What midnight had to do with it Jessica could not imagine, although images of coaches and pumpkins floated into her mind. She obediently padded along in his wake, one hand holding the hat so she could squint under the brim, the other clutching the coat around her.
They reached the head of a broad staircase, not the narrow one she had been so unceremoniously bundled up, struggling and scratching, only an hour before. The heat and the noise rising from the room below were overwhelming. Jessica took a firm hold of the man’s coat tails.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said mildly, ‘My valet will complain. Here, beside me.’ She forced her clenched fist to relax and, stumbling in her trailing greatcoat, went to stand on his left side. She tried to look up, see him now the light was better, but the hat brim defeated her.
‘You are drunk,’ her rescuer ordered, his deep voice calm and definite. ‘You can do that?’
‘Yes.’ Actually she wanted to scream, have the vapours and faint dead away. Do all the things, in fact, that the well-bred women lucky enough to be in a position to think themselves her superiors would do if they found themselves captives in a brothel. But she owed it to herself, and to this calm capable man, to have courage, even if she was going to have to pay for her rescue by losing her virtue in his bed. She could not imagine any man would remove a naked woman from a brothel and not expect the logical reciprocal gesture. After all, why else would he be here, if not for a woman? That was what he had meant when he had said he would take her.
‘Slump against me, then, and, whatever happens, don’t panic.’ One arm came round her shoulders and clamped her to his side. He smells nice, Jessica thought irrelevantly. Spicy citrus and clean linen and leather. ‘And whatever happens, hang on to that hat.’
They began to stagger down the stairs, the man keeping up a slurred, grumbling commentary that taught Jessica, in two terrifying minutes, more cant and bad language than she had ever heard in her life.
The noise swelled, overwhelming her; the stink of hot oil, candle wax, alcohol, sweat and excited masculinity enveloped her, driving away the comforting smell of the man beside her. Then their feet hit the level floor of the entranceway and she drew in a deep, sobbing breath. They were down. The door was right in front of them.
‘Off already, gentlemen?’ It was the false-genteel accents of the woman who had picked her up at the inn, the woman whose face she had glimpsed, hard and merciless, as the bullies had swept her up the stairs into the nightmare of captivity. Madame Synthia.
‘Unfort…unfortunately, Madame, Lord Rotherham ish…is overcome. We will have to return another night—see your famed midnight ex’bition.’
Jessica pressed herself against the tall, gently swaying figure as the madam took her rescuer’s other arm and tried to urge him into the room. ‘He’ll be all right, my lord, one of the girls will look after him. Or I’ll get the lads to keep an eye on him. Here, Geordie…’
‘Hat,’ he hissed, sweeping her up and over his shoulder. Jessica made a grab and held it on. ‘Too late, Madame, you don’t want him throwing up on your nice marble floor.’ Then the doors were open and with an exaggerated stagger they were out. Out into the blissful cold of the night, out into the quiet of a side street with only a hackney cab driving past.
‘Cab!’ The carriage reined in. Jessica tried to catch a glimpse of the man’s face in the light from the windows of the brothel, but he bundled her into the musty interior before she could focus.
‘Well.’ The door slammed shut and he settled down opposite her in the darkness. ‘Here we are, then.’
Chapter Two
The dark shape opposite her did not become any clearer, however hard she stared. Dots began to swim in front of her eyes and Jessica gave up. Seeing him clearly was not going to make any difference—she was in those large, capable hands whether she liked it or not.
Count your blessings, she always said to pupils who whined or complained, knowing as she did it just how infuriatingly smug it sounded. But it was the sort of thing expected from teachers. Now she tried to apply her own good advice.
Blessing One: I am not naked, I have clothes on—but they belong to some man who is currently disporting himself in a house of ill repute. Blessing Two: I am not in a brothel about to be ravished by goodness knows who—but I am in the power of a complete stranger who probably has my ravishment high on his agenda. Blessing Three… She appeared to have run out of blessings.
Know your enemy. Another useful dictum. Especially when you did not know how much of an enemy he was.
‘My name is Jessica Gifford.’ She ignored the impulse to give a false name. Life was complicated enough without that. ‘Miss,’ she added with scrupulous care.
‘And mine is Gareth Morant.’ The deep voice was curiously calming. She had noticed that in the corridor in the brothel, but then, at that point, anyone who had not drooled or sworn at her would have been comforting. Now that her panic had subsided into cold fear she expected to be rather more discriminating—but he still made her feel safe. Safe-ish, she corrected scrupulously.
‘Mister?’
‘Lord.’ She could hear he was smiling. ‘Earl of Standon.’
‘Thank you for rescuing me, my lord.’ There was no call to be impolite, even if you were quaking in your silk-stockinged feet. His silk stockings. That felt almost more indecent than wearing that other man’s pantaloons.
An earl. An aristocrat. Oh Lord, she really had jumped from the frying pan into the fire. A nice, respectable baronet might be concerned with rectitude and reputation. A plain gentleman might be law abiding and bound by the conventions of church and received morality.
But everyone knew about the aristocracy. They did what they liked and to hell with anyone else’s opinions or values. So long as they paid their gambling debts they disregarded with impunity every standard held dear by lesser mortals. They gambled, they spent with wild extravagance, their sexual morals were a scandal, they duelled and they did not give a fig for the opinion of anyone else outside their own charmed and privileged circle. Look at Papa, she thought with an inward sigh. And look at Mama—which is rather more to the point under the circumstances.
‘So, what am I going to do with you, Miss Gifford?’ Lord Standon enquired. The thread of amusement was still there in the deep voice—he knew exactly what he was going to do with her, she supposed.
‘Take me to a respectable inn?’ she suggested hopefully.
‘You have your luggage safely somewhere, then?’
‘No. They took it all.’
‘But you have some money?’
‘No.’ Obviously she did not have any money, he must know that perfectly well.
‘Some respectable acquaintance in London to whom I could deliver you?’
‘No,’ she repeated through gritted teeth. He was finding this amusing, the beast.
‘Then I think you are coming home with me.’
Where you will expect me to show my suitable gratitude for this rescue, she thought with a sinking heart. The trouble was, it was not sinking quite as much as it ought, given that she was a respectable virgin completely in the power of a rakish aristocrat. There was something about his size that made it very hard not to feel safe with him, and something about the amused kindness in his voice that made her want to talk to him. And something about the sheer masculine splendour of him that makes me want to put my hands on him. All over him…
‘Are you frightened?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Yes.’ It was the honest truth. Frightened of him, frightened for the future, terrified of her own, purely female, responses to him.
‘Sensible