THE END OF THE DAY ARRIVED, but Lord Blakely and his grandson still had not returned. This meant that William had still not been sacked.
Winter struck directly through William’s coat as he left his place of employment. Yes, he’d had a reprieve—albeit a temporary one. He knew the marquess’s tactics. Once he got a man in his sights, he did not let up. Today William survived. Tomorrow… It was going to be another damned cold night, one in a string of damned cold nights stretching from this moment until death.
“Mr. White.”
William turned. There, in virulent yellow waistcoat, burgeoning over an ample belly, his locks pomaded to glossy slickness, stood Mr. Sherrod’s solicitor. The corner of William’s lip turned up in an involuntary snarl.
“Do you have another taunt to deliver on your late employer’s behalf?” William pulled his coat around him and started walking away, brushing past the unctuous fellow. “As it is, I must be on my way.”
The solicitor’s hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. “Nonsense, Mr. White. I’ve come to a realization. A profitable realization. I wanted to…to share it with you.”
William stared at the chubby fingers on his cuff, and then carefully picked them off his sleeve, one by one. The digits felt greasy even through his gloves.
“Adam Sherrod,” the man said, “left the bulk of his fortune in his final testament to the serious little stick of a woman who served as his wife. Given the informal agreement he made with your father, you might contest the disposition of his estate. I had, in point of fact, hoped that you would. You accepted your fate with surprising grace the other day.”
“Is there any chance of overturning the testament? I assume the document was valid and witnessed. And it was only an informal agreement between the two men, after all. I’ve heard that excuse often enough.”
“Hmm.” The man looked away and rubbed his lips. “To speak with perfect plainness, you could claim he was not in his right mind. You see, before he married, he actually had intended to keep his word. He’d left you half his fortune, five thousand pounds. It would be easy to argue that he did not see sense. After all, he did marry her. Overturn his latest version of the will, and you stand to win a great deal.”
In William’s experience, any time someone claimed to speak perfectly plainly, his words were rarely plain and never perfect. First, Adam Sherrod had been merely despicable, and not mad. Even setting aside this tiny detail of reality, the solicitor’s suggestion felt as oily as his hair. It took William a moment to pinpoint why he was uneasy.
“You’re his solicitor,” he accused. “You’re the trustee of the estate, are you not? This advice of yours cannot be in the estate’s interest. Why are you giving it?”
The man licked his lips. “Mr. White. Must you ask? I don’t like to see an upstanding young man deprived of what ought rightfully to be his. It doesn’t sit well with my conscience.”
The solicitor bounced on his toes and lifted his chin, unburdened by anything so heavy as a sense of right and wrong. William kept silent, staring at the man. The man rubbed the back of his neck uneasily. He shifted from foot to foot.
That dance of guilt was all too familiar to William. He’d felt that itch. The knowledge that he’d made an irretrievable error had nestled deep in his stomach all day. He’d known what he’d done to Lavinia had been wrong as he was doing it. He’d done it anyway.
“At what point in your legal apprenticeship did you acquire a conscience, then? And when did you first betray it?”
“Well. It’s not so much a betrayal as…as a renegotiation, if you will. If you must know the truth, if you could tie up the estate in Chancery, the fees to the trustee from administration of her estate would be substantial. It’s a profitable plan for us both. I’ll protest, naturally, for form’s sake. And you—you’ll be able to strike an open blow at the man who had you put out on the streets when you were fourteen. You could have him declared mad, and destroy his reputation.”
Greasy though the man was, he knew how to tempt William. There would be a delightful symmetry in ruining Mr. Sherrod’s legacy just as William’s father’s had been ruined.
“And then what?” William demanded.
“Well, after a short, insignificant delay in the courts of Chancery—really nothing to speak of—you’ll get his five thousand pounds.”
“A short, insignificant delay,” William said drily. “Naturally. Chancery being known for its alacrity. And you must mean, five thousand pounds minus the tiny fees for estate administration that would accrue over that infinitesimal delay.”
The solicitor bowed. “Precisely so.”
It would hardly be so smooth. The process might take years. Still, the money called out to him. Five thousand pounds. Five thousand pounds in the safe four-percent funds translated into a good two hundred a year.
As if sensing William’s temptation, the solicitor continued. “Think on the money. You could buy your own home. You would not need to labor like a common man. You could buy yourself a new coat.”
The solicitor reached out and flicked William’s sleeve, where the fabric had become shiny with age. William recoiled.
“Mr. White, you would need never feel cold again.”
The man misunderstood the nature of temptation. It wasn’t himself he clothed in new finery. Instead, his breath caught, thinking what he could give Lavinia. She could have any dress she wanted. Every last penny she deserved. He could fashion himself into a gentleman. He could become a man she would respect, instead of one she gifted with her virginity out of pity.
He need never feel cold again.
But then, there was a catch. There was always a catch, and this one stuck in his skin like some barbed thing. He’d have to enter into a collusion with this unnatural creature. He would have to lie to the court. He’d have to cheat Adam Sherrod’s widow—his innocent widow—and dispossess her of funds that she deserved.
What did a little thing like his honor signify? He’d toss his own grandmother to hellhounds if it meant he could have Lavinia.
He’d won a reprieve from the marquess. Now he’d gotten this offer. A little oil, a little grease. What was a little extra dishonor, atop the mountain he’d already constructed for himself?
The solicitor jogged William’s shoulder. “Don’t take too long. It took me weeks to track you down. The time for filing an appeal is disappearing. Stop by my office tomorrow morning to go over the details.”
William opened his mouth to say he’d do it. The words filled his mouth, bitter as rancid lard, but they would not come out. I’ll do it, he thought. I’ll do it.
He conjured up the thought of Lavinia—but he could not imagine how she would forgive him, promise of money or no. And with the money…if he agreed to this scheme, he’d not be able to wash the stench of this bug of a solicitor from his skin. How could he beg for her absolution if he could not even face himself?
How could he have her at all, if he did not accept this desperate possibility?
What he finally said was, “Tomorrow. I’ll decide tomorrow.”
THE LIBRARY BUSTLED WITH CUSTOMERS that Monday evening—six of them, to be precise—and they kept Lavinia very busy indeed, as none were willing to browse on his own. She was reaching up, up for the newest set of Byron’s poetry when she heard the shop door open behind her.
A blast of cold air greeted this newest arrival. Yet it was not the temperature that had Lavinia’s skin breaking out in gooseflesh. Without looking, she knew it was him. She froze, hand above her head. Her heart raced. But she could not react, not in this room, not with all these people here. And so she retrieved the leather-bound volume and handed it to Mr. Adrian Bellows before she allowed herself to turn.
Mr. William Q. White was as tall and taciturn as ever. This time, though, he caught her glance and ducked his head, coloring.
Oh, how the tables had turned. Two days ago she’d been the one to blush and turn away. Two days ago she had wondered, in her own giddy and foolish way, what
he thought of her.
But then yesterday they’d come together, skin against skin. He’d had her; she’d had him.
Today the question on her mind was: What did she think of him?
It was not a query with an easy answer. He dawdled until the others trickled out, one by one. Even then he did not approach her. Instead, he studied a shelf of Greco-Roman histories so intently, she wondered if their spines contained the secrets of the universe. When she walked toward him, he turned his back to her. He bent, ever so slightly, as if he carried a great weight in his jacket.
Lavinia supposed he did.
“I am sorry,” he said, still faced away from her. “I ought not to have come. If my presence distresses you, say so and I shall leave at once.”
“I am not easily distressed.” She kept her voice calm and even.
He turned toward her and looked in her face, as if to ascertain for himself whether she was telling the truth. “Are you well?” His voice was low, lilting in that accent that he had. “I could not sleep, thinking of what I had done to you.”
She had not slept, either, reliving what he had done, touching herself where he had touched. But the expression on his face suggested that his evening had not been spent nearly so pleasurably.
“I am very well,” she said. And then, because he looked away, his eyes tightening in obvious distress, she added, “Thank you for asking.”
Politeness didn’t seem enough after what had passed between them, but she was unsure of the etiquette for this occasion.
“Miss Spencer, I know I can never hope for forgiveness. I dishonored you—”
“Strange,” Lavinia interjected, “that I do not feel dishonored.”
He frowned as if puzzled, and then started again. “I ruined you—”
“Ruined me for what? I am still capable of working in this shop, as you see. I do not believe I shall turn toward prostitution as a result of one afternoon’s pleasure. And as for marriage—William, do you truly think that any man worth having would put me aside for one indiscretion?”
“Put you aside?” His gaze skittered down her breasts to her waist, and then traveled slowly up. “No. He would take you any way he could have you.”
She was not one bit sorry that she’d given herself to this man, however foolish and impulsive the gift had been.
“As I see it,” Lavinia said carefully, “you are feeling guilty because you attempted to coerce me into your bed. Then, believing I was forced, you took me anyway.”
He flinched, looking away again. “Yes. And for that, I ought to be—”
“I was not forced, and so you did not dishonor me.”
“But—”
“But,” Lavinia said, holding up one finger, “you believed I was, and thus you dishonored yourself.”
His expression froze. His eyes shut and he put his hand over his face. A shaky breath whispered through his fingers. “Ah.” It was not a sound of understanding or agreement, but one of despair. “You are very astute.”
There was nothing to say beyond that, but he looked so unbearably alone that she reached out and placed her hand atop his.
He shut his eyes. “Don’t.” His hand bunched into a fist underneath hers, but he did not pull away. Apparently, “don’t” was William Q. White for “keep touching me.” Lavinia pressed her hand against the heat of his knuckles.
“Tell me,” he said presently, “the other evening when you told the young Mr. Spencer that you had a plan, why did you not tell him immediately he could not be held accountable?”
It took Lavinia a few seconds to remember what he was talking about—the moment when James had first presented her with his idiocy.
“Why would I have told him? I would have taken care of it. He didn’t need to know any details. It was simply a matter of deciding upon an approach.”
“You would have done everything yourself? Without assistance?”
Since her mother had died this year past, Lavinia had assisted everyone else. She had assisted in the library, until her father’s illness destroyed all pretense that she was a mere assistant. She had assisted with housekeeping; she had assisted her younger brother in his lessons, and bailed him out of the sort of scrapes that younger brothers occasionally got into. She had never begrudged them the time she spent; she did it because she loved her family.
She wasn’t sure she knew how to let someone help her instead.
She tightened her hand about his, letting his warmth seep into her. “Of course I’d have done it alone.”
“Tell me.” His voice dropped even lower, and she leaned in to listen. “If I had offered that evening—would you have let me assist you?”
She looked up into his eyes. He watched her with that expression in his eyes—desire, she realized, and dark despair that ran so deeply, it was almost outside detection. He wasn’t asking out of an idle desire to know.
“But you didn’t. You didn’t offer.”
He shut his eyes.
And then the door burst open, and William snatched his fingers from hers. She pulled her hands away and tucked them behind her back with alacrity and jumped away.
James darted through the entry, his face a picture of excitement. But even he was sufficiently observant to see she’d sprung from William like a guilty child. It was easy to think of him as her younger brother, as a child. But when he looked from Lavinia to William, his lips thinning, she realized he was not as young as he’d once been.
“We’re closed,” he said, in a chilly tone of voice. “And you—whoever you are—you’re leaving.”
Before Lavinia could protest, William had pulled away and was walking out the door.
James looked her over, his gaze resting first on her flushed cheeks and then on the telltale way she put her hands behind her back. Then he cast a glance of pure scorn at William’s back. “I’m leaving, too,” he announced, and he followed William out the door, into the cold.
Chapter Four
LAVINIA’S BROTHER, WILLIAM THOUGHT WRYLY, was a thin spike of a boy. Attach a sufficient quantity of straw to his head, and he’d have made a passable broom. In polite society, he might have served as a chaperone, a place-holder designed to do little more than observe. But James Spencer, this pale wraith of a child, apparently believed he could protect his sister from someone who threatened her virtue. He had been alarmingly misled. Standing outside Spencer’s on the freezing pavement, James folded his arms—a posture that only emphasized the sharp skin-and-bone of his shoulders.
There was a saying, William supposed, about guarding the cows after the wolves had already come a-ravening. The adage seemed rather inappropriate as cows could only be eaten once. He’d promised himself he’d not importune her again, but one touch of her hand and he’d been ready to go a-ravening all over again.
James tapped his toe, frowning. “Did you kiss her?”
Oh, the barren and virtuous imagination of callow youth.
“Yes,” William said. It was easier than resorting to explanation.
James peered dubiously at William, as if trying to ascertain whether there truly was a patch on his coat. “And what are your prospects?”
“Too dismal to take a wife. Even if I chose to do so, which—at present—I do not.”
Lavinia’s brother gasped. If the boy thought kissing a woman without wanting to marry her constituted open devilry, God forbid he ever learn what had really transpired.
“If you’re not going to marry her,” he said, shocked, “then why’d you kiss her?”
William had long suspected it, but now he was certain. Lavinia’s younger brother was an idiot.
“Mr. Spencer.” William spoke slowly, searching for small words that were nonetheless sharp enough to penetrate her brother’s dim cogitation. “Kissing is a pleasant activity. It is considerably more pleasant when the woman one is kissing is more than passably pretty. Your sister happens to be the loveliest lady in all of London. Why do you suppose I kissed her?”
“My sister?”
“You needn’t pull such a face. It’s not something to admit in polite company, but we’re both men here.” At least, James would be one day. “You know it’s the truth.”
“No,” James said incredulously, screwing up his eyes. “You want to kiss my sister? I never thought—”
“Well, you’d better start thinking about it, you little fool. Everyone wants to kiss your sister. And what are you doing to protect her? Nothing.”
“I’m protecting her now!”
“You leave her in that shop with nobody to call for if she needs help except your father, who is too ill to respond. You send her out to capture your vowels from known ruffians who live near docks where sailors cavort. Don’t tell me you protect your sister. How many times have I found her alone in the library? Do you have any idea what I could have done to her?”
He was angry, William realized. Furious that he’d been allowed to take from her the most precious thing she could give, and angrier still that nobody—least of all Lavinia—was willing to castigate him for it.
“I could have taken a great deal more than a kiss,” he said. “Easily.”
James’s face paled. “You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.”
He had. He would. He wanted to do it again.
It felt good to admit what a blackguard he was, even if he was hiding his confession behind safely conditional statements. “Lock the door and anything becomes possible,” William said. “I could have had—”
James punched him in the stomach. For a skinny fellow, he struck hard. The blow knocked the wind out of William’s lungs and he doubled over. That punch was the first real punishment he’d suffered since he’d had Lavinia. Thank God. He deserved worse.
When he regained his breath and his balance, he looked up. “Don’t tell me you protect your sister. You put everything on her—the burden of caring for your entire family—and give her nothing in exchange. I’ve seen her. I know what you do.”
James stood over him. “If you’re such a blackguard, why are you telling me this?”
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