The trouble was, Rutherford thought, putting his empty glass down on the floor beside him, getting to his feet, and removing his coat and waistcoat, he really had not had much choice but to make her his offer. Jessica, he suspected, did not quite realize how serious her predicament was. He had not exaggerated when he had told her that within a week she would be facing starvation or a life as a street prostitute. He owed her his protection. It was because of him that she had lost her situation with the Barries.

And by God, he admitted, removing his neckcloth and undoing the top buttons of his shirt, he wanted her. Finding a luscious beauty hidden behind the disguise of a little gray mouse was enough to stir any man's senses. He would not feel guilt. He was doing the best he could to look after her. He would treat her well. He always treated his women well in bed, always paid them generously afterward. Jess Moore would live like a lady, and he would provide handsomely for her when he finally tired of her. She would not need ever again to be a gray governess.

She was standing at the foot of the bed when he went into the room, brushing her hair and looking just exactly as she had looked in the Barries' library the night before. Rutherford closed the door behind him and allowed his eyes to roam over her. He expected her to look tense. She gazed calmly back at him and laid the brush down on a stool. He closed the distance between them.

"Have I kept you waiting?" he asked. "You look very beautiful, Jess."

He placed his hands on her shoulders and drew her against him. He lowered his mouth to hers. And immediately began the fight to control his desire. There was no virginal shrinking in her. Although his hands held only her shoulders, her body immediately fitted itself to his from firm, full breasts to knees. He cradled her head with one hand and rested the other against the small of her back. He set himself to ignore the demands of his body while he slowly coaxed her mouth into deeper intimacy.

He waited until his tongue had been allowed full and deep possession of her mouth before moving his hands knowingly over her again and lifting her up to carry her to the bed. She watched him as he undressed and climbed into the bed beside her. He had decided not to snuff the candles before doing so.

He wanted her then. He did not wish to wait another moment. He could not remember when the need to mount a woman's body had been quite so urgent. But she was not ready. She was langarous but not aroused. He set himself to arouse her, unbuttoning her nightgown to the waist so that he might touch her warm flesh, stroke her breasts with expert hands and mouth. He slid the linen of her nightgown up her legs so that he might caress her more intimately. She lay on her back, still, her eyes closed, her breathing quickened, her body tensing, and her heart thumping beneath the hand that moved over her left breast.

Now, he thought at last, lowering his head to kiss her deeply once more before moving his weight onto her so that he might enter her body and finally unleash his passion in her. She was looking at him, shaking her head slightly.

"No," she whispered. "No, I cannot. I am sorry. I cannot."

He brushed her lips softly with his own and willed control on himself again. "Relax," he said. "There is no haste. I can wait for you. I know it is your first time. I want it to be good for you."

"No," she said, and her eyes were big with unshed tears suddenly. "I cannot do this, my lord. I thought I could. I truly did. I have reasoned it out with myself and I can see no great wrong with it under the circumstances. But reason is no good against the moral habits of a lifetime, you see. Please, I must leave. I cannot do this."

Rutherford swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up with a jerk. He buried his fingers in his hair, his elbows resting on his knees. God, did she know what she was asking? Did she realize how very nearly impossible it was to grant her request? He willed calmness on his body. His mind would not function while the blood pumped so furiously through him.

"I am sorry," she said again from the bed behind him.

"So am I, Jess," he said. "So am I, believe me."

"It is just that I have been so frightened all day," she said. "I do not know what to do, you see. I do not even know why I am going to London. It is because I have to go somewhere and do something, I suppose."

"Yes," he agreed, hoping through words to drown out his physical agony, "I can understand your predicament. I thought I had offered a solution that would be thoroughly satisfactory to both of us."

"I think it might have been," she said, "if it did not feel so very wrong. And I truly do not know what I am to do now. But I must go to the room allotted to me here."

"There really is another alternative for you, Jess," he said, his thumb and one finger rubbing his eyes, concentrating hard on the activity. "I was too selfish to mention it while I thought there was a chance of the other."

"Oh, what?" she asked. She was sitting up behind him. He dared not turn around. Even if she had buttoned up her nightgown again, her hair would be in voluptuous disarray from the pillow and his playing hands.

"I shall take you to someone," he said, "someone in London who will take care of you on my recommendation."

"A brothel?" she asked in a shocked whisper.

Rutherford felt an unexpected wave of amusement at the idea of his grandmother's very respectable establishment being mistaken for a brothel and his grandmother for a procuress.

"No," he said. "An elderly lady of great influence who will find you genteel employment, Jess, despite the lack of a recommendation from your former employers. Her word will be far more respected than theirs, you may be assured.

"Oh, will you?" she cried with such passionate gratitude that he felt sudden guilt for what he had tried to perpetrate against her, and his desire began finally to come under his control. "How very generous you are, my lord. I must leave here and go to my room." She scrambled off the other side of the bed.

Rutherford stood up, raising his eyebrows as he looked around at her and noted her flood of embarrassment. "Get back into bed, Jess," he said. "This is where you are going to sleep tonight. I will not molest you further. You have my word on it, though I do believe there is a lock on the door if you are unconvinced. I shall sleep in the parlor. Perhaps you would do me the honor of breakfasting with me?"

"I cannot stay here," she said, turning to him again now that he had pulled on his breeches.

"Yes," he said. "This you can and will do. You will not spend the night in an attic with the servants. You will sleep in this bed tonight even if I have to break my word and sleep in it with you to hold you here."

The fight had gone out of her, he saw. He picked up his shirt from the floor, made her a mock bow, and withdrew to the parlor, where he spent an uncomfortable and near sleepless night on one of the worn armchairs, feeling less than charitable with the whole of the female sex, devising in his mind wonderful tortures for Miss Jessica Moore, and cursing his own tenderness of conscience that would not allow him any intimacy with a female for which he did not have her full consent.

Moments! Moments only and he would have mounted her and it would have been too late for her sudden attack of moral scruples. He could have taught her to enjoy instead. And she would have enjoyed. He had never failed to delight a woman with that part of his lovemaking. She had already been responding with flattering heat until somehow her mind had gained the ascendancy over her body.

And he would have enjoyed! There was no doubt whatsoever about that. Jessica had excited him more than any other woman he could recall at the moment.

Damnation!

He was certainly never going to have anything to do with virgins again.

Except his wife, he thought with a grimace. Whoever she turned out to be.


Jessica did not sleep much better, though she lay awake in greater comfort than the man in the adjoining room. She was consumed by embarrassment and guilt. Embarrassment at what she had done with Lord Rutherford, what she had allowed him to do. Guilt at what she had done to him. She had agreed to become his mistress, had allowed him to take her to bed, allowed him unimagined intimacies, and then denied him the ultimate one. She had some inkling of the great willpower it had taken him to stop at that particular moment. She also realized full well that perhaps only one man in a thousand would have stopped. And how could she have accused him if he had not?

But he had stopped and then, instead of throwing her out into the inn corridor in her nightgown and hurling her valise after her, he had insisted that she sleep in his bed for the night while he sat up in one of those shabby chairs in the parlor. And he had promised to give her an introduction to a lady in London who would find her employment. Jessica had her doubts about his ability to do so, but she appreciated his generosity in being willing to try.

In fact, strange as it seemed, she felt a certain respect for the Earl of Rutherford. True, he had tried to seduce her the night before, and tonight he had made her a very improper offer of employment and had tried to seal their contract without delay. But the man was no ravisher. He took her for a servant, which she was. She knew that for many gentlemen, women of the servant class were considered theirs for the having. And yet Lord Rutherford had been willing to release her without argument the night before, and he had let her go tonight even after she had consented both verbally and physically to allow him his will.