“It doesn’t have to be,” he insisted. “The annuity alone is more than enough to keep you in style, in this house, your entire life. You must sell it.”
Jason would never understand. Unless she made him.
“You want to know why I married a seventy-two-year-old man? I was eighteen and asked to read to him at his sickbed. He asked specifically for me after I accompanied my father, his doctor, one day. The book he gave me was Fanny Hill. Have you read Fanny Hill?” She waited for his affirmative nod and then continued. “He asked me to read it to him. Claimed he was on his deathbed and it was the least I could do. Then he’d ask me questions. Was there any young man I fancied? Wouldn’t I like that man to touch me the way Fanny was touched?
“And I’d had many nights where I imagined all those things. Where my hands had stolen to places that before I had barely touched. I’d managed only to inflame passions but not to soothe them. Which is what Roger had wanted.”
She watched Jason’s face—his reactions to her story—shifting from interest to disgust to…
“One day I came to read to him but he was sitting in a chair, looking much improved. He asked me to sit on his lap. I refused. He insisted and started coughing, still quite sick with the influenza. But he was an insatiable old man.
“I sat, innocent as I was. He cupped my breasts through the muslin dress. It didn’t matter his age at that moment, they were the first male hands on me, and my nipples came alive. He’d primed me so well for that moment.
“He slid my dress up over my legs. I didn’t once say a word to stop him. He held me there then parted the lips, and touched that little rise of flesh within…to arousal.”
She knew her words had an effect on Jason despite himself, just as her husband had known what he was doing when he seduced her.
“He brought me to ecstasy and despite all that followed, I still thank him for that entry to passion. I might not have survived the marriage otherwise. I might not have married such an old man either, fortune aside.”
Jason’s mouth opened and closed, a muscle in his jaw pulsed, but he had said nothing.
“You look in need of satisfaction,” Diana had remarked, glancing pointedly at his crotch where the hard ridge of his cock now pressed visibly against the fine lawn breeches. “It’s the quiet ones who turn out to be the most depraved. How depraved are you, Jason?”
His face had been red with anger.
“Clearly you are a lost cause, so I’ll simply ask you to be discreet. If one word of your business,” he layered that word with contempt, “reaches society’s ears and hurts my family—”
“Then what?” she interrupted. “You’ll ruin me? Of course, I’ll be careful. I care about my reputation. But I will not be dictated to. Not by Mr. Jarvis and certainly not by you.”
She’d seen him next a year later at the funeral for his wife and the infant son who had lasted one day longer than his mother.
Jason had stared at her, offered her a coldly polite greeting and turned away.
But tonight, as they walked across the raucous grounds of Vauxhall, the coldness was absent. He’d come to her rescue, apologized even for his rash assumption.
“The pavilion is just ahead,” Jason murmured.
“Yes, I see.”
“Are you certain you’re all right?” he asked again. ‘You’re still shaking. Wouldn’t you rather I see you home?”
“No,” she said, too abruptly. “I mean, yes. I’d like to go home.”
Which was all it took for him to change directions. She let him take care of her, bundle her off in her carriage. She left him to take care of all the little details, like making her excuses. As much as she had rebelled two years ago against his male instinct of taking charge, tonight she welcomed it.
Chapter Four
We had a bet,” Daniel revealed, when Jason appeared again in their box, his commissions done. It had been rather easy to find Lord Oakley and Lord Ashburton and their wives. “Whether you’d met your death due to some scoundrel in the walks or were enjoying another sort of death entirely.”
“Clearly, I win,” Seymour crowed, pointing.
Jason looked down at his jacket and saw, for the first time, the rip in his sleeve. A chill went through him as he wondered what Diana’s friends made of that.
“Really, Jas,” Lizzie chided him, shaking her head. “Tell me you at least made the most of your gallant rescue and haven’t cost me ten quid.”
Ruefully, Jason shook his head. He gratefully accepted a glass of wine from the waiter. It was easier to let his friends joke at his expense than to contemplate his turmoiled thoughts. Later. Later he would examine the significance of the evening. Perhaps after a few more drinks. “You’re too reckless with your bets, my dear. Men do change.”
“Ha!” Lizzie laughed incredulously. “I highly doubt you have.”
“Lizzie, love,” Daniel began, but his wife ignored him.
“I believe, widower, father, baronet and all, you are still as much a scapegrace as ever and we’ll find you embroiled in some scandal or other before the year is out.”
“I’ll give you double or nothing on that,” Seymour said.
“There will be no scandals,” Jason said repressively. “At least none of which you’ll ever hear.”
“Now that’s more like it!” Daniel said, raising his glass. “To discreet scandals!”
Chapter Five
Diana was still in bed and nursing her cup of chocolate when Maggie, using her connection as a cousin to excuse the early hour, came calling.
“What happened last night?” Maggie demanded as soon as she entered, dropping Diana’s reticule on the bed. “And don’t give me the faradiddle about a megrim which Sir Jason gave us. And while I’m on the subject of him, why did you never tell me the newest baronet is so charming? I thought you hardly knew each other.”
“Maggie, please sit down before you do give me a headache,” Diana insisted, pointing to a high-backed chair upholstered in pink-striped silk.
“And speaking of men,” Maggie continued, opting to perch on the edge of the bed instead. “Lord Simon returned half an hour later, quite disturbed that you were gone.”
“I would rather not talk about it,” Diana demurred, placing her cup back on the silver tray that lay heavy and flat on the counterpane.
Maggie gaped at her. “It must have been quite a night for you not to talk about it,” she pointed out. “You’re the one who’s always shocking me to no end.”
Diana couldn’t help but laugh at that, thinking the Maggie who stood before her now was very unlike the more mousy woman who had arrived in London merely three months earlier.
“Fine, keep your secrets,” Maggie sighed, rolling her eyes. “I’ve assured myself that you are well, so I’ll be off.”
“Wait,” Diana said suddenly, the words tumbling out before thought. “You found Sir Jason charming?” She regretted her question the minute that Maggie, looking like a cat who’d found the cream, settled herself again on the bed.
“Quite.” Maggie grinned. “If I didn’t have Oakley…” She let the words trail off and a slight twinge of irritation struck Diana.
“Regrettably, he’s a prudish stick,” Diana blurted. “You’d never find him interesting.” But even as she said the words, she felt the steel of his arm under hers, the heat of his body. She remembered the fire in his eyes two years ago when she’d described her first orgasm to him.
There was something not quite so prudish brimming under the surface. How hard would it be to bring that to the surface and puncture the man’s arrogant disdain?
“Really? How do you know?”
“His eyes,” Diana said, before she realized Maggie was asking about Jason’s prudishness and not his hidden passion. “I mean”—she coughed—“they’re so judgmental. He knows about Harridan House.”
Maggie’s eyes widened. “And he doesn’t approve?” She thought quietly for a moment before she spoke again. “I could imagine, Di, that
some men who have no trouble frequenting the club might have problems with their female relatives owning it.”
He’s the reason I own it, Diana wanted to say, but there were some admissions that were far too embarrassing to reveal. After all, a woman of reason would never make a decision merely out of spite and pride. But she had and it continued to shape her life.
“I think you should invite him there, see if I’m right,” Maggie teased.
“He would never go,” Diana stated, even as she considered Maggie’s suggestion.
“I’d wager he would,” Maggie said, one eyebrow raised in challenge.
“I don’t intend to see him again.”
Maggie stared incredulously.
A scratching at the door distracted them both.
“Come in,” Diana called out. Her maid Julia entered, carrying a rather large bouquet of purple irises.
“These came for you, my lady.” Julia handed her a card before stepping back and placing the arrangement on the side table.
Under Maggie’s curious gaze, Diana ran her finger over the thick, fibrous cream paper on which Jason had sent his regards.
“All right,” Diana agreed, reluctantly. “When I win, I’m claiming that lovely green hat at Mrs. Pathenay’s.”
Chapter Six
Jason sent the flowers early in the morning, knowing it was the gentlemanly, polite thing to do after one rescued a woman. Yet when the afternoon came and with it the hours for social calls, he held back, unsure.
Diana may have been trembling and vulnerable the night before, but that did not change who she was or what she did.
It didn’t change that she had been the lynchpin of his most erotic fantasies these last two years, that her husky voice played in his thoughts and her throaty laughter echoed in his dreams.
It was lust, pure and simple. It had been from the first moment he’d seen her in the solicitor’s office, the black of her mourning garb setting off the creaminess of her skin, the rich auburn of her hair, the dark fire of her gaze.
His very first thought stunned him: Why didn’t I manage to get myself leg-shackled to a woman like this? His wife, who entered a step behind him, still pretty in her pale, English rose manner, was a poor light next to Diana’s burning flame of beauty.
His anger at his own perfidious thoughts was underscored when Diana proved to be not only a woman who married for money and position, but one who was morally deficient, seeing no problem with owning a “club” that was barely better than a brothel.
Yet here he was two years later, by a twist of fate compelled to call upon her as good manners dictated.
Not just good manners. He wanted to go, to see her again. Rather desperately. That was why he stalled in Lizzie’s sitting room, helping her unknot her threads.
“You do realize you’re making them worse?” she chided him.
Jason looked down at the pile in his hands. She was right. He’d managed to snarl the red with the white in a dismaying mess. Lizzie lifted it from his lap and deposited the lump into her sewing basket. “Why don’t you tell me, Jas, why you’re sitting here with me?”
“What have I told you about her?” he asked, finally.
“Lady Blount?” Lizzie’s eyes narrowed. “Not much. You inherited from her husband. You rescued her from some sort of attack last night…in the dark walks.” She smirked at that last. “But I have seen her at the theater. She’s always surrounded by men. I’ve heard she runs through lovers like water.”
Jason sighed. Her reputation was exactly what he didn’t want to hear, not when he knew it was in truth so much worse than Lizzie knew.
“Really, you should call on her,” she said, grinning. “What’s the worst that could happen? You end up in the lady’s bed?”
The image that leaped into his head at her words caused other parts of him to leap as well and he shifted uncomfortably on the chair.
“Just go to her, Jas,” Lizzie pushed. “Unless there is something you aren’t telling me. Some dark history between the two of you…In fact even then you should go. So I can win my bet with Ogden Seymour.”
“You’re right,” Jason agreed, standing. “But don’t count your guineas too soon. There won’t be any scandals.”
Chapter Seven
After the flowers, Diana knew he would call. But Lord Simon came first, with a jewelry box and apologies, wishing he had been the one able to offer her assistance home.
If she’d been bored of him the night before, now she was completely over the man. She refused the gift unopened and sent him off with as kind words as she could muster.
Then Earnestina called, wondering, as Maggie had, about Sir Jason Blount.
Finally, when it was almost rude, when she was about to change for dinner, Jason arrived.
She’d thought him handsome when she first met him three years ago, drawn to him by some odd pull. She’d thought him strong, tall and kind in the dark shadows of the night before. Today, in the late afternoon light, he looked very much like the kind of man she might have dreamed of marrying when she was fourteen and reading the society pages, thinking London a magical world and her little corner of Devon the remotest country.
“I meant to come earlier,” he said, by way of apology, “but the business which brought me to town…” He drifted off. His expression revealed what he didn’t say: he’d stayed away for other reasons.
“I am truly grateful for your assistance last night. It’s good of you to come, to ask after my welfare.” Diana offered up her most frivolous smile. “But now, that duty has been discharged.”
His lips thinned into a hard line.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he said.
Oh, but it does, Diana thought. For neither of us has forgotten.
“You’re right, Sir Jason,” she agreed instead, “and perhaps as a peacemaking, a truce, I may induce you to stay for dinner?”
Jason joined her at her table, struck by the intimacy of the moment, of a private meal.
Three years ago he would never have imagined being here, at Diana Blount’s table.
His wife, Marianne, had been the daughter of a wealthy cit, with the plump beauty and charm of youth. They’d met at a country party and even though he was a man of no wealth and, at that time, no prospects, she was young and willing to ignore the guardian aunt who chaperoned her.
He wasn’t so caring about propriety back then. His intentions were not noble. And underneath the shade of a willow tree, with the lapping of water in the pond and the morning birds playing in his ear, he breached the thin barrier of her virginity.
Four months later, when she could no longer hide her growing belly and her father disowned her, she came to Jason and he married her.
Thus his days as a carefree bachelor ended.
Then, a year later, he met Diana. All his calm resignation shattered. Her voluptuous beauty, her bold, lurid words, captured his imagination and magnified clearly what he had given up. By accident he’d settled for a woman who would never really satisfy him, in his bed or in his soul.
He heard Diana describe her husband’s planned seduction, and when Jason entered his wife’s bedroom that night, he sat Marianne down on his lap, cupped her breasts in his hands and whispered in her ear exactly what he wanted to do to her, all the while knowing it was Diana to whom he wished to do those things. When he thrust into his wife’s aroused, welcoming body, it was Diana whom he imagined he fucked.
For twelve more months, it was Diana he imagined every time he came to his wife’s bed. Even after his wife’s death, it was Diana he imagined each and every time he took his cock into his own hand.
He had never been physically adulterous to Marianne, but he had been unfaithful each time he slipped into her body.
Now here they were, two unattached adults sitting down to dinner as if he didn’t desire Diana with every breath in his body.
To honor this truce, he would have to pretend that she didn’t own Harridan House, that she didn’t have countles
s lovers, that he should treat her as if she were any society lady accorded all the politeness and respect that good manners demanded.
When all he wanted to do was seduce her into his own bed.
“So how do you like Hertfordshire?” Diana asked. “We spent most of our time here in London, so I never did get to make any improvements to the old place.”
Which had made living at the country estate bearable. As it was, Jason frequently imagined Diana in the master suite, in the large carved mahogany bed that was now his.
“It’s lovely,” he said, truthfully. “A great improvement over my earlier lodgings.”
“That couldn’t have been hard,” Diana said with a laugh.
“No,” Jason agreed ruefully. His fifty pounds a year hadn’t given much room for luxury. “If one is going to live in the country, it is far better to do it in style. Cassandra is much in love with her new pony.”
“Cassandra is your daughter?” He nodded. “I can’t quite think of you as a father. But of course, that explains your exceeding domesticity.”
He laughed at the way she so neatly insulted him.
“You amaze me, Jason,” she continued, her voice silky. As silky as he imagined her skin would be if he could ever touch it. “I am so pleased that you can laugh at yourself. It gives me great hope for this…friendship.”
“I too, my lady, am hopeful.”
Diana couldn’t bring herself to do as Maggie had asked. The seeming truce between them was too appealing. She actually liked Jason, and the combination of his newly revealed charm and handsome exterior muddled her senses more completely than four glasses of red wine ever could.
There was that look in his eyes, that simmering desire, and by the time the last course was taken away and Diana invited him into the parlor for a drink, she wondered where the night would lead. Perhaps Maggie was right: perhaps a man who disapproved of her lifestyle might willingly partake in it with her.
They settled in the room. She draped herself across a divan and he lounged on the sofa opposite, swirling the amber liquid in his glass.
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