“I’m glad to hear it.” His friend looked back down at the guests. “It was good of you to marry her. I hope everything works out for the best.” He gave a short, sharp laugh. “If Aurelia had wed you as she wished, what would have become of poor Baroness Maitland? She’d be at home polishing all the gaudy new rings Stafford purchased with her inheritance.”
“I’m glad now that I wed Josephine.” Warren watched her dance around the ballroom with Lord Grimshaw, smiling, head held high, all to please her husband. “As for Aurelia, that snarl’s in the past. She ended up with the right person.”
“It’s early to say, but I think Josephine ended up with the right person too.”
Warren stared hard at the banister. “I don’t know, Towns. I don’t know if I’m a decent husband sometimes. I’m better than Stafford but… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what? Stafford is a perverse, self-centered arsehole. He has no conscience. You’re nothing like that.”
Warren’s chest felt tight with shame. Josephine had been an innocent when he married her and he’d taken full advantage, asking her to do things most gentlemen would only ask of a whore. A perverse, self-centered arsehole? Perhaps he was that too. He took a bit too much pleasure in spanking his wife’s bottom, that was certain.
“It’s not the same, old chap,” Townsend said.
“What’s not the same?”
“The activities you’re thinking about. The things that are making you go red about the ears.” His lips curved in a smile. “I know your brand of perversity, and it’s not the same perversity of Stafford’s ilk.”
“But…the things I ask of her… She’s a lady,” he said, his voice harsh and tight.
“Is she a willing lady?”
“Of course she is. But only because she doesn’t know any better. She wasn’t raised in a traditional fashion, to harbor feminine inhibitions, so I’ve taken advantage, just as someone of Stafford’s ilk would.”
“Stafford sees women as objects to use, vessels to hurt and manipulate for his own pleasure. I know you, Warren. What you do with your wife is not the same.”
“It feels the same to me sometimes.”
“Listen.” Townsend leaned closer to him and lowered his voice. “Don’t tear yourself to pieces. I do everything with my wife.” He raised a brow. “Everything. It’s perfectly all right.”
“Everything?” He regarded his friend, thinking of prim, pure Aurelia. “What do you mean, everything?”
“Everything,” Townsend drawled, with slow, deliberate emphasis. “For Aurelia’s honor, I won’t go into specifics. I’ll only say we engage in a delightful array of marital activities, and it pleases us both. If you’ll recall, you were the one who goaded me to demand what I desired.”
“I was drunk then, and mostly asleep.”
“But you were right. As you know, Aurelia was raised very traditionally. She’s been bred to propriety from the cradle, and yet she enjoys…”
“Everything?”
“Pretty much. Yes.”
Warren let out a low whistle. “How I admire you right now.”
“Don’t admire me,” he said impatiently. “Just wipe that guilty look off your face. You’re nothing like Stafford, because you care about your wife and you want what’s best for her. If you and Josephine enjoy unusual intimacies in your marriage, then get down on your knees and thank the heavens for it. I certainly do.”
The idea of getting down on his knees, and heaven, brought some rather lurid images to Warren’s mind. He turned to seek out Josephine among the dancing couples. He imagined stealing her from her partner and crawling beneath the ruffled skirts of her gown, pushing her back and tossing them over her head…
Townsend grinned and nudged him on the shoulder. “Everyone’s watching you stare, so you might as well go down to her already. I daresay no one will bat an eyelash if you choose to dance with your wife an outrageous number of times.”
A flush heated his cheeks, to be caught staring so avidly. “We’re supposed to be silencing gossip, not inviting more,” he said, tearing his gaze from Josephine.
“You’re supposed to be silencing the wrong kind of gossip, and giving the ton something more pleasant to prattle on about. If it helps, I’ll go reclaim my wife as well. We’ll play reformed rakes, transformed by love and marriage. Come, Warren, add more yearning to your gaze.”
Warren grinned. Easy enough to add more yearning. He couldn’t wait to take her upstairs, away from the music and whirl of society, and be alone with her again.
*** *** ***
Her husband never said so, but Josephine knew he would come to her afterward. She waited up in her dressing gown, peeking out the window at the last of the retreating carriages. Her feet hurt from dancing nearly every dance, many of them with her husband. Her face ached from forced smiles, and her brain hurt from trying to come up with answers to the inane conversation of her dance partners. She had tried to be a gracious countess for Warren.
And he’d told her he was pleased. The last time he danced with her, he’d bowed his head close to hers and murmured “What a very good girl you are,” and the tone of his utterance had reminded her of private and exciting things. His touches, his kisses, his authority, even the punishment he’d given her earlier. She’d clung to him rather too closely for propriety as he’d guided her through dancing figures, but he hadn’t seemed to care.
She turned at a firm tap on the door. A moment later, Warren entered the room. He wore breeches, but nothing else of his formal finery. His defined chest muscles shone in the candlelight, and she had an image of him dancing in the ballroom as he was now. How the ladies would have stared! He had been the handsomest gentleman there, in her estimation. Remarkable, that he was hers.
She felt the strangest impulse to smile at him, to flirt, to be coy and drop her lashes as she’d seen other ladies do, but she didn’t know if she might look ridiculous. Instead she stood still as he approached her. A shy smile trembled at the corners of her lips.
“Lovely Josephine.” He embraced her, pressing his forehead to hers. “I’ve wanted to kiss you all night.” He did so now, gently at first, teasing her mouth open with patient pressure. “Darling,” he said in the midst of this play. “How beautiful you looked in your gown. How gracious and dignified you were.”
“You too,” she whispered, leaning away. “You looked very splendid in your black silk, like an estimable gentleman.”
“We fooled them all, then, didn’t we?” He laughed, swinging her into the one-two-three steps of an abbreviated waltz. She heard a softer, lighter sound of merriment and realized it was coming from her. He pulled faces, humming the music and imitating some of the most notable guests until she grew breathless from laughter.
He stopped, out of breath himself, and swayed with her in the middle of her room. He held her hand in his, palm to palm, against his heart. “Do you remember the night we met, Josephine? At Baxter’s ball?”
“Yes, of course. I found you very strange.”
“The feeling was mutual, but I still wanted to dance with you. Did you want to dance with me? Even a little? Tell the truth.”
She gazed at him, remembering how she’d shrunk from his size, his heat, and his solidity. He had frightened her more than anything. She still felt agitated when he was near, but it was a different sort of agitation now. “I—I was rather afraid to touch you that night. Or even look at you. Much less dance with you.”
He gave his pirate’s grin, dirty and lopsided as a listing ship. “What if you had known then that you would go to bed with me?”
“I would have run screaming from the room.”
He laughed hard at that, and let go of her hand. “Come with me. There’s something I’ve wanted to show you. Nothing to make you run away screaming.” He thought a moment. “Well, perhaps.”
She opened her mouth to protest but he was already drawing her along to his suite of rooms opposite. His furnishings were as bold and masculine as hers were frilly and feminine, all black and deep blue with gold edging that caught the candles’ glow. His bed was gargantuan, big enough across for four people. He tossed her into the middle of it, then went to fetch something from a chest.
“You must forgive me,” he said. “I enjoy playing with you far too much.”
“Forgive you for what?” she asked warily.