“I do notknowwhat happened,” Jocelyn said through his teeth. “She has not seen fit to confide in me. But let me say this. Jardine had better be dead as the proverbial doornail. If he is not, it will be my distinct pleasure to make him wish he were.”
“If you need any help,” Brougham offered, “look no further than yours truly, Tresham.”
“What are you going to do about Lady Sara, Tresh?” Lord Kimble asked.
“Thrash her within an inch of her life,” Jocelyn said viciously. “Get to the bottom of that ridiculous story. Get leg shackled to her and make her sorry for the rest of her life that she was ever born. In that order.”
“Leg shackled.” Conan Brougham winced. “Because she is your mistr—” He was overtaken suddenly by a fit of coughing, brought on perhaps by a sharp dig in the ribs from Viscount Kimble’s elbow.
“Leg shackled,” Jocelyn repeated. “But first I am going to get foxed. Inebriated. Drunk as a lord. Three sheets to the wind.”
The trouble was, of course, that he never seemed able to get drunk when he wanted to, no matter how much he imbibed. He rather believed, by the time he left White’s alone at something past midnight, that he had consumed a vast quantity of liquor. But unless he was drunker than he realized, he was walking a straight line in the direction of his mistress’s house, and he still felt only coldly furious instead of passionately angry. How could he thrash her—not that he ever could literally beat her or any other woman. How could he deliver one of his famous tongue-lashings, then, if he could feel no heat with his anger?
By the time he had reached the house and let himself in with his key, he could think only of humiliating her, of reminding her of her very subordinate position in his life. He was going to have to marry the woman, of course, even if she did not realize it yet. She would be his wife in name. But she would soon understand that always, for the rest of her days, she would be less to him than a mistress.
19
E CAME AFTER MIDNIGHT, LONG AFTER JANEhad given up expecting him, though she was still up, pacing from the den to the dining room to the sitting room, knowing that something was terribly wrong. She was in the den, gazing at his portrait of her, her arms wrapped defensively about her waist, when she heard his key in the outer door. She hurried to meet him, picking up a candlestick as she went. But she mustered the self-respect to step quietly into the hall. She was glad of that restraint a moment later.
He was wearing his black opera cloak. He removed his silk hat and gloves with careful deliberation before turning to look at her. When he did so, Jane found herself gazing at the Duke of Tresham—that stranger from her past. The dark, cold, cynical, and surely inebriated Duke of Tresham. She smiled.
“Upstairs!” he commanded with cold hauteur and a slight jerk of his head in the direction of the stairs.
“Why?” She frowned.
He raised his eyebrows and looked at her as if she were a worm beneath his foot.
“Why?” he asked softly. “Why, Jane? Have I mistaken the address, by any chance? But my key fit the lock. Is this not the house at which I keep my mistress? I have come to avail myself of my mistress’s services. I need a bed in order to do that comfortably and her person on that bed. The bed is upstairs, I believe.”
“You are foxed!” she said, matching him in coldness.
“Am I?” He looked surprised. “But not too foxed to find my way to my mistress’s house. Not too foxed to climb the stairs to her bed. Not too foxed to get it up, Jane.”
She flushed at his coarseness and stared at him while her heart felt too like a leaden weight to be capable of breaking. But it would break, she knew, once this night was over. Fool! Oh, fool, not only to have fallen in love with him, but to have dreamed that he had fallen for her too.
“Upstairs!” He pointed again. And then he nodded. “Ah, I have realized the reason for your hesitation. I forgot to say please.Pleasego upstairs, Jane. Please remove all your clothes and hairpins when you get there. Please lie on your back on the bed so that I may avail myself of your services. Please keep your end of our contract.”
His voice was colder than ice. His eyes were as black as the night.
She had no good reason to refuse him. It had never been part of their bargain that he must love her before she would grant him her favors. But she felt suddenly disoriented, as if a week—the most precious week of her life—had just been erased without a trace. As if she had dreamed it. As if he had never become her companion, her friend, her lover. Her soul mate.
When all was said and done, she was merely his mistress.
She turned and preceded him up the stairs, the candlestick held high, her heart turned to stone. No, not that. A stone felt no pain. She blinked back tears. He would not see such a sign of weakness in her.
Never!
“I have come here, Jane,” he said a few moments later, standing inside the door of her bedchamber, his expression quite inscrutable—except that there was something about him that spoke of inebriation and threatened danger, “to be entertained by my mistress. How are you going to entertain me?”
It felt again as if the past week had not been. If it had not, of course, she would have found nothing particularly offensive in his words. Therewasnothing offensive in them. She must not respond as if she thought there were. She must simply forget the past week. But she hesitated too long.
“You do not have a headache, by any chance, Jane?” There was heavy irony in his voice. “Or your courses?”
Her courses were due within the next few days, and she had been feeling a justifiable anxiety about them. But she would not worry before she must. She had known the consequences of such a liaison from the start. There was even a clause in the contract that dealt with children of their affair.
“Or are you simply repulsed by me tonight?” he asked, looking more dangerous than ever with his eyes narrowed on her. “Are you going to exercise your prerogative, Jane, and send me off to hell, my lust unsatisfied?”
“No, of course not.” She looked at him calmly. “I will be pleased to entertain you, your grace. What else do I have to think of and dream of and plan for during all the long hours when you are not here, after all?”
