The Secret Mistress

“Since I have no experience,” she said, “and therefore cannot answer your question directly, Lord Windrow, I can only suggest that I answer it with—how did you phrase it?—with practical action.”

“Ah,” he said, taking another step forward, so that his body, from shoulders to thighs, brushed against hers, “take your time, Miss Goddard. There is no hurry at all for your answer. And do feel free to handle me to your heart’s content.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I will.”

And he brought his mouth down, open, across hers.

“And now,” he said several minutes later, his lips still brushing hers, “you have no need to answer my question. Sometimes action speaks far louder than words. And that pearl of wisdom is the academic portion of your lesson for today. Heyward would be shocked at how misplaced his trust in you is.” His lips moved down to her throat. “Although if his trust was merely in your ability to handle me, then it could be argued just as forcefully that his trust was well placed.”

“Yes,” she said. “But poor Lady Angeline. She will doubtless believe she has failed and will wish to try again.”

“A plan I thoroughly applaud,” he said, stepping back and looking with keen approval at her flushed face and rosy, just-kissed lips. “Can you persuade her to try again this evening?”

He grinned.

“Oh,” she said, “I will do no such thing. I would not have agreed to this afternoon if I had not felt that Lady Angeline needed a nudge in Edward’s direction. I knew he would not come after me, but I hoped he might spend some time with her and that the two of them might come to their senses. Whether it has worked or not, I do not know. But I was not cut out for intrigue. I shall tell her later that I have no romantic interest at all in Edward or he in me and that she must put aside her schemes. I daresay she will be relieved, for of course she loves him herself and must be heartbroken over her conviction that he belongs to me. She really is a very sweet girl and my first female friend ever. I value her friendship and will not toy with it any longer.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” he said. “I am cut out for intrigue, you see, and I believe it would be perfectly splendid to play Lady Angeline Dudley at her own game and at the same time accelerate her into the arms of her dull swain, who you insist is not dull at all. I have been used, Miss Goddard, and I am deeply offended. I am entitled, it would seem, to revenge in kind.”

“Oh.” Eunice looked at him with sharp interest. “What did you have in mind?”

He smiled slowly.

DINNER THAT EVENING was an elaborate affair in official celebration of Lorraine and Fenner’s betrothal. The meal consisted of twelve courses and was followed by speeches and toasts and dancing in the drawing room afterward to music provided by a small group—pianist, violinist, and flautist—from the village nearby.

It was a happy and merry occasion, for which Edward was glad. It might have been rather melancholy for his own family to see Maurice’s widow move on in her life with a different partner. But they had all taken her so thoroughly to their hearts from the moment of her marriage to Maurice that she felt like one of their own, and they were happy for her, despite the fact that Edward noticed his mother wipe a tear from her eye when she thought herself unobserved.

For himself, he was distracted. The events of the afternoon had shaken him quite considerably, for he had discovered himself quite unexpectedly and not altogether happily in love. Yes, it really was the only term he could use to describe his feelings, but it was not at all the sort of silly, shallow, wishful-thinking feeling he had expected it to be.

He was in love with Lady Angeline Dudley. He was enchanted by her and invigorated by her. And it was not just a sexual feeling, though it certainly was that too. It was more a longing for … well, he did not have the language for a sensation he had always despised and distrusted and really not believed in at all as a serious emotion.

It was a longing for her. For her as a part of himself. For … No, there was no way of expressing it in words. Happily-ever-after was not it at all, though it was the only phrase that came close. It all sounded so very trivial in words.

It was very serious.

Perhaps what he had learned most about himself during the afternoon was that he had surely always wanted simply to have fun, to let go and enjoy himself, to laugh. To laugh with someone else, to enjoy himself with someone else. He kept reliving that run down the hill. It had been mad—the slope was far too long and steep to be negotiated safely—and he never did mad things. It was one of the most wonderfully free things he had done in his life—running and falling and rolling and laughing. And kissing. And feeling grass all around them, and smelling it, and seeing blue sky above and the branches of trees and her yellow, blue, and pink bonnet wedged in an upper branch, its ribbons fluttering gaily in the breeze.

Feeling young.

Not that the afternoon had been all carefree enjoyment. It had not. She had spilled out her soul to him up on the battlements of that folly. Or that was how it had felt anyway, and he had understood all the loneliness of her girlhood and all the surprising insecurities that had been instilled in her by a vain, insensitive mother and dull, insensitive governesses. She was not at all the sort of woman she appeared to be. Well, she was. The exuberance, the boldness often amounting to indiscretion, the sheer zest for life were all real. But there was more than just that aspect of her person. Far more. Even the bold colors she liked to wear and the extravagant, garish hats made more sense now. She could never get her appearance and fashions right, she thought, so why not get them defiantly wrong?

He had poured out his heart to her too—almost deliberately, to start with. He had wanted her to feel less embarrassed about her disclosures by sharing some of his own. But real pain had surfaced —and she had understood and comforted him. She had confirmed what he had always known, of course—that he had been in no way responsible for Maurice’s accident and death.

And yet …

And yet she had made it very clear after their kiss that she did not want to marry him. She would refuse if he asked, she had told him. And then she had got definitely upset. She had been cross and crying.

Why?

She had admitted that she had kissed him as much as he had kissed her. And … what else had she said?

Sometimes I wish you were not such a gentleman, though the fact that you are was precisely why I liked you so much the very first time I saw you.

What the devil did that mean?

She wished he were not such a gentleman? But he had kissed her, had he not? That was not a very gentlemanly thing to do when they were not even betrothed. If he offered for her now, she meant, it would be only because a gentleman offers marriage to the woman whose virtue he compromises. Just as he had done last time.

Did that mean she did not love him?

Or did it mean that she loved him too much to accept an offer from him only because he felt duty-bound to make it?

Was that why she had refused him last time? Not so much because he had neglected to tell her that he loved her, but because she did love him?

Past tense?