More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (33 page)

She tried to show him with her body that she cared, that she would withhold nothing from him when he needed her. And despite his strange, bleak mood, she sensed that he
did
need her.

She did not know for how many minutes she continued while he remained hard and motionless. But desire became a raw ache, and ache became indistinguishable from pain before finally—ah, blessedly—his hands came to her hips and clamped there so unexpectedly hard that her rhythm and all her control shattered even as he thrust urgently and repeatedly up into her, pumping past the barrier she had deliberately not erected. She could hear herself sobbing as if she listened to someone else a great distance away. She heard the growl of his climax and felt the hot gush of his seed.

Union. Ah, the blessed union. He would be consoled now. They would lie together, warm and sated, and talk. She would reassure him and he would be Jocelyn again instead of the dark, dangerous Duke of Tresham.

Tomorrow she would be able to confide her own dark secrets to him.

She was panting and damp and chilly with perspiration. She still straddled him on the bed, her legs wide and stiff. He was still embedded in her. She lifted her head and smiled dreamily at him.

“Vastly entertaining, Jane,” he said briskly. “You are becoming skilled indeed at your profession. You are beginning to be worth every penny of your salary.” He lifted her off him, turned her so that she sprawled on the bed, and got to his feet. He began to button himself up again.

He might as well have hurled a pitcher of ice water over her.

“And you, of course,” she said, “have always been a master of the veiled insult. I perfectly well understand that this is what I am paid to do. You do not need to remind me just because you let down your guard last evening and embarrassed yourself by telling me things you deeply regret telling.” She pulled the bedcovers up to cover herself. Suddenly she felt very naked indeed.

“You are insulted, Jane,” he asked her, “to be told that you are remarkably skilled in bed? I do not often pay that compliment, you know.” He was throwing his cloak about his shoulders.

“I am
insulted,
” she told him, sitting up and holding the covers to her breasts, “that you would think it necessary to degrade me, your grace, with this talk of skills and salary. I am insulted that you are ashamed of having confided in me merely because I am a woman and your mistress to boot. I thought we had become friends—and friends
do
talk to each other. They do confide in each other and share their deepest secrets and their
deepest wounds. I was mistaken. I should not have forgotten that you pay my salary for this.” She indicated the bed with one sweeping arm. “And now I am tired. I have been working hard earning my living. Kindly leave, your grace. Good night.”

“Friends
confide
in each other, Jane?” He was glaring at her quite intently, his eyes very black. For a moment she felt frightened. She thought he was going to lean over and grab her. Instead he made her a sudden, ironically deferential bow and strode from the room.

Jane was left cold and trembling and lonelier and unhappier than she had ever been in her life before.

A
S
HE MADE HIS
way home to Grosvenor Square, Jocelyn's mood was black indeed. He now thoroughly despised himself—a satisfyingly familiar feeling, at least. He felt as if he had raped her—though he had approached her in very much the way he had been accustomed to approaching his mistresses in the past. And he despised her. She ought not to have allowed him within touching distance of her tonight, but in fact she had serviced him like an experienced courtesan.

He hated her for lulling him all week into a belief that he had found a friend, a soul mate, as well as a damned good bed partner. For somehow inducing him to lower all his defenses, to share with her everything that was his most secret self. For somehow keeping him from noticing that she received but gave nothing except her body in return, that there was nothing reciprocal in their relationship.

She had taken his trust but had kept herself well hidden behind the position of mistress and the alias of Jane
Ingleby. Yet she had dared just now to lecture him on the nature of true friendship.

She had taken
everything
from him, even the love of which he had thought himself no longer capable.

He hated her for fooling him into hoping that after all life was worth living. For stripping away all the comfort of the hard cocoon inside which he had lived for ten years.

He hated her.

He could not even
think
of her as Sara.

She was Jane.

But Jane Ingleby did not exist.

He could feel the satisfying beginnings of a headache as he neared home. If he was fortunate, he would have the distraction of a colossal hangover by morning.

F
ROM HIS POSITION IN
the shadows of a darkened doorway across the street, Mick Boden watched, first as the Duke of Tresham strode off down the street and then as the light in what must be the bedchamber of the house was extinguished. The house was clearly a love nest—the duke had let himself in with his own key, stayed long enough for a prolonged mount or two in that room where the candlelight had appeared just after his arrival, and had then stridden off homeward, looking well satisfied with himself.

It had been a long day. There was no point in hanging about any longer. It was scarcely likely that the mistress would emerge from the house to gaze after her lover, or even appear in the window since she had not done so in order to wave good night to him.

But she must come out sometime—probably tomorrow
to go walking or shopping. All he needed was a glimpse of her. At least then he would know if the duke's fancy piece could possibly be Lady Sara Illingsworth, alias Miss Jane Ingleby. Mick Boden had a certain intuition about the female occupant of that house, and during his years as a Bow Street Runner he had learned to trust his intuition.

He would come back in the morning, Mick decided, and watch the house until she came out. He could set an assistant to such a mundane task, of course, since there were other courses of inquiry that he really should pursue, but his curiosity and even a certain respect for the woman had been aroused during his long, frustrating search for her. He wanted to be the first to see her and the one to apprehend her.

OCELYN MISSED HIS USUAL MORNING RIDE IN THE
park. He was too busy dealing with a fat head and a queasy stomach and a valet who opened back his curtains on bright sunshine and then appeared surprised to discover that his master was lying in his own bed, the sunlight full on his face.

But Jocelyn would not allow himself the luxury of nursing a hangover and terrorizing his staff for too long. There were things to do. Fortunately he had had a chance to talk with Kimble and Brougham the evening before. The same could not be said of the Earl of Durbury, who never appeared in public—just like his niece or his cousin or whatever Lady Sara Illingsworth was to him.

The man was still in town, though, and still at the Pulteney, Jocelyn discovered when he called there in the middle of the morning. And willing to receive the Duke of Tresham, though he might have been puzzled by the request. They had never had more than a nodding acquaintance, after all. He was standing in his private sitting room after Jocelyn had first sent up his card and then been escorted up by the earl's man.

“Tresham?” he said by way of greeting. “How do you do?”

“Very well, I thank you,” Jocelyn replied, “when it is considered that I might at this moment be lying in my
bed at home with my throat slit. Or in my grave, more like, since Lady Sara Illingsworth has been gone from my house for longer than two weeks.”

“Ah, yes, have a seat. Let me pour you a drink.” The Bow Street Runner had clearly reported to the earl recently, then. “Do you know where she is, Tresham? Have you heard something?”

“Nothing, thank you,” Jocelyn said of the drink while his stomach churned unpleasantly. He availed himself of the offer of a chair. “You must understand that when she was in my employ she dressed the part of a servant and used an alias. She was a mere employee. It did not occur to me when she left to ask where she was going.”

“No, of course not.” The earl poured himself a drink and sat at the square table in the middle of the room. He looked disappointed. “Those damned Runners are not worth a quarter of what they charge, Tresham. Devilish incompetent, in fact. I have been kicking my heels here for well over a month while a dangerous criminal runs loose among an unsuspecting populace. And for three weeks of that time she was at Dudley House. If I had only known!”

“I was fortunate indeed,” Jocelyn said, “to escape harm. Murdered your son, did she? My condolences, Durbury.”

“Thank you.”

The man looked distinctly uncomfortable. So much so, in fact, that Jocelyn, gazing keenly at him while giving an impression of almost bored indolence, drew his own conclusions.

“And robbed you to add insult to injury,” he said. “Having spent three weeks at Dudley House, Lady Sara must be well aware that it is full of costly treasures. I
have been apprehensive since learning her identity yesterday morning that she might attempt a burglary and murder me too if I am unfortunate enough to stumble upon her at the wrong moment.”

The earl looked keenly back at him, but Jocelyn was long practiced in the art of giving nothing whatsoever away with his facial expression.

“Quite so,” the earl agreed.

“I quite understand your, ah, ire,” Jocelyn said, “in having had a mere female relative—and a dependent one too, I daresay—cause you such personal pain and expose your authority to such public ridicule. If I were in your shoes, I would be waiting as impatiently as you for her capture so that I could put my horsewhip to effective use about her hide before the law takes its turn. It is the only way with rebellious women, I have heard. I would mention two things to you, though—my reason for coming, in fact.”

The Earl of Durbury looked unsure whether he had just been insulted or commiserated with.

“I have questioned some of my servants,” Jocelyn explained—he had done no such thing, of course, “and they assure me that the nurse I knew as Miss Jane Ingleby had only one small bag of possessions with her at Dudley House. Which leaves a question in my mind. Where has she hidden the fortune in money and jewels that she took from you? Has the Bow Street Runner you employ thought of approaching the search from that angle? Find the treasure and there will surely be a clear trail to the woman.”

He paused, eyebrows raised, for the earl to respond.

“It is an idea,” his lordship conceded stiffly. Jocelyn
was confirmed in his suspicion that there
was
no treasure, or at least not any significant amount of it.

“He would certainly be better employed looking for the money and jewels than following me,” Jocelyn added amiably.

The Earl of Durbury looked sharply at him.

“I suppose,” Jocelyn continued, “he concluded from his interview with me yesterday morning that I am the sort of man who would derive a certain titillation out of bedding a woman who might rob me of my last farthing while I sleep and split open my skull with the sharp end of an ax for good measure. One can understand his conclusion. I do have a certain reputation for reckless, dangerous living. However, although I found it rather amusing yesterday to be followed wherever I went, I do believe I would find it tedious to have the experience repeated today.”

The earl clearly did not know what his Runner had been up to most of yesterday. He stared blankly.

“Not that it has been happening yet today,” Jocelyn admitted. “I daresay he is camped out again before the house of a certain, ah,
lady
whom I visited last night. The lady is my mistress, but you must understand, Durbury, that any mistress I employ is under my full protection and that anyone who harasses her will have me to answer to. You will perhaps consider it pertinent to explain this to your Runner—I am afraid his name escapes my memory at the moment.” He rose to his feet.

“I most certainly will.” The Earl of Durbury looked thunderous. “I am paying the Runners an exorbitant amount
to watch your mistress's house
, Tresham? This is outrageous.”

“I must confess,” Jocelyn said as he picked up his hat
and gloves from a table beside the door, “that it is somewhat distracting while one is engaged in, ah,
conversation
with a lady to know that the window is being watched from the outside. I will not expect such a distraction again tonight.”

“No, indeed,” the earl assured him. “I shall demand an explanation for this from Mick Boden, believe me.”

“Ah, yes,” Jocelyn said as he let himself out of the room, “that was the name. Wiry little man with well-oiled hair. Good day to you, Durbury.”