More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  “Perhaps—” Dr. Raikes began again.

  “Why should I care,” Jocelyn asked her, “if you lose your job and are tossed out onto the street to starve? If it were not for you, I would not be lying here as helpless as a beached whale.”

  “I was not the one aiming a pistol at you,” she pointed out. “I was not the one who pulled the trigger. I called to both of you to stop, if you will remember.”

  Was he actually, Jocelyn wondered suddenly, scrapping with a mere laboring girl? In his own home? In his own bedchamber? He pushed her arm away.

  “Conan,” he said curtly, “give this girl the sovereign she ran away from earlier, if you will be so good, and throw her out if she refuses to go on her own feet.”

  But his friend had time for only one step forward.

  “She certainly does refuse to go,” the girl said, straightening up and glaring down at him, two spots of color reddening her cheeks. She was having the unmitigated gall to be angry and to show it to his face. “She will not budge until she has her signed note.”

  “Tresham,” Conan said, sounding almost amused, “it would take you only a moment, old chap. I can send down for paper, pen, and ink. I can even write the note myself, and all you will need do is sign it. It is her livelihood.”

  “The devil!” Jocelyn exclaimed. “I will not even dignify that suggestion with a reply. She may grow roots where she stands until a burly footman comes to toss her out on her ear. Are you finished, Raikes?”

  The doctor had straightened from his task and turned to his bag.

  “I am, your grace,” Dr. Raikes said. “There is much damage, I feel it my duty to warn you. It is my hope that it will not be permanent. But it most certainly will be if you do not stay off the leg and keep it elevated for at least the next three weeks.”

  Jocelyn stared at him, appalled. Three weeks of total inaction? He could not think of a worse fate.

  “If you will not write the note,” the girl said, “then you must offer me employment to replace my lost job. I simply refuse to starve.”

  Jocelyn turned his head to look at her—the cause of all his woes. This was his fourth duel. Before today he had not suffered as much as a scratch. Oliver would have missed by a yard if this girl’s screeching had not given him a broader target at which to aim and the luxury of aiming at an opponent who was not also aiming at him.

  “You have it,” he snapped. “You have employment, girl. For three weeks. As my nurse. Believe me, before the time is up you will be wondering if starvation would not have been a better fate.”

  She looked steadily at him. “What are my wages to be?” she asked.

  JANE AWOKE DISORIENTED EARLY the following morning. There were none of the noises of drunken men bellowing and women shrieking and children crying and quarreling, none of the smells of stale cabbage and gin and worse to which she had grown almost accustomed. Only silence and warm blankets and the sweet smell of cleanliness.

  She was at Dudley House on Grosvenor Square, she remembered almost immediately, and threw back the bedcovers to step out onto the luxury of a carpeted floor. After she had gone yesterday to give notice to her landlord and fetch her meager belongings, she had reported to the servants’ entrance of Dudley House, expecting to be put into an attic room with the housemaids. But the housekeeper had informed her that the house had its full complement of servants and there was not a bed available. His grace’s nurse would have to be placed in a guest room.

  It was a small room, it was true, at the back of the house overlooking the garden, but it seemed luxurious to Jane after her recent experiences. At least it offered her some privacy. And comfort too.

  She had not seen her new employer since yesterday morning, when she had so boldly—and so despairingly—demanded that he provide her with employment if he would not help her keep the job she already had. He had apparently taken a dose of laudanum after she and the physician had left, which the housekeeper had sneaked into a hot drink without his knowledge, and it had reacted with the enormous amount of alcohol in his system to make him violently sick before it plunged him into a deep sleep.

  Jane guessed that the size of his headache this morning would be astronomical. Not to mention the pain in his leg. It was only through the skill of a superior physician, she knew, that he still had two legs today.

  She washed in cold water, dressed quickly, and brushed out her hair before plaiting it with expert fingers and coiling it tightly at the back of her head. She pulled on one of the two white caps she had bought yesterday out of the wages she had earned at the milliner’s. She had gone back there officially to give her notice and explain that she would be working for the Duke of Tresham. Madame de Laurent had paid up, too surprised to do otherwise, Jane guessed.

  She left her room and made her way down to the kitchen, where she hoped to have some breakfast before she was summoned to begin her work as nurse.

  He would make her prefer starvation to her current employment, he had predicted yesterday. She had no doubt he would try his best to make her life uncomfortable. A more arrogant, bad-tempered, ill-mannered man it would be difficult to find. Of course, there had been extenuating circumstances yesterday. He had been in considerable pain, all of which he had borne stoically enough, except with his tongue. That had been allowed to run roughshod over everyone within earshot of it.

  She wondered what her duties would be. Well, at least, she thought, entering the kitchen and discovering to her chagrin that she must be the last servant up, her working life was unlikely to be as monotonous as it had been at Madame Laurent’s. And she was earning twice the wages with board and room in addition.

  Of course, it was to last for only three weeks.

  HIS LEG WAS THROBBING like a mammoth toothache, Jocelyn discovered when he woke up. From the quality of the light in the room, he judged that it was either early morning or late dusk; he guessed the former. He had slept the evening and night away and yet had lived a lifetime of bizarre dreams in the process. He did not feel in any way refreshed. Quite the contrary.

  It behooved him to concentrate on the mammoth toothache in his leg. He did not want even to think about the condition of his head, which felt at least a dozen times its usual size, every square inch of it throbbing as if some unseen hand were using it as a drum—from the inside. His stomach was best ignored altogether. His mouth felt as if it might be stuffed with foul-tasting cotton wool.

  Perhaps the only positive note in an overwhelmingly negative situation was that if first impressions were anything to judge by, at least he was not feverish. It was the fever that killed after surgery more often than the effects of the wound itself.

  Jocelyn jerked impatiently on the bell rope beside his bed and then vented his irritability on his valet, who had not brought his shaving water up.

  “I thought you would wish to rest this morning, your grace,” he said.

  “You thought! Do I pay you to think, Barnard?”

  “No, your grace,” his man replied with long-suffering meekness.

  “Then fetch my damned shaving water,” Jocelyn said. “I have bristles enough on my face to grate cheese.”

  “Yes, your grace,” Barnard said. “Mr. Quincy wishes to know when he may wait upon you.”

  “Quincy?” Jocelyn frowned. His secretary wished to wait upon him? “Here? In my bedchamber, do you mean? Why the devil would he expect me to receive him here?”

  Barnard looked at his master with considerable unease. “You were advised to stay off your leg for three weeks, your grace,” he said.

  Jocelyn was speechless. His household actually expected him to remain in bed for three weeks? Had they taken collective leave of their senses? He informed his hapless valet with colorful eloquence what he thought of the advice and interference of physicians, valets, secretaries, and servants in general. He threw back the bedcovers and swung his legs over the side of the bed—and grimaced.

  Then he remembered something else.

  “Where is that damned wo
man?” he asked. “That interfering baggage whom I seem to remember employing as my nurse. Sleeping in the lap of luxury, I suppose? Expecting breakfast in bed, I suppose?”

  “She is in the kitchen, your grace,” Barnard told him, “awaiting your orders.”

  “To attend me here?” Jocelyn gave a short bark of laughter. “She thinks to be admitted here to ply my brow with her cool cloths and titillate my nerves with her sharp tongue, does she?”

  His valet was wise enough to hold his tongue.

  “Send her to the library,” Jocelyn said, “after I have retired there from the breakfast room. Now fetch my shaving water and wipe that disapproving frown from your face.”

  Over the next half hour he washed and shaved, donned a shirt, and sat while Barnard arranged his neckcloth the way he liked it, neat and crisp without any of the silly artistry affected by the dandy set. But he was forced to concede that the wearing of breeches or pantaloons was going to be out of the question. If current fashion had not dictated that both those garments be worn skintight, perhaps matters might have been different. But one could not fight fashion altogether. He did not possess breeches that did not mold his legs like a second skin. He donned an ankle-length dressing gown of wine-colored brocaded silk instead, and slippers.

  He submitted to being half carried downstairs by a hefty young footman, who did his best to look so impassive that he might almost have been inanimate. But Jocelyn felt all the humiliation of his helplessness. After he had sat through breakfast and read the papers, he had to be half carried again into the library, where he sat in a winged leather chair beside the fire rather than at his desk, as he usually did for an hour or so in the mornings.

  “One thing,” he said curtly to his secretary when that young man presented himself. “Not one word, Michael, about where I should be and what I should be doing there. Not even half a word if you value your position.”

  He liked Michael Quincy, a gentleman two years his junior who had been in his employ for four years. Quiet, respectful, and efficient, the man was nevertheless not obsequious. He actually dared to smile now.

  “The morning post is on your desk, your grace,” he said. “I’ll hand it to you.”

  Jocelyn narrowed his gaze on him. “That woman,” he said. “Barnard was supposed to have sent her in by now. It is time she began to earn her keep. Have her come in, Michael. I am feeling just irritated enough to enjoy her company.”

  His secretary was actually grinning as he left the room.

  His head now felt about fifteen times larger than normal, Jocelyn thought.

  When she came into the room, it was clear that she had decided to be the meek lamb of an employee this morning. Doubtless word had spread belowstairs that he was in one of his more prickly moods. She stood inside the library door, her hands folded in front of her, awaiting instructions. Jocelyn immediately felt even more irritated than he had already been feeling. He ignored her for a couple of minutes while he tried to decipher a lengthy, crossed letter written in his sister’s atrocious handwriting. She lived scarcely a ten-minute walk away, but she had written in the greatest agitation on hearing about the duel. It seemed she had suffered palpitations and vapors and other indecipherable maladies so serious that Heyward, her husband, had had to be fetched from the House of Lords.

  Heyward would not have been amused.

  Jocelyn looked up. She looked hideous. She wore yesterday’s gray dress, which covered her from neck to wrists to ankles. There was no ornament to make the cheap garment prettier. Today she wore a white bonnet cap. She stood straight and tall. It was altogether possible, he thought, mentally stripping her with experienced eyes, that she looked quite womanly beneath the garments, but one had to be dedicated to observe the signs. He seemed to recall through yesterday’s nightmare of pain that her hair was golden. It was invisible now.

  Her stance was meek. But her eyes were not directed decently at the floor. She was gazing steadily at him.

  “Come!” He beckoned impatiently.

  She came with firm strides until she was three feet from his chair. She was still looking directly at him with eyes that were startlingly blue. Indeed, he realized in some surprise, she had a face that was classical in its beauty. There was not a fault to find there, except that he remembered yesterday’s thinned lips. In repose today they looked soft and exquisitely shaped.

  “Well?” he said sharply. “What do you have to say for yourself? Are you ready to apologize to me?”

  She took her time about answering.

  “No,” she said at last. “Are you ready to apologize to me?”

  He sat back in his chair and tried to ignore the rampaging pain in his leg. “Let us get one thing straight,” he said in the quiet, almost pleasant voice that he knew had every last member of his staff instantly quaking in his or her boots. “There is not even the smallest semblance of equality between us—” He paused and frowned. “What the devil is your name?”

  “Jane Ingleby.”

  “There is not the smallest semblance of equality between us, Jane,” he continued. “I am the master and you are the servant. The very lowly servant. You are not required to cap everything I say with some witty impertinence. You will address me with the proper respect. You will tack ‘your grace’ onto everything you do say. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And I believe, your grace, you should watch your language in my hearing. I do not approve of having the devil’s name and the Lord’s name bandied about as if they were in everyone’s nursery vocabulary.”

  Good Lord! Jocelyn’s hands curved about the arms of the chair.

  “Indeed?” He used his iciest voice. “And do you have any other instructions for me, Jane?”

  “Yes, two things,” she said. “I would prefer to be called Miss Ingleby.”

  His right hand found the handle of his quizzing glass. He half raised it to his eye. “And the other thing?”

  “Why are you not in bed?”

  3

  ANE WATCHED THE DUKE OF TRESHAM RAISE HIS glass all the way to his eye, grotesquely magnifying it, while his other hand came to rest on top of the pile of letters in his lap. He was being enormously toplofty, of course, trying to frighten her. And half succeeding. But it would be certain suicide to show it.

  His servants, she had gathered at breakfast, were all terrified of him, especially when he was in one of his black moods, as he was this morning, according to his valet. And he looked rather formidable, even clad as he was now in dressing gown and slippers over a crisp white shirt and expertly tied neckcloth.

  He was a powerful-looking, dark-haired man with black eyes, prominent nose, and thin lips in a narrow face, whose habitual expression appeared to be both harsh and cynical. And arrogant.

  Of course, Jane conceded, this must not be one of his better days.

  She had approached the room with Mr. Quincy, the duke’s pleasant, gentle-mannered secretary, and had decided to be what she was supposed to be—a quiet, meek nurse who was fortunate to have this position even if only for three weeks.

  But it was difficult not to be herself—as she had discovered at great cost almost a month ago. Her stomach lurched and she withdrew her mind firmly from those particular memories.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said now, lowering his glass to his chest again.

  A rhetorical question. He did not, she guessed, suffer from defective hearing.

  “You were told to stay in bed for at least three weeks and keep your leg elevated,” she reminded him. “Yet here you sit with your foot on the floor and obviously in pain. I can tell from the tension in your face.”

  “The tension in my face,” he told her with an ominous narrowing of his eyes, “is the result of a giant headache and of your colossal impudence.”

  Jane ignored him. “Is it not foolish to take risks,” she asked, “merely because it would be tedious to lie abed?”

  Men really were foolish. She had known several just like him in her twenty years�
�men whose determination to be men made them reckless of their health and safety.

  He leaned back in his chair and regarded her in silence while despite herself she felt prickles of apprehension crawl up her spine. She would probably find herself out on the pavement with her pathetic bundle of belongings in ten minutes’ time, she thought. Perhaps without her bundle.

  “Miss Ingleby.” He made her name sound like the foulest curse. “I am six and twenty years old. I have held my title and all the duties and responsibilities that go with it for nine years, since the death of my father. It is a long time since anyone spoke to me as if I were a naughty schoolboy in need of a scolding. It will be a long time before I will tolerate being spoken to thus again.”

  There was no answer to that. Jane ventured none. She folded her hands before her and looked steadily at him. He was not handsome, she decided. Not at all. But there was a raw masculinity about him that must make him impossibly attractive to any woman who liked to be bullied, dominated, or verbally abused. And there were many such women, she believed.

  She had had quite enough of such men. Her stomach churned uncomfortably again.

  “But you are quite right in one thing, you will be pleased to know,” he admitted. “I am in pain, and not just from this infernal headache. Keeping my foot on the floor is clearly not the best thing to be doing. But I’ll be damned before I will lie prone on my bed for three weeks merely because my attention was distracted long enough during a duel for someone to put a hole in my leg. And I will be double damned before I will allow myself to be drugged into incoherence again merely so that the pain might be dulled. In the music room next door you will find a footstool beside the hearth. Fetch it.”

  She wondered again as she turned to leave the room what exactly her duties would be for the coming three weeks. He did not appear to be feverish. And he clearly had no intention of playing the part of languishing invalid. Nursing him and running and fetching for him would not be nearly a full-time job. Probably the housekeeper would be instructed to find other tasks for her. She would not mind as long as her work never brought her in sight of any visitors to the house. It had been incautious to come into Mayfair again, to knock on the door of a grand mansion on Grosvenor Square, to demand work here. To put herself on display.