With a gargantuan effort and a dwindling will, she pulled him away and paced to the window where the night allowed her merely to see her own grim reflection. She thanked years of theatre training that afforded her to look as cold as that brook where Ophelia died. And encrusted her voice with the icy shards she intended it to display.
“I called you here because I’m ending our liaison.” As she swivelled to him, she darted those shards at his rugged person.
The veritably savage scowl that smothered him told her this wasn’t going to be as straightforward as she’d expected.
Drake Theodore Rannell Aldridge stared at Hester from the height of eight generations of Worcesters while his mind worked frantically to assimilate what the deliciously diminutive woman was saying. Back in the day, he'd sown his wild oats and counted a good number of notches on his bedpost. He didn't remember their names or their faces, but he did remember not receiving a single refusal. Not a bloody one. Worse, not one of those women had abbreviated their liaison. Not a bloody one!
Now, this slip of a girl looked at him with a foreign expression and even more foreign notion. She'd been the longest mistress in his life ever. The others lasted an average of weeks, two months at most until he got bored with their lack of substance, lack of morals, or lack of imagination.
Hester had gifted him with all three. Life with her was never boring. As a member of Drury Lane, she possessed cultured tastes in reading and the arts. And Drake would always marvel at her creativity in the performances she put in their joint soirees. His townhouse stood perpetually open for those who also enjoyed the fine accomplishments of new painters, new poets, or new sculptors. And Hester fit in them so perfectly it became a wonder. Their soirees listed already as one of the most sought after in London, even if they started with scandalous fame. In the year that passed, the presence of dukes, earls, and rich merchants had lent a polished glow to them.
As for the morals, she had it in spades. She didn’t ask for money, or dresses, or trinkets. In fact, Drake wondered if she had a single materialistic bone in her delectable body. He’d not seen her fussing, gossiping, or making any intrigue either. As far as he knew, her passion rested on the arts and the plays she recited majestically. A passion so intense it bled everywhere!
He’d leave her imagination be for the time being before his groin responded even harder to her. His brain needed a shake, and he kicked at it mentally.
“What do you mean by end our liaison?” Short of roaring, he kept his temper in check.
“I spoke English, and you heard me.” Her melodious voice could acquire any tone she desired, but she said that with a flatness that hadn’t been there in the time he interacted with her. Bellying that, her eyes flashed with determination.
Whenever she directed those beams at his person, she unbalanced him. Her eyes were of a shade of green that changed with her every mood. From sea green when she felt happy, to hazel in the candle-lights of the stage. But in the throes of fierce perdition, they transformed into a brilliant hue of parakeet that invariably engulfed him. That was how he knew her core would clamp on him in such a hopeless way he'd be doomed to downfall. The memory nearly brought him to his knees with arousal. Another thing that didn’t change since the first time he laid eyes on her, his helpless desire for her.
Her answer and his reaction to her clouded his brain further. “Of course you’re not ending it.” He growled. This simply wasn’t done. Mistresses left for two reasons. Their keepers tired of them. Or, he swallowed grit, they betrayed their keepers, at which the latter kicked them into the street.
That she might have betrayed him unleashed such a primal rage he had difficulty dealing with it. "You're bedding someone else." To his own ears, his voice carried a cartload of contempt. After an indomitable insistence on his part, she came to him as a virgin. His and only his, and that's how he'd intended it to remain.
Her eyes shifted again to a basil shade that indicated her irritation. Every time she looked at him, a bonfire lit in his veins. To hell if she bedded another, he wouldn’t be able to stop wanting her. He’d been waiting for this affliction to end, but it gave no sign of dousing any time soon.
Those lips that put only one thing to his mind stretched in a scornful grin. “Naturally, there must be a man involved because a woman cannot decide by herself.” Rosy and full, he’d never forget her applying her lips and her imagination to him.
Her use of by herself seized his fractured attention. “No other men then.” And hoped his relief didn’t show as vividly as he felt it.
Those delicate brows pleated in annoyance. “Do you think I’d have the time or,” she blushed as furiously as when they were caught in the storm of heat, “inclination for such?”
He knew he didn’t because he invariably ended their sessions, half-dead, in paradise, and thinking of when he could go for more. “Fine, now we can forget this nonsense and proceed with our evening.”
At that, her entire frame went so rigid she resembled a sculpture on a rock by the sea, her contrariety seeming to slash her with tempestuous waves. "I'm leaving tomorrow morning unless you request me to do it right away."
Just like that sea, the seriousness of her words threatened to pull him under. Currents he possessed no way of naming pulled at him. Vexation ... yes, frustration ... most certainly, but there was one other element in this mixture that he refused to call loss. He’d not felt it before, why would he at this moment? A mere woman, a mistress didn’t inflict the likes on him, ever.
Pride slotted in and made him swallow this rubble flogging his guts. He didn’t know what it was and would thrash anyone who did. “You’re sure you want to give up on all this.” He drew an encompassing gesture to their surroundings. The imprint of contempt on his tone hit her as she snapped up her head and shot him a burning look. Hester showed no sign of attachment to material comforts, but he had to meet a woman who didn’t cling to them.
“No one can give up on what’s not theirs.” The vehemence added to the rubble roiling in him. Had she asked he’d have given anything and everything she might wish. He’d have settled her for life, bought her a house in Mayfair, paid for books, jewels, art, and taken her to the moon and whatever else the hell he might think of.
“I gifted them to you, it’s all yours.” He emphasized.
If possible, she became even more rigid, a magnificent statue emerging from the sloshing sea contained in her eyes. The haughtiness that tilted her chin up wasn’t regal, regal was feeble, vulgar. It was downright imperial. Katherine the Great and Messalina wrapped in one. And he wanted nothing more than to carry her to bed and worship every inch of her. Breach the marble on the surface and delve in the warm, responsive woman beneath. She might be an actress, but this was no act even if he’d not seen her like this before.
“I don’t want anything.” The coldness turned to frost.
He looked at her and, through the haze of these foreign emotions she incited in him, he wondered if she had another reason for this preposterousness other than a man. “Are you with child?” Most mistresses understood that if that should be the case they were in for a rough ride, and despair caused people to make wild decisions.