The Bluestocking and the Rake (Hearts in Hiding 2)

She slapped him then. Stepped back and brought her hand sharply a second time across his high cheekbone while rage and disappointment compounded her sense of stupidity at being so easily taken in.

“So you lied to my, Lord Ruthcot. That is what you really think of me after all? A lightskirt. A whore for the taking. Good night!”

Her devastation was too acute for tears. Her heart felt like a dried husk; her body weighed down by sorrow. For one brief moment, she’d felt like a girl again. A girl unburdened by the past, by what she’d become.

But his clumsy, fumbling hands had poured cold water on any hope she might hold that she could for even one moment forget what she’d become.

She didn’t listen to him calling her back as she picked up her skirts and ran.

Ran to the walkway, slipping through knots of revelers, between courting couples, until, her breath coming in gasps from emotion and exertion, she took refuge in the shadows of the great pillars that surrounded the promenading dancers. From there, she could watch Lord Deveril spin his wife-to-be in a lively country dance. Lady Elizabeth was looking livelier than Jemima had ever seen her and Deveril, too, looked entranced. The young debutante’s smile was guileless, her enjoyment apparent as she was swept away by the music—and by the handsome man who would be her husband in six short weeks.

Jemima gripped her stomach and doubled over as pain and grief seared her. No one observed her; she was too well hidden in the shadows.

The shadows where she was destined to remain forever.

Chapter 8

Miles tossed the dice, cursed his luck, and bowed out of the game, wishing that the level of agitation he felt these days was not to be laid at the door of the bewitching creature who would be forever out of bounds to him.

Well, full blame was to be laid at his door but he wished he was not such a slave to thoughts of only her. Images of Miss Mordaunt smiling at him consumed every waking hour and tormented his dreams. In his mind she kept changing from innocent, guileless and wronged to wanton seductress trading on her sexual allure to line her pockets. Who was she really? No woman had got under his skin like she had. And she hadn’t even encouraged him. She’d barely even smiled at him. And certainly not after he’d taken such liberties and offended her at Vauxhall.

He stared about the room, pulsing with men concerned only with their own pleasure, and wished he were not so like them.

What had possessed him? He’d been a cad. Behaved abominably.

Restlessly, he began to pace the length of the gaming chamber, for he was unable to remain still. She was like a fever within him. It wasn’t just her beauty which was undeniable. It was something deeper. Something about the essence of her self containment and dignity.

A dignity he had plundered before it had earned him her contempt and anger. And disappointment. Lord, if she only knew how he’d disappointed himself.

But he was sure she’d been as eager as he. That as this was their only opportunity for something that went further than kissing, and as she was a woman who traded her body to get those things she couldn’t get otherwise, she was succumbing to her true feelings for him.

Which made his behavior all the more reprehensible. He realized every charge she’d laid at his door was true. That he was even more guilty of the base sentiments he attributed to Deveril. Yes, more, for Miles had sought to take advantage, when it should have been enough Miss Mordaunt was even prepared to trade a kiss. He disgusted himself.

“Are you all right, old chap?”

He looked up as his old friend, Harry Harding, put out a hand to steady Miles. Harry looked foxed – he usually was – but his concern was genuine.

“Perhaps you should sit down, Miles? What is it? You’ve lost big tonight? Ah well, you don’t have to account to your brother for that, at least. Not that?” he went on when Miles shook his head fiercely though he allowed Harry to lead him to a sofa. “It’s the girl, isn’t it? The missing girl. Nothing you can do about her,

I’m afraid.”

Miles sank onto the shabby velvet seat and rested his head in his hands. The girl. The missing girl Miles had been supposed to rescue. It should be that girl who tormented him. Ephemeral and out of reach. A girl he had let down badly, if he only knew who she was. He heaved in a great sigh. Miss Mordaunt tormented him. She was not so ephemeral but she was equally out of reach.

It was a cruel irony but perhaps he was being punished.

“Where are you going?” Harry asked as Miles rose.

“To where I first met her,” Miles mumbled. It was all he could think about. Tracing his footsteps back into the past. A past where he was unable to turn back the clock and make good his actions.

“Who?”

“The girl I love, obviously,” Miles muttered as if Harry were a fool.

Lord, but he longed to be given the opportunity to prove his worth to someone who mattered though his brother was no longer alive to see it. Redemption. That was what Miles craved.

Stumbling through the gambling den above the Red Door a few minutes later, and into the elegantly furnished drawing room that adjoined it, Miles was astonished, delighted, and dismayed in equal measure to find that Miss Mordaunt was, in fact, at Madame Plumb’s salon this very evening.

Reclining on a chaise longue by the window, with three gentlemen paying court, including the ubiquitous Lord Deveril, she was reading from a volume by Sir Walter Scott. Miles ventured only close enough to read the spine, before wandering with leisurely movements that belied the fact his pulses were racing, toward a chair near the fireplace into which he lowered himself. From here, he could pretend to contemplate the crackling flames while out of the corner of his eye, observe the exquisite creature.