when not a day ago the sight would not have interested him in the slightest?
He was still swallowing too hard to ask if she needed any assistance in getting back into the house undetected when she scampered over to the horse trough and clambered up onto its rim. From there she swung herself up onto the stable roof.
Darting him an impish grin as she reached for the lower branches of a gnarled old apple tree, she said, ‘I don’t think you are such a cross old stick as you look.’
Having fired that Parthian shot, she clambered from one bough to another with the agility of a monkey, giving him one tantalizing glimpse of a perfectly formed bottom as she leaned over to push up a sash window which had been left open an inch, before vanishing into the house.
For some minutes all he could do was stand there, rock hard and breathing heavily, feeling as though he’d been hit by some kind of energising force.
He’d begun the night seething with resentment and frustration. But now he was savouring the delicious sensation of knowing everything was in working order. And it had not been achieved through the determined wiles of some doxy. No, in spite of everything, it had been a natural response to a society female. He chuckled. It was good to know that there was one, at least, amongst them that it would be no hardship to take to bed. He eyed the window, half wondering what would happen if he were to climb up after her and …
The window slammed shut. He took a step back into the deeper shadows close to the stable. He’d come to London to contract a respectable alliance, not get embroiled in a scandal. It was no use standing here gazing up at the window through which she’d disappeared, wondering if the branches of that apple tree would bear his weight.
But the fact that he was thinking along those lines at all was immensely cheering.
He turned and walked away with a grin on his face. Lady Jayne was what was termed a handful. Continuing an association with her was going to bring him no end of trouble. He could feel it. And yet he was not dreading their next encounter. Not by a long shot.
In fact, he couldn’t remember when he’d last felt so alive.
‘Lor, miss, I been that worried about you,’ exclaimed Josie, leaping to her feet, dashing across the room and hauling Lady Jayne in over the windowsill. ‘Thank heavens you’re back safe and sound and no harm done.’
‘I am sorry you have been so worried,’ said Lady Jayne. ‘And I promise you,’ she said vehemently, turning to shut the sash firmly behind her, ‘that I shall never do anything so thoughtless and reckless and selfish ever again.’
Josie, who had been with her since she was twelve years old, and therefore knew her moods well, looked at her sharply.
‘What happened? Something, I can tell. Have you fallen out with your young man?’
Lady Jayne shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that.’
Although, in a way, she supposed she had. Even before Lord Ledbury had come along and put an end to their encounter she had wondered if it had been a mistake to leave the house to meet Harry. The darkened windows of the houses she’d snuck past had seemed to glare at her menacingly, so that she had already been feeling uneasy by the time she’d entered the square. It was not like sneaking out at dawn for an unsupervised ride or walk around Darvill Park, her grandfather’s estate in Kent. She might run into anyone in a public park.
‘We’d best get you into your night rail and into bed before that maid of Lady Penrose’s comes in with your breakfast,’ said Josie, turning her round and briskly unhooking the back of her gown while she undid her breeches.
She’d already been feeling distinctly uneasy when she’d found Harry. And then, instead of just taking her hand and murmuring the sort of endearments he generally employed during their snatched meetings, he had pulled her down onto the bench next to him and hauled her into his arms.
‘I cannot bear to go on like this, my darling,’ he’d said in accents of despair. ‘There is nothing for it. We shall have to elope.’
Before she’d had a chance to say she would never do anything of the sort, he had kissed her full on the mouth. His moustache had scoured her upper lip in a most unpleasant way, and some of the bristles had gone up her nostrils. And what with his arms crushing her ribcage, half his moustache up her nose, and his mouth clamped over hers, she had felt as though she was suffocating. It had all been a far cry from what she had expected her first kiss to be like. When eventually she permitted some man to kiss her … And that was another thing, she reflected with resentment as she stepped out of her gown and breeches. She had not given him permission. He had just pounced. And he had been so very strong and unyielding that for a moment or two she had panicked.
It was not easy, even now, to keep perfectly still while Josie untied her stay laces and she relived those horrible moments in Harry’s determined embrace. How relieved she had been when Lord Ledbury had come upon the scene, looking so ferocious. Not that she would ever admit that to a living soul. She ducked her head guiltily so that Josie could throw her night rail over her head.
She had not felt grateful for long, though. The way he’d looked at Harry, as though he wanted to tear him limb from limb, had caused her fear to come rushing back—although its focus had no longer been upon herself.
But then he’d dismissed Harry, wiped away the one tear she had not been able to hold back, and taken her home as though there was nothing the least bit untoward about walking through the streets at daybreak with a person he’d just caught in a compromising position.
She went to the dressing-table stool and sat down heavily.
Until the viscount had talked about getting Harry brought up on a charge it had never occurred to her that others might have to pay any penalty for her misdemeanours. She had cheerfully flouted the rules, safe in the knowledge that any punishment meted out to her would be relatively mild. Lady Penrose might have forbidden her to attend any balls for a few nights, or curtailed her shopping expeditions. Which would have been no punishment at all.
At the very worst she had thought she might get sent home to Kent. Which would have felt like a victory, of sorts.
It had taken the grim-faced viscount to make her see that there would inevitably be repercussions for others tangled up in her affairs, too. To wake her up to the fact that she would never have forgiven herself if Josie had lost her job, or Harry had been cashiered out of his regiment, on her account. Thankfully he had listened to her pleas for leniency for Harry and Josie, and had given his word not to speak of what he knew about her activities tonight.
She reached up and patted Josie on the hand as her faithful maid began to brush out her hair, separating it into strands so that she could put it in the plaits she always wore to bed. How could she not have considered that others might have to pay for her misdemeanours? How could she have been so selfish?
She raised her head and regarded her reflection in the mirror with distaste.
People were always telling her how very much she resembled her father. They were beginning to whisper that she was as cold and heartless as him, too, because of the wooden expression she had taken so many years to perfect.
But you couldn’t tell what a person was really like from just looking at their face. Only think of how wrong she’d been about Lord Ledbury. Earlier tonight, when she’d noticed him at Lucy Beresford’s come-out ball, she’d thought him one of the most disagreeable men she’d ever seen. He had not smiled once,
