The Famous Heroine/The Plumed Bonnet (36 page)

He chuckled again.

The gray dress really was a masterpiece. It complemented the glorious auburn of her hair to perfection, and its simplicity somehow enhanced her long-limbed, slender beauty. She did not have a voluptuous figure, but
he had no doubt at all that she knew exactly how to make the most of what she had. Certainly she had succeeded in bringing him to painful arousal even before he had touched her.

He was not sorry she had said no. Well, perhaps that was not strictly true. He still felt uncomfortably warm as his mind touched on the imagined picture of that wavy, tangled hair spread on a pillow beneath him and of those long slim legs twined about his as he worked his pleasure on her. No, he could not pretend that he had not really wanted her. He had and he did.

But he was not sorry even so. One did not know with whom she had been last or with how many she had recently been. The mistake he had made, of course—but perhaps after all it was a fortunate one—was in offering her lodging for the night and in taking the room and sending her to it before agreeing to terms. He had been given the impression that she had enjoyed enormously evicting him while pretending to wish to evict herself. He wondered again if she really was an actress. She seemed almost too good. For there had been nothing melodramatic in her performance. It had been neither understated nor overstated. It had been almost convincing.

He smiled again. She was wonderful, he thought. A woman who lived by her wits and who knew how to use them to her own best advantage. What intelligent woman, after all, would willingly give herself an hour or so’s strenuous work in bed when the bed might be had without the work? She had maneuvered him into offering the one without first extracting an agreement about the other. Very wise of her. Undoubtedly she was very tired. She needed to sleep tonight, not to work.

He wondered if she was sleeping peacefully. He would wager she was. And he wondered too if tomorrow night he would plan more carefully and make his conditions
clearer. But he doubted it. It amused him to allow her to play out her hand.

Tomorrow night? Was he planning to have her with him again tomorrow night, then? Was it not time to set her down somewhere along the way? With the wherewithal to continue her journey in comfort, of course.

No, he knew he would not set her down. Neither would he go directly to London, he realized. He would take her to Hampshire, if that indeed was her destination. He would take her to the exact place she was going, if she did have an exact place in mind. He was curious to know where it was and why she was going there. And he looked forward to seeing her try to worm her way out of allowing him to travel the whole distance. She would not want to have all her lies exposed, after all.

So they would have a battle of wits. But this was one he intended to win. A night of sexual frustration notwithstanding, he had had more enjoyment out of today, and he had a brighter anticipation of the morrow than he had felt for a long, long time. It was a thought that made him feel a twinge of guilt when he remembered how eagerly and kindly Carew and his wife had entertained him for the past few weeks.

Miss Stephanie Gray—or whatever her name was—had succeeded where they had failed.

I
T WAS RAINING
heavily when she got up the following morning. She looked out the window of her luxurious inn room and imagined the misery, as well as the terror, she would have lived through last night if it had not been for the generosity of Mr. Munro.

The rain eased up by midmorning, but it drizzled all day long, and the treetops were tossed about in a fitful and gusty wind. Even inside the carriage, which traveled
more slowly than it had the day before because of the state of the roads, the air felt chill and slightly damp.

Through most of the morning she sat tensely in her seat. The tension was caused partly by embarrassment, although he was gentleman enough to make no mention of last evening’s misunderstandings. She could not help remembering, though, that she had let her hair down and that he had touched it and called it beautiful—and that he had touched
her
and even kissed her. She could not help remembering that the bed had been behind her and that he had thought she was inviting him to take her there and—Well, she did not need to let her thoughts stray further.

But mostly she was tense because at every village and town she expected him to announce that he had brought her far enough. The long, comfortable journey with him had made her a dreadful coward. The prospect of being alone and destitute again was a terror she could not face, even in her mind. She thought of begging when he finally made his announcement and knew that perhaps she really would.

But so far it had been unnecessary. He had said nothing all morning or into the afternoon, when they had stopped for a meal and a change of horses. And he had handed her back into the carriage afterward, as if he had not even considered leaving her behind. Perhaps he no longer liked to suggest that she leave. Perhaps he expected her to broach the subject. But she would not do so, unmannerly as it might seem.

Please God, let him take her farther. Just a little farther.

He kept her talking all day. She told him about her childhood and her girlhood, about her mother and father. And in the telling, she found herself remembering details and events she had not thought of in years. She found herself becoming more animated, more relaxed,
more prone to smiles and even laughter. And then she would remember where she was and glance at him anxiously and suggest that she was boring him. But he always urged her to continue.

She discussed plays with him—those of Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. Sheridan and Mr. Goldsmith. But when he asked her about her experiences with the theater, she had to confess to him that she had never seen a play performed on stage, though she had dreamed of doing so in London, where plays were surely performed at their best. Her only contact with the theater and actors had been a very recent one, but he had not asked about that, and it was something she tried not to remember, though they had been kind to her, of course.

He smiled when she told him she had only read plays, not seen them performed. He would think her impossibly rustic, of course. And he would be right. She
was
rustic. She would not pretend otherwise just in order to appear sophisticated in his eyes. He seemed to like her well enough as she was anyway. He did very little of the talking himself. Yet he appeared interested in everything she said. His eyes smiled frequently.

He had told her nothing of himself, she realized.

“Well, Miss Gray,” he said finally when she was trying not to notice that afternoon had long ago turned to evening and evening was threatening to turn to night. “Another night is upon us.”

“Yes, sir.” She looked at him and kept her eyes on his. She knew that she was gazing pleadingly at him, but she could not muster up enough pride to look at him any other way.

“My coachman will stop at the next inn,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” She closed her eyes tightly suddenly and lost the final shreds of her dignity. “Please. Oh, please let me stay with you. I … It is raining and it is going to be very dark. There will be no moon. I … Oh, please.”

“Miss Gray,” he said, his voice sounding surprised, “I thought it would have been obvious to you by—”

“Please.” She would beg and grovel if necessary. “I will do anything. I will repay you in any way you choose.” She knew the implication of her words even as she spoke them, though she had not realized it in advance. But she did not care. She would not recall the words or qualify them in any way. She would do anything not to have to face the terrors of the darkness again.

There was a lengthy silence, during which she kept her eyes closed and held her breath.

“No,” he said finally. “I think not, Miss Gray, though it is magnanimous of you to offer. Your pleas and your offers are unnecessary anyway.” The bottom fell out of her stomach, but fortunately he continued. “I thought it would have been obvious to you by now that I am taking you to your grandfather’s home, now yours, in Hampshire. I believe we will reach it tomorrow if the roads do not prove to be quite impassable and if you can tell me exactly what house I am looking for.”

He was going to—“You are going to take me all the way?” She opened her eyes and stared at him uncomprehendingly. “All the way there?”

He smiled. “I am afraid so, Miss Gray,” he said.

She was glad she was sitting down. Her legs would not have supported her. Her hands shook in her lap. Even so, she had to raise them quickly to cover her face before she lost control of every muscle in it. She swallowed repeatedly, intent on not bawling like a baby.

“Yes,” he said. She did not even notice the thread of humor in his voice. “I thought you might be affected by the announcement, Miss Gray.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you. Oh, thank you.”

INDON
P
ARK—HE HAD HEARD OF IT
. I
T WAS SAID TO BE
one of the grander manors in the south of England. The park, with its rhododendron groves and rose arbors and formal parterres, was said to draw visitors throughout the summer months.

At least, he thought, she was willing to practice deception on a grand scale. He wondered what she would do when she realized that there would be no getting rid of him, when she knew that he intended to escort her right to the main doors of Sindon and even within the doors—if she was allowed within them herself. But she would be—she was with him.

He wondered if she would turn her marvelous inventive skills on the poor unsuspecting inhabitants of the house. Would she claim to be a long-lost relative? He sincerely hoped so. He hoped she would not crumble at the grand scale awkwardness of it all. He would be disappointed in her.

He watched her with appreciation throughout the day. They did not do much talking. She watched the scenery through the window with eager—and with slightly anxious?—eyes. And he watched her.

He was a fool, he thought. He could have had her last night. She had offered herself. Had he accepted, there was no way she could have wormed out of the commitment
as she had done the night before. And he had wanted her. He still wanted her. But he had decided not to take on such an entanglement. Or perhaps it had seemed distasteful to him to accept an offer that had been made out of some desperation. He had no doubt that she really had been alarmed at the prospect of having to spend the night out of doors. Somehow he liked to sleep with women who wanted to sleep with him.

Perhaps, he thought, he would take her back to London with him once this charade played itself out to a suitable denouement. Perhaps he would set her up somewhere and keep her for a while, until she found her feet and could make her own way in the metropolis. He had no doubt that that would not take her long at all. Perhaps he would buy her new clothes, ones that were more … seemly for a mistress of his. Though he could appreciate the humorous contrast between the flamboyant cloak and bonnet on the one hand and the demure simplicity of the gray dress on the other.

He wondered for how long she would amuse him. Would she succeed in pushing back the massive boredom from his life? She had succeeded admirably for longer than two days. But could she continue to do so? He felt such a deep longing suddenly that he almost sighed aloud.

He waited for her to speak. He knew that she would do so quite soon now. They must, after all, be within ten miles of Sindon. She could not wait much longer.

She was blushing when she looked at him—and biting at her lower lip. Yes, she was setting up the situation very well. He could almost hear already the words that would follow. He was not disappointed.

“Are we close, sir?” she asked him. “Is Sindon Park far off? Do you know?”

“Less than ten miles at a guess,” he said, containing his amusement. “Just relax, Miss Gray. I am not about
to abandon you now. We will be there in time for tea, I daresay.”

Her eyes dropped from his again for a moment, and she played with the shabby glove of one hand, twisting the hole out of sight. “I have been thinking,” she said.

He did not doubt it. The workings of her mind had been almost visible to his amused eye throughout the day.

She looked back up into his eyes. She was good with her eyes. They looked purely guileless—and purely beautiful, of course.

“I cannot arrive with you,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows and resisted the urge to grin.

“You have been so very kind,” she said earnestly. “And it seems so very ungrateful of me. But don’t you see? I have no chaperone or even a maid. They will want to know how far you have brought me. I have been alone with you in this carriage for almost three days. I have stayed with you—in separate rooms, of course.” She paused to sit back in the seat and to blush with maidenly modesty. “I have stayed with you for two nights. It will be impossible to explain and to make it appear as innocent as it has been.” She flushed an even deeper shade.

He would not help her out. He was enjoying this too much. He kept his eyes on her and waited for her to continue.