More Than a Mistress – Chapter Four

This is my favourite chapter so far and might actually be the chapter where I started liking this book.  It’s a slow, fairly non-eventful chapter, but there is some nice character development and good foundation laid for the coming romance (no pun intended, I swear).

So, where Chapter Three featured a visit from Tresham’s sister, Lady Heyward, Chapter Four features a visit from his brother, Lord Dudley.  Dudley is just as self-important as Lady Heyward – Tresham, in comparison, is starting to seem like a half-decent guy, especially as he seems to view his siblings as the boors they are.

Jane Ingleby continues to be an enigma wrapped in a riddle.  She carries and comports herself like a proper lady, and this attitude somehow startles people into responding to her as such, even when they are told she is a servant.  For example, Tresham presents his brother Dudley to her – “this must surely be the first time he had been presented to a servant” – and Miss Ingleby, rather than curtsying as might be proper for a servant, “inclined her head graciously”, which inspires Dudley to make “an awkward little bow”.  This is not the way servants are generally treated, but then, as Tresham himself is starting to suspect, Jane is no servant.  Indeed, when Dudley makes a vulgar statement, Tresham cuts him off and is about to insist that “there is a lady present” before remembering that servants don’t actually count as ladies.

Tresham and Jane have a nice civil conversation about how they shall pass the time together; cards, chess, reading, gambling?  Again, one would not expect a servant to know how to read, but Tresham is onto her ruse and makes a knowing comment about the superiority of the orphanage she attended.  Then it’s time for some lusting.  Jane comments that Tresham will certainly soon become bored with the entertainments she can offer, but Tresham gets a “wolfish” look about him and comments only, “We shall see,” before ordering her to remove her cap.  When she refuses, he asks her a little more softly.  This time she concedes.  Is this to be the pattern of their interactions – she will do as he asks, if he asks nicely?  And teach him a valuable lesson about being kind to people?  Perhaps so.  After Tresham reflects on the incredible beauty of her golden tresses, he asks if she was hiding her hair because of his reputation.  She is unaware of his reputation, so he shares it with her, which is weird if he was worried about her being afraid of it.  He makes sure she is well aware that he has been accused on multiple occasions of sleeping with married women, but promises that he doesn’t seduce unwilling women, or servants for that matter.  “But I would give a monkey,” he says softly, “to see you with your hair down.”  A monkey?  Is this some kind of Regency-era currency?  I wear my hair down every day, no one has ever given me wildlife in return.

That evening, Jane reads from “Gulliver’s Travels” while Tresham reflects how boring his evenings are going to be while his leg recovers.  Usually he’s into the theatre or opera and then getting laid, “the most energetic exercise of all”.  He ponders Jane’s swanlike neck and her cultured reading voice, and longs again to see all her hair undone.  Just about the time I was starting to wonder if Tresham had a hair fetish, he also thinks how he might like to see her naked, too.  (Maybe that would be worth a monkey AND a giraffe!) 

The next day, the physician visits and praises Jane for her excellent job of changing Tresham’s bandage.  Then Tresham tells the doctor he wants to exercise his leg, and curses at the man when he advises against it.  Jane, naturally, has to get in the middle of this, insisting that Tresham owes the doctor an apology.  “He is merely giving you his professional opinion, for which you summoned him and are paying him.  There was no call for such rudeness.”  The doctor, of course, is flustered by this and makes excuses for the Duke, but Jane cannot let it go, advising Tresham that pain is no excuse for speaking abusively.  She feels embarrassed about her outburst, reflecting that “it came of having grown up in an enlightened home, in which servants had invariably been treated as if they were people and in which courtesy to others had been an ingrained virtue.”  Though she again resolves to curb her tongue, just moments later when Tresham orders her to fetch a cushion, she retorts, “You might say please once in a while.” 

This leads to an interesting dialogue between the two of them, with Jane encouraging the Duke to use his manners and also his words: “If I feel any indignation on any subject, I have the vocabulary with which to express it.  I do not need to resort to violence.”  But Jane’s inner monologue tells us that this is “as massive a lie as any she had ever told.”  This hearkens back to her Mysterious Past and the murder she is accused of.  Hopefully the next chapter will bring us more clues because I am getting impatient!

Tresham thanks Jane for bringing the cushion, which surprises her greatly.  He gets all sexy again, pointing out that he is superior in his ability to “amuse and delight women”.  Suddenly, Jane notices that he is a man: “Her awareness of his masculinity had been a largely academic thing until he spoke those words … But suddenly … she felt a totally unfamiliar rush of pure physical desire that did alarming things to her breasts and her lower abdomen and inner thighs.”  What were these alarming things, I wonder, and why were they alarming?  Desire is meant to be pleasant, not alarming.  But perhaps it is merely alarming because it is so unfamiliar.  In any case, Tresham and Jane are progressing quite nicely, as both have now started secretly lusting after one another.  I predict that physical contact will commence in no more than three chapters.  I kind of can’t wait.