by Mary Balogh
He read two chapters before stopping and lowering the book to his lap. They sat in silence for a while after that. In a silence that seemed to him thoroughly comfortable. He was sprawled in his chair, he realized. He could nod off to sleep with the greatest ease. He felt … How did he feel? Contented? Certainly. Happy? Happiness was something he had little or no acquaintance with and set no store by.
He felt shut off from the world. Shut off from his usual self. With Jane. Who was certainly shut off from her world and usual self, whatever they might be. Could this be perpetuated? he wondered. Indefinitely? Forever?
Or could it at least become an occasional retreat, this room that was so much Jane and in which he felt comfortable, restful, contented—all alien to his normal way of life?
He should put an end to these foolish, unrealistic, and uncharacteristic dreams without further ado, he thought. He should take his leave—or take her to bed.
“What is it you are working on?” he asked her instead.
She smiled without looking up. “A tablecloth,” she said. “For the dining room table. I had to find something to make. Embroidery has always been a passion with me.”
He watched her for a while longer from beneath lazy eyelids. The frame was tilted away from him so that he could not see the pattern. But the silks were autumnal colors, all tastefully complementary.
“Will your hackles rise,” he asked, “if I come and look?”
“No indeed.” She looked surprised. “But you are under no obligation to be polite, you know. You can have no interest in embroidery.”
He did not deign to answer. He hauled himself out of the deep, comfortable chair, setting his closed book on top of her open one as he did so.
She was working a scene of autumn woods across one corner of the cloth.
“Where is the pattern from which you work?” he asked her. He wanted to be able to see the whole picture.
“In my head,” she told him.
“Ah.” He understood then why it was a passion with her. It was not just that she was skilled with her needle. “It is an art with you, then, Jane. You have a fine eye for color and design.”
“Strangely,” she said, “I have never been able to capture my visions on paper or canvas. But through my needle pictures flow easily from my mind to the fabric.”
“I was never any good at portraying scenes,” he said. “I always felt that nature did so much better than I could possibly do. Human faces are a different matter. There is so much life and character to capture.”
He could have bitten his tongue as soon as the words were out. He straightened up in some embarrassment.
“You paint portraits?” She looked up at him, bright interest in her eyes. “I have always thought that must be the most difficult form of art.”
“I dabble,” he said stiffly, wandering to the window and gazing out at the small garden, which was looking remarkably well tended, he noticed. Had those roses always been there? “Past tense. I dabbled.”
“I suppose,” she said quietly, “it was not a manly pursuit.”
His father’s language had been far more graphically scathing.
“I would like to paint you,” he heard himself saying. “There is a great deal in your face even apart from exquisite beauty. It would be an enormous challenge.”
There was silence behind him.
“Upstairs we will satisfy our sexual passions,” he said. “In here we could indulge all the others, Jane, if you wished it. Away from the prying eyes and sneering lips of the world. This is what you have created in this room, is it not? A den, as you call it, a haven, where you can be yourself, where all the other facts of your life, including being my mistress, can be set aside and you can be—simply Jane.”
He turned his head. She was looking steadily at him, her needle suspended above her work.
“Yes,” she said.
“And I am the last person with whom you would wish to share the room.” He smiled ruefully at her. “I will not insist. In future you will entertain me in the sitting room whenever we are not in the bedchamber.”
“No.” She let a few moments pass before elaborating. “No, I will no longer think of this room as mine but as ours. A place in which our contract and our relative stations in life have no application. A place where you may paint and read, where I may embroider and write, a place where there can be a woman at one side of the hearth and a man at the other. A place of quiet and peace, where all is well with the world. You are invited to make yourself at home here whenever you wish, Jocelyn.”
He gazed at her over his shoulder for a long time without saying anything. What the devil was happening? There could be only one reason, one passion to bring him to this house. He did not want any other reason. He might become dependent upon it—upon her. And yet his heart ached and yearned with hope.
For what?
“Would you like tea?” She was threading her needle into the linen and getting to her feet. “Shall I ring for the tray?”
“Yes.” He clasped his hands at his back. “Yes, please.”
He watched her do so.
“There is plenty of spare room in here,” he said. “I am going to have a pianoforte brought here. May I?” He could scarcely believe he was actually asking permission.
“Of course.” She looked gravely at him. “It is our room, Jocelyn. Yours as well as mine.”
He thought for one moment that it might be happiness that rushed to engulf him. But he soon recognized it as an equally unfamiliar emotion.
Terror.
16
ANE WENT TO BED EARLY, BUT SHE COULD NOT sleep. She stopped trying after half an hour. She got out of bed, lit a candle, pulled a warm dressing gown over her linen nightgown, slipped her feet into her slippers, and went back downstairs to her den. Their den. Their haven, he had called it.
Mr. Jacobs was still up. She asked him to build up the fire again. The young footman brought the coals and asked if there was anything else he could fetch for her.
“No, thank you, Phillip,” she said. “That will be all. I can find my own way to bed when I am tired.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Don’t forget to put the guard about the fire, then, when you leave, ma’am.”
“I won’t.” She smiled. “Thank you for reminding me. Good night.”
“Good night, ma’am,” he replied.
She would read until she was too tired to keep her eyes open, she decided. She seated herself beside the fire, in the chair Jocelyn had occupied during the afternoon, and picked up a book. Not the one from which he had read. She left that where it was. Perhaps he would wish to continue with chapter three next time he came. She opened her book to the page at which she had left off reading the night before and set it on her lap.
She gazed into the fire.
She should not have allowed him in here. She knew that she would no longer think of this room as hers. It was theirs. She could feel his presence here. She could see him as he had been earlier, sprawled comfortably but not inelegantly in this chair. She could hear his voice reading from Mansfield Park as if he were as lost in the story as she had been. And she could see him standing at the window.…
It was unfair. She could have coped with her new life if their relationship had proceeded, as she had expected, along purely sexual lines. She knew enough to realize that sex was not love, especially sex between a rakish duke and his mistress. She did not know what this was.
He had spent longer than two hours in this room with her this afternoon—with his mistress—without once touching her. He had not taken her to bed. After tea, during which they had discussed the war and political reform—she was a pacifist, he was not; she was unreservedly in favor of reform, he was far more cautiously so—he had got to his feet quite abruptly, made her a bow, bade her a good afternoon, and gone on his way.
He had left her feeling empty inside. Though that could not be strictly true or she would not also have felt all churned up—her body, her mind, her e
motions.
For almost the whole time they had been here together in the den, he had not been the Duke of Tresham. He had been Jocelyn. But Jocelyn with far fewer reservations than she was accustomed to. Jocelyn without any mask. A person in need of being himself as he had never been before. A man in need of friendship and acceptance and—ah, yes.
Jane sighed aloud.
A man in need of love.
But she doubted he would ever accept that ultimate gift even if he acknowledged the need to himself.
She doubted even more that he was capable of returning the gift.
And who was she to offer? A fugitive. A murderess—no, not that. She was even beginning to believe it herself. She did not think the blow she had given Sidney would have killed him in itself.
She shuddered at the memories.
And then she set her head back against the chair and listened to the sounds of Mr. Jacobs or Phillip at the front door, locking up for the night. A moment later there was a tap on her door.
“Come in,” she called. It must be midnight or later. The servants should be in bed.
He looked powerful and satanic, covered from neck to ankles in a long black opera cloak. He stood in the doorway, one hand still on the knob, while her stomach performed a complete somersault and she knew that indeed the afternoon had been disastrous to her.
“Still up?” he asked. “I saw light beneath the door.”
“Do you have your own key?” she asked him.
“Of course,” he replied. “This is my house.”
She got to her feet and moved toward him. She had simply not expected him.
And then a strange thing happened. He took his hand from the doorknob as she approached and spread his arms to the sides, revealing the white silk lining of the cloak and the elegant black and white evening clothes he wore beneath. But Jane did not really notice the splendor of his appearance. She kept walking and was soon enveloped in the folds of his cloak while she lifted her face and he lowered his own both at the same time.
It was a long and deep and fierce embrace. But the strange thing was that it was not sexual—not entirely so anyway. Jane had little experience with embraces, but she knew instinctively that he was not just a man kissing his mistress prior to taking her to bed. He was Jocelyn. And he was kissing her, Jane.
By the time the embrace ended he was the Duke of Tresham again.
“I will be putting you to work tonight, Jane,” he said.
“Of course.” She stood back and smiled.
And then gasped with alarm when he caught her hard by the wrist and gazed down at her with hard, cold eyes.
“No!” he said fiercely. “You will not smile at me in that way, Jane, like a jaded coquette hiding her weary cynicism behind a cool smile of invitation. There is no of course about it. If you do not want me, then tell me to go to hell and I will go.”
She jerked her wrist out of his grasp. “What do you expect when you speak of putting me to work?” she asked angrily. “Does a woman go to work for a man in bed when she wants him? When you call it work you make a whore of me.”
“You are the one,” he reminded her, his eyes as cold as steel, “who speaks of contractual obligations and rights. What does that make of me? It makes me someone who has purchased access to your body. Someone who has bought the services of a whore. It makes of you a woman who is working when she lies on her back for me. Don’t use righteous anger on me, Jane, and expect me meekly to bow my head. You may go to the devil for all I care.”
“And you may …” But she forced herself to stop and to draw a steadying breath. Her heart was pounding like a hammer. “We are quarreling again. Was it my fault this time? I am sorry if it was.”
“It is that infernal contract that is to blame,” he grumbled.
“Which is my fault.” She smiled briefly at him. “I really am pleased to see you, Jocelyn.”
The anger and the coldness faded from his face. “Are you, Jane?”
She nodded. “And I really do want you.”
“Do you?” He gazed broodingly at her, his eyes very black.
Could this be the Duke of Tresham? Unsure of himself? Uncertain of his welcome?
“I am saying it inside the room where we agreed our contract would bear no sway,” she said, “so it has to be the truth. Come to bed with me.”
“I have come from the theater,” he explained. “I was invited back to Kimble’s for supper with his party and said I would walk there rather than crowd a carriage. But I found my legs carrying me here instead. How do you interpret that, Jane?”
“I daresay,” she said, “you were in need of a sharp quarrel with someone who would not back down from you.”
“But you were the first to apologize,” he reminded her.
“Because I was wrong,” she told him. “I do not insist upon winning an argument at any cost, you see. Not like some I know.”
He grinned wolfishly at her. “Which means, I suppose,” he said, “that as usual you have had the last word, Jane. Come, then. Since it is what I came for and since you have invited me, let us go to bed.”
Physical desire made her breathless again as she stepped past him and preceded him up the stairs. He did not come immediately after her, she noticed. He had paused to set the guard in front of the dying fire.
Which was probably, she guessed with an inward smile, one of the most domesticated things he had ever done.
KIMBLE WOULD TEASE HIM mercilessly in the morning. Jocelyn did not care. When had he ever cared what anyone—even his closest friends—thought or said about him? And the teasing would at least be good-natured.
The truth was he had had to come back tonight. He had been more disturbed by the strange events of the afternoon than he cared to admit. He had had to come back just to get some normalcy back into his relationship with his mistress. To put her to work.
It had been a mistake to use those exact words to her, of course. But he was not accustomed to tiptoeing his way about other people’s sensibilities.
He undressed, doused the candles, and climbed into bed with her. He had instructed her to keep on her prim and pretty nightgown. There was something surprisingly erotic about grasping its hem and lifting it up her legs and over her hips to her waist. He did not want foreplay tonight. He wanted to do what he had come to do before somehow the whole scene became unfamiliar again. He slid his hand between her thighs and felt her. She was ready enough. He turned onto her with his full weight, spread her legs wide with his knees, slid his hands beneath her, and entered.
She was soft, warm, relaxed heat. He began to work her with firm, vigorous strokes. He tried to think of her simply as a woman. He tried to think of his need as simply sexual.
He failed miserably on both counts.
He rarely kissed in bed. It was unnecessary, and it was too personal for his taste. He kissed her.
“Jane,” he murmured into her mouth, “tell me you wanted me to come back, that you have thought of nothing but me since this afternoon.”
“Why?” she whispered. “So that you can warn me again not to become dependent upon you? I am not sorry you came. I am glad. This feels good.”
“Damn you,” he said. “Damn you.”
She was silent while he worked. But just as he felt the climax approach and was about to deepen and quicken his rhythm, he felt her arms close about his waist and her feet slide up the bed and her thighs hug his hips while she tilted her pelvis to allow him deeper access.
“Jocelyn,” she whispered, “don’t be afraid. Please don’t be afraid.”
He was driving toward release and did not hear the words consciously. But after he had finished, when he lay exhausted beside her, he heard their echo in his mind and thought he must have imagined them.
“Come here,” he said, reaching out a hand to touch her.
She curled up against him, and he lowered her nightgown, drew up the bedclothes, wrapped his arms about her, pillowed his cheek against the top of her head, and fell asle
ep.
He had frequently spent nights at the house and staggered home at dawn to sleep. He had never slept a night at the house. When he had come this time, he had intended a few hours of vigorous sport just to remind both Jane and himself of the basic nature of their liaison.
He awoke when daylight was pouring into the room. Jane, tousled and flushed and delicious, was still asleep in his arms.
He drew free of her and swung himself out of bed, waking her in the process. She smiled sleepily at him.
“My apologies,” he said stiffly as he pulled on his evening clothes. “I daresay according to that infernal contract I have no right intruding on your privacy when I am not actually asserting my rights. I will be gone in a moment.”
“Jocelyn,” she said with soft reproach, and then she had the unmitigated gall to laugh.
With glee.
At him.
“I amuse you?” He scowled at her.
“I do believe,” she said, “you are embarrassed that you slept instead of spending the night demonstrating your renowned prowess as a lover. You seem always to have to prove your superior manhood.”
The fact that she was perfectly right did not improve his mood.
“I am delighted to have amused you at least,” he said, throwing his cloak about him with a vicious swing of his arm and buttoning it at his throat. “I shall do myself the honor of calling upon you some other time when I have need of you. Good morning.”
“Jocelyn,” she said softly again when he already had the door of the bedchamber open. He looked back at her with haughtily raised eyebrows. “It was a wonderful night. You are lovely to sleep with.”
He did not wait to discover if she mocked him or not. He stepped through the door and closed it none too quietly behind him.
Devil take it, he thought, noticing the clock in the hallway as he descended the stairs and noticing too with a grimace that Jacobs was waiting there to let him out, it was seven o’clock. He had been here for seven hours. He had been in her bed for seven hours, and he had had intercourse with her once. Once!