Her Mystery Duke Page 21

  At the house party, just last night, after dinner in the parlor, David had told everyone that she was a published author of children’s stories. He had then pulled out the leather-bound volume which had just been released by her new publisher. But she couldn’t help feeling she’d just gone from being an awkward, chubby, common girl to being a complete oddity.

  But David had beamed with pride and several of the gentlemen looked at her with renewed interest.

  She still felt somewhat disconnected from the whole matter of being published. She had expected to feel such joy. Oh, what was wrong with her? Why was she suddenly so dissatisfied with her writing? She should simply force herself to write and keep writing until something good came of it. However, she never seemed to have the time. There always seemed to be fittings for new gowns, sittings to have her hair arranged by her maid, or late mornings, sleeping off the effects of too much lovemaking.

  Even David had admitted that he had not made love so frequently since he’d been twenty-five or younger.

  “You shall be the death of me,” he had said more than once. But he had laughed as he said it. David seemed filled with more energy than he could ever use. As though he were restless in his current manner of living. Daily, at dawn, he rode his horse in the park and he boxed at his sporting club. But it almost seemed an energy born of impatience with the world.

  Still, they did seem to engage in an inordinate amount of carnal activity. It must be a phase of being new lovers, like a honeymoon. It was completely normal for her to feel tired. To be overwhelmed by her new life and the demands of being David’s mistress.

  Or was all of that simply an excuse?

  “What is on your mind?”

  At David’s deep, relaxed-sounding voice, she glanced up. “Oh, I didn’t know you were awake.”

  She cringed. What a stupid thing to say. Try as she might, she’d never be as interesting or sophisticated as those other women at the party. Would he eventually tire of such a dull little mouse of a mistress?

  He traced a fingertip lightly between her eyes. “Whatever can make you frown like that?”

  She tried to relax her face. “You don’t really want to hear my thoughts at this moment.”

  “They are not happy thoughts?”

  “Far from it.”

  “Well, I want to hear them anyway.”

  “I was thinking of those other women at the party.”

  His features became tense “They are courtesans. They are different from you.”

  Unease twisted through her stomach. Was he unhappy with her behavior? With the way she hadn’t fitted in? “Are they really so different?”

  His countenance eased. “Of course they are.”

  “You may think so. But I think father’s doctor would say his prediction had come true. The world will say it also.”

  He drew his dark brows together and his expression grew pained. “Jeanne, don’t do this. You’re not used to travel yet. It is part of the reason why we went there to begin with, to accustom you. You’re simply tired.”

  She chewed on the tip of her glove.

  “I have asked you not to do that.”

  She felt her frown snap back into place. “Because ladies don’t nibble on their gloves.”

  “Yes and because it gives away your nervousness. It is not a good habit to encourage. It is not always wise to reveal what you are feeling.”

  She put her hand into her lap. “If you had a daughter, would you want her living the life I currently lead?”

  His mouth tightened and he re-shifted in the seat. “Jeanne, that’s not a fair question.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. My daughter would have an inheritance, a title. She would have so many more options than you. It would never be a fair comparison.”

  The carriage began to roll again.

  David studied her for long moments with his most penetrating gaze, his heavy, dark brows brought low as though he were thinking deeply. Analyzing her. She shifted her position and resisted the strong urge to chew on her fingertip again. “Why did you stop writing?”

  The question fell like a lead weight between them.

  “Why do you believe I am not writing?”

  He gave her a stern look.

  “Don’t prevaricate with me.” He took her hand and removed the glove. He ran a caress over her fingers. “I know you’re not writing because your hands are always so clean now. No ink smudges. Tell me why?”

  “I just don’t find the time for it lately. I am sure it will pass.”

  “You’re not like those other women. You need something of your own to feel passionate about.”

  “I admit I don’t feel much passion for writing now.”

  “Maybe it is time for you to re-evaluate your work.”

  “Yes, perhaps.” She said it merely to placate him and end the discussion. Any time she thought about her lack of feeling for her work, it made her agitated. She certainly didn’t wish to discuss it with him.

  “You insisted on presenting a very hard and prickly exterior when we met. However, on the inside, you were really the next thing to a girl.”

  It made her exceedingly uncomfortable to have him analyze her like this. He seemed to take a certain pleasure in it. She shrugged. “I suppose I must accept your assessment. I couldn’t see myself from the outside.”

  “Now you are maturing. Perhaps your writing needs to be allowed to mature as well. Perhaps that is where your sense of discontent with it is coming from.”

  “Perhaps.” Her head was beginning to ache from this conversation. She put her hands to her temples and rubbed. She always seemed to be rushing, hurrying. There was never enough calm to think clearly.

  “Parliament will rise soon. We shall go away. Maybe someplace near my estate in York. We shall spend several weeks together alone.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Jeanne said.

  “You are simply tired.” He motioned to his lap. “Lay your head down and try to sleep some.”

  She laid her head on his lap and pressed her cheek to the fine nap of his velveteen pantaloons. The warmth of his well-muscled thighs and the scent of his body relaxed her own tense body. Comforted her. She wrapped her hand about his knee and closed her eyes.

  He slipped the pins from her hair, one by one, and then he began massaging her scalp. “We shall be home soon, my love, and we shall sleep in your bed tonight. Things will seem clearer to you in the morning.”

  She wished she could believe that. However, she feared that she was only beginning to face a hard, cold truth. That Dr. Edmonton had been correct all along.

  * * * *

  David leaned against the wall in the ballroom of Somerville House. The ladies in their ball gowns made a colorful, twirling rainbow as they danced the quadrille. It was a small, family gathering to celebrate his cousin’s seventeenth birthday. The music was cheerful and everyone was happy.

  But David was lonely.

  And he was tired from trying to spread himself between his life with Jeanne, his political life and his family life. There just weren’t enough hours in the day.

  And every hour he spend apart from Jeanne was empty.

  He wanted her by his side.

  Over the last few days, the seed of something had begun to take root. Somewhere deep in his mind. A developing undertow. Something that would require a total reordering of everything he had once expected of life. Of himself. And Jeanne. It was just a spark of an idea. It filled him with warmth. It would take time to grow.

  “There you are, David, hiding in the shadows of your own ballroom.”

  He turned. Isabella was resplendent in an apple green gown with a sheer white overdress.

  “Good evening, Isabella.”

  “I can never find you anymore. Your servants report you are gone from your house more often than not. I need you to escort me to the Middleton’s ball tomorrow tonight.”

  “I can’t. I am going to the theatre.”

  I
sabella’s expression hardened and she flickered a glance about. “You’re taking Miss Darling?”

  She had lowered her voice, as though Jeanne were a dirty secret.

  Irritation sparked through his blood. “Yes.”

  Isabella pursed her lips for a moment. “Heavens, David, I would have thought you’d have grown weary of her by now. I mean she’s not exactly of the first water, is she? I heard your kitchen servants gossiping. They said she behaved like the commonest bumpkin when she visited here.”

  She had actually spoken to his kitchen servants about Jeanne. That spoke volumes about how much the matter of his mistress must be vexing her.

  “She may have been a little awkward. She may have some rough edges to smooth out still. But that’s the thing about culture and refinement. It can be easily taught, if one is set to learn. What a pity the same cannot be said about compassion.”

  Isabella stared at him a moment and then she fanned her face. Rapidly. And she tittered, a forced sound. “Oh, David, you say the most curious things. I just think she’s quite a bit below your dignity. If you’re going to keep a mistress, then she ought to be someone of fashion with an elegant reputation. You are a duke, remember?”

  “Well, when I forget, I am sure you’ll remind me.”

  Isabella gave another forced giggle and continued to fan herself.

  It was none of her affair whom he chose to spend his time with. And of all people, Jeanne didn’t need Isabella’s approval. But then, one had to understand Isabella’s situation and temperament. Naturally she would be among the first to cast judgment on her social inferiors.

  Isabella coughed softly. “I wish I could have gained your agreement about the Middleton ball before you made other plans. I stopped by your office yesterday to talk about it. But you were already gone.”

  “I had an afternoon appointment.”

  Jeanne had been in low spirits since the country house party. Unable to concentrate on anything else, he’d been unable to shake his concern for her. So, he had left his chambers early. He had visited her and carried her immediately to her bedchamber. There he had bound her arms over her chest and tied legs spread-eagle on her bed and taken her. The euphoria had been fantastic for them both. However, the loss of time from his work had weighed heavily on his conscience. He was spreading himself too thin. Something had to give.

  Isabella was gaping at him. “But it was well before noon. You never leave your offices so early.” She frowned. “You are acting very strangely as of late.”

  He needed to be alone with his thoughts. “Pardon me, Isabella, but I am going to take a walk in the garden.”

  She snapped her fan shut. “But you are the host, you shouldn’t just leave—”

  “It is springtime. I think I should like to take a walk in the fresh air.”

  Isabella shook her head. “You are behaving very strangely.”

  * * * *

  Hours later, David sat in Jeanne’s bedchamber. Firelight lent a glow to Jeanne’s golden hair as she ran the brush through it. She was lingering excessively over the task. David could feel her despondency permeating the chamber.

  She’d been like this since the house party. He had needed to attend that house party. Important connections were built and reinforced at such clandestine events. Sometimes more so than the official events. And to be perfectly honest, he would have hated to leave her. So he had taken her along. She was his mistress after all.

  However, he should never have taken her to the house party. She wasn’t like the other women and of course she felt out of place there. Shame washed over him. He had wanted her to fit there. He had wanted there to be some area of his life where she fit. Somewhere besides this house.

  Jeanne had made him happy and yet she was not completely content with their arrangement. She wasn’t a courtesan. At heart, she was a good girl and she wanted respectability and more security than the deed to her house and a contract that entitled her a very generous pension. That was something he found hard to ignore. One couldn’t love a woman and not feel her pain as acutely as one’s own.

  And his feelings for her, his need for her, might well be another great distraction. But he viewed it differently now.

  No, he wasn’t truly distracted. He was awake. He saw things more clearly, could think with greater discernment and scope. He’d been lost in a sort of narrow minded, limited vision for far too long. Now he’d begun to take a long, hard look at the way he’d been living, at the futility of the type of work he’d allowed to consume his life for far too long. Money and influence prevented real change. There had to be a better way.

  He thought often of how Jeanne had saved him that first day. Lost, alone, not knowing who he was, he might well have ended up in some hellish situation of barbaric treatment. He could have found himself placed in the care of people who didn’t recognize him. People who might have refused to believe him once he remembered himself. They might have dismissed his assertions as the rantings of a madman.

  That might be a fantastical extrapolation of how events could have unfolded. But he couldn’t take his mind off the personal nature of her concern for him that day. He’d been a stranger to her. Nothing to her. And yet she had cared for and treated him with compassion.

  Her personal sense of compassion was the most inspiring thing he’d ever known. He began to think about ways his own crusade could be more personally directed. How he could learn to be more actively compassionate in a way that would touch individuals and make a greater, more lasting change than his work in the political realm.

  Jeanne made him see the world in a whole new way.

  “Jeanne.”

  She paused in the act of brushing and met his eyes in the mirror.

  “I shan’t ask you to attend one of those events again.”

  “Why not David?”

  “Because you’re not like those women and it was insensitive of me to expect you to try and fit in with them.”

  “I shall have to learn, won’t I?”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I am your whore now, aren’t I?”

  She had to fit somewhere in his life besides in this house and this bed. But she wasn’t his whore. Never his whore.

  “I’ve told you to stop using that word to refer to yourself.” He went to her in the bed and lay beside her under the covers. “In fact, I think if you do it again I should punish you.”

  She looked up at him, her big blue eyes afraid, lost. “David, what is our future to be?”

  He caressed her back. “I made a mistake before in thinking that I could define what we would become. I tried to limit its boundaries and I nearly killed what we have. I think we need flexibility. We need to keep learning about each other and continue growing.”

  Beneath his hands, her ribs began to rise and fall faster. Her muscles tensed. “There’s no room for us to grow. We are now as we shall always be. A duke and his mistress.”

  Why should they be limited to that future? Only the narrowness of vision or a lack of moral courage on either of their parts would prevent something else. There was only one way that Jeanne could become part of his life.

  Marriage.

  There was relief, a relaxation in every part of his body, to finally admit it to himself. To actually think the word. Other men of his station had married commoners. It would cause uproar, outrage. Those things would pass.

  His political career would suffer. Well, of late, he’d begun to doubt the effectiveness of politics to solve the problems he wished to address. But that was a whole other area he’d have to sort out. First things first.

  He took a deep breath.

  If he did choose to wed Jeanne, Isabella would cause her the most consistent and direct grief. Of course he would protect Jeanne as much as he could. He couldn’t always be at her side. He had to be sure Jeanne was resilient enough to bear all the difficulties. Before he let his heart make a rash decision, he had to make sure Jeanne was strong. His mother had been forced into the positio
n of duchess when she wasn’t able to cope. It had destroyed her.

  He put his lips to Jeanne’s, a brief kiss. “We have to be brave.”

  Her eyes widened. He sensed her perception. Her suspicion of where his thoughts were going. It frightened her. He felt her begin to withdraw, to retreat.

  He tightened his embrace. “We could face anything together.”

  “I am not a very brave person, David.”

  “Nonsense, my love. You are a very brave, giving person.”

  She closed her eyes. She turned away from him. But more than just the simple act, she had pulled away from him. Emotionally.

  He let her go. She needed time. He placed his hand lightly on the side her buttock, just to let her know he was there. Even in the face of her retreat. He closed his eyes and let sleep drift over him.

  In his dreams, hope burned brightly, as it had not done in years.

  * * * *

  “You’re no daughter of mine! Not now!”

  Papa lunged at her.

  The glint of metal caught the candlelight.

  “You think I don’t know whose idea it was to send me to that wretched place—all so you could be free to play the whore!”

  The knife arced down. She threw her hands up and screamed.

  Heart thudding, Jeanne sat straight up in the bed. The bed drapes were partly open. There were no candles, only moonlight streaming in the window.

  Strong arms wrapped about her. She struggled against them.

  “Shh, it is all right. You’re safe. It was just another dream.” David’s deep voice calmed her. He urged her to lie back and he cradled her for a time against his bare chest, his wiry hairs tickling her cheek. The sound of his heartbeat and his scent comforted her.

  The dreams had been coming so often of late. They made her feel scared and then after she’d awoken fully, they always made her feel foolish. She wasn’t a girl any longer. She shouldn’t be so terrified of nightmares.

  “I have to leave soon, my love,” he said. “But I hate to leave you alone when you are feeling overset.”