More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (19 page)

She fetched warm water and ointments and bandages as soon as she had settled him in the library. She was sitting on a stool before the fireside chair, rubbing ointment into his badly scraped palms, when his groom was admitted.

“Well?” his grace demanded. “What did you find, Marsh?”

“The axle had definitely been tampered with, your grace,” his groom told him. “It was not natural wear and tear that made it go like that.”

“I knew it,” the duke said grimly. “Send someone reliable over to my brother’s stable, Marsh. No, better yet, go yourself. I want to know exactly who has had access to that curricle during the past few days. Especially yesterday and last night. Deuce take it, but surely both he and his groom were careful enough to inspect the vehicle when it was to be used in a lengthy race.”

“I know you and I both would if it had been you, your grace,” the groom assured him.

He went on his way, and Jane found herself being scowled at.

“If you are planning to use those bandages,” he said, “forget it. I am not walking around with two mittened paws for the next week or so.”

“Those cuts will be painful, your grace,” she warned him.

He smiled grimly at her, and Jane sat back on the stool. She knew that his mind was distracted with the morning’s events and with anxiety for his brother’s safety. But the time had come. She could wait no longer.

“I am going to leave,” she said abruptly.

His smile became more crooked. “The room, Jane?” he said. “To put the bandages away again? I wish you would.”

She did not answer but merely stared at him. He had not for a moment misunderstood her, she knew.

“You would leave me, then?” he said at last.

“I must,” she said. “You know I must. You said so yourself last night.”

“But not today.” He frowned and flexed the fingers of his left hand, which was less badly scraped than the other. “I cannot cope with another crisis today, Jane.”

“This is not a crisis,” she told him. “I have had temporary employment here and now it is time for me to leave—after I have been paid.”

“Perhaps,” he said, “I cannot afford to pay you today, Jane. Did I not agree to give you the colossal sum of five hundred pounds for last evening’s performance? I doubt Quincy keeps that much petty cash on hand.”

Jane blinked her eyes, but she could not quite clear them of the despicable tears that rushed to them.

“Do not make a joke of it,” she said. “Please. I must leave. Today.”

“To go where?” he asked her.

But she merely shook her head.

“Don’t leave me, Jane,” he said. “I cannot let you go. Can you not see that I need a nurse?” He held up his hands, palms out. “For at least another month?”

She shook her head again and he sat back in his chair and regarded her, narrow-eyed.

“Why are you so eager to leave me? Have I been such a tyrant to you, Jane? Have I treated you so badly? Spoken to you so irritably?”

“That you have, your grace,” she told him.

“It is because I have been pampered and fawned over since my youth,” he said. “I did not mean anything by it, you know. And you have never let me browbeat you, Jane.
You
have been the one to browbeat me.”

She smiled, but in truth she felt like bawling. Not just because of the frightening unknown into which she
would be going but because of what she would be leaving behind, though she had tried determinedly not to think of it all morning.

“You must leave here,” he said abruptly. “On that we are agreed, Jane. After last night it is even more imperative that you leave.”

She nodded and looked down at her hands in her lap. If she had hoped he would try harder to persuade her to stay on the slim excuse of his scraped hands, she was to be disappointed.

“But you could live somewhere else,” he said, “where we could see each other daily away from the prying eyes and gossiping tongues of the
beau monde
. Would you like that?”

She raised her eyes slowly to his. She could not possibly misunderstand his meaning. What she could not believe was her own reaction, or lack of it. Her lack of outrage. Her yearning. The temptation.

He was looking steadily back at her, his eyes very dark.

“I would look after you, Jane,” he said. “You could live in style. A home and servants and a carriage of your own. Clothes and jewels. A decent salary. A certain freedom. Far more freedom than a married woman enjoys, anyway.”

“In exchange for lying with you,” she said quietly. It was not a question. The answer was too obvious.

“I have a certain expertise,” he told her. “It would be my delight to use it for your pleasure, Jane. It would be a very fair exchange, you see. You cannot tell me in all honesty, can you, that you have never thought of sharing a bed with me? That you have never wanted it? That
you are in any way repelled by me? Come, be honest. I will know if you lie.”

“I do not have to lie,” she said. “I do not have to answer at all. I will have five hundred pounds plus my three weeks’ salary. I can go wherever I want and do whatever I want. That is a fortune for a frugal person, your grace. I am not compelled to accept
carte blanche
from you.”

He laughed softly. “I do not believe, Jane,” he said, “that I would ever be fool enough to try to compel you to do anything. I am not seducing you. I am not tempting you. I am offering you a proposition, a business one, if you wish. You need a home and a source of income beyond what you already have. You need some security and someone to take your mind off your lone state, I daresay. You are a woman with sexual needs, after all, and you are sexually drawn to me. And I need a mistress. I have been womanless for an alarmingly long time. I have even taken to cornering nurses outside their rooms when I escort them there and stealing kisses. I need someone I can visit at my leisure, someone who can satisfy my own sexual needs. You can, Jane. I desire you. And of course I have the means with which to enable you to live in style.”

And in hiding.

Jane looked at her hands, but her mind was considering his offer. She could not quite believe that she was doing so, but she deliberately stopped herself from reacting with simple horror and outrage.

Even assuming she was never caught, she could never go back to being Lady Sara Illingsworth. She could never come into the inheritance due her on her twenty-fifth birthday. She had to think practically of
her future. She had to live somewhere. She had to work. Five hundred pounds would not last forever no matter how frugally she lived. She was perfectly capable of taking employment fitted for a gentlewoman—as a teacher or governess or lady’s companion. But to do so she would have to make application, she would have to have references, she would have to risk discovery.

The alternative was to grub out an existence at menial tasks. Or to become the Duke of Tresham’s mistress.

“Well, Jane?” he asked into the lengthy silence that had followed his last words. “What do you say?”

She drew a deep breath and looked up at him.

She would not have to leave him.

She would lie with him. Outside wedlock. She would be a mistress, a paid woman.

“What sort of a house?” she asked. “And how many servants? How much salary? And how are my interests to be protected? How am I to know you will not dismiss me out of hand as soon as you have tired of me?”

He smiled slowly at her. “That’s my girl,” he said softly. “Feisty.”

“There is to be a contract,” she told him. “We will discuss and agree to its terms together. It is to be drawn up and duly checked and signed by both of us before I become your mistress. In the meanwhile I cannot stay here. Is there already a house? Are you one of those gentlemen who keeps a house especially for your mistresses? If so, then I will move to it. If we cannot come to an agreement on a contract, then I will, of course, move out again.”

“Of course I have such a house,” he said. “Empty of all but two servants at present, I hasten to add. I will take
you there later, Jane, after Marsh has returned with news from my brother’s stable. I have to do something to fill in the time before word comes from Brighton. We will discuss terms tomorrow.”

“Very well.” She got to her feet and picked up the bowl and the bandages. “I will have my bag packed and will be ready to leave whenever you summon me, your grace.”

“I have the feeling,” he said with deceptive meekness as she reached the door and turned the handle, “that you are going to drive a very hard bargain, Jane. I have never before had a mistress who insisted upon a contract.”

“The more fool they,” she said. “And I am not your mistress yet.”

He was chuckling softly when she closed the door.

She leaned back against it, thankful that there were no servants in sight. All her bravado went from her, and with it all the strength in her legs.

What on earth had she just done?

What had she agreed to—or
almost
agreed to?

She tried to feel a suitable degree of horror. But all she could really feel was enormous relief that she would not be leaving him today, never to see him again.

T WAS A HOUSE HE HAD OWNED FOR FIVE YEARS
. It was on a decent street in a respectable neighborhood. He had had it decorated and furnished at great expense. He had hired decent, reliable servants, two of whom had been there for all five years, staying to maintain the house even when it had no occupant.

It was a house of which Jocelyn was fond, representing as it did a world of private and sensual delights. And yet as soon as he stepped across the threshold with Jane Ingleby, he felt uncomfortable.

It was not just the house. It was the whole idea of her becoming his mistress. He wanted her, yes. In bed. In all the usual ways. Yet somehow the idea of Jane Ingleby as his mistress did not seem quite to fit.

“Jacobs,” he said to the butler, who bowed deferentially, “this is Miss Ingleby. She will be living here for a while. You and Mrs. Jacobs will take your orders from her.”

If Jacobs was surprised to find his master choosing a mistress from among the working classes—she was, of course, wearing the cheap gray cloak and bonnet she had worn in Hyde Park—he was far too well trained to show it.

“We will do our best to see to your comfort, ma’am,” he said, bowing to her.

“Thank you, Mr. Jacobs,” she said, inclining her head
regally before he withdrew discreetly to the nether regions of the house.

“They will hire more servants, of course,” Jocelyn said, taking Jane’s elbow and beginning a tour of the house with her. “Shall I give the orders, or would you prefer to be in charge of it yourself?”

“Neither yet,” she said coolly, looking around the sitting room with its lavender carpet and furnishings, its pink draperies and frilled cushions. “I may not be staying longer than a few days. We have no agreement yet.”

“But we will.” He guided her toward the dining room. “I shall come in the morning for our discussion, Jane. But first I will take you to a modiste I know on Bond Street. She will measure you for the clothes you will need.”

“I will wear my own clothes, thank you,” he was not surprised to hear, “until I am your mistress. If we come to an agreement on that point, then you may summon a dressmaker here if you wish. I am not going to set foot on Bond Street.”

“Because it will be known that you are my mistress?” he asked, watching her run her fingertips over the polished surface of the round dining table—it could be considerably enlarged to seat guests, but when dining alone with his mistress he preferred to be within touching distance. “You think that a matter for shame? I assure you it is not. Courtesans of the highest class, Jane, are almost on a par with ladies. Above them in some ways. They often have considerably more influence. You will be highly respected as my mistress.”

“If I become your mistress, your grace,” she said, “I will be neither ashamed nor proud. I will be taking the
purely practical step of securing employment that will be both lucrative and congenial to me.”

He laughed. “Congenial, Jane?” he said. “You bowl me over with your enthusiasm. Shall we go upstairs?”

He wondered if she felt as passionless as she looked. But he remembered the two embraces they had shared and drew his own conclusions, especially from the one in the music room. She had been anything but passionless on that occasion. And even outside her room, after she had sung for his guests, there had been a yearning that he might have kindled had he chosen.

He was still in the doorway of the bedchamber when she, a few steps ahead of him, turned toward him.

“One thing must be made perfectly clear even today,” she said, her hands clasped at her waist, her chin lifted as if for battle, a martial gleam in her eyes. “If I decide to stay, everything in this house has to be changed.”

“Indeed?” He raised his eyebrows and his quizzing glass and took his time looking about the room. The wide, canopied, mahogany bed with its intricately carved posts was covered in brocaded silk, with the same silk pleated in a rosebud design on the canopy. The bed curtains were of heavy, costly velvet, as were the window draperies. The carpet was soft and thick underfoot.