Help. She had recklessly unleashed him, and now female instincts battled, the urge to assuage his need, and deeper fears, and then, the obvious—to not look like a complete trollop.

“I can’t,” she whispered, the beginnings of a panic washing over her. “Not . . . like this.”

Not up against a door. Not in any location, had she been thinking at all.

Montgomery’s chest tensed beneath her palms. “Of course,” he murmured. “Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” A frisson of foreboding raised the hair on her nape.

“I will have put everything in writing, whatever your terms,” he said. “You have my word.”

Terms?

He made to kiss her again. Something in her expression stopped him. He eased back, adjusting the front of his trousers, his lips twisting with discomfort. “Well, I won’t get a hold of my solicitor now,” he said.

Her blood ran cold. So she had understood him right. He thought she wanted to negotiate an arrangement.

“You thought I meant to negotiate an arrangement,” she said out loud.

He frowned at the flat tone of her voice. “You did not?”

He was still breathing hard. He looked oddly boyish, with his cravat rumpled and his hair mussed from her greedy hands, and God knew what she looked like.

Who would try to talk terms on the brink of lovemaking, when a man was half crazed and prone to promise anything? A calculating courtesan, that’s who.

Nausea welled in her stomach.

“And you’d sign whatever my terms?” she heard herself say. “How about a yacht, Your Grace?”

He tilted his head. “If you need one.”

She gave a small, ugly laugh.

He had not seen her at all.

Never mind their talks and walks and breathless kisses, all along, he had clearly never stopped thinking of her as a woman who’d bargain her favors for money. He’d have hardly propositioned a respectable woman for a knee-trembler in his library in the first place.

She smoothed her hands over her skirts. “I told you that I wasn’t in the market for such a thing.”

There was a pause. When he spoke next, his voice was cool. “What do you want, Annabelle?”

You.

At some point, she must have begun feeling, wanting, impossible things. “I don’t want to be your mistress.”

His eyes raked over her, his incredulity palpable, and she knew what he saw, a disheveled female who had brazenly put her hand on his cock.

Her heart crumpled. She felt naked, and utterly foolish.

She was as deluded and impulsive at twenty-and-five as when she’d been a girl.

She turned abruptly and felt for the key in the door lock.

A beat later, he was behind her, his hand staying her frantic efforts.

“Annabelle.”

She shook her head.

“I feel I have offended you, which was never my intention,” he said.

“Please,” she said, “I gave you the wrong impression, which I regret. But I won’t be your mistress. I won’t.”

He hesitated, for two heartbeats, perhaps three. Then his hand fell away and he stepped back, taking the warmth of his body with him. “As you wish.”

His tone was formal. Impersonal, even. Not unlike how he had sounded during their very first meeting in this library.

She unlocked the door and hurried into the night. From afar, she heard the pops and explosions of yet another firework display she didn’t see.

Chapter 19

Dawn had barely dragged itself over the horizon, but the coach to his weekly London appointment was ready for departure.

Sebastian halted in the entrance hall halfway to the doors. “Bonville,” he barked.

The man seemed to materialize from thin air. “Your Grace?”

“Something is wrong with the lighting.”

The butler cast a quick assessing glance around, at the plaster work above, the chandelier, the French seating arrangement before the fireplace, and a touch of panic rose in his eyes. Clearly, Bonville did not find anything wrong with the lighting situation.

“The lamps,” Sebastian said impatiently, starting for the entrance again. “They seem to have dimmed. I reckon the circuit has been overburdened during the house party.”

Granted. It was a subtle thing, but it made the house feel unacceptably dull.

Bonville was all business now. “I will have the gas specialists called in to examine the pipes and every single bulb, Your Grace.”

Sebastian gave a curt nod.

The footmen swung open the double doors for him, and a blast of cold morning air made his eyes water. He briskly stamped down the slippery stairs to the carriage. The light cover of snow that had made Claremont look pristine and enchanted had turned into sludge during the past couple of days. Not that it mattered. The weather was always the same in his study.

London was slowly but steadily soaked by gray drizzle. By the time he entered Buckingham Palace, his leather shoes were glistening wet despite the black umbrella hovering above him.

He did not expect a warm welcome in the royal apartment today. Neither the queen nor Disraeli would be keen on his latest recommendations. He’d push his strategy through regardless. He just knew when a plan was right, like his farmers had a sixth sense for how the weather would change. What niggled at the back of his mind as he took his seat was whether Victoria already knew that his heir presumptive had absconded. That would open a can of worms he’d prefer to keep firmly closed.

The queen and the prime minister sat in their usual spots, she in her thronelike armchair by the window, he right next to the fireplace, as if he suffered from a perpetual chill. Sebastian’s briefing was laid out neatly on the low table.

The queen’s eyes were as opaque as her onyx earbobs. “I was very pleased to hear that your New Year’s Eve party was a success,” she said.

He blinked at the unexpected sting between his ribs. He’d forever associate that party with personal rejection.

“I’m glad it lived up to expectations, ma’am.”

“I had no doubt it would.” Her gaze slid away from him to the briefing before her. “We were, however, surprised by your suggestions for the campaign. Indulging the farmers, Montgomery?”

“You once described them as the backbone of Britain, ma’am,” he said smoothly.

The queen pursed her lips, deciding whether she liked having her own words played back to her like that.

“Farmers are not our clientele,” Disraeli said. His white hair stood on end at the back of his head, as if he’d taken a nap in his wing chair and not yet fixed himself. “Local soil is not the running ticket of the Tories. Besides, the Liberals firmly have their claws in them already.”

“They are easy prey for Gladstone because they still hold a grudge against you over the corn laws,” Sebastian said. “Enough of them could be turned if given a few concessions.”

Disraeli was gripped by a coughing fit; he coughed until his eyes bulged and watered. “But how many farmers are there?” he asked when he had caught his breath.

“Around three thousand.”

“Not a number that will make or break our victory, surely? Even if they had the vote.”

Sebastian resisted the urge to rub a hand over his face. How this man had managed to weasel his way into a position of leadership and into the queen’s good graces continued to astound him.

“Give each of these three thousand farmers a few partners in trade they can infect with their outrage in the pub every Friday, and we have the tens of thousands of outraged tradesmen who are bound to influence their constituencies,” he said. “The Liberal party is still very effectively blaming the economic downturn on the Tories, and they are blaming us daily, in town halls and market squares all over Britain.”

Disraeli’s lips twisted as if he were trying to rid himself of a bad taste in his mouth. “You were there when I wrote the Tory manifesto. We stand for expanding the empire, endless horizons. Glory. Greatness. That is what uplifts people, even the most lowly man. Uplift the empire and farmers will follow you gladly.”

Sebastian’s smile was entirely void of humor. “And I give every man credit who prefers starving for glory over feeding his family,” he said, “but the current polls are what they are and they demand a change in tactics.”

One did not even have to read four newspapers every morning to know this, or have a spy planted among the opposition. He, like every man of his class, had tenants. Unlike his peers, he saw their toils; he found them reflected in his own balance sheets when a harvest was bad or imported grain was sold too cheaply. It was all there if one cared to look. And he had looked hard in the past five days; every moment he hadn’t spent speaking to Scotland Yard, he had buried himself in paperwork and figure columns and reports. Of course, facts hardly convinced people whose emotions wanted it to be otherwise; a pity, for he found he was surprisingly unwilling to indulge petty sentiments today.

The silence in the royal apartment thickened. Disraeli shifted in his chair until the queen produced a displeased little sigh. “Very well,” she said. “While three thousand men are not a problem, tens of thousands could well be. Beaconsfield, we suggest you do as the duke recommends. As long as it can be done discreetly.”

* * *

What a curious thing power was, Sebastian thought when he was back on the train. The one person in Britain who could effectively tell him what to do barely reached his chest. And it was he who had given her much of that power, because he valued his mission and he needed her to achieve it. It was a worthy mission, of course. The men who had come before him had, save a few shameful exceptions, guarded and improved their dynasty for hundreds of years.