Beauty Tempts the Beast

by Lorraine Heath

  It remained a bit incongruous to be addressed in such a manner, rather than as Lady Althea.

  “Mr. Beckwith, you have the agreement ready?” Benedict asked.

  “I do, sir. Please have a seat.” He indicated two leather chairs set before his desk.

  Benedict directed her to the one on the left while he took the other. If the solicitor thought anything at all regarding her relationship with the man beside her, he kept his thoughts closely guarded. She suspected Benedict paid him a good deal for his ability not to disclose his judgment on matters.

  He looked at them through piercing blue eyes that appeared all the larger because of the spectacles resting on the bridge of his patrician nose. “I have a copy for each of you, and one that I shall keep on file. If you’ll read them, ensure all is to your satisfaction.”

  She did hope neither man noticed the slight tremor in her fingers as she took the sheaf that he offered her and began reading. It was all so formal, so precisely spelled out just as they’d discussed the day before.

  Her salary of one hundred pounds per annum to be paid out weekly, the balance to be paid in full should she leave his employ for any reason before the full fifty-two weeks had occurred. If he dismissed her or she decided to leave of her own accord, she was guaranteed that one hundred pounds even if the fault for her departure rested with her. They’d not discussed the little detail regarding how they would handle an acrimonious parting of the ways; she hadn’t even considered that they might have one, that a reason might arise that would see her leaving before she’d anticipated. It seemed Benedict had more experience at drawing up contracts than she, leaving nothing to chance. She found no fault with the terms favoring her.

  The payments for reaching the three-month, six-month, and twelve-month goal were spelled out. Succinct and to the point.

  But it was the wording of her addendum to their negotiations that had her heart pounding so hard she was fairly certain the solicitor could hear it.

  Mr. Trewlove shall provide to Miss Stanwick lessons in being an accomplished temptress. When their association comes to an end, should Miss Stanwick deem Mr. Trewlove failed in his endeavors, the only proof required being her opinion on the matter, Mr. Trewlove shall immediately hand over the sum of one thousand pounds.

  She looked to her right where he sat so calmly in the chair beside hers, his sheaf already returned to the desk to indicate he’d read it. “This last part regarding my deeming your efforts a failure . . .”

  He shrugged one large shoulder. “If I’m going to penalize you for not meeting my expectations, it seemed I should be penalized if unable to meet yours.”

  “You’re trusting I won’t lie simply to acquire that thousand pounds.”

  “Will you lie?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then I don’t see the problem.”

  “The terms don’t seem equitable. They favor me more than they do you.”

  “You know what I want. It can’t be measured in coin.”

  For the briefest of moments, she imagined he wasn’t talking about getting out of the brothel business but was talking instead of having her. What would it be like to be wanted that desperately, that badly? To be a need, an ache that overrode all good sense?

  “If you are looking at the amounts referred to in this document,” he continued, “and believe you are getting the better deal, I assure you, you are not. I’m ready to sign. Are you?”

  Never in her life had she signed a legal document; never had she placed her signature on something that tied her to another. She had always assumed the first time she did would be the day she married and signed her life over to her husband. Yet, she would secure freedom in signing this document with this man, something marriage would not have granted her. With a deep breath, she calmed her nerves. “Yes.”

  Three times she dipped the gold nub of the pen in the inkwell. Three times she signed her name. Three times she watched him do the same. Then the solicitor as witness.

  When they were finished, Benedict Trewlove looked at her with satisfaction reflected in his onyx eyes. “’Tis done.”

  “Indeed it is,” Mr. Beckwith said as he neatly folded two of the sheaves, once, twice, and handed them each one.

  She placed hers in her reticule. Benedict placed his in the inside of his jacket and stood. She followed his example, which resulted in Mr. Beckwith also coming to his feet.

  “Before you take your leave, Mr. Trewlove, as you’re here, and if you would not consider it an imposition, I wondered if you’d be good enough”—he opened a drawer, withdrew a book, and set it on the desk—“to sign your novel for the wife. She enjoyed it immensely.”

  Stunned, Althea wondered if he was talking to someone who had wandered into the room unobserved. Although Mr. Beckwith had addressed him by name, she couldn’t fathom that he was implying Benedict Trewlove was an author.

  But Benedict picked up the book and the pen with which he’d signed their agreement only moments earlier. “Is there anything in particular you’d like me to say?”

  “I shall leave it to the discretion of the wordsmith. Her name is Anne, with an E at the end.”

  In fascination, she watched as Benedict turned back the cover, dipped the pen in the inkwell, and scrawled inside the book. Not closing it, he handed it back to Mr. Beckwith.

  “‘To Anne, a woman of mystery. Yours sincerely, Benedict Trewlove.’ Ha. She’ll love that.” He smiled. “I very much appreciate it. She did want me to inquire as to when the next one might be published.”

  “Sometime late next year.”

  “I shall so inform her. Do you require anything else of me?”

  “Not at the moment. We appreciate your discretion on this matter.”

  “By all means. It is one of the things for which you pay me so handsomely.”

  He shook Mr. Beckwith’s hand. “Good day to you, then.”

  Mr. Beckwith smiled at her. “It was a pleasure, Miss Stanwick.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  With his fingers splayed over her lower back, Benedict urged her toward the door, and she wondered if it was with that hand that he penned novels.

  It seemed while he’d asked many questions of her, her shame over her answers had numbed her to the need to make inquiries of him as well. Quite suddenly, she realized she knew very little about him and wanted to know everything.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were an author?”

  She’d waited until they were settled in a hansom cab and were on their way to ask her question of him.

  “It’s not something that easily comes up in conversation.” Beast sighed. “And to be honest, I’m not quite comfortable with it yet. I don’t know that it’ll last. The one I’m writing now is not . . . cooperating. Which makes me sound like a madman, as though a novel is a living thing that determines where it goes.”

  “But it is, isn’t it? A living thing? Even when it’s finished, it breathes life into people as they read it. Or they breathe life into it. The reason I love books is because it’s as though I’m traveling with a friend.”

  He didn’t know what to say to that. Mostly because he felt much the same way, and for him, books had always provided an escape from a reality that had not always been kind.

  “How many have you published?”

  “My first was published about two months ago.”

  “Is it in bookshops?”

  Her flurry of questions and her excitement made him even more self-conscious. He lifted a shoulder, dropped it. “In many of them. I don’t know if it’s in all of them.” His sister Fancy, the Countess of Rosemont, owned a bookshop, the Fancy Book Emporium. She’d ordered in about a thousand copies. Or so it had seemed.

  “What is the title?”

  “Murder at Ten Bells.” The proprietor of the pub in Whitechapel hadn’t minded his use of the establishment for the setting of the murder. Apparently, the notoriety had brought an increase in business to his door.

  Her smile of delig
ht tightened his chest. “That’s the reason you wrote to Mrs. Beckwith what you did. A woman of mystery. Because you write mysteries.”

  He viewed what he wrote as more of a detective story than anything.

  “I want you to tell me everything.”

  What more was there to tell? As he realized where they were, he shifted his focus to something of a more urgent nature that required his attention. He’d meant to inform her after they’d climbed into the cab that they’d soon be parting ways, but then she’d begun her inquisition. “I appreciate your interest. However, it will have to wait. It’s not often that I get to this area of London, and I need to make a stop elsewhere. If you’ve no objection, I’ll have the driver drop me off and carry you on to the residence.”

  A flash of disappointment lit her eyes like lightning during a bleak winter storm. Appearing quickly and gone, leaving him to wonder if it had ever been. “No, none at all. Do what you must.”

  Leaning back, he called up through the small opening in the roof to the driver. “Deliver me to Abingdon Park. Stop at a flower shop on the way.”

  When they arrived at the garden cemetery, with his arm cradling an abundance of colorful blossoms that could only exist this time of year in a hothouse and had no doubt cost him a small fortune, he promised to return to the residence before Althea was to give her first lesson. With the grace and agility that she’d come to expect of him, he leapt out of the conveyance.

  After paying the driver additional coins, Benedict told him where to deliver her. As they started off, she glanced back to see him trudging through the gated entrance, his gait slower than she’d ever seen it, and she was struck—as she’d been the night she watched him walk away from her shabby little residence—by the loneliness of him, but something had been added to deepen it. A forlornness hovered around him. And why shouldn’t it? He hadn’t passed through the gates in order to enjoy a spot of tea.

  They barely reached the next street when she ordered the driver to circle around to where they’d been. After instructing him to wait, she clambered out of the vehicle and stood on the precipice of indecision. Should she simply wait for his return or join him in order to offer whatever support he might welcome as he visited whoever it was now lost to him? Would he be glad to see her or angry at the intrusion?

  In the end, she decided it was worth the risk of garnering his anger on the off chance that he needed her solace.

  As she walked along the path, she couldn’t deny the area contained a peacefulness, a quietness, a calmness. A rustling sounded as the slight breeze toyed with the last of the tenacious leaves clinging to the trees. A briskness on the air made her breath visible.

  Passing by a statue of a huge stone angel, she noted the words carved at its base indicated it watched over the Duke of Lushing. His widow had married a Trewlove.

  Rounding a corner along the path, she spotted Benedict with his dark head bent, kneeling on one knee at the foot of a grave marked with a small, simple headstone, his beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers resting against the black marble with its gilded lettering.

  Sally Greene

  June 15, 1841

  August 5, 1866

  Waltzing now with the angels

  Stopping far enough away so as not to intrude, but near enough to read the words, she felt a sharp pang of sorrow, wondering who the young woman was and what exactly she’d once meant to him. She wondered at the shade of her hair, the gentleness of her soul. Although she couldn’t quite imagine him with someone who wasn’t as strong, bold, and daring as he.

  It was several long minutes before he finally stood, settled his beaver hat on his head, and turned to face her.

  “I apologize if I disturbed you,” she uttered with all sincerity.

  “You didn’t, but you were supposed to take the cab back to the residence.”

  “This area isn’t exactly teeming with cabs. I decided it would be better to return here and have the driver wait for us in order to ensure you’re there when I meet the ladies. I’m a bit anxious about my first encounter with them, to be honest.”

  He studied her for a full minute before nodding. “You have such confidence it hadn’t occurred to me you might be experiencing a spat of nerves. You were right to bring the cab back. We should be off.”

  “Did you love her?” The words were out before she could stop them, before he could leave, and she realized she already knew the answer. It resided in the flowers, the manner in which he’d been kneeling, the somberness, the sadness that now clung to him like a well-worn cloak.

  Shoving his gloved hands into the large pockets of his greatcoat, he looked up at the graying sky. “It was hard not to love Sally. She often complained that her mouth was too wide and her teeth too crooked, but when she smiled, her dark eyes sparkled, and it was like a thousand tapers had been lit to brighten the world.”

  Such profound, poetic words. Her throat tightened, and she wondered how she might explain the tears stinging her eyes. She was rather certain that the Earl of Chadbourne had never spoken so passionately about her or held her in such tender regard, for if he had, surely, he wouldn’t have broken things off after her father’s fall from grace. Surely, he would have stood by her. “Sally was a fortunate woman indeed to have such devotion. But she died so young. Had you plans to marry her?”

  He met her gaze. “My affections toward her never ventured beyond friendship.”

  “Friends seldom leave such an abundance of flowers.” Costly ones at that.

  “Ah, those . . . My attempt at easing my guilt. I’m the one responsible for her death.”

  Before the words had fully settled like an anvil on her chest, he removed his watch from his pocket, flipped open the cover with a practiced flick of his thumb, studied the time, and tucked it back into place. He jerked his head toward the path down which she’d traveled to arrive here. “We’ve lingered long enough.”

  A tenseness threaded through his voice, as though he dreaded her response to his earlier confession, regretted making it, was hoping by moving on to another topic he’d never learn her thoughts on the subject.

  “I don’t believe for a single moment you killed her.”

  “Not directly but I may as well have.”

  He started to move past her, and she stopped him easily with a hand on his arm, an arm thick with firm muscle, the strength of it clear even through his greatcoat. “You can’t possibly believe you can say something like that and not clarify.”

  He studied her intently. “Do you remember my saying that the brothel came about as a favor to a friend?”

  She nodded.

  “She was the friend, in need of a place where she could safely ply her wares, so I provided it.”

  “She was a fallen woman?”

  He gave a little scoff. “More girl than woman. Fifteen when she started working. Sixteen when she approached me to see if I’d provide her with a sanctuary. She had a way about her that made it impossible to refuse her. In that one regard, at times you remind me of her.

  “Anyway, some years later, one night I heard her scream. I don’t know what the blighter did to her before I got to the bedchamber, but by the time I burst through the door he was straddling her and banging her head against the floor. I dragged him off her, beat him bloody, and tossed him out into the street. By the time I returned to her, she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She said her head hurt a little, and she was going to retire for the night. I wished her pleasant dreams. On the way out, she patted my shoulder. ‘Always my hero.’ She was dead by morning. A true hero would have known to fetch a physician.”

  Her heart was breaking for him. How could he believe any of that was his fault? “That’s the reason you sent for a surgeon the night I was hurt, the reason you watched me so closely.”

  “I couldn’t have borne it if you’d died.”

  He’d not meant to be so fervent in his declaration, hoped she understood it was the guilt of another death on his conscience and not some ardent affection towa
rd her that was responsible for what would have been better left unsaid. Because whatever he was beginning to feel for her was also better left unfelt. She had her plans, her goals, and they certainly didn’t include him.

  Neither spoke as they made their way back to the waiting cab. He was torn between being grateful she’d not left without him and desperately wishing she had.

  As though she’d actually come up and tapped him on the shoulder, he’d been acutely aware of her arrival as he knelt before Sally’s grave. Damnation, as if he hadn’t been telling Sally about her, and his words had conjured her.

  The two women would have liked each other, he was rather certain of that. Althea possessed a strength he wasn’t certain she realized she owned. But life had battered it, left it bruised, as circumstances had brought her to a part of London where she didn’t belong.

  When they reached the cab, he handed her up and then settled in beside her. It was beginning to feel almost natural to be so near to her, to have his thigh pressed up against hers, to have the scent of gardenia wafting around him, to glance to his left and see her pink-tinged cheeks chafed by the cold.

  As they made their way relatively swiftly through the crowded streets, he felt as though he should say something—thank her for not leaving, explain the last words he’d spoken were simply the result of the cornucopia of emotions that always bombarded him when he came here, mention the brittleness of the weather—anything that would dispel the awkwardness that had settled between them. He shouldn’t have gone to the cemetery with her in tow, shouldn’t have burdened her with his regrets. All these years and still they lashed at him. They were the reason he continued to reside in a bloody brothel, wouldn’t abandon the women who relied on his reputation—and occasionally his fists—to keep them safe.

  She must have felt his gaze on her, because she glanced over at him with sympathy and understanding in her eyes, and he remembered she’d only recently lost her mother. Perhaps she was struggling with her own grief and regret.