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He picked his way through the entwined couples and crossed the checkerboard black and white tiles of the hall. He vaguely remembered that the study was the third door on the left and he was just in time to catch the faintest swish of material as Beth whisked through the door, leaving it ajar for him.
Marcus smiled to himself. The situation was most promising and, despite his cynicism, he had to admit that there was something intriguing about the lady’s air of aloof mystery. Perhaps it was all assumed simply to whet jaded appetites, but it was working on him and he was more world-weary than most. He quickened his step, went into the study and closed the door behind him.
It was a small room with a mahogany card table and chairs in the middle and matching mahogany bookcases about the walls. Long amber curtains shut out the night and the only light came from one lamp, standing on a side table.
Beth was standing beside the window. She had taken the dice from their box on the table and was tossing them lightly in one hand. She did not look up when Marcus came in and for a moment he thought he sensed something tense and wary in her stance, though the impression was fleeting.
He took a step forward. ‘Would you care to indulge in a game of chance, sweetheart?’ he asked.
She looked at him then, a stare as straight and protracted as the one she had first given him in the ballroom. Marcus was amused. He knew of few men and even fewer women who were so direct. Her eyes were a shadowed silver behind the mask, her gaze as deliberate and fearless as a cat.
‘If you are sure that you wish to play, my lord.’
They were talking in double entendres now and Marcus appreciated her quick wit. It made the pursuit even more enjoyable. He wondered if she knew who he was, even though he had given only his name and not his title. It was entirely possible. She had focused on him from the first and he did not flatter himself that it was simply because she was attracted to him. She might well consider that his status and physical attributes outweighed a lack of fortune. And fortune was relative anyway. He could pay her well enough.
He kept his eyes on her face and smiled slowly. ‘I’m sure. Which game do you prefer?’
The lady smiled too, the dimple quivering again at the corner of her deliciously curved mouth. Marcus suddenly wished he could cut to the chase and simply kiss her. It was a high-risk strategy and might backfire, but it was very tempting. He took a step closer. She took one back.
‘Hazard might be appropriate,’ she said coolly, tossing the dice from one hand to the other. ‘One throw of the dice. The winner takes all.’
Marcus hesitated. It was clear from her words that she would be his prize if he won and he considered it very sporting of her to offer her services for free. The reckoning would come later, of course, if they suited each other: the villa, the carriage, the jewels…
But if she won the wager…
‘I like your terms, but first I need to know what you want from me if I lose,’ he drawled. ‘I do not have a fortune to offer. What would you settle for, sweetheart?’
He waited confidently for her to name her price. A necklace of diamonds, perhaps, to outclass the exquisite but tasteful grey pearls already around her neck.
She moved closer until he could smell her perfume. It was a subtle mix of jasmine and rose petals, warm as the sun on the skin, and it sent his senses into even more of a spin. Damn it, whatever the price, it had to be worth it.
‘I don’t want a fortune,’ she said sweetly, ‘just a small part of your patrimony. I want Fairhaven Island.’
Marcus stared. It comprehensively answered the question of whether or not she knew who he was, but it seemed an extraordinary suggestion. Fairhaven fell in the part of his estate that he had not yet had time to visit, but as far as he was concerned, it was a storm-swept isle in the middle of the Bristol Channel that supported a few people, a flock of sheep and nothing else. There was no earthly reason he could see why it should appeal to a courtesan. It was worth absolutely nothing at all.
Part of his mind prompted him to ask a few questions and get to the bottom of the mystery. The other part, tantalised by her perfume, suggested that there was no need to cavil and he was bound to win the bet anyway. Even if he lost he was fairly certain that he could persuade her to humour him. The time for a discussion on land and property was not now, when he wanted to sweep her into his arms, but later and best left to the lawyers.
‘Very well,’ he said, adding slowly, ‘Do you always honour your bets?’
She looked away for the first time. ‘I do not usually gamble, my lord. Do you honour yours?’
Marcus laughed. No man would have dared ask him that question but, after all, he had questioned her integrity first. And she still had not really answered him.
‘I never renege,’ he said. He took her hand in his and felt her tremble slightly. Her skin was very soft; he turned the hand over and pressed a kiss on the palm. ‘But you did not answer my question.’
There was a flash of something in her eyes that almost looked like fear but it was gone as swiftly as it had come. She raised her chin.
‘I will pay my debt, my lord—if I lose.’
Marcus nodded. He drew her closer until one of her palms was resting against his chest.
‘And if I wish to take something on credit?’ he asked, his voice a little rough.
‘Then you might find yourself even further in debt since there is no guarantee that you would win.’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘If you are willing to take the risk—’
It took Marcus only a split second to decide that he was. He bent his head and brought his mouth down on hers.
He was experienced enough not to try to take too much too soon. Even a Cyprian liked to be courted and he was no naïve boy to pounce without finesse. He kissed her gently, exploratively, holding her like china until he felt the tension slide from her body and she started to respond to him. She tasted soft and sweet and very innocent. She even trembled in his arms. It had to be an illusion, but it was such a beguiling one that Marcus felt his self-control slipping dangerously. He deepened the kiss and, after a moment’s hesitation, she kissed him back tentatively, pressing a little closer to him. Desire surged through his body, so powerful it pushed all other thoughts aside and he pulled her to him fiercely, careless now of gentleness. But it was too late—she was withdrawing from him, as elusive as she had ever been. Marcus stifled a groan of frustration.
‘The game, my lord?’ Her voice was husky.
The game. He had forgotten. Intent on a different game of his own devising, he had not been certain that she would persist in their wager. Still, he was quite willing to indulge her.
‘If you wish.’ Marcus shrugged. ‘All on the one throw.’ He gave her a slight bow. ‘I will concede you the honour of calling the main, madam.’
Beth threw him one swift glance. ‘Then I call a nine.’
She took the dice up and cast them on to the walnut table. Marcus watched them spin and settle on the polished wood. A five and a four. She really had the devil’s own luck. He could not believe it. He smiled a little. ‘Will you play for the best of three?’
‘Certainly not.’ She sounded breathless and as she turned into the light he saw the expression on her face. He had expected triumph or greed. What he saw was relief.
‘Fairhaven,’ she said, on a questioning note. ‘You will honour your bet, my lord?’
Marcus did not reply. For the first time, doubt surfaced in his mind, faint but troubling. She had come close to him again; her skirt brushed against his thigh. Part of him responded to her proximity, but he clamped down hard on his desire and tried to concentrate.
‘Why do you want it?’ he asked.
She laughed then and he saw the triumph that had been missing a moment before. ‘Your question comes a little late, my lord! Surely that is academic now.’ She took a step back and her silken skirts rustled. ‘My man of business will call on yours on the morrow. Goodnight, my lord!’
She turned to go, but Marcus caught her arm in a tight grip and spun her round to face him. He tore the mask from her face with impatient fingers. Without it she was even more striking than he had supposed. Her face was a pure oval, the smoky eyes set far apart beneath flyaway black brows, the nose small and straight, the sultry mouth that was not smiling now. She was breathing very quickly and he could tell that she was afraid. And that she was not the courtesan she pretended to be. For some reason that took all the anger out of him.
‘One of us is in the wrong place, I believe,’ he said slowly.
‘It is I,’ she said simply. ‘Did you truly believe me a Cyprian, my lord?’
Marcus started to laugh. He could not help himself. ‘Assuredly. Until I kissed you.’
That gave him the advantage. He saw the colour come up into her face and she tried to free herself from his grip. He stood back, letting her go with exaggerated courtesy. No, indeed, this was no courtesan, but even so he still wanted her. He had no idea whom she was, but he intended to find out.
‘You will honour your bet?’ she asked again.
Marcus grinned, folding his arms. ‘I will not.’
He saw the fury come into her eyes and held her gaze steadfastly with his own.
‘I will make you do so!’ she said.
‘How?’ Marcus shifted slightly. ‘Are you telling me that you would have honoured yours had I won? If so, I would press you to play me for the best of three!’
She blushed even harder at that but her mouth set in a stony line. ‘What I would have done is immaterial, my lord, since you lost. You claimed never to renege!’
Marcus shrugged. ‘I lied.’
‘A liar and a cheat,’ Beth said, in a tone that dripped contempt. ‘I repeat, my man of business will call upon yours on the morrow, my lord, and will expect you to have ready the title to Fairhaven to hand over.’
The study door closed behind her with a decided snap and Marcus heard the quick, angry tap of her footsteps receding across the marble hall. He picked the dice up casually in one hand and sat down in one of the chairs. A whimsical smile touched his lips. He could not believe that his judgement had been so faulty. To mistake a lady for a Cyprian, even given the circumstances…He had been thoroughly misled by his desire, like a youth in his salad days. Led by the nose—or some other part of his anatomy, perhaps. It had never happened to him before.
He tossed the dice absent-mindedly in his hand. So he had been richly deceived and for an intriguing reason. He wanted to know more about that. He wanted to know more of the lady. Damn it, he still wanted her. Marcus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. And he needed a drink. Urgently.
Justin found him in the refreshment room after he had already downed a glass of brandy in one swallow. Justin watched him take a refill and despatch it the same way, and raised his eyebrows.
‘Unlucky in love, Marcus?’
‘Unlucky in games of chance,’ Marcus said feelingly. He took Justin’s arm and drew him into the shelter of one of the pillars, away from prying gossips. ‘Justin, you know more of West Country genealogy than I! Tell me, does Kit Mostyn have a sister?’
Justin nodded. ‘He has a widowed younger sister, Charlotte. Allegedly a blonde beauty, but she lives retired so it is difficult to say with certainty.’
Marcus frowned. Beth had never been a blonde and she could scarcely be described as retiring. Perhaps she was Mostyn’s mistress after all. Yet something in him rebelled at such a thought.
‘What is all this about, Marcus?’ Justin was asking, looking puzzled. ‘I thought you were about to make a new conquest, old fellow, not indulge in a mystery play!’
‘So did I,’ Marcus said thoughtfully. His face lightened and he held up the glass. ‘Only find me the bottle and I will tell you the whole story!’
‘I cannot believe that you just did that, Beth.’
Christopher Mostyn sounded mild, but his cousin knew full well that he was angry. She had known him well enough and long enough to tell.
Beth sighed. ‘It was your idea to escort me there, Kit—’
‘I may have escorted you to the Cyprians’ Ball, but I did not expect you to behave like one!’
Now Kit’s voice sounded clipped, forbidding further discussion. Beth sighed again. Kit was head of the family and as such she supposed he had the right to censure her behaviour. The fact that he seldom did owed more to his easygoing nature than her obedience.
Beth rested her head back against the carriage’s soft cushions and closed her eyes. Truth to tell, she could not believe that she had behaved as she had. And she had only told Kit half the story, the half relating to the wager. She knew that if she had told Kit that Marcus Trevithick had kissed her, very likely he would have stormed back and challenged the Earl to a duel and matters would be immeasurably worse.
Beth opened her eyes again and stared out of the window. They were travelling through the streets of London at a decorous pace and the light from the lamps on the pavement skipped across the inside of the carriage in bars of gold and black. It hid her blushes and a very good thing too, for whenever she thought of Marcus Trevithick, she felt the telltale colour come into her face and the heat suffuse her entire body.
Not only had she overstepped the mark—by a long chalk—but she knew that she had been completely out of her depth with such a man. She had a lot of courage and, allied to her impulsive nature, she knew it could be her downfall. However, her nerve had almost deserted her in that secluded room. If he had won the bet…Beth shivered. Like as not he would have demanded his prize there and then on the card table or the floor…But he had not won. She took a deep, steadying breath.
Marcus Trevithick. Children of her family were taught to hate the Trevithicks from the moment they were born. There were tales told at the nursemaid’s knee—stories of treachery and evil. The Earls of Trevithick were jumped-up nobodies, whereas the Mostyns could trace their ancestry back to the Conquest and beyond. The Trevithicks had stolen the Mostyn estates during the Civil War and had wrested the island of Fairhaven from them only two generations back, taking the family treasure and the Sword of Saintonge into the bargain. No good had come to the Mostyns ever since—their fortunes had fallen whilst the Trevithicks had flourished like an evil weed.
Marcus Trevithick. Beth shivered again. She could not believe that he was evil, but he was certainly dangerous. He was also the most attractive man that she had ever met. Having been a child bride, her experience was necessarily small, but even so she was certain that he could stand comparison in any company.
The carriage drew up outside the house in Upper Grosvenor Street that she had rented for the little Season. Kit descended and helped her out with cold, studied politeness. He did not say a word as he escorted her up the steps and into the entrance hall. Beth bit her lip. She knew she was well and truly in disgrace.
Charlotte Cavendish, Kit’s sister, was sitting in the red drawing room, her netting resting on the cushion beside her. She was reading from Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield but cast the book aside with a smile as they came in. Like her brother, she was very fair with sparkling blue eyes, slender and tall. A scrap of lace was perched on her blonde curls as a concession to a widow’s cap.
‘There you are! I had almost given you up and gone to bed…’
Her smile faded as she looked from her brother’s stony face to Beth’s flushed one.
‘Oh, dear. What has happened?’
‘Ask your cousin,’ Kit said shortly, stripping off his white gloves. ‘I will be in the book room, enjoying a peaceful glass of brandy!’
Charlotte’s gaze moved round to Beth. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said again, but there was an irrepressible twinkle in her eyes. ‘What have you done, Beth?’
Beth wandered over to the big red wing-chair opposite and curled up in it. She was beginning to feel annoyed as well as guilty.
‘It is all very well for Kit to act the moralist, but it was his idea to go to the Cyprians’ Ball in the first place—’
Charlotte gave a little squeak and clapped her hand to her mouth. ‘Beth! You told me you were going to Lady Radley’s rout!’
‘Well, so we did, but then Kit had the idea of the Cyprians’ Ball!’ Beth wriggled uncomfortably under her cousin’s horrified stare. ‘We were masked, so I thought there would be no harm…’ She looked defiant. ‘Very well, Lottie, I admit it! I was curious!’
‘Oh, Beth,’ Charlotte said in a failing voice. ‘I know I cannot accompany you about the town, but I thought you would come to no harm with Kit!’
‘Well, you were wrong!’ Beth said mutinously. It suddenly seemed much easier to blame the whole thing on her cousin. ‘None of this would have happened if Kit had not decided to have some fun!’
‘None of what?’ Charlotte asked, in the tone of someone who was not entirely sure they wanted to know the answer.
Beth yawned. She was very tired and suddenly wanted her bed, but equally she wanted someone to confide in. Her cousin had been as close as a sister this year past, closer than they had ever been in childhood when Charlotte’s five years’ seniority had put Beth quite in awe of her.
Beth, Kit and Charlotte had grown up together, but time and differing fortunes had scattered them. Charlotte had married an officer and followed the drum, Kit had spent several years in India and Beth had been orphaned at seventeen and left penniless. Friends and relatives had murmured of schoolteaching or governessing, but two days after her bereavement, Sir Frank Allerton, a widower whose estate marched with that of the Mostyns, had called to offer her an alternative future. He had not been a friend of the late Lord Mostyn, but Beth knew that her father had esteemed him as an honest man, and so she had accepted.
She had never regretted her decision, but she did regret the lack of children of her marriage. Her home and parish affairs had given her plenty to do, but when Frank had died, leaving her a widow at nineteen, she had been lonely. Though Kit had inherited Mostyn Hall and the title he was seldom at home, and it was Beth who kept an eye on the estate. Then, a year into Beth’s widowhood, Charlotte had lost her husband during the retreat from Almeira and had come back to Mostyn. Fortunately she and Beth had found that they got on extremely well. Charlotte was cool and considered where Beth was impetuous and tempered some of her cousin’s more madcap ideas. Beth’s liveliness prevented her cousin from falling into a decline.
‘So what has happened?’ Charlotte asked again, recalling Beth’s attention to the lamp-lit room. ‘You went to the Ball…’
‘Yes. We only intended to stay for a little, although I think Kit might have lingered if he had been there alone!’ Beth said, with a sudden, mischievous grin. ‘At any rate, it was not as I had imagined, Lottie! There was the most licentious behaviour—’
Charlotte looked exasperated. ‘Well, what did you expect, Beth? You were at the Cyprians’ Ball, not a Court Reception!’
Beth sighed. ‘Yes, I know! Everyone was staring at me—no doubt because they thought me a demirep!’ she added, before her cousin could make the observation herself.
‘Yes, well, it was a reasonable assumption—’ Charlotte looked at her frankly ‘—and you do have a lovely figure, Beth! The gentlemen—’
‘Spare me,’ Beth said hastily, remembering the disturbing heat in Marcus Trevithick’s eyes. ‘I thought you wished to hear what had happened, Lottie?’
‘Yes,’ her cousin said obligingly, ‘what did?’
‘Well, Kit and I had a few dances and, as we were waltzing, the behaviour was becoming more and more uninhibited so I decided it would be wise to come home. Then a gentleman came up to us and asked me to dance.’
Beth looked away. When Marcus Trevithick had first approached her she had been amused and some dangerous imp of mischief had prompted her to play along. She had not known his identity then, but she had been tempted by the atmosphere, tempted by him…
She looked back at Charlotte, who was waiting in silence. ‘We danced a country dance together and he introduced himself as Marcus Trevithick. I had had no notion—I have never met Trevithick before, and although he knew who Kit was he did not know me, though he made strenuous attempts to find out my name…’
‘I’m sure he did,’ Charlotte said drily. ‘Did he proposition you, Beth?’
