Gabe felt queerly distant, as if he were watching the scene from another room, or even from the audience of a theater.
“She’s your mistress, isn’t she?” Gillian asked.
“Who?” he asked. “I don’t think Medley has a mistress.”
“This Loretta. Miss Hawes.”
“No!” But she read his eyes; she knew it, and he saw it, and she didn’t bother to acknowledge his protest. “As the manager of this production, I should perhaps insist that you play Dorimant. As far as I know, the Duke of Holbrook is as pure as the driven snow. And yet you…”
“I assure you that my reputation—”
“Of course, Emilia’s mother is the one who really understands Dorimant,” Gillian said, almost to herself. “She says that if he does but speak to a woman she’s undone. I never credited the line before.”
He noticed with extreme irritation that there wasn’t a trace of passion in her voice or face now, only a kind of inquiring curiosity.
“You would go a long way to changing my mind about rakes, Mr. Spenser, I assure you.”
“You make me feel like an animal on exhibit,” he said.
She ignored him. “Merely a little conversation and a few minutes copying out parts, and you quite diverted my attention. It was a masterful performance.” She gathered up her scrolls. “Good afternoon, sir.”
And without further ado, she tucked herself through the door.
19
Love’s Mistress
It was one of those evenings when the sky is a clear, dark blue, almost as if it is lighted from the inside. He was wearing the mustache. And a black opera cloak.
It felt rather dashing, as if he were a spy. Or an illicit lover. But he’d given a great deal of thought to the evening, and he knew precisely how it would unfold. Imogen didn’t really wish to engage in surreptitious intimacies with Gabe. This was merely a wild flight, akin to when she tried so desperately to entice Mayne into improprieties. He’d wager half his estate that she would change her mind when it came to the point. Then he could bring her back to the house without her ever knowing that Gabe had backed out of the evening.
The moon was just bright enough so that the acacia leaves kept a faint golden glow, as if they’d kept a trace of sunshine. He had arrived early and taken up a place leaning against the rounded, mossy stones of the orchard wall. The old acacia kept flinging its leaves at him: beautiful golden ovals that tumbled through the air as if they were waltzing a particularly vigorous, solitary measure.
He straightened when he heard the sweep of a cloak in the leaves. He couldn’t quite believe that Imogen wouldn’t recognize him. Surely she would take one look at his face and know it was he. They’d exchanged enough hard glances.
He would certainly pick her from a hundred women. No other woman had such a deep bottom lip, and those flaring eyebrows. No, or the cracking wit she constantly broke over his head either.
A moment later he took that back. To say she looked like a romp would be a compliment: a night-walker would be the common assumption. He would never have recognized her.
“Imogen!” he said, forgetting for a moment that he was Gabe, and Gabe would address Imogen as Lady Maitland.
“May I call you Gabriel?” she said, dimpling up at him and putting a hand on his arm.
“You—you look—”
“I look positively decadent,” she said with satisfaction. “Once I was completely costumed, my maid had what she called a Very Nasty Spasm at the thought of my being seen in public like this. But I assured her that no one could possibly guess who I am.”
Rafe stared down at her, speechless. Imogen’s lips were shining crimson, and her eyes were lined in black. She’d covered her face in some sort of powder, and a great quantity of flaxen ringlets spiraled out of her hood in all directions. “I believe you are correct in your assumption,” he said. Of course, she was the most beautiful night-walker he’d ever seen.
“Shall we go?” Imogen asked.
“Where did you find the wig?” Rafe said, pulling himself together and taking her arm to lead her through the orchard door.
“It was in one of the boxes of theatrical properties sent from London, of course,” she said, glancing up at him. “Didn’t you help Griselda catalog the contents?”
“Of course!” Rafe said hastily. “I didn’t recognize it on your head.”
“I do believe it’s meant for a queen,” Imogen said, laughing. “It has alarming height in the back. I thought Daisy would have another spasm when we finally got it fixed in place. Is this your carriage?”
“No,” Rafe said gravely—for now he was keeping in mind Gabe’s customary solemn demeanor—“I hired a vehicle, thinking that we would be less likely to be recognized.”
“What a good idea! I can see that you know precisely how to handle this kind of arrangement.”
Rafe raised an eyebrow at this evidence of Imogen’s opinion of his brother’s expertise in arranging illicit liaisons, but climbed into the carriage after her.
Once they were seated opposite each other, she took a deep breath. “There is bound to be some sense of discomfiture in the beginning of an excursion such as this,” she said.
Rafe thought that was likely true, but he had never taken an illicit trip to Silchester in his life. And he was beginning to enjoy himself exceedingly. “What are you wearing under your cloak?” he asked.
“Mrs. Loveit’s costume. It’s a trifle gaudy, of yellow spangled satin, embroidered in silver. I can only suppose that it will look well on the stage, because I assure you that it is far too vulgar for a drawing room.”
Rafe couldn’t see anything glittering in the dark carriage, but he could picture it.
“But I do wish to speak to you, Mr. Spenser,” Imogen said. “Perhaps this is not an uncomfortable moment for you, since you have such experience. But—”
“You said you would address me as Gabriel,” Rafe interrupted.
“Yes, of course.” Imogen was fidgeting with her handkerchief, and Rafe was aware of a deep, abiding sense of enjoyment. He was always one to love moments of exquisite ridiculousness, and unless he missed his guess, his ward was about to confess to the man she had coerced into this excursion that she wished their friendship to be platonic.
“You see,” Imogen said haltingly.
Rafe smiled to himself. He could put her out of her misery—but why bother? Of course Imogen didn’t really mean to sleep with Gabe. She was far too much of a lady for that.
“I have limited experience with the male sex,” Imogen said.
And I mean to keep it that way, Rafe thought with a touch of grim humor.
She leaned forward and touched him lightly on the knee. “You will likely laugh, but I assure you that it is quite a new sensation for me to be embarking on an affaire of this nature.”
Suddenly Rafe didn’t feel the slightest inclination to laugh. His eyes narrowed. The script was not going precisely as he had predicted.
“You must think me very bold,” Imogen was saying. “Indeed, I am being bold, if not immoral. But my husband died over a year ago now, and we were only married for two weeks.” She looked at him appealingly.
Rafe managed to nod.
“I am truly not an immoral woman,” she continued. “That is, I suppose I am an immoral woman because—because I am here. And yet, Mr. Spenser—Gabriel—I don’t wish to marry again. Not until I understand something of men.”
“Of men?” Rafe said hollowly.
“I really don’t know any of your sex. That is, I knew my father, and I loved him, but he was rather irresponsible. Then I married Draven, and I’m afraid he was quite similar to my father. In fact, in retrospect, they behaved in precisely the same ways. And now—now I should like to…”
Her voice trailed away.
“You do know Rafe,” Rafe said over the promptings of his better self.
“Well, of course.” But she closed her lips and didn’t say anything further.
“You
could be ruined if anyone discovers this little excursion,” Rafe said, carefully schooling his voice so that it had the solemn depth of his brother’s.
“Oh, we won’t be discovered. I’m not afraid of that. But I have been rather discomforted all afternoon by—”
Here it came. Of course Imogen wouldn’t be able to go through with an illicit assignation with a man she scarcely knew. True, Gabe was a handsome man. But she was a lady of taste and…
And passion.
“I have thought over our conversation in the hallway, you understand, many times. And I cannot get it out of my head that you did not, in fact, wish to accompany me to the library, nor to Silchester either, Mr. Spenser.”
“Gabe,” Rafe said shortly. “Of course I wished to accompany you, or I wouldn’t be here.”
A sudden gleam of moonlight entered the carriage and flashed past Imogen’s hands in her lap, twisting a handkerchief.
“I shall be absolutely honest with you,” she said, her voice low but steady. “I am haunted by the idea that my husband was not as—as enthusiastic about our elopement as I was.”
Rafe remembered just in time that his brother had never met Imogen’s dead husband and so could hardly say something scathing about Maitland’s limp manhood. “I am absolutely certain that could not have been the case.”
Moonlight began pouring in the window as the carriage lurched onto the open road leading to Silchester. Imogen’s little rueful smile made Rafe long to pull Maitland back to life, just long enough so he could kill him for ever making Imogen feel undesirable.
“You didn’t know Lord Maitland,” she said, looking down and concentrating on folding her handkerchief into a small square. “My husband was far more devoted to his horses than to any one person. I loved him”—she paused—“far more than he loved me. Naturally, that understanding was rather grievous to me at first, but I have come to understand that life is not always equally balanced in these matters.”
“In general, you may be right,” Rafe said in a harsh tone. “But I find it inconceivable that Lord Maitland did not value you exactly as you are worth.”
“I take it you mean to say that I am worth more than a horse?” Imogen asked, looking at him with a sly humor that made Rafe want to grin back. But Gabe was not the sort to grin, not when it came to serious subjects.
“Far more than a horse, or indeed, other women,” he said.
“Thank you,” Imogen said. And then: “This is rather difficult to say.”
“Anything you tell me will never leave this carriage,” Rafe said, achieving Gabe’s solemn tone without even thinking about it.
“The truth is that I thought to have an affaire last year, when poor Draven had only been gone six months. You’ll think I’m the variest drab. I believe I was rather crazed with sorrow.”
“I can understand that,” Rafe said, thinking of himself after his brother Peter died.
“Well,” Imogen said with a little gulp, “most people manage their misery a great deal better than I have done. I was so…I can’t say it.”
Rafe leaned forward, regardless of the moonlight and the fact that she might recognize him, and wound his fingers through hers. “You may tell me,” he said firmly.
“I tried very hard to take a lover,” Imogen said with a rush. “Lord Mayne. Of course, you don’t know him, but he is a veritable rake, I assure you. Though he did not—”
“He did not take advantage of your grieving state,” Rafe said, promising himself that he would apologize to Mayne for ever doubting him.
“I would like to imagine that he suffered a sudden attack of virtue, but I’m afraid it isn’t true. He simply wasn’t attracted to me,” Imogen said flatly.
“I do not believe it.”
“You haven’t met him,” Imogen said with a little sigh that went straight to Rafe’s heart. “But I assure you that he told me directly that he was not interested. Which returns us to my original subject. You see, Mr. Spenser, the more I thought about our meeting in the corridor, the more certain I became that you are here in this carriage out of some sort of reluctant chivalry. Like a true knight, you did not allow me to suffer embarrassment, but that does not mean that you actually wish to be here.”
Imogen thought that Gabe didn’t want to be with her—and he didn’t. Rafe knew deep in his bones that he would do whatever it took to keep her from knowing that Gabe was indeed in the ranks of Draven and Mayne: men who were inexplicably blind to her charms and couldn’t tell a diamond from a river rock.
“I gather you are worried that I don’t desire you,” he said, his voice coming out in a low growl.
She flinched a bit, and said, “I suppose you could put it that way.”
He pulled the curtains shut. Without moonlight, the carriage became a dark and cozy place, a room hardly big enough for the two of them. He could just see the slanting beauty of her eyes, shadowed black by all that kohl she was wearing.
Without further ado, he reached over and hauled her into his lap. The first thing he did was rub her handkerchief across her lips, holding her startled eyes with his own. He only meant to rub off the greasy ointment. But he rubbed once and found himself riveted by the deep curve of her lower lip. She was watching him, not fighting, just watching.
Well, if she were trying to find signs of desire, she was sitting directly on a fairly potent one. But the next moment that thought fled. Because she licked her lip after he rubbed it. He took the cloth and rubbed across her lip again. And, watching him, that small pink tongue touched her bottom lip.
He threw the handkerchief to the ground, and tilted up her face. Her eyes were only just visible in the shadowy carriage. Slowly he rubbed a thumb across that plump lower lip.
And without saying a word, and looking him straight in the eyes, her tongue touched his thumb.
That was it. He took her mouth with all the hunger that had been building in him for weeks, watching her flit about his house, flicking seductive glances at Gabe under her lashes, flicking him glances that were nothing if not indifferent.
She didn’t open her mouth so he nipped her lip, and then swept into her mouth with all the searing hunger that had fueled him during the week. Of course he would never do such a thing to his ward.
But she wasn’t his ward, because he was Gabe, and she was a minx bound on adventure, and he—he couldn’t stop kissing her lips, that lower lip that fired his belly with a wish to devour her.
The carriage was rocking to a stop.
“We must—” Rafe said, horrified by the thickness in his voice. He thrust her back onto the bench.
Sophisticated Imogen, the young woman who had astonished—and delighted—the ton by flaunting her supposed affair with Mayne, sat on the other seat with the look of someone who had been struck by a bolt of lightning.
The hackney driver pulled open the door. Rafe bundled her out and turned back to the driver. “Meet us here in an hour,” he said, giving the man a sovereign.
“Yes, sir,” the driver said, eyeing the man in the cloak with new respect. He had more than tuppence to throw away, clearly. Of course, that light piece he was with would burn it soon enough. There was nothing like a yellow-haired lass when it came to burning through the ready, at least in his opinion.
She stepped from the carriage and Snug’s eyes widened. Now that was a nice bit of buttered bun, if he said so himself. She even looked clean. Perhaps she was one of those that cost two hundred pounds a night. His cousin Burt had sworn there were such in Londontown.
They were going to an inn, the Black Swan. Could be they were only hoping to hear Cristobel, though ’twas a queer thing to bring a woman to see her. Or…could be they were making use of those beds. But if so, the gentleman had picked the wrong inn, because Hynde, the innkeeper, didn’t hold with buns taking their wares into such a place.
With a sigh Snug climbed onto the box and clucked to the horses.
Carriages were drawing up every which way under the spreading oak trees in front of the
door. Every moment another carriage would draw up, and cloaked gentlemen would jump out, shouting at their drivers. Imogen and Rafe threaded their way between the vehicles, heading for the open inn door.
“There are so many people,” Imogen said, watching as four more men shouldered their way into the inn, light spilling out with a swell of noise from the inn.
“It’s due to Cristobel,” her escort said. There was a faint tone of amusement in his voice.
“Have you seen her before?”
“Once. She is a notable attraction. I expect that men have come from several counties.”
Imogen registered that word men with a small frisson of surprise. But she wanted an interesting evening, didn’t she? This was much better than sitting about hemming a seam and listening to Griselda complain about the play’s inconvenience. So Cristobel was likely not a proper woman. In fact, Imogen thought, perhaps she’s a bird of paradise. That seemed the right kind of label for someone called Cristobel.
She walked into the Black Swan inn clutching her escort’s arm because, to tell the truth, her knees were trembling. So far, although she kept stealing looks at Gabriel, he hadn’t looked down at her since they left the carriage. It must be the kiss that made him look so entirely different to her. She thought he was handsome before; now the lights of the tavern played over the planes of his cheekbones and his shadowed eyes and made him look far more than handsome: dangerous. Her eyes kept catching on his lips; they were deep and full, pure seduction. And the line from the play describing Dorimant kept running through her mind; Gabriel Spenser, this evening, seemed to have something of the angel yet undefaced in him.
“I’d like you to keep your hood on,” he said, cutting her a slanting glance.
Imogen nodded, aware that her cheeks were burning rose under all the powder she had on her face. They walked into a very large room, lit by a number of lanterns precariously attached to nails stuck in the wall. At one end was a fireplace that was likely lit during the day but was now blocked by a makeshift stage. The rest of the room was crowded with male bodies shouting at each other and hoisting tankards of ale.