More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (20 page)

“The more fool they,” she said. “And I am not your mistress yet.”

He was chuckling softly when she closed the door.

She leaned back against it, thankful that there were no servants in sight. All her bravado went from her, and with it all the strength in her legs.

What on earth had she just done?

What had she agreed to—or
almost
agreed to?

She tried to feel a suitable degree of horror. But all she could really feel was enormous relief that she would not be leaving him today, never to see him again.

T WAS A HOUSE HE HAD OWNED FOR FIVE YEARS
. It was on a decent street in a respectable neighborhood. He had had it decorated and furnished at great expense. He had hired decent, reliable servants, two of whom had been there for all five years, staying to maintain the house even when it had no occupant.

It was a house of which Jocelyn was fond, representing as it did a world of private and sensual delights. And yet as soon as he stepped across the threshold with Jane Ingleby, he felt uncomfortable.

It was not just the house. It was the whole idea of her becoming his mistress. He wanted her, yes. In bed. In all the usual ways. Yet somehow the idea of Jane Ingleby as his mistress did not seem quite to fit.

“Jacobs,” he said to the butler, who bowed deferentially, “this is Miss Ingleby. She will be living here for a while. You and Mrs. Jacobs will take your orders from her.”

If Jacobs was surprised to find his master choosing a mistress from among the working classes—she was, of course, wearing the cheap gray cloak and bonnet she had worn in Hyde Park—he was far too well trained to show it.

“We will do our best to see to your comfort, ma'am,” he said, bowing to her.

“Thank you, Mr. Jacobs,” she said, inclining her head
regally before he withdrew discreetly to the nether regions of the house.

“They will hire more servants, of course,” Jocelyn said, taking Jane's elbow and beginning a tour of the house with her. “Shall I give the orders, or would you prefer to be in charge of it yourself?”

“Neither yet,” she said coolly, looking around the sitting room with its lavender carpet and furnishings, its pink draperies and frilled cushions. “I may not be staying longer than a few days. We have no agreement yet.”

“But we will.” He guided her toward the dining room. “I shall come in the morning for our discussion, Jane. But first I will take you to a modiste I know on Bond Street. She will measure you for the clothes you will need.”

“I will wear my own clothes, thank you,” he was not surprised to hear, “until I am your mistress. If we come to an agreement on that point, then you may summon a dressmaker here if you wish. I am not going to set foot on Bond Street.”

“Because it will be known that you are my mistress?” he asked, watching her run her fingertips over the polished surface of the round dining table—it could be considerably enlarged to seat guests, but when dining alone with his mistress he preferred to be within touching distance. “You think that a matter for shame? I assure you it is not. Courtesans of the highest class, Jane, are almost on a par with ladies. Above them in some ways. They often have considerably more influence. You will be highly respected as my mistress.”

“If I become your mistress, your grace,” she said, “I will be neither ashamed nor proud. I will be taking the
purely practical step of securing employment that will be both lucrative and congenial to me.”

He laughed. “Congenial, Jane?” he said. “You bowl me over with your enthusiasm. Shall we go upstairs?”

He wondered if she felt as passionless as she looked. But he remembered the two embraces they had shared and drew his own conclusions, especially from the one in the music room. She had been anything but passionless on that occasion. And even outside her room, after she had sung for his guests, there had been a yearning that he might have kindled had he chosen.

He was still in the doorway of the bedchamber when she, a few steps ahead of him, turned toward him.

“One thing must be made perfectly clear even today,” she said, her hands clasped at her waist, her chin lifted as if for battle, a martial gleam in her eyes. “If I decide to stay, everything in this house has to be changed.”

“Indeed?” He raised his eyebrows and his quizzing glass and took his time looking about the room. The wide, canopied, mahogany bed with its intricately carved posts was covered in brocaded silk, with the same silk pleated in a rosebud design on the canopy. The bed curtains were of heavy, costly velvet, as were the window draperies. The carpet was soft and thick underfoot.

All were a rich scarlet.

“Indeed!” she replied firmly, pure scorn in her voice. “This house is disgusting. It is a caricature of a love nest. I will not sleep in this room even alone. I will certainly not lie here with you. I would feel like a whore.”

Sometimes one had to take a stand with Jane Ingleby. The trouble was he was unaccustomed to taking stands since nobody had ever made it necessary before now.

“Jane,” he said, planting his booted feet apart, clasping his hands at his back, schooling his features into their most forbidding aspect, “I believe it is necessary to remind you that I am not the one being offered employment. I have made you an offer, which you are free to accept or reject. There are plenty who would rush to take your place here given half a chance.”

She stared at him.

“My mistake, your grace,” she said after a few silent moments, during which he had to concentrate hard not to shift uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I thought we had agreed to discuss terms. But I see you have reverted to that ridiculous posturing as autocratic aristocrat, whose will no sane person would even dream of crossing. You had better go and give someone else half a chance. I am leaving.”

She took one purposeful step toward him. Only one. He stood his ground in the doorway. She could try going through him if she wished.

“What is so objectionable about the house?” he was weak enough to ask her. “I have never before had a single complaint about it.”

But she was quite right, damn it. He had felt it as soon as he had stepped inside the house with her. It was is if he had been entering a strange dwelling and seeing it for the first time. This house was just not Jane.

“I can think of two words to describe it,” she said. “I could probably think of a whole dictionary full if I had more time. But those that leap to mind are
sleaze
and
fluff
. Neither of which is tolerable to me.”

He pursed his lips. Those two words perfectly described the house. He had had the sitting room designed for a feminine taste, of course, not his own. Or what he
had imagined was feminine taste. Effie had always appeared perfectly at home there. So had Lisa and Marie and Bridget. And this room? Well, in candlelight it could always heighten his sexual desire. The predominant reds did marvelous things to the color of naked female flesh.

“It is one of my first conditions,” she said. “This room and the sitting room. They are to be redone to my instructions. This point is not negotiable. Take it or leave it.”

“One of?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Tell me, Jane, am I to be allowed to write some conditions of my own into this contract of ours? Or am I to be your slave? I would like to know. Actually the prospect of being a slave has a certain appeal. Does it come with chains and whips?” He grinned at her.

She did not smile.

“A contract is a two-way agreement,” she said. “Of course there will be certain things that you will insist upon. Like unlimited access to my—”

“Favors?” he suggested when she floundered.

“Yes.” She nodded briskly.

“Unlimited access.” He gazed steadily at her and was gratified to see that the rosiness in her cheeks owed nothing to the redness of her surroundings. “Even when you are unwilling, Jane? Even when you have a headache or some other malady? You would agree in writing to act the martyr even if my appetites prove insatiable?”

She thought for a moment. “I imagine it would be a reasonable demand for you to make, your grace,” she said. “That is what mistresses are for, after all.”

“Poppycock!” He narrowed his gaze on her. “If that is the attitude with which you approach the liaison, Jane, I want none of you. I do not want a body to plow whenever
my sexual urges are out of control. There are innumerable brothels I might use for such a purpose. I want someone with whom to relax. Someone with whom to take the ultimate pleasure. Someone to pleasure in return.”

The color deepened in her cheeks, but she kept her spine straight and her chin raised.

“What if you came here ten days in a row and I said no each time?” she asked him.

“Then I would consider myself a damnable failure,” he said. “I would probably go home and blow my brains out.”

She laughed suddenly and looked so vividly beautiful and golden amid the scarlet that he felt his breath catch in his throat.

“How absurd!” she said.

“If for ten straight days a man cannot entice his mistress into bed,” he said meekly, “he might as well be dead, Jane. What is there for him to live for if his sexual appeal is gone?”

She tipped her head to one side and regarded him thoughtfully. “You are joking,” she said. “But you are half serious too. Being a
man
is very important to you, is it not?”

“And being a
woman
is not important to you?”

She considered her answer. It was characteristic of her, he had noticed before, not always to rush into saying the first thing that came into her head.

“Being
me
is important to me,” she said. “And since I am a woman, then I suppose being a woman is important too. But I do not have a mental image of what a perfect woman is, of what other people look for in me because I am a woman. I do not slavishly pattern my appearance
or my behavior on any image. I need to be true to myself.”

Jocelyn felt a sudden wave of amusement.

“I have never stood in this doorway before,” he said, “halfway across the room from a woman, discussing the nature of gender and sexuality. We should by now, you know, have consummated our intent to contract a certain relationship. We should be lying exhausted and naked and mutually satisfied on that bed.”

This time there was no other way to describe her face than to say she blushed.

“I suppose,” she said, “you expected that once you had got me here I would succumb to your devastating charm and the allure of this room?”

It was exactly what he had expected—or hoped for anyway.

“And I suppose,” he said with a sigh, “you will not allow me to lay one lascivious finger on you until this room looks like a monk's cell. Go ahead, then, Jane. Give your orders to Jacobs. Do whatever you wish with my house. I will do my part and pay the bills. Shall we go back downstairs? I daresay Mrs. Jacobs has a tea tray ready and is bursting with curiosity to catch a glimpse of you.”

“She can bring it to the dining room,” Jane said, sweeping past him when at last he stepped to one side of the doorway.

“Where will you sleep tonight?” he asked, following her down. “On the dining room table?”

“I will find somewhere,” she assured him. “You need not concern yourself about it, your grace.”

He walked away from the house an hour later, cane and painfully scraped palm and all, having dismissed his
town carriage earlier. He was eager to hear Marsh's report from Ferdinand's stable. It might be impossible to prove that any of the Forbeses had had access to the curricle. But all he needed was the possibility that the broken axle had come courtesy of one of them.

Then they would have the Duke of Tresham to deal with.

He wondered if word had yet arrived about the result of the race. Unusually for him, all he was really concerned about was that Ferdinand had got to Brighton safely.

He should never have suggested that Jane Ingleby become his mistress, he thought. There was something all wrong about it.

And yet his loins ached for her.

Why had the damned woman not simply tiptoed on past that morning in Hyde Park when she had seen that there was a duel pending, as any decent woman would have done?

If he had never set eyes upon her, he would not now be walking around with the curious sensation that either he or his world was standing on its head.

S
HE SLEPT ON THE
sitting room sofa. The color scheme and all the frills and knickknacks were in atrociously bad taste, but at least it was not as vulgar a room as the bedchamber.

While they had talked in that room during the afternoon, she had had lurid, uncomfortable images of lying tangled with him on the bed amid all that scarlet silk. She did not know what full sexual arousal felt like, but it must be something very like what she had felt then.
What she had agreed to—or was about to agree to—had become appallingly real to her.