The Price of Temptation Read online

“Well, not just yet—the man does have a contract, after all. Just get me a brandy, will you? The good stuff, too.”

  Charles poured a generous measure, from the decanter with the gold tag, not the silver one. “If you aren’t feeling well, why not stay in tonight? Rebecca’s got a nice leg of mutton.” And Jamie’s wearing the blue waistcoat, he added to himself. Get your mind off that yellow-haired tart.

  Stephen shook his head, and winced slightly. “No, I’m committed to Aunt Matilda’s tonight, for dinner and cards. The company should be good, and I can hardly afford to offend her.”

  “As you please.” Charles gave Stephen’s coat a final brush. “There you are. Perfect as always.” Time for plan B, then. “Stephen? I didn’t expect you’d be home tonight, and Sam’s feeling poorly. Would you mind putting yourself to bed?”

  “I think I can manage,” the earl said, pulling on his gloves. “Anything else I can do for you?” he asked, with exaggerated politeness.

  Charles refused to be baited. “Yes, actually. Check the library on your way upstairs. Jamie’s been falling asleep at the desk lately—”

  “Oh, all right. I’ll see he gets to bed. Tell Sam I hope he feels better.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be over it soon,” Charles replied. The valet smiled wickedly as his employer strode purposefully from the room. Seeing as I made it up on the spot.

  Later that night, the earl opened the library door quietly and peeked inside. As predicted, his secretary was sound asleep at the desk, head pillowed on his arms, a book still open beside him. The earl tiptoed over, rather unsteadily, and sitting down on a chair next to the desk, contemplated the sleeping Jamie. The light from a single candle flickered over his face. His skin glowed in the candlelight, flushed from sleep, rose-pink lips parted slightly. Stephen examined those lips with a critical eye. Upper a bit short, but he’d never noticed how pleasantly full the lower one was. Temptingly full. He stretched out his hand, brushed one finger over it. The boy—how old was he, anyway, twenty-two, twenty-three?—stirred in response, as if seeking to re-establish the contact.

  The earl scooted his chair a little closer. “Jamie,” he whispered.

  Jamie opened his eyes, and the earl drew back in surprise. His secretary blinked in confusion. “My lord?” he said, his voice husky from sleep.

  “Where on earth are your spectacles, Mr. Riley?” Stephen asked, recovering slightly.

  Jamie blinked again. “Oh. Rebecca borrows them sometimes. I don’t really need them to read, and she —”

  “Blue,” marveled the earl. “There’s really no other word to describe them, is there? Not so deep as sapphire, nor as light as the sky. Not even a hint of green, or grey, or violet. Just blue.”

  Jamie flushed deeper. “I think you’ve been drinking, my lord.”

  “I know I have,” agreed his lordship. “But I don’t think you realize how rare those eyes of yours are. I’ve only ever seen that particular shade before once in my life.”

  “Just once?” Jamie seemed intrigued by the idea that he possessed any sort of quality that might be considered rare.

  “Oh yes.” Stephen reached out a finger and delicately traced the corner of Jamie’s eye. “My first lover, in fact,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s like, Mr. Riley. Can’t imagine.” He shook his head. “You hate yourself. Think you’re wicked, evil to have such thoughts. Such unnatural thoughts, but they won’t go away... and then you meet a man. An older man. A good man, a noble man — a lord, yes, but noble in the truest sense of the word, and if he’s like that too, then maybe, just maybe you aren’t such a monster, either.”

  The earl paused, his finger traveling down Jamie’s face, brushing again over his lip. “The first time he kissed me, I cried. And the first time we made love, I knew I’d found heaven.”

  Stephen leaned forward, giving his secretary every chance to stop him. But there was no attempt to evade the kiss, and the earl’s generous mouth brushed gently over Jamie’s. Jamie still didn’t pull away, even when Stephen’s hand crept to the back of his head, pulling him in closer, lips more demanding now. The earl’s tongue caressed Jamie’s lower lip, and Jamie gasped, allowing the tongue to slip inside his mouth, and begin a slow, thorough exploration. The young man tasted of the tea he’d been drinking, and cinnamon; so much more appetizing than Julian’s usual sour-wine tang. Shyly, Jamie’s tongue met his, and Stephen couldn’t help a moan of surprise at the jolt of pure desire this small gesture evoked in him.

  But the sound seemed to bring his secretary back to himself. Jamie’s chair overturned with a crash as he jumped to his feet with a cry, wild-eyed with dismay.

  “I—excuse me, my lord, I have to—”

  Stephen closed his eyes wearily and laid his head down on the desk, the sound of footsteps echoing in his ears as Jamie ran blindly up the stairs.

  Chapter Seven

  Jamie walked west on Oxford Street the next morning, in search of a glazier the London City Directory listed over on Adams Street, near the coach manufactory. He was putting together a proposal for the greenhouse, and while he could have sent a letter inquiring the price of the necessary glass panels, Jamie needed a chance to get out of the town house for a while, to clear his head after last night’s incident.

  He shivered despite the warmth of the late autumn sun, still unable to believe that the earl had kissed him. It was lowering to think that on Sunday he would turn twenty-two years of age, and yet had never been kissed. The close call with the vicar’s assistant had been as near to it as he’d been. There had been rare opportunities when a coy glance or smile from one of the neighborhood girls had hinted that liberties might be allowed, but he had never taken advantage. At the time, he’d supposed he was being noble, but the truth was that none of the girls he’d known had ever stirred him the way Stephen Clair had last night.

  His heart beat faster as he remembered Stephen’s dark eyes, liquid in the candlelight as his face had moved closer... Stephen’s full mouth claiming his... the first electric brush of tongue on tongue...

  “Pardon me!” A liveried footman, over-laden with packages, glared at Jamie, and he sidestepped quickly to avoid collision.

  “Sorry,” he called after the retreating figure. Oxford Street was not the place to lose oneself in reverie: one of the main thoroughfares into town, it was becoming increasingly busy as the morning lengthened. Jamie paused to get his bearings, surprised to realize he was already on the edge of Hyde Park. Perhaps for his own safety, he should remove himself from traffic until he’d got his thoughts under control. He waited for a gap in the endless stream of carts and carriages and dashed across the road, seeking the wide expanse of the park. Exciting as the city was, he was country-born, and this green oasis among the cold stone and brick was instantly soothing.

  Jamie settled himself under a tree. On another day, he might have been interested in the slow trickle of finely-dressed men and women on horseback, the brass buttons of their military-inspired riding habits gleaming in the sunshine as they arrived for their morning ride. It would have amused him to wonder who they were, and why they were up and about so early for society denizens. Today, however, he was consumed by the kiss.

  Just for a moment he allowed himself the indulgence of reliving it. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds, perhaps half a minute at most, from the first touch of Stephen’s lips on his to his panicked dash from the room, fleeing from a confusion of arousal and shame. The flickers of attraction he’d felt for his employer had been acceptable when Jamie had been certain the earl was out of his reach. But now he had to face the harsh reality: it was no use mooning after the Earl of St. Joseph, no matter how exciting the kiss had been. Even if his employer’s attraction to him were anything more than a brandy-induced lapse, Jamie could never, ever become the plaything of a lascivious lord.

  Because that’s exactly what his mother had been.

  And it had destroyed her.

  His mother had told him the story before she died,
wanting him to understand. Maria Riley had visited her aunt in London for the Christmas season following her come-out, and caught the attention of a handsome young viscount. Although she had no title of her own, the match was not impossible: her father was the Earl of Thornleigh’s youngest son, and her dowry was substantial. And while she hadn’t boasted of it, Maria had been beautiful. Even twenty years later, her face aged prematurely by worry and illness, enough trace of it had been there to convince Jamie that the portrait he treasured of his mother had not exaggerated her loveliness.

  Her eyes had been faraway as she’d described the night he’d been conceived. “I was supposed to go back home to the country early in January, but I kept making excuses to stay. To be near him. London is fairly quiet at that time of year, which means instead of the dozen social entertainments to choose from every night during the Season, one scrapes by on that many in a week. The Perkins’ ball in celebration of the English victory at Toulon was the chief event of the month. I’d made my debut the spring before, so I was allowed to wear colors. My gown was peach peau-de-soie, and I wore my grandmother’s pearls. I thought — I thought he was going to ask me to marry him.”

  She had fallen silent for a long moment, and Jamie hadn’t pressed her. At last, she continued. “We were allowed two dances together in an evening. Any more was considered scandalous—perhaps it still is. A couple might choose to sit out one of the dances together, to spend the time in conversation. He asked if we might have a private word together in the orangery. Of course, I thought—and when he asked me to be his, I was sure he meant—oh, Jamie. I won’t lie to you about it. He didn’t force me, didn’t coerce me in the least. I gave myself to him, there among the orange trees, with the moonlight streaming in the glass walls. It was the most wonderful experience of my life, and what happened after can’t take that away from me. I loved him so much, and I was sure he loved me.”

  A long bout of coughing interrupted the narrative, and Jamie hastened to fetch the drops Dr. Roundtree had prescribed for his mother’s condition. “Please, Mother. If it taxes you, you don’t have to go on.”

  She shook her head. “You deserve to know, before it’s too late. The day after a ball, he always sent violets, a little nosegay with a charming note. When they didn’t arrive the next morning, I assumed it was because he’d be calling formally, to ask for my hand. I cancelled my engagements and waited. And waited.”

  “He never came.” Jamie couldn’t help the bitterness in his voice. “The scoundrel.”

  “We were so young, Jamie, neither of us even eighteen. I was too mortified to approach him about it, at least until I realized the trouble I was in.”

  Then, she had sought the viscount out, begged him to do the right thing. He denied he was the child’s father, said she’d probably had a dozen others since they’d been together. Cruelly, he’d told her that his wife would someday be a great lady, and he was damned if the position would go to some roundheels who would lift her skirts in the shrubbery for any man who asked. Once her increasing belly had advertised her shame to the world, her father had cast her out of his house in only the clothes she had on her back. Maria sold the jewelry she’d been wearing and took a cheap room, determined to find a job somewhere. But at seventeen, unmarried and pregnant, with few skills beyond the rudiments of embroidery and watercolor-painting thought suitable to young ladies of her class, she had nothing to recommend her to potential employers.

  She had been desperate when a friend of the viscount’s tracked her down in her cheap lodgings. A baron of middling wealth, he might have offered for her hand himself, once, if he’d thought he stood a chance. Now, he had another offer to make. And to keep herself alive, to provide food and shelter for the child growing within her, she’d taken it. Become his mistress, first kept lavishly in a large house on his estate, then, once he’d married, shunted off to a tiny cottage in Yorkshire and all but forgotten.

  In the small village of Wheldrake, the neighbors were more inclined to accept her story that she was a widow, despite the occasional visits the baron still made from time to time. But she’d never cared for him, and the stress of her position and what everyone would think of her and her son if they knew wore away at her. When Jamie was fourteen, she’d come down with a bilious fever, and her lungs had never recovered. It had taken several more years for her to waste away to nothing, coughing her life out bit by bit.

  No. The kiss had been extraordinary, and Jamie’s whole body thrilled to the memory of it now. But Stephen Clair was another like his father, a man who took his pleasures where he would and then moved on without a backward glance. He would never share the shame that had killed his mother.

  Jamie stood up from beneath the tree and brushed off his trousers briskly. It was time to visit the glazier.

  Stephen made a face at himself in the ridiculously ornate mirror he’d purchased when he’d inherited St. Joseph House, a huge bronze monstrosity festooned with sphinxes and pyramids. The earl’s chambers had needed redecoration at once — he could hardly bring himself to sleep in Robert’s and Mary’s marriage bed — but it occurred to him now that he’d been careless executing the change, choosing a popular Egyptian theme almost at random and allowing his decorator a free hand. The result had been amusing at first, but it was starting to grate on him. He stared at the palm tree legs of his dressing table with a frown, pulling his train of thought back to the conversation at hand. “I was drunk and sentimental, that’s why,” he said, lifting his chin so that Charles could scrape the razor over his neck. He would have shaken his head, but the delicacy of the operation precluded it, so he settled for a sigh. “That colorless little mouse.”

  Charles made a noncommittal sound, which his lordship chose to take as encouragement. “Not entirely colorless,” he admitted. “You wouldn’t credit it, Charles, but he has the loveliest eyes behind those dreadful spectacles.”

  “Really?” For some reason, the look on his valet’s face was almost a smirk.

  “Really. The very definition of blue. Lashes Julian would kill for, and without a speck of paint, either. And that smile! Such a prim little thing, though.”

  “Who, Mr. Julian?”

  “Very funny, Charles. But Julian doesn’t need candlelight to bring out highlights in his hair.”

  “No,” the valet agreed, “just bleach. What highlights?”

  “Red. Gold. The lad is a cache of hidden treasures. If I were the poetic sort, I’d compare his hair to an autumn grove—you think it’s all brown and lifeless until the sun comes out, and then—oh Christ, this is why I’m not a poet.” The earl sat glumly for a few moments while Charles navigated his jawbone. “Half an hour with Julian should sort me out.”

  “I thought you said it was over with you and Mr. Julian?”

  Stephen grimaced. “I tried, but what’s the point? I’m paying for him anyway. I might as well—besides—oh, blast.” He scowled, unable to explain the actor’s attraction, even to himself. Maybe he was like this bedchamber, exotic and fun, but not especially meant to be restful. “It was a hell of a fight last night, but we didn’t quite end it. If Julian freezes me out for a while, I may be able to pick up some temporary respite elsewhere. There’s a new baritone in the chorus over at Sullivan’s Music Hall — auburn hair and cheekbones that could cut glass. I hear he’s open to offers.”

  The razor slipped just a little, but no damage was done. “Perhaps you should get to know Mr. Riley better, first,” Charles protested. “He’s a very good sort.”

  “Mouse,” muttered the earl. And then, in disbelief, “Charles? Are those tallow candles?”

  Early that afternoon Jamie heard a familiar voice, rich as Sam’s sherry trifle, outside the library door and tensed. A moment later the owner of those tones appeared in the doorway, looking back into the hallway with confusion.

  “What do you make of that, Mr. Riley? I swear... Mr. Symmons was downright civil to me.”

  Jamie did not look up from his accounts. Why bother? He knew e
xactly what his lordship looked like. “Perhaps he’s had a change of heart.”

  “Well, let’s see if it lasts.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Am I bothering you, Mr. Riley?” the earl asked, with a touch of asperity.

  Jamie still didn’t look up. “Not at all, my lord.”

  “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  At that, Jamie pushed his spectacles firmly up his nose, and at last met his employer’s gaze. “Yes?”

  “There are tallow candles in my room.”

  Jamie let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Oh. Yes, there are. I told you—”

  “Mr. Riley, is this not my house?”

  “Yes, but it’s not like you spend much time in your room.”

  “Charles and Rebecca get wax, and I get tallow?”

  “They need the light, and you don—”

  “Mr. Riley! Am I not the head of this household?” the earl snapped.

  Jamie snapped back. “And therefore should have the most interest in balancing your accounts!”

  Stephen closed his mouth. “You’re right, Mr. Riley,” he said in quieter tones. “My apologies. And since I’m apologizing—”

  Jamie colored some more. “No need, my lord. You were very drunk indeed.”

  “I’m sorry I was drunk, and I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. But the kiss itself—I can’t be sorry for that. It was a very sweet kiss, indeed.” And, softly, as Jamie turned an even more vivid scarlet, “Wasn’t it, Jamie?”

  Jamie decided quickly that his best refuge was the truth. “My lord,” he said with unmistakable sincerity, “It was quite the worst kiss I’ve ever had.”

  Stephen’s face flickered with shock, hurt, and then settled into anger. He turned on his heel and stormed out of the library, slamming the door hard enough to shake the house. Jamie balled up a piece of paper and threw it after him. “Worst kiss, indeed. It would have to be, you idiot. And the best, too.” But he knew that it would never occur to the earl, that anyone could reach the ripe age of nearly twenty-two without ever having been kissed.