"Deal the cards!" the marquess commanded.
He won three hands in a row quite handily although his concentration was only half on the game. His eyes kept roaming to the staircase, but of course she did not come down.And would not, doubtless, until he had left the inn.He supposed it would be somewhat embarrassing for a female to come face-to-face in the harsh light of morning with the stranger who had shared her bed for half of the night before and who had stripped her and caressed her and aroused her and taken her to the very brink of penetration.
And she was no ordinary female. She was a lady. Both her appearance and demeanor of the day before had shown him that. She had doubtless been suffering from the vapors ever since. Though perhaps not. She might be a lady in rank and appearance, but she was allwomanin bed. He wondered about the absent husband or lover she had taken him for.
And envied the man.
The night had progressed like an absurd bedroom farce. When he had closed the door of her room behind him, clad only in his breeches, the rest of his clothes bundled under hisarm,it was to find Carter and the lady's maid in heated conversation in the doorway to his room.
Carter's eyes had taken in the bareness of his upper body and feet and thrown him a look of disdain such as only valets of a very superior class were capable of.
The girl's eyes had taken in the same details, and her flush without a doubt had extended down to her toenails.
"My lady!" she cried, throwing her hands in the air, apparently unaware of her unfetching appearance in a shapeless and wrinkled shift. "My poor lamb."
"Hush," Lord Kenwood had commanded. "Your poor lamb is quite safe, my girl, and would have been saved from embarrassment too if you had only remembered at bedtime which was your own room."
"This person," Carter had said—Carter had a gift for making a person sound like a worm beneath the toe of his boot—"this person offered to break my head with the water jug, m'lord. And I do not know what she was doing in your room if she was not robbing your valuables, since your person was not in there."
Bridget had appeared to swell like a hot air balloon. "I do take mortal offense at that insinuation," she had said. "I have never stolen so much as a tin spoon, my man, I would have you know."
"Hush!" The marquess's tone had silenced both combatants. "I have no doubt your mistress needs you, my girl—Bridget, is it? Pick up your dress and go to her immediately, if you please."
It was to the girl's credit that she had not quite passed out when she looked down at herself and realized her dreadful state of deshabille. If she had blushed scarlet at sight of him, she had turned more puce at sight of herself. She had obeyed him immediately, throwing her hands in the air again and calling on a superior power to love them all,
Carter, it seemed, had been woken earlier from his uncomfortable perch beside the dead kitchen fire by the arrival of the barmaid, all injured indignation. She had had a thing or two to say about gentlemen who promised one a night's occupation and for whom one had kept oneself up later than usual, though that was late enough, the good Lord knew, washing one's hands and face and combing one's hair and dabbing on some scent from one's only precious bottle, only to find when one went to his room that there was another doxy there.
"Doxy," the marquess had commented. "Bridget? Oh, unfair, Carter, unfair.Poor Bridget."
And men to find, the barmaid had continued, that the maid had already been abandoned in favor of the mistress, with whom the grand gentleman had chosen to sport for the rest of the night—in her room, if you please. Who did the strumpet think she was?A royal princess?
Carter had not quite followed the girl's logic, but he had concluded after she had retired and he had endured another hour of discomfort that his master's room must be empty and that it would be stupid of him not to make use of the truckle bed he had set up earlier the evening before.
"But when I got here, m'lord," he hadsaid,his voice accusing and aggrieved, "it was to find that person occupying my bed and offering to throw things at my head. Unsavory goings-on, if I may make so bold as to say so."
"Feel free," Lord Kenwood had said, kicking off his breeches again with a sigh of relief and climbing
into his own bed at last."But very quietly and into your pillow, if you will, Carter."
But he had not slept. Damn his mouth. Why had he not just come when she had begged him to come and where she had begged him to come, and explored the interesting question of her identity when passion had been sated?So soft.So yielding.So pantingly hot and aroused.
Damnation!
Carter had raised his head in silent and long-suffering protest when the marquess thumped his pillow vengefully.
A strange, strange night, he thought now, the third game of cards won.Almost a blissful night.A few more seconds and it would have been too late for either of them to wonder about—or worry about—the identity of the other. And he would never see her again.Strange to have shared that and never to have looked fully into each other's eyes.Deuce takeit, but he did not even know the color of her eyes.
Lester hurled down his cards in disgust, stretched, and crossed the room restlessly to the outer door. "Another hour," he said, "and we can risk it. It's drying fast out there."
"Good," Lord Crensford said. "Another two hours would have me climbing the walls for amusement."
The marquess strolled across the room to the barmaid, who was busily and vengefully polishing a brass candlestick.
"I am afraid I missed you last night, my dear," he said, resting one hand lightly on her hip.
She tossed her head and pursed her lips. "It's all the same to me," she said. "I'm a good girl, like I said. My pa won't half like it that I have had to share a roof with a couple of high-classed doxies."
"I am sure you are a good girl," he said soothingly. "Allow me." He showed her a gold coin that had her eyes widening to such an extent that they were almost released from their sockets, and placed it edgewise between her breasts. She watched as he slid it down into her cleavage with two fingers.
