Games of Pleasure (14 page)

Yet he stopped by the bed to pick up the slipper. The ribbons flowed like water through his fingers.

“You believe that Hanley followed me to the White Swan?”

“I don't know. After I left you in Dorset, I could hardly travel unseen. He would have received reports—”

He flung up his head, nostrils flared. “You think he's sent spies after you?”

“Yes, I'm sure that he has.”

The slipper folded like a crumpled white rose. “And you still expect me to go home?”

“If you refuse to leave now from some misplaced sense of gallantry, I'll reject it. There's no earthly reason why you should stay for yourself. You have no real duty toward me.”

He strode off again, back and forth, like a caged lion. “No, of course not. My clear duty is to find a suitable bride. Throughout the last Season, London was filled with fleets of young ladies in full sail, all flying every flag for my attention. I'm expected to choose the most tolerable of them and marry her.”

“Then you should go back to finish courting whichever lady most takes your fancy.”

“No,” he said. “I should come to Derbyshire with you.”

She was incredulous, stunned into silence, though her pulse leaped into startled life, like a pheasant whirring up from a hedgerow.

“But you can't,” she said at last. “You can't simply walk out of your life.”

“Yes, I can.”

“You're mad,” she said. “A madman! There are a million other answers.”

He dropped into the chair, arms on thighs, hands clasped between his knees. Candlelight smoothed his skin to warm bronze. His shadowed jaw betrayed where he needed a shave.

“Yes, I know.”

“You wouldn't survive for a day.”

His eyes gleamed, as a cat's gleam green in the dark, as he glanced up. “Are you offering me a challenge? I promise to keep up with you.”

“On the drovers' roads and packhorse trails? On foot?” Panic began to flutter in her gut. “And what happens every night?”

“That's not why I want to do this.”

“Then why?”

“I don't know. Perhaps I need to do it, before my life is given up entirely to all those inescapable obligations. I had already realized it in London during the Season, I think. The yearning for something unknown has been like a fist crushing my mind. If I cannot save you from your fate, perhaps you can at least save me from the horrors of my immediate future.”

“From all those young ladies who'd like to become duchesses?”

“I'll still return to marry one of the handful who's qualified to become a duchess. It would be disastrous to any female to marry me otherwise.”

“You'll find the right lady. There's no sin in being young and untried.”

“Of course not. Yet there's something so brutal in the game. How can I even trust my own judgment when I'm such a damned golden prize that even the most innocent of females will deceive and scheme just to ensnare me? The rest is . . . I don't even know. Perhaps you represent the means for something else entirely—for an escape without associations of cowardice, since I've told myself that your care is my duty? I don't know. Only know that I'm not doing this from lust.”

“Then you will do it to demonstrate how very little you know yourself? You are indeed doing it from lust, Ryder, but you intend to nobly suppress your desires. Meanwhile, I find you—”

“No! Don't!” He cupped both palms over his ears in mock outrage. “Don't! Of course, I desire you! But why the devil must we act on that? Men aren't beasts.”

“It didn't seem so just now,” she said dryly, “when you kissed me like a savage.”

He stood up and strode closer to her. “Which is only grist to my mill. That won't happen again.”

“So now you reject what happened between us at the Merry Monarch?”

“I don't reject it. I just want my memory of that night to remain unsullied, with no past and no future. I didn't know then why you felt you had to seduce me. Perhaps that ignorance lent a certain purity to our exchange. I don't know. But I wouldn't trade that memory for the base coin inevitable between a courtesan and a gentleman.”

She brushed both palms over her cheeks. “You were only the recipient of my professional services.”

“Yet I would prefer not to be so again in the future.” He turned away to pick up the slipper. The ribbons entwined about his long fingers, as if they would knot themselves into mysteries. “Does such restraint seem absurd to you? You think this simply the romantic impulse of the moment?”

She felt as if he were slowly tearing her in two, like tissue rent inch by inch in careful, precise little movements. To have been offered the protection of a duke's son at any other time in her life would have seemed like the answer to a prayer. Now she knew only that she owed him his freedom.

“I don't know,” she said.

“Then understand this: I'm telling you something truly fundamental about myself. I've never been promiscuous. I've never frequented bawdy houses, or dodged from bedroom to bedroom in my friends' country houses. In spite of the expectations inherent in my position, I would prefer to marry a lady I could love. You've told me what you are and what you expect. Now I'm telling you what I am and what I expect. I will escort you to Derbyshire. I will prevent Hanley from doing you any harm. But not because I want your sexual favors in return.”

“Then why?”

“Because you're my responsibility and because I want to go.”

“So insanity runs in your family? I've heard many things about the St. Georges, but I've never heard that. Yet I can't prevent your coming with me, can I?”

“No, you can't.” He thrust the slipper into his pocket and retrieved his cloak from the floor. “That bed seems clean and free of fleas. I suggest you climb between the sheets and go to sleep.”

“While you keep celibate vigil?”

His lips curled with a very faint derision, but only at himself. “In purity, in holiness, in prayer?” He wrapped himself in the cloak, propped himself in the hard chair, and crossed his arms over his chest. “Of course. Yet if Hanley breaks into this room, I shall shoot him.”

She gulped down her fear. “In spite of all your precautions, you think he might find us here?”

“No, but two of my men are watching the place anyway. We're certainly safe here till morning. Then I'll go back to the White Swan to make sure of him.”

“So you'll shoot him there?”

He laughed. “I shall simply bump into him in the hallway to tell him that the trail has gone cold and that I'm going back to Wyldshay. He'll find me a bitter and disappointed man. A few stray hints will then send him off on a wild-goose chase. Meanwhile, my coach may travel home without me.”

“By then I'll be gone,” she said.

“I'll catch up with you—and not on foot. That makes no sense at all. I'll buy you a pony before I leave, then the drovers will accept that our pact was fulfilled.” His grin made him seem younger, almost merry. “To be tarred and feathered sounds like a most unpleasant procedure.”

“You don't know which route I plan to take.”

“There's another drovers' inn about ten miles north of here: the Duke of Wellington. Wait for me there.”

She did not believe that he really meant any of it. Or at least, he might think that he meant it now, at this moment, but in the clear light of day, once he had returned to his own world, once he had tasted again all the luxury that he was used to—

“Very well,” she said. “I'll wait till midday, but no longer.”

“Then let's get some damned sleep!”

His eyes closed. His long legs stretched out in front of him. His boots alone were worth a small fortune.

Miracle snuffed out the candle, stepped behind the screen, and slipped off her dress. The sheets smelled of soap and sunshine. The innkeeper's wife must be a proud housekeeper. How would that worthy lady react if she knew that the Duke of Blackdown's heir was sleeping in the hard chair and not in the bed with the harlot he had purchased?

Ryder could probably throw Lord Hanley off her trail, at least for now, and her heart eased at the thought. Yet she had no faith at all that—if he really came with her—he'd be able to keep the rest of his promises.

His dark figure had almost disappeared into the shadows, though a faint luminosity glistened on his thick hair. His breathing became steady and even.

A small, insistent pulse of pleasure beat in her blood as she watched him beneath her lashes. He had seized her in his hands to burn ferocious, angry kisses into her mouth. Then they had exchanged kisses of exquisite delicacy. She had known him naked and erect and feral with passion. They had talked about the stars. They had laughed and flirted over a dining table. He had saved her life. He did not intend to ever touch her again.

Yet the craving and the desire were not only his, they were hers, too. Whatever happened, it was going to be a difficult journey, with an ending full of pain.

Hugging the blanket to her chin, Miracle turned away to face the darkness. She had been right to begin with, though the idea gave her no joy at all.

 

 

SHE turned in her sleep, her face shadowed like an ivory carving. Thoughts raced—thundering herds of duties and preconceptions and only half-understood motives, flocks of impressions beating sharp wings of yearning—while Ryder's blood drummed in his veins.

What did he know of professional courtesans? His affairs with women had been few and discreet, mostly with society's most glamorous widows, where money was never exchanged, only nice little droplets of guilt. When he married—as of course he must—his wife would eventually become a duchess. Once she had produced an heir, they would not expect to be faithful to each other, though appearances must always be maintained. Whatever happened, he must marry a lady who had been raised and trained for such a role, someone like Lady Belinda Carhart.

But not yet!

There are a million other answers.
God! The heavens glittered with other answers, like stars.

So why had he just chosen the dark path directly into the unknown?

Laurence Duvall Devoran St. George, heir to the titles of Duke of Blackdown, Marquess of Ryderbourne, and Earl of Wyldshay—with all the duties and obligations and privileges they implied—had no idea how to survive on the drovers' roads. He had never spent a day without menservants to wait on him. He had never before traveled without an entourage. The efficient machinery of the dukedom had smoothed his way forward since the day he was born.

Which was one reason why he was going to do this.

He was also going to travel with the loveliest woman he had ever seen—a woman who inflamed his blood, seduced him from his principles with a glance, maddened him like a burr beneath a saddle—yet not make passionate love to her every night?

That part, surely, would not be beyond his power? If he failed in it, then he doubted he'd ever be able to trust himself again.

He was obviously going to do it for her, because no one else could protect her from Hanley's wrath, and because every other man had only ever wanted her for her body.

He was also going to do it for himself, because only she had ever offered him such a clear opportunity to follow the will-o'-the-wisp straight into the void.

 

 

MIRACLE woke knowing that he was already gone. The room echoed, barren without his vital presence. She lay still for a few moments, staring at the ceiling. Lord Ryderbourne—Ryder—wanted to escape from his life for a few weeks and lose himself in the perceived romance of a journey to nowhere. Yet he did not intend to make love to her again?

Whatever his motives, he seriously thought he could do it. It touched her, stirred something vulnerable and lost deep in her heart, that—in spite of all of his power—his approach to life was so innocent. After what they had already shared, did he know himself so poorly?

She swung her feet to the floor. A bundle sat on the hard chair. Miracle padded over to it: a new riding dress and a clean petticoat, wrapped in a cloak. She rubbed a finger over the soft cotton stockings and the fresh linen. When had any man last taken such careful thought for her needs?

A tray with rolls and cheese and a jug of cold milk beckoned from the table. As soon as she was dressed, she tore into the warm bread and thought she ought to weep tears of gratitude.

Thirty minutes later she walked out into the yard of the Drovers' Arms. Clouds hung heavily over the fields. The drovers had already left with their flocks, or were riding home with their letters of credit safely folded in a pocket.

The innkeeper was leaning on the fence of one of the pens, chewing idly at a straw. A saddled white pony stood tied, head drooping, fetlock deep in mud, next to him. The man looked up as she approached.

“Your friend already left,” the innkeeper said. “He paid for your breakfast and that dress, and left you this pony, before going back to his pretty habits on the highway.”

“What habits? The careless use of such accusations could get a man hanged.”

“Your gentleman of the road, then, shall we say? Who else carries two fine pistols and is so free with his gold? And who else arranges to meet his moll in an out-of-the-way inn like this, where they can play their little games at the expense of more honest patrons? Though I've never seen nor heard of him in these parts before.”