Before the Kiss: A Book Club Belles Society novella

  Copyright © 2014 by Jayne Fresina

  Cover and internal design 2014 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover illustration by Judy York/Lott Reps

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  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  A Sneak Peek at Once Upon a Kiss

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  One

  Bath, 1814

  “It’s past ten o’clock, missy,” exclaimed the stout lady, her coarsely powdered face looming out of the dark hall and catching the light of the streetlamp. Her bulky form filled the narrow space, exuding an aura of suspicion and impatience, just as unsubtle as the odor of beef stew lingering about her person. “I don’t hold with stray females in my gentlemen’s rooms at this hour. This is a respectable bachelor residence, not a bawdy house.”

  Thus she prepared to shut her door, only to find a defiant foot wedged in her way. A foot that belonged to a young woman who, accustomed to putting that appendage wherever it was not welcomed, bore the pain bravely. For Miss Justina Penny, adventurer, optimist, and determined author of her own fate, had not come so far on this mission only to be turned away at the door.

  She’d just crept out of her aunt’s house and traveled a good distance through the streets of Bath, alone in a hired chair, wearing a wig and a mask. It was a great deal of trouble to go through and one last little barrier—this lady with her badly repaired facade flaking off in crusty pieces—would not stand between her and the prize she sought.

  “My good woman, this caution does you credit, but I am the sister of one of your guests, and I bring him important news from home. I must see him directly.” Speaking firmly, head high, she stepped closer to the peevish landlady, pushing the door open again. “Captain Sherringham is my brother, and he is boarding here, is he not?”

  “Sherringham? But he’s—”

  A loud crash from the room at the far end of the corridor momentarily distracted the landlady and she turned her head to yell, “Father! What have you done now? You’d better not have tipped the commode again. Sit still, for pity’s sake! I told you to wait for me. Every night we go through this palaver.”

  Justina considered dashing by the lady, but there was not enough time. The woman’s head swiveled around again on her stout neck and her eyes narrowed.

  “Might have known you were one of Sherringham’s trollops. There’s always three or four of your sort hanging around that fellow. Soldiers on leave! More trouble than they’re worth and half of them sneak off without paying their bill. I could afford a maid to open this door for me, if it weren’t for soldiers like your fair captain, cheating me out of an honest living. For all his fine talk, I’ve never known a man with pockets to let so often and, if rumors are true, he owes coin to more than half the tradesmen in Bath. I doubt you’ll get much out of him, missy. Except a case of the French pox.”

  “How dare you!” she replied, raising her voice in outrage. “I told you, I am his sister.”

  “Aye. He has a lot of them.” A second bang from the back room, followed by a rattling, spinning clatter, caused the landlady to shout again over her shoulder, “Father! I told you to stay there and wait for me.”

  High-pitched wheezing laughter echoed down the hall in reply.

  “You are not a jockey in the Epsom Derby!” the woman hollered. “Do not race that commode around the bedchamber. If I have to come back there and clean up another spilled pot—”

  “Oh, please do go and tend to your poor father,” said Justina eagerly. “I will wait here.”

  The woman chortled. “Of course you will! Come on, missy. Off you go now!” Grabbing a broom from the corner behind her, she thrust it at Justina’s skirt, pushing her backward out of the door and down the step. “I’ve naught against folk who must earn a living, but you can ply your trade elsewhere. This is a respectable house.” And thus the door was slammed in her face.

  Furious, she waited on the step a moment, one hand clutching the iron railing. This was a disaster. She firmly refused to go all the way back again without her mission fulfilled. If she did, she suspected her courage would not hold out for a second try.

  She’d known Captain Nathaniel Sherringham for several years. His sister was one of her very good friends at home in the village of Hawcombe Prior, where they were members of the local book society, a small group of young ladies that Nathaniel had teasingly named “The Book Club Belles.” But as much as Justina adored the handsome, charming fellow, she had never yet let him know it. He still thought of her as a fairly insignificant little girl—amusing, certainly, and “jolly good fun,” as he’d said to her not long ago—but a mere girl. Tonight, having learned of the captain’s arrival in Bath only a few days before she and her family were due to end their stay and return home, Justina planned to open his eyes and make him see her as the woman she truly was.

  Eighteen now and “out,” she was expected to find a husband. Not that she wanted one. There were other things she would prefer to do with her time, but her mother was insistent. If Justina had any hope of avoiding the humiliation of the marriage mart and the grief of being constantly compared to her prettier, much sweeter, elder sister, she would just have to get it over with and choose a husband for herself. Let the matter be settled immediately, she thought, and save everyone from the inevitable bouts of nervous prostration and aching of the spleen that were bound to occur for as long as she was paraded about on the auction block.

  Who better for her than Captain Sherringham?

  He was lively company, never mawkish. He was not the sort to lecture her or chastise her for saying or doing the “wrong” thing. In fact, since her mischief amused him, he had a tendency to urge her on. The captain saw nothing wrong in teaching her anything she wanted to learn—especially those things a girl was not supposed to know. He took evident delight in showing her how to cheat at cards, how to curse in French, and how to pick locks.

  Thus, it was decided. If she must have a husband, she would rather it was Captain Sherringham than any other man.

  She supposed that meant she was in love.

  The only thing left to do was prove to him that she was a little girl no more. That she could be his playmate in other ways.

  On a more mercenary note, she’d purchased a splendid pair of silk stockings and pink ribbon garters especially for this moment, but if she couldn’t gain access to his lodgings, the extravagant spending of her allowance on one article of clothing would be a complete and shameful waste.

  Retreating down the steps to the street, she turned her mind to other possible routes inside the building.

  A mob of noisy fellows passed her on the moonlit path, and she hastily dodged aside to avoid being swept up in their rapid motion. A coach-and-four thundered by and then another. Bath was a much larger and busier place than Hawcombe Prior, of course, but after almost three weeks there she’d grown accustomed to the crowds and the noise. Justina enjoyed observing the oddities of humanity, and there was plenty of that to watch here.

  Suddenly she found herself at the steps that led down to the servants’ entrance of the boardinghouse. A dim light showed through a barred window, but the door was shrouded in darkness.

  Justina glanced around quickly and then ducked down the steps, her heart pumping vigorously again after the previous pinch of disappointment had rendered it sluggish. Peering through that small, grimy window, she saw a low fire glowing. No sign of life within. The landlady had sounded exasperated by the lack of a maid to answer her door, so perhaps she had no staff. Or if she had any at all, they were currently occupied elsewhere, and with the landlady busy tending to her father on the commode, Justina had a good chance of entering and slipping upstairs unseen.

  To her surprise, the door opened easily, neither locked nor bolted. While celebrating this lucky chance, she heard someone whistling, followed by a dragging bumping sound that grew louder as it descended the steps behind her.

  Apparently the door had been left open for a delivery of some sort.

  Seizing her chance, Justina dashed inside before she was seen and hid behind the door, holding her breath. As she watched through the crack, a large bulk shuffled by dragging a sack of what appeared to be potatoes or onions—probably very badly bruised on
es by then. The man continued his tuneless humming while he warmed his hands by the fire, then he trudged back out again and shut the door.

  Justina took off the wooden pattens that had kept her feet dry in the muddy streets but would rouse every resident in the house if she wore them indoors, and then ran up the stairs to the main floor of the house.

  She could still hear the landlady complaining to her father as he threw things around in the back room and laughed merrily.

  Pulse racing, she dodged up the next flight of stairs and then the next, knowing the captain’s room was on the top floor. When they ran into each other in the street that day he had told her about his lodgings and mentioned having a good view of Sydney Gardens from his window, so she went to the door of the room that must face the front of the narrow house. It was a cramped rectangle of landing with a sloping floor and no wall sconces to light the way, but moonlight shimmered through a small window. Just enough to mark her path to his door. There at last she paused for a breath.

  All was quiet within, but for the low, irregular sound of a man snoring, followed by the creak of the bed frame as he turned over.

  Odd that lively, pleasure-loving Captain Sherringham should be abed at this hour, she mused. She’d expected him to still be out at the theater or a concert, in which case she’d planned to wait for him under the covers.

  Justina raised her knuckles and tapped lightly.

  No reply.

  If she knocked louder someone might hear and find her there.

  She was very hot under her clothes, nerves about to get the better of her. But she was too far in now and there was no changing her mind. It was a favorite saying of hers that when bound to be in trouble anyway, one may as well make the most of it.

  She carefully tried the handle. Locked, of course. Now she could put her hatpin and one of Captain Sherringham’s lessons to good use.

  Hopefully he had not put the bolt across.

  Damn and blast! He had put the bolt across.

  Luckily for her, however, the door was badly fitted in its frame and there was just enough room to slide a bent, and very determined, hatpin through the gap. With some careful wriggling, she managed to jostle the bolt until it slid free of the catch. And not a moment too soon, for she heard heavy footsteps on the stairs behind her.

  Her heart in her mouth, she entered the room and quickly closed the door.

  Candlelight from a brass lantern by his bed cast a warm, flickering glow around the small, tidy room. A lump under the bedcovers proved that he was in it and apparently fast asleep. Did he not know it was dangerous to fall asleep with a candle still lit? How tired he must have been. She paused a moment, pondering the snoring bump under the quilt.

  Now, how did one proceed with a seduction under these circumstances?

  Justina knew he liked her. He often said how much he enjoyed her company. Whenever he came home on leave to the village of Hawcombe Prior, she was flattered by his attention, for while most people thought Justina was simply in the way, Captain Sherringham always had time for her. He was never too busy for a good prank, never too glum to laugh at her jokes, or too shocked by a bawdy story.

  “Nathaniel Sherringham has no responsibilities,” her mother would remark crisply, “that’s his trouble.”

  But a lack of responsibilities did not sound very troublesome to Justina. On the contrary, it sounded like a good thing and a state she ought to strive for herself.

  After a moment of pensive consideration at the foot of his bed, she decided to sit quietly in a chair and wait for him to wake.

  No sooner had she sat than she jumped up again. No, she could not wait. There was no time for that. In her experience, the element of surprise was always best, especially if there was a slim chance of the other person trying to take evasive action. The truth was, she did not know how the captain would react to finding her in his room. While it seemed unlikely he would suddenly become concerned about propriety and send her back to her family, there was a nagging doubt. He might not be willing to deflower her. He might want to discuss it and try to talk her out of it, which would do no earthly good for her nerves.

  Therefore, she ought to remove any opportunity for debate. And there was only one way to do that.

  Justina quickly began removing her wig and her clothes.

  If he should wake suddenly and be consumed by a rare attack of the conscience, it would be too late for him to do anything about it once she was naked. The excitement of her mission had soon swept her up again, and she firmly thrust those lingering doubts and fears aside. Tonight Captain Sherringham would initiate her into womanhood at last. Then he would marry her. Of course he would. Whatever people said of him, he was not so very wicked. She knew him better than most, didn’t she?

  The unsuspecting bulge in the bed groaned and turned over again.

  With impatient, sweaty hands, she tugged her chemise over her head, and now she was down to her new stockings and pink garters. Those she would keep on. For now. The last things to be removed were the pins that had held her long hair in place and kept it out of sight under her wig. With her dark curls set free, the pins placed in a row on his dresser, she glanced over at the long mirror by the washstand and solemnly contemplated the image staring back at her.

  It was improper, her sister would remind her, to study one’s nude body, but in the grand order of events about to take place that evening, it seemed a very small thing to worry about. Besides, she was in no danger from the sin of vanity. How could she be when she had nothing against which to compare herself and knew nothing about the attributes a man might desire? She merely looked out of curiosity and to take stock of her parts. Such as they were.

  Through the narrow view afforded by her flinching gaze, Justina examined her shape in the mirror. While it went in and out as did most women’s bodies, according to her father’s anatomy books, there was nothing remarkable. She had the expected quantity of limbs and parts where they were supposed to be and that was all that could be said.

  Hopefully Captain Sherringham would not find anything objectionable.

  Her breasts and hips were rounder than they used to be, her waist more defined. The pink silk garters tied in bows around each thigh seemed to frame the triangle of tight, dark curls that hid yet another lock—this one to be picked by the skillful Captain Sherringham himself.

  She’d heard he was excellent at these matters and had considerable experience. One might even say he was infamous.

  Well, this was it. Swiftly dismissing the unexceptional image in the mirror, she swallowed hard and turned to face the bed. Time to get on with the business at hand. There was no point being meek about it. No cause to be shy. Men and women did this sort of thing all the time. Sort of.

  Justina backed up a step, contemplated the space between her and the bed, and then took one of those reckless, running leaps for which she was, sadly, notorious.

  Two

  Darius Wainwright had arrived in Bath three days before his stepmother and her daughter were expected for the express reason of spending time alone, in peace and relative tranquility as long as it lasted. Not in the least fond of Bath, he only went at all because his old friend, Miles Forester, had pestered him unremittingly until he agreed to spend a few weeks there.

  “You need to get away from Town, old chap,” Miles had said with a cheerful smile. “You begin to look old and gray about the gills. All work and no play, makes Wainwright a very dull boy. A change of scene will do you good. Come and take the waters. You’ll feel much better.”

  “I wasn’t aware of being ill, Forester,” he’d replied gruffly.

  “Exactly,” was his friend’s response.

  But arriving in Bath early, before he was expected by the staff, had resulted in a most inconvenient problem for Darius.

  Unbeknownst to him, his stepmother had arranged for the place to be repainted and papered. All the furniture was either removed or covered in dust sheets while this unsanctioned refurbishment took place. Another example of the women in his life trying to take charge, he thought angrily. He would have expected them to give up by now since he never gave them any encouragement and stubbornly resisted their foolhardy attempts to change him. Apparently it gave them something to wile away their endless leisure hours in between spending his money.