She shuddered.
She had not yet had the heart to tell him that her idea of a blissful summer affaire de coeur was a rousing romp in bed followed by fond promises to repeat the adventure in another two years’ time when they parted in the morning.
Henri was sweet, but men were best left to administering boudoir pleasures and lifting things a woman oughtn’t. For finer intimacies, they only disappointed.
She’d invited Henri here to distract her from her memories of Kestrel Bay and the sickly feeling they lodged in her chest—not to enhance her unease with new anxieties.
She dreaded lovers who coupled bedsport with emotion. Nothing made her feel unsteady like a man who wasn’t leaving in the morning.
Besides, she’d spent most of her evening with Henri recalling the architect from the belvedere, and the way he’d sucked in his breath at her touch, like she’d stung him.
That’s what she needed—a stranger. The rush of pure seduction.
Which did not lessen the awkwardness of extricating herself from this misunderstanding with Henri, and his tender gaze, and his lock of stolen hair.
“Darling?” She poked his shoulder.
“Mmmmm.” He rolled over in her bed.
Oh, her pounding head. She had been far too liberal with the spirits last night, for wine was her most proven antidote to worry. She had hoped enough of it might rouse in her the courage to inform Henri he was a temporary guest. Or, failing that, at least alleviate the constant thrumming of her worries—Elinor, the book, the memories.
It hadn’t worked on any of them.
She bent down to gather the butt of a cheroot from a saucer on the floor and yelped as something sharp bit into her foot. Shards of last night’s wineglass twinkled from a puncture in her heel. She bent and plucked them out, wincing at the pain.
“Poupée,” Henri murmured, rolling over at the sound of her distress. He winced at the sight of her blood. “Mon dieu, ton pied!”
“Just a cut.”
“Come, let me kiss it better.” He reached out and grabbed her shin. She backed away and jammed her smarting foot into her slipper, safe from the dubious healing powers of his lips.
“Come back to bed,” he pouted.
“I’m afraid I have to write. Take your time. I’ll have Maria send up breakfast so that you are well fed for your journey.”
There was a sudden heavy silence in the room.
“My journey?”
She grudgingly met his eye. “My dear, you are so kind to offer to keep me company here. But you see, I’m woefully behind in my work, and with you here to tempt me, I’ll be too distracted to write. There’s a boardinghouse in Penzance if you wish to stay on. Excellent light.”
“Penzance,” he repeated, as skeptically as if she’d said “Hades.”
“It’s only an hour’s ride away—if I finish my book, I’ll come and see you at midsummer. Now be good and I’ll send your man up to make you handsome before luncheon.”
She limped downstairs without waiting for a reply. Her secretary, Tompkins, was in the parlor, collecting more of the evidence of last night’s indiscretions.
What were her stockings doing discarded beside the sofa? Was that really another empty bottle of Château Margaux? Thank goodness Tompkins was constitutionally incapable of shock.
“Oh, Tompkins. What a scene.”
This precise scene—the empty bottles, the unwanted man, the aching temples—was becoming far too common. She was not known for temperance with spirits but lately she could be accused of being . . . injudicious. What had begun as a distraction from her concern for Elinor was in danger of settling into something more like a way of life. She kept meaning to retrench and be good. But the dread she felt every time she attempted to work on her memoirs made the desire to loosen the coil of her thoughts with a sturdy drink seem justified.
She’d be good later, when this was over.
Tompkins plucked a crystal decanter from inside the open belly of Seraphina’s late mother’s pianoforte and gave her the kind of smile that withheld judgment without exactly covering concern.
“There’s coffee for you in the study.”
“Thank you. You are a saint. And I have the kind of headache due to the worst of sinners. I don’t suppose we have a headache powder?”
“Waiting with the coffee. And I left your correspondence. You’ve had a letter from Miss Ludgate.”
At last. She itched for news from London. She had left it in a state of upheaval, all the papers whispering of Elinor’s sudden disappearance, and the announcement of Seraphina’s coming memoirs.
“Bless you. And might I ask another favor? Please have Monsieur Lapierre’s servants see that his conveyance is ready to depart after luncheon. And give them the direction for the inn at Chapel Street.”
Tompkins wrinkled her brow. “Certainly. Though, it was my understanding he planned to stay through July.”
Seraphina picked up the Frenchman’s discarded cravat with two fingers. “Yes. That’s just the trouble, isn’t it?”
Tompkins granted her a wry smile. “I see. I’ll take care of it.”
“You always do. Thank you.”
Seraphina walked into the small parlor she had adopted as her study. It held a view of the ocean, a table she’d repurposed as a desk, and little else. In her childhood, it had been the sewing room, where she had whiled away her days under her stepmother’s exacting observation, making useless embroidered handkerchiefs for a father too coarse to bother using them.
She had chosen this room to write her memoirs just to be perverse.
But perhaps the true victim of the irony was her. Her parents, after all, were dead. Whereas she was alive, and this room brought back her fury at them without precisely inspiring her to turn it into gripping prose.
She picked up the letter from Cornelia.
Sera darling,
I hope that the ocean is agreeing with you. Thaïs and I yearn for your return but we are contenting ourselves with rebellious plotting and fine wine in your absence. Write us and tell us how you are, for if you don’t, we will be forced to come after you to reassure ourselves you are rusticating in tranquility and not glowering into the cliffs and beating your breast thinking of Him. If you are tempted to do the latter, even briefly, please let this note be your reminder He is not worth it.
JW is avoiding letters as Bell’s solicitors are following him and he suspects they read his post, but he visited me yesterday with news from his investigator. Prepare yourself for this next sentence, love, for it’s not a happy one: we think that bastard Bell has E locked in an asylum. JW’s man believes the place is somewhere near Bell’s holdings in the South, but has not yet been able to confirm the whereabouts. I’ll write as soon as I know more.
Don’t despair, dear. We’ll find her, and we’ll bloody free her if we have to storm the castle keep ourselves.
Thaïs has just arrived and she sends her love as well and says WRITE US, WENCH.
With love,
Cornelia (and Thaïs)
Lady Elinor Bell in an asylum.
They had assumed Bell was holding Elinor in one of his Northern properties—perhaps his shooting estate in Scotland. This was so much worse.
What corrupt institution would accept an able-bodied, perfectly sane woman as a lunatic, regardless of what lies her husband claimed about her fidelity? Was the suggestion that women would benefit from education, apprenticeships, and independence so incredible that a physician would believe it was symptomatic of insanity?