More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (14 page)

“You do not wear it loose even to bed?” he said.

Her hair. He was talking about her hair, which was in a thick braid down her back. But she was not to be distracted.

“It was your own composition,” she said. “It
was
, was it not?”

He shrugged. “As I said,” he told her, “I dabble.”

“Why does your talent embarrass you?” she asked. “Why are you eager to belittle and even deny it?”

He smiled then, slowly. “You really do not know my family,” he told her.

“I suppose,” she said, “that playing the pianoforte, composing music, loving it, is something quite unworthy of a Dudley male.”

“Bordering on the effeminate,” he agreed.

“Bach was a man,” she said, walking toward him and setting her candle down on the pianoforte beside the candelabrum that had been giving him light. “Were all the famous composers effeminate?”

“They would have been if they had been Dudleys.” He grinned rather wolfishly at her. “Bare feet, Jane? Such shocking dishabille!”

“According to whom?” She would not allow him to change the subject. “You? Or your father and grandfather?”

“We are all one,” he said. “Like the trinity, Jane.”

“That is blasphemous,” she told him firmly. “Your father must have been aware of your talent. Something
like that cannot be hidden indefinitely. It will burst forth, as it has tonight. He did not encourage you to develop it?”

“I soon learned never to play when he was at home,” he said. “Not after he caught me at it twice. I never did particularly enjoy having to sleep on my front all night because my rear was too sore.”

Jane was too angry to say anything. She merely stared at him with compressed lips—at the hard, cynical, dangerous rake who had had all traces of his more sensitive, artistic nature thrashed out of him by a father who had been ignorant enough and weak enough to fear all things feminine. Why was it that men of that type did not realize that the mature, balanced person, regardless of gender, was a fine mix of masculine and feminine qualities? And here was this foolish man trying to live up to the ideal set him by ignorant men—and doing rather a good job of it most of the time.

He turned his attention back to the keyboard and began to play softly. This time it was a familiar tune.

“Do you know it?” he asked without looking up.

“Yes,” she said. “It is ‘Barbara Allen.' ” One of the lovelier and sadder folk songs.

“Do you sing?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she admitted softly.

“And do you know the words?”

“Yes.”

“Sing them, then.” He stopped playing and looked at her. “Sit on the bench here beside me and sing. Since you have come, you might as well make yourself useful. I shall try to play as if my fingers were not all thumbs.”

She did as she was bidden and watched his hands as he played some introductory bars. She had noticed before
that he had long fingers. Because he was the Duke of Tresham, it had not occurred to her then that they were artistic hands. It was obvious now. They caressed the keys as if he made love to the music rather than merely produced it.

She sang the song through from beginning to end, long as it was. After an initial self-consciousness, she forgot everything but the music and the sad story of Barbara Allen. Singing had always been one of her greatest joys.

There was silence when the song came to an end. Jane sat straight-backed on the pianoforte bench, her hands clasped in her lap. The duke sat with his hands poised over the keys. It was, Jane thought, without quite understanding the meaning of the thought, one of life's most blessed moments.

“My God!” he murmured into the silence. It did not sound like one of his all-too-common blasphemies. “Contralto. I expected you to have a soprano voice.”

The moment passed and Jane was very aware that she was sitting beside the Duke of Tresham in the music room, clad only in her nightgown and outdoor cloak, her braid loose down her back. With bare feet. He was wearing very tight pantaloons and a white shirt open at the neck.

She could think of no way to stand up and remove herself from the room without making a grand production out of it.

“I have never in my life,” he said, “heard such a lovely voice. Or one that adapted itself so perfectly to the music and the sentiment of the song.”

She was pleased despite her discomfort.

“Why did you not tell me,” he asked her, “when I had
you play for me and gave you an honest assessment of your talent? Why did you not tell me that you sing?”

“You did not ask,” she told him.

“Damn you, Jane,” he said. “How dare you keep yourself so much to yourself? A talent like yours is to be shared, not hidden away from the world.”

“Touché,” she said quietly.

They sat side by side in silence for a while. And then he took her hand in his and held it on the bench between them. Suddenly half the air seemed to have been sucked from the room.

“You ought not to have come down,” he said. “Or you ought to have crept into the library and chosen your book and ignored your curiosity. You have caught me at a bad time.”

She understood his meaning. It was a bad time for her too. They were firmly caught in a situation that was unfamiliar to them. In a mellow, somewhat melancholy mood. Alone together—as they often were, of course. But entirely alone this time, with no servants moving about beyond the door. Late at night.

“Yes” was all she could think of to say. She stood up then, drawing her hand free of his. Yet everything except her common sense yearned to stay.

“Don't go,” he said, his voice unusually husky, and he swiveled around on the bench until he sat with his back to the pianoforte. “Don't leave me yet.”

It was a moment—and only a moment—of decision. She could listen to common sense, say a firm good night, and walk from the room. He could not—and would not—stop her. Or she could stay in a situation that was charged with tension and against which her defenses had been lowered. There was no time to debate
the matter with herself. She took the couple of steps that brought her directly in front of him.

She lifted both hands and set them on his head as if in benediction. His hair was silky and warm beneath her fingers. His hands came to rest on either side of her waist and drew her toward him. He sighed and leaned forward to bury his face between her breasts.

Fool
, she told herself as she closed her eyes and reveled in the physical sensations of his touch and his body heat and the smell of his cologne.
Fool!
But the thought was without conviction.

When he finally lifted his head and looked up at her, his dark eyes fathomless, she went down onto her knees on the floor between his spread thighs. She did not know why she did so, whether at the guidance of his hands or from some instinct that did not require thought. She set her arms along the tight fabric over his thighs, feeling their firm, muscled strength, and lifted her head.

He was leaning over her, and his fingers touching her face were feather-light and tipped with a heat that scorched its way into the depths of her femininity. He cupped her face with his hands before kissing her.

She had been kissed before. Charles had been her beau for four years as well as her dearest friend forever. On a few occasions she had been alone with him and had permitted him to kiss her. She had liked his kiss.

Now she realized she had never been kissed before. Not really. Not like this.

Ah, never like this.

He scarcely touched his lips to hers. His eyes were open, as were hers. It was impossible to lose herself in sheer physical sensation even though every part of her body sizzled with awareness and ached with desire. It
was impossible not to know fully what was happening and with whom. It would be impossible afterward to tell herself that she had been swept away by mindless passion.

This was not mindless.

He feathered kisses over her cheeks, her eyes, her temples, her nose, her chin. And returned to her mouth, which he touched softly, teasingly, with his lips, coaxing her to kiss him back in the same way.

A kiss was not necessarily just lips pressed to lips, she discovered in growing wonder. There was the warm, moist flesh behind her lips, which he touched and stroked with his tongue. There was her own tongue moving lightly across his top lip and back over the bottom one. He touched its tip, sliding over the top of it deep into the cavity of her mouth. There were sucking and stroking and soft, wordless moans in her voice, in his.

And then his arms closed about her as he leaned farther over her, half lifting her against the taut strength of his chest, and they shared a deep, hard, openmouthed embrace that had her clinging and pressing and yearning for more.

At last she was down on her knees again, his hands spread over her own on his thighs, his dark, heavy-lidded eyes gazing down into hers.

“We will have to punish each other for this in the morning, Jane,” he said. “It will be amazing how different it will all seem then. Forbidden. Impossible. Even sordid.”

She shook her head.

“Oh, yes,” he insisted. “I am just a rake, my dear, with nothing on my mind except covering you on the floor
here and taking my wicked pleasure deep inside your virgin body. And you are the wide-eyed, innocent dove. My servant. My dependent. It is quite impossible. And definitely sordid. You think that what has happened is beautiful. I can see it in your eyes. It is not, Jane. That is merely what an experienced rake can make a woman think. In reality it is the simple lustful, raw desire for sex. For the quick, vigorous mating of bodies. Go to bed now. Alone.”

Both his face and his voice were harsh. She got to her feet and stood away from him. But she did not immediately turn to leave. She searched his eyes with her own, looking into the mask that he had settled firmly in place. The impenetrable mask. He was gazing back at her with a mocking half smile on his lips.

He was right. What had happened had been entirely physical. And very raw.

But he was wrong too. Her mind could not yet grapple with what exactly was wrong with what he had said. It just was. He was wrong.

But yes, it was quite impossible. And without a doubt this would all appear very different in the morning. She would not be able to look calmly at him tomorrow as she was doing now.

“Good night, your grace,” she said.

“Good night, Jane.”

He had turned back to the pianoforte by the time she had picked up her candle, left the room, and closed the door behind her. He was playing something quiet and melancholy.

She was halfway up the stairs before she remembered that she had come down for a book. She did not turn back.

ES, A STOOL WILL DO NICELY,” JOCELYN SAID
with a careless wave of his hand to the servant who had asked.

It would do more than nicely. He had come to White's Club in his town carriage rather than riding, but he really ought to have used his crutches after descending instead of just a stout cane. His boot was pressing uncomfortably against his still-tender right calf. If he was not careful he was going to be compelled to have the boot cut off again when he returned home. He had already lost his favorite pair that way the day of the duel.

“And fetch me the morning papers too,” he instructed the servant, lifting his leg onto the stool without any outer appearance of effort but with a grateful inward sigh.

He had left the house early so that he would not have to encounter
her
before leaving, and she was herself an early riser. He picked up the
Morning Post
and scanned the front page, scowling as he did so. What the devil was he about, escaping early from his own home so that he could postpone coming face-to-face with a servant?

He was not sure which of two facts he was most ashamed of—if shame was the right word. Embarrassment might be more accurate. But neither was an emotion with which he had much recent acquaintance.

She had caught him playing the pianoforte. Playing
one of his own compositions. And he had kissed her. Damnation, but he had been alone and inactive for too long and had broken one of his cardinal rules and had sunk to a new low in his own esteem. If his leg had not been aching enough to distract him, he probably would have laid her on the floor and availed himself of the treasure that had lain beneath the flimsy barrier of her nightgown. She would not have stopped him, the silly innocent.

“Tresham? By God, it is! How are you, old chap?”

Jocelyn was happy to lower his newspaper, which he had not been reading anyway, in order to greet acquaintances, who were beginning to arrive for their morning gossip and perusal of the papers.

“Hale, hearty, and hopping along at roughly my usual speed,” he replied.

The next several minutes were taken up with cheerful greetings and jocular witticisms about the Duke of Tresham's leg and the elegant stool on which it reclined and the stout cane propped beside his chair.