The evening sun had set, turning the river below their window to a dull, gunmetal gray, before they spoke again.
"I don't know how soon I'll be able to ask Thomas for a sum sufficient to quieten your creditors." Agnes shifted and the bedropes creaked. "It's a little awkward to demand a substantial sum from one's bridegroom as one leaves the altar."
"That's why I'm going into Yorkshire," Bernard said, letting his hand rest on her turned flank. "I can escape my creditors for the summer, while you, my love, work upon the gouty but so wealthy Sir Thomas."
Agnes chuckled. "I have my appealing story well prepared… an indigent second cousin, I believe, suffering from rheumatism and living in a drafty garret."
"I trust you won't be required to produce this relative," Bernard remarked with a responding chuckle. "I don't know how good a master of disguise I would prove."
"You are as much a master of deception as I, my dear," Agnes said.
"Which is why we suit each other so remarkably well," Bernard agreed.
"And always have done." Agnes's mouth curved in a smile of reminiscence. "Even as children… how old were we, the first time?"
Bernard turned his head to look at the face beside him on die pillow. "Old enough… although some might say we were a trifle precocious." He moved his hand lazily to palm die delicate curve of her cheek. "We were born to please each other, my love." Hitching himself on one elbow, he brought his mouth to hers, exerting a bruising almost suffocating pressure as his palm tightened around her face and he held her flat and still with his weight. When finally he released her mouth, there was an almost feral glitter of excitement in her tawny eyes. She touched her bruised and swollen lips with a caressing finger.
Bernard laughed and lay down beside her again. "However," he said as if that moment of edging violence had not occurred, "I shall look around me for a fat pigeon to pluck at the beginning of the Season. I don't wish to be totally dependent upon your husband's unwitting charity."
"No, it would be as well not. It's a pity Thomas is no gamester." Agnes sighed. "That was such a perfect game we once played."
"But, as you say, Thomas Barret is no George Dever-eux," Gracemere agreed, reaching indolently for his wineglass. "I wonder what happened to that husband of yours."
"It's to be hoped he's dead," Agnes said, taking the glass from him. "Otherwise I am a bigamist, my dear." She sipped, her eyes gleaming with amusement.
"Who's to know but you and I?" Her companion laughed with the same amusement. "Alice Devereux, the wife of George Devereux, has been dead and buried these last twenty years as far as the world's concerned… dead of grief at her husband's dishonor." He chuckled richly.
"Not that the world saw anything of her, either before or during her marriage," Agnes put in with remembered bitterness. "Having married his country innocent, George was interested only in keeping her pregnant and secluded in the Yorkshire wilds."
"But with the death of reclusive Alice in a remote convent in the French Alps, the sociable Agnes was born," Gracemere pointed out.
"Yes, a far preferable identity," Agnes agreed with some satisfaction. "I enjoyed making my society debut as the wealthy young widow of an elderly Italian count.
Society is so much more indulgent toward women of independent means, particularly if they have a slightly mysterious past." She smiled lazily. "I wouldn't be an ingenue again for all the youthful beauty in the world. Do you ever miss Alice, Bernard?"
He shook his head. "No, Agnes is so much more exciting, my love. Alice was a young girl, while Agnes was born into womanhood… and women have much more to offer a man of my tastes."
"Sophisticated, and perhaps a little outri," Agnes murmured, again touching her bruised mouth. "But to return to the question of money…"
"I still have George's Yorkshire estate," Bernard said.
"But it yields little now."
"No, it's a sad fact that property needs to be maintained if it's to continue to support one," he agreed, sighing. "And maintenance requires funds… and, sadly, funds I do not have."
"Not for such mundane concerns as estate maintenance," Agnes stated without criticism.
"True enough, there are always more important… or, rather, more enticing ways of spending money." He swung himself off the bed. "On which subject…" He crossed to the dressing table. Agnes sat up, watching him, greedily drinking in his nakedness even though his body was as familiar to her as her own.
"On which subject," he repeated, opening a drawer. "I have a wedding present for you, my love." He came back to the bed and tossed a silk pouch into her lap, laughing as she seized it with eager fingers. "You were always rapacious, my adorable Agnes."
"We're well suited," she returned swiftly, casting him a glinting smile as she drew from the pouch a diamond collar. "Oh, Bernard, it's beautiful."
"Isn't it?" he agreed. "I trust you'll be able to persuade your husband to reimburse me at some point."
Agnes went into a peal of laughter. "You are a complete hand, Bernard. My lover buys me a wedding present that my husband will be required to pay for. I do love you."
"I thought you'd appreciate the finer points of the jest," he said, kneeling on the bed. "Let me fasten it for you. Diamonds and nakedness are a combination I've never been able to resist."
"I don't see your cousin this evening, Charlie." Judith slipped her arm through her escort's as they strolled through the crowded salon. She glanced around, as she had been doing all evening, wondering despite herself why the Marquis of Carrington had chosen not to honor the Bridges' soiree.
"Marcus isn't much of a one for balls and such frippery things," Charlie said. "He's very bookish." His tone made this sound like some fatal ailment. "Military history," he elucidated. "He reads histories in Greek and Latin and writes about old battles. I can't understand why anyone should still be interested in who won some battle way back in classical times, can you?"
Judith smiled. "Perhaps I can. It would be interesting to work out how and why a battle turned out as it did, and to make comparisons with present-day warfare."
"That's exactly what Marcus says!" Charlie exclaimed. "He's forever closeted with Wellington and Bliicher and the like, discussing Napoleon and what he might decide to do on the basis of what he's done in the past. I can't see why that should be as useful as going out and getting on with the fighting, but everyone seems to think it is."
"Battles aren't won without strategy and tactics," Judith pointed out. "And only careful strategy can minimize casualties." She reflected that perhaps nineteen-year-olds on the eve of battle, drunk on dreams of heroism and glory, probably wouldn't take this particular point.
"Well, I can't wait to have a crack at Boney," Charlie declared, looking a trifle disappointed at his goddess's lack of enthusiasm for the blood and guts of warfare.
"I'm certain you'll have your chance soon enough," Judith said. "As I understand it, Wellington's only waiting for Napoleon to make his approach and then he'll attack before he's properly in position."
"But I don't understand why we can't just go out and meet him. He's already left Paris," Charlie complained in an undertone, glancing around to make sure none of his fellow officers in their brilliant regimentals could overhear a possibly disloyal comment. "Why do we have to wait for him to come close?"
"I imagine it would be rather cumbersome to move 214,000 men at this stage in order to intercept him," Judith said. "They're strung out from Mons to Brussels, and Charleroi to Liege, as I understand it."
"You sound just like Marcus," Charlie observed again. "It seems very poor-spirited to me."