More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (18 page)

“But I will escort you to your room,” he told her. “No, you may not look significantly down at my leg. I am not a cripple, Jane, and will not behave like one. Take my arm.”

He did not care who saw them leave together. He would not be gone long. And she would not be here at Dudley House much longer to fuel any gossip. That was clearer than ever to him.

The hall and staircase seemed very quiet in contrast to the buzz of conversation they had left behind in the drawing room and could still hear. Jocelyn did not attempt conversation as they ascended slowly—he had not brought his cane with him. He did not speak at all until they were walking along the dimly lit corridor to Jane’s room.

“You were as much of a success as I knew you would be,” he said then. “More so, indeed.”

“Thank you,” she said.

He paused outside her room, standing between her and the door.

“Your parents,” he said, “must have been very proud of you.”

“Y—” She caught herself in time. She looked keenly at him, as if to see whether his words had been a mere slip of memory. “The people who knew me were,” she said carefully. “But a talent is not something to be unduly proud of, your grace. My voice is something for which I can take no credit. It was given me, just as was your ability to play the pianoforte as you do.”

“Jane,” he said softly before dipping his head and setting his lips to hers.

He did not touch her anywhere else. She did not touch him. But their lips clung softly, warmly, yearningly for many moments before one of them drew back—he was not sure who.

Her eyes were dreamy with latent passion, her cheeks flushed with desire. Her lips were parted and moist with invitation. And his own heartbeat was drumming in his ears and threatening to deafen him to reality. Ah, Jane, if only …

He searched her eyes with his own before turning and opening her door. “It is as well that I have guests below, Jane. This will just not do, will it? Not for much longer. Good night.”

J
ANE FLED
INTO HER
room without a backward glance. She heard the door close behind her before spreading her hands over her hot cheeks.

She could still feel his hand at her waist as they waltzed. She could still feel his heat, still smell his cologne, still feel the sense of perfect rhythm with which they had moved to the music. She could still feel
the waltz as an intimate, sensual thing, not the sheer fun it had been when danced with Charles.

Yes, it was as well there were guests downstairs.

She could still feel his kiss, not fierce, not lascivious. Much worse. A soft, longing kiss. No, it would not do. Not for much longer. Not for
any
longer, in fact. A great yawning emptiness opened up somewhere deep inside her.

HE BRIGHTON RACE WAS TO BEGIN AT HYDE
Park Corner at half-past eight the following morning. Fortunately it was shaping up to be a clear, windless day, Jocelyn discovered when he stepped outside, leaning on his cane.

He climbed up unaided to the high seat of his curricle, and waved away his groom, who would have jumped up behind. He was only going to the park and back, after all. He was going to give Ferdinand some last words of encouragement—not advice. Dudleys did not take well to advice, especially from one another.

He was very early, but he wanted to spend a few minutes with his brother before the crowds arrived to cheer the racers on their way to Brighton. There were a number of gentlemen who would ride their horses behind the curricles, of course, so that they could witness the end of the race and celebrate with the winner in Brighton. Ordinarily Jocelyn would have been one of them—no, ordinarily he would have been one of the
racers
—but not this time. His leg was considerably better than perhaps it should feel when he had waltzed on it last evening, but it would be foolish to subject it to a long, bruising ride.

Ferdinand was flushed and restless and eager as he checked his new team and chatted with Lord Heyward, who had arrived even before Jocelyn.

“I am to be sure to tell you from Angeline,” Heyward was saying with an ironic lift of one eyebrow, “that you are to win at all costs, Ferdinand, that you are to take no risks that will break your neck, that the honor of the Dudley name is in your hands, that you are not to worry about anything but your own safety—and a great deal more in the same contradictory vein, with which I will not assail your ears.”

Ferdinand grinned at him and turned to bid Jocelyn a good morning.

“They are as eager as I to be on the way,” he said, nodding in the direction of his horses.

Jocelyn raised his quizzing glass to his eye and looked over the curricle, which his brother had bought impulsively a few months before entirely on the grounds that it looked both smart and sporty. He had complained about it ever since, and indeed there was something clumsy about it that one detected only in the handling of it. Jocelyn had driven it once himself and had never felt any burning desire to repeat the experience.

The odds were against Ferdinand in this race, though Jocelyn did not despair of his wager. Youth and eagerness were on his brother’s side as well as a certain family determination never to come in second at any manly sport. And those chestnuts were certainly a pair that Jocelyn coveted himself. The curricle was the weakness.

Lord Berriwether, Ferdinand’s opponent, was driving up amid a veritable cavalcade of horsemen come to cheer him on. All of them would have wagered on him, of course. A few of them called good-naturedly to Ferdinand.

“A prime pair, Dudley,” Mr. Wagdean cried cheerfully. “A pity they have three lame legs apiece.”

“Even more of a pity when they win,” Ferdinand retorted, grinning, “and show up Berriwether’s pair, which has no such excuse.”

Berriwether was showing his unconcern with the opposition by flicking at an invisible speck of dust on his gleaming top boots with his whip. The man looked more suitably dressed for a stroll on Bond Street than a race to Brighton. But he would be all business, of course, once the race was under way.

“Ferdinand,” Jocelyn said impulsively, “we had better switch curricles.”

His brother looked at him with undisguised hope. “You mean it, Tresham?”

“I have a better regard for my wager than to send you off to Brighton in that bandbox,” Jocelyn replied, nodding at the red and yellow curricle.

Ferdinand was not about to argue the point further. In a matter of minutes—and with only five minutes to spare before the scheduled start of the race—his groom had unhitched his curricle from the chestnuts and switched it with the duke’s.

“Just remember,” Jocelyn said, unable after all to resist the urge to give advice, “it is somewhat lighter than yours, Ferdinand, and more instantly responsive to your maneuvering.
Slow down
on the bends.”

Ferdinand climbed up to the high seat and took the ribbons from his groom’s hand. He was serious now, concentrating on the task ahead.

“And bring it back in one piece,” Jocelyn added before stepping back with the rest of the spectators, “or I’ll skin you alive.”

One minute later the Marquess of Yarborough, Berriwether’s brother-in-law, raised the starting pistol skyward,
there was an expectant hush, the pistol cracked, and the race began amid a roar of cheers and a cloud of dust and a thundering of hooves.

It looked, Jocelyn thought, gazing rather wistfully after the curricles and the throng of riders, rather like a cavalry charge. He turned toward Ferdinand’s curricle and exchanged a few pleasantries with some other spectators.

He wished then that he had brought his groom after all. He would have to go home in order to have his horses stabled and the curricle put away in the carriage house before proceeding to White’s. But he need not go inside the house. He had no reason to do so and every reason
not
to.

He had kissed her again last evening. And had admitted that they could not go on as they were. The matter had to be dealt with. She had to go.

The trouble was, he did not want her to go.

He should have driven around to the mews, he remembered as he drove into Grosvenor Square and approached the front doors of Dudley House. He was not concentrating. He would drive around the square and back out of it.

But just as he gave his horses the signal to proceed, a series of incidents, which happened so fast that even afterward he was not sure of the sequence, changed all his plans. There was a loud snapping sound, a sudden lurching of the curricle to the left, a snorting and rearing of the horses, a shout in a male voice, a scream in a female’s. And a painful collision of his body with something hard enough to knock the breath out of him.

He was lying facedown on the roadway outside his own doors when rational thought returned. With the
sound of frightened horses being soothed behind him, with the feeling that every bone in his body must have been jarred into a new position, and with someone stroking his hair—what the devil had happened to his hat?—and assuring him in a marvelous exercise of utter female stupidity that he would be all right, that everything would be all right.

“Bloody hell!” he exclaimed ferociously, turning his head to one side and viewing from ground level the ruin of his brother’s curricle, which was listing sharply to one side on its snapped axle.

Every house on the square, it seemed, was disgorging hordes of interested and concerned spectators—had they all been lined up at the windows to witness his humiliation?

“Just catch your breath,” Jane Ingleby said, her hand still in his hair. “A couple of the servants will carry you inside in a moment. Don’t try to move.”

That was all he would need to cap the mortification of one of the most wretched months of his life.

“If you cannot talk sense,” he said, shaking his head irritably to rid himself of her hand, “I suggest that you not talk at all.”

He planted his hands on the ground—there was a ragged hole in the palm of one of his expensive leather gloves, he noticed, with raw flesh within—and hoisted himself upward, ignoring the silent screaming of muscles that had just been severely abused.

“Oh, how foolish you are!” Jane Ingleby scolded, and to his shame he was forced to set a heavy hand on her shoulder—again.

But he was gazing narrow-eyed at Ferdinand’s curricle.

“It would have snapped when he was out in the country driving at breakneck speed,” he said.

She frowned up at him.

“It is Ferdinand’s curricle,” he explained. “The axle has broken. He would have been killed.
Marsh
!” he bellowed at his head groom, who was still soothing the horses while someone from another house was unhitching them from the vehicle. “Examine that curricle with a fine-tooth comb as soon as you have a chance. I want a report within the half hour.”

“Yes, your grace,” his groom called.

“Help me inside,” Jocelyn commanded Jane. “And stop your fussing. I’ll have bruises and scrapes for you to tend to your heart’s content once we have reached the library, I do not doubt. I have not broken any bones, and I did not land on my right leg. At least, I do not think I did. Someone did this. Deliberately.”

“To kill Lord Ferdinand?” she asked as they went inside. “So that he would lose the race? How absurd. No one could want to win a bet or a race that badly. It was an accident. They do happen, you know.”

“I have enemies,” he said curtly. “And Ferdinand is my brother.”

He hoped fervently that the curricle was all that had been tampered with. This had the signature of the Forbes brothers all over it. Underhanded, sneaky bastards.

J
ANE HAD RISEN WITH
a firm determination to take her leave of Dudley House that very day. Her usefulness here, what little there had been, was at an end. The three weeks were over. And what she had agreed to and done
last evening for the entertainment of the duke’s guests had been the ultimate madness. Fifty members of the
beau monde
had seen her—really
seen
her—when she was dressed, if not quite in the splendor of evening garments that would have set her on a level with them, at least in a manner that set her noticeably above the level of a maid.

It was surely only a matter of time before the search for her led to the circulation among the
ton
of a description of her appearance. Indeed she was puzzled that it had not already happened. But when it did, a number of last evening’s guests were going to remember Jane Ingleby.

She had to leave Dudley House. She had to disappear. She would take the five hundred pounds—another madness, but she had every intention of holding the Duke of Tresham to his end of their bargain—and go into hiding. Not in London. She would go somewhere else. She would walk clear of town before trying to board any public conveyance.

Jane was determined to leave. Even apart from every other reason, there was last night’s lingering kiss, which had come alarmingly close to exploding into uncontrolled passion. It was no longer possible for her to remain at Dudley House. And she would not allow herself to indulge in any personal longing. For the moment at least she could not allow herself to have any personal feelings.