The Earl's Mistress (2 page)

“No.” The lady had the audacity to spin around and throw up a staying hand at Jervis. “No, I will have another moment, Mr. Jervis, if you please.”

To Hepplewood’s surprise, his secretary blanched, bowed, and backed out of the room, shutting the door again.

The woman turned to face Hepplewood. He returned the gaze, a smile twisting upon his face. “Well, madam?”

She marched a step nearer. “What do you mean,” she again demanded, “by saying I will not do? I have come all the way from London, sir, at your agent’s behest—in
February
.”

Hepplewood felt his own eyes flash at that. “I think you forget, my dear, your place,” he said warningly.

A flush crept up her cheeks. “I am not
your dear,
” she countered. “And you . . . why, you have not even interviewed me! How can you possibly know what I’m capable of? How can you know if I will or will not suit?”

At that, his emotional tether snapped. Hepplewood leaned very near and caught her chin in his hand. “Let me be blunt, my dear,” he said, tightening his grip when she tried to draw back. “You would
suit me
very well indeed. But you are not the sort of pretty distraction a wise man wants running loose in his house, and had Petershaw not been dead in his grave, his wife would never have employed you, either. Surely you must know it.”

Acknowledgement flickered in her eyes. Ah. It was not the first time she’d heard this—or suspected it, at the very least.

He released her chin and forced his hand to drop, but by God, it was harder than it should have been.

Mrs. Aldridge drew a deep, shuddering breath, her hands fisting, then slowly unclenching at her sides. “
Please,
your lordship,” she said hoarsely.

He leaned in a little. “Please what?”

“Please just . . . just give me a chance.” Her gaze dropped again to his Turkish carpet. “I’ve come such a frightfully long way. And I . . . I need this post, sir. I need it very desperately.”

“I shall, of course, cover all the expenses of your return to London,” he said.

“But I wish to
work,
” she said more emphatically. “I am a
good
governess, Lord Hepplewood. I am possessed of a lady’s education. I paint and sew and keep accounts with the greatest of skill. I speak three languages and even have a flair for mathematics, should you wish it taught.”

“Ah, both beauty and brains,” he murmured.

“Surely you, of all people, know that beauty can be a curse,” she said sharply. “But I will take excellent care of Lady Felicity, and love her as if she were my own. And I shan’t be underfoot. I
swear
it. Indeed, you need never see me. We may . . . why, we may communicate in writing.”

He gave a snort of suppressed laugher. “You realize, of course, how ludicrous that sounds?” he suggested.

“No.” Her long, lovely throat worked up and down. “No. Indeed, I think it might work admirably. You are not even here that often. I mean,
are
you? Please, sir, I beg you.”

He did laugh then. “While I never tire of hearing a beautiful woman beg,” he said, dropping his voice, “I strongly advise you to take yourself back to London, Mrs. Aldridge. Put on a stone or two, then find yourself a husband or—more practically—a rich protector.” He let his gaze settle on a promising pair of breasts, presently flattened beneath layers of gray worsted. “With your assets, it won’t prove difficult.”

“But I am here
to work,
” she repeated, her hands fisting again. “Why, I have brought my trunks and all my books! Mr. Gossing ordered me to come prepared to start at once. He
told
me this job was to be
mine
.”

Hepplewood was not accustomed to argument—or to restraining his desires. “Then I fear Gossing, too, forgot his place,” he returned.

Her eyes widened to round, almost amethyst pools as he backed her nearly into his bookcase. “I . . . I beg your pardon?”

Irrationally tempted, he lifted his hand and drew his thumb slowly over the sweet, trembling swell of her bottom lip.

Ah, God. How he wanted her. Her entire body seemed aquiver to his touch.

“Alas, Mrs. Aldridge,” he murmured, dropping his eyes half shut, “there’s only one position I could offer to a woman of your looks—and that position, my dear, would be under me, in my bed.”

On a gasp, she tried to shove him away. “Why, how dare you!”

“I dare because to my undying frustration,” he replied, seizing her shoulders, “I desire you. I prefer bedding women with a little fire. Indeed, you may assume your new position at once.” He lowered his mouth until it hovered over hers. “Right here, in fact, since you’ve so high-handedly dismissed my secretary and left us alone. What, will you have it? Do please say yes, for I begin to find myself quite uncomfortably arou—”

He did not finish the sentence.

Mrs. Aldridge did not say yes.

Instead, she drew back her hand and struck him a cracking good blow across the face.

Startled, Hepplewood stepped back, one hand going gingerly to the corner of his mouth. The little wildcat hit like a man, by God.

“Why, how
dare
you!” Mrs. Aldridge’s eyes blazed with outrage as she scooted away from him. “How dare you, sir, shove me up against a wall and speak so vilely! Indeed, you are every bit as bad as they say!”

Lust thrumming through him now, Hepplewood glanced at the blood on the back of his hand. “Ordinarily, Mrs. Aldridge, I’d put a woman over my knee for what you just did, and spank her bare bottom,” he said. “But the way your lashes just dropped half shut? The way your lips so delicately parted? Oh, be glad, my dear—be
very
glad—I’m not hiring you, because the fire that flared just now would scorch us both.”

“You
cad,
” she hissed.

“I don’t deny it,” he acknowledged, “but I also know a woman’s invitation when I see it, my dear, and you were well on your way to my bed. One of your hands, by the way, had already slid beneath my coat and was halfway up my back—not, alas, the one you just slapped me with.”

“You are utterly depraved.” She strode past him to snatch her paperwork from his desk. “Kindly forget, Lord Hepplewood, that you ever laid eyes on me.”

“I take that to be a no, then?” he murmured. “How frightfully awkward. Still, I console myself with the knowledge that you were fully aware of my less-than-sterling reputation when you walked in here.”

Mrs. Aldridge was shaking all over now. “How very much you must despise yourself, Lord Hepplewood, to behave with such lechery,” she declared, one hand seizing his doorknob.

“Spoken like a true governess, Mrs. Aldridge,” he said mordantly. “Perhaps you might like to take
me
upstairs for punishment? Sauce for the gander,
hmm
?”

A sneer sketched across her beautiful face. “You may go to the devil, Lord Hepplewood, and be served a proper punishment,” she replied, yanking open the door. “It would have to be a cold day in hell before any respectable woman would lie with the likes of you.”

At that the door swung wide; so wide the hinges shrieked and the brass knob cracked against the oak paneling behind.

As to the lady, she plunged into the shadows and vanished.

Lord Hepplewood sat back down and wondered vaguely if he’d gone mad.

How very much he must despise himself!

Oh, the woman really had no clue. . . .

And now he was supposed to forget he’d ever laid eyes on Mrs. Aldridge and her softly parted lips? Well, be damned to her, then, the purple-eyed bitch.

He would do precisely that.

Hepplewood got up again and kicked his chair halfway across the room.

CHAPTER
2

I
sabella’s tears had run dry by the time she reached King’s Cross two days later. Indeed, they had dried before she’d left Northumbria, since she’d been obliged to put up another night at the damp coaching inn near Loughford in order to be hauled rather gracelessly in a farm cart down to Morpeth to catch the morning train.

So much for Lord Hepplewood’s
noblesse oblige,
she thought bitterly. The man was a cad and a bully.

But he was not quite a liar, was he?

Isabella could still hear his rich, deep laughter ringing in her ears. Dear God,
would
she have kissed him?

The truth was, she did not perfectly remember the moment when he’d seized her and lowered his mouth to hers. She could remember only the overwhelming strength of his grip and his warm scent drowning her. The sensation of her knees buckling beneath a wave of sudden longing. The shiver of his muscles as her hand went skating up his back.

Stupid, stupid, stupid woman!

Until that moment, she could have saved the situation. She was
sure
she could have done, for she’d needed that job so desperately.

But then the man had tried to kiss her, and rather than hold the course, her bloody brain had gone to mush! She had proven his very point—that she’d no business anywhere near him—and lost her opportunity. And all for what? The heat of a man’s touch?

Isabella swallowed hard and closed her eyes. Good Lord, had she no pride?

But pride always went before a fall, did it not? That was what her old vicar had been ever fond of saying. Moreover, during that long, sleepless night beneath the Rose and Crown’s moldering bedcovers, she’d had much time to consider—and cry over—what her pride had brought her to.

Had she been overly proud? Did she deserve this fall? A fall that was destined to lay her so low she might never rise again—this time taking those she loved down with her?

Dear God. How had it come to this?

As the fringes of London appeared, Isabella stared out the train’s window and pondered the question. She had been foolish, certainly, in her youth. She had made an impetuous marriage in a moment of desperation, and as it was with most such marriages, she’d been left to rue the day.

But prideful? She prayed not. She had tried to step cautiously, and after Richard’s death, to choose wisely and work hard. To think about those people who now depended on her, rather than those on whom she’d once depended. Her father. Her stepmother. Richard, so very briefly.

And somehow, she had managed.

But as the cramped and malodorous third-class carriage went clackity-clacking back into King’s Cross Station, Isabella was seized by the fearful certainty that she was no longer managing; that she had just run out of options. Almost nauseous with dread now, she drew her landlord’s last missive from her bag and, to further torture herself, reread it for about the twentieth time. No, this time, he would not be forestalled. The licentious Lord Hepplewood had been her very last hope.

And yes, she had known precisely what he was. A wastrel and a womanizer. Lord Hepplewood was infamous in certain circles.

Yet she had gone to take the job anyway, for such was her desperation.

The train ground slowly to a halt beneath the vaulted roof in a steaming clatter, porters darting along the platforms to throw open the doors to the first-class compartments. The man on the long bench beside Isabella—a cobbler from Newcastle—rose before her and elbowed open the door himself. From the bench behind her, someone hefted a squawking hen in a wicker cage over Isabella’s head. A boy with a knobby burlap sack that smelled of damp earth and parsnips pushed past.

The odor made Isabella want suddenly to wretch. Settling a hand over her stomach, she hung back until everyone else had clambered out and onto the platform. Then she stood and hefted down her valise, wondering if she could spare enough of Lord Hepplewood’s leftover fare money to hire a conveyance to haul her trunks back down to Munster Lane.

She was still standing on the platform, pawing through her reticule to count her coins, when she felt the hair rise on the back of her neck. A shadow drifted past—uneasily near—and when she looked up it was to see her aunt, Lady Meredith, studying her from beneath the brim of a hat perched at a jaunty angle atop a pile of unnaturally pale curls.

Isabella bit back a quiet curse and tried to smile.

“Isabella, my dear.” Lady Meredith touched a bit of darning on Isabella’s sleeve with feigned concern. “Good heavens, child. You look a disheveled fright.”

Isabella dropped her hand, sending her reticule swinging from the cord on her elbow. “My lady,” she murmured, bobbing the stiffest of curtsies. “How do you do?”

“Better than you, I fear,” declared her aunt. “Indeed, it troubles me to see those dark smudges beneath your eyes. Isabella, are you losing weight again?”

“I don’t think so,” Isabella lied, noting a little bitterly that Lady Meredith did not look in the least troubled. “Please, ma’am, don’t miss your train on my account.”

Her aunt gave a dismissive wave. “We’ve plenty of time,” she said. “What of yourself? Are you departing? Or arriving?”

“Arriving,” she said, praying her aunt did not ask for details.

But Lady Meredith had begun to glance up and down the platform. “You will wish, of course, to pay your respects to your cousin Everett,” she said a little stiffly.

Isabella felt a cold chill settle over her. “I don’t see him.”

“He went back to fetch my portmanteau.” Her aunt flashed a self-satisfied smile. “We are just on our way down to Thornhill. As I’m sure you know, the manor house is so very cozy this time of year.”

“It’s lovely, yes,” said Isabella.

But there wasn’t a corner of England one could charitably call cozy at this time of year, and they both knew it. Cousin Everett, however, was now Lord Tafford of Thornhill—Isabella’s father’s former seat—and Lady Meredith loved to wield that fact like a weapon.

As to her cousin, he simply loved to wield control—over anyone smaller and weaker than himself.

Isabella was not weaker.

And once upon a time, she had proven it—but at a terrible cost.

Lady Meredith had never forgiven her. “I wish you’d had time to return my letters, Isabella,” she said, tugging absently at her gloves as if to neaten them. “I have been thinking how desperately you must miss the old family pile.”