No Man's Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  They talked about the weather.

  She told him how the river walk had been so overgrown when she first came to Pinewood that she had thought the area was mere wilderness. When she had discovered that there was a well-defined path there, she had set the gardeners to work and had even sent some of the farm laborers to help them. He told her about Oxford and the delight he had taken in the libraries there and the conversation of men who were unashamedly intellectual.

  “It is a wonder,” she said, “you did not stay there and become a lecturer or a professor or don.”

  “No.” He laughed. “By the time I had finished my studies, I was vowing never to open another book in my life. I wanted to live.”

  They talked about the weather.

  She told him that her one real extravagance since coming to Somersetshire had been buying books. She sent to London and Bath for them. Several of the books in the library had been added during the past two years, including the copy of Pride and Prejudice from which he was reading to the ladies. He talked about the book, and they embarked on a brief but spirited discussion of its merits.

  They talked about the weather.

  When she rose at the end of the meal and announced that she would leave him to his port, he breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was over for another day. She was incredibly beautiful. She was also charming and intelligent and an interesting companion. It was easy to relax into the pleasure of her company and forget that after two more days he would never see her again.

  He found it a rather depressing thought.

  He left the dining room a mere ten minutes later, not having drunk any port, and made his way to the library. But Jarvey intercepted him.

  “I have carried a tea tray up to the drawing room, my lord,” he said, “at Miss Thornhill's request.”

  Did she expect him to join her there? But it would be churlish of him not to.

  “She asked me to inform you,” the butler added.

  She was pouring a cup of tea for herself when he entered the room. She looked up, smiled, and poured another for him.

  “You did not stay long,” she said.

  She took her own cup and saucer and sat down to one side of the fireplace. She had had the fire lit, he saw, even though it was not a cold night. But it was almost dark outside and the candles were lit. The fire added coziness to the room. He took the chair at the other side of the hearth.

  She did not speak. She was drinking and gazing rather dreamily into the flames. She looked relaxed and elegant at the same time.

  “Why did you become a courtesan?” he asked, and could have bitten out his tongue as soon as the words were spoken.

  She transferred her gaze to his face and her expression changed so slowly and so subtly that for a while he was unaware of it. He was aware only of acute discomfort.

  “Why else does one work?” she asked him. “For money, of course.”

  He had been pondering the question a great deal during the past few days. He had never thought much about whores and their motivation. But when he did think about them, he concluded that they must enter their profession for one of two reasons—love or money. Which had it been for her? She had answered the question. But she had been London's leading courtesan for a long time, and she had charged a fortune for a fee. Surely after the first year or so she had not needed to continue to work for money. She must have made enough on which to retire quite comfortably.

  “Why did you need the money?” he asked.

  Her smile, he realized suddenly, was not Viola Thornhill's. “Asked like a true son of the aristocracy,” she said. “I had to eat, my lord. Food is necessary to survival. Had you not realized that?”

  “But you must have made a fortune,” he said.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Yes, I did.”

  “Did you enjoy it? Your profession, I mean?” He understood now that he was talking to Lilian Talbot—the amusement in her eyes was faintly mocking. Her voice had become lower pitched, more velvet in tone.

  She laughed softly and began to run one finger lightly along the neckline of her gown, beginning at one shoulder. “Everyone, male and female, hungers for sex,” she said. “Is it not a dream profession to work and earn one's living doing what one most enjoys? It is far preferable to making up beds and emptying chamber pots for a pittance.”

  He was slightly shocked. He had never heard a lady use the word sex or speak openly about sexual hunger.

  “But with so many different men?” He frowned.

  “But that is part of the allure,” she told him. “It is said, you know, that no two men are identical, that each has unique gifts. I can vouch for the truth of that.”

  Her finger had paused at the slight shadow indicating the valley between her breasts. She hooked the fingertip down inside the fabric of her dress. He felt an uncomfortable tightening in his groin.

  “And it was the challenge of my profession,” she said, “to satisfy the individual needs of each client. To give so much pleasure that each man would plead for more. And never forget me.”

  Who had started this? he wondered, leaning farther back in his chair as if to put more distance between himself and her. And why the devil had the fire been lit on such a warm night?

  She seemed to be having the identical thought. “It is very warm in here, is it not?” she asked, and she reached down a little farther into her décolletage to pull the silk of her bodice away from her flesh before returning it and sliding the finger up inside the bodice to her shoulder again.

  He was mesmerized by the sight of that long finger. When he looked up into her eyes, they laughed knowingly at him.

  “I should have had my maid dress my hair up off my neck,” she said, raising both arms and sliding her fingers beneath the coiled braids there. She closed her eyes briefly and tipped back her head. And then he realized that her fingers were working at the braids, her movements quite unhurried. She drew out pins and set them down neatly on the table beside her. The braids uncoiled and then fell, two of them, down her back. She drew one over her shoulder and unraveled it. Thick, wavy hair spread over her bosom and down to her waist as she drew the second braid over her other shoulder and unraveled that too. She shook her head when the task was completed, and her hair fell about her in luxurious, disordered waves.

  Ferdinand's mouth was dry. He had not taken his eyes from her. Neither of them had spoken a word for several minutes.

  “That is better,” she said, looking across at him with heavy-lidded eyes. The sharp, mocking look had gone. “Are you overwarm too? Why do you not remove your neckcloth? I will not mind. There are just the two of us. I have told Mr. Jarvey that we do not wish to be disturbed.”

  He was not so dazzled that he did not know exactly what was happening. She had decided that tonight was the night, and she had gone into action. She intended to bed him within the next hour and banish him tomorrow. For all the heavy sensuality of her eyes, he could not miss noticing their essential emptiness. She was working. This was business to her. And she was an experienced worker.

  But very, very good. Every bit as good as she had promised. She had not even touched him yet. She was sitting several feet away from him. She was fully clothed; so was he. But he was wearing silk evening breeches. It would have been foolish to try to disguise his arousal. How would he do it? Grab a pillow and set it on his lap? He made no such attempt. Her eyes had not dipped, but he felt no doubt at all that she knew very well what effect her voice and actions would have on any red-blooded male.

  He might have fought her. He might have jumped to his feet, fully aroused though he was, and walked from the room. He had always had good control over his sexual urges. But it was perhaps part of her skill, he thought as he reached up and unknotted and removed his neckcloth, that she could seduce even a man who knew he was being seduced and had sworn it could not happen.

  The point was that perhaps it would be better this way. He had decided that he was going to give her Pinewood, that he was going to walk a
way from it, figuratively as well as literally, and buy himself property elsewhere. He would give her what was rightfully hers—the old earl should never have promised and broken his promise. A gentleman just did not act that way. The trouble was, she might spurn the gift from him. There was no predicting her reaction when he told her.

  Perhaps he should simply let her win her wager.

  And he wanted her. Desire had become indistinguishable from pain. His erection pressed against the tight, confining fabric of his breeches.

  “Open your shirt at the neck,” she said, leaning back in her chair and laying her head against its rest so that it looked in the candlelight as if she were already laid back against pillows, her hair spread in a dark red cloud of waves about her. “You will feel cooler.”

  He doubted it, but he did as she suggested and ran one hand inside his shirt. His chest was damp. She was watching him and moistening her lips, the tip of her tongue moving slowly across her upper lip.

  “Has anyone told you how beautiful you are?” she asked him.

  No one had. He was deeply embarrassed. What man would enjoy being called beautiful? At the same time, it felt as if Jarvey must have crept in invisibly and built the fire halfway up the chimney.

  “You are, you know,” she said. “Incredibly beautiful. Even with your clothes on.”

  He shot out of his chair then and closed the distance between them in a few strides. He held out a hand for hers, and she placed her own in it and allowed him to draw her to her feet and straight into his arms.

  “Witch!” he said, before fastening his open mouth to hers.

  But she drew back her head and set her two forefingers against his lips.

  “You are impatient,” she said. “I wanted to make love to you with words for an hour or longer, but I cannot do that when you are touching me. Do you not like making love with words?”

  “I think we had better go to bed,” he said. “I want action, not words. I am conceding defeat, you see. You win. I will pay dearly for you. Pinewood in exchange for one night in bed with you. You have promised that I will never regret it. Live up to your promise, then.”

  He tried to kiss her again, but she cupped his face with both hands, holding it away from her, and gazed into his eyes. An extraordinary thing happened then. Lilian Talbot gradually dissolved into Viola Thornhill. He tried to draw her closer again. He was desperate for her. But she broke from his grasp and turned to run with stumbling steps toward the door.

  “Viola—” he called.

  But she was through it and gone before he could say any more.

  14

  V iola did not stop running until she was inside her bedchamber, the closed door against her Y back. She could have won the wager within the hour. Indeed, he had already conceded defeat.

  She had just not been able to do it.

  She did not understand why. He was merely one more man; it was merely one more night of work.

  She had not been able to do it.

  She pushed herself away from the door and moved toward her dressing room, peeling off her gold silk gown as she went. She reached for her nightgown, but her hand stilled before she touched it. She could not bear to lie down here, to try to sleep, knowing that in time he would come up to his own room, not far from hers. She dressed quickly in one of her day dresses. She drew a warm cloak about her shoulders and as an afterthought pulled down the blanket that was always kept folded on top of the wardrobe.

  The hard part was leaving her room again. She set her ear to the edge of the door and listened. There was no sound. She opened the door a crack and peeped out. Nothing and no one. She darted along the corridor, her heart thumping, ready to run back to her room if she should see him on the stairs. But they were deserted and she ran down, pausing when she reached the drawing room floor and gazing warily at the closed door. It remained shut. She darted down to the hall, which was mercifully deserted, slid back the bolts on the front doors as quickly and quietly as she could, and slipped outside. She pulled the door closed slowly, trying not to make a sound.

  A minute later, she was half running along the terrace and down the sloping lawn until the trees that shaded the river walk hid her from view. Then she slowed. She had to. The moonlight did not penetrate here and she had to find her way to the path by touch and memory. Even the path itself was dark—almost frighteningly so. But she made her way along it, telling herself that ghosts and goblins were preferable to the inside of Pinewood Manor tonight. Soon enough she had walked past the trees and there was light by which to see where she was going. It was even sparkling on the surface of the river.

  She sat down in the exact spot where she had made a daisy chain a week or ten years ago. It was not a chilly night, but she wrapped both her cloak and the blanket about her—she was shivering. She hit the black depths of despair as she sat. There was no glimmering of hope left. She drew her knees up, wrapped her arms about them, and rested her forehead on them.

  The fight had gone out of her and she did not know how she would ever find the energy to get up from where she was. But it would not take a great deal of energy, she thought fleetingly, to move the few feet from where she was to the riverbank. The water was deep and fast-flowing. All she would have to do …

  But even escape into oblivion was not an option. If she died, Claire would have to take her place….

  A twig snapped and her head shot up from her knees.

  “Don't be alarmed,” a voice said. “It's just me.”

  She would have preferred the ghosts and goblins. Far preferred.

  “Go away,” she said wearily, returning her forehead to her knees.

  He did not answer her. Neither did he go away. She sensed rather than heard him sitting on the bank beside her.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked.

  “I saw you,” he said, “from the drawing room window.”

  And he had pursued her, his lust unsatisfied. But he was all out of luck. Lilian Talbot was dead. Oh, she would have to be resurrected soon enough, but not tonight. Not here. And never with him.

  She sat in silence. So did he. He would go away eventually, she thought, and she would be left to concentrate on her despair. It frightened her. Even at her darkest moments, she had never been much given to self-pity.

  And then every muscle in her body tensed. His hand had come to rest on her head, his touch so light that for a moment she was not sure that her senses were not playing tricks on her. But then she felt his fingertips, feather-light, massaging her scalp through her hair.

  “Shhh,” he said, though she had not spoken a word.

  She dared not move. She did not want to move. His touch felt so very good, so very soothing. She had always been the pleasure giver. None of her clients had ever considered her pleasure. Why should they? Besides, personal gratification had always been the farthest thing from her mind while she had been at work. She let go of despair and accepted the brief gift of the present moment. She was relaxed in every muscle when his hand lifted and brushed her hair over to the side farthest from him. Then his lips were against the back of her neck, warm, soft, light. She should have felt threatened—he had also moved closer to her side—but instead she felt immeasurably comforted.

  “I am Viola Thornhill,” she said without lifting her head. She had not intended to speak. But it was as well that he know, just in case he had come with any idea of resuming what she had abandoned in the drawing room.

  “Yes.” His voice was a whisper of sound against her ear. “Yes, I know that, Viola.”

  The sudden yearning she felt was as piercing, as painful as the despair that had preceded it. She lifted her head and turned her face to him. He was only inches away. She could not see his expression in the darkness.

  “I know,” he said again, and then his mouth was on hers.

  She hugged her knees and allowed the kiss. She did not participate except to relax her lips and teeth. She stood back mentally and emotionally, rather as she had done the night of
the fête, except for different reasons, to observe. And to take the kiss to herself as a gift. She felt gifted.

  He was not fierce and impatient, as he had been earlier in the drawing room. He kissed her slowly and with infinite gentleness, his mouth open, warm, and moist, his tongue tracing the line of her lips and then penetrating slowly, exploring, touching, teasing, sending darting spirals of sensation down into her throat and even into her breasts. One of his hands cupped the side of her face and then smoothed the hair back from her temple.

  She had little previous experience with gentleness. She was helpless against it.

  “Viola,” he whispered when he finally drew back his head.

  “Yes.”

  A question had been asked and answered. But she was no longer outside herself, observing. She had spoken the one word from a deep inner need—for someone gentle and tender, for someone who asked the question with her name, for someone who did not demand that she perform for him.

  He touched her then, drawing her upward until they were both on their knees, facing each other. He unbuttoned her cloak and let it fall. She lifted both arms as he drew her dress off over her head. He did not immediately remove her shift too. He set his hands on either side of her waist—they were trembling, she noticed—and lowered his head to kiss her beneath one ear, at the base of her throat, on the rise of one breast. When his mouth closed over the nipple and suckled her, she tipped back her head, closed her eyes, and buried her fingers in his hair.

  And then she lifted her arms again while he removed her shift.

  She was almost a total stranger to physical desire. She felt it now in the almost painful tightening of her breasts and in the raw, pulsing ache in her womb and down between her thighs. She was pressed to him from her waist to her knees, and through the thin silk of his knee breeches she could feel again the hard bulk of his erection.