'You have nothing?' he asked her.
She raised her eyebrows.
'I have enough,' she lied. 'But if you are to be my lover, Lord Merton, you are also to be my protector. You will pay me for services rendered.
You will pay me as you would the most celebrated of courtesans. Very well indeed, that is. And I will render services that will be ten times more satisfying than any courtesan would offer. Tonight was a mere pale sampling.'
It sounded like a foolish boast. She almost expected him to laugh at her.
'You were not attracted to me at all, were you?' he said. 'You came uninvited to Meg's ball in order to find a protector.'
She smiled at him – and her slipper finally fell off her foot and landed on the floor with a soft thump.
'A lady does, Lord Merton,' she said, her voice low, 'what a lady must.' /Go/, she told him silently. /Please go. Go away and never let me have to see you again/.
There was rather a lengthy silence during which they continued to stare at each other. She would not look away, she decided. Neither would she say anything more before he did. She certainly would not jerk to her feet and rush inside her dressing room and slam the door and press her body back against it until he had gone.
'I will pay you weekly, Lady Paget,' he said at last, 'in advance.
Beginning today. I will send a package as soon as I return home – or at the earliest respectable hour, anyway.'
And he named a weekly sum that had her heart thumping in amazement.
Could courtesans possibly earn /that/ much?
'That will be satisfactory,' she said coolly. He had stopped calling her /Cassandra/, she noticed. 'You will not be sorry, Lord Merton. I will service you very well indeed.'
A light flashed deep inside his eyes.
'I do not wish to be /serviced/, ma'am,' he said, getting to his feet,
'as if I were some sort of animal that functioned on blind lust alone. I doubt there /are/ such animals, anyway, except those of the human variety. I will be your protector. Technically you will be my mistress.
But I will bed you when our desire is mutual. I will bed you when you wish to be bedded and desist when you do not. We will be /lovers/ or we will be nothing. Your weekly salary will not depend upon the number of times you make your body available to me upon that bed or any other. Is that clear to you?'
She gazed at him in some surprise. She found herself almost afraid of him. Not afraid in any physical sense. She was reasonably sure that he would never hurt her. But he was… She did not even know what he was, what it was about him that had made her suddenly afraid.
Was it the fear that she could not manipulate him as she had expected to do? He was young and good- natured and gentlemanly – and there was a definite air of innocence about him. She had expected him also to be rather weak, or meek anyway – to be easily controlled by the power of sex.
She might have misjudged him.
It was a ghastly possibility.
But he had agreed to be her protector for an indeterminate length of time. And he was paying her more than handsomely. She had been planning to demand a little more than half what he had offered.
'Oh, very clear,' she said, standing up after kicking off the other slipper, and stepping closer to him. She lifted her arms and busied herself with straightening his neckcloth and restoring some of its intricate folds. 'We have an agreement, then, Lord Merton.'
'We do,' he said, and he lifted his hands to take her by the wrists.
She raised her face to his and smiled.
He did not smile back. His eyes searched hers.
'You do not have to wear it with me,' he said softly.
'/It/?' She raised her eyebrows.
'Your mask of cold contempt for the world and all its human creatures,' he said. 'You do not need to wear it. I am not going to hurt you.'
She felt real fear then and would have turned and run after all if he had not been holding her wrists, though his grip was not a tight one.
She smiled instead.
'How lowering,' she said, 'to smile at one's lover and protector and be told that it is an expression of cold contempt. Perhaps I ought to frown at you instead.'
He lowered his head and kissed her briefly but hard on the lips.
'You are going to Lady Carling's at-home this afternoon?' he asked.
'I believe I might,' she said. 'The lady did invite me, and I think it would be amusing to watch the reaction of her other guests.'
'My sisters will be three of them,' he said. 'They will treat you with courtesy, and Lady Carling herself will be kind. I will bring my curricle there and take you for a drive in the park afterward.'
'You will do no such thing,' she said, drawing back from him. 'You have nothing to gain and a great deal to lose by consorting with me publicly.'
'I will visit you here discreetly at night and with all due care to your reputation,' he said. 'But you are not a courtesan, Lady Paget. You are a lady, and one whose reputation with the /ton/ is in need of restoration. I do not know what happened with your husband, though you have told me the bare bones. I believe there is more – much more – and we will speak of it as time goes on. But your reputation does need to be restored. It will be done at least partly in my company. And if you believe my reputation will suffer great harm from it, you do not understand the double standard with which the beau monde – and all of society for that matter – judges the behavior of men and women. Sherry, for example – Sheringford – is in the process of being forgiven, while the lady with whom he eloped would have had a far more difficult time of it if she had lived and chosen to return here. My reputation will remain virtually unsullied if I escort you about London. Yours will gain from association with me.'
'You do not need to be kind to me, Lord Merton,' she said.
'If the word /protector/ means merely that I have exclusive and unlimited access to your body,' he said, 'I do not really want the position. If I am your protector, then I will /protect/ you as well as sleep with you.'
She sighed deeply and audibly.
'I believe,' she said, 'I found myself a monster last evening when I merely expected an angel – a /wealthy/ angel. Your sisters, no matter how courteous they are to me this afternoon, will be quite appalled when you arrive at Lady Carling's to bear me off to the park with you.'
'My sisters,' he said, 'live their own lives, and I live mine. We do not control one another. We merely love one another.'
'It is their love for you,' she said, 'that will cause their horror.'
'Then they must be horrified,' he said. 'I will come for you at half past four.'
'You had better go home now,' she said, 'before Alice gets up and frowns at you. She will grow accustomed to you, but at first she will frown.
You would not wish to face those black looks when you are at a disadvantage. Your coat and breeches are sadly wrinkled and your neckcloth is quite irredeemable. Your curls are breaking free and attempting to riot.'
He smiled – the first time he had done so in several long minutes.
'The bane of my life,' he said.
'Then you ought not to try taming them,' she said. 'Any red-blooded female would find her fingers itching to run through them and become entangled in them.'
He bowed to her and raised her right hand to his lips.
'I will see you this afternoon, then,' he said. He looked up into her eyes. 'And I will send that package this morning.'
She nodded.
And he was gone, closing the door quietly behind him.
She crossed to the window and stood looking down until he emerged from the front door. She did not hear it either opening or closing. She watched him walk with long, easy strides down the street until he disappeared around a corner. And even then she stood looking after him.
