deserted. There was almost sure to be some maid out walking a dog, some tradesman taking a scenic route to his work, or some more fashionable person intent on walking off the cobwebs of the mind acquired the previous night. One was not expected to move at great speed in the park. It was uncivilized to do so. It was also dangerous.
Yet he galloped, the harsh wind of November whipping against his cheeks and causing his eyes to water. Cobwebs of the mind! His brain felt fuller of chain mail.
He did not know quite why he should still feel so furious over the events of the night before. After all, if the woman wished to masquerade as a lady of the
If between them those two women had concocted some mad scheme for the profit of the one and the entertainment of the other, then he should shrug the matter off and forget all about it. At least he felt himself absolved from the promise he had made his grandmother to give the girl his company and help bring her into fashion. Why allow the matter to affect his whole mood, then? He would give it no further thought. Rutherford eased his horse back to a safer canter.
She had been presented to Mama, Faith, and Hope. He had glanced across the ballroom at a time when he was conversing with an acquaintance from the House of Lords, and there she had been with his grandmother, talking to his mother and Faith. Had Grandmama's wits gone totally begging? It was one thing for her to countenance such a trick on the
It must not be allowed to continue, he decided as he had the night before. There was no point in talking further with Jess and appealing to her sense of decency. Clearly she had none. He must call privately on his grandmother that afternoon and see if he could make her see sense. He did not relish the task. The dowager was notoriously difficult to deal with. She had a will of iron and was not to be turned from any enterprise on which her heart was firmly set. He would just have to hope that she would be satisfied with last night's triumph and uninterested in continuing the experiment.
Good God! he thought with a renewed burst of fury, the woman had been a servant, a little scrap of a gray governess a mere two weeks before. She had been a meek little thing who never raised her eyes in public or uttered a sound. She had certainly known her place when she was with the Barries. And he had been misguided enough to pity her. And less than two weeks ago she had agreed quite coolly to become his mistress and had carried her agreement through to the very brink of fulfillment.
And even then he had pitied her. He had considered her a demure, frightened girl who had felt herself forced into giving up all her principles, but whose character had been strong enough at the last moment to save her and to plunge her into an even worse predicament. He had pitied her and tried yet again to help her.
Had she seen the possibility even then? Had she seen how easy it was to lure a gentleman into making such an offer? If he had desired her when she appeared as she did, clad all in shapeless gray, her hair scraped into its unbecoming bun, what might not be accomplished if she could find some way of improving that appearance and some way of gaining introductions to other wealthy gentlemen? His offer to take her to his grandmother must have seemed like a gift from heaven. It was no wonder that she had refused to be taken but had chosen to go alone!
What story had she spun for his grandmother's benefit? he wondered. It must have been clever indeed. The dowager was no one's fool.
Yes, speak to Grandmama he must. Besides, how could he meekly ignore the woman after the challenge she had flung down the night before? He had never been bested by a woman. Not nearly. And he had no intention of making the encounter of the night before the end of the war. Merely an unimportant skirmish.
He had really thought he was succeeding. He had begun to kiss her in frustration, the need to punish and insult her the only way he could cope with her stubbornness and impudence. But he had felt her almost instant response. She had not clamped lips and teeth together as he might have expected. Nor had she removed her body from his after his one free hand had brought her against him. He had felt a certain triumph as soon as her hands came away from his lapels and moved up to his neck and into his hair. He had not missed noting that her breasts had then been pressed more intimately against him.
She had wanted him, he was sure. Even if those reactions had been feigned in order to take him off his guard, there had been the very real surge of heat that he had felt with his hands and his body. He had been careful then to change the quality of his embrace, to woo her with his body. He had even been weighing in his mind how comfortable a bed that chaise longue would make and how safe the unlocked door behind him would be while he sealed their contract.
The woman obviously had iron-hard control over her own feelings. He could not have been mistaken about her response. He had too much experience in such matters to be easily fooled. But somehow she had mastered her own desire and had succeeded in dealing him that stinging slap. That too had never happened to him before. He had always sworn that the female who struck him would be struck back twice as hard. And indeed, it had taken no small measure of control on his part to let his hands drop to his sides and to allow her to leave. Instinct had made him long to tip her beneath his arm and wallop her until she cried for mercy. Alas, he had discovered that he could no more strike a female than he could bed an unwilling one.
Physical punishment he could not deal her, then. But he would not stand meekly by and allow her to make a fool of him. She had refused to give up her charade. She had refused his renewed offer of protection. He had given her every chance. Now there would have to be punishment of some sort. The woman was to learn that one did not trifle with the Earl of Rutherford and escape unscathed.
Damnation, but she was a desirable wench, he thought, grinding his teeth as he turned his horse in the direction of home. He could not pretend even to himself that he had been guided solely by his head when he had embraced her the night before. Indeed, he had not really known he was going to kiss her until he was in the process of doing so. And the warmth and moistness of her mouth encompassing his tongue, and the shapeliness of her body pressed against his own had sent his own temperature soaring as well as hers. His sense of triumph had resulted as much from his conviction that she was after all to become his own possession for as long as he chose as it had from the belief that the charade would now come to an end. If he were totally honest with himself, he would admit that he had considered that chaise longue more as a means of fulfilling an almost overwhelming desire than as a way of finalizing a contract.
She was the only woman who had ever resisted him. Oh, not quite, he supposed. There were always those occasions when he sent out tentative lures only to discover that there was no point in expending further energies on a siege. But he had never been rejected on any occasion when he had made a determined effort to attract and even made a definite verbal offer.
And now he had been rejected-three times-by the same female, and a servant at that, a girl past her first bloom and without a penny in the world. And there was probably the attraction, he realized as soon as he had mentally verbalized the facts. He was experiencing the universal human craving for what cannot be had.
She did not wish him ever to touch her again, she had said. What a thoroughly unnecessary admonition! His very sanity might depend on his staying as far away from her as circumstances would allow.
The Dowager Duchess of Middleburgh bestowed a benign look on her butler. The man had just informed her that her triumph was now finally complete. He had not said those words, actually. He had merely announced in his well-trained confidential tones that were designed to carry no farther than her own ears that the Earl of Rutherford was downstairs in the hall, requesting a private word with her.
'Show him up,' she said.
The butler, long trained not to contradict his lady, looked her briefly in the eye to see if she could possibly have missed the detail about the private interview, understood that she had not, made a stiff obeisance, and withdrew himself from the drawing room to carry out orders.
