More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress by Mary Balogh Page A

below?”
    â€œMy hair?” She looked back up at him, startled. “It is only hair. Below my waist.”
    â€œOnly hair,” he murmured. “Only spun gold. Only the sort of magic web in which any man would gladly become hopelessly caught and enmeshed, Jane.”
    â€œI have not given you permission for such familiarity, your grace,” she said primly.
    He chuckled. “Why do I put up with your impudence?” he asked her. “You are my servant.”
    â€œBut not your indentured slave,” she said. “I can get up and walk out through that door any time I please and not come back. The few pounds you are paying me for three weeks of service do not give you ownership of me. Or excuse your impertinence in speaking with lascivious intent about my hair. And you may not deny that there was suggestiveness in what you said about it and the way you looked at it.”
    â€œCertainly I will not deny it,” he agreed. “I try always to speak the truth, Miss Ingleby. Go and fetch the chess board from the library. We will see if you can give me a decent game tonight. And have Hawkins fetch the brandy while you are about it. I am as dry as a damned desert. And as prickly as a cactus plant.”
    â€œYes, your grace.” She got to her feet readily enough.
    â€œAnd I would advise you,” he said, “not to call me impertinent again, Miss Ingleby. I can be pushed only so far without retaliating.”
    â€œBut you are confined to the sofa,” she said, “and I can walk out through the door at any time. I believe that gives me a certain advantage.”
    One of these times, he thought as she vanished through the door—at least
one
time during the remaining two weeks of her employment—he was going to have the last word with Miss Jane Ingleby. He could not remember
not
having the last word with anyone, male or female, any time during the past ten years.
    But he was relieved that their conversation had returned to its normal level before she left. He did not know quite how she had turned the tables on him before that. He had tried to worm out of her something about herself and had ended up telling her things about his childhood and boyhood that he did not care even to think about, let alone share with another person.
    He had come very close to baring his heart.
    He preferred to believe that he had none.

7
    OME HERE,” THE DUKE OF TRESHAM SAID TO JANE after a game of chess a few days later, in which he had prevailed but only after he had been forced to ponder his moves and accuse her of trying to distract him with her chatter. She had spoken scarcely a word during the whole game. Jane had moved away to return the chess board to its cupboard.
    She did not trust the tone of his voice. She did not trust
him
when she thought about the matter. There had been a tension between them during the past few days that even in her inexperience she had had no difficulty in identifying. He saw her as a woman, and she, God help her, was very much aware of him as a man. She breathed a prayer of gratitude as she approached the sofa for the fact that he was still confined to it, though she would no longer be employed if he were not, of course.
    The thought of leaving her employment—and Dudley House—in another week and a half was becoming more and more oppressive to her. In their careless conversation, his friends had several times referred to the fact that her father’s cousin, the Earl of Durbury, was in London and that he had the dreaded Bow Street Runners looking for her. The friends and the duke himself appeared to be on her side. They jeered over the fact that she had overpowered Sidney, a man who was apparently not universally liked. But their attitude would change ina moment if they discovered that Lady Sara Illingsworth and Jane Ingleby were one and the same person.
    â€œShow me your hands,” the duke said now. It was, of course, a command, not a