by Lavinia Kent
Questions. He didn’t know where to begin. “You left Foxworthy’s house well after two attired in nothing but your gown, and that untied?”
“Yes.”
“You had relations with him previous to that exit?”
“Why don’t you just ask if I fucked him?” Her voice remained calm despite the vulgarity of her words.
“Did you?”
“I spent the evening at dinner with his friends showing just how desirable I found him. I ran my fingers up his velvet-clad thighs indiscreetly, advertising to all just how little control I had around him. At dessert he dropped a cherry down my bodice and I let him fish it out with his mouth. More than a dozen gentlemen saw him slip a hand up my skirts while we waited for his coach to be brought round. Do you want to know more?”
Each word she said pounded a nail into his chest. He could feel the air in his lungs leak and sputter. Soon he would be unable to breathe. “Yes, tell me all.”
“I never knew you were such a voyeur. Perhaps we should have explored it more—it might have held my attention longer.”
Peter jumped to his feet in fury and then sat down again. She was spurring him on, trying to get him angry enough to leave and not come back. Why? “Continue with your story.”
She paled further beneath his stare, then bent forward and picked up his teacup, bringing it to her lips. She took a long swallow. “He had his hands all over me on the ride back to his home. He liked to describe each move he made, every time he licked me, bit me, caressed me, it required comment. He liked my titties—good full ones like a real woman. Would you like to hear more of his conversation?”
“I am interested in you not him. Why did you do it?”
“Is that really any of your business?”
He stood again, not with anger or with fury, but with determination. He took the step forward that closed the separation between them, let his knees brush hers.
“Yes, it is. If you had chosen Struthers or Winchester, I would have held my tongue. I would have accepted that you had the right to choose who you wanted to be with. It would have wrenched the soul right out of me, but I would have let you do it. I can’t say I wouldn’t have fought—I searched all of London with that purpose in mind—but in the end I would have let you go.
“But Foxworthy”—his mouth filled with bile—
“when you choose a toad like that it is my business. When you leave his home alone in the middle of the night, your dress clutched around you and your eyes empty of even tears, then it is my business.”
“You are wrong.” She lifted her face to stare straight into his. “Nothing has ever been further from your business. I appreciate your bringing me home. I thank you for the comfort of your arms. But it still has nothing to do with you. I have a life and problems that are all my own. I do not need your help.”
“But you have it whether you need it, whether you want it.” He held her gaze steady. “I have no purpose but to help you.”
She pushed up to her feet, the chair groaning with the strength of her grip. “That is not your right.”
He placed a hand upon her cheek. Her face was as expressionless as any statue. She gave no indication that she even felt his touch.
“You may be correct that it is not my right, but I have no other choice, Violet. I can’t even pretend that I wish it were different. I want to take care of you, to shelter you. Can’t you give me even a small opportunity?”
She turned her face away from him, but did not remove his hand. “I belong to Foxworthy now. You must accept that and leave. You must find that girl, that innocent, sweet girl who will give you children and build a family around you. There is nothing in this world that would make me happier than to know that you have found tranquillity.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She lifted both her hands and took his fingers between her own chilled ones. “Peter, no matter what you saw, or think you saw last night, I will return to Foxworthy. I cannot explain my motivations to you, but as soon as you have left I will return upstairs to change. I will put on my most becoming day dress, and in the middle of the afternoon I will call upon him at home. I will be unmindful of scandal, unmindful of my reputation. My only concern will be to persuade him to give me another chance.”
“Another chance? What do you mean by that? You look as if your life depends on it. Tell me what hold he has on you. Is it money? Does he hold some vowel that you gambled away? Only tell me and I will take care of it.”
She turned from him and walked to the window. Despite the perfection of her posture she looked ready to sink to a puddle on the floor. “What I mean does not matter. It is not my life that depends on it. My life will go on much as it always has. I may be welcome at a few less doors. The comments may be louder and more ribald when I enter a room, but that is of little significance.”
She turned and looked back at him from across the length of the room. How could any woman look so strong and so frail at the same time?
She took a single step back toward him. Something in her expression softened, changed. “You will no longer be in my life and for that I am sorry. It is, perhaps, my one regret. I enjoyed our dream in a summer garden, but I must remember it was only a dream.”
“Why? Can’t you just tell me why?”
“I could, but it would make no difference. You might blacken Foxworthy’s eye, but that would only raise his ire. He would take his anger out on me, and so you shall not do that. You will not challenge a man to a duel because I chose him over you, and even if you did I imagine that Foxworthy would laugh it off. He is a man of pride, but not stupidity.”
“If it doesn’t matter why won’t you tell me?”
“Would it salve your pride if you knew that it was not of my own choice that I leave you for a man twice your age and half your value?” She stepped toward him again. “I will tell you whatever you need to make this easier for you. If I cannot make you go in anger then tell me how to make you leave with kindness.”
“It is not my pride that needs salving, but my heart.” He had nothing to lose. He could feel her leaving him even as she stepped closer. “And your heart.”
“Oh, Peter.” There was true feeling in her voice. “I never asked you to love me. I told you not to. Please can you not just go and somehow find a way to be happy? I have never been good for you.”
“Isn’t that for me to say?” He tried to smile, but knew it was more of a grimace. This was really the end and she wouldn’t even tell him why. Anger began to rise within him. She would not even give him an explanation of her actions. A thought came to him.
“You want me to marry, somebody young and innocent. Forget the sweet, you’ve ruined me for sweet. How would you feel if I married your sister? She made quite a play for me at Summerton’s house party and if I can’t have you—”
Her eyes flashed fire, once. He had expected outright rejection, but instead he could see the wheels moving deep inside her head. The feelings she had fought so hard to hide were leaking through.
“That would solve the last of my worries.” She spoke quietly, to herself, her voice almost mechanical. “Why can I not survive that too?”
She took his hands in hers. “It would relieve me greatly if you would marry Isabella. Just promise me you will always care for her. No matter what. She deserves a good life.”
He caught the undertone of voice. “And you don’t?”
“It is too late for me. I made too many bad choices before I realized they were choices. I found my strength too late. Keep my sister safe until she finds her own strength.”
He grabbed her hands and, holding them tight, pulled her to the settee. He pushed her to the seat and knelt before her. “If that is your wish I will promise it to you. You could not have asked a harder thing of me, but for you I will do it. I will even endeavor to love and care for her if that is your wish. But I do have a price. You must promise to explain this whole sordid mess to me. You must explain how in a matter of days I went from f
eeling I had achieved my one desire to being forced to settle for second best—”
“Do not call my sister second best. She has done nothing to harm you. She deserves all you can give her and more.” She spoke with vehemence.
“From the moment we leave this room I will do all I can to cherish her, but first you must tell me the truth. I must admit that from what I have seen of your sister she seems more a gold digger than a victim.”
Violet shut her eyes. Her brows clenched together and he sensed she held back tears, tears she would see only as a weakness. “My sister has acted only as she has been forced. You cannot count her actions of the last weeks against her. She is kind and good and only needs a chance to shine.
“I will tell you all now, but you must promise me you will not let it affect your promise. When you leave this room we are finished. You will go to my brother’s house and ask for Isabella’s hand in marriage.” She did not look at him.
He kept his gaze fastened on the clock on the mantel. “I promise.”
Chapter 15
Violet watched him, she listened to him, and she felt the love he did not put into words. It was not infatuation or lust as she had consoled herself.
Peter loved her.
It shone out of him. He would put her needs before his own, always. For the first time she let herself accept it, let herself look at him and feel the wonder of it, of him.
For ten seconds she felt giddy with the glory of it.
Then the despair hit. It was impossible. It ruined everything. “I am a fool. The very idea of you and Isabella is ridiculous.”
He turned away from the mantel and stared back at her. “Ridiculous? A fool? Do you think I am not good enough for your sister? Not good enough for you, not good enough for her?”
She tried to swallow, but her throat closed halfway. “No, that is not it.” It was hard to form the words when her tongue felt that it filled her mouth in its entirety. “I cannot trap either of you into a life without love. I will not force her to marry a man she does not want any more than I would allow my brother to.”
“What does Masters have to do with this?” he asked.
“I thought only of myself,” she continued as if he had not spoken, “of whether I could survive if you married Isabella. I did not think of her, or of you. I want you both to be free.”
“What does Masters have to do with this?” he repeated, his voice rising in volume.
She could only stare back at him. She rubbed her throat as if trying to loosen it. The words she needed seemed to flee from her.
Finally, she walked to a chair by the window and sat, waving him to the seat across from her. “I did promise to tell you. I am not sure I am bound by that, as I certainly have no intention to holding you to your own words.”
He moved to the seat and sat. And waited.
“Masters wishes Isabella to marry Foxworthy,” she said. “He does not take her feelings into consideration. That is the story, simple as it is.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
She stared blankly, his question bouncing around her mind like a rubber ball.
He tried again. “It would seem that all arrangements are between Masters, Isabella, and Foxworthy. Why are you involved?”
“I am involved because Isabella has nobody else to speak for her and she certainly has no desire to marry Foxworthy.”
“So she says no. She cannot be married if she does not agree.”
Violet picked up the paper he had been reading. She resisted the urge to swat him, hard. “Sometimes you can be so male. Isabella is still a girl. She has no money. She has no choice. I will give her a choice.”
“I still don’t see why she doesn’t just tell Masters no.”
“Do you really not understand?”
He paused, considered. She could see his mind working. He might be idealistic. He was not a fool.
“I still don’t understand why you were at Foxworthy’s,” he answered.
“Are you being deliberately obtuse?” She slapped the paper against her knee. His eyes followed the blow. Ah, he knew it was not her knee she wished to hit. “I sought to persuade Foxworthy that he could do better than Isabella. He visited my brother and withdrew his suit in return for my promise. Now he threatens to approach Masters again.”
The paper swung, hard.
He watched the paper, imagined its sting. It all made sense, such dreadful sense. He knew Violet, loved her desire to protect those around her. He closed his mind against the image that formed in his mind. He did not want to believe. Still—“Why would marriage to Foxworthy be so bad? Yes, he’s older and not the most attractive of fellows, perhaps not the most respectable—but I’ve never heard anything nasty about his personal habits. There are many such marriages.”
“Never heard anything nasty about him? That makes it acceptable?”
He didn’t answer.
Violet evidently did not need his answer. “It is not acceptable to marry a girl off without giving her a say in the matter. I will do what I need to for two reasons. First, because Isabella deserves to learn she has choices. If she is forced to marry Foxworthy her whole world will change. I cannot allow that.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“I don’t think any man can understand what it is like to be seventeen and full of dreams. The most important decisions in your life involve choosing new dresses and what type of posies to press in your memory book. I remember a cat who had kittens that summer, and I spent hours trying to decide what to name them. Should they be Knights of the Round Table or Shakespearean fairies? I didn’t even consider their sexes. I don’t believe I would have known how to tell the difference.
“Then my brother came and told me I was to marry Sir Dratton. I have already told you it was not a bad marriage, but it changed everything. I was never able to lose myself in the magic of imagination after that. I was never able to pretend the world was a sun-filled, enchanted kingdom. I learned of reality and I learned quickly. I do not want that for Isabella. I want her to grow at her own pace.”
She dropped the newspaper she clutched between her fingers into her lap. There was a smudge of ink in the upper corner.
“You said there were two reasons?” Peter asked.
She looked up at him. “Milber. He is my second reason. I will never risk her having a marriage like that.
“I could tell you stories, but what good would stories do? Most of the things he did would be perfectly acceptable in society. He rarely hit me, and nobody cared if his words were cruel and abusive. He had some practices in the bedroom that were perhaps unusual, but I doubt many of your friends would find them shocking if practiced with a mistress. They would perhaps be shocked that he performed them with his wife, but they would probably consider him lucky to have such a willing wife. Because, of course, a wife cannot be unwilling. It would be unnatural.”
Peter slipped off his chair and knelt before her. “I can see that this discussion pains you. Is that why you never talk of him?”
“No, I never talk of Milber because I have made him irrelevant to my life. I cannot say that his actions did not change me—but he is gone and I am here. I do not give him the grace of thought.”
“But surely you realize that Foxworthy is no Milber? Rumors do spread and I have never heard—”
She cut him off. “But you don’t always hear. I would admit mostly you do, but not always. And, yes, I also realize there is no guarantee that Isabella will not choose a man who has his own secrets, but it will be her choice.”
Peter lifted his hands and took them between his own. “So you traded yourself to Foxworthy for your sister. Where is your choice?”
“Don’t you see I am making it? I understand fully what I do. Believe me, I could not understand more fully.”
“Is it money? Why do you not just pay Masters off? If you need more funds I will give them to you. I doubt Foxworthy can offer more than you and I combined.”
Violet tri
ed to pull her hands away. He held tight.
“It is not simply a matter of money,” she said. “Although it is at the core.”
“Do you need to speak in riddles? We have always been straightforward with each other.”
Violet did not answer.
He tried a different tack. “If you won’t answer that, answer this.” He rubbed his hands back and forth, warming her captive ones. “Explain why you wanted me to marry Isabella.”
Violet looked up at met his glance. Her eyes were dark and haunted. “It occurred to me last night that I might be saving Isabella from Foxworthy, but I cannot prevent Masters from doing the same thing again. I had hoped that your offer would be good enough that Masters would agree and Isabella would be safe.”
“Then why take away my promise? I would do this for you, do it as willingly as I am able. Then you would not need to go to Foxworthy.”
She wanted to believe him. Peter was right, if it was only money, they together could surely offer as much as Foxworthy. But there was still the matter of her brother’s possible treason. Would it be possible to buy the man off? She had tried in the gambling hell when they first bargained, but had she tried hard enough? She had offered reasonable amounts—what if she offered the unreasonable? What if she were willing to sell her house and offer all she had? Could any man, even Foxworthy, refuse such an amount?
Her brains were muddled from anxiety and lack of sleep. She knew money was not the solution. Isabella would still be threatened.
She pulled her hands away, this time giving him no choice but to release her. Rubbing her temples, she walked to a corner chair and sat. She picked up a small portrait from the table, her father. It was the only picture of him she had. She ran a finger across the surface of his cheek, uncaring of the oils she left upon the paint.
She thought she had felt safe during his life. The memories were so faint and frayed. She forced her glance up to stare around her perfect room, her perfect house. Could she risk it all, go back to having nothing? Would it serve any purpose?
