More Than a Mistress

I do beg you to have some regard for my pride. A million years? I assure you I would stop asking after the first thousand.

Why do I want to run from happiness?

Everyone should know what it is like to be called by name. By the name of the unique person one is at heart.

How dare he give her no opportunity to ignore him?

Now she realized she had never been kissed before. Not really. Not like this. Ah, never like this.

Aloneness is not always the same thing as loneliness.

Some instinct told her that this was usually done in darkness and with eyes tightly shut, that usually all the pleasure was hugged tightly to oneself, the pleasure-giver shut out. Even in her inexperience she sensed that lovers did not always love with eyes open and focused on each other’s whenever it was feasible to do so.

How fragile were the moments of chance on which the whole course of one's life hinged.

She hated him. She believed the heavy ache in her heart would never go away. And then she felt sudden panic. Her portrait. Her precious painting. She had left home without it! Home? Home? All the fashionable world rode or drove or promenaded in Hyde Park late in the afternoon during the spring Season. Everyone came to see and be seen, to gossip and be gossiped about, to display and observe all the latest fashions, to flirt and be flirted with. Jane was wearing a blue dress and pelisse and a plain straw bonnet tied beneath her chin with a wide blue ribbon. She carried a straw-colored parasol, which Lady Webb had lent her. She was perched on the high seat of Lord Ferdinand Dudley’s new curricle while he wielded the ribbons, conversed amiably with her, and introduced her to a number of people who approached for the specific purpose of meeting the notorious Lady Sara Illingsworth,

what she ought to have done as soon as she discovered that Lady Webb was not in London to help her. She was going to find the Earl of Durbury if he was still in town. If he was not, she was going to find out where the Bow Street Runners had their headquarters and go there. She was going to write to Charles. She was going to tell her story to anyone who would listen. She was going to embrace her fate. Perhaps she would be arrested and tried and convicted of murder. Perhaps that would mean a hanging or at the very least transportation or lifelong imprisonment. But she would not give in meekly. She would fight like the very devil to the last moment—but not by running away and hiding. She was going to come out into the open at last and fight. But not just yet. That was the agreement she made with herself as she pulled weeds from about the rosebushes and turned the soil until it was a richer brown. A definite time limit must be set so that she would not continue to procrastinate week after week, month after month. She was going to give herself one month, one calendar month, starting today. One month to be Jocelyn’s mistress, his love, though he would not be aware of the latter, of course. One month to spend with him as a person, as a friend in the den, if he ever returned there, as a lover in the bed upstairs. One month. And then she was going to give herself up. Without telling him. There might be scandal for him, of course, when it became known that he had harbored her at Dudley House for three weeks, or if anyone knew that she had been his mistress here. But she would not worry about that. His life had been one scandal after another. He appeared to thrive on them. She thought he would probably be rather amused by this particular one. One month. Jane leaned back on her heels to inspect her work, but Phillip was approaching from the direction of the house. “Mr. Jacobs sent me, ma’am,” he said, “to tell you that a new pianoforte just arrived and an easel and other parcels too. He wants to know where you want them put.” Jane got to her feet, her heart soaring, and followed him back to the house. One glorious month, in which she would not even try to guard her feelings. One month of love. There followed a week during

And what may I do for you?” Jane had intended to try to draw her away to the refreshment room, but it seemed they were