The Passionate Prude

by Elizabeth Thornton

  She raced up the hard stone steps which Armand had recently descended, found the door she wanted, and threw it open. Rathbourne, his back toward her, turned at her entrance. From the corner of her eye, she saw O’Toole pick up the pieces of a small, shattered side chair. He took one glance at her white-mouthed expression and looked to his master.

  “Leave us,” said Rathbourne in a voice that was barely audible, “and O’Toole, shut the door behind you.”

  The click of the latch as the groom made his exit was the signal for Deirdre to advance upon the powerful figure of the Earl. She halted when she was only a step away from him. What she intended to do or say, Deirdre had yet to formulate, but a glance at his contemptuous and faintly challenging expression and Deirdre’s temper exploded. She wanted to humiliate him in the most insulting way she could think of. She looked him straight in the eye and spat in his face.

  She fell back at the blaze in his eyes, but strong hands caught her in a viselike hold, and she was hauled, struggling and kicking, till he had positioned her, head down, over his muscular thighs.

  “My father used to say whenever he beat me that this hurt him more than it hurt me. I, Miss Fenton, do not share his sentiments. This is a pleasure I will long remember.”

  He removed one of the slippers from her wildly bucking legs, and plied his arm with ferocious vigour. Deirdre, mortified at the indignity of her ignominious position, gritted her teeth and tried to weather his retribution with an indifference which she hoped would show her utter contempt for the man. She bit down on her lip to stifle her cries, and tears of pain and frustration squeezed from under tightly closed lids.

  At the sixth blistering stroke of the slipper, a strangled groan was torn from her aching throat. She had every intention, when the shaming ordeal came to an end, to spit in his face again, but she was turned and held with infinite tenderness against his chest.

  This gentling she found more humiliating than his former fury and she strained against him in a vain effort to free herself. Arms, corded with muscles she had never suspected existed, grasped her securely and she gradually stilled, though she held herself tense and ready to take advantage of the first sign of weakness.

  “Deirdre, why do you persist in making me lose my temper? Don’t,” he threatened when he saw that she was about to spit on him again, “or I’ll blister your backside till you can’t sit down for a week.”

  “You would!” she sneered, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “You know you deserved it,” he reasoned patiently, as if he were speaking to a willful child. He found his handkerchief and carefully brushed the tears from her cheeks. His voice altered. “Deirdre, look at me.”

  His eyes locked with hers and a pulse beat frantically in Deirdre’s throat. She had seen that look in his eyes before. He bent his head to take her lips. For an unguarded moment, she wanted to melt into him, to give herself to the gentleness and strength of arms which would shield her from every adversity, relieve her of every worrisome burden. She thought of Armand and her feelings of tenderness died stillborn. She tore herself from his arms, half falling on the floor in her frantic haste. He let her go and she put some distance between them.

  “Why did you thrash my brother?” she asked him, straining for some semblance of calm.

  He looked at her for a long, dispassionate moment. “Because I am a sadistic savage? Isn’t that what you’d like to think?” He drew out his snuffbox and helped himself to a miniscule pinch. The negligent gesture was almost insulting.

  “Why do you hate him so?” persisted Deirdre.

  “I don’t hate him. That implies strong feeling. I am indifferent to him.”

  “I don’t doubt it! You use him to punish me because you know how much I love him.”

  “Is that what you call it? Love?” he sneered. “Love is when you seek another’s highest good. The maudlin sentiment which makes you blind to all St. Jean’s faults should not be dignified by so lofty a word.”

  “I do love him,” protested Deirdre, stung by his open contempt. He looked credulous, and she repeated more forcefully, “I do!”

  “Then prove it! When next he comes crying on your shoulder to help him out of his latest peccadillo, let him suffer the consequences.”

  “It’s not like that!” she cried, and wondered why she wanted to make him understand. “He is all I have. We’re family! It’s only natural for us to be loyal to each other. You had a younger brother once.” She saw his head come up and quickly explained, “Captain Ogilvie told me. You of all people should understand my anxieties on behalf of a younger sibling.”

  “I do understand,” he said patiently, “none better. But if your brother doesn’t mend his ways, he is in a fair way to throwing away his life.”

  “I…I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you? He has not told you, then, that his sympathies in this coming confrontation lie with the French? I find that very hard to believe since he has made no effort to conceal his views from all and sundry. Now why wouldn’t he tell you?”

  “Armand doesn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I’ll remind you of that when they hang him as a traitor.”

  The words made her brain reel. “D—don’t be ridiculous!” she stammered. “Armand isn’t the only one to express such sentiments. Even the Duchess of Richmond has said as much. No one takes her seriously. You’re just trying to frighten me.”

  “So you did know of St. Jean’s indiscreet words? I thought as much. As for Her Grace, I hardly think that is relevant. She is not French, nor without friends at Court. You should be glad I am your brother’s guardian, else he might be languishing in some godforsaken cell by now awaiting a much severer punishment that the one he provoked today. I can see, however, that you have no intention of thanking me.”

  He moved to the gib door and held it open. “It was foolish of you to burst in on a bachelor establishment unannounced,” he said with a devilish smile lightening his expression. “It might have proved very embarrassing. I see that I shall have to keep my door locked in future.”

  Deirdre’s cheeks flamed. She, none better, knew what scene of seduction she might well have interrupted. She quelled the ache in her chest, and lifted her chin a fraction. “In the middle of the day, my lord?” she asked archly.

  As she sailed past him to the service stairs, she heard his burst of laughter as he shut the door behind her. “Oh Deirdre, you’re such an innocent!” And her cheeks flamed even hotter.

  Her anxiety for Armand increased during the days that followed. He became abrupt and moody and refused to discuss what had taken place between himself and the Earl. Their morning rides continued, however, and Deirdre found herself looking forward to them more than ever since a pall had descended on the engagements Rathbourne forced upon her in the hours that remained each day. She soon came to see herself as little more than a chaperone as Rathbourne squired Mrs. Dewinters to every social event of any note. His excessive gallantry toward the lady, whether in his box at the theater, at small private dinner parties among close friends, in his borrowed open carriage which was large enough now to accommodate a silent and subdued Deirdre, and on any and every occasion, was enough to bring a curl of contempt to Deirdre’s usually tranquil expression. When she quizzed him lightly about the nature of his duties as Lord Uxbridge’s aide which allowed him so many hours of leisure while others were obliged to remain at Ninove, he answered evasively that his role was more in the line of liaison officer.

  In retrospect, Deirdre came to acknowledge that it was her own reckless behavior at the Château de Soignes, the ancestral home of the Marquis and Marquise de Soignes, which brought matters to a head between herself and the Earl. Perhaps she had been guilty of imbibing too many glasses of champagne; perhaps she might have behaved with her habitual decorum if Lady Fenton had been in attendance instead of laid upon her sickbed with a ferocious megrim; perhaps if Armand had not encouraged her so outrageously but had tempered her precocity with a look or a
word; and perhaps if Deirdre had not heard that the Earl’s liaison with the actress was generally accepted, she might have remained collected behind her usual protective wall of reserve. But she did overindulge in champagne; Lady Fenton was not present that evening; Armand made no attempt to restrain her; and she did hear the latest titillating ondit about the Earl. As a consequence, Deirdre went a little wild.

  She had turned dizzy and slightly sick when Lady Mary Ingram, a young friend, an acquaintance really, had whispered outrageously behind her fan as the Earl and Mrs. Dewinters waltzed past locked in each other’s arms, that she wouldn’t mind changing places for one night with the sultry actress who was fortunate enough to be tutored in the ways of amour by such a delectable protector as the wildly exciting and rather dangerously good-looking Earl. Since Lady Mary was a well-brought-up and sheltered young deb who had little notion of what she imagined she knew, and Deirdre could not claim such innocence, it was not to be wondered at that it was Deirdre’s cheeks that flamed to a pretty shade of pink. Lady Mary silently remarked the phenomenon, and made a mental note that Miss Fenton was probably a confirmed spinster and much too nice in her notions for her taste.

  It was from that moment on that Deirdre’s personality seemed to undergo a transformation. As if she had been sheltering in the protective warmth of a cocoon until that evening, she emerged, a rare butterfly, a thing of beauty and utterly enchanting, flitting from one handsome partner to another, sampling but never remaining with one for long, unless it was with Armand, who took her into supper and whose eyes seemed almost as feverish as her own.

  La crème de la crème of Brussels society was present at the Château de Soignes that evening, and many a watchful, experienced gentleman remarked the English beauty whose escort gave her only the most cursory attention.

  The Comte de Wetteren kissed her in the conservatory where they had gone to observe a rare orchid which had been cultivated by their proud host. The Marquis de Nivelles kissed her on the terrace where they had strolled to view the lake. The Baron de Gembloux offered her carte blanche in the library where he had escorted her to view, so he said, a very rare manuscript, a letter written by the scholar Erasmus. Armand surveyed it all from the sidelines, his lazy, watchful eyes flicking to Rathbourne, whose brooding expression had become more thunderous as the hours slipped by.

  When word buzzed round the assembly that the Comte de Wetteren and the Baron de Gembloux had ridden off to the Forest of Soignes to fight a duel over the dainty morsel, Armand made his move.

  “I think a storm is brewing!” he said languidly to his sister, and he nodded surreptitiously in the Earl’s direction. Rathbourne was moving swiftly toward them.

  Deirdre crowed, as if her brother had said something uncommonly witty, but she was not so lost to all sense of her jeopardy that she did not understand the urgency of leaving the premises with all dispatch. They bolted for their carriage like a couple of mischievous children and fell back against the squabs convulsed in hoops as if they had just done something terribly wicked and clever.

  “You’re foxed, Dee,” Armand accused without rancor.

  “No more than you!” protested his sister with great dignity. “Where to now?” she asked as the coach picked up speed for the six-mile drive back to the city.

  Armand regarded her pensively. “I’m meeting some of my friends at the Café Royale, but I don’t think it’s quite the thing for you to come with me.”

  “Why not?” she pouted.

  “Rathbourne won’t like it,” said Armand decisively.

  “Oh, won’t he? He’s not my guardian,” she coaxed. “And what I choose to do is none of his business. Oh Armand,” she went on, her brittle air of gaiety slipping, “I couldn’t bear to go home and think right now. If I were a man, I should drink myself into oblivion. Please don’t make me go home to my own thoughts.” She saw that he was weakening and ended on a rush. “Especially when his rooms are right above mine. I don’t think I could bear it.”

  Armand expelled a soft expletive. “I don’t understand. I could have sworn that he…oh never mind! Don’t repine, Dee. I’ll take you with me. Half of my friends are in love with you already, and the other half are dying to meet you!”

  Shortly after four o’clock in the morning, when the sky was beginning to lighten over Brussels, Deirdre trudged wearily into the hotel. She gave a muted belch as she passed the night porter, and elevated her brows a trifle as she tried to focus on him. She had been imagining all evening that Rathbourne’s groom, O’Toole, had been doggedly following her about. She hoped she had been mistaken, for she did not wish for one word of her night of dissipation, ever, ever to get back to the Earl. She thought of the “ladies” who had accompanied Armand and his friends on their round of Brussels nightlife, and she shuddered. Her aunt would give her the worst scold she had ever had in her life, and Rathbourne would positively kill her. She was sure she did not know which was more to be feared. She favored the night porter with a frown and passed on.

  She struggled up the broad staircase and fumbled in her reticule for the key to her chamber. When she could not find it, she dug deeper and gave a triumphant crow when her fingers closed about it. She turned the corner of the stairs and took one step into the long corridor. The key dropped from her fingers, and Deirdre giggled. As she bent to retrieve it, she became conscious that the door at the far end of the hall which gave onto Mrs. Dewinters’s private parlor had opened. Deirdre slowly drew herself to an upright position. Rathbourne, his back to her, was silhouetted against the open door. Mrs. Dewinters was in his arms. Deirdre could not tear her eyes away as the Earl crushed the actress to him in a passionate embrace. One hand closed over a thrusting breast and slid below the taut bodice of the gown. Deirdre did not wait to see more.

  She whisked herself around and went racing soundlessly down the carpeted stairs, her head miraculously clearing of the effects of her night of overindulgence. She heard the heavy tread of footsteps in pursuit and she picked up her skirts, giving the stunned porter a clear view of her drawers and neatly turned ankles. Her name was called in a compelling voice at her back, but she ignored the summons. Her one thought was to reach the safety of her room. She dragged open the door to the service stairs and half threw, half dragged herself up by the iron railing, a stitch knotting painfully in her chest. She heard the door open behind her, and she sobbed aloud and stumbled, recovering almost on the instant, and pressed forward. The key to her chamber was clutched convulsively between her fingers. She pushed it home, turned it quickly, and sobbed again when she heard the reassuring click of the door give way beneath her shoulder. Before she had taken a step, however, she was spun around and flung, head down, over Rathbourne’s broad shoulder, as if she had been a sack of potatoes or a side of beef, and he one of the porters at the early morning market in Grand’ Place.

  He went up the stairs two at a time as if scarcely aware of the weight on his back. Deirdre was not afraid, only desperately angry, but she restrained the impulse to kick or struggle, biding her time till he should put her down and she would be in a position to do some damage. The instinct for flight which had governed her actions only moments before had changed to a primitive desire to inflict punishment on a hated enemy.

  He kicked open the door to his suite of rooms and lowered her gently to the floor. The moment her feet touched the ground, Deirdre spun on him. In the flickering light of the lone brace of candles on the mantlepiece, she gave the appearance of some mythical creature, a Valkyre, a warrior maid of the North with a curtain of flaxen hair tumbling in wild disarray about her shoulders. Her eyes were stormy and reckless with unbridled rage, and a feral snarl distorted her lips. He knew, in that instant, that if a dagger were put into her clenched hand, she would plunge it into his heart without a moment’s hesitation. She was magnificent in her anger, he thought on one level of consciousness, while another gave him the wit to move out of her way. His spirits soared.

  He had deliberately baited her with the sigh
t of another woman in his arms. A slight twinge of conscience provoked him to remember he owed Maria Dewinters an apology for his callous and impulsive use of her. But the actress was dismissed from his thoughts as he circled the snarling spitfire who faced him. His smile was blatantly triumphant.

  “You’re jealous.”

  Deirdre lashed out at him, catching him a glancing blow on the cheek as he dodged the full force of her ferocious backhand.

  “Not fair!” he taunted. “Gentleman Jackson would disqualify you for that inadmissible blow.”

  “I hate you!” she stormed at him. “I hate you!” Her foot caught him hard on the hip, missing her target by only inches. He lunged for her wrist and sent her spinning.

  She lay panting on the floor, fighting to regain her breath. She heard the soft click of the door latch as he shut it, and his tread on the rug as he advanced toward her. She scrambled to her feet and stood glaring up at him, a blaze of defiance reaching out to scorch him.

  “Touch me,” she said between her teeth, “and I’ll scream the house down.”

  He held up his hands, palms open. “I won’t come near you! I won’t touch you, not unless you touch me first. But I won’t let you go till we talk this thing out.”

  She relaxed slightly, but her eyes were watchful as he neared her.