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Authors: Patricia Cabot

Tags: #Romance, #Adult, #Historical

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BOOK: Portrait of My Heart
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“I haven’t the slightest idea who he is,” Lord Mitchell said in a loud voice. He, clearly, did not mind whether or not he was overheard. “And I don’t care, either. I can’t think why you dragged me here, Leticia. You know I can’t abide crushes like this.”
“But he’s got to be
someone
,” his wife insisted. “The
Althorpes wouldn’t invite just
anyone
to their only daughter’s coming out.”
Ah, Maggie thought, unfolding her fan again. They’ve only spotted a face in the crowd that they can’t identify, that’s all. She smiled to herself. Really, Augustin was so funny about that sort of thing! Like a woman, almost, in his fascination with the mechanics of the
haut monde.
Poor Augustin. He had never been any good at hiding his feelings, particularly enthusiasm, with which he fairly bubbled over at times. It had been difficult for Maggie to convince him to conceal his glee upon her acceptance of his proposal, since he had claimed himself the happiest of men. But their engagement had had to be kept secret until a suitable period of mourning for her mother had passed. It had been a difficult year for Augustin, made no easier by the fact that Maggie’s father had expressed no more approval for the engagement than he had over Maggie’s decision to pursue a professional painting career. According to Sir Arthur’s way of thinking, his youngest child’s duty was to himself. He expected Maggie to return home to Herbert Park to tend him, despite the fact that he had two daughters already living within an easy distance of his home.
Thinking of her father, Maggie fanned herself with more energy than was necessary. What was Sir Arthur going to say, she wondered, when he learned that the Duke of Rawlings had returned home from India … and with a royal bride in tow? He would not be pleased. Sir Arthur had an inherent distrust of anything foreign. It wouldn’t be easy for him to supplicate himself in front of a duchess who didn’t speak the queen’s English. And Jeremy’s aunt and uncle! Pegeen had nearly suffered an apoplexy, Maggie remembered, when she’d first heard of the existence of the Star of Jaipur. Seeing the Princess Usha serve tea in the Gold Drawing Room back at Rawlings Manor might just finish off Lady Edward entirely.
Maggie closed her eyes. Hill was right. She was going to have to find a flat of her own, and at once. She couldn’t possibly continue living there, not knowing she was sharing the same roof as that … that
woman
.
Not to mention that
man.
“
Zut,
” Augustin was saying, admiringly. “Look at the way all the women are eyeing him! He has even caught the Honorable Miss Althorpe’s eyes, and I never thought
she’d
forsake that pastry of hers for a pretty face … .”
Lady Mitchell laughed shortly. “He’s hardly
pretty,
Monsieur de Veygoux. But what girl could resist a man in uniform? You know how they react on the Ladies’ Mile, whenever the Horse Guards ride by. There’s just
something
about a cavalryman … .”
Her husband made a rude noise. “I’ll say. The stench of horse manure, which follows ’em everywhere.”
“Really, James. Just because you’re too awkward in the saddle to ride with a sword at your side doesn’t mean you have the right to be rude about those who can.” Lady Mitchell was squinting now. “La, but this one is tall. And so many medals! He must have been very brave in some battle somewhere.”
“India, it looks like,” Augustin said. “Where else could he have picked up such an extraordinary tan? He’s dark as a Gypsy.”
It was at that point that Maggie, who’d been listening with only half an ear, took a quick step forward. It was impossible. It was
quite
impossible, since Jeremy didn’t even
know
the Earl of Althorpe. Certainly his uncle might, but Jeremy? How would
he
know Lord and Lady Althorpe?
Because the backs of both Lord Mitchell and Augustin were blocking Maggie from seeing the dance floor, she darted behind a pillar until she found an unimpeded view … .
And then her heart, quite simply, stopped.
The orchestra didn’t stop playing the waltz it had launched into. Certainly a hush did not fall over the room. The dancers did not part, like the Red Sea, to allow her a path across the parquet floor. But it seemed to Maggie as if all of these things happened. Because suddenly, she could hear nothing but the sound of her own swift intake of breath as she caught sight of the tall, uniformed cavalryman on the other side of the room.
Good God. It was Jeremy.
Granted, last time she’d seen him had been in her dimly lit bedroom. It had been at the crack of dawn, and she hadn’t exactly been at her sharpest, having been frightened senseless first by the presence of a man in her room, and then by the identity of that man. But there was no mistaking the fact that Jeremy was standing not fifty feet away from her, a champagne flute raised to his lips as his silver-eyed gaze casually raked the dancing couples between them.
She had thought Jeremy’s looks ruined by his sallow complexion and broken nose, but she’d been wrong. True, he was no longer breathtakingly handsome, as he’d been five years ago. But now there was something so much more masculine about him—and therefore so much more innately appealing—that Maggie wondered why every woman in the room wasn’t falling down into a swoon at his feet, as she was very much afraid
she
might. In his immaculately cut coat, the epaulets of which emphasized the swell of his broad shoulders, he stood proudly as an admiral, as if the ballroom floor were the deck of one of Her Majesty’s great warships, and he was about to give the order to fire all cannons.
And yet there was also a hint of something dangerous in his stance, something only just barely kept in restraint, that lent him the air of a brigand or highway robber. Maybe it was Jeremy’s riotous crown of black curls, the curls no one had ever been able to keep under control, and which, no matter how recently cut, had a tendency to fall across his forehead. Or maybe it was the derisiveness in his glance, the utter contempt in which he seemed to hold everyone around him. In any case, had she seen a glint of gold at his earlobe, Maggie would not have been surprised.
He was dictatorial in his self-assurance. Maggie had never seen any man fill a room with his mere presence the way Jeremy was doing just then, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out how, exactly, he was managing it. Certainly
she
was incapable of placing her eyes anywhere else than on his tall, elegant form.
But then she, of course, was in love with him.
It was that thought which, like a slap, brought Maggie round. Good Lord! What was she doing, standing there gaping
at him like a simpleminded chambermaid? Jeremy was clearly looking for someone … .
Me?
her heart whispered hopefully. Hardly. Why on earth would he be looking for
her
when there was a woman like the Star of Jaipur in existence? Where
was
his little consort? Straining her eyes, Maggie could see no sign of Princess Usha. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t in the ballroom somewhere. And Maggie would be damned before she’d stand there and watch the two of them find one another. She hadn’t eaten that much that evening, but a sight like that would definitely bring it back up.
She moved just a second too late. Not even a second. A
fraction
of a second too late. But that fraction of a second was enough. Jeremy’s restless gaze was attracted by the movement, despite all the other motion in the room, and suddenly, his eyes were locked on hers. She froze, watching helplessly as he took in her upswept hairstyle, the bare curves of her neck and shoulders. His eyes widened a little at her decolletage, which was considerable, then narrowed as they followed the sweep of her long white skirt as it fishtailed into a three-foot-long train behind her.
There was a loop upon that train that could be attached to Maggie’s wrist when she wanted to dance or move without a tangle of satin about her feet. With all the dignity she could muster under that insulting gaze, Maggie bent, lifted the train, slung it over her arm, and coldly turned her back on the Duke of Rawlings.
Jeremy nearly burst out laughing. She certainly was something, his Maggie. Just where, he wondered, did she think she was going? There was nowhere, nowhere on earth, she could go to escape him. He’d follow her into the bowels of hell if he had to.
Not that he imagined such extremes were going to be necessary.
No. She was obviously put out with him. What woman wouldn’t be? If she’d been under the same impression as the rest of London seemed to be—that the Star of Jaipur was of the animal, and not mineral, variety—then he perfectly understood her animosity. Well, maybe not perfectly. After all, she was the one who’d gone and gotten herself engaged to a frog-eater. And
she
was put out with
him
! Little hypocrite.
He wondered if she’d have been as angry had she been privy to his thoughts upon finally spotting her across the ballroom. The sight of Maggie Herbert as he’d never seen her before, coolly elegant in a snow-white off-the-shoulder evening gown, from which crystal beads dripped like icicles, had staggered him. Certainly there were women in that ballroom who were more beautiful than Maggie Herbert. But none of them made his pulse beat quicker.
And when she bent to lift her train, that pulse had stuttered and nearly stopped. Bending over in a dress like that, with a figure like Maggie’s, ought to have been a capital offense. Her breasts, full to the point of nearly overflowing from the
tight constriction of the corset she wore, all but toppled out of the neckline of her gown. Jeremy’s gaze had torn around the room, jealously seeking to know if any other man had glimpsed what he considered his own rightful property. Where was this fiancé of hers? How dare he let her go about in such a dress? Why, the man deserved a thrashing simply because of
that.
Quick as a snake, Jeremy crossed the dance floor, dodging whirling couples and feeling the occasional sweep of a woman’s train across his legs. Maggie, he saw, had ducked behind a massive pillar, but when he too rounded it, he found only a tall, redheaded man and a rather pompous-looking couple blinking at him astonishedly.
“What’s the matter, then?” Jeremy demanded of them. “Never seen a member of the queen’s Horse Guards in the flesh before?”
He didn’t wait around to hear their response. Instead, he hurried off in the only possible direction Maggie could have gone, through a door paneled to look like part of the wall. Beyond it, he found himself in a dark, masculinely furnished room, a library, he thought, though it was hard to tell, since there wasn’t any fire. The only light was that which spilled through a pair of tall windows at the far side of the room, and that was moonlight, and there wasn’t much of it, since the moon was only half-full.
Still, there was enough to see by, enough to reflect against the beading on Maggie’s dress. Standing by the window, her gloved hands clenched into fists at her sides, Maggie stamped her foot and cried exasperatedly, “Oh, Jerry, really! What do you want? Why are you following me?” He might have been mistaken, but he thought her voice caught on a sob. “Why can’t you go away and leave me be?”
Jeremy didn’t feel like laughing anymore. There was nothing, he suddenly realized, even remotely amusing about this situation.
“I did that already,” he said, closing the door behind him with a soft click. The music from the orchestra and the laughter of the revelers outside was suddenly cut off. There wasn’t
a sound in the library, not even the crackling of a fire on the hearth. It was damnably cold.
Maggie, however, didn’t seem to notice the chill, in spite of the indecent cut of her gown.
She had turned her back on him again … only this time, she was cornered. She seemed to know it, too, if the defensive way she’d folded her arms across her chest was any indication. Her breath, he saw, fogged the glass of the windowpane before her as she spoke. “What do you mean?” she demanded hoarsely. “What do you mean, you did that already?”
“What I said.” Jeremy was aware that, though she was pretending not to, she was looking at him out of the corner of her eye. He slid his hands into his trouser pockets, in an effort to appear less threatening. He remembered her fear of him as well as if it had been yesterday. “You wanted to be left alone. I left you alone. For five years, to be precise.”
“Well,” Maggie said, swallowing quite audibly. “Apparently, five years wasn’t long enough.”
“Apparently not,” Jeremy observed. “You know, Maggie, you are a bit trying. You’re lucky I’m so forgiving. A lesser man than myself might have begun to feel a bit unwanted by now. I mean, after waiting five long years for you.” He slowly circled the far end of a leather sofa, his gaze locked on her slender form.
“You seemed to manage to keep yourself busy in the interim,” Maggie remarked to the window.
“Oh?” Jeremy navigated his way around an ivory-topped end table.
“Yes,” Maggie said. “We were all kept highly entertained by the newspaper accounts of your heroic activities in the Far East.”
Jeremy was close enough now to touch her, but he kept his hands planted firmly in his pockets. He had not come this far just to have his face slapped. Though Maggie, if he recalled correctly, had never been much of a slapper—more of a puncher. Instead he said nonchalantly, “Yes, I understand
The Times
was quite faithful in reporting my every
move. There might have been one or two rather important points, however, that they got wrong.”
“I highly doubt that,” Maggie said coldly. “
The Times
is, after all, the most widely read newspaper in the world. I’m quite sure the journalists who write for it exercise great care in researching their stories.”
“There’s one particular story, however,” Jeremy said gently, “that I know for a fact they got wrong.”
, That got her attention. She whirled away from the window and, obviously taken aback by the fact that he’d managed, without her noticing, to get so close, took a quick step backward, until her shoulder blades obliterated the foggy patch her breath had made. “Stop it,” she said, in a voice that wasn’t exactly steady.
“Stop what?” Jeremy stayed where he was, lest another step forward send her backing out the window.
“You know what I mean,” Maggie snapped. With her back to the window, he couldn’t see her eyes, but he imagined they were as tear-filled as her voice. “Jeremy, I
know
they didn’t get the story wrong. You admitted last night that you had the Star of Jaipur with you, and I saw her myself, in the foyer, not two hours ago!”
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. That was the only muscle in his body that moved as he said, “You saw the Princess Usha in the foyer two hours ago. You didn’t see the Star of Jaipur.”
Maggie thought she might burst a blood vessel, she was so angry. She lifted her folded fan and held it, as another woman would have held a knife, to his chest. “Jeremy,” she said, from between gritted teeth. “The Princess Usha is the Star of Jaipur!”
“In her opinion, maybe,” he said, with a slight shrug. “She’s certainly been called that by a number of people, including her doting uncle. Sort of like a nickname. But the real Star of Jaipur isn’t a woman. It’s a stone.”
The fan stayed exactly where it was, pointed threateningly at his heart. “Jeremy,” Maggie said. “The newspaper said you’d been awarded the Star of Jaipur for your valor at the
Palace of the Winds. According to
The Times,
the Star of Jaipur is the maharajah’s niece … .”
“Right.” Jeremy nodded briskly. “That much is true. He did try to foist his niece off on me. It was a bit of a sticky situation, you understand, because in India, you know, giving a man your niece or daughter is supposed to be a very great honor. Especially a woman like the princess, who many of the natives believe is too beautiful to look upon directly—”
Maggie couldn’t help snorting at this. Jeremy ignored her.
“What I’m trying to say,” he went on, as if she hadn’t interrupted, “is that I couldn’t very well stand there and say, Well, thanks, but no thanks, to a maharajah. It would have been a terrific insult. We aren’t too popular over there, and something like that would have completely ruined whatever chances we might have had at eventually coming to an amicable relationship with the local government of the province—”
Maggie looked as if she were going to plunge her fan into his eye at any moment. “Is there an end to this story?” she demanded.
Jeremy grinned. There wasn’t any other woman on earth, with the possible exception of his aunt, who was so routinely rude to him as Maggie Herbert. He supposed that was why he loved her. “Yes, there is, Mags. What
The Times
obviously failed to report, most likely because it didn’t make a very good story, is that later, I went back and explained to His High Exaltedness that while I was very appreciative of the honor he’d bestowed upon me by giving me his niece, I already had a girl back home.” Jeremy began to dig around in his pocket. “He was a jolly good sport about it. He gave me this instead.”
Pulling his hand from his pocket, he opened his fist. There, dazzling even in the weak moonlight, was the Star of Jaipur. It had collected a bit of lint from having been in his pocket so long, but otherwise, it was as perfect a gem as had ever existed.
Maggie, however, did not lower the fan. He saw at once that she was completely unimpressed by both the stone’s beauty and obvious worth, a typically Maggie-like reaction.
“If what you just told me is true,” she inquired coolly, “then why was the Princess Usha in your foyer this afternoon?”
“Now, that,” Jeremy said, closing his fist with a sigh, and dropping the stone back into his pocket, “is a bit of a mystery to me, too. Near as I can get out of her translator—Usha doesn’t speak much English, you know—she’s madly in love with me, and is determined to marry me, despite all of my protestations.”
Maggie threw the fan at him with all the force she could muster. Fortunately, he anticipated the move, and ducked. The fan struck the arm of the leather couch and fell, with a clatter, to the parquet floor. Jeremy, stunned, looked up at her from where he was crouched.
“I
knew
it,” Maggie shouted. “I just knew it! Jerry, how could you? How
could
you?”
“What?” Jeremy held up his arms in order to shield himself from her flailing hands. Apparently, in his absence, Maggie had become something of a slapper after all. “What did
I
do?”
“What did you do?” Maggie echoed, her voice breaking hoarsely. “What did you do? I’ll tell you what you did, you stupid, stupid man!
You made her fall in love with you …”
… the same as you did me, she finished. But to herself, only to herself. The thought was so enraging that she felt an overwhelming need to strike something, and since Jeremy was just standing there, blinking at her in confusion, he seemed like the perfect outlet for her pent-up rage. Unfortunately, her fist connected only with his upper arm, which he’d flung up instinctively to ward off the blow he saw coming.
Even padded as that arm was with muscle, Jeremy couldn’t help wincing. The girl still threw a very wicked right. Considering that he was the one who’d taught her to punch, the blow was all the more humiliating.
Loath as he was to hurt her, Jeremy was even more loath to see her hurt herself, and from the way she was hopping about—a rather interesting sight, considering the depth of her decolletage—cradling her right hand, which she’d apparently
bruised once again by hitting him, he saw that she’d already done so. Jeremy decided to put an end to these antics, and like any good military man, he determined to do so as quickly and decisively as possible.
Perhaps seizing Maggie about the waist and throwing her, rear end first, onto the leather couch wasn’t the most tactful way to handle the situation. And Jeremy didn’t suppose it really helped things along when he flung himself after her, effectively pinning her where she lay with his body weight, then, when she struggled to get up, anchoring both her wrists to the sides of her head with his hands. It did, however, cheer him up excessively, despite her livid expression.
“Get,” Maggie panted, “off me!”
“I don’t think so,” Jeremy said, admiring the way her breasts had swelled up over the edge of her gown. He could see both rosy nipples peeping out from beneath the satin fabric. What with Maggie being so out of breath, and her chest heaving up and down, he didn’t suppose it would be too long before more of her came spilling out. He knew he’d be a fool not to stick around and watch. “That last time I got off you, if you’ll recall, five years went by before I got the chance to get on you again. One thing I learned in the cavalry, my dear, is that opportunity is everything, and retreat gets one exactly nowhere.”
“Jer—” Maggie started to yell, but Jeremy found that crushing her mouth under his worked quite effectively at keeping her quiet.
BOOK: Portrait of My Heart
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