The Offer (Baron 2)

“Do you love her?”

“Certainly not. I scarcely know her. You know I’m far too young to love anyone. Far far too young to wed.”

“Aren’t you also a rake?”

“No, not really. It’s all a matter of degree. I’m a very low degree, as in I’m barely on the scale at all. Most of it is just gossip. I’m not as clean as Rohan Carrington is known to be now, but it’s close. All right, not all that close, but I’m not a womanizer, not like Richard Clarendon.”

“I’ve always enjoyed the degrees you’ve given to me, Phillip.”

“Stop twisting my words, Martine. Clarendon would have really compromised her, taken gross advantage of her innocence, had it been he who had found her. She was very lucky in her rescuer. I’m honorable. I might have felt lust for her, but never would I have acted on it.”

Martine pondered this for some minutes, then harked back to two words that quite struck her fancy. “Clarendon, he also wanted to be the sacrificial husband to this girl nobody compromised?”

“It wasn’t ev

er a question of that. It was Charles Askbridge—the blockhead—who said that. Your romantic Clarendon would have shied away had he thought of himself as a sacrifice, no matter how much he shouted about his desire to marry her, if only I swore I hadn’t damaged her. Damaged. Can you believe that? After hearing that she nearly died, he had the gall to ask me if I’d damaged her. Sometimes it’s a sorry world, Martine. It’s a world that ranks down there with slugs.”

“Yes, that is true,” Martine said as she ran the tips of her fingers over his chest, down to his belly. To be truthful, which she hoped she wouldn’t have to be, she was getting bored with all this talk about a girl she didn’t even know. She leaned up and kissed his throat. “How hard you are,” she said, her fingers low on his belly now, touching him.

“You know I spar at Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Salon,” he said absently, his attention returning to the cracked plaster overhead.

Martine chuckled and kissed him all over his chest. “No, Phillip, I don’t think your Gentleman Jackson has anything to do with this particular hardness.” She was holding him now and he sucked in his breath.

He pulled her on top of him. She said into his mouth, “I don’t understand something here, Phillip. You’ve told me many times that you’re too young to marry, that the last thing you want is a wife. But you act like a man with a very guilty conscience.” Then she began to move over him. His mind very nearly blanked out.

She stopped for a moment, and he managed to say, “She spent nearly a week with me—alone. And that wretched pair, Elizabeth and Trevor, were spreading tales about her having tried to seduce her own brother-in-law. At least when I saw them, I made it clear—in no uncertain terms, mind you—that they were to keep their mouths closed. But no doubt the damage has already been done. It just hasn’t reached London yet, but it will. Sabrina doesn’t understand this, damn her for not trusting me, for not believing me.”

Martine let him fill her completely. It was a wonderful feeling, particularly with Phillip. “This girl whom you did not seduce, would she like this?”

Phillip thought of Sabrina, small, slight, pressed hard against him during the worst of her fever. He could feel again her consummate embarrassment at his intimate care of her. Although his lust had very nearly overcome his wits, he managed to bring himself to heel. A gentleman didn’t discuss a lady of quality in such a way, much less discuss the matter with his mistress. He knew, of course, that it wasn’t Martine’s fault this had happened. It was his.

“No more, Martine, no more. Just this. Yes, just this.” He wrapped his fingers in her short fair curls and pulled her mouth down to his.

24

Dambler wasn’t happy when he admitted his master at near dawn the following morning. He trailed after him up the wide staircase of Derencourt House. He knew very well what his master had been doing. He’d ceased being envious years ago. He was now happily sour about the entire business, a benefit of getting old. One of the very few. He sniffed. His master smelled of sex and brandy. More of the former than the latter.

“Don’t you preach at me,” Phillip said over his shoulder, thinking that at any minute Dambler would tread upon his heels.

Dambler didn’t say a word. When he reached his bedchamber, Phillip tried his best to get off his rumpled clothing. His fingers didn’t seem to want to work together.

“The nighttime, my lord, is for sleeping and not for carrying on,” Dambler said as he helped his master undress.

“It’s only for sleeping if you’re old, Dambler, and you well know it. I remember my father telling me what a wild young man you were. You’re just jealous now.”

“I don’t think so, my lord.”

Phillip grunted. He couldn’t imagine a man not being jealous. He slid in between the sheets. They were cold. He wanted to complain about it, but he was too sleepy.

“On the other hand, anything is possible,” Dambler said. “I will think about this. I was just congratulating myself on enjoying one of the benefits of approaching my autumn years, that is, I don’t have to bed a woman every night.”

“Two women, if possible.”

“As you say. I don’t remember. Well, at best they’re fleeting memories that sting only for a very brief instant.”

“You sound like you’re about to weep. Forget autumn years, Dambler. Go find yourself a laughing lady. But first, go to bed and don’t wake me up unless the house is on fire or you feel a bout of apoplexy coming on. I didn’t ask you to wait up for me, curse you.”

“What would her ladyship say?” Dambler said as he blew out the candles.