Page 7 of To Love and to Loathe
“I mean to say, it is of course nonsense, just spoken in anger, but it… well, it’s lodged itself in my mind and I can’t stop thinking about it. I shall never bed a woman again at this rate if I can’t get myself into an amorous situation without the blasted woman’s words echoing around in my head the second things get interesting.”
“Has that happened to you, then?” Diana asked, finding her tongue, torn between glee and an unexpected rush of indignation. She had always rather prided herself on having cornered the market when it came to crushing set-downs delivered to Willingham, but this unnamed lady had clearly usurped the crown.
“Well, no,” Willingham admitted, still pacing, “but it’s only a matter of time. I need to just, er, get back in the saddle, as it were, but I’m finding the task a bit daunting.” Diana, watching him closely, thought she detected a telltale flush rising in his cheeks. Was Willinghamblushing? She had not thought such a thing possible—when roughly a third of the widows in London had seen one in the nude, she would have thought that one would be above (or below?) blushing.
“Why are you sharing this with me, of all people?” Diana asked belatedly. This should, truly, have been her very first question, but she had been somewhat taken aback by the unexpected nature of his revelation, and her mind was not moving at its usual rapid pace. “Wouldn’t Audley or Penvale be a more likely confidant?”
“Good God, woman!” Willingham stopped in his tracks and turned to face her, looking truly appalled. “This isn’t the sort of thing I can tell another man. I’d be a laughingstock! I’d never be able to look your brother in the eye again.” He paused, a shrewd look coming into his own eyes. “Which means that you aren’t to tell him, either. I shouldhave gotten your agreement on that count before I began. I’ve gone about this all the wrong way.” He shook his head. “See? I’m addled! Not thinking clearly! Lack of bedsport isn’t good for any man—look at Audley’s behavior recently, if you need proof of that. It dilutes the power of the brain. Makes us soft.”
Diana’s mouth quirked up. “I’d rather thinksoftis quite the opposite of what it would make you.”
He shot her a quelling look. “This is not the time for bawdy jokes, Diana.”
It had been many years since he had addressed her by her Christian name—when they were young, tumbling about her aunt and uncle’s estate on his visits with Penvale, she had been Diana and he had been Jeremy. Or, more often, names had been forgone entirely in favor of more insulting monikers. But once she had made her debut in London, emerging onto the scene as the sophisticated debutante she’d worked so hard to craft herself into, she had been Miss Bourne, later Lady Templeton, and it had been more than five years since she’d heard him call her anything else.
None of this explained, though, why hearing her name on his tongue did such odd and uncomfortable things to her insides. She had long since resigned herself to the fact of her own body’s unwanted, traitorous responses when in the presence of this man, but with firm mental control and self-discipline, these reactions could be ignored. And so she proceeded to do just that.
“If it will ease your mind, I am happy to inform you that the thought of discussing your difficulties in the boudoir with my brother is one of the more horrifying prospects I have ever considered,” she said. “But you have still failed to answer my question: why on earth are you telling me this? We’re hardly in the habit of trading confidences.”
He heaved a sigh and stiffened his shoulders, as though steeling himself for a daunting task. Diana scarcely had time to contemplate what said task could possibly be when he took a few steps forward, seized her hand, and dropped to his knee in front of her.
“Lady Templeton,” he said solemnly, his handsome face gazing earnestly up into her own. “I have a proposal for you.”
Three
It was entirely worth itjust to see the look on her face, Jeremy thought.
Diana, he knew, prided herself on her control, every move she made calculated to have maximum impact, each word honed to sharpness before launched. The sight of her standing above him, jaw slack, a look of abject horror on her face, was one of the most satisfying Jeremy had ever witnessed.
It took only a moment for Diana to come to her senses and wrench her arm from his grip. “Get up off that floor at once,” she said, waving her now-liberated hand at him imperiously. “Have you lost your mind?”
“I don’t believe so, no,” he said, leisurely climbing to his feet. “But I am hurt, truly, that you were not willing to hear me out.”
“Hear you out?” she repeated incredulously. “What could possibly have possessed you to think that I’d wish to hear aproposalfrom you? Have I not made it abundantly clear in the past that a marriage proposal from you would be entirely unwelcome? How better can I explain it so that you finally get it through your thick skull that I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in London?” She paused. “Unless you are indicating your desire to concede our wager?” She batted her eyelashes at him. “I suppose I could nobly suffer matrimonyif it meant I’d win one hundred pounds, and the lifelong satisfaction of knowing I’d bested you.”
“My dear Lady Templeton,” he said, smiling his most winsome smile at her, “as charming as it has been to hear you yet again elucidate your disgust at the prospect of sharing a life with me, I fear you may have gotten a bit ahead of yourself.”
“How so, precisely?” Diana asked icily. Her words were so clipped that she scarcely needed to move her jaw to speak. She was magnificent when she was angry—hazel eyes blazing, cheeks flushed, and that rather spectacular chest of hers doing all sorts of interesting things with every slight movement. This was, of course, no small part of the appeal of riling her.
His smile widened. “My proposal,” he said slowly, drawing the words out, enjoying himself immensely even as her eyes flashed dangerously once again, “was not one of marriage.”
He paused for one beat, then another. Her brow furrowed slightly in confusion, and then smoothed just as quickly as realization sank in. She arched a brow at him and took a step back, crossing her arms over her chest as she gave him a slow once-over.
“Just to be certain I understand this,” she said, her gaze seemingly fixed—surely he was mistaken?—somewhere just south of his navel. “You want me to be your mistress?” He could not help noting that she sounded less insulted by the prospect of being his mistress than by that of being his wife, but decided not to take offense. When he had been mentally reviewing the list of women of his acquaintance, he had discovered that the number he had not dallied with in the past was almost embarrassingly small—and that the number of those who remained who would not be appalled by his proposition had shrunk even further. All the way down to one, in fact.
“I thinkloverwould be more accurate,” he said by way of reply. “Mistressimplies a certain financial arrangement that I don’t think would be necessary between us.” He cast a wry glance at the priceless works of art upon the walls of the drawing room, and at the emerald ring upon her hand. “And, indeed, it also implies a power imbalance, which would not be my intention at all. I’d expect us to enter this arrangement as equals, each receiving benefits.”
Diana’s other eyebrow joined its twin in a race toward her hairline. “And what benefits, precisely, would there be for me? You’ve just informed me that your performance in this context has been receiving somewhat tepid reviews of late, have you not?”
“I am certain those are naught but the angry words of a bereft woman,” Jeremy said, with a touch more confidence than he actually felt. Could women feign pleasure? He supposed they could do so far more easily than a man, and the idea raised a number of unpleasant possibilities in his mind. How was a man ever to know if a woman was truly enjoying herself, if her response could be feigned? What if every woman he’d ever dallied with had been internally critiquing his performance? It seemed unlikely—he did, after all, have something of a reputation. But, of course, it wasn’t impossible. Improbable, yes. But not impossible. And he needed to know, just to be sure.
“If you’re so certain,” Diana said, echoing his thoughts, “then why are you propositioning me in my drawing room? I assume that’s what this is about, is it not? Take me to bed, get a complimentary review of your efforts, head back out into the world reassured of your manly prowess?”
This was, in fact, precisely what Jeremy had in mind, but when she stated it so baldly, it sounded a bit… well, pathetic.
“Something along those lines,” he hedged. “But you would benefitas well, of course.” Seeing the skepticism writ plain on her face, he rushed on. “I’ve heard your discussions with Violet, all this talk of taking a lover. And yet no rumor of a love affair has reached my ears, so unless you are being remarkably discreet, you must continue to sleep alone. Which begs the question:why? You’re young, you’re beautiful, and, er…” He floundered, unsure of how to put into words the quality she exuded, the one that made every man halt and turn as she passed, the one that made it impossible to look at her for more than five seconds without imagining her a great deal less clothed and more vocal. Or, rather, hedidknow how to put it into words—but not words that were appropriate for a lady’s ears.
“You… attract men,” he finished, which was true, but an enormous understatement. She was like a magnet. She could have bedded every eligible man of theton—and a good many of the ineligible ones, too. He was surprised the suitors hadn’t been beating down her door before her husband was cold in the ground. He knew—had known for years—that he had this damned weakness where she was concerned, but he also knew he was far from alone in these sentiments.
