Chapter 38

As she sank against the door of the room she'd left so many hours ago now-it made her mind spin to remember-Cass closed her eyes. She was alone. Finally, unequivocally. Thank God.
Ruby turning up like that was the last straw in a haystack of final ones. Need Cass think about being asked to sit down and sip tea? Only seconds after she'd indulged in things that didn't go with tea. Things that made her blush to remember. Things that ...
"Good evening, Miss Armstrong."
Cass jerked her eyes open. God, in heaven above, was she seeing this? Devorlane Hawley sprawled upright in-it wasn't her bed, when it patently belonged to him. Not just in the bed either. Naked in the bed. For a second she stared, her first thought that she wasn't imagining this swiftly overtaken by the second: did he want more? At this time of the day too?
Well, he wasn't getting it.
She should have gone and gotten the papers, then left when she had the chance, last night instead of sitting in the burning darkness, thinking it didn't feel quite right somehow to take advantage of him like that. Besides she didn't want it commonly known, not even by him, that she only glittered in certain departments and was a bit lacking in others--just because she didn't, not meaning she couldn't and all that. She picked herself off the door, crossed to the sideboard where various silver dishes gleamed. After all, she may be his mistress, she wasn't his whore. Sapphire, wasn't she?
"Lord Hawley, would you like to tell me exactly what you're doing here? Why you've chosen to lie here in what, in essence, is my bed at this time of the day too? Well?"
She let her gaze flit across the sideboard. So? What would it be? Salmon mousse? Or a slice of the cold pork tart on the pretty, flowered plate? Wedgewood possibly. Nothing would stop her picking it up. A napkin too.
"I think that speaks for itself, when you're my mistress. I could have waited till we'd eaten, but I thought this first."
"Really?" Perhaps he did, but she didn't. She shook out the napkin and laid it across her arm. That was as opposed to picking up the whole damn platter, flinging it across the room at him, and leaving by the first available door.
After all the Argand lamp shade was worth a good few guineas. What if she missed him and shattered it by mistake, especially when her aim had never been good. Besides the walls she had so carefully constructed about herself hadn't gone up stone by stone to be diminished by rage.
She wanted these papers, especially on this shrinking square she now occupied. The key to this situation was one thing only. Him. In all respects.
"Didn't they feed you this afternoon? I gave instructions."
"Instructions?" For a second her hand, clutching the knife, hovered above the salmon mousse. "I'm sorry. Was this for me? Or the household cat?"
"The-?"
"But if you don't want me to eat ...?"
"Not at all. Have you forgotten what I told you the night you kissed me?"
"So far as I recollect, and it was ten years ago, mind you, you told me nothing. Probably because you were the worse for wear."
"I'm not meaning that night."
That rustle of the bed linen? She didn't want him out of bed. Naked and prowling and expecting things.
"Oh?" She turned her back, fixing her gaze on the pork tart. "You mean the other one? Well, you flatter yourself that whatever night it was, I should remember something so boring, I probably yawned. Yes. Perhaps, for that matter, I did. But if I didn't I can do it now if-"
"What my doxies do behind my back is none of my damned concern."
She set down the knife, placed the pork tart on her plate. It was difficult to do so with a modicum of control. But control was what she was famed for.
"Maybe that's because I'm not actually your doxy, Lord Hawley."
"That's not how it seemed to me this morning."
"And actually, technically you've just contradicted yourself being as I'm not behind your back. So ..."
She tilted her jaw. These damned papers were surely not worth whatever this was. Certainly not after this morning. What did it matter she must also leave the county? She set down the plate, rubbed the back of her neck.
"Are you going somewhere?"
"Yes. Actually I am. If you think a pile of papers that in all probability you got from your laundry maid, or every gaming house and whore-parlor in the county, if not the country, are enough to keep me here, putting up with your vile cheek and perfectly revolting advances, you are mistaken."
"I see. You're sure it's not because this morning is as much as you've got in that arsenal of yours?"
All she had? She begged his pardon. Was that what he thought? Why, for a woman as inexperienced as she, a woman who hadn't wanted to come here, wanted even less to be his mistress, she'd been pretty damned good actually. She must be, or he wouldn't want to see more. Well, his loss, talking to her like this. As if he just had to insult her for reasons best known to himself.Ones she didn't see she should trouble herself to find out. Finding out who she was, was bad enough.
"You don't think it might be because what's in yours isn't to my liking?"
"If you didn't have such a funny way of showing it perhaps."
"Me?"
"Leaving me with no choice but to assume you won't join me because you can't."
"Oh, that's a good one."
"That you're afraid after this morning of what I might do to you."
"Not very much. No. I think you should worry about what I might conceivably do to you, Lord Hawley."
"You?"
It was true, wasn't it? As the morning had shown she was hardly a novice, although what she'd do to him had nothing to do with sex. No. She eyed the platter of salmon mousse. It would decorate him very nicely. She wrinkled her nose. The smell in particular. Then she eyed him. No, he hadn't left the bed. Just done a lot of shifting about. Probably because he couldn't contain himself.
"Yes. Me," she said.
"You have my attention already. So why don't you come over here?"
He shoved the cover aside, his gaze very definitely holding hers.