The Outrageous Belle Marchmain

Outside thunder rumbled again. Davenant went to light the lamp on the table where the model engine was; his movements were lithe, almost graceful for such a powerfully built man …

Stop it. Stop it, you fool.

Two thousand guineas. Belle sank into the nearest chair. Now Davenant was saying with lethal politeness, ‘I take it there’s some discrepancy over figures. Am I right?’

Belle thrust aside a long bonnet ribbon that trailed down her cheek. ‘I don’t know—I might have misunderstood—’

‘I doubt it,’ he cut in crisply. ‘Try asking your brother again. On this occasion you might find that he remembers the truth.’ His expression was glacial. ‘You could ask him, at the same time, why he stole my livestock.’

Belle was truly floundering now. ‘It must appear to you as theft, I know. But that was all a mistake.’

‘I suppose he told you that my sheep had strayed on to his lands,’ he drawled icily. ‘Told you that it was my fault, for not maintaining my fences.’

The hot blush rose to Belle’s cheeks. That was exactly what Edward had said.

‘I maintain my fences very carefully, Mrs Marchmain,’ went on Davenant. ‘In fact, every detail of my life is conducted with the utmost rigour. Now, I’m a busy man …’ he glanced again at his watch ‘… it’s gone four, and I’m sincerely hoping you’ve come here with some concise suggestions as to how your younger brother intends to pay back the not inconsiderable sum he owes me for selling off my sheep. Which is a criminal act, incidentally.’

Adam Davenant usually kept his emotions on a tight rein, but by now he was deeply angry. Somehow this woman had got under his guard and he shouldn’t have let her. Turquoise and pink, for God’s sake—he had to blink every time he looked at her! He should have abided by his first instinct and ordered her off his premises.

‘Mr Davenant,’ she was saying, that pointed chin still tilted defiantly, ‘you must realise that it has been extremely difficult for my brother to see our heritage so diminished.’

She wasn’t giving up yet, registered Adam. ‘Ah,’ he answered. ‘The precious notion of blue blood and entitlement. Spare me, Mrs Marchmain. The Hathersleigh estate has been lurching towards ruin for generations, thanks to a fatal mixture of greed, complacency and sheer carelessness. Have you observed the way in which your brother conducts his business? Have you seen the great piles of unsorted paperwork that litter his so-called study?’

‘He is busy,’ Belle faltered. ‘His wife is not well …’

‘And so he sends his older sister to make his excuses for him. I repeat, I bought that land at an excessive price from your brother—not out of generosity, nor out of greed, but because I simply had no desire to have a bankrupt neighbour in Somerset. It’s not good for appearances.’

Belle gazed at him whitely. This man was surely as cold and hard as the rock his men hewed from the ground. She rose to her feet. ‘Exactly how much does my brother owe you for the sheep?’

‘I don’t see how you can hope to pay me off. You must have even less money to spare than he does.’

‘I run a successful dressmaking business!’

‘Not successful enough.’

She sat down again. Adam watched the turquoise ribbons, ridiculously flippant, fluttering from her straw bonnet and reflected that her brother was a goddamned weakling. Adam had rashly hoped to help young Hathersleigh by buying that land, but the fellow was a fool, and a liar, too—he’d not even equipped his rather pluckier older sister with the truth.

And the fact that she was still assuming her goddamned superiority, and laboured under the misapprehension that he, Adam, was somehow under obligation to show leniency, sent bitterness surging through Adam’s blood.

He knew that people like her despised and feared men of Adam’s mould, who were a symbol of things to come, of old values passing. She thoroughly deserved humiliation at his hands. Yet even while she glared up at him as if he was the devil incarnate, he felt something simmer, damn it, that was very like lust in his traitorous loins. Felt the longing to take her very firmly in his arms and plunder that sweet, rose-pink mouth with his lips and tongue …

Jarvis had clearly tried to make her his at some point in the past. Jarvis had failed.

Adam could see her hands trembling now. Yet still she faced him with that damned defiance, still she came up with fresh excuses for her sibling.

‘My brother does not deserve prison, Mr Dave na nt.’

‘Really?’

‘Indeed. You see, he has a wife who is expecting their first baby very soon—’

‘He’ll have that in common with many of his fellow-prisoners in Newgate gaol, then.’

She tightened her fists. Then: ‘You are despicable,’ she said quietly. Her voice was steady, yet he noted how her small, high breasts heaved with distress beneath that tightly buttoned little pink jacket. ‘Despicable,’ she repeated. ‘Both in your behaviour to me now, and your deliberately not telling me who you were that afternoon on Sawle Down. Your deception was truly dishonourable.’

Dishonourable? Damn it! She’s a greedy little widow, angling for money. Adam went in with all guns blazing.

‘Your kind talk always of honour and status,’ he retorted harshly. ‘Would you say your brother was showing honour, in sending his sister to me to plead his cause? There are names for that kind of behaviour.’

She recoiled as if he’d struck her. ‘It was my decision to come here! If you think that Edward intended—’

‘I think,’ he cut in, ‘that your cowardly brother told you about his plight in the hope that your feminine charms would soften my steely peasant heart. If that’s an example of blue-blooded behaviour, you can keep it. In my world, we call it pimping.’

‘Oh! I think—my brother did not mean—’ She was stammering now, and backing away; somehow her dangling sleeve caught the little steam model and it went crashing to the floor.

She let out a cry of dismay and bent to start picking the pieces up.

‘Leave it,’ he commanded harshly. ‘A footman will see to it.’

‘No!’ She was still flurrying around the floor. ‘No, I will pick it all up and then I am going, you hateful, hateful man! Edward was right to say you are a boor and a tyrant. And—and I will see Edward and I in gaol together before I grovel any more to you!’

With that she bobbed down again, to pick up more pieces of the ill-fated model. As she did so she was presenting that very pert, very rounded derrière to Adam’s narrowed eyes. Hell. He did try to look away. He despised himself for registering even the slightest flicker of interest. But a picture of her unclad appeared rather tantalisingly in his mind, and his body responded accordingly.

Adam had decided long ago that marriage was not for him. He had neither the time nor the inclination to play the games of courtship, flattery and lies that a permanent commitment would involve. God knew he was offered enough suitable brides; they were pushed before him at every opportunity, thanks to his wealth.

But the example of his parents’ marriage had put him off for good. Miner Tom’s only son, Charles, had been so rich he was able to choose a bride from the aristocracy, but his well-born wife—pushed into the marriage by her parents—had thoroughly despised her low-born husband and after producing two male heirs she’d embarked on a string of affairs.

Adam had spent a good deal of his childhood trying to protect his young brother, Freddy, from their mother’s promiscuity and their weak father’s rages. Both parents had died years ago, and Adam felt not the slightest desire to emulate their unhappiness; hence his custom of keeping suitable mistresses to satisfy his own male desires.

He treated them generously, but always Adam made the terms quite clear: ‘This ends when I say it ends. Afterwards, if we happen across each other in society, we will acknowledge each other civilly. No more and no less.’

Most of his former mistresses knew better than to cause him any trouble; Lady Farnsworth, his latest, had been an exception. Adam had quickly wearied of the elegant widow’s clinging possessiveness and her withering contempt for any suspected rivals.

The trouble was, he hadn’t yet chosen himself another woman for his bed. Usually they were either widows or amicably separated from their husbands and the choice was plentiful. But no one had tempted him to make an offer, since …

Since he collided with this little minx, who’d insulted his name to high heaven one March afternoon on Sawle Down.

The realisation struck him like a thunderbolt. No. He couldn’t have held back from singling out a new chère amie because he was thinking of Belle Marchmain. It was damned impossible! But …

She’d come here to ask him a very big favour, but her plans—so far—had come crashing round her pretty ears. Now he looked at her again as she furiously picked up the last bits of his model from the floor.

Her straw bonnet had fallen off and her glossy raven curls were tumbling around the slender column of her neck. ‘There! That’s all of it!’ she breathed, putting two more pieces defiantly on the table. Her face had become a little flushed. ‘Whatever you call it,’ she added rather darkly, her hands on her hips.

Mrs Belle Marchmain looked delectable. Her pink silk jacket had fallen apart, and the brightly patterned gown that fitted so snugly to her bosom and tiny waist almost made him smile.

What would she be like in bed? If she was, as Jarvis suggested, well practised in the erotic arts and open to offers, it might be interesting to find out …

‘And—and you can stop looking at me like that!’

Her rebuke shocked him out of his reverie and Adam stopped smiling. ‘You were asking about the model you almost destroyed,’ he said. ‘It’s a miniature of a Newcomen steam engine. And that’s not quite it, Mrs Marchmain. You came to me with a problem. And I think I might have the solution.’ He’d propped his lean hips against the sideboard and watched her with cool, assessing eyes.

Belle suddenly felt that the room was too small. Either that or this formidable man was too close. Something tight was squeezing her lungs. ‘Let me tell you now that Edward will never sell more of the estate to you and I wouldn’t ask him to. It’s his heritage!’

‘But of course,’ answered Adam imperturbably. ‘And your brother shouldn’t be expected to dirty his hands for a living as so many men—and women—do.’ She swallowed. ‘I also imagine,’ he went on in the same calm voice, ‘that most of the rest of his estate is entailed. You want me to drop charges against your brother for stealing my livestock, don’t you? Well, I certainly require payment. And as to what that payment shall be, I have the perfect answer. I think you do as well.’

What? Belle paled. ‘I—I thought perhaps we could come to some arrangement, for Edward to pay his debts off gradually …’

His lip curled. ‘Impossible, I’m afraid. But I still see no reason, Mrs Marchmain, to dismiss the obvious solution.’

So frozen did she look that her lips could clearly scarcely frame the words. ‘What exactly are you suggesting, Mr Davenant?’

‘Let’s be clear. You surely realise you have only one thing you can offer in payment of your brother’s debts,’ Adam said softly. ‘Yourself. Be my mistress.’

Chapter Five

Belle felt, in that instant, as if all the breath had been squeezed from her lungs. Lord Jarvis’s insults had made her feel sick. This man made her feel as if the safety of her world had been rocked to its foundations.

Be my mistress.

He was just watching her, leaning back against the sturdy oak sideboard with his arms folded across his broad chest. The candlelight fell on his cropped dark hair, on his sleepy grey eyes, on his hateful, sternly handsome face. And her pulse was skittering with the unsteadiness of a new-born colt.

The way he was looking at her. Assessing her, damn him. She felt his presence in the pit of her stomach and her dry mouth. She couldn’t look at him without tingling anew at the sight of his powerful figure: those heavily muscled shoulders, his broad chest tapering down to slim hips and powerful thighs … Oh, just his being near her made the air difficult to breathe.

His mistress. How dare this man make such a proposition? How dare he? Yet—oh, goodness, she’d been an arrogant idiot to come here. Straight into the lion’s den, armed only with her own stupid defiance—and her brother’s lies. She bent to rather shakily pick up her fallen bonnet; how ridiculous its gaudiness seemed now.

She remembered how she’d felt when her husband died and the enormity of the debts she’d faced. Remembered how she’d stood her ground against Lord Jarvis—only, dear God, this man was far more dangerous than Jarvis.

When she eventually spoke her words were, to her, miraculously steady. ‘To be perfectly honest, Mr Davenant,’ she replied, ‘I’m not quite sure whether your—offer is intended as a deliberate insult or a very poor joke.’

He shrugged. ‘It’s neither. There happens to be a vacancy.’

‘But I thought you already had a mistress …’ She clamped her mouth shut. You stupid fool, Belle. She shouldn’t have shown the slightest interest. Yet she couldn’t help but hear, in her shop, the gossip of the ton. Couldn’t help but know that Adam Davenant attracted the attentions of the most beautiful women in London.

His dark eyebrows had already arched in amusement. ‘So you take an interest in my affaires, do you? Then you should be aware that my latest companion and I have recently parted company.’

Belle returned his smile, sweetly. ‘She has had a lucky reprieve.’

He laughed. He actually laughed. ‘I wish you’d tell her so.’ His voice was silky. ‘I thought I was making you quite a reasonable offer. I would provide you, of course, with a London house and an income, so I do wish you’d stop acting like some virgin schoolgirl, Mrs Marchmain.’

She let out a sharp breath. ‘I’m merely, as a woman of the world, trying to assess what you would gain from such an arrangement. You’ll understand I find it hard to believe you are suggesting this out of any kind of—of liking.’

He shrugged. ‘I’m rather bored with women who think I’m the answer to all their prayers.’

‘So tedious for you, I’m sure!’

He nodded. ‘A little, yes.’ Belle gritted her teeth. ‘I think,’ he went on blithely, ‘that you, on the other hand, would enter the kind of relationship I’m suggesting with a refreshing honesty. And of course your weakling brother’s error regarding the sheep would be forgiven—’ He stopped. He suddenly noticed that she was trembling. ‘Is something wrong, Mrs Marchmain?’

‘You thought I came here to—to bargain with you.’

‘And didn’t you?’

‘Yes! But not in that way.’

He was silent a moment. Then he said steadily, ‘I see. Not now that you know exactly who I am, you mean. Tell me, does my low birth make me so much worse a prospect than Jarvis?’

She shuddered. ‘Jarvis is despicable.’ She spoke with such absolute disgust that Adam felt a bolt of uncertainty shoot through him.

‘I was under the impression that you were holding out for considerably more money from him.’

‘Holding out for … Oh, you are a friend of his,’ she retorted bitterly, ‘so it wouldn’t matter what I said. But do you really think I would contemplate a proposal of any kind from Lord Jarvis?’

Adam shrugged. ‘Jarvis would offer a solution to your problems. He’s not as rich as I am, but he does have a title. And, oh, I believe his family goes back almost as far as yours, although there might not be a duke in the family …’

Belle had stepped shakily away from him. ‘You are hateful,’ she whispered. ‘Mr Davenant, I will find some way to pay back the money my brother owes, I swear. But you’ll understand, I hope, if I tell you that I can no longer bear to spend another moment in your presence.’

He shrugged. The taint of Miner Tom. Well—let her face the consequences of her and her brother’s damned arrogance.

She was already making for the door when he saw something sparkling under her dark lashes. Tears.

‘Stop,’ he said.

She turned. She was almost broken, he suddenly realised; he saw it in the paleness of her cheeks, the trembling of her fingers as she crammed her straw bonnet over her dark curls.

Something dangerously like pity twisted at his throat.

‘Jarvis is not my friend,’ he said curtly. ‘He was here on a matter of business and, believe me, that was almost more than I could tolerate. What exactly happened between the two of you?’

She lifted her eyes steadfastly to his. ‘Two years ago Lord Jarvis invited me to his house on the pretext of investing in my business. He made me an offer that I found … obscene. Though—’ Oh, what was the use? Belle was shivering. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You still think I’m in the market for … That I visited you to … Oh, I’ve been so stupid. I should never have come here.’

Not now she knew who he was. Adam started towards the door. ‘Unlike Jarvis,’ he said, ‘I don’t—ever—force myself on unwilling females. You came here of your own accord and you’re equally free to leave.’

She started towards the door, then stopped. ‘But—’

‘As for those sheep,’ he went on pitilessly, ‘I’ll get my secretary to send you a bill so you can pay me for them. You told me your shop was flourishing, didn’t you?’ He was holding the door open for her.

Belle froze. Her shop—flourishing? Oh, Lord, this was bad. What could she do? He’d offered her a solution and she’d discarded it.

Think again, Belle.

She heaved in a great breath. ‘Mr Davenant,’ she said.

Now, Adam wanted this woman and her insults out of here. But something was happening. Some new desperation in her voice riveted his attention. ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Davenant—what if I were to consent to becoming your mistress after all?’

What? What in hell …?

Suddenly she’d tugged off her straw bonnet and tossed it to the floor again. He closed the door. That hat would be lucky to survive the day, thought Adam rather dazedly. Then she was sidling across the room to him and lifting her sweet face with its tempting rosebud mouth to his and—

Hell. She’d raised her arms to run her fingertips along his broad shoulders.

‘Mrs Marchmain,’ he began.

His voice was thick in his throat as her small hands tugged him closer. That delicate scent tickled his nose again—lavender soap, he guessed. He could feel the warmth now, of her tender body; her nearness was turning his blood to fire and making his pulse throb. He reached out his big hands to take hers and hold them away.

‘I thought,’ he grated at last, ‘that you were going to repay me from your business.’

Her voice was husky. ‘Perhaps I’ve had second thoughts.’

She was playing a mighty dangerous game. Adam swore under his breath; Jarvis had warned him she was a conniving minx, damn it, and Adam wasn’t one to be toyed with. With a low growl—half of anger, half of lust—Adam pulled her to him and let his lips capture her soft mouth.

And Belle’s world spun until she no longer knew if she was on her head or her heels. In this man’s arms, she didn’t much care either way.

Faced with that open door and his chilly dismissal, it had struck her most forcefully that—like a drowning seafarer—she couldn’t afford to be choosy about her rescue options. Pay him back from her shop? Dear Lord, she’d no idea how much a flock of sheep cost; she did know that if this man wasn’t going to show mercy she and her brother were sunk.

It wasn’t as if she was a youthful, shrinking maiden. One by one the frantic thoughts raced through her brain. Other women do this. In fact, he assumed that was why she’d come to his hateful abode in the first place. Other women use men of influence and wealth to get what they want—why shouldn’t I?

The trouble was that he didn’t repel her as Jarvis did. Far from it. The instant his firm, demanding mouth started caressing hers, she forgot she was supposed to be in charge. She forgot he was her enemy. All she wanted was more.

The sweetness of his kiss pulsed through her veins. As his strong hands caressed her she could feel the heat of his body against hers; then he coaxed her lips apart and deliberately set about ravishing her mouth with his tongue. She could taste the maleness of him. He was filling her senses, branding her with shocking demands.

She’d meant to fake her response but, dear heaven, this was no pretence. Her hands instinctively curled tighter around his heavily muscled shoulders; somehow she could not get close enough to him. When he grasped her waist and hauled her against him, she felt his rock-hard arousal pressing against her stomach and it stopped her breathing. Stopped her thinking.

Her response was primeval and passionate. She plied her tongue in his mouth, tasting him, shuddering as he thrust his own tongue between her lips in measured response. She yearned to press her aching bosom closer to the hard wall of his chest, then gasped aloud because his hand, warm and strong, was cupping one desperately sensitive breast, his thumb teasing her stiffened nipple through the silk of her gown, rubbing it gently to and fro until she was crying out for more …

Then he drew away.

Belle swayed where she stood. Needing the warmth of his arms around her. Missing the heat of his hard male body.

He said levelly, ‘This is an absurd situation, Mrs Marchmain, and both of us know it.’

She gazed up at him, imagining she saw a glint of concern in his dark grey eyes, but if so it was quickly gone. She felt as wretched as she’d ever felt in her life. ‘Absurd? But, Mr Davenant,’ she said with a forced smile, ‘I was merely indicating that I’d had second thoughts about the offer you’d made earlier—’

‘I was damned wrong to make that offer,’ he broke in harshly. He was making for the door again, straightening his coat. ‘Mrs Marchmain, please forget my proposition. You were foolish to come here alone, foolish to make yourself so vulnerable.’

She gazed at him, white-faced. ‘But what about my brother, and …?’

‘You can tell the young idiot he owes me nothing for my livestock,’ Adam rapped out. ‘The matter’s dealt with. Finished.’

Belle drew back as if he’d hit her with a sledgehammer. ‘So you’ve got your revenge,’ she said steadily.

‘What?’ His hand had been on the door; now he swung round to her, his jaw set, his eyes ominously dark.

She shrugged and lifted her chin. ‘I was desperate and you realised it. You’ve achieved my humiliation—that was what you wanted all the time, wasn’t it?’

Adam said through gritted teeth, ‘You misunderstand me.’

‘On the contrary—’ Belle’s voice shook now ‘—I think I understand you only too well.’ Not even Jarvis had made her feel as wretched as she did now.

She saw him utter some low expletive under his breath. Then: ‘I’ll call my carriage for you,’ said Adam curtly, turning to the door again.

She looked distraught. ‘I would prefer to walk. In fact—I insist on walking!’

He threw her one last, withering look. ‘There’s a fine line between independence and sheer stupidity. I repeat: I’ll summon my carriage.’

As the luxurious coach moved off Belle was aware that the thunderclouds had passed overhead and once more the sun shone brightly in the late afternoon sky. She was still able to move, she was able to breathe. Yet it seemed as if nothing was working any more. It reminded her of how she’d felt when they came five years ago to tell her that her husband had died. The world went on, but for her nothing could be the same.

Belle was crushed and humiliated by what had just occurred, yet it was her fault for breaking all the rules—not just of civilised behaviour, but of survival. Davenant was a cruel man with massive power; she’d insulted him badly in Somerset and he’d not forgotten. Men like him never did.