No Man's Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  “He had no right to wager away the house,” she cried, “when it did not belong to him. It is mine. It was left to me.”

  “I can understand your agitation,” he told her. “This was dashed irresponsible of Bamber—both Bambers: the father for making a promise he did not keep, the son for forgetting you were here. If I had only known of your existence, I could at least have given you ample notice before I came here in person. But I did not know, and so here I am, eager to acquaint myself with my new property. You really are going to have to leave, I'm afraid. There is no sensible alternative, is there? We cannot both live here. But I'll give you a week. Will that be long enough? I'll sleep at the inn in Trellick during that time. Do you have somewhere else to go? Couldyou go to Bamber Court?”

  Viola clenched her hands even tighter. She could feel her fingernails digging into her palms. “I have no intention of going anywhere,” she told him. “Until I see that will and it is proved to me that I am not named in it, this is where I belong. This is my house. My home.”

  He sighed, and she realized that he was too close for comfort. But she would not take a step back. She tilted her head and looked him straight in the eye—and had a flashing memory of standing even closer to him just the evening before. Could he possibly be the same man?

  Beware of a tall, dark, handsome stranger. He can destroy you.

  “If there is nowhere,” he said with what she might have interpreted as kindness had the words not been so brutal, “I'll send you to London in my own carriage. I'll send you to my sister, Lady Heyward. No, on second thought, Angie is too scatterbrained to offer any practical assistance. I'll send you to my sister-in-law, the Duchess of Tresham, then. She will gladly offer you shelter while she helps you find some suitable and respectable employment. Or a relative willing to take you in.”

  Viola laughed scornfully. “Perhaps the Duchess of Tresham could do that for you, my lord,” she suggested. “Find you respectable employment, that is. Gamblers frequently find their pockets to let, I understand. And gamblers are invariably gentlemen who have nothing more meaningful to do with their lives.”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked at her in some astonishment. “You do have a sharp tongue,” he said. “Who are you? Have I seen you somewhere before? Before yesterday, that is?”

  It was entirely possible. Though no one else in the neighborhood of Pinewood had. That had always been a large part of its charm. The only twinge of alarm she had felt at first downstairs—it seemed laughable now—had come with Mr. Jarvey's introduction of yesterday's handsome stranger as Lord Ferdinand Dudley—a member of the ton, possibly someone who lived much of his life in London and had perhaps done so for several years. She guessed that he must be in his late twenties.

  “Viola Thornhill,” she told him. “And I have never seen you before yesterday. I would have remembered.”

  He nodded, but his brows were still knitted in thought. He was obviously trying to remember where it was he had seen her before, if anywhere. She could have offered a few suggestions, though it was true she had never seen him before yesterday.

  “Well,” he said briskly, shaking his head, “I will take myself off back to Trellick, Miss Thornhill. It is Miss, not Mrs.?” She inclined her head. “For seven nights, though I must beg leave to intrude upon you here in the daytime. If you need my assistance in planning your journey, feel free to ask for it.”

  He strode past her across the room, all masculine arrogance and energy and power. Yesterday's dream transformed into today's nightmare. She looked after him with intense hatred.

  “Lord Ferdinand,” she said as his hand closed about the doorknob, “I do not believe you heard me a moment ago. Until I have seen that will, I am going nowhere. I will be remaining here in my own house and my own home. I will not give in to bluster and bullying. If you were a gentleman, you would not even ask it of me.”

  When he turned, she could see that she had angered him. His eyes looked very black. His brows had drawn together. His nostrils were flared, making his nose look sharper, almost hooked, and his lips were set in a grim line. He looked altogether more formidable than he had a moment before. Viola glared defiantly at him.

  “If I were a gentleman?” he said, so softly that despite herself she felt a shiver of apprehension curl about her spine. “If you were a lady, ma'am, you would accept with grace what has happened through no fault of mine. I am not answerable for the failure of the late earl to keep his promise to you, or for his son's choosing to bet an estate instead of money on the outcome of a card game. The simple fact is that Pinewood Manor is mine. It was my plan a moment ago to inconvenience myself out of deference to your sensibilities and the awkwardness of your situation. It is no longer my plan. I will be taking up residence here immediately. It is you who will stay at the Boar's Head tonight. But as a gentleman, I will send a maid with you and have the bill sent to me.”

  “I will be sleeping here, in my own house, in my own bed,” she told him, holding his gaze.

  The air fairly crackled with the clashing of their wills.

  His eyes narrowed. “Then you must share the house with me,” he told her. “With someone you have accused of being less than a gentleman. Perhaps, as well as being a dissolute gamer, I am also possessed of unbridled sexual appetites. Perhaps last evening gave you only the glimmering of a hint of what I am capable of when my passions are aroused. Are you sure you wish to put your person and your reputation at such risk?”

  She might have laughed if she had not been so incensed.

  She took long, angry strides toward him until she was close enough to point a finger at him and jab it against his chest, like a blunt dagger, as she spoke. Her voice shook with fury.

  “If you so much as attempt to lay one lascivious finger on me,” she told him, “you may be surprised to discover that your sexual appetites will die an ignominious death and remain dead for all time. Be warned. I am no man's mistress. I am no man's abject victim, to be threatened and coerced into whimpering submission. I am my own mistress, my lord, and I am mistress of Pinewood. I will remain here tonight and every night for the rest of my life. If you truly believe you have a claim to the house, then I daresay you will stay here too. But I can guarantee that soon you will be glad enough to leave. You are a rake and a town fop and would be quite incapable of living more than a week in the country without expiring of boredom. I will endure you for that week. But I will not be bullied or threatened sexually without retaliating in ways you would not enjoy. And I will not be removed from my rightful home.” She stabbed at his chest one more time-it was a remarkably solid chest. “And now, if you please, I wish to leave the room in order to resume my interrupted plan of walking out and taking the air.”

  He stared at her with the same angry expression—with perhaps also a suggestion of shock?—for several moments before standing aside, whisking open the drawing room door, and gesturing with a flourish toward the landing beyond it, while sketching her a mocking bow.

  “Far be it from me to hold you against your will,” he said. “But I in my turn can guarantee that within a week, or two at the most, you will be forced to abandon your rash determination to share a bachelor establishment with a rake. I will send for that damned will.”

  Viola ignored the blasphemy with cold civility and swept from the room. He had the deed of Pinewood, she thought as she climbed the stairs to her room. Something was terribly wrong. She had no written proof, only the word of a man long dead. But strangely, foolishly, the thought that crowded all else from her mind was that he—Lord Ferdinand Dudley, that is—had not known she lived here. He had made no attempt to discover who she was. He had not cared enough. Yesterday had meant nothing to him.

  Well, it had not meant anything to her either!

  4

  Viola did not, after all, go out walking. She sat for a long time on the window seat in her bed-chamber. Hers was fortunately not the master bedchamber—at least they were not to fight over that and perhaps insist upon s
haring the same bed. She had always preferred her present room, with its cheerful Chinese wallpaper and draperies and screens and its view over the back of the house rather than the front, over the kitchen garden and greenhouses, over the long avenue beyond them, culminating in the tree-dotted hill half a mile away.

  Pinewood was hers. No one else had even been interested in it until it had become the subject of a card game. Lord Ferdinand Dudley would not be interested either once he recovered from the novelty of having won it. He was a city man, a dandy, a fop, a gamer, a rake—and probably many more nasty things. Once he went back to London, he would forget all about Pinewood again.

  Once he went back to London…

  Viola got to her feet, smoothed out her dress, straightened her shoulders, and left her room, bound for the kitchen.

  “Yes, it is true,” she said in answer to all the anxious, inquiring looks turned her way as soon as she walked in. They were all there—Mr. Jarvey; Mr. Paxton, the steward; Jeb Hardinge, the head groom; Samuel Dey, the footman; Hannah; Mrs. Walsh, the cook; Rose, the parlormaid; Tom Abbott, the head gardener. They must have been holding a meeting. “Though I do not believe it for a minute. Lord Ferdinand Dudley claims to be the new owner of Pinewood. But I have no intention of leaving. Indeed, I have every intention of persuading Lord Ferdinand to go away again.”

  “What do you have in mind, Miss Vi?” Hannah asked. “Oh, I knew that man was trouble the minute I set eyes on him. Too handsome for his own good, he is.”

  “How difficult can it be,” Viola asked, “to convince a town tulip that the life of a country squire is not for him?”

  “I can think of a few ways without even taxing my brains, Miss Thornhill,” Jeb Hardinge said.

  “So can I,” Mrs. Walsh agreed grimly.

  “Let's hear some of these ideas, then,” Mr. Paxton suggested, “and see if we can come up with a plan.”

  Viola sat down at the kitchen table and invited everyone to join her.

  A short while later, Viola was walking into the village. She was far too restless to sit still in any vehicle when she might be striding along, trying to keep up with the pace of her teeming thoughts.

  How very different two days could be. Yesterday's dream had been very pleasant while it had lasted—more than pleasant. She had lain awake half the night reliving the dance about the maypole, when she had felt more vigorously alive than she had since she did not know when. And reliving his kiss and the feel of his lean man's body against her own.

  More fool her, for allowing herself to indulge in dreams, she thought, lengthening her stride. Maybe that gypsy fortune-teller had not been so far off the mark, after all. She should have taken more heed. She should have been more wary.

  She stopped first at the vicarage and found both the Reverend and Mrs. Prewitt at home.

  “My dear Miss Thornhill,” Mrs. Prewitt said when her housekeeper had ushered Viola into the parlor, “what a delightful surprise. I fully expected that you would remain at home, exhausted, today.”

  The vicar beamed at her. “Miss Thornhill,” he said. “I have just now finished adding the proceeds from the fête. You will be delighted to know that we surpassed last year's total by almost exactly twenty pounds. Is that not significant? So you see, my dear, your daisies were sacrificed to a good cause.”

  He and his wife laughed over his joke as Viola took her seat.

  “It was an extremely generous donation,” Mrs. Prewitt said, “especially when one remembers that the gentleman was a stranger.”

  “He called on me this morning,” Viola told them.

  “Ah.” The vicar rubbed his hands together. “Did he indeed?”

  “He claims to be the rightful owner of Pinewood.” Viola clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “Most provoking, is it not?”

  Both her listeners stared blankly at her for a moment.

  “But I was under the impression that Pinewood was yours,” Mrs. Prewitt said.

  “It is,” Viola assured them both. “When the late Earl of Bamber sent me here almost two years ago, he changed his will so that it would be mine for the rest of my life. However, the present earl had the deed and chose to wager away the property in a card game at a.gaming hell a short while ago, and lost it.” She did not know where the card game had been played, but she chose to assume it had been at the shabbiest, most notorious hell.

  “Oh, dear me,” the vicar commented, looking down in some concern at his visitor. “But his lordship could not wager away property that does not belong to him, Miss Thornhill. I hope the gentleman was not too disappointed to learn how he had been deceived. He seemed pleasant enough.”

  “In a card ga me?” Mrs. Prewitt was more satisfyingly shocked than her husband. “We were deceived in him yesterday, then. I did think it very forward of him, I must confess, Miss Thornhill, to make you dance with him about the maypole when he had not been formally presented to you. What a dreadful turn you must have had when he called on you with his claim this morning.”

  “Oh, I have not allowed him to upset me greatly,” Viola assured them. “Indeed I have a plan to persuade him that he would find life at Pinewood vastly uncomfortable. You may both help me if you will…”

  A short while later she was outdoors again and continuing the round of visits she had planned. Fortunately everyone was at home, perhaps understandably so after such a busy day yesterday.

  Her final call was at the cottage of the Misses Merrywether, who listened to her story with growing amazement and indignation. She had disliked Lord Ferdinand Dudley from the moment she first set eyes on him, Miss Faith Merrywether declared. His manners had been far too easy. And no true gentleman removed his coat in the presence of ladies, even when he was engaged in some sport on a hot day.

  He was extremely handsome, Miss Prudence Merrywether conceded, blushing, and of course he had that charming smile, but one knew from experience that handsome, charming gentlemen were never up to any good. Lord Ferdinand Dudley was certainly not up to any if his intention was to drive their dear Miss Thornhill away destitute from Pinewood.

  “Oh, he will not drive me away,” Viola assured both ladies. “It will be the other way around. I shall get rid of him.”

  “The vicar and Mr. Claypole will see what can be done on your behalf, I am sure,” Miss Merrywether said. “In the meantime, Miss Thornhill, you must come and live here. You will not be at all in the way.”

  “That is extremely kind of you, ma'am, but I have no intention of leaving Pinewood,” Viola said. “Indeed, it is my plan to—”

  But the description of her plan had to be deferred to a more convenient moment. Miss Prudence was so shocked at the mere idea of her returning to the house when there was a single gentleman in residence there that Miss Merrywether, made of sterner stuff herself, had to send in a hurry for their young maid to fetch burned feathers and hartshorn in order to prevent her sister from swooning dead away. Viola meanwhile chafed her wrists.

  “There is no telling what such a libertine might attempt,” Miss Merrywether warned Viola after the crisis had passed and a still-pale Miss Prudence was propped against cushions sipping weak, sweet tea, “if he were to get you alone with no servants in attendance. He might even attempt to kiss you. No, no, Prudence, you must not go off again; Miss Thornhill will not return to Pinewood. She will remain here. We will have her things sent for. And we will lock all our doors from now on, even during the daytime. And bolt them too.”

  “I will be perfectly safe at Pinewood,” Viola assured both sisters. “You must not forget that I am surrounded there by my own loyal servants. Hannah has been with me all my life. Besides, Lord Ferdinand will be leaving soon. He is about to discover that life in the country is simply not for him. You can both help me if you will…”

  On the whole, Viola thought as she made her way homeward, she was pleased with her afternoon's visits. At least all the villagers with whom she was closely acquainted had heard her side of the story before he had had a chance to tell his own
. And those she had not told would soon find out for themselves. News and gossip traveled on the wind, she sometimes thought.

  As far as those families who lived in the country were concerned, well, she would be able to talk to several of them this evening when she dined at Crossings with the Claypoles.

  Lord Ferdinand Dudley would dine alone at Pinewood. Viola smiled with sheer malice. But thinking of the man only served to remind her that she could no longer approach her home with the usual glad lifting of her spirits. She looked ahead up the lawn toward the house and wondered if he was standing at one of the windows, watching her. She wondered if she would encounter him as soon as she entered the house—in the hall, on the stairs, in the upper corridor.

  It was intolerable to know that a stranger had invaded her most private domain. But there was no help for it, for the moment at least. And she could not afford to allow her footsteps to lag. She had an evening engagement to prepare for.

  She was striding along the terrace from the stable side of the house several minutes later, determined not to tiptoe fearfully into her own home, when she was met by the sight of him striding onto it from the opposite direction. They both abruptly stopped walking.

  He was still in his riding clothes. He was hatless. He looked disorientingly male in what she had made into her own essentially female preserve. And he was clearly making himself right at home. He must have been down by the river or out behind the house, inspecting the kitchen gardens and the greenhouses.

  He bowed stiffly.

  She curtsied stiffly—and then hurried on her way to the house without looking at him again. Whether he was coming in behind her or was still rooted to the spot or had gone to jump into the fountain, she neither knew nor cared.

  “Mr. Jarvey,” she said, seeing him pacing about the hall looking unaccustomedly lost. “Have Hannah come up to me, please.”

  She continued on her way upstairs, assuring herself with every step that she hurried only because there was little time left before she must leave for Crossings.