More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (13 page)

Lady Oliver had boasted to her husband, probably during a quarrel, that the Duke of Tresham was her lover. And said husband, in high dudgeon, had issued his challenge. Who was Jocelyn to contradict the lady?

Why had he wanted Jane Ingleby to know that he had never bedded Lady Oliver? Or any other married lady, for that matter?

If Barnard did not have those crutches by tomorrow, Jocelyn thought suddenly, he would beat the man about the head with them as soon as they were in his possession.

HAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?” JANE
asked, startled, when she walked into the library the following morning to discover the Duke of Tresham standing facing the window, propped on crutches.

“I
think
I am standing at the window of the library,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at her, his eyebrows raised haughtily. “In my own home. Deigning to answer an impertinent question from an impertinent servant. Fetch your cloak and bonnet. You may accompany me outside into the garden.”

“You were told to keep your leg still and elevated,” she said, hurrying toward him. She had not remembered that he was quite so tall.

“Miss Ingleby,” he said, without changing his expression, “go and fetch your cloak and bonnet.”

He was a little awkward with the crutches at first, she noticed later, but that fact did not deter him from strolling outside with her for half an hour before they sat side by side on a wrought-iron seat beneath a cherry tree. Her shoulder was almost touching his arm. She sat very still while he breathed in slowly and audibly.

“One takes many things for granted,” he said, more to himself than to her, it seemed. “Fresh air and the perfumes of nature, for example. One's health. One's ability to move about freely.”

“Deprivation and suffering can certainly act like wake-up calls,” she agreed. “They can remind us to stop squandering our lives in unawareness and in attention to mere trivialities.” If she were ever free again …

Her mother had died after a shockingly brief illness when Jane was barely seventeen, and her father had taken to his bed and died a little over a year later. She had been left with memories of happiness and security, which she had been young and innocent enough to expect to last forever. She had been left with Papa's cousin inheriting his title and taking over Candleford. And resenting her and courting her favor all at the same time and devising plans for her future that suited his vision but not her own. If she could have back just one of those days of her innocence …

“I suppose,” the duke said, turning his head to look down at her, “I should turn over a new leaf now, shouldn't I, Miss Ingleby? Become that rarest of all social phenomena, a reformed rake? Defy my heritage? Marry a saint and retire to my country estate to become a model landlord? Sire a brood of model children and raise them to be model citizens? Live happily ever after in a monogamous relationship?”

He had made himself sound so abjectly meek that she laughed.

“It would be a fine thing to behold, I am sure,” she said. “Have you proved your point for this morning? Your leg is hurting, is it not? You are rubbing your thigh again. Come indoors and I shall make you comfortable.”

“Why is it,” he asked her, “that when you say such things, Jane, I forget any idea of turning over a new leaf and feel very unsaintly indeed?”

He had leaned slightly sideways. His arm was against
her shoulder and there was no space on her other side to shuffle across to. She stood up.

That feeling of almost unbearable tension was happening altogether too often. With him, of course, it was deliberate. She believed he delighted in making suggestive remarks to her and looking at her with his eyes half closed. He was amusing himself by teasing her, knowing very well that she was affected. And she
was
affected. She could not deny that the sight of him—even the very
thought
of him—could quicken her blood. That the careless touch of his hand could make her ache for more.

“Take me back inside, then,” he said, getting up and onto his crutches without her assistance, “and perform whatever nursing duties you deem necessary. I will come meekly, you see, since you are not in the mood for dalliance.”

“And never will be, your grace,” she assured him firmly.

But it was a statement and a resolve that were to be tested later that very night.

J
OCELYN COULD NOT SLEEP
. He had been suffering from insomnia for a week or more. It was understandable, of course, when there was nothing to do after eleven o'clock at night—sometimes even ten—but go to bed and picture in his mind all the balls and routs then in progress and to imagine his friends moving on afterward to one of the clubs until dawn sent them homeward.

Tonight his sleeplessness was combined with a terrible restlessness. He could feel temptation grab almost irresistibly at him—the sort of temptation that had often
got him into trouble when he was a boy until he had learned to curb his urges, especially when his father was at Acton. Finally he had suppressed them completely—except when occasionally they burst through all his defenses and would not leave him alone.

On such occasions he usually went to a woman and stayed with her until there was no energy left for anything but sleep and a return to his normal way of life.

He thought with brief wistfulness of Jane Ingleby, but he turned his mind quickly away from her. He enjoyed teasing her, flirting with her, annoying her. And of course she was powerfully beautiful and attractive. But she was off-limits. She was a servant beneath his own roof.

Finally, at something past midnight, he could resist no longer. He threw back the bedcovers, hoisted himself upward with his crutches, and hobbled through to his dressing room, where he donned shirt and pantaloons and slippers but did not bother with either waistcoat or coat. He did not light a candle as he did not have a third hand with which to carry it. He would light some downstairs.

He made his way slowly and awkwardly down to the ground floor.

J
ANE COULD NOT SLEEP
.

The Duke of Tresham no longer needed a bandage. The wound had healed. He was getting about with crutches. He was restless and bad-tempered and would soon be going out. He would not need her.

He never had really needed her.

She would probably be dismissed even before the
three weeks were at an end. But even if not, there was only one week left.

The world beyond the doors of Dudley House had become a frightening place that she dreaded having to step into. Every day one visitor or other referred to what was known as the Cornish incident. Today the duke and his friends had chatted merrily on the subject.

“I wonder,” the blond and very handsome Viscount Kimble had said, “why Durbury stays shut up in the Pulteney almost all the time instead of enlisting the aid of the
ton
in apprehending his niece or cousin or whatever the devil relationship the woman has to him. Why come to town to search for her and then hide away and let the Runners do all the work?”

“Perhaps he is grieving,” the brown-haired, pleasant-faced Sir Conan Brougham had suggested. “Though he does not wear mourning. Could it be that Jardine is not dead after all but is merely skulking in Cornwall with a broken head?”

“That would be in character,” the duke had said dryly.

“If you were to ask me,” Viscount Kimble had observed, “the woman should be awarded a medal rather than a noose if he
is
dead. The world will be a better place without the presence of Jardine in it.”

“But you had better watch your back with the rest of us once you leave the sanctuary of this house, Tresham,” Sir Conan had added with a chuckle. “Look out for a fierce wench wielding a pair of pistols or a hefty ax. Accounts vary on which she used to do the dastardly deed.”

“What does she look like, pray?” the duke had asked. “So that I may duck out of sight when I see her coming.”

“A black-eyed, black-haired witch as ugly as sin,” Sir
Conan had said. “Or a blond Siren as beautiful as an angel. Take your pick. I have heard both descriptions and several others between the two extremes. No one has ever seen her, it seems, except Durbury, who is keeping mum. Have you heard about Ferdinand's new team? I daresay you have, though, and from the horse's mouth itself, so to speak. Will they decide to travel north when he gives them the signal to proceed south, do you suppose?”

“Not if he is a true brother of mine,” the duke had said. “I suppose he bought a frisky pair that will take a year to tame?”

The conversation had proceeded on that topic.

Now Jane could not sleep. Or even lie still. She kept seeing Sidney's parchment-pale face and the blood on his temple. She kept thinking of the earl's coming to London to search for her. And of the Bow Street Runners combing its streets and questioning its inhabitants to discover her whereabouts. She kept imagining herself taking her fate in her own hands and leaving Dudley House to confront the earl at the Pulteney Hotel.

It would be such a relief to come out of hiding, to have everything out in the open.

To be thrown into jail. To be publicly tried. To be hanged.
Could
an earl's daughter be sentenced to hang? An earl could not. But could his daughter? She did not know.

Why was her father's cousin not wearing mourning? Was it possible that Sidney was not dead after all? But it would be foolish to hope.

She threw back the bedcovers eventually and stopped even pretending to be settled for the night. She lit her candle, threw her cloak about her shoulders, and
left her room, not even bothering to dress or to put on shoes. Perhaps she could find a book in the library into which to escape until her brain quieted down.

But she became gradually aware of something as she descended the stairs. Some sound. By the time she reached the bottom it was quite obvious what it was.

Music. Pianoforte music.

Coming from the music room.

But who could be producing it? It was far too late for visitors. It must be well past midnight. Besides, there was no light in the hall. The servants had all retired to bed. There was a thin thread of light beneath the music room door.

Jane approached it gingerly and rested her hand on the knob for several moments before turning it and opening the door.

It was the Duke of Tresham.

He was seated on the pianoforte bench, his crutches on the floor beside him. He was hunched over the keys, playing without sheet music, his eyes closed, a look almost of pain on his face. He was playing something hauntingly beautiful, something Jane had never heard before.

She stood transfixed, listening. And experiencing again, with a constriction of the heart, the feeling that the music came not from the instrument or even from the man but through them from some divine source. She had not believed there could be another musician with a talent to match her mother's.

But now she was in his presence.

Five minutes or more must have passed before the music ended. He sat, his hands lifted an inch above the keyboard, his head bowed, his eyes still closed. It
was only in that moment that Jane realized she was a trespasser.

But it was too late. Even as she thought of withdrawing and closing the door quietly behind her, he turned his head and opened his eyes. For a moment they looked blankly into hers. And then they blazed.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he thundered.

For the first time she was truly afraid of him. His anger appeared somehow different from any she had seen in him before. She half expected him to get up and come stalking toward her.

“I am so sorry,” she said. “I came down for a book and I heard the music. Where did you learn to play like that?”

“Like what?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. He was recovering from his shock, she could see, and was looking more himself. “I dabble, Miss Ingleby. I was amusing myself, unaware that I had an audience.”

He had retreated, she realized suddenly, behind a familiar mask. She had never thought of him before as a man who needed defenses. It had never occurred to her that perhaps there were depths to his character that he had never shown her, or any of his visitors either.

“Oh, no,” she said, aware even as she spoke that perhaps it would be wiser to remain silent. She stepped right into the room and closed the door. “You are no dabbler, your grace. You have been gifted with a wondrous and rare talent. And you were not amusing yourself. You were embracing your talent with your whole soul.”

“Poppycock!” he said curtly after a brief silence. “I have never even had a lesson, Jane, and I do not read music. There goes your theory.”

But she was staring at him with wide eyes. “You have never had a lesson? What were you playing, then? How did you learn it?”

She realized the truth even as she asked the questions. He did not answer her but merely pursed his lips.