Page 33 of Beneath the Devil’s Mask (The Hidden Hearts Collection #4)

Eleven

Astorm was brewing. Mandell stood at the open window of his study, staring at the overcast sky.

The wind tore past the draperies, rifling his hair, the raw spring air seeming to cut through the thin linen of his shirt.

The room was as cold as his empty hearth He had had no one in to light the fire and none of his servants had dared to appear unbidden.

His humor had not been of the best since he had sent Anne away last night.

He had retired to his empty bed, not to sleep, but to lie awake calling himself every sort of idiot.

He might have spent the hours until dawn with Anne’s slender warm body clasped in his arms, sampling all those pleasures she had so willingly offered.

Instead, he had been left to toss and turn, his loins afire, tormented with the ache of unfulfilled desire.

He had finally cursed himself to sleep somewhere near daybreak.

He had not awakened until well past noon, bleary-eyed, and in the devil’s own temper. A temper that had not improved much as day wore on His mood was about as dark as the sky overhead, the storm clouds stealing away the daylight earlier than usual.

He ought to close the window. His study was by now cold and damp. But he welcomed the bite of the wind. Perhaps its chill breath might return both his icy composure and his common sense.

What the deuce had come over him last night?

He had gone to such lengths to seduce Anne, greater effort than he had ever expended upon any woman.

He had pursued her at the theatre, followed her through the streets like some lovesick ass and had come close to fighting a duel all for her sake.

In his bedchamber, he had done his best to put her at her ease, murmured such tender words as had ever passed his cynical lips.

Then, after such a hard-fought campaign, he had allowed her to escape him because of some wretched attack of scruples.

It was as ridiculous as if Wellington had turned back from Waterloo to avoid distressing Napoleon.

Mandell shook his head in disgust. It was just fortunate that he had seen nothing of his cousin Nick of late.

If Drummond ever guessed how this affair of the lady Anne had ended, Nick would either roar with laughter or go all sanctimonious and declare that he had known one day Mandell’s more noble self would emerge. Either response would be intolerable.

If only he had it all to do over again, Mandell thought fiercely.

But that was the pure hell of it. He feared he would end by doing the same thing.

What else was there to do when one found oneself drowning in violet eyes, listening to the woman pledging that she was ready to give him everything he wanted?

Did not the little fool understand that no one gave to the marquis of Mandell?

He took what he wanted. There was nothing to be done with a female that naive but send her packing.

Nick had warned him all along that Anne was not suited for the kind of diversion Mandell sought.

He should not have had to be warned. He had always known that virtuous women were the very devil.

He should be glad that his conscience, his better self, or whatever it was, had emerged to intervene.

He should be glad to be quit of his Lady Sorrow before things had gone any further, become even more complicated.

And he was glad, so long as he did not dwell too long over the way Anne’s hair had looked tumbled across his pillow, moonlight outlining the soft whiteness of her breasts.

Slamming the window closed, he stalked over to the corner cabinet and poured himself a large brandy. He raised his glass briefly, his lips curling into a self-mocking sneer.

“Here’s to the resurrection of my nobler self,” he muttered. “And may it henceforth be buried six fathoms deep where it belongs.”

He tossed down the brandy in a single gulp and it burned like fire in his empty stomach. It occurred to him that he had never gotten around to eating anything yet today. But now another brandy seemed far more appealing.

He was reaching for the decanter to refill his glass when a light rap came at his study door. Composing his features into more implacable lines, he issued a command to enter.

John Hastings stepped into the room. With a solemn bow, the footman presented Mandell with a packet of letters.

“Forgive me, my lord. But I noticed these lying upon the hall table. They must have arrived by the morning post.”

“You certainly took your time about bringing them to my attention.”

“Yes, milord.” Hastings did not flinch beneath Mandell’s icy regard.

Most likely the fault lay with the butler or the timid parlor maid, but Hastings was not a man to offer any excuses. Mandell accepted the letters and tossed them upon his desk.

“Thank you, Hastings. You may go.”

The young footman apparently took the “may” in his command quite literally.

Instead of quitting the room, Hastings began stacking logs on the hearth, bending down to kindle the fire.

The man was obviously too new to Mandell’s employ to gauge the danger in the marquis’s temper, or else was possessed of the most stolid nerve.

Mandell was inclined to believe the latter. Instead of voicing the acid rebuke that sprang to his lips, he watched Hastings in silence, observing the man’s movements with the poker and bellows.

He had not exchanged a word with Hastings since he had summoned the footman to convey Anne home last night. Though he despised himself for doing so, Mandell asked, “The lady you escorted to her house yesterday evening. You made certain she arrived safely?”

“Yes, milord.”

Of course, he had. Hastings was as dependable as the sun rising in the east. Otherwise, Mandell would never have trusted him with such a delicate commission as looking after Anne. After an awkward pause, Mandell asked, “How did the lady seem when you left her?”

“Seem, my lord?”

“Was she calm? Distressed? Did she say anything?”

Hastings paused in his task, bellows still in hand. He frowned as though in effort of memory. “Well, she bade me good night and offered me a most generous vail.” Hastings brightened. “And then her lips sort of trembled and she smiled.”

Anne must have been most relieved to be quit of her pact with the wicked Lord Mandell. An unexpected pain twisted somewhere inside him.

“Your lady has a passing sweet smile, my lord,” Hastings ventured.

“The fire waxes hot enough. Have done and get out.”

Hastings rose to his feet, dusting off his hands on his breeches and started to leave the room. When he had reached the threshold, Mandell brought him up short by adding tersely, “And Hastings.”

“Yes milord?”

“She is not my lady.”

“No, milord,” the footman said quietly, easing the door shut behind him.

When Hastings had left, Mandell let fly an oath. When had he become reduced to holding conversations with his footman, especially about a woman? Irritated beyond measure, Mandell poured himself another brandy. He did not know what the devil had come over him of late, but he knew the cure for it.

Diversion. Fortunately, he was in a city that could provide amusement in abundance for a gentleman of his wealth and tastes. Anything from an evening at the opera to a night at a most discreet and exclusive bordello.

He was in no mood for Mozart. What he needed was a woman, and not one with soft trembling lips and vulnerable blue eyes, but a practical woman skilled in the arts of pleasing a man and grateful for nothing more than the size of his purse. Yet the thought left him strangely cold.

Perhaps what he really required was supper and cards at White’s, that all-male bastion that had the good sense to ban any woman from so much as peering across the threshold.

He might bid Drummond to come and dine with him.

It could be entertaining to discover what Nick had been up to this past week, to torment him over the doings in Parliament.

But Nick might be inclined to ask some awkward questions about the lady Anne, questions Mandell felt unequal to parrying.

Frowning into his glass, Mandell drained it. He had fallen into one of those damnable moods when every distraction he could think of seemed stale and meaningless. He would end by spending the evening at his own fireside.

But to do what? To discard books the first page barely read, to rise from the pianoforte, the melody half finished, to begin a letter only to leave the sheet blank?

To pace this great empty house like a caged beast, tormented by his dark memories, questioning everything from the folly of the world to the meaning of his own existence?

Anne was right to have been relieved to have escaped him.

He frequently found his own society quite intolerable.

Mandell started to reach for the brandy again only to check the movement.

He was already entertaining enough morbid notions and he wasn’t even drunk yet.

Instead, he forced himself to settle behind his desk, attempting to concentrate on the letters he had received.

The cards of invitation he thrust aside without hesitation to be examined later.

The rest were bills, many of them still from when he had had Sara Palmer in his keeping.

One from a dressmaker looked surprisingly recent.

He wondered if Sara had been desperate enough to attempt to foist one final purchase off on him. Mandell would not have put it past her.

He had never known any female to be bolder or more shrewdly calculating. She would likely one day get her hooks into some noble fool and trick him into wedding her.