Rushed to the Altar by Jane Feather

you won’t
be
my mistress?”
    “Exactly. No one will know except you and me, but we will not have a . . . a physical arrangement.” The words seem to stick in her dry throat. How could she expect him to agree to such a condition? He believed her a whore.
    “May I ask why?”
    “I . . . I would like a respite from . . . from all this.” She gestured vaguely at her surroundings. “Is that so difficult to understand, sir?”
    He considered. “No . . . no, I suppose it’s not.”
    “I believe you said you would wish for my exclusive services. If I restrict those services to the one you really want from me, then we both get what we wish for.”
    Still she didn’t look at him and didn’t hear him come up behind her, soft footed on the thick Aubusson carpet. She gave a startled gasp when he put his hands on her shoulders from behind, moving his fingers up the deep groove of her neck in a strangely soothing gesture. She could feel the heat of his body against her back and trembled.
    “I would find that quite a sacrifice,” Jasper murmured,lifting a ringlet, twisting it around his finger. His breath was warm against her ear. “It seems a somewhat uneven bargain, to buy services that will not be available to me.”
    She remained motionless, almost rigid with a paradoxical mixture of apprehension and anticipation. “I will perform the service you want from me. I will enable you to inherit your uncle’s fortune. Can you not think of me purely as an actor, someone you pay to play a part?”
    “But how convincingly can either of us play that part if we are not sharing the pleasures that are essential to our roles?” After not giving the matter much thought, he found that he now cared
very
much about this issue. She was a whore whom he had offered to rescue from a harlot’s life and instead of gratitude she was making insulting conditions.
    “Believe me, my lord, you will have no cause for complaint.” Her voice shook a little.
    He turned her to face him and she forced herself to meet his frowning gaze. “I am going to pay Nan Griffiths for your exclusive services. It seems to me that I have the right to dictate those services.”
    Clarissa looked him in the eye. “You offer me the means to get out of this life, sir; as I understood it that was the incentive for me to join with you in this charade, but you still want to keep me in whoredom, for
your
benefit. Illogical, wouldn’t you say, my lord?”
    He pressed finger and thumb against the bridge of hisnose as he frowned at her. She was right, of course, but it had never occurred to him Mistress Clarissa would consider she had the right to dictate terms. “That may be if you look at it from a certain perspective. But it could also be said that until you are finally free to take charge of your own life, you must continue to do what you are accustomed to doing to earn your bread. I need a whore for this task and I fail to see why you would refuse to undertake all aspects of the task. Unless, of course, you find me repulsive?” An eyebrow lifted in question.
    That would be an easy way out, but for some reason it wasn’t one Clarissa could imagine taking. “No . . . no . . . it’s not that,” she said hastily. “I don’t find you repulsive. But I would like a respite from this life. I don’t know why that is so difficult to understand.”
    He threw up his hands. “Let us leave it at that for the moment. I will complete negotiations with Mistress Griffiths, and then we will pay a visit together.” He went to the bell rope by the fireplace and pulled it. “The sooner we start, the sooner we will finish.”
    And that, thought Clarissa, sounded like a most heartfelt wish. But how could she blame him? The man was paying for something that he wasn’t going to get. Although the caveat
for the moment
wasn’t too reassuring. It didn’t sound as if he was resigned to such a condition at all. But she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. It occurred to her that