Absolute Pleasure (30 page)

She had the appropriate lineage—although her rank hadn't been as high as he'd have liked—and she'd been the prettiest of the season's crop of eligibles, which had definitely made the idea of sex more palatable. The few times that they'd been in each other's company before the wedding, she'd been deferential and respectful, creating the false impression that she'd be a biddable, conscientious, and submissive wife.

In reality, she was never tractable, rarely agreeable, and she didn't comprehend anything about prudent regard for her duties.

He furtively examined her, trying to recollect why he'd ever found her attractive, and instead, he caught himself ruminating over how, of late, she'd been awfully peculiar. Furious, morose, captious, she pretended not to hear him when he spoke to her; she acted as though she didn't notice when he entered a room. While she'd constantly been fussy and acrimonious, she'd recently grown more obstinate.

Once, she'd even had the gall to refuse him sexual services when he'd visited her bed, but he'd set her to rights with the back of his hand and hadn't had to brook any subsequent nonsense.

About what did the bloody girl have to be despondent?

Just when he'd supposed she'd be more contented than ever, her attitude had soured. For months, she'd been harping about Mary, demanding that she be fired, that she be turned out, and now Mary had departed.

But was Charlotte happy? No, she was not!

There was no understanding women!
 
What they wanted. What they needed. He'd never previously figured it out, and obviously, he hadn't gleaned a clue by the ripe old age of fifty.

Unable to fathom his wife, he shifted his attention to his daughter, when it dawned on him that he didn't grasp anything about her, either. She'd undergone significant changes, as well. There was a glow about her, a sparkle, a spring in her step, that he hadn't formerly perceived. She regularly dressed in brightly colored, gadabout clothes that were flawlessly tailored to enhance her demeanor and charm.

While she'd habitually been quiet and somber, she was now carefree, lighthearted, and gay. In fact, as he pondered the circumstances, it seemed that Elizabeth's conversion into a livelier, more vivacious person directly correlated with Charlotte's descent into the doldrums.

How odd.

He held out his glass, and a servant automatically replenished his wine. With liquid courage at the ready, he was braced to expound on the meal and Charlotte's role in the debacle, but just as he opened his mouth, Charlotte leapt into the void.

"Elizabeth, how was your afternoon?" Charlotte was inexplicably rancorous, her query conniving and malicious.

"My afternoon?" Preoccupied, Elizabeth was overtly startled that Charlotte had addressed her. "It was exceptional."

"Really. Where were you?"

"I was sitting for my portrait." Elizabeth was plainly exasperated by the inquisition. "Charlotte, I've explained my whereabouts time and again. Why do you persist in bothering about it?"

Findley stared from one to the other. There was a queer undercurrent to the conversation that he couldn't interpret. Born women were in an elevated state of volatility, with Charlotte quarrelsome and hostile, Elizabeth animated and exuberant.

"How is your
portrait
coming along?" Charlotte sipped her wine, using it to cover a snicker.

"Marvelously well."

"So it's almost finished?"

"Almost."

"Pity," Charlotte said snidely. "You'll soon run out of reasons to call upon your distinguished
friend."

"Yes, it is too bad. He's been wonderful to me, and I've learned a great deal about the creative process. I wish I had the money to be a patron. I'd support as many artists as I could afford."

"A patron! For
dozens
of artists!" Charlotte smothered a strangled sound by pressing her lips to her glass. "What stamina you have!"

"What?" Elizabeth queried, confused.

Abruptly, Charlotte turned to him, and she was ablaze with a bizarre sort of venom. "Milord, I would speak with you privately after our supper has ended."

Taken aback by her malevolent expression, he cleared his throat and sat up straighten "I would speak with
you
now."

His anger peaked in harmony with her own, the excessive wine causing his temper to flare over matters about which he ordinarily couldn't have cared less. "This food is atrocious."

"But I've accounted for why—"

"No more quibbling." He slammed his fist on the table, making the silver—and the two women—jump. "You have one week to correct your shortcomings in home management. If I dine at this table next Friday night and endure anything similar, I will strip you of your responsibilities"— he leaned toward her, his larger size reminding her of his dominion over her—"and I will confer them upon Elizabeth, once more."

There! Let her stew! Charlotte's pride was one of her few redeeming qualities, therefore, there was no worse insult he could level, no more demeaning renunciation he could pronounce. "I will no longer tolerate your deficiencies or lapses. Have I made myself clear? Unless you show serious improvement, I will have no choice: Elizabeth shall run this house."

"Actually, Father"—Elizabeth flashed the most annoying smile—"I don't fancy having the household chores bestowed upon me ever again. As you counseled, I've involved myself in various other activities, and they adequately engross me. I'm much too busy to superintend the house or the staff. I really have no interest in reestablishing our prior arrangement."

He analyzed her protractedly, thinking that she had metamorphosed into someone with whom he was not acquainted. She didn't want to oversee the house? She was too ... too ...
busy?

His marriage, and how it had produced a vacuum in her life, had been an incessant protest for months! What was wrong with her? Had the damned woman gone batty?

"If I command it," he imperiously decreed, "you
shall
handle it for me. And I shan't listen to any objection. My residence will be put in order!" Rampageous, he rose, violently tossing his napkin. "Now, if you'll excuse me—"

"May I speak with you, milord?" Charlotte repeated her solicitation, springing up and blocking his exit, determined to hash out whatever petty dilemma weighed on her.

"No, you may not."

Gripping her forearms, he lifted her, and physically deposited her to the side, then he stomped out and stormed down the hall to his library, the sole sanctuary he possessed in this madhouse of crazed females.

As he passed the butler, he curtly decreed, "I am not to be disturbed! By anyone!"

He slammed the door and poured himself a stiff whiskey, gulping down the contents. On his empty stomach, with his supper uneaten and the wine sloshing about, the amber concoction gurgled and burned, and he plopped down in the chair behind his desk, rubbing his tender, unsettled abdomen while cursing Mary. Charlotte. Elizabeth.

Tired and aggravated, he closed his eyes, relishing the quiet, when to his shock and consternation, the door squeaked, the noisy hinges apprising him of an interloper.

His temper simmered. Had he no authority left in his own home? Was there not an individual remaining who paid heed to anything he said? Who dared contradict his mandate for privacy?

He whipped his eyes open, and to his amazement and fury, his visitor was Charlotte. She had deigned to confront him! Despite his current ill humor! He truly could not bear any trivial feminine complaints!

"Am I now to add
deafness
to your many faults, Charlotte?" He stood, his body a rock of tense muscles and ire. "I could have sworn I just told you that I am in no mood to deal with whatever it is you're intent on sharing. Begonel At once!"

"But milord—"

"Go!" he roared, cutting her off. "Leave me be!"
   

"This can't wait."

"I don't care!"

"It has to do with Elizabeth." Ignoring his directive, she waltzed in, sitting across from him in one of his favorite chairs.

"What about Elizabeth?" His jaw was clenched so tightly that he worried he might crack a tooth.

"I would discuss the artist she's been seeing."

As she was fairly glimmering with spite, he was swamped by the impression that she was up to no good. She thrived on trouble, mischief was her forte, so he was instantly on guard.

"What about him?"

"His name is Gabriel Cristofore."

Elizabeth had sporadically mentioned the man. "And…
?”

"He's not painting her."

Suddenly, she was blushing, her cheeks so red that he prayed she might burst into flames and put them all out of their misery. "What's he about then, Charlotte? If you have something to say, say it and be done!"

"He's ... he's..."—she choked it out—"having marital relations with her."

Findley assessed her composure, while he calculated the impact of what she'd just contended. "Are you maintaining that Elizabeth and this artist are—"

"Yes." She nodded eagerly, believing she wouldn't have to clarify.

"In the middle of the afternoon, in his studio, where anyone might walk in on them"—a tic started in his cheek, and he speculated as to whether her accusation was genuine, or if she was simply stirring a pot of adversity— "they're getting naked and... and ..
fucking?
   
Is that what you're claiming?"

At his use of the indelicate term, her bravado faded. She studied the floor, her nervous fingers fiddling with her skirts. "Aye, Lord Norwich."

"And you know this because…?”

"I saw them."

"Today?"

"Yes, that's what caused the problems with supper. I was so distraught! I couldn't supervise the kitchen."

"No, of course not" He toyed with the chain of his watch. "Just how did it happen that you stumbled upon them?"

"Well, Elizabeth had waxed on about Mr. Cristofore’s talent, so I proposed to visit him and request his doing a portrait of me, but when I arrived, I... I..."

She couldn't finish her sentence, and she continued to scrutinize the floor. Either she was too embarrassed to specify what she'd observed, or she couldn't concoct a satisfactory lie on the spur of the moment He couldn't deduce which problem harried her. He prodded: "You walked in and ... ?"

"Well, no one appeared to be at home, although Elizabeth's carriage was parked out front, so I looked in the window."

"My Countess of Norwich was spying from the lawn like a bloody Peeping Tom?"

"It wasn't like that," she warily attested.

"What was it
like,
then?" Out of patience, he crudely postulated, "Were they rutting like beasts in the forest? Going at it like a couple of dogs in a barnyard?"

"She was ... she was on her knees, and he was roughly taking her from behind."

"Did he spill his seed inside her?"

"Yes! Then, they kissed for a long while and started in again. With Elizabeth on her back, and the artist on top."

Gad! Could it be true? He couldn't imagine Charlotte inventing such a horrid story, notwithstanding how the two women disliked one another. Not even Charlotte would stoop so low. Would she?

And what about Elizabeth? She'd always been so well behaved, so trustworthy. Would she comport herself so reprehensibly?

A remote hope flared, and he asked, "Might you have been mistaken, and he was forcing himself upon her?"

"No. She was willingly participating."

The pathetic wench had spied on them long enough to know! Though he needed solitude to assimilate the dreadful tidings, he pointlessly inquired, "Why have you come to me?"

"I felt you had to be informed."

"So that I could do what?" He wasn't interested in her advice; he was merely curious about what selfish methods she'd formulated as to how he should pursue a resolution.

"Well, my original opinion was that we must find her a husband, but then"—finally in her element, she tenaciously stared at him as if they were coconspirators—"I realized that she's ruined herself. Why ... she might even now be with child. No gentleman would have her."

The irony was not lost on him: His unwed, spinsterish daughter might be sinfully, shamefully increasing, while his young, healthy wife consistently exhibited—month after disappointing month—her inability to conceive.

What next?
he petulantly wailed. How else would the women in his life torment him?

"If not marriage, then what do you suggest?"

"She should be sent to Norwich, in perpetuity, so that she's secluded from decent people."

"Such as yourself, you mean?"

"Absolutely." Charlotte missed his sarcasm. "I shouldn't have to be sullied by her wicked presence."

"Barring that move?"

"She must be confined to the house. To her rooms. Not let out. Ever. Not to socialize or fraternize, not to shop or mingle about town, not to attend her charitable functions or those musicales she enjoys."

"Who would act as her jailer? You?"

"If you asked it of me"—striving to seem demure and sympathetic, she bowed her head—"I would gladly assist you."