“Perhaps they don’t like the feeling they get when they are pleased? That warm feeling that crawls down their spines and over their fronts—”
“Enough.” She had to shut him up. The damned mind reader. “Ye will make me hate ye again, Jack Pike, and I am tired of hating ye. Let’s call a pax.”
Mags had been staring at each of them in turn during this exchange, her eyes wide.
“But ye have never hated Mr. Pike, my lady.”
Jack sat back and smirked.
Helen took a deep breath. “That’s right, Mags. I have never hated him. Why would I hate a man who would use his power to tease a poor, defenseless woman?”
“Defenseless?” The word erupted from Jack and he laughed. That glorious laugh. “You are nothingbutdefenses.”
“Nae. I’m. Nae.” The tears were close. But she kept them down. This was just a dinner conversation, after all.
“No, you’re right. You are much more than that. You are the Countess of Kinmarloch—”
“—in her own right.” This last was said by Jack and Mags and Duncan, all three together in one chorus.
She looked around the table. Mags and Duncan were serious. Jack wore his mischievous grin.
She straightened. “Aye. And nane of ye are ever to forget it.”
“How could we when you remind us of it so often?” Jack popped a piece of bread in his mouth.
“When ’tis all ye have, ye might be guilty of being a bit repetitious, too.”
He swallowed. “Like how I’m a scoundrel.”
“Aye,” she said. “Like how yer a scoundrel.”
And then he laughed. And she laughed, too. And Mags and Duncan laughed as well, even though they couldn’t possibly understand. But they were swept up by the magic of Jack Pike’s laugh, just as she was.
Damn. She was going to miss that laugh. For a moment, just a moment, she didn’t mind the warmth which crept over her spine and across her front when she sat at Jack Pike’s table and laughed with him.
She wasin the bedchamber of her girlhood. TheotherMrs. Mac, the housekeeper, had put her there yesterday, not even asking if she would rather sleep somewhere else. But, in truth, if theotherMrs. Mac had asked, she would have said no, she wanted to be in this room.
Because so many hopes and dreams had been imagined in this bedchamber by a young girl whose grandfather had told her she was beautiful.
Her nightdress was dry. She put it on quickly and as she did so, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror which hung above the dressing table. She had not seen a mirror in over a year, not since the little one they had in the keep was broken by a small rock falling down. She should have known then that the place was not safe. She had been a fool about the keep.
But she had not missed having a mirror in the last year. Mags was good about telling her if her face was dirty, if her hair was disordered. She looked now in the mirror. At her jaw. Her nose. Her forehead. All still too big. Her brow, too heavy. She was still ugly. She thought about taking off her nightdress and looking at her body in the mirror.
No. She shuddered. She saw her own body with no mirror, often enough. She didn’t want to see it as someone else might. As a man might. As the duke might. As Jack might. No, that was silly. Jack didn’t see her that way.
But Jack did see her. In some ways, he saw her very well. Some parts of her. And maybe he might tell the duke about the good parts of her, the ones which had nothing to do with her body and her face.
She got into the bed.
There must be something else she could offer the duke besides her earldom, her title, her character. But the duke was down in London, surrounded by beautiful ladies. And Jack had said the duke had rarely met a woman he didn’t like.
Rarely met a woman he didn’t like.
She sat up. She did have something to offer the duke. She had no shame now. She had no pride. Well, she did, but she could let it go. She must let it go.
Those fine ladies in London, they would not be willing to do what she would. They would not be as desperate as she was. They would not be willing to whore themselves out before marriage.
But I am willing. If only I knew how.
