How could he seduce a woman he liked, bed her in order to win a wager that was written into the betting book at White's?
How could he do that to any woman? What the devil could have possessed him to become a part of something quite so vulgar and tasteless? He would kill—he would quite surely kill anyone who did something like that to Hester.
There was loneliness and emptiness without Teddy, she had said. He had news for her. There was always loneliness and emptiness..It was part of the condition of living.
Mine or your own?shehad asked when he had suggested taking away those feelings with a kiss.
Hers, of course.She was the one who was lonely. He had learned long ago how to cover up the
essential emptiness of his life. He could take it away for her if she would let him.
Could he?
"Jack." Lady Knowles leaned toward him as everyone around them burst into laughter following another of her husband's humorous stories. "Whoever she is, she is a fortunate lady. You should be forced to wear a dark shade over your eyes at all times, you know. No man should be allowed to have eyes like yours."
He smiled lazily up at her and removed the blade of grass from between his teeth. "Ah, but then I would not be able to see the ladies around me," he said. "I should have to feel them with my hands. I imagine that might occasion some shrieks and slaps."
"Perhaps not as many as you think," she said, patting his arm. She sighed. "Oh, Jack, if I were only twenty years younger."
"Ah," he said, "but then I am not interested in twelve-year-olds, ma'am."
He grinned and winked at her as she tutted and gave his arm a playful shove.
He wished he were in London. He wished he could get away from the oppressive atmosphere of this house party even if only for a few hours. Where would he go?To one of his clubs?Play cards and get pleasantly drunk? Reel home and let Carter, impassive yet stiffly disapproving, put him to bed?
Find some woman he knew? Fanny, Lady Brewster, perhaps? Sally? Some woman he had not had before? Spend the night learning new ways of being pleasured by some new courtesan and sharing his own expertise with her? Make love with all his energy so that he could sink finally into peaceful oblivion?
Devil takeDiana Ingram! What was it to him that she had been happy with Teddy? That she had loved him? That he had been kind to her? What did it matter that she had not known how to go on living after his death? That she was lonely without him? What did it matter that she was in search of a more powerful love? There was no such thing as love, not beyond the sort of affection one felt for one's family, anyway.
What was it to him that she wanted a love that would make the universe explode, as she put it? She was a foolish, naive girl for all that she must be three-and-twenty at least and for all that she had been a married woman for four years. She lived in dreams. He could work her to the height of physical passion so that the stars would eventually shatter around her. But a few minutes later she would be herself again. Nothing would have changed permanently. Even making love could not change the universe.
Women and their romantic notions! And Diana Ingram was the worst of them. She could look at him with her beautiful gray eyes, and touch him with her soft, shapely body, and kiss him with her warm mouth, and he was almost willing to believe that perhaps she knew something that he did not know.
He was going to have to make a decision. Either he must leave Rotherham Hall, make some excuse to take him back to town, or he must concentrate his mind and his expertise on bedding Diana.Ingram. Once he had done so, he could forget about her and return to himself again. He could prove to himself that beneath him on a bed she was really no different from any other woman—no more and no less pleasurable to possess.
He would prefer to leave. He would far prefer it. For some reason that he could not fathom, or did not care to try to fathom, he wanted to run a million miles from Diana Ingram.
But of course he could not leave. It would be extremely ill-mannered to do so. There was this infernal conceit in the evening. And the main event, the earl's birthday with all its attendant celebrations, was still five days away.
So he was trapped.
The Marquess of Kenwood sat up to take a plate from a footman and look over a large platter of cold meats and bread rolls.
It seemed that there was no choice, then. He must return to the chase that he had faced with such relish little more than a week before. And that he still relished. He wanted Diana Ingram very badly, the wager notwithstanding.
He looked across to where she sat, between the earl and the countess, smiling glowingly at the former.
''Te he he, quoth she/Make no fool of me!"That damned song. It had been running through his head for three days. "Men I know have oaths at pleasure/But their hopes attained/Theybewray they feigned/ And their oaths are kept at leisure."
Well, sweet Kate, he thought grimly, still staring at Diana, at least I have made no oaths to her. She knows what I want of her. When she gives it to me, it will be of her own choosing and with full knowledge of the consequences. I need feel no guilt. She is no green woman.
She caught his eye across the width of three blankets and raised her chin with that stubborn little lift that he was beginning to recognize as characteristic of her. He raised one eyebrow and smiled.
Oh, yes, she was irresistible. He was going to enjoy the continued pursuit of her. He deliberately let his eyes travel down her body until she flushed and looked sharply away. Her lips were compressed in annoyance.
His smile became a grin before he turned his attention to his food and his nearest companions.
12
