Mistress Read online

  Iphiginia had always liked Richard, however, and he had always been kind to her, especially during the difficult time after her parents had been lost at sea.

  When she recovered from the impact of the first dreadful shock of their deaths, Iphiginia had found herself left with her nine-year-old sister and herself to support.

  Unfortunately, the Brights had left very little in the way of an inheritance. Iphiginia’s mother had never made much money from her paintings. Her father, a gifted architect, had lacked the business acumen to turn his elegant, classical designs into reality.

  The unexpected hidden costs of construction, a poor talent for selecting his business associates, and the myriad problems inherent in building houses on speculation had combined to make most of Bright’s profits evaporate.

  In any event, both of Iphiginia’s parents had been far more interested in renewing their artistic spirits with frequent trips to the ruins of Egypt, Italy, and Greece than they had been with making money.

  The Brights had traveled widely, with little concern for the shifting theaters of the war that had raged at various points on the Continent for years. Iphiginia and her sister had usually accompanied them on their travels.

  But Iphiginia and Corina had been left behind when the indomitable Brights had set out on their last journey. News of their deaths at sea had come as a devastating blow to their beloved daughters.

  Faced with the responsibility of providing for herself and Corina, Iphiginia had taken a bold step. She had scraped together every available penny she could get from the sale of her mother’s paintings and a pattern book that her father had created.

  She had used the small sum to open her academy for young ladies. It had been an immediate success.

  Richard had assisted Iphiginia by persuading his father to rent her a suitable house for her academy. He had made certain that the rent was reasonable. He had gone out of his way to perform other small acts of kindness as well. He had even convinced his mother to recommend Iphiginia’s academy to her friends.

  She would always be grateful to Richard, Iphiginia thought. And she would always feel a certain fondness for him. He was a handsome, amiable man with a likable manner.

  But she knew now that she would not have been the best choice for a wife for him. He, apparently, had comprehended that better than she had at the time.

  The truth was, she would have been quite miserable if she had been forced to spend the remainder of her life in Deepford. She had not realized just how much she had been obliged to repress her naturally exuberant, independent, adventurous, intellectual nature until she had left the village last year.

  She had felt as though she had shed a cocoon and become a creature with wings.

  Iphiginia had discovered this past year that she had inherited a full measure of her parents’ unconventional, artistic sensibilities. She would have had a very hard time behaving in a manner suited to the wife of a staid country squire.

  Her sister, on the other hand, was entirely comfortable with the strictures of life back in Deepford. Corina even seemed to like her new in-laws.

  “Iphiginia?”

  Iphiginia surfaced from her brief reverie. “Yes?”

  “I am very concerned about this new development.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “This situation is dangerous.”

  “Nonsense. We shall find the blackmailer and all will be well.”

  “I am not talking about the blackmail situation.” Amelia gave her a searching glance. “I am talking about your personal situation. This business of masquerading as a notorious widow entails far too much risk. Look at what happened in here tonight.”

  Iphiginia’s cheeks burned. “Really, Amelia. It was just a kiss.”

  Amelia watched her with worried eyes. “For your own sake, I pray you will take great care not to indulge in any more such reckless embraces. Masters is not some harmless country squire whom you can control with a word or a frown. He is a powerful man, accustomed to getting what he wants.”

  “He is a gentleman,” Iphiginia protested.

  “Men of his stamp seize what they desire and do not care whom they hurt in the process.”

  Iphiginia could think of nothing to say in response. She was only too well aware that Amelia spoke from painful experience.

  In the perilous days ahead, she must bear in mind that she was not really Mrs. Bright, the exciting, exotic widow, mysterious paramour of the most notorious earl in the ton.

  She was Miss Bright, spinster, scholar, student of classical design.

  And she had a blackmailer to catch.

  She was fascinating, Marcus thought as he walked up the front steps of his town house. Intelligent, passionate, and so delightfully different from the usual run of females. She would make him a most interesting mistress for the remainder of the Season. Perhaps longer, if he was fortunate.

  Marcus experienced a surge of what could only have been hope. It would be an enormous relief to settle into a comfortable, stable, long-term affair with an intelligent woman.

  One who accepted his rules and did not pester him for marriage or subject him to childish tantrums and irritating emotional scenes.

  One who understood the demands of his assorted intellectual interests.

  One who did not constantly seek to divert his attention from whatever book he was studying or whatever project he was working on at the moment.

  One with whom he could actually converse after the demands of passion had been temporarily satisfied.

  Lovelace opened the door just as Marcus reached the top step. “Good evening, sir. A pleasant night, I trust.”

  “An interesting evening, Lovelace.” Marcus stripped off his coat and handed it to his butler along with his hat.

  Lovelace’s expression, usually as impassive as an Egyptian sepulchral mask, registered momentary surprise. “I am pleased to hear that, sir. You do not usually return from an evening’s round of social affairs with such, ah, enthusiasm.”

  “I am well aware of that, Lovelace. Tonight’s affairs were of a somewhat unusual nature.” Marcus crossed to the library. His boots rang on the gold-veined black marble floor. “You may go to bed. I shall see to the lamps.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Lovelace paused delicately. “There is one item of news to relate.”

  “And that is?”

  “Your brother arrived here earlier this evening. He left an hour ago. I believe he went out to his club.”

  “Bennet is here in London?” Marcus frowned. “He is supposed to be visiting friends in Scotland.”

  “Yes, m’lord. I know.”

  “Well, I shall talk to him in the morning.” Marcus went into the library. “Good night, Lovelace.”

  “Good night, sir.” Lovelace quietly closed the door. Marcus crossed the room to the small table in the corner. The rich French brandy inside the crystal decanter glowed a mellow shade of amber.

  Marcus poured himself a glass of the brandy and settled into the large, comfortable wingback chair. He absently inhaled the heady fumes that emanated from his glass as he contemplated the fact that he was about to become involved in another liaison.

  The astounding thing was that he was filled with a deep sense of anticipation this time.

  Most unusual. He had always disliked the customary unpleasantness that accompanied the inevitable ending of an affair. Lately, however, he had actually found himself resenting the investment of time and effort that it took to form a new connection.

  It was difficult to work up enthusiasm for the project when one knew precisely how it was all going to end. He had even gotten very good at predicting exactly when it would all terminate.

  He had been allowing the periods between affairs to stretch out longer and longer, until the pressure of his physical needs grew too strong to ignore.

  The difficulty was that he was burdened with a full complement of the usual masculine desires. When he was in a particularly melancholy frame of mind, he somet
imes wondered what it would be like to be freed of his passions. He would then he able to abandon the murky world of romantic entanglements in favor of devoting himself to the satisfactions of his intellectual endeavors.

  The thought made him grin briefly. If there was one thing he had discovered tonight, it was that there was no immediate likelihood that his body would allow him to ignore his lust. The talons of unsatisfied desire still gripped his loins.

  But the most interesting aspect of the situation was that he was not dreading the work of seduction that lay ahead. In truth, for the first time in a long, long while, he was looking forward to it.

  All his instincts told him that with Iphiginia things were going to be new and different.

  For starters, he could not see the inevitable conclusion to the affair.

  For once he would be going into a liaison without knowing when and how it would end. That alone was enough to whet his appetite.

  Marcus sipped the brandy and contemplated the pleasures of a passionate attachment that held the promise of surprise and unpredictability.

  He wondered how long she would stick to her outrageous tale of a plan to catch a blackmailer.

  He gave the lady high marks for creativity. She had hit upon a brilliant way to thrust herself into Society at the highest levels.

  She had no doubt expected him to remain away from London for the full month, which would have given her time to entice a wealthy paramour. Or perhaps she had been out to capture his attention all along.

  That last was an intriguing notion. And rather flattering.

  Marcus turned the brandy glass lazily in his hands. He would allow her to continue her pretense of hunting a blackmailer as long as she pleased. It did no harm and it would he amusing to see how long she could keep up the charade.

  But in the meantime he had other, more interesting games to play with Iphiginia Bright.

  An unpleasant sensation of dampness made Marcus glance down at the front of his coat. He groaned when he saw the dark, spreading stain that marred the expensive fabric.

  He got to his feet, removed his coat, and reached into the inside pocket. He withdrew the metal object there and regarded it with some dismay.

  Clearly his latest design for a reliable hydraulic reservoir pen that contained its own supply of ink and could be carried about in one’s pocket needed more work.

  This was the third coat that he had ruined in the past two weeks.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Marcus had just helped himself to a portion of eggs from one of the trays on the sideboard when Bennet sauntered into the breakfast room the next morning.

  “Morning, Marcus.”

  “Good morning. Lovelace said you had returned to London. I wasn’t expecting you.” Marcus glanced at his brother, started to smile, and then blinked in astonishment. “Bloody hell. What happened to your hair?”

  “Nothing happened to my hair.” Bennet’s handsome face twisted into an offended scowl. He went to the sideboard and busied himself lifting the lids of various serving trays. “This style is all the rage.”

  “Only among Byron and his crowd,” Marcus surveyed his brother’s elaborately tousled curls. Bennet’s dark hair was normally quite straight, just as Marcus’s was. “Remind your valet to be cautious with the crimping iron. He’ll set fire to your head if he’s not careful.”

  “That is not amusing. Are there any muffins?”

  “Last tray on the end, I believe.” Marcus carried his own heavily loaded plate back to the table and sat down. “I thought you intended to spend the entire month in Scotland with your friend Harry and his family.”

  Bennet kept his attention focused on the muffin tray. “I thought you were going to spend the month in Yorkshire.”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “So did I.”

  Marcus frowned. “Did something happen to cause you to alter your plans?”

  “No.” Bennet concentrated intently on laying eggs out of another tray.

  Marcus eyed his brother’s back with an uneasy feeling. He knew Bennet too well. Bennet had never kept secrets from him. Something was wrong.

  Marcus had single-handedly raised Bennet since their mother’s death eighteen years ago. True, Marcus’s father had still been alive at the time, but George Cloud had taken no more interest in his youngest son than he had in his eldest. George preferred his hounds, his hunting, and his friends in the local tavern to the bothersome burdens of family life.

  There had been no one else to see to the rearing of Bennet, so Marcus had taken on the responsibility, just as, at an even earlier age, he had assumed the responsibility of working the family farm.

  The profits from the farm improved steadily over the years, thanks to Marcus’s successful experiments with tools, fertilizers, plows, and breeding techniques.

  George had used much of the increased income to purchase better hounds and jumpers. When Marcus’s mother had timidly suggested that Marcus be allowed to attend Oxford or Cambridge, George had squashed the idea immediately. He was not about to deprive himself of the income produced by the best farmer in the district.

  Occasionally George clapped Marcus on the back and chortled about having produced such a useful son. Once in a great while he thought to hoist Bennet aloft in a gesture of casual affection.

  Cloud frequently observed with some satisfaction that it was fortunate both of his sons had inherited his own excellent constitution. He pointed out that chronic ill health, such as Mrs. Cloud suffered, was a damnable nuisance. But that was the limit of his paternal involvement in his sons’ lives.

  Marcus’s mother, whose medical complaints were generally of a vague nature and featured such symptoms as melancholia and fatigue, contracted a very real fever the year Marcus turned eighteen. She succumbed to it within a matter of hours. Marcus had been at her bedside, his two-year-old brother in his arms.

  His father had been out fox hunting. Cloud had lived for nearly a year after this death, an event he had noticed more because it had interfered with his hunting plans than because of any great sense of loss. But eleven months after his long-neglected spouse had succumbed to the lung fever, he managed to break his own neck in a fall when his newest jumper failed to clear a fence.

  Marcus was at work in the fields with his men the morning the vicar came to tell him that his father was dead. He had been studying the effectiveness of the modifications he had recently made in a new reaping machine.

  He still recalled the curiously detached sensation he had experienced while he listened to the vicar murmur words of condolence.

  A year earlier he had wept alone after his mother’s death. But on the morning of his father’s demise he could not summon a single tear.

  His principal emotion beneath the sense of detachment had been a brief, senseless anger.

  He had not understood the reason for the inner rage, so he had quickly buried it somewhere deep inside himself. He had never allowed it to resurface.

  Young Bennet seemed virtually oblivious to his father’s absence. He’d focused all his attention and affection on the one person who was a true constant in his life, his older brother Marcus.

  Marcus pushed the memories aside and watched Bennet wander over to the breakfast table.

  “Harry and I got bored in Scotland,” Bennet offered. “We decided to return to London for the Season.”

  “I see.” Marcus spread jam on a slice of toast. “I thought you had declared the Season a dead bore.”

  “Yes, well, that was last year.”

  “Of course.”

  Last year Bennet had been barely nineteen. He’d just come down from Oxford, full of a young man’s enthusiasm for politics and poetry. He had been disdainful of the frivolousness of the Season. Marcus had gotten him into a club populated by other young men who were passionate about the new poets and the latest political theories. Bennet had seemed content.

  Marcus had been quietly pleased to see that his brother was not the type to be swept off his fe
et by the superficial entertainments of the ton.

  Oxford had done its job. Marcus had not sent Bennet to Oxford for an education. On the contrary, he had seen to his brother’s schooling at home with the assistance of an excellent tutor and his own ever-expanding library.

  A young man did not go off to either Cambridge or Oxford in order to study. He went there to obtain a social polish and to mingle with the young men with whom he would later do business for the rest of his life. He went there to form friendships with the scions of the best families, families from which he would eventually select a suitable wife.

  Marcus had been determined that his brother would not be like him, a naive, rough-edged country squire who knew nothing of the world beyond life on a farm.

  Marcus had paid a high price for his own lack of worldliness. He did not want Bennet to suffer the same fate. A man needed to shed his illusions and dreams as quickly as possible if he was to avoid becoming a victim in this life.

  Marcus took a large bite of his toast. “Where did you go last night?”

  “He and I both went to our club,” Bennet said vaguely. “Then Harry suggested that we drop in on a few of the more interesting soirees.”

  “Which ones?”

  “I don’t remember precisely. The Broadmore hall, for one, I believe. And I think we stopped briefly at the Fosters’ levee.

  “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  Bennet met Marcus’s eyes for an instant and then his gaze slid away. He shrugged. “You could say that’”

  “Bennet, I’ve had enough of this evasiveness. If something is wrong, tell me.”

  “Nothing is wrong.” Bennet glowered at him. “At least not with me.”

  “What the devil is that supposed to mean?”

  “Very well, Marcus, I shall be blunt. I understand you made a spectacle of yourself last night.”

  “A spectacle?”

  “Hell and damnation. They say you carried your new paramour out of the Fenwicks’ ballroom in your arms, for God’s sake. Talk about causing a scene.”