"In bed?" she asked. "I think not, my lord. You are incapable of ravishing a woman, a fact of which I have had happy proof. Yet there is no other way that you will gain what you want of me."
"You think you will not one day come to me and offer yourself to me?" he asked. His eyes were on her lips.
"Not until hell turns to ice," she said. "One's desires are not the most important forces of life, my lord, not when they are divorced from all more tender feelings."
"Love," he said with a scornful little laugh. "Never tell me you believe in love, Jess? You a romantic? I would not have thought it. I see you as a very practical young lady, an opportunist, no less."
"Let me go, my lord," she said. "Everyone must be served with supper already." She was suffocatingly aware of the hand that still held hers, the other hand beneath her chin, his face only inches from her own. She was fighting the humiliating urge to lean forward and close the gap between their mouths.
He did it for her. "You see?" he said, his lips already touching hers. "You talk of love in one breath and food in the next. Bodily appetites, Jess. They figure very large in your thinking."
And his mouth opened over hers, his tongue tracing a tantalizingly light course around her lips so that sensation vibrated through her.
"Children, children! The proprieties, please!" The dowager duchess's voice was booming enough to set the pair into jolting apart. Yet it was a brightly cheerful voice. Rutherford's eyes sought Jessica's for one moment, and he raised the hand that he still held to his lips before turning to greet his grandmother and mother.
"Miss Moore and I have been discussing our various musical talents," he said, rising lazily to his feet. "Are we too late for supper? I believe Faith can consider the evening a resounding success, Mama."
"I told you they would be in here tete-a-tete, Marianne," the dowager said. "Your mama was becoming convinced that you had left altogether, Charles. But I assured her that if we could just find Jessica, you would not be far away." She tapped him on the sleeve with her fan.
"I am so pleased you could come, Miss Moore," the Duchess of Middleburgh said. "You do look lovely in that particular shade of pink, my dear. Of course, someone with your figure would look delightful even in a sack, I daresay. I have always had to fight against fat, alas. Come along to the supper room while there is still food left. Charles is always indifferent to food and sometimes forgets that his companions are not necessarily so."
"Exactly what I was discovering, Mama," Rutherford said with a bow. "You go along. I want to have a look at this violin while the artist is still at supper. It has quite a superior tone."
"Jeremy." Lord Rutherford slapped down the third ruined starched neckcloth onto the dressing table before him. "My damned fingers are all thumbs today. Come and work one of your miracles."
The valet, busy brushing invisible lint from the green superfine coat that he was all ready to help his master into, crossed the room in some surprise. It was only on the most gala of occasions that he was ever called upon to perform his art's supreme creation: a well-tied neckcloth.
"Hif your lordship would 'old your 'ead still for one minute," he scolded a few moments later, "hit would be done and over with."
"Sorry," his lordship muttered meekly, holding his head poker still. He was nervous. By God, he was nervous! He would not be surprised to find that if he held out his hands, they would be shaking. Lord Rutherford smoothed his hands over his waistcoat and turned to reach his arms into the sleeves of the coat Jeremy was holding out for him. He would not put the matter to the test.
Well, it would all be over within the next hour or so, he consoled himself. And it was after all something he had never done before. And if it was something that every man intended to do only once in his life, he supposed he had some right to be nervous. Even if she was an ex-governess, a social nobody.
It was his own idea, he was convinced of that. He had not been browbeaten into it by his grandmother. She had been quite annoying the night before, it was true, but his mind had been made up even before she appeared on the scene. Or almost, anyway.
She had not followed his mother and Jess to the supper room. She had seated herself in the music room, occupying the chair on which Jess had sat, while he crossed to the abandoned violin and picked it up to inspect it. He had hoped that she would go away. A fond hope where Grandmama was concerned!
"And when might I expect you to call to pay your addresses, Charles?" she had asked archly.
He had run his thumb experimentally across the strings of the violin. Why pretend to misunderstand her? Her meaning was pretty obvious.
"Tell me more about her, Grandmama," he had said without looking up. "Who is she?"
"My dear boy," the dowager had said, "you must know far more about Jessica than I do. Every time you are in company with her you seem to get very close to her indeed. You were not offering her carte blanche again just now, were you? Very poor form, m'boy. Only marriage will do under the present circumstances. She is my guest, you know, and has been received by your sister."
"And is the granddaughter of the dearest friend of your youth," Rutherford had said, lifting the violin to his chin and drawing the bow across its strings. "Is that true, by the way? I find it hard to penetrate the tissue of lies that both you and Jess seem bent on throwing my way."
"Of course it is true," she said carelessly. "But of course you will not believe me. You owe her marriage, Charles. You have been with her unchaperoned for a quite scandalous length of time this evening, and both your mama and I have witnessed your holding her hand and kissing her. On the lips, no less."
"Tomorrow," he had said, laying the violin down at last and looking at his grandmother for the first time. "If you will engage to be at home tomorrow afternoon, Grandmama, I shall call to make my offer."
"Oh, splendid, Charles!" she had cried, getting to her feet and clasping her fan to her bosom. "I really did not think it would be quite this easy, m'boy, I must confess. But you will not be sorry. Jessica is the ideal wife for you, princess's daughter or barmaid's daughter notwithstanding. She will be at home tomorrow. You have my word on it."
But it was not she who had trapped him into doing it. Perhaps he would not have gone quite as soon as today, but sooner or later he would have been preparing himself for this same errand. He had known as he sat beside Jess in the music room that his words to her were quite true. He was obsessed by her. They were fated to end up together. It had been equally obvious to him that the time when she might perhaps have been persuaded to become his mistress was well past. Jessica Moore might not have a legitimate claim to move among the haute ton, but she was there now and seemed to have been accepted with remarkably little inquiry.
No, he had decided as he took her hand in his and ached to gather her completely to himself, if he wanted Jess-and he did want her, had to have her, in fact- then he must marry her. The thought should have shocked him, repulsed him. Even the thought of her resident in his grandmother's house had offended his notions of proper behavior just a few days before. But the idea came with ease and little resistance from his rational mind.
She was, after all, accepted by society. It seemed that she was not completely beyond the pale of his social milieu. It seemed likely that her father had been able to lay claim to membership of at least the lower gentry. She was educated and accomplished. Her total absence of dowry would matter not at all to him. He already had more money than one man should fairly expect in a lifetime. And she was refined. And beautiful. And very desirable. Achingly so. He did not believe he could go on living with any degree of comfort until he could somehow make her his own.