by Mary Balogh
At the same time, he felt uneasy about conducting such business inside her home. Perhaps he ought to have rented a house in which to conduct their liaison. Perhaps he still ought.
He would think about it tomorrow.
10
CASSANDRA sat in the darkened drawing room as she waited. She had changed into a silk and lace nightgown that she very rarely wore. She wore a flowing robe over it. Both were white. She had brushed out her hair and tied it at the nape of her neck with a white ribbon.
Like a bride awaiting her bridegroom, she thought.
Some irony.
And it was not a comfortable outfit to wear in the chilly room.
He came late. But she had not been expecting that he would be early. She listened for the clopping of horses’ hooves, the jingling of harness, the rumbling of wheels. But she was taken by surprise after all when the knocker rapped rather softly against the door.
He had come on foot.
He was wearing a long black opera cloak, she could see when she opened the door, and a tall silk hat, which he removed as soon as he saw her. She saw him smile in the light of a street lamp, and the cloak swirled around him as he stepped closer.
He was all darkness and light and virility.
Her breath quickened, half with dread, half with …
Well.
“Cassandra,” he said, “I hope I am not very much later than you expected.”
He stepped into the hall and shut and bolted the door himself as the single candle in the wall sconce shivered from the outside air.
“It is only half past eleven,” she said. “Did you have a pleasant evening?”
She turned to lead the way upstairs, extinguishing the candle as she passed it. Within a week or two, she supposed, this would all be very routine. Perhaps even tedious. There was much to be said for tedium. Tonight she could feel her heart thumping, robbing her of breath. She was as nervous as a bride, even though they had done this just last night and tonight should be easier.
That had been a little different, of course. She had not been his mistress then, employed to offer just this service. Paid in advance.
“Yes, thank you,” he said. “I dined with Moreland and my sister and their other guests and then went to the theater with them.”
And now to the house of his mistress. A complete gentleman’s night out.
She was glad Alice’s room was on the upper floor with Mary’s and Belinda’s. She had wanted Alice to take the room next to hers when they moved in, but there was too much noise from the street outside, Alice had protested, sensitive to it after ten years of living in the country. The higher room was sure to be quieter.
Cassandra extinguished the candle outside her room and stepped inside. He followed her in and shut the door. There was enough light. She had angled the side mirrors of the dressing table, as she had done last night, so that the light from the single candle was many times reflected.
“May I pour you some wine?” She crossed the room to the tray she had set on a table beside the bed. It had been an extravagance, the wine, but today she had been able to afford it.
“Thank you,” he said.
She poured a glass for each of them and handed him one. He was standing not far inside the door. He had set his cloak over the back of a chair, his hat upon the seat. He was wearing black evening clothes with an ivory embroidered waistcoat, a white shirt with crisp collar points, and a neckcloth that had been knotted by an expert, though it was not ostentatious.
The Earl of Merton did not need ostentation. He had enough beauty and charisma of person to make further adornment quite unnecessary.
She clinked her glass against his.
“To pleasure,” she said, and smiled into his eyes.
“To mutual pleasure,” he agreed, and held her gaze as they both drank.
Even in the dim, flickering light of the candle his eyes were very blue.
He took her glass from her hand and carried it, with his own, to set back on the tray. Then he turned and opened his hands, palms out, toward her.
“Come,” he said.
He was standing right beside the bed. She half expected that he would tumble her to it without further ado and proceed to business. Instead, he set both arms loosely about her waist.
“And how was your evening?” he asked her.
“I sat in the drawing room watching Alice stitching at some mending,” she said, “and did absolutely nothing myself. I was shamefully lazy.”
She had been horribly agitated, actually, though she had tried not to show it—or even admit it to herself.
Until last night she had only ever lain with Nigel. And that, God help her, had had the sanctity of marriage. It had not felt sinful.
Did this, then? They were consenting adults. They were harming no one by being together.
“Sometimes,” he said, “laziness is a thoroughly enjoyable luxury.”
“Yes, it is.” She set her hands on either side of his slim waist. They were instantly warmed by his body heat.
He closed his arms about her, bringing her against him from bosom to knees, and kissed her.
It was somehow unexpected. And it was strangely alarming. She had expected to control this encounter as she had last night’s. She had planned to undress him slowly tonight, exploring his body with her hands and mouth as she did so, driving him mad with need and desire. She still planned it, but …
But he was kissing her.
The alarming, unexpected thing was that it was neither a passionate nor a lascivious kiss. It was warm and comfortable and … Tender?
It was a kiss that tore at her defenses.
He kissed her lightly with parted lips, moving them over hers in unhurried exploration before touching them with the tip of his tongue and then moving on to kiss her closed eyelids, her temples, the soft, sensitive flesh beneath one earlobe, her throat.
And that throat felt suddenly raw within, as though with unshed tears.
Why?
She had expected passion. She had wanted passion. Passion could be held at a purely physical level. She had intended this to be only physical. She had wanted sex and nothing else. And that word was becoming easier to verbalize in her mind.
She had wanted raw sex.
Something mindless and carnal.
She had wanted to feel herself earning every penny of her living.
Her hands, she realized, were spread over his upper back, un-moving. She was being kissed. She was not kissing. She was receiving, not giving.
She was earning nothing.
He lifted his head a few inches from her own. He was not smiling, and yet something lurked in his eyes that seemed like a smile. She was leaning into him, she realized, all warm and relaxed, almost languorous.
“Cass,” he said softly.
No one had ever called her that before.
“Yes,” she said, a mere breath of sound.
And she realized at the same moment that it was not languor she felt at all, but … desire.
How could it be desire? He had done nothing to arouse it in her.
Had he?
“I want you,” he said. “Not just your woman’s body but the person inside it as well. Tell me you want me too.”
… but the person inside it …
She almost hated him. How could she fight this?
She did her best. She half closed her eyes and lowered the tone of her voice.
“But of course I want you,” she said. “What woman could resist someone in whom man and angel collide in such erotic splendor?”
She smiled carefully at him.
But just when he ought to have resumed the kisses, passionate or not, he chose to look at her, his eyes searching her face.
She ought to have extinguished the candle.
“I am not here to hurt you,” he said softly. “I am here to—”
“Love me?” She cocked one eyebrow.
By what rules did this man play the game of dalliance and seduction?
“Yes,” he said. “In a manner of speaking. There are many kinds of love, Cass, and none of them are simple lust. I find simple lust well-nigh impossible. Especially for you, who are in some sort of relationship with me. Yes, I am here to love you.”
He did not know the first thing about love.
But did she?
… you, who are in some sort of relationship with me …
She drooped her eyelids over her eyes again and smiled.
“Take it off,” he said. “Please.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Your mask,” he said. “You do not need it here with me. I promise you.”
She had the sudden feeling, the sudden fear, that she needed it with him more than with anyone else. He was a relentless ripper of masks, of carefully woven defenses.
He kissed her again, more deeply this time. His tongue traced the outline of her lips and then pressed into her mouth as he untied her hair ribbon and dropped it to the floor. Then his arms held her close, and after a minute or so he turned her and lowered her to the bed after pulling loose the tie that held her robe closed at the neck, and letting the garment slither to the floor.
He did not follow her down. He undressed beside the bed, dropping first his coat and then his waistcoat and shirt to the floor to join her robe and ribbon. He reached for the buttons at his waist and stepped out of his breeches and stockings and drawers. He took his time about it and made no attempt to turn away from her steadily watching eyes.
Dear God, he was beautiful. With most people clothes were a blessing in that they hid a multitude of imperfections. His clothes hid only perfection—well-muscled arms and shoulders and chest, which was lightly dusted with golden hair; a slender waist and hips; tight buttocks; long, tautly muscled legs.
Ancient Greek sculptors had doubtless idealized their models when sculpting the gods. They could have used the Earl of Merton just as he was.
He was as much god as angel.
He was blue and golden, like a summer sky—blue eyes, golden hair. All light. Blinding light.
“Blow out the candle,” she said.
She could not bear to look at him any longer, with the knowledge that she was in some sort of relationship with him—mistress and protector. That was all, as she had planned, as she had wanted. As she still wanted. She would hold that knowledge better without the sense of sight. She would hold images of Mary and Belinda and Alice in her mind’s eye, and even Roger. Poor Roger, who had once tried to protect her …
She was Lord Merton’s mistress, nothing else.
He came down beside her after putting out the candle, and she turned to him and reached for him, intent upon taking control of the encounter as she had planned it. But his hands were grasping the hem of her nightgown, and she lifted her arms while he peeled it off her and tossed it over his shoulder. Then, before she could lower her arms, he grasped both her wrists in one hand and held them above her head while he leaned over her, turning her onto her back again, and kissed her, first on the lips and then down over her chin to her throat, and on down to her breasts. He opened his mouth over the tip of one breast, breathed in, bringing a rush of cold air to the moistened nipple, and then closed his mouth about it and suckled her. Heat replaced cold, and a dart of pain that was not pain stabbed downward through her womb and out to her inner thighs, which suddenly ached with need.
His mouth left her breast and moved down to her stomach. She felt his tongue dart into her navel, and all her inner muscles contracted tightly.
His free hand was smoothing over her inner thighs, his fingers lightly circling. And then they were at the secret wet heat of her, light and feathering until one finger penetrated her to the first knuckle. He moved it in a hard circle.
She could have freed her hands. His grip on her wrists was not tight. She did not do so. She lay passive beneath his onslaught, though that was not at all an appropriate word to describe what he was doing. She had thought him an innocent. He was not. He was very skilled indeed. He knew how to use slow tenderness to build a passion that felt like a raging fire.
This was not as she imagined a man would use a mistress. She had expected all brute strength, orchestrated by her own seductive wiles. Though not with him once she had chosen him. With him she had expected an innocence that would be all at her mercy.
As though she were an experienced courtesan.
How foolish had been her expectations.
His fingers feathered her breast and closed lightly over her swollen nipple. She almost cried out with the pain of it—the pain that was not pain.
His body came over hers then, and his weight came down on her as he released her wrists and slid his hands beneath her buttocks. He lifted his head and she knew he was looking into her face, though she could scarcely see him in the darkness.
“There is a kind of love,” he said, his voice very low, “that a man feels for his lover, Cass. It is more than lust.”
And he came into her even as his words undid her and made it impossible for her to brace herself against the invasion.
He was big and long and hard, as she remembered from last night. She clenched her muscles about him, as she had done then, and slid her feet up the bed and hugged his strongly muscled legs with her own.
He smelled clean, she thought. His subtle, expensive cologne did not mask less pleasant odors. It merely enhanced cleanliness. His hair was soft and faintly fragrant. She slid the fingers of one hand into it as he rested his head on the pillow beside hers, his face turned away from her. She wrapped the other arm about his waist.
And he began the rhythmic thrust and withdrawal of intimacy, always the part that had required the greatest effort of endurance from her during most of her marriage.
He had more control over himself tonight. She soon knew that. It was not going to be over in a very few minutes. His movements were steady and measured. Deep and shallow, deep and shallow.
She could feel the wet slide of him inside her, hardness against softness, heat against heat. She could hear the suck and pull of their coupling.
It was a curiously enticing sound.
And a sort of yearning began there, where he worked toward his own pleasure, and spread to her bowels, her breasts, her throat. A yearning that was an ache, a pain that was not pain. She wanted to weep. She wanted to twine her legs tightly about his, raise them to his waist, wrap her arms tightly about him, press her face to his shoulder, cry out with the strange longing for she knew not what.
She wanted to abandon herself to that longing. To lose herself. For one blessed moment in her life to give in.
It was what she ought to do, she realized with an effort of conscious thought. She was his mistress. He was paying her handsomely to pleasure him, to flatter him by taking pleasure.
But if she feigned pleasure, she might be snared by her own game.
She felt helpless and frightened.
And aching with longing.
His hands slid beneath her again. His face was above hers once more.
“Cass,” he whispered. “Cass.”
And as the rhythm ended and he pressed deep and held there while she felt the hot rush of his release, she knew that it was the very worst thing he could have said.
She wanted to be woman and mistress to him. She wanted to keep herself for herself. She wanted her two lives—her private life and her working life—to be kept strictly separate. But he had looked into her face in the darkness and called her by that name no one else had ever used, and told her with that one use of it that he knew who she was and that she was somehow precious to him.
Except that he did not, and she was not.
It was just sex.
She was suddenly alarmed by the realization that two hot tears were trickling diagonally across her cheeks and dripping through her hair to the pillow beneath. She hoped fervently that his eyes had not become accustomed enough to the darkness that he would notice.
All the aches and the yearnings subsided to be re
placed by regret, though regret for what she did not know.
He drew out of her and moved to lie beside her. He turned her half away from him and snuggled in behind her before drawing her back to lean against his body, her head on his shoulder, his arm beneath her head and stretched along hers to the wrist, about which his fingers closed as her hand rested against her ribs.
She could hear his heart thudding steadily.
He smoothed back her hair with his free hand and set his lips against her forehead, just above the temple. The place one would kiss out of affection.
She could suddenly hear his words again.
There is a kind of love that a man feels for his lover.
She did not want his love, not any kind of love. She wanted his money in exchange for what she gave him here.
She repeated the thought over and over in her mind lest she forget what this was all about.
“Tell me about the child,” he murmured against her ear.
“The child?” she said, startled.
“At the door this afternoon,” he said. “She was peeping about the skirts of your maid. Is she yours?”
“Oh,” she said. “No. You mean Belinda. She is Mary’s.”
“Mary is the maid?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I brought them with me to London. I could not leave them behind. They had nowhere else to go. Mary was dismissed when Bruce—the new Lord Paget—finally came to live at Carmel. Besides, she is my friend. And I love Belinda. We all need some touch of innocence in our lives, Lord—Stephen.”
“Mary has no husband?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But that does not make her a pariah.”
“Did you have no children?” he asked.
“No.” She closed her eyes. “Yes. I had a daughter who died at birth. She was perfect, but she was born two months too soon, and she would not breathe.”
“Oh, Cass,” he said.
“Don’t say you are sorry,” she said. “You had nothing to do with it, did you? And I miscarried twice before that.”
And probably once after, though the third time there was only very heavy bleeding almost a month after she had missed her courses and she could never be sure there had been a child. Oh, but she knew there had been. Her woman’s body had known it. So had her mother’s heart.