He nodded and left.
Alone, she sank back against her pillows and wondered if she should have said something more to Julian. What would he think if she told him she was revisiting a thousand moments, regretting half her life?
She removed the wrapped package he’d given her from her drawer and stared at it, unsure if she could bear another touching gift from him.
Slowly she unwrapped the paper to find a leather box. Inside, nestled within velvet, was a smooth marble ornament, like the priapic carving she’d seen in his trunk, only daintier, prettier, and attached to an orb. A note in his script was tucked inside the box.
For your pleasure, on nights when you want someone to touch you.
I’m sorry I wasn’t the man to do it. I’ll never stop wishing that I could be.
All my love,
Julian
Chapter 15
Apthorp paced outside the Commons Chamber in St. Stephen’s Chapel. The third reading of his bill was due to happen in a quarter hour—the series of ayes and nays that would decide the rest of his life. And yet, somehow, he didn’t care about the outcome.
What had felt so vital now felt utterly beside the point.
All he could think about was Constance.
He could not shake the feeling that he was letting her go too easily. He replayed her words in his mind. I’ll think about you whenever I am with him.
Had she been telling him she didn’t want to leave? Or was he merely torturing them both by scouring her every turn of phrase for hidden shades of meaning?
He did not want to trap her in a future she would hate. But perhaps together they could create a different future from the one that she envisioned. One in which they lived primarily in London. They could renovate his house on the Strand, and she could host salons and write plays. Perhaps, once he was free, he could shed his stiff exterior and welcome her friends and her ways and show her the side he’d been so careful to hide.
The side that had existed only on Wednesday nights, wearing a mask.
“Apthorp.” From around the corner, a tall figure loped into view.
Henry Evesham.
“Ah, Mr. Evesham,” he said, straining for a pleasant tone. It would not do, in these halls where anyone could overhear, to imply he was anything other than friendly with the hack. “Or should I say, Lord Lieutenant. Congratulations on your new office.”
“Why, thank you, Lord Apthorp.” He lowered his voice. “Or perhaps you prefer to be called Master Damian.”
Apthorp’s heart ceased beating.
Feign bafflement.
“Pardon?”
Evesham gave him a long-suffering smile. “You can pretend not to know of whom I speak, but we both know that you do.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.”
“If that is the line you’re taking, one hopes you have a strong constitution for the next story I’m reporting. London may think itself incapable of being further shocked by you, but we both know the truth is sensational.”
Apthorp strove for a bored tone. “One would think, given the weight of your newfound responsibilities, you would lack time to pursue slanderous rumors.”
“My newfound responsibilities enshrine in law my mission to ensure that vice and corruption are eradicated—from the top of this city to its gutters. And to those rare places, like Charlotte Street, where they so curiously intersect.”
He smiled at Apthorp like he had just beaten him at chess.
“Come, now,” he said. “We needn’t be enemies. I will ensure your name is not among those sullied. Your peers—not to mention your future wife—will never know of your transgressions. If you help me.”
“Why are you pursuing this? To sell newspapers?”
“On principle,” Evesham said. “I believe the public has a right to know what their supposed betters are involved in. The same men who blame them for their gin holes and molly houses and bastards are guilty of vices that could make a madam blush. The sun shines on all men equally, my lord, as does God’s forgiveness. So should earthly justice.”
“I am as fond of justice as the next man, but needless persecution of those pursuing harmless pleasure does not equate to me with honor. I have nothing more to say to you.”
If Evesham wanted to destroy an institution that stood out as a rare sanctuary, then he would have to do his dirty work himself. Apthorp would take his chances with ruin. Having already braved it twice, he found that he was becoming rather used to it.
“Very well,” Evesham said. “But don’t forget that you had your chance. I genuinely shudder to think what Lady Constance will think of you when she finds out she married a whore. And she will find out, Lord Apthorp. Her skill for locating inconvenient truths is well known on Grub Street.”
“Bugger off, Evesham,” he sighed, dropping all pretense of politeness. “I have work to do.”
He leaned against the wall and watched the man retreat, feeling like he was watching his future recede with every footstep.
Whore. He preferred to think that he provided a service that was mutually enjoyable.
But it was true. For five years he had fucked for money. Fucked in ways that could probably get him hanged.
And if the truth came out, there would be no feigning Christian virtue or political blackmail to temper the force of public shame. Aristocrats were not meant to have professions. They certainly did not debase themselves by plying the oldest trade of all. He was already regarded as being less than an earl; in the eyes of society, this would make him seem less than a man.
If there was any mercy in the fact that he was going to lose Constance, it was that it would spare her being pulled down into the muck. He knew that she would try to find an angle that might preserve his dignity. He knew that she would fight for him.
But she didn’t deserve to have to try.
He knew what he must do.
He had to let her go.
For it was no longer a question of if the full truth would be exposed.
It was only a question of when.
“Good morning,” Poppy, the Duchess of Westmead, said as she greeted Constance and Lady Margaret in the towering entry of Westmead House, ushering them through air heavy with the scent of flowers.
Constance was immediately beset by an attack of sneezing. “Blasted lilies,” she gasped.
“I did try to warn you,” Poppy laughed, offering her a handkerchief. Behind her, the entry hall was festooned with forty feet of white flowers woven through floor-to-ceiling trellis panels that had taken the duchess’s florists all month to design and days to install.
Constance had hoped the effect would be a stunning assault on the senses. The visual senses. She regretted ignoring her sister-in-law’s warning that the primary assault would be upon her guest’s ability to breathe.
“Oh, Poppy,” she wailed. “What are we going to do? The papers will write I gave the entire peerage hay fever.”
“We’re trimming the pollen from the flowers to reduce the effect,” Poppy said. She gestured at a row of footmen armed with scissors, who were going from flower to flower on step stools and ladders, carefully snipping the anthers off each lily and collecting them in glass jars. “But I daresay that if you do give the entire peerage hay fever, everyone will assume it was only because you wanted them to weep at the sight of you in your gown.”