Lady Sarah Grenford made her way down the abandoned servants' passage to the heir's wing of Haverford House, holding the skirts of her dress out of the dust that had accumulated since the last monthly clean. Once, these apartments had been witness to carnal excesses such as London had never seen or heard, when her father was young, still the Merry Marquis of Aldridge, before he married Mama. Or so the gossip columns said.
Now that Sally was approaching seventeen, she knew more than she used to about the ways of the world, in part because her parents overlooked her advancing age and never considered that a child would understand their conversations.
She often dined with her parents now, even when they had guests, especially family friends, as was the case tonight. Aunt Bella and Uncle Wellbridge exclaimed over the grown-up gown, newly arrived from the modiste, and the way Maud had dressed her hair high on her head, with just a few curls cascading down her neck to touch her white shoulders.
But it had been a dismal meal, the adults preoccupied and avoiding the one topic on their minds. Toad Northope, her best friend in the whole world, was in deep disgrace with his parents and godparents alike, and the nature of his crimes was such that they were loath to sully a maiden's ears with it. Aunt Bella had glanced over at her with such sadness in her eyes, again and again, throughout the meal, even as the conversation stuttered and started, when she thought Sally wasn't looking.
For most of her life, Sally had assumed she would one day grow up and marry Toad. When she was little she looked forward to living night and day with the friend who always understood her. As she grew older, and he became the most handsome man she knew, she trembled at the thought of being his to touch.
If he wanted to marry her.
The parents thought Sally did not know he was here in London, and they would be horrified if they realized she had heard them discussing why. But they wanted to talk about it again. She had counted on that, had expected Papa to dismiss her immediately after dinner was over. It was a simple matter to give Maud leave to go to bed, declaring that Sally wanted to feel like a princess for a little longer in her grown-up gown, and would take down her own hair.
A princess. In her father's old quarters, she lit every candle she could find and twirled in front of the gilt-framed mirrors lining every wall of his former bedchamber. She used to think this a room for a princess, and the draped painting of the mysterious woman on the wall seemed proof, for she was surely the most beautiful of any of the many portraits in her family's houses.
Sally's dress, striped in yellow and cream, which had seemed very grownup at dinner, looked suddenly insipid against the ornately painted and carved walls, the richly upholstered furniture—all red and gold. And it seemed childish next to the decadent gown worn by the lady in the painting, that bared her breasts, leaving nothing to the imagination.
Sally tried not to look at the enormous bed with yet another mirror above it on the ceiling, but it was reflected from every angle. Thinking about the use to which her father had put that bed and all these mirrors was making her nearly as red as the velvet spread she had once thought so fine. She retreated to the sitting room next door, just barely managing not to run from her own lust, and seated herself on one of the powder-blue fireside chairs.
No. The dark blue sofa would be a better contrast with her gown. Should she lie down on it, stretching herself out like the women in the pictures Toad had sent? Her eyes turned to the shelf that held The Scrapbook.
The Scrapbook was Sally's and Toad's deepest secret. When first she had overheard the stories about the young rake's escapades with the wrong dairymaid—when Eton strongly suggested Uncle Wellbridge withdraw him to avoid expulsion—she had complained to him about her ignorance of such matters and demanded Toad teach her what he was learning. She had been a silly little girl then, only fifteen.
And Papa was wrong when he said Toad had no restraint, for he had not bedded her when she asked, but instead had promised to send her 'the finest examples of literature and art and scientific treatise on the subject.' Papa, Toad had said, would castrate him if the dukes or duchesses ever found out, so Sally kept The Scrapbook here, tucked among Papa's own collection of such literature and art.
Papa's examples had been more illuminating than Toad's, but even in them, Sally found it hard to tell what was going on. Tonight, she intended to find out.
Sally had overheard her mother's stories and those of other women often enough to know the heartache of loving a rake who was not ready to settle. And being sent down from Cambridge for yet another bedroom scandal was just the last in a long line of incidents that showed Toad was quite clearly not ready to settle.
Tonight, she would try to change his mind. Papa sometimes told Mama that once he'd had a taste, he could not look at another woman. Tonight, Sally would give Toad a taste.
She had two purposes. Toad was the only person with whom she could imagine satisfying her burning curiosity. And perhaps, after he had made love to her, he would be as keen to marry as she was, so they might indulge themselves any time they wanted, in whatever it was he was doing with dairymaids and opera dancers, and would one day do with his wife
If not, she would have to find someone else to marry. If she waited for Toad to grow up, she would be an old woman, so she could not allow him to ruin her. However, her research suggested they could do a number of things without completely destroying her marriageability. She was not quite sure what, but Toad would know. She could trust Toad to know, because she trusted her father and godfather had taught him well.
In the silence of the deserted wing, she heard someone approach. Toad. Swiftly, Sally draped herself along the sofa like Madame Recamier, and stared into the bare cold fireplace, trying to look as if she were lost in thought.
"Sal... you are..." She turned her head just enough to see him in the dark doorway, his amused smile belied by an intent gaze, such as she had never seen on his face before. Had he grown even taller in his months away? His voice, when he spoke, was husky, as if his throat were as dry as hers.
"When did you become such a beauty? I pity the poor men of the ton when you are unleashed on the marriage mart. They will be able to do naught but fall at your feet."
Sally blushed, for once speechless. She knew Toad was handsome, but somehow today, with what she had in mind, he was breathtaking, leaning casually against the doorframe. Her gaze caressed the long lean limbs, the broad shoulders, neatly and tightly encased in the most elegant of fashions. Could she persuade him to remove that exquisitely tailored coat, those tight pantaloons?
But his own troubles must take priority. She mustn't let him think she was so unfeeling as to ignore his plight. "Were they very hard on you, Toad?"
"Not as hard as they will be if they find I have escaped Dalrymple House to come to you. But you said you needed me, and His Ducal Magnificence decrees I leave London again at first light."
Her eyes glowed, and she held out both her hands. "You defied them for me?"
"Minx." He pulled himself upright and crossed the carpet in two long strides, to tug at a lock of her hair falling from its pins. "You are just the type who wishes knights to fight duels to the death for her, are you not?"
So much for him seeing her as an adult. "I would not wish you to be hurt for me even a little bit, Toad. Perhaps you had better go."
He smirked as he tucked the stray hair behind her ear, caressing the lobe as he pulled his hand away.
"After I have risked all to get here? I think not. Come and tell me what plan you have. Of course, I will do whatever I can to help." He grasped her hand and helped her sit up so there was room for him to sit beside her.
Sally was silent. Now that it came to it, could she really ask him? But if she did not, he would return to Cambridge tomorrow and her chance would be lost.
Once she began her come out, she would be hedged around with chaperons and restrictions. She was not to have her Season until next year, but her skirts had been let down, her hair put up, and she was to begin attending private dinners and dances as a young lady. At the thought of it, she leaned into Toad, seeking the comfort he had always given her. But Toad shrank away.
"You, my beauty, should not be here with me alone."
He slid a bit farther from her on the sofa. "I am... er... not entirely sober and a known rake. You should not be caught alone with me." His body moved away from her, but she took heart from the way his hand remained entwined in the fabric of her gown.
She followed him along the seat. "Am I a beauty, Toad? I shall be, I think. I shall fascinate the whole ton, and have heaps of proposals, and shall turn them all down."
He laughed and moved back a few more inches, until he hit the arm of the sofa. With wild eyes, he chucked her under the chin, as though she were still in the nursery. "You are a diamond of the first water, and you shall secure the greatest match in all of Christendom. Heaven help the poor sod." He winked and pinched her cheek.
This is not going to work. He had all the woman of England panting to fall into his bed. And he clearly didn't want her to be one of them. She retreated a little and frowned at the empty grate.
Toad cleared his throat. "Has it really been more than six months since we have seen each other? I never feel so far away from you as I do with the others, since we write so often."
Their letters were her greatest comfort: at least three a week since he had left for school at age ten, but most often, they wrote each other daily.
Sally took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh, then did it again when she realized the heaving of her breasts had drawn Toad's eyes. "It has been forever, Toad. I do wish I could be a man and have adventures, like we planned when we were young. We could take one of your mother's ships and go fight the Barbary pirates!"
Toad laughed again. "God help me if you intend adventure! Given all the hidings I took for you when we were children, I can only imagine what scrapes you would get me into now. We would end in a Moorish prison. One does not wish to imagine what your parents and mine would do to me, if you got us both locked up in a Moorish prison, Monkey."
Monkey, indeed! Surely no man alive ever allowed himself to be seduced by a woman he called Monkey.
"Do not call me that, if you please."
He arched one brow. "Must I remind you that you constantly call me Toad?"
"It is your nickname, you know," she said, breezily, "given to you by a king along with your barony. It is hardly my fault you are master of Toadstone Hall."
But while those things were all true, her words were not the truth. If she were to be honest, she thought of him as David when she read The Scrapbook and tried to imagine him doing to her what the pictured men and gods and other beings were doing to females of varied classes and species. And that is why she tried always to call him Toad, as the rest of Society did, even though she knew he disliked it. Lest she blush at his real name and he ask why.
"If I call you 'David,' will you kiss me?"
Sure enough, she was blushing. Sally chewed her lower lip and refused to meet Toad's eyes.