The Clergyman's Daughter (3 page)

Just when she thought she could bear no more of his scrutiny, the earl touched the brim of his hat with affected courtesy and murmured, “Tell me, pretty miss, have you seen—” He broke off abruptly as his gray eyes flicked away from her to the portfolio lying on the ground. His mouth hardened.
“You’re
the drawing teacher?” he exclaimed.

“Y-yes, my lord,” Jessica stammered, bobbing a curtsy, confused as much by his initial gallantry as by his inexplicable change of mood. “I’m Jessica Marsh.”

Raeburn’s fair brows lifted. “You’re not what I expected,” he muttered under his breath. “There must be more to Andrew than I….” With a sudden lithe movement, unexpectedly graceful for so large a man, he swung down from the saddle. He patted the great stallion firmly on its gleaming flank, and it moved away a few paces and began to crop the grass, docile as a sheep. Stalking across the space the horse had vacated, Raeburn loomed over Jessica, tall and blond and oddly threatening. She wanted to retreat, but she was brought up short by the puddle, and she had no choice but to let him approach her.

He stood so close that she could smell the hot, masculine scent of his powerful body, and the intimacy of that odor disturbed her. She had never seen him before except at a distance, usually in the autumn when he and a collection of elegant houseguests rode through the village on their way back from a hunt, and now she caught her breath, not daring to meet his flinty gaze. Instead she kept her eyes carefully trained on the white tops of his spurred boots. He was so
big,
she thought; almost too big for gentility—utterly different from his younger brother, a slender, fine-boned patrician of the mode that she had always assumed was the pattern for members of the aristocracy. Raeburn was far above average in height, and while the tight buckskin riding breeches and fashionable Newmarket coat revealed a body that carried not an ounce of surplus flesh, he was so heavily muscled that he gave the impression of being stocky. Remembering the lavish parties that Lady Claire claimed her older brother often attended in London, Jessica drooped her silky lashes low over her eyes, just for a second diverted by the spectacle of this—this human mountain tripping his way through the intricate figures of a country dance….

Her faint smile disappeared when large, blunt fingertips hooked in the soft skin under her chin and jerked her head up roughly. Jessica’s green eyes widened with pain. “Lord Raeburn!” she choked indignantly.

His hand dropped away as he scowled at her use of his title. “So you do know who I am,” he muttered.

Jessica nodded, robbing her jaw. “Of—of course. You are the earl. Everyone knows that.”

Studying her wan face grimly, he demanded, “Does everyone also know that you are my brother’s whore?”

The accusation was so unexpected, so completely unfounded, that for a moment Jessica could only gape at him, rigid with shock, uncertain that she had heard him correctly. Her mouth worked mutely, but she could make no words come. Raeburn, watching her efforts unsympathetically, snapped, “Oh, don’t bother to deny it. I have it from numerous sources. Andrew himself—”

At this betrayal, Jessica found her voice. “No!” she cried hoarsely, her mind whirling. “You’re lying! He’s never—he would never—”

“He wrote to me in London and told me he wants to marry you,” Raeburn rasped. “Just now, when I reached the Chase, he told me the same thing again. With a moon-minded adolescent like Andrew, that can only mean that you’ve fallen for his baby and he has some idiot notion of making—”

Utterly shaken, Jessica did not listen to the rest of the man’s ranting. Marriage? she echoed silently, stunned. The Honourable Andrew Foxe, the peer’s son, who had never kissed her, had never declared his love in anything but speaking glances, had actually applied to his autocratic brother for permission to
marry
her? She shook her head fiercely. No, it was impossible. Somehow the earl had misunderstood. Huskily Jessica said, “There’s been some mistake.”

“I know,” Raeburn answered drily, his eyes raking over her with scathing intent, “and you made it. You set your sights too high, my girl. I don’t know how you’ve managed, to convince my sister’s chaperon that you’re fit to teach her drawing, but don’t think that the fact that you’ve been permitted inside the Chase makes you better than you are. I will never permit my brother to be trapped into marriage with a scheming little doxy who has probably tumbled in the hay with every—”

“But I am not—not with child!” Jessica persisted, wanting to scream hysterically. Her eyes glistened with tears of embarrassment and temper. “I have never—no one has ever—”

He snorted, “Don’t play the innocent with me, miss!
I
know what life is like on the farm. The country girl hasn’t been born yet who could keep her maidenhead to the age of fifteen.”

“But you’re wrong about me!” Jessica shrieked, so shrilly that she shocked herself. With great effort she brought her voice back under control. “If I were…what you think, it would be unlikely that I would know how…the drawing lessons…my—my father is a clergyman,” she finished lamely.

Raeburn regarded her with patent disbelief. He said, “I always thought clergymen’s families were expected to maintain an air of respectability, however shabby. That dress you’re wearing….” His voice trailed off suggestively.

Jessica colored again, recalling the times she had pleaded with her father to be able to replace the outgrown dress. His response had been to charge her to consider the lilies of the field…. “I have seven younger brothers and sisters,” she said stiltedly, hating this man who was forcing her to make excuses. “My father’s parish is a small one, and of necessity we must…practice economy.”

“Indeed,” Raeburn drawled, beginning his outrageous appraisal of her body once more. “It sounds to me as if it would be more to the point were your father to practice a little abstinence.”

Jessica slapped him.

The action came so quickly, so unexpectedly, that she had no time to debate its wisdom, in that moment of fury knowing only that no matter who he was or what he might say about her, she would not allow him to insult her family. But even as the sound of the blow still echoed across the empty, sunlit fields on either side of the road, and her small hand stung as if she had struck it flat against a boulder, the rashness of what she had done seeped into her, and Jessica stared up at him fearfully.

He did not flinch, but even in the shadow cast by the brim of his tall hat, the star-shaped imprint of her hand glared ruddily on his tanned cheek, and as she watched, in the pupils of his eyes tiny flames began to blaze like bonfires set in the gray London snow. Jessica retreated, heedless of the puddle behind her, but before she could take even one step, large hands lashed out and captured her thin arms in living manacles, hauling her toward him and crashing her against the granite wall of his chest.

“Listen to me, clergyman’s daughter,” he growled, as she gasped for air, “do you know who I am? Do you know what behavior like yours invites? I could take you here, now, in the mud, with no one to hear your screams, and even if they did, they would not dare to interfere….”

His long fingers wound painfully into her thick hair, jerking her head back so that the curve of her slender neck clear down to the swell of her burgeoning breasts was exposed to his contemptuous gaze. His head moved closer, and she could feel his breath hot on her sensitive skin. “A-Andrew would s-stop you,” she stammered, her heart fluttering against the inside of her chest like a wild bird caught in a cage.

Raeburn snorted cynically. “My little brother would be the last person to come between me and my pleasures. He’s never defied me in his life. Once he discovers I want you for myself, he won’t look at you again—”

“But you don’t want me!” Jessica squealed in protest. “This is just some scheme to punish me for daring to—”

“Of course I don’t….” he began scornfully, but his deep voice trailed off, and the expression in his eyes altered subtly. Since confronting the recalcitrant Andrew, Raeburn had been drinking himself into a blind fury, and when he first touched the girl, he had been intent only on subduing her, bending her to his will as easily as he arched her body over his arm. Now he seemed to become truly aware of her provocative posture. His nostrils flared as he muttered, “By God, I think I do want you,” and he lowered his head toward hers.

Like one mesmerized, Jessica watched the descent of his mouth, her green eyes wide and staring as he moved closer, closer…. But when she felt his quickening breath tickle her lips, she could almost taste the brandy scenting it, and the realization that he was more than a little in his cups revolted her. With rekindled frenzy she tried to twist away from him, yanking her hair painfully.

“Don’t fight me,” he growled impatiently, “or you’ll make me angry….”

Even as she thrashed about in his powerful embrace, she knew it was hopeless to fight him. All she was doing was exhausting herself. With a moan of despair, she relaxed, gazing up at him desolately.

When her struggles stilled, his voice softened, became cajoling. “Come now, clergyman’s daughter,” he urged, “why won’t you use your head? Be…sweet to me, give me a little of what you’ve already given my brother. If you pleases me…don’t you realize that I could set you up in far better style than Andrew ever could?”

Sick with humiliation, Jessica drooped her long lashes over her bloodless cheeks, trying to shut out the sight of Raeburn’s avid, bewildering gaze. “Why are you doing this to me?” she sobbed in a voice heavy with defeat. “I didn’t know that Andrew would—”

“Damn Andrew,” Raeburn swore in an undertone, and his mouth came down brutally over hers.

She had never been kissed before, had never been touched in any way by a man, her father’s profession a thin but adequate armor against the casual flirtations of the village swains, who had considered her above them. In her dreams she had envisioned sexual passion with both lyricism and distaste, an uncomfortable compound culled from the Song of Solomon and the guttural moans she heard issuing through the wall of her parents’ bedroom at night…. Even with Andrew she had never truly imagined him caressing her. Now the earl’s mouth ravaged hers, frightening her with greedy demand as his arms pressed her slim body against the hulking mass of his own and made her intimately aware of his driving male hunger. He was hurting her badly, and although she tried to tell herself that he was inflicting this pain with calculation, that his intention was to humiliate her into submission, not degrade her, she panicked. When one of his large hands closed with shocking intimacy over the swell of her breast, Jessica again began to flail wildly, all her senses outraged, certain that if she did not escape him at once, he would soon subdue her in the most basic and irrevocable way of all….

Suddenly he released her.

His action came without warning, just when Jessica was pushing against his wall-like chest with renewed vigor, and she lost her balance, oversetting herself. Clawing at the air, she toppled backward, and before Raeburn, lunging for her with lightning reflexes, could catch her, she fell with a disgruntled splash into the puddle.

Instantly muddy water soaked the thin fabric of her dress, plastering it to her slender body, and her black hair, freed from its sedate knot during her struggles, dangled over her breast in soggy ropes. Shaking with temper and reaction, she stared down at herself, at her murky reflection on the agitated surface of the puddle, and as she watched helplessly, one tear worked its way down her smudged cheek, marking a rivulet of white against the dirt. When the tear had dripped from her chin into the puddle, a second began its course down the other cheek. She buried her face in her hands and began to sob helplessly, sick with shame and humiliation and fury at her own impotence.

A shadow fell on Jessica as something large and solid came between her and the sun, and she glanced up with red-rimmed eyes to see the earl looming tensely over her, his mouth tight, his expression inscrutable. As Jessica’s gaze moved over the towering length of him she noted with malicious satisfaction that his boots had been badly splashed when she fell; she hoped the clinging mud stained the white tops beyond repair.

While she watched, he pulled an immaculate handkerchief from the sleeve of his coat and extended it to her. “Here,” he muttered, “you can at least clean your face.”

She did not move. When he tried to press the square of fine bleached linen into her fingers, she let it fall unhindered into the mud beside her. She watched as if fascinated as the folded cloth slowly absorbed the dirty water and at last foundered until only one white corner remained aloft like the topsail of a grounded schooner. With cool deliberation she forced under that last corner as well, then she looked up at the earl again. “I hate you,” she said slowly and distinctly. “I wish you’d die.”

Raeburn’s hooded gray eyes became shuttered. “No doubt you do,” he said in a voice that matched her own. “With me out of the way, Andrew would succeed to the title, and you’d be halfway to your countess’s tiara…. How unfortunate for you that I have no intention either of dying soon or of sanctioning any union between my bird-witted brother and a cheap little guttersnipe, no matter how beautiful she is. Good day to you, madam.” He spun on his heel and stalked away to his grazing stallion….

* * * *

“Miss Jess,” Willa reproved sternly, “your broth is getting cold.”

Jessica blinked hard, jerked back to the present with dizzying abruptness. “Wh-what did you say?” she stammered in confusion, staring about the cramped, humid kitchen as if she had never seen it before.

Willa, recognizing one of her mistress’s “moods,” repeated more gently, “Your broth is getting cold, and you look as if you’re like to spill it all over yourself. Pay attention now, and drink it up quick, before all the goodness steams out of it.”

“Yes, Willa,” Jessica answered meekly, raising the thick cup to her lips. As she sipped the savory soup she admitted that its rich warmth was indeed comforting, almost—almost as comforting as Andrew’s regard and solicitude had been that day when he found her beside the road long after Raeburn had galloped away. Even as he leaped from his horse he had been ripping off his coat and he had wrapped it modestly about her wet, muddied shoulders. He had pulled her into the shelter of his embrace, touching her with an extreme tenderness that had been belied by the unusual hardness of his soft brown eyes, the edge in his young voice. “That bastard,” he had groaned fiercely, “if I had known what he—if I could have caught up with that damned great stallion of his….” He had drawn her still-trembling body closer to his, cradling and protecting her, and even as Andrew held her, Jessica had felt him begin to tremble too. When she looked up questioningly at him, his face had been glowing with a strange new light. He murmured huskily, “I’ll keep you safe, Jessica, I promise. I’ll fix it so that he can never hurt you or insult you again. You’ll be my wife. That’ll show him. All you have to do is come away with me, come away with me
now
….”