"Where is she?" Lord Crensford demanded. "What have you done with her?"
"She is somewhere about the house or gardens, I imagine," the marquess said. "Before she left here I laid her back across the top of the pianoforte and had my wicked way with her." He depressed one of the keys with the nail of his forefinger and drew it up the length of the keyboard.
"If you did," Lord Crensford said, his voice shaking almost out of control, "I'll kill you. I'll kill you right here with my bare hands."
Lord Kenwood got to his feet and crossed the room to examine a Constable that was hanging on the wall there. He still had not looked around. "You're making an ass of yourself, Ernie," he said.
"Yes." Lord Crensford had mastered the trembling of his voice. "To you it would be asinine to protect a lady's honor. To you, females are only to be used. But Diana is my sister-in-law, Jack, and I care for her. And I owe her protection. She doesn't have Teddy anymore, and I am Teddy's elder brother. I'mherbrother." He strode a few steps into the room. "Did you touch her?"
"Deviltakeit, Ernie." The marquess turned, and his relative was surprised to see his face serious and tight-lipped. The customary mocking humor had deserted it for the moment. "Are you asking me if I touched her with the tip of one finger?If I kissed her?If I mounted her?I'll give you an answer." He strode toward the other and stopped only when he was a few paces away. "It is none of your business what Diana Ingram and I do—or do not do—when we are alone together. We are both adult. If you are so fond of her, do you not trust her to behave in a manner consistent with her character? If you pretend to any knowledge of me at all, do you not trust me to take nothing by force that is not freely offered? Take yourself off, Ernie, before I plant my fist between your eyes and have to live with that act of aggression on my conscience."
"She is an innocent," Lord Crensford said. "She married Teddy when she was eighteen, and she certainly would not have learned the ways of the world from him. She has been with her mother and father for the year since he died. It's no fair contest, Jack. She'll give, you'll take, she'll be left with a broken heart, and you'll move on to your next victim.'' He noticed the whiteness around the marquess's mouth and nostrils, but he was too indignant to feel alarm.
"Get out of my sight, Ernie." Lord Kenwood was speaking very quietly through his teeth."Now."
"I'm going," Lord Crensford said. "But you have to give over this wager, Jack. I feel sick with guilt over the whole thing. It'sall myfault. I was damnably drunk—I had been thinking all night that it should have been me that died, not Teddy. So Diana was on my mind, I suppose. I deserve to be shot."
"I am not in any mood to hear anyone's sniveling confession," the marquess said grimly.
''Dammit, Jack!'' Lord Crensford slammed his open hand down on top of the pianoforte. "Diana's name must not be dragged through the mud. If you had any decency at all, you would go back to White's and tell Rittsman and anyone else who was there that the wager must be struck from the books. Pay him his damned five hundred guineas.Double it.If you win, I'll have it on my conscience for the rest of my life."
"Get out of here!" Lord Kenwood spoke with ominous quiet.
"If you were pursuing her out of love it would be bad enough, given your reputation," Lord Crensford continued, undeterred. "But you don't know the meaning of the wordlove, Jack. It's what comes of not having a heart either, I suppose. I think I am going to tell Diana about the whole thing."
The marquess, whose hands had been clenched into fists at his sides, relaxed those hands suddenly and flexed the fingers. He raised one eyebrow. The mockery was back in his eyes.
"Is there a nice muddy duckpond hereabouts?" he asked. "If so, you really must stand with your back to it when you tell her. And let me know ahead of time so that I can witness your being shoved into it, my boy. I would not miss the show for worlds. I can just imagine how any female would enjoy being told such a thing. You might as well open your mouth and place your booted foot right inside it, Ernie, and save yourself a ducking. And you need not after all take yourself beyond my sight. I will take myself off beyond yours."
And of course, he thought, as he sauntered through the hall and up the stairs, croquet must be due to start within the next few minutes. He would have to stroll about the lawn tapping a ball with a mallet and resist the urge to swing the thing past his shoulder and crack the ball a few hundred yards through the air.
Carter was not in his dressing room. And what did he mean by not being there? The marquess ignored the fact that his valet had no possible reason for being upstairs at that particular time of day.
His coat was too tight for playing croquet in.Too damned tight.He needed the green superfine. He struggled out of the offending garment, feeling thoroughly disgruntled and aggrieved, though he could with the greatest of ease have summoned his valet by pulling the tasseled bell rope.
Thedevil takethat ridiculous wager. And thedevil takeDiana Ingram.And Ernie too, for that matter.
He did not need sermons. He went to church every Sunday to hear a sermon. One a week was quite enough, thank you very much.Love and commitment, indeed.He had merely kissed the woman and suggested that they share a little mutual pleasure. And she had started talking about love and commitment. Did she think he was going to marry her in order to get her into bed?
The woman could go hang for all he cared.And the wager too.And Ernie could keep himself beyond the range of his fists. And there was no way this damned coat was going to go on without rumpling his shirt up into giant frills around his neck. Damn Carter. Where was he when he was most needed?Belowstairs lording it over all the lesser mortals there, doubtless.One of these days he was going to have to dismiss the man and hire someone a little more human.
Devil takeDiana Ingram! She had started that kiss. He had been quite prepared to tease for another few days before attempting to come close to her mouth. She was the one who had turned in his arms and set those firm and lovely breasts against his coat. She was the one who had raised her face so that he had found himself looking into her wide gray eyes and down to moist, parted lips. What had she expected
him to do? Start talking about the weather?
She had invited the kiss, the hussy. And she had enjoyed it.And participated in it.And yet she was not prepared to take the consequences of her own actions. She had stood on her feet afterward, cheeks glowing, eyes flashing, bosom heaving, and delivered her sermon.
He wondered if she had written Teddy's Sunday sermons for him. All about love and commitment, they would have been. The congregation would have been in tears of rapture.
One kissed a female and was expected to declare undying love for her and lifelong devotion? The woman was an idiot.A prude.A hypocrite.She belonged in a country parsonage.Or a nunnery.Or a madhouse.
Damnationtakethis coat.
He had allowed her to nettle him. He had never allowed a woman to nettle him before. Or any man, for that matter. He was thoroughly nettled.
Why?
A woman had allowed him to kiss her but had refused to allow him to bed her. A dreadful tragedy indeed!
