“What?” Jeremy looked up at the butler in wonder. “Where’s my uncle?”
“Lord and Lady Edward were called back to Yorkshire just this weekend to attend a funeral.” After Jeremy had made an appropriate grimace, the butler continued. “Yes, tragic. The infant child of one of Your Grace’s tenant farmers. But,” he added, on a more cheerful note, “they are expected back any day now. Would it suit Your Grace to stay in the chambers normally occupied by his lordship, or would you prefer one of the guest bedrooms?” Evers tried again, less subtly this time, to address the subject of the Star of Jaipur. “Is it only yourself and your valet, Your Grace? Or shall I prepare more rooms?”
“More rooms?” Jeremy echoed. “Why in the devil would you need to prepare more rooms?”
“Well, in the event that Your Grace had brought, er, the Star of Jaipur home with him … .”
“Of course I brought it home with me,” Jeremy said impatiently. “What sort of fool would leave something like that behind? But I hardly think it needs a room all to itself. It isn’t that big.”
Evers coughed. “Er, no. Of course not.” Evers thought it prudent to change the subject. “Might I suggest the Green Room, then? The White Room is, I’m afraid, currently occupied by Miss Margaret, but I can have the fire in the Green Room lit at once if Your Grace prefers—”
Jeremy choked on his whisky. Concerned, Evers stepped forward and only just managed to restrain himself from patting the Duke of Rawlings on the back. “Your Grace?” he asked worriedly. “Are you unwell?”
Still coughing from the whisky that had gone down the wrong way, Jeremy managed to sputter, “Maggie? What the devil is she doing here?”
“Why, Miss Margaret accompanied Lady Edward to London this season, and has been with us since just after the New Year, Your Grace.” Calmly taking the glass from the duke’s limp fingers before—as it appeared he would—Jeremy allowed it to drop to the floor, Evers retraced his steps to the sideboard to fill it a third time. “My understanding was that Miss Margaret was only to stay a short while here at Park Lane while she looked for a flat of her own. But it appears that she has yet to find suitable housing. I would imagine it can’t be easy for a young lady to establish herself in a large city like London, particularly a young lady striving to make a living in a very competitive field—” Turning away from the sideboard only to find that the duke had risen, not very steadily, to his feet, Evers could not help inquiring, perhaps more solicitously than his station required, “Forgive me, Your Grace, but are you Well? You look exceedingly ill … .”
But Jeremy waved aside the butler’s concern. “And what of this fiance my aunt wrote to me about? He isn’t staying here, too, is he?”
“Mister de Veygoux?” Evers looked genuinely shocked. “A Frenchman, under this roof? Certainly not!”
Jeremy nodded grimly. “I thought not, but I’ve been away a while. One never knows how things might have changed in one’s absence, does one?” Giving the ends of his morning coat a resolute tug, Jeremy asked, “In the White Room then, is she, Evers?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” the butler said. Then, as the duke began moving determinedly toward the doorway, Evers cried out, before he could stop himself, “Your Grace!”
Pausing at the threshold, Jeremy turned, his dark eyebrows raised questioningly. “Evers?”
“You aren’t … Your Grace can’t be thinking of going to Miss Margaret’s room … .” Evers smiled nervously. “You know that your aunt would not approve.” Though he nearly choked on the words—an Evers never presumed to correct a Rawlings, no matter how wildly he might be behaving—the butler said gently, “Gentlemen do not call on young ladies in their boudoirs, Your Grace. I’m sure Lady Edward would be very shocked indeed were she to discover that you had even entered the house without an appropriate chaperon while Miss Margaret was staying here—”
The duke smiled, and Evers took an involuntary step backward. It was ridiculous, the butler knew, but for a moment, with his ink-black hair and eyebrows, his silver eyes, and that strange, yellowish skin surrounding them, the Duke of Rawlings bore an uncanny resemblance to … well, to the devil.
“Your concern for Miss Maggie’s reputation is touching, Evers,” Jeremy said with a smirk. “It really is. But last time I checked, this house belonged to me. Which makes everything in it mine, as well.”
Without another word, Jeremy turned and headed up the marble staircase leading to the second floor. Behind him, Evers, standing in the foyer in his nightcap and dressing gown, lifted the glass of whisky to his lips and hastily drained it. He had enjoyed his all-too-brief employment with the Rawlings family, and had hoped to remain in it as long as his grandfather had. It appeared, however, that his career was about to come to an abrupt end. Because if the Lady Edward didn’t terminate him for allowing the duke and Miss Margaret to remain unchaperoned under the same roof, then the duke would surely do so, for objecting to that very thing.
Evers decided that a short letter to his father was in order. He needed, he was afraid, some advjce. Some advice and, he was sorry to say, another drink.
Chapter 10
Jeremy had not spent as much of his childhood in the house on Park Lane as he had at the manor house in Yorkshire, but he remembered it well enough to know why Maggie had chosen to stay in the White Room. Unlike the other rooms in the house, it alone was not papered in one muted color, carpeted in another, and furnished with yet a third, a decorative practice that his aunt Pegeen had espoused, being convinced that the more color in a room, the less likely that the finger smudges would show—and since a large number of children had frequented the town house, including Jeremy himself, this scheme had not proven unwise.
But the White Room was just that, white-walled, with a rich white rug upon the parquet floor, gauzy white curtains over the windows, and entirely white furniture. It was the only room in the house in which children, with their dirty hands and propensity to track mud, had been traditionally forbidden to enter. And it was the kind of room that only a painter, mixing colors all day long, would find restful.
Which, Jeremy knew, was precisely why Maggie had chosen it above the other ten bedrooms in the house. Jeremy could see quite clearly, even in the orange glow from the dying fire in the white marble fireplace, that Maggie had already stamped the room with her own unique personality. There was a collapsible easel leaning against a far wall, along with a wooden case that Jeremy remembered contained brushes and tubes of paint. Beside these loomed a very large, very heavy-looking black leather portfolio, which held either works in progress or copies of Maggie’s canvases, undoubtedly to show prospective sitters. On a low table beside a matched set of ivory-backed chairs lay a few less obvious tricks of Maggie’s trade, a large stuffed bird on a stick, some sort of mechanical horse, a papier-mâché sailboat, and a number of different-sized, colorfully garbed dolls. Jeremy had no idea what possible use these toys might serve, unless at twenty-one, Maggie was still more of a child than she ought to be.
Of more interest to Jeremy, however, were the items thrown over the backs of the chairs scattered about the room, including a corset and a pair of frilled pantaloons. These things were almost as distracting as their owner, who lay in the middle of the large white canopied bed, a few yards from the dying fire. Maggie, Jeremy observed, was as untidy sleeping as she was awake. She had kicked off most of her covers until she lay only half-under a single linen sheet, despite the distinct chill in the room. Unfortunately, she was probably kept quite warm by the very thick cotton nightdress she wore, which covered her, from what Jeremy could tell, from the neck to the ankles.
Still, when Jeremy moved closer to the bed to get a better look at its occupant, he saw plenty to interest him. For one thing, the nightdress had hiked up a little, revealing one bare calf and the slim curve of an ankle. For another, Maggie slept with one arm flung up over her head, which stretched the material of her nightdress taut over one of her breasts—still quite surprisingly large, Jeremy noted with d
elight, especially for a girl who’d completely lacked a bosom for so many years—and revealed the soft indentation of an unawakened nipple. Her long hair, unbraided, lay in a thick dark tangle beneath her head. Maggie’s face, turned toward the glow of what remained of the fire, had lost its childish roundness, and Jeremy was startled to see how the planes of her high cheekbones stood out, lending her winsome looks an air of haughtiness they’d completely lacked before.
My God, Jeremy thought, stooping to examine the sleeping girl at close range. She’s gone and turned into a society beauty behind my back.
The thought nettled him almost as much as the fact that she had a fiancé.
Well, what had he expected? Had he thought her parents would be able to shield her from the attentions of other men forever? That he was the only man capable of appreciating her natural, country-bred beauty? That a girl like Maggie, whose mouth, as he knew only too well, had a tendency to fall open when she was kissed, would wait around for him forever?
Suddenly tired, Jeremy sat down on the edge of the bed, raising a hand to his brow. His skin felt hot. He was probably feverish again. But what else was new? He’d been fighting off secondary attacks of the disease for weeks now. The doctors in New Delhi had assured him that this was normal. One of them had even explained that Jeremy would continue to suffer malarial bouts three, even four years after his initial contraction of the disease. Jeremy had nearly struck the physician upon being told this, but had been too weak with fever to raise his fist.
Taking his hand away from his eyes, Jeremy looked down at Maggie. She was still sleeping soundly, her breathing deep and even. She had always, he remembered with some amusement, been a heavy and untroubled sleeper, never stirring even when she’d had to be carried to bed after falling asleep in her chair at the dinner table as a child. This time she had slept, he realized, right through his ringing of the doorbell, and now was perfectly unconscious of his presence at her bedside. He could, he realized, have violated her ten different ways already, and she’d undoubtedly have slept right through it.
The thought was a tempting one. Looking down at the peacefully slumbering body, hidden as it was inside the voluminous nightgown, Jeremy recalled a certain afternoon, . five years earlier. As if of its own volition, his hand began creeping toward the hem of the nightdress, toward that bare white calf … .
What stopped him, Jeremy had no idea. One minute, his hand was so close, he could feel the heat of her skin beneath his fingertips. The next, he was drawing back. What, he wondered, could be the matter with him? He had every right, every right in the world, to touch this girl. When he left England five years earlier, it had been with the conviction that upon his return, he would marry Maggie Herbert.
Granted, he hadn’t exactly refrained from seeking comfort in the arms of others in the meantime. Jeremy had considered it wise to at least attempt to rid himself of the memory of Maggie Herbert’s kiss. He wasn’t, after all, a eunuch. Lieutenant Colonel Rawlings’s sexual misadventures had been greatly admired by the men serving beneath him, and became the subject of numerous jokes by Jeremy’s fellow—mostly married—officers. For the most part, Jeremy had ignored the ribbing, only resorting to fisticuffs when he was drunk or in a foul mood … which had been frequently enough, for he had found India to be an unbearably hot country, a cesspool of poverty and disease, and hardly the magical place he and Maggie had imagined in their games of childhood.
But though Jeremy, for almost half a decade, dallied with dozens of women, he never encountered a single one who caused his heart to race the way it had that day in the stable with Maggie. He never met any other woman who so fully captivated him, emotionally and intellectually—not to mention physically—the way Maggie Herbert had. While this discovery had proven occasionally awkward—case in point, that incident concerning the Star of Jaipur—it had also been extremely motivating. Jeremy, remembering his uncle’s advice, concentrated the full of his considerable powers of intellect upon proving himself worthy of a girl of Maggie’s caliber. Rather to his own surprise, this resulted in a quick rise through the ranks of Her Majesty’s cavalry. Jeremy made quick work of every task assigned him, from escorting important ambassadors through the jungle to subjugating the occasional peasant uprising, tasks in which he took pleasure, since they, at least, kept him from brooding, as he tended to do when left otherwise unoccupied.
Though it was the last thing he’d had any intention of doing, Jeremy ended up impressing his superiors with his intelligence and apparent lack of fear. Having purposely dropped his title upon joining up, few knew that the young man who began his army career as Jeremy Rawlings was actually one of the richest men in England, a titled peer whose uncle was an extremely powerful force in the House of Lords. To his fellow officers, Jeremy was only Captain Rawlings, though he remained a captain only a short time before receiving a promotion to major—as well as that Medal of Honor from the queen, for his quick snuffing out of the Jaipur rebellion. By the time he was finally felled—and by disease, not an enemy bullet—Jeremy was perceived by all as one of the bravest men in the queen’s service, a fearless hero whose skill with a sword was unrivaled. His rank, accordingly, had been elevated to that of Lieutenant Colonel, and another gold star added to the high collar of his red coat.
And yet, to Jeremy, the promotions, the medals, the honors—even the bequeathal of the Star of Jaipur—meant nothing. He was conscious only of the fact that, for the first time in his life, he was doing something he was not only good at, but that he actually enjoyed. And through it all, he waited for only one thing: a letter from Maggie, asking him to come home.
He thought it might come the fourth year, during which his aunt Pegeen wrote to tell him that Lady Herbert, Maggie’s mother, had succumbed to a long illness, and died in the spring. His condolence letter, however—the only communication he sent to anyone during his long absence, having a distinct abhorrence of letter-writing—went unanswered. It wasn’t until twelve months after that, when Jeremy received the information about Maggie’s engagement, that he realized his long years of waiting had been for nothing: The girl he’d intended to marry was marrying someone else; had apparently never taken his proposal seriously in the first place; and had forgotten him as easily as another woman might forget to purchase eggs at the market.
He had been duped. He had been made to feel a fool. He had suffered in a hot and barbarous country for five years for nothing.
And now he was coming home to take his revenge.
Since he’d learned of her treachery, Jeremy had thought of little else save the vengeance he would wreak upon Maggie at the first opportunity. In fact, it was the thought of revenge that had kept him alive those weeks when he’d been half delirious with fever. His thirst for revenge had, he was convinced, saved his life. Dead, he could not make Maggie Herbert sorry for giving herself to another. In the end, revenge had been what drove him from his sickbed, insisting upon leaving for England even though the physicians urged him to remain in the hospital until he was stronger.
And yet now that he had the object of his torment close at hand, he found he could not bring himself to punish her. Not yet.
Yes, that was it. Not quite yet. He would play with her first, the way he’d seen tigers play with their prey before devouring it. How much more satisfying to torture her a little, before moving in for the kill.
Accordingly, Jeremy brought a hand to his face and, stroking his chin, watched Maggie for a few moments as she slept. And then, lowering that same large, deeply tanned hand, he brought it down with considerable force, and a good deal of noise, upon her heart-shaped backside, unprotected except for the cotton of her nightdress.
Chapter 11
Maggie shrieked with as much volume as if someone had lit her hair on fire, and sat bolt upright in her bed, her eyes, wide with indignation, searching out the offender who’d so rudely wakened her. When her startled gaze focused on the man sitting upon the edge of her bed, she let out another shriek, this one of outrag
ed modesty, and dove for the sheet tangled at her feet. It lay, unfortunately, beneath the laughing man, and no matter how hard she tugged at it, Maggie could not pull it out from under him. At last, breathing hard, Maggie clutched one of her pillows to her chest and, using its plump shape to hide what the nightdress didn’t, demanded, the words spilling over one another in her haste to get them out, “W-who are you? Get out of my room at once! I shall call for the Bow Street runners!”
Jeremy couldn’t stop laughing. The look on her face had been well worth five years of hellish climate. In fact, he’d have crossed the Sahara on foot if he could have been assured of another glimpse of her expression upon opening her eyes to find him in her room.
“Ah, Mags,” he said, still laughing, though not quite as hard now. “If only you could have seen your face … . Priceless. Absolutely priceless!”
Instantly, recognition flooded her pretty features. It was hard to tell in the dim light cast by the embers on the hearth, but the person sitting on the end of her bed appeared to be … was the right size and shape for …
“Jeremy?” she ventured cautiously, her dark eyebrows slanting down over her even darker eyes. “Is that you?”
“One and the same,” Jeremy said. He found that his eyes had begun watering, he had laughed so hard, and he raised an arm to wipe them with his coat sleeve. “God, what a shriek. You sounded like Praehurst, that day we dangled the snake down from the balustrade in the Great Hall.”
“What in the world …” Maggie was still staring at him, round-eyed. “What are you doing here?”
He grinned at her. “I live here. This is my house, remember?” He nodded toward her nightdress. “Do you always wear such boring nightclothes? Haven’t you anything with bits of lace stuck in it?”
Maggie was sure her cheeks were scarlet. Good God, Jeremy! Jeremy, back from India. Jeremy, in her bedroom! It was a dream, it had to be. Lord knew she’d dreamed of his homecoming often enough. And yet … and yet, none of her dreams had been like this. The Jeremys she’d dreamt of had never whacked her on the behind.
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