It deserved consideration.She sat down and stared at the rose-colored walls of her bedchamber. If she did this—this horrendous, delicious, tempting thing—it would be for the last time. While she had two small little trysts in the ten years since her husband died, she had allowed each man precisely one night. But they had been older than she, cheerful bachelors who understood the rules and abided by them. She had remained the best of friends with both gentlemen. But Darlington was young. Terrifyingly young.
And she had made up her mind to—
“Grissie!” Annabel popped her head into the bedchamber. “Would you like to come upstairs and keep me company while I see to Samuel? He’s due to wake from his nap any moment, and you said you’d like to be there.”
“And when did I give you permission to call me by that revolting nickname?” Griselda said with a mock scowl.
“You didn’t,” Annabel retorted. “But now that I’m a married lady, and you’re no longer my chaperone, I’m taking the liberty.”
Griselda hopped up, hastily thrusting Darlington’s note into her sleeve. “How did Samuel sleep last night?” she asked as they walked to the nursery.
“Like a dream. He really is a splendid child.”
Griselda agreed, with all her heart. At this advanced age, she had suddenly been struck by an acute longing for a baby. And she was willing to take a husband to attain one.
So…But she shook the thought away because Master Samuel crowed with delight to see them coming.
“Go ahead,” Annabel said, laughing. “You pick up the little rascal.” He was kicking his chubby knees and smiling with a madcap grin that was designed to make everyone in the vicinity love him…and it was manifestly successful.
Griselda scooped him up, never feeling the note slip from her sleeve. She was too busy cuddling Samuel, and tickling him, and generally making it clear to him that she was a very, very important person.
So it wasn’t until Samuel began making squawking noises that indicated, in all likelihood, that while he liked her, she wasn’t the person who produced milk, that she turned around. And found Annabel seated in a comfortable rocking chair and grinning at her. This was an entirely different kind of grin from that on her son’s face.
“Griseldaaaa!” she sang, waving a little slip of paper in her hand.
Griselda plumped Samuel into Annabel’s lap and snatched at her note. “Give me that!”
“Grillon’s Hotel,” Annabel said, laughing aloud. “The place where my reputation died a painful death. Why, if I remember you correctly, no lady ever enters Grillon’s Hotel. ‘I’ve never entered such a place!’” she said, imitating Griselda’s voice.
“And I never did enter such a place until your sister Imogen constrained me to do so,” Griselda said, ripping the note and tossing it into the fireplace.
Annabel pointed commandingly at the seat across from her. “Sit down this minute, you wild widow, and regale me with the tale of who on earth is asking you to Grillon’s. Who is Darling—” But the words faltered on her tongue. “It’s Darlington!”
Griselda fell into the chair with rather less than her usual grace. “It is indeed.”
“But no one meant that you should trade your virtue for cessation of his nasty talk,” Annabel said. “Oh, Griselda, you didn’t think that was what Sylvie meant when she directed you to seduce him, did you? Because she only meant it in the sense that you should flirt with the man, and entice him into changing his mind.”
Griselda had to smile; Annabel looked so horrified. “I know that,” she said. “It’s just that Darlington…”
“He’s blackmailing you. The scoundrel!” Annabel’s eyes narrowed. “He’s not blackmailing just you, Griselda, he’s blackmailing all of us. That’s what he means by his ‘morality slipping,’ doesn’t it? He actually thinks to blackmail you into entering Grillon’s Hotel and carrying on an affaire with him. Rafe may be away on his wedding trip, but my husband will beat Darlington into smithereens, and Tess’s husband will ruin him financially.” She looked as if she were about to leap out of the chair, nursing baby or not, and send Darlington to his doom.
“So I gather you think that I shouldn’t go to Grillon’s?”
Annabel gasped. “You can’t possibly be considering it! Absolutely not, Griselda. That’s a sacrifice that not one of us would ever wish you to make, including Josie. In fact, it would probably make Josie ill just to hear of this. That horrid, impudent little mushroom of a man.”
“But I don’t think he’s little,” Griselda said. “He’s at least as tall as Rafe.”
“I didn’t mean—” Annabel snapped. And stopped. “Griselda Willoughby,” she said slowly, “you tell me what is happening here.”
“Well, you are a married woman,” Griselda observed.
“Manifestly so,” Annabel said, dropping a kiss on the fuzzy head of her son. “And as such, Griselda?” She paused, eyebrow raised.
Griselda looked down at her ankles rather than meet Annabel’s gaze. Her stockings were really quite beautiful. “Don’t you think these are exquisite?” she asked, pulling up her skirts a tad and swinging her ankle in the air. The silk was so thin that they gave her legs a golden sheen, like canary wine.
“Griselda,” Annabel threatened.
“I’m thinking of having a tryst with the man,” Griselda said, watching Annabel carefully under her eyelashes to see if she looked horrified at the thought.
But she didn’t. In fact, she just looked fascinated. “It’s nothing to do with Josie, then?”
Griselda shook her head. “Darlington promised to say nothing of Josie in the future, and I believe him. He had the air of a man who has finally realized he made himself loathsome.”
“Well, why on earth would you wish to have an affaire with someone who is loathsome?”
Griselda laughed. “It seems that marriage has left you unaccountably naive, dearest.”
“I have never been naive,” Annabel said, deftly switching Samuel to her other breast. “I gather that Darlington has some attributes that are…enticing?”
Griselda smiled.
“In that case,” Annabel said, “I shall entertain Josie while you frolic in Grillon’s Hotel.”
“I am rather old for him.”
“Robbing the cradle?” Annabel said cheerfully. “And why not?”
“He can’t be more than twenty-four.”
“That’s nothing. Look at how many marriages have a twenty-year gap in favor of the man.”
“It would be my last such indiscretion,” Griselda said.
“I know, darling,” Annabel said. “Because you should marry now, and have yourself a little Samuel.” Samuel let out a great burp, so she stood up and plopped him into Griselda’s arms.
“I suppose…” Griselda said.
“You’re a born mother. Of course you suppose. Is Darlington a possibility?”
“Certainly not! I just told you that he’s less than thirty. One doesn’t marry men of that age. One might dance with them—”