No. He would simply have to figure out the mysterious lady on his own.
***
It was nearly ten that evening when Julian came into Thorne’s library and headed straight for the brandy decanter. Thorne put down his pen, tented his fingers together, and observed, “The Old Man was in fine fettle tonight, I see?”
Julian drained his glass in a gulp. “He started off the evening by scolding me for not having a proper visiting card to present. I told him it was a trifle hard to find a printer in the section of France where I’ve been stationed. And it became increasingly sticky from there.” He refilled the glass and raised it to his lips.
“You might want to go easy on that, Julian. Aubrey was already well on his way to ruining his digestion with alcohol long before he took that corner too fast and upset his curricle.”
“I can see why he drank,” Julian said grimly, but he put the glass down. “I was prepared—among other things—for the Old Man to tell me to choose a wife and be brisk about it. But instead he announced he’s already chosen one for me.”
“Well, that’s tidy of him.”
“Tidy? It’s an unholy mess! The Old Man arranged a betrothal for Aubrey just weeks before he died. The settlements were agreed to and the marriage contract already drawn up. Then Aubrey cracked up his curricle—”
“Which ended the betrothal and voided the contract, of course.”
“Not as far as the Old Man’s concerned. I didn’t actually see the paperwork, but he’s apparently just had the lawyers scratch out poor Aubrey’s name and insert mine. And if I don’t agree to the plan, he has an entire list of unpleasant consequences for me.”
“Starting by cutting off the allowance he hasn’t yet agreed to give you?” Thorne leaned back in his chair. “You know, I feel sorry for the Old Man. He’s got no idea how to deal with you, so he barks orders and expects them to be obeyed—never realizing that you’re far too much like him to respond to his threats.”
“What do you mean, I’m like him? I should call you out for that insult, Thorne.”
“Pistols at dawn?” Thorne suggested cheerfully. “If you insist. But I think it would be more productive if you took your irritation out on me at Gentleman Jackson’s in the morning. I don’t mind.”
“Thanks, but I’ll just draw the Old Man’s face on a punching bag instead. If I throw enough jabs at that hooked nose of his, I might feel better.”
“A punching bag won’t give you enough of a challenge to be satisfying.”
“Very well then—I’ll give you the beating you deserve.” Julian flung himself in a chair and stretched his feet out to the fire.
“What did you think of the woman?”
Julian didn’t look up. “We didn’t meet.”
“That’s odd. I’d have expected the Old Man to have had her there tonight. If you’re to be betrothed…”
Julian shuddered. “He probably didn’t want to give me any extra ammunition that might prompt me to refuse the match. It seems—from what I was able to pick up from the servants—that she’s something of a shrew. But the Old Man’s story was that she’s been indisposed ever since Aubrey died.”
“Indisposed? That’s an all-purpose excuse. Perhaps she’s not any happier about the arrangement than you are.”
“You mean that she was attached to Aubrey, and now she’s mourning for him? It seems not—they’d barely met. It appears she agrees with the Old Man that Aubrey and I are completely interchangeable. There’s no question she’s getting the better end of the bargain, and she knows it. It seems she’s inherited a tiny corner of land practically next door to the Abbey. God knows why, but the Old Man wants it at any cost—and her price is marriage.”
“I suppose you told him that in that case, he should marry her himself.”
“I would have done so, if I’d thought of it.” Julian contemplated his glass and sipped. “No wonder Aubrey drank too much and drove too fast. Even the Old Man couldn’t make this woman—do you know, I don’t think he ever told me her name—sound like anything but a virago. If I can’t find a way out of this, I may have to throw myself under the curricle, not just fall out of it—because I might survive a simple fall!”
***
If he hadn’t been stuck in the middle of London, Julian would have saddled his horse and gone for a bruising ride. He considered it anyway, for he was far too wrought up to sleep. But he knew the city’s streets, never quiet, would not provide the freedom he needed to take his mind off his problems.
Instead, he stripped off his coat and boots and paced the floor of his bedroom, still too furious over the way the Old Man had so callously arranged his life to even sit down. Being swapped off for a few acres of land… For this, he had fought his way across Portugal, Spain, and France? To preserve the English way of life… what a cruel jest that was.
His measured step brought him close to the window, and he paused to look out over the garden. Far below, light glinted and shifted, and his heart leaped. But it was only a statue that had caught the moonlight. A swaying bough had made the statue look as if it had moved…
No—there was someone out there. He could feel it.
He reached automatically for the red uniform coat he had just removed and tucked his boots under his arm as he crept down the stairs, avoiding the servants who were still moving around the lower floor as they extinguished fires and candles and lamps, and readied the house for the night. He sat down in the dining room to pull on his boots before once more stepping through the window that so conveniently overlooked the garden.
She was nowhere to be found, and he would have given up except for the unshakable sense that she was there. Was it the barest hint of her scent along the paths, or just a simple feeling? Then he saw movement in a secluded corner.
His mysterious lady had retreated to the shelter of the grape arbor, her dark cloak closely wrapped around her. The hood was pulled up—it was cooler tonight—and the light of the moon fell in bars across her face. For an instant as he approached, she seemed to be wearing a mask.
“You look as if you’ve just come from a masquerade ball,” he said.
“I’ve never been to one.” For a moment, she sounded sad, almost wistful; then her rich voice curled around him like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s night as she went on. “Good evening, Major Hampton. I wondered if you would dare to come tonight.”
So much for the warm blanket. Wet blanket, more like. “Dare?” he asked. “Miss… I still don’t know your name.”
“I know. Quite exciting, isn’t it? Very… illicit.”
There was an undertone of laughter in her tone now. A woman of many moods, he thought, a little dazed at the speed with which she could shift from one to the next.
She patted the bench next to her, and he sat down. “May I call you Julian?”
“You may not—and if you don’t give me your name, I’ll call you Lady Mysterious.”
She smiled, and a dimple he hadn’t spotted before, just at the corner of her mouth, teased his senses. “Oh, that’s quite lovely. I’m not a lady, you see—only a Miss.”
“And not a lady in the other sense of the word, either, if you’re meeting a man in a garden at this hour.”
“Why, Major Hampton—it’s not as if we planned this assignation.” She reached up to a cluster of grapes hanging just above her head and plucked one, popping it in her mouth.
The bunch looked sadly depleted, as if she’d been sitting there quite a while. So she had waited for him, had she? Julian felt a sizzle of warmth at the idea but sternly suppressed it. “You dare steal my cousin’s grapes?” he asked in mock indignation.
“Why not?” She reached up for another and smiled at him. “If he notices at all, he’ll think you ate them. And you would tell him that you did, wouldn’t you? Rather than give me away? Because you promised.”
“Yes, minx, I would.” Julian dug a small knife from his pocket and cut a larger bunch from the vine, setting it on the bench between them.
She pulled a grape from the cluster he’d cut, and he watched as she savored it. “That one tasted much better than the ones I chose.” She took another grape and leaned closer, holding it close to his mouth. “Here—see if you don’t agree.”
He started to suggest that her flirtatious behavior was both inappropriate and unwise, but she popped the grape into his mouth before he could get the words out. Her fingertip brushed his lips, and the velvety touch sent a surge of hot blood through him. He bit down on the grape, and the sweet, cool juice flowed over his tongue.
She would taste like grapes if he kissed her right now… and oh, how he wanted to kiss her, to taste her sweetness mixed with that of the grapes…
He tamped down the thought and tried to focus on the fruit. His stomach growled.
“I’m teasing you about grapes when you haven’t had dinner.” She looked concerned, and the sparkle vanished from her eyes. He hadn’t been able to see their color the night before, and he still wasn’t certain—but he thought they were dark, unusually so for a woman with hair so bright.
“I had dinner. I just didn’t enjoy it.” In fact, Julian wasn’t certain he’d actually managed to swallow anything at that ill-fated meal. “My grandfather spent it lecturing me about marriage.”
She pulled another grape from the stem and ate it. “You’ll be looking for an heiress to wed, I suppose.”
“You sound quite matter-of-fact about it.”
She shrugged. “I’m just very practical, I’m afraid. Since you’re from a younger branch of the family and you’re a soldier, it seemed a likely guess that you haven’t any money of your own.”
“I don’t,” he said.
“Then an heiress it must be. Unless you don’t wish to marry at all?”
“Not particularly, no.”
She fed him another grape. “But your grandfather is leaving you no choice? You have my sympathies. I’m in the same straits as you, actually. I’ve no money of my own, so my uncle is trying to sell me off to the highest bidder.”
“Rich, old, and unpleasant, I suppose, or he wouldn’t have to buy a wife.” Julian gritted his teeth at the idea.
“He’s certainly no prize,” she agreed. “But he is rich—and my friends say that surely one can fall in love with a rich man just as easily as with a pauper.”
“You’re very young.” And naïve and innocent. Julian felt old himself as he said it.
“Exactly.” She seemed to have taken the comment as a compliment—which was not at all the way he had meant it. “However, I don’t wish to marry, either. No matter how rich he is… what if he’s like my uncle and raises dogs right in the house?” She shuddered. “I want to travel. I want to be free. I want to do good deeds… and I want to publish my memoirs someday for an adoring audience.”
“And the money to support you and your good causes, and pay for your travel, will come from where?”
“Well, that is a bit of a poser,” she admitted. “But I’ve been thinking—and I’ve decided I shall be a mistress. I will collect diamonds and houses and carriages from my lovers, and then whenever I wish to travel or do a good deed, I’ll sell something.”
Julian’s jaw dropped.
She poked another grape into his mouth, and the dimple in her cheek peeked out again. “And you could give me lessons,” she went on blithely just as he bit down on the grape.
Julian choked.
“Don’t expect me to believe you’re inexperienced, Major Hampton.”
“Not exactly, but…” He had to stop to clear his throat, and finally his wits returned. “This is not a conversation one has with a…”
“All soldiers have lovers from time to time,” she said as if he hadn’t interrupted. “My father, for instance—”
“Your father told you that all soldiers have lovers?”
Her eyebrows raised a little. “No, but Uncle Rufus sort of did. Not that I needed telling. My mother died when I was very small, and my father was away a great deal before he was killed during the war. Of course he must have had lovers. But that’s beside the point, really. As I was saying, you could give me lessons.”
He caught her wrist just as she was conveying another grape toward his mouth. The wrist felt delicate, dainty, as if he could crush her bones simply by closing his hand tight. “Lessons in how to be a courtesan.” It seemed to Julian that she was doing quite well already for an amateur.
“Yes. Though I think I’d rather just be called a mistress. Still, it’s no different, really. Don’t all mistresses do the same things?”
She had tipped her face up to his and was watching him earnestly. A single drop of purple grape juice was lurking at the corner of her lips, and it was all Julian could do not to lick it off and call it Lesson One…
He swallowed hard and looked away. “Not precisely. And certainly not in the same ways.”
“You see? That’s why I need a teacher who knows these things.” Her voice was blithe, her face bright. “I assure you I’m a very good student. Well—not so much when it comes to music and drawing. And I’m simply terrible at embroidery. But when it’s something I want to learn, like geography or…”
“Or being a mistress.” He was doomed to burn for this, Julian knew. Not that he was going to do as she asked. He had some common sense left, after all, and more self-discipline than the average man. He could—he would resist the temptation.
But just thinking of her stretched out on a bed taking lessons in seduction… and then practicing her homework… left his mouth dry with desire and his body tense with the urge to take her right here and now on a hard bench in a grape arbor.
He had to do something—say something—to distract himself from the image. “If you really want lessons in being a mistress, you should talk to Thorne. Lord Hawthorne, I mean.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Lord Hawthorne has a mistress? But he’s so old.”
“Only two years older than I am,” he pointed out. “And not a mistress—he’s had rafts of them.” His tongue seemed to have a mind of its own. Telling a girl who was barely out of the schoolroom about mistresses—what was wrong with him?
She shook her head very definitely. “Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. At least… Well, from what I’ve heard about him, I cannot think that we would be a suitable combination.”
“Mistresses don’t always have a lot of choice, you know. Men who have the money to keep a mistress in style and buy her diamonds and houses and carriages aren’t always the young and handsome ones. They’re sometimes just as old and unpleasant as the man your uncle wants you to marry—and they might raise dogs in the house to boot.”
“I didn’t say Lord Hawthorne wasn’t handsome,” she said judiciously.
Julian felt as if he’d taken a punch in the gut. So she thought Thorne was good-looking, did she?
“And anyway, I would have plenty of choices, as long as I’m a very good mistress. Please, Julian, do help me. Wouldn’t you like to be able to say someday that you were the very first lover of the notorious and oh-so-famous… hmm. What name shall I use?”
“The very first?”
“Well, yes.” She looked at him as if he’d just fallen off a hay wagon. “Someone has to be first.”
“You’re a virgin?”
“Of course I’m a virgin, but that doesn’t mean I intend to remain one.”
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen. I’ve been out of the schoolroom for nearly two years. Hmm. What shall I call myself, do you think?”
His head was swimming. His throat was still tight from choking on that last grape, and his eyes didn’t quite want to focus. He watched as moonlight peeked out from behind a cloud and touched her hair. For a moment, she looked as if a fire had sprung up around her head… “Flame,” he said. “Lady Flame.”
“Oh, I like that.” She rewarded him with a smile that made his insides twist. “See? You’re absolutely the perfect choice.”
“I’m absolutely not.”
H
e thought for a moment she was going to stamp her foot, but she simply drew back her hand—she’d been about to feed him another grape—and said, “If you won’t help me, perhaps I will have to ask Lord Hawthorne to train me. Perhaps I can overlook his advanced age because of his extra experience.”
He wished he could believe that she was possessed or demented. Turning her down would be so much easier if he thought she honestly had no idea what she was saying. But she’d told him herself that she was practical—and damned if he didn’t believe she meant it. She intended to do this… one way or another. His blood ran cold at some of the possible ways she could carry out her plan.
So now what did he do? He should never have mentioned Thorne’s name, of course, even in half jest… but now that he had done so, he couldn’t live with himself if he was responsible for turning this sensual armful of temptation loose on Thorne. He seemed intent on sticking to his marriage vows, but Thorne was vulnerable just now, on his own in London with a pregnant wife all the way out in Surrey…
Oh, hell, Julian, at least tell the truth. It’s not Thorne’s morals you’re worried about.
The truth was that he couldn’t stand the idea of any other man training her… taking advantage of her… perhaps hurting her. She was far too innocent to have any idea what she was doing.
At the least, he could teach her why she shouldn’t take risks like this…
He felt dizzy at the enormity of what he was contemplating. She was far from being a child, and yet her artlessness, her absolute certainty of the path she had chosen, made her seem very young.
“You’re serious?” His voice felt raspy.
This time, she didn’t smile. There were no dimples peeking out. He looked down at her hands, clutched in her lap. Her knuckles were white, and she apparently hadn’t noticed a grape crushed and oozing from her fingers. “Never more so.”
He looked into her eyes. There was no mischievous sparkle, no teasing light. Just somber consideration and something that was almost stern. There was nothing childish about her now—she was all woman, and his body responded fiercely, hungrily, to the sight.
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