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Authors: Mary Balogh

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BOOK: No Man's Mistress
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What he had not known until he went to London with his mother, whom he had adored, was that she too
had lovers—legions of cicisbei who assembled in her dressing room both morning and evening to observe all but the most intimate stages of her toilette before squiring her about to all the routs and parties with which the London Season abounded, and a number of particular favorites with whom she shared a bed, though never at the house. She was never vulgar, his mother.

Infidelity in marriage, for both wives and husbands, was very much the norm in the
ton
, he had learned early. The vows brides and their grooms exchanged in the nuptial service were a sham. Marriages were for financial and dynastic alliances.

Ferdinand wanted none of it. The very idea of marriage sickened him. And unlike the naïve and gullible Miss Viola Thornhill, he did not believe in love and trust. Oh, he loved Tresham and Tresham's wife and children. He loved Angie and was even fond of Heyward. But not blindly, as Miss Thornhill loved and trusted. Perhaps after this disillusionment she would harden her heart and learn to trust no one but herself.

“Yes, I enjoyed it,” he said in answer to her observation.

They seemed to have nothing more to say to each other after that. Ferdinand sat looking at her. He was annoyed with himself. He had sought her out so that they could talk about her future, make some sort of definite decision about her leaving. Instead they had talked about their childhoods. There was a light breeze blowing. It was lifting the short curls at her neck. He felt an absurd—and hastily quelled—desire to brush them aside with his hand and set his lips there.

“What are you planning to do with that daisy chain?” he asked her, getting to his feet.

She looked down at it as if she were noticing it for the first time. “Oh,” she said.

He reached down a hand and helped her to her feet. He took the chain from her and looped it over her head.

“My wholesome country lass,” he murmured, and bent his head to kiss her on the lips. He raised his head again sharply, but too late, of course. What sort of a blithering idiot had he turned into for that brief, thoughtless moment?

Color flamed in her cheeks, and her eyes sparked. He waited with an inward grimace for the crack across the cheek he fully expected—he would not defend himself, since he had undoubtedly been in the wrong. But she kept her hands to herself.

“Lord Ferdinand,” she said, her voice cold and quavering, “you may have grounds for believing that Pinewood is yours. But I am not part of the package. My person is my own property. I believe I have said this before, but I say it again, lest you did not believe me the first time. I am no man's mistress. I am my own.”

She turned and strode away, not along the river path but across it and up the steep bank beyond, to disappear over the top.

The devil! Ferdinand thought. What in thunder had possessed him? He had come out here to be firm, to assert himself, to get rid of the woman, and he had ended up kissing her and murmuring something so deucedly embarrassing that he did not care to remember the exact words.

My wholesome country lass
.

Each word taken separately was enough to make him wince for a week.

Lord, but she had certainly been transformed before
his eyes. A daisy-bedecked country lass one moment, a frosty, tight-lipped lady the next.

He wished suddenly that he could be as iron-willed and ruthless as Tresham would undoubtedly be in a situation like this. The woman would have been gone yesterday, forgotten today.

How the devil was he going to get rid of her?

He set off back along the river path, feeling all the frustration of having settled nothing but only compounded his problems. What he needed to do was sit down quietly somewhere and think for a few hours. Make plans. And then carry through on them. But as soon as he set foot inside the house, he knew that he was not going to get what he needed—not for a while anyway. The hall seemed crammed to capacity with people, all of whom turned at his entrance and gazed expectantly at him.

“Jarvey?” Ferdinand singled out the butler and raised his eyebrows in inquiry.

“Mr. Paxton is awaiting your return in the library, my lord,” Jarvey told him. “And there are a number of persons who are requesting an audience with you.”

“Paxton?”

“Pinewood's steward, my lord,” Jarvey explained.

Ferdinand glanced about at all the silent persons who awaited an audience with him, and turned in the direction of the library.

“I had better see him, without further delay, then,” he said.

Viola walked in the avenue until she felt she had calmed down sufficiently to risk meeting other people. She had
talked
with him, almost as if he were a friend. She had let him
kiss
her. Yes, she had allowed it. She had
known somehow as soon as he took the daisy chain from her hands and looped it over her head that he was going to do it. She could have stopped him. But she had not. All the time he had been sitting beside her, half reclined on the grass, she had fought the effects of his attractiveness on her breathing, her heartbeat, her nerve endings.

She did not want to find him attractive. She wanted to hate him. She
did
hate him.

She turned her mind determinedly to her letter, slipping her hand into her pocket and closing her fingers about it. The answer was no—again.

“We are all very much obliged to you for your kind invitation,” Claire had written. “You must know how we long to see you again after so long. Two years is
too
long a time. But Mama has asked me to express our deepest regrets on her behalf and to explain why we cannot go. She feels that she owes too much to our uncle, especially now that he has been generous enough to send Ben to school. She feels that she must stay here and help out as best she can. But she misses you dreadfully, Viola. We all do.”

Viola felt bereft. She felt not so much her loneliness-she had learned to hold that at bay with her various activities and friendships at Pinewood—as her terrible aloneness. They would never come. Why did she keep on hoping they would?

It had been her dearest dream when she had come to Pinewood that soon her mother would recover from her anger and forget the dreadful quarrel they had had over Viola's accepting the earl's gift, that she would come to live with her daughter and bring Claire and the twins, Maria and Benjamin—Viola's half siblings—with her. But her mother was not ready to forgive her, at least not to the extent of coming here.

Mama and the children—though Claire was fifteen already and the twins twelve—did not have a home of their own. Viola's stepfather had died when she was eighteen and left nothing to his family except debts, which Uncle Wesley, Mama's brother, had paid off. He had taken them all to live at the coaching inn he owned, and they had remained there ever since.

“I am working now,” Claire had continued. “Uncle Wesley has been showing me how to keep the account books, as you once did. He has said that he may let me serve in the coffee room too now that I am fifteen. I am happy to work for him, but what I really want to do is be a governess as you were, Viola, and help support the family with my earnings.”

They had been proud of her, both Mama and her uncle, Viola recalled. Uncle Wesley had been disappointed when she had first announced that she would be leaving the inn, but he had understood her desire to help support her family. Two years ago her mother had not been able to understand why she was so eager to leave respectable, interesting, well-paid employment in order to accept charity. Charity, she had called the gift of Pinewood….

“It feels good to help out,” Claire had written. “Uncle Wesley really is most generous. Ben's school fees are considerable. In addition, he has bought new books for Maria, who is learning from Mama and is becoming more of a scholar than I ever was, and new clothes for her too. He bought me new shoes even though the old ones would have done for a while longer.”

Only Uncle Wesley knew that the money for Ben's education and for many of the extra family expenses came from Pinewood rents. He had not wanted to be part of the deception. He did not want to take credit where it was not due. But Viola had pleaded with him in a letter she had
written soon after coming to Somersetshire. Mama would never accept anything that came from Pinewood. But Viola needed to keep on helping her family. Claire and Ben and Maria must have a chance at a decent life.

“Bless you, dearest Viola,” the letter had concluded. “Since we cannot go to Pinewood, can you not come to London for a visit? Please?”

But she had never been able to bring herself to go back there. The very thought made her shudder.

Upset over her encounter with Lord Ferdinand, and upset too over this letter, Viola gave in to a rare moment of self-pity and heard a gurgling in her throat. She swallowed determinedly. She did miss her family dreadfully. She had not seen them for two years, not since that dreadful quarrel she had had with her mother. Her one consolation had been that she was doing them some good while she lived here. But how would she continue to help out if Pinewood was no longer hers?

How would she be able even to support herself?

Panic tied her stomach in queasy knots as she turned her steps back toward the house. How she hated Lord Ferdinand. It was not just Pinewood he was trying to take away from her. It was everything. And how she hated herself for not merely turning a cold face away from him on the riverbank just a short while ago.

She might have gone into the house through the back door, since it was the closest entrance from the avenue. But she walked around to the front. She wanted to see if the plans for the rest of the day were being put into effect. Somehow she expected to find the hall deserted. But it was not. It was filled with people. Far more than she had expected or even hoped for. Was there a tenant farmer or a laborer who was
not
here?

Viola smiled broadly as all the men touched their
forelocks or bowed awkwardly to her, and the few women bobbed curtsies. But they all grinned back at her in mass acknowledgment of the conspiracy afoot.

“Good morning,” she said brightly.

Was
it still morning? It certainly would not be by the time he had dealt with every petitioner and complainer who had demanded audience with the new owner of Pinewood. And before he could begin to admit them, he would have to listen to the speech of welcome and orientation that Mr. Paxton had doubtless stayed up half the night preparing. Mr. Paxton could be alarmingly ponderous when he set his mind to it. Lord Ferdinand would be fortunate indeed if he had time to snatch some luncheon before all the afternoon callers began to arrive to pay their respects to their new neighbor.

The Reverend Prewitt would talk about the church choir and next Sunday's sermon, Mrs. Prewitt about the ladies' sewing circle and the new kneelers they were busy making. The schoolmaster would drone on about the leaking schoolroom roof and the necessity of teaching something meaningful to the older pupils at the same time as he instructed the younger ones in the recitation of the alphabet. The Misses Merrywether would talk about the flower show coming up in the summer and the attempts of certain villagers to grow new or better strains of various blooms. Mrs. Claypole, Mr. Claypole, and Bertha—well, the Claypoles would simply be themselves. Mr. Willard had a bull who he claimed was in a state of deep depression over the demise—by butchering—of his favorite cow. Mr. Willard could—and would—wax mar-velously eloquent on the subject of his cattle.

Mr. Codaire could put anyone to sleep on the subject of roads and toll gates and new methods of paving. Fortunately for Viola, he knew it and had offered it up as
a suitable topic with which to
regale
the ears of Lord Ferdinand Dudley when the Codaires called upon him. Mrs. Codaire had just read a book of sermons she was sure his lordship would enjoy hearing paraphrased. And the Misses Codaire, aged sixteen and seventeen, had suggested accompanying their mama and papa and
giggling
at every available opportunity. Since the sight of a handsome young man was always opportunity enough for those girls even without an extra incentive, Viola was confident that they would grate upon every adult nerve in Pinewood's drawing room, most particularly upon those of Lord Ferdinand Dudley.

By this time tomorrow, Viola thought hopefully as she retired to her room, where she planned to spend a cozy afternoon reading, he might well be on his way back to London, having realized that country living would drive him mad within a week. He would still be the owner in the eyes of the law, she supposed, but chances were that he would never come back. If he tried to take the rents for himself, she would simply ignore him until he stopped asking. By this time tomorrow she might have her home to herself again.

And by this time tomorrow pigs might also have learned to fly, she thought with a sigh.

Viola did not leave her room until dinnertime. She had steeled herself to dine with him, consoling herself with the conviction that at least she would have his grumblings to listen to and enjoy. But the dining table was set for only one person, and the butler was standing behind Viola's usual chair at the head of the table, waiting to seat her.

“Where is Lord Ferdinand?” she asked him.

“He said he would dine at the Boar's Head, ma'am.”

“I daresay,” she said, smiling with relief and preparing unexpectedly to enjoy the meal, “he has had enough of making polite conversation for one day.”

“I suppose so, ma'am,” Mr. Jarvey agreed with a smirk, ladling soup into her bowl.

“Has he enjoyed his day, do you think?” She was feeling almost lighthearted.

“He
seemed
in a good enough humor whenever I stepped into the drawing room to announce another visitor,” Mr. Jarvey told her. “He was smiling and talking and greeting the new arrivals as if he couldn't think of any better way to be spending his time. But I daresay that was just his cunning, so that I would not see that we had him bothered.”

“Yes,” Viola agreed. “I am sure you are right.” But she would have far preferred to hear that he had been looking bored or irritable or weary or thunderous. “Have you spoken with Mr. Paxton?”

BOOK: No Man's Mistress
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