The Mistress' House Read online

  “I did not,” Anne protested. “I haven’t talked about you, Fliss. At least—only a little.”

  Felicity curtseyed. “It is an honor to meet you, Lady Stone.”

  Lady Stone’s beady black gaze ran over her from head to foot, and slid past her to the sizable stack of sewing Felicity had abandoned to rise in greeting. “What’s that you’re doing?”

  Felicity felt herself color a bit. “Mending household linens,” she admitted.

  “Practical sort, aren’t you?”

  “Well, I have no need for any additional monogrammed handkerchiefs.” Her tone was crisp, and the words were out before Felicity stopped to think.

  Lady Stone laughed, and Felicity relaxed. “Anne told me you were an original, but I hardly dared think it possible. I’m just surprised she hasn’t got you embroidering for the heir. She even tried to drag me in to do that job—but my eyes won’t stand that nonsense anymore.” She sat down and sampled the port the butler had quietly brought in, with evident satisfaction. “Come to think of it, I never could abide doing fancywork. I was far more interested in gardening.”

  “That calls for equal patience,” Felicity observed. “Just a different sort.” She picked up the tablecloth again, but her hand trembled a little at the suggestion that she might help to sew clothes for Anne’s baby. It hadn’t even occurred to her to offer—and Anne hadn’t asked…

  For the rest of the visit, Felicity kept her voice cheerful and never left a pause in the conversation. But underneath, she was wondering exactly why Anne hadn’t asked. Had some instinct made Anne realize how painful it would be for Felicity to take up a needle and a baby gown?

  A bit later, she caught a name in Lady Stone’s rapid-fire conversation. “Have you called on Lady Colford yet, Anne?” the older woman asked.

  “No. Lord Colford said she’s not receiving anyone. I can’t like the woman, but—”

  Lady Stone snorted. “That’s quite the nicest thing I’ve ever heard anyone say about Blanche, Anne.”

  “Lucinda, really. This can’t be easy for her.”

  “No—but just because she’s weary of being in mourning is no excuse for making Richard’s life a living hell when he’s grieving for his brother.”

  Grieving for his brother… Well, Felicity told herself stoutly, she knew what that felt like. And perhaps Lord Colford had extra reason to grieve for his brother. Feeling guilty had that effect, sometimes…

  When Lady Stone had finished her port and excused herself, Felicity went back to Number 5 Upper Seymour Street, where she stood in the window of her bedroom for a long time, thinking. Then she sat down at her desk and wrote a letter.

  ***

  Three days passed before the Earl of Colford came to call on her. Felicity had almost concluded that he meant to ignore her completely, and she had begun to contemplate her next move by the time her butler came into the drawing room and announced that she had a caller.

  Felicity’s hand clenched the stem of a rose she was inserting into a tall vase, causing her to stab her finger with a thorn. “Show him in,” she said calmly.

  A moment later, Colford checked on the threshold and looked around the room. “Your chaperone is not present, Miss Mercer?”

  “I have no need of a chaperone. I am three and twenty, and well on the shelf.”

  “Not everyone would agree with that assessment.”

  “I am not a simpering society miss, my lord. I asked you to call in order that we might have a private discussion. You are in no danger from me.” Not just yet, at any rate.

  “I cannot think what we would need to discuss, Miss Mercer.”

  “No?” Felicity said sweetly. “Yet… you are here.” She inspected the vase, shifted a rose, and set the arrangement on the table where it showed to best advantage. “If you believe we have nothing to talk about, why did you come?”

  “It is good manners for a gentleman to respond to a lady’s request.”

  “A lady?” Her voice was brittle. “That was certainly not how the Colford family perceived my station when your brother wished to marry me.”

  “I… beg your pardon?”

  “Tell me, my lord—had you forgotten my name? Or did you never bother to find it out? Your brother, Roger… Surely you do remember him? You have very much the look of him, and you must be reminded by your mirror every morning.”

  He didn’t answer, but the flash of pain in his eyes gave her pause. “What do you want, Miss Mercer?”

  Felicity steeled her resolve. This is your one chance, she told herself. “I want what your brother should have given me. I want a child.”

  ***

  Though she looked perfectly normal—or better than normal, actually—the woman was totally mad. No question about it.

  Richard, Lord Colford, knew that the worst thing to do when confronted by an insane person was to challenge her beliefs, for that would almost certainly push her into violence. But what the devil was he to do with her?

  He cursed himself for letting his curiosity get the better of him, for coming to see what she wanted of him. When he had met her the week before at Thorne’s house, she had intrigued him. She was beautiful, vibrant, and exotic—with green eyes that slanted just a bit and fair hair wound into a coronet worthy of a princess. It was an old-fashioned style, but it had suited her. Her dress had been out of date as well—yet somehow it had made her look timeless, rather than dowdy.

  Then he had made his bow over her hand, and the chill in her face had frozen him to the core. Such immediate and strong dislike had puzzled him. He wasn’t used to that reaction from women; he’d always been a favorite with them, and not because of his rank.

  He had racked his brain to think whether he could have met her before—if he might have slighted her somehow—and concluded that they had never met. He couldn’t have forgotten that bright gold hair, those almond-shaped eyes.

  So he told himself that she simply didn’t like him—it was nothing more nor less than that. She had a right to her feelings, and not everyone thought he was wonderful. Blanche certainly didn’t. In fact, Blanche and Miss Mercer might have a grand time together cataloguing his faults…

  So he had put Miss Mercer out of his mind.

  At least, he had tried.

  When her letter—a stiff, polite little request for him to call on her, containing no hint of what she might really want—had arrived, he decided to ignore it. He had even pitched the letter into the fireplace but then scrambled to pull it out just as the edge of the paper began to smolder, crushing the scorched corner between his fingers.

  He couldn’t forget her message. Couldn’t stop debating why she wanted to see him. Couldn’t keep from thinking about the chill in her face and wondering what he could possibly have done to cause it. And—if he was honest—questioning what he might do to turn that coldness into warmth.

  So here he was, three days later—confronting a woman who had just calmly announced that she wanted to bear the child of a man who’d been dead for well over half a year.

  Yes, her carriage had definitely lost a wheel. Maybe even two of them.

  Unless… was it possible she didn’t realize Roger was dead? He didn’t see how she could be unaware of that fact. On the other hand, lunatics weren’t known for their reasoning powers. But if she really didn’t know, and he just announced the fact out of the blue…

  Obviously the only way to handle her was to appear to take her seriously—and then, just as soon as he could make his escape, to go warn Thorne that his wife’s bosom friend belonged in Bedlam, not in Upper Seymour Street.

  He pulled himself back to the drawing room with an effort. “Why don’t you tell me about it?” he said easily.

  As her eyes narrowed, they seemed to slant even more, and they darkened to a sultry deep green. Under other circumstances, he’d be trying to get even closer, testing to see if passion would darken them even further…

  “You already know what happened.”

  “Not the details
,” he pointed out. “And not your side of it. Perhaps we could talk about it over…” He hesitated. Not wine, he thought; the only thing worse than dealing with a madwoman would be dealing with a tipsy madwoman. “Tea?”

  And perhaps, he thought, he could signal the butler to call for help. He hadn’t seen a single footman since he’d arrived, so no aid could be found there. But Thorne’s grooms were close by in the mews…

  Not that he needed assistance. Miss Mercer was a small thing and slight—there should be no reason he couldn’t easily overpower her by himself. But he’d heard that the insane could sometimes display the strength of several people. If he tried to subdue her by himself and she fought him… He wouldn’t want to have to injure her.

  Her voice dripped irony. “Whatever you wish, my lord.” She rang the bell, and when the butler responded, she said, “Lord Colford would like tea. And perhaps Cook has some of her poppy-seed cakes today, as well.”

  Poppy-seed cakes would choke him—but one excuse was as good as another. Richard tried to catch the butler’s eye, without success. He cleared his throat, but the butler turned away.

  Miss Mercer was watching him closely. “Mason is quite deaf, you know,” she said finally. “Especially when it suits him to be. I assure you, my lord, I am not a danger to you.”

  Richard wasn’t so certain—and the perceptiveness she showed worried him. “Tell me, Miss Mercer, how did you meet Roger? And what made you think he wanted to…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “To marry me? Let me think. It might have been when he said, Felicity, will you marry me?”

  His jaw dropped. “Roger said that?”

  “Not quite,” she admitted.

  Richard didn’t relax—he was much too alert to let down his guard entirely—but some of the tension went out of his body at the confirmation that he’d been correct.

  “He said he wanted to marry me, but he feared that his family wouldn’t allow him to do so. And he was right,” she said bitterly. “If there had only been more money, I might have made a palatable bride, if not exactly a welcome one. But there wasn’t. So the son of an earl could not throw himself away on the daughter of a mill owner.”

  “He told you this?” Richard didn’t believe a word of it. Yes, their father had been a stiff-necked old goat, but since when had Roger listened to anything the earl had said, much less actually obeyed an order? “When was this?”

  “More than a year ago—at the beginning of spring last year. Roger was recalled from York to London, and I never heard from or about him again, until word filtered back through his friends that he had taken a chill—and died of it.”

  So at least she did know that much—but Richard wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or even more upset. Not many people had known about Roger’s stay in York, so how had this chit heard of it? And yes, she was right that it had been more than a year ago, just as winter had given way to spring, that Roger had returned to London. Richard remembered it well, because his brother had complained so much about how cold it had been in York…

  The details were coming back to him now. Roger had been on a sort of rusticating lease for a few months, lying low with some of his less-reputable friends, waiting until the earl had gotten over being furious at him. Richard had never heard the details of why their father had been so angry; he only knew it was because of something Roger had done around Christmastime. Richard himself had been too caught up in his own duties to pay attention to the details. It was nothing unusual, after all, for the earl and his son to be at loggerheads, so this time had seemed no different.

  But then, instead of calming down and summoning Roger home as expected, the earl had quite suddenly died… and everything was different.

  So it was possible—even if just barely possible—that Miss Mercer was telling the truth. That Roger, in his boredom, had wooed and won a wench in York. And if the earl, already furious with his son, had heard that Roger had taken up with the daughter of a mill owner…

  But why hadn’t Richard heard about it—about her—then? It wasn’t the sort of thing that the old Earl would have handled with finesse; he’d have bellowed like a bull…

  Richard’s attention had slipped away from Miss Mercer for a moment, and when he looked back at her, he realized that she was unbuttoning her dress. The neckline gaped open, and he could see the swell of her breasts peeking out beyond the pale blue of her gown. Was it his imagination, or was her creamy skin really giving off heat in waves?

  “Oh, no you don’t,” he said, and sprang toward her. He seized her bodice just as she jerked back, and the dainty, pale-blue lawn tore in his hands. The sound of it ripping seemed to echo, just as the butler backed into the room with the tea tray.

  Richard froze, his hands still clenched on Miss Mercer’s dress, his knuckles grazing her breasts. Her skin was hot—for he was feeling extraordinarily warm just now…

  The butler looked past them as if he saw nothing, set the tray on the table, and went out again soft-footed.

  “Oh, do close your mouth,” Miss Mercer snapped. “It’s very unattractive, letting it hang open that way. Don’t be any more of an idiot than you must, my lord. He’s seen this sort of behavior before.”

  “You mean you—” He stopped himself, but it was already far too late.

  The gold darts in her big green eyes should have slain him where he stood. “Do I regularly entertain men, do you mean? No—not in front of the butler, nor in any other circumstances!”

  “I profoundly beg your pardon, Miss Mercer.”

  “I should think you would. In the small chance that you did not already realize it, this house is Lord Hawthorne’s private bordello.”

  He almost choked. Not at the idea that Thorne had a trysting place set up—though why he’d locate it right under his countess’s nose was another question—but that this chit could speak of it so calmly. Was she…?

  She had gone straight on. “All the servants are well trained to see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing. And before you ask—no, I am not Lord Hawthorne’s mistress.”

  “I did not suggest—”

  “You were wondering.” She pulled a thin gold chain out from inside her dress. “Before you made fools of both of us, I was merely reaching for this to show you.”

  At the end of the chain dangled a ring. Roger’s ring—an engraved gold signet that his brother had worn for years. Richard would have recognized it anywhere.

  He’d never realized it was missing. He wondered how long she’d had it—and where she had come by it. He had no idea how long it had been since he’d seen the ring; could it have been missing for a full year without him noticing? That was possible, he concluded, since Roger would have put it away when their father died, anyway…

  He closed his hand around the ring, and only then did he realize how close he was still standing to her. They were linked by the fine chain that had suspended the ring between her breasts. The gold signet was so warm that it almost burned his hand, and his fingertips tingled as if he—and not just the ring—had caressed the shadowed crevice of her cleavage.

  “You’re saying he gave you this?” Richard asked. His voice felt hoarse.

  “Do you think I would confess that I stole it from him?” she asked sharply. “Yes, he gave it to me! Why is that so difficult for you to believe? He would have married me… I know he would have married me, if his father hadn’t been furious and his mother outraged at the very idea…” For the first time, her voice broke.

  Richard fought the impulse to draw her close, to comfort her. He believed her now—or, more accurately, he believed that she was convinced she told the truth. But she hadn’t known Roger as well as he had. Roger no doubt had given her the ring—but he doubted that his brother had meant it as a token of betrothal.

  He let the ring drop to the end of the chain and stepped away from her to a safer distance. “What is it you want, Miss Mercer?”

  “I told you. I want a child.”

  “Why not
the usual way? Find a husband, and in due course…”

  Her mouth tightened to a hard line. “That is not possible.”

  Richard considered the possibilities and the tautness of her face, and took a deep breath. “Did my brother bed you?”

  She nodded, finally. “I am an unmarried woman who is no longer a virgin. I am the daughter of a tradesman, and though I have enough money to support myself in comfort, I have it on the best authority—that of your prestigious family—that I am not wealthy enough for a gentleman to overlook my handicaps. When I lost Roger, I thought for a while that at least I would have his child. But that was not to be.” She stood even straighter, if that were possible. “I want what I should have had then. I want a child who bears his blood.”

  Chills ran up Richard’s spine. “But my brother is dead, Miss Mercer.”

  “I know. That is why I want you to give me a child.”

  ***

  As the silence stretched out, Felicity thought that perhaps she was being a little unfair. After all, Colford had only had a few minutes to take in what she was saying. She’d been thinking of this for a week—or maybe even longer than that.

  She hadn’t planned this exactly, but perhaps this scheme was what had been lurking in the back of her mind from the moment she’d received Anne’s letter and began to make her plans to come to London. For where else would Lord Colford be found during the Season but in London? It was expected of a peer of the realm.

  If she had been plotting this, the thoughts had been so deeply buried that she hadn’t even realized it herself—until she had actually met him and recognized the opportunity, and then the plan had seemed to spring full-fledged into her head.

  She had known, of course, that Roger had a brother—for her lover had told her enough about him. Richard had been the satisfactory son, Roger had said one day when he was feeling particularly annoyed at having been banished to the far reaches of the country. Richard was the one who saw eye to eye with their father. The one who followed the old Earl’s orders and carried out his wishes. The one who exceeded every expectation and never, ever quarreled with their sire…