Chapter Twenty-Two
Miss Talbot’s perfectlywondrous eyes opened wide in shock. Then she lifted her chin. “Lord Payton will accompany me back to your house.”
James nearly pushed the matter, following through with his threat to shut her out, but it would benefit him not a whit. Obviously, she would stay with Payton, and James would go mad with jealousy.
“Very well, but I’m not going directly home. I was only going to escort you there safely before going out for the night.” James was lying like a child, but he couldn’t stop himself. He wanted this engaged woman whom he didn’t trust, and he could see no way to have her.
“I won’t be back until morning.” He would enjoy a doxy that night and satiate all frustrations and desires. It was the only way he could live with Glynnis and not want to pounce on her every moment.
Without waiting to watch her walk away with Payton, he spun about and stumbled toward the blonde Cyprian. She was talking to another fellow, but he didn’t care. Grabbing her arm, he whispered in her ear an invitation for an exorbitant price. Anything so she would immediately walk with him. She did. She even leaned her head upon his shoulder and looked up at him adoringly.
He wished he knew her name, but it didn’t matter. It would be Glynnis he was thinking of when he thrust inside of the whore. It would be Glynnis’s name he roared when he climaxed.
***
GLYNNIS HADN’T FELTso miserable in a long time, maybe not since James had rebuffed her soundly in Lady Sullivan’s library.
He’d raged at her duplicity. It had been a pity since her desire for him had been real even then when she’d hardly known more about him than that he was wealthy and handsome.
Now, she knew much more, and she loved all she knew of him.Except his behavior that night!Her brother drank too much, another reason Rhys always lost at cards. She found nothing attractive or admirable in a foxed man whether he be merely a little wet or so drunk he was clipping the king’s English.
Tearing her gaze away from where James escorted a blowsabella through the south gate, she looked up at Lord Payton. He gave her a tentative smile before offering her his arm.
As they started to walk, he said, “Hargrove’s been under some strain lately. He had a bit of a mishap in London.”
At first Glynnis thought he meant the incident with her, but realized that was impossible. James hadn’t been sent to Paris to get the art for the prince until well after their kiss.
“A mishap?” she asked.
Lord Payton nodded but kept walking. They left by the closer north gate, giving them a longer walk along the front of the east side of the Pavilion and along the Steyne toward the sea.
She refused to let it go so easily.
“Will you tell me of the mishap, my lord?”
He sighed. “It’s not fit for a lady’s ears, Miss Talbot. Suffice it to say, he got in a spot of trouble with another man’s wife.”
She gasped softly, only because she’d come to think of James as being unusually reserved, even prim, in how he’d managed to stop himself from tupping her on more than one occasion. A married woman was safer for a rake, she supposed, as someone’s wife couldn’t force his hand into marriage.
“I see. Then he is better off with the woman he escorted from the party.”
That seemed to cheer Lord Payton up. “Yes, indeed. To tell you the truth, I thought the two of you ... That is, you and Hargrove have no arrangement?
“No. None at all. I am borrowing a room in his house and that is all,” she said firmly, wishing it weren’t the truth, but she may as well get credit for her still-sterling reputation.
“You needn’t worry what he’ll be like when he does return to his house. I know Hargrove. He will be apologetic for his boorish antics.”
“Thank you,” she said. Since her brother became, if anything, gentler when intoxicated, she hadn’t considered the alternative “I’m not worried in the least about that.”
Besides, he wouldn’t be back until morning. Her heart pinched at the thought of him spending the rest of the night with that harlot. Thinking of him returning tomorrow satiated and back to his old companionable self simply because he’d made the two-backed beast revolted her.
