Mistress by Midnight

by Nicola Cornick

  Garrick turned back to her. A smile tugged at the corners of his lean mouth. “Are you going to beg?” he inquired gently.

  “No!” Merryn said. She moderated her tone. “But I should be very grateful…” She stumbled a little over the words. Damn him for enjoying her discomfiture. She could have slapped him, she was so angry.

  “Of course,” he said courteously. With a sigh he took out his pocketbook again and paid the jailer, who let Merryn go with every sign of disappointment. Garrick offered her his arm.

  “Permit me to escort you back to Tavistock Street, Lady Merryn.”

  “No,” Merryn said. “I—”

  “It wasn’t a question,” Garrick said, taking her arm and propelling her down the stairs. “It was an order.”

  They reached the first landing. Merryn stopped. “I will pay you back,” she said.

  Garrick slanted a look down at her. “How? I thought you said you had no money.”

  It was a fair question, Merryn thought. Tom paid her a generous amount but she had spent the last of her wages on a copy of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa. She had not enjoyed the book; now she wished she had the money instead. And she could scarcely ask Garrick to knock the sum off the thirty thousand pounds he had promised her—and she had rejected.

  Garrick waited a moment, then smiled and urged her down the next flight. “I won’t press you for payment,” he murmured.

  Merryn stopped again. “I’ll borrow the money from Joanna,” she said fiercely. “Or Alex. Or anyone. I’ll go to the moneylenders. Anything not to be in your debt.”

  “Anything?” Garrick said. He grabbed her, turning her against the wall. The cold stone pressed against her back. He put one gloved hand against her cheek, tilting her face up to his. The leather of his glove felt cool and smooth against her hot skin. He kissed her.

  This time Merryn was a little more prepared, not quite so stunned by something so utterly beyond her experience. Now, instead of discovery, there was an edge of wicked excitement and a heat that lit her from the inside out, burning her up, making her long for more. She knew she wanted this. Garrick had shown her that there was a part of herself she had not realized existed, a wild, wanton side so different from the cool, rational Merryn Fenner whose life had been lived vicariously in the pages of books.

  She opened her lips to Garrick and touched her tongue eagerly to his. He tasted delicious. She could not name the sensation that held her but it felt like temptation distilled. She was drowning in it, so potent, so hot. There was a tight, tense ache in the pit of her stomach. Her mind spun. The solid stone of the Fleet seemed to rock beneath her feet.

  She felt Garrick groan deep in his throat. He laced his hand in her hair and gave her back all she asked for, more, deepening the kiss, his tongue moving against hers, demanding a response she barely understood. Merryn forgot where she was, forgot every last one of the rules that guided a lady’s behavior and slid her arms about his neck so that she could draw him closer, pressing her body against his as though the layers of clothing between them simply did not exist. His tongue slid along the inside of her lower lip, his teeth closed about it, biting softly, and Merryn’s body clenched tight as a fist, deep inside.

  Someone laughed close by, a lewd sound, full of suggestiveness. There was a crash from near at hand and someone swore loudly and the sounds and smells of the prison slid back into Merryn’s mind.

  “Sure I can’t hire out a cell to you so you can finish your business, sir?” a voice said and Merryn pulled herself from Garrick’s arms and turned to see the jailer leering at them.

  For a second she caught Garrick’s expression. His eyes were blazing and his face was taut with desire. They were both breathing as though they had been running. Then his face changed. The naked desire was gone, replaced by his habitual cool indifference.

  “Consider your debt paid,” he said.

  “Twelve shillings,” Merryn said. She was proud to be able to find any voice at all. “For one kiss. You are extravagant, your grace.”

  “It was worth every penny,” Garrick said, “but I apologize that I chose to take payment in public.”

  Merryn shivered deep inside. No doubt a kiss meant little or nothing to Garrick, rakehell that he had been. She, in contrast, felt cast adrift, lost. The heat in her blood was cooling now and it left her feeling as bereft and alone as she had done the previous night. This was wrong, this desire she had for Garrick. So how could she feel it so intensely that it hurt?

  Garrick drew her close to him, belatedly shielding her from the curious glances and the knowing stares of the inmates and guards. His face was hard and set, as though he was angry with her, or perhaps with himself. He said nothing else until they were outside the gates and even then he gave her no choice, practically throwing her into the carriage that was standing waiting, before jumping in after her and slamming the door. Tumbled on the seat, out of breath and dismayed, Merryn reached for the door only for him to catch her wrist and pull her back so that she was practically sitting on his lap.

  “Forgive my presumption,” he said, “but you will not leave my protection until I see you are safely home, Lady Merryn.”

  Thoroughly incensed, Merryn struggled to free herself. “I would in all probability be safer anywhere else than with you,” she snapped.

  Garrick laughed. “Let’s not put that to the test.”

  He rapped on the roof of the carriage and the horses moved off. He sat back, watching her, crossing one elegantly booted ankle over the other knee.

  “What were you doing in the Fleet?” he asked.

  “I am surprised that you need to ask,” Merryn said resentfully. “You were there before me, weren’t you? You gave Dr. Southern the gin to render him so drunk he remembered nothing!”

  She waited but Garrick did not deny it. A smile that was not quite nice curled his lips. “You would have to call before seven in the morning if you wished to see Dr. Southern sober, I fear.”

  “He said that you visited him often,” Merryn said, “no doubt to make sure he is well supplied with drink and therefore insensible.”

  Garrick’s smile deepened. “I do visit him often,” he agreed. “For whatever reason.”

  “He also said that you bought him out of prison.”

  “Also true,” Garrick said. “I paid off his debts on both of the most recent occasions he was in the Fleet.” He sighed. “Dr. Southern was physician to our family for many years. When I returned to England and found that he had ceased to practice because of his weakness for the bottle, I tried to help him. I paid his debts. I visited him in the Fleet.” He shrugged. “I quickly realized that there was nothing I could do for him. He prefers to be in the prison because it is familiar to him. He feels safe. He is fed and housed. If I buy him out he only seeks its shelter again.” His mouth thinned. “He is an unhappy man but his unhappiness at least is not on my conscience.”

  “He is in your pocket,” Merryn said, “bought off by you, your creature.” She felt bitter and frustrated and she could see something in Garrick’s eyes, something of regret and pity that only made her all the angrier. “I’ll go back,” she said. “I’ll find a way to get him to talk.”

  “I wouldn’t advise it,” Garrick said. “You saw what happened today. Next time you might get yourself into far greater difficulties.”

  “I would have persuaded them to let me go,” Merryn said.

  Garrick grabbed her without warning, his hands biting into her upper arms. His touch was fierce. It was so sudden and so shocking that Merryn could not hold back a gasp.

  She had never seen this anger in him before. For a moment she thought he was going to shake her. His eyes were black with fury, his mouth a hard line. She could feel tension radiating from him.

  “Persuade them?” he said. “With what?” He bit the words out. “You had no money. And you have only one other commodity to sell.” His gaze raked her with insulting thoroughness. “Would it have been worth it—a few fumbled liberties—for
your freedom?”

  “Is that what you took from me?” Merryn said. She was shaking now. Her voice was shaking, too. “A few fumbled liberties?”

  She heard Garrick swear under his breath. He dropped her onto the seat and pinned her there with one hand on each side of her. She pressed back into the plush cushions, trying to put some distance between them. His physical presence was overwhelming.

  “You are too courageous and too stubborn, Lady Merryn,” he said. “You never seem to learn that one day your persistence will get you into trouble.”

  He was very close to her. Merryn stared into his eyes. They were the deepest brown, flecked with gold and green and they held her gaze with absolute demand. She felt odd, light-headed. She knew she was an inch away from shifting her gaze to Garrick’s mouth, and then he would kiss her again, or she would kiss him. It was inevitable; and there would be the same undertow of anger and longing and helpless desire in their embrace that there had been before. Her stomach felt odd, tingling with nerves, aching for something deeper.

  “Tell me,” she said suddenly. “Tell me about Stephen’s death.”

  The change in Garrick was extraordinary. She saw darkness fall across his eyes like a veil, thick, impenetrable, shutting her out. The line of his jaw was as hard as granite. He said nothing at all.

  Merryn stared at him, baffled and frustrated, while outside the carriage the flow of people swirled around them, passed by in a blur of color, a moving pageant. She was locked into the still core of it, possessed by the ferocious tension she could sense in Garrick, trapped by the harsh misery in his face.

  “Why don’t you speak?” she burst out, after what seemed hours, goaded by fury and misery. “Why do you say nothing?”

  He caught her wrists and pulled her close to him.

  “There is nothing I can say.” For all his harshness, his breath stirred her hair like a tender caress. She could hear pain in his voice as well as anger. “Nothing will put matters right. Nothing will give you your brother back.”

  His hands gentled on her, slid from her slowly, reluctantly. He sat back and Merryn felt shocked and alone, missing his touch, hating herself for feeling so bereft.

  “You are home,” Garrick said. “I’ll bid you goodbye.”

  There did not seem to be anything else to say. Merryn looked at his face, at the unyielding line of his cheek and jaw and the cold distance in his eyes as they rested on her. He opened the door for her with studied courtesy and then Merryn was standing on the pavement watching the carriage disappear into the press of London traffic. Garrick had said the previous night that he would stop her inquiries and so far he had been true to his word. He was always a step ahead. She felt so impotent. There was no one who could help her. The truth had been suppressed years ago. But her only alternative was to abandon her quest for justice and it had possessed her for so long that to forsake it now seemed unthinkable. It would leave a huge void in her life and she would not know how to fill it. Besides, that was what Garrick wanted. He wanted her to give in, to concede defeat, and if she did so she would never achieve the justice that Stephen deserved.

  That justice would see Garrick Farne swing on the end of a silken rope, convicted for murder.

  A long shiver racked her. She thought of Garrick, of his hands on her body and his mouth on hers, of the desire in him and the answering need in her. How could it be that an outcome she had so devoutly sought for twelve years now left her shuddering? For she had the strangest feeling that if she found the evidence she sought, if she held Garrick’s life in her hands, proved him a murderer, she would not be glad, but sorry.

  She turned and ran up the steps to the house trying to escape her thoughts. A footman opened the door and bowed her inside. As Merryn stripped off her gloves and unpinned her hat, she noticed a large bundle of papers, tied with ribbon, sitting on the hall table. The table, one of Joanna’s decorative pieces of rosewood furniture that was intended for display not use, looked as though its spindly legs might collapse beneath the weight.

  “Merryn, dearest!” Joanna was coming out of the drawing room, Max the terrier clasped in her arms, his velvet green topknot a perfect match for her gown. Alex was following, holding Shuna by the hand as the baby toddled across the marble floor.

  “Where have you been?” Joanna said. “You missed luncheon!”

  “Nowhere in particular,” Merryn said. She knew that Joanna had no real curiosity and she had no intention of telling either of her sisters anything of her business. She nodded toward the pile of papers.

  “What are those?”

  “Oh…” Joanna waved a vague hand. “Mr. Churchward sent them over. They are the deeds to Fenners or something else monstrously dull. Alex can sort them out.”

  “I’d like to look at them,” Merryn said in a rush.

  Joanna looked faintly surprised. “Well, of course, darling,” she said. “If you like. I’ll have someone put them in the library for you.”

  Merryn put out a hand and touched the top sheet. It was smooth from age and use and it smelled faintly musty. The ink was fading brown but it felt magical, alive, the first link she had had to her childhood home in over ten years. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt the tears sting her eyes.

  Fenners is rightfully yours… I am giving it back…

  She could hear Garrick’s voice like a whisper, like a promise. She looked at the writing, the word Fenners on the top of the document pile, a fragile link to another time.

  She wished that Garrick did not always make it so difficult to hate him.

  “OLD HABITS DIE HARD, FARNE.”

  Garrick glanced up from the brandy glass before him and into the mocking green eyes of the man who addressed him. How anyone had found him here in Mrs. Tong’s Temple of Venus in Covent Garden, he could not imagine. Not that Owen Purchase was likely to have been looking for him. One did not come to Mrs. Tong’s brothel for a conversation that one could have at White’s or Brooks’s club. If it came to that, one did not visit Mrs. Tong’s brothel for any kind of conversation, other than the one where one handed over the money.

  “Purchase,” he said. He gestured to the bottle. “Care to join me?”

  “Why not?” the other man said. He slid into the gaudy covered booth opposite Garrick. He looked oddly out of place there, Garrick thought, too hard, too masculine, amid the rich silk drapes and garish cushions. Owen Purchase was an American sea captain of legendary skill and no fortune. He had fought for the British against the French and fought for the Americans against the British and had ended a prisoner of war for his pains. Now that the war was over he was back in London looking for a commission and a ship. Garrick had met him the previous year when his half brother Ethan and Purchase had been prisoners together. It had been an unconventional start to a good friendship.

  “Your brother recommended this place,” Purchase said in his rich Southern drawl, looking around at the swinging Chinese lanterns and the shadowy alcoves where various ladies of doubtful virtue were plying their trade. “I hear he found his future wife here.”

  Garrick spluttered into his drink. “So he did,” he said.

  Purchase smiled. His thoughtful green gaze came back to rest on Garrick. “So why are you drinking this extortionately priced brandy,” he asked, “rather than taking one of these willing harlots to bed? You could get drunk more cheaply in any tavern.”

  Garrick had spent the previous hour asking himself that very question. When he had arrived, Mrs. Tong had almost burst out of her low-cut evening gown with excitement. Her girls had flocked about her like so many brightly colored birds of paradise vying for the privilege of meeting his every carnal need. Although it was true that physical desire had driven him there, Garrick had looked at their artfully painted faces and had felt not the slightest flicker of lust. All he had was a deep urge to get very drunk very quickly, to forget, to drown the past.

  Mrs. Tong had assumed that he was getting cold feet; that he was out of practice. She had given h
im a bottle of brandy and her best girl. The brandy had been of surprisingly high quality, the lightskirt less so and a great deal less tempting. After ten minutes Garrick had sent her away. Mrs. Tong had sent in another to replace her, a different girl, less obviously brazen, with more pretense of innocence. Garrick had felt repelled. When he sent that one out he had told her to tell the madam to leave him in peace with the brandy bottle. Mrs. Tong had sent a message back that it would cost him but as far as she was concerned, if he could pay he was welcome to drink himself to death in her whorehouse. Garrick had thought that was a fine offer.

  But now Purchase was here and asking awkward questions. He watched as the man poured himself a glass of brandy and raised it in sardonic toast.

  “You don’t have to answer me,” Purchase said conversationally, “but I want you to know I’ve noticed your evasion.”

  Garrick traced circles with his glass on the silken tablecloth. The brothel was busy. Every few minutes the door opened to admit another visitor. The girls fluttered past like showy butterflies. Purchase gave one of them a wicked smile and she looked at him, looked at Garrick, and raised her brows. Purchase shook his head and her mouth turned down at the corners in a pretty display of disappointment.

  “Don’t mind me,” Garrick said. “I appreciate that you didn’t come here for a chat.”

  “I can wait,” Purchase drawled. He sat back in the booth, toying with his glass, his gaze keen as it rested on Garrick’s face. “You know, Farne, if it did not seem so ridiculous I would say that you are suffering from unrequited love.”

  Garrick laughed. “Unrequited lust, more like.”

  He thought of Merryn Fenner. He had not stopped thinking of Merryn since that morning. In point of fact he had not stopped thinking of Merryn since he had dragged her out from under his bed. Love? It was not love, he thought, that hot, tight bond that held them so close. It was anger and frustration, an attraction that could not be denied, a force that impelled them together only to drive them apart. It was intolerable, like the chafing of a bond that could not be slipped. But the one thing that he could not dispute was that it was Merryn he wanted, not one of these Cyprians, no matter how prettily they might perform for him. He could take one of these girls and lose himself in forgetting for a little while, but then he knew his hunger for Merryn would come back and it would be sharper than before because what he was trying to substitute for it was hollow and worthless.