She was going to come out into the open at last andfight.
But not just yet. That was the agreement she made with herself as she pulled weeds from about the rosebushes and turned the soil until it was a richer brown. A definite time limit must be set so that she would not continue to procrastinate week after week, month after month. She was going to give herself one month, one calendar month, starting today. One month to be Jocelyn’s mistress, his love, though he would not be aware of the latter, of course. One month to spend with him as a person, as a friend in the den, if he ever returned there, as a lover in the bed upstairs.
One month.
And then she was going to give herself up. Without telling him. There might be scandal for him, of course, when it became known that he had harbored her at Dudley House for three weeks, or if anyone knew that she had been his mistress here. But she would not worry about that. His life had been one scandal after another. He appeared to thrive on them. She thought he would probably be rather amused by this particular one.
One month.
Jane leaned back on her heels to inspect her work, but Phillip was approaching from the direction of the house.
“Mr. Jacobs sent me, ma’am,” he said, “to tell you that a new pianoforte just arrived and an easel and other parcels too. He wants to know where you want them put.”
Jane got to her feet, her heart soaring, and followed him back to the house.
One glorious month, in which she would not even try to guard her feelings.
One month of love.
THERE FOLLOWED A WEEKduring which Jocelyn almost totally ignored his family, the Olivers, the Forbeses, and all topics of gossip with which thetoncontinued to entertain itself. A week during which he rode in the park most mornings and spent an hour or two afterward breakfasting at White’s and reading the papers and conversing with his friends, but during which he attended few social functions.
Kimble and Brougham were highly diverted, of course, and very inclined to ribaldry. Until, that was, the three of them were walking along a fortunately deserted street on the way from White’s one morning and Kimble opened his mouth.
“All I can say, Tresh,” he said, pretending to sound bored, “is that when the delectable Miss Ingleby has finally exhausted you, you may pass her on to me, if you please, and I will see if I can exhaust her. I daresay I know a trick or two she will not have learned from you. And if—”
His monologue was rudely interrupted when a fist collided with the left side of his jaw and with a look of blank astonishment he crashed to the pavement. Jocelyn looked with scarcely less astonishment at his own still-clenched fist.
“Oh, I say!” Conan Brougham protested.
Jocelyn spoke curtly to his friend, who was gingerly fingering his jaw. “Do you want satisfaction?”
“Oh, I say,” Brougham said again. “I cannot be second tobothof you.”
“You should have told me, old chap,” Kimble said ruefully, shaking his head to clear it before scrambling to his feet and brushing at his clothes, “and I would not have flapped my jaws. By Jove, you are in love with the wench. In which case the punch was understandable. But you might have been more sporting and warned me, Tresh. It is not the most comfortable of experiences to walk into one of your fists. No, of course I am not about to slap a glove in your face, so you need not look so damned grim. I meant no disrespect to the lady’s honor.”
“And I did not mean to endanger our friendship.” Jocelyn extended his right hand, which his friend took rather warily. “It is all very well for you and Conan to tease, Kimble. I would do no less to you. But no one else is to be drawn into this. I will not have Jane publicly dishonored.”
“I say!” Brougham sounded suddenly indignant. “You do not believe we have been spreading the word, Tresham? The very idea! I did not believe I would live to see the day when you would be in love, though.” He laughed suddenly.
“Love be damned!” Jocelyn said gruffly.
But apart from that one incident, almost the whole of his attention for the week was taken up by the house where Jane lived and where he spent most of his time—in two separate but strangely complementary capacities. He spent his afternoons and several of his evenings in their den with her, almost never touching her. He spent his nights in the bedchamber with her, making love to her and sleeping with her.
It was a magical week.
A week to remember.
A week of such intense delight that it could not possibly last. It did not, of course.
But before it ended, there was that week.…
17
NCE OR TWICE THEY STROLLED IN THE GARDEN, and Jane showed him what she had already done with it and explained what she still intended to do. But most of the time they spent indoors. It was a misty, wet week anyway.
Jane had simply abandoned herself to sheer pleasure. She spent hours stitching by the fire, necessary because of the damp chill, the autumn woods spreading in glorious profusion across one corner of the linen cloth, then another. Sometimes he read to her—they had reached almost the halfway point ofMansfield Park. More often in the evenings he played the pianoforte. The music was almost all his own composition. Sometimes it was halting, uncertain at the start, as if he did not know where the music came from or where it was going. But she came to recognize the point at which it went beyond an activity of the mind and hands and became one simply of the heart and soul. Then the music flowed.
Sometimes she stood behind him or sat beside him and sang—mostly folk songs and ballads with which they were both acquainted. Even, surprisingly, a few hymns, which he sang with her in a good baritone voice.
