Page 23 of Private Arrangements
She rolled her eyes. “I can't wait.”
She had said the same thing to him once before, on the last day of their short-lived happiness. Then she had meant it, had been pink-cheeked with delight and anticipation. As had he.
“I can,” he said.
She sighed, a weary flutter of air. “Go to hell, Camden.”
Chapter Eight
December 1882
Theodora's letter arrived on the midday post three days after Camden's encounter with Miss Rowland. The sheaf of rose-scented paper notified him of her imminent marriage to a Polish nobleman—imminent only in the past tense. The letter had been composed two days before the date of the wedding, but not posted for another three days.
Camden could not imagine Theodora being married to anyone else. People in general made her nervous; even he did, to some extent, though she'd let him hold her hand and kiss her. She'd have been happiest far removed from the rest of humanity, a musical recluse in a chalet high up the Alps, with no neighbors but the cows at their summer pasture.
He worried about her. But even as he did, he could not stem the tide of excitement that the news engendered. Desire. Fascinated lust. Sensual bedazzlement. Covetousness by any other name was still rapacious. He wanted Miss Rowland. He wanted to laugh with her. He wanted to burn with her. And now he could.
If he married her.
Marriage, however, was a serious matter, the commitment of a lifetime, a decision not to be rushed. He tried to approach the matter rationally, but like idiotic, lust-addled young men since time immemorial—to which club he never imagined he'd belong—all he could think of was Miss Rowland's eagerness on their wedding night.
She'd probably be the one to come into his room, rather than the other way around. She'd allow him to keep all the lights on so he could visually devour her to his heart's content. She'd spread her legs wide, then wrap them tightly about him. And he might even make her look at what he'd do to her, so he could watch her flushed cheeks, her lust-glazed eyes, and listen to her moans and whimpers of pleasure.
God, he would make love to her for days running.
After a night of internal debate, during which much voluptuous fantasizing and very little sensible debate occurred, Camden resolved to put the choice to the Fates. If Miss Rowland was there again by the stream that day, he'd propose to her within the week. If not, he'd take it as a sign that he should hold off until the end of next term to allow time for more solemn reflection.
He spent the entire day at the bank of the brook, pacing up and down, all but climbing the naked trees. But she did not come. Not in the morning, not in the afternoon, not when the sky turned blue-black. And that was when he realized he was far gone: Not only was he immensely unhappy with the Fates, but he'd decided that the Fates could all go drown in a cesspit.
He returned his horse to the stable and requested a brougham be readied for him immediately.
The footman hesitated and looked inquiringly at Gigi. Her plate was still almost full. She pushed it aside. The plate disappeared to be replaced by another, a compote of pears.
“Gigi, you hardly ate anything,” said Mrs. Rowland, picking up her fork. “I thought you liked venison.”
Gigi picked up her own fork and excavated a cube of pear from the clear syrup. She was being too obvious in her preoccupation. Her mother never worried that she ate too little. Quite the opposite. Mrs. Rowland usually feared that Gigi's appetite was too robust, that her corsets wouldn't lace tightly enough to achieve any decent approximation of the wasp waist.
She stared at her fork and could not accomplish the simple task of putting it in her mouth. Her stomach churned already. She had no confidence it could handle the sugar-drenched piece of fruit.
She set down the fork. “I'm not that hungry tonight.”
Merely terrified.
What she'd done was in every way unprincipled, and quite possibly criminal. Worse, she'd not only perpetrated a fraud, she'd made an incompetent mash of it. She'd been too impatient, her methods too crude. Any half-wit could pick up the rank odor of villainy and sniff the trail right to her door.
What would Lord Tremaine do should he find out? And what would hethinkof her?
A footman entered the dining room and spoke a few low words to Hollis, their butler. Hollis then approached Mrs. Rowland. “Ma'am, Lord Tremaine is here. Should I ask him to wait until dinner is finished?”
It was a good thing Gigi had quit all pretense of eating, or she'd have dropped everything in her hand.
Mrs. Rowland rose, radiant with excitement. “Absolutely not. We shall go greet him this instant. Come, Gigi. I've a suspicion that Lord Tremaine didn't come all the way to seeme.”
Mrs. Rowland was no doubt hearing wedding bells. But scandal and ruin loomed large in Gigi's mind. She would live out the rest of her life like Miss What's-her-name, the mad old spinster in a wedding dress, laying waste to her estate and infecting everyone with her bitterness.
She had no choice but to follow her mother, bleakly, grimly, a foot soldier who shared little of the general's optimism for victory and spoils, who saw only the bloodbath ahead.
He was there, standing in the middle of the drawing room—the epitome of her desires, the instrument of her downfall, the eligible young scion who groomed horses and ran just slightly shady games of probability.
