Part 1 (1/2)

Mistress by Marriage.

MAGGIE ROBINSON.

Prologue.

London, 1820.

Edward Christie had been an utter fool six years ago. True, he'd had plenty of company. Every man in the room gaped when Caroline Parker entered Lady Huntington's ballroom. Conversation stilled. Hearts hammered. Shoulders straightened. Chests and areas lower swelled.

There were many reasons for those changes. Her hair, ma.s.ses of it, red as lava, was swirled up with diamonds. Diamond earrings, a diamond necklace, and diamond bracelets were festooned all over her creamy skin-skin so delicious every man whose tongue was hanging out longed to lap it. Her eyes were liquid silver, bright as stars and fringed with midnight black lashes, so at odds with her hair. And her dress, a shocking scarlet for an unmarried woman-for any woman-had a diamond brooch hovering over the most spectacular a.s.sets he'd ever seen. The jewels were all paste, as he was later to find out, but her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were very real.

There were known drawbacks, which quickly circulated about the room, prodded along by spiteful cats who were quite eclipsed by Caroline's magnificence. She was old, at least twenty-five, and her family-what there was of it-was dirt poor and touched by scandal. Some said her brother died in a duel; others said he was killed by one of his many mistresses. She had a sister in Canada, living in some G.o.dforsaken outpost in the snow with her lieutenant husband and howling wolves. Her parents were long dead and she was clinging to the ton by the weakest of threads. The distant cousin who had inherited her brother's t.i.tle was anxious to get her off his hands before he put his hands all over her and irritated his irritable wife.

Edward had obliged in a courts.h.i.+p of less than five days. Baron Christie had spent his first thirty-four years never, ever being impulsive, and his sudden marriage by special license to a woman who looked like an expensive courtesan was the on dit of the season. He had buried one wife, the perfectly staid and proper Alice, whose brown hair would never be compared to living fire and whose brown eyes could only be compared to mud. Alice, who'd quickly and quietly done her duty had provided him with an heir, a spare, and a little girl who looked just as angular and forbidding as her father. Alice, who'd caught a chill one week and died the next was no doubt rolling over in her grave to be supplanted by Caroline Parker.

Edward had no one to blame but himself. He didn't need more children, and Caroline hadn't any money. But what she did have-what she was-had upended Edward's life for one h.e.l.lish year before he came to his senses and put her away.

Caroline had no one to blame but herself. It was her pride, her dreadful Parker pride that had prevented her from saying one simple word-no. If only her rosy lips had opened and she had managed to get her tongue to the roof of her mouth and expelled sufficient air, she would not find herself living on Jane Street, home to the most notorious courtesans in London.

When Edward asked her to marry him after less than a week's acquaintance, she should have said no. When he'd asked her that horrible, vile, impertinent question five years ago, she should have said no. But instead she'd said yes to the first question, rather gratefully if truth be told, and hadn't said a word to the second, just cast her husband the most scornful look she could conjure up and showed him her back.

Caroline was no man's mistress, despite her exclusive Jane Street address and rumors to the contrary. In the five years since she and her husband separated, he had come to her door but once a year, the anniversary of the night she was unable to utter that one syllable word. They took ruthless pleasure in each other, and then Edward disappeared again. She, however, remained, ostracized from polite society, completely celibate, and despite her ardent hopes, a mother only to the curious contingent of young women who shared her street. The children changed, but the game remained the same. From experienced opera dancers to fresh-faced country girls who had been led astray by rich gentlemen, Caroline watched the parade of mistresses come and go. She pa.s.sed teacups and handkerchiefs and advice, feeling much older than her almost thirty-one years.

But when she looked in her pier gla.s.s, she was still relatively youthful, her red curls s.h.i.+ny, her gray eyes bright. She might have been stouter than she wished, but the prideful Parkers were known to run to fat in middle age. For some reason Edward had let her keep some of the lesser Christie jewels, so there was always a sparkle on her person even if there was no spark to her life. She made the best of it, however, and had some surprising success writing wicked novels that she couldn't seem to write fast enough. Her avocation would have stunned her old governess, as Caroline had showed no apt.i.tude whatsoever for grammar lessons or spelling as a girl. Fortunately, her publisher was grammatical and spelled accurately enough for both of them. Her Courtesan Court series was highly popular with society members and their servants alike. There were happy endings galore for the innocent girls led astray, and the wicked always got what was coming to them. She modeled nearly every villain on Edward. It was most satisfactory to shoot him or toss him off a cliff in the final pages. Once she crushed him in a mining mishap, his elegant sinewy body and dark head entombed for all eternity with coal that was as black as his heart.

Of course, sometimes her heroes were modeled on him, too-men with pride nearly as perverse as the Parkers, facile fingers that knew just where to touch a girl, and particularly long, thick, entirely perfect p.e.n.i.ses. Caroline missed Edward's p.e.n.i.s, although she didn't miss his conversation much. He was so d.a.m.ned proper and critical, and had been beyond boring to live with. Controlled. Controlling. Humorless. Once he'd installed her as his baroness, it was as if he woke up horrified at what he'd actually done, and whom he'd actually married. It was no wonder that she- No, she couldn't blame him. She had no one to blame but herself.

Chapter 1.

He had been the coldest man in England. They called him Frozen Frazier. How fitting it was for him to be encased in ice at the bottom of the alp.

-The Count's Courtesan.

”If you don't do something about your wife, we will.”

Edward looked at the two gentlemen, viscounts both, who had already helped themselves to his best conciliatory brandy. He knew as soon as he'd received Lord Pope's note he was in for it. Caroline had gone too far. But when hadn't she?

”It's libel. Or slander. I cannot remember which. But we'll sue you for every groat you've got, Christie, and the publisher too, unless you control that woman. We've got friends in high places.”

Edward wore his impa.s.sive Christie face. His grandfather had been known for it. His father had been known for it. Now it was his turn. The house could be engulfed in flames, the s.h.i.+p sinking, the heart breaking, but a Christie was always cool and collected. He'd heard the sobriquet ”Cold Christie” a time or two and wasn't offended. It suited him perfectly most of the time. ”I have very little influence over Caroline. We've lived apart for years.”

”But you keep a roof over her head and the clothes on her back!” Lord Dougla.s.s objected. It was rumored he was to appear in the much-antic.i.p.ated The Senorita's Senor, and he wasn't clacking his castanets about it. His ex-mistress Victorina Castellano had apparently described Dougla.s.s's masculine equipment in an entirely unflattering but anatomically correct way.

Edward shook his head. ”That's not precisely true. She earns enough to dispense with her allowance. My man of business tells me she hasn't touched much at all since she's been writing her books.”

”Books! As if the trash she writes deserves such elevation. She's worse than the worst scandal sheet,” Pope bl.u.s.tered. ”Because of her my wife left me!”

”Surely the fact that you caned your mistress nearly to death had something to do with that,” Edward murmured. He watched as Pope's fist clutched his brandy gla.s.s, expecting it to shatter at any moment. The fist or the gla.s.s, he wasn't sure which.

Each of the so-called gentlemen in Edward's library was the thinly-disguised villain in one of Caroline's wildly successful novels. He didn't read them himself, of course, could only reluctantly permit himself to imagine their lurid content, but his sister Beth gave him regular book reports on their irregular content. The slender books came out monthly, and Beth was amongst the first who lined up eagerly to buy them. Edward was quite sure Beth lived to torture him with every salacious revelation. But he couldn't throw his widowed sister out, as she was helping him raise his children. Not that either one of them was doing a particularly creditable job. The boys, and especially little Alice, were nearly as bad as when Caroline was their stepmother. Perhaps in some ways worse.

He'd made a dreadful mistake-just the one-and was paying for it every day. A dutiful son, when he was one and twenty he'd married the sweet seventeen-year-old girl his parents picked for him from her cradle. They were neighbors, grew up together. He'd liked her well enough. Alice had been raised to be his perfect wife. Her behavior was faultless, her conversation unexceptional, their lives organized. They'd been lucky with his heir Neddie, a honeymoon baby, and then two years later Jack came along. Little Alice didn't even remember her mother, and all three had needed a new one.

If he was honest, Edward had been lonely, too. Alice had been good company, soothing and steady. Then he laid eyes on Caroline Parker, glittering, glossy, and entirely unmotherly. Steady as a fault line. Soothing as a razor blade at one's throat.

It had been a disaster. Nearly every day of it, if not the nights. He and Caroline disagreed on the most fundamental things. She babbled incessantly at breakfast; he wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his toast and the Times. She encouraged the children to mischief-they'd gone through five governesses in the year she lived with them. And even though Caroline had indulged their every whim, the children hadn't really known what to make of her. She was nothing at all like his wife. She was nothing at all like anyone he'd ever known.

Now she was writing about lords and their ladybirds, books that were so-so-graphic they'd put a blush to a wh.o.r.e's cheek. Or at least that's what Beth said.

Edward put his gla.s.s down. It was June 14. He'd see Caroline tonight; it wasn't as if he had to make a special trip. It was their night to remember their last. ”I'll speak to her. That's the best I can do. I hear most Jane Street gentlemen are flattered by her work.”

Pope was crimson. ”Well, we are not. She can't be allowed to destroy lives and champion those wh.o.r.es. Why, she's just a wh.o.r.e herself.”

Edward's long fingers were suddenly wrapped around Pope's cravat, whose knot he inconveniently tightened. ”I suggest you leave now, both of you. If I hear from my wife you have threatened her in any way, I shall do more than this.” He shoved Pope down on his a.r.s.e. He'd have to get the carpet cleaned tomorrow.

h.e.l.l and d.a.m.nation. It wasn't as if Caroline needed the money to write such rubbish. He'd piled an enormous amount in her account the past five years. Guilt money. Guilt for asking such an unsuitable woman-a stranger-to marry him. Guilt for letting her down, because he couldn't, wouldn't, shouldn't have to change. Guilt for still wanting her as much as he ever had. Guilt, because unless one of them died, their lives were absolutely ruined by his single, mad, impulsive mistake.

He shouldn't go to her tonight. He could send a note, or simply not turn up at all. Perhaps she didn't even mark the date. Maybe she was still in the country with her sister. But no, he knew she'd been back for days, probably came back just to see him . . .

Or have one of her d.a.m.n tea parties, where the courtesans confessed. He really should warn Conover now that he had set up his mistress. But maybe Con wouldn't care if his tattoo turned up on some poor chump's shoulder in the next installment of the Courtesan Court series.

Edward picked up his gla.s.s, then set it down again. He needed to be clearheaded, though one minute with Caroline turned him into a prize idiot. In her company, the only head he thought with fought to get free of his breeches at the earliest opportunity.

It was time to discuss a bill of divorce. It would be criminally expensive, embarra.s.sing, endless, and, if successful, a scandal even worse than the one they were living. But he had the letters, and right was on his side.

Or he could step in front of a fast-moving carriage.

Or go on as he was.

What he could not do was live with Caroline. That had been tried, and found wanting.

When she woke up, Caroline knew perfectly well what day it was and wished she'd never come back from her sister's home in the country. Not only had her garden completely gone to seed and weeds, but she'd pulled a muscle in her back trying to fix it which had made solid sleep the past few nights nearly impossible.

But Mary had been much too happy with her decorated major, who had been knighted for his frostbitten Canadian service to the Crown. Their twin boys and two daughters were the most adorable children on earth, their puppy well behaved, their small manor house charming. And Mary was pregnant again, swollen and beautiful. It had been three weeks of absolute, unadulterated, harmonious h.e.l.l. Caroline thought she'd turn green with envy, and toward the end she could barely lift the corners of her lips to smile. Even her cat Harold had enough and coughed up an enormous hairball on Mary's new brocade settee.

She hated feeling this way, so base, so jealous. Her sister had endured dreadful hards.h.i.+ps-blizzards, wild Indians, wars-and deserved every idyllic minute of her new life. Mary's husband Sir Jared was missing two toes and three fingers, for heaven's sake. How dare Caroline begrudge her sister the happiness that would never be hers?

So she'd plunged right into her Jane Street life when she came home, met her new neighbors, hosted her tea, and felt an enormous pit of emptiness, which would only get deeper when Edward came tonight. And he must come. If he didn't- Well, she'd simply go on. Alone, alone, alone.

My, but she was being maudlin. Positively lachrymose. Lugubrious. Sepulchral. She spent much of her time with a dictionary handy trying to broaden her vocabulary for her novels. After all, one had a duty to educate one's readers.