More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (15 page)

He found his brother exactly where he expected to find him, exercising and training his new horses. At least Ferdinand had a good eye for his matched pair, Jocelyn discovered with some relief. They were not just a pretty pair, but superb goers too. The trouble was, of course, that Ferdinand had not had the handling of them for nearly long enough to race them, besides which point he was a restless and impulsive and reckless young man—a typical Dudley, in fact—with impatient hands and a tendency to make colorful use of all the most profane words in his vocabulary when he was frustrated.

“You have to let your hands talk firmly yet seductively,” Jocelyn said with a sigh after one particularly hair-raising tirade occasioned by the horses’ refusal to act as a team. “And you have to give your voice a rest, Ferdinand, or by the time you reach Brighton there will be none of it left with which to cheer your own victory.”

“Damned cattle,” his brother grumbled. “I have bought a couple of prima donnas.”

“What you have bought,” Jocelyn told him, “is an excellent pair that was cheap at the price. What you have
to do, preferably before Friday, is teach them who is master.”

He was not entirely without hope of winning his substantial bet at White’s. Ferdinand was a notable whip though a somewhat erratic one, who appeared to believe that superiority consisted in taking unnecessary risks.

“Now, with
your
curricle, Tresham,” Ferdinand said with studied nonchalance, “I would leave Berriwether five miles behind my dust. It is lighter and better sprung than my own.”

“You will have to be content to leave him only two miles behind your dust, then,” Jocelyn said dryly.

“I’ll be giving Wesley Forbes a thrashing one of these days,” Ferdinand said later when the brothers were relaxing in his bachelor rooms, Jocelyn with his right foot up on a low table. “He was making offensive remarks at Wattier’s last night about people who stagger about on crutches to convince the world of their weakness but forget which leg they are supposed to have injured. Sometimes they lurch along with the right leg raised, he said, and sometimes with the left. He thinks he is the world’s sharpest wit.”

Jocelyn sipped on his glass of claret. “He could not have been referring to me, then, could he?” he remarked. “Don’t be drawn, Ferdinand. You do not need a brawl this side of the race. And never on my behalf. The very idea!”

“I would have planted him a facer right there in the card room,” Ferdinand said, “if Max Ritterbaum had not grabbed my arm and dragged me off to Brookes’s. The thing is, Tresh, that not a one of them will have the bottom to say anything like it to your face. And you can be
damned sure that none of them will be decent enough to slap a glove across your cheek. They are too craven.”

“Leave them to me,” Jocelyn said. “Concentrate on the race.”

“Let me refill your glass,” Ferdinand said. “Have you seen Angeline’s latest monstrosity?”

“A bonnet?” Jocelyn asked. “The mustard one? Atrocious.”

“Blue,” his brother said, “with violet stripes. She wanted me to take her walking in the park with it perched on her head. I told her that either it or I would go strolling with her, but not both together. I would be the laughingstock, Tresham. Our sister was born with a ghastly affliction: no taste. Why Heyward encourages her by paying the bills is beyond me.”

“Besotted with her,” Jocelyn said. “As she is with him. No one would ever guess it to see them together, or
not
together, which is more often the case. They are as discreet about it as if they were clandestine lovers.”

Ferdinand barked with laughter. “Lord,” he said, “imagine anyone besotted with Angie!”

“Or with Heyward,” his brother agreed, idly swinging his quizzing glass from its ribbon.

It was an enormous relief, he reflected some time later as he made his way home, to be getting his life back to normal.

I
F
J
ANE HAD THOUGHT
for one moment that what had happened the night before had meant something to the Duke of Tresham, it did not take her long to learn the truth. Not that she
had
thought it, but sometimes one’s emotions defied reason.

He did not return home until late in the afternoon. And even then he did not summon Jane, but closeted himself in the library with Mr. Quincy. It was almost dinnertime before he sent for her.

He was still in the library. He was seated on the chaise longue, his right leg elevated on the cushion. He was fully dressed minus his right boot. He was also scowling.

“Not one word,” he said before she had even thought of opening her mouth. “Not a single word, Miss Ingleby. Of course it is sore and of course Barnard had the devil of a time pulling off my boot. But it is time it was exercised, and it is time I took myself off out of here during the daytime. Else I will descend to rape and debauchery.”

She had not expected him to refer to last night after being absent all day. Last night seemed rather like a dream. Not perhaps their embrace, which was something so far beyond her experience or expectations that she could not possibly have imagined it, but the sight and sound of the Duke of Tresham playing the pianoforte and coaxing magic from its keys.

“I suppose,” he said, turning his black eyes and his blacker scowl on her for the first time, “you thought it was love, Jane? Or affection? Or some fine emotion at least?”

“No, your grace,” she said. “I am not as naïve as you seem to think me. I recognized it as physical desire on both our parts. Why should I believe that a self-acknowledged rake would have any fine feelings for his servant? And why would you fear that a woman like me would fall for your dangerous and legendary charm
when I have been subjected to your ill temper and profane tongue for more than two weeks?”

“Why would I
fear
?” His eyes narrowed. “I might have guessed that you would have the last word on the subject, Jane. How foolish of me to imagine that I seriously discomposed you last night.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “I daresay your leg is somewhat swollen. You will need to bathe it in cold water. Keep it submerged for a while.”

“And freeze my toes?”

“I imagine,” she told him, “that that discomfort is better than watching them turn black over the coming weeks.”

He pursed his lips and there seemed for a moment to be a smile lurking in his eyes. But he did not give in to it.

“If you are planning to go out again tomorrow,” she said, “I beg leave to be given the morning free, your grace.”

“Why?” His frown returned.

Her clasped hands turned cold and clammy at the very thought of her reason, but she could no longer give in to the paralysis of terror. She must sooner or later venture beyond the sheltering doors of Dudley House.

“It is time I looked for other employment,” she said. “I have less than one week left here. Indeed, I am not really needed now. I never have been. You never needed a nurse.”

He stared at her. “You would leave me, would you then, Jane?”

She had been firmly repressing the pain she felt at the thought of doing just that. The pain just did not have either a rational or worthy cause. Though, of course, she
had seen a startlingly different side to him in the music room last night.

“My employment here will soon be at an end, your grace,” she reminded him.

“Who says so?” He was staring at her broodingly. “What poppycock you speak when you have nothing else to which to go.”

Hope stirred. She had half thought of asking him—or of asking the housekeeper, who hired the servants—if she could stay on as a housemaid or scullery maid. But she did not believe she would do so. She would not be able to bear living on at Dudley House in a more menial capacity than the one she had held so far. Not that she could allow pride to dictate her actions, of course.

“It was agreed,” she said, “that I remain to nurse you while your injury forced you to remain inactive. For three weeks.”

“There is still almost a week left, then,” he said. “I will not hear of your searching for something else, Jane, until your time here has been served. I do not pay you to spend your mornings flitting all over London looking for an employer who will pay you more than I do. How much
do
I pay you?”

“More than I earn,” she said. “Money is not the issue, your grace.”

But he was being stubborn. “I will hear no more about it for at least another week, then,” he said. “But I have a job for you on Thursday evening, Jane. Tomorrow. And I will pay you well for it too. I will pay you what you deserve.”

She looked warily at him.

“Don’t stand by the damned door as if poised for flight,” he said irritably. “If I wished to pounce on you, I
would do so no matter what the distance. Come closer. Sit down here.”

He pointed to the chair where she usually sat.

There was no point in arguing that at least. She did as she was told even though doing so brought her uncomfortably within the aura of his masculinity. She could smell his cologne and remembered how it had been very much a part of last night’s sensual experience.

“I am hosting a grand entertainment here tomorrow evening,” he said. “Quincy is just now writing out the invitations and having them delivered. There will be only a day’s notice for the invited guests, of course, but they will almost all come. Invitations to Dudley House are rare enough to be coveted, you see, despite my reputation. Perhaps because of it.”

She would remain for every moment of the evening behind the closed door of her room, Jane thought, clasping her hands very tightly in her lap.

“Tell me,” the duke said, “do you possess any garment more becoming than that atrocity you are wearing and the other one you alternate with it, Miss Ingleby?”

No. Oh, no. Definitely not. Absolutely, without question not.

“I will not need it,” she said firmly. “I am not going to be one of your guests. It would be unfitting.”

His eyebrows arched arrogantly upward.

“For once, Miss Ingleby,” he said, “we are in perfect accord. But you have not answered my question. Do take that mulish look off your face. It makes you look like a petulant child.”

“I have one muslin frock,” she admitted. “But I will not wear it, your grace. It is unsuited to my employment.”

“You will wear it tomorrow evening,” he informed her. “And you will do something prettier with your hair. I will find out from Barnard which of the maids is most adept at dressing hair. If there is none, I will hire one for the occasion.”

Jane was feeling somewhat sick to her stomach.

“But you have said,” she reminded him, “that I cannot be one of your guests. I will not need a muslin dress and an elaborate coiffure to sit in my room.”

“Do not be dense, Jane,” he said. “There will be dinner and cards and conversation and music—provided by a number of the ladies I am inviting. All ladies are accomplished, you know. It is a common fallacy among mothers, it seems, that the ability to tinkle away at a pianoforte keyboard while looking suitably decorative is the surest way to a man’s heart and fortune.”

“I wonder,” she said, “what has made you so cynical.”

“Do you?” He smiled in that wolfish way of his. “It comes of growing up with an earl’s title and the rank of a marquess, Jane. And of becoming a duke at the tender age of seventeen. Time and again I have proved myself to be the blackest-hearted villain in all England. But every mama with a marriageable daughter still fawns over me as if I were the Angel Gabriel, and every papa courts my acquaintance. Not to mention the simpering young maidens themselves.”

“One of these days,” she said tartly, “you are going to fall in love with one of those maidens only to discover that she will laugh your courtship to scorn. You have little respect for female intelligence, your grace. You believe yourself to be the greatest matrimonial prize in Christendom and therefore despise all those whom you
believe to be angling after you. There are
some
sensible ladies in this world, I would have you know.”

He pursed his lips again, a gleam of definite amusement in his eyes now. “For my pride’s sake, Jane,” he said, “might we extend that to include the Islamic world as well as just Christendom?”

He was quickly learning, Jane thought, how to burst her bubble.

“But we digress.” He looked at her more soberly, and Jane felt fingers of apprehension creep up her spine. “You, Miss Ingleby, are going to be the main attraction of the evening. You are going to sing for my guests.”

“No!” She stood up abruptly.

“Ah yes,” he said softly. “I will even accompany you. I believe I must have admitted to the
ton
from time to time that I dabble. I do not fear that my manhood will be in jeopardy if I merely accompany a vocalist. Do you believe I should?”

“No,” she said. “No to the whole thing, I mean. I will not do it. I am not a public performer and have no wish to be. You cannot make me and do not think you can. I will not be bullied.”

“I will pay you five hundred pounds, Jane,” he said softly.

She drew breath to continue and snapped her mouth shut again. She frowned.

“Five hundred pounds?” she said incredulously. “How ridiculously absurd.”

“Not to me,” he said. “I want you to sing in public, Jane. I want the
beau monde
to discover what I discovered last night. You have a rare talent.”

“Do not think to flatter me into agreeing,” she said. But her mind had already whirled into motion. Five hundred
pounds. She would not need to work for a long time. She could disappear into a more secure hiding place than this house. She could even move away to somewhere the earl and the Bow Street Runners would not think of looking.

“Five hundred pounds would free you from the necessity of searching out instant employment, would it not?” he said, obviously reading her thoughts, or at least some of them.

But first she would have to face a houseful of guests. Was there anyone in London, she wondered, apart from the Earl of Durbury, who knew her real identity, who had ever set eyes on her as Lady Sara Illingsworth? She did not believe so. But what if there
were
someone?