Regency High Society Vol 7: A Reputable Rake / The Heart's Wager / The Venetian's Mistress / The Gambler's Heart. Diane Gaston
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and placed her back to him so he could fasten the buttons. ‘My mind is quite made up.’
‘You will not marry me?’ Another man might make this sound like a plea, but in Sloane’s voice it sounded like a pirate about to attack. He fastened her buttons with lightning speed.
She made her voice light. ‘Do not be absurd. You’ve no wish to marry me! Goodness! To think you would propose out of some obligation. You need not play the gentleman with me, Sloane.’
Her words wounded him. She saw it in his eyes. For a moment she wished he would strike her. The pain might distract from the wrenching ache inside her. But she knew he was too much a true gentleman to do so.
She picked up her stockings and balled them in her hands, putting her bare feet into her dancing slippers. He shrugged into his coat and ran a brush through his hair. Morgana put hers in a quick plait.
‘I will see you to the back entrance of your house. If we are careful, no one outside will notice you.’
It was a gentlemanly thing to do. He could have just opened the door and pushed her out.
‘Thank you,’ she said, failing to maintain her bright-sounding speech.
He did not appear to notice. He opened the bedchamber door and walked her down the stairs. She managed to put one foot in front of the other, although all she truly wanted to do was sink into a puddle of despair. On a table in the hall was her gold domino, folded neatly. He put it around her shoulders and pulled the hood up over her head. His touch was like a smithy’s tongs hot from the forge.
When they walked out of the door and through the gap in the garden wall, they did not speak. The silence spread through her like some wasting disease.
She had given him the means of retaining his hard-won respectability. She had given him a clear path to offer for a respectable wife—her cousin. But she’d hurt him. Not with her refusal of marriage. A man soon got over such a blow to pride. No, she’d treated him as if he were not a gentleman. That made her no better than his father. And it made her feel sick inside.
The door to her house was unlocked. He opened it for her and she stepped inside. She turned quickly to bid him goodbye, but he had already withdrawn. He did not look back.
The man wore a vendor’s apparel and carried a sack of brushes on his shoulder. He’d wandered around Culross Street since dawn, finally discovering a way to slip through the mews to a shrouded place where he could spy on Cyprian Sloane’s townhouse. Instinct told him to watch the back of the house. Instinct, and lack of success witnessing anything of consequence from the front.
It was too bad he could not watch the house next to Sloane’s where he’d briefly spied the pretty girls through the window. Sloane’s place was as quiet as a church cemetery.
Just as he was about to leave, Sloane’s door opened. There was the man himself, a woman with him. He walked her over to the other house and she entered it.
What an arrangement, thought the man with envy. Some men have all the luck.
Morgana paused when reaching the door to the library. It was open a crack, and she could hear the girls’ voices and the reedy laughter of her grandmother, who undoubtedly found everything to be very lovely. Oh, to have her grandmother’s forgetfulness, to live in a present that was perpetually lovely. How much easier life would be. How much less painful.
The voices were not sounding happy, however. Katy’s shrill tones rose above the others. ‘We need Miss Hart! She will know what to do.’
Morgana glanced down at her hand, still holding her stockings. She stuffed them into a pocket inside her domino and stuffed her numbing despair along with them.
She opened the door. ‘I am here.’
Katy leapt up from her chair. ‘Gracious, Miss Hart!’ She looked her up and down. ‘Did you have a nice night?’
Lucy and Rose stared at her, and Miss Moore, seated near her grandmother, gave her a kind, knowing smile.
It felt as if someone had ripped off all her clothes in a public square, but she realised it was not making love to Sloane that made her feel exposed. It was the ache in her heart.
She tried for a vague smile. ‘A lady does not speak of such matters, Katy.’
Katy laughed. ‘Harriette Wilson had no trouble speaking about it.’
Morgana gave her a candid look. ‘But Miss Wilson is not a lady.’
Was it too late to convince them that they could be ladies? Oh, not ladies of the ton, perhaps, but respectable women who deserved men who loved them and who would never walk away?
Lucy stood up. Her face looked drawn. ‘Miss Hart, we must tell you about Mary.’
If something had happened to Mary while she was making love to Sloane. ‘What of Mary?’
‘It is nothing bad,’ assured Rose.
Lucy gave an imploring glance to Miss Moore.
Miss Moore beamed at Morgana. ‘It seems our Mary has run off to Gretna Green with Mr Duprey.’
‘That cowhanded sapskull…’ Katy shook her head ‘… how could she?’
Tears sprang to Morgana’s eyes. She walked over to Miss Moore. ‘Is it really so?’
Miss Moore handed her a letter. Mary wrote that she was sorry to disappoint Morgana, but Mr Duprey had proposed to her at the masquerade, promising to save her from such unpleasantness and give her a good home. He did not have a big fortune, she added, but Mary looked forward to making little economies to make his life pleasant. The letter then went on for a whole page, heaping praises upon Mr Duprey.
When Morgana finished she clasped the letter to her chest.
‘That slow-top could have purchased a special license here in London.’ Katy shook her head in disgust.
‘Gretna Green is romantic, is it not, Miss Hart?’ Rose directed her beautiful green eyes on Morgana. ‘It is good that she marries, is it not?’
Morgana smiled through her tears. ‘It is wonderful for her!’ She would miss the shy, gentle girl. Her loss was Mr Duprey’s gain—and Mary’s salvation.
Morgana thought of Sloane. ‘It is wonderful for her,’ she repeated. ‘Well done, Mary.’
Chapter Seventeen
Sloane’s horse was waiting for him when he tore back into the house. Elliot stood in the hall and the butler hovered in a doorway.
It was Elliot who handed him his hat and gloves. The look of compassion on the young man’s face nearly jolted him out of the towering rage that consumed him.
Morgana.
He grabbed his hat and gloves and thundered out the door, snatching the reins of his horse from the groom, and mounting in one easy motion. He fleetingly considered detouring into Hyde Park to ride off the storm inside him, but even a hell-for-leather gallop down Rotten Row would not suffice. He must simply wrest control back, push down the pain that kept shooting up through the anger.
Morgana.
He could not think straight. He felt as if she’d pushed him off a very high cliff. Hitting the ground, he had met with pain too intense to bear. She had refused him. Said she’d toyed with him. Accused him of being no gentleman.
His head told him not to believe a word of it. Morgana, a courtesan? Nonsense.
Did she concoct that story as an excuse to refuse his offer of marriage? She had wanted their lovemaking as much as he, but only when he’d mentioned marriage did she repeat her outrageous story. Sloane’s insides felt as if a dozen sabres had slashed him to ribbons and his head