The Passionate Prude

by Elizabeth Thornton

  Rathbourne raised one black brow. She was playing her games off on him again, pretending to a worldliness he knew perfectly well was unnatural to her. She could never resist the temptation to put him in his place. A slow smile touched his lips. But then, he would not rest either until he had Deirdre Fenton in the one place he had long since reserved for her—his bed. She really didn’t stand a chance, although he knew she would never admit to it.

  “Is Bessie a milker?” he asked innocently.

  “The best.”

  “Then perhaps Bessie’s look conveys a message that is beyond your ken, my dear Miss Fenton.”

  She had an answer for him on the tip of her tongue, but she dared not utter it. She had gone her length and he knew it.

  “Why don’t you say what’s on your mind?” he goaded.

  “Because I am a lady.” There was more heat in her tone than she wished to convey.

  “I take leave to doubt that.”

  “And you, sir, are no gentleman.”

  His eyes held hers. “I meant it as a compliment,” he said softly. “I’m not much interested in ‘ladies.’”

  “And I have no interest in men.”

  “Not even Wendon?” he quizzed lightly. “A safe, quiet, biddable sort of a chap, wouldn’t you say?”

  A quiver of some unknown emotion disturbed her equilibrium. He could not possibly know of her stated preference in a husband. Only her aunt had been taken into her confidence and she would not have breathed a word of it to the Earl. But she didn’t trust his knowing smile.

  “Wendon is a gentleman,” she said with slow emphasis.

  He made no attempt to conceal the heat of desire which glowed in his eyes. “Deirdre, a gentleman is only a gentleman until he meets the woman who excites his senses.”

  To this blatant effrontery, Deirdre could find no ready answer, and as one of the guests approached, she looked up with unabashed relief. When she recognized Lord Uxbridge, her smile, already strained, became a little tighter.

  “Trust you to corner the prettiest girl in the room, Rathbourne. How do you do it?”

  “Practice,” said Deirdre without thinking, and immediately regretted the unfortunate remark.

  Rathbourne turned away to hide a smile, but Uxbridge, with the aplomb of the practiced flirt, treated Deirdre’s sally as a challenge.

  “In the art of dalliance, I take leave to tell you, Miss Fenton, Rathbourne is still a greenhorn. I suppose it’s time I gave these younger beaux a chance with the ladies, but mark my words, in my salad days I’d have had these striplings looking to their laurels.”

  Deirdre drew herself up a little straighter. A raging sense of ill-usage suddenly washed over her like a rising tide. There was nothing that could shame the sensibilities of such hardened degenerates. Hadn’t she discovered that with her stepfather? Such men flaunted their indiscretions as if somehow it gave proof of their virility. She rose to her feet in one unhurried, fluid movement and the tight smile on her lips became a sneer. There was a warning look in Rathbourne’s eye which she refused to acknowledge.

  “You gentlemen have so much in common,” she managed in a dulcet tone. “I shall leave you to reminisce about all your conquests…on the battlefields and elsewhere.”

  Rathbourne came to her side before a half hour had gone by. One moment she was engaged in quiet conversation with Mr. Landron, a gentleman Deirdre found very easy to talk to since he never once paid her gratuitous compliments or made remarks which might be construed as flirtatious, a courtesy which she appreciated, and the next instant without being aware of how it had come about, Rathbourne had changed places with him.

  “Was that necessary?” His voice was soft and devoid of anger, but his eyes held a dangerous glint.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Deirdre parried.

  “What makes you think you are such a paragon of virtue? You have slighted the best damn cavalry officer in the British Army, who also happens to be my good friend. I hope you are satisfied.”

  Deirdre’s eyes wandered to Uxbridge, who, at that moment, was the center of attention of some of the younger ladies. Every banality he uttered was met with a gale of girlish giggles. It was obvious to Deirdre that Uxbridge was basking in their open admiration.

  “Women have no sense,” she said with disgust. “Look at them! Beguiled by a handsome face and a pair of broad shoulders, and I don’t doubt that the gentleman’s salacious reputation is an added attraction.”

  “You refine too much upon it. Uxbridge has an eye for the ladies. What of it? They’re as safe as houses with him. He happens to be head over heels in love with the Countess.”

  “Which one?” she asked with ill-concealed contempt.

  “That was uncalled for. You know perfectly well that I meant his wife.”

  “Yes, and everybody else’s wife to boot, I don’t doubt. Men of that stamp always run true to form.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re his bosom bow, you figure it out.”

  “I never imagined you could be so petty or unforgiving. So he was a bit of a libertine in his salad days, what of it? Marriage to the woman he loved put paid to his former follies. Why should you care?”

  “Why do you defend him?”

  “Because I know Uxbridge and esteem him.”

  “As a gentleman or as your commanding officer?”

  “Both.”

  His answer should not have surprised her, but somehow she was disappointed that he should show such unquestioning loyalty to a man who had forfeited her good opinion. It confirmed her worst suspicions of his own character. What had she expected? No doubt Rathbourne would deal with his own countess in much the same manner. He and Uxbridge were two of a kind.

  She meant to keep her own counsel, but found she could not prevent herself from uttering one last cut.

  “Then don’t let me detain you, my lord. Birds of a feather, so they say, flock together. Like your friend, I’m sure you would rather be exercising your prodigious charm with ladies of a more receptive disposition.”

  Rathbourne said not a word, but he removed from her side immediately and did as she had bade. And for what was left of the evening, Deirdre had the pleasure of seeing Rathbourne make a cake of himself over every pretty chit in sight. A few curious looks were bent in her direction, but as Lord Wendon made himself as attentive as she could have wished, she hoped that Rathbourne’s rapid desertion for greener pastures would invite little comment.

  Chapter Ten

  The row of overhead lamps suspended from the decorative wrought iron railings above the front entrances of the few houses which made up Burlington Gardens cast a dim though welcoming light in the early morning darkness of the moonless night. Lords Rathbourne and Uxbridge were the last of Serena’s guests to take their leave, and they lingered on the steps of Uxbridge House exchanging a few desultory civilities before going their separate ways.

  There was a storm brewing. Rathbourne could feel it in the air as the stiff breeze whipped at the capes of his heavy greatcoat. He pulled the folds of his mantle more securely about him, morosely reflecting that the violence of the black night exactly matched his mood of contained fury which had simmered, barely checked, since Deirdre had dismissed him with haughty disdain in the Kinnairds’ drawing room. Her galling rudeness to Lord Uxbridge, no less than to himself, gnawed at his insides like the effects of a slow but deadly poison.

  “Uxbridge,” the younger man began on a cautious note, “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you were subjected to that piece of impertinence from a chit who has the manners of a guttersnipe. Were she in my charge,” he went on, his voice hardening, “it would give me the greatest pleasure to beat her to within an inch of her life.”

  Uxbridge gave his friend a curious look. “I never gave it another thought until you mentioned it just now. Was she impertinent? I really hadn’t noticed. You’re making too much of it, Rathbourne. Besides, there’s no need for you to apologize for the chit
’s remarks. It’s not as if you are related, or about to be, is it?”

  Rathbourne heard the laughter in his companion’s voice and his harshly handsome features relaxed into a faint smile. He was relieved that the Earl would pass over Deirdre’s unprovoked malice with such obvious lack of rancor. But Uxbridge was known for his amiability. It was a virtue that amounted almost to a fault.

  “Are you about to become related to the lady?” Uxbridge persisted.

  Gravely, Rathbourne countered, “Not to Miss Fenton’s knowledge.”

  “Oho, so that’s the way of it?”

  Rathbourne said nothing but turned up his collar in a defensive gesture as he came under the close scrutiny of a pair of piercing blue eyes. He was faintly regretful of having given so much away with his unguarded words, and Uxbridge, sensing his friend’s embarrassment, let the subject drop.

  After a moment, Rathbourne remarked idly, “There’s a storm brewing. I’d best be getting along.”

  “You’re sure I can’t persuade you to come up and crack a bottle with me? Then I’ll let you go.” A look of frank speculation gleamed in Lord Uxbridge’s eyes, but he turned away without comment and ascended the shallow steps in a slow, measured tread, giving Rathbourne the impression that he was reluctant to bring the tête-à-tête to an end.

  Suddenly, on reaching the front door, Uxbridge turned and called Rathbourne by name. “I couldn’t be happier for you, Gareth, you know that, don’t you? It’s about time you got on with your life and put that other episode behind you once and for all. Bring her up to Beaudesert when the thing is settled, why don’t you? Char will love her.”

  Rathbourne could think of no ready rejoinder and he touched his walking cane to his curly-brimmed beaver in a polite but distant acknowledgment and turned on his heel toward Bond Street and home.

  He could scarcely tell his friend that Miss Deirdre Fenton and “that other episode” were one and the same. Only Guy Landron had ever been privy to that confidence and he had stumbled upon it by accident. Rathbourne was aware that during his early years on the Peninsula, his complete disregard for life and limb on the battlefield had roused wild speculation among his comrades-in-arms, and it had become tacitly assumed that a woman must be behind the almost suicidal audacity of their ferocious commander. By slow degrees, he had mastered his emotions until he could think of Deirdre Fenton with something like contempt and had congratulated himself on a lucky escape from the clutches of a harpy. That fiction he had been able to sustain only intermittently, and when he had received the surprising intelligence that Deirdre had not in fact married, as he had supposed, but had accompanied the Fentons to Jamaica, he could not deny the wild surge of elation which had swept through him, leaving him visibly shaking as if he had been a green recruit on the eve of his first battle.

  From that moment on, the torment had been replaced by a new emotion, a cold and unshakable determination to bring the woman he desired above all others, the only woman he had ever wanted, to heel. But still, even yet, she thwarted him!

  He could not remember when he had last been in such a towering fury. Bridled rage mixed with frustrated desire throbbed in his veins. His hand clenched hard on his gold-tipped cane and he swung it in a savage arc in front of his face. A wild desire to strike out at somebody, anybody, assailed him like the buffeting gale, and he wished with grim fervor that some foolish footpad would make the attempt to waylay him on this night of all nights. Only the week before, he had been accosted as he had walked through Green Park to his own front door. There had been only two assailants then, and they hadn’t stood a chance against him. Five years with Wellington had tuned his senses to such a degree that a sixth sense warned him of danger long in advance. On that particular night, he had been in a generous mood, permitting the ruffians to crawl away after he had beaten them senseless. Such was not the case tonight. His rage was so great that he wanted to do murder.

  How dare she judge him and find him wanting after the hell she had put him through since their first chance encounter? How dare she bracket him with Uxbridge, or any other man for that matter? She had taken his measure and found him wanting. So be it. He would give the prude something to gloat over. What he needed was a night of whoring, and he’d make damn sure the report of it got back to the stuck-up bitch.

  “Char will love her.” Lady Uxbridge would never be given the chance to touch the hem of her gown, if Deirdre had her way, Rathbourne raged in silent fury. That he could still desire such an unsympathetic and prune-faced baggage heated his blood to boiling point. But he had known what she was like from the moment he had first set eyes on her, when her vivid green eyes, openly assessing, had swept over him as they were introduced at Serena’s come-out five years before. How often he had regretted not obeying his first sure instinct to avoid like poison the “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth” debutante who looked at the world with clear and uncompromising vision. Damn her! What did she have to be so superior about?

  She had rejected him without knowing the first thing about him, without giving him a proper hearing, and that had hurt. It had hurt because he had been captivated by everything about her. What a contemptible specimen he was to let her acquire such power over him. What did she have that she had this hold over him? He had known more beautiful women; women, moreover, who were of a frankly passionate nature as he preferred them. Did she think she was the only intelligent chit to match wits with him? There were dozens he could name and much more alluring into the bargain. Then why did he have to fall under the spell of such a clear-eyed, cold-hearted witch?

  His mind was suddenly filled with the vision of Deirdre as she had last been in his arms, her lips swollen with his bruising kisses, her green eyes dazed with surprise and deepening to emerald with the passion he had roused with such patient deliberation. Damn! His body was on fire for her! Did he think to gammon himself? Her beauty was matchless; her intelligence incomparable; her company uncommonly delightful; no woman had ever crossed swords with him to such devastating effect; her air of unattainability was a spur to his bridled desire; and the passion which she rigidly suppressed, which she denied him even when he had brought her to the point of surrender, was more alluring than the sensuality of the most highborn sluts who graced the finest drawing rooms of Mayfair no less than the camp followers of those transient bordellos which invariably followed an army on the move. He contemplated Deirdre’s outrage should she read his thoughts and an unholy smile of amusement touched his lips.

  She resisted him with a strength he might have admired in other circumstances. And yet, she was fragile, although she had shouldered burdens that a lesser woman would long since have sloughed off. She needed a man to protect her if only from scoundrels like himself. The thought of Armand, whom he regarded as a parasite, brought a frown to his eyes and a sharp expletive to his lips. That Deirdre should lavish her devotion on such a worthless creature was like a thorn in his flesh, a constant irritant that kept his temper on a short fuse.

  Damn right he was jealous! Armand St. Jean’s scandalous career was the result of overindulgence, a surfeit of female affection which had cushioned his life from the cradle. The follies of Rathbourne’s youth were no worse than her brother’s. Yet Deirdre forgave her brother everything while she treated him like dirt beneath her feet. What did she know about the loneliness of his childhood, the unfulfilled longing for recognition and affection that had driven him to a despairing kind of indifference to whether he lived or died? She knew nothing about him. He didn’t wish her to know. He wasn’t looking for pity, only for recognition that he was a man with a man’s strengths and weaknesses. And that he was man enough for her—that went without saying.

  Rathbourne lost the rhythm of his stride as a thought came to him, revolving in his mind with tantalizing slowness, bringing a devilish smile to his lips. What Deirdre Fenton needed to cure her unending ministrations to Armand St. Jean was a babe in her arms. And that, he promised himself with grim conviction, would be his pleasure. He had
been a prize fool to let her turn him off once before, respecting her wishes, her scruples, with unaccustomed gentlemanliness. Well, the war had taught him something—that gentlemen, beneath that thin veneer, were really savages, with primitive instincts that civilization could never obliterate. She was his woman, he would make it so, and if she didn’t know it yet, she would soon learn it. Time was running out for Miss Deirdre Fenton, and the sooner she became reconciled to her future, the better. She had cheated him of five years, and he had reached the limit of his patience.

  As he turned the corner of Bond Street into Piccadilly, the threatening rain came down in a deluge and he lengthened his stride, savoring the battle with the elements as wind and rain lashed him mercilessly. A slate was torn from a roof by a ferocious blast of wind and came to a splintering crash a yard ahead of him. He laughed, a primitive sound of defiance and exultation. Rathbourne House was just ahead, the house which he would share with Deirdre. His house, his bed, his heart, and there was nothing in this world that would prevent it. Nothing! His mood lightened, the projected night of whoring scarcely remembered. It was time to procure that Special License. She would probably cavil at the suddenness of their marriage, but he Would make it up to her. But he refused to tolerate another month without her. Miss Deirdre Fenton had better make up her mind to a very hasty marriage or he would take her without it.

  She awakened to the muffled sounds of deep-racked sobbing. It took a minute or two before she could force her slumberous thoughts into focus. She put a hand to her face. Tears drenched her cheeks. Deirdre brushed them aside, her lashes slowly fluttering open as she absorbed the shadowy forms in the darkened interior. Like a sleepwalker slowly awakening from a dream, she turned her head slightly in the soft feather pillow, and her eyes shifted to the silhouette of the dressing table which stood against the long window in her bedchamber in Portman Square.