The Earl's Mistress (12 page)

He dragged the arm away and turned back to her. “Isabella,” he pressed, “what happened to your husband?”

“He died.”

“May I ask of what?”

At last she rolled over to look at him. “You may do anything you please,” she said, her eyes glistening. “I think we just established that.”

Hepplewood looked at her and sighed. “Oh, Isabella,” he said, reaching up to push his fingers through her hair. “Perhaps that’s the sort of arrangement we have, yes. But I should like to please
you
in the process. And you seemed, in the end, to take pleasure in what we just did.”

“Pleasure?” she said, her lips thinning. “It was like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Yes. It was a sort of pleasure.”

“Did it feel . . . distasteful?” he asked, crooking his head. “Isabella,
did
it?”

“It felt frightening at first.” She looked away. “What am I to say, my lord? I am your wh—I mean, your lover—and here to accommodate your wishes. Please, may we not have this discussion? It seems perilously near those things we vowed we would not discuss.”

Hepplewood felt as if he’d just been shut out of something at once precious and yet deeply unpleasant. He did not like it one damned bit.

And what was far worse, he didn’t like that he didn’t like it. He much preferred to not give a damn. Yes, he was what he was, and he’d best remember it. Isabella’s beauty and her goodness would never change him.

And perhaps he ought not change her.

“Can you be content here, Isabella, in my bed?” he said gruffly. “Will you wish to continue this arrangement?”

She was staring up at the ceiling now. “I am content enough,” she said. “I agree to continue our arrangement. And I will give you satisfaction—and obedience—from here out.”

Hepplewood felt a prick of raw anger. “Good,” he snapped, “because that’s damned well what I expect of you.”

She drew another long, uneven breath. “My husband died of drinking,” she said, her voice emotionless. “
Acute alcohol poisoning,
the coroner called it. He was young and romantic, and married, he’d once proclaimed, to the love of his life. And yet his life still turned out to be not what he’d wanted. So one day he took the cork out of a cheap bottle of gin, and washed that bottle down with another, and perhaps even a third, and that is all I know, my lord. Beyond that, his death is as much a mystery to me as it is to the next person. Now, have I given satisfaction with my answer?”

Hepplewood got the unpleasant feeling he’d just struck a nerve.

“You’re right,” he said, forcing down his ire. “I should not have asked you. But if it is of any comfort to you, my marriage was also short, and it ended just as miserably, trust me.”

“How can anyone take comfort in another’s misery?” Isabella murmured. “And you had
a child.
At least you got a child for your misery.”

Her tone, husky, with the barest hint of longing, made him shiver. Was that what she wanted, deep down? A child, a husband, a family? The simplest of dreams? And if she did, why was she wasting her time and her beauty on him?

The question chafed at him. He did not wish to feel tenderness.

“Yes, I got a child because I seduced her,” he snapped, since simple subtraction made it obvious. “She was rich, lovely, and green as grass, and I was charmingly irresistible. So I seduced her—
easily
—and by the time she climbed out of my bed and came to her senses, she had my babe in her belly and it was too damned late. So yes, I got a child. And she died bearing it—married to a man she despised.”

Isabella folded her hands just below her breasts and studied the room’s crown molding in excruciating detail. “Well,” she deadpanned, “I’m glad we got those little formalities out of the way.”

Hepplewood laid back down on the bed again, oddly exhausted. He knew he was not done with Isabella; no, not by half. Not in the physical sense. Ordinarily he would have permitted her to drowse a few moments before urging her on to the next step, then taking her again.

But this time the raging need had seemingly burned clean through him, and now his hunger for her lay more like a cold weight over his heart than that familiar, pooling warmth he would ordinarily be feeling in his groin.

Ah, God.
He could feel what this was coming to.

“Isabella,” he said quietly, “would you like me to leave you now?”

“If you are finished with me,” she said with exquisite politeness, “then, yes, my lord, thank you.”

If he was finished with her?

Was he finished?

Yes,
thank you,
he very much thought he was.

Certainly, he’d better be finished—for the sensual experience he’d so triumphantly anticipated upon reading Mrs. Litner’s letter did not feel at all like the experience he’d just had.

It should have been just the raw, sexual release born of driving himself into a beautiful woman’s body. Why, then, had there been nothing releasing about it?

He let out his breath in a long, pensive exhalation, still savoring the warmth of Isabella’s body beside his. But their mingled warmth changed nothing. Nor did his anger. A wise man knew when to surrender and how to cut the ache of his losses before they were . . . well,
losses
. For if he did not, the ache he’d feel then might just eat him alive.

If you are finished with me. . . .

Well, be damned to her.

“Then I will leave you, Isabella, to rest,” he said tightly.

And with that, Hepplewood rolled off the mattress, circled around the bed to snatch up his clothing, and went back down to his study, slamming the door behind.

He threw on his clothes, roughly yanking and buttoning and shoving things this way and that, steeping in his own wounded pride.

But once dressed and a little calmer, clarity dawned.

He had known she was a danger; known she was not meant for him. Yes, he’d known it all the moment he’d first laid eyes on her, and the knowledge had both angered him and taunted him.

She really was an innocent, he realized. A sweet and beautiful innocent who wanted children, and an ordinary life, he supposed. And he . . . well, he had not been innocent in a very long time.

On a long sigh, he sat down at his desk and scratched out a few succinct lines. When he was done, he pushed the letter away, shut his eyes, and considered his alternatives.

It still felt as if he had none.

The truth was, he’d had none since that day at Loughford.

Had he been so bloody willing to shove his cock into a meat grinder, he should have simply seduced her then and there. He could simply have dusted off the foolproof Hepplewood charm that once had served him so well and had Isabella tipped back onto his desk in a mere trice, with her skirts tossed up to her waist.

She had been that vulnerable.

And he had nearly been that stupid.

His bitterness burning bright again, Hepplewood unlocked his bottom desk drawer. Then he lifted out all of Jervis’s diligently gathered jewel boxes and simply heaped them atop the letter.

Well, all save one. The one he loved most; a ring set with a ten-carat diamond surrounded by dark, flawless amethysts.

To remember her by, he told himself.

CHAPTER
6

A
ttired in a fuchsia-colored gown and matching peignoir, her pink satin turban trimmed with magenta-colored ostrich tips, the Marchioness of Petershaw was sequestered in her private sitting room, hastily scratching out invitations to an especially intimate soiree, when Isabella was announced.

More than three weeks having passed since their last meeting, the marchioness had given standing orders that her former governess should be brought to her at once, at any time of day or night, should she happen to turn up. Thus, upon hearing Isabella’s name announced, the lady immediately flung down her pen and, in a shocking breach of her usual decorum, actually rushed across the floor.

“Wicked girl!” she said, grasping both her hands in a reassuring squeeze. “You’ve left me all agog. The note Dillon brought me was so vague as to be unsettling. Sit down at once.”

Isabella sunk into a chair by the desk, grateful to be received. “Thank you for allowing me time to collect my wits,” she said. “You . . . you are not angry with me?”

The good lady drew back an inch. “Why should I be?” she said evenly. “But are you, perhaps, angry with yourself? Come, child, you must tell me about this Mr. Mowbrey and what he did to make himself so intolerable.”

Isabella caught her lip in her teeth. “Actually, ma’am, he sent me away,” she said. “That’s what I meant, you see, when I wrote that things didn’t work out. And there was no Mr. Mowbrey. It was just as you said—a ruse.”

Lady Petershaw’s eyes widened. “And he did not find
you
acceptable? I don’t believe it. Well! Did he at least give you his real name?”

“He didn’t need to,” she said quietly. “I knew him.”

“Oh, dear.” The marchioness leaned forward. “That sounds ominous.”

“It was the Earl of Hepplewood,” Isabella blurted, looking up from the floor. “The gentleman who interviewed me as governess. Th-the one who tried to seduce me, and said that I was better suited to—” Tears suddenly welling, she made an impotent little gesture with her hand. “—to nothing, it would appear. It seems he really cannot be pleased.”

“
Hepplewood
?”

The marchioness was rarely shocked by anything, but this struck her speechless for a full half minute. “Well,” she finally said on a rush of indignation, “of all the impertinence! Still, I cannot imagine how . . . I mean, Tony
is
clever, of that there’s no doubt. But to manipulate Louisa into literally handing you over? It is unconscionable!”

Tony.

Was that his nickname? Isabella had lain in his bed and in his arms—and allowed him the most indecent intimacies imaginable—and yet she’d never asked what he preferred to be called. Indeed, she’d taken pains to learn nothing at all about the man.

Why, then, was she unable to put him from her mind? Why did she keep remembering his touch—those moments of passion, and yes, even of tenderness? She felt her stomach twist into another knot and set a hand lightly over it.

“I don’t think he tricked anyone, ma’am,” she managed. “I think . . . I think he was just angry I refused him at Loughford. I collect he simply—good Lord, it’s so mortifying—but I collect he simply wanted someone who
looked
like me. It was my eyes, I think. He seemed oddly obsessed with them.”

Lady Petershaw trilled with laughter. “Heavens, where’s the mortification in that, my dear?” she declared. “To get beneath a man’s skin, and to do it in such a way that he cannot stop thinking of you? Now
that
is the stuff of which rich courtesans are made—sometimes even rich wives—and you’ll allow that I’ve some experience in this regard.”

Isabella sighed. “Well, I clearly had none,” she said, opening her reticule. “He sent me away after one night—laughing, I do not doubt. And I scurried off like a rabbit. But here, ma’am, enough of that. I’ve come to repay your kindness—not that I ever can.”

With a look of reluctance, Lady Petershaw took the money Isabella counted out. “He was generous with you, then?” she said, her lips thinning. “He damned well better have been. I have some notion of the tricks that cheeky devil gets up to. Tony has developed rather a twisted streak these last few years, if all I hear is true.”

It was this discussion that Isabella had so dreaded. “I could not say, ma’am.”

“Of course you could not,” said the lady, nodding with approval. “No mistress worth her salt would. But I am glad, my dear—desperately glad—that Hepplewood let you go if he has become truly depraved. I mean—
that
sort of life with
that
sort of man—oh, my dear, it is a hard one. After all, one feels so desperately sorry for them.”

“Sorry for
them
?” squeaked Isabella.

“Dear me, yes.” The lady waved her hand again. “That sort of man is more wounded, and more angry with himself, than with any woman he might subjugate to his perversions.”

“Wounded? Angry?” Isabella was incredulous. “I fear, ma’am, we are talking about two different sorts of men. The Earl of Hepplewood seemed the most arrogant, most cocksure gentleman of my acquaintance.”

“Oh, that’s as may be,” the marchioness said, “but his sort of wicked desires, once they rise beyond mere bed play, become self-loathing in its purest form. And a man like that, my dear . . . well, any woman who could want him would not be
worth
wanting, would she? That, you see, is the twisted way such men think. And so she must be punished. For being available to him. For being beautiful to him. And above all things, for being desirable to him.”

Isabella shook her head, her mouth gaping. “You were quite right at the outset,” she finally said. “I do not know how to go about this business.”

At this, Lady Petershaw cast her a wary, assessing glance. “Is it at all possible, my dear, that you misunderstood?” she said. “
Was
it more than bed play? For Tony’s not a bad man. Indeed, as a boy, he was a very sweet sort—so very charming and kind—and so
unflaggingly
devoted to his lovers, if you know what I mean.”

Isabella felt color flood her face. “He doesn’t seem sweet now. Yes, he seems angry at someone. Did marriage change him?”

Lady Petershaw laid a finger to her cheek. “It worsened things, perhaps, but he’d altered slightly even before that, I should have said. And I can’t think as I laid eyes on the man during his marriage. He must have stayed in the country—he always did have rustic leanings—but he took up again in Clarges Street after his wife died. Long before that, however, there was . . . some little scandal.”

“Really? Of what sort?”

Lady Petershaw threw up a hand. “Hush, let me think, let me think,” she said, shutting her eyes a long moment. “Tony had a cousin—a pretty girl named Anne. They were promised to one another, he once said, and he meant to have his fun whilst he could. But then she married elsewhere.”