Page 5 of Tempting Harriet
Damnation, but she was more beautiful than ever. She had no business still being beautiful at her age. The Dukeof Tenby stood behind Lord Bruce Ingram's chair in thecard room, his pose relaxed, his lips pursed. Bruce wasabout to make a stupid move—disastrous if the stakes hadbeen higher. But there was nothing particularly unusualabout that. One thing his grace always studiously avoidedwhen playing cards himself was partnering Ingram.
He was still shaken from seeing her and realizing that it was indeed she. Like a little ghost out of his past. He hadalways assumed whenever he thought of her that she wasliving a life of quiet and blameless drudgery somewhere,resisting the advances of amorous employers as she had resisted him, making an armor of her virtue. She had wantedhim. He knew that. She had even admitted as much on thelast occasion he had seen her, but had added with that sweetgravity that had always been able to raise his temperature afew degrees that temptation was not sin, only the giving into temptation.
He had been about to marry her when his grandfather became gravely ill. Or to offer her marriage, anyway. Perhaps she would have refused. He had been about to offer hermarriage because a marriage bed had seemed the only onehe had had a chance of coaxing her into. And because hehad been in love with her—in lust with her.
He had marveled at himself over the years since, wondering what could possibly have tempted him to act so out of character and so contrary to all that his family and upbringing expected of him. As memory of her had faded, blurringabout the edges, it had seemed to him that she was nothingso out of the ordinary. She was a quiet, sweet little blusher.None of those qualities was appealing to him in otherwomen. It was just that he had expected an easy lay withMiss Harriet Pope, he had convinced himself, and had beenpiqued at being rejected by a mere servant.
But he had remembered wrongly. Harriet Pope had been all of those things he had remembered, but it was the sumtotal of all the qualities he usually found unappealing ratherthan each taken separately that had so affected him. And hereally had been in love with her, he realized now in somesurprise, wincing as Lord Bruce Ingram made the expectedfatal move. It had not been just the desire to mount herbody, though it had definitely been that too. It had been theneed to possess her and to be possessed by her. The realization shook him. He had never felt that way about any othermistress, either before or after the start of a liaison. He didnot feel it about Bridget, his current resident mistress. Hevisited Bridget in order to satisfy his lust. It was as simpleas that. He cared not one fig for the person inside Bridget’sbody.
“The devil,” Lord Bruce said, scraping back his chair and getting to his feet “I can’t think why I play, Tenby. I haveno luck.”
The duke forbore to comment on the fact that it was not always luck or the lack thereof that accounted for a loss at the tables. “You need to find a servant to refill your glass,”he said.
Lord Bruce nodded and signaled a footman. “So you did not pluck up the courage to go shopping after all, Tenby?”he said. “Many a fluttering hope must have been dashedwhen you walked away from the ballroom doors. You careto play?”
“Do you know a Lord Wingham?” the duke asked abruptly.
Lord Brace thought for a moment “Can’t say I do,” he said. “What about him?”
“I am dancing the supper waltz with his wife,” the duke said.
Lord Bruce grinned. “You made the supreme effort after all, old chap?” he said. “And found that the first womanyou fancied is not a marketable commodity? Hard luck,Tenby. They should have to wear different-colored plumesin their hair or something, don’t you agree? Yellow formarried, red for single, pink for married yet available, bluefor single but not interested. It would all give a man asporting chance not to make an ass of himself.”
The duke was not paying attention. He was wonderingwho Wingham was, how long she had been married to him, how deeply she cared for him. Was he a handsome devil,damn him? The name made him sound dashing. Was heone of her former employers who had also discovered thatit had to be a marriage bed at Miss Harriet Pope’s back ornone at all? Was that what she had always been in searchof? A wedding ring in exchange for her virtue? Was thatwhat she had hoped for from him? She had very nearly gother wish too, by Jove.
But there was no point in whipping up anger against her, he thought. That was all any woman was after, was it not?That was what virtue was—that marketable commoditywhich a woman of quality sold in exchange for a husband.Harriet had sold to Wingham, whoever the devil he was. Hewondered if she was happy, if she considered she had madea fair exchange. She had looked happy enough until shehad caught sight of him.
But damnation, she looked lovely when she blushed. He had not been able to resist fading into the old habit of trying to make her do so. It was no more difficult to do nowthan it had been six years ago. How much longer did hehave to wait before the supper dance?
“You may wear a hole in it if you stare so fixedly and so ferociously at it, Arch,” Lord Bruce said.
The duke looked up at him, frowning in incomprehension, and then back down to the carpet at which he had been staring.
“She must be a looker,” Lord Bruce said. “But not a better looker than Bridget, surely? And certainly not better endowed by nature in her other parts? Impossible, Archie.”
“You are referring to a lady,” the duke said, his voice haughtily aristocratic, one hand playing with the handle ofhis quizzing glass. “And another man’s wife, Bruce.”
Lord Bruce chuckled, quite uncowed by the reprimand. “She is a looker,” he said. “This I have to see, Arch, myboy, even at the expense of having to step into the lions’den for the second time in one evening. The supper waltz.And then supper. Someone had better warn Wingham,whoever he might be, poor devil. But he might be a ferocious giant who has no respect for ducal titles, you know. You might be going into the lions’ den in dead earnest, Archie.”
“I am not planning to ravish the woman in the middle of the ballroom,” the duke said with an hauteur that would havecowed most listeners.
His friend merely chuckled. “In some secluded corner, then?” he said. “Much more tasteful, Archie. You had better not be late. It must be approaching suppertime if mystomach is a reliable hourglass. It usually is.”
Damnation, the duke thought, releasing his hold on his quizzing glass and turning to leave the card room and return to the ballroom, he was feeling nervous! Nervous of going back in there and dancing with her. With Harriet Pope, the little girl who had worked for Freddie’s wife. With a woman who was now married to another man andof no possible interest to him except as a slightly nostalgicmemory.
More likely, he thought, it was of entering the ballroom he was nervous. He had the feeling that doing so would change the whole comfortable and familiar pattern of his life. Though perhaps that was already an accomplished fact. He had already entered the ballroom and found Harriet there. Already he was uncomfortable and already he was on unfamiliar ground.
He squared his shoulders as he approached the ballroom, Bruce at his side, and concentrated on looking haughty andslightly bored. It was an effective mask and had served himwell through the years. She was in the middle of a circle ofadmirers, he saw at once, flushed and laughing. Behavingquite unlike her former self.
“Which one?” Lord Bruce asked.
“In front of Lady Muir,” the duke said, turning his eyes away from her. Obviously a set had just ended and the supper waltz was next. “Holding court.”
Lord Bruce Ingram was silent for a few moments. “Yes, a looker,” he said. “And more than that. Definitely morethan that. Poor Bridget. I hear a death knell tolling. Doknells toll? Or is my lady a virtuous wife, do you suppose?What a bore for you if she is, Arch. My commiserations,old chap.”
“I had better go and claim her,” the duke said, strolling away, feeling again as he had felt earlier the attention hewas drawing. Well, he would waltz with her and have supper with her, if the unknown Lord Wingham did not raiseany objection. And then he would take himself off to Bridget’s to give her an unexpected night of hard work and toproceed to lay the ghost that should have been laid sixyears ago.
She was aware of his approach. He could tell that, though she was half turned away from him. He watched her flushdeepen and her smile become more fixed as she listened towhat Robin Hammond was saying to her. He wonderedhow she had remembered him through the years, if she hadremembered him at all. With shame? With indignation?With regret? With indifference? He wondered how she hadbeen comparing her memories of him with her present feelings for her husband.
