Games of Pleasure

by Julia Ross

  “That’s supposed to reassure me?”

  “Why not? I’m nothing to you. Lend me a few coins, and your duty as a gentleman is fulfilled!”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “The truth might convince me to agree. Nothing else will.”

  She trembled as if with fear or anger, or both. “You cannot keep me imprisoned here.”

  “No, but you can hardly leave in your present state of undress, however delightful that prospect might be to the villagers.”

  A clanging sound echoed from the hallway. Ryder strode to the door and flung it open to reveal Jenkins with the tub, followed by a string of servants carrying cans of hot water.

  “Take a bath,” he said. “Worry about nothing. No one will find you here. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Without a backward glance, he stalked from the room.

  MIRACLE wrapped his cloak about her body and watched the servants prepare the hot bath. She was—against all expectations—still alive, though she felt weary enough to die. She had been rescued by a man with the natural power of a god, and an earthly power not far from that. But not even the son of the Duke of Blackdown could save her, once the truth came out. The only answer was to flee as far from Dorset as possible. The Americas, perhaps?

  She swallowed the impulse to mad hilarity. She was still in shock. Her emotions were hardly trustworthy. Lord Ryderbourne probably had the power to do as he had promised: make sure that no one would find her here, at least for the moment. And if they did? Well, she might as well die clean as dirty!

  As soon as the men and boys left the room, Miracle shed the wet cloak and stripped off what remained of her ruined corset and shift. She winced as the hot water sought out every contusion, then dropped her head back into the bath, her hair floating about her shoulders.

  Angry voices sloshed in the tub and hissed in the crackle of the fire. When did you develop such fine tastes? In the gutter? Wait until I’ve finished with that pretty face! No one will ever want you again. Whore! Whore! You let Hanley roger you, but turn up your nose at Philip Willcott? For the last time, Miracle! For the last time!

  She buried her face in both hands. Water streamed from her hair. She spread her fingers to stare at the faint trace of the rings she had torn off earlier that day. With a shrug, she reached for the soap. It was scented with orange and lavender, like a memory of innocence. Miracle scrubbed herself until her skin shone red, as if she could scour away the stain in her soul.

  It was still raining outside. She had nothing to wear but Lord Ryderbourne’s damp cloak, huddled where she had dropped it on the floor. One problem at a time, perhaps? She was probably safe until morning, though as soon as he discovered what she had done, Lord Hanley would hunt her down. And when he found her, not even the high-and-mighty Lord Ryderbourne could save her from a last dance on nothing.

  She must get some clothes and some money. She must find out what ships left from which ports without attracting attention. She must plan!

  Yet fatigue had spread its corruption deep in the bone. The bed beckoned, a warming pan tucked within its cozy embrace. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to lie down for a few minutes?

  Miracle climbed from the tub and wrapped herself in a warm towel, then bent to dry her hair at the fire. The inn had provided a brush and comb, even a toothbrush with paste, even scented skin powder: everything necessary for a lady’s pleasure—or a man’s?

  Worry about nothing. No one will find you here. I’ll take care of everything.

  And perhaps he would, at least for a few hours, at least until the hue and cry arrived, and jeering strangers came to drag her away to her death.

  Miracle dropped the towel on the floor. She hung Lord Ryderbourne’s cloak where she could reach it. Then, in a heady splendor of scent, her hair like warm silk on her shoulders, she climbed into the waiting bed.

  SHE woke with her heart already pounding. The door had crashed open. Male voices echoed from the corridor. Lights danced and glimmered in the darkness, blinding her. It was too late, then! Too late! She would be hauled naked to her doom.

  Well, damn them all!

  Miracle grabbed the cloak, spun from the bed, and ran to the window to wrestle with the casement. The drop to the inn yard was probably too far to survive, but better that than the gallows!

  A hand clamped down hard on her wrist. Hot breath, angry and fast, seared her cheek.

  “What the devil are you about?”

  She stared up at Lord Ryderbourne’s face, then glanced over his shoulder. With a great clanging of buckets, menservants were hauling away her cold bath water. Another procession of servants had lit candles and set a table and chairs in front of the fire. Maids were bringing in trays of hot food. Miracle closed her eyes against fierce tears: the mad upwelling of relief, and her unholy mirth.

  The door closed behind the servants, leaving her alone with her rescuer. His dry hair shone with highlights of mahogany, like a blood-bay horse, not as dark as it had seemed earlier, soaked in seawater. He wore no jacket, only breeches with a clean shirt and cravat. The linen at his throat formed crisp folds beneath his freshly shaved chin. While she slept, he must have bathed and changed in another room.

  “You promised me you wouldn’t try to take your own life.” His fingers burned on her skin. “Does your word mean nothing?”

  Her pulse thundered, but she smiled up at him. “I only said that I wouldn’t do so without good cause.”

  He gazed down at her with a kind of ironic bewilderment, honed to a knife edge. He was obviously aroused. Though she had held together the front of the cloak with one hand, it must have offered glimpses of her naked body as she moved.

  “And this supper is cause enough?” he said. “You have such particular culinary requirements that the Merry Monarch cannot satisfy them?”

  “Not at all, my lord.” His scent enveloped her—man and soap and fresh linen. A hint of ocean lingered only in his boots, dried and polished now, though still stained by salt. She inhaled, flaring her nostrils to take his essence straight into her lungs. “Indeed, something smells heavenly and I’m ravenous.”

  His eyes shone as keen as kingfishers’ wings. The mood shifted, as if sunlight suddenly flooded a dark courtyard.

  He lifted his fingers and released her. “So am I.”

  “Then we should eat,” she said, answering the hidden message in that green gaze, “if you believe it is safe to do so?”

  “Everyone in this village is sworn to secrecy about your arrival. No one will dare to gainsay me.”

  Miracle walked away a few paces. Hot shivers ran up her spine. Keeping her back to him, she reached up to take the hooded collar of the cloak in both hands.

  “Yet perhaps there’s another kind of danger?” she asked. “I could quite easily allow this cape to slide from my shoulders. Then I’d stand naked before you, inviting you to satisfy quite another appetite.”

  She heard him inhale. His boots echoed on the floorboards. The door latch rattled under his fingers. He stopped.

  “That thought has obviously occurred to me, but I shan’t act on it. I’m not such a cad.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. Yes, he was still erect. Magnificently so! “Perhaps your body wouldn’t agree?”

  He leaned his shoulders back against the door and crossed both arms over his chest. “The body has no conscience, ma’am. However, I was raised in a thicket of scruples.”

  “So was Sir Lancelot.”

  “The most painful example of infidelity in literature?”

  She couldn’t quite read his expression. A sardonic impulse to mirth? A ruefully gracious withdrawal? She walked to the fireplace, offering him nothing but her cloaked back and the dark waterfall of her hair.

  “Painful?” she asked. “Why?”

  “Because Lancelot’s weakness haunted his conscience. It made him less than he had wanted to be.”

  “He was still a perfect knight.”

  “Not in his own eyes. He had believed he
was perfect only as long as he remained chaste.”

  “Then he was in thrall to obsolete teachings about chastity and sin,” she said.

  “Obsolete?”

  “You don’t think so?” She turned to face him and smiled pointedly at his obvious discomfort. However much he tried to behave as a gentleman, he was alone in a room with a woman who was naked except for a cloak. Her nipples rose against the soft lining. “Are you also sworn to chastity, my lord?”

  “I’m not a member of the Round Table.”

  “No, you St. Georges enjoy a quite different reputation: one of duty and power and privilege, just like the knights of King Arthur’s court, but it’s also one of self-indulgence, as typified by your brother. Lord Jonathan is notorious for sin, I believe?”

  His eyes burned as if she had just lit a fuse in his heart. “Who the devil says such nonsense?”

  “Ah,” she said. “So your little brother has not adventured all over the world?”

  “Jack’s not the heir. He can do as he likes.”

  “Goodness!” She poured open scorn into her voice. “And Lord Ryderbourne cannot?”

  “You think I’m doing exactly as I want right now? Maybe. But with power comes the responsibility to use it wisely. I’m not without conscience.”

  “No, my lord, I believe your conscience is very fine!”

  He stood in silence for a moment, as if digesting this, then he pushed away from the door to pace across the room.

  “Do you want me to flee? It would seem that I’m not quite such a coward, after all.” He stopped, his head bent, then he flung up his chin and inhaled. “I would like you to trust me. Is that unreasonable?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s not a matter of reason?”

  “For God’s sake! Any gentleman would rescue a dog from drowning without expecting anything in return.”

  “Then why insist on keeping me here against my will?”

  “Because a great deal lies within my authority, and I have judged it best that you eat and sleep before you make any further decisions. I brought clothes. There! On the bed. Something should fit.” Intensity streamed from him as light streams from a lamp. “No one from outside will find you here—not even your husband.”

  Miracle swallowed. “I have no husband.”

  “Not in your heart, perhaps, not after what he’s done. If you wish it, I can make that a reality in the world, as well.”

  It was a statement of raw power. Very possibly it was true. Yet he could not, of course, help her. Stifling her reaction to the absurdity of her predicament, Miracle walked across to the bed. Dresses, petticoats, underwear lay on the covers. She formed a double drape in the cloak so that she was entirely modest, and turned back to face him.

  “How can you be so sure that I’m married, my lord?”

  “Only a husband could possibly have sufficient hold over you to create this much fear. You were wearing several rings until recently. Any single lady beaten by a stranger or mere acquaintance would run straight to her family for protection. Or has a foolhardy elopement estranged you from your family?”

  She raised a brow. “And if it had, you can order Parliament? You can dissolve marriages simply through the power of your name? Or perhaps you would challenge any wife-beater to a duel, so that you could kill him? Is that your solution?”

  The ocean wave turned in the depths of his eyes, as if her words were deadly serious, which perhaps they were. “Which would you prefer?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m overwhelmed by so much gallantry. Have you ever fought a duel, my lord?”

  “I’m perfectly confident of my ability with a pistol.”

  “That’s not what I asked. No doubt your daily life is a dreary round of obligation that leaves you little time to fight duels.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I have responsibilities, certainly.”

  “And can you afford to renounce all that weight of duty to risk your life for a stranger?”

  “There’s no need to assume that my life would be risked. There are other paths.”

  “Ah, so you would solve all my problems through the courts! Wouldn’t that be a considerable burden on your time, my lord?”

  He smiled at her, but it was the smile of the sun-touched clouds that ran ahead of a storm. “Any legal issues you need settled—divorce, annulment—could be delegated to my secretaries. Whatever your problem, I can solve it with negligible cost to myself. Why reject that?”

  “Perhaps I don’t wish to be any more deeply in your debt, my lord.”

  “Any such debt is irrelevant and freely forgiven. What can it matter?”

  She bit her lip. “It matters to me.”

  “There’s no debt that counts in this,” he insisted, “except what’s owed to honor. Whether either of us likes it or not, you’re my responsibility. I insist that you not leave here without either allowing me to help you, or clearly explaining why I should not. You will agree to that?”

  She wrapped his cloak more tightly about her shoulders. “It seems that I must.”

  He stepped closer, splendid in his masculine intensity. “You give me your word on it?”

  Miracle glanced up into his eyes. Beneath the natural arrogance that came with so much power lay a very genuine concern. He probably wasn’t aware of what else that intense green gaze betrayed. But she was.

  “Yes, I promise, Lord Ryderbourne. I won’t leave this room without either telling you the truth or letting you help me.”

  “Then we have a bargain,” he said. “I will hold you to it.”

  “And tonight? Your family isn’t expecting you?”

  “The weather’s turned foul. I’ve sent a message to Wyldshay that I’ve been delayed.”

  Miracle turned her back. She allowed the cloak to slip just a little from her shoulders. “You intend to spend the night here?”

  Lord Ryderbourne sucked in a long breath and strode away. She heard the shutters clang shut. “I certainly intend to have supper.”

  Her pulse leaped with the hot thunder of awareness, tinged just a little with an oddly wry disappointment. So he was no different from any other man, after all?

  “Then if you’ll allow me a few moments to get dressed, my lord, I would be honored to join you for a meal. Then by morning you may have either truth or challenge—or perhaps both.”

  RICH and thick and lustrous—colored like starlings, like blackbirds, like iridescent rooks—her hair spun dark skeins over her white skin. The cloak slipped a little more. Such tender, fascinating bones and flesh, the curve of a woman’s neck and spine and shoulder blade!

  His heart hammering, Ryder turned his back and locked the shutters in place with their iron bar.

  His mystery swooped up the clothes and stepped behind a screen that stood in a corner of the room.

  She had been naked beneath the cloak! Her every movement had offered shadowed glimpses of smooth legs, elegant ankles and feet. And perhaps a breast? A curved thigh? He had tried, a little too desperately, not to look.

  I’m not such a cad!

  Not by conscious intent, perhaps! Yet her movements behind the screen mocked his composure. He stared at his fingers—spread on the shutters like starfish—as his mind arrowed in on the sounds. The shush of silk petticoat. The slide of laces. The snap of buttons. The little rap of shoes. At each rustle his arousal only grew stronger.

  For God’s sake! Was his body so blind to conscience? She had been beaten and cast adrift. If her husband knew that she’d survived, he would no doubt hunt her down to complete his punishment. Fate had placed her instead into the hands of the one man who could help her, whatever her predicament.

  Ryder inhaled and turned around. Light flickered about the room, washing color over the tapestry screen. He had already secured another bedroom, of course: the room where he had washed and changed earlier.

  Duty and discipline had always defined his life. He had absolute faith in his self-control and in the rightness of his insisten
ce on gallantry. Yet he also felt this bright surge of courage, the response to adventure, the temptation to take just a few hours for himself with a beautiful woman who owed him her life. Why not? What harm could there be in it? Perhaps, if he could only win her confidence, she would yet allow him to help her?

  She stepped out from behind the screen.

  Dark hair framed her face to stream in a shining waterfall over her shoulders and back. Loose strands curled at her throat and shoulders and white neck. She had made no attempt to put it up or secure it with ribbon. Instead, where a necklace might lie, she had tied a narrow black velvet ribbon around the base of her throat.

  The effect—when she was otherwise formally dressed—seemed outrageously wanton.

  Thunderously hot blood pounded into his groin.

  Her ivory silk dress buttoned at both shoulders. A gown that had belonged to the innkeeper’s daughter, the silk no doubt bought from smugglers, the result purchased by Ryder at a premium earlier that evening. An overdress of thin black netting rippled over the silk, emphasizing every curve of long thigh and waist.

  The net sleeves of the overdress disguised the marks on her arms. The bruising on her cheek had disappeared into the shadow of her hair. Nothing hid the glorious swell of her breasts, her skin soft as cream above her low neckline. As if she needed to find solace in his admiration, nothing hid the sheer, breathtaking beauty of his captive, wrapped in mystery and courage and dark wit.

  She walked forward, her slippers almost silent: white satin dancing slippers, just a slip of fabric with the thinnest of soles, and ribbons that laced up the ankles.

  “I’ve been ungracious,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be. Your Lordship has been most generous and I am grateful. I owe you my life. I’ve not forgotten that.”

  “The gratitude is all mine.” Perhaps he really meant it. The idea left him feeling oddly defenseless. “If I seemed imperious—”

  She laughed. “Ah! Are most ladies so demoralized simply by your thunderous presence, my lord?”

  He took a deep breath. “Yes, I suppose many of them are.” He held out a chair for her, then seated himself opposite. Desire mocked like a third guest at the table.