by Amanda Quick
“Because I chose you, you great, half-witted idiot. Get off me.”
Marcus looked thunderstruck. “Iphiginia—”
“Off, I said.”
He flinched as though she had struck him. In the moonlight, Iphiginia saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead. His dark hair was damp with it. His jaw was locked. Every muscle in his body was as hard as though it had been carved from marble.
Marcus gritted his teeth and slowly began to withdraw from her body. Iphiginia wriggled impatiently.
“Hold still,” Marcus said urgently. “Damnation.” He wrenched himself free of her with shocking suddenness.
“Ouch.” Iphiginia yelped in dismay. “That hurt.” Marcus did not pay any attention. His features were contorted in an expression of what appeared to be unbearable anguish. He sucked in his breath, shuddered heavily, and collapsed, facedown, alongside her. A terrible groan shuddered through him and then he lay absolutely still.
“Oh my God. Marcus, are you all right?” Iphiginia forgot about her own discomfort. She levered herself up onto her elbow, horrified by Marcus’s sudden and mysterious collapse.
A terrible, soul-destroying fear shook her to the core. Marcus was dead and it was all her fault.
Iphiginia scrambled to her knees. Frantically she shook his shoulder. He did not stir.
She leaned over him to see his face, which was turned away from her. His eyes were closed.
She recalled the expression of agony that had twisted his features.
“Dear heaven, what have I done? My lord, are you alive? Speak to me, please speak to me.”
She struggled to pull him into her lap. It was not easy. He was impossibly heavy. She managed to get his face onto her knee. She stroked his hair back from his forehead.
“I am so very sorry, Marcus.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I never meant to hurt you. That is the last thing I would ever do. Please, Marcus, you must not die. Not now after I have finally found you. I could not bear it. I love you, Marcus.”
Bloody hell.
He’d lost his self-control for the first time since his wedding night.
He’d spilled his seed like some clumsy, untried youth with his first woman, just as he had that first time with Nora. Somewhere in the darkest reaches of his memory he thought he heard her angry, jeering words.
You’ve got the hands of a farmer, you great oaf.
“Marcus, Marcus, please forgive me. Open your eyes. You cannot die.”
Marcus opened one eye.
“You’re alive.” Iphiginia’s face glowed with hope and relief. “Thank God.” She started to ease his head off of her lap. “Wait right here, my lord. Do not move. I shall go back to the house and fetch help.”
Marcus opened his other eye, reached out, and caught her wrist. “No.”
“But it is obvious that, you need a doctor. You have suffered some sort of seizure.”
“For better or worse, I do believe that I am going to survive. My compliments, Miss Bright.” Marcus grimaced with self-disgust. “You have the ability to make a thirty-six year old man feel like a young blade of twenty again.”
She peered at him anxiously. Her fingertips were astonishingly gentle on his cheek. “Are you quite certain that you are not in need of a doctor?”
“Absolutely certain. I may, however, be requiring a new coat.” He thought of how he had pumped himself ignominiously into the expensive superfine of one of his tailor’s more expensive creations. “I do not know if my valet will he able to salvage this one.”
“I shall pay for a new coat for you,” Iphiginia said very earnestly. “This is all my fault. I am very much aware of that, my lord.”
Marcus swallowed an oath. “I should have guessed that you would prove to be as much of an Original in the role of the outraged innocent as you were in the part of the notorious widow.”
“But Marcus, I am not outraged. Nor am I a green chit fresh out of the schoolroom. I am quite old enough to make my own decisions.”
“You were a virgin.” Marcus sat up wearily. “I never get involved with virgins. I have a rule against it. I have never broken that rule until tonight.”
“You must look on the positive side, my lord.” Iphiginia smiled brightly. “I am no longer a virgin, therefore you are no longer in violation of your own rule.”
Rage flickered through him. “Damnation, woman, this is not a jest. I vow, there are times when your mouth would drive any sane man to the edge. If I had not already just taken your virginity, I would be strongly tempted to put you over my knee for that stupid remark.”
Iphiginia’s smile vanished. “Sir, I comprehend that you are angry because you have broken one of your precious rules. But truly, you must not blame yourself.”
Marcus concentrated on refastening the front of his breeches. “A virgin masquerading as a widow.” He felt as if his fine intellect had turned to mush. “I should have known.”
“That is ridiculous. How could you possibly have known?”
Marcus got to his feet and stood looking down at her. For a moment he was transfixed by the sight of Iphiginia sitting in the center of the ruin, bathed in moonlight. Her white skirts frothed around her as she clutched the bodice of her gown to her graceful breasts. Her hair was in disarray and one of her small white shoes had come off. The aura of innocence still enveloped her, just as it had done the very first time he had seen her.
“I think that I did know,” he said quietly. “But I refused to acknowledge the truth because I did not want to see it.”
Iphiginia scowled. “Are you always this hard on yourself when you break one of your own rules, sir?”
“I don’t know.” Marcus reached down to pull her to her feet. “This is the first time that I have ever broken one. Come.”
“Where are we going?”
“Back to the house.” Marcus helped Iphiginia adjust the tapes of her dress. “We must take care that no one sees us.
“Why must we be careful, my lord?” Iphiginia gave him a thoroughly exasperated look. “In the eyes of the world nothing has changed. Everyone is convinced that I am a widow and they all believe that I am your mistress. There is no way that anyone in the house can know the truth.”
“I know the truth.” The truth was that he’d broken his own rules and he would pay the price.
Well at least marriage to Iphiginia would make a change, he thought wryly. His first wife had been a woman of experience who had pretended to be an innocent. This time he would marry an innocent who had masqueraded as a woman of experience.
He ought to take Iphiginia’s advice and look on the bright side, Marcus told himself. This time he would be marrying his own mistress rather than one who had belonged to another man.
Marcus scooped up his coat and eyed it glumly. He’d ruined several expensive coats during the past few weeks, thanks to his experiments with his new hydraulic reservoir pen. This was the first one he’d soiled in this particular fashion however.
He’d completely lost his self-control. He had not even remembered to employ the specially designed sheep-gut condom he had brought along in his pocket.
Marcus ignored Iphiginia’s searching gaze. He took her hand and led her out of the ruin of the Temple of Vesta.
The night fell softly around them as Marcus walked Iphiginia back to the great house. The stars appeared clear and bright in the sky.
Marcus considered how his life was about to change. He wondered how Bennet would react to the news of his impending nuptials.
At least Iphiginia was unlikely to object to the amount of time he spent in his library and laboratory, he thought philosophically. She would understand.
There might be children. Perhaps even a son to inherit the title. Odd, he had never before cared about having an heir of his own blood. Tonight, however, the prospect of Iphiginia carrying his babe gave him a strange sensation of possessiveness, an awareness of the future that he had not been conscious of until now.
It was a troublesome concept.
Marcus realized that he was walking so swiftly she was obliged to skip to keep up with him. “Yes?”
“I realize that you are very angry, my lord. I want you to know that I sincerely regret my actions.”
“Hush, Iphiginia.”
“I should not have misled you about my past.”
“We will talk of this tomorrow. I must think on the matter tonight.”
“Yes, my lord. I understand. You are vastly annoyed and no doubt wish to abandon your pretense of being my lover.”
“I do not see any alternative.” He was going to replace the role of lover with that of husband.
“On the contrary,” Iphiginia said swiftly. “There is every reason to continue on with our masquerade.”
“That is no longer possible, Iphiginia.”
“Come now, sir. You are a very intelligent man.”
“Do you think so? I, myself, am having some doubts on that particular point.”
“Nonsense,” Iphiginia said bracingly. “You are really quite clever. There can be no question about the powers of your intellect.”
“Hmm.”
“And although you are angry, I know you will not allow your emotions to dominate your keen sense of reason.”
“I appreciate your confidence in my brain,” he said gravely.
“Yes, well, the thing is, I would like to remind you that I had a very good excuse for pretending to be both a widow and your mistress.”
“This is not the best time to remind me of your talent as an actress.” They were almost back to the terrace. Marcus saw that most of the lights on the upper floors were out. The guests were abed. It should not be difficult to get Iphiginia back to her bedchamber unseen.
“Sir, I must ask you to keep in mind that my reason for undertaking the role of your mistress-in-name-only still exists. We must maintain the pretense until we discover the identity of the blackmailer. I trust you will not do anything rash?”
“Rash?”
Iphiginia’s eyes were wide and luminous in the shadows. “I pray you will not terminate our liaison so far as Society is concerned. You will allow our pretense to stand, will you not?”
Her obvious failure to comprehend the ramifications of what had just happened on the floor of the Temple of Vesta caused Marcus to lose what was left of his patience.
“Miss Bright, I would like to remind you that you have a new and potentially far more significant problem on your hands than you had an hour ago.”
She blinked uncertainly. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are no longer a mistress-in-name-only.”
She looked blank for an instant. Then realization dawned. “Oh, I see what you mean.”
“Do you, Miss Bright?”
“Yes, of course.” She lowered her eyes, apparently fascinated with the pleats of his shirt. “But I do not see that one extremely brief little interlude that did not amount to much need alter the nature of our association in any way.”
“Damnation, Iphiginia—”
“Marcus, please.” She raised a hand as though to touch his cheek and then apparently changed her mind. “I know that you did not enjoy what happened back there in the ruin.”
“My pleasure or lack of same is the least important element in this situation,” he said roughly. “I do not believe that you quite grasp the enormity of the problem.”
“But I do, my lord. I mean, I realize precisely how unnerving, indeed, how very alarming your collapse must have been for you. Heavens, for a moment there, I believed that you had died or at the very least had suffered a fit of apoplexy.”
“Apoplexy. Christ. I am going mad. There can no longer be any doubt.”
“You must believe me when I say that I had no notion that your discovery that I was a virgin would have such a debilitating effect on you. I am truly sorry, my lord.”
Marcus reached the balustrade that surrounded the terrace. He came to a halt and looked at Iphiginia. Her conversation had become riveting in some strange, demented fashion. He was literally fascinated.
“Quite right,” he agreed. “How could you have known just what your virginity would do to my delicate sensibilities?”
“Precisely.” She smiled her brilliant smile. “But you have assured me that you are all right now. You were being truthful, were you not?”
“I do seem to have made a rather remarkable recovery, considering the circumstances.”
“Excellent. I know the entire affair must have given you quite a shock.”
“A shock.” He nodded once. “Yes, that describes it very well.”
“And it no doubt frightened you. But set your mind at ease, sir. I can assure you that there is no cause for further concern.”
Marcus put one hand on the balustrade and gripped it very tightly. “Why not?”
“Because you have my word of honor that I will make no further demands of an, ah—” she paused to gently clear her throat, “of an amorous nature upon you.”
He contemplated her expectant face for some time. He could not recall another female who had robbed him so thoroughly of speech.
“That is very thoughtful of you, Miss Bright.”
“Think nothing of it,” she said graciously. Then she leaned closer and lowered her voice to a more confidential tone. “to be perfectly frank, I did not find our little interlude all that pleasant, either, and I assure you that I am in no great rush to repeat it.”
Marcus went cold inside. The “interlude,” as she termed it, had been a debacle. On top of everything else, he had ruined her first experience of passion for her.
In spite of his initial anger and the devastating knowledge that his life had been irrevocably changed by her deception, Marcus felt a rush of guilt. His only goal tonight had been to give her pleasure even as he took his own. He had failed.
“Iphiginia, I regret the unpleasant nature of the experience. If I had known—”
“No, please.” She put her fingers over his mouth to silence him, “You must not apologize. Had I truly been what I pretended to be, a widow well acquainted with the intimacies of the marriage bed, I would have been better able to make the calculations.”
“What calculations?”
“Why, the sort I make when I am analysing the perspective and elevations of a fine ruin,” she explained. “I would have realized that everything about you would be in, very equally majestic proportion, if you see what I mean.”
“Proportion?”
“I fear that I was somewhat misled by my previous experience with classical statues.” She frowned. “And even by those in Lartmore’s collection, now that I think of it.”
“Iphiginia—”
“In my own defense, however, I must tell you that in all my studies of ancient statuary, I have never come across an example which was constructed with precisely your proportions.”
Marcus interrupted deliberately. “This is undoubtedly one of the most interesting conversations I have ever had. However, it is getting quite late and I am determined that we shall deal with this matter at a later time.”
“After you have regained your composure, you mean?”
“That is one way of putting it. Let us go upstairs to our bedchambers, madam. I have some thinking to do.” He took her arm and started her toward the door.
“Marcus.” She clutched at his sleeve. “Promise me that you will not tell anyone that I am not really your mistress.”
“Calm yourself, Iphiginia.” Marcus opened the door and ushered her into a darkened hall. “Your little fiction is no longer a pretense, as we had agreed. There is no secret to keep. Tonight you really did become my mistress.”
She gave him a sharp glance. “You will not tell anyone that I am not really a widow, either, will you?”
“Believe me, I am no more eager for Society to learn the truth than you are.”
“No, of course not.” She appeared to relax slightly. “You would not want anyone els
e to know that you had broken one of your own rules, would you?”
“No,” Marcus said. “Things are going to be awkward enough as it is.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Never mind, Miss Bright. I shall explain it all to you at a more convenient time.”
“Mrs. Bright,” she corrected urgently. “We must maintain the masquerade in private or we might become careless in public.”
“I beg your pardon. Mrs. Bright.”
Marcus braced his hands against the windowsill of his bedchamber and looked out at the stars.
He had never thought to wed again.
He was about to break another of his own rules. Tonight, with the scent and the feel of Iphiginia still so fresh in his mind, he could not seem to think rationally on the subject of marriage.
The only thing that was transparently clear in his mind was the memory of Iphiginia bending over him, terrified that she had somehow murdered him with her virginity. Her words still rang in his head.
I love you, Marcus. She had been hysterical, of course, frantic at the thought that she’d accidentally killed him. That was the only reason she had said such a thing.
———
The next morning after breakfast, Lady Pettigrew regarded her departing guests with sincere regret. “I do wish the two of you could stay another day or so. We so enjoyed your visit, didn’t we, George?”
“Visit was fine,” Pettigrew muttered. He was having a hard time disguising his relief that at least two of the unwelcome guests were about to leave.
Lady Pettigrew turned to Iphiginia, who waited on the front steps as Marcus’s black phaeton was readied. “Mrs. Bright, I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to learn that my Temple of Vesta is indeed a proper sort of ruin. Thank you so much for taking the time to study and measure it for me’”
“You’re quite welcome.” Iphiginia was terribly conscious of Marcus standing next to her. His impatience was palpable.
“You do feel that our ruin is quite accurate?” Lady Pettigrew pressed.
“Yes, indeed,” Iphiginia murmured. She could feel Marcus’s laconic gaze resting on her.
“It is amazingly accurate in every detail,” Marcus said. “I toured it myself last night. I vow with very little imagination, one could imagine the presence of a genuine temple virgin.”