Read Online Vanity by Jane Feather - Free Book Online

reality meant consequences. She might have conceived a child.
How had it happened? How could such a thing have happened? What had happened to her that had allowed such a thing to happen?
    Slowly, Octavia sat up again and took stock. She was alone in the room. The fire now burned brightly, and someone had scraped the snow from the outside of the window so that a feeble ray of sunlight fell across the wooden floor.
    Where was the highwayman? Her dream lover? If she hadn’t been so devastated, Octavia could almost have laughed at herself for such whimsical folly.
What had happened to her? What had taken her into that fantastic world?
    Her eyes fell on her clothes, neatly arranged over the chair by the fire. Her boots had been polished. At the end of the bed were draped her shift and the velvet robe.
    “Lord of hell!” she muttered. There was nothing dreamlike about this morning.
    The door opened. A booted foot stepped into the room. The door closed. Each sound unnaturally loud. Dreams and fantasy trances vanished into the woodwork.
    Octavia turned her head warily. The highwayman walked over to the bed. Except that it wasn’t the highwayman. Oh, it was the man of her night, but she no longer looked upon the plainly dressed gentleman of the previous day.
    “Who are you?” Her voice came out as a whisper. The highwayman was dressed in a suit of turquoise velvet, rich Mechlin lace edging his shirtsleeves, his hair concealed beneath a high-dressed powdered wig, a black solitaire at his neck, tied in a bow around his starched white stock. He wore a sword and jeweled buckles on his red-heeled shoes, but his smile was straight out of the night.
    “At this moment, Miss Morgan, Lord Rupert Warwick is at your service.” He bowed with a deep flourish, and as his hand moved through the ray of sunlight, the amethyst on his finger sparked fire.
    Octavia’s voice shook with angry confusion, banishing the lingering memories of joy. “So yesterday you were Lord Nick, the highwayman, and today you’re Lord Rupert Warwick, the courtier. Do you have other identities, sir? Or have I met all of you?”
    The slate-gray eyes glittered and his voice was lightly humorous. “Not quite, my dear. But all those you need to know … at least for now.”
    “You gave me your word you would not ravish me.”
    “I did not ravish you.” His eyes met hers steadily.
    “But I may now be with child,” she said in a low voice, accepting his flat denial by default.
    “No, Octavia, you need have no fear of that.” He sat on the bed beside her, reaching for her hand, his expression gentle, his eyes reassuring. “I don’t know what you know of such things, but there is a device that a man may use. It’s known as a condom.”
    “You used such a thing?” She stared at him in disbelief, unable to imagine how in that entwined dream such a practical, wide-awake consideration could have come to him.
    He nodded. “I would not hurt you, my dear. You must believe that.”
    “But how did it happen? I don’t understand how it happened.”
    “You invited me,” he said simply.
    Had she? It seemed impossible … and yet she had been willing. More than willing.
    “I don’t understand anything,” she said helplessly.
    “There’s nothing to understand. We enjoyed each other last night as men and women do. And now you will get up, dress, break your fast, and I will take you home to your father.”
    And it would be over. She would forget all about it. All about that tangling of limbs in limbo.
    Perhaps.

Chapter 4
    S omeone had mended the torn lace of her fichu—Tabitha, Octavia presumed. It was difficult to imagine the hard-eyed, unfriendly Bessie performing such a service.
    She dressed before the fire in the deserted bedchamber. The highwayman had said that he would await her in the parlor where breakfast was ready and had left her to herself. She was grateful for this unusual consideration from a man who hitherto had shown little or no recognition of a