More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (12 page)

The sooner he got out and back about his usual activities,
the better it would be for his sanity. Tomorrow he would want to know the reason why if Barnard had not acquired the crutches he had asked for.

And then came the second visitor. Hawkins, come to announce the caller, looked disapproving. Jane Ingleby gathered up the book from which she had been reading and retreated to the corner where she always hid out while he entertained.

“Lady Oliver, your grace,” Hawkins said, “wishing for a private word with you. I informed her ladyship that I was not sure you were well enough to receive visitors.”

“Bloody hell!” Jocelyn roared. “You know better than to allow her over the doorstep, Hawkins. Get the woman out of here.”

It was not the first time she had come to Dudley House. The woman knew no better, it seemed, than to call upon a gentleman in his bachelor home. And she had come at a time when half the fashionable world was out and about and might happen by and see her or evidence of her presence.

“I suppose,” he asked rhetorically, “she came in Lord Oliver’s town coach and that it is waiting for her outside?”

“Yes, your grace.” Hawkins bowed.

But before Jocelyn could renew his command that the woman be removed from the premises immediately if not sooner, the lady herself appeared in the doorway. Hawkins, Jocelyn thought grimly, would be fortunate indeed if he did not find himself demoted to the position of assistant boot boy before the day was over.

“Tresham,” she said in her sweet, breathy voice. She raised a lace-edged handkerchief to her lips as visual evidence of the distress of a woman of sentiment.

She was, of course, a vision of delicate loveliness in varying shades of coordinating greens to complement her red hair. She was small and slender and dainty, though she did also, of course, have the bosom that Ferdinand had referred to earlier.

He scowled at her as she wafted into the room, her hazel eyes clouded with concern for him. “You ought not to be here.”

“But how could I stay away?” She continued wafting until she reached the chaise longue. She sank to her knees beside him and possessed herself of one of his hands with both her own. She raised it to her lips.

Hawkins, the arrant knave, had withdrawn and closed the door behind him.

“Tresham,” she said again. “Oh, my poor, poor dear. You shot gallantly into the air, it is said, when you might easily have killed Edward. Everyone knows your prowess with a pistol. And then you bravely allowed him to shoot you in the leg.”

“It was the other way around,” he told her curtly. “And there was nothing brave about it. I was not paying attention at the time.”

“A woman screamed,” she said, kissing his hand again and holding it against one cool, powdered cheek. “I am sure I do not blame her, though I would have swooned quite away if I had been there. My poor, brave darling. Did he nearly kill you?”

“The leg is far from the heart,” he said, firmly repossessing himself of his hand. “Do stand up. I will not offer you a seat or refreshments. You are leaving. Now. Miss Ingleby will show you out.”

“Miss Ingleby?” Two spots of color appeared in her cheeks suddenly, and her eyes flashed.

He indicated Jane with one hand. “Miss Ingleby, meet Lady Oliver. Who is leaving—now!”

But Lady Oliver’s look of jealous annoyance turned to indifference mingled with disdain when her eyes lit on Jane. What she saw, obviously, was a maidservant.

“You are cruel, Tresham,” she said. “I have been worried half to death about you. I have been languishing for a sight of you.”

“Which you have now had,” he said briskly. “Good day to you.”

“Tell me you have been pining for me too,” she said. “Ah, cruel that you make me beg for one kind word.”

He looked at her with something like loathing. “Frankly,” he said, “I have scarce spared you a thought since I last saw you—at the Georges’, was it? Or on Bond Street? I do not remember. And I daresay I will not spare you another thought once you have gone.”

She was holding her handkerchief to her mouth again and looking at him reproachfully over the top of it.

“You are angry with me,” she told him.

“My feelings, I assure you, ma’am,” he said, “do not go beyond irritation.”

“If you would let me explain—” she began.

“I beg you will spare me.”

“I came here to warn you,” she said. “They are going to kill you, you know. My brothers, that is, Anthony and Wesley and Joseph. In defense of my honor, which they do not believe Edward did convincingly enough. Or if they do not kill you, they will find another way to hurt you. They are like that.”

Behaving with a ruthless disregard to honor must be a family trait, then, Jocelyn thought.

“Miss Ingleby,” he said, “would you please conduct
Lady Oliver to the door and see her on her way? And instruct Hawkins that I will have a word with him.”

Lady Oliver was weeping in earnest. “You are hard-hearted, Tresham, as everyone warned me,” she said through her sobs. “I thought I knew better. I thought you loved me. And I do not need a maid to show me out. I can see myself out, thank you.”

Which she proceeded to do in a tragic performance that surely would have brought whistles from the pit of any theater had she been on stage, and a demand for an encore.

“Well, Miss Ingleby,” Jocelyn said after an unseen hand had closed the library door, “what do you think of my paramour? Can you blame me for climbing into the lady’s bed, married or not?”

“She is very lovely,” she admitted.

“And your answer to my second question?” He glared at her as if she were somehow to blame for Lady Oliver’s continued indiscretions. He would have expected the woman to avoid him above all others for the next lifetime or two.

“I am not your judge, your grace,” Jane Ingleby said gravely.

“You condone adultery, then?” he asked, looking at her with narrowed gaze.

“No, of course not,” she said. “It must always be wrong. Nevertheless, you were cruel to her just now. You spoke to her as if you loathed her.”

“I do,” he said. “Why pretend that I do not?”

“And yet,” she said, “you lay with her and made her love you. But now you have spurned her when she braved propriety in order to come and see you and warn you.”

He smiled. “Is it possible,” he asked, “to be so incredibly naïve? I made Lady Oliver love me, Jane? The only person Lady Oliver loves is Lady Oliver. And she has braved propriety so that the
beau monde
will believe that she and I are flouting convention and danger by continuing our liaison. The woman is an exhibitionist. It pleases her to be notorious, especially with someone like me. It delights her to have it said that she has tamed the heart of a Dudley—of the Duke of Tresham himself. She would love nothing better than for me to be compelled to shoot into the air three more times while her brothers use me for target practice. Five times if the other two brothers should descend upon town.”

“You trivialize the lady’s sensibilities,” Jane said.

“I thought,” he said softly, “you were not my judge.”

“You would tempt a saint,” she told him tartly.

“I hope so.” He grinned. “But tell me, what has you so convinced that I have lain with Lady Oliver?”

She stared at him blankly for a few moments. “Everyone knows it,” she said at last. “It is why the duel was fought.
You
told me.”

“Did I?” he asked. “Or did I just allow you to make the assumption?”

“I suppose,” she said, sounding indignant, “you are going to deny it now.”

He pursed his lips and took his time about answering. “No, I think not,” he said. “To deny it would be to give the impression that your good opinion matters to me, you see, Jane. I could not have you believing that, could I?”

She came closer and sat down on her chair again. She arranged the book open on her lap without any apparent care that she turned to the right page. She set her hands flat on the pages. She was frowning.

“If it is untrue,” she asked, “why did you not deny it? Why did you fight a duel and risk death?”

“Jane, Jane,” he said, “is a gentleman publicly to contradict a lady?”

“But you loathe her.”

“I am still a gentleman,” he said, “and she is still a lady.”

“That is ridiculous!” Her brows snapped together. “You would allow her husband to believe the worst of you and her without telling him the truth? You would allow all of fashionable society to believe the worst of you?”

“Ah,” he said, “but they love me for it, Jane. I am the bad, dangerous Duke of Tresham. How I would disappoint the
ton
if I were to insist that on this occasion I am as innocent as a newborn lamb. Not quite, of course. I did flirt with the lady on a few occasions. I often flirt with married ladies. It is expected of me.”

“What nonsense you speak!” she said crossly. “And I do not believe you. You are telling me all this only so that you may laugh at me later and tell me what a simpleton I am to believe in your innocence.”

“Ah, but, Miss Ingleby,” he said, “I have already told you that your opinion matters not one whit to me.”

“You are despicable,” she said. “I do not know why I remain in your employ.”

“Perhaps, Jane,” he said, “because you need a roof over your head and food in your stomach. Or perhaps because you enjoy scolding me and chastising me with your barbed tongue. Perhaps because you are growing just a little fond of me?” He deliberately made his voice into a caress.

Her lips were set in a thin line. She stared grimly at him.

“Just remember one thing,” he said. “I do not tell lies, Jane. I may acquiesce in other people’s lies, but I do not tell lies of my own. You may believe me or not as you wish. Now put down that book and go and fetch me some coffee. And my mail from Michael Quincy. And the chess board.”

“You will
not
call me Jane,” she said, getting to her feet. “One day I will beat you at chess again even when you are concentrating. And wipe the complacency from your face.”

He grinned at her. “Go and do what you have been told to do,” he said. “
Please
, Miss Ingleby?”

“Yes, your grace,” she said vindictively.

Why, Jocelyn wondered as she left the room, had it seemed so important to him, despite his denial, that she know the truth about Lady Oliver? He did not care tuppence what anyone thought. Indeed, he had always reveled in his rakish reputation even on the rare occasion like this when it was unearned.

Lady Oliver had boasted to her husband, probably during a quarrel, that the Duke of Tresham was her lover. And said husband, in high dudgeon, had issued his challenge. Who was Jocelyn to contradict the lady?

Why had he wanted Jane Ingleby to know that he had never bedded Lady Oliver? Or any other married lady, for that matter?

If Barnard did not have those crutches by tomorrow, Jocelyn thought suddenly, he would beat the man about the head with them as soon as they were in his possession.

HAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?” JANE
asked, startled, when she walked into the library the following morning to discover the Duke of Tresham standing facing the window, propped on crutches.

“I
think
I am standing at the window of the library,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at her, his eyebrows raised haughtily. “In my own home. Deigning to answer an impertinent question from an impertinent servant. Fetch your cloak and bonnet. You may accompany me outside into the garden.”

“You were told to keep your leg still and elevated,” she said, hurrying toward him. She had not remembered that he was quite so tall.

“Miss Ingleby,” he said, without changing his expression, “go and fetch your cloak and bonnet.”

He was a little awkward with the crutches at first, she noticed later, but that fact did not deter him from strolling outside with her for half an hour before they sat side by side on a wrought-iron seat beneath a cherry tree. Her shoulder was almost touching his arm. She sat very still while he breathed in slowly and audibly.

“One takes many things for granted,” he said, more to himself than to her, it seemed. “Fresh air and the perfumes of nature, for example. One’s health. One’s ability to move about freely.”

“Deprivation and suffering can certainly act like wake-up calls,” she agreed. “They can remind us to stop squandering our lives in unawareness and in attention to mere trivialities.” If she were ever free again …

Her mother had died after a shockingly brief illness when Jane was barely seventeen, and her father had taken to his bed and died a little over a year later. She had been left with memories of happiness and security, which she had been young and innocent enough to expect to last forever. She had been left with Papa’s cousin inheriting his title and taking over Candleford. And resenting her and courting her favor all at the same time and devising plans for her future that suited his vision but not her own. If she could have back just one of those days of her innocence …

“I suppose,” the duke said, turning his head to look down at her, “I should turn over a new leaf now, shouldn’t I, Miss Ingleby? Become that rarest of all social phenomena, a reformed rake? Defy my heritage? Marry a saint and retire to my country estate to become a model landlord? Sire a brood of model children and raise them to be model citizens? Live happily ever after in a monogamous relationship?”