Jane turned back to the mirror. She could spend hours at a dressing-table, gravely staring at her reflection just as an artist might gaze on his work in search of a final gloss that might turn a merely pretty picture into a masterpiece. “Would you say there’s colour in my cheeks?” she asked Lord John.
“Yes.” He smiled with relief that she had changed the subject away from Richard Sharpe. “In fact you’re looking positively healthy.”
“Damn.” She glowered at her reflection. “It must be the hot weather.” She turned as her maid appeared from the anteroom with two dresses, one gold and one white, which were held up for Jane’s inspection. Jane pointed to the pale gold dress then returned her attention to the mirror. She dipped a finger into a pot of rouge and, with exquisite care, reddened her nipples. Then, obsessively, she went back to blanching her face. The table was crowded with flasks and vials; there was bergamot and musk, eau de chipre, eau de luce, and a bottle of Sans Pareil perfume that had cost Lord John a small fortune. He did not resent such gifts for he found Jane’s beauty ever more startling and ever more beguiling. Society might disapprove of the adulterous relationship flaunted so openly, but Lord John believed that Jane’s beauty excused everything. He could not bear to think of losing her, or of not wholly possessing her. He was in love.
Jane grimaced at herself `in the mirror. “So what happens if Richard is at the ball tonight?”
Lord John sighed inwardly as he turned back to the window. “He’ll challenge me, of course, then it will be grass before tomorrow’s breakfast.” He spoke lightly, but in truth he dreaded having to face Sharpe in a dawn duel. To Lord John, Sharpe was nothing but a killer who had been trained and hardened to death on innumerable battlefields, while Lord John had only ever brought about the death of foxes. “We needn’t go tonight,” he said hopelessly.
“And have all society say that we are cowards?” Jane, because she was a mistress, rarely had an opportunity to attend the more elegant events of society, and she was not going to miss this chance of being seen at a duchess’s ball. Not even Jane’s tender digestion would keep her from tonight’s dancing, and nor did she have any real fear of meeting her husband, for Jane well knew Sharpe’s reluctance to dance or to dress up in a frippery uniform, but the possibility of his presence was an alarming thought that she could not resist exploring.
“I shall just try to avoid meeting him,” Lord John said helplessly.
Jane dabbed a tentative finger to test whether her rouged nipples had dried. “How soon before there’s a battle?”
“I’m told the Peer doesn’t expect the French to move till July.”
Jane grimaced at the implied delay, then stood with her slender arms raised high to allow her maid to drop the gauzy dress over her head. “Do you know what happens in battle?” she asked Lord John from under the cascading cloth of gold.
It seemed a rather broad question, and one for which Lord John could not think of a specific answer. “Rather a lot of unpleasantly, I imagine,” he said instead.
“Richard told me that in battle a lot of unpopular officers are killed by their own men.” Jane twisted herself to and fro in front of the mirror to make sure the dress hung properly. The dress was high waisted and low-breasted; a fashionably filmy screen through which her brightly coloured nipples showed as enticing shadows. Other women would doubtless be wearing such dresses, but none, Jane thought, would dare to wear one without any petticoat as she herself intended. Satisfied, she sat as her maid began to untwist the lead strips from her hair and tease the ringlets into perfection. “He told me that you can’t tell what happens in a battle because there’s too much smoke and noise. A battle, in short, is an ideal place to commit a murder.”
“Are you suggesting I should kill him?” Lord John was genuinely shocked at the dishonour of the suggestion.