He gave her his back, leaning on a chair, the muscles in his back and arms straining rigidly. “How can I ask such a stupid question!” Still, he would not turn to face her. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again—I promise.”
“It’s not your fault,” Jane told him, getting to her feet. He would not face her. She hesitated, wanting to comfort him. “Both of us are responsible adults. I did not deny you.”
He didn’t move. She heard him curse. She could see the tendons straining in the back of his neck. Hesitantly Jane approached and laid a palm on his waist. He flinched as if struck. “Don’t touch me!”
Jane withdrew, hurt.
“I promise you,” the earl said harshly, turning to look at her. His eyes were silver with pain and some form of deep, internal punishment. “I’ll send Molly to you.”
And then he was gone.
Jane did not see the earl the rest of that day. It was as if he were avoiding her. With the incident in the morning room past, she began to think more clearly. There was no question that he had broken their agreement, even if she had been a willing party once he’d started kissing her. Yet she could not be angry. She had only to remember her own ecstasy in his arms, and his own agony after, to keep any wrath at bay.
And Jane worried about him.
What dark obsessions tormented him? What dark fires burned in his darker soul? And why, why did she have the terrible urge to heal him and make him laugh and smile?
Even when she arrived at the Criterion for the evening’s show she could not shake him from her thoughts. Robert informed her that they had another full house. This momentarily distracted her.
She knew her performance was off that night, and knew it was because of him. She did her best but could not lose herself in her role. In the back of her mind there loomed a hot memory she could not shed. And after, after the polite, scattered applause, the press attacked her outside her dressing room once again.
“Is the child yours?”
“Why keep it a secret?”
“He took her to Regents Park today and admitted she is his. Any comment?”
“Is it true you were Dragmore’s ward in the summer of seventy-four?”
“Wouldn’t that mean you are still his ward?”
“Did he abuse his position? The childisyours?”
“So you were what—seventeen that summer?”
“Why didn’t he marry you then?”
Jane escaped into her room, with Gordon slamming the door behind her.
She was frozen, stunned, unable to move. Unable to breathe.
“Good Lord!” Gordon cried. “My God! The impertinence! Jane, are you all right?”
Her hand fluttered to her breast. Her eyes were wide. She was still unable to move. And she was whiter than death. “Oh, God, what next?”
The earl could not find solace in brandy.
“Darling, what ails you tonight?”
He did not hear his mistress. Amelia huffed with frustration. They were in her parlor, Amelia dressed for an evening out, the earl in his breeches, boots, and shirt, the latter open halfway, untucked and wrinkled. There was a shadow on his face, but it was nothing compared to the shadow in his eyes. He had drunk half a bottle of whiskey, but he wasn’t drunk. To the contrary, he was stone-cold sober.
“Fuck,” he said viciously, and he sent the bottle sailing onto the Turkish carpet on the floor.
“Nick!” Amelia cried, furious. She bent to pick up the bottle.
“Leave it,” he ground out.
She stood, hands on her plump hips. “You are a bastard tonight. Are we or are we not going to the Sinclair soirée?”
