A Duke For All Seasons (6 page)

~ A Gentleman’s Guide to Keeping a Mistress

    
“Let me explain,” Arabella said, backing toward the desk. “It's not what you think.”

    
Sebastian looked at the crumpled missive. “Oh? What do you think it is, then? A guest list for Napoleon's next ball?”

    
“I mean ...” Her thoughts darted furiously, more florid than a Mozartean cadenza and as damnably difficult to get a handle on. What could she possibly say that wouldn't make the situation worse? “You don't understand.”

    
“Pray enlighten me.” He approached with the stealth and menace of a hunter. “But be warned, madam. I will suffer no more lies from you.”

    
“I haven't lied.” The edge of the desk bit into the back of her thigh just under the crease of her bottom. “I'm only the courier. I know nothing about the contents of the envelope.”

    
He leaned forward, trapping her between his body and the desk. “But you know enough to know possession of such a document would be considered aiding and abetting enemies of our country at the very least.”

    
“I don't care,” she cried angrily. “I had no choice.”

    
Sebastian shook his head. “An independent woman like you who flouts convention because it amuses her? I find it difficult to believe you ever do anything because you
must
.
”

    
“I don't care what you believe.” She lunged for the note, but he caught her in his arms, pinning hers to her sides. She struggled, but was no match for his strength. “Please, Sebastian. I'll do anything if you'll only give it back to me.”

    
A corner of his mouth twitched. “Anything?”

    
She felt his body quicken, but his eyes were harder than the bulge in his trousers. He was close enough that his breath feathered hotly across her lips. If she tipped up her face, he'd probably not be able to resist the invitation to claim her mouth. But she sensed the tension in his body wasn't all sexual. Arabella couldn't tell if he struggled with the desire to ravish her or wring her neck.

    
Or both.

    
“I’ll sign your contract. I’ll do whatever you like,” she babbled. “Truly, it’s not what you think. You’d help a man who found himself in these dire straits. Won’t you help me?”

    
He shoved her away and paced the length of the room to put some distance between them.

    
“No. I wouldn't betray my king and country for any man,” he said, tugging at his jacket, but it was the cutaway sort and the line of his trousers left no doubt of his roused state. “Or any woman either.”

    
“Would you do it for a child?”

    
He stopped pacing at that. “Explain yourself.”

    
“If I don't deliver that envelope, he'll...” Arabella twined her fingers together, the picture of nervousness. Sebastian tamped down any feelings of empathy for her. She was a talented actress. It would behoove him to remember it. “You have no idea what he's capable of.”

    
“Since I have no idea who 'he' is, I'm sure I don't,” Sebastian snapped. “Start by telling me who you're dealing with and how you became involved.”

    
She turned and gazed out the tall windows, as if she'd like to leap out, run over the rolling hill, and never look back.

    
“I first met Fernand five years ago when I was in Paris.”

    
“What were you doing in Paris then? In case it escaped your notice, we've been at war with France off and on, for more or less forever.”

    
“Yes, but even in wartime the French still love their opera and our troop of players had safe conduct.” A sad smile tilted her mouth. “I realize now that Fernand planned this from the start when he approached me. Performers and diplomats are almost the only ones who can travel freely when there are hostilities between countries and no one takes an artist seriously off-stage. We'd never be suspected of involving ourselves in clandestine matters.”

    
“Who is this Fernand?”

    
“Fernand de Lisle, Vicomte Gimois. His family lost their estates, their fortune, almost everything during the Revolution, but Napoleon reinstated his title,” she said. “Estates and fortunes are more difficult to retrieve.”

    
“Gimois?” Sebastian frowned. The name niggled his memory. “Ah, now I recall. Isn't he an attaché to the French ambassador in London?”

    
“Yes.” Her shoulders sagged. “And the father of my daughter.”

    
She had a child. That should have made Arabella even less appealing as a potential mistress, but the catch in her voice tugged at his heart.

    
“Where is your daughter?”

    
She turned and met his gaze. “As far away from me as I can bear. I know I'm not fit to raise a child, not with the hours I keep and the travel, never mind the general strangeness of theatre people. There was never any question of marrying her father. I'd broken it off with Fernand once I realized he only wanted to use me for his cause, before I discovered I was bearing his child. My Lisette lives with my sister and her husband. They've never been blessed with children so they're raising her as their own. I send them money faithfully for her care, but they love her dearly, and would have taken her regardless.” Her chin trembled. “She calls me 'Auntie Bella' when I visit her. It shouldn't hurt, but it does.”

    
She swiped away the single tear that spilled over her eyelid. “I suppose you despise me as unnatural for abandoning my child.”

    
Her words knifed through his gut. Another mother who'd left her child sprang up in his mind's eye. He could still smell her perfume, sickly sweet and laden with essence of lilac. To this day, he couldn't abide them and had ordered every bush on his estate eradicated as if it were a patch of cankerworts.

    
But Sebastian's mother hadn't left him because it was in his best interests. She'd abandoned a five year old Sebastian to his stoic, distant father in order to run away with her lover. And never looked back.

    
“I don't despise you,” Sebastian said. Arabella St. George had done the best she could for her daughter under the circumstances. The child wasn't tainted with bastardy. She was being raised by people who loved her.

 
   
And Arabella obviously suffered for her choice. If his mother had ever had second thoughts, Sebastian certainly wasn't aware of them.

    
“I was approached by a man the last time I was in Paris, who told me he had people watching my sister's home, watching Lisette. He gave me the envelope and a description of the man who would collect it from me in London. If I didn't do what they asked,” she said, her voice edged with agitation, “Vicomte Gimois would exercise his rights and take her. I'd never see Lisette again.”

    
“If a nobleman wants to claim a child as his, he's usually praised for it.”

    
“That's not what Fernand will do.” Her face crumpled in fear. “You don't know him. He's ruthless and cruel. Lisette is nothing to him but a tool to be used. He's an assassin. He'll kill her if I don't do what he wants. But you fit the description I'd been given for my London contact and that's why I gave the envelope to you. Then Fernand came and it's all such a horrible muddle. Don't you see?” She grasped both his lapels. “I have to deliver that note.”

 
   
She pressed her body flush with his and stood tiptoe to kiss him, tentatively at first, then in a heated rush that went straight to Sebastian's groin. Her mouth was a wonder and he was pulled headfirst into her dark sensual heat. Her hands slid down his back and kneaded his buttocks. He groaned into her mouth.

    
Then, without stopping their deep kiss, she made a little room between them so she could undo the buttons over each of his hipbones. Her hands invaded his trousers and all rational thought fled from his mind. 

 
   
Arabella wasn’t bluffing when she said she’d do 'anything' to secure his help.

“A
gentleman should take pains to insure that important decisions regarding his mistress not be made when his mind is compromised by the requirements of his body.”

~ A Gentleman’s Guide to Keeping a Mistress

    
Arabella teased Sebastian's groin with the nearness of her questing fingers, but denied him the relief of her direct touch. White-hot wanting seared him. Her kiss was a drug, a mind-altering elixir more powerful than any poppy extract in a London opium den. Her hands fluttering over his groin threatened to reduce him to mindless incoherence.

    
“Help me, Sebastian,” she whispered, between peppering kisses down his neck.

    
She grasped his shaft and his eyes rolled back in his head.

    
He lifted her onto the desk and rucked up her skirt. The heavy walnut furnishing had been in the family since before Cromwell. Many a time, Sebastian had watched his father poring over Chaucer or laboring on the estate ledgers behind the venerable piece.

    
The ancient desk had borne up under plenty of ducal occupation and diversion, but never anything like this.

    
The thought of the long line of his disapproving forbearers might have been what gave Sebastian the strength to stop, but he still possessed the presence of mind to make a rational decision on his own. Much as he wanted her, he couldn't trust this woman.

    
He grasped Arabella's wrists and pulled her hands from his trousers. He held her immobile while he willed his heart to stop galloping in his chest. The scent of her arousal tickled his nostrils and the look of abject need on her lovely face nearly weakened his resolve.

    
She's a traitor to her king
, he reminded himself between heaving breaths.
My king.

    
“Do not think, madam, that you may purchase my assistance with your sweet slit,” he said as soon as he trusted his voice not to rasp with need.

    
Her eyes narrowed. “Why not?” she said through clenched teeth. “You thought to purchase use of my body for the next three months with your bloody contract.”

    
He released her hands and stepped back, but the effort was Herculean. The way she was seated on the old desk, knees spread, her skirt hiked above the top of her lacy pantalets with one stocking bunched at her ankle--it was the most erotic pose he'd ever seen. He rearranged his small clothes and buttoned his drop-front trousers. Since he was fully roused, it was a difficult trick. When he looked back at her again she'd pulled down her skirt, but she was still perched on the desk.

    
“It appears,” he said woodenly, “that we have sufficiently established that neither of us can be bought.”

    
He walked around to the other side of the desk and rang for Cobb. She hopped down and twisted her fingers together in nervousness.

    
“What are you going to do?” she asked, white-lipped. “Summon the magistrate?”

    
“No.” He tugged down his waistcoat, but nothing would disguise his current state. He sat in the leather desk chair before Cobb arrived. “I intend to protect the Crown's interest. And incidentally, yours.”

    
Relief weakened her knees. Arabella sank into one of the heavy Tudor chairs flanking the small fireplace as Sebastian's butler entered.