Lady Scandal (9 page)

"I suppose that's only fair."

"What do you mean by that?"

He only smiled for an answer.

Her lips tightened for a moment before she
said, "I assume she is your paramour.
And married to a jealous
man?"

"How quick you are to think the worst of
me."

"And how right am I?"

Unrepentant, he lifted one shoulder—the good
one—but he winced at the effort.
"Near enough to the mark.
Though
from the starch in your voice it sounds as if you thought I would
become a monk after you sent me away." Color bled into her cheeks.
He grinned.
"Ah, you did think it—you imagined me pining for
you."

She drew her back stiff, but he kept
grinning.
He did not want her to know he had spent far too long
doing just that, dragging himself around the world and finding
every other woman lacking when compared with her.
He would be
properly boiled himself before he admitted just how long it had
taken to forever harden his heart.

Those eyebrows of hers arched over her gray
eyes again.
"I thought you not such a rogue as to take up with
married women."

"Why not?
I took up with you."

The color flamed in her cheeks, two bright
splashes of hot pink against the soft cream of her skin.
He thought
for a moment that she might dash her mug of tea into his face.
She
swallowed hard, and gave a small nod.
"Yes, you did.
But you did
not learn then that such liaisons only lead to grief?"

"Oh, with Lisette it was leading to
something quite pleasurable."

"You have an odd notion of pleasure when it
comes from nearly being shot to death."

He decided on blunt truth.
To shock her.
And
to serve fair warning that what lay between them was far from
finished.
"That I did not plan.
Actually, I displeased the lady.
I
called her by your name."

She stared at him, suspicion in her eyes.
He
met her gaze with one as open as he could make it.
"I do not
believe you," she said.

"As you like.
She certainly was not amused.
She began screaming rape, and then I found out about the wisdom in
not bedding a general's wife."

Alexandria's eyebrows snapped together and
he expected her to blister him now with righteous disapproval.
Instead, she said, her tone indignant, "Rape?
You?
Honestly, what a
ridiculous charge?
As if you ever had the need for such a thing
when you had but to smile at any woman to have her melting at your
feet!"

Amused, he sipped his tea.
Still the
innocent, despite everything.
To think that a woman's availability
and interest had much to do with some men's appetites.
But she was
right in one thing.
The dark violence of rape had never stirred
him.
He preferred to court a woman's surrender, to coax it from
her, to steal it with kisses and soft touches.
As he intended to do
with her.

But telling her that much truth would spoil
his plans.

So he only sipped his tea, and he said, "I
did not feel inclined to defend myself to General D'Aeth." Her eyes
widened and he asked, "Ah, so you know the general?"

She nodded.
"And his wife—she is, well, I
should call her a flirt."

"I should call her a
racoleuse
—and, no, I will
not translate that for you."

"I have not asked, now have I?
But I can
guess it is as far from polite as you are.
I do wish, however, that
you would have thought twice before taking my maid's place.
You are
a good deal of bother, you know."

Reaching out, he gave her his mug, but after
she took it from him, he gripped her wrist.
"Yes, I know.
So you
must allow me to make it up to you."

She stiffened.
"Please, do not."

His thumb brushed her skin.
"
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
"

"You know very well what it is.
And I know
at least that in French."

"Ah, but I only meant that I could repay you
in that I could see to obtaining transportation for us.
What did
you think I meant?"

"I know what you meant and it is not that.
Do not make me regret my decision to help you."

"But we have so many regrets between us
already.
What are a few more?"

"You are going to force me to pour the rest
of the tea in this pot over your head!"

He grinned.
"You may try—but if you think I
will allow that, you mistake me for that doddering old fool you
married?"

"Bertram was not that old."

"You don't, I see, defend
his doddering.
But I do misspeak.
He was not as great a fool as I.
Why did you not leave me here,
ma
chére
?
Why stay?
Are you still making
choices from what you think is your duty?"

The color rose in her cheeks, but she met
his gaze, her own assured, even though he could see her chest rise
and fall with rapid, short breaths.
"Is that all you think you are
to me?
A case of Christian charity?
That I have no feelings here?
That what we...what we once meant to each other does not matter to
me?"

His hand tightened around her wrist.
"It did
not seem to matter to you when last we parted."

She shook her head.
"You always judged my
feelings by how well I capitulated to your own, and I failed you
there.
However, I do still have some care for you, even though you
have obviously not changed one bit!"

"Oh, I've changed.
How could I not?"

One skeptical eyebrow lifted.
She glanced
down at the hand he still held.
She had not tried to pull away.
A
perverse desire swept into him to tug, to drag her onto the bed
with him and have her, whether she willed it or not.
To let out the
violence in him.

And he had just thought himself beyond such
tastes.

But perhaps he was.
For he could not do it.
She had put him in her debt by staying.
And he wanted more than her
body—he wanted her heart, vulnerable, open, ready to be cut out.
He
wanted to know she could—and would—feel anguish.

For that he needed time.

Letting go of her, he lay back on the bed.
He slipped a smile in place.
"I am a demon to torment you when you
bring me tea.
Of course, I might be better behaved if you brought
me something to eat—you can satisfy at least one of my
hungers."

With a swish of skirts, she strode
to the door.
There she paused.
"When were you ever satisfied with
anything, Paxten?
I shall have your beefsteak sent up to
you."

She slammed from the room.
He stared at the
door a moment, and chuckled.
The Alexandria he had once known would
never have slammed a door.
No, she had always been too afraid of
giving offense.
Of not doing the right thing.
It seemed he was not
the only one to have changed.

But had she stayed with him out of that
damned chain of responsibility that had once bound her?
Because of
the memory of affection?
No—he could not believe that.
She had
stood still in his hold, her face indifferent, but the pulse had
quickened in her wrist.

She still loved to lie to him.

And he was indeed a demon to torment her.
He
smiled again, but without any humor, for he had just begun.
With
her, he would prove himself an utter devil.
But first he would have
to earn her trust.
And that meant starting to act like the
gentleman he had never been.

#

As soon as she was out of the room,
Alexandria leaned against the door, fury racing through her.
Not
fury at him, but at herself.
She wished she had some impolite words
in French that she could mutter to vent her feeling.
Instead, she
only had the proper English taught to her.

Oh, curse it all!

A quarter hour with him and she was
explaining herself, wanting something from him that he could not
give, and back to defending poor Bertram.

Poor, poor Bertram.
He ought to never have
married.
But she had realized that only in the year after Jules had
been born, when it had become apparent that Bertram considered his
duty done to get an heir, and that there would be no more children.
Nor any attempts in bedding her to get them.

Poor Bertram indeed.
He would have made a
wonderful bachelor uncle—always pleasant, ever the correct
gentleman, ready to offer light flirtation and capable of doing not
much more than that with any woman.
He had not done so well as a
husband.
Perhaps she ought to have paid more heed when her mother
told her—after Bertram had asked her parents for her hand—that he
would never give her a moment's concern.
He had not.
He never took
a mistress.
Never glanced at other women.
Never stayed late at his
club.
Never did anything that might upset the routine of his
life.

How had he actually managed to get her with
child, and to produce a son?
He had done so little else in his
life.

But that sounded unkind, and she had never
wanted to be unkind to him.
He tried to be decent in his own way.
He never raised his voice or hand to anyone.
Never drank too much.
Never gambled away his fortune.
And he had no need for
companionship or affection, other than from his male friends.

He had also been shocked down to the soles
of his perfectly fit boots when she had asked for a divorce.

"Chetwynds don't divorce," he had said,
sounding as horrified as if she had suggested they both walk naked
down St.
James's Street.
Those, however, had not been the words
that had finally turned her away from her plan to run away with
Paxten.

Why had she learned too late that the sort
of man who did give a woman concerns was the sort who lifted her
pulse?
Paxten's sort.
Hot-tempered, hot-blooded, a man who admired
every woman who crossed his path, who created trouble around him
and laughed at it.
He had been the opposite of staid Bertram.
And
he had come into her life just when she needed that madding,
passionate disorder to fill the hollow emptiness of a barren
marriage.
She had almost thrown away everything for him.

If only she had not....

That will do.
You promised
yourself no regrets.

Still, she had them.
Paxten had been right
about that.

Straightening, she pushed her feelings back
into place.
She would not indulge them.
Not after so many years of
strict discipline to hold herself together.
But her son no longer
needed a capable mother.
And she no longer had the ties of her
husband and his family.
She only had...what?
Dutiful choices?

Bother Paxten for always knowing her better
than she knew herself!

She could admit it now that he had forced
her to look.
She had told herself that she stayed at this inn from
a sense of concern for him.
She had felt so virtuous to be sending
her carriage away, sacrificing for another.
She had convinced
herself that she owed him such an obligation.
But now she saw that
hidden excitement, the shimmer of hope that there might be more
between herself and Paxten again.

Paxten had stripped the pretense away
between them.
She saw the truth in herself now.
She had stayed in
the hopes of rekindling past feelings.
But he had shown her that
while physical sparks might be there still, so did deep scars that
still hurt if touched.

With a shake of her head, she started down
the stairs.
At the foot, she paused and glanced back.
If she had
any real courage, she would stride back up, go into his room, pin
him to his bed and kiss him until she knew for a certainty that all
this was between them was a physical attraction that could be
mastered.