Games of Pleasure (28 page)

“Yes, I do believe that you think that you love me at the moment, Ryder. But in the end, every protector tires of his mistress and walks away. ‘I'll give her a pretty bauble,' he'll say to his friends, even when it's a damned diamond necklace.”

“I'm aware, of course, of the social expectation in such situations.” His tone was restrained.

Miracle spun away, determined to hammer at the truth. “And of course she takes it, which allows him to salve his conscience—if he has one—with the belief that she was only after his money all along. After all, she's a fallen woman, a soiled dove—ugh, what an obnoxious expression!—so obviously she's mercenary and heartless at the core, without morals or values or even any real desire, except for money. That's what your friends say and what you believe, too, Ryder, in your heart of hearts.”

“I've never kept a mistress. I don't know.”

The force of his male power beat at her defenses, as if she stood unprotected in the path of a storm. “Yet you thought you simply felt jealousy? Deny, if you will, that the thought of my past repels you, however much you keep trying to ignore it. At heart you esteem only purity and innocence. Thus you agonize over your desires and drag guilt and moral superiority in equal measure into every erotic encounter.”

“Perhaps.” He folded his arms and leaned back with careless arrogance against the trunk of a tall elm. “However, I began this journey prepared to learn something new. Did you?”

She turned her back to gaze out at the dark, sleeping world. It was easy for any gentleman, even one so profoundly honorable as Ryder, to fancy himself in love with the lady of the moment. It was an absolute disaster for a harlot to allow herself to fall in love in return.

“Why should I change? I've learned the truth about men throughout many bitter years.”

“You would condemn all of society? And half of humankind?”

“Yes, on the whole—simply for the hypocrisy of it all.”

Ryder walked up to set both hands on her waist. She allowed him to do it, to use his warmth and strength to shield her from the cool air rising off the night grasses, even if he could not shield her from herself.

“If a female trades her body for money,” he said in her ear, “she can hardly complain when the world sees her as mercenary.”

Miracle dropped her head forward and closed her eyes. “No, she can't. So she'd better secure every bauble she can get, for one day she'll no longer be pretty enough to attract another protector. Then, if she's been too fine in her scruples, she'll be an old woman begging at the side of the road. She may even watch as the man she once loved passes in his carriage, taking his respectable wife to the opera, where he once noticed a girl dancing and fancied her in his bed.”

His breath faltered, as if his heart stopped for a moment. “Did you love any of those men, Miracle?”

Her fingers gripped the damp wooden rail. “One or two of them, when I was younger. But believe it or not, there haven't been that many. Even a member of the muslin company can sometimes pick and choose. I've been lucky.”

He tipped her face up to his with one hand. “I think I understand—most of it, anyway. Yet, if the choice was yours, why did you pick Hanley?”

Miracle turned her head aside, letting his fingers slip down to her neck, knowing that this duke's son would condemn her in the end, knowing that he would then leave her, just like all the others.

“Precisely because I knew that I would never fall in love with him. And, of course, he promised to be generous.”

“You'll never have to face poverty again,” he said. “I promise!”

She pulled away and laughed. The summer night was too seductive. Because she loved him, she had told him the truth. It wasn't fair to either of them. Time to retreat, to find a safer basis for their relationship.

“And perhaps I'll never have to face old age, either, if Lord Hanley catches up with me.”

“He won't. But there's something else that's been bothering me. Before our journey was so inconsiderately disrupted by Bruiser and his friends, you were telling me that Hanley had just accused you of stealing from him?”

“Well, not exactly. But after I left the yacht, he searched my bags and I can't imagine why.”

“Neither can I. He also ransacked your rooms in Blackdown Square.”

She stared up at him, stunned. “He searched my rooms? When?”

He gazed down at her beneath contracted brows, an angry tilt to his mouth. “After you left him in Dorset. What the devil was he looking for, Miracle?”

“I've no idea! Are you sure?”

“Hanley cut open your mattress, ripped into your dresses, smashed vases, tore the books from their cases. Your maid tried to put it all back to rights, but yes, I'm certain.”

Deep tremors shook their way up her body. “He was very angry with me, even before I left. That morning in Exeter he seemed consumed by jealousy—”

“Which was how it looked at first glance, or was meant to look. Yet it was not simply the work of a man hurt and enraged at the loss of a mistress. He was searching for something that he thinks you have, or had, perhaps.”

“But I have nothing of his, except for the jewels he gave me. Surely he would not want to take them back?”

“I don't know. God, it's late! We both need our sleep. Yet, if you can bear it, I think you must tell me exactly what happened in Dorset, before you were cast adrift in that dinghy. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” she agreed, grateful for the consideration that allowed her a night's reprieve. The image of Lord Hanley slashing up her bed with a knife was going to haunt her dreams. “And, yes, I can bear it—though I doubt if I'll sleep much tonight after what you've just told me.”

“Neither will I,” he said. “Though perhaps for different reasons.”

Miracle thrust her anxiety aside and smiled as she gestured toward the camp. “Meanwhile, Mr. Faber's company is sleeping like a baby, in spite of the disaster of missing tonight's performance.”

“Thanks to Ophelia's fecundity! But they'd anyway planned to stay here tonight. In the morning the troupe heads north toward Buxton, and tomorrow night the play will be performed in a barn near a village called Hulme Down. You still wish to play Ophelia?”

“Why not? We might as well travel north with the Fabers as far as that, at least, and if they give us their food and their protection, we must do our best to save their play for them, as well.”

His gaze was disturbingly perceptive, but he laughed. “You think the play can be saved? I have certain misgivings about
Hamlet
's being performed as a farce.”

She struck a dramatic pose. “‘Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!'”

“Instead, I could borrow a horse from that farmhouse down there to ride into the nearest town to demand all the rights and considerable privileges of my position.”

Her renewed fear made it tempting: to let him fetch a carriage and horses to speed her to Dillard's house—and straight into another encounter with Lord Hanley?

“We can't let the Fabers down.”

He raised a brow. “You would risk discovery, simply for the sake of one more bad performance of
Hamlet
?”

“We gave our word, Ryder.”

“Yes, I'm aware of that.”

She felt frantic to convince him, though she knew she was only trying to find rationalizations for herself. She had always tried to live by a code of honor—yet this time it might indeed be at risk of her life.

“It would anyway take you some time to arrange other transportation, and meanwhile, Lord Hanley will never think to look for us among the traveling players. There'll be no one in the audience tomorrow night except locals, and we'll be in costume. Obviously we'll do as little as we can to attract attention otherwise.”

“Which is the only reason why I'm agreeing to this insanity.”

“I'll put myself at your disposal after the performance to travel in any way that you wish. I promise.”

He took her hand and turned it up, then traced the curves and hollows with one finger, as if he might find the secret of the Gordian Knot written in her palm. Heat spread from his touch, as if her veins soaked up sunlight.

“And meanwhile our play will go on?” he asked lightly.

“I don't think we can escape it,” she said. “You've certainly made plenty of dramatic entrances and exits in my life so far.”

His pulse throbbed against hers as he closed his fingers. “It's not only the play that I can't escape, but the passion. Whatever the consequences, I cannot fight that any longer, Miracle.”

She searched his dark gaze, pinned by her heartbreaking need to be honest—simply because he was too fine to be lied to?

“No, a dark thread of desire binds us at the moment. Yet you mustn't forget—in fact, I promise it will be the only thing that matters in the end—that I'm a lady of the night. I'm good at it. That's what I am.”

“No,” he replied with absolute certainty. “That's what you've done. It's not who you are.”

She slipped her fingers from his and walked away. “Whereas you're exactly what your birth made you. You were wrong when you said you'd be nothing if you were stripped of the power of your position. That power is who you are. You can't shed it, any more than you can shed your skin.”

“I'm going to be a duke, whether I like it or not.”

“And you like it.”

“I'd better,” he said. “A title isn't something one may renounce. I have responsibilities to thousands of people besides myself. Material assets come with the position, of course, but only if I husband them.”

“Whereas my destiny was to scrabble for every penny from the day I was born. If we'd met under different circumstances, you wouldn't have hesitated to set me up as your mistress. You'd have done so expecting to tire of me eventually. And since you're an extremely wealthy man, I'd have driven the hardest bargain I could manage.”

“So what's happened instead?”

A fox ran, loping across a far hillside, head turned for an instant as if the animal looked directly into her heart.

“Nothing that can be allowed to matter,” she said.

He caught her hand again and spun her to face him. “We shan't solve it tonight. Come, let me escort you back to Hamlet's wagon!”

“Alas, he and Rosencrantz like their privacy. So I'm sharing with the Fabers, who are past the age of any such nonsense.”

Ryder brought her knuckles to his mouth and kissed them. “Really? I don't believe there's any male alive who would agree to that statement.”

She laughed and kissed his fingers in turn. Hand in hand, they walked back across the dark field to the camp. Miracle stood on tiptoe and kissed him once again on the mouth, using every ounce of her control to keep it light and friendly, though contact only fanned the flames. Before he had time to regret his resolutions, she slipped inside the largest tent.

Ryder stood for a long time staring up at the Milky Way, before he strode away to his wagon and crawled back into his empty bed.

His hot craving for the gifts of her body would sear him for the rest of his days. He had never before lived every moment of every day with this crackling erotic spark charging every breath. Yet Miracle possessed an extraordinary strength of mind, as well, along with a bright intelligence and audacity that had allowed her to survive, even flourish, in a world he knew to be cruel.

She knew she was taking a risk to take part in the Fabers' play, yet she would do it simply because she had given her word. And—God! It must have taken all the courage she possessed to be so honest with him.

The obvious solution—if he could only somehow clear her of the charge of murder—was, of course, to make her his mistress.

Yet something in him still rebelled at the thought—that to use her in such a way would inevitably demean her? The dread that she was right in her judgment about men and would prove him to be no different from all the others, after all? Or simply that she would in the end demonstrate that she was more honorable than he?

Meanwhile, what was he really risking? The Duke of Blackdown's privileged elder son with all the wealth and power of the St. Georges at his fingertips?

Whatever he wished to the contrary, Miracle was right: He could guarantee her nothing, not even himself.

THE next morning's journey allowed them no privacy at all. Miracle laughed and joked with the other players in the second wagon, while Ryder rode with Mr. Robert Faber in the first one. It was some time since he had read
Hamlet
. If he was to play Fortinbras and other assorted gentlemen, he must learn his lines. Yet he kept looking up from the book in his hand as other characters' words burned in his mind.

As they crossed into Derbyshire, the landscape began to look familiar. If he strode into any bank in any of the nearby towns, Lord Ryderbourne could replenish his empty pockets. If His Lordship sent a message to Wrendale, he would have a carriage and servants immediately at his disposal to take Miracle straight to her brother's house.

Yet he said nothing. He agreed with Miracle that they were temporarily safe from Hanley's pursuit. They certainly owed the Fabers that night's performance. And these might be his last days and nights with the woman who had turned his world upside down.

It was as if she had lit a slow fuse in his heart. Whenever he glanced at her, his pulse quickened. If he allowed himself memories of their lovemaking, the explosive flames of passion would consume him. Yet images of her face and her quicksilver laugh stirred him just as profoundly, and sent a deeper, hotter fire burning into his soul.