Pleasure for Pleasure
Page 28

Apparently he thought that she was counting these tiresome rounds? Sylvie noticed that Lady Feddrington was wearing diamonds as large as daisies in her ears. Rather gauche, or could one put it down to flare? It was so hard, sometimes, to decide between the two. Certainly Lady Feddrington had an adorable visage, with her pouting lips and wide set-apart eyes.
“I might go to the stables and see how my jockey is doing,” Mayne said. “It can be quite dispiriting to lose so badly, and I want him to keep his heart up for Sharon’s race. Would you like to accompany me?”
“To the barn?”
“If you would be interested.”
There was no question of that. Mayne had a great deal to learn about ladies, obviously. “I shall pay a small visit to Lady Feddrington,” Sylvie said, giving him a gently corrective smile. In time, he would learn the appropriate places to invite his wife. An enclosure designed for animals was not one of them.
She stood up and waited while he collected her pelisse, her reticule, and her fan. She carried her parasol herself, as she was determined that not even one ray of sunlight would strike her face.
“Lady Feddrington,” she said, as Mayne opened the small door between their boxes, “I trust I do not intrude. We met two nights ago at the Mountjoy fete.”
“Miss Broderie,” Lady Feddrington said with just the right amount of appreciation to soothe Sylvie’s slightly disturbed spirits, “I am enchanted to see you. Please do come and relieve the tedium of this afternoon.”
That was precisely the right thing to have said in front of Mayne; it meant that she did not have to point out the same herself. So Mayne took himself off, and Sylvie plumped down next to Lady Feddrington. Within a few minutes they were bosom friends, speaking on the intimate level that Sylvie most enjoyed and which she constantly strove to achieve. In fact, Lady Feddrington—or Lucy, as it turned out—was such good company that Sylvie quite forgot that she was in such an objectionable place as the racetrack.
“I feel just the same,” Lucy confided sometime later. “Of course, I do my best to support Feddrington in moments like these. He has a large stable and works himself into a disagreeable state of anxiety over large races. In fact, I have to insist that he leave me in the box by myself, because I find that I do not enjoy close proximity with a man in a lather of anxiety, if you’ll excuse my frankness. But you will never suffer as I do, dearest Sylvie. One cannot imagine Mayne in a lather over anything!”
Sylvie agreed. One of her primary reasons for choosing Mayne had been his impeccable appearance at every moment. He was almost French that way. Well, considering that his mother was French, his elegance must have been inherited from his mother. Although given that his mother had retired to a nunnery, Sylvie found her elegance slightly hard to imagine.
The important thing was that Mayne’s attendance at her side had not been all it could be. “He was distraught,” she told Lucy. “I prefer an escort who is more attentive. Mayne actually showed a slight surliness when I did not notice that his horse had lost a race.”
“They’re always like that,” Lucy said comfortingly. “I have been married for three years now, and I am, perforce, an expert on the subject. And darling, you will be the same, for I believe that Mayne’s stables are even larger than Feddrington’s. They grow increasingly agitated in the weeks before a large race, such as the Ascot. Feddrington even wakes up in the middle of the night at times, if you can countenance it.”
“You don’t!” Sylvie said with horror, before she caught the words back.
Lucy giggled. “Do you mean share a bedchamber?” And, at Sylvie’s little nod, “Of course not!”
“You must forgive me,” Sylvie said, flustered. “It’s just that I have many things still to learn about English nobility.”
“I feel as if I’ve known you forever,” Lucy said, bending her head closer, “so I shall tell you something truly indiscreet, hmm?”
Sylvie loved indiscretions.
“When Feddrington is nervous and can’t sleep in the night, he visits my chambers,” Lucy confided.
“He has the temerity to wake you up?” Sylvie said, blinking at her. Her father would never, under any circumstances, have woken her maman. Maman’s chambers were sacred to her sleep, and even her maid knew better than to enter the room until eleven of the clock, and then only if she carried une tasse de chocolat.
“I have yet to break him of the habit,” Lucy said, sighing. “I have impressed upon him that my sleep is more important than his horses, but I don’t seem to be able to convince him. Men are invariably selfish in these matters, you know. I have found it best for the happiness of the household if I simply acquiesce. Of course, I have made it clear that such things will be tolerated only if the race is truly one of the largest, such as the Ascot.”
Sylvie was appalled. She tended to avoid thinking about the issue of marital intimacies; her maman had unfortunately passed away before clarifying these things. But Sylvie knew instinctively that this was not an aspect of marriage that would please her. Under no circumstances would she engage in something so distasteful in the middle of the night. Perhaps…one evening a month. She had decided that would surely be enough to satisfy Mayne. After all, she had chosen a man with a reputation for finding his own pleasures; while she was rather looking forward to the idea of having enfants, she did not consider marriage to be a contract ensuring that she provide all the entertainment.
“Mayne is so in love with you,” Lucy said, giggling again. “He must be positively ardent.”
“He behaves precisely as he ought.” Now she thought about it, Mayne would never be so impolite as to try to wake her at night. Never. Her poor friend Lucy’s husband was obviously incommodious and, though it pained her to think it, ill-bred.
“Oh!” Lucy cried. “Here is my dear friend Lady Gemima. I asked her to join me this afternoon.”
Coming toward them was a woman wearing an exquisite promenade gown of periwinkle blue. “She has the most lovely costumes,” Lucy sighed. “She’s not married, you know, but she’s enormously rich so she just does precisely as she pleases.” She lowered her voice. Lady Gemima was greeting Mrs. Homily, a red-faced matron who had been trotting up and down in front of the boxes like a terrier smelling a rat. “She was engaged four years ago, but then the gentleman died. I do believe he was a marquis. She put on mourning for a year, and then declared that she would never marry. She is the only daughter of a younger brother of the Duke of Smittleton. He was a colonel in the army, stationed in Canada, and as I understand it, he made a positive fortune in shipping. So of course then he was given his own title. One would think that she would be bad ton, unmarried as she is, and raised in Canada. But she’s not.”
Sylvie could see that for herself. Lady Gemima wasn’t precisely beautiful. Her face was a trifle long, and her mouth too coolly intelligent. But her hair was an extraordinary striped, tortoiseshell color, and as she came into the box and curtsied to Sylvie and Lucy, Sylvie saw that her eyes were green and fringed with thick lashes of the same color as her hair. Her clothes were obviously French. Sylvie rose with the sense of having at last met someone who was, as her papa would say of boxers, at her weight.