The Earl's Mistress (16 page)

Isabella drew a deep breath. “I cannot speak to your assumptions, my lord. We must all wrestle with our own conscience.”

“I wonder if you ever have to do so.” He turned to look at her again, his glittering blue gaze searching her face. “Well, Isabella, I have asked my question, and you’ve answered. I can ask nothing more from you.” He set his wide, long-fingered hands over his thighs, as if to rise. “Shall I go, then? Shall this be the end of it?”

Did she wish him to leave?

Lord, she didn’t know. She didn’t understand anything, least of all the feelings that stirred in her treacherous heart as she listened to him. There was something about his deep, beautifully modulated voice that melted over her like butter, warming her to the bone and weakening her resolve.

She dropped her head, her hands twisting in her lap. “I do not know, my lord,” she admitted, her voice threading a little. “I no longer know what I wish or think or even feel. Since I returned from Greenwood, I . . . I haven’t understood anything. Not myself, and certainly not you.”

“Come, Isabella,” he gently pressed. “Can we not try and build a friendship between us, at the very least? Have I treated you so ill that I am beyond the pale?”

His letter had, in fact, said precisely that; that he would always feel a fondness for her and be a friend to her should she ever require one. Isabella had assumed the words to be mere platitudes born of guilt and the wish to be rid of her. But there was no denying that, inexplicably, she saw in him much to respect and yes, even to like.

Nonetheless, she was also a little obsessed with him; obsessed in a way that frightened her and had begun to disturb her sleep. Not a fear of him—no, strangely, it was not. It was something far, far worse—an almost dark craving—a fear of herself, perhaps. And it was the reason she would as soon not see him again.

“Yes.” She lifted her gaze to his. “Yes, we may part as friends.”

“
Part
as friends,” he echoed, “but not remain friends?”

Confused, she opened her hands, palms up. “We will not see one another after this. We are not of the same world, you and I—not now, if we ever were.” She let her hands fall back into her lap. “I’m sorry. You are kind to come; most men would not have troubled themselves.”

“I am not,” he said quietly, “most men.”

“And this is awkward for us both, I’m sure,” she went on. “Perhaps I’ve been alone and away from society so long I’ve forgotten what friendship is. Moreover, this cottage . . . it cannot be what you are accustomed to.”

He flicked another gaze round the room. “I rather doubt it is what you are accustomed to,” he said a little dryly. “You were born at . . . Thornhill, I believe, your father’s seat?”

“In Sussex, yes,” she said quietly. “But I have not lived there in years.”

“Since your father’s death?”

“No, before that,” she said. “I left when my father remarried. I was . . . nineteen, I think.”

“Ah,” he said quietly. “And then you became a governess?”

“Because I wished to,” she said swiftly. “I love children. My stepmother brought a child to the marriage—my sister, whom I adore—but they were newlyweds. I thought it best I go. So I did.”

“So you did,” he said in that faintly acerbic tone. “And your father did not forbid it? He should have done. He should have been watching over you.”

“You have such charmingly old-fashioned notions,” she said.

“Do you really believe, Isabella,” he asked very quietly, “that it is old-fashioned for a man to guard what is his?”

She shrugged. “Having never been guarded,” she said, “I shall reserve judgment. In any case, Papa could never forbid anyone anything. He was the most lenient and forgiving of men.”

“I’m not sure leniency and forgiveness are the best qualities in a man who must steward an estate and a family,” Hepplewood replied. “Resolve and discipline are sometimes more useful.”

Isabella flashed a wry smile. “Yes, I comprehend your views on resolve,” she murmured, “and discipline.”

He gave a bark of sarcastic laughter and looked away. “Damned if you can’t put a man in his place, Isabella,” he said, “for all your quiet ways.”

“Do you realize, sir, that a few moments ago you ordered me inside my own home in a most high-handed fashion?” she said. “And called me by my Christian name whilst doing it?”

“No.” His mouth twitched into a mordant smile. “I did not realize. That will garner some interest, I daresay, at Tafford’s dinner table tonight.”

Unease must have shown in her expression.

“Forgive me,” he added. “I didn’t mean to cause you any embarrassment.”

“It is Everett who is the embarrassment,” she said tightly. “And I care very little what is said of me at his table. It will be nothing kind, I assure you.”

The earl seemed to ponder this a moment, his long, thin index finger tapping lightly upon the arm of his chair. “Is anyone else at home, Isabella?” he said after a time. “May we talk freely? You have young sisters, you said.”

She was touched he remembered. But then, he likely remembered each and every time his will was thwarted. “Yes, Jemima and Georgina,” she said. “They’ve gone down to Brighton with Mrs. Barbour, who helps look after them.”

“Jemima and Georgina,” he echoed softly. “So I’m permitted to know their names?”

“Have I any means, really, of keeping them from you?” she asked a little stridently. “You know where I live. You are already in my home—and you look very much
at
home, if you don’t mind my saying. And you have known me in the most intimate of ways. So let us be realistic, my lord. There is nothing I could hold back from you—
nothing
—and I wonder I ever tried.”

He surprised her then by jerking from his chair and striding to the window, one hand dragging through his mass of unruly curls—the only thing about the man that did not reek of tightly leashed control.

It was dusk now, the lane empty. She wondered, fleetingly, how he’d managed to appear out of nowhere. He was dressed for driving, in snug charcoal trousers and an elegant frock coat of the finest black merino. But she had seen no carriage.

After a time, he set a hand flat on the low sill and the other at his hip, pushing the fall of his coat back to reveal the lean turn of his waist. “Isabella,” he rasped into the glass, “would this have ended differently for us if . . . if I had been a more tender lover?”

“That is a question you must ask yourself, my lord,” she whispered, “because
I
did not end it.”

He cut a look of surprise over his shoulder, then his hand fell. “Yes, but that’s not what I meant,” he said, “and I think you know it.”

She shook her head. “No. I do not. I very often find I do not understand you.”

He turned from the window and crossed the room in two strides, dropping before her on one knee, capturing her hands in his. They were warm, long, and surprisingly gentle. “Could you feel some small affection for me, Isabella,” he rasped, “if I were a different man?
Could
you? If I tried?”

“I feel an affection for the man you are,” she said. “Or I feel . . .
something
. Something I don’t have words for. To myself I would call it an obsession.”

“Come back to Greenwood, Isabella,” he said. “Forgive me. I made a terrible mistake in sending you away.”

“You do not strike me, my lord, as a man who makes mistakes,” she said, “or who makes his decisions lightly.”

“Anthony,” he said. “Or just Tony—could you call me that, Isabella, when we’re alone? I don’t like this formality between us. It seems . . . cold. It seems not what we are together, you and I.”

But they would not be alone again after this evening, she thought to herself. She was not going back to Buckinghamshire. The thought flooded her with an aching sense of loss even as she acknowledged the foolishness of that emotion.

“Come back with me,” he said again, “and I will try to temper my ways if that’s what you need. I used to be . . . gentler, I suppose. I can try to be that again. Let us get to know one another better before we decide we do not suit.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I cannot.”

Something dark and unhappy passed over his face. “Is there someone else?” he demanded, the pressure on her hands tightening. “Isabella,
is
there?”

She felt her brow furrow. “No,” she said sharply.

But Hepplewood’s head had bowed, his eyes seemingly locked on their joined hands. “Forgive me,” he said. “I find myself unaccountably jealous. And pray do not trouble telling me I’ve no right. I know that I do not; it makes not a damned bit of difference.”

But Isabella remembered Lady Petershaw’s taunt. He did have cause, really, to wonder if she was already warming another man’s bed. But to be jealous? It seemed not at all like him. Why would a man like the Earl of Hepplewood lose a moment’s sleep over someone like her?

“There is no one else,” she said. “And there shan’t be; I’m not suited to that life. You know it as well as I.”

He lifted his gaze then. “Isabella, what are you talking about?”

She shook her head. “You sent me away for a reason,” she said. “Don’t lose sight of that now. I am . . . just a governess, no matter how pretty you think me. I must find something else I can do with my life.”

Those ice-blue eyes drilled into her. “You think you failed to please me.”

It was not a question, but she lifted her shoulders all the same.

“Oh,
Isabella
.”

His hands slipped away then, both settling instead around her face, lightly cupping it. Words lingered unspoken in his eyes, but he said no more. Instead, he leaned into her, lightly kissing her mouth. He murmured her name again and planted a second kiss on her cheek, and then another at the corner of one eye; kisses tender as the brush of a moth’s wing in the night.

“Oh, love,” he whispered, “you please me beyond measure.”

“Then
why
did you send me away?” she asked a little stridently. “With no explanation, really, save for a letter full of vague inanities? Yes, I left, my lord, and quickly—before you changed your mind. Or worse, before
I
did.”

To her shame, her voice wavered a little at the end, and something like sorrow softened his eyes. Then he set one hand to the back of her head and kissed her in earnest, opening his mouth over hers, tasting her deeply.

Isabella felt plunged headlong into a pool of warm, swirling water. It surged all around her, pulling her under, turning her stomach upside down. As if of their own volition, her hands left the chair arms to slide up the front of his coat, then twined about his neck as she gave herself up to the feeling.

When he came away, her hands were tangled in his hair and his breath was rough, his nostrils faintly flared.

“Let me take you to bed once more,” he rasped. “Come away with me. Tonight. To Greenwood. To
anywhere
. Let me show you how well you please me.”

She shook her head, her eyes widening. “I can’t. Not . . . like that.”

Gloom had steeped the room now, casting him in shadows. He cupped his hands tenderly around her face again. “Are you afraid of me, Isabella?” he whispered. “Am I too rough? Too demanding? It was wrong of me to be so harsh.”

Again, she shook her head. “I am . . . afraid of myself, perhaps,” she said. “Afraid of how I feel when I’m with you. Of the things you can make me want.”

He kissed her again, and the rush of emotion surged anew. He tasted of wine and of sin, the heat rising from his skin in waves, redolent with his familiar scent; a mingling of soap and chestnut and some kind of spice her mind but dimly recognized—
sandalwood,
she mused—just before he kissed her again, raking her cheek with the dark stubble of his beard.

Isabella kissed him back, twining her tongue with his, returning his thrusts in a way that, a few short weeks ago, she would not have dared. He responded with a deep, almost primitive groan and thrust deeper, fully inside, one hand sliding into the hair at her temple.

Her heartbeat pounding in her ears now, Isabella pushed him a little away. “Take me upstairs,” she murmured, her eyes dropping half shut. “Just . . . once more. Please? Will you?”

He kissed her again, swift and hard. “Will you,
Anthony,
” he corrected.

“Will you, Anthony,” she whispered, “take me to bed and make me feel . . .”

“Make you feel how?” He swallowed hard, the apple of his throat working beneath the silken knot of his cravat. “Tell me. How shall it be?”

“As it was at Greenwood,” she whispered, grateful for the darkness that hid her blushes. “I want to feel as if . . . dear God, don’t make me say it. I can’t even explain it.”

But she was to have no opportunity to explain it; Hepplewood had risen and scooped her up from the chair as if she were weightless.

“Where?” he demanded, starting up the stairs.

“In the back,” she said, “the middle door.”

He shouldered his way into the narrow room, so small he had to turn to keep her heels from striking the wall. Here, moonlight had begun to spill through the window, casting a shaft of milky light across Isabella’s bed.

They undressed one another in a feverish pitch, his hands rough and impatient, and nothing at all as they had been at Greenwood. There, he had been a master of control. Now he seemed different; no less in control of her, but perhaps in far less control of himself.

When she was naked before him, he turned to face her, eyes glittering in the moonlight.

“Isabella.” Now stripped to the waist, the band of his trousers hanging off his slender hips, he slid his hand behind her head and kissed her deep, pulling the long length of his body hard against hers.

She could feel the jutting weight of his erection throbbing against her belly and the softness of chest hair teasing her breasts. He let his mouth roam over her face again, infinitely more tender, his hand sliding over and over through her hair.

“How long, love?” he rasped. “How long have we?”

“I’ve sent everyone away,” she admitted, and knew on her next breath that she had done it deliberately—that she had wanted this, wanted
him
—“until tomorrow afternoon.”