A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Where did you sleep? What did you eat? It’s freezing, and the roads are absolutely swarming with highwaymen—are you completely insane?”
She stared at him. His obvious anger bewildered her. Why did it matter to him how she had gotten to London?
“I did what I had to do,” she said. “It was a bit brisk, I suppose, but not unendurable.” It certainly had been no chillier than Thornwood with its stupendously drafty windows and smoking chimneys, and she’d spent her nights in unlocked barns and stables, where she’d slept without fear, lulled by the familiar sounds and smells of animals. “Hertfordshire and Middlesex were familiar enough, though London was overwhelming at first. I have never been to Town before.”
“Then how did you know where to find me?”
“The newspapers write about you a great deal.”
He nodded, pouring himself more wine. Miranda forced herself to pick up her fork again.
After a moment, Jason asked unexpectedly, “Your cousin is Laurence Thornwood?”
“Yes,” she said. “You know him?”
“Yes,” said Jason. “He plays here at the club sometimes.” He finished a helping of lobster salad before continuing. “But there is something you have not yet told me. Why did William hit your uncle?”
She kept her face carefully blank. “I told you, they quarreled,” she said.
“Miranda,” said Jason, very softly. It was the first time he had used her Christian name all evening, and the fork dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers.
“I’m going to ask you again,” he said. “Why did William hit your uncle with the poker?”
“William’s not a bad boy—he had provocation—Uncle Clarence can be perfectly odious.”
He leaned back in his chair and regarded her coolly. “You said William hit your uncle in the back of the head with a poker. It sounds less as though William had acted in the heat of a quarrel, and more like a deliberate attack. No, look me in the eye. Don’t lie to me.”
His dark, steady gaze caught her, made her feel trapped and helpless, a pinned butterfly, a fox brought to bay. She could not remain sitting any longer. Rising to her feet, she pushed back her chair.
Jason stood immediately as well. Without looking at him, she trailed barefoot to the window, where she wrapped her arms around herself and gazed out into the rainy night.
She could remember the night clearly, and she did not want to. She did not want to think of it ever again, let alone to speak of it to this cold-eyed man who had become such a stranger to her. She could not look into that dark, impassive face and tell him what it had been like. Would he even believe her if she told him the truth, when he so clearly despised and mistrusted her?
“William was very angry at the way my uncle had been treating me,” said Miranda at last. It was not a lie. She had never lied to Jason before. She did not think she could manage it now. “The blow left Uncle Clarence unconscious. There was a great deal of blood, though he was still breathing when we left. I was so afraid. I didn’t know what to do.” Her eyes slid shut. “Please. You have to help William.”
Jason stood directly behind her now. He placed his large, warm, ungloved hands on her neck, lifting the heavy mass of her hair aside. His breath was warm against the sensitive skin of her shoulders.
“Why?”
Dazed, confused, she stared at their hazy reflections in the rain-splattered glass.
“Why what?”
“Why should I help you?”
“What do you mean, why should you help me?” she asked, staring at his reflection uncomprehendingly. “They will hang him if you do not! You were fond of him once. You knew him when he was a child.”
And you knew me once, she wanted to say. You trusted me.
You loved me.
“That was a long time ago,” said Jason. “I’m afraid that’s not enough.”
“What do you want, then?” she whispered.
“Maybe I still want what I couldn’t have all those years ago,” he said. “You.”
His hands were on her shoulders, turning her toward him. She looked up into his harsh, expressionless face, the face she had once known better than her own. Her heart pounded so hard her blood was a low, dull roar in her ears. He brushed his thumb across her left cheekbone, leaving a trail of sensation. She drew a ragged breath.
“I want you, Miranda,” he said. “In my bed. And on the floor. And anywhere else I can think of.”
A wave of heat swept through her at the sound of his low, rasping tone. The words should scandalize and appall her, she ought to respond with indignation, and scorn, and offended pride. But she could recall no words of outraged virtue. She only stood there, her fingers shaking uncontrollably as she gripped the material of his evening coat.
It was not what he had said, or even the touch of his hand on her skin, that made her tremble so violently. It was the look in his eyes.
He lowered his head and kissed her.
For a moment she stood frozen in the circle of his arms, lost in a maelstrom of agony and longing so intense she thought she would die of it. Ten years had passed since Jason Blakewell had kissed her, but she had not forgotten a single nuance, a single sensation. How many nights had she tossed and turned, dreaming he was kissing her thus? How many days had she survived only by remembering the way his arms had felt around her? And now it was happening again. He was kissing her, holding her, his hands gentle on her skin, his mouth soft against hers, and Miranda, without thought, without volition, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
He did not love her anymore. Whatever youthful passion he’d once cherished for her had died long ago, by her father’s hand and her own. He would not help William if she did not agree to give herself to him.
Some part of her even understood. He wanted to punish her father. He wanted to punish her, he wanted to hurt her, he wanted to destroy her. He wanted to prove once and for all, in claiming what had been denied to him when he was friendless and impecunious, he had left that other self behind forever.
Her every instinct for self-preservation screamed the obvious at her. It was not love, or even affection, that drove him now. Something darker and far crueler had aroused his passion, and she would find no safety in the arms that had once protected her from the world.
But he was here. He was warm and real and alive beneath her hands, and she had dreamed of him so often, had missed him for so long, her mind could not seem to reconcile all the long years of hopeless yearning with the reality of his kiss. She drew closer to him and the heat of his body surrounded her, warming her frozen limbs, warming her very heart.
She had no defenses against him.
She licked at his mouth, as he had taught her ten years before, and he made a sound in his throat and pulled her tight against him. She pressed closer, running her hands over the planes of his chest, wanting to tear open his shirt so she could nuzzle at the skin beneath.
But before she could reach for his cravat, he lifted his head a fraction and looked down at her through slitted eyes.
“Well, Miranda?” he asked, his voice passionless, as though they had been doing nothing more exciting than sipping tea for the past twenty minutes.
“Well, what?” she whispered against the warm skin of his throat. She had trouble gathering her thoughts, but at the same time she was strangely, piercingly aware of her surroundings. The ticking of the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, the reflection of firelight in the cravat pin Jason wore, the warmth of his hands against her skin, had all taken on a sharp and consuming clarity.
He placed his hand beneath her chin, forcing her to look into his face. “It’s very simple,” he said. “I will save your brother. I will protect him, and you, and restore Thornwood Hall to you. But in exchange, I want you.”
She looked steadily at him. His eyes were very dark.
“You want me for your mistress, in return for saving William,” she said, and it was not a question. She could not
possibly mistake his meaning.
“It would be a fair exchange,” he said.
She closed her eyes, knowing what she should say, knowing how she should feel. She was gently born and bred, the daughter of a viscount, and she ought to be shocked, and outraged, and horrified.
But she was no hypocrite, and the only emotion she felt was pain, and beneath the pain a flicker of yearning too strong to be ignored or extinguished. He would save William. He would help her. She need only agree to be his mistress. To be his. Outside of wedlock, outside the boundaries of what was proper, in defiance of what was proscribed by man and God.
But she would be his.
She drew a shallow breath. “All right,” she said.
She was not prepared for his reaction.
His head jerked back; his hands tightened painfully on her flesh. “All right?” he repeated with disbelief. “All right? That’s it?”
She stared up at him. He looked at her with so much rage and hatred she took an involuntary step back.
“I see. You intend to be the sacrificial lamb. You are so desperate to save your brother you will do whatever I ask. Even this. Goddamn it, Miranda,” he whispered raggedly, “don’t you have an honest bone in your body?”
She stared uncomprehendingly up at him, and he reached for her again, but this time, his hands and his mouth on her were hard and painful. His fingers reached into the loose neckline of her dress and closed roughly around her left breast, and he dropped his head to nip at the sensitive skin of her shoulder.
“Please,” she gasped. “You’re hurting me.”
He lifted his head again, still holding her, and she gazed up at him, unable to breathe, unable to save herself.
“Do you hate me so much?” she whispered.
For a moment his grasp slackened. Then he dropped his hands from her altogether and took two steps back, leaving her standing cold and alone by the window, the bodice of her borrowed gown fallen nearly to her waist. The way he eyed her naked breasts and shoulders made her flush hot with embarrassment.
“Of course not, Miss Thornwood,” he said. The rage was gone. His face was once again a cool, blank mask. “I don’t hate you at all, my dear. I was only curious. I wanted to know if you really were worth two years in the hulks.”
The barely veiled contempt in his eyes, the silky tone of his voice, was crueler than a blow. Though he made no move to touch her again, his rage and hatred was a palpable thing.
Miranda, who had never been afraid of this man before, was afraid of him now. She flinched, struggling to right the flimsy material of her bodice. But she managed to find her voice again before he could reach the door.
“You will help William?” she asked.
He did not turn. “I’ll keep my part of the bargain,” he said. “Will you keep yours?”
Jason let himself into his darkened office once again. His shattering loss of control shook him to the core. He had never hurt a woman in his life, but when Miranda had looked up at him like some kind of virgin sacrifice, her eyes huge and shadowed in her thin white face, his hatred had become such a pulsing, living thing that in that moment he had only wanted to punish her, to give her back some measure of the pain she had caused him.
When he had first seen her drying her hair by the fire, she had looked so fragile, the ill-fitting gown nearly slipping off her too-thin shoulders and revealing the edges of her small breasts. Her unbearable vulnerability had aroused all his old protective instincts toward her, but he could not forget what she had done to him.
He could not reconcile his conflicting desires, to hurt her and protect her, ravish her and worship her, save her and destroy her.
He had intended to insult her with his proposition, had wanted her to slap him, mock him, spit in his face, anything, only show some sign of her old spirit so she would not seem so terribly defenseless. But instead she had kissed him back with the same ardor he remembered from ten years before, and he had gone momentarily mad, lost in a vortex of rage and lust and longing so intense he had been unable to see, let alone think. If she had not whispered that pleading question—do you hate me so much?—he would have taken her there on the floor of his sitting room. Only his determination that she should never again hold the power to make him lose his self-control so completely had stopped him.
Needing to find an outlet for his pent-up frustration, he lit several lamps and sat down at his desk to settle accounts for the club from the last year. He would have preferred a bout at Gentleman Jackson’s, but the lateness of the hour precluded that possibility, so instead, he forced himself to concentrate on what Miranda had told him.
Whatever had happened, there was more to the story than she had confessed, and he fully intended to discover what she was hiding from him. He knew without a shred of doubt she had lied when he’d questioned her about the reason William had struck Clarence Thornwood.
She never had been able to lie worth a damn, especially not to him. Her shifty expression and the way her eyes had slid away from his had reminded him forcibly of the way she had looked at the age of nine, when she had vowed earnestly to Cook that she and Jason had most definitely not stolen and eaten the entire rhubarb pie. Unfortunately for both of them, her explanation had been made somewhat less convincing by the crumbs and jelly streaked liberally across her face.
For the briefest instant, a smile flickered across his face at the memory, then vanished almost immediately, to be replaced once again with the familiar pain that had been his constant companion for the last ten years.
He flicked the ceaseless ache away like cigar ash and turned his attention back to Miranda’s story.
Jason had never met Clarence Thornwood or his wife, but Laurence Thornwood had first showed up at Blakewell’s nine months before with a group of bored, reckless, wealthy young men. Thornwood had been new to town and eager to prove to his friends he was adept at their favorite activities of drinking, gambling and whoring. Unfortunately for the fool, he was an appallingly unskilled gamester, losing thousands of pounds with a single turn of card or roll of dice. The records of his losses were staggering. No doubt he had kept out of dun territory only by pilfering liberally from his cousins’ inheritances.
For a while, Jason studied figures, adding up a long column of numbers he made on a scrap of foolscap, then adding them again before double checking a few dates. When he was satisfied with the results, he extinguished the lamps and went to find his manager again.
“Oliver,” he said, when he had tracked down his friend on the first floor of the club, “are any of Laurence Thornwood’s friends currently here? Lord Hargreaves, perhaps, or Mr. Murray?”
“Yes,” said Oliver immediately. “Mr. Murray, in fact, is playing hazard upstairs.”
“Have him sent to my office immediately,” said Jason. “I should like to speak with him.”
Chapter Two
After Jason had gone, Miranda forced herself to sit back down at the supper table. Unable to bear thinking about their awful confrontation, she focused instead on the superbly prepared food. Though her thoughts shied away from Jason, knowing he would help her calmed her stomach considerably, and for the first time in days, she ate a full meal.
Once she had sated her appetite, exhaustion overwhelmed her. It was as though, knowing that Jason now knew everything and would take care of everything, her mind and body could finally relax. With no notion of where he had gone for the night, and little intention of waiting to find out, she climbed into the massive four-poster bed, still wearing her borrowed gown, and was asleep almost immediately.
She slept deeply and dreamlessly through the night, and when she woke again, it was morning. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she raised herself to a sitting position and gazed blearily around her.
Light flooded the room, and the clock read nearly eleven o’clock. In the clear gray morning, the events of the previous night seemed as fantastical and absurd as a nightmare, and like fear inspired by a nightmare, the paralyzing anguish of se
eing Jason again no longer seemed as ungovernable or as all-consuming. Fortified by the first full night’s sleep she’d had in weeks, if not months, she shoved aside any lingering traces of emotion and focused instead on practicalities.
She slid off the bed and onto her feet. The door swung open and she glanced up, wondering with a quick indrawn breath if it was Jason.
But it was merely the maid, Harriet, wearing a very large lace cap that nearly covered her entire face and carrying a tray laden with toast, jam and tea.
“Good morning, miss,” mumbled Harriet, keeping her face lowered. “I was sent up here to make sure you were up. Madame Beaumont will be arriving soon.”
Miranda blinked. “Madame Beaumont?”
The maid nodded and set the tray down on the bedside table, still without looking at Miranda. Her hands trembled rather badly, and she sloshed tea in the saucer as she handed it to Miranda.
“Mr. Blakewell said I was to tell you you’re to have a few new day gowns made up.”
Miranda’s heart clenched at Jason’s name. She wondered if she would ever be able to hear it without that sickening sense of loss, but shoved the thought away immediately. She had more pressing matters to consider.
Aloud, she merely said, “I see.” Since he had ordered her only dress burnt and the one she still wore was utterly indecent, she supposed she ought to be grateful. Turning back to the maid, she said, “Thank you, Harriet.”
The girl nodded, curtsied and left.
When Miranda had eaten and the tray had been taken away, Harriet showed Madame Beaumont into the chamber, trailing two sewing girls bearing a very large trunk between them. The trunk, when opened, produced a dazzling array of gowns that made Miranda blink rapidly.
Neither Madame nor her assistants seemed to think there was anything odd about fitting a lady for gowns in a bedchamber above Blakewell’s. Was this blasé attitude simply their form of discreet professionalism, or did Jason habitually ask them to outfit women in his club? She hoped rather fervently that the latter scenario was untrue.
Lily Lang Page 3
