His reputation and five hundred guineas of his money were at stake.
His name would survive, and he would not be reduced to begging for crusts of bread on the street.
Devil takeher. The devil was welcome to her. She would make hell a thoroughly dreary place. Women and their moralizing!
And Ernie and his.Incapable of love, indeed.No heart, indeed. Of course he knew what love was. Didn't he love his mother and sisters? Hadn't he cried with Frances when she lost that first child, who would have been his niece? Hadn't he taken Hester to Brighton for a month to take her mind off that rascal who had merely played with her feelings? He was as capable of love as the next man.
Why did one have to prove it with a woman who was not one's relative? Why did everyone think there must be a connection between love and physical passion?
They could go hang, all of them. He should never have left London.
The door opened behind him and the little upstairs maid who seemed to find no lack of errands to do in his rooms stood in the doorway to his dressing room, her eyes large with surprise. She carried a pile of starched neckcloths in her arms.
"Ooh, your lordship," she said, meeting his eyes in the mirror for a fleeting moment and bobbing a series of curtsies, I didn't know you were here. I brought these—" she indicated the linen in her arms—"because Mr. Carter was finished with starching,them. I'll leave immediately, your lordship."
The marquess motioned to the top of a chest, where she might deposit her burden.
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you, your lordship,'' the girl said, bobbing another series of curtsies. "Is there anything your lordship wishes for?"
"No, no," he said. "You may run along."
"Begging your pardon, your lordship," she said. The girl was making him feel almost seasick with her constant bobbing. "May I help you with your coat?"
He shrugged out of it, exasperated, and straightened his shirt. "Hold it, then, if you will," he said, "while I try to get both myself and my shirt neatly inside it."
The task was accomplished to his own satisfaction within a minute, though Carter would doubtless have turned faint if he could have seen the crease in the shirt beneath the coat. The chambermaid came around in front of him and smoothed the lapels of his coat quite unnecessarily.
"There, your lordship," she said, peeping up at him from beneath dark eyelashes. "Will there be anything else?"
Her dress was not cut indecently low in front, as became the servant of a noble household. But it was low enough when she stood so close and leaned even closer. Quite low enough. The marquess put his hands beneath her breasts and lifted them. He looked down at her with amused eyes.
''Alas, my sweet,'' he said, ''I have to go and play croquet just at a time when I could think of a much more congenial and energetic sport. Do those lips belong to anyone?"
They were pouting very prettily. "Just to me, your lordship," she said, "and to whomever I choose to give mem."
"Ah," he said, his thumbs brushing her nipples through the fabric of her dress. "And do you choose to give them to me?"
"I don't know, I'm sure, your lordship," she said. "You're such a fine gentleman."
He did not pause for further discussion, but kissed her quite thoroughly. And found that he was thankful after all for the imminence of the game of croquet. What was he about now? It was a personal rule that he never made advances to—or accepted open invitations from—the servants of private homes, including his own. Without the croquet he would have felt himself committed to taking the maid to his bed and making sport with her there for at least the next ten minutes.
He could not think of anything he felt less like doing.
There must be something wrong with him. He must be sickening for something. The girl was quite lusciously feminine.And very, very willing.
"Ah, my sweet," he murmured, smiling down into her eyes, "how am I to tear myself away from you?Perhaps some other time."
He turned away from her while her mouth pouted again, and took a coin from his purse.
"Go back belowstairs now before you are missed," he said, slipping the coin into the pocket of her apron.
"I am sure I did not mean to offend your lordship," she said, all wide eyes again.
He took her by the elbow and led her to the door of his bedchamber. He opened it and smiled at her, one finger beneath her chin. "On the contrary," he said. "You have pleased me well, my sweet." And he bent his head to kiss her again.
And completed the action, though Mrs. Diana Ingram chose that precise moment to sweep past his room, shoulders back, chin firmly in the air, on her way down to croquet.
Damnation!
