Chapter Seventeen

It was past noon when Lord Devon and his well-seduced wife bestirred themselves from the bed, dressed between deep kisses, and plodded downstairs for the breakfast that the thoughtful Mrs. Hadley had kept warm in the kitchen. She had been quick to show her approval of their marriage by serving the most enormous breakfasts.

It was a ritual that Devon thought he might even learn to enjoy. A passionate romp with his wife, a late breakfast together, he sorting through his mail while she sipped tea and perused the newspapers and scandal sheets that, by this hour, had already entertained an unknown number of Londoners who relished a good dose of gossip before beginning their day.

“Anything interesting?” he asked, putting down his coffee to stare at her. She looked delectable after a night of lovemaking, and he wondered now why he’d so willingly come downstairs when they could have enjoyed breakfast in bed. And each other’s company.

“As if you didn’t know,” she said in a voice of hurt disbelief that didn’t sound anything like the lighthearted woman who’d warned him only minutes ago to behave himself at the table. He hadn’t taken her favorite cup, had he? Forgotten her birthday? It couldn’t be their wedding anniversary.

“What is it?” he asked in bafflement.

“Don’t make me say it.”

“Pardon me?”

“Not this time, you deceitful…deceiver.”

He looked down at the paper. He’d hoped she was joking. The woman who was withdrawing from him before his very eyes was not his sweet, passionate wife. She looked betrayed—but surely not by him. “What have I done now?”

“Do not even bother to deny it,” she said across the breakfast table at the precise moment the footman laid a silver platter of crisply fried bacon, sausages, and warm buttered scones between them.

“What exactly is in the paper?” he asked warily.

Her silver teaspoon clanked against her cup with an emphasis that challenged the integrity of the elegant bone china. “The gossip of London. Last night’s gossip. The—”

“Gossip,” he said, leaning back against one elbow in his chair. “I do not need the word hammered into my skull with a teaspoon to take your meaning. What sin am I accused of now?”

He thought a tear glistened in her eye. Her voice, however, was quite even as she whisked the newspaper from the table and dropped it on the platter. “Pray read it yourself.”

“And what is it that I’m supposed to read?”

“The charming piece entitled ‘Wives and Concubines.’ ”

He picked up the paper, scowling, and read the article several times. He could feel Jocelyn studying his face as if to interpret every nuance of reaction. And in the end he was hard pressed to hide his own annoyance.

The unidentified correspondent of the piece had described in uncanny detail Devon’s actions of the previous day and a good part of the night. This included a rendition of the encounter at the park between Jocelyn and a gallant.

A certain “Sir G’s” chivalrous intervention was lauded when her husband appeared to have neglected to do his spousal duty. To further compound his lack of responsibility, this sinful nobleman had visited an infamous brothel later that same evening whereupon he was personally received by the proprietress of the exclusive Bruton Street establishment.

There was a ring of first-person authenticity to the account that brought his blood to a slow boil.

The last few lines, however, were what he realized had given his wife offense.

“It wasn’t exactly a brothel,” he said, which admittedly was not the best defense he could have presented.

“If it was not a brothel,” Jocelyn said, her spoon tapping again, “then what was it?”

“It’s more of an exclusive club than a brothel. And no matter what it was, I did not go there for pleasure. I came to you.”

“There are women of easy virtue in a bordello, Devon.”

“There are women of no virtue whatsoever,” he said unwisely.

“And you think to visit these women without virtue after only a week or so of marriage?”

“I didn’t think of them at all. I went there looking for Gabriel.”

She stood, visibly upset, the quaver in her voice upsetting him. “You left my bed last night to go to a brothel?”

“Audrey Watson is a family friend.”

“She is a votary of Venus, Devon.”

“I don’t deny what she is, but I only went to her house to look for Gabriel.”

She swallowed. “But the paper said that this Watson woman took you into her private chamber to entertain you.”

“Well, not exactly. We went into her chamber to talk. Audrey does not receive callers in front of an audience.”

“You were alone with her.”

He rose from his chair. “I came to you last night, Jocelyn. I merely talked to Audrey.”

She backed away from the table. He had a horrible feeling she wasn’t listening to anything he was saying. “That’s what my father always told my mother. And don’t remind me. You warned me at the wedding.”

He stared at her, his heart twisting in realization. “I won’t tell you anything of the sort.”

She nodded slowly. “It’s not your fault. I know you didn’t want to marry me.”

He watched her helplessly. Suddenly he understood, or he thought he did, even if for several moments he was so insulted that she’d compare him to Gideon that he could not react. The pain in her voice reminded him that she had probably not been raised in the happiest of homes.

“I’m not like your father,” he said carefully. “I’m not anything like my own father, for that matter. I was with you last night. I wanted—”

“Devon, it’s all right.”

“It damn well isn’t. Not unless you say you believe me.”

She gazed at him, biting her lip.

“Say it,” he said, his voice urgent. “Say it, and mean it.”

The door opened as she turned to leave, and Devon was prepared to chastise one of the servants for interrupting. The person who appeared to take Jocelyn’s place, however, was none other than his older brother Grayson, who managed to enter the room between Jocelyn’s escaping figure and the door.

“Did I arrive at an awkward moment?” Grayson asked with a rueful glance in his disappearing sister-in-law’s direction.

Devon shouldered him from his path. “Why would you think that? I’ve just been libeled wholesale in the papers, and my wife believes I am the incarnation of her father.”

Grayson removed his gloves. “I don’t suppose a private appointment with my jeweler on Ludgate Hill would help?”

“At this point,” Devon muttered as he heard a door slam upstairs, “I’m not sure that an offer of the Crown Jewels would help.”

         

Devon did not chase after his wife to offer another apology for a fictitious offense.

For now he had a more pressing matter to attend. Yes, he’d been gossiped about in the past, but not as maliciously as this. And he wasn’t about to let it happen again.

Grayson followed him out into the vestibule. “Where are you going?”

“To find out who’s slandering me.”

“That sounds like a lively afternoon’s entertainment. Do you care for company?”

Devon hesitated. He knew his brother meant well, but having Grayson on his shoulder like a stone gargoyle would only hinder his baser instincts. If Devon found the guilty party and wished to throttle him, he did not want his brother interfering. “We can call a family cabal, females excluded, later tonight to discuss the matter.”

“You’re doing this alone?” Grayson asked in his masterly marquess and patriarch-of-the-family tone of voice.

“I went off to war by myself, didn’t I?”