PrivateArrangements



 

Chapter Fourteen




January 1883


Gigi jerked awake in the small hours of the morning, gasping and covered in cold perspiration. In her dream, she had been running in her nightgown, chasing after something in the dark, screaming, “Come back! Come back to me!”
Was it an ill omen, this dream? Or was it her conscience, festering in the dungeon of the past three weeks, finally breaking out of captivity and, spitting mad, coming to settle the score with her?
She touched the engagement ring Camden had given her. It was reassuringly snug on her finger, the gold band as warm as her own skin, the facets of the sapphire cool as silk. At the foot of her bed, Croesus snorted in his padded wicker tray. She scooted until her head was level with his. He smelled clean and warm. She took hold of one of his paws and felt some of the fear drain out of her.
She let herself breathe again. All was well. And who needed a conscience when she had happiness by the bushel?
Right?


Hell did not begin to describe it.
Camden stood at the center of a maelstrom of joy and goodwill, drowning. The ceremony. The unending congratulations. The wedding breakfast. The flash and bang of the photographer recording the occasion for all posterity. So much laughter. So much cheer. So much genuine pleasure all around. He felt a complete fraud, a bigger fraud than she, if that was possible.
Several times his will nearly broke. People were happy for him. For them. Mrs. Rowland had tears in her eyes. So did Claudia. Surrounded by a sea of tulle and organza, with Briarmeadow decked to the rafters in daffodils and tulips, as fragrant as the first day of spring, they thought it a fairy tale still, the one marriage of convenience out of thousands so fortunate as to become a blissful, devoted union. The weight of his deception choked him.
It was she, in the end, who salvaged his iniquitous intentions, she with her radiance that struck him a physical blow every time he looked upon her. Every ebullient, cocksure smile from her was a little death for him, every mirthful giggle a stab in the heart.
Even so, he almost couldn't.
After the reception, they traveled fifteen miles to another Rowland house nearer to Bedford for their wedding night. The two of them, alone—if one didn't count Croesus—in the oppressive confines of the brougham. Giddy and loquacious from the champagne, his new wife strategized the surprise reception that they would throw for his friends.
The apartment her agent had found for them in the Quartier Latin, overlooking Rue Mouffetard, had ten rooms. How many people did he think could fit into such an apartment? Would her governess-taught French suffice for the evening's conversation? And if they served foie gras and caviar, perhaps his friends might not notice that they had hardly any furniture?
Her childish enthusiasm for the life that they would never share clawed at him with a ferocity he did not want to understand. An incandescent light illuminated her eyes, a light of hope and fervor. It made her intoxicating, enchanting, beautiful, despite everything he knew, despite the effrontery and selfishness that were the warp and woof of her corrupt femininity.
He wanted to violate her then, to assert his power over her in the crudest, foulest manner, to crush her and snuff that lovely light. It would have been malevolent, but honest, to a degree.
He held back because of his own reciprocal corruptness. It would have been too easy for her. Shattering, yes, but shattering all at once. He did not want that. He did not want her to recognize the beast in him. He wanted her to panic, to despair, but to still want him, still think him the most perfect man that ever lived.
That was how he would go on tormenting her, after his physical departure from her life. A baroque plan, byzantine even, a plan that both pleased and shamed him.
He awaited only the night, this one grotesque, terrible night.


Camden was drinking cognac directly from a decanter when the connecting door between the bedchambers opened. He turned around and took another swig, barely feeling the fire sliding down his throat.
She was swathed in a blaze of virginal white. But her hair, a great glossy mass of it, tumbled free and unbound, like a cascade of the river Styx. The tips of her toes, round and pretty, peeked out from the hem of the white robe. He suddenly felt drunk.
“You didn't come,” she said softly, plaintively.
He glanced at the clock on the mantel. It had been only a few minutes since her maid had left. “I made a bet with myself that you'd come for me first.”
“You made me nervous,” she said, twirling one end of the silk sash that held her robe together. “I thought . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“What did you think?”
“I was afraid you might be having second thoughts.”
A ray of hope pierced him. If she confessed now, if she was drowning in remorse, rightfully fearful but still courageous enough to admit what she had done and take responsibility, he would forgive her. Not in an instant, but he would. And in return, he would come clean about his own fiendish plot.
“Why would you think that?” he said.

Do the right thing, Gigi. Do the right thing.

She hesitated. For a fleeting instant, she looked conflicted and frightened. But in the next moment, she was again in control of herself, a young Cleopatra out for her own best advantage. Her eyes traveled down his person and slowly back up again. “Wedding-night jitters, I suppose. Nothing more.”
Instead of honesty, she had fallen back on that old cliché: feminine wiles. She thought him so stupid that he'd go on in an erotic daze and never notice that he sported an ass's head.
Rage, great and raw, exploded in him. He tossed aside the decanter. In a heartbeat, he'd already covered half the distance between them. He was going to dangle her lying, scheming rump out the window until she screamed, begged, and sobbed the truth at last.
She opened her robe and let it fall. Beneath the robe she wore a chemise as transparent as a water goblet, a layer of gossamer that hid nothing.
He stopped and stared, his body reacting instantly. She was a pornographer's dream: high, firm breasts, rosy nipples pointed at a man's eyes, miles of legs, and hips that flared decadently, magnificently, hips meant for a man's hard grasp as he drove himself full hilt into her.

You bitch, he thought, in a dozen languages. You prick. That was for himself. The die was cast at last, the choice finally made. The high roads would be deserted and untrod. He had embarked on the path to purgatory.
Fire blazed in the grate, but the English winter crept damp and insidious along walls and floors. He closed the distance between them. “Come to bed,” he said, taking her by the wrist. “You must be cold.”
Beneath the pad of his index finger, her pulse raced madly—her mind was cold and calculating, but her blood certainly ran hot. She followed him obediently and let him usher her up the stool and under the bedspread.
She sat straight against a mound of pillows, the bedspread reaching only slightly past her abdomen. Her gaze flitted to him, then darted to a corner of the room. Her fingers clutched the covers.
What was she afraid of now? Solomon himself could not discern Camden's ultimate goals, so eclipsed were they by the inferno of lust that threatened to flame out of control.
Understanding dawned with all the gentleness of an artillery-shell impact. She was nervous because she was a virgin, and this would be her first time with a man. He almost laughed. How normal. How charming. How frigging sweet.
God help him.
He undressed slowly, shedding honor and rectitude alongside waistcoat and shirt. Her curiosity must have prevailed over her uncharacteristic shyness, for she watched him as if he were the very miracle for which she'd spent a lifetime on her knees, devoutly praying.

Don't look at me like that! he wanted to bellow. I am as unprincipled, disingenuous, and blackhearted as you. More, if anything. God, don't look at me like that. But she did, her eyes shining with the kind of trust and devotion that hadn't been seen since the Age of Chivalry.
He climbed onto the treacherously soft bed on the side away from her and sat as she did, upright, a wall of pillows behind his back, the bedspread drawn over his trousers. For once, he wished he'd debauched his way through St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris. His body burned with hellfire, but his mind was an abysmal blank. How did one make love, exactly, to a girl one despised with greater intensity than all the love in the world put together?
She cleared her throat. “Would you . . . uh . . . be needing a nightshirt?”
He chuckled despite himself, and the answer came to him. The only way to do it was to make love to her as if the past thirty hours had never taken place, as if his heart still overflowed with optimism and tenderness.
He slid a strand of her hair between his unsteady fingers. It was as cool as well water. He lifted it and pressed it to his lips, inhaling its sweet cleanness, as fragrant as a blade of young leaf. “No, thank you,” he said. “I don't think I'll need a nightshirt tonight.”
She cleared her throat again, more softly. “Well, then, should we say our prayers and go to sleep?”
He laughed. Frightening how easy it was to slip back into the earlier hours of the day before, to be amused and delighted with her every utterance. He gathered her to him, kissed her, and tasted the lingering astringency of her tooth powder, flavored with sweet birch oil.
Her mouth was all warm eagerness. Her hair cascaded over his arm and chest, jolting him with its featherlight caresses. And her scent. He was driven to distraction by the fiendish freshness of her skin, as wholesome as new milk that still faintly steamed.
He would never have her again. Never. The realization bludgeoned him. The unfairness of it. He wanted to smash the bed, the windowpanes, the fireplace. He wanted to shake her until her thick skull rattled. What have you done to me? What have you done to us?
Instead, he became slower, more gentle, more tender. He kissed every square inch of her face and undressed and worshipped every undulation of her body. The satiny texture of her nipples was the sweetest thing he'd ever tasted, the moans of her pleasure the most melodious sounds to ever vibrate the air of this earth.
And how she responded to him. She was a school-boy's wet dream come to life, fervent, willing, all but trembling with desire. Her hands roved avid and avaricious, searing him with their unchaste touches. Her mouth followed her hands, nibbling, licking, loving every nook and cranny of his body.
When he at last entered her, she branded him with her scorching heat. His invasion hurt her. He apologized incoherently, barely comprehending his hypocrisy—he was despondent at causing her physical pain, yet he looked forward with savagery to breaking her spirit.
To slide completely into her, to penetrate those silken, strong walls of her sheath, with her gasps and whimpers and little breaths of “yes” and “more” scalding his ears, was to lose a bit of his mind each time. He whispered sweet nothings into her ear, words both reverent and wicked, and ate up her moans of arousal. He touched her where he filled her, reveled in her melted-butter sleekness, and loved the frenzy it drove her into.
If only the pain in his heart didn't multiply a little with each thrust, each caress, each endearment. But pleasure swelled and roiled through him despite his desolation. Her rich voluptuousness possessed him. Conquered and defeated him. When she wrapped her long legs entirely about him, he lost his last shred of control.
The sensations walloped him, keener, wilder, more powerfully delicious than any he'd known or even imagined. He gave in, surrendered, only vaguely aware of his grunts and imprecations, of the heavy motions of his body as he ground into her, emptied into her.
“Oh, God, Gigi,” he mumbled. “Gigi.”


There, he'd done it. The most despicable act of his life. Now she would go to sleep, leaving him to stare at the ceiling for the rest of the night. He would rise before dawn, dismiss the servants for the day, and deal with her as necessary in the cold light of morning.
But she didn't go to sleep. She clung to him, rained kisses upon his shoulder and arm, giggled, and said, “Do it again.”
And he was rock hard again, just like that.
As he turned to her, in stupefied desire, in craving that corroded him from the inside out, he saw the enormity of his mistake. He hadn't embarked on the path to purgatory. He had knocked on the gates of hell.