“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 amanis very important to you, is it not?”
“And being awomanis 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.
“Beingmeis 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.
SHE SLEPT ON THEsitting 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.
