Mistress (8 page)

“Thank you, sir.” Lovelace paused delicately. “There is one item of news to relate.”

“And that is?”

“Your brother arrived here earlier this evening. He left an hour ago. I believe he went out to his club.”

“Bennet is here in London?” Marcus frowned. “He is supposed to be visiting friends in Scotland.”

“Yes, m’lord. I know.”

“Well, I shall talk to him in the morning.” Marcus went into the library. “Good night, Lovelace.”

“Good night, sir.” Lovelace quietly closed the door.

Marcus crossed the room to the small table in the corner. The rich French brandy inside the crystal decanter glowed a mellow shade of amber.

Marcus poured himself a glass of the brandy and settled into the large, comfortable wingback chair. He absently inhaled the heady fumes that emanated from his glass as he contemplated the fact that he was about to become involved in another liaison.

The astounding thing was that he was filled with a deep sense of anticipation this time.

Most unusual.

He had always disliked the customary unpleasantness that accompanied the inevitable ending of an affair. Lately, however, he had actually found himself resenting the investment of time and effort that it took to form a new connection.

It was difficult to work up enthusiasm for the project when one knew precisely how it was all going to end. He had even gotten very good at predicting exactly when it would all terminate.

He had been allowing the periods between affairs to stretch out longer and longer, until the pressure of his physical needs grew too strong to ignore.

The difficulty was that he was burdened with a full complement of the usual masculine desires. When he was in a particularly melancholy frame of mind, he sometimes wondered what it would be like to be freed of his passions.
He would then be able to abandon the murky world of romantic entanglements in favor of devoting himself to the satisfactions of his intellectual endeavors.

The thought made him grin briefly. If there was one thing he had discovered tonight, it was that there was no immediate likelihood that his body would allow him to ignore his lust. The talons of unsatisfied desire still gripped his loins.

But the most interesting aspect of the situation was that he was not dreading the work of seduction that lay ahead. In truth, for the first time in a long, long while, he was looking forward to it.

All his instincts told him that with Iphiginia things were going to be new and different.

For starters, he could not see the inevitable conclusion to the affair.

For once he would be going into a liaison without knowing when and how it would end. That alone was enough to whet his appetite.

Marcus sipped the brandy and contemplated the pleasures of a passionate attachment that held the promise of surprise and unpredictability.

He wondered how long she would stick to her outrageous tale of a plan to catch a blackmailer.

He gave the lady high marks for creativity. She had hit upon a brilliant way to thrust herself into Society at the highest levels.

She had no doubt expected him to remain away from London for the full month, which would have given her time to entice a wealthy paramour. Or perhaps she had been out to capture his attention all along.

That last was an intriguing notion. And rather flattering.

Marcus turned the brandy glass lazily in his hands. He would allow her to continue her pretense of hunting a blackmailer as long as she pleased. It did no harm and it would be amusing to see how long she could keep up the charade.

But in the meantime he had other, more interesting games to play with Iphiginia Bright.

An unpleasant sensation of dampness made Marcus glance down at the front of his coat. He groaned when he saw the dark, spreading stain that marred the expensive fabric.

He got to his feet, removed his coat, and reached into the inside pocket. He withdrew the metal object there and regarded it with some dismay.

Clearly his latest design for a reliable hydraulic reservoir pen that contained its own supply of ink and could be carried about in one’s pocket needed more work.

This was the third coat that he had ruined in the past two weeks.

M
ARCUS HAD JUST HELPED HIMSELF TO A PORTION OF
eggs from one of the trays on the sideboard when Bennet sauntered into the breakfast room the next morning.

“ ’Morning, Marcus.”

“Good morning. Lovelace said you had returned to London. I wasn’t expecting you.” Marcus glanced at his brother, started to smile, and then blinked in astonishment. “Bloody hell. What happened to your hair?”

“Nothing happened to my hair.” Bennet’s handsome face twisted into an offended scowl. He went to the sideboard and busied himself lifting the lids of various serving trays. “This style is all the rage.”

“Only among Byron and his crowd.” Marcus surveyed his brother’s elaborately tousled curls. Bennet’s dark hair was normally quite straight, just as Marcus’s was. “Remind your valet to be cautious with the crimping iron. He’ll set fire to your head if he’s not careful.”

“That is not amusing. Are there any muffins?”

“Last tray on the end, I believe.” Marcus carried his own heavily loaded plate back to the table and sat down. “I thought you intended to spend the entire month in Scotland with your friend Harry and his family.”

Bennet kept his attention focused on the muffin tray. “I thought you were going to spend the month in Yorkshire.”

“I changed my mind.”

“Well, so did I.”

Marcus frowned. “Did something happen to cause you to alter your plans?”

“No.” Bennet concentrated intently on ladling eggs out of another tray.

Marcus eyed his brother’s back with an uneasy feeling. He knew Bennet all too well. Bennet had never kept secrets from him. Something was wrong.

Marcus had single-handedly raised Bennet since their mother’s death eighteen years ago. True, Marcus’s father had still been alive at the time, but George Cloud had taken no more interest in his youngest son than he had in his eldest. George preferred his hounds, his hunting, and his friends in the local tavern to the bothersome burdens of family life.

There had been no one else to see to the rearing of Bennet, so Marcus had taken on the responsibility, just as, at an even earlier age, he had assumed the responsibility of working the family farm.

The profits from the farm improved steadily over the years, thanks to Marcus’s successful experiments with tools, fertilizers, plows, and breeding techniques.

George had used much of the increased income to purchase better hounds and jumpers. When Marcus’s mother had timidly suggested that Marcus be allowed to attend Oxford or Cambridge, George had squashed the idea immediately. He was not about to deprive himself of the income produced by the best farmer in the district.

Occasionally George clapped Marcus on the back and chortled about having produced such a useful son. Once in a great while he thought to hoist Bennet aloft in a gesture of casual affection.

Cloud frequently observed with some satisfaction that it was fortunate both of his sons had inherited his own
excellent constitution. He pointed out that chronic ill health, such as Mrs. Cloud suffered, was a damnable nuisance. But that was the limit of his paternal involvement in his sons’ lives.

Marcus’s mother, whose medical complaints were generally of a vague nature and featured such symptoms as melancholia and fatigue, contracted a very real fever the year Marcus turned eighteen. She succumbed to it within a matter of hours. Marcus had been at her bedside, his two-year-old brother in his arms.

His father had been out fox hunting.

Cloud had lived for nearly a year after his wife’s death, an event he had noticed more because it had interfered with his hunting plans than because of any great sense of loss. But eleven months after his long-neglected spouse had succumbed to the lung fever, he managed to break his own neck in a fall when his newest jumper failed to clear a fence.

Marcus was at work in the fields with his men the morning the vicar came to tell him that his father was dead. He had been studying the effectiveness of the modifications he had recently made in a new reaping machine.

He still recalled the curiously detached sensation he had experienced while he listened to the vicar murmur words of condolence.

A year earlier he had wept alone after his mother’s death. But on the morning of his father’s demise he could not summon a single tear.

His principal emotion beneath the sense of detachment had been a brief, senseless anger.

He had not understood the reason for the inner rage, so he had quickly buried it somewhere deep inside himself. He had never allowed it to resurface.

Young Bennet seemed virtually oblivious to his father’s absence. He’d focused all his attention and affection on the one person who was a true constant in his life, his older brother Marcus.

Marcus pushed the memories aside and watched Ben-net wander over to the breakfast table.

“Harry and I got bored in Scotland,” Bennet offered. “We decided to return to London for the Season.”

“I see.” Marcus spread jam on a slice of toast. “I thought you had declared the Season a dead bore.”

“Yes, well, that was last year.”

“Of course.”

Last year Bennet had been barely nineteen. He’d just come down from Oxford, full of a young man’s enthusiasm for politics and poetry. He had been disdainful of the frivolousness of the Season. Marcus had gotten him into a club populated by other young men who were passionate about the new poets and the latest political theories. Bennet had seemed content.

Marcus had been quietly pleased to see that his brother was not the type to be swept off his feet by the superficial entertainments of the
ton
.

Oxford had done its job.

Marcus had not sent Bennet to Oxford for an education. On the contrary, he had seen to his brother’s schooling at home with the assistance of an excellent tutor and his own ever-expanding library.

A young man did not go off to either Cambridge or Oxford in order to study. He went there to obtain a social polish and to mingle with the young men with whom he would later do business for the rest of his life. He went there to form friendships with the scions of the best families, families from which he would eventually select a suitable wife.

Marcus had been determined that his brother would not be like him, a naive, rough-edged country squire who knew nothing of the world beyond life on a farm.

Marcus had paid a high price for his own lack of worldliness. He did not want Bennet to suffer the same fate. A man needed to shed his illusions and dreams as quickly as possible if he was to avoid becoming a victim in this life.

Marcus took a large bite of his toast. “Where did you go last night?”

“Harry and I both went to our club,” Bennet said vaguely. “Then Harry suggested that we drop in on a few of the more interesting soirees.”

“Which ones?”

“I don’t remember precisely. The Broadmore ball, for one, I believe. And I think we stopped briefly at the Fosters’ levee.”

“Did you enjoy yourself?”

Bennet met Marcus’s eyes for an instant and then his gaze slid away. He shrugged. “You could say that.”

“Bennet, I’ve had enough of this evasiveness. If something is wrong, tell me.”

“Nothing is wrong.” Bennet glowered at him. “At least not with me.”

“What the devil is that supposed to mean?”

“Very well, Marcus, I shall be blunt. I understand you made a spectacle of yourself last night.”

“A spectacle?”

“Hell and damnation. They say you carried your new paramour out of the Fenwicks’ ballroom in your arms, for God’s sake. Talk about causing a scene.”

“Ah, so that’s the problem.” Marcus’s hand tightened on the handle of his knife. He cut into his sausage with grave precision. “Did I embarrass you?”

“Marcus, are you going to spend the rest of your life titillating Society with your bizarre behavior?”

“I did embarrass you.” Marcus forked up a bite of sausage and chewed meditatively. “Try not to take it to heart, Bennet. Society has seen worse.”

“That’s hardly the point, is it?” Bennet slathered butter on his muffin. “The thing is, a man of your years should behave with some sense of propriety.”

Marcus nearly choked on his sausage. “A man of my years?”

“You’re thirty-six. You ought to have remarried years
ago and settled down to the business of filling your nursery.”

“Bloody hell. From whence springs this sudden concern with my nursery? You know full well that I do not intend to remarry.”

“What about your obligation to the tide?”

“I’m quite content to see the tide go to you.”

“Well, I don’t particularly want it, Marcus. It’s yours and it should go to your son.” Bennet scowled in obvious frustration. “It’s only right and proper that you should see to your responsibilities.”

“I perceive that my actions last night have, indeed, humiliated you,” Marcus said dryly.

“You must admit, it’s a trifle awkward to have an older brother, a thirty-six-year-old unmarried earl, no less, who has no compunction about becoming the latest
on dit.”

“This isn’t the first time.”

“It’s the first time that you’ve caused a scene in the middle of a fashionable ballroom.”

Marcus cocked a brow. “How would you know? You’ve hardly spent any time at all in Society.”

“Miss Dorchester told me as much,” Bennet retorted, clearly goaded.

Marcus stilled. “Juliana Dorchester?”

“I had the great privilege of dancing with her last night,” Bennet muttered.

“I see.”

“Whenever you say ‘I see’ in that particular tone, it generally means you disapprove. Well, you had best not say anything unpleasant about Miss Dorchester to me, Marcus. She is a beautiful young lady with extremely refined sensibilities who would never dream of getting involved in a scandalous scene.”

“This is Juliana Dorchester’s second Season,” Marcus said grimly. “She has to secure a husband this time around because the Dorchesters cannot afford a third Season for her. Do you comprehend me, Bennet?”