Undesirable Liaison (21 page)

‘Did you think this was
all? Foolish wench, it is just the beginning.’

Flo’s fingers trembled
in his grasp, and an unwelcome feeling of helplessness overcame
her. She forgot to watch her words.

‘A disastrous
beginning, Jerome. I am aching, and I must have bled all over the
sheets.’

Like a glimmering
ghost, she saw him whiten. The brown eyes grew darker and a look of
abhorrence came into his features. His tone was hushed.

‘Do you tell me you
were virgin? Confound it, why didn’t you say so? Hell and
damnation, what have I done?’

Chapter
Eight

The implication hit
Florence. ‘You thought me wanton?’

‘Not that, no,’ Jerome
snapped, writhing with a newly pricked conscience. ‘But a virgin! I
would not have taken you, had I known.’

The passions of the
night overwhelmed Flo. She flew into a rage. ‘Are you daring to say
you would have stopped had I told you so? When you came in here,
Jerome, you had every intention of taking me, come what might.’

‘That’s not true. If
you had told me, I would have left you alone.’

‘I don’t believe you!
And if it is true, it is even worse, for you believed me little
better than a whore—’

‘I didn’t say
that!’

‘You might as well have
done.’

‘For God’s sake, woman,
what was I to think? I hardly expected an innocent maid to be open
to discuss freely the inevitable end of the attraction between
us.’

Her uncomfortable
conscience compelled Florence to acknowledge the justice of this.
At the time, it had not occurred to her that her openness might lay
her status in question. She wanted to continue to protest his
assumption, but it would not do. She sat back against the banked
pillows, letting out a fresh sigh.

‘It is of no use to
repine. What’s done is done.’

‘Florence, I could
shake you! Don’t you see how this alters things?’

‘I knew before. I may
have been innocent, but I was not ignorant.’

Jerome fairly snorted.
‘How is that possible?’

‘If you knew my
history, you would not ask.’

He threw exasperated
hands in the air. ‘We are going round in circles.’

‘Because I cannot talk
to you,’ snapped Flo, struggling with an aching throat that boded
most unwelcome weakness. ‘You never listen and your temper is
uncontrollable.’

‘This from you? A more
shrewish vixen I never met.’

‘I know,’ she said,
unable to help the husky note. ‘I know I’m ill tempered. But I’d
rather be a vixen than a strumpet.’

Tears trickled down her
cheeks, and Florence dashed them away. Jerome caught the movement,
and a frantic feeling of calamity warred in his breast with a wash
of compassion. Without a word, he reached out and gathered her
close, stroking her hair with automatic fingers, while the choked
off sobs wrought hell with his conscience.

Almost he wished he
might turn back the clock. But a pricking of truth compelled him to
the knowledge it likely would make no difference. Virgin she might
have been, but the magnetism between them was such he doubted
anything less than an ocean or two would have served to keep him
from pursuing his need to this conclusion. What he could do about
it now was another matter.

While he thought, his
lips absently caressed her hair, shifting down to her forehead.
Without realising he had begun, his mouth moved to her cheek where
the taste of salt tears pulled sharply at his senses.

And then he was kissing
her all over again, until Flo, lost for a moment or two in the
enjoyment of his gentling lips, recalled the passage to this
moment, and wrenched away from him.

‘Don’t! If you do that,
how can I behave?’

Jerome let out an
embittered laugh. ‘What’s done is done—did you not just say
so?’

‘Therefore we may
continue to do wrong, is that what you mean?’

He cursed. ‘Hell and
the devil, did I say it was wrong?’

‘From the instant you
knew this was my first time, yes,’ she retorted. ‘At least, it is
what you implied.’

‘I meant it was wrong
in me. I am not judging you, Florence. How could I? Any more than I
can let you suffer the consequences.’

Consequences? Great
heavens, to where was she headed now? It was too soon for that
reflection, and she lacked strength. Flo sagged against the
bed-head.

‘Don’t let us talk of
it tonight—what there is left of the night. You had better go, had
you not?’

An odd sort of wrench
attacked Jerome. ‘Go?’

‘The servants will be
stirring soon.’

‘To the devil with the
servants!’

Yet she was right. The
last thing needed was discovery. Things were bad enough without
that. The thought of parting from her was anathema. Without
resolving anything? With the supposition all must end with this and
this alone?

Savagery rose within
him. He leaned to her and caught her face between his hands,
kissing her fiercely, as if he must burn the imprint of it into her
brain. He pulled away, looking into her startled features.

‘I am not done with
you, Florence Petrie, so don’t think it. You gave yourself to me.
Remember that!’

Then he swung himself
out of the bed.

Feeling as if her bones
had been filleted, Flo watched him hunt for his discarded clothing.
He shrugged on his robe, not bothering with his nightshirt, which
he crumpled in one strong fist. Tossing back the mane of dark hair,
he threw her one last vengeful look, and then stalked away towards
the door. She heard it close behind him with a snap, and sank down
into the bed. His aroma pervaded the sheets, and Florence let the
back of her hand come to rest at the warm patch where his limbs had
lain.

She felt too numbed for
inspection of what had occurred, or conjecture on what was to come.
Nor could she fathom the intention behind that last punishing
kiss.

In no time at all the
exhaustions of the night overcame her. Her last coherent thought
concerned her mother’s words, and a single determination. She must
teach her heart the truth, for there was no love here.

***

The insistent voice
dragged her from the depths of a lurid dream. Someone was calling
her, and the note of urgency bit into the fogging inertia that
pulled at her unwilling limbs.

‘Flo, what’s the matter
with you?
Flo
! Can you hear me?’

Yes, she could hear,
but she had no voice to say so. Her tongue, thick and cloying in
her mouth, refused to budge. She tried to open her eyes, but a
weight was on her eyelids and they would not shift.

The caller’s tone
changed, and Florence heard a note of desperation.

‘Oh, Flossie, please
wake up!’

Belinda… Belinda needed
her. With a supreme effort, she ploughed her way up through the
clogging mists of sleep, aware of emitting unintelligible sounds as
she struggled to express reassurance. Succeeding in thrusting up
her heavy lids, she sought identity in the hazy features hanging
over her. They wavered a little and then slipped into focus.

‘Bel…’ she managed
faintly. ‘What is it?’

Belinda burst into
sobs. ‘Oh, thank God! You frightened me horribly.’

‘I’m s-sorry,’ said Flo
without understanding. The remnants of sleep held her in a sort of
limbo, where nothing yet made sense. But she pursued the thought
that had hoisted her from unconsciousness. ‘What is the
matter?’

‘What is the matter?’
repeated Bel in a stupefied tone, sniffing back her tears. ‘It is
what I am here to ask you, Flo. It is past ten o’clock!’

Florence stared up at
her. ‘Past ten?’

‘You’ve missed
breakfast and everything. When you didn’t come through, I thought
perhaps you weren’t hungry and had gone to Lady Langriville
straight off. But she sent to me by Miss Gilmerton to ask if you
were in my chamber. Of course you weren’t, so I went to the dowager
and she said you hadn’t come up at all. I was worried sick!’

Watching her sister tug
a pocket-handkerchief from her sleeve, and blow her nose, Flo lay
in a mindless daze, unable for a moment or two to plumb the meaning
of Belinda’s extraordinary words. But a creeping wisp of memory
came wreathing through her brain, in which an all too vivid meaning
grew like a swift-spreading cancer, seeping a sensation of
horror.

What had she
done
?

Images, tangled and
passionate, flitted through her mind, as the waking flesh on her
body spilled its damning evidence into her consciousness. Nausea
pervaded her stomach as a dragging ache started up in the conquered
well in which she had suffered herself to be invaded. The
perpetrator’s name was an inward groan in a bosom too full of
remorseful torment to be open to inspection.

Driven, Flo surged up
in the bed, precipitating a rush of blood to the head that made it
swim in a sickening fashion. She clutched at her temples, letting
the covers fall. Belinda’s shocked gasp alerted her to the
remembrance she was naked.

‘Gracious, Flo, you
haven’t any clothes on!’

Florence released her
head and grabbed instead at the slipping sheets, dragging them up.
Improvising desperately, she fought for control against the giddy
sensation in her head.

‘I was—I was hot in the
night. A fever… perhaps I have a fever.’

But Bel was not
listening. She was rummaging about in search, as she informed her
sister, of Flo’s nightshift. Florence was assailed by a vivid
memory of Jerome’s hands divesting her of the garment and throwing
it aside. The resulting kaleidoscope of visions made her throw her
hands over her face, and she was unable to prevent herself from
groaning aloud.

Belinda popped up from
beside the bed. ‘Are you ill, Flossie?’

Florence nodded. She
felt ill, even if her indisposition had an all too shaming cause.
What other excuse could she give for her tardiness and her
condition?

‘Here, let me help you
on with your shift,’ said her sister, her tone solicitous now.

The operation took all
Florence’s concentration, and she was dismayed to discover how her
hands trembled. Worse was to come, for in her haste to make her
sister comfortable, Bel dragged aside the covers and exposed a
scattering of dark stains upon the sheet beneath.

For a petrified moment,
Flo stared in blank horror, her mind frozen upon the point of a
terrible discovery. Then Belinda let out a huge whoosh of
relief.

‘Oh, so that’s all it
is! Thank goodness, Flo! I thought you were truly ill. Why in the
world couldn’t you say at once it was your monthlies?’

The convenient excuse
swept Florence through with thankfulness. Almost she babbled, in
her eagerness to embrace it.

‘I couldn’t. I didn’t
realise it myself. It must have—must have come upon me as I
slept.’

‘Lord, we’ll have to
change the sheets! Shall I ring for a maid?’

But Flo was not yet
ready to face anyone, especially a sharp-eyed servant, who might
prove more discerning than her innocent sister. She sank against
the pillows as Belinda banked them behind her.

‘No, Bel, pray don’t.
It would be too humiliating. Go and see Mrs Brumby yourself and ask
her for a clean sheet. Oh, and pray run first to Lady Langriville,
and tell her I am indisposed.’

Pausing only to beg her
sister to remain in bed until she returned, Belinda sped away upon
these errands, leaving Florence to unmerciful remembrance of last
night’s fateful happening and its appalling aftermath.

How she had come to
this was so entangled she could not begin to unravel it. The speed
of her descent into disaster was terrifying. And all to be set at
the door of that infernal ruby! Would she had never discovered it.
But it was useless to think of that. Discover it she had, and the
dreadful consequence had ruined her life.

She inspected the word,
and realised her emotions refused to equate it with the experience
she had undergone. She felt neither betrayed nor ruined. Battered,
bruised and shocked, yes. It was catastrophic, and she had no
notion how to move forward. She ought to feel ruined. Was she not
now done for in the eyes of the world?

But what, demanded her
stubborn heart, of the eyes of Jerome, Lord Langriville? Harsh
words jangled in her memory. Cruel words, angry and distressed.

Flo began to feel ill
again, and was glad to answer the call of nature, if only to put an
end to thought. As she clambered ungainly from the bed, she found
her limbs stiff and sore. She ached all over, which set her to
blaming his infuriating lordship. It was altogether too much
suffering to set against the illusion of pleasure. Yes, an
illusion—for he had mauled her to pieces! And he supposed he might
do so again.

Furious despair gripped
her as the remembrance of his final words hit. Not content with
taking her maidenhead, he must needs promise it was not over. Flo
knew herself defenceless against the unmitigated liberties he had
taken—and would again. The dangers thereof were sufficiently well
known to her.

The sight of Belinda
returning, armed with a crisp folded sheet, did nothing to
alleviate her alarms. Poor darling Belinda, the living image of
just such a danger as she now faced.

To distract her mind,
she insisted on helping her sister remake the bed—an exercise that
demanded so much concentration, Flo was unable to think beyond her
present discomforts. By the time Bel had helped her to wash, found
the rags she supposed were needed, and supervised a change of night
gear, sheer exhaustion kept at bay all but the desire for a period
of quiet.

It was granted briefly,
for Belinda went off, promising to return with a tisane. Having
asked instead for tea, Flo sank into reverie.

Inevitably, her
reflections led to renewed dismay, coupled with discomfiting
memories. The feel of Jerome’s lips upon her flesh, the searing
heat of his passion, and the answering need in her that had led to
an irreclaimable violation. What was done could never be undone.
And she had welcomed it!