The Earl's Mistress Read online

  “And planned to live forevermore without sensual pleasure?” He was studying her across his glass. “Then it was a poor excuse for a marriage, my dear.”

  Isabella felt faintly awkward. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”

  He smiled without humor again. “I’m quite sure that you don’t,” he said. “Tell me, Isabella: Are you going to remain here with me and uphold your end of this devil’s bargain? Or do you mean to turn tail and run back to London like the sexual coward you’ve thus far been?”

  “I’ve never heard virtue called cowardice before,” she retorted.

  He shrugged, sipped again, then set the brandy aside. “I asked Mrs. Litner for an introduction to a particular sort of female,” he said, “a service she has provided me for some years, with sadly declining success. But with you, Isabella—oh, with you, the good lady may have just redeemed herself for all time. Or she may have just suffered her last failure.”

  “And you suffer from a vast deal of presumption,” said Isabella.

  “No doubt,” he said, “but tell me, my dear: If I ordered you right now to kneel between my legs, unbutton my trousers, and fellate me, would you?”

  She did blush then, heat rushing to her face.

  Hepplewood set his head to one side, eyes glittering wickedly in the firelight. “Is that a no, Isabella?” he softly pressed, “—or do you simply not know what I’m asking?”

  She clasped her hands in her lap. “I do not know,” she confessed.

  Hepplewood scrubbed a hand around the dark stubble of his beard. “I’m not surprised,” he said, “but perhaps naiveté will prove diverting. Yes, my dear, I think you’ll suit. But you must decide if you wish to stay—and before you refuse, explain, if you will, why you approached Mrs. Litner in the first place?”

  She felt her body stiffen. “Because I decided you were right,” she said bitterly. “There, does that please you? You were right. No one is willing to hire me for the one talent I do have—the education of children. So I may as well cultivate another.”

  “You might try to remarry,” he softly suggested.

  “I should sooner whore myself,” she snapped, “as I think my presence here proves.”

  “Dear God, and I thought I had a miserable marriage,” said the earl. “And kindly don’t use that word again. Not in relation to yourself.”

  “I can’t think why I oughtn’t.”

  “Because that is not what you are, Isabella, and not what you will become to me.” His voice softened a little. “I merely seek a sort of companionship without emotional complications. A woman with beauty and grace and a wish to please me, and a wish to be pleasured in return.”

  “And I seek a way to pay the rent,” she replied honestly. “I can pretend, my lord, to have other motivations, and perhaps, if you are very clever, you can charm me into thinking—”

  “No, Mrs. Aldridge.” He held up one hand. “I will not charm you or flirt with you—ever. So you’d best take that long walk to the village now if that’s what’s required to ease your petit bourgeois sensibilities.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Isabella drew herself up like a true scion of nobility. “You know nothing about me, sir, or my sensibilities—or the color of my blood, come to that.”

  He hesitated. “Quite so,” he said stiffly. “Well. Let us merely agree, then, that you seek an arrangement with a gentleman. But you could easily find that without the aid of a predator like Louisa Litner. You would turn heads on the Town, you must surely know.”

  Isabella snared her lip, debating what to tell him. “I have a family, my lord.”

  “Good God, you have what?”

  “A stepsister and a half sister who depend on me,” she clarified. “They are but children. I may have fallen far, Lord Hepplewood, but I’ve no wish to drag them down with me.”

  “Where are these children?” he demanded. “Who are they?”

  She lifted her gaze to his very steadily. “They are private,” she said. “They are my life. And they have nothing to do with this, or with what I do or don’t become.”

  For an instant, he looked taken aback.

  “Are you a gentleman, Lord Hepplewood?” she asked.

  “A gentleman with more than a few vices,” he acknowledged, “but no one has ever accused me of lying, or cheating, or breaking the sacred bond of my word.”

  “Then I ask for your word as a gentleman,” she said, “that you will not pry into my private life, nor discuss our arrangement beyond the bounds of this house.”

  “Do you?” he murmured. “Fascinating.”

  “I wish to be a rich man’s mistress,” she said, “and I wish for utter privacy. If you can give me those things”—she dragged in a rough breath—“then yes, I will stay. For as long as it pleases you. I will learn to pleasure you. And to-to fellate you—whatever that is.”

  He observed her almost clinically for a moment. “And to receive pleasure, Bella?” he finally murmured. “Will you promise to learn to do that as well?”

  “You may not call me that,” she said.

  He crooked one dark eyebrow. “I’m not sure you get to decide.”

  She fisted her hands on the chair arms. “I do decide, my lord,” she said vehemently. “I will please you—yes, I will uphold my end of any bargain—but I am not nothing. I will not be ground beneath your boot heel. And I do not give you permission to call me that.”

  He was turning his brandy glass round in little circles on the tabletop. “May I ask why?”

  “I prefer only the children use that name.”

  “Ah,” he said, inclining his head almost regally. “Very well then, Isabella. Answer my question.”

  “W-what question?”

  “Will you learn to take pleasure?” he asked, watching her very intently. “Will you learn to receive as well as give? Will you trust me to lead you on this exquisite path? And most importantly, my dear, will you be obedient?”

  She nodded.

  “I should very much like to hear you say it.”

  Isabella looked away. “I shall do as I’m told.”

  “And—?”

  “I shall learn to do whatever you require,” she managed, “and to give and receive pleasure. Is that what you want to hear?”

  The earl sat without speaking for some moments, the utter silence broken by nothing but the crackle of the fire. After a while, Isabella looked up from her intense study of the carpet to realize the room had slowly gone almost dark.

  Hepplewood sat at an angle to the flames, which now cast an almost satanic glow up one side of his face, emphasizing the lean plane of his cheek.

  “We shall deal very well together, Isabella, you and I,” he finally said. “Yes, I agree to your terms. And you agree to be my . . . my disciple, let us say. How shall we begin?”

  “H-however you wish,” she said.

  “And that, my dear, is the precisely right answer,” he said without a trace of sarcasm. “However I wish. Now, go to the sideboard and pour yourself a glass of sherry—not brandy, for I would not have you insensate. Then sit back down.”

  “I . . . I do not care for any, thank you.”

  “I did not ask,” said the earl.

  For an instant, she froze. Then, remembering Lady Petershaw’s instructions, she pushed herself from the chair and did as he had ordered.

  “Excellent.” The earl sat fully reclined in his chair, his feet still up, his brandy cradled low between his thighs. “Now, drink it, Isabella, then pull all the pins from your hair. I wish to see it down.”

  “Now?” she said incredulously.

  He did not answer. She could feel his gaze drilling into her through the gloom. She was going to pay, she feared, for standing her ground. And once again, the ugly word came to mind.

  Whore.

  Isabella shut her eyes and pulled the first pin.

  “Good God,” he said thickly when all her hair was down. “Draw your fingers through it, Isabella. Yes, like that. Over and over
. Does it feel good to be free of constraint?”

  She did as he ordered. “Yes,” she whispered, “it feels good.”

  He had steepled his fingers pensively together again. “Excellent,” he said. “Now, Isabella—this might feel awkward, but I wish to see you touch yourself.”

  “T-touch myself?” she said.

  “Yes, begin with your breasts,” he said. “Just stroke them with your fingertips. Stroke them until your nipples become aroused.”

  Isabella felt a little ill. “I . . . I do not know how.”

  “Isabella,” he said warningly. “In such things as this, I will not be gainsaid. Just do it.”

  Awkwardly, she did so. When he did not tell her she might stop, she continued. After a time, he braced his hands on his chair arms and rose. She stopped, watching warily as he crossed the room toward her.

  He halted before her and flashed his strange, dark smile, his gaze hooded. “Isabella,” he said quietly, reaching down to weigh her left breast in his hand, “you are beyond inept at this.”

  Somehow, the insult stung.

  “I beg your pardon,” she said, “but I was of the impression you wished to bed a woman of beauty and grace, not watch some twopenny tart prick-tease you.”

  At that, he threw back his head and laughed. “My dear, your vocabulary is impressive,” he said, “and I’m finding ineptitude has its own allure.”

  At that, she pushed him back and stood. “You do not make a grain of sense, my lord,” she said. “I still think you might be mad.”

  “Ah, Isabella.” Lightly, he reached out to thumb her nipple, which, to her horror, went pebble-hard beneath her gown. “And so I might be—mad, that is. But in any case, here endeth the lesson, my dear. I have business in the village tonight.”

  “In the village?” Isabella felt a wave of relief mixed with disappointment. “Then shall I see you la—” She bit off the words and looked up at him.

  He smiled thinly. “You mean, will I require your services tonight?” he said. “No. I expect to be late. Make yourself at home. Dinner is in the oven. Your room is adjacent to mine, with a bath and dressing room between. We’ve rudimentary plumbing upstairs, but I’ve carried up hot water from the kitchen for you. Ask me to do so at any time.”

  At last, he looked faintly apologetic.

  “I assure you, I’m quite capable of hauling bathwater,” she said. “Indeed, I should prefer it to—to . . .”

  “The loss of privacy?” he murmured, tipping up her chin on one finger. “Then in that, my dear, we are agreed. It is amazing what a man will give up in order to have his way, and to have it in private.”

  When she did not reply, he looked hard into her eyes.

  “Isabella?”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Will you be frightened here alone?”

  She exhaled slowly. “No,” she said honestly.

  He dropped his hand and made her a slight bow. “Then I bid you goodnight,” he said quietly, “and welcome.”

  With that, he was gone, his boot heels ringing down the passageway in the direction of the back door. There came the sound of a heavy coat being dragged on, the swish of what might have been a crop, followed by the slamming of the back door.

  Isabella sank back down in her chair.

  Perhaps ten minutes later, she heard the pounding of hooves rounding the side of the house. She looked out to see the earl vanishing into the gloom, the tails of a sweeping black duster flying out behind.

  He was gone.

  Exhausted and oddly dejected, Isabella rose and slowly climbed the stairs. It took but a moment to find the room in which her bags had been placed, though she spared it scarcely a glance. Instead, she went straight to one of the windows that overlooked the side garden and threw up the sash.

  For a time, she simply stood there in a rush of damp and frigid wind, her loose hair lifting lightly, her hands braced wide on the sill as she leaned into the night. To an innocent passerby, Isabella considered, such a pose would give the impression of a woman bent on hurling herself out.

  But Isabella had already thrown herself into the abyss—one from which even the Marchioness of Petershaw, she feared, would not be able to extract her, however much the lady might care.

  And now the rain had begun to spatter down. On a sigh, Isabella withdrew from the window, extracted the white handkerchief from her skirt pocket, and carefully dropped the sash on it.

  UNABLE TO SLEEP, Hepplewood went belowstairs in the cold, quiet hours before dawn, making his way across the flagstone floor in his slippers, wrapped in a silk banyan that was barely sufficient to the chill. But Yardley, God bless him, had been there before him to sweep and lay the upstairs hearths and leave the kitchen blazing.

  He yawned, and caught the smell of something savory. Cracking the warming oven, he found a platter heaped with back bacon, and alongside it a large covered dish. Black pudding and eggs, he guessed.

  Content with the simplicity of it, Hepplewood shut the oven and went about making his coffee. On mornings like this, when he rose in one of his grimmer moods, steeped in a sense of life’s futility, he often wondered what his small staff thought of him; that he was both dissolute and eccentric, he supposed, or perhaps just Satan incarnate.

  But however they might view his character and the goings-on under his roof, they were at least discreet and dependable. And he paid them well for it, too.

  He wondered if he was going to be paying Isabella Aldridge well for it.

  He certainly hoped so—hoped rather too much, perhaps. It was never wise to invest one’s self too deeply when it came to women. He’d gotten much, much better at that over the years, slicing away at the artificial elements of every liaison until he had pared each one down to the clean, white bone of lust that lay beneath all the breathless sighs.

  No, he’d no intention of allowing Isabella Aldridge to dull that well-stropped blade.

  Instead, he put the coffee on and sat down at the ancient worktable to wait for it to boil. He expected he’d down an entire pot of the stuff before his houseguest rose.

  Last night he’d passed a miserable evening at the Carpenter’s Arms, sipping a dreadful stout in his damp boots, chin-wagging with a pair of local squires about the prospects for spring planting and when to expect the lambing to commence in earnest.

  God knew he was no farmer, for all that he owned a dozen. But he’d feigned an interest because it was what any decent landowner did, however removed from it he might have felt. And perhaps because—once upon a time—he’d aspired to nothing more than a quiet life and the land beneath his feet.

  But he’d stayed at the Arms to drink and natter on, primarily because he’d known better than to go home.

  He had lied to Isabella about having business in the village. He almost never went there, and as soon as he’d arrived he’d longed to turn around and go home to his bed.

  No, he had longed to go home to her bed.

  But her bed was not home, and he’d damned well better not confuse the two concepts.

  Yes, keeping Isabella as his plaything would be like playing with fire unless he kept sentiment from the process. And though he’d never really loved a woman in any romantic sense, Hepplewood still had sense enough to recognize an emotional sinkhole when he saw it.

  To his chagrin, the woman had turned up earlier than he’d expected, and he had not been prepared. Not mentally, and not physiologically. Had he taken her last night, he would have expended all of about five minutes at it and pumped himself into her like some pimpled schoolboy.

  He did not intend to let her off that easily.

  No, he intended to savor the woman and break her gently. She would not slap him through the face again, by God. But that first, cracking blow she’d struck? It had definitely caught his attention—and merely hinted, he suspected, at the depths of heat and passion hidden beneath those layers of gray wool.

  The soft shuffle of leather on stone stirred him from his reverie, and he looked up
to see the object of his fascination perched like a tentative bird upon the last step, pushing a curl of loose hair off her face.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  She was still blinking against the lamplight. He was inordinately glad she had not put her hair up but had merely fastened it over one shoulder.

  “So this is the kitchen,” she remarked, coming fully into the room.

  She wore a morning dress of yellow silk and a shawl of paisley wool that looked warm but still elegant.

  “Did you not come down last night?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I wanted a bath whilst the water was hot.”

  A little irritated, he had risen and gone to the dresser where the breakfast china was kept. “You need to eat,” he said, taking down teacups. “You’re too thin.”

  “Rethinking your boney little bargain?” she said dryly.

  He turned and cocked one hip on the dresser’s ledge. “By no means,” he said. “I’m merely remarking on the state of your health. Go upstairs to the dining room, Isabella. I’ve got coffee on. I’ll serve you shortly.”

  She looked with what he imagined was longing at the battered table. “Might we just stay here?” she asked. “It’s warm by the ovens.”

  “It seems somehow inappropriate, given you’re my guest.”

  She laughed without humor. “You sound like my mother,” she said. “I was never permitted in the kitchens as a child, even though our cook begged—”

  Her words broke off, but he hardly noticed. Indeed, he was hardly listening. Instead he found himself again transfixed by her eyes. In the lamplight they appeared a deep, luminous purple—and filled with a barely veiled sorrow.

  What had she just said? He tried to recall and failed.

  Instead, he took the cups to the table and put them down. “I spend most mornings here when I haven’t a guest,” he said. “You may suit yourself.”

  He went about serving coffee and putting out the food. To his surprise, she ate ravenously. It made him wonder again at her weight. There was no way on God’s earth a woman could eat like that, he decided, and look as she did.

  Why had she not been eating? It troubled him.