No Man's Mistress (26 page)

“Hannah!” Viola grabbed her maid's wrist as the steps were set down and the passengers scrambled to get out and make the most of the short time they would be allowed. “Stay here, please. You are not desperate for anything, are you? We will wait until the next stop.”

Hannah looked surprised, but before she could question Viola's strange request, someone had come to stand in the doorway and was extending a hand toward Viola.

“Allow me,” Lord Ferdinand Dudley said.

Hannah drew in a sharp breath.

“No,” Viola said. “Thank you. We do not need to get out.”

But he was not the smiling, good-natured gentleman she was most familiar with. He was the grim, hard-jawed, arrogant, demanding aristocrat he had been that first morning at Pinewood. His eyes looked very black.

“Hannah,” he said, “get down, please. Go inside the coffee room and order yourself a meal. You need not hurry. There will be plenty of time to eat it. The stagecoach will be continuing on its way without the two of you.”

“It most certainly will not.” Viola bristled with indignation. “Stay where you are, Hannah.”

“If you wish to scrap with me in the inn yard with a score of people looking on, I am game,” he said grimly. “But you will not be continuing your journey on this stagecoach. I suggest we go inside to the private parlor I have reserved and scrap there. Hannah, please?”

Hannah took his hand without further argument and scrambled down from the coach. She disappeared in the direction of the inn without even looking back at Viola.

“Come.” He had reached his hand back inside.

“Our bags—” she said.

“Have already been taken down,” he assured her.

She was angry then. “You have no right,” she said, brushing aside his hand and descending to the cobbled yard without his assistance. Her bag and Hannah's were
indeed standing side by side on the ground. “This is bullying. This—” She encountered the grinning face of an interested groom and clamped her mouth shut. He was not the only one who had stopped work in the obvious hope of witnessing a fight.

“Runaway wives need firm handling,” Lord Ferdinand remarked cheerfully, obviously for their further amusement. He took her elbow in a firm grasp and propelled her toward the inn while she listened indignantly to the purely male laughter behind them.

“How dare you!” she said.

“It's dashed fortunate I caught up to you before you reached London,” he said. “What the devil did you mean by running off like that?”

He led her down a long, low-beamed corridor to a small room at the back of the inn. There was a fire crackling in the hearth. A table in the middle of the room had been set with a white cloth and laid for two.

“I would be obliged if you would watch your language,” she said. “And my movements are none of your business. Or my destination in London. Excuse me. I have to fetch Hannah and have our bags put back on the coach before it leaves without us.”

He ignored her. He closed the parlor door and stood against it, his long, booted legs crossed at the ankles, his arms folded across his chest. He was looking less grim now.

“Was it that stupid joke I made?” he asked her. “About your winning our wager? It was
a
.
joke.”

“It was
not
a joke,” she said, taking up her stand on the far side of the table. “You said you were going to give me the deed to Pinewood today. Don't tell me you were going to do it out of the goodness of your heart. Or out of a pang of conscience.”

“But I was,” he said.

“Was I
that
good?” She glared scornfully at him.

“I decided it yesterday,” he said, “long before I knew whether you were good or not.”

Her eyes flashed. “Liar!”

He stared at her for such a long time that her fury evaporated and a cold chill crept up her spine in its place.

“If you were a man,” he said at last, “I would call you out for that.”

“If I were a man,” she retorted, “I would accept.”

He reached into a pocket of his coat and drew out some folded papers. He held them out to her. “Yours,” he said. “Come and take them. We'll eat, and then I'll reserve a room here for you and your maid tonight and hire a private chaise to take you both home tomorrow.”

“No.” She stayed where she was. “I don't want it.”

“Pinewood?”

“I don't want it.”

He stared at her for a few moments before striding toward the table and slapping the papers down on it.

“Goddammit!” he said. “If that doesn't beat all. What the devil
do
you want?”

“Watch your language!” she said again. What she
did
want was to rush around the table, cast herself into his arms, and sob out all her misery. But since that was not an option, she regarded him coldly. “I want you to go away and leave me alone. I want you to take those papers with you. And if it is not too late, I want to get on the stagecoach.”

“Viola,” he said, his voice so gentle suddenly that he almost broke her reserve, “take Pinewood. It is yours. It was never mine. Not really. I daresay the old
earl meant it to be yours but just forgot to change his will.”

“He did
not
forget,” she said stubbornly. “He would not have done so. He did it. It was the wrong will that the Duke of Tresham read.”

“Well, then.” He shrugged and she knew she had not convinced him. “All the more reason for you to take the papers and go back home. I'll continue on my way to London and make the transfer right and tight. Let me tell the landlord we are ready for dinner.”

“No!” He had already taken a couple of steps toward the door. He turned to look at her in some exasperation. “No,” she said again. “It would be a gift from you. Or the prize for a wager won. I will not accept it either way. Things would never be the same. It was a gift from
him
.”

“Very well, then.” He was definitely annoyed now. “We will just say that I am setting matters right.”

“No.”

He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled and unconsciously making himself look more gorgeous than ever.

“What do you want, then?” he asked her.

“I have told you.”

“What are you going to do in London?”

She smiled at him even though every muscle in her face felt stiff. “That is not any of your business,” she told him.

His eyes narrowed and he looked menacing again. “If you are planning to go back to whoring,” he said, “it dashed well is my business. You were happy enough at Pinewood until I came along. I am not going to have you on my conscience every time I see you about town with
the Lord Gnasses of this world. You had better marry me.”

Her insides somersaulted, and for a moment she stared at him in utter astonishment. He looked hardly less surprised himself. She forced herself to smile again.

“I think I had better
not
marry you,” she said. “The Duke of Tresham would devour you for breakfast.”

“I don't care a tuppenny toss what Tresham says,” he said. “Or anyone else. I'll marry whomever I want to marry.”

“Unless she says no.” She felt engulfed in a huge wave of sadness as she continued to smile. “And she does say no. You think you know the worst about me, Lord Ferdinand, but you do not know all. I am a bastard, you see. When my mother married my stepfather, it was her first marriage. Thornhill was her maiden name. You do not want to be marrying a bastard
and
a whore.”

“Don't do that.” He frowned. “Don't smile like that and call yourself names like that.”

“But they are true names,” she said. “Come, admit that you are relieved by my refusal. You spoke entirely without forethought. You would be horrified if I said yes.”

“I would not,” he said, but he spoke without conviction.

Viola smiled again.

“You are not going back to whoring,” he told her.

“How vulgar!” she said. “I was never a whore. I was a courtesan. There is a world of difference.”

“Don't
do
that,” he said again. “Do you have any money?”

She stiffened. “That is none—”

“And
don't
tell me it is none of my damned business,” he said. “You don't, do you?”

“I have enough,” she told him.

“Enough for what?” he asked. “Your fare and your maid's to London? A few meals along the way?”

That was about it.

“If you won't go home to Pinewood and if you won't marry me,” he said, “there is only one thing left for you.”

Yes, she knew that. But she felt as if the weight of the universe had settled on her shoulders again. Had she really been hoping that he would be more persuasive over one of the other options?

“You are going to have to be my mistress,” he said.

T
hey were driving into London in Ferdinand's carriage, everyone else in their entourage having been banished to horse or curricle. They were sitting side by side, as far apart as space allowed, gazing out of opposite windows. They had not spoken to each other for more than an hour. It was early evening.

Ferdinand did not feel as he imagined a man ought to feel with a new mistress. Not that she had yet agreed to accept the position. But she had adamantly refused to go back to Pinewood. She had insisted upon paying for her own room at the inn and had tried to purchase tickets for herself and her maid on today's London stage. That was after breakfast. He had threatened to revive the story about her being a runaway wife if she tried it. He would take her over his knee in some very public place and wallop her a good one, and there would not be a man or woman at the inn who would not applaud him.

She had retaliated with an icy stare and an assurance that if he laid so much as a fingernail on her she would inform everyone within earshot exactly
why
she had run
away from her husband. He would not care to discover how very inventive she could be, she warned him, but he was welcome to find out, if he so desired. However, she
would
accept a ride in his carriage to London, since he had caused her to miss yesterday's stagecoach, for which she had paid.

“I suppose,” she said now, breaking the long silence between them, “you have not thought this thing through, have you? I suppose you do not know where you would take me. We cannot go to a hotel. It would not be respectable. You cannot take me to your rooms. Your neighbors would be scandalized. I have no rooms of my own—I gave them up two years ago.”

“There you are wrong,” he told her. “Of course I know where I am taking you. You are going to be my mistress, and I intend to house you in style. But I have just the house in mind for tonight and the next few days.”

“I suppose,” she said, “it is where you always house your mistresses.”

“Well, it is not,” he said. “I am not in the habit of mounting mistresses. I prefer to… Well, never mind.” She had turned to look at him, her expression faintly amused. She was such an expert at that look, and it never failed to irritate him and make him feel like a gauche schoolboy. “The house is Tresham's.”

“Your brother's?” She raised her eyebrows. “It is where he houses
his
mistresses? Are you sure there is no one in residence?”

“It is where he
did
house them,” he said, “before his marriage. I don't know why he has never sold the house, but to my knowledge he still has it.”

“How long has the duke been married?” she asked.

“Four years,” he said.

“Are you quite sure, then, that the house is not occupied?” she asked.

It had damned well better not be. If it was, he would rearrange Tresham's nose for him so that it projected inward instead of outward. Not that one could really challenge one's brother for being unfaithful to one's sister-in-law. But Ferdinand had not realized until that moment how much he was depending upon his brother to restore some of his faith in love and marriage. Tresham's had almost certainly been a love match. But could it stand the test of time? Tresham had always changed mistresses dizzyingly often.

“You really are not sure, are you?” Viola Thornhill asked him. “You had better let me down at a clean, cheap hotel, Lord Ferdinand. You can go back to Pinewood or back to your usual life here in London and forget all about me. You are not responsible for me.”

“I am,” he said. “I played cards with Bamber and turned your life upside down.” Not to mention his own.

“If it had not been you,” she said, “it would have been someone else. You are not responsible for me. Set me down and I will get on with my life. I will not be destitute. I have work awaiting me.”

“As a whore?” He frowned fiercely at her. “You could do better than that. There are all sorts of other things you could do.”

“But whoring is so lucrative,” she said, her voice pure velvet amusement. He
hated
it when she did that.

“You are going to be my mistress,” he said stubbornly. “It was settled yesterday. It has been settled again today. I don't want to hear any more arguments.”

“It was settled and is being settled unilaterally,” she said. “Do I have no say in the matter? Because I am a woman, perhaps? A nonentity? A thing? A toy? You do
not want a mistress, Lord Ferdinand. And I have never been one. I have always belonged to myself.”