“Would you have me become your mistress?” she demanded, hating the thought but knowing she must face the truth of their impossible situation.
She had not worked this hard to become independent and to foster the liberty of her fellow women only to fall into the bed of a handsome man and to answer to him for the roof over her head. Until he grew bored of her…
His silence was telling.
She wrenched herself away from him, furious with herself as much as she was with him. “Have you nothing to say?”
“I would reward you handsomely, Isabella. I am a wealthy man. You would never need work another day in your life,” he said.
How she longed to slap him. He had just delivered the most intense, passionate moment of her life directly to the dirt, every bit as surely as he had swept those pots to the ground. Part of her hated him for it. The pragmatic part of her, however, understood, and she loathed herself for that even more.
“I would far prefer to work all the rest of my days than to become a gentleman’s whore,” she bit out. “If you will excuse me, Your Grace, I must return to the party before my absence grows untenably long and there will be no means of excusing it.”
Already, there was precious little chance that Callie would not find her extended disappearance troubling. Fortunately, she was not a society lady. She had no doubt that most of the lords and ladies in attendance this evening would not take note of her. Still, she needed a hasty visit to the withdrawing room to make certain she was not covered in soil and a quick tack of her hem rather than a full repair. She had never excelled at prevarication, but she hoped she could at least fool her hostess.
“Isabella, if you will but listen to reason,” he began.
“No,” she cut him off coolly, refusing to hear another word. “If you have a care for me at all, you will wait here until I return to the party.”
“I will be damned if I almost make love to you in the orangery and then you go and watch some damned conjurer change a tree into a pagoda,” he growled.
“I am afraid you do not have a choice in the matter, Duke,” she told him. “I am my own woman, just as I have always been.”
With those parting words, she spun on her heel and fled the orangery.
Chapter Nine
Awaiting Isabella Hilgrovein the small salon at her modest home was an exercise in patience to which he was markedly ill-suited at the moment. Partially because Benedict was still consumed with unrequited desire for her and partially because her nervous maid returned every few minutes to ask him if he was sure he did not want tea whilst he passed the time. Also because he was irritated and in desperate need and he had never been particularly talented at swallowing his damnable pride.
He sighed as he stopped to study a table laden with various bric-a-brac: two small marble busts of Grecian deities—Demeter and Aphrodite, unless he was mistaken—and a collection of pictures in ornate frames. One was a picture of a storefront, another a stern woman who resembled Isabella. There was also a book of poetry placed with the careful arrangement in haphazard fashion, which suggested it had been temporarily abandoned there.
Had she been recently reading it? Benedict drummed his fingers on the cover of the slim, leather volume. He longed to take it up, flip through the pages though he loathed verse, just on the chance he might read something which had recently fallen beneath her eye.
Good God, how besotted had he become? Someone ought to deliver him a swift kick in the arse. What the devil was this maudlin sentimentality? Since when had he ever kissed a woman and then closed off all thoughts of another?Christ, he was already celibate as a monk. Now he was contemplating reading poetry simply because she had perhaps been flipping through the pages?
He drummed his fingers again. He was not going to read the book,damn it. He had already sacrificed enough in venturing here. The reward seemed worth the risk, even if it was against his will. Something about visiting Isabella’s home felt oddly personal. As if he were seeing a rare glimpse into the woman beneath the black dresses that would not have otherwise been afforded him. Her house intrigued him, but perhaps that was because everything about Isabella did.
The location was not far from Mayfair, but neither was her address a fashionable one in the strictest sense. It was, however, more suited to the goddess in the golden dress who had bewitched him in the orangery at Westmorland House some two days before. Like the two dresses he had seen her wearing that had not been her traditional, nondescript work frocks designed to cloak the rich sensuality of her curves, Isabella’s home was a revelation.
But he was not going to read the damned book. Poetry made his head hurt. He dealt in fact. The aesthetic was beyond him. His was not a soul given to note the beauty of a country sky or the verdant blades of summer grass. He did not find higher meaning in the petals of flowers or the lips of a woman.
At least, he had not. Not until Isabella.
“Is Your Grace certain I cannot fetch you tea?”
The question from the threshold, at least the fifth time the query had been offered, had him snatching back his hand as if the poetry volume had singed him. Or as if he had been caught about to steal. Perhaps neither was far from the truth.
“No, madam,” he told the servant. “Thank you.”
She curtsied deeply, then emitted a nervous giggle he knew had everything to do with the distinction of a duke paying her mistress a call and nothing to do with true humor. An odd creature, this Betsy, to be sure. As he watched her disappear, he wondered if Isabella did not have anyone else to aid her here. Surely the running of a household of this size could not be managed with Isabella and a lone maid?
And who was here to protect her? The street was safe enough. Certainly, it was a far cry from the rookeries. However, he had never in his life seen a woman living on her own. It was strange. Unsettling. As was the realization that he was worrying about Isabella Hilgrove. That he cared.
He was not meant to care.
Still, his fingers wandered back to the poetry volume by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Giving in to temptation, he snatched it up. But as he flipped it open, he made a discovery he had not expected. An inscription written in bold scrawl.
Miss Isabella Hilgrove
