Rules for Being a Mistress (14 page)

“You’re late,” he said sternly.

“I know!” she whispered. She sounded frantic. She was out of breath, as if she had been running. “I’m sorry! I couldn’t get away sooner, with that fecking dirty constable of the Watch lingering in the street like a bleeding vagrant!” She let the curtain fall closed. “I don’t think he saw me, the bollocks.”

Benedict felt a stab of guilt. He had never given a single thought about the risk she was taking in coming here. It was scarcely a hundred yards from his door to hers, but for a young woman it was as fraught with danger as the Silk Road. He shuddered to think what would have happened to her if the constable had caught her.

She took a deep breath and smiled at him. She had not bothered to paint her face tonight, and her red hair was tied back neatly with a ribbon. On her feet were sturdy boots; walking the steep, slippery paths of the cold, dark park in high heels on the previous night had not been such a delightful experience that she wanted to repeat it.

“Smoking, Ben? You said you gave it up,” she teased him. “Did they repeal the iniquitous tax on tobacco?”

“I decided it was not fair to punish the British merchant for the stupidity of his government. I didn’t think you were coming,” he added stiffly.

“Honestly, I couldn’t get away sooner,” she said. “I was afraid you’d gone to bed already. But I decided to risk it, in case you hadn’t. Shall we get started, then?”

Not waiting for an answer, she sat down on the sofa and picked up the small green book from the table. She had marked her place with the ribbon attached to the book’s spine. “I think we’d made it to Chapter Five: ‘A favorite hound described, which pups while pursuing a hare; the hare also litters while pursued by the hound—’”

He sat down next to her on the sofa, turned her face to his, and kissed her.

He tasted of warm brandy. Dropping the book, she slipped both arms around his neck and gave her mouth to him completely. He was pulled down to the sofa, and somehow ended up crouched over her, kissing her. Her mouth clung to his. His hand slipped to her breast, cradling it in the curve of his palm. He could feel her heart beating in wild measures. The roughness of her clothing annoyed him. Hoping that underneath the coarse fabric she would be wearing the silk and lace of the night before, he began to unbutton the jacket.

Cosima froze. She had welcomed his kiss, and she did not really object to being caressed over the protection of her clothing, but she was not ready for this. She was deeply insulted that he would think she would permit such an invasion. He knew perfectly well that she was no woman of easy virtue. Or did he?

He felt her shrink from him, and he drew away from her. She sat up on the sofa and put one hand up to her wig to make sure it was still in place. She had pinned it on securely, but she had not bargained on being mauled. He had been nothing but respectful on the previous night. “It’s so nice,” she said coldly, “to be with a man who doesn’t take insufferable liberties!”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Cherry,” he said, getting up from the sofa.

“I am not,” she said angrily, “jumping into bed with you just because—” She broke off in confusion and buttoned her jacket. “Well, I’m just not, that’s all! If it’s a harlot you want, I recommend you go back to Mrs. Price and ask for somebody else!”

“I don’t want anybody else,” he said quietly.

“Well, you can’t have
me!
I’m not for sale.”

He sat down in the chair opposite the sofa. “I still don’t want anybody else.”

She felt absurdly pleased. He was a hard man to read, but she thought she detected suffering in his cold gray eyes. “I’ll read to you, but that’s all I’m doing,” she said primly.

“Of course. Please forgive me. I was a brute.”

She picked up the book again and found her place. She liked kissing him but, obviously, anything more was completely out of the question. She had not meant to shut him down completely but, she supposed, it would hardly be fair to start him up again when she had no intention of coming across. He wouldn’t be satisfied with just kissing, and she absolutely would not give him anything more.

Unless they married, of course, in which case she would have to let him do as he liked, whether she wanted to or not. The thought of marrying anyone threw her into a blind panic. She certainly didn’t want to marry a man who was in the habit of hiring prostitutes and making indecent proposals to innocent young women, even if he thought they were only housekeepers.

But what a kiss! Her mouth felt lonely without it. So that, she thought, is what brandy tastes like. The men in her family were not brandy drinkers. Sir Benedict, obviously, was a bit more sophisticated than her rough-and-tumble brothers.

“Was it like kissing a newel post?” he asked.

“What?”

“I have been told,” he said, “that kissing me is like kissing a newel post.”

“Who would say such a terrible thing?” she said softly. “And you such a lovely, lovely man? She must have been a terrible girl. Could be she has no talent for it herself so she doesn’t recognize it in you.”

“That must be it. Would you care for a strawberry?”

She frowned, and he was suddenly quite ashamed of his blatant attempt to seduce the girl. Such a cliché, too. Strawberries and champagne, indeed. Pickering really had no imagination. “It’s after midnight,” she pointed out. “I have Mass in the morning.”

He didn’t see the connection.

“I have to be in a state of grace to receive the body of Christ,” she explained. “I can’t eat until after Mass.”

“I’ll put them away,” he offered.

“No need,” she said. “I can exercise self-restraint, you know.”

“I suppose champagne is out of the question,” he murmured.

“I should really do my reading,” she said taking up the book. “You’ll not be able to hear me over there,” she said as she found the ribbon marking her place. “I’d only be wasting my voice. Are you so senile in your old age that you’ve forgotten that you’re deaf?”

Benedict had assumed he was to be banished from the sofa, but he was not slow in joining her.

“Now, put your hand on my knee,” she instructed when he was beside her.

He looked at her in surprise.

“Put your hand on my knee,” she repeated firmly. “I don’t trust you,” she explained. “Obviously, I won’t be able to keep an eye on you while I’m reading, but this way I’ll know where your hand is at all times. Go on,” she commanded.

He leaned forward a little and claimed her knee.

“That doesn’t look comfortable,” she observed.

“It isn’t. Why don’t I put my hand here instead?” Leaning back, he placed his left arm across her back and cupped her shoulder with his palm. “Consider the benefits of this position. I will be close enough to hear you even if you should whisper. You will know where my hand is at all times. And, I think, it is a comfortable position for us both.”

“Aye,” she agreed. His nearness made her skin tingle, and his hand felt hot through the green baize of her jacket. “Would it be an insufferable liberty,” she asked, “if I were to rest my head on your shoulder like so?”

“Not at all.”

Nestled against him, then, she began to read in an outrageous German accent: “All these narrow and lucky escapes, gentlemen, were chances turned to advantage by presence of mind and vigorous exertions…”

In the morning, Pickering was astonished to find the strawberries uneaten and the champagne still corked. Still more puzzling was the fact that his master did not seem unhappy in the least. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“Will your friend be coming again tonight?” he asked hopefully.

“Not tonight,” Benedict replied.

Pickering was crushed. He felt like a dismal failure.

The clock on the mantel was quietly striking midnight when she arrived the following night. “Good evening, Miss Cherry,” Benedict said, climbing to his feet.

He was surprised to see her.

Cosy stared at him in dismay. He was dressed for bed, a black brocade dressing gown loosely belted over his snowy white nightshirt. On his feet were embroidered velvet slippers. Thick black hair filled the open neck of the nightshirt.

“Please don’t be alarmed,” he said, making her laugh. “My man likes to undress me for bed at a certain time every night before he retires himself. You said you couldn’t come on Sunday, so I was prepared for an evening alone. This is not,” he added wryly, “part of an elaborate plan to seduce you. I mean, I
have
got an elaborate plan to seduce you, of course, but this isn’t it.”

“It’s Monday,” she pointed out, indicating the clock on the mantel. “Last night, I got here so late, it was actually Sunday. And today, it’s so late, it’s Monday. So I
was
here Sunday, after all. I just didn’t realize it at the time.”

To his disappointment, she was again clad in her green baize habit, buttoned up to the neck, with sensible shoes on her feet. What happened to the delightfully minimal gown she had been wearing the first night? “You are quite right,” he said, resuming his seat as she took the sofa. “I am, of course, pleased to see you, whatever the day.”

“I guess there’s no real reason I can’t come on Sunday,” she said slowly. “It’s not as though we’re up to anything! We’re committing no sin.”

“Certainly not,” he agreed heartily.

She sat down on the sofa and opened the book, setting aside the ribbon marking her place. “Chapter Eight,” she read aloud, “in which the Baron arrives unintentionally in the regions of heat and darkness, from which he is extricated by dancing a hornpipe.”

Benedict joined her on the sofa and placed his arm across her shoulders.

Somehow, the fact that he was sitting there in his dressing gown, rather than fully clothed, made the situation embarrassing for her. Her cheeks flamed. “You’re fine in the chair,” she said quickly. “I think I can trust you now. I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson.”

Benedict frowned. “Certainly, you can trust me. However, I
hear
so much better when I am close to you. Your voice is so soft, just like Miss O’Hara’s. Of course,” he added, “Miss O’Hara
always
took me on her lap and cuddled me.”

“Don’t even think about it,” she warned, laughing.

Extending one long leg, he pulled the ottoman over to them with his foot. He put his feet up and invited her to do the same. She did so, but immediately wished she hadn’t. Her ugly black shoes were just the thing for walking through parks on dark wintry nights, but they looked embarrassingly mannish on an ottoman in a gentleman’s study. “Nice slippers,” she sniffed. “Did your mother embroider them for you?”

“My sister,” he answered.

She felt an odd stinging sensation in the tips of her breasts. It seemed connected somehow to the timber of his voice. “‘I was once in danger of being lost,’” she read loudly, “‘in a most singular manner in the Mediterranean—’”

“Aren’t you going to rest your head against me?” he interrupted her. “I hear so much better when you do.”

She realized she was sitting up very straight. With her feet on the ottoman it was a posture both ridiculous and uncomfortable. She forced herself to relax. He had already laid his arm along the back of the sofa, and as she leaned back he was able to clasp her shoulder with his left hand, pulling her closer still. She leaned her head against him and closed her eyes for a moment. She was so tired, and he smelled so good. He felt good, too. The silk of his dressing gown caressed her cheek. She drifted toward sleep.

“Lost in the Mediterranean,” he prompted her, making her jump.

Chapter Eight was a very short chapter, only three pages, but she had to struggle to concentrate on the words. Not only did her mind wander to the man sitting close beside her, but her eyes frequently left the page she was reading to stray over his body. His chest, in particular, fascinated her. The thick hair showing at the opening of his nightshirt moved gently when she breathed, like a meadow moving on a windy day. Her fingers itched to touch it. Would it be coarse or soft to the touch? What would he do if she touched him?

He would want to touch her, of course. He was not a green young man. He would expect her to give him everything, and he would be angry when she would not.

She didn’t dare touch him. She could only look at him and wish and wonder.

“You’re not doing the funny accent tonight,” he complained, breaking into her thoughts, and his voice stung her breasts again. “Is it because you found out in the last chapter that the Baron is Dutch?” he went on, as though unaware of the unsettling effect he was having on her body and her nerves.

“Please, don’t be angry with me!” she burst out.

He looked puzzled. “Why should I be angry with you?”

“I can’t concentrate on my reading,” she said, turning to look at him. “You’re just so hairy!” she said helplessly.

Benedict was taken aback. “I am sorry if it offends you, my dear,” he said. “I am as God made me—well, almost as God made me. There
has
been a
slight
alteration—”

“No, it doesn’t offend me,” she said quickly. “Oh, you
are
angry!”

“No,” he said tightly. “Why should I be angry? You find me physically repulsive. Naturally, I am overjoyed. Couldn’t be happier!”

“But I don’t find you physically repulsive,” she answered. “I think you’re nice.”

“Nice?” Now he was seriously annoyed with her. “You use that word quite a lot, I’ve noticed. You use it for everything! This is, for example, a nice room. That is a nice book. These are nice slippers. Strawberries are nice. You use it so much, in fact, that it has become meaningless. Tell me, Miss Cherry, in what sense of the word do you find me
nice
?”

His arm tightened around her, pulling her against him. She put out her hand as if to stop him, and encountered the hard reality of his chest. As if of their own accord, her fingers raked through the hairs on his chest. They were not as soft as the hairs on her head, but neither were they as coarse as they appeared. They were short, crisp, and clean, and as her hand moved, they sprang up and tickled her fingers. Fascinating. She couldn’t seem to stop touching him.

The book fell to the rug, and with it, all pretense seemed to fall away. She touched his mouth blindly, and in the next moment they were kissing, attacking one another with lips and tongues. Her hand slipped inside his nightshirt, exploring his body as her tongue strained to explore his mouth. He was as hairy as a hound, and she couldn’t stop touching him.

“You are so nice to touch,” she panted as his lips sought the tender skin of her neck. “You are so nice to kiss. You’re so nice to me! I just think you’re so nice!”

He laughed softly. “I think you’re very nice, too.”