Phyllida’s eyes widened. “Confess to the prim-and-proper confidante of the queen that I wanted to run away from my lawfully wedded husband? You, who were so famously devoted to an elderly man who bored you senseless?” Phyllida lifted her glass of champagne. “I am delighted to see you’ve let Cameron corrupt you.”
Giorgio had turned to Cameron to ask him a question about horses, and the two men were already deep in conversation about that. Ainsley watched Cameron become interested in their discussion about differences in various race courses.
I was already corrupted, dear Phyllida. Cameron simply made me acknowledge it.
“Surely you could have raised the money without resorting to blackmail,” Ainsley said.
“Not at all. My so-called friends were as upright and closed-minded as you. They’d rather obey the rules and live in misery than boldly snatch a few moments of happiness. Besides, I wanted to punish Her Little Majesty for forcing me into marriage with an ice-cold man. To Mr. Chase, a wife is little more than an automaton to stand beside him and say the right things at the right time—to benefit him. I’m surprised he didn’t store me in a closet every night and wind me up again every morning.”
“Was Signor Prario the happiness the queen had taken from you?” Ainsley asked, remembering their conversation in the garden. “The reason she made you marry Mr. Chase?”
“No, no, I didn’t meet Giorgio until about a year ago. But it was a similar thing—ten years ago, the most delightful man in the world asked me to marry him, but the queen refused to let me. He wasn’t rich enough or well-born enough to be able to override the queen’s objections, and she persuaded my family to her side. I was too young and too afraid to simply run away with him. He’s long gone, in America, probably married to someone else by now. Mr. Chase was looking for a society wife about the same time, and the queen influenced my family to marry me off to him instead. Our Victoria buried me in misery for ten long years. I decided that she needed to suffer a little for it, though she’ll never quite understand what she did to me.”
Ainsley thought she understood a little. Phyllida was a woman of strong emotions, and being locked to a man who had no interest in her must have been very, very hard. Ainsley’s marriage hadn’t been her choice either, but at least John Douglas had been a warm man. Friendly and kind, he’d done his best to make his young bride happy. The fact that he hadn’t entirely succeeded hadn’t been his fault.
One thing Ainsley didn’t understand, however. “If you were so in love with Signor Prario, Phyllida, why did you take up with Cameron?”
Phyllida waved this away. “Because Cameron has a reputation for lavishing very expensive gifts on his ladies.” Phyllida glanced pointedly at Ainsley’s diamonds, and Ainsley stopped herself touching the strand on her bosom. “Giorgio and I wanted to elope, but neither of us had a bean. He raised money by singing, and I by the only way I knew how—out of other men. Cameron is very generous, you must admit.”
“And Signor Prario didn’t mind this?”
Giorgio was now engrossed in his discussion with Cameron, which had moved to sport in general. He didn’t look in the least worried that Cameron had once been his mistress’s lover.
“Giorgio understands that I love him to distraction,” Phyllida said. “He knows that people like us need patrons—singers no different than ladies. Now he’s attracted a patron of his own, a very rich, elderly Frenchman who dotes on young tenors. So we have no more worries about money.” Phyllida gave Ainsley an open look. “You don’t know, darling, what it’s like to fall asleep at night with a man who adores you. To open your eyes in the morning and look upon him, knowing that your day will be filled with delight. It’s absolute bliss.”
No, Ainsley didn’t know what it was like. She had to glance away, to pretend interest in the last drop of champagne in her glass.
Phyllida rattled on, not knowing that she’d said anything awkward. “I can already tell that you’re good for Cameron—heavens, he married you, the man who put it about, loudly, that he’d never go to the altar again. The Mackenzies are hard, hard men, but you seemed to have softened this one a little.” She squeezed Ainsley’s hand. “Do come to the concert, you and Cameron both. You won’t regret it.”
Too damn many people here. Cameron shifted on his seat in the crowded box high above the stage while below them, Prario burst into song.
The fact that Phyllida has stuffed Prario’s box with as many people as she could meant that Ainsley sat slap against Cameron on his right. This was fine, but the presence of so many others meant that he couldn’t take advantage of the closeness as he’d like. He had to sit, hard and aching, with Ainsley’s scent under his nose, and not be able to do anything about it.
Phyllida sat on the other side of Ainsley, with Phyllida’s Parisian friends taking up the other chairs. The box was tiny in the eighteenth-century jewel box of a theatre, and Phyllida sat forward to watch Giorgio Prario, her face glowing with love.
Cameron had to admit that Prario was good. His voice filled the theatre with solid sound, his notes unwavering. Cameron tried to lose himself in the beauty of the music, while his trousers stretched too tight. He should have overridden his Parisian valet’s horror and worn his kilt.
Ainsley leaned to him, her warmth heady, and her sweet voice drifted into his ear. “How many buttons, Lord Cameron?”
Cameron’s breath stopped. He felt a hand on his waistband, but their corner of the box was too dark for him to see his own lap. Ainsley’s hair and eyes glowed in the light from the stage, and her smile was sultry.
“Devil,” he murmured back.
“I say four.” Her breath tingled down every nerve.
“Eight.” That would open him all the way. “The whole bloody lot.”
“You’re daring, my lord.”
“I don’t believe you’ll do it,” he whispered back.
Ainsley popped open the first button, bold as brass. She kept her eyes on the stage, sitting modestly in her chair while her fingers opened buttons too damn slowly for his taste. Cameron’s heart hammered as each one came undone, and then he was sitting in the opera house with his trousers open.
Cameron wore thick underwear against the cold of October, but damned if Ainsley didn’t find a way inside. She’d removed her gloves, he noted as her bare fingers closed around him.