coldly.
“Mr. Martin didn’t have to wait.”
“Mr. Martin didn’t actually get to sleep with me.”
He grinned. “Do to me what you did to him—I should be more than happy enough.”
She took a deep breath. “You are a disgusting pig, Hastings.”
She’d compared him to far baser entities over the years, but something in her tone struck him. He’d always been a game to her, a somewhat unsavory game, but one she played with finesse and nonchalance. Now, however, she could no longer rap him on the hand and saunter away; now he was her present and her future.
Her dismay was a sharp twist in his heart, a feeling of utter futility. As ever, when he felt trampled, he turned to ever greater frivolity and callousness, those false friends who led him only deeper into despair, but who, at least on the surface, imbued him with an appearance of flippant nonchalance.
“The slings and arrows I suffer for my honesty,” he said, barely feeling the words sliding past his lips. “Very well then, I’ll settle for a description of what you did.”
“That is none of your concern.”
“It very much is—I have to do those exact same things, don’t you see, to wipe away his fingerprints from your body, so to speak.”
She smiled, an expression of arctic certainty. “You needn’t even try. His fingerprints will always be on my body.”
He walked slowly toward her, his height and breadth somehow multiplying with each step, as did his menace. She realized, for the first time in their long acquaintance, that she’d never encountered his anger—hadn’t even known it was an emotion he ever encountered in his glib existence.
His voice, however, was utterly velvety—if an upholstered wrecking ball could be called velvety. “I won’t need to try, my dear. My touch will burn away his.”
She couldn’t breathe.
“You were always quiet in his bed,” he went on, “but you won’t be in mine. You will scream with pleasure—and you will do it again and again.”
If she gripped the windowsill any harder, she’d break off a piece of it. “If you are quite finished with your theatrics, I am weary and would like to rest—in private.”
He loomed over her, his gaze harsh. For a moment she thought he’d flick aside her request and shove her against a wall. But the next moment he shrugged, very much back to being his normal self—the breaking of the tension oddly vacuumlike inside her chest.
“Of course. I wish you a pleasant night’s rest. I’m sure one of the maids will be eager to entertain me for a couple of hours in your stead.”
Suddenly it was she who was closing in on him, her finger stabbing into his chest. “I can’t stop you from pursuing affairs, but I will not tolerate any carrying-on with the staff.”
“That is terrible—such a convenient source of gratification, the maids. Why, one doesn’t even need to leave the house!”
“You will keep your hands off the maids.”
“Fine. What about my housekeeper?”
Mrs. McCormick was rather youngish, only in her late thirties. Helena grimaced. “Not Mrs. McCormick, either.”
Hastings sighed, as if his patience were being tested by an unreasonable toddler. “Can’t we make a bargain? You can have a go at my grooms while I dally with the maids—provided I get to watch, of course.”
She hoped he was jesting. But Hastings was such a swine, it was quite possible that he indeed hoped for such a debauched tableau.
“No. Nor with your footmen, your coachmen, your gardeners, nor anyone else in or out of your employ.”
“My God, you are turning into Mrs. Monteth.”
“Don’t compare me to that harpy—I am not interested in exposing you. But I will protect the staff from your predation.”
She’d not quite realized it, but she’d been advancing against him and he’d been moving backward, and now they were both back where they’d started, at the vanity table, where she was greeted with the image of his daughter, looking small and meek in her photograph.
The poor girl, growing up in such a salacious household.
“When do I meet Miss Hillsborough?”
He looked nonplussed at the sudden change of topic—and, for once, genuinely surprised. “My daughter, you mean? You wish to meet her?”
“Of course I wish to meet her. Henceforth I am responsible for her upbringing.”
“You’ve never asked about her before.”
“Your illegitimate child is not a subject considered suitable for an unmarried woman to broach. But that is not her fault, only yours. She is approaching an age when she will be in dire need of good guidance—or at least of being spared the