Darlington commenced his search along the gravel footpaths. The paper lanterns cast a rosy glow on the already golden way beneath him. “Cassandra!” he called into the secluded groves. “Miss Welles!”
Having traversed the length and breadth of the gardens for some minutes without finding success in his endeavor, he leaned against a tree to catch his breath.
“You look fatigued, Caliban.” The voice came from a youth seated on a marble bench nestled within a cluster of trees.
“Who’s there?” Darlington asked, and the youth adjusted his mask to preserve his anonymity.
“A friend,” answered C.J., attempting to disguise her voice by pitching it in a lower register.
The earl regarded the lad in his doublet and hose of amethyst. “Ohh,” he sighed. “What a fortunate youth you must be. You are far too young, sir, to know what anguish it is to break a lady’s heart.”
“In truth, I have not broken a lady’s heart . . . that I know of . . . but indeed, for all my tender years, too well I know what it is to have one’s heart broken. Come, sit beside me. If you have such a tale of woe, you will find my ears amenable to the hearing of it.” C.J. motioned to the space beside her on the bench.
“The sad saga is not mine own,” Darlington began, “but that of a bosom friend,” he continued, quite sure of his intimate familiarity with the shapely legs of the “youth” at his side.
“Pray confide it, if you may,” C.J. said, secure in her personal knowledge of the musculature of the half-bare man seated next to her. He had not thought to disguise his voice, or, perhaps in his haste to leave Bath to find her, remembered to remove his signet ring.
“It is a cautionary tale, good youth.” Darlington sighed. “I had a friend who used his lady ill. He loved her from the depths of his soul for her beauty and her clever wit, and for the generosity of her person in so many bountiful ways. They had an understanding between them, which afforded my friend the delectable opportunity to gain the most intimate knowledge of his lover’s body. Never before had he experienced such rapture—he told me—and was certainly ready to offer for her and to make extravagant wedding plans.”
In the dark C.J. bit her lip. “What happened?”
“My friend learned the truth about the destitute condition of his estate and the attendant devastation upon the lives of his tenants. Against his judgment, he permitted himself to be persuaded by his aunt to break off the understanding and enter into a formal betrothal with an heiress who was his aunt’s godchild.”
“How cruel! Did he make amends to his jilted lady?”
“Not nearly what she deserved. And for all that, he learned that she was carrying his child. He was torn between love and duty. Or more aptly put, love and money.”
“Pray continue, Caliban.”
“He realized how grave an error he had made when his love was injured in a dreadful riding accident. While she languished twixt our world and the next, he made plans to extricate himself from the betrothal and then journey to Canterbury to request a Special License from the archbishop so they could marry, posthaste, wherever they chose. When he discovered that his love had most suddenly departed for London, he followed her trail, thus obliged to postpone for a day or two his expedition to Canterbury.”
“He threw over the heiress?” C.J. asked breathlessly.
“My friend had no alternative. He could not bear to lose his love, and to see her suffer alone raising their child, shunned by polite society, knowing that he was the cause of their mutual misery but lacked the courage to remedy the situation. So he risked his own nearly guaranteed ostracism.”
“That is quite an extraordinary tale, sir. How does it end?”
“That remains to be seen, good youth. My friend now agonizes over whether his lady—should she learn that he fully intends to marry her with all the pomp and circumstance accorded his station—would accept his humblest and deepest apologies for all the pain he caused both to her and to her esteemed aunt. He desires to know whether his mistress would consent to his suit after all the unpleasantness that has passed between them. And naturally, my friend wonders if this lady is too angry to accept him now, and if she still loves him as he does her.”
“I should hazard a guess,” C.J. began, “that once your friend’s lady hears his account and is convinced of his unswerving devotion to her for the remainder of their days, she might be exceedingly pleased with his decision to reunite and to join their bodies and souls in holy matrimony.” She angled her body toward Darlington’s. “If you will permit me to try a little exercise, I can demonstrate to you just how grateful—how happy—your friend’s mistress would be.”
C.J. climbed onto the earl’s lap, straddling him. As she gripped him with her legs, her lips met his in a deep kiss. Tingles of sensation exploded along her spine like thousands of tiny Roman candles. For the briefest moment she prayed that whatever body paint the earl had smeared all over his bare torso would not smudge the great Siddons’s velvet doublet. Oh, well.
In the distance a crowd had gathered to watch a parachutist jump from a hot-air balloon and descend softly with his gossamer canopy, as if on a cloud, to the ground below. The lovers could hear the boom, crackle, and hiss of Lady Chatterton’s fireworks display.
C.J.’s
