-coated gentlemen and luxuriously gowned ladies stood talking in theatrical tones and whispered confidences.

“There’s Loxy,” Henny whispered, squeezing Collette’s arm to her.

Collette flinched. She wanted to suggest they leave, as she began to feel she had made a dreadful mistake in coming. These people were all so…so sophisticated and rich and…well, different from her. Her dress was dowdy, and she had not a single jewel save her mother’s plain pearl earrings and a sapphire pendant. These women were exquisitely gowned in dresses that swung out from their nipped waists.

Collette merely wore a couple of layers of petticoats, whereas these gorgeous creatures wore skirts with yards and yards of expensive gold and green and blue fabric, jewel tones, trimmed with ells of lace, all draped over a cage crinoline. They looked like lovely bells, their gowns swaying as they walked. Collette stared in fascination. They had nothing like this in Listerwood-on-Sea.

Henny, though, was oblivious. She waved to a slender, beautifully attired woman on the other side of the room, and that lady broke away from the little group she had been standing with to sweep across the room, her full skirt billowing out. Collette stared at Philoxia, thinking she would never have picked the elegant, sophisticated lady walking toward them for her wild, passionate, impetuous friend.

“I never thought to see the day!” she said, hands outstretched as she approached. “Henrietta! Has Dancey let you away from your babies, then, and sent you out to see the great, wide, wicked world?”

Henrietta grasped her hands in her own and kissed her friend on the cheek, then stood back with a mischievous glint in her blue eyes. “Philoxia, I have come to bring you a surprise!”

Philoxia had smiled at Collette with polite greeting but no recognition in her eyes. Now she glanced down again—there was a considerable disparity in height between them—and a puzzled frown marred her lovely, aristocratic features. Her coal-black hair was swept back from her forehead and pomaded with fragrant oil, and she wore a deep burgundy gown of exquisite cut with a heavy chain of garnets and garnet drop earrings.

“Do I… Pardon me, but have we met?” she asked, peering nearsightedly at Collette.

Henny, for all her bulk, gave a schoolgirlish skip and giggled. “I knew you would not be wearing your glasses. Look carefully, my dearest. Your birthday is in two weeks—this young lady is your present!” Her eyes sparkled and she clasped her hands together, breathless while she waited for recognition.

“I don’t understand, dear.” She turned to Henny. “Whatever are you talking about?”

“Look closely, dear. Imagine that face with red strawberry around the mouth and an ink stain on the pointed chin!”

Philoxia peered carefully at Collette, then her narrow face took on a bewildered expression. She stared into Collette’s eyes. “Collette Jardiniere? Colly?” She grasped Collette’s shoulders and glared deeply into her eyes as if searching her soul for the truth. “Colly! Dear, sweet Colly, is that really you? Well, yes, of course it is! I should have seen it right away. You have changed hardly at all. But it has been almost…heavens, almost ten years since I left Miss Grant’s, and you were gone when I came back, and we hardly wrote. Oh my goodness, Colly!” Her voice had risen in tone through her speech until it was girlish and high, breaking with excitement and emotion.

Absurdly, Collette felt tears welling up and brimming in her eyes. Loxy, darling Loxy! How had she ever lost track of these two dears? One arm around Henny’s plump shoulders and one around Loxy’s, Collette drew her friends into a three-sided hug. For the first time in a long time, she felt complete. “Oh, Loxy, Henny, how I’ve missed you!” she exclaimed, tears blurring her vision behind her spectacles. “I never knew how much until this very second.”

The three young women, all of an age but with such different lives, chattered giddily as they moved over to a sofa, Collette in the center. Holding each others’ hands, they canvassed thoroughly their lives since school, chattering all at once sometimes about Collette’s quiet home in Listerwood-on-Sea and Philoxia’s various travels through Italy and France and even about Henny’s domestic woes.

But eventually Loxy glanced around the room, fishing her lorgnette out of a hidden pocket in her glamorous gown. “Oh, dear, what a dreadful hostess I am being tonight. I must see to my other guests, my darling dears, but I shall be back, and then, Collette, I shall introduce you around. If you are still interested in writing there are some very important people I would like you to meet.”

And so the meeting between herself and her old friend had occurred and yet still Collette felt that nervous quivering within her. She gazed around the room at the groups of people in energetic conversation. She knew Philoxia had played hostess to any number of literary luminaries, including Mr. Dickens himself, the king of London literary society. Perhaps she was just anticipating meeting such illustrious folk.

Loxy made her rounds, stopping here and there to talk, guiding people to the refreshment table, laden with pastries and presided over by an elderly dragon in black silk. She then came back to Collette and Henny and walked with them about the room, introducing them to people, gently steering them toward those who would look kindly upon them.

It was obvious to Collette that there were certain people who lurked in dark corners, people to whom Loxy did not introduce them, for whatever reason. There were men with a wild, unkempt look about them, and women whose dress was outré, to say the least. Collette wondered if Philoxia, knowing Henny’s husband’s control of her life, was being careful that she would have nothing to conceal after this night. It did not appear that those people did anything so very scandalous, but perhaps their conversation would shock.

“Ah, there is Mrs. Gaskell,” Philoxia said with an eager smile. “Let me introduce you to her. She is a very good friend.”

They approached a woman with a lovely oval face, mild eyes and a perfect cupid’s bow mouth. Loxy pulled Collette toward her and said, “Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell, I would like to introduce you to my old and dear friend, Miss Collette Jardiniere. Colly, this is Mrs. Gaskell, the author of Mary Barton, you know.”

“You d-do not need to tell me.” Collette took the other woman’s outstretched hand in greeting. “The name is enough. Mrs. Gaskell, this is an honor. I read Mary Barton with much interest. Such passion and meaning and…and…so much social conscience. It inspired me. I am reading North and South right now and enjoying it immensely.”

The woman gazed at her with interest. “Philoxia, dear, I would like to speak with this clever young woman. May I?” Eyebrows raised, she glanced at Loxy, who nodded.

Before Collette knew it, Philoxia and Henny were left behind and she was being escorted on a tour of the room with the famous novelist. It is like a dream, she thought, floating along with the other woman, and yet I am one of them. I am one of these people, a writer, a novelist acclaimed as the new Thackeray. But I did not have the courage to put my own name on the novel, and so now I am reaping the bitter harvest of cowardice. Perhaps it is only in the small villages such as mine that being a novelist is shocking. Perhaps if I had seen the world a little, come to London, I would not have made the same decision. If only I could talk to this woman as one writer to another. If only I had not hid behind a man’s name. If only—

All the “perhapses” and “if onlys” bore down on her like a leaden weight. This was the life she had wished for when young. Never had she found anyone to whom she could talk about literature and writing and books. Dear friends as they were, Henny was bored by books and did not want to even think about them outside of school hours, and Philoxia in her youth was wild, her tastes running to artists and musicians and a Bohemian lifestyle she espoused and wished to emulate. Running away with a music master and then being deserted by him was the closest she had ever come, as far as Collette knew. Books had been Collette’s province and a private delight and solace.

They walked and talked of books and writing. Mrs. Gaskell insisted that Collette call her Elizabeth, as the conversation became more personal. The authoress told Collette that she and Philoxia were close friends. When Philoxia had lost the last of her babies, she, Elizabeth, was just a few years past the death of her own last child, a boy, at ten months old. It had been very painful, and so she had been of some comfort to Philoxia.

“And so,” the woman said, turning away from such a sad subject and brightening, “do you write yourself, Collette, or do you just read?” She guided them toward a seat by the fireplace. “Though I should never say ‘just’, for is not the reader most vital in the process? What does a writer write for if not for some audience, the all-important reader?”

“I do have some ambition in that direction,” Collette said, sitting carefully so as not to disturb the other woman’s fashionable gown.

Mrs. Gaskell nodded with approval. “Novels, my dear, are a woman’s natural outlet. We are created for observation of people by a lifetime of needing their cooperation to live our lives with any amount of freedom. My own William—my husband, you know—is the dearest of men, but even the best of men require managing.”

Her remark echoed closely the thoughts Collette had been having earlier. “Did your husband not object to you publishing under your own name?” she asked, curious about the dynamics in a family where the woman was famous, and for writing books that had stirred controversy, too, much as her own Last Days had.

A group of ladies and gentleman nearby was embroiled in a fierce argument on some obscure matter of social law. Collette’s eyes widened at the boldness with which the women expressed themselves. She had always thought herself alone in the way she thought and spoke, but here were other women with passionate opinions and beliefs. Perhaps there was a place, even in Victoria’s England, for women with minds of their own!

“Oh, no, my dear,” the authoress said. “He encouraged me to write. But then William is… Well, he understands passion.” She flushed faintly, glancing away, and did not elaborate. “And things are easier for a married woman, you know. My dear friend Charlotte Brontë…” Her voice broke and she stopped for a moment, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief produced, as if by magic, from the sleeve of her elegant gown.

Collette stayed respectfully silent, not knowing what to say in the face of an acquaintance’s grief. It had been a shock to the literary world that just as she was becoming known as the real person behind the name Currer Bell, Miss Brontë, or rather Mrs. Bell as she had become upon marriage to her father’s curate, had died just that last spring.

Mrs. Gaskell drew herself up. “I was saying that unmarried women in our time must be careful of their reputation, as was my friend.”

Collette nodded. It was some sop to her conscience, she thought, that this woman might understand her motives, but not enough.

“I do not know whether she would have continued to write after her marriage,” Elizabeth continued, with a frown on her lovely face. “She would have had a family to look after,” she said, obliquely referring to the writer’s delicate condition, “and that must always take precedence. But I am determined that she will be immortalized for the work she did and for the wonderful, courageous woman she was. I am writing a life history of Charlotte, which explains my presence in London. I am gathering material, letters she wrote, keepsakes people treasure. Once I have what I need, I pray I will be able to retire back home to begin the writing.”

“I can sympathize with that. I believe the retirement of the village or countryside more suited for writing, and the more taxing the material, the more retired the writer’s circumstances should be,” Collette said. “You have undertaken a difficult job and should have some measure of seclusion.”

Elizabeth Gaskell glanced at her with piercing interest in her fine eyes. “You might not think my circumstances favorable for writing if you had seen the suffering I have observed around Manchester. My situation may be retired compared to London, but life is still full of duties that pull me this way and that. But on the whole I agree with you, my dear. I think that is especially true of women writers.

“The gentlemen seem to thrive on the hustle and bustle of the city, the aura of competitiveness. Mr. Dickens, Mr. Thackeray and the rest seem to need that to produce their best work. But women writers prefer the country. Perhaps it is just that we have so many more calls upon our time. You must wed a gentleman who values your mind as well as your other various parts. Not all husbands are as sympathetic as my dear William.”

Collette thought that perhaps Mrs. Gaskell was right. “If a woman writer is to marry,” she offered, “she had best be sure her husband is the right kind of man, in other words, and is wealthy enough for decent household help.”

Mrs. Gaskell chuckled. “Perhaps you have hit on something. We women are so dependent on others to make our lives smooth, whereas the gentlemen seem able to produce even when their home lives are in turmoil, as are some I could name. Ah…” Her lovely face lit up with enthusiasm. “Now, my dear,” she said, leaning into Collette and murmuring beneath the hubbub of conversation that swirled around them. “Now you will get to meet a truly interesting man. Though I don’t know how suitable he is for the company of a young unmarried woman, as he has the reputation of being a rake. But there is nothing so attractive to a woman as a rake, do you not agree? Collette, do you not agree?”

Collette could not speak. It was as if all breath had been sucked from her lungs while her heart pounded wildly. She stood absolutely still, gazing toward the door.

Jamie was here.

Six

She had not thought to ever see him again, and there he was, devastating in black evening clothes: broad-shouldered, taper-waisted, dark hair gleaming by candlelight. Jamie. A swarm of buzzing bees sounded in her ears and butterflies fluttered in her stomach, a veritable entomological frenzy of activity.

Jamie. Or whatever his name was. He was bending over a lady listening to her chatter as she flirted up at him, eyes wide and hands waving, touching his shoulder, then her own cheek, moving so her lovely skirt swayed. He took her hand and caressed it before raising it to his lips and kissing it slowly and gently.

Riveted, Collette watched, experiencing every sensation as though it were her hand; she remembered the feel of his lips, gentle on hers, and the tickle of his mustache.

Never had she believed that a woman could bear the mark of a man on her soul, but the fiery, searing touch of him had left its imprint, and she would never be the same. How could she ever leave him? And yet she must. To do otherwise would be to be devoured whole, a female Jonah within the leviathan gullet of his overwhelming presence. But then he swept over her like a channel wave and she was gone, gone, gone—

Why did that blasted inner voice only seem to work when she thought about him or saw him? And why could she not shape these internal maunderings into something—anything—that had literary merit? Perhaps it was because, as she had admitted to herself in the darkness of her attic room the previous night, she was experiencing and feeling new things. To fashion these new sensations into a plot would take time and contemplation, neither of which she had in abundance at the moment. Perhaps it would not be until she was back in Kent.

She gradually realized Elizabeth was guiding her in Jamie’s direction, and Philoxia was bearing down on him too, from across the room. They reached him together. He straightened, turned, and his eyes met Collette’s. For one instant all the sophisticated air of boredom was erased from his handsome face. His slate eyes widened, his thick brows raised on his forehead and his mouth, with its neat mustache lining it, curved in an expression of joy. He looked youthful and happy, as if someone had just given him an unexpected gift. Collette could not imagine what he was thinking. She only knew she was thrilled and afraid and hazardously close to euphoria.

“Jameson, how good to see you.” Philoxia took Collette’s other arm, and as Mrs. Gaskell looked on with some amusement, having perhaps noted the stunned expression on Collette’s face, their hostess said, “Miss Collette Jardiniere, may I introduce you to Mr. Charles Stonehampton Jameson?”

Jameson. Charles Jameson. In one moment, the time it took for the introduction, Collette’s world had convulsed, pitching her into a wilderness of confusion and disbelief.

He had betrayed her, had taken the most tender moments of her life and made them into dross. He was not who he said he was, or at least he was not who she had thought he was. He was her sworn enemy, a dastard, a fraud.

“M-Mr. Jameson? Charles Jameson?” Collette said, hearing her own voice’s inane inflection and quavering tremor.

“I am,” he said, his voice deep, his eyes expressive. “Miss Collette Jardiniere. What a lovely, lovely name, for a lovely lady. I feel almost as if we have met before.”

Collette felt a swell of fury tamp down the misery she had begun to experience. Villain! Cold-hearted devil! He would toy with her this way? Had he known who she was even as they spoke on the train?

She was bewildered and flustered. He couldn’t have known, could he? No one knew she was Colin Jenkins except her publishers, and even they had not known what she looked like. Her publishers. Was this set up somehow, Jameson’s misidentification as the author of Last Days? Had they all along known about the article in Wilson’s Gazette, planted it there, perhaps?

She needed to get away, needed to think. Nothing made sense.

Philoxia, eyes bright, glanced down at her and then at Jameson. “This rascal,” she said, waving her elegant hand toward him even as she glanced back and forth between her friend and the gentleman, “is reported to be an author. It is whispered that he is author of that scandalous, entertaining and thoroughly wonderful book, The Last Days of a Rake. But he will neither confirm nor deny it.”

Mrs. Gaskell spoke up. “Ah, the press! They do dog one’s trail so. If you are the author, I do not blame you for leading them a merry dance, Jameson. This young lady,” she said, her arm over Collette’s shoulders, “is interested in books. She may even write one someday. Collette, you should talk to this rogue. He poses as a mere do-nothing, a man about town, but at the very least he is a collector of rare manuscripts and an admirer of fine prose. And perhaps a very fine writer?”

Collette noticed the knave had not denied being the writer of her book, and her fury grew. She remembered the first moment she had seen the article. She read every paper she could obtain in Listerwood-on-Sea, and that usually included Wilson’s Gazette, as Professor Stiltson dropped off his copies for her perusal. The Professor was one of the few people aware of her literary secret identity, and she suspected that he had deliberately kept that particular issue out of her sight so as not to upset her. He seemed to believe she was much more fragile than she really was, perhaps because of her short stature.

It was not until two weeks after the story ran that she came across the article. The paper was wrapped around some vegetables delivered from the manor house to her aunt’s cottage. She wouldn’t even have noticed, but that the title of her book had leaped out at her. She had read all of the reviews, hugging her secret delight to herself except in front of her aunt and the Professor, and she eagerly seized the paper to read it.

To her dismay, after the headline she read:

Man about town and legendary rake Charles Stonehampton Jameson, an eminently well-connected gentleman, has been heard loudly acclaiming as brilliant the daring new novel The Last Days of a Rake. The novel is brilliant, a tour de force, an inimitable piece of perfection, he has been heard to exclaim. When this reporter approached Mr. Jameson and taxed him with being, perhaps, the secretive author, he would only say, “I suppose if I deny being Jenkins you will not believe me, so I will not bother denying it.” This equivocation is proof that the man is the brilliant new author and that the work is to some extent autobiographical, relating his journey from rake to man of letters. We congratulate Mr. Jameson, heretofore a collector of manuscripts, for stepping into the role of author, and acquitting himself with such brilliance on his first time out.

She glared up at the object of the paper’s fawning article. Blackguard, she fumed to herself. Base scoundrel. Thief.

What a fortuitous night this was, Jameson thought, rubbing his hands together. He had not been going to come to this literary party at all, having begun to find the sly innuendo and outright badgering he was subject to since that damned article, a nuisance. But he had come, and as a reward here was his sweet little Collette, his secret flirtation, the most intriguing young lady he had met in quite a while.

Collette Jardiniere. He rolled her name around in his mind, listening to the sound of it, liking the rich French tones, even as he relished how her indigo dress, as unfashionable as it was, clung to her modest curves. He smiled down at her, only to find her glaring up at him as if he emitted a particularly foul odor or had said a nasty word. What was wrong that she glowered at him like that?

“Well, my dear Mrs. Gaskell, if you say we must speak, you shall be obeyed at once.” More anxious than he ever found himself, he took her arm and guided her away, saying, as Mrs. Gaskell and Philoxia Bertrand looked on with indulgent smiles, “Miss Jardiniere, have you noticed that you and I have the same initials? Would your middle name happen to start with an S?”

When they were far enough from the others, he offered her a seat on a small fainting couch in a dim corner of the room and sat beside her, ignoring other ladies who were looking at him in reproach for not making his customary gallant rounds. She sat carefully, keeping a distance between them.

He thought for a moment. Had he done aught to offend her? She seemed angry. He must bend all his effort to charming her back into the open smile he remembered from the train. That expression had been so unguarded, so unpracticed. He had never experienced anything like it since. “Now that we are alone,” he murmured close to her ear, “I shall call you simply ‘Collette’ again. I do so like that name.”

She bent away from him and glared into his eyes, candlelight glinting on her spectacles. “I did not give you permission this time, sir!”

“Ah, but once permission is given, it can never be rescinded.”

“Is that some kind of rake’s code?” she said, her tone tart. “Does that carry through for your amorous conquests as well? May they never say ‘no’ to you once they have said ‘yes’? A dangerous philosophy, sir.”

He began to understand. Sighing, he shook his head. “Did Elizabeth and Philoxia fill your head with some nonsense about me being a rake? Is that what is behind this change in attitude toward me?” He lowered his tone, making it tender as he laid a hand on her slender bare arm above her glove. “You were not always so cold, my dear.” He caressed her soft, smooth skin. It had the feel he remembered, that satiny texture of finest chamois.

“I am not your dear,” she said fiercely, pulling her arm away.

Her green eyes, behind glass, were the color of jade and just as mysterious as that oriental stone, with sparks of topaz. She had hardened toward him. Had his liberties in the train given her a disgust of him? Was that why she ran away from him in the station? Or was she afraid of her own feelings? That was much more likely. Women were often frightened of their own sexual responses and repulsed by the physical aspect of human life. With their weaker understanding, they could not reason that life relied on just such physicality.

Whatever had happened, it appeared all she felt toward him was revulsion. But it could not stay that way, not if he bent all his efforts to the task at hand. He would charm her against her own conscience—he had done so before.

Sincerity. That was perhaps the weapon to charm her. But she was bright and perspicacious; any falsity would be sensed. And so he would tell the truth.

He clasped his hands in front of him and scanned the room. Philoxia and Elizabeth were standing together by a mahogany table looking in his direction and talking and smiling. He didn’t even want to think what they were making of him drawing Collette away like this. It had been rash, for he would not wish their conversation to become the subject of gossip. As odd as it seemed even to himself, his relationship with this slender lady was precious to him and private. He should have been more circumspect. Jameson looked down at the Turkish carpet and sighed.

“I know you are not ‘my’ dear,” he said to Collette, looking back up into her eyes. He didn’t smile. He simply examined her expression, the flashing green of her eyes, the dour scowl on her pretty mouth. He deeply wanted to kiss that scowl away but would have to talk her out of her sour mood. “Do you know, I have done nothing but think of you every minute since you ran away from me in the train station?” Damn it, that was the truth. Against every determined effort of his own, he had not been able to forget the little country wren. “Why did you do that, Collette…Miss Jardiniere, if I must call you that? Why did you run away from me?”

He saw indecision on her gamine face. She really was an adorable creature, with a pointed, dimpled chin and perfect mouth. He was not sure why she had affected him. Perhaps she represented a challenge or a change or something like that. But he had enjoyed their conversation almost as much as their kisses, and that was puzzling. She had done nothing but disagree with him. He was not accustomed to women who disagreed with him.

“I did not run away from you.” She gazed across the room but then turned and met his eyes again. “I merely found the man who had come to meet me at the station,” she continued. “I’m not familiar with London, and he was departing in the other direction. I was afraid to lose sight of him. He had my bag, and I didn’t even know where I was going, as he had, to my surprise, already rented a room for me. It is reasonable, I think, to not want to lose sight of the only person in a great metropolis who knows where one is going, and who, furthermore, has one’s valise.”

He frowned. “Who is this man who met you at the station? And what have you come to London for?”

“I told you,” she replied tartly. “Business.”

“Business. Yes, you did say that, but you never did explain what business a young lady like you could possibly have in London.”

“But Mr. Jameson, you have some explaining to do.” She stared at him, her lips pinched in a firm line, her expression still dour. “Why did you not tell me, when you saw what I was reading, that you are the author of that book?”

Damn. He had forgotten what she was reading on the train. And Philoxia had had to bring that up as she introduced them. Damn and damn again!

“That is merely a rumor, Miss Jardiniere. Surely you do not trade in rumor and innuendo?”

“No, I generally go to the source and ask them the truth straight out. I am a great believer in the truth.”

That sounded very much like a challenge.

“Shall we say that some of the novel reads like the story of my life?”

“No, we shall not say that,” she said, a stubborn note in her melodious voice. “What is so difficult about a simple question? Did you write The Last Days of a Rake or not?”

“What if I was the author and wrote under a pseudonym because I wanted my privacy? What then should I say to intrusive questions like that?”

He was pleased to see her flinch. She gazed off over his shoulder with glazed and unseeing eyes for a moment, and then seemed to come to a decision.

“I would say,” she said, meeting his eyes again, “that you are entitled to your privacy, but once someone speculates on your identity, I think that if it is your work, you should acknowledge it. You should not lie, and evasions are merely lies in vague dressing. Is it your work or not? Make a statement.”

Her words were harrying. He could not abide a nag, and this harpy would certainly be one of those. He was becoming intensely irritated without quite knowing why. She was the most demanding, infuriating girl—woman, lady?—he had ever met. He longed to give her a set down, to tell her it was none of her business after all, but some part of him admitted the justice of her remark. The confusion over his supposed authorship had become tedious and mocked his inadequacy.

He sighed deeply and folded his arms over his chest. “I am not the author of The Last Days of a Rake. Are you satisfied?” He caught a look of some gratification on her face. What was it to her? Why was this an important issue?

“Not wholly.” She sat up straight and primly folded her hands together on her lap over her reticule. “What are you going to do about that journal, Wilson’s Gazette? Should you not tell them the truth so they can print a retraction of some sort?”

“Why would I do that?” he exclaimed. “Do you take me for a bloody fool? Tell them I am not the author whom I never claimed to be?”

“They wrote that you were the author, and you should correct them!” she said, shaking her finger in his face. “For the real author’s sake, if for nothing else.”

He stared at her if she were mad. It occurred to him that she had read the Gazette story; she must have to be so familiar with it. Was she disappointed he was not the author? Did she fancy herself enamored of this elusive Colin Jenkins, as half the silly women in London claimed to be, to judge by foolish conversations he had overheard at tea tables and evening parties, the opera and theatre? One woman claimed she had written the author, at the publisher’s address, offering to marry him, sight unseen. But that just did not fit with what he had surmised about her. He did not judge her to be one of those women seeking some tenuous connection with celebrity, even if it was only in their own fevered imagination.

“In the first place, it is not my business to correct erroneous stories about me by young men with more imagination than intelligence. In the second place, I have learned the least said, soonest mended, and in the third place, are you quite mad?”

She bridled and lifted her chin. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to shut her mouth in the most delectable way he could think of, and that was to kiss it. But if it was highly irregular on the train, it was scandalous in a salon crowded with people. Not that half of these people would mind. They were of an artistic bent, or of a mind to appreciate the artistic temperament, and would be shocked but titillated. If it were any other woman he might do it just to garner a reaction, even if it ended in his being slapped on the cheek. It would not be the first time. He still remembered her resounding slap with a great deal of pleasure and wished he had taken the opportunity to return the salute with a vigorous smack on her bottom as he followed her off the train.

However, he did not wish to subject a lady whom he could only characterize as innocent, and for whom furthermore, he had a peculiar—absolutely mad, considering the way she treated him—affection, to gossip and innuendo. He was inured to it, but she would not know what to do. Of course there was that maddening strain of tenacity; perhaps he was being too easy on her.

“I am not mad, but I believe in honesty,” she was saying in reply. “What do you think the real author is thinking this very moment? Do you feel quite comfortable being such a fraud?”

Jameson shifted uncomfortably. He had not really thought of what the author would think about him. It had not seemed important at the time, but perhaps she had a point, especially in light of the fact that he was trying to find him. It was what his trip down to Kent was about. He had gleaned from the pages of the novel an inkling that since a promontory along the Kentish shoreline was the setting for one memorable and very poignant scene in the book—one close to the end when the hero was considering his imminent death—it had, perhaps, some deep meaning to the author. So he had hared off to Kent to try to track down the exact location, thinking the novelist might actually live close by, but no one had known any Colin Jenkins. Meeting Collette on the train was the only thing that had salvaged his memory of that otherwise disappointing jaunt.

“If the author wishes me to retract,” Jameson said carefully, “he need only come forth and tell me. I have been longing to meet the fellow to congratulate him on a work I would not feel ashamed to name my own. That was half the reason I equivocated to the damned Gazette lad. I thought the real author might come forth to straighten out the record.”

She gazed at him steadily, her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You mean, this is not some kind of conspiracy between you and the publisher to gain more publicity for the book?”

“Don’t be absurd! I tried to get the author’s real name out of the publisher, a chap by the name of Bellringer, and he would not tell me, nor even if Colin Jenkins is a nom de plume or the fellow’s actual name. I have had a man harassing every Colin Jenkins in London. I was set to send him about the countryside smoking out other Colin Jenkinses, but I am on the verge of giving up.”

Her expression cleared and she actually smiled. “The publisher would not tell you the author’s real name? Do you think he was being protective of the author’s identity?” Her voice lifted with a lighter tone.

“Yes. He told me the fellow lived in retirement and did not wish to be bothered. He would not confirm the name as a pen name, so I still don’t know the truth.”

“And you truly only want to talk to the writer?”

“What do you think, that I want to marry the fellow? Of course I only want to talk to him. I would respect his anonymity,” Jameson said with all honesty. It would be a great pity in his thinking, but if the fellow truly wanted to remain anonymous, then so be it. “I would gladly tell the public I am not the author if that is what the fellow wanted. I just want to congratulate him on a fine achievement, possibly the best novel of this decade. I would like to be his patron but would respect his desire for anonymity if it came from his lips.”

Collette looked pensive, staring down at her gloved hands, stroking the indigo fabric of her dress and picking at a loose thread. He watched her. She was teetering on the edge of some decision. What was it?

“I don’t know what any of this has to do with you,” Jameson said. He edged toward her. “Why don’t we talk about something more entertaining,” he said urgently, “like a kiss on a dark train by the light of a single candle? I have thought of you so often. I don’t even know why, but you left me bereft when you fled the station.” He felt naked and helpless, unable to explain even to himself the effect she had upon him. All he knew was he wished to explore it further.

She reddened but did not respond. She looked up into his eyes, and he had the oddest feeling she was searching his soul, diving into depths he did not even think he possessed.

“There is something we can talk about,” she said. “You can talk to me about my book if you like. I am the author of The Last Days of a Rake. I am Colin Jenkins.”

Seven

Oh, Lord, Collette thought. I have done it. I have told him. Her heart thudded wildly with the knowledge that in some way, reading a writer’s book was to glimpse into her soul. She was afraid to look up into his eyes, fearful that she would see a dawning understanding there, and so was not prepared for the sharp bark of laughter, followed by quickly stifled snorts.

“You are Colin Jenkins? Ha! Very good, my dear. I have been hoisted, I believe, on my own petard.” He relaxed back on the fainting couch, resting against the wall and crossing one long leg over the other.

“You don’t believe me?” Now was her chance. She could retract now and let him think she joked.

He uncrossed his legs and sat up straight again, tilting his head, his slate gray eyes challenging her with his direct stare. “Believe you? I didn’t think you were serious. My dear, you do not mean to tell me that you, a young lady, wrote a book that explores the darker side of a rake’s consciousness?” His voice had a caustic edge to it, as sharp and burning as acid.

Fury at his patronizing tone filled her. How dare he question not only her abilities, which she admitted he had no reason to know about or believe in, but her veracity? She, who had taxed him with lying! She was driven now to respond to his insult. “Do you think I lie?”

He bent toward her and said, “You’re serious? You mean me to believe you wrote that book?”

“I mean you to believe I do not lie,” she said.

He smiled, but the expression was cold and humorless for all his lips twisted upward in the corners. “For argument’s sake, let us say I believe you. Where on earth did you, a spinster from a tiny seaside village, come about knowledge of the soul of a rake like Lankin?” he asked, about the central character of the novel. “How would you understand how he thinks, how he feels, what he wants? Impossible. Outrageous.”

She smiled back at him. To any of the twenty or thirty people in the room it would look, no doubt, as thought they were having a charming conversation, when all she wanted to do was box his ears. Scornfully, she said, “Do you really think a London rake is so very different a creature from the charming but amoral dairyman, who has all the village maidens swooning with love for him? Their language may differ, and their manner of dress, but judging by the success of my novel, I would say the characterization is the same.”

His look of boredom sharpened into something else. “A rake and a dairyman!” He shook his head. “Nonsense. They have nothing in common and to suggest otherwise is an insult. If you expect me to believe you, then tell me this—where did you get the idea for such an exploration of life? And to set it in London, too! Why not stay with a novel of village or countryside life?”

Anger changed to understanding. Of course he could not imagine where she came by the idea. She didn’t even completely understand it herself, but that some element of it had nothing at all to do with a rake, or city life, or sexual conquest, but had to do with the journey of the soul. That any writer of merit could render. The rest was just details and could be filled in with research and imagination.

Collette gazed off into the dim corners of the room, not really seeing any of it. The images from her book were vivid in her mind, sometimes sharper and more real than the life around her. “I cannot say what moved me to write about Lankin. He came to me and fascinated me. His rakishness could have its substitute in any behavior taken to extremes. The gambler, the opium eater, the drunk… All excesses have at their core the same drives, don’t you think? Lankin uses his sexual conquests to dull the pain of his own inadequacy, even while he is filled with a kind of conceit, the conceit that only he matters, only his thoughts and his concerns. In the end, his salvation only begins when he understands how false a life that is. His reformation… That troubles me still because reformation was not necessary—only full knowledge of what drove him was vital, a deeper understanding, you see. That he attains. Even as he is dying, he comes to realize he is only beginning to truly live. That is the saddest part for me. His self-knowledge comes too late. And yet, I could not change his fate.”

She plucked absently at the smooth fabric of her dress and stared down at her hands, the smooth fabric of the gloves concealing the ink stains that tattooed her fingers. “Do you know, my Aunt Nettie was a London belle during King George IV’s regency? A celebrated beauty, I believe. She had four London seasons before marrying and going to India, and has told me so many stories, that coming to London I felt like I was coming to a place I had explored once but had not seen for many years. The gardens of Vauxhall, these beautiful houses of Mayfair,” she said, waving a hand around the salon, the ornate furnishings and high ceilings. “Rotten Row and promenades of Hyde Park, the theatres and churches… I have seen it all through her eyes. If the novel has a faintly old-fashioned air, it is because my aunt has not been to London in…oh, twenty-five years or more.” She glanced over at Jameson, realizing he had been silent for some time.

His expression had devolved into an open stare of astonishment, and Collette’s stomach convulsed. He is beginning to believe me, she thought. What have I done?

He shook his head. “It is not possible,” he said, a faint hint of desperation in his fine voice. “When I was reading the novel, I thought, ‘I have felt like that before. I have said just that same thing, and to just that sort of person.’ How could you have…? Where did you…?” He shook his head again, falling silent.

“I take that as a compliment,” Collette said. It thrilled her to learn that an acknowledged rake should recognize the core of truth in her writing. She had labored long over every sentence, every phrase, every deeper meaning, and his wonder was heady praise, whether he knew it or not.

Even longer had she worked on the plotting, every nuance working toward the eventual, inevitable resolution, her hero’s death. For a while she had not been sure if it was right to leave the conclusion with some ambiguity. Lankin’s search for Susan, his first innocent conquest, remained unresolved in the end, but life was not tidy. It would not do to tie up all the ends like a neat parcel, ready for the post. Life was a messy business, and the verisimilitude of her novel lay in that truth.

Jameson stared into her eyes for a long time. His own eyes had deepened in color until in the false light of the salon they looked almost black. Fear seized her, for if he believed her, then she was in grave danger. She was attracted to him physically—that much was evident by her reaction to his kisses on the train—but perhaps, she had thought, that was only because he was the embodiment of her rakishly handsome character, Lankin. That attraction was artificial, driven merely by his good looks, his skill in the sensual arts and her own curiosity. But if he was deeper in character, if he was searching for truth as it seemed from his earnest gaze, then… Collette gazed into the depth of his eyes, and the inner voice spoke again.

Save me, for I am drowning, losing myself within a man as I swore I never would, and I am afraid. He could change me against my will. I would become someone else; a woman in love is a woman without thoughts and feelings and beliefs of her own, and I cannot let that happen to me.

The voice quieted, and still he gazed into her eyes. She looked away from him, desperate to break the contact that riveted her. She glanced up to find that Philoxia and Henny were drifting in their direction, intense curiosity and alarm on their faces. She didn’t have much time to accomplish what she had set out to do. It was now or never, she feared, and she had not exposed her soul to this man without a reason. She needed something from him and had realized within minutes of meeting him that telling him the bald truth was the only way to attain her end.

She turned to Jameson. “I feel you may believe me now, that I am indeed Colin Jenkins, the author of Last Days. You can see now my interest in to whom authorship is attributed. I have my own reasons for being displeased that it has been attributed to you. I would ask—plead with you really—will you be honest? Will you tell the truth? Own up, Mr. Jameson. Tell the public you are not the author of Last Days.”

He gazed at her still, his dark eyes locked on her face, tracing her lips, her brow line, her chin, and then meeting her eyes again. His expression was troubled, turbulent like the gray channel waters on a wild winter day, a view she loved even more than those same waters on a sunny, blue and green day. Every time she allowed her gaze to linger, locked with his, she felt like she was being dragged in by the current of his personality, in danger of drowning. She broke the connection with an exasperated sigh.

“I will have to think on this.” He followed her gaze and saw Henrietta Dancey and Philoxia Bertrand bearing down on them. “I will consider all you have told me, and then I would see you again to discuss this further. When may I see you?”

Her eyes widened. She had not thought to see him in social circumstances. She was not prepared. What would she do?

“Accompany me to the opera,” he said, his tone urgent. He grasped her hand and held it to his chest. “Tomorrow night. Say you will, Collette, please. I have a box. Perhaps one of your friends would be so good as to accompany you?”

She could feel his heart pounding through his evening jacket. “I can’t.”

“Please.”

“I… I’ll have to see,” she cried, staring into his eyes, lost in their dark depths. “I’m not prepared for social—”

“Your gown is just fine,” he said, his intimate knowledge of women perhaps bringing him understanding of what stalled her. He stroked her palm through the glove. “Under cover of all the screeching and moaning of the singers, we can talk some more, and I can tell you what I am prepared to do.”

“You will be prepared to tell the truth,” she said indignantly, tugging at her hand.

“Ah, but there are many ways to approach the truth. Besides,” he said, recovering his jaunty tone, “you have not wholly convinced me that you are Colin Jenkins. Another meeting will be necessary. Tomorrow night.”

He stood and pulled her to her feet, then bent from the waist and laid a practiced kiss a proper inch in the air above her glove. “I will consider it done,” he said, releasing her hand from his iron grip. “’Tis late in the season, but a few performances remain for this particular opera, and if we do not enjoy the singing, I am sure we will enjoy the company. I know I will.” He bowed to her, greeted Philoxia and Henrietta, and then drifted away to talk to others.

Collette was stunned. She was confirmed in her belief that though others felt she had successfully rendered a rake’s life and reform in her novel, she had not done the creatures justice. He had mesmerized her once again until she had acquiesced to going to the opera with him.

Jameson circulated, talking and laughing, flirting and drinking just as he normally would, even though his mind was madly whirling beneath his affectation of normalcy. Old Hawley, another collector of manuscripts, asked him about the Henry Fielding manuscript and he told the story he had invented to explain his sudden trip, of going all the way down to Kent only to find it a fake. A voracious widow, Mrs. Allen, flirted outrageously with him and he responded with just the right amount of salacious wit to keep her giggling, while delicately evading her blatant invitation to her boudoir. Percy Conway demanded to know what Jameson thought of his new poetry collection, but honesty would have been rude in this case, and so Jameson murmured that it was so very indicative of Percy’s soul, was it not? The young man smugly preened.

But all the while he kept his eye on Collette. She was simply dressed in an indigo gown with a modest flare, a slim, serious, bespectacled figure in a room of women garbed in bell-like dresses of enormous proportions. Her hair was unadorned, while every other woman in the salon had jewels or silk flowers or gaudy ornaments in their coroneted, braided, looped, curled, pomaded hair. Every simple detail merely elaborated on the theme; Collette Jardiniere was different from any other woman in the room, different in thought, different in temperament, different in heart and soul.

Unlike him, she did not attempt to appear unconcerned and relaxed. She darted glances toward him and her forehead creased in troubled lines. Her friends, Henrietta Dancey and Philoxia Bertrand, spoke to her for a few moments, but she appeared to wave off their concern and they left her to sit alone.

He, too, was troubled as he talked and laughed with acquaintances, only one small part of his mind taken up with the social interaction so much a part of his existence. Was she telling the truth? Was she Colin Jenkins? It was unthinkable, unimaginable! How could that girl—for though he judged her to be in her late twenties, she appeared no older than a girl with her narrow, solemn face and unblinking stare—how could she write a work like Last Days, as she called it familiarly, as one would shorten an old friend’s name? How could a work that explored the inner life of a man who lived a rake’s life in London come from that quiet country spinster?

And yet…something whispered to him that she was telling the truth, something in her eyes and her expression and her explanation. If she was lying, it was a brilliant dissemblance. But surely she would not risk saying something so outrageous if it were not true?

Philoxia, the hostess of this literary salon, led a balding, bearded man over to her seated friend and he bowed before Collette. At her invitation, one wave of her white-gloved hand, he sat beside her. Who was it? Who would partake of her delicious conversation and stare into her gold-flecked green eyes? Jameson glared through the dim light. It was that failure, Mr. Anthony Trollope, he realized, a fellow who haunted the literary scene on the coattails, or rather skirts, of his well-known mother, Frances Trollope. He would never amount to anything beyond the civil servant he was and would probably always be, and was doomed to remain, as a writer, a scribbler of Irish tales and everyday sundries. Why was he not in Ireland, at his Post Office appointment?

Still, Collette and Trollope appeared to find much to talk about. The first faint stirrings of resentment in Jameson’s breast took him by surprise. He left the group with whom he stood and circled at a distance the couch they sat on, wondering what it was they spoke about. And yet, what was his concern if Collette should waste her time talking to a literary nobody? The man was a bore, though Collette evidently did not find him so, judging from her intent conversation. She had stopped even looking up and no longer sought Jameson out in the crowd.

What were they talking about?

“Jameson, you old dog, where have you been lately? Avoiding the press? Or courting it!”

The voice behind him startled him out of his reverie. He turned to find himself accosted by a friend and fellow rake, Sainsbury Ellice. He groaned at yet another suggestion that someone had read that damned story in Wilson’s Gazette and believed him the author of Last Days.

“Now, Sain,” he said, deliberately making his voice laden with ironic detachment. “I really had thought to be safe from you. I didn’t think you read anything more taxing than your invitations!”

The man chuckled and slapped Jameson on the back. “I don’t as a usual thing, but the season’s over and invitations getting thin. Must keep myself occupied somehow when I’ve run out of money for gambling, m’mistress is cheating on me and I am sick from too much brandy.”

“Don’t tell me you believe the scurrilous nonsense, though.”

Sainsbury raised his thick, dark eyebrows. Jameson had been told on more than one occasion that he and Sain looked enough alike to be brothers, but he couldn’t see it. Sain had bright blue eyes, dark hair and the beginnings of dissipated little lines around his eyes. Threads of red veins crossed his cheeks, the remnant of too much brandy and too little sleep.

They had similar habits, and their taste in pastimes, drink and women was much the same, but Sain went at it a little more fervently and had no other interest in life. Where Jameson had investments and business dealings, Sain lived on a quarterly allowance meted out by his father, an elderly war hero from the Napoleonic era. It was a good thing the old man handled his money, or Sain would be broke, as he had no goal in life but to carouse away all his waking hours. That, Jameson liked to believe, made them very different creatures.

“Of course I don’t believe it, you dolt,” Sain scoffed. “I know you too well. Think what you will of my academic strengths. I have read that particular piece of trash and know you would not write such odious garbage.”

“Trash? Garbage? Watch yourself, Sain,” Jameson said, glowering at his friend. “I think it is as fine a piece of work as I have ever read, and you must admit I have more right to judge than do you.”

His friend gazed at him, a considering look replacing the skeptical one on his face. “Perhaps you are the writer, after all, or you wouldn’t be so damned touchy about it! Last Days of a Rake! Dismal piece of nonsense. If you’re going to write something, I say pattern it after some o’ that scandalous French folderol, and don’t moan on about dying from our vices.”

Jameson stared moodily over at Collette and Trollope on the sofa near a large window. She was totally enthralled by what the man was saying as he waved his hands in the air, tugged at his beard and became more animated than Jameson had ever seen him. She nodded vigorously, and he caught her hands up in his.

“I am not the writer,” Jameson said, through gritted teeth. What were they talking about? The question screamed through his brain, torturing him with persistent nagging.

“If you say so, old man. What is wrong with you though, and why are you staring gloomily at Trollope? You two having a feud? Wouldn’t think you would stoop to fight with a pettifogging civil servant. Not the done thing, you know.”

Roused from his unsuitable preoccupation, Jameson determined that he was really being ridiculous. What was it to him if Trollope and Collette were talking like old friends, heads together, a radiant smile on her piquant face? Her green eyes probably glinted with those flecks of gold that seemed to glow when she was excited or perturbed, and she—

Damn it! He was doing it again, obsessing about a little country nothing who must be mad to claim authorship of a novel about a legendary rake! He had to get away.

He turned to Sain. “What do you say, old man, that we go and find some sport? My treat.”

“Good go!” Sain said, clapping his hands together. “I’ve had enough o’ this literary claptrap to last me an eon. Lead on! ’Specially if you’re paying the way.”

The two departed with only one backward glance on Jameson’s part at Collette. She was still caught up in conversation with Trollope, her reed-like figure bent toward him. Jameson would see her tomorrow night and perhaps even stoop to using his wiles to make her a little in love with him again. She would be no match for his abilities, and he knew it. For the first time in his life, twenty-four hours seemed a long time.

Eight

Collette sat at her desk, gazing down at the spidery script, her own handwriting, in front of her in the yellow pool of light that spilled over her page from the oil lamp. She was trying to concentrate on the beginning of a new novel. It was not the first time she had tried. In Listerwood she had made many starts, but they had all seemed false and overwrought. Last Days had come so easy in one sense. Lankin and his story had come to her as if it were a dream she had and merely needed to write down.

The agony came in the rewriting process, the polishing of her work to a golden sheen, the exploration of every theme, the aching need to be sure her hero’s motivation rang true and his speech was just right. Writing was sheer delight, rewriting torment. She kept expecting another novel to come to her like a lover in the night, but it eluded her. It was hard work, not the free-flowing expression of her soul that Last Days was. She wasn’t afraid of hard work, but surely she should have some feeling that it was going somewhere!

Life was full and confusing right now, but beneath all the turmoil fear hummed: fear that she would never write another novel like Last Days, and fear that she had just that one stroke of genius in her. Not that Last Days was truly brilliant; she was beginning to see the flaws now, so very vividly. She stared at her page until ink dropped from her pen, blurring the last word and soaking into the paper. She blotted the blob and wiped the nib of her pen.

The lamplight was fading. She put her head in her hands and cradled it, staring down at the paper. It was all like a snarled needlework project: one kept going back to it and getting discouraged because the same knots presented themselves time after time. What should she write? Could she write? Or was the first one just a fluke? After all, she had written for years before producing Last Days. Maybe it would take just as long or longer to do something new.

Even that evening had been a bewildering tangle of jumbled thoughts, emotions, experiences, but then that seemed to characterize her life right now. She could think of nothing but Jameson. Even her inner voice was obsessed with him and some unnamed, unimagined character falling in love with a man like him. But she had written that story, or something close to it. It was time for a new theme, new characters.

And yet time and time again, her mind returned to her present dilemma. The evening had been so strange, so… She shook her head and scrubbed her bleary eyes.

Meeting Jameson again and learning he was the cad indirectly taking responsibility for her novel had shocked and appalled her, and yet by the end of their conversation she had agreed to accompany him to the opera the next night! What was there to discuss? Either he would own up to not being the author of Last Days, or he was an unprincipled bounder. There was nothing to discuss and nothing more between them. How could she even continue to think of him with an idiotic longing in her foolish breast, knowing that not only was he a rake and a scoundrel, he was the cad who had stolen her identity?

But then Philoxia had introduced to her a Mr. Anthony Trollope, who, like Mrs. Gaskell, was on a very brief visit to London, he from his position in Ireland in the Post Office. Knowing she was interested in books and writers, even if she did not know the full extent of her friend’s involvement in literary endeavors, Philoxia had murmured her introduction and then left them alone.

It was the kindest thing she could have done. For one precious hour she had been able to forget there even existed in the world a man like Charles Jameson. She at first hesitant, and Trollope a little shy, they had spoken of the weather. But then she had asked him some trifling thing about books, and they found together so many of the same tastes and beliefs about literature and writing.

Mr. Trollope, it seemed to her, was the embodiment of a true writer. It was all he wanted to do, all that mattered to him, even though he labored at daily employment. In every spare moment away from work and family duties, he wrote, while his wife did the fair copy of his work for him. He had struggled long and hard, writing novel after novel, only to be disappointed time and time again. His Irish novels had been severely criticized by most literary reviews, but, undaunted, he had continued writing.

This time he believed he had found his niche. The Warden, his latest novel, had met with some favorable criticism, even if sales had not been very encouraging. But he felt he was on the right track, felt he had found a style and setting suitable for his talent. He had stolen a couple of days away from his work for the Post Office in Ireland to consult with his publisher, he said. He had started a new novel tentatively titled Barchester Towers, and it was going to be much longer than The Warden. He needed the assurance of his publishers that the length he had in mind would not be an impediment to publishing.

How did he find time for writing, Collette asked him, with a demanding job and a family? He confessed he had taken to writing on the train as he traveled, not willing to let the hours be idle. They talked on about writing and the publishing world, and she felt she had gleaned valuable information from one who had struggled so long for elusive success. It humbled her that this great man had worked so hard, and yet her own novel had hit such a voracious market in her first time publishing. But whose was the name people would remember in the future? She didn’t know, but there was something of greatness in the small, balding, homely man, and she was grateful for his kindness toward her.

It was a heady feeling indeed to be talking to a man she might consider a colleague, and that he treated her as an equal, listening gravely to her opinion and not shunning it because it had come from a woman, like some gentlemen she could mention. Perhaps being raised by a writing mother had led Mr. Trollope to a true understanding of the abilities of women, for she felt none of the condescension emanating from him as she so often felt from men, none of the patronizing pat-on-the-head attempts to speak down to a child’s understanding. She had been close, so very close, to confiding in the man, for she thought he might believe her and understand her dilemma. But then, what would she say? She could not claim her rightful place as author of Last Days. She could only listen as others around her praised or damned her work. It was frustrating.

Finally she laid down her pen, admitting to herself that she was not going to get any more work done this night. She had been sitting and just thinking for so long it would be first light in a few short hours. Collette blew out the candle and laid down on the lumpy, uncomfortable bed. Had coming to London been a huge mistake? It felt like it right now. She had imagined Rosewood Publishing would be as appalled as she by Jameson’s usurpation of her identity and her work, and that they would gladly help her. She thought they would be indignant on her behalf and would sternly warn the paper that they must print a retraction.

Apparently it was too much to hope for, though, that they would openly deny the story in Wilson’s Gazette. They were, in their own view, doing what was best for her because the better sales were, the more money would be made. As long as the public continued to gossip about the authorship of the book, the more it would sell.

She turned over in bed and punched the lumpy, musty-smelling pillow, longing for the sweet-smelling linen and open windows of her own tiny room in the eaves of her aunt’s cottage in Listerwood-on-Sea. At night she would leave her windows open so the salt-tanged air would roll in, scented with the aroma of the hay in the nearby fields. The cottage garden was right below her window and night-scented stocks gave off their perfume along with sage and yarrow, borage and basil from her herb garden. She had tried leaving her window open here, but all she got was the smell of horse dung, garbage and human waste, and her ears were assaulted by the harsh early-morning yells of the hawkers and cart-men selling their wares, instead of being lulled to sleep by the distant sound of waves crashing on the shore at home.

She should go back to Listerwood and write, and not care if Mr. Charles Jameson took her name, since he could never have her ability or her royalties. What did it matter in the long run to whom the credit went, if those closest to her and she herself knew the truth? Sighing deeply, she admitted that at that moment, it was a very attractive thought. If only she had someone to talk to about it, someone in whom to confide. She had reanimated her acquaintance with Philoxia and Henrietta but still did not feel able to confide in them fully. She closed her eyes but knew sleep would not be coming for a long while.

Had he been wrong? He didn’t want to think it.

Jameson sat brooding over a late-night brandy by the empty fire grate in the library of his townhouse. The house was silent around him, as he had sent his staff scuttling off to bed long before, not willing to have others waiting for him to take to his bed. He might not go to bed at all that night, and the knowledge that others tiptoed around the house, whispering in corners and waiting with one eye on the clock would be unnerving.

He had caroused with Sain for several hours after leaving Philoxia Bertrand’s literary soirée but had finally left his friend drunk at a house of ill repute. Madame Peléron would make sure he got home safely, or at least had a place to sleep off the effects of far too much wine. He might have lost his diamond collar studs and tie pin by the next morning and he would undoubtedly have an aching head, but he would be fine.

As for himself, he had drunk far less than Sain, wishing to retain the clarity of thought that was sobriety’s sole province.

Was Collette Jardiniere right? Had he been wrong to imply—despite the weakness of his words to the reporter the implication was clear—that he was the author of Last Days? Should he have attempted to stem the tide of gossip surrounding him?

For a little while it had been entertaining. People who had hitherto ignored him now eyed him speculatively and even talked to him on occasion. William Thackeray had gravely shaken his hand and asked how he did, at a dinner party. George Smith, the publisher of Jane Eyre, had, in a very roundabout way, expressed to him an interest in books “of the quality of The Last Days of a Rake”.

“If you should ever, uh, come across such a piece, I would count it a favor if you brought it to my notice,” he had said.

Jameson had enjoyed those moments. He did not like to think himself such a pathetic creature as to need those meager scraps to feel he belonged to the literary world on something other than the outer fringes, and yet—

Writers and editors spoke a language he did not understand. What was it they felt, believed, lived, that separated him from them? He gazed up at the dark walnut bookshelves that lined his library. Shelves and shelves of books, old and new, serious and comedic, by both women and men. He might disdain the books of all but a few select women writers, but he recognized, as not many did, that someday their works might be valuable. That was his talent, he thought, recognizing talent in others.

He was a dilettante, a wastrel, a gambler and womanizer. He had been born wealthy, of a class on the level of the aristocracy, though untitled. His great-grandfather had refused a title, preferring wealthy, well-born anonymity to a title as being more genteel. Titles were vulgar and brought unwanted attention, Great-Grandfather had believed. He had no siblings but two who had preceded him to the grave, not having lived beyond a year, and his parents were both gone. He was alone and had invested his wealth wisely, so it grew and he was very, very rich. Even when he gambled—and he did gamble, as it relieved the tedium for a few hours sometimes—he made a habit of never gambling more than his investments had made the previous month. He was thirty-four, in good health, had many friends and was fortunate in every way.

Jameson sighed and leaned back in his chair, lighting a cigar and picking up his glass of brandy. He had everything a man could want in life except for something to do.

Damn.

Unfortunately, all he could think of that he wanted to do in that moment was seduce the piquant and amusing Collette Jardiniere. Sexual abstinence, perhaps, was making him mad.

Randall Proctor was one of those lucky individuals, or at least so he characterized himself, who needed little or no sleep. He also knew the London streets intimately from a misspent youth of breaking into homes of the quality and nicking anything he could get his hands on to sell to the fences who populated a teeming underworld of night haunts and gin houses.

When he was a hardened little bastard of ten or eleven, a gin-soaked prostitute had taken a liking to him. With a name like Randall Proctor, she said, he could drag himself up in the world. She taught him to read and write, saying a clever lad needed to know that. She was murdered by a drunken customer a few years later, but she had left her meager hoard of money to him, and he had bought himself a good suit of clothes, rented rooms in a respectable, if poor, section of the city and started looking about himself to see what he could do with his life.

Becoming a writer had never been his ambition, but when opportunity presented itself, he put to good use his cunning mind, overwhelming curiosity and the skills Fanny Hodges had taught him. He had started as a printer’s devil but had swiftly moved to writing pieces when some of the gin-drenched writers could not come up with the required amount of text.

From there he had climbed the ladder from obituaries on up. And now, many years later, he made good money, some that his employer gave him as wages, and much more that they didn’t know about in the form of tips and bribes. He was not above printing salacious rumor and lascivious hints for a benefactor. He had a rumor pipeline of servants and informants, thieves and con artists, who fed him information in exchange for gin or tuppence, and he used it to blackmail even more information out of those in the know.

But always he had been on the fringe. Usually his stories did not even carry his name because the publishers took his information and used it for their own stories. They still paid him, but he had begun to hunger after the respectability he could purchase with a little fame. He wanted to hobnob with a higher class of folk.

The story of Charles Stonehampton Jameson had been his key. He had insisted on his name appearing under the headline in exchange for the story, but he had not been prepared for the furor his tip, garnered from a few chance words overheard in a gentleman’s club by a scullery maid, would engender. It seemed this Jameson fellow was a big stink in the world of London society, and everyone was gaping that he would write such a book. Privately, Proctor had tried to get through the novel, but it was a lot of high talk and words he had never heard of, a dead bore. The gentry folks seemed to be right mad about it, though.

Now that flurry of excitement was starting to go away, and he needed something to stir it up again. And so he had taken to following this Jameson chap, lolling about his doorstep, following him about town, all to get another shot at talking to him. The fellow was refusing so far, but he was culling bits and pieces from the servants at every party he went to.

Then today, something odd had happened. A skinny young chap with glasses had stopped by his table in the chop house where he was eating a ploughman’s lunch. The bread was stale and the cheese was nigh rancid, but it was cheap and filling, and money was starting to become a concern again. The spectacles chap had stopped and asked him if he was Randall Proctor, the fellow who wrote the story naming Mr. Jameson as Colin Jenkins. He had said yes, and the fellow had sat down opposite him and told him a little tale.

There was, he said, a young lady who was a little nicked in the brainbox. She fancied herself a writer, and had come to think she was Colin Jenkins, poor mad dolly. If Proctor would follow her, he might find something to interest him.

It was a right interesting story, one that danced around in his brain as he thought about what a certain footman in Mrs. Philoxia Bertrand’s household had told him about his quarry’s behavior that night. The spectacled fellow might have something, or there might be more going on than even he knew, considering the mad mort had talked for quite a while to Mr. Charles Jameson.

Perhaps the truth was something completely different than what the spectacles chap had said. Proctor had been lied to his whole life, and he took nothing on one person’s say-so. He wasn’t above publishing a bit of gossip dressed up to look like truth, but it didn’t mean he bought it himself. Nothing actionable, that’s all his employer cared about, and even if he occasionally skated rather close to the edge, he wouldn’t sink himself. He had a firm grasp on just the right way to word innuendo.

It might take a while longer to come up with the whole story, but Randall had a nose for scandal, and he had a feeling that was what was brewing, all right. Scandal and juicy gossip, the kind them gentry types would snap up newspapers for.

On a dirty piece of paper he wrote down some names from what the footman had told him and what the spectacles chap had said. Under Charles Jameson’s name he wrote down Miss Collette Jardiniere, and then chewed on the pencil. Charles Jameson. Collette Jardiniere. Colin Jenkins.

Too bloody coincidental, if you asked him. Too chancy by half. This would bear investigation, but he had a feeling he was onto a story that would make his career and a pocket of gold, too. He fair itched for daylight, when he could answer a few questions that popped into his mind. His life was going to change, and the future looked rosy.

Nine

Collette fiddled with her gloves and squirmed in her seat like an over-anxious seven-year-old dressed for church. She traveled elegantly in Philoxia’s old but gracious barouche to Haymarket to meet Mr. Charles Jameson. She didn’t quite know why she was so nervous, but she seemed to be on edge every minute now. Meeting Jameson again made her apprehensive and even the idea of seeing an opera for the first time had her stomach fluttering

“Colly, behave!” Philoxia Bertrand’s melodious voice was commanding, but she ruined her stern demeanor with the smile in her expressive and lively eyes.

Collette glanced at her and rolled her eyes. “I do not know what possessed me to say yes when Mr. Jameson asked me to the opera!”

“You don’t?” Philoxia said archly.

Shooting her a reproachful look, Collette said, “It is not what you think. I told you I met him on the train coming to London and find him a reprehensible man. I cannot like him.” She sat up straight and folded her hands demurely on her lap.

“Oh, Collette, I shall have to laugh if you continue in that vein. Mr. Charles Stonehampton Jameson is London’s most eligible and elusive bachelor and one of the best-looking men I have ever seen, even if his lack of sidewhiskers is considered a little, well, eccentric. I think it gives him an air of dashing mystery, like he comes from a bygone era, and indeed he is the most outrageous rogue, flirting quite expertly. And yet he rarely pays the slightest bit of attention to single ladies, so every woman in the opera house will be pea green with envy. I only wish London were not so thin of company right now, for I should like to see a few wicked little cats chastised.” She patted her elegant hairstyle and settled back in her seat with a sigh.

“You make too much of a simple invitation to the opera, Loxy.” Collette tried to peer out the windows of the barouche, but all was darkness, just the faint glow of gaslights lining the streets and the lumbering outline of dark townhouses. Most of society was in the country, and their houses were abandoned except for minimal staffing for security.

“If you knew more I should listen to you, but in this one subject I have the superior understanding, my dear.”

The carriage slowed, pulling up to the Haymarket Theatre, which was presenting a summer season of opera. Philoxia turned to Collette and took her friend’s hands in her own. “Don’t be nervous, my dear, though I know you have likely never been in company with such a man as Mr. Charles Jameson before. I will be there the whole time to keep him in check. At least Mr. Jameson had sense enough to invite a friend to stand you company. Your reputation would suffer if you were escorted to the theatre alone by such a well-known rake.”

Indignant, Collette said, “You make it sound as if I am fainting for love of the man or something.”

“I saw the look on your face when you were reintroduced to him. He is…spectacular,” Philoxia said with a sigh, straightening her silk gloves and smoothing them up over her elbows.

“Do you think that is all it is, Loxy? Just his good looks? Is that what attracts women?”

Her friend paused and glanced over at her. “No, I think there is something more to the man, certainly. Do not take this amiss, Colly, but I must say, he seemed quite smitten with you, and you do not possess any of the qualities I would have thought he would look for in a flirt. But therein lies the danger, dearest. He is intrigued by you, and you… No matter what you say, I know you feel something for him. He’s dangerous, do not forget that.”

Dangerous? If Loxy only knew, Collette thought. He had her thinking dangerous thoughts, indeed, and she had more than enough reason to know of his skill in the seductive arts. Philoxia would be shocked to the core if she had seen her friend kissing the London rake so passionately on the train.

Humble in the face of the knowledge of her own vulnerability to the man, she said, “I will lean on you and your knowledge of London ways.”

“You can depend on me.”

The words were simple but said with a heartfelt tone, and the two women embraced before alighting to the pavement, where they found Jameson awaiting their arrival. He was impeccable, tall and handsome in tails and white gloves, and he offered both his arms to the ladies.

Collette looked up at his face, trying to search his dark eyes for some clue to his intentions. Would he do what she wanted, or would he be perverse to torment her? His expression was shuttered, veiled by a well-bred vacant look peculiar to the upper-crust of society. Still, despite the veneer of boredom, some raw force within him called out to her, and she heard the voice again, but this time she had to acknowledge that it echoed her own thoughts.

His eyes hold mysteries, dark knowledge that I do not have. He has known women in ways I cannot even imagine, and it frightens me that he knows more about my body than even I do. What are sexual relations that they rule men so and control so much of their behavior? Or is that only because they are allowed so much more freedom? Can women become as addicted to earthy pleasures of the flesh as men once the experience is given them? Once a woman has explored a man’s—

Collette’s eyes widened at the dangerous direction her inner voice was taking. What was she thinking? Her own deepest thoughts and desires were surfacing in appalling ways to disturb her serenity and tease her with forbidden introspection. She must not weaken. If she truly did just want to engage in forbidden activities with the enticing Mr. Jameson, the troubling thing was, despite what morality told her, she was free to do so. She was in London, away from home and away from family. They would never know if she fell from grace.

That inner voice, the one she had always thought of as her literary self, could just be the expression of her awakening womanhood, so long dormant and now blooming with vigor.

But no! She must not think that. That inner voice was as it always was, her reliable guide pointing the way toward her next project, if she could just decipher what that should be. How would the puzzle pieces fit together?

Jameson glanced down at Collette as he guided the two ladies up the steps and into the Haymarket Theatre. She looked deeply into his eyes, her green orbs glinting in the last rays of the late day sun, refracting into gold and emerald as he watched. They held some new knowledge. A subtle alteration had taken place, a kind of awakening within Collette’s bosom. For the briefest of moments he was lost within a sensual daydream of such heat that all around him disappeared.

He remembered a villa in France where he had spent a summer years before. He had, regrettably, been alone, but it had been a peaceful introspective time and ultimately it remained as a sweet memory. His favorite room, the bedchamber, had been lovely, secluded, comfortable. A stream of hot sunlight had fallen, in late day, directly through his open window and across his bed. For one moment, on this late summer evening in London, he had imagined taking Collette Jardiniere to France, to that room, and teaching her in the hot sunlight what pleasure a man could give a woman.

He blinked and shook himself, awakening to the impropriety of his thoughts. What in God’s name was happening to him? This young lady was no experienced woman ripe for sexual play. He had no business even thinking about such a thing and should be horsewhipped in the streets! She’d be shocked—no, horrified—if she could see into his mind. He reined in his turbulent, fevered imagination. It must be stopped from wandering down that particular alleyway, the road that led to the imagined seduction of this innocent at his side.

Mind firmly in control, he guided the two ladies up the long staircase inside the theatre and down a gaslit hallway to the box he had secured for the performance. It was probably best if he did not see Miss Collette Jardiniere again. But she would want an answer from him concerning his expropriation of her supposed pseudonym, and he still did not know what he intended to do.

They took their seats. He had been talking as he thought, his social skills guiding him through the everyday interaction necessary, even as his mind worked on the problems she represented. He watched as she leaned forward and stared down into the pits, her lively gaze taking in what was evidently a new experience for her. He admired the modest curve of her bosom and the swell of her hips, forgetting his resolution of just minutes before. Women were beautiful in all of their variations: slim, plump, tall, short, freckled or ivory-skinned or dusky-hued. She was slender but well made, and naked, she would be a delight, he thought. He should like to see her nude, her body stretched out in sunlight, and would enjoy exploring her, watching her eyes as he brought her pleasure with experienced hands.

He again pushed away such prurient thoughts and concentrated on the two ladies.

“My dear, no one seeing you could ever imagine you had been to a theatre before,” Philoxia said, amusement lilting through her voice.

“Am I so very gauche, then?” Collette said, twisting and looking at her friend. “Of course I have been to the theatre, but not a London one. I have never mastered that look of cultured boredom Londoners seem to affect so readily.”

“It is not affected, Miss Jardiniere,” Jameson drawled. “We really are bored by almost everything.”

“How sad for you,” she replied, her tone cutting, her expression challenging. “I cannot imagine going through life in a state of terminal ennui.”

“Collette always had an intensity that drove other people to assume their most reserved demeanor around her,” mused Philoxia.

Stung, Collette replied, “It never did that to you, Loxy, and that is the truth. You were much more intense than I in school. Ask Henny or any of our other friends from those days.”

Philoxia laughed, a musical tinkle that many men found enchanting, Jameson supposed. She was just the kind of woman he would find appropriate for flirtation and eventual seduction at any other time, and yet like a moth he was entranced by the bright sparkling flame that was Collette. Drab clothes could not hide it. Her saucy grin and open laugh, her unselfconscious movement and unrestricted joy of life; every moment he spent in her company dispelled that boredom they discussed.

“Colly, do not tell tales out of school,” Philoxia said.

“I would not do that, dear. You must know that.”

A look passed between them, and Jameson supposed there was something in it, some secret from their youth. But he was not interested in secrets having to do with Mrs. Philoxia Bertrand. “And so have you always lived in your small village, Miss Jardiniere?”

“I have,” she answered, smiling still. “Apart from my years at school, Listerwood-on-Sea has been my home.”

“And what does one do for amusement?”

“One reads,” she said, gazing at him steadily. “Anything and everything one can obtain. One visits and gossips. And one watches people and observes them. The interplay of men and women together and separately is enormously entertaining, almost like a play. Do you not think so?”

“Ah yes, the dairyman and his bucolic conquest,” Jameson murmured. “I think you mentioned something about that particular pair before.”

“And the tinker and his six strapping sons, and the country squire and the widow in the village who is his mistress. Everyone knows about it but pretends not to because the squire owns all of the land locally and is the magistrate, and so is quite powerful. What most do not know is that the tinker’s eldest son is also the widow’s swain, though he is years younger than she, and she takes him into her house after the good squire has left, presumably to gratify urges unsatisfied by the aging squire!”

Philoxia’s fine eyes widened. “Collette! As a young unmarried woman you are not supposed to know about things like that!”

Jade eyes alight with mischief, Collette said, “Oh, but Philoxia, you must know that the tinker’s handsome son is the talk of the town.” She clasped her gloved hands to her bosom and assumed an air of sighing admiration. “What a beau he is, with black hair and flashing blue eyes, a thick mustache and broad, strong hands! It is said he romances the widow in the hope that the squire will be persuaded by her to make him a land agent or some such elevated post. No tinker will he be—what, waste all of that masculine potential? At the same time, in the shadows, he seduces the pink-cheeked milkmaid with promises of London to obtain her favors, for which he is much more anxious than the widow’s faded offerings of love.”

Jameson laughed, delighted by her word-pictures that danced in the air about them. He could see it all when she spoke, so vivid did she make it. In a misty haze a handsome young man flirted with a pretty milkmaid by a stile on a country lane, and a widow invited a stocky squire into her home with a sly glance down the village street, and—But the sound of his laughter drew more attention than he wanted. Some in the pit craned their necks around to see what the gentry were up to that was so entertaining. He deadened his expression.

The opera was about to begin. He knew Collette’s words were designed to show him human nature was the same everywhere and he had to admit to himself that the situation she spoke of had its echoes in the bedrooms and bowers of the gentry and titled elite. She had a point—sharp observation of humankind was the fodder of every good novel he had ever read. She would have him believe there was nothing new under the sun, that men and women behaved much the same way no matter what their rank or social standing.

Perhaps she was correct, but where did she learn to write as she did if she was indeed Colin Jenkins? Observation was one thing, but how did she learn to crawl inside a man’s brain? And where did she get the audacity to express it so piquantly on the page if she was indeed Colin Jenkins?

The opera started, and he watched as Collette moved once more to the very edge of the box, leaning her arms on the ledge and her cheek on her hand. She wore the same indigo gown from the previous night, but it was embellished with a lace shawl and gloves, and her hair was adorned with a spray of silk lily-of-the-valley. He was glad she was still simply garbed. It suited her in a way no jewels or finery ever could.

She was a slender woman, lithe and energetic, with a perfectly oval face and small chin adorned with a dimple in the center. He sat back in the shadows of the box watching her rather than the opera, which he had seen before. But he noticed her eyes were often not on the stage either, even though by her own admission she had never been to a London theatre before.

Her restless gaze roamed the crowd below them and peered through the gloom at the other boxes, only some of which were occupied. Occasionally, she would stop, and he watched what she watched. Once it was Leticia Verdun, Lady Nettlethorpe, entering her box with a rustle of silk and the fluttering attention of her varied beaux. She was a much sought after belle in her third or fourth season, who enjoyed most having men make a fuss over her. To that end she would never settle on one but would always have several escorting her anywhere. She was gaining a reputation as a flirt.

Then Collette’s wandering attention was taken by a dispute in the gallery seats. An orange seller was berating a customer so loudly that the singers on stage were clearly disconcerted, though they often had to compete with such altercations for the crowd’s attention. This one ended when the singer, an enormous woman who went by the name of Madame Camembert, lobbed a table from the stage into the crowd, neatly catching the orange seller and his fractious customer and sending them down like skittles.

Giggling behind her gloved hand, Collette sat back in her seat and caught Jameson’s eye at that moment. He couldn’t help it. He smiled, delighted by her sparkling green eyes and sweetly upturned mouth. “You are enjoying the opera but not always for the performance on stage, I think,” he said quietly.

She reached out and grasped his hand in both of hers. “It is more wonderful than I could have imagined! Thank you so very much for inviting me, Mr. Jameson. I do not think I have laughed so much for a long time.”

Simple words of gratitude. He had had mistresses who did not thank him so sweetly for jewels or phaetons. He covered her hands with his own and gazed down into her eyes. “I am happy to afford you any pleasure Miss Jardiniere… Collette.”

Her laughing expression died and her eyes widened. Pink stained her cheeks and she pulled her hands away, turning back toward the stage.

“I apologize for using your name again with no permission,” he said, “but please allow it. And call me Jameson or…or Jamie if you prefer.”

His direct tone and unaffected words appeared to hit their mark. She met his gaze, smiled and said with a chuckle, “I told you before Mr. Jameson, you do not suit the name Jamie. I doubt you ever suited it.”

“Call me whatever you wish and I will answer. I am your devoted servant.”

She looked away again. “Ah, truly? But will you do what I wish?” she murmured. “That is a more pertinent question, sir.”

He could not read her tone of voice and her face was turned away from him. He knew Philoxia was examining him and he pulled his hand away from hers. Damn! He wished they were alone. He wanted to talk to her—really talk to her—not this idle society chit-chat! What did men and women do who wanted to talk to each other?

It occurred to him that he did not know because he had never wanted to speak to a woman in any other milieu. The opera, or playhouse, or salon or…well, the bedroom, was the only place he had ever spoken to a woman before, but with any other lady he had been content to idly chat, all the while knowing later, words of seduction would pass between them.

Collette had turned back and was watching the opera, but he thought the stiffness of her backbone and erect line of her neck said volumes. He had crossed some imaginary line again, perhaps, or was there more to it? She had come tonight ostensibly to get his answer to whether he would correct the public’s image of him as the author of Last Days. If he said yes, it would be the end of any excuse to see her.

Had he really accepted that she was Colin Jenkins? One moment he was completely convinced, and the next he thought it impossible. He could go to the publisher and ask them point blank, but was not sure they would cooperate with him. But mostly, if she was the author, it was a useless exercise to tell the public that he was not Colin Jenkins unless at the same time she was willing to claim her rightful glory. But she had not said she was ready to do that, and so what could he do?

He could go out with her again. It was almost September, but London was still thin of society. A gentleman could take a lady out driving in an open carriage, and that was where they could talk. They would drive through Hyde Park, and he would show her the sights, trying to ignore how much he longed to teach her earthier pleasures.

Ten

It was only as the last ringing notes echoed into the highest reaches of the theatre ceiling, after an evening packed with new sights and sounds and experiences, that Collette realized her ostensible reason for accompanying Mr. Jameson to the theatre was a subject that had not been broached. She had entirely forgotten she was not there to enjoy herself, but to learn what action he would take to correct a grievous error.

She turned to him as they rose, consternation in her heart. “Mr. Jameson, I have not asked you… You did not say—”

“I know. We have settled nothing. But I did not want to interfere with your enjoyment of the opera…and other things.”

His slate eyes held amusement and she wondered how much was at her cost. She must present a sad spectacle for one as sophisticated as he. How he would laugh with his friends over the country spinster he treated to the opera! Or was she being unfair to him? Gazing up at his face, she was lost in contemplation of his compelling eyes, curved lips adorned with the mustache and the cleft in his undeniably strong chin. What a perfect Lankin he would make if Last Days were ever mounted for the stage! A rake should be just so dark and compelling, with hooded eyes and a brooding dissipated air. He should have those small lines at the corners of his mouth and under his eyes, and the dark shadow of whiskers along his jaw—

And she was staring at him again! Mortified, she realized that what had been acceptable of a stranger on the train was no longer so impersonal. He was gazing back at her with an unfathomable look on his face and there was silence between them. Philoxia cleared her throat, and Collette had the feeling it wasn’t for the first time.

“Shall we go?” she said pointedly, indicating the entrance to the box.

Jameson, who had been as motionless as Collette and had stared just as steadily into her eyes, moved finally, and bowed for them to precede him from the box. They exited the box into the dim hall that led to the stairs.

“Will you go for a drive with me tomorrow?”

Collette jumped. The words, in Jameson’s deep baritone, were almost directly into her ear, and his warm breath teased at the tendrils escaping her severe bun. She gasped and said, “I…I…I…”

“Say you will,” he murmured. “We do need to talk and we cannot with a third person nearby unless Mrs. Bertrand is in on your little secret?”

He left the question dangling, and Collette shot a worried glance at her friend’s back. It was true Philoxia did not know, and even though they were going on to a ball after the opera, she and Jameson would not be able to talk about such an intense subject without it looking most peculiar. “I am staying at the Chapter Coffeehouse,” she whispered over her shoulder. “I will be in the coffee room at ten in the morning.”

London in summer. The upper crust deserted it in droves for Brighton or Margate, or went to their homes in the country for shooting. But there was a part of society that existed for London, and so even after the end of the season, in late August, into September, there were enough people of adequate class to still hold parties and the occasional ball, but more often breakfasts and teas, literary salons and excursions to the countryside, to Surrey or Richmond.

Jameson always had invitations to country houses. Acquaintances with eligible daughters inundated him with casual and sometimes frantic invitations to “come to the house, come down and shoot for a week or two, get out to the countryside, do you some good!” After which hearty phrases they usually gave a weak laugh. Their real business was to find a rich, eligible husband for their Lucy or Alice, Beatrice or Anne. But Jameson was not, nor had he ever been, in the market for a wife, not even the most obliging, biddable kind.

Why should he marry? He was rich but not titled, and so he had no duty to sire an heir of his flesh. The Jameson name lived on in other branches of the family, even if he had cared for such things as lineage. Pleasures of the flesh he could satisfy easily enough by taking a mistress, his preferred route, or by attending houses maintained for the sexual needs of wealthy men. His habitual boredom, he had always thought, would only be intensified by some clamoring wife, always wanting his attention, restless from her lack of inner resources, looking to him to supply her with entertainment.

And so, with no family to think of, he lived in London throughout the year. He had occasionally thought of purchasing a country house. He vaguely pictured a mellow red brick manse in a park with a verdant roll of green land and bucolic scenery where he could stroll about, wearing brogues and carrying a shooting stick over his shoulder.

Inevitably he would awaken from his daydream, shudder and dismiss it.

At the ball the previous evening he had questioned Collette about her home in Listerwood-on-Sea. He was fascinated by her paradoxical nature and interested in what kind of landscape would birth such a conundrum as she presented to him. He had visited Kent and rather liked the seaside. If he were to settle in the country, perhaps it would be in the Kentish countryside. He could picture a home on some high cliff, overlooking the lonely coast, with seabirds wheeling and screeching about the uppermost towers. That would be a home in which he could be happy. And so he had probed her for information about her village.

But Collette had answered absently, her eyes brightly taking in all the sound and chatter at her first London ball. It had been a poor affair, an attempt by a friend of Philoxia Bertrand’s to revitalize London society in the summer. And yet, as he tried to engage Collette in conversation about her home, her eager gaze darted this way and that as she watched it all, commenting sometimes on this woman or that man.

After a time, interested despite himself, he began to see a pattern in her observations. The people she found fascinating were often the ones least likely to attract notice on their own. Through her eyes he noticed that Sally Debinham, a wallflower, was languishing with love for Walter Ponsonby, a silly calf enamored of his tailor more than any lady. And old Lady Naunce, a baroness, attended the ball to relive her youth, watching with vague eyes the figures of the dance, as she beat out the time of the music with her cane.

Jameson, who supplied the names to her, had to admit that when Collette looked at people and spoke of them, they suddenly became more interesting to him. They gained a life under their glazed eyes and dull manners. He was used to watching the first figures of society, the coquettes and men about town. Collette’s pointed observations had opened his eyes, though, and he started to see the subtle tones and shading, the underplay that went on beneath the brittle surface interaction even of the haut ton. It was as if one glanced beneath the glittering surface of the ocean to find the teeming life underneath. His ennui, a persistent affliction usually only dispelled by drink or gambling, never plagued him in Miss Collette Jardiniere’s company.

He was taking Collette out for a drive in the park at an unfashionably early hour and looked forward to it as if it were the grandest treat. He must be going quite, quite mad.

He strode down the hall and began to whistle as he bounded down the steps two at a time. Gardiner, his uniform immaculate as always and his expression habitually dour, was startled into staring, gape-mouthed, at his employer’s cheery tune.

“Good morning, Gardiner. Is my carriage ready?”

“Y-Yes, sir, I did as Mockley asked, even though… Pardon, sir, but you do know it is only nine-thirty in the morning?”

“I do know that, Gardiner, yes. Early drive. See London before the heat of the day, don’t you know.”

Silent, Gardiner bowed from the waist, handed him his hat and opened the front door for him.

As he descended the front steps two at a time toward his waiting carriage, Jameson realized with a start that he must call off Dick Murphy. There was no point in scouring the countryside for Colin Jenkins when he…or rather she…had plopped right into his lap, so to speak! He laughed out loud and his groom gaped at him. Time to leave before his staff thought he had lost his senses.

Miss Collette Jardiniere was punctual and was actually waiting on Paternoster Row for him as he drove up, his smart equipage rolling to a halt directly in front of her. He gazed disapprovingly at the shabby exterior of the Chapter Coffeehouse. Could she not afford better lodging than this dingy old place? Her royalties should be adding up nicely, enough to afford her a stay in one of the better hostelries. She was neatly dressed in the brown traveling dress she had worn on the train, he noticed. Of course, she could not have brought much in the way of clothing, as she had only had the one valise.

“Good morning. I hope you slept well.” he said as he leaped down to help her up into his open carriage.

“I did, sir, or as well as can be expected in London.” Once seated, she looked around her with eager interest.

“Are you ready?” he asked, taking up the ribbons and smiling over at her.

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “I am ready!”

An hour later they had briskly toured Hyde Park and Regent’s Park, and Collette had settled in her seat a little. They headed back to Hyde Park and trotted more slowly. The day was warm, with a suggestion of building heat, though a sprightly breeze still tossed the treetops. He would have noticed none of this if it had not been for her commentary. She noticed everything in nature just as she did with people, and he began to think how much more alive she seemed to him than any other person he had ever met.

Gazing at her lips, curved up in a habitual smile, he remembered their kiss, or rather kisses, on the train. He now knew her to be a very proper young lady, and he could not reconcile the demure miss at his side with either the writer of The Last Days of a Rake, or the sweet mystery woman on the train. How could she be all those women at once?

He pulled into a shaded area and the horses stopped. It was unfashionably early, still, and so the park was peopled mostly by servants on their half day, nannies with their young charges and one young man with papers under his arm, cutting through the park on his way to deliver them.

“You look a little flushed, Collette. Would you like to walk a bit, cool down?”

She smiled as an answer and he leaped to the ground and held his hands up to take her down after him. She needed little help and seemed strong rather than fragile, as most young ladies at least pretended to be. Stretching her arms out, she turned in a circle, embracing nature and giving a little skip.

“What a glorious day! I am so happy we came here. I have been longing for green space, and this is ideal.”

He was entranced by her joy in so simple a thing as the park in the morning. He glanced around, seeing for the first time the mist rising off the grass and the ducks waddling off in a row toward the pond. Then his gaze returned to her, and the sight fed him in some way, stirring him from his dilettante’s ennui, his customary indifference. Did every new experience invigorate her so? Would she bring the same verve, the same joy, to everything, even the bedroom? Would she be as restless and energetic, voraciously devouring fresh sensations?

In the dappled shade of a grove of birch trees he gave in to temptation and closed the distance between them, capping her shoulders with his large hands. For one breathless minute she looked up into his eyes with a look of barely concealed anticipation.

As sweet as a meadow wildflower, she was just as artless and unspoiled, with no brittle London crust. Would she taste as honeyed as he remembered if he dipped into her mouth? He felt a tremor of some strong emotion course through her, a shudder that beckoned him, inviting him to a kiss. With a stifled exclamation he moved to claim her lips, warmed to berry-sweetness by the sun.

My God, he thought as he touched them, suckling the plump, tender flesh. His eyes were closed and he trembled with yearning. So much sweeter than I remembered.

“Jameson, you devil, who is this latest conquest?”

Jameson froze at the familiar voice. Sain! Sainsbury Ellice, the last person he would like to meet. The last person he would expect to meet in the morning in the park! Unless the fellow was just going home from a night of carousing. Jameson realized what it would look like, his arm around Collette now, holding her close to his body, her face upturned to his, in the protection of the shade trees. It would look like what it was; he was kissing her in public, an unforgivable sin with a young lady of lily-white reputation.

“I wondered why you deserted me at Madame Peléron’s night before last, but now I see why,” Sainsbury said with a low chuckle. “Got another delectable bundle?”

Jameson, shielding Collette from his wastrel friend’s view, turned. “Go away, Sain. I am attempting to have conversation, something that should bore you to no end.”

“Conversation! Would that be a criminal conversation? Come on, let’s have a look.” Sainsbury prodded Jameson’s shoulder with the end of his stick.

“Leave us alone, Sain. Just go away!”

Collette popped her head around Jameson’s arm. “Why do you not introduce me to your friend, Mr. Jameson?”

Jameson groaned. Did the girl not have a particle of sense? Had she never heard of a compromising position?

“Yes, Jameson, introduce me!” Sain said, mockery heavy in his voice as he stared at Collette with interest.

Jameson stepped aside and delighted in his friend’s look of astonishment. Collette Jardiniere, dressed in a sober brown gown of antiquated style, slight and unfashionable, unadorned by jewels or feathers or rich fabrics, was no one’s idea of a “soiled dove.” Maybe that would end the misunderstanding.

Sain stepped forward and looked Collette up and down. His brows raised and he turned to say something, but then stopped and looked back at Collette.

“Sainsbury Ellice, Miss Collette Jardiniere. Miss Jardiniere, Mr. Sainsbury Ellice.”

It was the barest of introductions, but Sain did not regard it. “I recognize you,” he said, pointing at her with one long, white finger. He strolled around them, taking in her entire figure. “You were at that literary swansong the other night. Talking to that horrible bore, Trollope.”

Collette bridled and her green eyes darkened. “Mr. Trollope is not a bore! I found him absolutely fascinating!”

“What? That pathetic old pest? He makes my head hurt just looking at him!”

Jameson stepped forward to interrupt, but Collette surged past him and stood in front of Sain, hands on her hips, gazing up at him with her face screwed up into an expression of outrage.

“He is not old and he is not a pest! It just so happens he has a brilliant mind and is an author—”

“I know he’s an author. Doesn’t he go on and on and on about it to anyone cracked in the brain enough to listen? The best thing that ever happened was when he got that stifling job with the… What is it, the naval office? They shipped him off to Ireland.”

“It is the Post Office,” Collette exclaimed. “I must say a man never shows the poverty of his mind better than in the judgments he makes of the truly brilliant.”

Sain looked nonplused, and Jameson, thoroughly entertained now even against his own common sense, stood back, arms crossed over his chest, and let Miss Collette Jardiniere fight her own battle. It was a war of wits and she was fighting an unarmed combatant. She clearly recognized that. Her dimpled chin lifted, and she said, “I always find it interesting that those who criticize writers are the very ones who never read. Pick up a book some time, Mr. Ellice.”

“I haven’t read a single book since I was sent down from Oxford. Not all the way through, anyway. Just skim them for the naughty bits.”

Her face registering a disdain so cold Jameson wondered that Sain wasn’t shivering, she said, “And you say it as if it were something to boast about! I cannot fathom a society that will allow a boor like you to attend the most hallowed of English universities and yet argues that women’s wits are too weak to make learning safe.”

Sain finally realized he was being insulted. He turned to his friend and with a haughty lift to his brow, said, “If you are bedding this little strumpet, Jameson, I would gag her mouth, or you will lose the will to fornicate, my friend.”

From amusement, Jameson flashed to dark anger, for his friend’s words were unforgivable when applied to Collette. “Sain,” he said, through gritted teeth. “If you do not apologize to the lady for that inexcusable insult, you shall have a challenge on your hands and this one shall not be who can get to the bottom of a bottle first!”

The look on Sain’s face was compounded of hurt and rage. “I will not apologize to—”

“If you do not,” Jameson growled, fists balled, “you will accept my challenge and I shall be forced to run you through. I am deadly serious.”

Baffled fury in his blue eyes, Sain turned to Collette. “A thousand pardons, miss. I did not mean to disparage you or your honor. Forgive me.”

Collette, staring at Jameson with something like horror, weakly replied, “Certainly, sir. I am just sorry I… I apologize. I, too, was unforgivably rude.”

For an answer Sain bowed, then turned and stalked away, returning to his horse, which a groom was holding along with the groom’s hack. In the brush near the river there was a rustle of movement, and a figure moved away from the trees to follow the man remounting at that moment.

Turning to Jameson, a quick blaze of anger in her eyes, Collette said, “Why did you have to challenge your friend? I don’t care what he said about me!”

“Perhaps I care what he said about you!”

Fists planted on her hips, Collette said, “It is not your right to care. We are here merely to discuss if you will do the right thing and tell the reporter for that journal that you are not Colin Jenkins.”

Perplexed by her anger, Jameson replied, “I would have intervened for any lady whose honor he had impugned. Good God, Collette, did you not realize that he saw us ki… That we were in each other’s arms? Do you not know what he thought?”

Collette’s brows knit together. “What did he think?”

“He thought you were my latest… He assumed you were a…” He could not finish. It was not right to say such things to a gently bred young lady, even one as infuriating as Collette Jardiniere. He wanted to strangle her! He wanted to—He wanted to kiss her again. And as shocking as it was, he wanted to take her home and make love to her.

But it was out of the question. Or was it? It would teach her a lesson, show her what it was that made women fall, as had happened in the pages of Last Days, first to Susan and then a series of other young ladies of previously impeccable reputation, who succumbed to the devastating charm of her hero, Lankin. She was so receptive, so…so willing and trusting—He tussled with his conscience and his conscience won. He pulled himself up to his full height.

“Miss Jardiniere, will you please get back into my carriage?”

He finally met her eyes, having won a war of wills with his own desires and his own body, only to see a mischievous glint in her green eyes, the color intensified by the green canopy of leaves. From bafflement she had moved swiftly to knowledge.

“He thought I was your latest conquest!” She laughed out loud, the sound ringing through the warm summer air like a church bell. “Oh, how rich!” she cried. “How absolutely hilarious, that he should mistake me for a…a fallen woman!”

He was mortified. Good God, she did not have to take such glee in being mistaken for a whore! Any other lady would be outraged, but she was giggling as if it were the most diverting joke. He watched her convulse in laughter and found his lips tugging up, then parting, and then a huge burst of hilarity broke free and he was laughing. He laughed until his sides ached and he held his ribs against the pain, trying to catch his breath and then leaned against the tree, finally, gasping for air.

But as their laughter died and she wiped the tears from her eyes, he gazed at her seriously. What was he going to do? It was only right that he tell the world he was not Colin Jenkins, if they would believe him now. Collette dabbed at her eyes, a last chuckle lighting her face with delight. She was adorable and clever and sweet and unaffected. How had a woman such as this written a complex, thoughtful exploration of a rake’s life and repentance? And yet he must believe her, for she was also honest and forthright, as well as maddeningly independent and on occasion tactless.

She was utterly charming, and he was a miserable, slavering beast to be having the thoughts about her that he was having, the wicked, improper imaginings of hot, sunlit rooms in France and sweet, green bowers in England and white, soft skin and naked curves awakened under his skillful hands to ecstasy.

Her laughter had completely died now, and she gazed up at him with a look in her eyes that held him spellbound. Green and glowing and as brilliant as the morning, those expressive eyes made him yearn for her touch, so when she reached out and caressed his cheek, he quivered with desire. He stared deep into her eyes as she searched him, turning him inside out and running her hands through his soul, and touching his heart with wonder. He felt naked and vulnerable, as though for that moment he could conceal nothing from her, and he was terrified she would see his thoughts and all his wicked, dirty, improper desires.

She would turn her snub nose up in disdain if she knew what he wanted, that he craved her body, and yet more than that, he wanted her to desire him, too. He wanted to make love to her. In his imagination she was eager and lusty beneath his hands, passion flaring in green-gold eyes lit by sunlight. He knew it was wrong, but it didn’t feel wrong, somehow. It felt all too right. That was the most frightening part. He could imagine, with Collette, feeling that way forever, day and night, and not just in bed, feeling a connection so strong it required no words to express it.

Perhaps it was fleeting. It was just long abstinence that was driving him mad. He turned his face away from her gentle hand and said, “We must leave this park, my dear. I will take you back to the Chapter Coffeehouse.”

Eleven

Disappointing as it was, he did just that, dropping Collette off at the door of the Chapter Coffeehouse with no mention of seeing her again. When she turned to ask him when they could finish their talk, he was already trotting away, clicking to his carriage horses.

Why had he deserted her that way? Twenty-four hours later, she still didn’t have an answer.

“Colly, dear, what is going on between you and that irrepressible rake, Jameson?” Philoxia said, leaning across the table in the coffeehouse public room as she and Collette took a cup of the inn’s steaming brew the next morning. Collette sipped hers, made a face and set it down on the scarred wood table by the window overlooking Paternoster Row. She had come to love the view of men hustling by, sheaves of paper clutched in their hands as they clamped their hats down on their heads against the tugging breeze.

Her friends could not understand why she stayed at the Chapter—both Henny and Loxy had offered her a room in their own homes—but the twofold reasons were, it was on Paternoster Row, center of English publishing and therefore dear to her heart even before she had ever seen it, and the inn itself had housed many a struggling writer and several of the successful ones, too. Her needs were simple. Though the service was poor, her room musty and her linens not changed as often as she liked, it provided a change from her usual life. She would appreciate home all the more once she was back in Kent.

But there was a more important motive behind her choice. She had things to do and people to see. She did not want her friends, no matter how well-intentioned, minding her business every day and asking where she went and who she saw. She must alternately badger her infuriating publisher and try to talk Jameson into confessing his duplicity. For that, she required the freedom to come and go as she pleased.

Besides, it was the first time she had ever lived on her own, and she liked the sensation. It was invigorating and intoxicating. A little freedom was, perhaps, a dangerous thing for a young, unmarried woman, and that was why men kept them so “protected”. The male half of the population was no doubt afraid women would come to realize they did not need men for every little thing.

Despite that enjoyment of her unprotected freedom, the memory of Jameson’s gallant challenge to his friend still lingered, intriguing her. There was something charming and old-fashioned about him, and perhaps that was his attraction for her. He was like a rogue from a previous time, for under his wastrel airs, he was chivalrous toward ladies, kindhearted against all reason and gentle until stirred to battle. She was more than a little besotted, she had realized, late the night before as she tried to sleep. It was disconcerting to realize how attractive she found him and how unexpectedly endearing.

Philoxia repeated her question and Collette said, “There is nothing going on between Mr. Jameson and me. We met on the train from Kent, and I think he finds me amusing and countrified.” Her sleepless night had been spent mulling over what it meant, that he had kissed her, and in public, too, and then challenged his friend over her honor. She had not asked him for protection, but he had challenged a man—a good friend, apparently—in defense of her honor. Though she had been angry at first, she was not now.

The kiss would never be forgotten. In the dappled shade of a towering beech he had touched her lips for the merest of seconds, and yet long enough for her to know the feelings that coursed through her were dangerous to her equanimity.

“Amusing and countrified? Try innocent and naïve. Be careful, my dear, for he is a rake, and you have no defenses against the kind of man you have never experienced before.” Philoxia readied herself to leave.

Collette was caught between amusement and guilt at her friend’s concern. No, she had never met a rake before meeting Mr. Charles Jameson, but she had had the temerity to write a life history of one. More and more she wondered how she ever did it. Sometimes she had felt like she was in a trance as she wrote, living and breathing inside of her creation, Edgar Lankin. She had imagined him to life, and yet now he seemed a pale shadow of the real thing, Charles Jameson, who pulsed with sensuality. Now she understood why Susan, the innocent victim of Lankin’s seduction, had fallen from virtue. A woman was not safe from her own feelings around him. She hoped it was not just his handsome person she was responding to, for that made her no better than the coquettish dairymaid in her home village, whose virtue had been overcome by the tinker’s son and his comely face.

She glanced up at Philoxia, who was straightening her shawl and retrieving her packages from the chair beside her. Guilt plagued Collette. She was fond of honesty and longed to tell her friends the truth, that she was a published novelist, the infamous author of The Last Days of a Rake. Unfortunately, once told, the truth could never be taken back and unsaid, and she was not sure if she was ready for anyone to know, though she missed having someone in whom to confide. She never told half her worries and thoughts to her aunt, nor even to the Professor, who as a man and having lived in the world some, could be expected to understand more, perhaps. She was too used to turning things over in her own mind and making decisions without consulting any outside influence.

Philoxia gathered her reticule and pulled her shawl up over her shoulders. “I wish I could go with you today, my dear, but one of my charitable societies is holding a meeting I simply must attend, or a bunch of very silly women will be providing purse netting materials to the poor instead of meat and clothing and coal, or something absurd like that.”

Collette laughed at the notion of providing supplies for fussy make-work to those in need of sustenance. Loxy was a wealthy and coddled lady, it was true, but she had the soul of a military commander and used her ability to marshal forces for the betterment of many in need. Charitable work was one of the few appropriate activities for a lady of means. Collette stood and said, “I’m just going shopping, Loxy, dear. If I am to stay in London any longer I simply must have a couple more gowns and a day dress or two. I had not intended to spend so long in London. The dressmaker’s name and your recommendation are valuable. I only hope she has something suitable already made up. I am not a fashion plate!” She looked down at her dowdy dress ruefully. “I should be the greenest goose anyone de-feathered if I had not your note. She will not dare cheat me now.”

“She would not anyway, my dear,” Philoxia said, pulling on her gloves. “She is a clever woman and knows that a good reputation is worth gold. The note is just a precaution. Save it for the moment when you think she is charging too much. But be warned—a new wardrobe is expensive, so prepare to spend some money. Do get something in green, to go with your eyes, dear. And think again about coming to stay with me. You know I would adore it!”

The two friends embraced and Philoxia left.

Collette leisurely pulled on her gloves and bonnet, and then made her way out of the inn coffee room and down the steps to bustling, gloomy Paternoster, lined with tall narrow buildings. It was a dead-end street, and so to retain the services of a hansom, she would need to walk down to the corner of Paternoster and Warwick Lane, as the carriages for hire did not like trying to turn their cumbersome equipages on that narrow street.

But first she would breathe in the air of freedom and enterprise. She took a deep breath and gasped, choking. It smelled remarkably like horse manure and rotten cabbage.

“Miss Jardiniere… Collette!”

She stiffened.

She would know that voice even in her sleep, she thought, even in her dreams where it had taken to whispering precious words of love and longing. His deep voice and honeyed words drew her to him and tempted her to deeds she had never imagined until he came into her life.

Carruthers and botheration, how the man did haunt her! “Mr. Jameson,” Collette said, turning slowly and looking up at him on his phaeton.

“Do I have the good fortune of finding you just coming, or the misfortune of finding you just leaving?”

Stilling her thudding heart with the utmost of difficulty and some deep, calm breaths, Collette said, “I am just leaving.” She should be angry with him, she told herself, knowing anger would be one protection against the weakness she felt in his presence. He still had not told her what he was prepared to do to make things right in Wilson’s Gazette. But she could not hold onto it, that ire. It melted away when her eyes traced the curve of his lips, or the line of the cleft in his chin, or gazed deeply into the charcoal depths of his eyes, framed in sooty, thick lashes. Was she just a foolish woman then, and not the rational creature she had believed herself to be before setting eyes on Charles Jameson?

“Oh. I had hoped…”

She was a fool to think she meant something to him, and yet every glance, every touch said she was the most important woman in the world. And so she fell a little further in love and gave a little more of her heart every time they talked and every time they touched.

When he said, “You are beautiful,” she heard, “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.” And when he said, “I enjoy your company,” she heard “You are the wittiest, sweetest creature alive.”

And when he whispered, “Will you make love with me?” she heard, “I love you.”

“Well, Miss Jardiniere. Do you have no answer for me?”

“What?” She blinked, the harsh sunlight of the summer sky, filtered by London’s enduring smoke, but still hot in August, blinding her as she gazed up at him. He had asked something, but she had drifted off again and hadn’t heard him. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Jameson. I was not attending.”

“I said, I had hoped to speak with you further.” He jumped down from his carriage. “If you are going out, may I convey you to your destination? I realize that yesterday, because of the incident with Sain, we did not speak of your…problem.”

Before she realized it, she had agreed that he could take her where she needed to go. A dark, slightly seedy man caught her eye as she allowed Jameson to lift her into the carriage. The strange knowing look he gave her unnerved her, so that even when Jameson sprang his horses, she was lost in thought.

Had she met the man before? Why did he look at her so, as if he knew a secret not to her credit?

“And where am I taking you?”

“Oh! I am going to Mrs. Parker’s Dressmaking Establishment, on—”

“I know where it is,” Jameson said, and snapped his crop over his horses’ heads.

“You know where it is?” Collette shot him an astonished look, but he was busy guiding the horses and did not see. He knew Mrs. Parker’s dressmaking shop? There was yet another aspect of rakedom she had not considered: the intimate knowledge he would have of every detail of women’s clothing, right down to…Oh, my.

It seemed everywhere her mind led was yet another reminder that the man beside her was acquainted with a woman’s body and women’s apparel in ways she had not thought of. She eyed his hands, gloveless, on the ribbons. They were strong, with prominent knuckles and protruding veins, dark hairs across the back, and with long fingers that curled around the leather straps, holding the sleekly muscled strength of his matched bays with an easy assurance. How many women had he undressed with those hands?

Every time she met him it struck her anew that she had written the life of a rake without having any idea of what a rake did to earn his reputation. She had considered the inside life, the thoughts, the philosophies of a rake, but never the day-to-day rakish doings. Here was her opportunity to learn more.

“Philoxia says I am to beware of you, for you are a rake,” she blurted out.

He shouted with laughter and glanced over at her before returning his attention to the road and the other drivers, some of them erratic. An omnibus careened around the corner ahead of them, three-horse team stamping and snorting, and Jameson pulled his bays up, cursing as a lorry followed close behind the conveyance. They stopped for a few minutes while Jameson settled his team, but finally started up again.

When they were on an even track once more, he said, “I suspected she told you that, but that was when you were glaring at me at her literary party. I thought you were quite properly shocked and horrified that you had consorted with such a vile creature on the train without knowing my true colors, though any lady should know a man who kisses her on a train a half hour after meeting her is either a rake or worse.”

“Is there worse?” she interjected.

He laughed again and glanced at her with a smile still on his lips. “Indeed, good question. Of course now I know it was the mention of my true name that horrified you so. You found out I was the base pretender who had boldly dared not contradict the rumor that I was Colin Jenkins.”

“You are incorrigible,” she said, trying to maintain her anger at him but finding it impossible in the face of his smile and smoky eyes.

“And you, my dear, are adorable!”

A tingle of some new sensation trilled through her and it became suddenly hard to breathe. Did he really think that? Was she—

Rake. He is a rake, she told herself firmly. He can no more help saying such audacious things to a woman than he can stop breathing. Surely he did not mean them, not to her, a little country nothing!

Primly, she replied, “Yes, Philoxia told me you were a rake and warned me against you. She is worried there is ‘something’ going on between us.” Thank goodness she had not known about the ride in the park, the kiss and the set-to with Sainsbury Ellice. In retrospect, it did not look good, the way he and she were kissing before Mr. Ellice interrupted them.

“And so there is,” he murmured.

She wasn’t sure if she had heard right, and so stayed silent.

Finally, she said, “Are you going to tell the truth, Mr. Jameson? Are you going to talk to that reporter and tell him the truth?”

They pulled up in front of a windowed establishment. The bow windows held a gorgeous array of silks and satins, with a selection of ribbons and gloves displayed enticingly. “We are here, Miss Jardiniere,” Jameson said, unnecessarily, given the bold sign that proclaimed Mrs. Parker’s Exclusive Dressmaking.

She sighed. “Are you going to plague me yet again by not telling me what you will do to make things right between us?”

He took her hand, caressing the thin, worn leather of her glove as if it were her skin. She felt the warmth of his touch and blushed. A man walked by slowly, and she pulled her hand away, but Jameson caught it up again.

“My sweet,” he said, his voice deep, his tone sincere. “I would do anything for you. Now that I know you, know your talents, what this delicate hand of yours is capable of, I am your slave. I wish to be your benefactor. I think your talents are such that a wider audience should be made aware of the passion, the, the…” He stopped and shook his head. “Words fail me.”

Collette was as deeply touched as she had ever been in her life. He finally believed her to be the writer and was impressed by her talent! She glanced around anxiously and then leaned over and planted a kiss on Jameson’s cheek, lingering just a second as the warm roughness of his mustache and smoothness of his cheek teased her lips, a sensation much more enticing in life than it was in words.

The man on the street had seen them, and Collette pulled back as if she had been burned by the touch of his skin. Whatever had possessed her to do such an outrageous thing? She had believed the street to be empty of people; the man was walking and should have been past them before now. But…surely, she thought, glancing at him with a frown, that is the same fellow she had seen on Paternoster as she was lifted into Jameson’s carriage. Or was her brain confused?

She risked a glance at her companion to find he was staring at her, his hand on his cheek where she had touched her lips to him. His eyes, coal-dark, burned into her and he moved forward, then appeared to master himself with difficulty.

“That was—”

“I know,” she said, softly, her cheeks burning. “It was inexcusable.”

“That was not the word that came to mind. Entrancing, inviting, enchanting but not inexcusable.”

“I must go in.”

“I will go in with you,” he said, hastily, handing the reins to a young groom and leaping down. He put his hand up to help her down. “Mrs. Parker will give you a better deal if I am there.”

Well, and he thought yesterday’s view was a good one, that buss in the park! Now he had the goods all right. Randall Proctor glanced around after the gent and his fancy piece went into the dressmaker’s, and slipped down an alley. Surely there would be a little dressmaker’s assistant who would be weak to a little bribery, a sweet or tuppence. Informants were worth their weight in gold to a pressman who couldn’t be everywhere at once. He was on to something, he thought, more than what the spectacled gent had said, too, but that was his own business, wasn’t it? The lady was not mad, not by a long shot if he had heard correctly. The poor besotted gent had said he was her slave, and that she had talented hands. He was so far gone that he had retained her services as his mistress, and that was a canny move on any whore’s part, for he was rumored to be a generous sort.

He tapped on the back door of Mrs. Parker’s, and a plain blonde waif opened the door. “Who is it?” she asked, peering out at him, squinting her reddened eyes.

“A gent who has something for you, my little dear.”

Jameson watched Mrs. Parker flutter around Collette, talking expansively about silk moiré, merino and cashmere, and trimmings of Brussels lace, silk flowers and ribbons in matching hues. He had thrown himself back in a chair and sat lazily, watching over his steepled hands, legs extended and ankles crossed. He brooded for a while on the effect a simple kiss, the merest brushing of her lips on his cheek, had had on him. Old clichés about lightning bolts and bells ringing came to mind only to be dismissed as tired. Collette would know how to describe the coursing of his blood through his veins, but he had no words.

He had been kissed before, in many and varied places by many and varied ladies, ladies being a kind term in some cases. But Collette, sweet, irresistible—

Her eyes shone as Mrs. Parker showed her bolt after bolt of gorgeous fabric and named styles and showed pattern books. Good God, he had not thought what his presence would do! The dressmaker was bringing out her most expensive cloth, her most frivolous trims, because she assumed he was bearing the cost. He did not know how much Collette had already realized from her royalties, but he didn’t think it was enough for even one of the gowns Mrs. Parker was rhapsodically speaking about.

But those eyes! Collette glowed as she looked over the cloth and exclaimed over a cunning arrangement of silk flowers on a bonnet. She would be so disappointed—

A tiny assistant popped her head through the curtain and gazed around the room, her eyes lighting on Collette, and then she disappeared again. Mrs. Parker called her back, and the young girl, skinny and half-starved looking, with a squint that hinted at long hours with a needle by poor light, hurriedly fetched some more extravagant cloth at her mistress’s behest.

Collette glanced over at Jameson. “This is quite wonderful, is it not? I have never seen such beautiful fabrics in my life, nor such radiant hues! Mr. Bottle, the draper in Listerwood-on-Sea, has nothing to compare to this!”

She held an emerald swatch of fabric up to her and smiled over at him. “Is this not lovely? I have never seen a green that shimmered so. It is just like sunlight on the channel!” She twirled around the room with the fabric flowing around her lithe figure, swirling as she danced.

At that moment his mind was made up. “Mrs. Parker, may I speak with you for a moment?” he said, and indicated the corner of the room.

She joined him and he drew her aside, keeping an eye on Collette who had stopped dancing and was examining a pattern in one of the many books with fierce concentration.

“Mrs. Parker,” he murmured. “This young lady is very special to me and I would like her to have the very best of clothing. You can see how lovely she is. She deserves silk and satin, the very best you have! And underthings, delicates. She must have the very best. But for her dignity’s sake, I would not like her to know how much these clothes are going to cost.”

The dressmaker gave him a sharp look, her thin brows pulled down over flashing eyes. “I do not think I understand, sir?”

“I know the price of things,” Jameson continued, gazing over at Collette as he spoke. “But she does not. She is just up from the country. So here is what we will do. I will pay you the full amount of the dresses, whatever she wants. In return you will quote her a very modest price…very modest, perhaps only a tenth of the true cost! You will accept the money from her, but no more than that token amount. You will profit the more from our little deception, because as I say, I will pay the full amount of the dresses!”

The older woman, an understanding gleam in her dark eyes, said, “Mr. Jameson, she will find me a most reasonable dressmaker, and very fast, too. I have a day dress and an evening gown already made that will fit her slenderness to perfection, and the others shall be ready in two, maybe three days. Will that satisfy?”

Jameson straightened. “I think that will be most suitable, Mrs. Parker. I will be generous, as always.”

The little seamstress’s assistant bundled up some of the bolts of cloth nearby, her gaze nervously darting between him and Collette and then to the sewing room door. Jameson noticed but said nothing. When she hustled from the room toward the back door, he had a moment of unease. Helpers such as her had served as gossip-retailers in his years of experience with clothing and housing mistresses. But he shouldn’t worry. In this case, he was doing no wrong and there was nothing unsavory to report.

He relaxed and went back to watching Collette exclaim over her new wardrobe.

“That was positively exhilarating, Mr. Jameson,” Collette said as they exited an hour later. She pulled on her gloves. “I have never thought spending money could be so enjoyable.”

His carriage waited, and he handed her up into it. It was a delightful summer day, and he hated the thought of tamely taking her back to her hotel but didn’t want to drive aimlessly. It was early in the day yet. There was definitely something he would like to do with her, but—“Would you, perhaps, like to see one of my houses? We could have tea there, out on the terrace, overlooking the river.”

“One of your houses?” she gasped, clapping her hands together. “How many do you have?

“A couple, but this one is very special. You must see it. I think you will enjoy the afternoon.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” she said, gazing up at him. “I would enjoy that very much. Please, take me there.”

“I would take you anywhere you wanted to go,” he said, gazing down at her with meaning.

“Would you? I think I would go anywhere with you…Jamie.”

His resolutions of the day before were forgotten. Driving him on was the light in her eyes whenever she looked up at him and the way her lips had felt against his. He snapped the reins, hope and desire rising, the beat of seduction thrumming its siren call through him.

Twelve

All the way to Jameson’s second home, Collette struggled with herself. It had occurred to her that it was quite possible Jameson, as an established man about town, was taking her to his house with the intent to seduce her.

Should she let him? Would she enjoy it? She had begun to think she had missed much by not experiencing life other than through the pages of books. There were risks, of course. What if she became pregnant? But as a man of the world, would he not know how to prevent that?

She cast him a sideways glance.

“We’re almost there,” he said with deep satisfaction in his voice.

“Good,” she said, her voice coming out with a trace of a squeak. If it came down to it she would have to ask him outright, because she would not risk having a child out of wedlock. That would bring shame to her aunt and difficulty to her own life. Lovemaking was one thing, a child was another. Her palms began to sweat in the confines of her gloves.

Don’t be silly, she chided herself. It was quite possible he had nothing more on his mind than a cup of tea on the terrace. He was an experienced man and would have no desire for a foolish little country girl like herself. Her breathing calmed.

They were on the outskirts of London, in Richmond, and pulled up outside of the front gate of a tiny, secluded cottage, sweetly pretty, with flowers blooming in boxes mounted beneath the windows. She examined the cottage with interest, noting the cobbled exterior and prim window curtains. It looked like a house belonging to a tidy widow or fussy bachelor.

“This is unexpected,” she said as he leaped down from the carriage and offered her his hand as a silent stable boy came out to get the horses and led them around toward the back. The boy seemed not even to take any notice of her.

“What is unexpected?”

“This style of house. It’s so…pretty.”

He took her arm and strolled with her through the wrought iron gate and up the stone path, then found a key in his pocket and opened the door, standing aside to let her go in ahead of him as the clop-clop of another carriage behind them sounded, going past on the road beyond the gate.

The house inside was every bit as pretty and quaint as it was on the outside. She pulled off her gloves and strolled through the front hall to a sitting room beyond, and into the kitchen at the back of the house. The walls were papered and cheerful in yellow and cream, with roses coating the walls of a dining area off the kitchen. “Why do you own this house?” she asked, turning to him. “If I owned it, I would want to live in it.”

He didn’t answer. This was where he kept his mistresses, she thought, suddenly. But no one lived there that moment, that much was evident. It was cared for, but not in the way a home lived in by a woman would be. What should she do now that they were here? Pretend she hadn’t a thought in her head but tea? He gazed steadily at her, and she stared back, looking up into his dark eyes.

“Would you care for some wine?” he said.

“No… Yes! Yes, wine please.”

He poured for both of them, but no further mention was made of the terrace as he showed her about the cottage, the sitting room, the parlor, the bedrooms. In the last bedroom, the largest by far, with a white-canopied bed and fresh linens, the window slightly open to allow in the fresh, sweet air that made her feel so much more at home than the fogs of London, she set her wine aside and turned to him.

“Will you kiss me again?” she whispered.

“Here? In this room?”

“Yes.”

Doubt assailed him. This was what he had brought her here for, and she almost seemed to be inviting seduction, ready for it, waiting, even. And yet now, on the brink, he had doubts. This was no ordinary seduction. He had anticipated that she would demur, draw back, be shocked. But there was knowledge in her eyes, and acceptance, and something more. She was waiting, perched on the edge, eager to know what it was all about.

As he presented every new experience to her—the opera, the park, the seamstress’s establishment—she soaked up information and knowledge, and this was just another new experience. She was not trying to entrap him into marriage, and she did not expect anything beyond this. There was no deception in her, no devious scheming. And yet it bothered him that he was expected to perform as a good rake would. She expected him to seduce her.

And why should he not? His resolution hardened and his body tensed. He took her in his arms and bent to kiss her deeply. He wanted this too. That was his whole reason for bringing her here, and he should not be upset that she understood, accepted and was looking forward to the act.

Her questing, active mouth demanded satisfaction, and he found his arousal growing, the passion of her luscious lips and delicate hands squeezing his shoulders and arms making him aware that she was impatient to continue. He began to fumble with the buttons of her high-necked dress, and she helped him, their eyes locked, her lips moist, his desire building.

The heavy, ugly dress dropped to the floor and he helped her step out of it, and shed his own jacket and waistcoat. As their mouths met in another soul-searing kiss, he felt her slim fingers fumble with the buttons of his shirt, and then her cool hands on his bare skin, splayed across his chest, touching his musculature, learning him like a fascinating book or perfect sculpture. His arousal pressed insistently against the front of his trousers, and he gasped against her mouth, pushing the straps of her chemise aside and then letting his hands travel down to her bottom, pulling her to him, fitting her to his bulging erection.

She shivered, and he stopped to gaze down into her glazed eyes.

“Do you know what that is, my dear?” he asked, forcing himself to be gentle, trying to go slowly despite the pounding urgency of his desire. He took her hand, slipped it between them and cupped it over him.

Her face was pink, and her auburn hair spilled from its bun down over her bare shoulders. She was adorably tousled, the pink tinge making her look younger and prettier than he had ever seen her. He was amazed by her loveliness; it was so unexpected. He had always known her to be pretty enough, in a countrified way, but now she was radiant, glowing in the sunlight that streamed though the gauzy curtains. She had shed the ugly dress like a cocoon to reveal the butterfly beneath.

She nodded. “I know a little male anatomy, for Professor Stiltson, you see, had books, and I was curious…for my novel, you know. I needed to understand…wanted to learn…so I do know what…what…” She trailed off.

He groaned aloud as she hesitantly let her hand travel the length of him. He fumbled with the buttons of his trousers and her slim hand insinuated its way into the opening, touching him, drawing back, but then cradling his naked flesh in her ink-stained hand.

“Collette…please…”

He dropped to his knees and undid her chemise, pulling it down and stripping her, eager for his first view. Her flesh was pale, with tiny freckles over her flat belly, and he took her slim waist in his hands, kissing her stomach and then making his way up to her breasts, two perfect, sweetly uptilted orbs, the rosy tips puckering at the cool air and his attentions. She shivered all over as he drew one into his mouth and tantalized it with his tongue.

“Are you cold, my dear?” he asked.

“No…no, not at all. Please…please…” she begged, her head thrown back, her hair completely tumbled and flowing in rich waves over her slender shoulders.

“Please what?” he said, his ardor growing with her passionate responses.

“I don’t know… Teach me! Please, just don’t stop. What should we do? I don’t know!” she cried, staring wildly down into his eyes as his tongue circled the puckered pink of her nipple. “Tell me what I should do!”

He looked up into her eyes, thinking she was teasing, but no… She was perplexed. He scooped her up and carried her to the bed, depositing her on the covers. He stripped off his trousers and undergarments, watching her eyes as she watched him, until he stood almost naked in front of her, only his shirt left on. The sunlight danced across her pale flesh, and her eyes were wide as she lay, staring up at him.

“Are you frightened?” he asked, desperate to know if he should be turning back or if he should proceed. He was in an agony of suspense while she looked her fill. She licked her lips and it was all he could do not to drop onto the bed and ravish her.

“A little,” she admitted, gazing at his male anatomy. “I’m nervous, but…Jamie, will that all…?”

“Will it fit you?” he asked, feeling the heat pound through him at her innocent, thorough scrutiny. He was accustomed to love in the dark, under covers, with the lights extinguished. To have a woman stare at him so in the brilliant sunlight, her eyes wide, her examination intent, was his undoing. His male member was stiff and long and he craved her touch, whether it be her tender ink-stained hands, her mouth or her sweet virgin flesh. “It will not at first,” he said, carefully, his heart pounding. He must be honest with her at every step. She would be his first, too, in a way, his very first virgin, and he was as nervous in his own way as she.

But not so nervous that he wanted to stop.

Her eyes widened. “What will you do?”

“Nothing at all, if you don’t want me to. But if you wish to continue, I’ll be gentle at first, and you will be able to accommodate me, at last.”

She was silent for a long minute.

“I promise I will be gentle,” he repeated, “and you’ll like it, not at first, but…but…” He could say no more. He had never taken a virgin and had no way of knowing if he could make her like it. Such was not a topic of conversation among other men he knew. Not a one of them had ever considered the pain of first breaking through their wife’s or lover’s maidenhead. “I’ll make it pleasurable if I can, my dear.” He began to feel faintly silly, standing nearly naked in the sunlight.

“Jamie, is there some way…” She was silent again, staring mutely into his eyes.

“What is it?”

“I don’t want to become with child,” she said in a rush.

“Of course not,” he said, feeling a surge of protectiveness, and with it a growing feeling of attachment. He pushed away such thoughts. This was seduction and nothing more. “There are ways my dear, but they are not foolproof. There is no guarantee.” He was fully prepared at that moment to dress and take her home. His passion subsided a little, and he began to feel calmer, almost relieved. There would be no need to make love to her, to soil her perfection, to tear down his paragon with mortal sins of the flesh.

“But I would like… I wish to experience…” She reached out one tentative hand and touched him. He stiffened and felt the blood course through him at her gentle touch, his arousal pulsing heavily again. He was gone in that instant and he knew he would do whatever he had to, to make love to her.

“Then, my sweet, I will do my best to keep anything…to prevent a child. But if that happens… Collette,” he said, gently, “I may be a scoundrel, but I am not a cad. I would marry you and let you go home to your village a married woman. And when the child came, if you did not wish to keep it, I would…I would raise it as my heir, you know.”

She hesitated only a moment more, then a sweet smile curved her lips. “Then let us make love,” she whispered, wrapping her fingers around him, delicately stroking in some instinctive knowledge of men.

He pulled her hand away and pushed her down onto the bed, kissing her deeply, thrusting his tongue into her mouth and caressing her sweet breasts. He moved down and kissed the pale perfection of them, wetting each soft mound with his tongue, suckling them in turn until they were rosy and peaked and she was writhing and moaning, her eyes closed and her head thrown back.

As he kissed her breasts, Collette felt his hand reach up under her chemise to touch her bottom. He cupped her and pulled her close, but then his fingers stroked her thighs, touching the tender flesh between them, sending shudders through her body. She pulled at his shirt, pushing it off his shoulders, capping them with her hands and flexing, feeling his muscles bunch under them. He was pushing convulsively against her thigh, and as she looked down in the brilliant sunshine, she could see his male member, engorged and red, pearly droplets oozing from him.

Fascinated, frightened, exhilarated, wildly excited, she reached down, but when she touched the tip, rolling the moisture around, feeling its silky texture, he groaned and buckled.

“No, my sweet delight, I will finish if you do that. I can’t bear it!”

Startled, she pulled back, but in the next instant she gasped, feeling his thick finger push between the delicate folds of dewy skin between her legs. Instinctively she spread her legs, and he moved to lie between them, moving up to kiss her lips. He guided himself to her, and she felt his erection nudge her, opening her. A flood of anxious pleasure bolted through her and she knew she was getting wet, whether it was from him or her, she could not tell.

With a groan he pushed in and she cried out at the discomfort. He stilled, panting, and gazed down at her. “My sweet pet, I will stop now if I must, but not after another few seconds. Tell me now, or I will breach you in another minute.”

Eyes wide, staring at him, she cried, mingled anxiety and want in her tone, “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”

He bent to his task and pushed hard. It hurt, and she cried out, but he didn’t stop this time, pushing fully in until she felt full to bursting with him, possessed, his body pulsing inside of hers. Frightened by the throbbing sensation, she quivered and gasped, but then tried to calm. When he withdrew, she thought, that’s it, it is over, done with. But in another second he pushed in again, filling her more deeply. Some of the pain subsided, but before she had time to adjust fully, before she could get back any tickle of delight, he began to thrust in and pull out, pushing hard, finally, and holding her down when she squirmed at the discomfort, and then he spilled into her, a hot gush flooding her as he stroked.

He collapsed in a heap on top of her and for one frightening moment she thought him unconscious, but then he lifted his head and gave her a weak smile, tenderly brushing back the sweat-drenched tendrils of her hair that stuck to her neck and cheek. “Sweet lady, I have never… That is, you are my first…”

“You have never done this before?”

He let out a great shout of laughter and kissed her neck as he withdrew from her body. He rolled off of her, pulling the sheet up to shield their nakedness from the bald light of day. “No, my sweet, I have done that many many times before, but never with…never with one such as you.” He turned on his side and gazed at her steadily, caressing her cheek. “You’re not sorry we did this, are you?”

“N-No, I suppose…” She bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling, afraid tears would come. She was not a weepy female. What was wrong with her? But it had occurred to her that this was irrevocable. She could not decide if she had lost something or gained something. Or was it both? She had lost that innocence that was supposed to be her pearl beyond price, given to her to protect until a husband required it. But she had gained knowledge.

Or had she? Did she understand any more now about what made women succumb? She had made a conscious decision, not an emotional one. She had been attracted to Jamie from the first moment on the train, but was that enough? She liked him, but she did not love him. She was attracted to him but found much in his character of which to be censorious, not the least of which was his appalling lack of intent to do anything about his casual assumption of her pen name.

And now it was over. She had given him her virginity, and what had she gained in return? She closed her eyes and one tear slipped down her cheek.

“Collette! Oh, lord, Collette, do not say I hurt you so badly.”

She opened her eyes to see him staring down at her, hovering above her anxiously, propped up on one elbow. Reaching up, she pushed back his dark locks, tousled from his ardent exercise. He was a good person beneath his layers of London roguedom. “No, Jamie, it did hurt, but not unbearably. It’s just…” She stopped but could not contain herself. She had to know. “Is that all there is to it?”

Jameson felt impaled by her ingenuous question. Never, after the successful conclusion of one of his seductions, had a lady ever asked him if that was all there was to the event. “Well, no, of course not,” he said. “I mean, of course there is no more this moment, but a second time would be better. The first time is never truly enjoyable for a lady,” he said, scrambling for an explanation, not sure he was telling the truth.

“Perhaps,” she said, searching his eyes, “perhaps if we loved each other?”

He threw himself onto his back. “I have never been in love, I assure you Collette, but I have enjoyed lovemaking every time I have indulged.”

“But you’re a man. Did any of your ladies enjoy it?”

He pushed himself from the bed, unwilling to answer, afraid to search his own heart. He turned away from her. “I will arrange for the necessities for bathing if you will excuse me.” He pulled a dressing gown from the garderobe and strode from the room, pulling it over his shoulders.

An hour later, after a meal taken stiffly in the breakfast room, they were back on the road toward London. Collette felt she had hurt him in some unfathomable way, but he had to understand that she knew nothing and looked toward him for enlightenment. She had merely asked questions. Now, with his obstinate silence, she was beginning to get angry at him, the throbbing irritation within her exacerbating her ire.

It was unconscionable for him to be so resentful, and of what? She had given him her precious innocence, and he behaved thus? Just because she asked a question?

“Jamie,” she said, abruptly, glancing over at his unyielding profile. “You still have not told me what you intend to do about the situation with my novel.”

“That is because I have not yet decided,” he said, his tone stiff.

“I think you ought to decide, and quickly,” she said.

“Has anyone ever told you that you are a most exasperating, independent, shrewish and harrying young lady?”

“And you have become pompous of a sudden. Do you always become so after a sexual encounter? Are you experiencing regret?”

He slewed a glance her way and narrowed his eyes. “A rake never regrets a conquest, did you not know that?”

She gasped. “That was rude.”

“I’m sorry, Collette. I am a little overset. Please, let’s not speak. I have much to think about.”

They were silent all the way to London, and he merely said, as he bowed over her hand at the Chapter Coffeehouse, “I will see you on the morrow. We’ll discuss things then.”

“Yes we will,” she said, her tone gritty. “But that is the final time, Jamie. You must make a decision, or I will make one for you.”

Thirteen

After a meager supper left mostly on the plate, Collette retired to her room. The darkness brought a confused sense of something like regret. Collette buried her face in the musty linen pillowcase and bit her lip. It didn’t help that she was very aware that she had lost her innocence. She could still feel him inside of her and shame warred with a strange trickle of anxiety. She would go home a different person. Would it be writ on her face as she stepped down from the train? Would Aunt Nettie know immediately, and would she cry?

Did she regret it? It had been a hasty decision, and Collette was never hasty, but still… She lay on her back and glared at the ceiling.

No, she regretted how it had ended, but she didn’t regret taking that step. She wasn’t sure how things would turn out now, and she knew she had been changed forever, but she didn’t think she would go backward in time if she could and take a different path. She supposed she had hurt him in some way, but she didn’t think his feelings so delicate as to be injured by a mere question. So maybe it was only his pride and not his feelings.

What use would regret be anyway? She had hurt no one with her decision, and she had only offered what was hers to give. And now she knew more, had learned so much.

He had been gentle and caring and tender until the last moments, until he had writhed and convulsed in the grip of a primitive ritual as old as time. It had felt… She frowned into the darkness. It had felt as though he was claiming her, and even as she had wriggled, his strength and desire had thrilled her deeply. Even if she had not experienced the kind of pleasure he had, she had liked the brief sense of being his and of giving him such pleasure.

But what was she left with? One tear formed, and then another, and soon they were welling and falling from her eyes as desolation swept through her. There was a price to be paid for knowledge, she discovered, and that price was that now she felt lonelier than ever before.

She turned onto her stomach and wept, trembling with the knowledge that from being a detached, independent woman, she had become not soiled, but claimed. Whether he wanted her or not, she was in some way Jamie’s—they had, after all, briefly been as one—even if they never saw each other again. This, then, was what had haunted her hero Lankin’s innocent lover, Susan. No matter where she went in life after he deserted her, there would always be a part of her left with him. She had lost something in the process, something beyond innocence.

Perhaps this feeling would pass with time, and in fact she would do all she could to defeat it, but this moment it was as sharp as a needle.

Philoxia Bertrand, relaxing in the pleasant morning room of her Mayfair home, opened her copy of Wilson’s Gazette, a paper that never failed to amuse her, and turned to the gossip column immediately. Above all she enjoyed trying to figure out what the veiled meanings and single letter names meant, and if they applied to anyone she knew.

Oh, bother. The first item was just one of those “A Day at a Country House” maunderings. Too boring! Anyone who was anyone knew exactly what a day at a country house was like! But the second piece… More about the Charles Jameson mystery. Was he the writer of that scandalous but wonderful The Last Days of a Rake, or was he not? She longed to know, but the original piece was worded in just such a way as to leave some doubt. The reporter clearly believed Jameson was Jenkins, but Jameson was not affirming it.

And so now what?

We have learned that C.J., who was recently named (by us) the author of a certain very well-received novel about a gentleman’s adventures, has taken a new little “bird of paradise” under his wing. This bird (or should we say “soiled dove”?) was seen giving him a peck in the park, and the very next day C.J. was buying her a new wardrobe of fine feathers!

A close intimate friend of C.J.’s, a Mr. S.E., has informed us that when he came upon them in the shade of a gracious old tree in Hyde Park, Mr. C.J. threatened him if he should tell what he had seen. The little strumpet, too, ripped into Mr. S.E.! Is there some secret here? Are they hiding from someone? When this writer dared to follow them, they flew the coop to a sweet little nest in the country and disappeared inside, to bill and coo, one must suppose, and nothing more.

More in the next issue!

Well, no trouble figuring out who the writer meant, despite the letters instead of names and coy talk of feathers and nests. So, Jameson had a new mistress, hmm? That was a good thing. Maybe then he would stop bothering Collette, who had no idea what to do with a rake. His behavior toward her was peculiar to say the least. He watched her with an odd look in his eyes, at once possessive and fearful. If he had a new mistress he could work off some of his manly energy in an acceptable manner and leave Collette alone.

Philoxia folded the paper and stirred her tea.

Unless—

No. No sane person could think for a moment. She took a sip of her tea, then set the cup down with a clatter. And yet, it had been many years since she had last seen Collette, maybe—

No! Absolutely not! Collette seemed just the same as she was in school, a little shy, reserved, an observer, not one to become involved, and certainly not with a rake! But still—the idea plagued her. Philoxia picked up the Gazette again and looked at the article. What was it about the piece that made her uneasy? There was nothing to indicate what she was worried about. It wouldn’t hurt to ask Collette about it if she could find a tactful way. She would no doubt find it was all nonsense.

Jameson stood as Collette joined him at the table in the Chapter Coffeehouse dining room. She wore the new day dress—the one Mrs. Parker already had made in the shop—of moss green merino, with ribands of gold sateen and forest green silk roses. High-necked, with long fitted sleeves, it flattered her vivid coloring of auburn hair and green eyes and fit her figure admirably, cinching in her tiny waist and flowing over her hips. The skirt was fuller than she had been wearing, but it was still not the monstrosities other women donned, dresses that made sitting or getting into a carriage almost impossible. She smiled as he took her hand, but it was a tremulous expression, and then they sat down opposite each other.

He stared at her for a few minutes, wondering if it was just the new dress, or if she was the prettiest woman he had ever seen in his life. On first glance, in the poor light of the train that memorable night of their first meeting, he had thought her plain, but his emotions had undergone a sea change since then, and now, looking at her, he thought she was a lovely young woman. Her eyes were her best feature, even behind spectacles, a sparkling, changeable green, but she had a perfectly molded nose, exquisite skin like thick Devonshire cream, an adorable pointed chin with a dimple squarely in the center and the sweetest rosebud mouth he had ever tasted.

A very kissable mouth, just as all parts of her were delectable. He pushed away thoughts of their last encounter, an afternoon that had left him changed, forever, he feared. He still wasn’t sure what he felt. He had left, outraged at what she had said, but then…how could he be angry with her? It was her very first time and she truly didn’t know what to expect. And he had experienced, toward the end, a ferocious wave of some indefinable exultation that even as she tried to move, he had held her down, intent on claiming her, stamping his mark on her forever. It was disconcerting, for never had he felt such a wave of primitive lust and ownership, and it could not have been pleasurable for her.

He was uneasy at the memory, shy of it, not quite knowing what to make of it. Looking at her now, Jameson recognized that he felt toward her a tenderness and wish to protect her that he could not put into words without sounding foolish. Despite—or perhaps because of—her innocent question, her wish to know if that was all there was to lovemaking, he wanted her. He wanted to show her how much more could be between them. He wanted to make love to her again and again, until he collapsed in weariness. He wanted… Ah, but there was the difficulty. He had no reason to think she wanted any more to do with him.

Perhaps once they got past the problem of Colin Jenkins he could try to figure out his feelings and what he ought to be doing about them. He cleared his throat and looked into her eyes. They were a little bloodshot. Had she not slept, perhaps?

“You wished to speak with me today, Mr. Jameson,” she said, her tone stiff.

He had been Jamie the previous day, but now it was back to formality. But perhaps that was just their surrounding. He glanced around the coffee room, aware some were glancing their way. “Are you quite well today, Collette? Yesterday… I hope…” Damn, how to ask? What to say? This was completely outside of his realm of experience and he felt as gauche as he had after his first time with a woman. He gazed steadily at her, watching the flicker of doubt in her eyes, the nuances of shifting emotion. “I hope,” he said, gently, “that I did not hurt you in any way. I’m afraid that toward the end… That is…I was uh, overcome and may have been a little more forceful than was necessary.”

“Was that not how you usually are?”

He shook his head and looked away, toward the bow front window and the men hustling by on their endless mysterious errands. “No, I have never behaved thus.” He met her steady gaze. “Please tell me if you need anything.”

She drew back. “Need anything? I am quite self-sufficient, I assure you, Mr. Jameson. Let us speak of something other than…other than yesterday afternoon.”

“Yes. Well, we must discuss how we are to go about making the public aware I am not Colin Jenkins.”

Collette frowned. A waiter brought them a pot of chocolate and then disappeared again when she told him she would prefer tea. “It is simple enough, is it not? Send the reporter a note and tell him his story was in error, that what you meant to say was that you are not Colin Jenkins, nor did you write Last Days!”

“It is not that simple, Collette! If it were, I would already have done it.”

“Why is it not that simple?”

“Because it is a case of protesting too much!”

Puzzled, Collette said, “But you haven’t protested at all!” How obtuse could he be? Surely in this city one could say a truth and be believed? It was that simple.

“They will think I am just trying to protect my anonymity! Gentlemen do not write novels!” Jameson said it slowly, as if she needed time to understand.

“What bosh!” Collette cried. Maybe she did need time to understand, because it sounded like he was talking errant nonsense to her. “Mr. Dickens, Mr. Thackeray, Mr. Trollope…”

“Are not gentlemen,” he finished stiffly. “They are, or have been, a clerk in a law office, an illustrator and a postal clerk. A gentleman does not work!”

“Then if you, sir, are a gentleman, I can think of no more worthless creature on the face of the earth. Not work? A man should work, and I have more respect for Mr. Trollope than a dozen of your gentlemen…fellows, I surmise, like your friend, Mr. Ellice.” She sat stiffly as the waiter brought the pot of tea, set it down and departed once more.

Jameson waited until the young man was gone again. “Collette,” he remonstrated, leaning across the table and punctuating his remarks with his finger on the tabletop. “I am just saying that is what people will think, that I protest so they will not think me stooping beneath my station in life.”

“Well, heaven forfend that you would seem to stoop!” Collette said, batting away his finger and rising. “I had not thought you so, so…gentlemanly!”

She turned to go, but Jameson jumped to his feet and grabbed her arm. “Collette, do not run away from me,” he said, his tone low and urgent. He circled her upper arm with his hand, holding her tight.

“I am not running away, but I thought you were going to help me—”

“I am! I just need to think of the best way, the way to be believed!”

“Simply tell the truth! And let go of my arm. You’re hurting me”

He released her immediately. “Collette, listen to me. You must admit I know London ways and society better than you. There is no point at all in doing this thing if people just smirk and think I am being modest or trying to maintain my anonymity. I meant what I said yesterday. I think you the most talented…” He paused, afraid to say more, aware how it could easily be misinterpreted in light of what they had done the day before. “I meant it when I said I worship at your feet.” He longed to see the tenderness on her face again, and the light in her eyes when she had given him that peck on the cheek in his carriage, outside of the seamstress’s establishment. He felt as though he had damaged something precious by seducing her, as difficult as that was for him to admit even to himself.

She glared at him but could not stay truly angry. “That is a picture,” she said softly. “I would pay a year’s royalties to see you at my feet, sir.”

“You could have me there and not pay a penny for the sight.” He took both her hands in his and stared into her eyes.

Would he kiss her again, right here in the coffee room? Surely not! But the wish was there in his expression. Why it was, she could not say, but he truly seemed to care for her, even if it was just as a funny little country mouse he felt protective toward. Collette wished she could go back to the day before, to the moments before she had gazed up at him and asked him to kiss her. Would he have tried to seduce her if she had not so blatantly made herself available? Had he merely taken advantage of an opportunity for lovemaking with a woman who offered herself? Now she would never know.

“What shall we do?” she asked, staring into his dark eyes.

“I will go today and try to find out what I can about the man who wrote the bilge in the first place. Proctor has hitherto been haunting my doorstep and now that I want him, I can’t seem to track him down. I can’t even remember what he looks like. Not a memorable sort, I suppose. But I will try again today. What will you do with your day?”

“I am promised to Henny. We are to spend the day with her children in the park.”

Jameson shuddered. “I think I have the more entertaining itinerary ahead of me. Remember, if you need me, just send a message to…here,” he said, giving her his card, then recaptured her hands. “That address will find me.” He lifted her hands to his lips, kissed them both and then departed.

In the corner of the room a man reading a paper peeked over the top at the two, then dipped below his copy of Wilson’s Gazette again. He scribbled on a notepad with one hand while he held the daily paper in his other. Collette glanced his way, but he bounced up that moment, threw some money on the table and stepped quickly out onto the street.

Collette passed the day in the park with Henny, the Dancey’s nursemaid, a nanny and the children, then spent another almost sleepless night, tossing and turning in her lumpy inn bed. The next morning, she frowned down at the note in her hand as she waited in Philoxia’s sitting room for her friend to join her. What did it mean, “I must see you on a matter of some urgency”? What was wrong? Collette hoped her friend was not ill or in some kind of trouble.

In their school days, Loxy had been the daring one, the wild one, the one who took all of the chances while Henny hid and Collette watched. It was Loxy who had first stolen into the pantry to filch cakes and cream, and it was Loxy who had shinnied down a trellis to visit a local tavern dressed as a boy. Only after she had successfully had those adventures did Collette and then Henny dare to follow. Collette was not proud of what a coward she had been, but next to Loxy, wild, capricious Loxy, anyone would have appeared a coward!

But now Philoxia seemed to have settled into the role of society matron, widow of a rich and prominent businessman. She was now the darling of the literary world and held the most dazzling parties, but she managed it all without a breath of scandal touching her name. Collette was happy for her. In her youth Loxy, for all her wild antics, had never seemed truly happy. Each escapade was more daring, as though she wanted to be caught, wanted to be taken away from the lonely confines of their refined girl’s school back to her even lonelier home.

Finally, of course, she had taken the ultimate risk and had indeed been caught and suffered. The attention of her parents was focused on her at last, but not in any positive way.

At least now, after all of these years, and more than her fair share of tragedy, she seemed serene, happy and fulfilled.

“Colly, dear!”

Philoxia entered the room with her hands outstretched and the two women embraced. They sat together on a settee.

“Whatever have you been up to, my dear?” Philoxia asked, her tone arch.

“Up to? Yesterday I was with Henny all day. We had an outing to the park with her children. My, they are energetic, I must say! I don’t know how she keeps up with them.”

“That is not precisely what I meant. Collette…” Philoxia broke off and sighed.

Collette held out the note. “What is it, Loxy? What does this mean? I have been in a panic since receiving your note, picturing you ill or troubled.”

“I’m sorry if the note worried you, but I did need to see you immediately.”

Collette noticed for the first time that Loxy had a newspaper clenched in her hand, which she now held out to Collette. Wilson’s Gazette! Had Loxy found out her identity? Was that what this was about?

But it was a new Gazette, not the one from a month ago that featured the story of the “discovery” of the identity of Colin Jenkins. It was folded over to expose a gossip column, a part of the paper that Collette never read, not knowing any of the people involved.

“What is this?” she asked, looking into her friend’s eyes.

Philoxia’s expression was troubled and she pointed one long finger at a particular piece. “Read it. Note the mention of C.J. That is Charles Jameson. They have been hinting he is the author of a new book…but that is neither here nor there. What is important is… Oh dear, this is so difficult. Just read it, my dear. Please tell me I am imagining things.”

Collette scanned the gossip piece for whatever disturbed her friend so.

Perhaps we were hasty in naming C.J.’s mistress yesterday, for they were observed in the dining room of a certain coffeehouse on Paternoster Row, and they were having a row!

What was this about the Chapter Coffeehouse? Why, she and Jameson had sat there two days before and talked, even had a little spat. The story retailed just such an argument with “C.J.”—Charles, according to Philoxia—and his…mistress?

Is it possible that it was due to the extravagance needed to feather the little bird? On good authority we have it that the feathers cost C.J. rather more than his last “friend’s” parting gift! It is said that the entire feathering will cost more than £500! How is that for feathering your nest?

Alarmed, Collette looked up at Philoxia. “Loxy, what is this about? I don’t understand why you’re showing this to me.”

The woman, normally unflustered and calm, reddened. “Colly, my sweet, I’m afraid to ask you a question I must ask, for fear of offending you.”

Collette took her friend’s hands and pulled her down beside her, discarding the paper and letting it slide off the settee. “Dearest, just say whatever you need to say.”

“First I must ask you, did you go to Mrs. Parker and purchase new clothing?”

“Yes, and it was marvelous!” She relaxed and smiled. “Oh, Loxy, I had no idea it could be so much fun to buy clothing! I am accustomed to sewing my own for the most part, or having old Mrs. Fenton in the village assist me, but at Mrs. Parker’s she had the most gorgeous…”

Philoxia interrupted her raptures, holding up one hand and saying, “I know, my dear. Did you go alone?”

“Well, no, I meant to, but you see, Mr. Jameson was just coming to see me, and he offered me a ride, and then he came into Mrs. Parker’s establishment with me… I don’t know why…”

Her friend searched her eyes, and once again Collette was puzzled at the concern she read there.

“And what did you buy?”

“Too much! You were right to send me there, Loxy. I spent a little more than I should have, but I purchased two dresses she had made up, a day dress and an evening gown, and ordered a walking dress, two more day dresses and one more evening gown. And some oddments: a fan, some petticoats, gloves. I shouldn’t have been so extravagant, I suppose, but really, I think that Mrs. Parker did not ask half what she could have.”

“But you paid for them yourself?”

“Of course I did,” Collette said, gazing at her friend in astonishment. “Or at least, I will. Who else would pay for them? I have not received the bill yet, but I already know the total amount, and it is quite reasonable.”

“But you are going to pay for them yourself? That is the agreement?”

“Of course! Loxy, what are you saying? What is this all about?”

Her handsome face drawn with concern, Philoxia picked up the paper from the floor. Collette frowned.

“Have you also been in Hyde Park with Mr. Jameson?” Philoxia asked.

“Yes, we…we went for a drive a few days ago.”

“And did you meet anyone there?”

“No… Oh, yes! An odious friend of Mr. Jameson’s. His name was… Oh, what was it? Ah, Sainsbury Ellice, I remember! A vile man, I assure you.”

“Sainsbury Ellice. S.E. Did you then have words with the gentleman?”

“I did! He disparaged Mr. Trollope, whom I met at your soirée and found fascinating. And then he called me a strumpet and Jameson tore a strip from him and…” Collette’s mouth dropped open. She plucked the paper from Philoxia’s hand.

“Do they mean…” Words failed her and she pointed at the piece and then at herself.

Philoxia nodded.

“But…”

“Then—I am sorry my dear, but I must ask—then it is not you? You are not his…his…”

“Am I his mistress? Is that what you are asking?” Collette quailed at the thought. Was she? Did making love once make her his mistress? But no. Being someone’s mistress meant they paid for your establishment and bought you things. She would never submit to such a life. She had satisfied her curiosity and nothing more. “Of course not, Philoxia! Good grief, his mistress? I am hardly the type.”

With an exclamation of sorrow Philoxia threw her arms around Collette, hugging her close. “I didn’t think so, but I had to ask! Please do not be angry, my dear, do not…”

Collette pushed her away but smiled at her. “I’m not angry at you, dear. I’m just shocked that any of this is in a newspaper. Why would it be? And what does all of this mean, about feathers and all that rubbish?”

“It refers to an earlier piece, from the day before. That piece told about your meeting in the park with Mr. Ellice, and your altercation with him. It named you Jameson’s mistress but did not identify you, thank a merciful God! That vile Mr. Ellice has been supplying this awful reporter with gossip.”

Collette was deeply shocked and sorely offended. “But it’s not true!” she cried. “None of it… Well, most of it is untrue, anyway.” This was the trouble one got into consorting with the likes of Mr. Jameson! She supposed it was true when he said he understood London ways much better than she.

“No one will believe this bosh anyway,” Collette finally said. “They are implying, are they not, that Mr. Jameson paid for my clothing at Mrs. Parker’s?”

“They are. The previous article stated it outright.”

“Well that is nonsense. Mrs. Parker is sending the bill around to my inn, and I am to send for a draft on my bank in Listerwood. We agreed on a price, and though it was more than I intended to spend, I was a little carried away by the divine fabrics.”

“How much she is charging you?”

“Oh, more than I have paid in the last five years for clothing.” Collette laughed. “But I have come into a little money, so £65 will hardly break me.”

“Oh, my dear,” Philoxia gasped, “£65? Your wardrobe cost at least £500, and probably more! I very much fear there is some duplicity here, and I would ask Mr. Jameson his part in it!”

Fourteen

Jameson glanced over at Collette, noting the stiff posture, the clenched hands, the rigid expression. He flicked the whip over his horses’ heads, and they quickened their pace through the jammed workaday streets of London. Lorries and omnibuses, clerks on foot, messengers and horsemen teemed on road and sidewalks, all with places to go, work to do, business on their minds.

Where could he speak to her privately, away from all this bustle? Something was bothering her, judging from her fixed expression. He had not expected her prim note requesting “a moment or two” of his time, and he wondered what it was all about, but he would not speak of it until they were private and his attention was not taken up with the worrisome job of driving through the hubbub.

It was a far different kind of day than the first time he had taken her for a drive. The sky was iron gray with clouds scudding across it and wind tossing the tops of trees. For lack of any better idea, he headed to Hyde Park and drove onto Rotten Row, pulling off into a grove of trees almost immediately. He had taken the precaution of bringing a tiger with him, and he threw the reins to Tommy and lifted Collette down, feeling the tension in her body.

“Shall we walk?” he asked, brusquely.

“Certainly, Mr. Jameson.”

“To the Serpentine, then,” he said, taking her arm and escorting her across the grassy sward in the direction of the small lake. “Now,” he said, glancing around uneasily, trying to rid himself of the feeling he had had lately of being followed. “What is this about? I have not thought of a manner of proclaiming myself not Colin Jenkins yet, if that is what you’re on about.”

“No doubt you will come up with a plan when it suits you,” she said tartly.

“What does that mean? What’s wrong with you today?” he asked, trying to catch her green gaze but failing. They stopped by the small lake, disturbing a family of ducks that blustered away with wild quacks of alarm.

She pulled her arm away and confronted him. “I want to know what you are up to.” She appeared to steel herself, and then her chin lifted, a clear sign she was ready to do battle. The trees tossed above them and a chill wind tugged at her bonnet. “What is going on between you and Mrs. Parker? Did you pay for my clothes? How much did they really cost? And why would you purposely compromise me that way? Was it all—everything, even the c-cottage and our…what we did—a scheme to discredit me?”

Damn, and damn again! How did she find out about his little ruse? “I’m sure Mrs. Parker will be sending you a bill any day,” he equivocated.

“But for £65! I am told my new wardrobe will cost close to ten times that!”

Searching her angry green eyes, he tried to think of a way around the problem but finally sighed, stroked his mustache and said, “All right, the truth of the matter is that your wardrobe cost me £672. And worth every ha’penny!”

Collette’s creamy complexion blanched as she stared at him, wide-eyed with shock. “Six hu… Six… What ever possessed you? Are you quite, quite mad? Why do you treat me like your whore? Is it because… Is it because of what we did together?” Her voice clogged with tears but she would not stop. “How could you do this to me, and then tell the papers…”

She turned away toward the Serpentine, covering her face with her gloved hands. She was crying, damn it! But what was that about the papers? “What are you talking about?” he said, grasping her shoulders and turning her to face him, pulling her hands down and grasping them. He searched her eyes again and saw the thick droplets trembling on her long lashes. “What do you mean, papers?”

“Wilson’s Gazette, as if you didn’t know! Even before the incident at the dressmaker’s shop they reported I was your mi-mistress!” Her voice was catching as she tried to quell her tears. “Someone must have told them so. Who else but you?”

Stunned, Jameson felt as if he had been hit in the chest with a hammer. “My mistress? You must be mistaken! How…” He stopped, dropped Collette’s hands, stepped away from her and gazed off into the distance with unseeing eyes. He should have known better than to accompany Collette in such an open manner. He was dogged by reporters, who collected the most innocent tidbits of his life and turned them into salacious treats for public consumption. A rumble of thunder rolled over them and a light pattering of rain tapped at the canopy of leaves above them but did not penetrate so far as the ground yet.

He had learned to not let such tales bother him. His reputation as a rake and ladies’ man ensured that gossip columnists reported every new conquest, down to flirtations he never consummated. But he had never really been in public with Collette, never escorted her to a ball, never danced with her nor taken her to dinner. If they had named her as his mistress even before the dressmaker’s, how…? Sain? Surely he would not—

“Did they print your name?” he asked grimly, glancing back at her.

“N…no. They only told about us being here in the park, using your initials, and about Mr. Ellice, and me ripping into him, and then about buying a wardrobe at Mrs. Parker’s and you p-paying. And…and they must have followed us to your…cottage.”

In the midst of his growing fury he was relieved about that one thing; they hadn’t named her, thank God! But was that because they didn’t know her name, or were they holding that back to titillate their readers? There might be worse to come.

He must devise a plan to protect her. She didn’t deserve to suffer just through knowing him. He looked over at Collette, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief and sniffing. She seemed to gather herself, turning toward him with an attempt at a smile.

“I am happy, anyway, that it was not purposeful on your part. I was imagining all kinds of vile things, and for that I apologize.”

Brave soul, he thought, gallant even when wronged. “You apologize? ’Tis all my fault.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, an uncharacteristically inelegant movement, and kicked at a tuft of grass. He gazed off over the Serpentine, watching the family of ducks, the ducklings almost grown now in late August. They had returned and sailed close, hoping for a handout, perhaps, a few breadcrumbs, as scattered raindrops ringed the placid surface. He glanced over at Collette again and caught her frown. “I’ll take care of this, I swear it. I’ll make it right. Even if I have to pummel Mr.-bloody-Proctor myself—he’s responsible for all of this, I’m sure of it—I will make him retract, and publicly, too.” The thought assailed him that if anyone had guessed who she was, it might already be too late. Once a lady’s reputation was besmirched, it was forever tarnished. No retraction, no matter how it was worded, would ever cleanse it.

“But I still do not understand why you paid Mrs. Parker for my clothes,” she said, her head to one side. “Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?”

How could he explain? He met her eyes and smiled at the quizzical expression in their glowing green depths. She was deliciously enticing, like an adorable package with surprising contents. How could he say the delight on her face as she went through all of the lovely fabrics and lace and furbelows was worth ten times what he had paid? That watching her in raptures over pretty things she had never had before brought a queer lump to his throat and an even stranger gladness to his heart. He could not even explain it to himself. He had paid for wardrobes before, was even somewhat of a connoisseur of women’s accouterments, but in this case he expected no payback and needed no pretty wheedling or pleading to pay the shot.

It was enough to see her, so spring-like in moss green, daintily shod in neat shoes of Morocco leather and with a parasol of an exact match to the dress. She wore pale green dyed gloves on her hands, hands he knew were ink-stained, but not less enticing for that. He shrugged helplessly. “You seemed to be enjoying yourself so much. I knew that what you liked would come to a dreadful sum, and I did not think you could afford it, and I have pots of money sitting in the bank doing me not a jot of good…”

She stiffened again. From quizzical, her expression changed to acrimonious. “I see,” she said. Her eyes took on the look of fine emerald, glittering and hard. “And then, in such a happy mood, I blithely accompanied you to your country cottage and…and offered myself in payment.”

“I never thought that, never once, nor did I pay with the hope of it!” he said, anger building. “I would never treat you like…like one of those women.”

“One of those women? What would men like you do without ‘those women’?” she said.

“Ah, so this is what is really at the heart of it?” He calmed. “Collette, please don’t make this into a quarrel about my unfortunate wording.”

“No, I won’t. I’ll get back to the heart of the matter.” She quivered with outrage. “You have sadly misjudged me, Mr. Jameson, if you think me such a child that I cannot bear to be disappointed when my income does not match my desires. Your misjudgment continued when you thought buying me a wardrobe was a proper, or even a kind thing to do. I suppose the misjudgment of the rest of the day and the way we…the way we spent it is upon my shoulders, though. We must leave now, and we shall stop by Mrs. Parker’s on the way to cancel my wardrobe, after which she will return your money. Then we shall find out how much this dress cost, for I have already worn it and cannot return it. I shall pay you for it with a draft from my bank.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Collette. It’s too late…”

“It is not too late! Even if she has already started on the clothing, she has dresses there all the time that were not paid for or not picked up, like this green one,” she said, holding it away from her as if wearing it was a distasteful necessity. “She should never have made such an agreement with you without my knowledge, and I hold her responsible as well as yourself.” She turned and started stalking off toward the carriage, disregarding the light mist of rain, but then stopped and glared back at him. “And another thing, Mr. Jameson! I have still not given you permission to call me Collette!”

They left the park, made their way to Mrs. Parker’s establishment, and the deed was done. The seamstress was irate about the cancellation, but Collette demolished her with a controlled, wicked diatribe about how a woman must fashion her own destiny, and that as a businesswoman, Mrs. Parker had an obligation to right the wrong that had been inflicted upon Collette without her knowledge.

Now they were back in the carriage, but Jameson could not bear to see her so unhappy. Another distant rumble sounded and he glanced up at the sky uneasily. It had been a dry summer so far, and even with the misting rain, dust swirled on the crowded streets, whirling into tiny devils and gritting pedestrians’ eyes. This light mist was likely the precursor of a downpour.

He could not just drive aimlessly about all day, and yet there really was nowhere but a park to take a young lady. He dared not suggest his cottage again, and truly, they likely didn’t have enough time to get there in an open carriage. But they needed to talk at length.

“Do you have any suggestions of how to tackle this mess, Collette?” Despite her anger at him, he would not go back to calling her Miss Jardiniere.

“No,” she said bleakly, gazing into the distance.

“Collette,” he said urgently, glancing over at her while maneuvering his team through the streets. “We must speak of this. I don’t know what to do, for the first time in my life, and I don’t wish to do anything more to hurt you, or to impugn your honor.”

She glanced over at him, her expression softer, more open at his evident sincerity. “I don’t know! I don’t know what to do either. I don’t know why I’m so upset about it all. I could return to Kent tomorrow and no one would ever think of me again.”

He hated seeing her so overset. “Please don’t go. We can come up with a plan, but to do so, we must speak in private. Will you come to my townhouse for an hour? We can enter privately so no one even on my staff will see you, for I have a private entrance dedicated to my own use. It is going to pour in a few minutes and we cannot just drive around the streets all day in the rain.”

She looked around helplessly but then nodded. “I don’t know what else to do, and we do need to speak of this.”

Before they got there, the sky opened and rain poured down on them. He drove directly into his stable, a shared accommodation with other householders in the area, and as his groom handled the team, he took off his coat and put it over Collette’s shoulders. Sheltering her with his arm, he ran with her to the back of his house and guided her through his private door, up the stairs and into his suite’s sitting room.

Saturated and shivering, she stood in the middle of the room, her bonnet bedraggled, her hair wet against her neck. He took her hat, removing the long hat pin carefully and setting it aside.

“That is what is wrong with fine feathers,” she said mournfully, holding her arms out and staring down at her green silk dress, now spotted with rain. “This dress will never look the same. A little rain would not have injured my old brown one. If I had not been so vain as to wear this, but I thought it looked so nice…”

He took her into his arms and held her close, feeling her shiver against him. “My housekeeper will take care of it,” he murmured into her ear. “She is a very discreet woman and will never see you, anyway. But to do so, to save it, you must remove it, you know.” He released her and held her away from him, ducking down to look directly into her eyes. “I am not trying to do anything but save your pretty dress, my dear. I will get you a robe and leave you alone for a minute.”

He exited into his bedchamber, which opened off the sitting room, brought back a robe and then left again, merely saying he would order tea.

Collette undressed down to her petticoats, but they were wet as well. May as well dry them too, she thought, since she had Jameson’s voluminous robe to cover her. She climbed out of all her things and laid her underthings over a chair.

Jameson tapped on the door and she called out, “Come in.”

He slipped in and picked up the green dress. “It is wet, isn’t it?” he said, holding it up. He glanced over at the chair and spotted her petticoats and underthings, then looked over at her.

“They’re wet too,” she said, wrapping his robe around her more closely.

“I will have a maid light the fire. Would you slip into my bedroom for a moment while she does so? I will preserve your anonymity even with my staff if I can.”

A half hour later, with a fire blazing and a tray laid with tea things on a low table by the fire, they were comfortable. He had ensconced her in the only chair and he, wearing only trousers and a shirt, open to the waist, sat on the floor, his legs drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. His damp hair was drying, and it was tousled from the rain and wind. She reached out and pushed back his tumbled locks. He caught her hand in his and kissed her palm.

“I’m so sorry for all of this, Collette. You don’t know how much I regret what you are going through. It never would have happened if I hadn’t made that foolish comment to Proctor.” He gazed up at her. “But then, I never would have met you, and I cannot be unhappy about that.”

Was he as sincere as he sounded? That was the problem with gentlemen of rakish habits; they were by nature accomplished flatterers and liars. But she would choose to think him sincere.

“I’m not unhappy we met, either. I only wish…” She looked away from his face and toward the fire.

“What is it?”

She listened to the pattering rain against the window and the crackle of an ember popping in the fireplace. “I’m afraid, Jamie.”

“Afraid? Don’t be. Please, my dear. I will slay the dragons, you know, even if I suffer immolation in the process. I will do anything to make this right, Collette.”

He knelt beside her chair and took her into his arms and she buried her face in his neck, smelling the spicy scent of his cologne. When he tipped her face up to meet his and found her lips, she surrendered to the sweep of desire and kissed back, allowing her mind to go blank. In one swift motion he picked her up, cradled her to him and took the chair, holding her close to his chest on his lap. But then they stilled, the sound of the wind and rain filling the room.

“We should talk,” she murmured finally, tucking her cold hand under his shirt and tracing the musculature of his abdomen.

“Yes. We will. But kiss me again first. I cannot seem to get enough.”

She kissed him, wriggling around to face him and ending up straddling him on the chair. His lips covered hers and he thrust in his tongue, dipping into her mouth. She opened to him, feeling his stomach quivering under her bottom. He ran his hands up under the robe, pulling her closer, running his hands over her round cheeks and squeezing.

“Oh! Oh, Jamie,” she whispered against his lips as she moved slightly and felt his arousal stir against her nakedness. He had pushed open her robe and pulled her to him. Her naked breasts felt the coarse hair of his chest rubbing her nipples with an enticing, exciting roughness. Every point of contact between them delineated their differences: he was coarse where she was smooth, heavily muscled where she was slight and hard where she was soft. Through her mind flitted the thought…He said it would be better a second time. He said I would enjoy it more. What would it be like?

But that was how a practiced seducer worked, she thought. “I don’t think this is what I should do,” she whispered.

“Sometimes it doesn’t do to think too much,” he said with a wicked smile. “I try never to think when I am holding a woman I care for as much as I care for you.” He pushed the robe back off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. With dark eyes, he stared, running his hands down her arms and cupping her breasts in his hands, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples as they hardened. “So perfect,” he whispered, and pulled her closer.

She gazed down, watching as he took one nipple in his mouth, swirling it and sucking it lightly, flicking the tip with his tongue. Pleasure shot through her down to where she could feel him, hard against her. She thrust her fingers into his hair, holding him to her breast and moved her bottom, feeling the rough fabric of his trousers against her softness. It was enticing, that sensation of his erection restrained by his trousers, and yet too coarse. She drew away slightly, and he let go of her with one hand, undoing his trousers and allowing his thickening rod to spring free.

But then he reached down and touched her, tickling her between the legs with his free hand as he moved to her other breast, drawing her nipple into his warm mouth. Sensations washed through her. She trembled at the feel of his thick fingers stroking her, and then gasped with pleasure as he inserted one, teasing her with his thumb even as he did so.

“Yes,” she sighed, but then gasped as he guided his penis to her cleft and pushed in a little. “Oh!” she cried, pulling away. “No, Jamie, I…” She trailed off, though, as an interesting sensation, a quiver of desire, trickled through her. She licked her lips and closed her eyes. “We mustn’t continue,” she whispered.

“I’ll stop, just tell me to.”

She trembled on the knife’s edge between sense and desire, his breath bathing her naked flesh with warmth and his mustache tickling her. He held her fast and still touched above where he had inserted himself. Moisture seeped from her, coating him, as her softening made his penetration easier. She opened her eyes and looked down into his, as he held her waist, pulling her down onto him. A tension was building within her as she watched his dark eyes and expression of eager passion.

“I don’t want to stop,” she admitted.

“Then we won’t stop. Pull up now, and then down,” he whispered, showing her how to lift from him and then thrust herself down on him again. “And I will continue to do this,” he said, tickling her still, even as she pulled up and pushed down, riding him, a little more of his stiff shaft penetrating with every motion. “You can control my movements, my dear. You can control everything. Find what you like, explore the sensations. If I hurt you, pull away, if you want more…”

He pulled her down hard and she was impaled. Feeling him move deep within her as he teased the sensitive nub, she trembled, a sensation sweeping through her body, the craving building to an impossible level until she couldn’t stand it and then like a wave it broke over her, pulling her in even as he thrust and bucked under her. He held himself rigid as she quaked and cried out into the stillness.

“Yes, oh, yes! Please…more!” She looked down at him and he was sweating, perspiration trickling down his forehead, a thick corded vein popping out from his neck.

“I’ll give you more,” he said through gritted teeth, and he gentled his movement, slowing and catching her rhythm as she lifted her bottom and thrust down on him.

She felt the pressure building again, and the sense of being owned, claimed, branded with his lovemaking, swept through her along with the delicious building tension. He touched her again, slipping his hand down and teasing her as he watched her face, a powerful yearning in his expression.

Her breath coming in gasps, she felt the overwhelming sensation of pleasure rocking through her until she was atremble, her skin feeling licked by flames and she arched, pushing down hard and crying out as the sweet sensation of dizzy pleasure demanded her compliance and swept her away. And then he was gone too, his expression turning fierce as he shoved in hard and released, his rod throbbing and pumping hot juices deep inside of her.

She rode him, the hot wetness sending her into a blissful haze, and then she collapsed on him and he buried his face between her breasts. Silence fell, and she was completely aware of him driven into her to the hilt. Finally he looked up at her, a strange smile on his lips.

“Better this time?”

She giggled, feeling a lightness of being she had never experienced in her life, dizzy with pleasure. She was a different woman, changed in some way. Collette now knew what it was to be satisfied thoroughly and completely. “Much better! Oh, Jamie, now I understand.”

“So do I.”

“What?” She gazed down at him. The day had turned even darker, and the light of the firelight was warm over them. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” he said, his expression enigmatic. He pulled her close and held her to his chest, his hands rubbing her shoulder blades and down to her bottom.

“Don’t you want to…”

“Never,” he muttered, his voice a guttural growl against her skin. “I never want to pull out.”

“You can’t stay there forever,” she said with a breathless chuckle.

“Pity, that.” He sighed. “And you, my tender sweet, are beginning to shiver.”

Her legs felt wobbly as she pulled off of him, his member softening and shrinking, wet from the mingled juices of their lovemaking. He pulled up his trousers, then wrapped the robe around her and she collapsed onto the chair.

“Come down here,” he said, pulling her down onto the floor in front of the fire. He rolled onto his side and pulled her close, in the curve of his body, cradling her head on his arm. He reached up, grabbed a soft tapestry cover from the arm of the chair and pulled it over them where they lay together.

Warmth began to seep into her bones again, and she closed her eyes. She was tired, so very weary, and had not been sleeping well at all in the awful inn room. When she opened her eyes again she realized, by the state of the fire, that she had slept. “Oh,” she said, propping herself up on her elbow and wiping her eyes. “How long have I slept?”

“Just an hour,” he said, pulling her down and close again.

“Mmm.” She was facing the fire, and she felt his big warm hand caressing her naked bottom. It felt wonderful. “Jamie?”

“Mmm?”

“Is it always like that?”

“Not always.”

“Oh. Why not?”

He kissed her ear and moved down to her neck. She was finding it hard to think again, a persistent affliction whenever he was near her. “Why not?” she repeated.

He sighed and rolled her over onto her back. “You do like to ask questions, don’t you?”

“Yes.” She gazed up at him. The lines of his face were harsh, his cheekbones angular, his jaw firm, his nose a hawk-like beak with the bristly mustache beneath it, but in his eyes was a softer expression than she had ever seen there. She reached up and touched his cheek, cradling it in her palm, then slid her hand down and pushed it under the fabric of his shirt, capping his muscular shoulder.

“All right, I’ll tell you what I think,” he said. “Not every woman feels as you did. I think it depends upon a kind of openness to the experience. You are the kind of woman who enjoys new experiences and new feelings. You’ve never felt that before, have you, that ecstasy?”

“No, never, it was… Oh, I can’t explain it. I felt like I was floating. And I was dizzy, but it was a wonderful dizziness, like I was as light as a feather.” She ran her hand down and his stomach muscles convulsed under her touch.

“It is called orgasm, my sweet, and some think women do not experience it in the same way men do. For men it is how our bodies expel our seed into a woman.”

“Oh,” she said, a little frightened by the implications. “You…you did so, into me.”

“Yes,” he said, gently kissing her cheek. “Oh yes, and very deeply. But by my calculation, based on something you said to me the last time we made love, you should not be capable of becoming pregnant right now for another week or so. There are times when it is relatively safe to make love, without fear of pregnancy resulting, and times when it is not.”

His well of knowledge was deep. She gazed into his dark eyes. “I experienced release of some kind, and more than once. If for men it is to release their…their seed, then why do women experience it?”

He laughed, his expression more open and joyous than she had ever thought to see on his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I only know some women are more capable of enjoying sexual play than other women.”

“It’s wonderful,” she sighed.

“Ah,” he said with a teasing tone, “but it was only so sweet an experience for you because of my skill, you see.”

She stretched languidly, her eyes closed, but gasped as she felt him kissing her bare stomach. “Oh!” He licked her skin and moved up to her breasts. Her nipples puckered as he wet them, first one and then the other. “Oh, yes, I do like that. It makes me tingle.” Her hand brushed down over his trousers and she felt him, stiff again, ready for more passionate play.

He pulled her robe off and pushed her onto her stomach on the tapestry throw cover, rubbing her back and down to her bottom, kneading and tickling, then pushing her legs open slightly, as he dipped his hand between her legs and tenderly stroked. When she tried to move he said, “No! Let me take care of you.”

She stopped moving, and he rubbed her back, then kissed her bottom as he tickled between her legs. Quiescent but trembling with desire, she accepted his petting, feeling the moisture seep between her legs at his skillful ministrations. Finally though, as he licked her bottom and teased her into a frenzy of desire, she struggled to sit up, saying, “But I want to…”

He smacked her bottom.

“How dare you!” she cried.

“Did it hurt?”

“Well, no,” she admitted.

“And it stopped you from wiggling about.”

She wriggled again and said, “I will do as I please, sir!”

“Unless you stay still, I shall spank you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she gasped, trying to turn over.

“I will indeed dare,” he said and pulled her over his knee, smacking her bottom.

Oh. She felt a trickle of pleasure and wriggled, still trying to get up. When he smacked her bottom again, she realized the sharp sensation of his hand on her flesh was making the other pleasurable sensations sharper, more focused, even as she felt the soft flesh of her breasts and stomach rubbing against his trousers, his arousal nudging her stomach. “Don’t you dare, Charles Jameson,” she said. “Don’t you dare lay a hand on me.”

He stilled. “I’m sorry, Collette,” he said, his voice cooler. “Perhaps you’d better get up, then.”

She swallowed hard, then wiggled her bottom provocatively. “I’ll get up when I want to, and right now I don’t want to,” she said softly.

Little termagant, Jameson thought, enjoying the view of her over his knee, her round bottom pinkening from his slap. She arched her back and lifted her bottom. When he smacked it again he heard her gasp, but she didn’t object. She just squirmed and moaned, kneeling over his lap, rubbing her breasts against his straining erection. Breathing hard, he smacked her bottom again. She whimpered, but it was the sound of a woman aching to be touched. He laid her down on the rug on her stomach, pulled his trousers down and covered her with his body, pulling her up to her knees.

“Jamie?” she cried, squirming to look at him over her shoulder.

“No words,” he grunted, spreading her legs with his knee and reaching down, slipping his fingers into her wetness, opening her and teasing the nub, which was swollen.

“Oh!” she gasped, arching her back.

“Yes, good girl, that’s what I want.” He gazed down at her, kneeling in front of him, her bottom lifted and legs spread, his finger inserted. He pushed his finger in and out, feeling her get wetter with every movement. She was beginning to move on his finger, pushing her bottom back and impaling herself on his thick forefinger. Harder and longer than he had ever been in his life and trembling with impatient lust, he pulled out his finger and guided himself to her, pushing the thick head of his shaft in. She instinctively spread her legs wider to receive him and he began to stroke, holding her bottom close to him, watching himself, solid and red, vein bulging down the length of his thickening rod as he disappeared into her, deeper with every stroke until he was buried to the hilt. She was tight and sweet, wet and hot. He stayed there completely embedded, tickling her pearly nub, knowing the sensation of his fingers would be heightened by his full penetration. He didn’t dare move again or he would be overcome and spill into her.

She arched her back, but moaned, “Jamie, not yet, I don’t want to yet,” as she squirmed to pull away from his finger tickling her pearly nub.

He pulled out and smacked her bottom and she gasped. “Yes!” she cried, pushing her bottom back up. “Oh, yes.”

He shoved back into her and teased her, tweaking the nub with his fingers, then rolling it. She cried out, arching her back and exposing herself fully as she shuddered. She was wet and slick, utterly submissive now to his forcefulness and he began to pump again, holding her firmly, kneeling behind and watching her pink bottom, her legs spread, his penis fully engorged as he thrust in. She wriggled and he smacked her bottom once more, knowing now that she liked it very much indeed, and that she twisted and turned purposely to incite him to spank her plump cheeks.

He muttered, over and over, “Good girl, yes, very good. Take it deep, like a good girl.” He shoved in hard, buried completely again, and felt the madness well up, his shaft pulsating as he spilled into her, gushing hot and wet. She moved her bottom as he climaxed and cried out her enjoyment, peaking as he did.

He pulled out and rapidly turned her over onto her back, spreading her legs and pushing into her before his rod wilted. Helpless and yielding, trembling from head to toe, she allowed him to thrust into her again and he watched as she writhed, moaning, her head thrown back, her knees up as he pushed into her, desperate to give her more before he was unable. Her whole body trembled and he watched her tossing her head back and forth as he lifted her up by her bottom and moved within her, his member beginning to go softer as she once more reached satisfaction.

Naked and helpless under him as he collapsed on top of her, she wept, tears streaming down her face.

“I didn’t hurt you! Please tell me I didn’t hurt you,” he said, pulling out of her.

“No, oh, no, Jamie, I just have never felt this way.”

She reached down and touched herself. He watched. She was swollen and pink, glistening in the firelight, the wetness spilling from her, but there was a look of wonder on her face. He got up and retrieved a wet cloth and bathed her gently, cupping her in his hand and tenderly washed her sweet cleft.

“Do you hurt?”

“I’m…tender,” she admitted, looking up at him. “And so sensitive. I can feel everything, every touch as you do that,” she said, touching his hand. “Everything.” She sighed. “But it feels…good. I can still feel you there, that you have been very deep inside of me, deeper than before.” She smiled hazily. “But you were very naughty, spanking me like I was a child.”

“No, my dear, that was not spanking as one does a child. You are a woman, and one word would have stopped me. You know that, I think.”

She chuckled and nodded. “Yes, Jamie,” she said softly. “You gave me the opportunity to stop you, I do know that.”

“I needed you to be biddable for once and ask no questions.” He still felt the lusty madness inside of him. Though fully drained, he still craved her, hungering deep inside of himself. His voice husky with suppressed desire, he said, “And I must say, I have never seen a sweeter sight than your bottom getting pink with my paddling. And you liked it, don’t tell me you didn’t. You got wetter with every swat and wriggled to provoke me into spanking harder.”

She quivered. “I did like it,” she said in wonder. “Even more when you…when you mounted me from behind.”

He swallowed hard, the vision of her receiving his swollen shaft flicking through his mind. Even as spent as he was, his hunger remained.

“Is that how people do that? I know that is how animals have…have sexual contact. Is it more often from behind like that for men and women too?”

He chuckled. “No. Some would say that is very wicked, to make love in that position.”

“Wicked? But then,” she muttered, drowsy, “people say all of what we did is wicked. I can’t think it is, for surely it would not feel so good if it was.”

Rising, he scooped her up into his arms.

“What are you doing?” she cried.

“You are going to need a rest. I have more yet to teach you, but you need some sleep first.”

Fifteen

She awoke to the room in darkness. Too tired earlier, she hadn’t noticed her surroundings, but realized his bedroom was large and sumptuous, the bed soft and the furnishing elegant.

Jamie was wrapped around her, holding her close. She stretched delicately and felt him stir. But she didn’t want to awaken him for a while, and so stayed motionless, sheltered by his warmth. It was odd to be naked and yet so comfortable. She had moved from prim Kentish spinster virgin to lady of pleasure in such a short time. Had it always been inside of her, this wantonness? Even now, as they lay quietly together, she wanted more. She wanted to touch him, explore him. Had she just been waiting for him to arouse her, awaken her?

Yet, it was not just any man who would do. Her lusty eagerness would only be satisfied by him. Jamie was special, not just for his skill in lovemaking, but for his gallantry and gentleness. She reached back and touched him, knowing he was asleep still. He had removed his trousers before climbing into bed with her, and she reached down to his naked shaft, closing her hand around it, curious. It was soft, short and stubby. But as she delicately touched the tip and played her fingers over its length, she felt it begin to stiffen. It swelled, lengthening and hardening, and with amazement she pulled the covers back and stroked it, watching it, moving down on the bed and exploring it in the white moonlight.

Putting her face close, she rubbed her cheek against it, the velvet, ridged texture thrilling, his musky scent intoxicating. He had washed them both again, she remembered, some time in the depths of the night. She buried her nose in the hair at the base of his penis and inhaled. Her stomach quivered and she rubbed her cheek to the tip and then surrendered to instinct, putting her lips to it and then her tongue, tasting it, running the tip of her tongue around the knobby end. She had no idea if what she was doing was naughty, she was just hungry for him in every way. She looked up to see his eyes open, his burning gaze watching her every move. She started back but he grabbed her arm.

“Don’t stop.” His voice was a throaty growl. “Go ahead. Do that again.”

Trembling, she obeyed, aware of his eyes following her tongue as it traveled the rapidly growing length. She closed her eyes and took in the tip, then as much of the shaft as she could. She could not take it all into her mouth, though she was ravenous for more. She explored with her fingers, touching the sac behind his penis, delicately teasing. His body was rigid and he was breathing hard, the sound raspy in the silence.

“Straddle me,” he commanded, gruffly.

She moved to obey his command, facing his chest, but he turned her around so that she straddled his chest facing his feet.

“That way! Now, do what you were doing,” he grunted, pushing her shoulders down so her head was close to his rod. “Do it… Kiss me.”

Resting on her elbows, she kissed his shaft, rubbing her lips across the tip and then taking him into her mouth, but she gasped and almost bit down when she felt a wetness in her cleft. She looked between them, toward his face, and saw him tonguing her. As she watched he pointed his tongue and pushed it in and she arched her back, feeling the now familiar sensation as he withdrew his tongue and lapped at her wetness, pointing his tongue and stroking. Eagerly she took his penis into her mouth and sucked as he teased her to the pinnacle. Pearly liquid oozed into her mouth as she rocked and thrust onto his tongue.

His mouth closed on her and he suckled, and she felt the rising tide of desire thrill through her. His hands gripped her hips and held her firm against his mouth, but then he abruptly stopped and lifted her off of him, turning her over and throwing her onto her back. He spread her legs with his knee in one swift movement and claimed her, impaling her again, driving deep.

“Will I never get enough of you?” he shouted. “You drive me mad, you little vixen!” He bucked on top of her, shoving in so hard he moved her whole body.

“Jamie!” she cried, frightened by his impassioned, ferocious carnality as she grasped the sheets beneath her.

He instantly stilled. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He convulsed, doubling over against the rising lust.

She locked her legs behind his back and moved to accommodate him better. He began to stroke her more gently and she dug her heels into his back, feeling the muscles of his buttocks rigid with his self-control.

“I don’t think I can do this again,” she said, exhaustion overwhelming her. Her legs ached from straddling him and her body was spent from her enjoyment of his suckling attentions.

“Yes, you can,” he said tenderly. “You can. Just once more, my sweet. Just once more and then I shall let you rest again for a while. Relax your body. Let me do all the work.”

She lay still, legs spread wide, submitting to his will, and he pulled almost all the way out and let the thick knob tease her, the pearly wetness enticingly sweet to feel.

“I have never felt as I did when I awoke to find you taking me into your mouth,” he whispered, slipping his staff in again, but gently this time, slowly, thrusting in inch by inch until he was once more buried. It was easier this time. She had been stretched to fit him like a glove over a hand, suited to one owner only.

“Did you like it? Was it something you have…done before?” She sighed. Somehow he knew exactly what she needed each moment that she needed it. This slow penetration was achingly pleasing. She stretched under his weight, her muscles beginning to lose their ache in her growing pleasure.

“Yes, I have done that before.”

“Oh.” She was ridiculously disappointed. Everything they did for the first time, he had already experienced. There was not a thing she could do that would be new to him. “Have you ever… That is, when I straddled you and you licked me…”

“Yes, I’ve done that before. You were much sweeter and wetter than any I have ever tasted, though.”

His words excited her as she remembered the sight of his tongue pushing into her as he lapped at her hungrily. He was a rake and a rogue, and had experienced how many women? Dozens? A hundred? More? He shoved his hands under her bottom and lifted her, driving in again and withdrawing, letting his wetness ooze into her. In another minute she was writhing and moaning beneath him as he pushed her to the limits again, and then again, before taking his final ease, squirting into her with the sweet, hot stream now familiar, but still wonderful.

She was limp as he pulled out, utterly depleted, and he turned her over, pulled her under the covers and cradled her against him, his shaft still wet from their lovemaking.

“I am going to Wilson’s Gazette in the morning,” he said softly, holding her close. He kissed her neck and moved against her. “I will tell them that they must withdraw their filth and apologize completely for making up stories, or I will buy the building they are housed in and shut them down.”

She was silent, not sure how to respond. She didn’t want to hear about their tangle in that moment. She wanted him to say other things…that he adored her, longed for her…loved her completely and forever. It was a moment for sweet words of tenderness.

“And then,” he whispered, “I am moving you into my cottage. I won’t let you stay in that awful hotel any longer, and I won’t allow you to leave London. You may stay there and write to your heart’s content, my sweet, sweet Collette, and every evening I will come and make love to you until dawn.”

Perhaps they weren’t words of love, but still it sounded wonderful, she thought, drowsy. She would write by day, and then at night he would steal in and carry her to bed and make love to her.

If she ever wrote again. What if she couldn’t? What if her current inability to write anything that made sense stretched on and on forever? But then, he would still make love to her and she would feel wonderful. Even if the days were filled with frustration, the nights would compensate. “Would you still do all of this if I were not a writer?” she murmured.

“What?”

“If I were not a writer. If I didn’t write. Would you still…” She moved, pushing her bottom against him.

“Mmm, yes, yes, of course, my sweet,” he whispered, kissing her ear, suckling the lobe. “I shall build a little bower in the cottage garden, so I can take you out there and make love to you under the stars. I would love to see your naked body stretched out in the garden, moonlight on your breasts and face.” He kissed her cheek and rubbed his chin against it, the bristle of his growing stubble rough against her skin. “We have so much yet to explore, so many things I want to show you. I’ll take you to France, my sweet. There is a house there I have thought of buying. I’ll buy it, and we’ll go there and I’ll make love to you in the hot French sunlight.”

She was drunk with love and she shivered with the knowledge. She had given herself up wholly to him, and every time he made love to her he claimed more of her soul, but she was intoxicated beyond caring anymore. It sounded deliriously wonderful, and she could imagine the hot sun on her breasts and him between her legs, taking her to blissful paradise.

His deep well of experience was evident in his deftness, a tantalizing ability to make her want him again and again. She was consumed and deliciously happy, she thought as she fell asleep to his whispered words that he would take her to Greece and make love to her in the Mediterranean, floating naked together in the sun-warmed water, and then on the beach he would lick the saltwater from her breasts.

But Collette awoke some time later in the deepest darkness of the night with the knowledge throbbing within her that she had allowed herself to be seduced, not only in body, but in mind. His whispered, honeyed words, like mead, had made her drunk and she had forgotten everything in her life but him.

Even as she acknowledged the desire within her to stay with him into the next morning, to perhaps make love yet again, she stole from the bed. Listening to his rhythmic breathing, she felt around, not willing to stir the fire for more light, and found the doorway into the sitting room. There she hastily gathered her dry underclothes and found her dress, which had been cleaned, brushed and returned by his resourceful and circumspect housekeeper. How many times had the woman done the same for one of his other conquests? Collette dressed in front of the fire, doing up her gown with shaking hands as she tried to forget how she had knelt and let him take her in front of this same fire, on this same carpet.

Rapture had transformed into dismay.

This was what had happened to Susan, the girl in her book, throwing away a whole life’s dreams for the sake of a man who had no heart to give, who was only practicing his cold ability to seduce and enthrall, until a woman was slave to base desire and treacherous promises. He was doing what he did best, with no more feeling or emotion than if she was one of his bought women. It showed in every second of his skill. He had beguiled her with his alternating tenderness, domination and enticement until she was a puddle of passion, greedily begging for more.

And that was why he intended to install her in that little cottage. It was what a rake did, this mastery over her senses and bewitching of her mind. He would move her into his cottage, and that would make her his mistress. Soon he would forget she had ever been anything but his mistress. He would come and go as he pleased, finally coming to her less and less, until he abandoned her one day for a new girl, one whose favors were fresh and dewy as morning.

If it had been anything more than that to him, more than an exchange of favors, surely he would have said so, would have told her if his feelings were engaged in any way. Tears welled into her eyes but she hastily dashed them away, retrieving her bonnet. She would not shed tears for him. It would be the height of hubris to think she could induce him to stay with her beyond a few months, at most, but a few months were not enough. She loved him…or at least she thought she did. She wouldn’t know for sure until she was away from him, for in his presence she was a defenseless slave to his bewitching skill. A few months would not suffice for her. She was terribly afraid no finite amount of time would ever be enough. But forever was not in a rake’s vocabulary. She had seen many men of his ilk, if not his quality, and they all tired of a woman’s favors eventually, moving on to fresh pastures.

Collette tiptoed into the bed chamber for one last look. He was stretched out, one arm flung over his eyes, his chest bare. He was utterly precious in his sleep, his expression blissful, his mouth slack in the dim light from the window, the moonlight that showed her it no longer rained. She could slip away from him and the pain he would inevitably bring her.

Jameson stretched luxuriously and yawned. Morning. So much to do today, he thought, but first… He reached over, but there was no Collette. He opened his eyes to bright morning sunlight. Mockley had clearly already been there, for the drapes were fully open when they had been half drawn last night.

He sat up in bed and looked around the room. Was she in the sitting room getting dressed? Perhaps. He slipped out of bed and to the door, hoping to surprise her in the act of dressing, but the sitting room was empty except for a maid bent over the fire, sweeping the ashes.

“Where is she?” he exclaimed.

The maid gasped and pinkened, her eyes wide and averted to the open doorway to the hall. “Beg pardon, sir,” the maid squeaked shyly, “but who?”

He stared at her, shook his head and retreated back into his bed chamber, slamming the door behind him, realizing his nakedness was discomfiting the poor girl terribly. Mockley was there, setting a tray down on the bedside table.

“Where is she?”

“Who, sir?”

“You know damn well who! The girl I was with here last night.”

Mockley gazed at him steadily, then said, “There was no one here this morning, sir. I entered at six, briefly, and you were alone.” The valet glanced over at the rumpled bed, the covers tossed wildly into a heap, and raised his eyebrows.

Jameson collected himself. He was acting completely out of character, and he did not wish to draw attention to that fact. But he had pictured another start to the morning, a more passionate one, and he was sorely disappointed.

“I will bathe this morning, Mockley. In the sitting room, though, for the bed will need to be stripped completely.”

He grabbed his robe and pulled it on, then went to the window to look out on a brilliant morning, mist rising from the damp roofs along the row of townhouses. She must have feared being found in his bed by his staff, he thought, feeling bereft without Collette there. She was new at this and likely embarrassed. He smiled just thinking of her, and how passionate and sweet she was despite her inexperience.

Still, she could have woken him and he would have made sure she got back to her hotel safely. He hated to think of her stealing out in the night and making her own way. Was she safe? The moment he was bathed and dressed he would have to go to the Chapter Coffeehouse and make sure, and then tell her to gather her things, for she would be staying at his cottage from now on.

A twinge of uneasiness pierced him. One never knew how Collette was going to take anything. Did she understand the previous night, when he had told her he was moving her into the cottage? Had she understood he meant to be her patron—with a few delightful benefits—and to support her in her writing so she could continue without leaving London immediately?

Or… He whirled and glared at the bed. Had she thought he meant to keep her as his mistress? Though there would be little difference in fact, he still did not think of it in that way. Taking a mistress was a negotiation, a series of meetings with a polite pretense of seduction, and a business arrangement finally, drawn up often by his man of business, who made sure both sides were pleased with the arrangement. That wasn’t how it was meant to be with Collette. She would be free…free to do as she pleased, to make love with him or not, though he hoped it would be the former more often than the latter.

But had she understood?

“Oh, lord, she must have thought… Mockley!”

The valet reentered and bowed.

“I wish to bathe, as I said, but quickly. Now!”

“But your breakfast, sir…”

“I don’t have time. Bath and then clothes…now! And my carriage in half an hour.”

Randall Proctor chuckled as he read the day’s gossip column for Wilson’s Gazette. Everyone assumed the daily piece was written secretly by some society matron or upper crust hanger-on, but Proctor had found within himself a curious ability to transform bits and pieces he gleaned from butlers and footmen, and even a few impecunious poor relatives eager for the odd bob or bull, into the archest, most gagging pieces of gossip.

To his own amazement, the public—he included high and low in that group—were voracious in their hunger for the swill he wrote with such disdain. It was one of the most popular pieces in the paper, and had given him the leverage with old Wilson himself to put his name to pieces he wanted to be known for writing. One day he would be a real writer, and he would expose all of the evil and inequities he had known as a child in the filthy back streets of London.

Until then he would spew this tripe, maybe ruining the reputation of a few innocent people along the way, but what did these high muckety-mucks know about suffering anyway? It would be good for their souls to be held up to the ridicule of their fellow nobs.

This column was a good ‘un!

It can now be revealed that Mr. Charles Jameson’s new ladybird has a startling similarity with her protector. They have the same initials! The young “lady,” staying at the Chapter Coffeehouse on Paternoster Row (Is that so that when Mr. Jameson visits his publishers, Rosewood Publishing, he can drop in for a little “refreshment”?) is also C.J.. What a coincidence, then, that Mr. Jameson’s nom de plume (to employ a French term—Mr. Jameson would seem to be fond of the French) is also a C.J., Colin Jenkins!

Proctor chuckled and rubbed his hands with glee. Oh, what he would not give to see the reaction to this piece in some quarters!

The clock on the mantle of the fireplace in Henny Dancey’s snug parlor ticked-tick-ticked away the morning hours. Henny was settled comfortably with her teapot, her sewing and three of her children, working on a tricky piece of embroidery, silent for the moment while she unsnarled her knotted silk. The children were playing quietly in the corner with a doll and a train set.

Collette leaned her head wearily back against the sofa cushion and stretched. Her vigorous, passionate exercise from the day and evening before and her late night escape had left her aching and feverish. She was so, so tired.

Once back in her room at the inn she had tried to sleep, and supposed she must have for a time, for she had awoken from passionate dreams to the memory of her lover’s body and his skillful lovemaking. Now that she understood their relationship and how widely their expectations varied, she was determined to not only forget last night, but to not be available for his seduction anymore. If he came to her, she was afraid of his ability to bewitch her mind and even more afraid of what his answer would be if she asked him what his intentions were. She may have written of a rake’s reformation, but it didn’t come in the middle of a seduction that was for sure. It came from contemplation and the abstention of the body’s pleasure in exchange for an inner peace and repose.

She could not see Jamie seeking reformation, or inner peace. He was who he was, and she should have realized that from the start. She had never meant things to go so far, nor to allow her curiosity about the pleasures of the flesh to end in her own heart being engaged so completely. Her new knowledge was hard won indeed.

Finally done with her unsnarling, Henny glanced up at Collette. “Dearest, I heard from Philoxia that you have several times seen that rogue, Charles Jameson. Perhaps you do not know, my dear, but he is whispered to be the worst kind of…of…” She glanced over at her children and leaned forward, her sewing bundled on her lap, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Seducer. He keeps women. I do not understand, dearest, why you would consort with a man like that.”

Just then little Loxy stole little Colly’s doll, and her namesake started wailing. A harassed nanny raced into the room and hauled both girls off for their tea, leaving just the baby, Edward, placidly sucking his thumb in a cradle by Henny’s feet.

“I am not consorting with Mr. Jameson,” she answered. “We met on the train coming here, and he has just popped up a couple of times.” Henny was the last one she could confess to. The woman would be shocked to the core if she even suspected that there was more to Collette’s relationship with Charles Jameson. She had always been very conventional, even as a little girl, when Loxy’s adventures had horrified her as much as entertained her.

“But Philoxia said some paper has been hinting that you are consorting with him?”

“Only vaguely. They have not named me. I have taken care of it. Please don’t worry.” She wished Loxy had not said anything to Henny.

Herbert Dancey came into the parlor just then and laid a calm kiss on his wife’s brow. “My dear.” He petted little Edward’s head and then turned to Collette with an unfriendly look in his protuberant eyes. He carried a paper in one hand and opened it. He paused then and glanced over at his wife.

“My dear, I have something of a personal nature to discuss with your friend. Would you take little Edward upstairs?”

Personal? What could he have to say that was personal? Collette had straightened at his entrance—it would not do to lounge in company—and now she frowned and gazed at the master of the house as Henny automatically began to set aside her sewing and gather the baby’s blankets. The nanny had returned and was waiting to carry baby Edward once her mistress was done fussing.

“Wait!” Collette said, holding out one hand toward Henny. “Mr. Dancey, you are very much a stranger to me, and I cannot imagine you would have something to say to me that I would not want your wife to hear.”

Henny paused and looked puzzled.

“I do not think you will wish Henrietta to hear our conversation. Henny, dear, do as I say. And Nanny, take away little Edward this moment.” The nanny scurried to obey, scooping up the child and retreating, though she paused at the door and threw back one curious look to the frozen tableau.

“Do not leave, Henny!” Collette’s tiredness dissipated in the face of Mr. Dancey’s pugnacity. She stood slowly and faced him. “I assure you, sir, that I wish Henny to remain.”

“As you will,” he said, his voice cold. He tossed the paper at her feet with deliberate rudeness. “In light of this article, I think it would be best if you do not visit our home again. We do not associate with the demimonde.”

Henny gasped and bent to pick up the paper, but he put his foot on it, almost trapping her fingers with the shiny black of his shoe.

“No, my dear, that is not fit for you to read.”

Collette picked it up as he released it, and saw it was the infamous Wilson’s Gazette once more and was folded over to the gossip column. She scanned the piece then blanched, feeling a wave of dizziness overcome her. They had named the Chapter Coffeehouse and her publisher and spoke of Jameson being fond of the French, a clear allusion to her French name. C.J. They had practically spelled it out!

But still—

She glared at Mr. Dancey while Henny worriedly wrung her hands and stared at the back of her husband’s head.

“Not a word of this scurrilous nonsense is true,” she said, waving the paper and then tossing it to the floor again. She felt no compunction at all about lying to a man like Herbert Dancey. She had seen his kind before in her own village: the smugness, the self-satisfied air, the iron rule of his house. All were familiar traits. He was a dictator and tyrant, no doubt. “It is the result of happenstance only. Circumstances have made it appear…”

“I might have known you would try to explain it away. Your type always does.” He enunciated type as if it were the most hideous profanity. “It makes no difference to me. I would like you to leave now and not bother my wife in the future with your presence.”

“Herbert, whatever is going on?” Henrietta pleaded, pulling at his coattail. “I do not understand—”

“Henny!”

She stopped talking at his command and dropped his coattail.

He turned to her and, putting his hands on her shoulders, he gently said, “My dear, you have been sadly taken in by this strumpet. I do not know what she was when you knew her, but Miss Collette Jardiniere is that despicable rake, Charles Jameson’s…” He broke off, but then shook his head. “I dislike saying such a word in front of a gently bred lady, but I know no other way to put it.” He lowered his voice. “She is his whore, his kept woman. This article clearly states it. I do not want her in this house, and furthermore, I will not have you associating with such trash.” His voice had risen again in volume and was harsh, his condemnation guttural.

“Herbert!” Henrietta gasped, one hand over her mouth. “She is my friend since girlhood. Surely there is some mistake?”

“No, my dear, for the papers have named her Jameson’s mistress, and what motive would such fine men as I know to be at the helm of Wilson’s Gazette have for lying?”

“They don’t have to be lying,” Collette said. With a great effort she kept her voice level and her tone neutral. She wanted to rage at the assumptions and presumptuous behavior of Mr. Herbert Dancey, but for Henrietta’s sake she would remain calm. “But they are mistaken in their inferences from things that have a very innocent explanation, and I think it is highly unfair—”

“Out of my house, Miss Jardiniere,” he said, pointing to the door, the very image of scornful rectitude in the face of depravity. “I will not have the very air polluted by your immorality. You may think me harsh, but I have a wife and children to consider.”

Collette was stunned by the pomposity, the arrogance, the base assumptions he felt free to make. But her intended negation of his accusation caught in her throat. Maybe lying—even to a man like Herbert Dancey—was more difficult than she had anticipated. She was Jameson’s mistress in every way but one: she had not allowed him to pay for anything. She turned to her friend and put out her hand. “Henny, things appear bad, but I will set the record straight.”

“I know, dearest,” the plump woman said with a watery smile. “I—”

“Henny, I have spoken!” The portly, balding man gazed steadily at his wife.

Collette looked from husband to wife and back again. Dancey was staring into his wife’s eyes. When Collette glanced back to Henny, she was horrified to see a transformation taking place. Her friend sighed, her shoulders sagged and she dropped her gaze to the carpet.

“Yes, Herbert, I do understand.”

“This is for the protection of you and our children.”

“I understand, dearest.”

Astounded and shocked at the transformation of her friend into cowed submission, Collette said, “Henny! I…”

Herbert swiveled his pale gaze to Collette. “I have asked you to leave, and I would appreciate your immediate acquiescence.”

There was nothing to do but obey. With one last look at Henny, who was openly sobbing into a handkerchief, Collette swirled from the room, snatching her parasol and gloves from the butler as she exited.

Sixteen

“How could she abandon me like that, Loxy? How could she?” Collette, weary and hurt by Henny’s failure to stand up to her husband for her friend, had poured out the whole story to Philoxia as she sat back on one of her elegant recamiér couches. Henny’s weak-willed acquiescence to her husband’s dictatorial arrogance had been thoroughly canvassed in a long diatribe.

But Philoxia did not immediately jump in to commiserate, and Collette opened her eyes and sat up straight. She stared at her friend in disbelief. “You don’t mean to say you agree with her? Oh, Loxy, I felt sure you would not!”

Philoxia Bertrand shook her elegantly coifed head and toyed with a bangle bracelet on her slim wrist. “My dear, you know I don’t, but you have never been a wife. Do not presume to judge her.”

“Judge her? They are judging me!” Collette jumped from her seat, skirts flaring out around her as she paced around Philoxia’s parlor. “Herbert Dancey is an overstuffed, ignorant, bellicose, judgmental dastard, and Henny went along with what he said. ‘Yes, dearest’, ‘Of course, dearest’ as if she had no more mind of her own than a…a…a peahen!”

Steel in her voice, Philoxia said, “Nevertheless, Colly, I cannot find it in my heart to condemn her. I say again, you do not know what it is like to be a wife.”

“What does that have to do with anything? I thought you, of all people, would be on my side.”

The woman sighed. “Colly, stop being such a child. Your ‘side’? We are not choosing teams for cricket.” She leaned over the tea table and poured from a patterned china teapot into two matching cups, handing one to Collette, who waved it away. She shrugged, set it on the table and took a sip of her own. “I am simply saying Henny is a married woman with five children, and possibly one more on the way. You have no idea what pressures Herbert can bring to bear on her, nor what she has to live with.”

“But he seems a positively indulgent husband. I had thought him sincerely attached to her. You do not mean…” Horrified, Collette sank back down onto the sofa and stared at Philoxia. “He does not beat her, does he? I knew a vicar who beat his wife every Sunday after service, ‘whether she deserved it or not’, as he said to his curate. The villain! I cannot—”

Impatiently, Philoxia waved her hands. “No, no, no! You must stop being so dramatic, Colly dear! You will never become a writer if you insist on seeing the world in such black and white terms. Herbert does not beat her, but he…he has a very narrow view of the world, my dear. He is a banker, after all, and in his world appearances are everything. I suspect that is why she has not attended any of my parties before. He does not trust the artistic world. Allowing her to escort you to my literary soirée was an aberration, and one he likely bitterly regrets and is compensating for now.”

“What does the narrowness of his view have to do with her?”

“Honestly, Collette, how have you lived this long?” Philoxia rolled her eyes, managing to make even that gesture look elegant. She set her cup down on the mahogany table, which was clothed in two layers of pretty chintz. “A husband will always carry the day in any difference of opinion between a man and wife,” she continued, her tone lecturing. “Henny is wise. Herbert could make things very difficult for her if she did not know when to acquiesce gracefully.”

“Difficult for her?”

Philoxia’s steady gaze settled on Collette “You must know that a husband carries all of the power in a marriage. The children are his, regardless of the fact that she bore them! And what do you think is more important to Henny, you or her children?”

Appalled, Collette said, “Do you mean he would separate her from her children?”

“I don’t know and she probably does not either. But even apart from that, she must live with him and be guided by him, and raise her children with him for the rest of her life. Surely you can understand her wish to keep her husband happy?”

“At the price of abandoning me? I’m sorry Philoxia, I cannot agree. I would have found some other way.”

“Would you have? Perhaps.” Philoxia fixed a steady gaze on her friend. “But, Colly, is there no area in your life where you have done less than you would wish? Nowhere you have been less than frank, less than honest, less than courageous, simply to make life a little easier for yourself? Have you never taken the easy way out of something, even if you suspected you would regret it one day?”

Guiltily, Collette thought of her writing career. The easy way. She had allowed her aunt to persuade her against her own inclination to publish under a man’s name, a pseudonym, simply because it would make life a little more complicated for her to publish under her own name. Her true motive, she now recognized, was fear. Was Henny afraid? Afraid of losing her husband, her family? If Collette had taken the easy way out, how could she fault Henny for doing the same?

Philoxia nodded. She seemed to have read Collette’s expression and interpreted it correctly. “I thought so. There isn’t a woman, or a man for that matter, who hasn’t compromised at some point. We make choices and then live with the consequences.”

Watching her friend’s handsome face, the shadow of long-suppressed pain that haunted her etched in lines bracketing her mouth, Collette remembered the whispering and rumors when Loxy disappeared in the middle of the night that long-ago winter. They had known, she and Henny, about the romance with the music teacher, though Loxy had not revealed her plans to elope with him. But when she disappeared, they knew. They knew and they didn’t tell anyone.

Maybe they should have. Maybe they could have saved Philoxia from her shame, the shame of an illegitimate child, a child that was never born alive, and from the stigma she had to live down. They had been silent because of the “romance” of it all. Still, it was Philoxia’s choice. She was speaking from experience when she spoke of making choices and living with the consequences. How many compromises had she made along the way to rescue her reputation and find the peace she now seemed to own?

Judging Henny was easy, Collette admitted to herself, but turning the magnifying glass on her own behavior was not. She had compromised when she made the choice to publish her novel under a man’s name. She agreed in part because she did not want to alarm or embarrass her aunt, but to be ruthlessly truthful, she had also done it to insulate herself from the reaction of the public. If it had been a disaster, she would have been able to disown it to some extent, divorce herself from public censure.

If she had been firm with herself and her aunt, and published under her own name, then she would not be in this mess now. Not this particular mess, anyhow. No doubt Henny would still be barred from seeing her—Herbert would certainly think Last Days scandalous and she as a woman writer immoral—but at least it would be for something she was proud of, not her own weakness as a woman, her capitulation to Charles Jameson.

Philoxia, silent all this time, gently said, “You see? It is not so easy when one really considers, is it?”

“No,” Collette said slowly, sitting up straight on the couch and taking her tea finally.

“And to be fair to Herbert, how long do you think his job at the bank would last if it was known that he allowed his wife to consort with someone of questionable morals? They are a very rigid bunch.”

Collette watched her friend shudder, and for the first time wondered how she had managed to regain her position in society after running away with the music master and then miscarrying his illegitimate child. Hesitantly, she asked that very question, though in a much more roundabout way.

Backbone straight, head up, proudly Philoxia answered, “I reintroduced myself to society as if the past had never happened. I was more moral than even the old cats who would have judged me severely and I held my virtue up for all the world to see. It was a struggle, because for a time I lived in fear of the old stain on my reputation coming back to haunt me. But then I met Albert Bertrand and he wanted to marry me. I told him the truth, told him everything, and it did not make a bit of difference to him. He was a good, good man.”

“And so you don’t worry anymore? About being found out, I mean.”

“At this point I don’t believe anyone would think it the same woman.” She smiled. “They all think me lily-white, you see. Holier than even the holiest ladies.” She laughed, a light energetic tinkle of sound. “And I have the satisfaction of having fooled them all. If they but knew the truth…”

“You’re right and I am wrong,” Collette admitted. “I’m sorry I was so harsh about Henny. I’ve been a fool in so many ways, Loxy.” She gazed down at the elegant patterned rug and sighed. But she would not give in to melancholy! She stiffened her backbone and looked up. “Let’s talk of other things, future plans. Say you will come down to Kent next summer and spend a month or two.”

She successfully turned the conversation to lighter topics. Collette, not wanting to return to her hotel for her own reason, accepted her friend’s invitation and stayed through dinner and early evening, and then allowed Loxy’s carriage to take her back to the coffeehouse. Alone in her room, finally, Collette pondered the thorny question of morality as she lay on her bed, staring at the water-stained ceiling by the light of one guttering candle. She had avidly read all of the criticism of her novel, laudatory and condemnatory, and the damning of Last Days as immoral had puzzled her. She had created in Lankin a man used to doing exactly what he wanted in life without apology. He was a rake, a seducer, a gambler and deep drinker. But she had not presented graphic views of his rakish life. How could she when she, in truth, knew so little?

In the course of the novel, though, he learned every action had a consequence. Morality, she had postulated through the novel, was not some arbitrary list of rules, but how your actions affected those around you. When Lankin began to recognize what his unthinking actions had done to people, he repented sincerely and went to great lengths to make amends. Surely his repentance was just what men like Herbert Dancey would have wanted?

But she supposed the controversy had been because she could not simply leave it there. In her heart she didn’t think morality was so simple, nor was repentance. It would have been a stiflingly preachy little fable, she thought, if she had not suggested Lankin could have been moral and still followed his true nature. Immorality was not lovemaking outside of marriage, drinking wine or gambling. Immorality was in the harm one did to innocent others along the way. He had thoughtlessly seduced innocent girls who didn’t understand the consequences of their actions, and he had even used lies to induce them to part with their virginity, sacrificing it to his lust.

Jameson had done none of those things. She had been, he told her, his first virgin, and she had offered herself to him wholeheartedly in the name of curiosity, though she now recognized beneath that inquisitiveness was an attraction and desire for him that she was not, then, willing to admit to herself on anything but a superficial level. She turned over on her lumpy bed and thumped her pillow, agitated by the very thought of him. Had he come to the hotel looking for her? She hadn’t asked that of the landlord when she returned late in the evening, not wanting to draw attention to herself. What had he thought when he awoke to find her gone? Had he missed her as much as she missed him?

She groaned aloud and turned over on her back. She had to stop thinking about him. Since she had come to London she had thought, it seemed, of little else. Kent called to her, for she longed for peace of mind. If she could she would have, in that moment, returned to her former blissful state of ignorance, before she truly knew how a man could consume a woman’s thoughts.

No, that was not true. For all of the pain of the journey, she was wiser, and one should never regret wisdom. Her fears, she supposed, were twofold. She worried that she would never be able to get him out of her heart and she worried that her ability to write was gone forever. Her former ability seemed to have fled, and even the voice inside of her was silent.

She closed her eyes but the tears slid from under her sealed lids. Tomorrow she had some decisions to make, even though she felt ill-prepared to make them. Jameson had promised to handle Wilson’s Gazette, but now that she had run away from him, he might not feel obligated to do so. What he would do for a mistress might be far more than he would feel compelled to do for a lover who had walked away from him.

Jameson stared out of the window of his office, brooding about the disappointment of the previous day. Awaking to find Collette gone had only been the beginning. After a full day of trying to track her down, he could no longer tell himself she was just embarrassed, or wanted to avoid being seen by his staff. She had escaped him deliberately and had purposely stayed away from her hotel all day with the intention of avoiding him.

But he still wanted to know why. He was terribly afraid he had hurt or offended her with his suggestion that she move into the cottage. She had likely misunderstood, though he had to admit, any woman in her position would have thought the same. He had been physically drained, though the euphoria that had coursed through him lingered far longer than was usual for him after a sexual experience. Without thinking how it sounded, he had suggested—no, decreed—that she move into the cottage. Clumsy! He knew women better than that. She was not an experienced courtesan, to be so commanded. Nor did he want her ever to think he thought of her that way.

Once his business with Dick Murphy was over, he would find her and apologize for his dunderheaded proposition. First, he’d again go to the Chapter Coffeehouse, and if she was still not there, then Philoxia Bertrand’s Mayfair home, and if not there, then her publisher. He’d find her, no matter how long it took.

His secretary ushered Dick Murphy into the room, and the young man sidled to the desk and took the offered chair. Now, Jameson thought, looking his temporary employee over, how to explain this mission?

“Dick, I have a new assignment for you,” Jameson said, fiddling with a pen at his desk. “I am having a little trouble with a reporter by the name of Randall Proctor. He is dogging my trail and making my life miserable and I want to find out more about him—where he’s from, how he works, where he lives, who he sees. Anything and everything.” He had decided that the bold approach he had suggested to Collette, of threatening Wilson’s Gazette, would likely only make things worse if it got out. He did not want to drag Collette’s name through the muck. Better to be circumspect, to find the reporter and offer him a bribe to recant his allegations. Or if that wouldn’t work, find some other way to make Proctor comply with his wishes. The fellow must have a weakness. What would it be? Cards? Women? Liquor? Was he in debt? Did he have an aging granny to support?

The young man, seated on a hard chair on the opposite side of the desk, nodded. “I can do that, sir.”

“Do it, then, to the exclusion of all else.” He wrote down Proctor’s name, where he worked and a description as best he could remember, folded the paper and handed it across the desk to Dick Murphy. “There will be a handsome reward in this for you when I am done.”

The young man tucked the paper in an inside pocket of his tweed jacket. “But sir, what do I do about the other?”

“Other?”

“Colin Jenkins, sir.” His bright eyes were fixed on his employer’s face with the intensity of a terrier eyeing a bone.

“Don’t worry about that,” Jameson said, annoyed by the unusual obtuseness of his paid ferret. “I am no longer interested in finding Colin Jenkins.”

Dick sighed and shrugged. He stood and started toward the door but turned and gazed back at Jameson. “I wish I had known that sir, before I found him.”

“What?”

“I found him. I found Colin Jenkins, the novelist.”

Seventeen

“You have found Colin Jenkins,” Jameson gasped, his heart palpitating. Slowly he sat back down in his seat, doing his utmost to regain his perpetual air of unconcern.

Had Dick convinced someone at Rosewood Publishing to admit Collette was behind Last Days? Or had he found someone in her little village who knew about the authoress in their midst?

“I have,” Dick said, perhaps perplexed by his employer’s amazement. He came back to stand in front of his employer’s desk.

“However did you do it?”

“The fine art of detection, sir.” Dick stood tall. If he had had feathers he would have been preening them, so evident was his pride. “Someday I will write a book on how to find anyone anywhere, even if they don’t wish to be found.”

“Well, out with it, man! Sit, sit!” Jameson gestured to the chair in front of the desk. “What have you found out?”

Dick slid back into the hard, polished chair and leaned forward on the desk. “Well, sir, seems this Colin Jenkins is a bit of a reclusive chap—”

“Chap?”

Dick’s pale eyebrows drew down. “Course, sir. You was lookin’ for Colin Jenkins, gentleman novelist, right?”

“Yes, but…” Jameson sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers, peering over them at Dick. “Go on.” There was a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach he did not care to think was anything more than the eggs he had for breakfast. “Tell me all.”

Dick tapped his head. “I thought, stands to reason a gentleman writing that novel would have to know something about it, so when I took my list of Colin Jenkinses who lived outside of London, I eliminated all the ones too young to have been a rake or too old to remember what it was like in those days, the days the book was set in, right? Then I eliminated all the ones, from what I could find out, that had never lived in London. Then I started inquiring into the ones I had left. One Colin Jenkins popped right up, you might say. He lives up Lancashire way, north of Blackpool.”

A roiling mass of emotions rolled over Jameson. Even though he had never believed women able to write truly great masterworks, he had begun to believe in Collette. No, strike that, he had been completely won over. She had understood the work so well.

And yet…a memory came back to him, a memory of something she had said when he was almost asleep. He closed his eyes, remembering. She had asked… What was it? She had asked if he would still want to make love to her if she was not a writer.

Not a writer! Had he been taken in? He didn’t want to believe it, and yet… He opened his eyes. He pushed away memories of lovemaking, their torrid passion and how much he longed to touch her again. She had snuck out of his home in the middle of the night like a thief. What other reason could there be, but that she feared her deception would be discovered?

Dick had been speaking, but having lost some of the conversation in his angry cogitation, Jameson said, “I’m sorry Dick, I was thinking of something for a moment. Where did you say this chap lives?”

“Blackpool. Or rather, north of Blackpool, actually, sir. Little village by the name o’…” Dick pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket, and then another and then another, all covered in his fine, crabbed handwriting, until he found the one he wanted. “Snellcombe, it is. I got the directions, sir, if you should be of a mind to visit the gent.”

“And what leads you to think he is the Colin Jenkins, the novelist?” Jameson said, still not sure what to believe.

“I found an old schoolmate of Jenkins. Seems the fellow was quite the blade in his time, sir, and he wrote constantly. Witty stuff, the chappie, his old chum, said. Made up clever rhymes, was always scribbling. Now, o’ course, he’s settled down to serious writin’, but…”

Mind made up that instant, Jameson leaped to his feet. He would go to see this Jenkins fellow—after all, that was the whole purpose of finding him—and if he was the author of Last Days, then he would tell him how much he thought of his novel. His admiration of the writer was the whole reason for this search. “You’ve done a splendid job, Dick, and that handsome bonus just got princely. I’ll go see him. Now, while I’m gone I want you to do something for me.”

Jameson, talking swiftly and pacing, set his young employee to his tasks, and then left his office. He stopped at home only long enough to pack a bag and throw his household into disarray with a list of demands before heading to the rail station, intent on his journey to Blackpool, and thence to the little village of Snellcombe.

Soon, very soon, he would have the proof in hand and be able to confront Miss Collette Jardiniere with her perfidy and ask that scheming miss what she thought she was doing. Then he would decide whether to abandon the wench to the mess of her own creation, or to be magnanimous and rescue her, sending her home to Listerwood-on-Sea with a blistered ear from the dressing down she would receive. No one made a fool of him and got away with it.

As he trundled toward the train station, he stared out the carriage window at the humble procession of London activity, carters and barrowmen, flower peddlers and street urchins. The problem with that plan—sending her home to her backwater village—was, he was still hungry for her, despite her wretched deception, and he didn’t want to let her go yet. He had not worked all of the desire for her out of his body. Perhaps when he confronted her with his knowledge of her deceit, she would be happy to take his offer of the cottage.

The more he thought about it the more confirmed he became in the belief that she was no author, or at least not such a one who could pen Last Days. It must have been that which made her run away from him. It occurred to her that if she accepted his offer and resided at the cottage, he would expect to see her progress as a writer day by day, and fear of discovery had frightened her off. He was almost relieved to think that she wasn’t a writer at all, and so he would forgive her the deception, and gladly. Her gratitude would be sweet, and he would spend days making love to her without pretense.

He left his carriage behind and strode into the station, valise in hand, his anxiety to get on with his task, to confirm the truth, making him impatient and hasty. When he had believed it true, that she was the brilliant writer of such a book as Last Days, he had been forced to rethink all of his assumptions about women and all of his experience. Now he was comfortably back in the position of knowing how things truly worked in his world. Making love to her would not be any less sweet for knowing the truth. He would spank her bottom, he thought, for her little trick on him. Jameson turned his thoughts away from randy imaginings, willing himself to keep such stimulating notions out of his mind.

He bought his ticket and waited on the bustling platform, resisting the shoving and surge of the crowd. Lost in contemplation, he barely noticed the cries of children, shouts of the conductors, hum of voices and the bell of a train just arrived on another track.

Deep within himself he had always known Last Days could have been written only by a man, and only by a man who knew what he was talking about. The depth of vision, the subtlety of expression, could only have come from the mind of a male. Women—the kind of women who enjoyed male attentions, anyway—did not think thus. He should have trusted his instincts rather than letting a sparkling pair of green eyes sway his common sense. He would never let that happen again. Ever!

There was a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Would he be able to forgive and forget Collette’s deception? He had begun to feel that she was that most special and rare of creatures, a woman who would never bore him. It took him a while to recognize what was wrong. He was deeply disappointed because some incongruous part of himself had enjoyed the experience of making love to an intelligent woman. A woman who thought deeply and yet lost herself in his arms.

Gazing absently out the window of the Chapter Coffeehouse dining room, Collette thought over her discussion with Philoxia the day before, about Henny’s siding with her husband over a friend. Though she understood a little more now that Loxy had shown her things in a different light, it still hurt, and she hoped that in that same situation, she would not abandon her friend. She stirred some sugar into her coffee, and some heavy cream, and took a sip. Once you were used to it, coffee was not so bad.

Inevitably her mind wandered back to her own predicament. What was she to do? Jameson had promised to right things with that paper, but now that she had run away from him in such a cowardly fashion, she didn’t suppose he would keep to his word. If he had, it would already have become common knowledge. She supposed she must do something herself to recover her damaged reputation.

The decisions she had made in the last week or so had brought home to her how fragile a woman’s reputation was, and the full impact of the loss now hit her with a devastating force. She had been forced to send off a hastily scribbled letter home, in fear that her aunt or the Professor should see the piece in Wilson’s Gazette and start to worry. She had to be oblique though, not wanting to alert them to her troubles if there was no need. She had simply said not to believe anything they read unless they heard confirmation from her. She knew deep in her heart she did not even need to say that. Her aunt would know she was not capable of becoming some rich man’s plaything.

But her aunt would also never suspect her innocent niece would abandon all sense and become that rich man’s lover. What had come over her? London had intoxicated her, just as Jameson had. Wholly unaccustomed to the feelings and sensations he engendered within her, she had thrown caution to the wind and given in to desire for the very first time. But now what? She still burned for him, his touch, his lovemaking. Even when he infuriated her, as he had with his obtuse actions in paying for her wardrobe, he still made her feverish with longing. His touch was like an opiate, addictive and bewilderingly pleasurable. Gazing into his eyes was mesmerizing.

No other man had ever affected her in that manner, and even in her little village she had not been without suitors. She had rejected two offers of marriage from good-looking enough men, partly because she knew deep inside that she would never feel anything for them other than a mild friendship. Is that what happened to all women? Did one certain man, and one man only, make their hearts pound and their palms damp until they could no longer imagine life without them? Was that really why she had succumbed to Jameson? It wasn’t just curiosity about lovemaking, she now knew. It was him. And she still felt the same way. But why did she have to suffer for her desires? Why were men free to indulge their carnal appetites and not women?

She had never before had even the faintest understanding. Now she understood how a woman could make that decision that life with him on any terms was better than life without him. Had she not run from Jameson’s bed because she was afraid of her own weakness?

Yes. It was true. She understood completely the women who had succumbed to Lankin’s rakish charms now. She could now make the next novel better with the things she had learned. The next novel. A queer, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach signaled the beginning of an idea. Just so had Last Days announced itself to her, making her almost ill with a need to scribble it down.

Susan. She had never really followed up on the girl’s history after Lankin abandoned her early in the novel. What happened to her? How did she live after being cast out of her family, after giving up her reputation for the man she loved? After Lankin’s cruel abandonment, she just disappeared, never to appear again in the pages of Last Days. Following his reformation into a man of conscience, Lankin tried to find her, to atone for his maltreatment of her, but she had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Lankin’s last thoughts on earth were of Susan, his abandoned mistress, as he uttered a prayer that she forgive him and an urgent whisper to his friend to find her, find her and help her.

The coffeehouse disappeared. Instead Collette saw a cliff and Susan wandering the windy edge, weeping, shuddering, fat tears rolling down her once pretty face as she considered throwing herself off that cliff because she had lost the one man who had been her obsession. Sea birds wheeled and dived, the waves crashed, but Susan decided… Yes, Susan decided to live! Susan reached deep within herself and found the grit and determination to go on, to overcome her pain and sorrow.

Redemption. Susan’s story would be about a woman’s reclamation, from tragedy to triumph.

She started up from her chair. She could write again, she knew it! Her ability had not fled, but now her writing would be conscious instead of just a flow of ideas tumbling from her brain. She would plan and then write, building the book from the beginning the way she wanted it. She must go up and write. Later she would handle the trouble with Wilson’s Gazette and her dilemma about Jameson. She wove between the tables in the coffeehouse, the giddy certainty that she had found the central theme and idea for her next novel making her stumble in her haste.

As she headed toward the stairs that ascended to the private rooms, she saw the innkeeper waddling toward her, his ponderous heft swaying with every step, and she paused. She could take one moment to ask him when the maids would deign to change her linen. The must and mildew were becoming unbearable.

“Miss Collette Jardiniere?”

“Yes, Mr. Portman. I am so happy to see you.”

Portman signaled behind him and a timid maid came forward with Collette’s black valise. She handed it to Collette, who took it.

“What does this mean?” she demanded, puzzled.

“This means you are no longer welcome in this establishment, Miss Jardiniere,” he said, his voice loud and pompous. “I would be pleased if either you or your paramour would settle your bill immediately.”

“My para… There must be some mistake, sir. What do you mean by saying such a vile thing?”

“Vile thing or no, miss, it is in the paper, and what is in the paper must be believed!”

Collette did not even bother pretending she did not understand him. “Carruthers and botheration! You too? You believe that…that rag? That vulgar, contemptible piece of drivel?”

Every head in the dining room turned toward them, and Collette was miserably aware that every word they said was being overheard and noted. Thanks to the innkeeper’s public accusation, the paper would have more fodder for its gossip columnist, for no doubt several of the gentlemen and ladies in the room would be quick to whisper this to others until it reached the proper ears.

“If it was not true they would not say it.” He folded his hands over his capacious stomach.

That was the same specious reasoning Herbert Dancey had used. “That is bosh. They will print whatever slander will sell papers.” She shrugged her shoulders anxiously. It was unbearable, having to lie to everyone. But if society was not so quick to condemn, she would not have to do so. That was circular logic, she was afraid, brought on by her own anger and anxiety. All she knew was a man in her position would not be asked to leave. That is what truly irked her.

His stolid expression told her she was getting nowhere with that line of reasoning.

She glanced into the dining room and several people turned away, ostensibly returning to their conversations. Perhaps retreat was the most discreet avenue open to her. She had been disgusted by the negligent attitude of the Chapter maids anyway. “Mr. Portman, I may not be able to change your mind, but at least let me have time enough to secure other lodging. You cannot mean to toss me out on the street—”

“Mayhap it’s where you belong,” he said, his voice raised. “I have no doubt you will find perfectly adequate lodging elsewhere before the day is any older.” He leered at her, looking her up and down with lascivious eyes. Then his gaze turned from hot to cold, his black eyes beady. “I’ll not have it rumored that my establishment is being used as a house of ill repute!”

If the dining room patrons had not been paying attention before, they certainly were now! “You old fraud,” Collette said, blazing anger making her incautious. She stamped her foot down on the creaky floorboards. “How many of the men seated here today have mistresses?” she said, sweeping her hand around the room. Several of the men ducked behind papers. “Why is it always women who are accused while men are excused?” She drew herself up to her tallest and with a scathing tone said, “You should be grateful to have your inn mentioned in the paper, any paper!”

His face suffused with a deep wine color. “Out! I’ll not have you saying I would countenance filthy behavior in my inn!”

“Countenance it? The ‘gentleman’ in the room next to mine has had a steady stream of women coming to his room. A different one, I might say, each and every night. I saw a pair of such ladies, bold as you please, tapping on his door. Two at once! Will you toss him from your premises?”

“Get out!” Portman bellowed.

Trembling with fury, Collette, bundling her portmanteau to her chest, started toward the door, but paused and turned before exiting. “I shall leave, but mostly because the service here is abominable! Your rooms are shabby, ill-lit and poorly cleaned. Your linens are mildewed and stink, and your food is hideously ill-prepared and overpriced. And you, sir, are a lout! I will find another establishment where my business is valued.”

With those words she whirled and stalked from the room, valise in hand.

The first light spits of rain pattered on the leaves above her, and Collette huddled dejectedly on a bench near the Serpentine, not far from a walkway. For all her brave words while leaving the inn, she had been in London only a week, and she knew of nowhere else to go. Innkeepers talked to one another, that she knew. It would be humiliating to have doors barred to her, but she would have to risk it, she supposed.

It was all very well to hold her head high as she left the Chapter Coffeehouse, but settling her account with them, which she had felt compelled to return to do because of the proprietor’s evil insinuations, had taken what little cash she had left. That she had been overcharged she had no doubt, but what could she say? She would not be so dishonorable as to leave her bill unpaid, no matter what the provocation, and she would not allow Portman to think Jameson would pay it for her.

She would get a draft on her bank account, but that would take some time, a few days at least, and in the meantime she had nowhere to go. She could not go to Henny. Philoxia would take her in, but the memory of their conversation came back to her. Loxy had struggled to raise herself from her stained reputation. Was it fair to place her at risk again, to ask her to shelter a woman the public now thought was a…a whore?

Her next thought had been that as the author of her misfortune, Jameson should loan her his cottage for a few days, at least until her bank draft came through or they concluded their business. She had gone to Jameson’s townhome, but he was not there and was not expected back for a few days, maybe even a week. It was a devastating blow. Where had he gone? Clearly he had never had any intention to settle things with Wilson’s Gazette. Nor did he care enough about her even to be sure she was all right, or he would not have just gone out of town, no matter how urgent the business. Humiliated by the knowing look in the housekeeper’s eyes, she had slunk away from the front door, valise in hand.

What was she going to do? Misery permeated every fiber of her being as the rain increased in intensity. Someone at that wretched inn had stolen her pretty new parasol, her umbrella and her best bonnet.

She stared glumly into the distance, thinking she must move, must find a place to stay, or very soon she would look irretrievably bedraggled, and no respectable innkeeper or landlord would rent her a room. So much depended on appearances in this evil city.

Rain was starting to seep through her sleeves and mat down her hair. She was alone in a city of strangers. She wanted her Aunt Nettie. She wanted to sit in the parlor and drink tea while she read out loud bits of her work to Auntie and Professor Stiltson. She wanted home: long walks near the marshes, the view of the channel on a wild day with the salty breeze tumbling her hair, the quiet country lane she walked when contemplating her plot.

Tears joined the raindrops trailing down her cheek, dripping off her chin. It had been a mistake, coming to London, thinking she could settle her own problems. Men only listened to other men unless there was money to be made from a woman’s talent. Mr. Bellringer had made it quite clear that profit was his sole motivation. She would never go to him for help, even if she were drowning in the Thames and he was offering his hand.

The tears came faster, sliding unnoticed in salty trails alongside freshwater cousins. A sob welled up in her throat, and a second later she had broken down completely. She covered her face, allowing the great, gusty sobs to overtake her. Gone was any faith that kindness existed. It was a hard world, friendless and cruel. Her nose clogged and she searched blindly for a handkerchief in her reticule.

“Excuse me, but can I help you?”

The light clear tones startled Collette as much as a gunshot would have, and she jumped. “What? Who…?”

A woman stood before her on the walkway, protected by a gigantic black umbrella that she held over top of Collette, too, so the rain no longer pattered down on her head. She was a pleasant-faced woman, perhaps in her mid-thirties, unremarkable in her pale coloring, light hair parted in the middle and regular features, spoiled only by a nose a little too large for her face. Her clothes seemed almost random, a dark jumble giving no indication of her form.

But her expression, or what Collette could see of it through the blur of tears, was kind, concerned. “May I help you?” the woman repeated, her tone earnest but hesitant. “I almost walked past… I do believe a person’s sufferings are their own private business…but then I could not stand it and came back to at least shelter you. You seem so desolate, and a woman’s suffering will always appeal to my heart. I have had my share of wretchedness, and a kindly hand was always welcome.” She sat on the bench beside Collette, ignoring the wetness and staring earnestly into the Collette’s tear-filled eyes.

“I don’t think anyone can help me,” Collette snuffled, searching through her reticule still for a handkerchief.

The woman presented her with a clean folded handkerchief with the letters G.L. embroidered in the corner. “Why don’t you tell me what is wrong, and let us figure out a cure together?”

Collette looked into the clear, intelligent eyes and read compassion and something else there. This woman would understand her predicament. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did, and was tempted to unburden herself. The final consideration that made her speak was the knowledge that she had nothing to lose, after all. She had no other friend in London she could run to, nowhere to go, and she desperately needed the help of someone who knew the city. It was so very complicated, Collette thought, that she could not tell the stranger everything without the long story of her authorship of Last Days. Yet she was still loath to part with that private bit of her. She just told the woman about the slight to her reputation, Jameson’s lack of help in righting that wrong, and ended with the scene at the Chapter Coffeehouse.

“That scoundrel!” the woman exclaimed. “I know a little of that man. He is hard in many ways. Even I have quivered under his stony gaze.” She said that with a faint smile. “Come, do not worry. I will see that you get your things back. I have been to the Chapter Coffeehouse before and know the owner slightly.”

“That would be some comfort,” Collette said, dabbing at her eyes. “But you could help me most by…oh, by showing me the rail station and loaning me the money for the train fare home, to Kent,” she said in desolation, embarrassed to have asked, and clutched her hands on her lap. “I would pay you back immediately.”

The woman frowned. “Pardon me, my dear, but is that wise?”

“I see nothing else to do!” Collette moaned, wringing the handkerchief in her hands. “I want to eat my auntie’s blackberry jam on scones. I want to sleep in my own bed! I want to walk a country lane and listen to the lark in the hedgerow. I am tired of London and the stench and the rude people and the crowded streets. I am so utterly weary of omnibuses and lorries and carriages and everyone so in a hurry. I want to go home.”

The woman gazed at her with ready sympathy in her eyes. “I know, my dear. There is nothing like the countryside, is there?”

The tears almost started flowing again at the sweet sound of understanding in the woman’s musical voice. She held them back and nodded.

“But before you take such a drastic step—for after all, my dear, once you are home this will continue to plague you, trust me—come home with me and you and I and George will consult.”

“George?” Collette said. “Your husband?”

“No, George is my… George is…” She trailed off with a little shrug. “Do you know, I don’t think we introduced ourselves.”

“Gracious, you’re right! I am Collette Jardiniere.”

She put out her hand, and the other woman took it and gave it a squeeze.

“I am Marian Evans. George is George Lewes, and he is marvelous! Come home with me to East Sheen and we will figure things out.”

Eighteen

Snellcombe, Jameson thought, sitting on the high seat of a hired cart, must be the smallest village ever honored with the title of village. One tiny shop that served as a stage coach office, post office and general merchandise shop comprised the whole of the business section, and it was merely one room above which the proprietor slept. Colin Jenkins’s abode was just a few steps away, by the church, across a dirty, muddy, evil-smelling road. Filthy chickens pecked and clucked at weeds along the path, and when a rider on a slow-moving cob lumbered toward them they scattered in a flurry of feathers and gabbling agitation.

His stomach lurched, whether from the smell of the muck or a kind of anticipatory revulsion, he did not know. He had searched for so long, and now his search was coming to an end. Would he be enlightened or hideously disillusioned? He still was not sure why it was so important to meet the author in person. Perhaps it was because he felt compelled to make obeisance to the man who had done what he could not do.

From a young age books had given him a sort of companionship other boys could not, a companionship of the mind. Within the calf covers of books he had traveled to India and the Americas, sailed with pirates and wanderers, rollicked with Gulliver on his strange travels and Tom Jones on his dubious path to self-knowledge, and even trod Miss Austen’s gentler path to Northanger Abbey and Mansfield Park. He would become lost for hours to all sights and sounds other than those enclosed in the covers, only to emerge dazed and fretful after finishing a work he wished would never end.

He had tried writing, but could never be satisfied with his own poor reflection of other writers’ glory. No matter how much he did, he never seemed to improve. He supposed that was what had bothered him so much when he had been tricked into believing Collette the author of Last Days. If a slip of a girl could write a novel like that, what did that make him? It was unthinkable that a spinster from Listerwood-on-Sea should write what was for him the definitive novel of a man’s voyage through life. So, mixed with the anger he felt at having been taken in by Collette was a kind of relief. His judgment about women’s writing ability was sound.

He had met other women who had pretensions to intellect. Marian Evans, now living with that radical George Lewes, was one of them. He shifted on his seat. Marian Evans made him uneasy every time they were in company together. She never flirted, she never deferred to him in an argument and she had a clear, gray gaze that was unsettling in its intensity. Her opinion was invariably well expressed, but since she had taken up with Lewes, he decided she must have been parroting her paramour’s opinions disguised as her own all along. He turned his thoughts away from Miss Evans and back to Collette. When he returned to London he would visit her and call her on her deception. He almost looked forward to the argument, to the way her eyes would sparkle, the anger in her voice—

“Hey, you, gent! You goin’ to see Jenkins or not? I got to get this ’ere rig back to Blackpool afore dark!”

The driver’s voice broke into his contemplation and he realized he was still sitting on the seat in the cart. He jumped down to the dirt road, one foot landing in mud. He needed to collect himself, gather his wits and go up to that door and meet Colin Jenkins. “I shall be back in one hour,” he said to the driver. “Get yourself a pint…if there is any place for such a thing in this village.” He tossed a shilling up to the man.

He crossed the road and took the few steps that led up the walkway to a small stone house snuggled next to the tiny church. He rapped on the door and waited, stamping and scuffing his feet to get rid of the muck from the puddle in the road. He was about to rap again when a gentleman answered, a man in his late fifties.

He wore a black frock coat of old design, a black waistcoat done up to the neck, revealing only a slice of white collar above, and had an enormous white napkin, stained with mustard and covered in crumbs, tucked in to his waistcoat.

“Damn, but I don’t know where the girl is!” he stormed. “Fanny! Fanny!” he roared over his shoulder, then turned back and glared at Jameson. “Well, what do you want? I am just sitting down to my tea, and if it is parish business, it can wait. If it is not parish business, then what are you doing bothering the vicar about it?”

Jameson stared in dismay at the vicar of Snellcombe.

A half hour later, after taking tea with the man, he was still at a loss how to broach the subject that had led him there. He had introduced himself at the door and said he was from London, after which the man enthusiastically pumped his hand, seeming not in any hurry to learn his business. Mr. Colin Jenkins, vicar of Snellcombe, missed London life a great deal, he said. As a lad he had been sent down from Oxford on two occasions, and had stayed at his uncle’s in London.

Were the gardens of Vauxhall still the place to meet a young lady if one wanted a little kiss in the dark, eh? The fellow peppered him with questions. Were the clubs on St. James still the place to be seen? He’d heard of the Crystal Hall and the great exhibition of ’51. Hadn’t been able to get to London; couldn’t afford to go. Was it all it was said to be in the papers? Was the array of goods just as magnificent?

Jameson answered as he drank ale and ate roast beef and pickle sandwiches, but his mind was elsewhere, his thoughts as scattered as the chickens on the road had been. Was this the author, then, this rotund, choleric gentleman of later years? He remembered Collette’s dreamy explanation for the slightly out-of-date feel of the novel. That explanation would fit if this were truly the author of Last Days. His youth was a good twenty-five or thirty years before and his memories of London were dated.

“Do you write, sir? I have been told you are a writer,” he blurted out.

He realized by the look on the other man’s face that the fellow had been in the middle of some remembrance and was put off at being interrupted. His expression changed to one of eagerness though, as Jameson’s question sank into a mind that did not seem to be active in more than consideration of what dinner might consist of, or whether the trout fishing would be good that Saturday.

“I am indeed a writer!”

Jameson had begun to hope that he was mistaken, that this was not the author of Last Days, so little did he like the man. But if he was the author, then there must be something deep within that gave birth to such an eloquent piece of fiction, and he would search for it. Leaning forward, he said, “I am come to thank you, sir, for your remarkable piece of work.” He gazed into the man’s eyes, searching for the depth that must be there.

“Really! Most kind. Which one?”

“Which one?” Jameson’s mind reeled. That Bellringer chap at Rosewood Publishing had assured him Last Days was the first novel by this particular writer. But maybe Jenkins had been published by another publisher. “I was not aware there was more than one work, sir. I would be delighted to read whatever you have written, if I could get a list…”

“I have one here somewhere,” Jenkins said, rising and lumbering to the corner of the small dining room and rustling through a desk piled with papers, fishing lures and the odd wizened apple core. “Where… Ah, yes, here it is.”

He brought a piece of stained and crumpled paper over and handed it to Jameson with a flourish. It was entitled, “The Various Works of the Reverend Colin Jenkins”. Jameson scanned down the list.

The Morality of Sunday Travel

Bread Upon The Water – A Treatise on the Dangers of Wasting Food.

Abolition or Abrogation – A Tract Treating the Question of Whether We Should Interfere in Our American Brothers’ Right to Hold Slaves.

Fly-Fishing For Sinners – A Vicar’s Reflections on Gathering Sinners Into the Fold.

There were more, but all were along the same lines. He looked up from the list. “I do not understand. These all seem to be religious tracts. Why is The Last Days of a Rake not on here?”

“Last days of a what? Who? What are you talkin’ about?”

“The Last Days of a… Oh, of course!” Of course a vicar could not own up to his past as a man about town, nor could he dare publicly acknowledge this kind of writing. But… Jameson paused. If that was so, if he was hiding his authorship of the novel, then why would he put his own name on it?

“Uh, The Last Days of a Rake, sir. Your novel.”

The man’s bushy eyebrows lowered, his cheeks and neck reddened, and he said, “See here, what do you mean by saying I wrote a novel? Heathenish notion to go about writing down what is false from the beginning! Damned lying drivel.”

The awful truth finally penetrated Jameson’s brain. “You are not the Colin Jenkins who wrote The Last Days of a Rake? No, of course you’re not. What was I thinking?” Wearily, Jameson stood and held out his hand to the older man. “My apologies, sir. It seems I have interrupted your day with the mistaken idea that you were a different Colin Jenkins.”

“Ah, there is George now,” Marian said, alert to the footfall on the doorstep. She flew to the door and pulled it open and stepped out to the hall.

Collette shifted uneasily in her chair in a shabby but comfortable sitting room. In the park it had seemed such a good idea to go with Marian Evans. In fact, it had seemed like the answer to a prayer at a moment when she was not able to think clearly for herself. But she had been shocked to the core when she went with her new friend to East Sheen, near Richmond Park, southwest of London, and found that George was Marian’s live-in lover.

What kind of man would seduce a young unmarried female into living with him when he could not free himself of a marriage no longer whole? The man had another family; that much she had learned in their conversation so far. And yet Marian seemed so untouched, so…innocent, almost, despite a vigorous intelligence and sharp, questioning eyes. But when she warned Collette of her living arrangements, there had been a touch of defiance, mixed with a small portion of sadness.

“Do not think this was an easy decision for me,” Marian had said, gazing steadily at Collette as though daring her to disapprove. “Though I espouse radical views on some issues, I do not believe in easily broken bonds, nor had I ever foreseen I would acquiesce to this kind of living arrangement. When you meet George you will understand me better.”

Collette realized her own feelings on the subject were a tumult of confused ideas about the moral code of her upbringing, the teachings of the church and the deepest feelings of her heart and conscience. Had she not just been postulating, about her novel, that true morality was living your life in as honest a way possible, without inflicting any intentional hurt on those one affected? And if so, were not George and Marian living with the utmost morality in admitting their devotion to each other, even in the face of his inability to marry her?

So she waited while Marian, just outside the parlor door, spoke in low tones to her…to George Lewes. The door opened again and Marian came in, her arm linked with a man who wore a neat, but not rakish jacket, and who carried his hat under his free arm. He sneezed and fastidiously wiped his nose on a large, square, white handkerchief with G. L. embroidered in the corner.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I am just recovering from a cold, as is Marian. You must excuse me.”

Collette gazed at his face with shock. Plain would have been a charitable description of George Lewes. Somehow she had envisioned the man who could tempt a woman to such a lifestyle as this to be devastatingly handsome, suave, with a piercing gaze and the signs of dissipation on his face. Instead she was faced with a very ordinary man, weak-chinned and with a thick, luxuriant mustache, slightly balding, and of no more than average height.

But Marian gazed at him with unconcealed joy and pride, and a doting expression. “George, this is Collette Jardiniere. Collette, this is George Lewes.”

An hour later, over tea taken at a round table in the corner of the dark-paneled sitting room, they were chatting and laughing like old friends. Collette gazed at George’s eyes and smiled. He was looking at Marian as she spoke about something, and there was such a look of fondness on his plain face that it was a pleasure to gaze at him. From incredulity that a woman would give up so much for a man like George Lewes, Collette had drifted to a more humble understanding of the attraction.

He loved her.

It was so apparent in every word and every gesture, every touch of his hand and every expression in his eyes. She was light and air and food to him, the very necessities of life. He and Marian had clearly decided to live the one life they were given with comfort. They needed each other, and the support they could share.

But there was more than just love between them. At first, Collette had not been able to imagine what it was. As they talked though, of their work and writing, she began to figure out what it was that touched her so deeply. George Lewes not only loved Marian, but he believed in her and respected her. He believed she could do anything she set her mind to, and only wanted to help in whatever way he could. Even if that meant staying away at crucial moments, such as when she was deep in one of the articles she wrote for The Leader or The Westminster Review, or editing a particularly taxing book.

That a man should be so supportive of a woman—a woman writer at that—had never occurred to Collette. It was one of the reasons she had vigorously rejected marriage in the past. Looking ahead at her life with one suitor she had briefly considered, a barrister in Listerwood, she had seen that he would expect her to give up her scribbling. How could she give up what was meat and drink to her?

Collette understood that when Marian fell in love with a man so decent and giving, she ultimately could not let his loveless marriage keep them apart. The inability to celebrate their love before the world and the forced cutting of many ties—for most of their old friends were loath to visit them now—was a heartbreak to Marian. But she and George consoled each other as best they could, Collette thought, as they sat down to dinner and talked of books and writing.

She envisioned their life together, the quiet dinners, the evenings and days spent in mutual work, reading to one another, exchanging ideas. They had only been living together in lodgings for a few months—before that they had been traveling—but already they had the air of an old married couple.

The time had come, she thought, with a kind of wonder, to tell someone. She had told no one but the Professor and her aunt…and Jameson…that she wrote, but instinctively she felt that these people would understand her dilemma. As Marian passed her a basket of rolls across the white tablecloth, Collette said, “I have not been completely honest with you both, and I feel the need to…to confess.”

Marian, basket in hand, paused and glanced across the table at George. Among the three of them they had thoroughly canvassed the problem of the scurrilous gossip in Wilson’s Gazette, but had as yet come to no definitive conclusion but that Collette should not go back to Listerwood, and that she should stay at Marian and George’s at least that night. Marian had expressed concern for Collette and her reputation, but Collette had laughed at the notion her reputation could suffer any more than it already had since she was named as mistress to the most notorious womanizer in London. Since neither of them read the Wilson’s Gazette columns, they did not know about the furor surrounding Charles Jameson’s supposed authorship of Collette’s book, nor had she so far introduced that complication.

“What have you not told us?” George asked, taking the basket from Marian and setting it down.

Collette sighed and fidgeted, swallowed and shifted in her chair. “I will understand if after hearing me out you wish to toss me from your home for not having been wholly honest. I…I can only plead that recently my trust has been abused. I have been let down rather badly by the one person to whom I told the truth, and I let it affect my behavior.”

“Tell us,” Marian said gently, putting her hand over George’s where his lay on the table.

He turned his over and squeezed Marian’s hand, saying, “You will receive a sympathetic hearing in this house.”

And so she told them, not omitting anything, right up to her present predicament. They had removed to the sitting room halfway through the story, and Collette, silent at last, watched her newfound friends’ faces.

Marian glanced at George, and then back at Collette. “My dear,” she said, leaning forward and taking Collette’s small hands in her slightly larger ones. “First, may I congratulate you? I have read The Last Days of a Rake, and overall I was very impressed, though if I had been your editor I would have suggested some changes in your characterization of Susan. That, and a few shifts in your language that did not strike me as quite authentic, and Lankin’s reformation seemed a little abrupt, a little forced. I would have advised…” She caught George’s steady gaze and stopped. “But I thought it a very good novel.”

George nodded, his brows beetling and his breath puffing through his thick mustache. He scruffed his sidewhiskers with one hand. “Yes, rather a good first attempt, though I must say I was surprised by the hubbub about it. People seemed to think it was a kind of validation of the rake’s lifestyle when it was clearly not meant as that.”

“Exactly! I was disappointed in people’s reactions concerning that, too,” Collette cried. “And what you said, Marian—and George, too—about the novel… Your critique is so true.” Their honest criticism was a relief to her. Here were two people who understood her desire to better herself and her writing.

Marian frowned. “I think perhaps the problem lay in your turning of his life toward the end. Perhaps you made him become rather too noble? I’m afraid people prefer someone wicked to someone too good.”

“Do you think so?” Collette asked.

“I don’t see that as a problem,” George said, tapping the tabletop with one ink-stained finger. “I wondered, though, if what you were really saying was that this man should have stayed a rake if that was what he was meant for. Perhaps that is why the change seemed so forced.”

“Yes, yes, exactly!” Collette shouted, jumping in her seat and clapping her hands. “No one has gotten that part of it! No one has seen that I meant to suggest that perhaps his reformation was not the end he was meant for, and that his behavior did not have to become so lily-white, that morality could have been achieved in a different manner. I’m afraid that I have not expressed it clearly enough. You are the first…” She paused, thinking of Jameson and a similar observation on his part, and felt her cheeks pinken. “Or…or perhaps the second person who saw that.”

She felt a shiver down her back. This was what she had been missing her whole life! Rational people able to discuss writing and literature and novels with insight and lack of prejudice. At home her aunt didn’t really understand her writing, and the Professor commented, but seemed to miss the point of almost every scene! Had she barred herself from this kind of discourse when she had refused to come to London? Or had everything she had done brought her to this point for a reason?

“Now that we know the whole truth, we can plan your attack on London,” Marian said with relish. “First, I believe George knows someone at Wilson’s Gazette, so perhaps we can find out how these bits are getting into the paper.”

George nodded thoughtfully. “Do not worry, Miss Jardiniere. I think we can find a way out of this situation for you.”

For the first time since she had come to London, Collette did not feel alone. She sighed and sat back in her chair and said, “Thank you, my friends. Please, please call me Collette.”

Nineteen

Jameson, purposely wearing his haughtiest expression, knowing he used it to intimidate, gazed down at Mr. Bellringer. “Sir, I know Colin Jenkins is a fictional name, and that it is Miss Collette Jardiniere who is the real writer of The Last Days of a Rake. Why do you not just admit it? She has told me herself, you know, because of that absurd misunderstanding with Wilson’s Gazette.”

Bellringer cast a worried glance over at his bespectacled assistant, David Stuyvesent, and tapped his long fingers on his scarred desktop. The other man, younger than Bellringer but even paler and more slender, shrugged and raised his eyebrows. They were communicating silently, Jameson thought, and he narrowed his eyes, watching the interchange.

There was no doubt left in his own mind, now that he had seen their reaction to direct confrontation with the truth. If Collette was not the author they would have said so, he was sure of that. Not that he had any doubt left. All the way back to London on the train, he had contemplated this, and the journey of self-discovery had been enlightening and humbling. Collette Jardiniere, village spinster and untraveled, uneducated lady, was the author of The Last Days of a Rake. She was possibly his intellectual equal, most certainly his emotional superior, and precious to him in ways he had not begun to understand. He had misused her terribly and owed her an abject apology. But first he would wrest the confession from Bellringer even if he had to squeeze his windpipe to do it. He leaned over the desk and glared into the man’s almost colorless eyes.

“Bellringer, she is the author. Say it! I will not leave here until you do.”

The answer came: “She is the writer.”

But it was not Bellringer who spoke after all, but Stuyvesent. Jameson turned and looked at the slender young man.

“We were protecting her,” Bellringer said, speaking up finally.

“At her request,” Stuyvesent added.

Jameson nodded. “I understand that, but this has gone on long enough. And now some despicable rumormonger has put it about that she is my mistress.”

Bellringer shot a worried look at Stuyvesent. The younger man cleared his throat and took off his glasses, cleaning them on an enormous handkerchief he whipped out of his pocket.

“Why do I get the feeling you both know something about this?” Jameson asked, glancing from Bellringer to his assistant and back again.

Bellringer sat up straighter. “I swear I had nothing to do with any gossip campaign and know nothing about it. On my honor, sir.”

“All right,” Jameson said slowly. “Can you say the same, Mr. Stuyvesent?”

“Why would either of us want to hurt Miss Jardiniere?” he said, pushing his spectacles back onto his nose. “It would not be in our best interest, surely?”

Jameson noted that it was not an answer.

“Is she not, then, your mistress?” Stuyvesent asked. “I think there must be some truth behind the, uh, rumor.”

His tone was sly, though his question was direct. What did they know? Surely the man would not have said such a thing just based on the gossip column. Keeping a tight rein on his fury, Jameson said, “I shall beat to a pulp any man who says such a thing in my presence. Now, would you like to repeat that, Mr. Stuyvesent?”

With ill-concealed dislike in his expression, Stuyvesent grudgingly said, “No, sir, I would not.”

“I didn’t think so. See that you never say that again, or I will learn of it, and then I will hunt you down as I would a mad dog.”

He left the publisher’s office in a thoughtful mood. He should have done this long ago, when Collette first came to town and confessed her authorship of Last Days to him. It would have saved him a world of trouble and a long journey to Blackpool if he had just confronted that chap Bellringer with his knowledge and wrung the truth from him. And if he had been man enough to take action immediately, he could have saved poor Collette a world of pain and this awful predicament. No matter what they did now, there would always be some who, like Stuyvesent, assumed there must be some truth behind the rumor.

Why had he truly denied for so long the possibility that she was the author? He was a pompous ass, he decided. A thick-headed pompous ass. Fortunately, the Chapter Coffeehouse was just down the street, and Jameson could, without giving himself time to think about it, admit to Collette that he would do everything in his power to disavow authorship of the book, even if she was not ready to admit to the world that she was Colin Jenkins. And there was one way he could reverse the tide of nasty gossip concerning Collette.

He could marry her.

He needed to grovel for forgiveness and hope she was kinder to him than he deserved. If Collette accepted his offer of marriage, at least he would have for a wife a passionate woman. It would be some recompense for having to marry at all.

He strode into the Chapter Coffeehouse. But fifteen minutes later he was back on the walk outside, twisting his hat in his hands in baffled fury. No one inside would admit to knowing where she had gone. It appeared she had vanished three days before with no forwarding address to send on her mail. There had been messages received for her, but with no forwarding address they had gone unclaimed.

Had she left London? Philoxia Bertrand was sure to know where Collette had disappeared to, or perhaps the authoress was staying with her. He strode off, determined to mend the mistakes he had made and undo the damage.

But Philoxia Bertrand, elegant in a gray-blue silk walking outfit, responded with horror when he told her that Collette had left the Chapter Coffeehouse.

“What do you mean she has left the Chapter Coffeehouse?” Philoxia’s face drained of color. “She must be there! I sent messages for her and never heard back, but I thought she was busy… I…I assumed…”

“She is not,” he said. “She left. I was hoping she would be here, but as you have no notion where she is either, I must suppose she has gone back to that little hole-in-the-wall village she comes from. Though I’m surprised she didn’t tell you before she left. Are you sure you have received no—”

“Message for you, ma’am,” a footman said as he came into the morning parlor.

Philoxia took it and ripped open the single sheet of paper, moving over to the window where the light filtered in through lace curtains. Her eyes widened. “Of all the… Why on earth would she go there?”

Jameson, brushing a mote of dust from his hat, glanced up, his gaze sharp and inquiring. “Is that from Collette?” Seeing the woman’s shocked stare, he corrected himself as he moved toward her, hand outstretched. “From Miss Jardiniere?”

Eyes narrowed, she said, “Why do I think this has more to do with you than anyone is saying?” She handed him the paper and folded her arms across her bosom.

Jameson read the paper and felt his blood chill in his veins. “She is at Evans and Lewes’s place? What in God’s name is she doing there? Of all the… This will ruin her reputation!”

“Perhaps,” Philoxia said acidly, snatching back the paper, “she feels she has no reputation left to ruin, thanks to you!”

He groaned and covered his eyes. “I wish to make it right for her! But this…” He uncovered his eyes and stared at the floor, abstracted. “Now she has done that which will put her beyond the pale. She must be out of her mind to go to stay with Evans and Lewes! They are pariahs even in the literary world! She must leave there at once, before the stain of their sins taints her. Wilson’s Gazette did not, at least, name her. Perhaps we can yet reverse all of this nonsense. No one will guess…”

“But they have as good as named her!” Philoxia said, glaring at Jameson, her eyes flashing with anger. “They gave out her initials and where she was staying. It would not be long before people pointed fingers. Why are you plaguing her anyway? I would not think her your type.”

Jameson paused and reflected, turning his hat around and around in his hands. Philoxia was evidently not completely in Collette’s confidence concerning her authorship of Last Days, nor the finer points of their relationship. “It has been wholly by chance, and may I say, not unmixed with pleasure on both of our parts,” he said carefully. “I regret any pain she has suffered from being connected to me in print, and I will do whatever I can to rectify the situation. But I still don’t understand why she chose to go to Marian Evans and George Lewes. Miss Evans is not accepted in polite society.”

“And yet you are accepted everywhere, and Lewes almost so.” Philoxia’s patrician face was contorted in rage. Her voice low and bitter, she glared at Jameson as if by being male he was somehow responsible. “Where is the justice in that? Why do men escape censure, while the women they bed do not?”

Her mellow voice had risen in hysteria. He watched her closely, wondering what was behind her sudden ire. Was there more to it than mere worry about her friend? But then he shook his head. “That is neither my doing nor my worry at present. Mrs. Bertrand, please believe me, I would save her from herself before she ruins her life.”

“Do not approach her yet,” Philoxia commanded, clenching her fists. “I will go see her and find out what is going on.”

Jameson bowed. “I will stay in contact with you, then, Mrs. Bertrand,” he said, not revealing that he intended to do more than just wait. He clapped his hat on his head as he exited Philoxia’s elegant townhouse. He would keep his own counsel and do what he saw fit. This was, at least in part, his own mess, and he would take care of it.

Philoxia lifted her dark veil only when she was securely in the Evans/Lewes home, rented rooms near Richmond Park. The little maid who had shown her in to the sitting room, a cozy room with a table by the window and a sitting area near the fire, retreated and closed the door. “Collette Jardiniere, I cannot remember when I have been so angry,” she declared with blistering heat, stripping off her gloves and throwing them down on a table.

Collette, who had leaped up from her seat at the table—she had been writing, and paper was strewn in front of her—was about to take her good friend’s hand, but stopped. “Loxy, what’s wrong?”

“What is wrong is that you would go to complete strangers to stay, and not come to me!”

Divided between concern and pique, Collette chose her words carefully. “You made your feelings on reputation clear. I feared exposing you to unkind report. Just look at how you come here, veiled as if entering a house of ill repute!” She glanced around, glad that Marian had had the tact to withdraw.

Discomfited, Philoxia shrugged. “I do not know Miss Evans and am only slightly acquainted with Mr. Lewes. For their sakes I would risk nothing.” Her expression changed, and she held out her hands. “But for yours…for you I would risk anything, and I should think you would know that!”

“I would not have you suffer on my account,” Collette said gently, taking her outstretched hands and squeezing them. She was touched Philoxia had responded to her brief note with a personal visit. She had underestimated the value of this woman before her, and she was deeply sorry.

Philoxia compressed her lips but nodded, releasing Collette’s hands. “I think there is more to this than meets the eye. Why is Charles Jameson so intent on finding you, too? Do not think to fob me off with easy explanation, for I intend to know all.”

Collette sighed. Perhaps it was time to tell Loxy her story, given how patient she had been and how helpful. It wouldn’t upset her that Collette was a novelist, but it likely would hurt her that she had not been trusted with the knowledge. It was a long story, so Collette indicated a chair. Philoxia glanced around uneasily, but then unbent enough to relax into a shabby easy chair by the table. How much should she tell, though? Should she share her intimate connection to Jameson? Or would it only upset Loxy and to no good effect? She would have to decide as she began her tale.

“I must tell you, I am a novelist.”

Philoxia raised a polite eyebrow. “That is not news to me, dear.”

At first Collette felt a jolt, that somehow Philoxia had known all along about Last Days, but in a second she understood her friend merely meant it was no surprise that she was a writer. Collette locked her hands in front of her on the table to keep from twisting them together, so much did her nerves rattle her. “I wrote The Last Days of a Rake.”

The other eyebrow rose to meet its mate. “You are Colin Jenkins?”

“I am.”

“Not Charles Jameson, but you?”

“Yes, me!” Collette said, beginning to get testy. If her own friend would not believe her, then how could she hope to convince others?

Philoxia, looking a little dazed, said, “Tell me all, Collette, make me understand.”

And so she did, from beginning to the present, and when Collette was done, her friend sat for a long moment, digesting the news. She stared off toward the mantle, where a German clock ticked away the minutes.

“I must tell you, Collette, my dear,” she finally said, “that every literary hostess has been wild to find you and be the first to fete you, you know. I among them. It is the only reason I invite Jameson to every soirée. I truly believed he was Jenkins, as did most of London.”

Collette said, fury tightening her voice, “He is the sole reason I am here in London. If he had not said what he did to that reporter, Randall Proctor, this whole mess would not have happened.”

Marian came into the room at that moment. “I would not interrupt you, my dear,” she said to Collette, with just a slight nod to Philoxia. “But there is someone else to see you.” There was an expression of distaste on her mild features.

“Who is it?”

“Mr. Charles Jameson.”

Anger—never far away when she thought of Jameson—flickered to life in Collette’s heart. If he had not abandoned her, leaving town when she needed him most, she would have spoken to him, but now he had given her no reason to ever see him again. “Would you tell Mr. Jameson that we have nothing to discuss, and that I do not wish to see him. Ever.” She relented after a moment and called her new friend back, rising from her chair. “Oh, Marian, I cannot have you do my nasty tasks for me. I should tell him that myself.”

A look of mischief lit the other woman’s face. “Oh, no, let me, please!” she said, stopping Collette with one outstretched hand. “Mr. Jameson has been rude to me on occasion. He questioned my right, as a woman and therefore an intellectual inferior, to chair a literary meeting. I think I should like the opportunity to deny him something he seems to want so very much.” She left, humming a little tune.

“Was that wise, dear?” Philoxia asked. “Will you not need his cooperation to battle this unfair campaign?”

“I will do things for myself, Loxy. I will tell you what Marian, George and I have planned. And what else I have in mind.”

Twenty

Smarting from Marian Evans’s refusal to allow him access to Collette, Jameson stalked to his club that night more out of restlessness than a want for any companionship. He threw himself into a chair and nodded when a waiter offered him brandy. He had not been bored, he realized, since Collette had come to London, and he didn’t know what to do with himself. None of the usual remedies appealed. Women? He could not think of a single one who could hold a candle in wit to Collette. How could she reject him, and in such a smartly worded rejection, too? It was beyond believing that a little Kentish spinster would hold him at bay, as if he were beneath contempt.

He would put her out of his mind. He would simply forget her and go on with his life of pleasure, a life that had been pleasant enough before a late night encounter on the train from Kent made it seem drab and uninteresting. He tossed back the brandy and set the glass down with a bang on the polished table beside his chair.

How was he going to forget her, when she had become a part of his thoughts? He realized with a start that Collette’s slender figure and passionate abandon had become an obsession with him. Beyond their sexual consonance, other moments spent talking and laughing, arguing even, came back to him constantly. He missed her. Marriage, even, had lost much of its terror, when he thought he could marry her.

He could drink more. That would certainly result in forgetfulness of a sort, but it did not appeal. Gambling? He eyed the door to the card room, a hum of voices coming from it like the sound of bees in a hive. Gentleman of all ages lounged near the door watching with avid, fevered gazes, looking for a likely table at which to try their luck. But gambling struck him for the first time as a horrific waste of money, when he could just as easily use that money—

He stopped, riveted in his chair by a strange and wonderful idea. A marvelous idea. A miraculous idea! Money. He had pots of it and accumulated more every day. He actually gave away a fair amount, more than he let on to any of his friends. He supported the charities his mother had held dear, as a way of honoring her memory. And his own philanthropies ran to education for the poor and housing for the elderly. He told no one because he could not bear to be thought altruistic. Excessive gratitude made him queasy.

But how about using his money for something he would enjoy, something that would help people and perhaps even make more money? He straightened in his chair and tapped his fingers on the low table in front of him.

He loved books, but he was no writer. And yet he recognized good writing when he read it. He could publish the kind of books he looked for and so seldom found, the work of worthy young writers with the kind of potential Collette showed. It would give him something to do, something about which he could become passionate. It might save him from the interminable boredom he suffered whenever not near Collette, and if it didn’t help him forget her, then it would at least make some use of the time he would otherwise spend brooding. He waved down another servant, demanded some paper, pens and ink, and eagerly fell to work at the table in front of him.

“‘It is regrettable that certain journals and gazettes in this great city must stoop so low as to commit libel to sell papers.’ Ha!” Collette laid down The Westminster Review’s condemnation of Wilson’s Gazette’s spurious search for the author of Last Days and their scandalous gossip campaign, and clapped her hands together. “George, Marian, it is marvelous! I am so grateful to you both, and doubly grateful it was not too late to put this in this issue.”

Marian yawned and leaned her head on George’s shoulder. “Well, it took some midnight work to word it just right, but with your help we got it done.”

Shamefaced, Collette admitted, “You know, there is quite a bit of truth in the allegations in Wilson’s Gazette concerning my relationship with Charles Jameson.”

“I know,” Marian said with a gentle smile, rubbing her lover’s arm. “But they did not need to make such suggestions. It is the condemnation of the woman in such a relationship of which we disapprove. Why should you be condemned and he lauded?” Raising one brow, she continued, “I will not say a word about your dubious taste in gentlemen. For the purposes of our campaign, we will whitewash a little what has been painted so black. I only wish we could reveal all of the truth. You should be praised for your accomplishment in writing such a notable book.”

“Even if the characters are a little weak and the reformation implausible?” Collette grinned.

“Shame on you, taking us at our word like that. No work is perfect, as my own articles attest.”

Collette’s grin disappeared. “Marian,” she said earnestly. “I aspire to better myself as a writer. I begin to see I have only just begun to grasp the true splendor of the craft. Last Days fell far short of what I wanted to say.” She shook her head. “I can see the subject matter was sensational, and so it garnered attention…undeserved, much of it. I vow I’ll someday write a book I can be proud of, and yet one that will still entertain and tell a good yarn.” She paused and gazed at her new friend steadily. “But Marian, your work is so far superior to mine! It’s the most lucid, cogent writing I have ever read. If only you put your talent to use writing novels, I think you would eclipse every novelist, female or male, since Miss Austen.”

“Hear, hear,” George said. “I heartily second that.”

Marian colored a bright pink.

“You must try your hand at a novel.” Collette picked up the paper again. “My only complaint with this article is that you did not blacken Mr. Jameson’s name at all! I so wished to see him humiliated.”

“Would you really like that?” Marian asked with a speculative look.

“He deserves whatever he gets,” Collette said. “If he had corrected the mistake immediately, none of this would have happened.”

“To be fair,” Marian said, “We have not given him the opportunity to respond.”

“He had ample opportunity and frittered it away,” Collette replied.

George frowned. “We must be responsible in our reportage, and restrained, or we are no better than that fellow at the Gazette. What is his name? Randall Proctor?”

“Imagine him being the one who writes the gossip column after all,” Marian said, deflecting the threatened disagreement effortlessly with a change of subject. “It had been hinted that the columnist was a society hostess, and that is how the gossip is gleaned. Opinion has been shifting as to which lady it was, but my informant is quite sure it is Randall Proctor behind it after all. Oh, if we could only come right out and say it is this fellow!”

“Why should you not?” Collette asked.

George and Marian exchanged glances.

“Unwritten rules,” Marian said with a shrug. “Articles, reviews, columns… Most are written anonymously, and that suits those of us who are no longer… Well, you know how it is for us. We are personae non gratae, you might say.”

Repentant, Collette laid her hands over her friends’. “I am sorry. I would do nothing to disrupt your lives. You know that.”

Marian laughed, but there was an edge of relief in her laughter. “Good! We are an impecunious lot at the moment, you know, and must work hard to maintain the flow of pounds and pence into the coffers.”

And she did know, Collette thought. Over the last few days she had, in the close confines of their Richmond Park rooms, learned much about her new friends. George manfully provided for his wife, from whom he was separated, and their children; so far that seemed commendable.

But as strange as it seemed, he also provided monetary support for her children by her lover, Thornton Leigh! Very odd, but so very George. Despite what she would normally think about a man who abandoned his wife to live with another woman, he was, in truth, the soul of honor. Collette understood more each day how Marian felt about him. But the end result of this scramble to support his family was that to Marian was left a great deal of the task of providing for their own modest wants.

She did it gladly, Collette knew, but it was a struggle. She must not burden them with her presence too much longer. Her bank draft had arrived, and she had insisted upon putting some money toward food and coal, but still, she was a third person in a crowded household. What would she do? Would the articles be enough to release her from the prison of unfounded gossip? And what should she do about Last Days? If she admitted her authorship of a book many considered scandalous, she would be placing herself right back in that purgatory of gossip and innuendo.

Did she really care anymore what people thought of her?

As George and Marian talked in soft undertones about an article they were collaborating on, Collette examined the thought that had been teasing her mind the last few days. The underlying message in her novel was that one must be true to oneself. Had she been? Or by fearfully disowning her work was she only mouthing convictions by which she was not prepared to live?

She had before her, in the persons of her new friends, an example of people willing to be true to themselves. They had given up the esteem of friends and family and the approval of society to follow their hearts and souls. Could she do likewise? Did she dare to live and do as she wanted, without worrying that others would be offended?

Her heart thudded as she pondered the freedom that lay just outside the open cage door. Did she dare step out and fly?

A war of words had erupted between the esteemed Westminster Review and the rag sheet, Wilson’s Gazette. And now it had gone beyond any ability of Jameson’s to repair, for the Gazette, stung by the Review’s criticism of their allegedly unfounded gossip, had come right out and boldly named Collette Jardiniere as his mistress.

He groaned and threw down the paper, jamming his fingers through his thick hair in an uncharacteristically inelegant movement. Of all the damned messes he had ever been in, he had never been accused of being a novelist! And he had never ever been accused of being lover to a lady of previously impeccable reputation. What was he going to do? He had hoped to be able to correct this debacle before it blew out of proportion, but it appeared he was too late. His indecisiveness was to blame, and his own blasted pride and arrogance. It had degenerated into a war of words between two papers, with Collette in the center, volleyed like a shuttlecock.

He ground his teeth and pulled at his mustache, thinking perhaps Collette Jardiniere had been right to send him away. What had he ever done but complicate her life? Now that he had lost them, he coveted her esteem and goodwill more than ever. From their first meeting he had been aware of something different about her, something that lured him and teased him, attracting him against his own intentions and reason.

And now that he acknowledged that Last Days was her work, completely and unequivocally, he had to admit it was not just her vivacity and country freshness that pulled him to her, nor was it solely the yearning he had for her body melding with his. She was intelligent, witty, more so than most men he knew. And if that was true of her, had he misjudged other women? Was she not an aberration but an exemplar of her sex?

There was Marian Evans, the young woman who had repeatedly irritated him with her outré opinions and intellectual pretensions. Though he had passed these off as the parroting of her lover’s thoughts, he now remembered things she had said, opinions she had stated, that had been at complete variance with George Lewes’s expressed ideas, and yet were so well formulated and coherently expressed that he rather began to suspect she was the more intelligent half of that very odd couple.

Philoxia Bertrand he had damned as a literary hanger-on, a society matron engaging in the cult of adoration of literary figures. But he had to admit that he had spoken to her often in the last months, and that rarely were her opinions foolish or poorly thought out. She might hostess parties and vie for the most dazzling of literary figures for her dining table, but unlike many hosts and hostesses, she actually read the books and the reviews, too. They had discussed in detail many modern works, not fiction only, but also translated German philosophical works, lengthy and serious tracts on social issues and the occasional travelogue. She read widely and with intelligence.

How vain of him to ignore that evidence, hidebound as he had been in adhering to his faulty opinions of feminine intelligence. Could it be that there were other women like Miss Evans, Mrs. Bertrand and Collette? He had allowed himself to unthinkingly condemn half of society as brainless without the slightest evidence. However, self-loathing was not going to correct this mess. It required action, action he was now ready to take. He was furious in a slow-burning, dangerous way. He would find out whether Dick had learned anything about Randall Proctor. It was time to settle this mess once and for all time.

“I need your help, Loxy,” Collette said over tea at Philoxia’s home. They sat in the atrium, a sunny, plant-filled room with windows to the ceiling. It was like sitting in a jungle, surrounded by aspidistras, ferns, rubber plants and giant palms. A parrot squawked from somewhere above. They sat at a lovely little table clothed in a gaudy fabric printed with more jungle plants and Macaw parrots. The total effect was a cheerful jumble of color and sound and scent, a joyous assault on the senses.

“How can I help?”

“Have you seen this?” Collette tossed the latest outrageous column in the Gazette on the table.

Philoxia shuddered. “No! I have sworn to never read that again now that I know how fallacious the material is and how hurtful to those who are the subjects of its gossip. I have no excuse. With a past like mine I ought to have known how gossip hurts, but I let my basest addictions lead me.”

“Just once more, dear,” Collette said, chuckling, touched that her dilemma had so affected her friend.

Philoxia scanned the piece. “Of all the contemptible, vile pieces of trash! How can they get away with saying that?” Her lovely eyes widened, but then she leaned forward, and in a lower voice said, “Did you really kiss Jameson in public? And…and did you go with him to his cottage?”

Collette said, “Yes, I did. He… Oh, Loxy, every time I am around him I lose my good sense.” She put her bare hands to her flaming cheeks. “I start imagining things and feeling things…but that is not what we are supposed to be talking about.”

Mischievously, the other woman said, “Why not, dearest? I have been a married woman. I can certainly understand those very strange feelings you are having.”

“Loxy!” Collette picked up the paper and swatted at her friend.

She giggled, unrepentant. “Remember,” she said, her dark eyes flashing. “I was the one who experienced those things even before marriage! When I ran away from school I spent three months with Gordon before…before he left me. And then years as a married woman.” She saw the look on Collette’s face and sobered. “What can I do for you, other than tell you about sex, for perhaps that particular lecture would come too late?”

Blushing deeply and trying to keep from remembering Jameson’s skillful lovemaking, Collette ignored her friend’s question, and said, “I want you to throw a party to introduce the author of The Last Days of a Rake.”

“Really?” Philoxia said carefully. “And who would you have me invite?”

“Everyone. Everyone who is anyone. I’m tired of hiding. It is time Colin Jenkins was introduced to the world.”

Twenty-One

Randall Proctor sat and stared at the large cream-colored square of parchment. It was his name on it and it had come to him at Wilson’s Gazette. Was it some kind of joke? Was someone having him on?

But no, surely no one would take a risk like that. They must know he would be skeptical and would check it out. It would be a pointless prank, and the kind of people who could afford parchment like this did not indulge in pointless pranks.

So he must believe that he had been invited to Mrs. Philoxia Bertrand’s home on the night of September first. He read the invitation over again.

Mrs. Philoxia Bertrand would like to extend to Mr. Randall Proctor an invitation to a select evening of entertainment in honor of the first public appearance of the novelist Colin Jenkins, author of The Last Days of a Rake.

Saturday, the first of September eighteen hundred and fifty-five at seven o’clock in the evening.

What did it mean? Was this because he was the one that broke the news about Charles Jameson? Jameson was often at Mrs. Bertrand’s home—she had a reputation as the first among London literary hostesses. Was Jameson finally admitting everything?

Whatever it was, of course he had to go. He could get enough material for a feature story and bags of good dirt for the gossip column, too. Mrs. Bertrand was very well connected, and these invites had probably gone out to anyone who was anyone in London.

His first order of business must be to go see a certain gent who could pilfer him a proper suit of clothes for an evening among the high muckety-mucks. Wouldn’t do to go looking less than his best. And maybe he could “borrow” a nice stickpin for his tie, too. He grinned and rubbed his hands together. This smelled like a breakthrough to him.

Philoxia gazed uneasily at the guest list and raised an eyebrow at Collette. They stood in her bedchamber, a lovely room with gold-figured wallpaper and windows draped so heavily that even at mid-day it was dim and a lamp was lit. “Are you sure about this, dear? It seems like a recipe for disaster.”

“I am sure of nothing anymore, but that I need to do this for myself. I know you do not approve of Marian and George, but they have taught me a lot about what is important in life. I’m not going to hide behind a fictional name anymore.” She gazed in the cheval glass the maid had wheeled in from the dressing room and patted down the dress, a burgundy silk of Philoxia’s altered to fit her more slender frame. “This is a beautiful dress, and you are a dear to allow me to wear it,” Collette said. “But, oh, Loxy,” she continued mournfully. “You should have seen the lovely gowns Mrs. Parker was making for me. There was a gorgeous emerald crepe de chine, and a gold walking dress, and lovely gloves and a fan and…” She sighed deeply.

The other woman laughed, tossing the list aside and coming up behind her friend. She gazed at her face in the mirror. “If you have become addicted to such pleasures as a luxurious wardrobe you will just have to do what I did, dear, and marry a wealthy man!”

“Bosh!” Collette said, starting to take the gown off with the help of Philoxia’s dresser, a dour Scotswoman named Gladys. “I will earn it myself or go without.” Pensively she added, staring down at the figured carpet, “I will never marry. With my luck I would end up with someone like Herbert Dancey! Unless I can find a man like George Lewes…”

“That ugly fellow?” Philoxia shuddered. “How could a woman kiss him, even in the dark?”

“Loxy! How cruel of you. How can you say that?” Collette turned and frowned at her friend. “You do not know him. He is the sweetest, most honorable of gentlemen.”

“Honorable?” Philoxia bridled. She swept around her room with sharp, angry motions and then stood facing her friend again. “To seduce poor Marian Evans into deserting her place in society for him?”

She just didn’t understand, Collette thought sadly. She hadn’t at first, either, and she had to admit Philoxia’s comments about George’s looks echoed her own first thoughts. She had grown, she hoped, even in just a few days. Judgment so swift and cruel would never spill from her lips again. George Lewes’s plain looks improved with every moment spent in his company and every smile on his homely face.

Collette pulled on her plain brown traveling dress again and turned, allowing Gladys to do up the back for her. Loxy saw what everyone else saw. They saw what Marian had given up, but not what she had gained. Life was a barter. If you got what you needed and gave up what was of no use to you, then you won something precious in the exchange. What good was a stainless reputation if you had to live by everyone else’s rules, never allowed the freedom to choose your path?

Philoxia was perhaps not the best judge, having suffered so from her own bad judgment in a case that could be considered similar to Marian’s. She had cast George in the role of her own faithless lover and disliked him accordingly. But Marian Evans’s choice had been the decision of a mature mind, while Philoxia had been a rebellious sixteen-year-old when she ran away with a man she had no intention of marrying. For all of the similarities, there were very few points of connection.

George and Marian had become valuable friends, understanding Collette better, sometimes, than she did herself. Marian, though she teased Collette about her abominable taste in men, was at the core sympathetic over her disappointment in Jameson. She understood, she said, how a woman’s heart could be attracted by an unworthy object even when confronted with proof of the gentleman’s worthlessness. Her words held the echo of past pain, but Collette did not pry.

She pulled her sleeves down and straightened, glancing at herself once more in the mirror, looking at a reflection to which she was accustomed: herself in plain attire. She refused to feel sorry for herself. She had made her decision when she sent Marian to the door with the message that she had no wish to see Charles Jameson ever again, and he had never been back. He had not acted the part of a true gentleman. A real gentleman would have been more concerned for her and her reputation. And he had never tried to straighten out his misidentification as the author of Last Days.

She had recognized her fascination for him as what it was, she thought, mere physical reaction to his astounding good looks, charm and charisma. She had reevaluated her own opinions of what made a man worthy, in the last few days, and not one of those items made her final list.

Although—

She still could not think of him without a deep, mournful longing. Making love had been one sweet part of their time together, but there had been so much more. When she counted up all of his faults—and there were many—and weighed them against one thing, she still could never forget him. That one thing was, whenever she was with him, he filled her with joy. Despite all his faults, he gave her something no one else had ever done, but whether it was the undivided attention he lavished upon her or something else, she could not say. It was unfathomable, and she was no closer to understanding it than she was the first night on the train.

But she had to take her life into her own hands. And that was what she was going to do that very night. After revealing herself as the infamous author Colin Jenkins, she would retire back to Listerwood and write Susan’s story. She would explore her own soul, if need be, and maybe, if she was lucky, her good friends George and Marian would give her the criticism and evaluation she needed to become a better writer.

More than ever she was convinced there was not another man of George Lewes’s stamp in the world. What other man would put up with a scribbling wife? With Collette’s solitary rambling down country lanes, her occasional absentmindedness when she was working out a plot detail, her ink-stained hands, paper everywhere, she was not a fit wife, and yet she could not give that part of her life up for anyone.

She gazed at the prim, lonely figure in the mirror, the figure of Colin Jenkins, author. Soon to be known as Collette Jardiniere, lady novelist.

“What do you mean you have not been able to run him to ground? The fellow must live somewhere!” Jameson paced behind his desk and then mashed a cigar out in a dish, glaring at the man across the desk from him. “You said you could find anyone, anywhere!”

Dick wore a stubborn expression on his pale face. “Didn’t say as I ’adn’t found where he lives, did I? But though the man has lodgings, he spends most of his time away from home. Landlady says as long as ’e pays his shot, she don’t care. And he does. Pays his shot, that is, and on time.”

Eyeing him with disfavor, Jameson said, “You know that Colin Jenkins you tracked down in Snellcombe? He turned out to be a pastor who writes tracts! I spent two hours bored to death watching him messily consume beef and pickle, only to find out he writes claptrap the like of which you have never read.”

The young man attempted, unsuccessfully, to hide a smile. “I said he was a writer, sir. You didn’t give me the time to research further. I could o’ done that and saved you a couple o’ days to Blackpool and back.”

“That is not the point,” Jameson stormed. “The point is that was a failure, and now you cannot find one journalist in the city of London.”

“Lot o’ writing blokes in this city, sir. Like I said, I didn’t say I couldn’t track him down, just that I hadn’t yet. Is it my fault that he never goes home to sleep? I have to occasionally, you know. And there does not seem to be any dirt on him either. Not what you want, anyway.”

Jameson flung himself into a chair and listened while Dick expounded on Proctor’s background—poor—and upbringing—almost non-existent—finally winding up with the man’s current status. He was a paid journalist for Wilson’s Gazette, and rising fast through the ranks, though he was almost without formal education. He was not well-liked by his colleagues because he was not above stealing a lead or a story when it suited him, but as his whole life seemed to be dedicated to his job, he did not appear to miss his lack of social life and friends. He had no lady friend, nor had he ever abandoned a woman. He did not drink immoderately, or gamble at all, and he seemed to sleep very little.

What he did have was a formidable network of spies, including butlers, footmen, waiters, barmaids and even some impoverished upper-crust hangers-on who exchanged tidbits of gossip for drinking and gambling money. It was thought that he might have connections with the underbelly of London society, the thieves and fences, but there was no proof.

Dick finished his report and folded his hands over his jacket and stared at his employer.

Jameson was silent for a minute. Grudgingly he said, “I suppose you’ve done all you can.”

“I have.”

“We’ll let it go, then. I’ll have to find another way at Randall Proctor. I shall go to Wilson’s Gazette myself and demand his head on a platter.”

“Or you could go to Mrs. Bertrand’s literary party for Colin Jenkins,” Dick said, straightening his cuffs.

“Mrs. Bertrand’s… What are you talking about?”

Again stifling that maddening smile, Dick said, “Didn’t you get an invite, sir? I thought for sure Mrs. Bertrand would invite you. ’Specially since she has invited Proctor. Though I suppose she thought it wouldn’t be good to have the real Colin Jenkins, whoever that is, and the fake Colin Jenkins at the same party.”

The young man’s eyes snapped with curiosity, but Jameson took a mean satisfaction in not enlightening him. So, Collette was revealing herself, eh? She had decided to abandon the shadows and show the literary world who the most talked about young author for some time really was. But what did Dick mean…?

“Are you saying that they have invited that hack journalist Proctor to this party and not me?”

“I have it on good authority, sir, that one invitation was sent out to Mr. Randall Proctor of Wilson’s Gazette. And that the response was affirmative. He will be there. Tonight. At Mrs. Bertrand’s residence.”

“Then so will I,” Jameson growled.

“Philoxia, I feel sure we have made a dreadful mistake,” Collette said for the third or fourth time, as they stood in her entrance hall, awaiting the first of their guests. The gasoliers shone brightly, just as they had the first night Collette had visited with Henny, but now she was to be the literary guest of honor.

“This was your idea to begin with!”

“I know, but now I think it was a mistake.”

“That is just your nerves talking. All will be well, dearest. I did not approve of your decision at first, but if you are going to do this, be steadfast.” Philoxia, impeccably turned out in black silk, with diamonds sparkling at her throat and in her glossy hair, was a picture of regal serenity.

She would emulate her friend, Collette thought, even if her meager height, slim build and fairer coloring could not compete in elegance. She was dressed in a flattering shade of burgundy, and wore some of Philoxia’s rubies at her throat and on her ears, and her auburn hair had been dressed high by her friend’s talented dresser. At least she felt well turned out, even if her own reflection in the mirror had startled her. Standing tall so that her spine was straight and her chin up, Collette said, “You’re right. Steadfast. I must be brave.” Her shoulders sagged and she leaned against her friend for the briefest of seconds. “Oh, I so wish Marian had agreed to come!”

Philoxia, trying to hide her hurt expression, said, “I think Miss Evans did exactly the right thing. She did not want you shunned because of her, nor did she want her own notoriety to overshadow your introduction to London literary society. Her delicacy is to be commended. For once.”

“I meant that as no comment on your support, my dear,” Collette said, having caught the flash of wounded sensibility on Philoxia’s elegant features.

“I know. I wish Henny were here. She always believed in you, you know.”

Collette frowned and shook her head.

“No, truly,” Philoxia said earnestly, turning and taking Collette’s gloved hands in her own. “I know you are angry at her, but Henrietta did always feel you would become something, someone important.”

“Too bad she lets her husband dictate her tastes and her friendships,” Collette said, pulling her hands away and folding them in front of her.

Philoxia opened her mouth to speak, but Collette interrupted her. “I know, I know. I will do my best not to bear a grudge. We have done our part in writing to her, though her husband probably consigned the invitation to the flames as he lectured her about her duty to him and her babies. Despicable man!”

“I think you will have to do better if you do not intend to bear a grudge.” Philoxia was smiling, so her words did not bear a sting.

Collette smiled back and took her friend’s hand again. “You will help me. And in turn I will help you come to an understanding of the worth of Marian and George. I know you too well to think you will be prejudiced against them forever, with so little cause.”

Philoxia squeezed her friend’s hand and with a wry expression said, “I always thought you timid in expressing yourself. I think a sea change is coming over you.”

“I am being led by the strength of friends, all my friends!”

“You are finding your own strength. My dear, I hear a carriage outside!” Philoxia said, dropping Collette’s hands and straightening to her full height.

Collette felt a chill go down her back. Now was the moment to turn tail and run. She could still do it, and for a few seconds it seemed preferable to letting all of these people in on her secret identity. She almost could not bear the thought of their questioning eyes on her, all of their secret surmises, their inner questions.

And yet she knew she must bear it, and in time it would become nothing to her. She must be stoic. She could not, even if she wanted to, run now. It would leave Philoxia in a dreadful position, as a woman who had promised a treat and then reneged. It would be seen in those terms. Some might even think she had made it all up to cause a sensation, and then her carefully wrought reputation as a literary hostess would crumble and she would be a laughing-stock.

The portly, self-important butler moved toward the door to let in the first visitors. He opened the large double doors and two footmen dashed out to help the ladies and gentlemen down from carriages. Philoxia took Collette’s hand, gave it another reassuring squeeze and then moved forward to greet her guests as they came up the stairs from the street below.

“Good evening! Welcome to my home. I am so glad you could come tonight!”

Twenty-Two

“I think it is going marvelously,” Philoxia whispered to Collette.

“We haven’t told them anything yet,” Collette whispered back, and then smiled at the gentlemen standing in a ring around her, talking.

“In due time.”

The evening so far had consisted of casual conversation, a brief talk by a publisher on the direction of English fiction—Collette and Philoxia had decided that since her own publishers had been so unhelpful, and in fact, possibly had aided the perpetrator of the gossip, they would not be invited to her unveiling—and then a light repast.

The time was drawing near, Collette thought. She could feel a shift in the mood of the assembled company, an expectation that moved over them one by one like a shadow, until all were gazing expectantly at Philoxia, who had strolled casually toward the hearth, where a blaze was crackling merrily. She wondered if the reporter Randall Proctor was there. She hadn’t asked Philoxia if he had come, not really wanting to know yet. She was almost sick with nerves and that would only make it worse.

Philoxia cleared her throat, and the crowd gradually quieted.

It is time, Collette thought, and her knees weakened and her stomach churned. She had eaten nothing, not being able to stand the thought of anything in her stomach, but she had drunk some champagne. The champagne was a mistake. It was making her lightheaded.

Philoxia smiled at the assembled guests. “You have all been very patient this evening.” Her gazed drifted over the crowd of about fifty, evenly divided among black-coated men and brilliantly gowned women. “I know that you are waiting for the momentous occasion when I introduce to you Colin Jenkins, but you will have to be patient for a few moments more.

“This last spring a marvelous novel, a brilliant novel, was published by Rosewood Publishing. We all read The Last Days of a Rake, commented on it, criticized it, lauded it, whatever our consciences bade us do. I read it myself soon after it came out, and thought it was probably the most honest treatment of relations between men and women I had read in a long time. I was impressed, especially since I had never heard of the author before, and the publishers made it plain that this was a first effort by a new novelist.”

Collette, near the back of the assembled crowd, felt them getting restless. Her nerves were so frayed that she had to clasp her hands together to keep them from trembling, as the time drew near for her to step forward. Was she doing the right thing? She no longer knew. But it was what she was doing, nevertheless. For better or for worse, she was going to claim her rightful name and place in literary society.

Philoxia continued. “It soon became evident that the author was not a part of the London literary society, that loose-knit group of like-minded men and women…mostly men…that writes and publishes and talks about writing and publishing. So who was this new talent? Why had no one ever met the author? It soon became clear that the name Colin Jenkins was a nom de plume.”

“Everyone knows it is Charles Jameson,” a heavily whiskered gentleman said, moving restlessly and gathering in other people’s glances with his own. “That paper, Wilson’s Gazette, already said that!”

“Ah, but Mr. Jameson himself did not admit it, you know. He said he couldn’t be bothered to deny it, and that is not an admission.”

A door at the back of the long room opened and then closed again. Collette twisted around to see whether someone had come in or had left, but she could not see past the taller gentlemen around her. She could barely see Philoxia’s face, in fact. She hoped she saw the signal that she was to start through the crowd when Philoxia gave it.

“But he didn’t exactly say he wasn’t either! And it all fits,” another voice said. “The writer must be a rake, or he wouldn’t be able to write about that kind of fellow’s thoughts, would he?”

“Ah, Mr. Proctor,” Philoxia said, her voice lowered to a silky, dangerous tone. “You have no proof Mr. Jameson is Mr. Jenkins, do you?”

“Well, not proof, so to speak.”

“But you were sure before you printed that?”

“As sure as I could be!”

“As sure as you ever are when you write something, in other words.” Her voice held a note of scorn, as sharp-edged as a razor. “With no proof you blithely make statements and…well, why do we not just say it? You write gossip, innuendo, unfounded trash you make up because you write the gossip column in Wilson’s Gazette too, do you not?”

There was a collective gasp and sigh from the gathering.

Collette wished she could see! All she heard from the reporter was a sputtering sound.

“But we are not here to castigate this man,” Philoxia said, raising her voice over the murmur of the crowd. “You all came because I promised you would meet the real Colin Jenkins! And you shall, because…”

“He is right here,” another voice called out.

The crowd parted and Collette turned around to see Jameson standing alone, the light from the gasolier glinting on his dark and glossy hair. The cad! He had not been invited. What was he doing here? He would steal her thunder yet again!

Philoxia, a hint of desperation in her voice, now that things were starting to disintegrate on her, called out, “No! He is not Colin Jenkins. Are you, Mr. Jameson?”

Swallowing hard and gazing into Collette’s angry eyes, he said, “No. I am not Colin Jenkins.”

“Then if not this bloke, who is? Why din’t the feller come forward before now?” said the reporter, having recovered from his exposure as the gossip columnist.

“I am the author!” Collette said, finding her voice at last. This was not how she had intended to announce herself, but Jameson had forced her to blurt it out. “I am Colin Jenkins, the sole author of The Last Days of a Rake.”

That was when the party really got interesting.

Several of the men started laughing. A gentleman Collette had been introduced to earlier, a Mr. Stanley Peckham, said, “You? A woman? I don’t think so!”

The woman with him bridled and glared at him over her lorgnette. “And why should she not be?”

“Because women are not capable of that kind of writing! Women write romantic tripe. Everyone knows that!”

“Everyone knows that? You mean the ignorant! Maybe they write ‘romantic tripe’ because that is all you men will allow us to publish!” the angry woman retorted.

“This is not about the kind of work other women write,” Collette said, attempting to keep the conversation from being sidelined. “I will not have other women’s novels dismissed as ‘romantic tripe’!”

No one heard her. From there, the affair devolved into a furious clash between the men and the women, and Collette stood, forgotten, laughing until her stomach hurt. Philoxia tried in vain to regain the crowd’s attention, and when she couldn’t, she made her way to Collette’s side. She was almost in tears.

“I am so sorry, my dear! I tried, I really…” She sobbed and clapped her hands over her ears against the acrimonious sounds of people quarreling.

Collette pulled Loxy’s hands away from her ears. There were tears in her own eyes, but they were tears of laughter and she hugged her friend. “Don’t worry, dear,” she shouted over the crowd. “I think this is the funniest thing I have ever seen or heard!”

“How can you say that? This is a debacle!”

“Don’t you see, Loxy? I was so worried about being the center of attention, and…and…” She broke into laughter again, indicated the crowd around them and then folded her arms over her stomach as tears coursed down her cheeks. She was almost doubled over, her stomach hurt so much with laughter.

“Miss Jardiniere!” Randall Proctor shouted above the hubbub.

“Mr. Proctor,” she said, straightening slightly.

“This ain’t fair, y’know. You could have just told me, an’ I woulda broke the real story as an exclusive!”

“You were far too busy dragging my reputation through the muck, sir. Why would I even think to give you such a boon, such a gift, as the truth, when you were out to destroy me?”

He looked down at his shoes and shuffled.

“Innocent women suffer when gossip-mongers like you and your infamous rag print filth dressed as news. Muck thrown at a lily-white cloth may slide off, but it leaves a stain.”

“All right…it’s true. I bin a bastard—uh, a devil to you, an’ I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“That’s better. You can atone by using your indubitable talent to titillate in other ways, sir, perhaps by writing something that will actually help people rather than harm them.”

Jameson surged through the bickering crowd. Where the devil had Collette disappeared to? One minute the crowd had parted and the next they had closed around him again. What a disaster this was, and it was all directly attributable to that bastard, Proctor! If the reporter hadn’t spoken up and forced their hand, Collette could have been introduced with the dignity that befitted a budding author of her caliber. Jameson had intended to point her out and escort her forward with all the ceremony she deserved. He had thought it fitting that the fake Colin Jenkins should introduce the real Colin Jenkins.

Instead, this chaos had erupted.

He caught sight of Collette and Mrs. Bertrand, standing together, isolated in the nattering crowd. And Randall Proctor was there! A dark red wind of rage swept through Jameson when he saw the author of Collette’s misfortune nattering at her. He would be damned before he would allow that beast to torment her, to harry the woman he loved!

He stormed through the crowd, elbowing his way as the view of Collette, with Randall Proctor heading toward her, urged him forward. The reporter was saying something to her. What could he possibly have to say?

The crowd was still gabbling, rings of gentlemen murmuring, groups of ladies shrilling, occasional couples arguing, and he could hear nothing but their babble. He pushed through another group, but a gentleman grabbed a hold of his coat.

“I say, Jameson, we all thought you was Jenkins. Is that little filly really the writer fellow? How can that be?”

“She is that ‘writer fellow’! Now let go of my coat, you jackanapes,” Jameson snarled, pulling his jacket out of the startled man’s grasp.

“Well, really! Of all the ill-mannered, uncouth, boorish…”

The rest of his words were lost on Jameson as he saw Proctor still talking to Collette, bending over her, touching her arm as if he had a right to be anywhere near her! The anger that had been simmering just beneath the surface boiled over, and Jameson charged the rest of the way and flew at Proctor, fists flying.

“You stay away from her, you lout,” he hollered as he tackled the man. Proctor went down underneath him with a thud. This was the moment he had been looking forward to for some time, and it was so very satisfying to feel his fist jam into the fellow’s chin, even as the reporter tried to twist away. Jameson straddled him and looked down into the man’s face, a crimson welt blooming on his chin.

“Now you are going to get what you have coming to you,” he growled, and proceeded to batter the fellow as best he could since the writer was putting up a valiant fight, trading blow for blow even in his inferior position under Jameson.

The crowd abandoned their bickering and circled the two combatants, shouting, “A mill, a mill!”

Jameson was dimly aware of Collette, standing on the sidelines shrieking something, but all his attention was focused on the tussle and he had no idea what she was saying.

“Damn you! Damn you, Charles Jameson, you fool, you idiot!” Collette hopped around in her elegant gown, so angry it was all she could do to keep from wading into the fray and hauling Jameson out of it so she could box his ears. “He was apologizing, you great, hulking imbecile! He was going to print a retraction!”

Philoxia took her arm and gazed down at the twisting, rolling, struggling duo. “Never mind, my dear,” she said, fighting back laughter, which bubbled out of her in gasping gales. “He will not listen to you until he has worked all the violence out of his system. He is only a man, after all.”

“Damn him! I hope he gets a good crack on the skull for his trouble! I am leaving!” Collette stomped away and flung herself up the stairs to the private area of the house, where she changed back into her street clothes and escaped out the back, using Philoxia’s carriage and driver to return her to Marian and George’s house.

“I’m all packed. I shall be leaving first thing in the morning,” Collette said, standing beside the table where Marian labored on a long piece on a German poet. “I shall not interrupt you further. I know how hard you are both working just now”

Marian looked up from her writing with a ready smile. “There is always work, my dear. It pays the rent and puts food on the table. Someday I pray it does more than that.” She put her hand over Collette’s, covering it completely. “I’m so sorry things did not work out as you hoped last night,” she said.

“I have no complaints,” Collette sighed. “I am thoroughly exposed as the writer Colin Jenkins, and that was my aim, was it not? Even though the whole thing turned from a drama into a farce.”

“I hope you know, though, that there was nothing wrong with writing under a male name in the first place. I have considered doing the same, should I write fiction, for my own reasons, of course,” she said, shrugging as she referred obliquely to her shattered reputation. “Men do take you more seriously if they think you one of their own!” Her voice had a bitter edge to it. But then she looked over at George, sprawled on the sofa in the corner, reading a paper, and her expression gentled. “Of course some men are not threatened by intelligent women.”

Collette followed her gaze and smiled with her. George, completely immersed in his reading, did not hear them. She had learned much from the pair about relations between men and women, and she thought that when she wrote her book about Susan, she would find a man like George, a good, ugly, compassionate man, for her heroine to settle down with at the end of her tribulations, as a reward for strength and courage.

“You are welcome to stay here as long as you like, you know,” Marian said, turning her gaze back to her younger friend.

“I thank you. Philoxia wants me to come stay with her, too, but I think I’ll go home to Listerwood for at least a while first. I have had a couple of anxious letters from Aunt Nettie, and one rather rambling, but also worried, tome from the Professor. If I do not go home soon, I fear they will descend upon London, and I think the city is not yet ready for the Professor’s advanced scientific theories.”

“Hey, you must read this,” George said, sitting up suddenly and waving the paper around.

“What is it now?” Collette asked. Randall Proctor had written his promised retraction in Wilson’s Gazette, and very thorough and contrite it was too, canvassing completely his mistaken attribution of her as Jameson’s mistress as well as his misidentification of Jameson as the author of Last Days. Just that morning, in return, he had been given an interview with her, the first real interview with Colin Jenkins. It had been a good exchange. She had gotten what she wanted in the end.

Marian moved to the couch, sitting down beside George and taking up the paper. She read silently and then looked up over the paper with raised eyebrows.

“Well! I did not think he had it in him,” she said. “Perhaps I have misjudged him.”

“What is it?” Collette asked. She took the paper, slid down onto the floor, slipped her spectacles on and read the piece to which Marian pointed.

The Last Days of a Fake

As most Londoners now know, I, Charles Stonehampton Jameson, am not the novelist Colin Jenkins. I never said I was, but I realize I never said I wasn’t either, and that led to some nasty repercussions that rebounded on a young lady who did not deserve the attention.

I am a fake.

I have nothing to say in my defense.

What prompted my peculiar reticence, my failure to declare myself NOT Colin Jenkins? Looking back on the occurrences of the past few months, I would say it was a mixture of things. A misplaced sense of humor played a part. I thought it was rather funny that anyone would think me a novelist, especially since they had picked one writer I would emulate and the one book I would write if I but could.

Also, I had a desire to flush the real author out of his cover, and thought the misidentification might do it.

But the real root of my failure to disavow any writerly abilities was jealousy. I have always admired those to whom the gift of literary talent is given. Since I was a boy books have been my entertainment, my moral guide, my friends. But I found, as I grew to be a man, that the most I could do was read, admire, collect and discuss. And then, this past spring, a novel came out that was close to the book I wish I could write. I felt an envy so strong I allowed it to mislead me. I very much wanted to meet the writer and tried the normal avenues. I spoke to the publisher, but he made it very clear that the author wished to maintain his privacy.

And so when a reporter confronted me with rumors that had circulated London, rumors that I just might be the author Colin Jenkins, some devil prompted me to not deny it. I told him I would not deny it because he wouldn’t believe me, which left him with the impression I was hedging because I really was Jenkins. I misled him deliberately.

The responsibility is mine and mine alone. Because of my actions a very talented young lady, Miss Collette Jardiniere, has been tainted by scandal and forced to claim her rightful place as the author just to stop scurrilous rumors. I am sorry. I have nothing to plead but ‘guilty’. I was guilty of jealousy, and then, when confronted by the owner of that talent, I did not believe her until it was too late to do anything about it.

To the public I apologize, but though you have been misled, you have not been harmed as much as Miss Jardiniere, and to her I extend my deepest expression of regret.

Charles Stonehampton Jameson

Twenty-Three

Melancholia had a firm grip on Collette, and she sat reading in the dim pool of light cast by a single lamp. She was leaving London in the morning—London, dear to her as the scene of so many revelations—and though she might come back again, she would never come back as the same person. The girl she was when she left Listerwood-on-Sea had been replaced by a woman who now knew what it was to love.

She recognized it, even as it disturbed her. She had fallen in love with Charles Jameson. While she was angry at him she could ignore it, but most of her anger had been dissipated by the article, and she had had hours to contemplate what he had done. It was an act of honor, an apology and an acknowledgment that he had been wrong. It spoke well of the man he really was underneath the rakish reputation. But no matter how hard she tried she could not make it into a declaration of love.

When she read it she had been proud of him, proud that he would offer himself up to be the butt of jokes, as he surely would be until some other scandal came along to titillate London society anew. He had even handed the reading public a great line to use, calling his letter “The Last Days of a Fake”. He had done what was right when he could easily have let it alone, or just left London until the furor died down.

She had tried to analyze her feelings toward Jameson, when first she realized that she had fallen in love with him. How had it happened when they had been bonded in an adversarial relationship for most of their acquaintance? What did she love about him, apart from his obvious attractions of looks and urbanity?

She loved how she felt in his presence, how he made her feel. It was joy that had overwhelmed her, and a sweet sense of being important to someone. He had led her gently down sensuous paths, had imagined a life together—even if it was not a married life—and all that knowing she was a novelist. Since their last night together she had begun to wonder if the question she had posed to him, of whether he would still want to be with her if she was not a writer, and her flight into the dark night shortly thereafter, had reintroduced his doubt that she truly was Colin Jenkins. If it had, who could blame him? It was enough that his public apology had been abject and thorough.

She might never know the exact moment when she had fallen in love with him. Perhaps there wasn’t one particular moment, but simply a growing sweet regard that then took you by surprise when you finally acknowledged it.

She stared down at the book in front of her. It was a copy of The Warden, Mr. Trollope’s latest novel—that wonderful gentleman had sent it when he learned where she was staying—and she had been looking forward to reading it, but she had not made her way past page one. Her friends were out walking. Collette had a feeling Marian had sensed her need for solitude and had chosen to leave her in peace for a while. It was a true friend who knew what you needed when you didn’t even know yourself.

Collette sighed and stared down at the book again, but she did not see the words in front of her. Instead, her mind returned to the one subject that had raced through it all day. She loved Charles Jameson. Marian, when in that same position had, after much soul-searching, been forthright in her love. Should Collette follow her friend’s lead and tell Jamie her feelings?

But no; her and Marian’s positions were very different, in truth. Collette was leaving the next morning to go home. It was where she belonged. If she had had some notion that he loved her too, confessing her love might have been worth the risk, but even then… They were such very different creatures, Jameson and herself, and lived such different lives. He was a Londoner through and through: sophisticated, worldly, urbane. She existed best in the countryside. She needed the quietude and serenity of country life to freely create. They would not suit, no matter how much she felt for him.

She needed a man like George Lewes, someone who could support her ambitions, who could love her enough to just leave her alone sometimes. Maybe someday men would recognize women as equal beings with just as much intellectual, spiritual and animal fire as they possessed. Despite Jameson’s respect for her ability, she still was not sure he wholly approved of a woman with a “male” need to express herself on paper.

And she would never stop writing. When her Aunt Nettie had been sick and Collette had had to devote all her time to nursing her—without resentment because she loved her aunt with all her heart—she had felt like she was disintegrating, losing little bits of herself. Until she had been able to sit back down at her desk and write, she had not felt whole. She was a woman, and she was a writer. The two halves of her could not be split and leave her sane and happy.

The door to the sitting room squeaked open behind her.

Not turning in her seat, Collette said, “I think I shall retire, Marian. I will be leaving early, and it’s a long trip.” She closed the novel in front of her, took her spectacles off and laid them on the book, and turned away from the table.

There by the sitting room door, hat in hand, stood Charles Jameson.

“What are you doing here?” Collette gasped, standing and staring. The low light darkened his slate eyes until they looked obsidian, and his mustache shadowed his mouth. He had an easy grace that still attracted her. The inner voice that spoke to her most richly in his presence was the voice of her own desires and had nothing whatever to do with literature or writing. Like all life experience it was rich material, but it was not some secret writerly part of her that she needed to depend on. Once she had admitted how much she loved him and longed for him, that whisper in her head had disappeared. Her writing would henceforth be conscious and deliberate.

Despite the innate grace of his stance, he looked absurdly unsure of himself, standing alone in the shadows.

“I bribed the landlady to let me in unannounced. I wasn’t sure you would see me.”

“You did not need to go to such lengths. I am done with hiding of any kind.” Her heart thudded, and she could not move from her spot, holding the back of the chair, staring across the room at him.

“I came to apologize in person.”

“I saw the article. You didn’t need to ask forgiveness from me. You have done everything you could be expected to do and more.”

He moved toward her and Collette scrambled to think what she should be doing, what she should say. Where were Marian and George? She felt awkward since it was not her place and she could not really treat him like a guest, and yet—

“It was my fault,” he said. “I could have stopped things from getting out of hand with a very simple statement. Whether it was believed or not, it would have been the right thing to do.”

He stood before her now, and she had to look up into the shadowed depths of his eyes. There was something in those eyes, some expression that made her feel shy and afraid. She had thought she was through with such feelings, even as she acknowledged her love for him, but it seemed Jameson in the abstract and Jameson in the flesh were two very different beings. She ached for him and she wanted to run away, all at the same moment.

“Also,” he continued, “I wanted to apologize because my actions forced you into a position where you felt the need to tell the world about your nom de plume. It took away from you the right to choose your moment.”

Collette’s chin went up. “Don’t be sorry about that, Mr. Jameson. You did me a favor, even if I didn’t recognize it as such until very recently. Until women speak for themselves, how can men know what is in their hearts and minds? I was hiding, allowing society to dictate to me even when I affected to despise society’s rules. Now I’m free to succeed or fail as a woman and as a writer.”

“I admire you more than I can say.” Jameson gazed down at her. “I have had so much thinking to do lately, and I don’t think I am all the way through yet, but I have begun to see how vastly I underestimated you and any number of other intelligent women. Including your friends Philoxia Bertrand and…” He glanced around the room. “And Miss Evans. I think I have an apology to make to her, too. I was used to thinking women were parroting the ideas and beliefs of their male friends or partners, but I have since seen how presumptuous a belief that was.”

Collette stepped away from him. She was in danger of becoming as mindless as he had thought all women if she stayed any longer in his magnetic pull. Her brain did not work as well when she was near him. She needed distance literally and figuratively. She smiled at him mischievously. Harkening back to their first flirtatious conversation on the train, she asked, “And now are you willing to admit women are the superior creatures?”

He chuckled and moved toward her again, tossing his hat on the table. “I did not say that, did I?”

“No, but I thought it was clearly implied.”

“I see you have as much to learn as before about the logic of debate.”

She realized they were slowly moving toward the sofa that sat in the corner of the shabby, comfortable room, so she changed direction, and with quick steps hastened toward the window. She flicked the curtain aside, but there was no sign of George or Marian coming back from their evening walk.

She felt his warmth behind her before she saw his shadow fall on the curtain. She turned swiftly and looked up at him. His eyes, so dark, flamed with a look she well remembered and cherished from their night of passionate abandon, and yet his expression was hesitant.

She had pledged herself to honesty in everything, word and deed. “I am truly free now, Jamie. I have come so far in these past few weeks. The final step was when I read your article in the paper and I understood for the first time how complicated we humans are. Looking back, I feel the change I created in Lankin was wooden, not real somehow.”

Jameson looked puzzled and then thoughtful. “Perhaps,” he said, “it is because he never seems quite clear himself why he changes. Perhaps…” He stopped and shook his head ruefully. “But I have no right to criticize your writing.”

“No, go on,” Collette said, her gaze riveted on his eyes.

“Perhaps if you had shown his inner struggle to take responsibility for his actions it would have seemed more truthful. I have just come to realize how that simple act changes one for all time.”

Collette felt a shock go through her. That he had hit on a very real flaw in the novel was not as surprising as the fact that they stood there discussing her book, just as she had with Marian and George. Could it be that in Jameson she had found a man who understood writing and writers, who understood that part of her? She shook her head and stared down at her ink-stained hands twisting around each other.

She looked up into his eyes again and stepped closer to him. His expression, thoughtful before, became alert and watchful. “What I started to say was that I am free now. I have pledged myself to honesty. And so…” She reached up and put her arms around his neck, standing on the tips of her toes, and planted a kiss on Jameson’s sensual mouth, savoring the firm, yet soft texture.

Jameson, astounded by the current turn of events, closed his eyes and let a wash of feeling sweep over him at the sweet taste of Collette’s lips. He had come to see her merely to apologize in person, with no expectation that she could ever return the feelings he was only beginning to understand, but now—

He shut down all rational thought in the turbulent rush of sensual delight and the heady swelling of love. He adored her. He could admit it now, recognizing the fear that had held him back for so long. There was no room for fear in his heart now. It was all taken up with love for Collette. He folded her into his arms, feeling hers tighten around his neck. Her slender curves fit against his hard body, and as he ran his hands down over her waist, to the gentle swell of her hips, he felt her shiver against him. His intimate knowledge of her and her capacity for passion only escalated his desire.

Sweet Collette! He lifted her bodily off the ground and swung her up into his arms, carrying her over to the shabby sofa that took up one dim corner of the room.

“Jamie…oh, Jamie,” Collette whispered in his ear.

Her warm breath sent a thrill of desire racing through him and he sat on the sofa with her in his arms. “Yes, my heart’s delight,” he said, gazing at the glowing perfection of her pale skin in the pale light cast by the lamp across the room. It was no time for words. It was time for action, time to kiss and touch and caress.

And yet—He had seduced many women in his day, but he recognized some difference in his intentions and his desires this time. Skill could reduce her to mindless languor. He knew he was capable of that with such a passionate creature as his Collette, but he did not want her mindless. He wanted her aware and responsive. He wanted her to feel for him all he felt for her, but he wasn’t secure in that yet. What did she feel? He searched her gorgeous green eyes, the light gleaming from the golden flecks like gold inclusions in rock. Maybe there were some words for this moment. Hesitantly, he said, touching her cheek with his free hand, “Collette, I have wanted you for so long, wanted you without even realizing I did. Do you want me too? And I mean more than just the delicious lovemaking. We have had…something beyond even that.”

She looked up at him, her eyes wide. “I…I think I do, but I am not sure.”

“Let me make you sure.” He laid her back on the sofa and covered her body with his own, feeling her move under him in a delectably tantalizing manner. Her form cradled him comfortably as he sunk down.

He gazed down into her sparkling eyes in the dim, flickering lamplight and brushed his lips across hers gently. With a soft oh of delight, she pulled his head down again and kissed him deeply, her tongue darting out to flick his lips. Delighting in her passionate aggression, he took her in a deeper kiss, thrusting into her moist mouth with urgent, demanding strokes in an intimate imitation of sexual intercourse.

He ran his hands up her body as they kissed and felt her shiver as he touched her perfectly shaped breasts, rubbing his thumb across one nipple until it hardened under the fabric into a tight peak. Almost drugged with passion, he groaned and pushed against her, instinctively seeking relief from the rush of desire.

“Jamie, oh, Jamie,” she murmured, running her hands up under his jacket and kneading the muscles of his shoulders and back.

“My sweet, I have wanted you for as long as I have known you,” he whispered in her ear.

“Mmm,” she breathed.

He took a deep shuddering breath. He lifted her froth of skirts and stroked her stockinged leg, up her calf, her knee, and then above her tied garter to bare flesh. She did not wear that new fashion, pantaloons, but had delightfully bare skin, soft and smooth. She moved her knee and he settled between her legs on the sofa. One more move and she would feel him again, would begin to know his intentions—

God, no! This was not what he had intended when first he kissed her. He had a reason for kissing her, but he had not wanted her so drugged with passion when he asked her an important question. He was just pulling himself out of his hazy dream world when a voice at the door called out.

“Collette! The landlady said you had a caller…”

Both looked up to find Marian standing at the door, bonnet in hand, gazing at them in consternation. Her sallow cheeks were reddening at a quick pace. “Have I inter… Well, of course I have interrupted! Foolish question. I apologize most profusely…”

“Oh, Marian, do not apologize,” Collette said, scrambling from underneath Jameson and straightening her mussed clothing and tousled hair. She blushed, too. “This is your home. We should be apologizing.”

Marian gazed steadily, first at Jameson, who felt his own face joining the other two in warm color—he had thought himself past the callow age of blushing—and then at Collette.

“So, you two will be getting married,” Marian said, turning the bonnet around and around.

Collette’s eyes widened, and she gave a quick, shocked look at Jameson. He had stood, too, despite a little difficulty in rising with any degree of comfort, and glanced from Marian to Collette. “No, Marian, you have misunderstood,” she said. “We are not… That is, this was not…”

Marian sighed at their silence and glared at Jameson. “I had begun to think better of you after that article. But do you mean to say you have not even asked her yet? And you were…” She made a sweeping gesture toward the couch. “Tsk! Fool. I suppose I will just have to leave the room again. Think of something to say, Mr. Jameson!”

She exited, closing the door firmly behind her.

“Marian has been so kind to me,” Collette said wistfully, turning back to Jameson. “I suppose she only thought we were going to… I mean, I wish she and George could ma—”

Jameson stopped her with a kiss, his lips melting every thought from her mind. With her new, more intimate knowledge of his body, and the understanding of how delicious hers felt when his was close, she clung to him, dizzy from his passionate, wet kisses.

“Those two, George and Marian, must solve their own lives,” he rasped, as he pulled away from her. “I think they have done all they possibly can to attain happiness, in committing themselves to each other, even though they cannot make their vows in front of the public.”

She moved away from him. “Did you always feel thus? I admit that at first I was shocked by their unorthodox relationship.”

“Ah, but I am a man of the world, my sweet, remember? A rake, a wastrel.” He prowled after her and took her into his arms again. “I was attempting to say something serious. Don’t interrupt me again or I shall completely lose my train of thought.”

“Well, pardon me! I did not know I was interfering with—”

He stopped her again with another kiss. This one was not as deep, but was full of passion and sweetness. He released her mouth and gazed into her eyes.

“Will you always keep me from arguing with you this way?” she murmured.

“If you insist on arguing, yes, I will.”

“Well, I call that unfair and taking base advantage of my weakness.”

Another kiss. Then he moved down to her neck and throat, bathing her in warm wet kisses and nipping at her earlobe.

“I must protest!” she said, gulping and clinging to his broad shoulders.

And yet another kiss, accompanied by the movement of skillful hands that cradled her bottom and lifted her against him.

“Oh, my! Yes, I well remember… That is, Jamie, shall we go somewhere? I don’t know where… Back…back to your cottage, perhaps?”

“Collette,” he groaned, at last. “Please stop talking.”

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, I can’t very well propose marriage, can I?”

She pushed away from him and glared at him suspiciously, placing her fists on her hips. “Why do I think you are making fun of me? I make no claim to understand sophisticated humor, sir.”

His dark eyes glowed and his expression became serious. “I’m not making fun. I’m asking you to marry me, and for a rake that is the most serious thing of all. We never even joke of that, you know. But every rake finds his match eventually, or they move from rakedom to lechery, and that is not a pretty journey. Save me from it.”

“I…I…I think the term rake is becoming an anachronism in this day and age,” Collette sputtered. “In my aunt’s time it was different, but…”

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her quiet. “Collette, I mean what I say. Save me from myself. Marry me?”

“Why?” she blurted out.

“Why? You exasperating little harridan, why do you think?”

“I have no idea.”

“Because I love you.”

Her heart thumped. “Do you? Do you really love me?” She frowned and pulled away from him. “I…I cannot think when you hold me like that,” she muttered, moving away and folding her hands in front of her.

“Good,” he said, moving toward her again. “I’m not sure I want you to think, for you might realize you can do much better than my poor inadequate self. Perhaps it is best for me if I exert what poor influence I have.”

She escaped his clutches and put the round table that dominated one end of the room between them, panting from exertion or some less worthy reason. “No! I need to think. Do you really want to marry me?”

“Yes!”

“And do you really…” Her voice faltered. “Do you really love me, Jamie?”

“I do not say what I don’t mean. I’ve never said that to any other woman, Collette, never, on my honor.” His voice was low and trembled with emotion.

“I believe you,” she said, feeling an absurd spurt of happiness. That he could love her! That he could want to marry her! But there were considerations to think about in such an endeavor. She had just begun to experience a freedom of spirit she had never known she could have, and marriage would mean he was her master in a legal sense, even if she did not recognize any moral authority over her. “I love you too. I have been sitting here thinking that tonight.”

“Then you will marry me!”

“Not so fast,” she said, her steady gaze keeping him from advancing around the table to take her in his arms. She clutched the back of a wooden chair and stared at him. “What kind of husband will you be, Charles Stonehampton Jameson?”

“The very best,” he said indignantly. “I am generous, I think, and when I am with one woman I am faithful to her, with one or two youthful departures from that rule, and…”

“No, no, no, that is not what I am talking about. You will be faithful to me because…because no other woman will ever love you like I can. I’m confident of that. But…but the church, the law, even society will say you are my master. How will you use that power?” She gazed at him steadily, searchingly.

And then he knew, finally, what she feared. For the first time he thought about what it meant to be a woman, with all the intelligence and spirit and soul of a man, but only a quarter of the rights, if even that. “I will surrender it to you,” he said quietly, standing straight and not pursuing her. “I vow I will never interfere with your autonomy, Collette. I love you, but I respect you, too.”

“You will not try to make me stay away from George and Marian?”

“I will bring you to visit them myself, and learn to love them if you want me to.”

“You will not dictate what I may do or whom I might see? You will not try to lay down the law to me? I won’t stand it, and I mean that. I will leave you if you ever attempt to control me like Herbert does poor Henny.”

He shook his head. Herbert? Henny? Who the devil were they? “I would not dare deny anything to a woman with the power of the pen. You could rip me to shreds with words,” he said.

She sighed with a dreamy smile on her face. “Then perhaps…” She stopped before finishing and frowned.

His patience was wearing ragged, and he groaned. “Do you mean to keep me dangling forever?” He slumped into a chair and put his head down in his arms on the table.

“No, but…” She walked slowly toward him around the table, trailing her fingers across the polished surface. He straightened again, but she avoided his eyes. “I think there is something I should tell you. It may make all the difference to you…and to your intentions.”

“What? Do you already have a husband tucked away in Kent somewhere?”

“Of course not, but…” She stood before him, looking down into his eyes, her green gaze burning bright in the dim lamplight. She was afraid, so afraid, that this would change everything. Having just learned what love could be she was loath to lose it so quickly. “I am a country woman. I have enjoyed my stay in London—well, parts of my stay—but I love the country and I will want to live there. That would be a problem.”

“Why?”

“Because you belong in the city, in London. You wouldn’t want to live in the country. Would you?”

Jameson stood, put his arms around her and smiled down into her serious eyes. “My love, I was raised in the country, you know. I live in the city because as a bachelor it made sense, and yes, I do love London, for all of its faults. But if we marry, and we are to have children…” She blushed and turned her face away, but he put one finger under her chin and turned her back to face him, tilting her chin up so they gazed into each other’s eyes again. “If we marry and have children, I think I would like to raise them in the country. I found myself entranced with the Kentish countryside. I would like to buy a house there… Perhaps near your aunt? And we could spend a part of the year in London, going to shows, the opera, art showings.”

“Oh, Jamie, would you? Could we?”

“Of course. We can live anywhere you like, go anywhere you like. We can travel, do whatever we want!”

“And you will not object to my scribbling? For I won’t give it up,” Collette warned, still afraid to believe. “Not even if we have babies.”

“I wouldn’t dream of making you give it up, even if I could. I love you, Collette, and that means I love everything about you, including your writing.”

“I already have my next novel in mind,” she said dreamily, relaxing in his arms and laying her head on his shoulder. “It is going to be about Susan, the girl from Last Days, and I have learned so much about love and men and women, and I can…”

He stopped her with a swift kiss. Now was not the time to tell her about his own plans to become a publisher and his hope to work with her in a partnership. Time enough for that when he had secured her promise to marry him. “Soon. You will marry me, won’t you?” She nodded against his shoulder. “Then I will gladly sit by your side and trim your nibs for you after we are wed, but I shall claim, I think…” He gazed down at her consideringly. “Three weeks for a honeymoon. Three weeks. And then you can write all you want. In the daytime at least. At night…”

“At night,” she echoed, as she stood on the tips of her toes and wound her arms around his neck, kissing him feverishly. “Every night,” she gasped. “And maybe in the morning, too!”

Epilogue

Proctor whistled as he entered the offices of Wilson’s Gazette. He approached his desk, one of the benefits of his new, more stable position as their most popular writer. His exclusive interview with the newly revealed Colin Jenkins had raised circulation of the old rag to heights never before reached, and he certainly was the fair-haired boy around here. Old Wilson had even given him the go-ahead for a series of articles on the terrible conditions of the stews and rookeries, London’s filthiest and worst neighborhoods. He was going to uncover who the landlords were who profited from such abysmal human misery.

He was no do-gooder, but he remembered what it was like, and he would never let go of the anger he held inside of him until he did what he could.

Proctor threw himself into his creaking, battered chair. The one small job he had demanded they allow him to do was write up the wedding notice of Miss Collette Jardiniere and Mr. Charles Stonehampton Jameson. He wrote the copy, reflecting that once he had come to know the young lady he had been heartily ashamed of destroying her reputation as he had. She had spoken to him as “one writer to another”, and it had made him take a second look at what he really wanted from this job. Did he want to be remembered as the chap what dug up dirt? What he had said about her was cruel, and he had done what he could to make up for it. As a result, he had sworn off writing rumor and innuendo. It was beneath him, or at least it was beneath the man he wanted to become. Old habits would be hard to break; it wouldn’t be easy, but nothing in his life had ever been easy. And so he would try. Only the truth from now on.

“Here! Copy boy,” he said with a devilish grin as he held the sheet up and waved it around.

The new fellow in the office took it and grimaced, the poor light in the grimy office glinting off his glasses.

“There, there, Stuyvesent. Don’t look so unhappy all the time! You musta figured out why Mr. Bellringer had to let you go,” Proctor said, chuckling as he gazed up at the publisher’s former assistant.

Stuyvesent glared at him. “That old bastard! He wanted Miss Jardiniere to leave London, and I said I could fix it so she did! He didn’t give a damn how I did it until we got caught out.”

“By feeding me lies,” Proctor said, his voice hardening. “You led me to believe all kinds of rot.”

“As if you cared,” Stuyvesent sneered. “You wrote that bilge all the time. Don’t go all pure on me now. All I wanted was Bellringer to publish my novel. Lot better than that claptrap he publishes now!”

“His best writer left, thanks to your… What did he call it? ‘Evil machinations’, I think you told me?”

And indeed, Colin Jenkins had left Rosewood Publishing. That was one of the things that had given him most pleasure to write in his profile of Miss Collette Jardiniere. She would now be published by her husband’s new company, it was said. She was off on her honeymoon in France that very day, but would be retiring to the country to write on her return, she had told Proctor in her second exclusive interview with him.

Stuyvesent took the copy and set off for the printing room without another word. Ah, well, couldn’t blame the poor bugger for being angry. He had fallen indeed from being a publisher’s assistant to being a copy boy at the Gazette, but no other publishing company in the city would touch him after it was widely spread around, by a suddenly innocent Mr. Bellringer, exactly who had spread the rumors about Miss Jardiniere.

Let the fellow learn a bit about life and work his way up, like Proctor had, he thought. He bent his head over a fresh sheet of paper and started his story on the neighborhood, if such it could be called, where he had grown up. He had read Mr. Dickens’s books, all about the poor sections of the city. Now there was a writer who understood a little of life, even if his books were damnably thick and hard to make his way through at times.

At the moment when Proctor was bending to his article, relishing writing the truth in a way he had never written it before, the new Mrs. Charles Jameson was dreamily staring over the railing of a boat bound for France as she and her new husband departed for their honeymoon after spending their wedding night at one of London’s finest hotels. Jamie stood behind her with his arms around her waist, holding her against his warm body as the chill wind tugged at her bonnet and spirals of auburn hair. The setting was bleak; the channel was choppy, white-capped waves crashing against the bow of the ferry from Dover to Calais.

But Jameson’s mood was sunny. “Happy?” he murmured in her ear, as well as he could around the confines of the bonnet.

“Yes,” she whispered back, the breeze taking her one word and lifting it to the heavens. There was no adequate way to tell him just how happy, so she would just have to show him again that night. Maybe more than once. She leaned back against him and anticipated the night.

He had shown her how perfect the union of man and woman could be, how sweet the sensation of skin on skin and how delectable the invasion of her body by his. Susan glowed with the knowledge that this was hers for a lifetime, and knew all her tomorrows would be rich and sweet.

The End

About the Author

Donna Lea Simpson, nationally bestselling author of historical and paranormal romances and mysteries, loves to write and read more than anything else. Becoming a published author was her dream from the age of twelve, and she feels fortunate that she achieved that goal. She can get lost in historical research, is fascinated by unusual tidbits of knowledge and is enthralled by the romance of history. History is about people, after all, and Donna loves to create characters who are immersed in, and react realistically to, the times in which they live.

But after working—and when not reading a mystery or historical novel—Donna likes to cook, sing karaoke, drink wine on the patio in the summer or chat with a good friend while drinking tea. She’s fond of cats and crafts, is a dedicated homebody and feels fortunate to be surrounded by wonderful family and faithful friends.

Donna loves a little mystery in her romance, and romance in her mystery!

For more information and to see Donna’s publishing history, visit her at www.donnaleasimpson.com.

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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9020-8

Copyright © 2010 by Donna Lea Simpson

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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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Table of Contents

Letter to Reader

Title Page

Dedication

Contents

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

About the Author