by KJ Charles
Robin came in with a polite word and a smile that faded as he took in Hart’s expression. He waited for the sound of the door that indicated Spenlow’s departure, and said, “You look stern.”
“I am extremely angry.” Hart spoke through his teeth.
Robin raised a tentative eyebrow. Hart said, “I am not playing, damn it! I have just spent the day with my sister and Alice, discussing your plans to elope with my niece!”
“I have no plans to elope with your niece.” Robin took a hasty step back, all the same. “I really haven’t.”
“Are you calling her a liar?”
“Could you possibly tell me what she said?”
Hart took a deep breath. “She told us—Edwina, then me—that she intended to marry in order to get her hands on her portion. She told us that you had agreed to marry her for that reason! You promised me! How the hell could you—after this week—my God, man, have you no shame?”
“Did she tell you why she wanted the money?”
“What the hell does that matter?!”
“Of course it matters. She wanted it for a very reasonable purpose.” He ignored Hart’s explosive reaction. “I told her to ask her mother for it first, and to hold me in reserve if her request was denied. I take it Mrs. Blaine refused?”
“That’s none of your damned business. We had an agreement! You told me you would leave her be, and you lied to me!” His voice was shaking with rage. Definitely rage; nothing else.
“She asked me to marry her a week and a half ago, in order to get her money,” Robin said, enunciating with odd, crisp clarity. “Me, a gazetted fortune hunter she had known for a matter of months. Did you want me to turn her down, so that she might request the same of someone else? Can you think of any ill consequences that might result if she took some random swine’s word that he’d leave her untouched and hand over her money? Of course I said yes! And I told her to speak to her mother with that in her back pocket, in the hope that she’d be allowed to do what she wants with her life instead of being trotted out to be married for her wealth!”
“That is grossly unfair,” Hart said savagely. “Edwina only wants her happiness.”
“And Alice told me very clearly what would make her happy. You said yourself she’s brilliant. It’s what she wants to do, and you wouldn’t think twice were she a boy.”
“But she isn’t a boy. Where does mathematics get a girl, especially one her age?”
“I have no idea where it gets anyone. She wants to do it, so why shouldn’t she?”
“She is talking about spending her marriage portion!”
“Because Mrs. Blaine doesn’t want to pay for it out of the money from her father’s brewery.”
Hart clenched his fists. “That is not true, and none of your damned business!”
“I dare say not,” Robin said. “But I think Alice had this in mind from the first: she wasn’t truly interested in me until I listened to her talk about mathematics, and she trusted me then because she thought I’d sympathise. She wants this, she obviously isn’t marriage-minded yet if she ever will be—and if you’re talking about where things might get her, by the way, I have to observe that making her sit through a Season is clearly as futile as any academic study.”
“You needn’t tell me that,” Hart said involuntarily. “It was Edwina’s idea. And none of this is the point!”
“What is the point?” Robin asked. “Why I told her I’d marry her if she saw no other way through? Because it isn’t pleasant to be trapped, that’s why. It leads one to do desperate things.” The usual lurking humour had gone from his eyes. “It isn’t entertaining to be helpless, and not listened to, and have no control of your life. I didn’t want her to do something even more stupid than asking me to marry her.”
“What ‘more stupid’ could you possibly you have in mind?”
“I’d have done it for five hundred and not touched her or the rest of the money. Is that so bad?”
“Bad? You’ve spent the last week fucking me!”
“Well, I hadn’t when I offered! We had that conversation before you and I came to our agreement!”
“You proposed our arrangement having already agreed to marry my niece? You told me you would withdraw your pretensions!”
“I didn’t sodding propose to her!” Robin shouted over him. “What I said was, if she couldn’t come to an agreement with her mother then she should come back to me!”
“And what were you planning to do then? Move from my bed to Alice’s? Christ almighty!”
“I wasn’t going to bed her and I wasn’t planning anything,” Robin said, more calmly. “I didn’t think I’d need to. I assumed Mrs. Blaine would relent.”
Hart sat down and put his face in his hands. A rustle of movement suggested Robin was perching on the desk. He didn’t want to think of Robin and the desk.
“Do you understand why I cannot stomach you becoming my niece’s husband?” he enquired.
“I sincerely hope it isn’t in question. Will Mrs. Blaine really not let her go?”
“Of course she bloody will. She is resigning herself to the prospect now, with much tearfulness. She only ever wanted to do what was best for Alice—”
“But they don’t have the same definition of best.”
That summed it up nicely. “Edwina is deeply conventional. She can’t understand why Alice wants to do such an extraordinary thing. She was quite sure she’d forget about mathematics when she grew to womanhood, and I suppose she didn’t want to believe she’d misjudged things so. She loves Alice deeply and it is upsetting to discover you have done badly by someone you love.”
“Yes. It is.”
Hart sighed. “So Alice will have her way, though I can’t say Edwina is enthusiastic at having her hand forced.”
“But she wasn’t enthusiastic anyway, and at least she’s made the right decision.”
Robin sounded just a little smug. Hart narrowed his eyes. “And you expected her to relent. Did you and Alice cook this up between you?”
“I might have suggested she offer marriage with me as an alternative,” Robin said without any obvious signs of repentance. “To remind her mother there are worse things than mathematics. Oh, come, it needed doing. This is what she wants, and why should she not have it?”
Hart flopped back in his chair. “Doubtless she should. God knows she has an apprehension of figures far beyond my capacity. I had wondered about her taking over the brewery, but she told me she prefers numbers in the abstract.”
“She gave me remarkable advice on rolling dice. So if she will get her way and has no need to marry me, why are you so angry?”
The rage and betrayal had been overwhelming, the thought of Robin scheming against him all the time, the feeling he’d been played for a fool. He wanted, desperately, to believe him now. “You promised to leave her alone.”
“And I have. I haven’t approached her except in a friendly and public way as we agreed.”
“And if she had asked you to fulfil your promise? What were you going to do then?”
“I honestly don’t know. I’d have burned that bridge when I came to it.”
Hart had to look up at that. Robin was looking down at him with a little frown. He dropped to a squat and tentatively, too tentatively, put a hand on Hart’s knee. “I wasn’t going to cheat you, I swear it. I’d probably have set up an elopement, something sufficiently drastic to make her plans seem the lesser of two evils. She asked me to help her, Hart. And I owed her something. I wasn’t fair to her.”
“You weren’t, no.”
“I didn’t want to let her down. But I wasn’t going to cheat you,” Robin said again. “Well, you must see I wasn’t: there was nothing in it for me.”
“Alice’s fortune?”
“My price was five hundred pounds. That’s a couple of good nights at the tables.”
“If you win.”
“Winning can be arranged. And if you’re about to say I could have consummated the marriage and
taken all her money—well, I could, but I promise you Marianne would have hunted me down and cut my balls off long before you got to me. But I wouldn’t do that, Hart. I’m not virtuous, but I don’t think I’m cruel.”
“You have a fascinating approach to morality.”
“I wasn’t brought up a gentleman.”
Hart watched his face, his hazel eyes that were green and gold and brown, like a forest opal. “I assumed you intended to run. To take her and her fortune.”
“The current arrangement suits me considerably better.”
“Better? Being trapped into desperate things? Having no control?”
Robin blinked. “Eh? I wasn’t referring to us by that.”
Hart reached out, taking hold of his chin, resisting the urge to caress with his thumb. “If you find our arrangement intolerable, you must tell me, now. I will gladly—”
“Mother of God,” Robin said. “How many times must I say it? And if you think I have no control, you haven’t been paying attention for the last week.”
Hart’s breath caught in his chest. He stared. Robin met his gaze and his jaw hardened in Hart’s hand before he jerked it away. “Are you going to keep assuming the worst every time I speak? I didn’t mean I’m proposing to blackmail you, for Christ’s sake.”
“What did you mean?”
“Since you ask, I meant that I am doing all the work here. You aren’t telling me what to do: you’re accepting my propositions, every time. Don’t delude yourself that taking your cock makes you my master. I’m leading you by the hand through this, so stop behaving as if you’ve got me under the thumb, because really, you do not.”
Hart could feel himself reddening. “I don’t think that.”
“You do. You cannot rid yourself of the thought that you’re compelling me to this. That’s why you can’t trust me, because you believe you’re wronging me. You simply can’t bring yourself to believe I truly want to fuck you. You insist it’s about that bloody gambling debt, as though I wouldn’t have been here for the asking, or even for you noticing me asking you. And I don’t know if that’s something I’ve done wrong, or if you feel that every man you touch must be repulsed—” He stopped abruptly.
Hart felt like he’d taken a right hook to the gut, leaving him winded. “I... You resented me. We were enemies. You owed me money. Naturally, I realise you cannot entirely—”
“Details,” Robin said. “I assure you, I can entirely. Or I could, if you’d let me, but you won’t. I don’t know how to persuade you, Hart. I am, or was, perfectly happy with where we are, and I’m certainly not proposing to hurt you when you have been—not unfair to me.”
Not unfair. The words stung. Was that the best he could say? Christ, maybe it was. “I did assume the worst,” Hart made himself admit. “You’re right about that.”
“Then stop it. Stop assuming the worst, and telling yourself I must be lying in every word and deed, and persuading yourself I cannot bear your touch in the teeth of the evidence. Because if you can’t trust me not to turn on you, you should have thought about that before, and you should say so now. That is no way to fuck.”
“Is there another? Given our situation under the law—”
“Not everyone betrays,” Robin said.
“Everyone lets you down. That is the state of humanity.”
“No.” There was something odd and bleak in his eyes. “Some people don’t. Not many, maybe hardly any, but some people will stand by you. Betrayal is not inevitable, it is not.”
“Robin?”
Robin stood, jerkily. “And if you believe I am harbouring some great resentment or that I will turn on you—well, perhaps that is rational. Most people would call it ill advised to trust someone like me. But you could, if you wanted, because I dare say I will let you down somehow, with your high standards, but I really don’t want to, and I won’t do it deliberately. I like you, Hart. You might try believing that, and if you can’t, you’re a fool to consort with me at all. Think about it and make your decision. But don’t shout at me because you’re afraid.”
He turned on his heel. The outer door slammed a moment later, and Hart was left alone.
Chapter Fourteen
The next afternoon, Robin was lying on the settle full length with his hands over his face when Marianne came in.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Robin considered telling all, assessed how much sympathy he was likely to receive, and decided not to bother. Marianne had been frying bigger fish for both their benefit, while he was miserable because a man who knew he was untrustworthy treated him as such. He deserved Hart’s suspicion, and if he’d made a mull of it all, he had only himself to blame.
He swung himself upright and round. “How did it go? How was the dragon?”
Marianne had finally had her long-awaited luncheon with the Dowager Marchioness of Tachbrook. It was not a friendly gesture, but very much a test. Robin had spent two hours dressing her that morning.
“Dragonish,” Marianne said. “Stiff-rumped, condescending, consequential. She gave me two fingers and a nod, and spent half an hour enumerating the Tachbrook lineage before deigning to ask me about my people.”
“And?”
“As we agreed. I told her my family was of no note whatsoever, that you were my only living relative, that she need not worry about hangers-on and claimants coming out of the woodwork. I freely confessed that I had neither portion nor birth, and sat with my head modestly lowered while she impressed my worthlessness and Tachbrook’s glory on me.”
“Sounds wonderful. So...?”
“I don’t know. It may be nobody is sufficiently conscious of their unworthiness for her son, but she told me twice I was pretty enough.”
“Pretty enough for that inflated lump of dough she calls a marquess?”
“Quite.”
“I’m not going to ask again if you’re sure, because it is very trying to be continually asked if one is sure,” Robin said. “But, just to note, if you would rather accept another invitation there, fill your pockets with everything valuable that isn’t nailed down, and disappear, I will very gladly keep you company.”
“Things not going well with Hartlebury?” Marianne asked. “Told you so.”
“He thinks I’m going to blackmail him for sodomy.”
“He shouldn’t have sodomised you, then.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Some people won’t be told.” She flopped down beside him on the settle. Robin put an arm round her waist and she rested her head on his shoulder. “Lord, Robin.”
“These bloody people.”
“If I were rich—when I am rich—I shall enjoy myself. I shan’t spend all my time making other people miserable because they aren’t as rich as me.”
“You won’t have to, because you have other qualities to recommend you than wealth.”
“True. Why do the worst people have it? Or why have we all decided that the most important and to-be-respected quality is the one possessed by the worst people? Ugh. Tell me something good, Rob.”
She’d used to say that a lot, when they were huddled together against fear or misery. Marianne had strength of character and an ability to think ahead that Robin could only envy, but her disposition was choleric and melancholic. She turned to Robin, sanguine and phlegmatic as he was, when she was lost in the dark and needed to see brightness.
“There is good news for Alice: she may yet get to pursue her dream of mathematics.”
He recounted events without touching on his argument with Hart as best he could. Marianne listened and made the right noises, but he wasn’t surprised when she said, “That was what you fought about?”
“Did I say we fought?”
“Obviously you did.”
Robin sighed. “That started it, yes. He thought I was going to run away with her, despite the agreement.”
“I don’t think he can have thought that, can he? Because it’s quite clear that you were at most a means to an end, i
n her eyes.”
“Lowering, isn’t it? I think I should give up fortune hunting.”
“You just need a stupider victim,” Marianne said consolingly. “And it sounds like you’ve got one.”
“What?”
“Hartlebury was jealous, oaf. And he’s given up four thousand for you already—”
“Only nominally.”
“All the same, it sounds to me like he’s cockstruck. And he’s rich enough, and considering your incapacity with women—”
“I’m not going to batten on him, if that’s what you mean.” Robin pulled his arm away.
“Why not? What’s the difference?”
“It wouldn’t work.”
“Sounds exactly the same, then,” she muttered. “Why wouldn’t it work?”
“We’re fucking because of the arrangement, or at least that’s what he’s telling himself. I expect that’s why he got angry today: he doesn’t want to have feelings about this. We haven’t gone to his bed, not once. He’s never kissed me.” That came out sounding embarrassingly plaintive.
“You care too easily, Rob,” Marianne said after a moment. “You aren’t meant to do that.”
He sighed. “This is embarrassing. I’m not even good at being a courtesan.”
“You’re marvellous at it,” she assured him. “You’re being the lover, or rather bed-partner, or rather not bed-partner that he wants. That’s the job at hand. Just remember it is a job.”
“What if I don’t want it to be?” The words came out before he could stop them.
“Then you’re a fool. Have you forgotten Manchester?”
He wished he could forget Manchester. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“But it always is. We use them or they use us, and this time we’re using them.”
“I didn’t want to use Alice. I don’t want to use Hart. I just want—”
“—him to forgive a massive debt, and forget your sordid dealings with his niece, and not put a spoke in my wheel,” Marianne finished. “You’re getting all that along with a good shagging, and you’re complaining because he doesn’t kiss you? Good God, Rob, at least you like him. If I snare Tachbrook, I may never be well-docked again, and do you hear me whining about it?”
