Mistress by Midnight (11 page)

Charlotte looped an arm through Laurette’s. “Is he stingy, your Lord Conover? Your dress looks seasons old.”

Laurette laughed. “That’s because it is. It’s my own. I assure you, Conover has filled my closets. I just chose not to be tempted today.”

“Very wise. I myself will not wear what Sir Michael has bought. It drives him to distraction.” They ducked into the
kitchen entryway. The room was clean and empty. “My servants are out, otherwise I would not have had the courage to kill all the little angels. Follow me.”

They moved through the house. The layout was identical to Laurette’s, although the furnishings were far more traditional. Except for the paintings. Laurette felt her face go hot to see so much exposed canvas flesh. There were naked women on every single wall, doing everything a naked woman could think to do and other things besides. Still, the brushwork was very fine, and Laurette said so.

“None of them are my doing. Sir Michael is quite the connoisseur. He has excellent taste in all things, except mistresses. What that Helena did to the bedroom—well, you shall see for yourself.”

They mounted the stairs and entered Charlotte’s bedroom. Laurette stopped in her tracks, speechless.

“You understand, don’t you. How can one possibly live in a room where so many plaster eyes are on one? And they look far from innocent. See their leering little faces?” Charlotte poked a dimpled cheek and shivered.

“I’ll help you. A pity we cannot borrow a wheelbarrow and roll them down the stairs.”

“I daresay the exercise will do us good, but I’m grateful you’re here. We’ll have the job done in half the time.” Charlotte gathered up her skirt and started depositing the little Cupids in the fold. Laurette thought her new friend had lovely legs.

It was a heady experience, dropping the plaster angels on their heads and shattering them. Laurette could not remember when she had more fun. After she was covered in dust and a healthy sheen of perspiration, she left Charlotte wielding a broom to push the evidence under the bushes, and returned home. They would take tea together tomorrow.

She ordered a necessary bath and killed off another hour waiting for Con. Tomorrow she would entertain the rather
entertaining Charlotte Fallon and kill more time. Six months was not so very long. She could—she must—do this.

Hours later she sat opposite Con, who had fallen upon his plate as though he were a starving man and now was biting into a flaky, honey-laced pastry. He had dispensed with English clothing for the evening and arrived in a long embroidered jacket and loose trousers. His black hair was unbound, falling past his shoulders. Laurette thought he looked as a pirate might, if pirates washed and played at dress-up. No wonder her neighbor thought he was mad; he looked the part tonight. The gangly boy from Dorset was gone, and a thorough rogue was in his place. She took judicious sips of wine and passed up dessert, too nervous about what was to come.

It had taken all her resolve not to weep with happiness after they had sex. She must continue to remind herself that their relationship was based on lust alone, that their friendship—and love—had ended long ago. She was simply a woman whose animal nature, long dormant, responded to a male of the species. It was not a sin or a failure of principal, but a simple fact of life.

“A penny for your thoughts.” Con gazed across the table, his eyes so very dark.

She was not going to flatter him telling him her thoughts had been about sex.

With him. Over him. Under him. Con moving lazily behind her, pressing her against his clean, warm body, his fingers tracing down her belly to the apex of her womanhood.

His fingers were amazing appendages. All ten of them had impressed her with their amorous indecency. Laurette looked at her own ordinary hands that had never managed to be skillful at much of anything. “I do not wish to bore you, my lord.”

He sighed and dropped his fork to the plate with an un-gentlemanly clatter. “Please, I beg of you. This ‘my lord’ busi
ness is offensive to me. We have known each other twenty-five years. You once called me by my given name.”

Desmond.
Des, most of the time, as they explored his estate, gorging on early strawberries and dropping half-dressed into the Piddle from their tree to swim and wash away their berry-stained mouths.

But one day an eleven-year-old Desmond Ryland had come to her door, a black armband pinned to the sleeve of his best jacket. His grandfather had died on one of his endless trips, leaving Des in the care of his horrible uncle. How she had wanted to giggle when he’d looked at her so earnestly and said, “You must call me Conover now.”

Her maid Sadie had said then that her old friend had risen in consequence and that Laurette should behave when next she saw him. “A marquess won’t have time for the likes of you,” Sadie had sniffed in a vain attempt to make her charge see the light of ladylike ways.

Sadie had been wrong.

“Twenty-four. My great-aunt invited us to live at the Lodge with her when I was five. But I shall do just as you say, call you what you will. I am yours to command for the next five months and twenty-seven days.”

Con’s lips quirked. “I have a mathematical prodigy on my hands, I see. I don’t remember you being so precise, Laurie.”

“I never had reason to be before.” In fact, she’d been so careless with numbers she’d been two months gone with child before she realized. It was Sadie who reminded her. This time, the maid was right.

“I suppose you teach maths to your little girls.”

For a moment her breath hitched. Then she realized Con was talking about her informal lessons with the village children at the Lodge. She nodded. “I do. A woman needs to have useful skills to get on. I learned that the hard way.”

Laurette had been thoroughly undomestic and under-educated as a girl. Why would she want to sit indoors with a stuffy book when Con was home from school and waiting
for her at the riverbank? She’d had plenty of time over the years to correct those flaws, living with Sadie in the country, and tallying up Charlie’s expenses and excesses. She knew quite a lot now, and one thing she knew was that the man opposite was trouble.

“I am so very sorry, Laurie,” he said quietly. “If I could change the past, I would.”

She rolled her eyes. “What’s done is done. Let us not become maudlin, my lord. Conover,” she corrected.

“Con.”

It was she who’d shortened his name, because Conover clearly belonged to his dead grandfather. “As you wish.” She placed her linen napkin on the table and rose. “Enjoy your brandy, and smoke a cheroot if you must. I shall await you upstairs.”

Almost six months more of waiting upstairs. What would her pupils do without her? Run wild, like she did.

She was wild no more. Now it seemed she was a tamed pet, fed, brushed, dressed in finery, and at the mercy of her owner. She was Con’s mistress, in the same unequal position as every other poor girl on Jane Street. Laurette wished she had a cherub to smash, right on Con’s dark head.

Con watched her walk away from the table, her back stiff with pride. She was no doubt on her way to insert one of those dratted sponges—and he couldn’t stop her. Ah, well. He had time. Five months and twenty-seven days, if she was counting correctly. He pictured her calendar with a big black X through each day.

Con sat in isolated splendor in the dining room. He raised a brow when Aram entered.

“Is all well?”

“I believe so. But Nadia tells me my lady met the woman next door today.”

Con frowned. It wouldn’t do to have Laurette revealed as his mistress before he made her his wife. The next Mar
chioness of Conover would have trouble enough getting on in society being married to the Mad Marquess. “Who is she?”

Aram shrugged. “You know the house belongs to Sir Michael Bayard. He has kept several women there. This latest is the sister of the woman who was there before.”

Con wrinkled his nose in distaste.

“It is not what you think,” Aram continued hurriedly. “There was a mix-up of some sort. A mistake. Martine has the story from the maid Irene, but as her English is not perfect—” He shrugged again.

“Keep an eye on the situation for me. I cannot have Miss Vincent’s reputation jeopardized by some jade.”

“Very good, my lord.” Aram bowed and slipped from the room as silently as he had entered.

Damn.
He didn’t want Laurette to feel imprisoned, but surely she couldn’t befriend a whore on this street.

Whore was probably far too strong a word. This little enclave catered to the most exclusive courtesans in London. One did not reach the pinnacle of that profession without having exceptional beauty, skill and intelligence. A man would pay only so much for an ordinary fuck. The costly women here were beneath no one except in the strictest sense. Assorted government ministers, lords whose patents dated to the Conquest, and captains of industry owned the dozen houses on the cul-de-sac, nicknamed “Courtesan Court.”

It was a coup to remark casually that you were off to Jane Street. It meant you had the blunt for the house and the stunning woman within. Con had a devil of a time negotiating the price for his, long before his plan for Laurette had become clear. At the time he was so gripped with despair by her refusal to marry him that he’d talked himself into setting up a mistress. If he couldn’t marry Laurette, he’d marry no one. Surely a decade of celibacy was enough to atone for his youthful mistakes.

But in the end, the house remained empty. He’d inter
viewed likely candidates and come away cold to the bone. His hand and his memories would serve as well until he found a way to win Laurette back.

And then her idiot brother came to town and provided the key to his conquest. Con drank the last of his port, brushing his long hair behind his ear. He was unfashionably shaggy but the style lent credence to his dangerous reputation. He wouldn’t want it known that within, he was still a poor boy who had been stripped of his honor and forced into a marriage of convenience. Emasculated.

Heartbroken.

Ah. The melodrama was at full ebb. Con grimaced. Too much wine and too little women and song of late. That would be remedied in perhaps ten minutes, as soon as he stoppered the brandy and sought comfort in Laurette’s arms. Of course the Greeks translated the concept of “wine, women and song” to “fire, women and the sea,” a most worthy, if dangerous, substitute. The Turks called for “horse, woman and weapon,” revealing their bloodthirsty side. Con wanted nothing less but peace between his mistress and himself. He was not likely to get it tonight, but the effort would be amusing.

He unhooked his coat as he climbed the stairs. He’d dispensed with a throat-clutching cravat, much to Nico’s disgust. His young servant was becoming more English than King George IV. Con hoped soon to be far from the London heat of the summer, where cravats would be unnecessary. He had several plans in motion. None were ideal, but he would not let a few bumps in the road deter him from uniting his family.

Laurette had lit the lamps and sat up in the center of the bed, sinfully, gloriously naked. Her hair rippled down her back and over her breasts in a gilt river. A book remained between her hands and she did not look up at him as he entered the room. Her eyebrows were drawn into a V of concentration and she gave every impression that Con’s arrival meant absolutely nothing to her.

Two could play at that game. He tossed his coat and shirt on a chair, yawning conspicuously. “Push over.”

Laurette wiggled over an inch or two. Con dropped his trousers, sat on the edge of the mattress, and kicked off his soft shoes. He was in Turkish garb tonight, perhaps an affectation, but he was comfortable for the first time in an age. He slid under the covers and closed his eyes, wondering how soon he could commence snoring. He heard the turn of a page, then another. Either she was a fast reader or the book was deadly dull. Or she wasn’t reading at all, but using the book as a prop to keep him at bay. He gave an experimental wuffle, then something between a deep breath and a frog in his throat.

Soon he was pacing the noises in a steady cadence. The book snapped shut and fell to the floor with a thud.

He felt Laurette leave the bed and soon the room was in total darkness. She got back in with more than necessary vigor and he snorked. It seemed he had quite a repertoire of sounds he could conjure. He sniffed, he sniffled, he snuffled. He was exceptionally proud of a drilling sound at the back of his throat that was bear-worthy. Laurette bounced on the bed as she turned, kicking him—quite deliberately, he thought—as she did so. He remained on his back, mouth open, nose whistling a snoring symphony.

“This is intolerable,” Laurette muttered. Con replied with a great gasping breath and a flourishing twitch for good measure. He hoped it was too dark for her to see him smile.

He waited as long as he could, until her body ceased its impatient rolling and her breathing was even. To Con’s way of thinking, it took an eternity. His cock was so stiff it might have passed for marble. If only she’d looked at him, she would have seen his ruse for what it was.

But he had dreamed of waking her from her own dreams, to find her warm in his bed. In his arms. He placed a hand upon a breast and felt her tingle of awareness.

He thumbed the nipple, feeling her peak and pucker. His lips suckled and his fingertips stroked below to her newly bare skin. She lay still at first, as if to deny that she was complicit in her seduction, but then his tongue traced the path of his hands until she shivered and touched his shoulder. He laved the center of her pleasure, the plump bit of flesh encircled by his mouth tasting like rose soap and sweetest sin. It was child’s play to send her up far beyond any thought of sleep, her breathless cries and writhing body only increasing his desire.

He needed her, worshipped her now more than ever. Not a word was exchanged as he entered her tight, hot passage. Tonight time was suspended, each glide slow and thorough, each kiss deeper and more determined. Laurette seemed to melt into him, to yield, no trace of her stubborn pride left. She belonged to him.

They belonged to each other.