More Than a Mistress, Chapter Eight

This is it, the chapter where I predicted things would get physical.  In the last chapter, Jane felt very aware of the Duke "as a man" and the Duke felt it was really important for Jane to know that he hadn't slept with Lady Oliver (though not important enough for him to actually tell her).  Let's see if my prediction comes true.

The chapter opens with Jane discovering the Duke in the library with a candlestick his new crutches.  She is all flustered because "she had not remembered that he was quite so tall."  They go for a stroll in the garden and then rest with "her shoulder almost touching his arm."  The Duke comments that he no longer takes his health and mobility for granted, and Jane reflects inwardly that she no longer takes her freedom and non-fugitive-status for granted, either.  We learn that her parents died within a year of each other, leaving her with her father's cousin, who had also inherited his title.  The cousin both resented her and courted her favour.  One more piece of the puzzle as to why she killed (?) the Earl's son, but none of it makes sense yet.

The Duke hits on Jane again, commenting that she makes him feel very "unsaintly".  Then he leans into her so that his arm is against her shoulder!  Yikes!  She can't move any further away from him on the bench, so she stands up.  Darn, so close to a make-out session!  "That feeling of almost unbearable tension was happening altogether too often. (...) She could not deny that the sight of him - even the very thought of him - could quicken her blood.  That the careless touch of his hand could make her ache for more."  So yeah, she's all wound up after that hot arm-on-shoulder action.  Though Jane tells the Duke that she will never be in the mood for a dalliance (that's how they said "DTF" in ye olde classy times), the narrative gives us hope: "it was a statement and a resolve that were to be tested later that very night."  YES.  I am so winning this bet!

The next scene has Jocelyn suffering insomnia, which he attributes to his new boring life as an invalid.  He is also feeling incredibly restless.  "He could feel temptation grab almost irresistibly at him - the sort of temptation that had often got him into trouble when he was a boy until he had learned to curb his urges." He usually deals with his urges by "go[ing] to a woman and stay[ing] with her until there was no energy left for anything but sleep and a return to his normal way of life."  Sometime past midnight, he can resist no longer, and hoists himself out of bed.  He puts on a shirt and pantaloons, making him deliciously underdressed for the time, and heads downstairs.

Meanwhile, it turns out Jane also cannot sleep.  She is worried about the Duke's recovery, specifically the fact that it is going well and thus she will soon be out of a job (and away from a safe haven).  She overheard a visitor that morning speculating that perhaps Jardine is not dead after all, and also varying descriptions of what the would-be murderess looks like: "a black-eyed, black-haired witch as ugly as sin, or a blond Siren as beautiful as an angel.  Take your pick; I have heard both descriptions and several others."  Jane again wonders what she should do, and even considers confronting the earl at the hotel - "It would be such a relief to come out of hiding, to have everything out in the open."  But then again, confessing would likely mean being "thrown in jail.  To be publicly tried.  To be hanged."  She is not actually sure whether an earl's daughter could be sentenced to hang, as an earl could not.  Interesting, but I suppose not all that surprising, that different classes of people would have different criminal sentences.

Anyway, she gives up on sleeping and decides to go down to the library and get a book.  She puts a cloak on, but does not "dress or put on shoes".  I'm not sure what she's actually wearing under the cloak, then, but trust that she is suitably unclad for the good times ahead.

As she descends the stairs, she hears piano music and is totally out of ideas as to who could be playing it.  When she reaches the door and sees that it is the Duke, she is transfixed.  The Duke is "playing without sheet music, his eyes closed, a look almost of pain on his face.  He was playing something hauntingly beautiful, something Jane had never heard before." That's right.  Those 'urges' the Duke was having trouble dealing with?  The ones that usually require a night of lovemaking to dispel?  They are piano-playing urges.

Jane is awestruck: "She had not believed there could be another musician with a talent to match her mother's."  Minutes pass, the music ends, the Duke's eyes open, and ... "What the devil are you doing here?" he thunders.  She apologizes, and his eyes narrow as he recovers from his shock.  "I dabble, Miss Ingleby.  I was amusing myself, unaware that I had an audience."  Jane realizes that he has "retreated (...) behind a familiar mask.  She had never thought of him before as a man who needed defenses."  So he plays piano just like Mother used to do, and he is a misunderstood man with hitherto unplumbed depths of character.  BINGO, Jane is in love.  Oh, and it doesn't hurt that he's handsome and tall.

But Jane, you know, she says what she thinks, and she isn't about to let the Duke describe his playing as mere dabbling.  "You have been gifted with a wondrous and rare talent.  And you were not amusing yourself.  You were embracing your talent with your whole soul."  The Duke calls this poppycock, and declares that "I have never even had a lesson, Jane, and I do not read music.  There goes your theory."  Except that actually, that just makes her point even more effective.  Because if two people played an incredible piece of music, which one would impress you more?  The one who has had decades of training, or the one who has never seen a piano before?  Way to argue, your Grace.  Also, this declaration makes Jane realize that he must have composed the piece he was playing.  In the middle of her being all shocked and amazed at this, the Duke goes and changes the subject to, you know, his favourite subject.

"You do not wear it loose even to bed?"

Yes, he's talking about her hair again, which by the way is in a thick braid down her back.  She doesn't comment.  "I suppose that playing the pianoforte, composing music, loving it, is something quite unworthy of a Dudley male," she points out.  The Duke agrees that it borders on the effeminate and confesses that when his father caught him playing as a youth, he was beaten so severely that he couldn't sleep on his back.  Jane wonders inwardly, "why was it that men of that type did not realize that the mature, balanced person, regardless of gender, was a fine mix of masculine and feminine qualities?", which is a fine and enlightened perspective.  The Duke starts playing again, and then asks her to sing.

Well, spoiler alert, Jane has Like The Best Voice Ever OMG.  Unlike Balogh's description of Jane's inadequate piano playing, and the Duke's amazing piano playing, we don't really get a description of what is so great about Jane's voice.  All we get is the Duke's response, which is, "I have never in my life heard such a lovely voice. Or one that adapted itself so perfectly to the music and the sentiment of the song."  The moment passes and suddenly Jane becomes aware that she is sitting beside the Duke in the music room wearing only a nightgown and a cloak in the middle of the night.  But she can't think of any way to leave "without making a grand production out of it."  Hmm, have you tried, "It's late, I'm going to bed now.  More singalongs tomorrow!"

The Duke tells her that a talent like hers ought to be shared, not hidden from the world, which is pretty much exactly the same thing she said to him ten minutes ago.  Then he takes her hand and "half the air seemed to have been sucked from the room."

"You ought not to have come down.  You have caught me at a bad time," the Duke says, which is a lovely bit of victim-blaming or at the very least personal accountability avoidance.  Come on Duke, don't buy into rape culture!  No means no!  Except then, "Yes," was all Jane could think of to say.  "Everything except her common sense yearned for her to stay."

"Don't go," he says in an "unusually husky" voice.  Having a husky voice is a sure sign of imminent sexy times.  If Jane's voice is then described as "breathy", then we are Go For Launch.

But Jane says not a word, just walks over to him where he sits on the piano bench and places her hands on his head "as if in benediction".  His hands on her waist pull him towards her and he buries his face between her breasts.  (Which always seems like a super sexy idea, but really, how does he breathe in there?)  After they revel in that awkward physical position for a few minutes, she kneels down on the floor between his legs, resting her hands on his "firm, muscled" thighs.  Then "he cupped her face with his hands before kissing her."

Now, first of all, let me say a BOO-YAH for correctly predicting the hotness of this chapter.  But secondly, if he is sitting on a piano bench and she is kneeling on the floor, her head is not in optimal kissing position (not for his mouth, anyway).  He would have to lean over far enough that frankly, a sexual partner would become obsolete.  Are you following my meaning here?  Okay, MAYBE she is on her knees but sitting up (as opposed to her thighs resting on her calves).  Otherwise he is performing a truly ungraceful hunchback manoeuvre right now.

Anyway!  Kissing!  Jane has never been kissed like this.  Forget that Charles character, THIS was kissing.  Her body "sizzled with awareness and ached with desire".  And so on.  Then the Duke says, "We will have to punish each other for this in the morning," and I'm not sure if he means the fun kinky kind of punishment or the kind where they just pretend the hot makeout session didn't happen.  "I am just a rake, my dear, with nothing on my mind except covering you on the floor here and taking my wicked pleasure deep inside your virgin body."  (Jane, to her credit, does not swoon.)  "You think that what has happened is beautiful.  I can see it in your eyes.  It is not. That is merely what an experienced rake can make a woman think.  In reality it is the simple, lustful, raw desire for sex.  Go to bed now. Alone."

Oh, this Duke fellow is confusing.  In the last chapter he really wanted Jane to know that he wasn't as much of a rake as his reputation made him out to be, but now he is saying the opposite.  And while there is nothing wrong with the simple, lustful, raw desire for sex, he is making innocent Jane feel ashamed of her participation in that desire.  What an ass.  Jane "searched his eyes with her own, looking into the mask that he had settled firmly in place."  Oh, I get it.  Every time he acts like an ass, it's because he's wearing a 'mask'.  And when he isn't being a jerk, that's the real him.  I guess it is Jane's job to help him 'take off the mask' and become 'his true self'.  Okay then.

She goes off to bed and only then realizes she never managed to get a book from the library.  But she doesn't go back.