More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (28 page)

He undressed, doused the candles, and climbed into bed with her. He had instructed her to keep on her prim and pretty nightgown. There was something surprisingly erotic about grasping its hem and lifting it up her legs and over her hips to her waist. He did not want foreplay tonight. He wanted to do what he had come to do before somehow the whole scene became unfamiliar again. He slid his hand between her thighs and felt her. She was ready enough. He turned onto her with his full
weight, spread her legs wide with his knees, slid his hands beneath her, and entered.

She was soft, warm, relaxed heat. He began to work her with firm, vigorous strokes. He tried to think of her simply as a woman. He tried to think of his need as simply sexual.

He failed miserably on both counts.

He rarely kissed in bed. It was unnecessary, and it was too personal for his taste. He kissed her.

“Jane,” he murmured into her mouth, “tell me you wanted me to come back, that you have thought of nothing but me since this afternoon.”

“Why?” she whispered. “So that you can warn me again not to become dependent upon you? I am not sorry you came. I am glad. This feels good.”

“Damn you,” he said. “Damn you.”

She was silent while he worked. But just as he felt the climax approach and was about to deepen and quicken his rhythm, he felt her arms close about his waist and her feet slide up the bed and her thighs hug his hips while she tilted her pelvis to allow him deeper access.

“Jocelyn,” she whispered, “don't be afraid. Please don't be afraid.”

He was driving toward release and did not hear the words consciously. But after he had finished, when he lay exhausted beside her, he heard their echo in his mind and thought he must have imagined them.

“Come here,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch her.

She curled up against him, and he lowered her nightgown, drew up the bedclothes, wrapped his arms about her, pillowed his cheek against the top of her head, and fell asleep.

He had frequently spent nights at the house and staggered home at dawn to sleep. He had never
slept
a night at the house. When he had come this time, he had intended a few hours of vigorous sport just to remind both Jane and himself of the basic nature of their liaison.

He awoke when daylight was pouring into the room. Jane, tousled and flushed and delicious, was still asleep in his arms.

He drew free of her and swung himself out of bed, waking her in the process. She smiled sleepily at him.

“My apologies,” he said stiffly as he pulled on his evening clothes. “I daresay according to that infernal contract I have no right intruding on your privacy when I am not actually asserting my rights. I will be gone in a moment.”

“Jocelyn,” she said with soft reproach, and then she had the unmitigated gall to laugh.

With glee.

At him.

“I amuse you?” He scowled at her.

“I do believe,” she said, “you are
embarrassed
that you slept instead of spending the night demonstrating your renowned prowess as a lover. You seem always to have to prove your superior manhood.”

The fact that she was perfectly right did not improve his mood.

“I am delighted to have amused you at least,” he said, throwing his cloak about him with a vicious swing of his arm and buttoning it at his throat. “I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you some other time when I have need of you. Good morning.”

“Jocelyn,” she said softly again when he already had the door of the bedchamber open. He looked back at her
with haughtily raised eyebrows. “It was a wonderful night. You are lovely to sleep with.”

He did not wait to discover if she mocked him or not. He stepped through the door and closed it none too quietly behind him.

Devil take it, he thought, noticing the clock in the hallway as he descended the stairs and noticing too with a grimace that Jacobs was waiting there to let him out, it was seven o'clock. He had been here for seven hours. He had been in her bed for seven hours, and he had had intercourse with her once.
Once!

He bade the butler a curt good morning and strode off down the street, noticing with some satisfaction that the twinge of stiffness in his right leg was becoming less pronounced each day.

You are lovely to sleep with
.

Jocelyn chuckled despite himself. She was right, goddammit. It had been a lovely night, and he felt more refreshed by his sleep than he had in a long while.

He would go home to bathe and change, he decided, and then go shopping—for a small pianoforte and for sketching and painting supplies. Perhaps the best thing to do about this whole extraordinary situation was to go along with it, let it happen, let it proceed in its own way and at its own pace to its inevitable conclusion. Sooner or later he would grow weary of Jane Ingleby. He had of every woman he had ever known or bedded. He would of her too—perhaps in a month, perhaps in two, perhaps in a year.

In the meantime, why not just enjoy the novel feeling of being—ah, yes, the fateful words that hovered in the background of his thoughts and threatened to verbalize themselves.

Why not?

Why not enjoy the feeling of being in love?

Why not revel in the ultimate foolishness for once in his life?

W
ORKING IN THE GARDEN
later that same morning, enjoying the exercise, loving the brightness and heat of the sun on her back, Jane came to a decision.

She was in love with him, of course. Worse than that, she thought she was also growing to
love
him. There was no point in trying to deny her feelings and no use whatsoever in trying to fight them.

She loved him.

But it would not do, of course. She was not foolish enough to imagine that he would ever love her in return, though she knew that he was in the grip of a serious obsession with her. Besides, even if he ever did love her, there could be no happily-ever-after to expect. She was his mistress. And she was who she was.

But she could not live forever as a fugitive. She should never have given in to the cowardly impulse that had sent her scurrying into hiding in the first place. It had been so unlike her normal self. She was going to have to come out of hiding and do what she ought to have done as soon as she discovered that Lady Webb was not in London to help her.

She was going to find the Earl of Durbury if he was still in town. If he was not, she was going to find out where the Bow Street Runners had their headquarters and go there. She was going to write to Charles. She was going to tell her story to anyone who would listen. She was going to embrace her fate. Perhaps she would be arrested
and tried and convicted of murder. Perhaps that would mean a hanging or at the very least transportation or lifelong imprisonment. But she would not give in meekly. She would fight like the very devil to the last moment—but not by running away and hiding.

She was going to come out into the open at last and
fight
.

But not just yet. That was the agreement she made with herself as she pulled weeds from about the rosebushes and turned the soil until it was a richer brown. A definite time limit must be set so that she would not continue to procrastinate week after week, month after month. She was going to give herself one month, one calendar month, starting today. One month to be Jocelyn's mistress, his love, though he would not be aware of the latter, of course. One month to spend with him as a person, as a friend in the den, if he ever returned there, as a lover in the bed upstairs.

One month.

And then she was going to give herself up. Without telling him. There might be scandal for him, of course, when it became known that he had harbored her at Dudley House for three weeks, or if anyone knew that she had been his mistress here. But she would not worry about that. His life had been one scandal after another. He appeared to thrive on them. She thought he would probably be rather amused by this particular one.

One month.

Jane leaned back on her heels to inspect her work, but Phillip was approaching from the direction of the house.

“Mr. Jacobs sent me, ma'am,” he said, “to tell you that a new pianoforte just arrived and an easel and other
parcels too. He wants to know where you want them put.”

Jane got to her feet, her heart soaring, and followed him back to the house.

One glorious month, in which she would not even try to guard her feelings.

One month of love.

T
HERE FOLLOWED A WEEK
during which Jocelyn almost totally ignored his family, the Olivers, the Forbeses, and all topics of gossip with which the
ton
continued to entertain itself. A week during which he rode in the park most mornings and spent an hour or two afterward breakfasting at White's and reading the papers and conversing with his friends, but during which he attended few social functions.

Kimble and Brougham were highly diverted, of course, and very inclined to ribaldry. Until, that was, the three of them were walking along a fortunately deserted street on the way from White's one morning and Kimble opened his mouth.

“All I can say, Tresh,” he said, pretending to sound bored, “is that when the delectable Miss Ingleby has finally exhausted you, you may pass her on to me, if you please, and I will see if I can exhaust her. I daresay I know a trick or two she will not have learned from you. And if—”

His monologue was rudely interrupted when a fist collided with the left side of his jaw and with a look of blank astonishment he crashed to the pavement. Jocelyn looked with scarcely less astonishment at his own still-clenched fist.

“Oh, I say!” Conan Brougham protested.

Jocelyn spoke curtly to his friend, who was gingerly fingering his jaw. “Do you want satisfaction?”

“Oh, I say,” Brougham said again. “I cannot be second to
both
of you.”

“You should have told me, old chap,” Kimble said ruefully, shaking his head to clear it before scrambling to his feet and brushing at his clothes, “and I would not have flapped my jaws. By Jove, you are in love with the wench. In which case the punch was understandable. But you might have been more sporting and warned me, Tresh. It is not the most comfortable of experiences to walk into one of your fists. No, of course I am not about to slap a glove in your face, so you need not look so damned grim. I meant no disrespect to the lady's honor.”

“And I did not mean to endanger our friendship.” Jocelyn extended his right hand, which his friend took rather warily. “It is all very well for you and Conan to tease, Kimble. I would do no less to you. But no one else is to be drawn into this. I will not have Jane publicly dishonored.”

“I say!” Brougham sounded suddenly indignant. “You do not believe we have been spreading the word, Tresham? The very idea! I did not believe I would live to see the day when you would be in love, though.” He laughed suddenly.

“Love be damned!” Jocelyn said gruffly.

But apart from that one incident, almost the whole of his attention for the week was taken up by the house where Jane lived and where he spent most of his time—in two separate but strangely complementary capacities. He spent his afternoons and several of his evenings
in their den with her, almost never touching her. He spent his nights in the bedchamber with her, making love to her and sleeping with her.

It was a magical week.

A week to remember.

A week of such intense delight that it could not possibly last. It did not, of course.

But before it ended, there was that week.…

NCE OR TWICE THEY STROLLED IN THE GARDEN
, and Jane showed him what she had already done with it and explained what she still intended to do. But most of the time they spent indoors. It was a misty, wet week anyway.

Jane had simply abandoned herself to sheer pleasure. She spent hours stitching by the fire, necessary because of the damp chill, the autumn woods spreading in glorious profusion across one corner of the linen cloth, then another. Sometimes he read to her—they had reached almost the halfway point of
Mansfield Park
. More often in the evenings he played the pianoforte. The music was almost all his own composition. Sometimes it was halting, uncertain at the start, as if he did not know where the music came from or where it was going. But she came to recognize the point at which it went beyond an activity of the mind and hands and became one simply of the heart and soul. Then the music flowed.

Sometimes she stood behind him or sat beside him and sang—mostly folk songs and ballads with which they were both acquainted. Even, surprisingly, a few hymns, which he sang with her in a good baritone voice.

“We were paraded to church every Sunday,” he told her, “to cushion our superior backsides on the plush family pew—though never, at our peril, to squirm on it—while lesser mortals sat on hard wood and gawked
in awe. And you, Jane? Were you orphans marched in a neat crocodile, two by two, to sit on backless benches and thank God for the many blessings He had showered on you?” His hands played a flourishing arpeggio.