Portrait of My Heart (26 page)

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Authors: Patricia Cabot

Tags: #Romance, #Adult, #Historical

BOOK: Portrait of My Heart
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Maggie felt headachy and tired by the time she returned to the house on Park Lane. It was a relief to slip into her own room and close the door—though she’d been a bit surprised at not encountering the duke on the stairs. She hadn’t dared to ask Evers if Jeremy was at home. She did not want to draw further attention to the fact that she was once again spending the night in the house alone with him—or at least, she assumed so.
Unless, after that unpleasant scene in her studio, Jeremy had found somewhere else to sleep. With the princess, for instance.
Maggie tried to keep such thoughts resolutely out of her mind. It wasn’t anything to
her
where Jeremy slept. He could sleep at the foot of Princess Usha’s bed for all she cared. All Maggie wanted to do was brush out her hair—Hill had stuck so many pins in her head in an attempt to hold up the heavy dark mass of curls that her scalp was beginning to throb—and go to bed.
Alone.
“Hill?” she called, as she stepped into her bedroom. The fire had been lit, and her bedcovers turned down, but there wasn’t a sign of her maid. Jerry the dog appeared instead, leaping up from the bed pillows and bounding toward Maggie, yapping enthusiastically.
“Bon soir,
Jerry,” Maggie said, stooping to lift the dog and give his ears a good scratching.
“Ça va
? Has Hill
walked you already?” It was clear from the appreciative way the dog had thrown back his head while she petted him that going for a walk was the last thing on his mind. “I see that she has. So where is she, eh? Gossiping belowstairs, I’ll wager.”
Maggie went to the bell pull at the side of her bed and yanked on it once. Then she sat down at her dressing table, placing Jerry on her lap, and began to remove her elbow-length gloves. She supposed she ought to be grateful Hill wasn’t about. She did not need another lecture about how inappropriate it was for her to remain in the town house without Lord and Lady Edward’s presence. For Evers had assured her, as soon as she’d asked—which she had, the moment he’d greeted her at the front door—that the duke’s aunt and uncle were apparently still in Yorkshire. The butler’s disapproval, though it went unuttered, had been evident in his averted gaze as he took Maggie’s cloak. Evers was no more pleased about the current living situation in the town house than Hill was.
Another night, Maggie reflected grimly, unchaperoned. Another black mark against her otherwise good name. A fitting end to a perfectly horrid day.
Maggie frowned as she pulled off her gloves and then started removing her jewelry. Lord, what a dreadful evening she’d had! What had started out as excruciatingly embarrassing had ended up being merely excruciating. Augustin, determined to show her that while the duke may have broken his nose, he could never break his spirit, had insisted upon dragging her from one nightspot to another after dinner, in defiance of both his cotton-packed nostrils and her weariness. Maggie hadn’t even bothered to pretend to be enjoying herself. It was clear it did not matter to Augustin how she felt about the matter. He had made plans to wine and dine her, and he intended to carry them out. He was like a man possessed by the devil … .
And that devil, Maggie knew very well, was Jeremy Rawlings.
Not that Maggie blamed Augustin for trying. She quite understood what he was feeling … or at least, she thought
she did. It was a humiliating thing, surely, for a man to be struck by another in front of his fiancee. And Augustin hadn’t even been able to fight back, since that single blow had felled him. And then Jeremy had apologized, so Augustin couldn’t even call him out—not that Augustin would have survived a duel with the Duke of Rawlings. No matter what weapon he chose—pistols, blades, or fists—Jeremy was master of them all, and would have made short work of the Frenchman in a fight of any sort.
Poor, poor Augustin. He had no way of knowing that Jeremy had bested him in another arena as well … and there hadn’t been a single moment all evening when Maggie might have told him about it, either. Well, maybe that wasn’t strictly true. There hadn’t been a single moment when Maggie felt it
right
to tell him … if there ever was a right time to tell the man to whom one was engaged that one had lost one’s virginity to another.
And Augustin had seemed to be in such high spirits, speaking excitedly of Maggie’s exhibition on Saturday and his future plans for her career. While this kept Maggie from having to answer any embarrassing questions Augustin might have asked concerning Jeremy’s parting remark earlier in the evening—she was fully prepared to assure him, regardless of the fact that it was untrue, that the duke’s aunt was back from Yorkshire, making it perfectly all right for the two of them to remain in the same house—on the other hand, his blind inattention to what was going on under his very own, albeit broken, nose was a little bit odd. Was it possible that Augustin did not care as much for Maggie as she had allowed herself to believe? Was there a chance that, close friends that they were, that might be all there was to the relationship?
But no, that would be too much to ask. For Maggie to have been able to part company with Augustin without hurting his feelings at all … . No. Things like that simply did not happen. Twenty-four-carat sapphires did not fall from the sky, handsome young dukes did not forsake princesses for painters, and young women could not break off engagements without causing hurt feelings … .
That was where Jeremy was. With the princess. It had to
be. Jeremy was hardly the kind of man who’d spend a night alone. And since he wasn’t with her, where else could he be? Why, after she’d so been rude to him at her studio, would he even consider spending the night with her, anyway? Maggie certainly hadn’t done anything to make him think he might be welcome in her bed … .
Which he most definitely was
not.
She’d prove it, too: Tomorrow, she’d ask Augustin to loan her some money—she’d pay him back from the sales from her exhibition—and she’d move to a hotel. Not the Dorchester, of course. A different hotel. She’d ask Augustin for the name of a decent one. And then she needn’t worry about chaperons or princesses or anything. She’d be on her own, completely on her own, just like in Paris. She’d tell Jeremy he could have his precious princess, for all she cared. It was better that way, she thought. Much better.
Though she would miss him. Maggie smiled softly to herself, recalling what a shock she’d had that morning, waking in Jeremy’s arms—more than that, waking with Jeremy
inside
of her! Shocking it had been, but wonderful, too. What would it be like, she wondered, to wake up that way every morning, cocooned in Jeremy’s arms, feeling his sweet breath in her hair? Would it be worth it? she wondered, as she pushed down the pink satin bodice of her gown. Would putting up with all the rigmarole of being a duchess be worth it if she could look forward to waking up every morning in Jeremy’s arms?
She wasn’t sure.
Maggie laid her ear bobs on the glass surface of her dressing table and stood up. After reaching behind her to undo the hooks to her evening gown, she stepped out of it, leaving the dress in a puddle on the floor while she went to work on the ties to her bustle. Maybe Jeremy was right. Maybe she really could have been a duchess and still managed to paint. After all, the queen painted, a little. Oh, she didn’t have shows, but she still managed to find time to paint … .
Not, Maggie reminded herself, that it made any difference now. Jeremy had not asked her to marry him. In all of their conversations, both before and after having made love, he
had never mentioned marriage. Oh, he’d said he wasn’t marrying the Star of Jaipur. But he hadn’t said he was marrying Maggie, either.
Dressed only in pantaloons and a corset, Maggie sat back down at the dressing table and regarded her reflection as she began to pull pins from her hair. How could she have been so wrong about him? She, who knew what he was! Had she been swayed by his looks? Certainly he was astonishingly good-looking—even with his malaria-sallowed complexion and crooked nose, Maggie thought him even handsomer than he’d been five years earlier. Of course, five years earlier, she hadn’t had the privilege of seeing him naked. Since having done so, her estimation of his physical person had risen to even more dizzying heights. Even when sleeping, the swell of his biceps had been impressive, the ridges that lined his flat stomach clearly definable. Just thinking of that trail of dark hair that led down to the thick nest between his legs brought a flush to Maggie’s cheeks. No, there was no doubt about it. Physically, Jeremy was as close to perfect as any man could be.
Intellectually, he was close to perfect, as well. What Jeremy lacked in the way of formal education, he more than made up for with his quick, native intelligence. He was, without a doubt, amusing. He had often made her laugh, even when she was on the verge of tears, with his quick sarcasm and dry wit. And there wasn’t any question as to his bravery. One might almost accuse him of foolhardiness, he was so cavalier about his own personal safety. Why, he’d been stabbed in the shoulder, and had thought so little of the wound—and the incident—that he’d been making ardent love not an hour later … .
No, if there was such a thing as a perfect man, Jeremy, despite his tendency toward violence, was it. Maggie could hardly blame the princess for having fallen in love with him. After all, Maggie herself loved him.
When the last pin had been pulled from Maggie’s coiffure, the thick, shining mass spilled down her shoulders. Sighing, she lifted her horsehair brush and went to work, trying to smooth the tangles away. It was not an easy job, and her
arms quickly tired. She had been painting for stretches of up to ten hours a day all week, in order to finish up the works that would be shown on Saturday. Sometimes her wrists felt so sore, she could barely lift them. Now was one of those times. She’d had too little rest in the past twenty-four hours to tackle her hair. She’d leave it for Hill to wrestle with in the morning.
Laying aside the brush, Maggie sat slumped at the dressing table, staring into her lap. Hopefully, the exhibition on Saturday would be a success. Then, at least, worries over her immediate financial future would be over.
What she was going to do about her romantic future was another matter entirely.
As she sat with her head bent, Maggie became aware that someone had come into the room, and, assuming it was her maid, she said, without lifting her gaze from her lap, “Oh, Hill. Would you see what you can do about my hair? I’m afraid it’s beyond me tonight.”
She felt the heavy weight of her hair lifted, and she let out a little sigh of relief. But instead of the bite of horsehair bristles against the back of her neck, Maggie felt the warm pressure of a pair of lips. Gasping, she lifted her eyes to the mirror before her and saw Jeremy’s reflection grinning back at her.
“You!” she cried, twisting on the velvet stool to glare up at him. “What are
you
doing here?”
Jeremy shrugged, the grin broadening to a smile. “I live here, remember?”
Jeremy, standing behind her with a half-empty glass of what looked like whisky in his hand, his cravat, waistcoat, and jacket gone, and the first three or four buttons of his shirt undone, looked supremely unconcerned by her outrage. And supremely attractive. The shadowy light from the fire on the hearth cast half his face in darkness, but she could still see the silver glow of his eyes as he stared down at her, making her overly conscious of the fact that all she had on were her underthings. Through the opening in his shirt, she caught a glimpse of the rich mat of hair that carpeted his chest.
“Now,” he said. “What was that about your hair?”
“Oh!” Maggie stood up, her fingers balled into fists at her side. “I thought you were Hill! What have you done with her?”
“With your maid?” Jeremy quirked up a dark eyebrow at her. “Not a thing. Are you always so suspicious, Mags? It isn’t a very attractive quality—”
“When it comes to you, yes, I’m suspicious,” Maggie snapped. “Now, where is Hill?”
Jeremy looked somber. “She had a little accident.”
Maggie gasped. “What sort of accident? If you’ve hurt her, you callous—”
“Not that kind of accident,” Jeremy said, rolling his silver eyes. “She accidentally drank some tea meant for me, and now she’s sleeping it off down the hall.”
“Oh, yes, I see. She
accidentally
drank some tea meant for you,” Maggie sneered. “And just what was in this tea, may I ask?”
“Well, nothing that will cause any permanent damage,” Jeremy assured her. “Just a little opium.”
“Opium!” Maggie stared at him, slack-jawed, hardly daring to believe her ears. “
You drugged my maid
?”
Jeremy winced, flashing a hasty glance at the bedroom door. “It won’t hurt her,” he said. “And keep your voice down, will you? I didn’t drug the rest of the household, you know, just her. Unless you want Evers beating down the door, I suggest you—”
“You
admit
it?” Maggie clapped both her hands to her cheeks. “You
admit
that you drugged her?”
“Well, of course I did,” Jeremy replied casually, as if it were the most obvious course of action in the world. “After the fuss you made this morning, about how shocked she was that you and I were spending the night under the same roof without a chaperon, I deemed it best. How else was I going to get to be alone with you tonight?”
“Get to be …” Maggie’s voice trailed off as she ogled him in astonishment. The man had to be insane. The malaria must have affected his brain. She was alone in her bedroom with a lunatic. A lunatic who had drugged her maid. “Jeremy,” she cried at last. “You can’t go around drugging people!”
“Why not?” Jeremy was beginning to grow tired of the discussion. While it was entertaining to watch Maggie hop about the room in outrage, considering that all she had on was a corset and pair of pantaloons, through which he could see some interesting dark patches, he decided it was time to steer the conversation in a more profitable direction. “I got what I wanted, didn’t I? You and I are alone together again.”
And to insure that it stayed that way, Jeremy crossed the
room in three long strides, stopping only when he reached the door. Carefully setting the empty whisky glass aside, he bent down, and turned the key neatly in the lock. Maggie heard the bolt slide into place, making the room inaccessible from the hallway. Then, casting a challenging glance at Maggie over his shoulder, Jeremy deliberately withdrew the key, and dropped it into his trouser pocket. Only then did he straighten. A smile, which Maggie could only have described as diabolical, spread over his handsome face.
Un duc diabolique
. Berangère had not been wrong.
Maggie continued to stare at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. A part of her wanted to burst out laughing at the very idea of the Duke of Rawlings locking himself into a bedroom with the youngest daughter of his steward. But another part of her failed to see the humor in the situation. In fact, her heart had begun to thud rather irregularly inside her chest.
She was locked inside a bedroom with the Duke of Rawlings
.
She didn’t have to be a genius to figure out what was going to happen next.
But that didn’t mean she had to go along with it. On the contrary. Just who did he think he was? He couldn’t go around drugging women’s maids and then locking himself into their bedrooms. What sort of behavior was that for a military hero? And if it really was another seduction he had planned, then he was going to be in for a sorry surprise. Maggie hadn’t the slightest intention of ever making love with him again, on this or any other night.
“Well,” she said, folding her arms over her breasts, hoping to hide the evidence of her wildly beating heart. “I hope you’re proud of yourself. In the past twenty-four hours, you managed to break the nose of an unarmed man, nearly get yourself killed—”
“Twice,” Jeremy pointed out.
“Twice?” She couldn’t help looking at him in astonishment.
“Right. Somebody tried to run me down outside
The Times
this morning.”
“Oh,” Maggie said. “So. After you’d seduced another
man’s fiancee, you had your engagement to an Indian princess announced in
The Times,
then you drugged a maid, and locked yourself into the bedroom of a woman who despises you. Congratulations. I’m sure the queen would be delighted to hear that this is how her officers comport themselves while they’re off duty.”
“You don’t despise me,” Jeremy said confidently.
“No?” It was Maggie’s turn to raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Really? You ignored me for five years, got yourself engaged to an Indian princess, assaulted my fiance, took my virginity, and drugged my maid. Yes, Jeremy, I think it would be safe to say I despise you.”
“I didn’t take your virginity,” he pointed out. “You gave it to me.”
Maggie glared at him. “You could have said no.”
“Me?” He laughed outright. “Refuse the offer of a beautiful woman?”
Maggie pointed angrily at the door. “Get out. Now,” she said, accompanying each word with a stamp of her stockinged foot upon the carpet.
“Why, Miss Herbert,” he cried delightedly, ignoring her command to leave. “You’re jealous!”
“Ha!” Maggie sniffed at the outrageous suggestion. “Not very likely!”
“No,” Jeremy said, shaking his head. His white teeth gleamed in the firelight as he approached her, grinning. When he stood just a foot away, he reached out to tuck a finger under her chin, forcibly bringing her face up toward his when she refused to look at him. “No,” he said, gazing down at her happily. “You are definitely, positively jealous. But why, Mags? Surely you couldn’t think anything would happen between your friend Miss Jacquard and I. After all, I think I’ve made it very clear to you that you’re the only woman I’ve ever cared about in my life.”
Maggie flinched, jerking her head from his grasp. His closeness was making breathing, which was difficult enough in her tight corset, an impossibility.
“That’s
where you were? With
Berangère
? Then … then you and the princess
didn’t—” She broke off, unable to finish a sentence to which she already knew the answer.
He shook his head, the smile gone. There was a touch of sadness now in his silver eyes. “Sweet Jesus, Mags, what do you take me for? Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been saying? There’s only one girl for me, and that’s you, even if you’re too mule-headed to see it. If you must know, I spent the entire evening listening to your friend Berangère talk about you.” He smoothed some of her wayward curls from her cheek. “She’s a better friend to you than you are to yourself, Mags.”
Oh, Lord. What had Berangère been telling him? Berangère was a born talker, liked nothing better than a good gossip. You could no sooner trust her with a secret than you could the corner fishmonger. God only knew what she’d been telling Jeremy.
“What do you mean?” Maggie inquired defensively.
“Only that Miss Jacquard agrees with me,” he said. His hand had lingered on her cheek after brushing the loose hair away, and now he dragged it down, tracing the smooth arc from her jawline to her shoulder with his callused index finger.
Maggie tried to ignore the shiver that coursed up and down her spine as he did this. More difficult to ignore was the fact that the shiver sent both peaks of her breasts hardening in the lace cups of her corset. She prayed Jeremy wouldn’t notice. “Agrees with you about what?” she demanded, hoping to distract him.
“That you’re a fool,” he said, in the softest voice imaginable, as he calmly followed the ivory shelf of her collarbone with his finger, “if you marry Augustin.”
“And is Berangère aware,” Maggie asked, though her mouth had gone dry as sand at the thought of what he’d do if he noticed the way her nipples had responded to his touch, “that you disappeared out of my, life five years ago? Was I supposed to just sit and wait until you made up your mind to come home? I wasn’t supposed to live any sort of life in the meantime?”
“All you needed to do was send me a line, Mags.” The
finger slid down to press against the beginning swell of her right breast, just where her heart was drumming hardest. “A single line, and I’d have been home in an instant.”
“Oh, really?” Maggie drawled, her unease making her seek refuge in sarcasm.
“Yes, really,” Jeremy replied. He was standing so close to her that she could smell the scent of clean man emanating from his open shirtfront. Had she reached out her hand, she could have combed her fingers through his chest hair. “For five years I waited for some word from you, some hint as to whether or not there was any hope for me, only to learn from my aunt that you had become engaged to another man—”
“Your aunt?” Maggie blinked up at him, confused. “Lady Edward … ?”
“She wrote to me a few months ago, warning me about the announcement of your engagement,” Jeremy admitted, watching, not without some satisfaction, as Maggie’s mouth fell open. “I asked her, before I left, to keep me informed of all your activities while I was in India. Whatever she heard from your mother or sisters, she related in her correspondence to me. When she found out about your engagement, she wrote me. I boarded the first ship for England I could find.”
“You …” Maggie was aware that she kept opening and then closing her mouth, like a goldfish that had suddenly thrown itself out of its bowl and onto the carpet, but she couldn’t help herself. The realization of what he had said was only just sinking in. He had come all the way back to England because his aunt had written to him that Maggie was getting married? He had left a sickbed—a malarial sickbed—in order to stop her from marrying someone else?
He had known all along that she was engaged, had feigned ignorance of the fact at the cotillion, just for the malicious pleasure of watching her stammer out an explanation?
“You!” she burst out furiously, slapping his hand away from her heart. “You knew all along! The night you came home, when you sat on my bed … and then at the cotillion, you pretended—” She sucked in a lungful of air, feeling as if she were going to explode. “And I was in agony the whole
time, wondering how I was going to tell you, when it turns out you knew all along! You were planning on hitting him from the beginning, weren’t you? You came to the cotillion with the express purpose of hitting Augustin, and mortifying me in front of all those people!”
“Now, Mags,” Jeremy said, holding up a warning finger. His gray eyes, however, glinted with amusement. “Watch that temper of yours—”
Maggie let out a strangled scream, her fingers balling into fists.
And before Jeremy could say another word in his own defense, Maggie launched herself at him, fists first. It was only thanks to his well-honed military training that Jeremy ducked in time to avoid receiving one of those fists in his mouth. To his very great astonishment, however, Maggie spun around at the last moment and sank her fist into his midriff instead. The blow didn’t hurt—she didn’t have enough upper body strength to really do him any damage, and besides, his stomach muscles were tough as iron—but it surprised him a good deal, especially since the move was one he had taught her himself, back when they’d been children.
“I say,” he declared, straightening up with a smile. “Good show, Mags! You’ve been working on that right cross of yours, I see.”
“You,” was all Maggie could say, through teeth gritted against the pain in her right hand. Who’d have thought a man’s stomach could be so hard? She felt as if she had punched a wall. “Get out of my room!”
“Now, Mags, really,” Jeremy said, eyeing her as she circled him, obviously looking for another opening through which to strike at him again. “This is ridiculous. You’re going to hurt yourself. Why don’t we try to discuss this like adults, shall we? After all, we aren’t children anymore—”
With a cry of sheer rage, Maggie went for him again, this time with both fists raised, apparently with the intention of pummeling his face to pulp. Jeremy, alarmed more by the strange sound she’d made than by the fact that she was trying to hit him again, threw up both his hands, and neatly caught
her by the wrists, which he hauled into the air, causing her corset to gap rather fetchingly in the front. Not willing to be subdued without a fight, Maggie swung a stockinged foot at his shin, succeeding only in stubbing her toes against impossibly hard bone, which caused her to wince and let out a yelp of pain.

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