Pleasure for Pleasure

Page 84

Tess’s eyes were wide. “Complicated? It’s utterly insane, Josie!”“It is not insane. In fact, it is well-designed.”
“You must be joking. Tell me you’re joking.”
Josie’s eyes narrowed. “If you won’t help me, I’ll simply hire those who will.”
Tess was shaking her head. “No. You can’t do this!”
“Yes, I can.”
“No, you can’t! You can’t drug Mayne.”
Josie waved her hand. “It’s the mildest drug in the world. We give it to horses just to calm them, and Peterkin gave it to the stable boys all the time when they had to have a tooth pulled. It will simply make him sleepy and malleable.”
“You’re talking about your husband,” Tess said, half horrified and half laughing. “How can you possibly plan something like this?”
“It’s necessary,” Josie said stubbornly. “He really thinks he’s in love with her, Tess.”
“Yes, but he’ll come to realize—”
“No, he won’t. I didn’t think about it clearly until I saw him kiss her letter. I can’t live with him, knowing that he loves someone else. I can’t.”
“I don’t believe he does love Sylvie,” Tess said, much more seriously.
“Neither do I.”
“Well, then—”
“He thinks he loves her.”
Tess gave a helpless little laugh. “I just don’t see how—”
“Sylvie is sailing to Belgium. That’s at least two nights on board ship, perhaps more.” She leaned forward. “Neither of us have been aboard ship, but you know what Mr. Tuckfield told us about his trip around the Horn of Africa with his wife.”
“He said that he almost threw her overboard three times,” Tess said. “But Josie, Mr. Tuckfield is a Scottish horse breeder.”
“When Mayne is on board ship with Sylvie, he’ll discover that he’s not in love with her. He won’t throw her overboard—”
“I should hope not!” Tess interjected.
“But he’ll stop kissing her letters and thinking about her.”
“You don’t know that he thinks about her.”
“I don’t know that he doesn’t.”
“Ridiculous!” Tess cried.
“Oh? How would you feel if you thought that Lucius was thinking about someone else when he made love to you?” Josie met her sister’s eye. “If he looked thoughtful, and you didn’t know whether he was remembering a woman he lost? If he murmured something while he was kissing you, and it sounded like a woman’s name to you?”
Tess frowned.
“It will poison us. It already is, a little bit. I can feel it.”
“You are so dramatic. I honestly think you’ve read too many novels, Josie. You never would have come up with this crazy scheme if you hadn’t read all those books.”
“I have always thought a plan of action is the best way to tackle problems.”
“That’s true enough,” Tess said reluctantly. “But I don’t see why this plan has to be so complicated. And involve drugging Mayne!”
“It is actually quite simple. I shall give Mayne a drink that will make him cheerful and sleepy, and then I will send him to the wharfs.”
“You will send him? Like a parcel?”
Josie thought for a second. “I’ll inform the footmen that Mayne wishes to board the Excelsior. That’s the name of Sylvie’s ship.”
“I don’t see why you have to drug him.”
“He won’t get on the ship otherwise.”
“True.”
“You see,” Josie said. “This will work, Tess. And I don’t need your help in the least, so you needn’t worry about it.”
“You do need my help,” Tess said. “Your footmen are Mayne’s footmen, may I remind you. They are not going to drag their sleepy, drugged master onto a ship and leave him there.”
Josie frowned.
There was a moment’s silence and then Tess said reluctantly: “But my footmen will do it.”
“Will you?”
“I don’t approve!”
“Of course not. But will you? Tess”—and there were tears glimmering in her eyes now—“I can’t live knowing that he loves Sylvie. Whether he loves her or not, I mean. I can’t bear the idea that he thinks he loves her.”
Tess gave her a hug.
Griselda was waiting for her brother in her sitting room. “You came!” she cried, jumping to her feet.
He walked in, looking as elegant and unconcerned as ever. Which had to mean that no one else had the chance to inform him before she did. The words started tumbling out: Darlington…Hellgate…the Memoirs…Mayne dropped into a seat before the fire and sat there frowning. He looked outraged. Griselda’s heart dropped into her slippers. He was going to threaten Darlington. Challenge him to a duel. Perhaps kill him.
“You can’t!” she squeaked.
“Can’t what?”
“Call him out.”
“Why the devil would I do that?”
She stared at him. “Aren’t you outraged? You look—”
“Something’s wrong with Josie,” he snapped. “So you’re telling me that Darlington wrote Hellgate’s Memoirs. And you’ve been having an affaire with him. The same Darlington who called my wife a Scottish sausage?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
There was a moment of silence. “I was thinking of killing him for that,” he said slowly.
“You mustn’t.”
“I suppose not. Could you have possibly chosen a more likable fellow to bed?”
“I—” Griselda swallowed back her tears. “I like him a great deal. And he will never say anything as cruel again. He’s terribly sorry about the anguish he caused Josie.”
“Given his abominable prose, I hate to think about the intimacies he’s whispered to you in private.”
“Darlington is not an abominable writer! You—You—”
Mayne’s laugh was that of an infuriating older brother. “Piffle, given his inability to put together an articulate sentence. I would have thought better of you.”
Griselda swallowed hard. “Would you stop funning and think for a moment, you ass!” She never swore. In fact, she could hardly believe it when she heard the word fly out of her mouth.
“Think about what?” Mayne said, a little quieter. “Obviously you’re planning on marrying him.”
“What if he’s merely doing it to turn me into a book?” Griselda shrieked at him. “Have you thought of that?”
There was a moment of silence. “Then I would kill him,” Mayne said.
Griselda met her brother’s eyes.
He came over to her and put a hand on her cheek. “Just because he can’t write doesn’t mean that he’s suicidal, Griselda. I assume that he is proposing marriage?”
She nodded jerkily.
“Yet another reason he might live to walk the aisle,” he said, turning around and scooping up his gloves.
“Don’t you—don’t you care that he wrote that book?” she choked.