Rules for Being a Mistress Page 4

  “Good,” she said. “Then you won’t mind proving it. You don’t plan on coming to my bed all buttoned up, with your boots on, I hope?” she added impatiently. “So I’ll be seeing you in the flesh anyway. Right?”

  Her request, while startling, was not unreasonable, he reflected. After all, a lady entertaining an offer of marriage had the right to know the character of her future husband before she accepted him. Did it not follow that a woman in Miss Cosy’s position had the right to know that her future lover was physically sound before she threw herself into his power?

  As incredible as it seemed, he was actually considering displaying his nude body to a strange female in a kitchen.

  “Is it as bad as that, sir?” she said pityingly. “Is it scales? Carbuncles?”

  Benedict abruptly stood up and began to struggle out of his coat. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with my body—apart from its obvious defect, that is.”

  He threw his coat down, and stood in his waistcoat and shirt sleeves. The right sleeve of his finely pleated linen shirt had been cut short at the elbow and neatly hemmed, unlike his coat, which was tailored in the usual way.

  “Of course, if you’d rather not,” she said quickly, “I’ll understand!”

  “No. I insist. You are perfectly right to safeguard your health by making certain of mine,” he said, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

  “You can keep your shirt on if you prefer.”

  His lip curled. “I would not have you treat me any differently than you would your other lovers!” he said coldly. “You will find nothing wrong with me, however.”

  Loosening his cravat, he tore off his collar and pulled his shirt off over his head.

  She stared at him in dismay. While he was not covered in sores, the thick, bristling, black hair that covered his torso was scarcely more attractive to her than a nasty rash would have been. On his chest it grew in ugly, black whorls, and, on his belly, deep, thick chevrons plunged downward to his loins. She hardly looked at his amputated limb. That, at least, she thought, a little irrationally, is not his fault.

  “There,” he said, slapping his belly proudly. “That, madam, is all muscle. I walk four miles a day without fail. I am as fit as a fiddle.”

  A hairy fiddle! she thought with ill-concealed disgust.

  In a few minutes more, after an embarrassing struggle with his boots, he was standing before her naked as the day he was born. As always, his posture was excellent. The hair at the joining of his thighs was especially bushy, and the pale flesh of his manhood retreated into it like a little bird into a nest. It was so ugly it was almost fascinating.

  “You know,” she said thoughtfully. “You don’t look like the sort of man who’d be all furry under his clothes. I thought you’d be smoother.”

  “As you can see, madam, there is nothing the matter with my private parts,” he said, taking himself in hand. “Normal in size and color. Scrupulously clean. Free of all disease.”

  Cosy tried to look knowledgeable and interested. “Could you turn around please?” she asked. Her voice squeaked, and she cleared her throat to regain some control over it.

  “Certainly.”

  “Hmmm,” she said thoughtfully, as she considered what to do next. If she hit him on the head with the poker, there would be the danger of killing him, while the bellows might not be heavy enough to knock him out completely. It was a difficult choice. Meanwhile, the back side of the man was not unworthy of a glance. His shoulders, back, and buttocks were smooth and white. His muscular legs were as much like carved marble as she could wish. There was only a little hair on the back of his calves. If only the front of him matched the back!

  “Well?” Benedict said.

  “Hush, man! The angels are singing,” she said, stalling for time. Her eye went to the bottle of whiskey. That would knock him out as well as the poker, she reasoned, without breaking his skull. Perfect! “Shall we drink on it, sir?” she asked brightly, jumping up to pour him a glass. When he turned around, she saw with some surprise, that her disgust of him was not as strong as it had been. There was something odd and fascinating about his hairy body, now that she had seen his naked back. He was like a god and a beast joined into one being.

  “There are better ways of sealing a bargain such as this,” Benedict grumbled. He was cold, and the cold had caused his manly flesh to shrink. Too proud to offer excuses for his poor showing, he was more eager than ever to give her a practical proof of his fitness.

  “To Ireland!” she insisted. “You’ll not refuse to drink to Ireland?”

  “To Ireland,” he agreed irritably. He wanted her so badly, he would have toasted France. Against his better judgment, he then drank to Father Murphy, who died for Ireland, and, then to the Boys of Wexford, who also, apparently, died for Ireland. Each time he drank, his glass was refilled as if by magic. She was amazed he was still on his feet.

  “To Lord Edward Fitzgerald!” she said, finally, in desperation.

  Benedict felt queasy, and the room seemed to be in motion around him. “Did this Lord Edward die for Ireland, too?” he asked suspiciously.

  “He did!”

  “Excellent,” he said. He drank, and then asked with disarmingly simple innocence, “What happens now? Do we go to bed?”

  “Darling,” she said, “you’d never make it.”

  The room began to spin around him like a carousel. “I see what you mean,” he mumbled as he slipped painlessly to the floor. “Let’s do it right here, where the cat sleeps.”

  “Sleep well, caro mio ben,” she said, kicking him to make sure he was unconscious. “What kept you?” she demanded as Nora belatedly came flying out of the scullery brandishing a frying pan.

  “I thought you liked him,” said Nora, staring at the man. “You sang to him and all.”

  Cosima’s eyes blazed. “I did no such shameless thing!” she cried. “And if you tell anyone, old woman, I’ll kill you.”

  Nora was a little near-sighted. “’Tis a good thing you threw that old carriage rug over him, the naked hoor.”

  “I’ve got news for you, Nora,” Cosy retorted. “That’s no carriage rug!”

  Chapter 3

  “Is it murder?” Ajax Jackson wanted to know.

  The two women had awakened the manservant with a bucket of cold water. The massive, wall-eyed Irishman was not entirely sober, but neither was he entirely drunk. His iron-gray hair hung down his back in rivulets. Fortunately, he had fallen asleep in his clothes.

  “Murder, indeed!” Nora Murphy scoffed. “And ourselves without a bog handy?”

  “There’s a river, woman,” he told Nora. “A river’s as good as a bog.”

  Nora rolled her eyes. “The Avon River is not the sort of river you can just toss a body in whenever it suits you. It’s not the Liffey! Sure the people would take notice of a corpse splashing around in the Avon River.”

  “Just get him out of here, please,” Cosy said wearily. She stood at a distance, holding the cat in her arms. The naked Englishman looked so harmless in his sleep that she wasn’t even sure she was still angry. She was beginning to think this was all her fault. Perhaps she had flirted with him just a little too hard, given him too much to drink. She knew she had been showing off for him, singing in Italian like a hussy! What was he supposed to think, the poor man, when she turned on the charm like that? If they didn’t get him out of her kitchen soon, she would be down on her knees, waking him up to beg his pardon. Unthinkable!

  “We’ll hand him a nice beating first, of course,” Nora said eagerly.

  “While he’s drunk?” Jackson sneered. “He’d think it was patty fingers with all the blood running in his eyes. Now, if your brothers were here to defend you, Miss Cosy, they’d geld him for your sake, and he’d wake up with his cullions in his mouth.”

  “Ugh!” said Cosy, revolted.

  “Too much blood,” said practical Nora. “We could tar and feather him, I suppose.”

  “And ourselves without any tar? We could
bridle him,” Jackson suggested.

  Cosy looked interested. “Bridle him? I never heard of that.”

  “May God preserve your innocence, child,” said Nora. “You force the iron bit of a bridle into the unsavory mouth of him. That way his tongue may acquire a touch of civility.”

  That sounded like a fair compromise. “Have we got a bridle?” Cosy asked.

  “We have not,” Jackson said angrily. “And, if you are determined to spare him, Cosy Vaughn, then there’s nothing to do but take him to the middle of nowhere, and leave him there to die like the low-down, dirty blackguard that he is.”

  “And where are we supposed to find the middle of nowhere in this Godforsaken place?” Nora wanted to know. “Sure the English are packed in Bath city like seeds in a sunflower.”

  “There’s the park,” Cosy suggested. “No one ever goes there but ourselves.”

  “Sure the English do prefer promenading themselves in the Pump Room,” Nora sniffed.

  “The park!” Jackson cried in disgust. “Sure the Watch would find your man safe and sound in the morning, if that matters to you! You might as well tuck him up in bed like a baby!”

  “I don’t like it any more than you do!” Cosy said crossly. “If we were at home, he’d go straight into the bog, but we’re not at home, and he can’t stay here.”

  Although it was but a paltry vengeance in his opinion, Jackson obediently carried the baronet out by the tradesman’s door, and returned from the park not twenty minutes later. To his surprise, the young lady was still up, pacing the kitchen and wringing her hands.

  “Did you tie him up, nice and tight, to a tree?” she asked anxiously.

  “I did not,” he replied, highly pleased with himself. “With a bit of luck, he’ll wake up and go traipsing through the streets of Bath crying for his mother in his shameless nudity. ’Tis how Ned Foley met his end in Drogheda. Drunk as he was, he never saw the cart coming, and the next thing he knew, he was under the hooves of it, trampled like the grapes of wrath.”

  “Are you mad, you bollocks? Go and tie him up at once before he wanders off and does himself a harm,” Cosy angrily commanded.

  “Is it sweet on him she is?” Jackson grumbled as she swept off to bed.

  “Sweet on him?” cried Nora. “And he offering to ravish her twice a week, poor child!”

  “Twice a week is not very affectionate,” Jackson observed. “She’d have the right to expect more attention, even if he is a cold fish of an Englishman. Mind you, that’s an easy class of husband, and that’s five nights’ rest she’d not be getting if she married with an Irishman.”

  “He wasn’t after asking her to marry him!”

  “Poor lass! Did she want to marry him as much as that?” he asked curiously.

  “And if you think so, Ajax Jackson, you know nothing of women!” Nora cried.

  “I may know nothing of women, Nora,” he replied. “But I know a fair amount on the subject of men. Sure I happen to be one! He’ll be back,” he said confidently. “And I wouldn’t want to be in Cosy Vaughn’s shoes when he does.”

  “He’ll leave town, surely, and never come back,” said Nora nervously.

  Jackson laughed. “And if you think so, Nora, me darling, ’tis yourself that knows nothing of men.”

  Leaving her open-mouthed, he went to find a bit of rope.

  Sir Benedict’s valet saw no reason to alter the morning routine simply because his master had been brought home by the Watch naked and quite insensibly drunk. It was not about punishing the delinquent baronet. It was about maintaining a high standard of service. At precisely six-thirty that same morning, therefore, Pickering entered his master’s room and flung open the bed curtains. Never having suffered the ill effects of a night of drinking himself, he was startled when a small china ornament smashed against the wall, narrowly missing his head.

  “Sir Benedict!” he cried in amazement.

  “Must you be so loud?” Benedict demanded, sitting up in the big four-poster bed.

  Sitting up was the worst mistake he could have made. A threshing machine inside his head was instantly set in motion. Its razor-sharp blades began making hay of his brain. Certain that he was dying, though not quickly enough, Benedict fell back in bed and lay paralyzed.

  “Good morning, Sir Benedict,” Pickering said sunnily.

  Benedict winced. To his sensitive ears, his valet’s voice sounded like the voice of an angry God. The threshing blades in his head rattled violently. He did not dare move, but the desire to be released from his present torment was so strong that he risked speaking again.

  “Pickering,” he whispered, scarcely opening his lips. “My will is with my attorney in London. You have much to gain if you kill me. Kill me now, I beg of you.” He burrowed down into the bedclothes and rode the gently lapping waves of nausea back to deep sleep.

  Pickering returned late in the evening and lit some candles. Benedict complained that the light hurt his eyes, but, after a little cajoling, he was able to sit up and drink a cup of beef tea. “What happened to me, Pickering?” he asked presently. “Everything is all jumbled in my head. There was—Was there a woman?”

  “Yes, Sir Benedict,” Pickering grimly replied. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Benedict sank into the pillows. “Don’t be. She was very beautiful. She liked me enormously, I think. We forged a bond that few can boast. Pickering, I love her.”

  Somehow Pickering managed to overcome the strong urge to roll his eyes. “Yes, sir. I’m sure you do, sir. Would you care to bring charges against her?”

  “Now, what was her name?” Benedict mused.

  A few seconds passed before he exclaimed, “Charges! What do you mean?”

  With unwholesome relish, Pickering explained that the beautiful woman had not liked him enormously, or even a little. In fact, as proof of her contempt, she had robbed him of everything, including his clothes, and then had left him tied to a tree in the park, innocent of all clothing, for the Watch to find. Most likely, she was part of a gang of vicious robbers. She had only pretended to like him so that she and her accomplices could rob him.

  According to the constable of the Watch, a very knowledgeable and zealous custodian of the law, it was the oldest trick in the book. It was called “The Honey Trap.”

  At first, Benedict did not believe a word of it.

  “I haven’t been robbed,” he scoffed. “What’s-her-name would never do such a thing. You don’t know her as I do, Pickering. And I think,” he added acidly, “one would remember if one had been tied to a tree.”

  “The constable has reconstructed your movements of last night,” Pickering informed him. “Evidently, you left a Mr. Fitzwilliam at the York House Hotel, then you walked to Camden Place. Most unwise, Sir Benedict; you ought to have taken a chair. You were an obvious prey for streetwalkers. The woman you met deceived you shamelessly.”

  “Streetwalker! She’s the housekeeper here. Red hair? Bit of a dish? Miss Cosy is her name,” he added, suddenly remembering.

  Pickering was revolted. “Miss Cozen, more like! The woman was a thief.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Benedict. He suddenly felt naked and betrayed and just a tiny bit foolish. “She seemed so warm, so open, so friendly.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pickering said dryly. “It must be necessary in her…line of work to look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it.”

  Benedict groaned. “Was she not the housekeeper?”

  Pickering shook his head. “There are no female servants here. I dismissed them all. You were discovered just before dawn by the Watch. The thieves had stripped you of everything. They even took the ring from your hand.”

  Benedict looked at his hand, almost spilling his tea in the process. His signet ring was indeed gone. He remembered everything up until the moment he had drunk to the Boys of Wexford, who were probably her gang. After that, Miss Cosy, the beautiful, warm, and friendly Irish housekeeper who sang to him in Italian, vanished from his mem
ory like a ghost in sunlight.

  “Needless to say, I paid the constable well for his discretion.”

  “What? Er…oh, yes. Well done,” Benedict said absently. His thoughts were elsewhere. He hadn’t been beaten and robbed. The little rogue had gotten him drunk, and talked him out of his clothes! He had actually given her everything he had. Worse yet, he had wanted to give her more. “Damn,” he said through clenched teeth. “I must have walked right into her trap like a mewling lamb to the slaughter! And, like a lamb, she fleeced me, did she not?”

  “Yes, sir. Though she must have had help tying you up.”

  “Yes, of course she had help,” he snapped. “I should have known it was all too good to be true! My watch! My ring! I had a thousand pounds in my wallet—but never mind that! Are you all right, my old friend?” he asked Pickering. “You seem unharmed.”

  Pickering was surprised, and touched. It was just like his master to think of others at a time when he might be excused for wallowing in their own misfortunes. He could almost forgive Sir Benedict for fouling up so spectacularly. “I was a trifle shaken up, Sir Benedict, of course, but my nerves are holding up very well. I thank you.”

  Benedict looked around the bedroom. It seemed amply filled with silver candlesticks and there were no blank squares on the walls where paintings had once been. “They did not burglarize the house at all?” he asked, showing a belated concern for Lord Skeldings’s property.

  “Oh, no, Sir Benedict,” Pickering assured him. “The house was quite untouched.”

  “The other servants? All well? No one hurt?”

  “Some shock more easily than others, but, all in all, fine.”

  Benedict sighed with relief. “I am glad. If I had been the means of injuring his lordship’s property or his servants, I would have been grieved, indeed. For myself, I am resigned never to see my thousand pounds again, and, I daresay, all my clothes will find their way to a secondhand shop. However, it may be possible to recover my ring, and my watch, too,” he went on thoughtfully. “It would be more profitable for the thieves to sell them back to me, rather than take the trouble of melting down my ring for its gold content or rubbing out the inscription on my watch. I shall offer a reward. ‘Gentleman seeking lost property. No questions asked.’ One sees such items in the newspapers from time to time. See to the advertisement, Pickering. And let us never mention this regrettable matter again.”