Love's Reward

“What, have you come by night, and stolen my love’s heart from him?”

—
A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Winner of the Rita Award for Best Regency

“It is a question of power,” Lady Elizabeth said archly. “I have it. You do not.”

“Really?”

Fitzroy Monteith Mountfitchet raised a brow and settled more deeply against the upholstered back of the chaise longue. He appeared to be a little foxed, his sprawl too relaxed to be seemly, his elegant coattails crushed haphazardly beneath him.

Lady Elizabeth laughed. She stood gracefully at the fireplace. Her gown of apricot silk exquisitely enhanced her slender figure. Diamonds flashed fire at her neck as she moved.

“Men have power everywhere else in this wicked world,” she said. “Why shouldn’t ladies wield it somewhere? So we have chosen our battleground and this is it. A gentleman gives way to a lady’s wishes here, does he not?”

He swung his feet up onto the chaise longue and leaned back. The red gleam from the fire was swallowed into dark shadows in his carelessly tousled hair and cast a frantic, carmine glow over his strong cheekbones and firm mouth. He was dressed for the evening: white linen cravat, ivory breeches, silk stockings, black dancing shoes, all tinged to pink by the firelight.

Dear God, the man was glorious—like a dark, exotic hero from some lost myth from the Arabian Nights!

He glanced up at her from narrowed eyes and smiled.

“In the bedroom? Undoubtedly! Guinevere glances from her window at Lancelot, and Camelot falls into ruin. Let Helen but smile, and Trojans and Greeks war to the death. Men are helpless when it comes to a beautiful woman.”

Lady Elizabeth billowed about, allowing the soft fall of her skirts to outline her legs. Music drifted into the chamber and delicately decorated the air, a lace-edge of sound, a faint echo from the distant ballroom.

She could see herself in the mirror. The flattering firelight brought a warm flush to her cheeks and cast shadows beneath her delicate jaw. She kept her voice soft, teasing.

“You speak of the heroes of romance? Bachelors all, of course! There’s such a charming inevitability to it, isn’t there? The unattached warrior and the married lady set fire to history and fable, while the poor husband boasts cuckold’s horns and finally consoles himself with a noble death. Why aren’t you married, Lord Tarrant? The rest have wives, do they not? All of Wellington’s
jeunesse dorée
: Lenwood, Hawksley, de Dagonet, Deyncourt? Lenwood even has a daughter, I hear. They say he has become distressingly domestic with some provincial little wife, and never comes to town except to badger the peers about factories and working hours. It’s too boring.”

A slight wariness crept into his features, but his voice remained casual.

“So I understand. What do you suppose is their connection to myself, madam?”

“Oh, stuff! It’s common knowledge, all that derring-do against Napoleon. You were one of them, one of the secret scouts who organized the partisans, worth a brigade to our Iron Duke.”

He held his right hand up to the firelight and studied it. The palm was square and strong. His carefully manicured nails gleamed faintly. She had a sudden vision of that hand scarred by calluses, its elegant lines blurred with dirt. For four years he had used it to wield sword or pistol, and for the more tedious daily toil of the campaign.

“We’re at peace with France now, if not with each other,” he said. “I haven’t seen any of them privately since. It’s a long time ago.”

“It’s not even two years. Wellington boasts that you conquered more Spanish hearts on the dance floor than Frenchmen on the battlefield. I can see why.” She moved closer, giving a sultry little laugh. “Then the Peninsular heroes came home to conquer hearts in England. Now they’re all married, except you.”

He glanced up and dropped his hand. “How lovely for them!”

Idly opening and closing her fan, she watched him, fascinated. There was no other gentleman in London as wickedly attractive as Fitzroy Mountfitchet, Viscount Tarrant, and with such a very dashing and mysterious reputation.

“So did those black Spanish ladies spoil you for golden hair and fair skin?” she asked. “I refuse to believe it. Don’t you find me attractive?”

His head dropped back against the arm of the chaise longue.

“I find you delectable, madam. Why do you ask? Why else do you suppose I am here, in your boudoir, while Lord Carhill entertains your guests in his ballroom without you?”

She made a small moue. “I told him I had the headache and would slip away for a while. I shall have to reappear in an hour or so, of course, or face husbandly tantrums, but no one will miss me till then.”

“Nor suspect?” He laughed. “Do you think an hour enough?”

In a whisper of silk, Lady Elizabeth stepped up to the chaise longue and dropped down beside it.

“Tarrant! Don’t be silly! How much time do we need?”

He turned on his elbow, caught her nape in an outstretched hand, and held her there for a moment, examining her features. She looked up at him under her lashes, a gesture of pure coquetry, and ran her tongue along her upper lip.

“That depends,” he said, pulling her toward him, “on whether I may dispense with the pretty flattery the situation obviously demands now.”

Lady Elizabeth bent like a willow as he lifted her face up to his and began to kiss her. Heat flushed her cheeks.

Ah! Delectable!

He slipped both hands into her hair. His fingers caressed her ears and jaw as his mouth searched hers. She moaned against his lips, a little sob of desire.

A log fell in the fireplace with a distinct crack.

He released her.

Lady Elizabeth collapsed back onto her knees, panting a little, her breasts rising and falling rapidly beneath her deep décolletage.

“Ah, Fitzroy, I knew how it would be with you.” She sighed, her blood racing. “Come, my darling hero! How can I let you remain unconquered? Let me enslave you.”

She slid one hand onto his chest to tug at his cravat.

He caught and held it. “Your maid will not come looking for you with salts?”

The question seemed lazy, unconcerned, but he kept her hand imprisoned in his.

“I have locked the door. The key is here.” She laughed as she touched her cleavage, where the diamonds sparkled. “She cannot enter. As you cannot leave. Unless you wish to retrieve the key yourself? Perhaps I will let you beg me for it.”

He ran his tongue lightly over her fingertips. “I am imprisoned, then?”

She leaned forward to touch his jaw with one forefinger.

“Admit that I have mastery over you, Fitzroy. You want me, don’t you? Then take me, darling, as Lancelot seized Guinevere.”

“Here on the chaise longue?” A faint trace of derision colored his voice.

“Why not?”

Lord Tarrant kissed her palm. “I’m not sure that I shall.”

“What do you mean?”

He stood, pulling her up with him in a hiss of apricot silk. He was over a head taller. Releasing her fingers he forced her to step back, away from him, and folded his arms across his chest.

Her pulse pounded as he swept his gaze over her delicate gold evening slippers, and up to the fine border of embroidery at the neck of her gown, and let it linger there for a moment.

“Take off your dress, Lady Carhill.”

She laughed, a little nervously. “What?”

Leaving her standing alone on the Aubusson carpet, he dropped back to the chaise longue and gazed up at her.

“Since you have so cavalierly locked out your maid, I assume you can manage without her. So, pray, take off your dress.”

She swallowed her confusion. “But I thought we would . . .”

“No,” he said softly, “you thought that I would. But I’m not prepared to do all the work when this little rendezvous was your idea. So let us take all the usual first steps as read. I have been plied with excellent wine and titillated with coteries of lovely women. We have flirted and danced and you have looked at me just so over your fan. One of your lackeys has discreetly extracted me from the ballroom to place me here in your sumptuous boudoir. You have told your husband a small falsehood and have managed to join me. We have exchanged compliments. We have kissed. There is less than an hour left. So take off your dress, madam, and let us get to it.”

Lady Elizabeth stared down at him. With a small, shaky laugh, she reached up to the clasp on her diamond necklace.

“Oh, no,” he said softly. “Leave the jewels, sweetheart. Just the dress, if you please.”

There were two sets of tiny buttons at the shoulders of the apricot silk gown. She began to unfasten them, one at a time. He lay relaxed on the couch and watched her.

Her dress fell in a soft crumple at her feet and she stepped out of it. A tightly laced corset lay beneath it, rich with white ribbons and lace, over a fine white chemise, almost transparent, stitched with a delicate border of silver embroidery. She was breathing a little fast.

“Now the lacing,” he said, as if faintly amused. “You won’t need all that whalebone.”

Lady Elizabeth pouted. “But I shall need help with the back laces.”

“Alas, I don’t feel inclined to give it. Never mind, I suppose we can manage with the corset on, like swimming in the willows.”

Her flush became fiery. “How dare you! This is outrageous.”

“Is it? How about the stockings? Can you manage them by yourself?”

“How can you expect me to undress like this, while you watch me?”

He grinned and stretched with deliberate unconcern, genuine humor warming his eyes.

“Why not? You don’t imagine that if you undress like this I shall avert my gaze, do you?”

Lady Elizabeth lost her temper, just enough to be provocative.

“It’s indecent! Not even Carhill would demand such a thing! You must look away.”

Lord Tarrant closed his eyes. “Do you mean to tell me that you deny your husband his rights to your person while offering yourself to any passing guest, and then have the effrontery to suggest that shedding your clothes in front of him is improper? Original, madam, but hardly logical.”

She stamped her foot. “I must have been mad to invite you here. I thought you were—”

“What?” He opened one eye and looked at her. “What did you think?”

“I thought you were Don Juan, if you must know. That’s what they say, isn’t it? Yet you have no more gallantry than a . . . than a barnyard rooster. Dear God! What’s the matter with you? Are you incapable?”

He stooped to the carpet and retrieved the key, where it had fallen from her dress.

“Not incapable, madam,” he replied calmly. “I just prefer to choose my own mistresses.”

Lady Elizabeth turned her back and caught up her apricot silk. “Dear heavens, you are a bastard, aren’t you?”

“Indeed not. I am the most impeccably legal heir to my father, and my mother is a lady of irreproachable propriety and always has been. I am certain that she would never have strayed from her marriage vows. Unlike you.”

She struggled into her dress. “What the devil can you know about it? You obviously have little interest in females. Do you think you have succeeded in humiliating me? There are hundreds more like you, footloose young dandies, wasting their lives on dissipation and fashion. I can see why you aren’t married like the others.”

He sounded merely tired. “I have no interest in marriage.”

She spun about, triumphant, and pointed her finger at him.

“Then you prefer boys? A common enough vice. But you’re an earl’s son. How can you not want an heir? Are you so unable that you fear you can’t get one?”

“Your sleeve is twisted.” He turned the key in his hand. “At the back.”

She tugged at the sleeve and rapidly fastened the buttons.

“I feel sorry for you.” Turning to the mirror, she patted her hair and adjusted her neckline. “What lady would willingly have you, in spite of that air of the conquering hero? Don’t tell me you’re a virgin, Lord Tarrant?”

The question was obviously absurd, and she knew it. But Lady Elizabeth, Countess of Carhill, was not prepared in any way for what he said next, nor for the deadly self-derision with which he said it.

“I have been married. She is dead.”

She spun back to see something close to anger in his face.

“It was not my intention to humiliate you,” he said. “I thought you were enjoying yourself, and that it was rather at my expense. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I shall rejoin your guests and your husband, before it’s noticed that I’m gone. I trust your headache will be better shortly.”

“You were
married?
” She caught at his sleeve as he stood up. “Fitzroy! I had no idea. I am sorry. It was in Spain?”

“Don’t be distressed.” He ran one hand gently down her cheek, then leaned forward and gave her a light kiss. “How could you have known?”

Lady Elizabeth stared up at him for a moment. So she had been misled and she had failed. She supposed she ought to be angry, for although she had acted as she had promised, she was deeply disappointed. Yet she did not feel humbled, she only felt puzzled. If he had not intended to become her lover, why had he agreed to come privately to her room?