More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  “I will not leave this house unless I am thrown bodily out,” the lady said.

  “You tempt me, ma’am,” Ferdinand told her quietly. He turned his attention to Claypole. “Good night, sir. You will take Miss Claypole with you when you leave?”

  “Miss Thornhill.” Claypole possessed himself of one of her hands. “Do you see now the foolishness of insisting upon returning here? Was not my mama right? Bertha is your friend. I flatter myself that I am more than just a friend. Come back with us to Crossings until this matter can be settled.”

  “Thank you again, but I will not leave my own home, sir,” she said. “And you must not upset yourself on my behalf, Bertha. I have Hannah and the other servants. I do not need a female companion.”

  “It is a good thing too,” Ferdinand said briskly. “Because you won’t be having one. Not in this house.”

  She looked at him with raised eyebrows and then turned away again to bid her companions good night.

  “This is highly improper—” Claypole began.

  “Good night.” Ferdinand strode to the double doors, opened them with a flourish while Jarvey still hovered uncertainly in the background, and gestured toward the darkness outside.

  They went unwillingly, but they did go. They had little choice without risking violence. The woman might have been game, Ferdinand judged, but the man certainly would not have been.

  “I suppose,” he said after he had closed the door behind them, turning on Viola Thornhill, who was removing her cloak and handing it to the butler, “he is your beau?”

  “Do you?” she said. “Thank you, Mr. Jarvey, you will not be needed again tonight.”

  Ferdinand could have argued, since Jarvey was now his servant, but he would not appear petty.

  “Claypole is a craven jackass,” he said. “If the situation were reversed, I would have drawn the cork of any man who insisted on your being unchaperoned if you remained here. And then I would have dragged you out of here whether you wished to go or not.”

  “How comforting,” she said, “to know that I am sharing a house with a caveman. I presume, my lord, that would have been by the hair, while you flourished a club in the other hand? Such a manly image.”

  He wished she had not removed her cloak. The darker green evening gown she wore beneath it was not in any way indecent. It fell in soft, shimmering folds from beneath her bosom to her ankles, and the bodice, though low, would have looked almost conservative in a London ballroom. But the garment did nothing whatsoever to hide the alluring curves of the woman beneath it. And he knew just what those curves felt like pressed to his own body, dammit.

  Lord! Perhaps he should have stayed at the Boar’s Head after all, stubbornness notwithstanding.

  “What you are doing,” he said, “is insisting upon sharing a house with a man who knows what is what. And it is not at all the thing for you to be here with me. That idiot was right about that, at least.”

  She had crossed the hall to the staircase. She turned with her foot on the bottom stair.

  “What, Lord Ferdinand?” she said. “Are you considering ravishing me after all, then? Must I race for my room? At least I must be thankful that I have a head start on you.”

  She had a saucy tongue. He had noticed it before.

  “Believe me, ma’am,” he said, “if I wanted to catch you, you would not even make it to the top of the staircase.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “Did you enjoy your dinner?”

  It was a strange question to ask at such a moment—until he understood the reason. They had both been out for the evening. She had had a dinner engagement, a fact he had learned with considerable relief, until the butler had informed him that since Miss Thornhill had not been expected to dine at home, all there was in the house to set on the dinner table for him was the leftover beef from two days ago, their having all dined in the village the evening before, his lordship would understand. But even though the beef still looked and smelled and even tasted unspoiled, the butler suggested that he should perhaps bear in mind that the weather had been unseasonably warm. And the pantry had never kept the food as cool as the cook would like, the butler had added as an aside. And no one could ever discover where the flies all managed to get in.

  Ferdinand had announced his intention of dining at the Boar’s Head. The food there had not been quite as appetizing as it had been yesterday, nor the service quite as prompt or friendly, but he had put those facts down to tiredness on the part of the staff after a day of celebrating.

  Now, with a simple question, Viola Thornhill had made all clear to him. He must be a fool not to have realized sooner. He was already—both at Pinewood and in the village—carrying around the label of local enemy number one, was he?

  “Extremely well, thank you,” he said. “Did you?”

  She smiled again and turned to climb the stairs without saying another word. In the light of the hall candles, the satin of her gown shimmered over the feminine sway of her hips.

  Devil take it, but it was a hot night for May.

  5

  ERDINAND MIGHT HAVE BEEN CONVINCED THAT he had not slept all night had he not been woken so rudely while it was still dark. He shot out of bed rather as if a spring had broken through the mattress, catapulted him in an upward arc, and brought him down flat on his feet beside the bed.

  “The devil!” he exclaimed, running the fingers of one hand through his disheveled hair. “What in thunder?” He had no idea what had disturbed him. For the moment he could not even recall where he was.

  And then the raucous noise was repeated. He strode across to the open window, flung back the curtains, and thrust out his head. Dawn was the merest smudge of gray on the eastern horizon. He shivered in the predawn chill and for once wished he wore a nightshirt to bed. There it was, he saw as he glared downward, strutting along the terrace before the house as if it owned the universe.

  A cockerel!

  “Go to the devil!” Ferdinand instructed it, and the bird, startled out of its arrogant complacency, scuttled halfway along the terrace before recovering its dignity and crowing again.

  Cock-a-doodle-doooo.

  Ferdinand in his turn scuttled back to bed after closing both the window and the curtains. He had been unable to fall asleep after coming to bed at midnight. Partly, of course, that had been due to his knowledge that he was sharing his house with an unmarried young lady—who also happened to be voluptuous beauty personified—and had refused to allow her a companion to lend a measure of respectability to the situation. Mainly, though, it was because of the silence. He had lived all his adult years in London, ever since coming down from Oxford seven years before, at the age of twenty. He was unaccustomed to silence. He found it unnerving.

  Why was a cockerel allowed to run loose so close to the house? he wondered suddenly. Was he to be woken thus every night (one could hardly call it morning, after all)? He thumped his pillow, which was about the most lumpy, uncomfortable specimen of pillowhood he had ever encountered, and tried to burrow his head into such a position in it that instant sleep would be induced.

  Five minutes later he was still very wide awake.

  He was remembering how she had looked in that shimmering satin evening gown. He was remembering how her shapely body had felt pressed against his own body, behind the oak tree in the village. And he thought about the fact that she was sleeping in a room not far from his own.

  Ferdinand made the sudden discovery that it was the heaviness of the bedcovers that was preventing him from falling back to sleep. He pushed them aside, turned his hot pillow and thumped it again, tried to find a soft, cool nook for his head, failed miserably, and shivered in the chilly air, which was assaulting his naked body on three sides. The blankets were out of reach unless he sat up to grab them.

  Devil take it, his sleep had been ruined. And she was entirely to blame. Why had she not taken herself off as any decent woman would, or at least taken the week he had offered before he lost his temper, so that he might now
be sleeping the peaceful sleep of the just at the Boar’s Head in Trellick? Bedamned to her, he thought unchivalrously. She was going to have to learn who was master at Pinewood, and the sooner the better. Today she would learn—when today came. He grimaced as he looked about his bedchamber, into which not even the suggestion of daylight had yet penetrated.

  He sat up on the side of the bed and thrust both hands through his hair again. Dammit, in his more normal life he often had not even gone to bed at this hour. Yet here he was, getting up. To do what, for God’s sake? Eat his breakfast? It would serve those servants right—they had deliberately sent him off to the village for his dinner last evening—if he went downstairs, loudly demanding food. But they would probably just slap that cold green beef on a plate for him. Read, then? He was not in the mood. Write some letters? But he had scribbled off notes to Tresham and Angie last evening to be sent this morning with the letter to Bamber.

  Ferdinand got to his feet, stretched, yawned until his jaws cracked, and shivered. He would go out for a ride and blow away some cobwebs before coming back and laying down the law. He enjoyed early morning rides, after all, he told himself grimly and not altogether truthfully. Anyway, he thought as he strode off in the direction of his dressing room, this hardly qualified as early morning. It was still the middle of the night, for God’s sake.

  He found his riding clothes in one of the wardrobes without ringing for his valet, dressed, and headed for the outdoors without stopping to shave. He had raced the sun, he saw grimly. Although it was no longer quite dark out, the world was lit only by a very gray twilight. It suited his mood to perfection.

  He stalked off to the stables in the fervent hope that there would be a few sleepy grooms there to bark at.

  THE COCKEREL HAD AWAKENED Viola even though her room was at the back of the house. But then, of course, she had been expecting it and had been sleeping lightly in anticipation of it. It seemed impossible to her that anyone in the house, especially someone whose room overlooked the terrace, could have slept through the alarum. She had chuckled with open malice when, ten or fifteen minutes later, she had heard a door open farther along the corridor and the sound of booted feet receding in the direction of the staircase.

  And then she had dozed off again.

  “His lordship was out the door, fit to be tied, not fifteen minutes after the first cock-crow,” Hannah reported later as she helped Viola dress and braided and coiled her hair. “In a proper rage he was, apparently, when he took his horse out. And then he went galloping off, cursing and scowling, the Lord knows where. You stay out of his way, Miss Vi. You let us servants handle everything this morning.”

  “But I can hardly wait to witness his rage for myself, Hannah,” Viola assured her. “I would not miss this morning for any consideration. Perhaps by noon he will be on his way back to London and we will be rid of him.”

  Hannah sighed as she straightened the combs and brushes on the dressing table. “I wish it could be that easy, lovey,” she said.

  So did Viola. There was a yawning empty feeling somewhere in the region of her stomach that she was trying hard to ignore. This was not a game she played with Lord Ferdinand Dudley, after all. Her home, her income, her hard-won peace, her very identity were severely at risk.

  VIOLA WAS SEATED AT the breakfast table later, still eating, when he strode into the dining room. Even though she had been expecting him and had steeled herself to having her privacy invaded, her heart felt as if it were hammering against her ribs. If this had to be happening at all, why could he not be an old man or an ugly man or in some way an unappealing man? Why should she be made to feel as if the very essence of maleness had just filled the room to suffocate her?

  He had obviously come straight from his ride. His buff riding breeches hugged his long, well-muscled legs like a second skin. His boots must have been freshly polished last night and still shone. He was wearing a well-tailored brown riding coat with a white shirt beneath. She had spent enough years in London to recognize in him a regular top sawyer, an out-and-outer, as other gentlemen would call him. His dark hair was tousled from his hat and the outdoors. His face glowed with healthy color.

  He was also smiling and looking annoyingly good-humored.

  “Good morning, Miss Thornhill.” He sketched her a bow. “And what a beautiful morning it is. I was awoken by a cockerel crowing beneath my window and so was out riding in time to watch the sun rise. I had forgotten how exhilarating life in the country can be.”

  He rubbed his hands together and looked about the room, hunger written all over his face. The sideboard was empty. So was the table, except for Viola’s plate and cup and saucer. There were no servants present. He looked a little less cheerful.

  “Good morning, my lord.” Viola smiled placidly. “And to think that I tiptoed past your room a short while ago, believing that you must be sleeping on late in the country air. It is chilly in here, is it not? I’ll have the fire lit and your breakfast brought up. I took the liberty of ordering what I thought you might like.” She got to her feet and pulled on the bell rope beside the sideboard.

  “Thank you.” He took the chair at the head of the table, which she had left vacant for him, as she did not want the morning cluttered with unnecessary wrangling over precedence.

  She still had eggs and sausage and toast on her plate—a far larger breakfast than her usual fare of toast and coffee. She picked up her knife and fork and continued eating, chewing each mouthful with slow relish, even though everything suddenly tasted like straw.

  “The avenue behind the house must be delightful for walking as well as riding,” he said. “The grass is well kept, and the trees on either side are as straight as two lines of soldiers on parade. It is a marvel of nature how they can hide an army of birds, is it not, so that one hears a thousand voices and yet is unable to see a single chorister until one of them decides to fly from one branch to another?”

  “I have always enjoyed strolling there,” she said.

  “One can see for miles around from the top of the hill,” he said. “I would have loved it as a boy. It reminds me a little of the hills at Acton Park, where I grew up. I would have been king of the castle and held it against all comers. Correction.” He grinned, and Viola was unwillingly reminded of the dashing stranger at the fête. “I daresay my brother would have been king and I would have been his loyal henchman. But henchmen have the more exciting life, you know. They fight dragons and assorted other villains, while the king merely sits on his throne looking bored and supercilious and issuing orders and cursing foully.”

  “Gracious! Is that what your brother used to do?” She almost laughed.

  “Elder brothers can be an abomination.”

  But Viola had no wish to hear about his childhood or his family. She did not want to see his boyish grin. She wanted him in a towering rage. She wanted him cursing foully. He was rather more frightening this way. Did he know it? Was this behavior deliberate? A cat toying with a mouse? He was drumming his fingertips on the table, though, and glancing at the door, sure signs that he did not feel as relaxed or as cheerful as he looked.

  Viola popped a forkful of egg into her mouth.

  “They are certainly taking their time in the kitchen,” he said after a short silence. “I must have a word with Jarvey.”

  How dare he! Mr. Jarvey was her butler. The old Earl of Bamber had employed him specifically to serve her. But it was not part of her plan to quarrel with this man just yet.

  “Does it seem a long wait to you?” She looked at him in cheerful surprise. “I am so sorry. The kitchen is at an inconvenient distance and the stairs are steep. Mr. Jarvey is not as young as he used to be and sometimes has trouble with his legs. The cook is a little slow too—and absentminded. But good servants are not easily come by in the country, you know, and one is wise to keep what one has even if it does not quite measure up to town standards.”

  The door opened as she spoke and the butler appeared, an uncovered plate in one hand, a
vast tankard of ale in the other. Viola gazed at both with admiration. How had Mrs. Walsh been able to pile the plate so high without everything sliding off? And where had she found such an enormous and hideous tankard? As Mr. Jarvey set his load down on the table, she could see eggs, sausages, kidneys, and bacon as well as slices of toast balancing on one edge of the plate. But the pièce de résistance was a large, thick beefsteak, which must surely have been shown briefly on both sides to the fire and then slapped onto the plate. It was swimming in red juice.

  She transferred her gaze to Lord Ferdinand’s face, which looked somewhat astonished for a moment.

  “I was sure you would enjoy a hearty country breakfast after a vigorous ride, my lord,” she said—and remembered too late that she was supposed to have thought him still fast asleep in his bed as a result of the country air.

  “Yes, indeed.” He rubbed his hands together again, in apparent glee.

  Was it possible that such a breakfast really did look appetizing to him? She waited with bated breath for him to taste it. But there was another detail to be taken care of without delay.

  “Mr. Jarvey,” she directed, “would you light the fire? His lordship is chilly.”

  The butler bent with agility to the task while Lord Ferdinand watched him. Viola hoped he was not noticing that there was no sign of creaky knees. And then she watched covertly as he speared a kidney with his fork and popped it in his mouth. She could have crowed with glee when he set his knife and fork down with a clatter.

  “The food is cold,” he said in astonishment.

  “Oh, dear.” She looked at him with apologetic concern. “I am so accustomed to it that I did not think to warn you. I daresay the cook prepared your food some time ago and forgot—again—to keep it warm in the oven until you came in. Is that what happened, Mr. Jarvey? Perhaps you would have it warmed up and brought back when it is ready. Will you wait for half an hour or so, my lord?”