Regency Rumours: A Scandalous Mistress / Dishonour and Desire. Juliet Landon

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СКАЧАТЬ is not going to look good, my lord,’ she said, picking up the sadly abused reticule. ‘A widow of only two years engaging herself so soon. I left Buxton to escape the gossip only to plunge myself into a different sort. I cannot imagine what my brother-in-law is going to say. Or Caterina, for that matter.’

      She would have expected him to offer some dismissive reply to that. After all, had she not already been seen in his company, been visited, and had he not made his interest in her quite obvious to Richmond’s prying eyes? Who would be really surprised to learn of their deepening friendship, and who would be upset by the news except those dreadful mothers and daughters he had mentioned? And his parents. But to her annoyance, he simply rested his behind on the scrolled end of the sofa, sprawled out his long legs, folded his arms and waited for the rest of her objections.

      Disconcerted, she tried another tack. ‘How long does it usually take you to win a woman’s consent to be your mistress, my lord? Hours, is it? Days…weeks?’

      ‘Never much longer than that.’

      ‘So you’ve never had to work too hard at it, then?’

      ‘I’ve been fortunate, I suppose. I find it best playing it by ear.’

      ‘Forgive the indelicacy. I need to know, you see, because you are apparently expecting a commitment from me in a matter of minutes, which surely must be some kind of record. I would not call that “playing it by ear", my lord, I would call it molto allegro con brio more like. Wouldn’t you?’

      His laughter was so prolonged that it was some moments before he could speak. ‘Lady,’ he said, still gasping a little, ‘you have shown up a problem that had not occurred to me, I have to admit. Blame it on my keenness. If it will make you easier, I will woo you, take time to win you, seduce you. I don’t want to rush my fences, believe me.’

      Blinking a little at the change of metaphor, she felt another surge of heat flood into her throat as the thought skipped into her mind that it might not take her as long to submit to him as she was indicating, and that she had already begun the journey, to her shame. ‘I have not been likened to a fence since I don’t know when,’ she murmured, moving away from him.

      But his reach was long and she was scooped up against him and held fast while he looked down into her troubled eyes, all signs of his former levity gone. ‘Steady, my beauty,’ he said, quietly. ‘You are an exception. I would have pursued you anyway, with or without the complications, but they give me a hold over you that I will not let go of. I need to be sure of you; you with your prickly defences. I suspect you’ve never been truly wooed before, have you? It’s not only the Hurst ordeal that’s cooled you towards men, is it? It’s fear, too. I can feel it in your kisses. Well, we’ll take it slowly, eh? And you’ll not find me difficult to please, or too demanding.’

      His kiss did nothing to convince her of that and, at the back of her mind, Amelie wondered once again how long she would be able to keep him waiting for her full involvement in the art of being a lover.

      Breathless and reeling, she held herself away. ‘I cannot approve of this arrangement, my lord, except that it appears to solve my major problems. But I beg one thing of you before I am obliged to accept it. Please do not ever offer me money, for then I shall be no better than a kept woman. A whore, to put it plainly. I value my independence, you see.’

      His face revealed nothing of his reaction to that, and Amelie thought that perhaps this time her outspokenness had gone too far. Indeed, she doubted she had ever spoken that word out loud before.

      ‘I shall not offer you anything, my lady, that you have no need of. Does that reassure you?’ he said.

      It was a cleverly crafted, if ambiguous, reply that made her feel ungracious. Instead of warning him, she could have thanked him for helping her out of more than one very damaging predicament which, if it created others of a different kind, would surely be of a more manageable order. But for the life of her the only difference she could see between the blackmailing methods of Ruben Hurst and Lord Elyot was that one man was a vile and treacherous murderer and the other an attractive but heartless rake whose offer had perhaps not insulted her as much as it ought to have done.

      As for not offering her what she had no need of, he would probably never appreciate the full significance of that or how it created the greatest of all her fears, which he had thought too remote to be worth discussing. In which case she must ensure that his promise of a slow seduction was performed ralentando.

      ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that does reassure me. Thank you. Now, we must not trespass upon your brother’s patience any longer. I cannot hear any sounds of Haydn. Do you think.?’

      ‘That’s probably because they’re both out there,’ he said. Looking over the top of her head towards the garden, he had caught sight of Miss Chester leading his brother towards the summer house in the far corner of a lawn. ‘Shall we follow?’

      The french windows opened on to a large verandah with steps leading down to pathways, plots and lawns. Further along the verandah another pair of french windows were open, too. ‘My workroom,’ she said, seeing him look, ‘where I am presently trying to incorporate a blackcurrant stain into a painting of a toadstool.’ She took the arm he offered, thinking it a particularly comforting gesture after what had just transpired. ‘What of your father?’ she said. ‘He will be expecting some kind of result from your investigations, surely?’

      ‘As long as the matter is cleared up, he will accept my findings. There will be no proceedings.’

      ‘Thank you. Will he accept your choice of mistress…er…wife?’

      The arm clasped hers tightly to his side as they reached the bottom of the steps. ‘What a beautiful garden,’ he said. ‘Your design, of course?’

      This was all very well, Amelie thought, walking by his side, but what is to happen when he wearies of the pretence or finds someone to love, someone he really wants to marry? Would she then be obliged to quietly fade away into a demimonde like Mrs Fitz Herbert, the Prince of Wales’s ‘wife'? Would the two of them have any kind of future together, her with her unacceptable northern industrial connections and him with his noble mistresses, while there in the background was the possibility of a pregnancy, which he preferred to believe would not happen after a childless two-year marriage. Not so, my lord. Not so. You do not know the truth of it.

      ‘My design,’ she said. ‘But still immature, as you see.’

       Chapter Five

      The needs of Miss Caterina Chester were of an immediate kind upon which good breeding and example from her elders would have not the slightest effect, and when she might have benefited from her aunt’s advice, that dear lady was talking privately with Lord Elyot.

      Lord Rayne’s professed enthusiasm for the music of Mr Haydn appeared to have deserted him and, despite Caterina’s invitation to sit close to her, he neither helped her to interpret the score nor did he take advantage of their closeness, which Caterina thought a great waste. There was not even a hand-touching. Not even a long gaze into her eyes. Nothing except a murmured enquiry about her aunt’s horses.

      In Buxton, she and her sister had commanded a faithful following of male and female friends who had taken the art of flirting just a little way beyond the boundaries proscribed by their governess. But Lord Rayne СКАЧАТЬ