Chapter I
Chapter I
Chapter One
[Isabella's POV]
London
May 1870
There was no light in the room other than that given off by the flames in the ornate marble fireplace. The fire was low, but managed to throw the couple on the divan into deep silhouette. Still, I was able to make out their features.
I knew who they were. I knew who they were very well indeed. I had, after all, recognized my fiancé's laugh through the closed door, which was why I'd opened it in the first place.
Unfortunately, it appeared I should have knocked first, since I'd obviously interrupted a moment of utmost intimacy. And though I knew that I should leave -- or, at the very least, make my presence known -- I found that I could not move. I was riveted where I stood, staring quite against my will at the Lady Victoria Seldon's breasts, which had come out of the bodice of her gown, and were now bouncing vigorously up and down in rhythm to the thrusting hips of the man who lay between Lady Victoria's thighs.
It occurred to me, as I stood there with one gloved hand gripping the doorknob, and the other clutching the frame, that my own breasts had never bounced with such wild abandon.
Of course, my breasts weren't nearly as large as Lady Victoria's.Which might explain why it was the Lady her, and not me, who was astride the Marquis of Winchilsea.
I had not been aware of James predilection for large-breasted women, but apparently Lord Winchilsea had found me lacking in that particular category, and had therefore sought out someone better suited to his tastes. Which was certainly his right, of course. Only that I couldn't help thinking he might have had the courtesy not to do it in one of Dame Ashforth's sitting rooms, in the middle of a dinner party.
'I suppose I should faint', I thought, and gripped the doorknob tighter, in case the floor should suddenly rush up to meet my face, as often happened to the heroines of the novels my maids sometimes left laying about, and which I sometimes picked up and read.
Only of course I didn't faint. I had after all never fainted in her life, not even the time I fell off my horse and broke my arm in two places. I rather wished that I would faint, because then I might at least have been spared the sight of the Lady Victoria inserting her finger into James's mouth.
'Now why', I wondered, 'did she do that?' Did men enjoy having women's fingers shoved into their mouths?
Evidently they did, because the marquis began at once to suck noisily upon it.
Why hadn't anyone ever mentioned this to me? If the marquis had wanted me to put her finger into his mouth, I most certainly would have done so, if it would have made him happy. Really, it was completely unnecessary for him to turn to Lady Victoria -- with whom he was barely acquainted, let alone engaged -- for something as simple as that.
Beneath Lady Victoria, the Marquis of Winchilsea let out a groan -- rather muffled, with Lady Victoria's finger in the way. I saw his hand move from Lady Victoria's hip to one of those sizable breasts. James had not removed either his coat or his shirt. Well, I supposed he'd be able to rejoin the dinner party more quickly that way. But surely with the fire -- not to mention the heat Lady Victoria's body was surely generating -- he must have been overly warm.
He didn't seem to mind, however. The hand which had gone to cup Lady Victoria's breast moved to the back of her long neck, where fine tendrils of fire red hair had escaped from the complicated coronet of curls atop her head. Then James pulled her face down until her lips touched his. Lady Victoria had to remove her finger from his mouth in order to better accommodate her tongue, which she placed there instead.
'Well, that's it, then. The wedding is most definitely off.'
I wondered if I ought to declare it, then and there. Suck in my breath and interrupt the lovers in their embrace (if that was the correct term for it), make a scene.
But then I decided that she simply wouldn't be able to endure what undoubtedly would follow: the excuses, the recriminations, James ranting about his love for me, Victoria's tears. If Lady Victoria could cry, that is, which I rather doubted.
Really, what else could I do but turn around and leave the room as quietly as I had entered it? Praying that James and Victoria were too preoccupied to hear the latch click, I eased the door gently closed behind me and only then I released a long-held breath.
It was dark in the corridor just outside the sitting room door. Dark and cool, unlike the rest of Dame Ashforth's town house, which was crowded with nearly a hundred guests and almost as many servants. No one was very likely to come this way, since all the champagne and food and music was a floor below.
No one except pathetically abandoned fiancées, like myself, that is.
My knees suddenly started feeling a little weak, I sank down onto the third and fourth steps of the narrow servants' staircase just opposite the door I'd closed so quietly. I knew that I was not, going to faint but I did feel a little nauseous. I would need some time to compose myself before going back downstairs. Leaning one elbow upon my knee, I rested my chin in my hand and regarded that door through the slender bars of the banister, wondering what I ought to do now.
It seemed to me that the thing any normal girl would do was cry, after all, I had just caught my fiancé in the arms -- well, to be accurate, the legs -- of another. I thought, that I should be weeping and storming to find my future husband on that situation, and I wanted to weep and storm. I really did. I even tried to summon up some tears, but none came.
'I suppose, that I can't cry because I'm terrifically angry. Yes, that must be it. I am livid with rage, and that's why I can't cry. Why, I should go find a pistol and come back and shoot Lady Victoria in the heart with it. That's what I ought to do.'
But the thought left me feeling more physically weak than ever, and I was quite glad that I had sat down. I didn't like guns, and could not imagine ever shooting anyone with one -- not even Lady Victoria Seldon, who quite thoroughly deserved it.
'Besides,' I told myself, 'even if I could shoot her -- which I quite positively couldn't -- I wouldn't. What would be the point anyway? I'd only be arrested. And then I'd have to go to jail'.
I knew more than I'd ever wanted to know about jail, because my best friend Alice was a member of the London Society for Women's Suffrage, and had been arrested several times for chaining herself to the carriage wheels of various members of Parliament.
I did not want to go to jail, which Alice had described in all its lurid detail, any more than I wanted to put a bullet through anyone.
'And supposing, they find me guilty. I'll be hanged and for what? For shooting Lady Victoria? It would hardly be worth it.' I didn't have anything particularly against Lady Victoria she had always been perfectly civil to me.
I decided, if I was going to shoot anybody -- which i wasn't, of course -- it would have to be James. Why, not even one hour ago he'd been whispering into my ear that he couldn't wait for our wedding night, which was only one month away.
Well, evidently he was so impatient for it that he'd been forced to seek out someone else entirely with whom to rehearse it.
'Cheating bastard!' I tried to think up some other wicked words that I had overheard her younger brother Jasper and his friends call one another. 'Oh, yes. Whoremonger!'
'It would serve that whoremongering cheating bastard right if I shot him.' And then I felt a rush of guilt for even thinking such a thing. Because of course I was perfectly conscious of how very much she owed James. And not just because of what he'd done for Jass, either, but because out of all the girls in London, he'd singled me out to marry, me to be the sole recipient of those slow, seductive kisses.
Or at least, that's what I'd thought up until very recently. Now I realized that not only was I far from being the sole recipient of those kisses, but that the ones I'd been receiving were quite different from the ones Lady Victoria was apparently used to.
'Damn!' She brought up her other elbow, and now rested her chin in both hands. What was I supposed to do?
The correct thing, of course, would be for James to call it off. The marquis was invariably correct in all of his activities -- well, with the exception of this one, of course -- and so I thought it was not unreasonable to hope that he might be the one to break off their engagement, thus sparing me the embarrassment of having to do so. 'Darling,' I pictured him saying. 'I am sorry, but you see, it turns out I've met a girl I like a tremendously lot better than you...,' but no. The Marquis of Winchilsea was nothing if not polite. He would probably say something like, 'Isabella, my sweet, don't ask me to explain why, but I can't in good faith follow through with it. You understand, don't you, old sport?'
And I would probably say that I understood, because I was an old sport. Lady Victoria Seldon was a strikingly attractive woman, who sang and played the harp quite beautifully, as talented as she was lovely. She would make any man a wonderful wife, although she hadn't any money, of course. Everyone knew that. The Seldons -- Lady Victoria's father had been the fourteenth Duke of Childes -- were an ancient and very well-respected family, but they hadn't a penny to their name, only a few manor houses and an abbey or two scattered here and there.
That James, whose family was just as noble but likewise just as poor, would have chosen to align himself with the Seldons wasn't surprising, though I wasn't certain it was the most prudent thing he had ever done. What did he and Lady Victoria imagine they were going to live on, anyway? Because unless they rented out all of those magnificent properties to some wealthy Americans, they hadn't any source of income to speak of.
But what did income matter, to two people in love? It wasn't any of my concern, anyway, how the pair of them got on. Her problem was this: What was she going to tell her mother?
The Dowager Lady Esme was not going to take this well. Not by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the news was likely to send her into one of her infamous fits. She quite thoroughly adored James. Why shouldn't she? He had, after all, saved the life of her only son. The debt that my family owed the marquis was enormous. By agreeing to marry him, I had hoped, in some small way, to repay his kindness.
But now it was quite clear that winning my hand hadn't been any particular accomplishment for the young marquis. How humiliating!
And the invitations had already been sent out. Five hundred of them, to be exact. Five hundred people -- the best of London society. I supposed that I was going to have to write to all of them. I began to feel a bit like crying when I thought of that, Five hundred letters. That was a bit much, my hand usually cramped up after only two or three.
'James ought to be the one to write the letters', I said to myself, bitterly. After all, he was the one who'd broken the rules. But James, who was much more of an outdoorsman than an intellectual, had never written anything longer than a check, so I knew counting on any help from him in that quarter was foolish to the extreme.
Perhaps I could merely put an announcement in the paper. Yes, that was it. Something tasteful, explaining that the wedding of Lady Isabella Marie Swan, only daughter of the first Earl of Bartlett, and only sister of the second, and James Devenmore Slater, tenth Marquis of Winchilsea, was regretfully called off.
Called off? Was that the right term for it?
Lord, how embarrassing! Thrown over for Lady Victoria Seldon! What would the girls back in school say?
Well, it could have been worse, I consoled myself. I just couldn't think how, but I supposed it could.
And then, quite suddenly, it was.
Someone was coming. And not out of the sitting room, either, but down the corridor. It was someone who was looking for Lady Victoria, I realized, as soon as the light from the candelabra he was holding illuminated his features enough for her to recognize them.
And when I did, my heart stopped beating. Some would say that was impossible but I was quite sure of that, my heart actually stopped beating for a moment. It hadn't done that when I'd opened the sitting room door and seen her fiancé making love to another woman. No, not at all.
But it did so now.
In spite of the candelabra, his foot hit the leg of a small table, on which rested a vase of dried flowers. When Edward Cullen's foot hit the table, the vase wobbled, and then fell over, sending a number of dried petals floating down onto the carpet runner below. He cursed beneath his breath, and leaned down to right the vase. I watched him from between the banister bars, saw that he looked more annoyed than he should, for someone who'd only accidentally knocked over some dried flowers.
'He knows', I thought. 'Good Lord, he knows'
This just might end in bloodshed after all.
Without conscious thought, I rose to my feet, and said, "H-hullo." Only my voice came out sounding extraordinarily breathless.
Edward Cullen looked up sharply. "Who's there?" he asked.
"It's only me," I said. Whatever was the matter with my voice? It sounded ridiculously high-pitched, I made an attempt to lower it. "Isabella Sawn, sir. I sat next to you last month at a dinner at Lady Chittenhouse's. You probably don't remember...."
"Oh. Lady Isabella. Of course."
There was no mistaking the disappointment in his deep voice. As I'd been speaking, he'd raised the candelabra and looked at me. I knew perfectly well what he'd seen: a young woman of medium height and medium weight, whose hair was deep boring brown, and whose eyes were neither blue nor green, but quite emphatically chocolate brown. I knew that I did not possess anything like the stunning dark beauty of Lady Victoria Seldon, but I also knew -- because my brother Jasper had told me, and brothers were nothing if not brutally honest -- that I wasn't a girl to pass over without a second look, either.
But Edward Cullen certainly passed me over, quite without a second look. 'As if he were anything much to look at himself,' I thought, with some indignation. 'Conceited pig.' After all, he wasn't nearly as handsome as James. Whereas the Marquis of Winchilsea was a golden Adonis, with his curly blond hair, blue eyes, fair complexion, and tall, arrow-straight frame, Edward Cullen was dark as sin, broad across the shoulders to the point of being barrel-chested, and always looked as if he needed a shave even right after he'd just had one.
Edward Cullen lowered the candelabra and said, "I don't suppose you've seen Lady Victoria Seldon come this way, have you?"
My gaze darted toward the sitting room door. I hadn't meant it to, I hadn't meant to look anywhere near that door. But my gaze was drawn to it as surely as the moon drew the tide.
"Lady Victoria?" I echoed, stalling for time.
What would happen, i wondered, if I told him she had seen Lady Victoria? That she was, in fact, just inside that door?
Why, Edward Cullen would kill James, that's what. Jasper had told me all about the man he referred to admiringly as "Cullen." How "Cullen," who'd been born in Seven Dials, the poorest, seediest district in London, had made a fortune in the firearms business. How "Cullen" was as ruthless in his personal life as he was in his business affairs. How "Cullen" was known for considering a bullet the swiftest way to handle problems in either area, a fact which was not hurt by his being a world-renowned crack shot with a pistol.
Why, James couldn't have hit the side of Westminster Abbey with a pistol, even by throwing the silly thing.
"Yes," Edward Cullen said, eyeing me curiously. "Lady Victoria Seldon. Surely you know her."
"Oh," I awkwardly said. "Yes, I know her...."
"Well," he said. The patience in his voice sounded quite forced. "Have you seen her go by here? With a... gentleman, perhaps? I have reason to believe she was not alone."
I swallowed.
How odious this was! Perhaps much more for him than for me, because of course there was the fact that "Cullen" had supposedly bedded more women than any man in London. This was not something my brother had announced at the breakfast table, but something I'd overheard him discussing with his friends. According to Jasper, "Cullen" apparently had as many lovers as the infamous Don Juan. In fact, Japer and his friends called him -- with straight faces, no less -- the Lothario of London.
Only lately had the Lothario finally settled down, and made an offer of marriage to the most beautiful and accomplished woman in all of England, Lady Victoria Seldon. Who at that very moment was straddling my fiancé, the Marquis of Winchilsea.
Just imagine how a proud, self-made man like Edward Cullen -- a man who was universally admired for his skills as a lover -- would feel when he found out his own fiancée had betrayed him. And with the Marquis of Winchilsea, no less, of all people, who hadn't a penny to his name, only his very pretty face to live upon! Why, all I needed to do was say a word -- just one word -- and I wouldn't need to worry myself again with the wording of the Times announcement: My wedding to the Marquis of Winchilsea would have to be called off due to his untimely death.
I shook myself. Good Lord, what was I thinking? I couldn't allow Edward Cullen to shoot James. Not after the way James had saved Jasper.
"I did see her," I admitted, finally. I pointed toward the far end of the corridor. "She went that way."
Edward Cullen's face hardened. He hadn't a very handsome face to begin with, in the traditional sense of the word, and it had not been treated kindly by life -- he bore the deep scar of what looked like a knife wound in his right eyebrow.
But when that face hardened with determination, it became almost frightening to look at -- like looking at the face of the devil himself. What in heaven all the women he'd bedded had seen in him, I couldn't imagine. I looked away, and concentrated instead on a vision in my mind's eye of the face of the Marquis of Winchilsea, which was every bit as angelic as Edward Culeen's was...not. ~
"Was she with anyone?"
I glanced in his direction. "I beg your pardon?"
"I asked -- " He took a deep breath, as if for patience. "Was Lady Victoria with anyone? A man?"
I replied quietly, "Why, yes, she was." There, I told myself. That ought to get rid of him in a hurry. And thus keep him from discovering the truth, which lay just beyond that door, a few feet away.
The smile Edward Cullen's lips curled into upon hearing this sent a convulsive shiver up my spine. So pleased -- so diabolically pleased -- did he look, that for a moment, my breath caught in my throat. Why, he really was a devil!
"Thank you, Lady Isabella," Edward Cullen said, sounding a good deal more cordial than he had before. And then he started down the hallway, and I tried to breathe once again.
And found that I couldn't.
This was alarming, to say the least. But i was determined not to let Edward Cullen know of my distress. No, what was important was not that I could no longer breathe, but that he would go away, far, far away, so that James might have a chance to escape....
Only my efforts to hide my discomfort did not appear to have been very effective, since just as he passed the staircase upon which I stood, Edward Cullen turned and looked back at her, inquisitively.
"Are you quite all right, Lady Isabella?" he asked.
He knew, though I didn't know how. I'd made no sound. How could I? I couldn't breathe.
I nodded vigorously. "Perfectly well," I managed to wheeze. "You'd better hurry, or you might miss her."
But Edward Cullen did not hurry. Oh, he looked very much as if he might have liked to. But instead he remained exactly where he was, looking at her with what, if I hadn't already caught a glimpse of that wicked smile, I might have thought was concern.
But no one with a smile as evil as that could be capable of feeling concern.
"I think you're lying," Edward Cullen said, and I felt as if her heart might explode.
'He knows! I thought, frantically. Oh, God, he knows! And now he's going to kill James, and it will be all my fault!'
But then he said, "You aren't perfectly well. You've lost all the color from your face, and you seem to be having difficulty drawing breath."
"Nonsense," I gasped. Though I was lying, of course. I was gulping in enormous amounts of air, only none of it appeared to be actually getting into my lungs.
"It isn't nonsense." Edward Cullen retraced his steps. When he'd reached the stairs on which I stood, he leaned over and laid a hand upon the back of my neck, just as, a few moments before, I had seen the Marquis of Winchilsea lay his hand upon the back of Lady Victoria's neck.
My heart, which had skipped a beat when I'd first seen Edward Cullen come down the hall, now started to beat so fast, I was certain it might burst. Good Lord, I thought, irrationally. He's going to kiss me. He's going to do to me whatever it is he's done to all those women he's supposedly bedded. And I shall be perfectly incapable of stopping him, because he's the Lothario of London.
Oddly, I found the thought of being kissed by Edward Cullen not in the least upsetting.
Only instead of tilting my head up so that he could kiss me, the Lothario of London said, commandingly, "Sit down."
I was so startled that I sat without question. I didn't suppose there were many people who would dare to disobey an order given by the great "Cullen," which was undoubtedly why he was so successful a businessman, not to mention lover.
Then Edward Cullen's hand on my neck tightened, and, incredibly, he pushed my head down until it was between my knees.
"There," he said, with some satisfaction. "Stay like that, and you'll be better in no time."
"Um. Thank you, Mr. Cullen." I said, my voice muffled against the stiff white satin.
My disappointment that he hadn't tried to kiss me or molest me in any way, despite my dislike of him, was profound, and extremely disturbing.
"Think nothing of it," Edward Cullen said.
Whoremonger! I thought to myself, as I stared into my own lap. 'I suppose I'm not good enough to seduce. After all, who am I? Oh, only the daughter of the first Earl of Bartlett. A nothing. A no one. I'm certainly no great beauty, like Lady Victoria Seldon. And I don't have any manor houses in the Lake District.
But there's one thing I jolly well do have that Lady Victoria doesn't: the common decency not to sleep with another woman's fiancé.
Oh, and a bit of money, too, of course, I added.
I expected him to go then, but he did not. The strong hand remained on the back of my neck. It was surprisingly warm.
"Ridiculous things, corsets," Edward Cullen went on, conversationally. "Ought to be abolished."
To say that I was astonished that a man as great as Edward Cullen was standing in a hallway with his hand upon her neck was an understatement -- and even more surprised that he should have brought up a subject as indelicate as my corset - I said, into my lap, "I suppose some people think so...."
Was this, I wondered, a prelude to taking my corset off me, and then -- Good Lord -- seducing her?
But Edward Cullen only said, "I'm surprised you wear one at all. Aren't you friends with Lady Alice Brandon?"
This was such a surprising question that Caroline heard herself say, "You know Alice?"
"Everyone knows Lady Alice. She's become quite infamous for her involvement in the women's suffrage movement. I had assumed, being her friend, that you were, as well."
"Oh," I said, into my skirt. "I am. I mean, I don't go to the rallies, or anything. I don't much like rallies. It's so much nicer to stay at home with a book than to go about shouting until you're hoarse and chaining yourself to things."
"I see that you are, at heart, a true freedom fighter, Lady Isabella," Edward Cullen observed drily.
"Oh," was my only response. I realized how foolish I must have sounded to him. "Oh, but I do support Alice's cause, you know. Last month alone I paid her court penalties twice because her father won't do it anymore. And I only wear a corset because, well, I think I do look nicer in one than not."
"I see." He sounded amused. "Your suffragist leanings end where your comfort and vanity begin. At least you are honest enough to admit it."
He was making sport of her. I knew that now. So he certainly wasn't going to try to seduce her. I certainly didn't know much about men, but I strongly suspected they wouldn't bother seducing a girl they'd made sport of. I was relieved, I supposed. But it was a little insulting that he hadn't even tried. After all, he'd apparently seduced every other girl in London. Why not me? I knew that I wasn't an elegant beauty, but I'd certainly had my share of admirers, including, just that morning, a young man -- a complete stranger -- who'd chased me for nearly an entire city block after I'd roundly berated him for needlessly whipping his horse, only to tip his hat and say that my smile was every bit as bright and pretty as a brand-new penny, and that he'd never whip another horse again.
But Edward Cullen apparently hadn't noticed my smile.
And then the memory of the reason why I'd lost my breath in the first place returned in a rush. All this time we'd been in the hallway discussing my corset, James had been in mortal danger of discovery! Whatever could I have been thinking?
"Hadn't you better go, Mr. Cullen?" I asked, trying to disguise the urgency in my voice. "If you mean to find Lady Victoria, I mean."
"Yes," he said. There was no kindness in his voice now. "Well, I'm sure there's no chance of that anymore."
Alarmed I asked, "No chance of what? Finding her? Oh, you're quite wrong. I'm sure she's still close." Then, realizing of what I said, I thrust a finger toward the opposite end of the hallway. "I'm sure if you just follow her -- "
"No point," Edward Cullen said, flatly. Then he added, almost as if to himself, "I lost any chance I might have had at catching her out in her little game when I took a wrong turn ten minutes back, and ended up in the kitchens."
"Little game?" I echoed, faintly.
Like someone recalling himself, Edward Cullen said, "Never mind. Feeling any better yet?"
I inhaled. My temples tightened with the beginning of a headache, but surprisingly, I found that I could breathe normally again.
"Much better," I said. "Thank you." And then, because I was worried he might know more about the details of his fiancée's faithlessness than he was letting on -- like, for instance, the identity of her secret lover -- i added, "I'm sure you're wrong, Mr. Cullen. About your bride-to-be. I'm certain she isn't involved in any...little game. With anyone."
The laugh Edward Cullen let out was every bit as wicked as his smile had been when I'd told him -- oh, why, why had i told him? -- That I had seen his fiancée with another man.
"How very good-natured of you, Lady Isabella," he said, in a tone that wasn't the least bit complimentary. "But please allow me to assure you that your confidence in Lady Victoria is sorely misplaced. And when I get the name of the fellow, I'll be only too happy to prove it, in a court of law, if necessary. You might mention that to her, when next you see her."
Quite openmouthed at this extraordinary declaration -- and at the thought that I and Victoria Seldon were anything but the most distant acquaintances -- I fought to think of some sort of reply.
I was saved, however, from making any when the door to Dame Ashforth's private sitting room opened and the Marquis of Winchilsea stepped into the corridor.
"Oh," I said, finding my voice at last. "Dear."
------
If You haven't read the book.. what do you think?
Radom: I'm a cat person, What type of animal person are you? ^^
Rosetta*
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