Part 11 (2/2)

Yet he was the evil in her life. How could he protect her when he was her worst enemy?

He wished he had known a month before what he now knew about marriage. He would have turned all his fortune over to Arabella's family and taken himself off to the farthest corner of the earth sooner than be tempted to enter the respectable state of matrimony.

Lord Astor handed his hat and cane to Ginny's butler the following afternoon and showed himself into the sitting room while the servant went to inform her of his arrival. He must get his life back to normal, he had decided that morning. Arabella would grow up and learn to accept what could not be changed. She was out visiting with her sister and his aunt that afternoon.

”Geoffrey!” Ginny always made a theatrical entrance. She came through the door now, both hands extended. She looked as beautiful as ever. Her very distinctive perfume reached him before she did. ”How lovely to see you again. I was just thinking about you and longing for you.”

He took her hands and jerked her roughly into his arms. ”Have you?” he said, his mouth already seeking hers. ”I will have to find out just how much, Ginny.”

”Ah,” she said, wriggling in his arms in a way that she knew from experience heightened his desire to fever pitch, ”I love you when you are hungry, Geoffrey. Will you come straight to my bedchamber?”

She was as beautiful, as voluptuous, as skillfully enticing as she had ever been. She lay naked on her bed, touching him, caressing him, crooning to him, moving her body against his, offering herself with an abandon that went beyond the desire to earn her generous salary. She used every skill and trick that experience had taught her would render him mindless with the need to drive out his pa.s.sion in her.

Lord Astor sat up on the side of the bed and put his head in his hands. ”Not today, Ginny,” he said at last. ”It is not your fault. I am just not in the mood.”

”Are you ill?” she asked, her own voice still heavy with desire. She sat up behind him and put her arms around his naked shoulders and chest. ”What is it, Geoffrey? Come and lie down beside me and I will make you feel better.” She began to nuzzle his earlobe.

He shook her off none too gently. ”Not today, I said, Ginny,” he repeated, getting to his feet and reaching for his clothes.

”I don't understand,” she said. ”I have never failed to arouse you before. There is no one else, is there?”

”I have told you,” he said, ”that it is not your fault. It is me. I think perhaps you would be happier with another protector. I know of several men who would kill for you, Gin. Let me give you the house and arrange for a settlement on you. It will be best.” He pushed his s.h.i.+rt inside his pantaloons and b.u.t.toned them up.

”What!” She was out of the bed and standing before him, unselfconsciously naked. ”You are turning me off, Geoffrey? For failing to arouse you? It is her, is it not? What power does she have over you and those other men who hang about her? I wish I knew her secret. She is not beautiful. She does not have a good figure. She is a mere dab of a thing. Yet you give me up for her, when you could have us both? She will never satisfy you, you know.”

”She is my wife,” he said, tying his cravat with impatient fingers.

She laughed. ”And since when has that relations.h.i.+p ever guaranteed a man satisfaction?” she said. ”You do not have a tendre for her, do you, Geoffrey? You are not in love with her?”

He pulled on his Hessian boots. ”She is my wife,” he said.

Ginny threw back her head and laughed. ”Lord Astor is in love with his child bride,” she said. ”How famous! And the child has discovered that men may be enticed and is beginning to enjoy the feeling of power. And Lord Astor is jealous. How delicious! I shall make you the laughingstock, Geoffrey.”

He drew on his coat. ”I shall send my man of business to settle with you, Ginny,” he said.

”Is he handsome, Geoffrey?” she asked. ”And is he is love with Lady Astor also? Has she rendered him impotent too?”

Lord Astor closed the door of her bedchamber behind him.

14.

Arabella arrived home from her walk with George two mornings later to find Lord Astor still in the breakfast room. She would have retreated if she could. She found being in his company difficult at the best of times. It was almost insupportable when there was no one else present. However, he rose to his feet, smiling, when he saw her, and held out a package to her.

”This will please you, Arabella,” he said.

At first she thought it was a letter from home, but when she took the envelope and drew out the cards, she knew immediately what they were.

”Vouchers for Almack's!” she said. ”Aunt Hermione really has been busy on our behalf. Frances will be very excited. I should go and tell her immediately.”

”Is it not a few hours too early to waken Sleeping Beauty?” he asked. ”Sit down and have your breakfast, Arabella.”

”The next ball at Almack's is only two evenings away,” Arabella said, nodding to the butler to put a m.u.f.fin on her plate and taking her place reluctantly at the breakfast table.

Lord Astor indicated to the servant that he could leave. ”I shall accompany you myself,” he said. ”Your first visit to Almack's is too grand an occasion for you to go alone or with only my aunt for company. Will you wear your blue silk, Arabella?”

”If you wish it, my lord,” she said primly.

”Yes, I do wish it,” he said. ”I have noticed in the last few days that you are looking thin and almost ill. It is not my imagination, is it?”

”I am quite well, I thank you, my lord,” Arabella said. ”I do believe I am slimmer than I was a month ago.”

”Slimmer?” he said. ”I would say 'thinner.' Am I responsible, Arabella? Is this what unhappiness and disillusionment are doing to you?”

”You need take no blame, my lord,” she said, looking coolly up into his face. ”I have been deliberately losing weight so that I might look less childish. I wish to look more like a woman. I can do nothing about my height, but I can control my weight.”

”That is strange,” he said, leaning back in his chair and looking thoughtfully at her. ”Yes, when I first knew you, Arabella, I thought you younger than your years. But not since we have been married. You had a pretty figure. Very feminine. And certainly not fat. Nowhere near, in fact. I liked you better as you were. I take it that you do like ices and b.u.t.ter and apple tart?”

Arabella concentrated her attention on her m.u.f.fin.

”Will you put the weight back on again?” he asked. ”I was about to add 'for me.' But that would be no inducement, would it? And even a request you will interpret as a command and obey because you are determined to be a dutiful wife. Will you accept my advice, then, Arabella, as a gentleman who appreciates the female form? You looked prettier as you were.”

”I am not pretty,” she said, hearing with some dismay the petulance in her voice.

” 'Pretty' is a very relative term,” he said. ”To me you are very lovely, Arabellaa”even as you are. I will leave you now, as I can see that my presence makes you uncomfortable. And now that you have learned the steps of the waltz, will you reserve the first one for me at Almack's on Wednesday?”

”If you wish it, my lord,” she said as he rose to his feet.

He smiled fleetingly. ”Yes, I do wish it,” he said.

He paused behind her chair, hesitated, and laid a hand lightly on her shoulder. ”Arabella,” he said, ”Ginny is no longer in my life. Neither is any other woman. Only you. Perhaps you can make of me a model husband after all.”

She neither moved nor replied. He continued on his way from the room.

Frances was indeed excited by the news that at last they would be able to attend the weekly ball at Almack's. Her particular friend, Lucinda Jennings, would be there too, she said. Theodore would not. Only that fact clouded her mood somewhat. Not that she would miss his presence, of course, she explained to Arabella, when there were so many other gentlemen eager to dance with her. But it was sad to think that he had come all the way to town to enjoy the Season, yet was not to be in attendance at the most fas.h.i.+onable a.s.sembly of all.

Sir John Charlton would be there, of course. He had asked her to reserve the opening set and a waltz for him, she told Arabella when they were both in her dressing room an hour before they were to leave for the ball. Frances was still not sure that she had made the right decision in choosing her pink satin gown.

”Though it is still new,” she said, more to her reflection in the mirror than to her sister. ”At least no one will have seen it before. But is pink the wrong color for me, Bella? Is it too pale when I am blond? Both Lady Berry and his lords.h.i.+p approved the color, but I am not sure. What do you think?”

”I think it is quite perfect,” Arabella said. ”If it were a paler shade, perhaps you would be right, Frances. But it is such a rich color. And your hair is not dull, you know, as blond sometimes is. Yours gleams.”

”Perhaps you are right,” Frances said. ”Do I have too many ringlets bunched at the sides of my head, do you think? Lady Berry said that the style is very fas.h.i.+onable, and indeed I have noticed that it is so. What do you think, Bella?”

”I think,” Arabella said, ”that if I do not return to my own room soon, I shall be forced to leave for Almack's in this dressing gown. There is no arriving there late, you know. The doors close at eleven o'clock.”

<script>