by Mary Balogh
The marquess, whose hands had been clenched into fists at his sides, relaxed those hands suddenly and flexed the fingers. He raised one eyebrow. The mockery was back in his eyes.
"Is there a nice muddy duckpond hereabouts?" he asked. "If so, you really must stand with your back to it when you tell her. And let me know ahead of time so that I can witness your being shoved into it, my boy. I would not miss the show for worlds. I can just imagine how any female would enjoy being told such a thing. You might as well open your mouth and place your booted foot right inside it, Ernie, and save yourself a ducking. And you need not after all take yourself beyond my sight. I will take myself off beyond yours."
And of course, he thought, as he sauntered through the hall and up the stairs, croquet must be due to start within the next few minutes. He would have to stroll about the lawn tapping a ball with a mallet and resist the urge to swing the thing past his shoulder and crack the ball a few hundred yards through the air.
Carter was not in his dressing room. And what did he mean by not being there? The marquess ignored the fact that his valet had no possible reason for being upstairs at that particular time of day.
His coat was too tight for playing croquet in. Too damned tight. He needed the green superfine. He struggled out of the offending garment, feeling thoroughly disgruntled and aggrieved, though he could with the greatest of ease have summoned his valet by pulling the tasseled bell rope.
The devil take that ridiculous wager. And the devil take Diana Ingram. And Ernie too, for that matter.
He did not need sermons. He went to church every Sunday to hear a sermon. One a week was quite enough, thank you very much. Love and commitment, indeed. He had merely kissed the woman and suggested that they share a little mutual pleasure. And she had started talking about love and commitment. Did she think he was going to marry her in order to get her into bed?
The woman could go hang for all he cared. And the wager too. And Ernie could keep himself beyond the range of his fists. And there was no way this damned coat was going to go on without rumpling his shirt up into giant frills around his neck. Damn Carter. Where was he when he was most needed? Belowstairs lording it over all the lesser mortals there, doubtless. One of these days he was going to have to dismiss the man and hire someone a little more human.
Devil take Diana Ingram! She had started that kiss. He had been quite prepared to tease for another few days before attempting to come close to her mouth. She was the one who had turned in his arms and set those firm and lovely breasts against his coat. She was the one who had raised her face so that he had found himself looking into her wide gray eyes and down to moist, parted lips. What had she expected
him to do? Start talking about the weather?
She had invited the kiss, the hussy. And she had enjoyed it. And participated in it. And yet she was not prepared to take the consequences of her own actions. She had stood on her feet afterward, cheeks glowing, eyes flashing, bosom heaving, and delivered her sermon.
He wondered if she had written Teddy's Sunday sermons for him. All about love and commitment, they would have been. The congregation would have been in tears of rapture.
One kissed a female and was expected to declare undying love for her and lifelong devotion? The woman was an idiot. A prude. A hypocrite. She belonged in a country parsonage. Or a nunnery. Or a madhouse.
Damnation take this coat.
He had allowed her to nettle him. He had never allowed a woman to nettle him before. Or any man, for that matter. He was thoroughly nettled.
Why?
A woman had allowed him to kiss her but had refused to allow him to bed her. A dreadful tragedy indeed!
His reputation and five hundred guineas of his money were at stake.
His name would survive, and he would not be reduced to begging for crusts of bread on the street.
Devil take her. The devil was welcome to her. She would make hell a thoroughly dreary place. Women and their moralizing!
And Ernie and his. Incapable of love, indeed. No heart, indeed. Of course he knew what love was. Didn't he love his mother and sisters? Hadn't he cried with Frances when she lost that first child, who would have been his niece? Hadn't he taken Hester to Brighton for a month to take her mind off that rascal who had merely played with her feelings? He was as capable of love as the next man.
Why did one have to prove it with a woman who was not one's relative? Why did everyone think there must be a connection between love and physical passion?
They could go hang, all of them. He should never have left London.
The door opened behind him and the little upstairs maid who seemed to find no lack of errands to do in his rooms stood in the doorway to his dressing room, her eyes large with surprise. She carried a pile of starched neckcloths in her arms.
"Ooh, your lordship," she said, meeting his eyes in the mirror for a fleeting moment and bobbing a series of curtsies, I didn't know you were here. I brought these—" she indicated the linen in her arms—"because Mr. Carter was finished with starching,them. I'll leave immediately, your lordship."
The marquess motioned to the top of a chest, where she might deposit her burden.
"I'm sorry to have disturbed you, your lordship,'' the girl said, bobbing another series of curtsies. "Is there anything your lordship wishes for?"
"No, no," he said. "You may run along."
"Begging your pardon, your lordship," she said. The girl was making him feel almost seasick with her constant bobbing. "May I help you with your coat?"
He shrugged out of it, exasperated, and straightened his shirt. "Hold it, then, if you will," he said, "while I try to get both myself and my shirt neatly inside it."
The task was accomplished to his own satisfaction within a minute, though Carter would doubtless have turned faint if he could have seen the crease in the shirt beneath the coat. The chambermaid came around in front of him and smoothed the lapels of his coat quite unnecessarily.
"There, your lordship," she said, peeping up at him from beneath dark eyelashes. "Will there be anything else?"
Her dress was not cut indecently low in front, as became the servant of a noble household. But it was low enough when she stood so close and leaned even closer. Quite low enough. The marquess put his hands beneath her breasts and lifted them. He looked down at her with amused eyes.
''Alas, my sweet,'' he said, ''I have to go and play croquet just at a time when I could think of a much more congenial and energetic sport. Do those lips belong to anyone?"
They were pouting very prettily. "Just to me, your lordship," she said, "and to whomever I choose to give mem."
"Ah," he said, his thumbs brushing her nipples through the fabric of her dress. "And do you choose to give them to me?"
"I don't know, I'm sure, your lordship," she said. "You're such a fine gentleman."
He did not pause for further discussion, but kissed her quite thoroughly. And found that he was thankful after all for the imminence of the game of croquet. What was he about now? It was a personal rule that he never made advances to—or accepted open invitations from—the servants of private homes, including his own. Without the croquet he would have felt himself committed to taking the maid to his bed and making sport with her there for at least the next ten minutes.
He could not think of anything he felt less like doing.
There must be something wrong with him. He must be sickening for something. The girl was quite lusciously feminine. And very, very willing.
"Ah, my sweet," he murmured, smiling down into her eyes, "how am I to tear myself away from you? Perhaps some other time."
He turned away from her while her mouth pouted again, and took a coin from his purse.
"Go back belowstairs now before you are missed," he said, slipping the coin into the pocket of her apron.
"I am sure I did not mean to offend your lordship," she said, all wide eyes again.
He took her by the elbow and led her to the door of his bedchamber. He
opened it and smiled at her, one finger beneath her chin. "On the contrary," he said. "You have pleased me well, my sweet." And he bent his head to kiss her again.
And completed the action, though Mrs. Diana Ingram chose that precise moment to sweep past his room, shoulders back, chin firmly in the air, on her way down to croquet.
Damnation!
* * *
Diana managed to avoid the Marquess of Kenwood for the rest of that day and all of the next. Indeed, it was not very difficult to do. He seemed content to stay away from her, too. She almost dared hope that he had decided to give up his mockery of her and his efforts to seduce her.
Almost. But not quite. When she deliberately upset the usual order at table by entering the dining room on the arm of Mr. Peabody, she still found herself sitting opposite the marquess. And from that position it was even harder than usual to avoid catching his eye. Whenever she did so, she seemed to be in the middle of some particularly dull or foolish topic of conversation. And his very blue eyes twinkled at her.
Mr. Peabody was always eager to escort her wherever she happened to be going, it seemed. And when she was not with him, men Ernest hovered at her side, taking his task of knight protector very seriously. She could relax when Ernest was there.
He invited her into the music room the day after her own disastrous visit there, the day she studiously avoided practicing her own duet, though she and Lord Kenwood clearly needed the practice. Ernest, it seemed, was to play the violin, and Angela Wickenham was to dance.
Diana stood at the window, half of her attention on the grass and flowers and blue sky outside, and half on the activity within. Poor Ernest, she thought. He really ought not to be subjected to having to perform in public. He was no violinist, though he insisted that playing the violin was easily his best musical accomplishment.
''But you have a good sense of rhythm, my lord,'' Angela said encouragingly. "That is all I need if I am to dance. Very often, you know, I dance without any accompaniment at all except what is in my mind. So it is a treat to have a violin play for me." She wrinkled her nose and smiled at Lord Crensford.
Bless her heart, Diana thought, and then looked at the girl with more interest. She glanced from the eager little face to Ernest's frowning one and smiled secretly. Bless the girl. So many people could not seem to look past the none too handsome features of her brother-in-law and his frequently awkward manner. But Teddy had taught her to see the affectionate and very honest heart behind the outer trappings. And Angela had seen it for herself.
Of course she was very young. Ernest was ten years older than she. There was doubtless some hero worship in that look she was giving him while he frowned over his music.
"Would you like to play it again?" Angela asked. "And I will dance?" She closed her eyes and lifted her arms, waiting for the music to begin.
Diana watched, and Lord Crensford, somehow continuing to play, gaped for the next several minutes as the girl moved to the music. No, Diana thought, awed, she did not move to the music exactly; she became the music. One became almost unaware of the scraping and squeaking of the violin, and saw and heard instead the lithe and supple grace of the dancing figure, who seemed scarcely to touch the floor as she glided over it, twirled and leaped, every part of her body expressing the passion of the music within her.
"Oh, I say," Lord Crensford said when they had finished.
"Oh, Angela," Diana said, "how very talented you are. That was beautiful."
"You see?" Angela was beaming at Lord Crensford. "You played quite well that time, my lord, because your attention was not wholly directed toward yourself. Shall we decide upon that for tomorrow night?"
"Where did you learn to dance like that?" Lord Crensford was frowning.
She shrugged. ' 'I did not,'' she said.' 'I used to dance when I was supposed to be practicing scales or sketching or doing something else like that. I am afraid I cannot produce music with my fingers or my voice. Only with the whole of me."
Lord Crensford swallowed. "I don't know what the others will think," he said.
Diana looked at him in surprise. ''They will be entranced,'' she said.
"It doesn't seem right somehow," he said. "Lester and Michael and Russell looking on and all that. And Jack."
Both Diana and Angela looked blankly at him, and he scratched his head and coughed.
"Shall we try it again, then?" he asked.
Diana watched for a while until her eyes wandered to the window. She felt very guilty. She thought perhaps she owed Lord Kenwood an apology. After all, she was the one who had caused that kiss. Though of course, he had been deliberately provoking her, putting his arms right about her like that while he played their duet.
But she had invited the kiss. And she had participated in it with quite wanton eagerness. She had wanted him. No, correction: she wanted him. Her face burned at the very thought, but it was true. She wanted to experience again what had happened at that inn. But free of the laudanum. Had she only imagined that it was so very, very good?
And she wanted to know what would have come after. Would it have been only what Teddy had done to her at least once a week during four years of marriage? Or would it have been different? Could it be different?
She wanted to know. She ached to know.
And despised herself quite heartily.
The man was a rake. That was all he wanted of her. And if he could not have it with her, then he would take it from any available female. Like that chambermaid! How could he have done that, and only an hour after she had left him in the music room? And how could he so shamelessly flaunt his depravity as to kiss the girl and say those words to her in an open doorway where anyone might have seen mem? Where she had seen mem.
She had felt quite sick for the rest of the day.
Oh, she owed him no apology.
And she had been quite right. She must remember her own words and know beyond a doubt that she had spoken the truth. He had nothing to offer her but heartache and emptiness. Even now she ached because of the touches they had shared, and could scarce think of anything else besides him. And yet she was not really to blame for any of those encounters. And her virtue was still intact, she supposed.
How would she feel, then, if she deliberately went into his embrace and allowed him all the intimacy that she had given for four years in a marriage bed? How would she feel when he went away? When she saw him with another female in the doorway of his bedchamber? How would she cope with the turmoil that behavior so contrary to her upbringing and experience would cause? How would she ever look herself in the eye again?
Besides, there was no real debate in her mind, was there? She could not seriously be considering allowing the Marquess of Kenwood to seduce her. Not him of all people. What number would she be on his list of conquests? A very high number, doubtless. But not nearly as high as the woman of this time next year, or the year after that.
She would not be a number on anyone's list.
"What do you think, my lord?" Angela was asking breathlessly.
"Well," Lord Crensford said doubtfully, laying down his violin, "it will have to do, I suppose."
Diana climbed the stairs beside Angela a few minutes later.
"I can't do anything right as far as his lordship is concerned," Angela said. She sounded quite crestfallen.
"Ernest?" Diana said in surprise.
"He always frowns at me or outrightly scolds me," the girl said. "I don't think he has realized that I am no longer fourteen years old."
Diana squeezed her arm. "I don't see how he could have missed it," she said.
"I know I was a bother to him then," Angela said. "He was a dashing gentleman already, and I was just a nuisance of a young girl whom he was expected to entertain. I thought it might be different now. But I think he admires you. I wish I had your beauty. And your poise."
She ran the distance from the top of the stairs to her room and whisked herself inside before Diana could think of a response to make.
10
"Well," the Marquess of Kenwood said, looking around the empty music room the following morning and strolling toward the pianoforte, "it seems that this is our hour. I gather the countess has seen to it that all the others have business that will take them elsewhere for the duration of those sixty minutes."
"Yes, I believe so," Diana said.
"What has she done with Ernie? That is what I would like to know." He was thumbing through the pile of music to find their duet piece. "It must have taken some ingenuity to persuade him to leave you alone in my clutches for such a lengthy period of time."
''Angela wanted to explore the castle again.'' Diana smiled faintly. "And I believe the countess convinced her that this morning was a convenient time. Ernest had to accompany her, of course, to make sure she does not hurt herself among the ruins. Russell and Barbara have gone too."