"Could I persuade you to do so, sir?" she returned mischievously.

"Do you doubt it?" He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the soft palm.

"Then let us do so, immediately. You shall carry me off to your bed and make a dishonest woman of me."

"We have not yet had supper," Justin objected.

"Oh, pah!" Danielle dismissed such mundane considerations. "My appet.i.tes run in directions other than green goose and burgundy, sir."

"I beg leave to inform you, Madam Wife, that you are a most immodest woman," her husband said severely. "We will stroll to the temple and then take supper. The box is bespoken and our guests will be discommoded to find themselves hostless."

"Oh, you are so prim, husband." Danielle sighed. "But I dare swear, antic.i.p.ation will make the pleasure greater." A slight sadness crept into her eyes. The pleasure would indeed be great, but not as it had been before making love with her husband had acquired such a desperate intent.

Linton, from his own standpoint, found that the antic.i.p.ation of privacy with his wife this evening merely increased his unease. But he played his part masterfully and enjoyed Danielle's pleasure in the vivacious scene. Colored lamps lit the walks along which strolled every manner of person, respectable or otherwise, and Danny's sharp tongue was busily employed in witty observations on the company. She continued to hold his hand, scorning the offer of his arm and Justin shrugged-what did it matter that she made her pleasure in his company so obvious? His fingers twined around the small gloved ones which squeezed back warmly.

At supper, Danny, contrary to her earlier statement, displayed a hearty appet.i.te and kept their party much amused with her comments on the scene. In addition to Julian and his usual cronies, the Earl and Countess of March joined them, together with D'Evron and several young ladies of Danielle's age whose mamas considered the chaperonage of Linton and Lady March to be unimpeachable. The young ladies, for their part, enjoyed the flattering attentions of Jules and his friends, blushed prettily when addressed by the formidable Earl of Linton, and gazed enviously at his countess who treated her husband with no apparent deference and whose gown made them long for the time when they too could lose their maidenly decorum.

It was well into the early hours of the morning when Justin and Danielle finally regained Linton House where a sleepy night porter let them in. "You must maid me tonight, milord," Danielle said softly as they ascended the wide staircase. "I told Molly not to wait up."

"It will be my pleasure, my love. However, since I fear I was not so considerate with Petersham you will wait for me, I trust."

"I fail to see how I may do otherwise," Danielle responded. "This hoop is so enormous, I cannot imagine how I may rid myself of it alone."

"I will not keep you waiting long." Justin disappeared into his own chamber, unable to hide his grin from the dozing valet who sprang to his feet at My Lord's entrance. The grin died as Linton submitted to Petersham's ministrations and prepared himself mentally for the disclosure he must make.

"Thank you, Petersham." He adjusted the folds of the long velvet robe. "I shall not require you further this night."

"Good night, my lord." Petersham bowed himself out of the chamber and Linton went through the connecting door.

"I have been waiting this age," Danny said indignantly. "Did you have a comfortable coze with Petersham?" She had contrived to rid herself of the overgown and to loosen her hair which now tumbled over her shoulders. The patch had gone, also, but the scent of freesias filled the room and Justin smiled at this evidence that his wife had been freely applying his favorite perfume.

"Now do not be cross, Danny," he said, unb.u.t.toning her. "I was not enjoying a comfortable coze with Petersham, merely preparing myself for the night."

At that she laughed. "Help me out of this ridiculous hoop, love. I wish to hold you and cannot when this wire puts such a distance between us."

He did so swiftly and then took her hands. "Danielle, I have something to tell you. It is best told now."

"Milord Chatham?" Danielle looked at him seriously, all play vanished from her eyes.

"How did you know?"

The slim shoulders in the white camisole shrugged. "You have looked a little distrait this evening. Is the news bad then?"

"No, not exactly." Justin turned her and began to unlace her stays. "Pitt wishes me to visit Paris."

"Oh, I should like that of all things." Danielle spun around as the last lace was released. "I have been homesick for France for many months and there is much to be learned that one cannot learn simply by listening to . . ." Her voice died away as she read his expression. "I am not to come with you?"

He shook his head. "No. My love, I don't wish to expose you to danger."

"Such nonsense!" she exclaimed. "There will be no danger and I am well able to protect . . ."

"No, Danny," he repeated quietly.

"Why not?" She reached behind her to unfasten the pearl necklace, her voice soft as she prepared herself for battle. She would achieve nothing by throwing a tantrum, only by sweet reason. Justin clearly had some misguided opinions on chivalry and she would put him to rights carefully and un.o.bjectionably.

"I would never know where you were," her husband told her directly. "Or in what guise. I'll not having you roaming the Paris slums in britches again, Danny."

"And if I promise not to do so?"

"The answer is still no. Listen to me for a moment." He reached again for her hands but she twitched them away impatiently. "Danny, you have work enough to do here. I will be gone but two weeks and when I return we shall go together to Mervanwey. It is too soon for you to return to Paris-the memories are too strong . . ."

"Am I not to be the judge of that, milord?" Danielle held herself in check. "I think it is the right time for me to return to those scenes. I am quite at peace with the memories and recollection will only serve to lay the ghosts to rest."

"Danielle, I must travel incognito and swiftly." Justin tried again, desperate to find a reason that she would accept and that would prevent his having to rely on the unquestionable veto that was the husband's right. "I cannot do that in your company unless we travel as we once did, and that I will not countenance under any circ.u.mstances."

Danielle thought rapidly. The idea of traveling again with her husband as master and servant, sharing bedchambers- although this journey they would also share beds-playing the urchin role in the kitchens made her toes tap with glee. Sadly she relinquished that plan. While it would be most amusing, it would not do except in dire emergency. But there had to be some way she could convince Justin that she would be useful and in no way an impediment.

"Justin, we do not have to travel in that manner. Neither must we travel as the Earl and Countess of Linton. We will be two members of the bourgeosie, if you prefer. I can carry that role without difficulty. I will pad my skirts to give a matronly impression and speak as the shoemaker's wife . . ."

"I am not prepared to play the part of shoemaker," Justin expostulated, horrified at the vivid picture Danielle was painting. "I will go alone, unremarked, with my ears open. I do not deny, my love, your ability to act any part you choose, or your ability to collect information, but this is no expedition for the Countess of Linton. The last time you sailed on the Black Gull you were hideously seasick and there is every reason to suspect that you will be so again. Supposing you should be pregnant?"

"Je ne suis pas enceinte" Danielle heard herself say before she had time for reflection.

"How can you know that?" her husband asked dismissively. "You are as likely to be as not, and a voyage on possibly rough seas followed by a jolting carriage ride and the deuce knows what other adventures . . . Danielle, you are a married lady and you may not go adventuring."

Danielle turned away, placing her pearls carefully on the dresser. She had kept this one secret so far, but her husband was not as other men, not the sort of husband her maman had warned her about, the sort of husband from whom one would need to protect oneself as Louise had done and as Danielle had been doing. But she had not been protecting herself from Linton, merely from consequences that she felt she was not yet ready to face. She had a.s.sumed that when she felt ready she would simply cease her precautions and no one would be any the wiser. But maybe it was right that he should know. It would, at the very least, disabuse him of ideas that she might need to take care of a prospective heir should she join him in his adventure.

"I know that I am not pregnant." Instinctively she sought the shelter of the deep armchair, tucking her feet beneath her, but meeting his eye. "I will tell you how I know, if you wish it. But I think, milord, that if you chose to divorce me you would find every court in the land sympathetic to your case."

Linton was capable only of a blank stare. His wife in camisole and pantalettes was a mere sc.r.a.p of a figure curled in the big chair, but her personality filled the room and he had not the remotest idea of what she spoke.

Danielle read the confusion in his eyes and drawing a deep breath, took charge. "You will hear me out, Justin. It is a complicated story and 'twill be best if you don't interrupt." At his slight nod, she plaited her fingers, frowning deeply.

"Ma mere a eu les difficultes . . . Pardon." She excused herself. "I will tell it in English."

"It matters not. Use whichever language is most comfortable."

"I will speak yours, Justin. You will perhaps understand the nuances better."

Justin, knowing that Danielle's idiomatic fluency in English exceeded his in French, bowed to her superior judgment.

"My mother had some considerable difficulty in bearing children. There were several stillborn babies before my birth."

Justin nodded and waited, still unsure what he was about to hear.

"After my. birth, Maman was told that further pregnancies would endanger her life. Mon pere was also told this most forcibly, but he felt that Maman was young, and with sufficient rest of six months or so should be able to conceive again and produce the male heir." Danielle looked directly at her husband. "My free speech does not shock you?"

"It hasn't done so for quite some time," he replied dryly. "Pray continue."

"After a 'sufficient time' my father forced his attentions on Maman. I think rape would be the correct word, although such a concept is not legally accepted between man and wife." Her eyes were large, her words carefully measured, but Justin heard the unspoken challenge and had no desire to pick up the glove.

"It became necessary for Maman to ensure that she did not again conceive, since she was unable to bar her husband from her bed. She had done so once before, at knife point ... It was before I was born, but once I was born it was impossible for her to use such a threat, you understand? When she had only her own life to consider. . ."

"I understand."

"Old Nurse had spent her early years as maidservant in a convent. Nuns are very skillful apothecaries, milord, and not nearly as innocent of the world as the world would like to think." Danielle's smile had a cynical twist. "They make their own .. . mistakes . . . and if they are unable to prevent them, then they know how to conceal them."

Justin wondered if he was actually hearing any of this. He knew Danielle had had no conventional upbringing, knew that she had knowledge and experience well beyond her years, but what she was telling him now took him into a new realm.

"I have silenced you, I think."

"Almost. But I wish to hear the rest. You have not yet reached the point."

"No. I was explaining the background in the hopes that the point would be blunted."

"Let me hear it without more ado."

"Very well. The nuns also used their skill and knowledge to aid the peasant women who had neither the strength nor the financial resources to produce a child every nine months. They were able to abort a pregnancy and also to prevent. Belledame taught my mother how to prevent and my mother taught me. Please . . ." she said as Justin stood suddenly, his face gray. "Let me finish."

He sat down again. "I have not told you before because, as I was taught it, it is a woman's knowledge. I was sixteen when Maman and Belledame explained the principle to me and explained that I had no need to be at the mercy of my body when my husband took possession. They were not talking, milord, of husbands such as yourself." She offered a tentative smile that was not returned.

Against the odds, Danielle persevered. "I have not and do not yet feel ready to be a mother. Belledame a.s.sured me that the precautions will in no wise affect my fertility . . ."

"Enough!" Justin sprang to his feet, the blue black eyes hard and cold as quartz chips. "I do not wish to hear any more!" He strode to the connecting door. "I go alone to Paris and that is my last word on the subject."

The door closed behind him with a decisive click. The devil take the woman! He tore off his robe and thumped into bed. For nine months she had been playing her own game without a word to him. If she had no desire for motherhood so soon then he would not have quarreled with her. But the idea that she had taken such matters entirely into her own hands drove the Earl of Linton into a teeth-grinding impotent fury, and the utter determination that now more than ever would he compel her obedience in the matter of the journey to Paris.

Danny finished undressing and crept into bed. The secret had been told and she could consider herself lucky that her husband had not exacted the penalty with fist and crop. She lay in the dark in the wide lonely bed and decided that the matter of Paris must be postponed. For the moment she must think of some way of restoring her husband's badly damaged pride. If only she had thought to discuss the matter with him, but the knowledge had been given her like the pa.s.sing down of a secret female rite-something that a man must never know, and Louise had impressed upon her daughter the need for absolute secreey. Her possession of a knowledge held normally only by the inhabitants of harems and brothels would be considered disgusting.

But she had made a grave error of judgment in not telling Linton; or perhaps the error had been in telling him. If he was now disgusted with her . . . supposing he could no longer desire her, knowing what she had done. Danielle tossed and turned, for some reason icy cold although it was a warm night. It would not be surprising if he found her body distasteful and the idea that she could enter the act of loving simply for pleasure, hideously immodest. But he had taught her how to take that pleasure freely and joyfully. The nightmare picture of a loveless marriage where the conjugal union was simply undertaken for reproductive purposes tormented her thoughts. At some point she must give her husband an heir and maybe from now on he would only take her for that purpose. It would be an appallingly appropriate punishment. She would have no weapons then with which to fight Margaret Mainwairing, or any of the others who would fill Justin's empty arms. She s.h.i.+vered and flung herself onto her face, hugging a thick feather pillow hoping for warmth and comfort. None was forthcoming from the inanimate object and Danielle knew that she had no choice. Torturing herself with fruitless speculation would achieve nothing. She must find out the extent of Justin's wrath and what he intended to do. Maybe he would, indeed, divorce her. No, that was impossible, the House of Linton would tolerate no scandal of such magnitude, but he could do as the Prince of Wales had done with poor Princess Caroline and force a separation by locking her away in miserable exile in the country ...

This was ridiculous! Danielle flung aside the covers and sprang determinedly out of bed. Typically, she didn't think to cover her nakedness as she gently turned the k.n.o.b on the door to her husband's room and slipped into the moon-washed chamber. She could hear only his deep, rhythmic breathing and stood immobile for a moment. Somehow she had expected him to be wide awake, tossing and turning miserably as she had been, and the idea that he had fallen so quickly asleep, Danielle found callous, disconcerting, and perversely annoying.

In fact, Justin was not asleep but at the sound of the turning k.n.o.b had instinctively deepened his breathing and now watched the still figure in the moonlight through half-closed eyes. She was so d.a.m.nably beautiful with those proud, perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the narrow waist and flat belly and that impudent, entrancing little rear. Just what was she intending to do? he wondered-knowing Danielle, nothing predictable.

She stole on tiptoe across the room and round to the far side of the bed. Justin closed his eyes completely and waited with interest. Danielle s.h.i.+vered and with sudden resolve gently pulled back the covers and insinuated herself carefully beneath them. She lay very still, scarcely breathing until she was sure her movements had not disturbed her slumbering husband; but his breathing continued unchanged except for a small snore. Danielle tried to relax, but she was still freezing. She inched experimentally toward the figure at the far side of the bed, and when nothing changed edged closer still until some of the heat radiating from his body lapped her skin. Danielle turned softly onto her side, facing away from him, the only position she ever found comfortable for sleep, but it still wasn't right-she needed his skin. He was so deeply asleep he wouldn't even notice, she decided crossly, and traversed the final few inches.

"Danielle! Your bottom's like a block of ice!" Justin yelped, shocked out of his pretended slumber.

"You weren't ever asleep," Danny accused indignantly. "I was trying so hard not to wake you and you were awake all the time."

"I was," he agreed. "But I had a lively desire to discover what you were about. Why are you so cold, child?"

"Because I'm unhappy," she wailed. "Are you not?"

"Not particularly. I was too angry to be unhappy."

"Was?" she asked with a tremor of hope.

There was a long silence before Justin replied. "For some extraordinary reason I find it impossible to remain angry with you for more than a few moments. I never know what you will do or say next and I don't imagine I ever shall. I have to remind myself constantly of your strange upbringing. I just wish I had thought a little more of the consequences of that upbringing before ..."

"Before you married me," Danielle finished for him as cold fingers of desolation crept across her skin.

"Certainly," he agreed. "It would not have changed my plans in the least, but I would have been better prepared for disclosures of the kind you were considerate enough to make this night."

"I should not have told you then. Maman said that no husband could understand or accept a wife's need for control over . . ." She fell silent as Justin seized her chin between fingers that gripped like pincers and glowered down at her.

"You should have told me at once" he declared with careful emphasis. "I do not know what reason I may have given you for casting me in the role of some brutish lout who would keep you forever with a child in your belly. Had you made your feelings clear, there were certain precautions I could have taken myself and would have done so willingly."

"I did not think of that." Danielle frowned, diverted by the idea. "I am sure, since you have presumably fathered no b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, that you are accustomed to such things . . . with Lady Mainwairing, no doubt?"

"We will leave Lady Mainwairing out of this, if you please, and anyone else that you think to drag into this discussion," he said, a razor's edge to his voice. "Why did you not trust me?"

Her unruly tongue again! Why had she mentioned Margaret? Now she had both to evade the question and retrieve the situation. Danielle thought rapidly.

"It was not a matter of trust, Justin. It was just that so many things are so very new to me and I am used to managing alone and . . . and ... I daresay I make the wrong decision at times. But I did not mistrust you."

Not in that way, at least, and the truth shone clear in the wide brown eyes beneath him and Justin sighed in resignation.

It was pointless to play outraged husband, however legitimately, in the face of this extraordinary innocence that marched hand in hand with a powerful sense of self-determination and a knowledge of the world's vicissitudes that far exceeded her years. He'd married Danielle de St. Varennes for all those reasons and there was no going back, even had he wished to do so. And he most definitely did not.

"I would like you to think very carefully if there is anything else I should know . . . anything at all," he stated. "I had thought we were done with secrets after the previous affair, but clearly this one escaped your, notice. Are there any others?" Danny shook her head. "Be sure of yourself, Danielle," he warned. "If anything comes to light after this, you will not find me so tolerant again."

"There is nothing." His affairs with Louise Rockford and Margaret Mainwairing were no secret to Justin, after all, and there was nothing she was doing that he did not know about. Danielle quietened the voice of conscience that mocked the spurious nature of such an argument. She touched his face with gentle fingers, smoothing the frown lines between the straight eyebrows. "I cannot promise never to do things that I will not tell you about, but they will be small things of no importance."

"Like what?" he asked cautiously.

"Like going to a public ridotto at Ranelagh when you had said it would be a vulgar masquerade and I would not enjoy it in the least."

"And did you enjoy it?" His eyes gleamed.

"No, you were quite correct. I thought it pretty at first, but it became tedious and Tony was very happy to escort me home at an early hour. But I wished to see it for myself, you understand."

"Of course," he agreed smoothly. "Why should you accept the second-hand opinion of your husband, after all?"

"You did not exactly forbid it," she reminded him, moving her hands to the well-muscled shoulders.

"I was not aware, Wife, that I was in the habit of forbidding anything. I know better than to throw down the glove where you're concerned." His head went back as Danielle's hands moved over his chest, pus.h.i.+ng him down onto the bed beside her, flicking her tongue across his belly. And Paris? The question died on her lips. Time enough tomorrow to deal with that question. Her head moved downwards and Justin groaned softly as she pleasured him with mouth and fingers and took her own joy from the giving.

Chapter 15.

It was nearly midmorning before the earl and his countess awoke and the life of the household continued in quiet deference to the sleeping master and mistress. Petersham and Molly waited in the kitchen as they had been doing since seven o'clock, neither of them commenting on whatever extraordinary circ.u.mstance had turned the normally early risers abovestairs into slugabeds this morning.