A Mistress for Major Bartlett Read online

  Anything, to take his mind off Sarah. To keep him busy and away from her.

  Yes, he would report to Flint.

  But instead of making his way straight up the Rue de Ruysbrock, misery kept him wandering aimlessly through the Park. He wasn’t the only one. Other soldiers loitered in the shady walks, some on crutches, some with arms in slings, and some, like him, with their head swathed in bandages.

  ‘Tom!’ Sarah’s voice. What the hell was she doing here? And bearing down on him like an avenging fury, brandishing her frivolous little ivory parasol like a battle standard.

  ‘How could you!’ Her face was livid. Her voice strident. An officer in a scarlet jacket, who’d been sunning himself on a nearby bench, opened his eyes and frowningly turned his head to see who was disturbing his nap.

  ‘Sarah, please, keep your voice down,’ he urged her. He’d left her to protect her reputation. But her words were bound to make people think he’d done the very thing he’d almost killed himself to avoid doing.

  ‘Keep my voice down? Keep my voice down! Ooh, I...’ She gathered herself, like a thundercloud about to burst. ‘I never thought I’d hear you say anything so utterly mealy-mouthed and...and hypocritical. But then I never thought you’d abandon me, either.’

  ‘I didn’t abandon you,’ he said, taking her arm and towing her towards a deserted walk. ‘I left you a note.’ Over which he’d agonised for what felt like hours. ‘Explaining.’

  ‘You call that an explanation? Two lines saying Major Flint was right and that you needed to think of duty. Duty!’ She spat the word as though it was a curse. ‘I had no idea where you’d gone.’

  He’d had no clear idea where he was going himself.

  ‘When I got back from my ride and saw your things packed, and your note on the pillow...’ She shuddered. ‘I’ve just spent the morning scouring Brussels for you. And when I couldn’t find you anywhere, I had visions of you lying collapsed in some gutter somewhere. And where do I find you? Strolling about the park as though you haven’t a care in the world!’

  ‘I’m not exactly strolling.’

  ‘Don’t be so pedantic! You know what I mean! You said—’ her lower lip quivered ‘—you said you loved me! Tom,’ she said reproachfully. ‘Is this your idea of love?’ Her eyes grew luminous with burgeoning tears. ‘To abandon me, just when I need you the most?’

  ‘Need me the most?’ His determination to resist her vanished under a wave of dread. He stopped walking, turned to face her, and seized her arms. ‘Has something happened? Your brother? Lord Randall. Is he...’

  ‘I have no idea how he is. It isn’t that.’ She gulped. ‘You said you loved me. I thought you meant it. I actually thought...’ Her mouth twisted into a bitter line. ‘And then you left. Left me alone. I have nobody in Brussels, Tom, don’t you realise that? Justin is probably dying and Mary won’t let me anywhere near him. Seems to think she has to protect me from him. And Gideon is lying in that revolting coffin, in that hideously cold chapel. Even B-Ben ran off the moment Adam snapped his fingers. I thought at least I could rely on you, Tom.’

  ‘You can rely on me,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see that I’m trying to do the right thing by you? If I’d stayed with you any longer, now that I’m getting well, I don’t know how long I could have resisted you.’ He gave her a little shake. ‘Just once in my benighted life, I wanted to do the right thing.’

  ‘I don’t want you to do the right thing.’ She stamped her foot. ‘I don’t want you trying to behave nobly. It isn’t you, Tom. And I want you. And if...’ She lifted her chin, though it was quivering. ‘If you really did love me, you wouldn’t dream of leaving me here alone. Knowing I’d have no alternative but to slink back to Antwerp with my tail between my legs and beg everyone’s forgiveness. And I won’t. I won’t. I didn’t do anything wrong!’

  ‘No. You didn’t. You haven’t, not yet. But don’t you see? If I stay with you any longer, we’ll become lovers. I can’t resist you any longer. I want you too much. That’s why I had to leave. Because I love you so much. I want the best for you, Sarah.’ He gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze. ‘And I’m not it.’

  ‘How do you know what is best for me? Have you ever asked? No.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘Nobody ever does. Everyone always think they know what is best for me. But they don’t. You don’t.’

  ‘Perhaps you are right.’ He let go of her arms and drew himself up. ‘But I do know it isn’t a cur like me. Sarah, you deserve so much better.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said defiantly. ‘If you knew what I’d done this morning...’ She turned her head away briefly and swallowed. ‘I was so cross with Adam. So sure it was all his fault.’ She shook her head. ‘Tom, you keep talking as though you think I’m some sort of paragon. But I’m not. I’m just a woman, that’s all. Given to flights of fancy and tantrums, and fits of spite. Not the angel you keep telling me you thought I was when you were in that fever. I started to think...’ Her shoulders slumped. ‘I thought you knew me, but you don’t really. So all your talk of love? It isn’t true at all, is it?’

  She drew herself up and looked him in the eye, hers flashing with pride.

  ‘Go, then. Leave. After what I’ve just done to Adam, my own brother, I deserve to be on my own.’

  ‘No, Lady Sarah, you will find someone, one day, who will be worthy of you.’

  ‘I thought I’d found him,’ she retorted. ‘But I was clearly mistaken. As mistaken as you were when you said you loved me.’

  ‘No!’ He took her hand again. ‘I do love you. Don’t ever think I don’t.’

  She lifted her chin. ‘A fine sort of love,’ she said scornfully. ‘The sort that leaves me broken and alone.’

  An elderly couple who were strolling past caught her words and gave Major Bartlett a scandalised look. Clucked their tongues, and hurried on.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said in an urgent undertone, pulling her off the main path and into the shadow of a stone lion, ‘the last thing I ever wish to do is hurt you. I didn’t think I could hurt you. I thought leaving was for the best. It’s not as if you care for me all that much.’

  ‘That’s all you know.’

  ‘What?’ He seized her hand. ‘What are you saying? I know you only took me in to prove something to yourself. And then you kept me because you needed the excuse to stay in Brussels so you could find out what happened to your twin. I’ve been convenient, until now. But—’

  ‘Yes. That’s all true. I’ve been utterly selfish. Until you said you loved me, I was only thinking about Gideon. But since then...’

  ‘What?’ His heart was banging against his ribs. ‘Since then, what?’

  ‘Since then, I started to wish for something I’d never thought I wanted before. To belong to someone, other than Gideon. To belong to you.’

  ‘I want that more than anything,’ he said, raising her hand to his lips. ‘But it cannot be.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Tom, stop talking such fustian! So, you’ve been a rake. So, your background contains a bit of scandal. I don’t care. I don’t care about any of it. What I do care about is what you think of me. That’s all. Because you’re the only person never to have condemned me. Or tried to order me about. You might even...’ her breath hitched in her throat ‘...be able to forgive the wicked things I’ve done,’ she ended, gazing up at him with eyes full of hope and longing.

  ‘You couldn’t do anything wicked. I don’t believe it. If you have done something you regret,’ he added swiftly when her face fell and he recalled her saying something about deserving punishment because she’d done something dreadful to Major Flint, ‘I would know that you didn’t mean any harm by it. Or if you did, that you were sorry, afterwards. Sometimes, we all do things, in the heat of the moment, we shouldn’t. That doesn’t make us bad people. Only human.’

  ‘Well, I suppose at leas
t this has made you stop saying you think I’m an angel,’ she said sadly.

  His face worked. ‘Yes. But that doesn’t change what I am. Why do you think Lord Randall selected me to become an officer in his unit? It’s because I’ve always been so good at causing trouble wherever I go. And leading others into it.’

  ‘The way you formed those village lads, the ones who taunted you with that horrid song, into a gang who followed you into all sorts of enterprising adventures?’ She curled her fingers into his. ‘You are a born leader of men, Tom. Why can’t you see that it’s a good thing? Why do you talk of it as though it is some kind of crime?’

  ‘You speak of me as though I’m some kind of...’ He shook his head, unable to find the right word.

  ‘To me, you are, Tom,’ she said with a soft smile. ‘The best man in the world.’

  Her words sucked the breath from his chest. Made his legs start shaking. ‘And I can’t bear the thought of you leaving. Please, Tom, don’t leave me.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘I can’t fight you,’ he said, bowing his head over her hand as he pressed it fervently to his mouth. ‘Not as well as my own desire. But it’s wrong of me. If I come back with you now...’ He looked up at her and what she saw in his eyes made her heart thunder. Naked desire. Agonised longing.

  For her.

  ‘Tom,’ she breathed, ‘I’m already as good as ruined. There is no point in you fighting some sort of rearguard action by leaving me.’

  She stepped up to him, slid her arms round his neck and kissed him.

  And his brain simply dissolved. He couldn’t have formed a rational explanation for why he should stop her from kissing him, had his life depended on it.

  ‘Disgraceful,’ he dimly heard somebody say. A swift glance over Sarah’s shoulder confirmed it was the same elderly couple who’d walked past a few moments ago. They must have doubled back to make sure they didn’t miss anything.

  With a low growl, he pulled Sarah closer into his body and gave them something really worth watching.

  He stopped kissing her only when his head began to spin.

  ‘Take me home, Tom.’

  Home. He lifted his head, eyes closed, and swallowed back what felt like a sob. From now on, wherever she was would be his home. And to think she’d spoken of their little room as home, too.

  ‘I very much fear,’ he confessed, once he could breathe steadily again, ‘you are going to have to take me home,’ he said. ‘My legs are shaking so much.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, instantly snaking her arm round his waist and wedging her shoulder under his. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed.’

  They began to weave their unsteady way back up the slope, and on to the Rue Royale.

  They said nothing more during their short walk back to the lodging house in the Rue de Regence. Tom hadn’t the breath for it, for one thing. For another, he was too stunned by her declaration she needed him to know what to say.

  ‘You fought for me,’ he said as he collapsed to the bed, having only just made it up the stairs. ‘You always have done. Right from the first. That is what made me fall in love with you. ‘

  ‘I will always fight for you, Tom,’ she said, bending over him to plant a kiss on his brow. ‘Because you are worth fighting for.’

  ‘I’m not. But your faith in me makes me wish I could be the sort of man who was.’

  ‘I don’t want you to change,’ she said, stroking his cheek tenderly. ‘I love you exactly as you are.’

  He snaked his arms round her waist. ‘You make me feel as if I belong. As if I’m exactly where I ought to be.’

  ‘You are, Tom,’ she said softly. ‘You’re with me.’

  ‘And what,’ he said with a rakish smile, ‘do you intend to do with me, now you’ve got me?’

  ‘Do you know, I’ve been thinking about that,’ she said, with a little frown. ‘When you left me, one of the things that made me really cross was the fact that I’ve gained the reputation of being a fallen woman, without actually experiencing any of the pleasure that would have made it worth while. So, Tom, do you think you could show me?’

  ‘Show you?’ He swallowed.

  ‘Yes. What is the point of falling in love with a rake, and knowing he’s had so many other women, and being the only one to leave his bed still a virgin?’

  ‘Because you’re not like any of the others,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going to tell me they meant nothing to you?’

  ‘No. Not that. I’ve been grateful to every one that’s been generous enough to share a few moments, or hours of pleasure. I like sex, Sarah. I won’t deny it. I like it a lot. It chases away all thoughts of who you are, and where you are, and replaces it with sensation. Glorious sensation. And leaves a sort of peace in its wake. A peace that enables a man to sleep without having to numb his brain with liquor. But this, for me, will be completely different.’

  He sat up and clasped her hands. ‘I know that you are feeling rebellious, and lonely, and will be seeking comfort and a sort of thrill. And there is nothing wrong with any of that. Those things have driven me to indulge in liaisons, in the past.’

  He gazed deep into her eyes.

  ‘But if I make love to you, Sarah, it will be really making love. For the first time in my life.’

  She didn’t know what to say.

  He bowed his head over her hand, and kissed it. ‘Lord Randall would say I’m not worthy of this,’ he said, kissing each knuckle in turn. ‘And I agree. I don’t have the right to claim it.’ He slid his tongue between her first and middle finger. She gave a little gasp, because for some reason the slide of his tongue sent sensations spiralling from her stomach to the juncture between her thighs. ‘But you have asked me, very politely—’ he turned her hand over and bit down on to the mound of flesh at the base of her thumb, turning the spiralling sensations to an insistent throb ‘—to show you the kind of pleasure that fallen women experience.’

  ‘Are you going to?’ Her voice came out like a sigh. He’d already started. And if this was how he could make her feel just kissing her hand, what would it be like when he really got going?

  ‘No power on earth could stop me. Not today,’ he growled, surging to his feet and pulling her into his arms.

  ‘Tom, oh, Tom—’ she panted between kisses ‘—you are shaking. You aren’t well enough for this. Today was your first time outside since the battle. We should stop.’

  ‘I have strength enough for what I have in mind,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling her on to his lap. ‘But,’ he continued, as he deftly undid the ties at the back of her gown, ‘if I need to, I can always lie down, can’t I? And you will lie down with me.’

  She opened her mouth to agree, when he started kissing his way down her neck to her shoulders, which he could get at easily now that he’d loosened her gown. And all that came out was a little sound halfway between a gasp and a groan.

  ‘I think,’ she panted out, when she was able to form thought into words, ‘we should lie down right now. Just in case.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he pleaded. ‘I want to get your clothes off first. May I?’ His hand went to her neckline.

  ‘Oh, yes, please.’

  The dress fell to her waist. He tugged her breasts free of her chemise. Cupped one gently in his hand, while he kissed and suckled at the other.

  ‘Tom—’ she gasped. ‘Oh, Tom.’ She kneaded at his shoulders, her head rolling back as the delicious sensations he’d already started grew and blossomed, so that she felt full, and ripe, and ready for...something.

  He slid his hand up under her skirt, caressing the soft skin he found at the top of her thigh, above her stocking. And then a little higher.

  And when his fingers began to work at her there, it was as though he unleashed some
kind of storm. As he skilfully removed the rest of her clothing, flashes of lightning flickered up her spine, lit up her blood, dazzled her every sense. And she was naked, on her back, and he was beside her, stroking her, kissing her, nibbling at her neck, her breasts, her belly. Making her gasp with shock, moan with pleasure.

  And then he shifted further down the bed, bent over her and fastened his mouth to the spot that was at the very centre of the storm. Pushed his finger into the heart of a maelstrom of sensation. Lashed her with his tongue. Lashed her into a frenzy.

  ‘Tom, I can’t, I... Oh, Tom...oh, oh, oh!’

  Pleasure exploded through her. Ripped her from her moorings. And gently floated her back to shore.

  For a moment or two, she was so stunned that all she could do was breathe. Drag in one breath after another and wait for the world to stop spinning.

  But then she managed to just about open her eyes.

  To see Tom, crouched over her.

  Looking at her not the way she thought a lover should look at all. But like a warrior. A warrior who was about to face a mortal foe.

  ‘Tom,’ she breathed, reaching up to cup his cheek with a tender hand. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  What was wrong? He sucked in a sharp, painful breath. There she was, lying there in the afterglow of the pleasure he’d given her. Still virgin.

  He’d thought he could do this for her. Thought he could give her the pleasure she’d asked him for—and leave her intact.

  But the thought of some faceless man, a man they’d think worthy of marrying her, seeing her like this, having the right to go where he hadn’t, it made him want to howl. With rage. With pain. The agony of imagining her with any other man was worse than any physical pain he’d ever suffered.

  The temptation to ruin that smug, worthy man’s hypothetical wedding night by making sure he wouldn’t be her first was almost overwhelming.

  He gritted his teeth. It was wrong. It was wicked.