The Sweetest Revenge (16 page)

“Do you believe I would ever trust you, Leo? I’d rather put my trust in a thief or a murderer.”

“I say that upon my honor. As a gentleman.”

“You are no gentleman.”

He took another step forward and spoke softly. “Tell me what I have done to make you say that so confidently, Mistress Jane. Do not say I have harmed women. You can repeat it over and over, and still I won’t understand, because it is too vague. Tell me what I have done specifically, to you, to make you feel this way.”

Her fingernails raked over his buttocks, and he took another step forward. His knees bumped the side of the bathtub.

“Step in,” she ordered.

Clumsily, he stepped over the lip of the bathtub. Hot water swirled around his calves.

“Sit.”

Without the use of his hands, sitting was an awkward proposition, but he managed to kneel and then twist himself so that he leaned back against the edge of the tub. The water rose to his chest, hot and soothing.

Mistress Jane’s skirts rustled as she leaned beside the tub. “If I spoke in such specifics, you might remember me. Or you might not. But I am not silly enough to take the risk.”

“Do you truly think so lowly of yourself to believe I might not remember having you?”

“You have discarded many women. Why should you remember any of them?”

He opened his mouth to inform her he had an excellent memory but closed it again. He could use this to his advantage.

“I suppose I can’t remember
all
of them. But I do remember the ladies I’ve had more than once.”

He was quite sure that Mistress Jane wasn’t one of them. Otherwise her voice would be familiar to him. He continued. “The brief liaisons, the singular nights of drunken revelry—well, I admit at times they blur in my mind.”

She snorted. “Of course they do. Who could blame you, after all? Remembering all of us must pose quite a challenge. Of course, it is not even necessary to remember, is it?”

“Indeed,” he agreed, allowing a hint of smugness to creep into his voice. He wanted to make her angry. Careless.

She commenced a harsh scrubbing of his body. He sank back into the side of the tub, relishing the sting of the soapy cloth on his skin.

“Do you know what happens to an unmarried lady when she is corrupted, Leo?”

Now they were getting somewhere.

“I suppose that would depend on the lady’s position and who knows about her disgraced state,” he said smoothly, but as he spoke, he thought of Belle and how the whole world had learned of the taint Leo had placed on her. Her father had probably made her life a living hell. It wrenched his gut to think of what people might have said to her, of the names they might have called her. He took a shallow breath and tried to focus on Mistress Jane.

“What if her disgraced state is discovered by her guardian, her father, specifically? What do you think happens then?”

“If the man is intelligent and hopes to make her a good marriage, I imagine he’d keep his mouth shut.”

“Even when her indiscretion is known to a great many people? What then?”

Now he knew she must be talking about Belle. Unless…

She took her time washing him. Starting at his toes, she had moved up his legs, skipping over the raw spots on his ankles, and now reached his thighs. His body tightened, remembering how her hands and mouth had worked him.

God, he didn’t want her hands on him. Not today, not now, not when discovering her identity seemed a hair’s breadth away. Not when Belle still walked the earth; not when she was nearby, probably somewhere above him in this very house…

But his cock didn’t seem to agree.

“Perhaps you ought to wash my hair, Mistress Jane.”

“If you like, Leo.” A smile laced her words. No doubt she saw the contours of his wayward shaft beneath his wet shirt.

He sank backward to wet his hair and came up dripping, blowing water from his mouth. She moved behind him and sank soapy fingers into his hair.

“To answer your question,” he said, “if the lady’s indiscretion is known to a great many people, I suppose she would be in an unpleasant predicament indeed.”

Her nails grazed his scalp. “So, knowing this, Leo, when you put young ladies in this ‘unpleasant predicament,’ do you not feel any remorse about it?”

His natural reaction would be to say he didn’t put young ladies in unpleasant predicaments, or at least he tried to avoid it at all costs. On his first day here, he had told his captors he never took virgins. They had known he was lying, of course, because of Belle. But other than Belle, and that one mistake a few years later, he had resolutely kept away from innocents.

“Remorse?” He pretended to ponder. “I admit, Mistress Jane, I don’t really think of remorse when I encounter a beautiful and willing lady in my bed.”

She sighed. “Of course you don’t. You leave all these poor unwitting young creatures to their fates. Has that never struck you as cruel?”

The way she said “cruel” made him almost certain she was speaking of her own fate and not just Belle’s. But if that were the case…

No, it could not be her. Mistress Jane could not be that girl.

“Rinse,” she commanded.

He obediently closed his eyes and sank into the tub. Fighting growing excitement, he held steady as she sifted his hair through her fingers to coax the soap out.

Improbable but not impossible…

“I do think it would be cruel,” he said slowly, upon rising from the water once again.

She did not move or speak. Christ. It had to be her. What was that girl’s name? He’d met her almost two years ago in Peterborough, where he’d stopped at Lord Jennings’s house party on his way home from a visit to Leothaid Castle.

He’d been in a particularly dour mood at that house party. The castle was in disrepair, the village desperately poor. His factor was frantic, pressuring him to move there full time and turn the place around. Leo had only wanted to return to London as quickly as possible and drink and fuck himself into oblivion. He’d warned Jennings that he’d probably only be able to manage a few days at the house party before continuing south.

She moved to his front again, soaping his chest through the neck of his shirt. Her movements were slower now, more controlled. He sensed tension behind her fingers and felt an answering tension in his own body. “So you believe that after you ruin a lady, the proper response is to treat her like a common trollop by simply leaving her to her fate?”

Bloody. Damn. Hell
. She had said too much, because that was exactly what he’d done to that poor young woman in Peterborough. She withdrew her hands from his chest, and he heard nothing for a few moments aside from water sloshing in the tub.

He did not want her to know he’d used her words to confirm her identity, but as silence stretched between them, he couldn’t think of what to say. Lady M had told him that Mistress Jane had nearly frozen to death on the streets because of him.

His empty stomach twisted and rolled.

She had been passionate in bed, but during their one night together, he had learned enough about her to gather that she was innocent in the relations between men and women. If her father had discovered what they had done that night, and then rejected her… Well, it was a miracle she was here today.

He finally found his tongue. “I do not make a habit of defiling virgins.” The words sounded tight as they emerged from his constricted throat. “If ever I did, I was sorry for it.”

“Sorry? Sorry is inadequate, I should think.” She sniffed, and Leo tensed further. Good God, he thought in horror, was she weeping?

“If it happened, it was a mistake. I was misled.” That was the truth. He’d met her when he’d first arrived at the party, learning that she was the daughter of one of the country squires who lived nearby. She’d brazenly flirted with him all throughout his first day. His second day, he’d gone grouse hunting with the other men and hadn’t seen her until dinner. Afterward, she’d brushed past him, whispering the location of her bedroom into his ear.

Later that night, more than a little sotted, he’d gone to her. Few words were exchanged. She’d kissed him and touched him like a woman who knew exactly what she was doing, and he had assumed that she was a woman of experience. Without speaking, they had removed each other’s clothing. Only when he laid her down, seen the flash of fear in her eyes, and then heard her cry out in pain, had he known what he had done, how very young she was.

If Mistress Jane wept, she recovered from it quickly. Suddenly, her hands were on him once more, moving up his thighs, reminding him she was no longer innocent—far from it. She paused briefly at his ballocks, then washed them, the gentle touch of the washcloth making his cock stir, then tighten again. Blast his body! He didn’t want her, as alluring as he remembered her to be, as eager a bedmate.

He wanted Belle.

He twisted away from her, but her hands followed his movements. “Mistress Jane—”

“Shhh.”

“—don’t do this.”

“Are you afraid I’ll leave you teetering on the edge again, Leo?” Her voice was as silky as her hands. “What if I promised you release this time?”

If he imagined it was Belle doing this to him…giving him pleasure, her fingers running up and down the length of his shaft, stroking the head of his cock with the pad of her thumb… He gritted his teeth against the temptation.

“Belle…”

The fingers slowed, then stopped. “Are you imagining your ‘Belle,’ Leo? Are you picturing her in your mind, her fingers stroking you, caressing you?”

There was no reason to lie to her. He nodded, then leaned his head back against the edge of the tub.

“Have you ever considered how Belle might have ached for her own release? When you were out carousing, corrupting the world with your seed, and she was alone in her cold bed? Can you imagine how lonely that must feel after having tasted pleasure?”

She was as good as admitting Isabelle was Miss Juliette. “Belle is here,” he murmured through his clenched teeth. “Send her to me. Let me talk to her, let me explain.”

“I did not say Belle was here.”

Her hands left him entirely. She resoaped the washcloth and then slipped it under his shirt. The cloth abraded his stomach, ran roughly over his nipples. He winced.

“It was all a mistake, a misunderstanding,” he said. “A disaster.”

She pulled away. “Do you really believe that?”

He did not know if she was speaking of his liaison with her or his liaison with Belle, but it was true for both.

“Yes.”

After he’d realized this girl was an innocent, he’d lain awake for hours in rising panic and finally disentangled himself from her naked limbs. Though it was still dark outside, he’d written a hasty note to Jennings, explaining that he had just recalled urgent business in London. Then he’d saddled his own horse and ridden away at a gallop.

Once back home in London, he’d worried about the girl, that someone might have discovered their liaison. He knew he should do the gentlemanly thing and go back to her. Even propose marriage, though he didn’t expect any woman would want to marry a dissolute like him.

After a few days, he came to his senses and decided to go back for her, resolved to set things right, if necessary.

The day before he planned to return to Peterborough, Sutherland came by for a visit. Disgusted with himself, Leo had relayed the whole sordid tale of what had happened.

Using calm logic, Sutherland had dissuaded him from going. “You can’t
marry
her,” he’d scoffed. “You aren’t cut out for leg shackles, old chap.”

“But—”

“It seems to me,” Sutherland interrupted, “that, inexperienced or not, all she was looking for was a single night of pleasure. It’s almost certain she never expected anything more from you.”

Leo frowned.

Sutherland clapped him on the back. “All she wanted from you was a way to rid herself of her pesky virginity.”

After Leo had imbibed three snifters of brandy, Sutherland finally succeeded in dissuading him from returning to Peterborough.

Instead, he had waited in anticipation—expecting to hear from her, or at the very least expecting to hear gossip about him and her. But there was nothing. He’d breathed a sigh of relief and had gone on with his life.

Still, he’d known he’d made a mistake with her. A mistake he hadn’t repeated since.

Mistress Jane drew him out of the tub and led him to the chaise. She toweled him off inadequately, for his shirt was still dripping when she pulled on his trousers. Then Hercules clamped Leo into the shackles, and he found himself lying on the chaise, his wet shirt plastered to his freezing torso.

After a protracted silence, she left him with a haunting remark. “Luncheon will be served soon. As you eat your bread and water, consider what it might be like if you are a girl ruined by a man’s lust, whose father turned his back on her. Consider what it might be like to live on similar fare for a year, desperate and alone in the world.”

As she bolted the door shut behind her, he groaned, turning his face into the back of the chaise. He had remembered her name.

Anna Newton
.

***

“You went to him.”

A hot flush crept across Isabelle’s cheekbones. She studied the carpet, thinking how convenient it would be to be able to melt into it. She raised her eyes to meet Susan’s. Her voice was only a little above a whisper. “Aye.”

“Why, Isabelle?”

Goodness, she felt like a naughty child. She shouldn’t feel this way—after all, she had as much right to Leo as Susan and Anna. She shouldn’t feel ashamed in the least.

“I don’t know, Susan. I felt…compelled. I don’t know why.”

Susan released a long-suffering sigh. “Do sit down.”

Isabelle chose one of the silk-upholstered chairs matching the burgundy silk damask wall coverings of Susan’s sitting room. She gazed at the marble fireplace, its edges carved in a repetitive Greek flower motif, still bright and unstained by coal smoke. Flanking it on either side hung portraits of a cherub-faced lad—Susan’s son Harry, she assumed. A painting of grapevines crossed the ceiling, meeting at the center with a plaster sculpture of a side-by-side Venus and Cupid. Susan had told her the house was only a few years old. Creating this architectural haven had been Lord DeLinn’s pet project before his death. He must have loved Susan very much, thought Isabelle, to have created such a splendid room for her. It was one of the most beautiful in the house.