Page 80 of Private Arrangements
“Well, then, milord, you will come for dinner next Wednesday?” drawled Mrs. Vanderbilt. “I don't think you've seen Consuelo for a good six months, and she has become ever so much more beautiful and swanlike and—”
The doors to the drawing room swung open—burst open, in fact, as if blown apart by a passing cyclone. In the doorway loomed a woman and a dog. The dog was small, well-behaved, and sleepy, snuggled in the crook of the woman's arm. The woman was tall, haughty, and ravishing, her voluptuous figure poured into a sheath of carmine velvet, her throat and breast glistening with a maharaja's cache of rubies and diamonds. And, ever so incongruously, she also sported a very humble sapphire ring on her left hand.
“Now, who is that?” demanded Mrs. Vanderbilt, at once peeved and fascinated.
“That, my dear Mrs. Vanderbilt,” replied Camden, with a glee he couldn't and didn't hide, “is my lady wife.”
* * *
Never in her entire life had Gigi felt so vulnerable, standing before a roomful of strangers—and a husband who had another lover arriving in an hour.
She'd already ordered a suite for her return voyage on theLucaniaand telegraphed Goodman to have the house on Park Lane readied. A cable for Mrs. Rowland lay on the bureau in her hotel chamber—Tremaine has taken up with the Grand Duchess Theodora, née von Schweppenburg—but somehow she couldn't send it, couldn't admit that final defeat, not without one last gallant and largely foredoomed charge down the hill.
Now all eyes were on her, including Camden's. There was surprise on his face, a measure of amusement, and then a nonchalance that did not bode well for her chances. She waited for him to acknowledge her, to toss her at least a line of greeting. But other than a few inaudible words to the woman next to him, he said nothing, leaving her to jump off the cliff entirely by herself.
She let her eyes travel the drawing room. “Truly, Tremaine, I expected better from you. The decor is obvious to the point of atrociousness.”
A collective gasp reverberated from the high ceiling.
He smiled, a cool smile that nevertheless ignited her hopes anew. “My lady Tremaine, I distinctly remember informing you dinner was at half past seven. Your punctuality leaves much to be desired.”
“We will discuss my punctuality or the lack thereof later, in private,” she said, her heart pounding. “You may present your friends to me now.”
* * *
Lady Tremaine couldn't quite keep straight who was an Astor, who a Vanderbilt, and who a Morgan. But it didn't matter. She had fortune, which they admired, and title, which they coveted. Her temperament fitted in perfectly with the energetic, purposeful, ambitious upper crust of the American aristocracy; her independence earned her the approval of the wives, several of whom were sympathetic toward the suffragists.
The men gawked, alongside Camden.
There'd been much surreptitious necktie-loosening when she—later, in private—unmistakably commanded him to shag her blind. The sexual energy she exuded was palpable; the response it provoked in him was downright atrocious. No other women came anywhere near him for the remainder of the evening; even the unsighted could see that he was hanging on to civilized behavior by the skin of his teeth, that if they didn't make themselves scarce, he'd commit public coitus right before their eyes—with his own wife.
In the end she did something almost as shocking. At precisely eleven o'clock, she disengaged from the guests and placed herself at the center of the drawing room. “It has been lovely meeting the very best society of New York, I'm sure. But if you will forgive me, it's been a long journey, and I feel myself no longer quite equal to company. Ladies and gentlemen, my repose beckons. Good night.”
And with that, she left, the intricate train of her gown swaying majestically, leaving behind a speechless crowd, the ladies fanning themselves much too vigorously, the men looking as if they'd sign away half of their companies if only they could follow her out on the heels of her black suede evening slippers.
“Alas,” said Camden, keeping his tone light. “It seems I have utterly failed in my husbandly duties of guidance and discipline. I shall henceforth devote the greater part of my time and energy to that eminently noble endeavor.”
Half of the women blushed. Three-quarters of the men cleared their throats. The leave-taking began in the next minute, and the drawing room emptied at record speed.
Camden raced up the stairs, charged into his apartment, and threw open the door to his bedchamber. She lay prone across his bed, her cheeks in her palms, studying his copy of theWall Street Journal—completely naked. Those legs, that sumptuous bottom, the curvature of her breast squeezed round and tight against the underside of her arm, and all that beautiful hair spilled across her back. Carnal desire, already simmering, exploded in him.
She tilted her head and smiled. “Hullo, Camden.”
He closed the door behind him. “Hullo, Gigi. Fancy seeing you here.”
“Well, you know how it is. Investment opportunities, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Took you long enough,” he growled. “I was about to hire dognappers.”
She licked her teeth. “Am I worth the wait?”
God above! He could barely remain standing. “You were unspeakably brazen before my guests. I'm afraid you have laid waste to my staid, upstanding reputation.”
“Have I? I'm terribly sorry. I must learn to be a better wife. If only you'd give me a little more practice . . .” She turned onto her back and slid a knuckle across her lower lip. “Won't you come to bed and make me pregnant?”
He was on that bed and inside her in a fraction of a second. She was all hellfire and heavenly suppleness, clutching at him, her legs wrapped tight about him, her unabashed gasps and moans driving him mad with desire.
He shook, shuddered, and convulsed, his vaunted control in pieces as he came endlessly, well on his way to making her pregnant.
