Simply Forbidden (9 page)

“Perhaps you could just ask him.” Marie-Claude suggested, her brown eyes alight with mischief. “There has to be some good reason why he won’t have sex.”

“I’ll ask him tomorrow. I’m supposed to be going riding with him.” Lisette groaned as she noticed the time. “If I can get out of bed in five hours.”

“You’ll make it. Sleep is far less important than finding out what Lord Swanfield is up to, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.” Lisette got to her feet and finished off the remains of her hot chocolate. She smiled down at Marie-Claude. “Thank you for listening to me.”

Marie-Claude shrugged. “It was a pleasure.”

“And thank you for not thinking I am fit only for the madhouse for biting a man I like.”

“You are welcome.” Marie-Claude rose, too. “I have to go back upstairs and finish out the night. I will see you tomorrow. Good night, my friend.”

Lisette kissed her cheek. “Good night.” She watched Marie-Claude leave and then turned toward the stairs that led up to the private part of the house where all her family had rooms. She hoped to God that Christian wasn’t around. She really didn’t want to face him at the moment. She managed to make it to her room and fell onto the bed fully dressed.

The next thing she knew, the birds were singing and one of her mother’s maids was standing over her laughing at her for sleeping in her clothes. It was time to get up and face Lord
Swanfield again, and this time, as they were away from the pleasure house, she doubted he would be in quite such a conciliatory or servile mood.

She opened her eyes wide. Oh goodness. Lord Swanfield would assume she was at her father’s house, and await her there. With a quiet curse she scrambled out of bed and asked the maid for some hot water. It was already half past seven, and if she had any chance of getting to the Knowles house before the impeccably punctual Lord Swanfield, she needed to move fast.

G
abriel checked his watch and looked expectantly up at the door of Knowles House.

“Maybe she ain’t coming, guv,” Mather said cheerfully. “You never know what nonsense females get into their heads these days.”

“Thank you, Mather.” Gabriel replaced his watch in his pocket. “Perhaps you might refrain from making witty remarks and go and ring the bell.”

Undaunted by Gabriel’s chilling tone, Mather grinned and bounded up the steps to the front door. Gabriel shivered as a gust of wind caught him unawares, and his horse, equally spooked, shied at nothing. Perhaps Miss Ross thought it too cold to go out this morning, although she hadn’t struck him as that kind of overprotected woman.

“She’s not here, sir.” Mather volunteered loudly from the top step. “She’s at her mother’s.”

Devil take it, he hadn’t thought of that. She’d probably stayed at the pleasure house last night. He frowned as he considered
his options. He didn’t want to be seen loitering at the front of Madame Helene’s and he certainly didn’t want Miss Ross subjected to the kind of gossip her presence there with him might raise.

“Sir?”

He looked down at Mather who was now standing beside his horse. “Yes?”

“The butler gave me her direction. We’ll find Miss Ross at One Barrington Square.”

“
Barrington
Square?”

“Yes, sir, do you know where it is?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I know it.” Mather mounted up again and also took back the reins of the horse Gabriel had brought for Miss Ross.

Gabriel followed along behind and soon found himself in an all-too-familiar area of Mayfair. He glanced at Mather, but the man seemed quite at ease as he guided his horse one-handed through the busy streets. He pulled up in front of an unfamiliar white mansion on the corner of a treelined square

“Here you are, sir. I have a cousin who works at the house next door.”

Gabriel stared at the long windows and thick drawn drapes of the house. Perhaps Madame Helene had more than one property in the city. And, in truth, this secluded square was very close to her other house, in fact…. The front door opened and Miss Ross emerged, one hand holding up the skirts of a black riding habit adorned with white lace.

Gabriel dismounted and went to meet her. “Good morning, Miss Ross. Your father’s butler gave me your direction. I hope I didn’t discommode you too much.”

“Not at all, sir.” She glanced up at him before reaching for her hat and ramming a pin back into her piled-up hair. “I was worried that you might leave without me.”

He helped her mount. “I was tempted, Miss Ross. But once I realized it was hardly your fault that I had the wrong place, I decided to try this address.”

She pressed her hand to her heart. “I confess I am quite overwhelmed by your forbearance, my lord. I can barely stand the stupendous honor of your company as it is, but this …”

He frowned at her as they overtook a grinning Mather and left him to follow discreetly behind. “Does the pleasure house back onto this property in Barrington Square?”

“How very astute of you, my lord. In truth, most of this house is part of the other. My family has their private quarters in the rest of it.”

“Ah, that explains it, then.” He lapsed into silence, suddenly aware that in his impatience to solve the riddle of her disappearance, he’d forgotten to be nervous about seeing Miss Ross again. Dressed in her military-style black riding habit, she seemed her usual acerbic self, which pleased him greatly. He relaxed a little in the saddle. Perhaps she would be wise enough to allow him to keep his private and personal lives as separate as he usually preferred.

“Lord Swanfield, may I ask you something?”

He checked his horse’s longer stride to match hers and draw level again. “Of course, Miss Ross.”

“Why don’t you bed anyone properly?”

He swallowed hard as all his confident predictions of separation evaporated. “I hardly think that is any of your business, Miss Ross.”

She kept looking at him, her quizzical expression unchanged. “I disagree.”

“Are you suggesting that you
want
me to ‘bed’ you, Miss Ross?”

“That would be very forward of me indeed, my lord, wouldn’t it? I’m just curious.”

“And curiosity killed the cat, didn’t it?”

She sighed. “I thought I’d give you the opportunity to answer my questions outside of the pleasure house. If I ask you again tonight, will you feel obliged to answer me?”

“That’s hardly fair. And if we are being curious, why aren’t you a virgin?”

She opened her eyes wide at him. “Now who is being forward? Perhaps we should agree to a trade. I’ll answer your impertinent question if you answer mine.”

“And if I choose not to answer you?”

She shrugged and returned her attention to the path ahead of them. “Then surely we have nothing more to say to each other.”

Frustration rose and twisted in his gut. She had him now and she probably knew it. He wasn’t sure that he liked being put in this position, but he was damned if he’d walk away from her again.

“All right. I agree.” When they entered the park, he nodded at a more secluded path that meandered away from the main thoroughfare. “Shall we turn down here and then walk for a while?”

She followed his lead down an avenue of old elm trees that formed a tunnel over their heads and turned the flickering shadowed light to a green haze.

He dismounted and helped her down, even remembered to hobble the horses. She turned to face him, her fine features shadowed by the brim of her hat and the uncertain dancing light.

“Yes, my lord?”

He stared down at the immaculate polish of his boots. “Ladies first.”

“Lord Swanfield …”

He looked up and contemplated her determined expression. “What exactly do you want to know?”

She sighed as if he was being difficult, which he supposed he was. “Why won’t you bed anyone?”

“Because I believe that procreation belongs inside marriage.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Many worthy people would disagree with you. Why doesn’t it make sense?”

“Because you are not that kind of man.”

“Not worthy?” He smiled. “Well, that is certainly true, but you hardly know me, Miss Ross, so how can you judge what kind of man I am?”

Color tinted her cheeks. “Lord Swanfield, you love being touched. You let perfect strangers arouse you at the pleasure house!”

He shrugged and allowed his gaze to wander around the avenue of trees as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “I admit I have needs. I just don’t choose to express them in the way most men do. Having a child out of wedlock is not something I approve of.”

She angled her head to one side to study him. “Is it because you already have too many bastards?”

“Good God, no.”

“Then, why does it concern you so much? There are many ways to avoid making a child with a woman, my mother says….”

He swung around to face her more fully. “And none of them are completely reliable, are they? I’m sure your mother has told you that.”

She didn’t back down. “If you were born a bastard like I was, I would understand your bitterness, but for you to inherit a title, you must have been a legitimate child.”

She sounded more confused than annoyed, and that gave him the courage to continue. “I told you that my mother was a scullery maid.”

“Yes.”

He rested his gloved hand on one of the old trees and focused on the gnarled bark beneath his fingers. “She was thirteen when my sixty-year-old father, the late Earl of Swanfield, met
her in the hallway and decided to rape her. She was fourteen when I was born.”

The silence behind him grew until he wanted to reach out and punch the tree just to break the tension. “When he found out from the butler that she was pregnant and about to be dismissed, the earl married her in secret, and threatened to kill her if she told anyone.”

He leaned back against the tree, glad of its solid warmth. “I continued to live on the estate, totally unaware of my mother’s marriage, until the earl died when I was nine and all hell broke loose.”

He forced himself to meet her gaze. “The rest of the family tried to break the marriage, but there was nothing they could do. The earl had tied everything up perfectly legally and I was his heir.”

“And it did not sit well with you?”

He shrugged. “I grew up thinking I was the by-blow of a scullery maid, that I was lucky to be fed and even tolerated on the estate of such a great lord. I was an uneducated savage and when everything changed I had no idea how I was expected to behave.”

“It sounds as if you would’ve preferred to have remained a bastard,” Miss Ross said slowly. “In truth, I would think your objections would be
against
marrying to create a legitimate heir, not for it. And I would’ve expected you to have a thousand bastards to prove your point.”

He stiffened. “You are suggesting that my mother should’ve remained unmarried and borne her shame alone?”

“No, of course I’m not. It sounds as if she was treated appallingly. But for you, the marriage was a blessing, wasn’t it? So I don’t understand …”

He scowled at her. “Understand this. When I marry, my wife will never have to worry about me committing adultery. I will remain true to my vows.”

“And give her all your children?”

“Yes.”

“And what if she doesn’t want to be continually pregnant?”

He blinked at her suddenly angry face. “What?”

“Has it ever occurred to you, as you so graciously offer to endow your poor wife with all your mighty seed, that repeated pregnancies can kill a woman?”

“My poor wife?” He struggled to recover from her unexpected broadside. “This conversation has gone on for quite long enough. You asked me why I won’t fuck anyone and I’ve answered you.”

“Despite your own experiences, you believe that it is better for a child to be legitimate and unhappy than for a child to be illegitimate and content.”

“Yes.”

“And you’d rather enjoy the sexual games at the pleasure house than have a real mistress who might get pregnant.”

“
Yes
.” He glared at her composed face. “Are you done with me now?”

“I certainly understand you better.” Lisette swallowed hard. “Did I tell you that I was brought up in France?”

“You mentioned it, but …”

“But you didn’t realize why? My mother was busy running the pleasure house and my father was married to somebody else.”

He let out his breath and gave her the courtesy of looking straight into her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know …”

“My father formally acknowledged us three years ago and we bear his family name of Ross as well as our mother’s.” Her attempt at a smile fell short. “There is no need to feel sorry for me. I am quite happy with my life.”

“Are you?”

“Yes, I am.” She glared at him, hating the flatness of his response. She was not going to tell him that his stance on bastard
children made her respect him a little more. How strange that they’d both had to fight the unusual circumstances of their birth to be recognized by society, to be accepted.

“If I fucked you,” he said slowly, as if explaining something to a half-wit, “I could get you with child.”

“I understand that.”

He reached for her then, and placed his hands on her shoulders so that he could better glower down at her. “Dammit, Miss Ross, you would not want to bear my bastard. You of all people should understand that. Can’t you just accept what I can give you, and be happy with that?”

She reached up to cup his scarred cheek. “As you’ve already noticed, I’m not a virgin, and my reputation is dubious to say the least. Why should I not be willing to take the risk and lie with you?”

His grip tightened. “Because if I got you with child, I would have to marry you.”

“Whether I wanted you to marry me or not?”

“Yes.” He kissed her slowly and then drew back. “And, in truth, I do not wish to marry at all. I’ve already decided to leave no heirs and let the rest of the family fight it out after my death.” He kissed her nose, and she felt the humiliating burden of unshed tears gather in her eyes and throat. “Now tell me the name of the bastard who took your virginity.”

She tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let her. “I’m not going to tell you his name. It has nothing to do with you, and it was my fault anyway.”

“How so?”

“I thought I was in love with him.”

“And that he would marry you?”

“I suppose so.” She managed to wiggle out of his arms. “Not only did he have no intention of marrying me, but I later found out that he had won a great deal of money thanks to a bet concerning the first man to seduce me placed at his club.”

Anger flared in his dark blue eyes. My goodness, he was magnificent when he scowled. “Tell me his name.”

“Don’t look so fierce. It happened a long time ago and I am quite reconciled to my tarnished reputation.”

“He
bragged
about having you?”

“Of course he did, otherwise how would he have claimed his money?”

His hand came to rest on his hip as if in search of the long cavalry sword that used to lie there. “Did no one avenge you?”

“Avenge me? And cause even a bigger scandal as to why I was at an exclusive pleasure house just asking to be compromised? It was hardly worth it.” She shrugged. “I learned my lesson.”

“Miss Ross …”

She couldn’t allow him to feel sorry for her, or responsible for what had happened. It had been hard enough dealing with Christian’s fury and concealing the whole sordid affair from her father. She
had
to redirect his thoughts into more practical matters.

“Will you still meet me at the pleasure house?” she asked. She held her breath as he studied her.

“If you will accept me for what I am, and for what I can give you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“You think you can change my mind, don’t you?” he asked.

She started walking back toward the peacefully grazing horses. “Perhaps.”

As she strolled away from him, a thrill of unexpected lust shot right to Gabriel’s groin. He didn’t want to fuck her, he
didn’t
. His cock was just responding to a sexual challenge. He was strong enough to resist the lures of the flesh and had proved it many times. He took a slow step toward her and then another. Part of him wanted to bring her to the ground, pull up her skirts, and just have her until she screamed his name.