She snaked her arms around his neck, opened her mouth under his and arched her back. The robe slithered free and the warm air caressed the swell of her breasts revealed by the silken gown. Deep in his throat he made a soft sound, a growl. Something inside Jessica turned to liquid fire. Was this only playacting?
An infuriated voice thundered, ‘Damn it, Jordan, get out of my way.’ There was silence, broken only by the thunder of her heartbeat. Then, ‘Morant, you libertine! What the devil do you think you are doing?’
Lord Standon shifted Jessica in his arms so that her face was hidden in his shoulder. She clung, quivering with mingled excitement and embarrassment.
‘I am attempting to eat my breakfast in my own dining room,’ he replied coldly. ‘You will forgive me if I do not get up. I believe Jordan did attempt to intimate that I was not receiving.’
‘You’ve been avoiding me, Sir! And neglecting poor Maude—and now I see why.’
‘Maude is hardly moping without my presence, Templeton.’Jessica gave a little wriggle as she felt the satin of her nightgown sliding over his knees. Lord Standon closed his hand more firmly over her hip and pressed her to him.
‘You are betrothed to Maude, damn it,’ the older man snapped. Jessica could imagine him, red faced with bristling eyebrows.
‘Forgive me, but we are not betrothed, whatever you and my honoured father cooked up between you. And neither of us wish to be. With respect, sir, you cannot force me to make a declaration to Maude.’
‘I can stop her marrying anyone else. What do you say to that, eh?’ Jessica, her senses filled with the smell and feel of the man who held her, struggled to focus on what was happening on the far side of the table. Lord Pangbourne appeared to be pacing.
‘I would say that I find it hard to believe that you would be such an unfeeling father.’
‘Bah! I’ll talk to you again, Morant, when you haven’t got most of your mind on your doxy. I give you good day!’
The door slammed. Lord Standon exhaled, his breath feathering hot all down her neck. ‘You can come out now, Maude.’ Jessica wriggled, sitting upright, but he still held her on his lap, apparently forgetting that they were merely playacting. The sensation of a man’s legs pressed so close to her derrière was breathtaking. Jessica felt the shift of thigh muscles and sat very still.
Maude popped out from under the table, pushing back her tumbled curls. ‘You see? He is quite impossible.’ She brushed down her skirt and stood regarding them. ‘Gareth, are you still supposed to be cuddling Jessica?’
‘What? Lord, I beg your pardon, Jessica, you felt so right there I quite—’ He broke off, shaking his head as though surprised at his own words and opened his arms. Jessica slid off his lap and returned to her own place, her cheeks glowing.
‘My lord…’ She pulled her robe into some sort of order and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. This was a madhouse and she needed to extricate herself from it and go and interview employment agencies before she became any more embroiled.
‘Gareth. I think we have gone beyond the use of titles, do you not?’
Gareth. It suited him, a solid, warm name. But she could hardly imagine herself using it, except in her head.
‘You see, don’t you, Gareth?’ Maude continued. ‘Papa finds you in the torrid embraces of a scarlet woman, and still persists in saying we should marry. What on earth do you have to do to make him realise we are not suited?’
‘Perhaps Lord Standon could marry someone else?’ Jessica suggested. She suppressed the turmoil the last few minutes had thrown her into and tried to apply some logic to the situation. Someone had to. ‘It seems the commonsense solution.’
‘So it is, if there was anyone I wished to marry.’ Gareth grimaced, pouring more coffee. ‘I’d sooner marry Maude than some female I don’t like.’
‘Then why?’ Jessica persisted, determined to make sense of it all. Her food was lukewarm. She pushed the plate to one side and started on the bread and butter and honey. ‘Why is Lord Pangbourne so insistent and why, when you obviously both like each other very much, don’t you do what he wants?’
Maude and Gareth exchanged looks, then he shrugged and gestured for her to start. ‘Once upon a time,’ she began, her voice taking on the singsong tone of the storyteller with a much-told tale, ‘Gareth’s uncle fell in love with my aunt. Our families’ lands march together and it was true love and a marvellous romance. He was the son of the duke, she was a great beauty. Everyone was thrilled, but on the eve of the wedding they were killed in a carriage accident. Both families were plunged into deepest mourning and our fathers vowed that when we grew up—I had just been born—we would marry and recreate the legendary love match.’
Jessica’s thoughts—that this was a piece of sentimental nonsense—must have shown, despite her careful lack of comment, for Gareth grinned. ‘It was not such a foolish piece of romance as you might assume. As we grew up it became obvious that because of her poor mother’s continuous ill health Maude was going to remain an only child—and there we were, presenting the perfect alliance to unite two great estates.’
‘Our fathers exchanged letters formally agreeing to the betrothal,’ Maude picked up the story. ‘And here we are.’
‘But you are not legally bound?’
‘No, this is not the Middle Ages, thank goodness, but Papa controls my money until I am thirty or I marry with his consent. And he has made sure everyone believes us to be betrothed.’
‘Then why don’t you do as he asks?’ Jessica persisted. ‘You can hardly object to Lord Standon, surely?’
‘Thank you Jessica,’ he said gravely.
‘I meant,’ she said repressively, kicking herself under the table for thinking aloud, ‘you are apparently highly eligible and you like each other.’
‘They made the mistake of bringing us up like brother and sister—we simply can’t think of each other except as that. And I know perfectly well that somewhere, out there, is the man I am going to fall in love with,’ Maude said flatly. ‘And I do not want to be married to someone else when we meet. Doomed love and broken hearts may be all very well in novels, but I have no intention of subjecting myself to such discomfort.’ She attacked an apple with a pearl-handled knife and a fierce expression. ‘But I will never get to know any men to fall in love with because no one will do more than make polite conversation because they are all scared of Gareth.’
‘He is rather formidable,’ Jessica agreed, eyeing his lordship’s brooding figure at the head of the table.
‘Thank you,’ he said again, politely. ‘We are agreed that I am eligible and formidable and that Maude cannot be sacrificed upon the altar of matrimony other than to a man she truly loves. You will also have observed that her father is a thick-skinned old termagant who won’t take no for an answer. You are a young lady whose common sense is her stock in trade—what do you suggest?’
Jessica pondered the problem, her abstracted gaze fixed on the rather attractive whorl of Gareth’s left ear where the crisp brown curl of his hair set the defined shape into sharp relief. She knew exactly what the skin there smelled like.
‘Um… You could pretend to become betrothed to someone else. Lord Pangbourne would admit defeat then, surely? But that means you need to find a complacent lady who would not mind such a charade, and you risk