Marrying the Mistress. Juliet Landon

      

       ‘Dance with me,’ he whispered.

      My eyes must have reflected my doubts, but he did not accept my refusal. Standing abruptly, he held out a hand and raised me to my feet, leading me like a sleepwalker into the ballroom, where we joined the end of the line, moving into the steps as we went, turning, parting, closing, balancing.

      If there were stares of disapproval neither of us noticed, only the slow and stately steps that moved us apart and together again, our bodies and hands just touching, like those six years condensed into six minutes. His eyes were brazen with desire, and mine were speaking of I know not what, except too much of my feelings. I knew then that I was losing control, that I was showing him what was in my secret heart, because, with his outspoken talk of wanting me, he had found a way in.

      Juliet Landon’s keen interest in art and history, both of which she used to teach, combined with a fertile imagination, make writing historical novels a favourite occupation. She is particularly interested in researching the early medieval and Regency periods and the problems encountered by women in a man’s world. Her heart’s home is in her native North Yorkshire, but now she lives happily in a Hampshire village close to her family. Her first books, which were on embroidery and design, were published under her own name of Jan Messent.

       Recent novels by the same author:

      ONE NIGHT IN PARADISE

      THE WIDOW’S BARGAIN

      THE BOUGHT BRIDE

      HIS DUTY, HER DESTINY

      THE WARLORD’S MISTRESS

      A SCANDALOUS MISTRESS^* DISHONOUR AND DESIRE^* THE RAKE’S UNCONVENTIONAL MISTRESS^*

      *Ladies of Paradise Road

      Author Note

      Madame Helene Follet, High-Class mantua-maker and milliner of Blake Street, York, would have kept records and notes of what she bought, designed and sold, the colours, sizes and weights, and price per yard. Such notes would have been packed into a book amongst snippets of velvet, calico and silk, lace and ribbons, pinned in tiers or wound around cards thick enough to prevent the book from closing properly.

      As an embroiderer, I could not resist making one for her using a method known nowadays as ‘altered books’. For this, I took an old book with hard covers that I no longer wanted and removed many of the pages with a sharp craft knife, leaving about 2 cms next to the spine. On these attached strips I stuck prettily-patterned replacement pages. Then I did what Helene would have done, packing each substitute page with Regency details, letting ribbons hang, arranging pages by colour, drawing hats and bonnets, cutting out pictures from brochures and postcards, sticking on scraps of fabrics that Helene would have known, stripes, florals, tiny prints and glittery bits. Papers can be bought from craft shops for the purpose. Just cut, arrange, pin and stick. I should warn you, it can become addictive.

      To finish, it is usual to re-cover the original backing (i.e. the covers) with a suitable heavy duty paper that complements the interior.

      MARRYING THE MISTRESS

      Juliet Landon

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       Prologue

       York—April 1802

      It was hardly more than two miles from the centre of York to the racecourse at Knavesmire, a distance that only a few months ago, the Honourable Linas Monkton would have been happy to ride on horseback without the least discomfort. On this occasion, however, his young mistress, Miss Helene Follet, had put her foot down and ordered the barouche to be made available, for nowadays Linas’s cough left him weak, sweating with pain and gasping for breath. She dared not allow it, although she would have liked to ride her own black mare that weekend.

      ‘I feel sure we’re in for some showers,’ she said, noting the bending tree-tops as they passed out of Micklegate, ‘and I don’t fancy getting soaked as we watch your brother’s horses go through their paces. If it turns out fine, I’m sure he’ll lend us two of his hacks to ride. Did you remember to pack the new linctus?’

      ‘I expect Nairn did. You look very nice, my dear.’

      Linas’s compliments rarely went beyond ‘nice’ or ‘smart’, which Helene thought more appropriate for soldiers. ‘Thank you.’ She smiled. She had made the outfit herself, including the beaded panel down the front and the frilled chemisette that showed inside the neckline. The matching bonnet of ruched blue-grey silk had been made by her, too, after the latest French styles.

      Linas himself ought to have been tucked up warmly in his Stonegate home on such a raw April day, but it was the start of the York racing season and nothing would have persuaded him to refuse his twin brother’s invitation to stay the weekend at Abbots Mere, so close to the racecourse. The invitation had been to stay for a week, but Helene had balked at that and Linas, aware of a certain tension between his mistress and his brother, had not insisted on more than two nights.

      Helene would rather not have gone at all. Although she enjoyed the races and the sight of horses in a herd at full gallop, bright with silks and shine, she could not look forward with anything like the same enthusiasm to meeting the Abbots Mere set, which, as like as not, would include a similar herd of Lord Winterson’s mistresses, past, present and hopeful.

      The twins were unlike each other in most respects, Linas being far from robust but still trying to emulate his brother in so many ways, by taking a mistress, for instance, and by trying to prove his fitness when it was plain to see, to Helene at least, that he grew weaker with each passing season. Lord Winterson’s rude health needed no proof, for one look at his powerful physique was enough to convince any critic that his parents’ recipe had favoured the first of the two to emerge with good looks, intelligence, and enough charm to ladle out whenever he felt he could spare the effort. At other times he could be insufferably proud and offhand, and it was said that one of Winterson’s set-downs could cause a recipient’s disappearance for as long as a six-month.

      Linas had never indulged in that kind of high-handedness except occasionally to the servants, and it was this brand of gentle courtesy that had won Helene over. After insisting that she would never again become intimate with a man for money, however high-born, she had relented and become Linas Monkton’s mistress, companion and nurse. That had been two years ago when she was still seventeen, two years in which there had been no sign of pregnancy, in spite of her desire to bear his child before it was too late.

      Perhaps it was already too late, for Linas had not visited her bed once in the last two months on the pretext that any physical exercise brought on his coughing spasms. Tomorrow would be her nineteenth birthday. She hoped he might visit her, if only to be held in her arms.

      It