More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (7 page)

“Of course I read.” Did he think her a total ignoramus? She remembered too late who she was supposed to be.

“Ah, of course,” he repeated softly, his gaze narrowing. “And write a neat hand too, I daresay. What sort of an orphanage was it, Miss Ingleby?”

“I told you,” she said. “A superior one.”

He looked hard at her but did not pursue the matter.

“And what other accomplishments do you have,” he asked, “with which to entertain me?”

“Is entertaining you a nurse’s job, then?” she asked.

“My nurse’s job is exactly what I say it is.” His eyes were looking her over as if he could see beneath all her garments. She found that gaze more than a little disconcerting. “It is not going to take you twenty-four hours of every day to change my bandage and lift my foot on and off cushions after all, is it?”

“No, your grace,” she admitted.

“Yet you are eating and living at my expense,” he said. “And I believe I am paying you a rather handsome salary. Do you begrudge me a little entertainment?”

“I believe,” she told him, “you will soon be heartily bored with what I have to offer.”

He half smiled, but rather than softening his face, the expression succeeded only in making him look rather wolfish. He had his quizzing glass in his hand, she noticed, though he did not raise it to his eye.

“We will see,” he said. “Remove that cap, Miss Ingleby. It offends me. It is remarkably hideous and ages you by at least a decade. How old are you?”

“I do not believe, your grace,” she said, “that my age is any of your business. And I would prefer to wear a cap when on duty.”

“Would you?” He looked suddenly haughty and not a little frightening with his eyebrows raised. His voice was softer when he spoke again. “Take it off.”

Defiance seemed futile. After all, she had never worn a cap before yesterday. It had just seemed like a good sort of disguise, like something beneath which she could at least half hide. She was not unaware of the fact that her hair was her most distinctive feature. She reluctantly untied the bow beneath her chin and pulled off the cap. She held it with both hands in her lap while his eyes were directed at her hair.

“One might say,” he said, “that it is your crowning glory, Miss Ingleby. Especially, I daresay, when it is not so ruthlessly braided and twisted. Which poses the question of why you were so determined to hide it. Are you afraid of me and my reputation?”

“I do not know your reputation,” she said. Though it would not tax the imagination overmuch to guess.

“I was challenged to a duel yesterday,” he said, “for having, ah,
relations
with a married lady. It was not the first duel I have engaged in. I am known as an unprincipled, dangerous man.”

“Spoken with pride?” She raised her eyebrows.

His lips twitched, but whether with amusement or anger it was impossible to tell.

“I do have some principles,” he said. “I have never ravished a servant. Or assaulted any woman beneath my own roof. Or bedded any who were unwilling. Does that reassure you?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Since I believe I qualify for sanctuary on all three counts.”

“But I would give a monkey,” he said softly, sounding as dangerous as he had just described himself, “to see you with your hair down.”

T
HE
L
ILLIPUTIANS WERE SWARMING
all over the Man Mountain, securing him with the greatest ingenuity—even his long hair—to the ground.

She was reading
Gulliver’s Travels
to him, a book to which he could hardly object since he had left the choice of reading material up to her. She had wandered about the library shelves for a half hour, looking and fingering and occasionally drawing out a book and opening it.
She handled books with reverence, as if she loved them. She had turned to him finally and held up the volume from which she was now reading.

“This one?” she had asked. “
Gulliver’s Travels
? It is one of those books I have always promised myself I would read.”

“As you wish.” He had shrugged. He was perfectly capable of reading silently to himself, but he did not want to be alone. He had never particularly enjoyed his own company for any length of time—no, that was not true. But for the past ten years or so it had been.

He had been feeling considerable irritation as the true nature of his plight had become clearer to him during the course of the day. He was a restless, energetic man, who engaged in a dozen or more activities every day, most of them involving physical exercise like riding and boxing and fencing and—yes—even dancing, though never the waltz and never at that most insipid of all institutions, Almack’s. Making love was a favorite activity too, of course, and that could be the most energetic exercise of all.

Now for three weeks, if he could bear the torture that long, he was to be inactive, with only visiting friends and relatives for company. And the prim, shrewish Jane Ingleby, of course. And pain.

He had distracted himself by dismissing his nurse and spending the afternoon with Michael Quincy. The monthly reports from Acton Park, his country estate, had arrived that morning. He had always been conscientious about them, but he had never before pored over them with quite such determined attention to detail.

But the evening threatened to be endless. The nights were the time when he did most of his living and socializing,
first at the theater or opera or whatever fashionable ball or soiree was likely to draw the greatest crowd, and then at one of his clubs or in bed if the sport offered there seemed worth the sacrifice of a night with his male friends.

“Do you wish me to continue?” Jane Ingleby had paused and looked up from the book.

“Yes, yes.” He waved one hand in her direction, and she looked down and resumed her reading.

Her spine, he noticed, did not touch the back of her chair. And yet she looked both comfortable and graceful. She read well, neither too fast nor too slowly, neither in a monotone nor with theatrically exaggerated expression. She had a lovely soft, cultured speaking voice. Her long lashes fanned her cheeks as she looked down at the book she held with both hands close to her lap. Her neck was long and swanlike in its elegance.

Her hair was pure spun gold. She had done an admirable job of making it look severe and insignificant, but the only way she could hope for success in that endeavor was to shave her head. He had noticed the beauty of her face and the loveliness of her eyes during the morning. It was only when she had removed her cap that he had discovered how far reality surpassed his growing suspicion that she was an extraordinarily handsome woman.

He watched her read as he rubbed the heel of his right hand hard over his thigh as if to ease the pain in his calf. She was a servant, a dependent beneath his roof, and without any doubt a virtuous woman. As she had observed in her usual pert manner during the morning, she was thrice protected from him. But he would dearly
like to see that hair with all the pins and coils and braids removed.

He would not be totally averse, either, to seeing her person without the dreary, cheap, ill-fitting dress and anything else she might be wearing beneath it.

He sighed, and she stopped reading again and looked up.

“Would you like to go to bed now?” she asked him.

She could always be relied upon to return her own particular brand of sanity to a situation, he thought. Her expression was without the slightest hint of suggestiveness despite her choice of words.

He glanced at the clock on the mantel. Good Lord, it was not even ten o’clock. The evening had scarcely begun.

“Since neither you nor Gulliver is a particularly scintillating companion, Miss Ingleby,” he said brutally, “I suppose that is my best option. I wonder if you appreciate how low I have been brought.”

A
NIGHT OF SLEEP
without either liquor or laudanum to induce slumber had not improved the Duke of Tresham’s temper, Jane discovered early the next morning. The physician had arrived and she was summoned from her breakfast in the kitchen to the duke’s bedchamber.

“You have taken your time,” he said by way of greeting when she entered the room after tapping on his door less than a minute after the summons. “I suppose you were busy eating me out of house and home.”

“I had finished my breakfast, thank you, your grace,” she said. “Good morning, Dr. Raikes.”

“Good morning, ma’am.” The physician inclined his head politely to her.

“Take that monstrosity off!”
the duke commanded, pointing at Jane’s cap. “If I set eyes on it again, I shall personally carve it into very thin ribbons.”

Jane removed her cap, folded it neatly, and put it into the pocket of her dress.

Her employer had turned his attention to the doctor.

“It was Miss Ingleby who changed the bandage,” he said, apparently in answer to a question that had been asked before her arrival, “and cleansed the wound.”

“You did an admirable job, ma’am,” the doctor said. “There is no sign of infection or putrefaction. You have had some experience in tending the ailing, have you?”

“Yes, a little, sir,” Jane admitted.

“She spooned purges into all the damned orphans when they overate, I daresay,” the duke muttered irritably. “And I am not
ailing
. I have a hole in my leg. I believe exercise would do it more good than coddling. I intend to exercise it.”

Dr. Raikes looked horrified. “With all due respect, your grace,” he said, “I must advise strongly against it. There are damaged muscles and tendons to heal before they are put to even the gentlest use.”

The duke swore at him.

“I believe you owe Dr. Raikes an apology,” Jane told him. “He is merely giving you his professional opinion, for which you summoned him and are paying him. There was no call for such rudeness.”

Both men looked at her in sheer astonishment as she folded her hands at her waist. And then she jumped in alarm as his grace threw his head back on the pillow and roared with laughter.

“I do believe, Raikes,” he said, “that a splinter from the bullet in my leg must have flown up and lodged in my brain. Can you believe that I have suffered this for a whole day without putting an end to it?”

Dr. Raikes clearly did not. “I am sure, ma’am,” he said hastily, “that his grace owes me no apology. One understands that his injury has severely frustrated him.”

She could not for the life of her leave it alone. “That is no excuse for speaking abusively,” she said. “Especially to subordinates.”

“Raikes,” the duke said testily, “if I could go down on bended knee in humble sorrow at my words, I would perhaps do so. But I may not so exert myself, may I?”

“No indeed, your grace.” The doctor, who had finished rebandaging the duke’s leg, looked considerably flustered.

It was all her fault, of course, Jane thought. It came of having grown up in an enlightened home, in which servants had invariably been treated as if they were people and in which courtesy to others had been an ingrained virtue. She really must learn to curb her tongue if she was to have this chance of earning three weeks’ salary to take with her into the unknown beyond it.

The Duke of Tresham submitted to being carried downstairs, though not before he had dismissed Jane and instructed her to stay out of his sight until he summoned her. The summons came half an hour later. He was in the drawing room on the first floor today, reclining on a sofa.

“My head appears to have returned to its normal size this morning,” he told her. “You will be pleased to learn that you will not be much called upon to use any of your considerable resources in entertaining me. I have given
Hawkins leave to admit any visitors who may call, within reason, of course. He has express instructions to exclude any milliners’ assistants and their ilk who rap on the door.”

Jane’s stomach lurched at the very thought of visitors.

“I will excuse myself, your grace,” she said, “whenever someone calls.”

“Will you indeed?” His eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“I assume,” she said, “it will be mostly gentlemen who will call. My presence can only inhibit the conversation.”

He startled her by grinning at her suddenly, completely transforming himself into a gentleman who looked both mischievous and far younger than usual. And almost handsome.

“Miss Ingleby,” he said, “I do believe you are a prude.”

“Yes, your grace,” she admitted. “I am.”

“Go and fetch that cushion from the library,” he instructed her. “And set it under my leg.”

“You might say please once in a while, you know,” she told him as she turned toward the door.

“I might,” he retorted. “But then again, I might not. I am in the position to give the commands. Why should I pretend that they are merely requests?”

“Perhaps for the sake of your self-respect,” she said, looking back at him. “Perhaps out of deference to the feelings of others. Most people respond more readily to a request than to a command.”

“And yet,” he said softly, “it appears that you are in the process of obeying my command, Miss Ingleby.”

“But with a mutinous heart,” she said, leaving the room before he could have the last word.

She returned with the cushion a couple of minutes later, crossed the room without a word, and, without looking at him, positioned it carefully beneath his leg. She had noticed in his bedchamber earlier that yesterday’s swelling had gone down. But she had noticed too his habit of rubbing his thigh and baring his teeth occasionally, sure signs that he was in considerable pain. Being a proud man, of course, he could not be expected to admit to feeling any at all.

“Apart from the thin line of your lips,” the duke said, “I would not know you were severely out of charity with me, Miss Ingleby. I expected at the very least that you would jerk up my leg and slam it down onto the cushion. I was all ready to deal with such a show of temper. Now you have deprived me of the opportunity to deliver my carefully rehearsed setdown.”

“You are employing me as a nurse, your grace,” she reminded him. “I am to comfort you, not harm you for my own amusement. Besides, if I feel indignation on any subject, I have the vocabulary with which to express it. I do not need to resort to violence.”