Midnight Quill Trio

Chapter 6-2

Gareth chewed once, twice, and then glanced at Edward.

Edward smiled. Told you so.

Gareth chewed again, doggedly.

“Might be another week before the bridge is fixed,” Strickland said, a sharp note of petulance in his voice. “A week! I don’t know what this parish is coming to.”

Gareth finally swallowed. He washed the mouthful down with a large gulp of tea and laid the rest of the shortbread on his plate.

“I’ve been saying for years that it needed to be replaced,” Strickland said testily. “But no one paid the slightest attention to me! Why, it was plainly obvious—”

The entrance of Lady Marchbank and Mrs. Dunn into the library halted his complaint. The introductions were made again, more tea was poured, and Strickland continued his criticism of the parish’s roads.

Edward idly watched the others. Lady Marchbank nodded in agreement to everything her brother said, her head going up and down like a marionette’s. Miss Chapple didn’t appear to be listening to her uncle. She was watching Gareth. A slight frown sat on her brow. He thought she was seeing the thinness of Gareth’s face, the lines of pain.

He caught Mrs. Dunn glancing at Gareth, too. Her gaze wandered over him. She paused at the missing arm. She didn’t recoil or show revulsion. Her mouth tucked in slightly at the corners. He wasn’t certain how to interpret that. Pity?

Edward grimaced. No man wished to be the object of pity.

“—you must stay at Creed Hall, Sir Gareth.”

Edward’s attention jerked back to his host.

“Here, you’ll know the sheets have been properly aired!”

But the bedchamber will be colder than a witch’s teat. Edward caught Gareth’s eye and shook his head fractionally.

Gareth took the hint. “Thank you, but the inn is perfectly adequate for my needs.”

Strickland looked at Gareth’s left arm. “Hardly suitable for a man in your condition.”

Gareth’s mouth tightened. “I shall stay at the inn.”

A short silence fell. “Looks like snow, don’t you think?” Edward said, at the same time that Miss Chapple and Mrs. Dunn also spoke.

The moment of awkwardness passed. The discussion turned to the weather. Five minutes later, Gareth stood to take his leave. “You’ll dine with us tonight, of course,” Strickland said.

Edward caught his friend’s eye again. He shook his head minutely.

Gareth accepted the invitation.

Edward accompanied Gareth out to the stableyard. “Extremely foolish,” he said, as they strolled between the puddles.

“What is?”

“Accepting an invitation to dine here.”

Gareth snorted. “I’ve eaten bad food before.”

“It’s not just the food,” Edward said. “It’s what comes afterwards.”

Gareth narrowed his eyes at him. “What?”

“You’ll see. A word of advice: counting helps.”

Gareth’s expression became baffled. “What?”

Edward spied the groom. “Hoby! Sir Gareth would like his horse.”

The groom touched the brim of his battered cloth cap and disappeared into the gloom of the stables.

Gareth dug in his coat pocket. “The Confessions,” he said, handing Edward a packet. “All of them.”

“All of them?” Edward said, startled. The first installment of Chérie’s Confessions had been released—and immediately sold out—several months ago. “Where on earth did you find them?”

“Bought them off Roxborough. He had the whole collection. Cost me a small fortune.” Gareth fixed him with a piercing stare. “What the devil do you want them for?”

Edward turned the package over in his hand. “Chérie’s in the village.”

Gareth’s mouth fell open. “Here? In Soddy Morton?”

Edward nodded.

Gareth blinked. “Well,” he said. “I never.”

“I’ve promised Strickland I’ll find her.” Edward’s fingers itched to open the package. Resolutely, he thrust it in his pocket. “I’m hoping the confessions will give me a clue to her identity.”

“Well, I never,” Gareth said again.

Gareth returned to Creed Hall just before six. He had shaved and changed his clothes. Edward waited impatiently for the clock to strike the hour. He was eager for the evening to begin, eager to see Gareth’s reactions to the treats in store for him.

First came the pronouncement that dinner would be a silent meal. “For the sake of our digestion,” Strickland said solemnly.

“Er . . . of course,” Gareth said.

Edward hid a grin.

Second was the food itself. Boiled veal, boiled cod, boiled cabbage. Even the mushrooms appeared to have been boiled.

Gareth ate deftly with one hand, choosing those dishes that were easily managed with just a fork. Edward watched as his friend speared a boiled kidney on the fork tines, as he chewed—hesitated—and then resolutely chewed again. Finally he swallowed and reached for his glass of wine.

The wine was thin and watered-down.

Gareth almost choked. He placed the glass back down, his lips moving in a barely suppressed grimace. He glanced across the table at Edward.

Edward smiled blandly. I warned you. He returned his attention to his food, chuckling inside.

But when he next looked up from his plate, his amusement was quenched. Gareth was gazing at Mrs. Dunn.

Edward watched while Gareth cataloged Mrs. Dunn’s features, apparently liking what he saw. His heart sank. Gareth had always had a liking for petite blondes and Mrs. Dunn was a particularly fine specimen—but a lightskirt was what Gareth needed in the wake of Miss Swinthorp’s desertion, not a penniless widow who’d leap at the chance of a wealthy husband.

He speared a piece of boiled cod and frowned across the table at an oblivious Mrs. Dunn. Don’t you dare take advantage of him.

After dinner, came the port. Gareth manfully drank the oversweet wine. Catching Edward’s eye, he grimaced expressively. Edward smirked—I told you so—but his heart wasn’t in it. He observed carefully as they entered the drawing room. Gareth’s gaze went straight to Mrs. Dunn.

Mrs. Dunn looked up. She, too, seemed to be searching for one face in particular: Gareth’s. When their eyes met, she colored faintly and dropped her gaze to her needlework.

Hell and damnation.

“My niece reads to us each evening,” Strickland told Gareth.

“How delightful,” Gareth said, wrenching his gaze from Mrs. Dunn.

They sat, accepted cups of tea, and settled back to listen.

“The reading is from Fordyce,” Miss Chapple told Gareth. She looked down at the open page. “Sermon Five. On Female Virtue, Friendship, and Conversation.”

Edward intercepted an appalled glance from Gareth. He sipped his tea. I did warn you.

This evening he didn’t try to count words; he let his thoughts drift. Miss Chapple’s voice was melodious. It was like listening to music—the cadence of the words, the rise and fall of her voice, the mellow tone.

His thoughts looped slowly, from the dank woods and gray lake, to gingerbread, to Gareth’s unexpected arrival, to the full set of Chérie’s Confessions Gareth had brought.

He’d read the first two confessions before dinner, trying to ignore Tigh’s tuneless whistling while the bâtman laid out his evening clothes. The confessions had been less explicit than the later ones, but still quite candid. The paragraphs had brought vivid memories to life: the warm softness of a female body in his bed, teasing fingers trailing over his skin, the urgency of escalating arousal, the exquisite moment of physical release.

Thinking about it made a tendril of desire unfurl inside him. Heat shivered over Edward’s skin. He jerked his thoughts away from the confessions. It was a relief that his body was capable of arousal again, but now was not the time or place. He focused his attention on Miss Chapple, but her voice was warm and smooth and silken. It made his thoughts slide sideways again, to Chérie’s Confessions, to the heat and pleasure of s*x.

Edward frowned. He shook himself mentally. For heaven’s sake, Ned. Control yourself! For the rest of the sermon, he concentrated on counting the thes.

Edward fell asleep in his frigid bedchamber and awoke lying on the battlefield at Waterloo. For a moment he blinked, dizzy, while the sky swung above his head and the roar of cannons filled his ears. “Get up, Ned!” someone shouted.

Edward tried to focus his eyes. He saw Toby’s face above him, urgent. “Get up!”

Edward squeezed his eyes shut. Wake up! he told himself. Wake the hell up!

Shells whistled overhead, a horse screamed—and then abruptly he was awake.

Edward lay beneath the covers, gasping. His heart thundered against his ribs, trying to batter its way out of his chest. After a moment he pushed up on one elbow and rubbed his face, feeling the prickle of stubble beneath his hand and the ridges of the scars.

He blew out a breath. It was getting easier to tear himself free from that particular dream. He’d managed not to witness the moment of Toby’s death, had managed not to feel Toby’s blood spray across his face.

He could taste the memory of blood on his tongue, though. Could smell it. And Toby’s voice still rang in his ears. Get up, Ned!

Edward pushed aside the bedclothes and climbed out of bed. The room was dark but for a tiny glow from the coals in the fireplace. The floor was icily cold.

Fumbling, he found a candle and lit it. The room sprang into view. The solid reality of it—faded curtains, dying fire—pushed the dream even further away. The taste and scent of blood faded.

His heartbeat slowed, his breathing steadied, but he knew that a return to sleep was impossible.

Edward fished the first volume of Pride and Prejudice out from under his mattress and climbed back into bed. He flicked to the tenth chapter and settled down to read, but the words failed to hold his attention. The book was well-written and amusing, but his thoughts kept straying to the other tales hidden beneath the mattress.

After rereading the same page three times, Edward gave up. He hid Pride and Prejudice again and took out Chérie’s Confessions. He put aside the two he’d read that afternoon and settled down to read the next in the sequence. It was dated September, 1815.

In response to your request, dear reader, for another confession from my pen, here is a tale from when I was but new in this most ancient of professions. I had recently come under the protection of a most worthy lady, Mrs. B., who kept an elegant and discreet house in L. Street.

Upon this particular occasion, Mrs. B. introduced me to a bashful young gentleman who was far more of a novice than I. Indeed, dear reader, it was to be my task to initiate him into that most pleasurable and tender of mysteries! In short, I was to be the recipient of his virginity.

Edward read the tale with amusement. The confession was more explicit in its detail than the first two, but as far as he could tell, it held no clues as to Chérie’s true identity. Just to be certain, he read it twice.

Next, he read the fourth confession, the tale of a brawny sailor whose “noble proportions” once he’d removed his clothes had made Chérie’s eyes almost start from her head. Edward snorted a laugh at this description. He read on: Indeed, dear reader, I was so alarmed by his dimensions that I shrank back and declared myself unable to accommodate his needs.

The sailor, however, was undeterred. After a page of coaxing, he succeeded in removing Chérie’s clothes and the tale proceeded to its predictable conclusion, where the sailor’s “excessive vigor” took Chérie to such heights of pleasure that she momentarily lost consciousness.

Edward snorted again. He laid the confession aside and sat thinking for several minutes, while the candle flickered in the draft. It seemed to him that each of the first four confessions had been more explicit than the last, as if Chérie had been gaining confidence in her writing.

Was it fact, or fiction? The physical descriptions rang true—the heat and the urgency—but the characters were mere ciphers: the bashful young gentleman, the brawny sailor.

For the life of him, he couldn’t tell whether Chérie was a man pretending to be a woman, like the author of Fanny Hill, or a woman. He wished he had a copy of Fanny Hill to compare with the confessions. It might give him a clue as to Chérie’s true gender.

Edward yawned. He hid the confessions under the mattress, blew out the candle, and climbed back into bed. Waterloo was utterly gone from his mind. The only subject on his thoughts while he drifted to sleep was how soon he could return to London and acquire a chère-amie of his own.