by Mary Balogh
Her lips mocked too, though her breathing was not quite steady, and he lowered both his head and his body and moved in her with deep, firm, rhythmic strokes, prolonging the intense, painful pleasure of their coupling for as long as he could before releasing into her and relaxing all his weight down onto her as the blood pounding through his temples gradually subsided and he wondered if he had waited long enough to give her too the ultimate pleasure.
He was ashamed of the fact that he was not sure.
“Cassandra,” he murmured as he withdrew from her and moved off her to lie beside her, his arm still beneath her head.
But there was nothing else to say. The exhaustion of sexual satiety overpowered him and he slid into a deep, satisfied sleep.
He was not sure how long he slept. But when he awoke he was alone—and still dressed in evening clothes that were going to be horribly rumpled. His valet would scold for a month and threaten to resign and find a gentleman who had greater respect for his skills.
The flap of his breeches had been neatly raised and buttoned, he realized with a flash of embarrassment.
The candles were no longer flickering. But the room was not quite dark. The light of early dawn was graying the window and the room itself. The curtains had been drawn back.
He turned his head and looked toward the dressing table. Lady Paget was sitting sideways before it, looking back at him. She was dressed, though not in last evening’s gown. Her hair had been brushed smoothly back from her face and tied neatly with a ribbon at the nape of her neck. It fell in a thick column down her back. She had her legs crossed. One foot was swinging back and forth, a slipper half off it.
“Cassandra?” he said. “I am so sorry. I must have—”
“We need to talk, Lord Merton,” she said.
Lord Merton? Not Stephen any longer?
“Do we?” he said. “Would it not—”
“Business,” she said. “We need to talk business.”
6
CASSANDRA had been awake for a long time. Indeed, she had done no more than doze a couple of times.
She stared for a long time at the ugly canopy above her head. She must remove it, she decided, or at least find a way to cover it with a fabric that was lighter and more cheerful. She must make the house into a home—if she was to remain here, that was. If she could afford to remain here.
And she turned her head and stared at the Earl of Merton for a long while in the flickering light of the candle. How very extravagant of her to let it burn! She had not extinguished the candles in the hall or on the landing either. As if she had money to burn.
He slept deeply and apparently dreamlessly. He looked as beautiful in sleep as he did when he was awake. His hair, short as it was, was rumpled and had freed itself of the combing that had tamed the waves and curls.
He looked younger.
He looked innocent.
He was not innocent—not sexually, anyway. There had not been a great deal of foreplay, either before they lay on the bed or after, and their actual coupling had lasted no longer than a few minutes. But he had known what he was doing. He was a passionate and accomplished lover even if a bit rushed on their first encounter.
Cassandra thought he was probably a very decent man from a decent family. For a moment she regretted choosing him. But it was too late now to choose again and to choose differently. She did not have the time to dally with several lovers before picking the one who best suited her.
Finally, when early dawn was beginning to gray the windows and make the candle’s light unnecessary, she could lie in bed no longer. She edged away from him so as not to wake him, but he did not even stir. His arm was still stretched out along the bottom edge of her pillow, the fabric of his evening coat noticeably creased where her head had lain. She leaned over him and very carefully lifted and buttoned the flap of his breeches, darting looks up into his face as her fingers worked.
He must, she thought, look quite magnificent without his clothes.
Next time she would see him. She felt an unexpected eagerness for that moment.
She got up from the bed, extinguished the candle, noting ruefully how much it had burned down, and let herself quietly into the small, cramped dressing room beside the bedchamber. Without the benefit of any light, she chose a day dress from the wardrobe there and pulled it on, after first washing her hands and face in the cold water that remained in the pitcher from last evening. She felt for a hair ribbon on the upper shelf of the wardrobe and brushed back her hair and secured it at her neck.
All the time she could feel a slight soreness within, where he had been. It had been a long time …
Surprisingly, it was a rather pleasant feeling.
He was still not awake when she returned to the bedchamber. She drew back the curtains from the window and stood for a few moments looking down at the street, which was still quiet despite the fact that the darkness of night was fast lifting. Finally a laborer hurried past, head down.
And then she went to sit on the chair before her dressing table, turning it so that she could see the man on the bed and know when he awoke.
It amazed her that he had not woken long before now, eager to resume the pleasures of the night. Her lip curled with scorn that he had not done so. Had she played her part so poorly? Or supremely well?
She crossed her legs and swung one foot idly until he finally stirred. It took him a while to come fully awake and to turn his head and see her sitting there.
“Cassandra?” he said. “I am so sorry. I must have—”
She cut him off. She did not want to know for what he was apologizing. For sleeping so long? The morning was still so early that even the tradesmen were not in the street yet, only that one laborer, who might have been on his way home from his night work. Or did he apologize for sleeping at all instead of availing himself of her willing body as many times as the night allowed?
He spoke her name as if it were a caress.
He had spoken it, she remembered, after he had finished with her body—as if she were not simply a woman’s body made for his pleasure, but a person with a name.
She must be careful not to be seduced by this man. It was she who was the seducer.
“We need to talk, Lord Merton,” she said.
“Do we?” he said, raising himself on one elbow, a smile in his eyes. “Would it not—”
—be better to tumble back into bed and talk later if at all?
“Business,” she said before he could finish. “We need to talk business.”
This was the moment upon which the whole of her future hinged. She continued to swing one foot, careful not to increase the speed or otherwise show how tensely nervous she was. She half closed her eyes, half smiled.
“Business?” He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed, brushed his hands rather ineffectually over his clothes, and attempted to tidy the fall of his neckcloth. He still looked like a man who had slept fully clothed.
“I did not seduce you,” she said, “for the pleasure of just one night in your company, Lord Merton. Especially when you slept through most of it.”
“I beg your—” he began.
She held up one hand.
“I take your sleeping so soundly as a tribute to the pleasure I gave you,” she said. “I slept through most of the night too. You are a very … satisfactory lover.” She curved her lips upward at the corners.
He did not say anything.
“I want you tonight again and tomorrow night and every night into the foreseeable future,” she said. “And I can see to it that you will want me equally as much and for at least as long, Lord Merton. Or do I not need to employ further seduction? Do you already want it?”
His answer gave her a slight jolt of alarm.
“I do not like the word seduction,” he said. “It suggests weakness on the part of the seduced and cold calculation on the part of the seducer. It suggests an inequality of desire and need. It suggests a puppet and a puppeteer. I have never admired male
seducers because they exploit women and make of them only playthings for their beds. I have never met a female seducer, though I am very familiar with the story of the sirens.”
“Did you not meet one last evening, Lord Merton?” she asked him.
He smiled at her.
“I met a lady,” he said, “who called herself that. You, in fact. I would prefer to think that in your loneliness—pardon me, your aloneness—you looked for someone for whom you could feel the comfort of an attraction, and you found me. You did not seduce me, Cassandra. You were open and bold about the attraction you felt, something I have not encountered in any of the ladies of my acquaintance, who usually employ a whole arsenal of more subtle wiles if they are interested in capturing my attention. I appreciated your openness. I felt an equal attraction to you. I would have asked you to dance with me even if you had not collided with me just before the waltz began. I do not suppose I would have also invited you to share a bed with me quite so soon if you had not made it very clear that it was what you wanted, but our mutual attraction might have led us here eventually.”
He had misunderstood entirely. Which was just as well.
Our mutual attraction.
“Yes,” he said, “I do want to sleep with you again and again into the future. But I must ask some questions first.”
She raised her eyebrows and regarded him haughtily.
“Indeed?” she said. She had somehow lost control over this business conference. She was supposed to be doing the talking, he the listening.
“Tell me about Lord Paget’s death,” he said. He was leaning forward, his arms draped over his knees. His blue eyes were looking very intensely at her.
“He died,” she said, smiling scornfully. “What more is to be said? You want me to tell you that his skull was cleaved in two with an axe, Lord Merton? It was not. It was a bullet that killed him—a bullet through the heart.”
He was still looking very directly at her.
“Did you kill him?” he asked.
She pursed her lips and looked back into his eyes.
“Yes,” she said.
She did not realize he had been holding his breath until he expelled it audibly.
“I might have found it difficult to wield an axe,” she said, “but a pistol was a weapon I was quite capable of using. I used one. I shot him through the heart with it. And I have never regretted it. I have not for one moment mourned him.”
His head had dropped so that he was looking down at the floor and she was gazing at the top of his head. She thought his eyes might be closed. The fingers of both his hands curled into his palms. He did not speak for a long time.
“Why?” he asked at last.
“Because,” she said, and smiled though he was not looking at her. “Perhaps because I felt like doing so.”
She ought to have said no to his original question. Was she trying to drive him away and sabotage her carefully laid plans? She could not have chosen a better way.
There was another loud silence. When he spoke again, his voice was scarcely audible.
“Did he abuse you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “He did.”
He lifted his head at last and looked intently at her again with troubled eyes, a frown between his brows.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“Why?” she asked him, her lip curling. “Could you have done anything to prevent it but failed to do so, Lord Merton?”
“I am sorry,” he said, “that so many men are brutes simply because they are physically stronger than women. Was it bad enough, then, that you had no alternative but to kill him?”
But he answered his own question before she could do so.
“It must have been. Why were you not arrested?”
“I shot him in the library,” she said, “late in the evening. There were no witnesses, and by the time a number of people gathered there, drawn by the noise, there was no knowing who had done it. There was and is no proof that I did. Anyone could have. Anyone at all. The house was full of servants and other residents. The library window was open to the whole world beyond. No one can prove anything except that he died of a bullet wound.”
“And except,” he said, “that you have confessed to me.”
“And to no one else besides you,” she said. “You will fear from this moment on that when you are asleep one night I will kill you too in order to keep you silent.”
“I am not a tattler,” he said, “and I am not afraid. You must not be either.”
“I do not fear you,” she said. “A gentleman does not reveal a lady’s secrets, and I believe you are a gentleman. And I do not fear you would ever abuse me. If you did, I would not kill you. Why would I when I can simply walk away from you as I could not from a husband? A widow has power, Lord Merton. She is free.”
Except that she was not. Her lack of money set her in thrall. And somehow this conversation was not proceeding at all as she had planned it in her mind. Then she had been able to control his answers as well as her questions. She was not sure there was a way of bringing it back under her control.
“I will be happy,” he said, “to be your lover. I will treat you kindly. I promise you that. And when it is over, you will simply tell me and I will go.”
“But the trouble is, Lord Merton,” she said, “that I cannot afford a liaison that is simply an affaire de coeur.”
It was not at all as she had intended to say it. But it was too late now. The words were out, and his gaze had sharpened further on her.
“Cannot afford?” he said.
“A man who succeeds to his father’s title and property and fortune,” she said, “is almost always going to consider his surviving stepmother an encumbrance. But most such men honor their obligations nonetheless. The present Lord Paget did not.”
“Your husband left no provision for you in his will?” he said, frowning. “Or in your marriage contract?”
“Certainly he did,” she said. “Do you think I would have killed him if I had known I would be left destitute, Lord Merton? I was to have the dower house at Carmel for my use during my lifetime, and the house in town here. I was to have a money settlement, all my personal jewelry, and a comfortable pension for life.”
He was still frowning.
“Can Paget legally withhold any of those things from you?” he asked.
“He cannot,” she said. “Neither can I legally kill a man. His father, in fact. It was a stalemate, Lord Merton, but he resolved it. He would not pursue prosecution against me if I just simply went away empty-handed.”
“And that is what you did?” he asked her. “Simply went away? Even though there was no evidence against you?”
“Evidence, Lord Merton,” she said, “can very easily be trumped up against someone one does not like.”
He stared at her for a few moments before closing his eyes and lowering his head again.
Seduction by a lady of questionable reputation followed by a business agreement by a courtesan—an expensive courtesan, an irresistible courtesan. And he would come to heel like a well-trained puppy because his appetite would have been aroused but not fully sated. He would be panting with lust for her.
That had been the plan. It had been clear in her head, and it had seemed perfectly reasonable. She had not expected it to be at all difficult to implement.
The plan had gone quite awry, however.
She began swinging her foot slowly again. She looked at his tousled golden blond curls with as much scorn as she could muster. She waited for him to get up and go away. She almost hastened him on his way by telling him to leave.
She did not fear what he would say to others after he had left. He was a gentleman, she believed. Besides, he would not wish openly to admit to anyone that he had been lured into the bed of a notorious murderer.
He lifted his head again, and it seemed to her as his eyes met hers in the growing light of day that he was paler than he had been, that his eyes were bluer. And very intense.
&
nbsp; “You have nothing?” he asked her.
She raised her eyebrows.
“I have enough,” she lied. “But if you are to be my lover, Lord Merton, you are also to be my protector. You will pay me for services rendered. You will pay me as you would the most celebrated of courtesans. Very well indeed, that is. And I will render services that will be ten times more satisfying than any courtesan would offer. Tonight was a mere pale sampling.”
It sounded like a foolish boast. She almost expected him to laugh at her.
“You were not attracted to me at all, were you?” he said. “You came uninvited to Meg’s ball in order to find a protector.”
She smiled at him—and her slipper finally fell off her foot and landed on the floor with a soft thump.
“A lady does, Lord Merton,” she said, her voice low, “what a lady must.”
Go, she told him silently. Please go. Go away and never let me have to see you again.
There was rather a lengthy silence during which they continued to stare at each other. She would not look away, she decided. Neither would she say anything more before he did. She certainly would not jerk to her feet and rush inside her dressing room and slam the door and press her body back against it until he had gone.
“I will pay you weekly, Lady Paget,” he said at last, “in advance. Beginning today. I will send a package as soon as I return home—or at the earliest respectable hour, anyway.”
And he named a weekly sum that had her heart thumping in amazement. Could courtesans possibly earn that much?
“That will be satisfactory,” she said coolly. He had stopped calling her Cassandra, she noticed. “You will not be sorry, Lord Merton. I will service you very well indeed.”
A light flashed deep inside his eyes.
“I do not wish to be serviced, ma’am,” he said, getting to his feet, “as if I were some sort of animal that functioned on blind lust alone. I doubt there are such animals, anyway, except those of the human variety. I will be your protector. Technically you will be my mistress. But I will bed you when our desire is mutual. I will bed you when you wish to be bedded and desist when you do not. We will be lovers or we will be nothing. Your weekly salary will not depend upon the number of times you make your body available to me upon that bed or any other. Is that clear to you?”