Letty sat up, the better to reenvision her entire adult life. “I would have hated that. I would have been filled with hate, every day. For my own husband—for myself.” And raising children in such a household would have made the whole awful, sordid business worse.
David sat up beside her, hiking his knees and wrapping his arms around them. “I came to hate the woman I married.”
Letty’s thoughts stopped midflight, knocked out of the sky as if by a raptor. “You’re married?”
Eight
So great was David’s focus on the admission Letty’s honesty had provoked, that her dismay took a moment to penetrate.
“And if I am married?”
“Then we are not lovers.” Letty started to scramble off the bed, as if David were that deceitful, treacherous cleric from her youth, or something worse.
“My wife is dead.”
She stopped, one leg over the side of the bed. “Dead?”
And because he was desperate for Letty to get back under the covers, he added, “Neither she nor the child survived childbirth by more than a few hours.” The words no longer hurt the way they should, which was an entirely new sort of pain.
“They died nearly a decade ago and an ocean away. I’d finished my medical studies as a proper physician, and thought to practice in the New World. I was smitten, not with the lady herself so much, though she was a comely young widow, but with the idea that somebody might stand with me through all of life’s vicissitudes.”
That anybody might stand with him. Fortunately, he’d given up on that bit of foolishness.
Letty resumed her place beside him on the bed. “Lifelong loyalty and fidelity are quaint notions. Others have found them appealing.” She rubbed his bare back, the way a fellow rider might have after a bad fall in the hunt field, to help him regain his wind.
“Though her family hid it from me when I courted her, the lady had a fondness for the bottle, and all my efforts to limit her consumption only provoked her into drinking more. She’d already conceived by the time I’d admitted the magnitude of the problem.”
He managed to sound as if he recited a case history, but this small tragedy still didn’t feel like a case history. With Letty sitting on the bed beside him, he admitted he never wanted it to.
She mashed her nose against his arm. “You were not stupid. You were young, and she was wicked.”
Her misappropriation of his words gave him a reluctant smile. “Wench.”
The hand on his back slowed. “I’m sorry. I’m not sorry you’re free to be in this bed with me now, but I’m sorry you were hurt.”
“My pride was devastated. I was a physician, a healer, and my own child—” A tiny, beautiful scrap of life, who had fought hard for a few hours and then fought no longer.
Letty gently but firmly pushed him onto his back, then straddled him and settled herself over him. The fire burned down, the shadows grew deeper, and David fell asleep in the sweet, silent comfort of Letty’s loving.
***
“Marry me,” David coaxed. His hand was wrapped around Letty’s breast, the warmth of his grasp more comforting than erotic.
“Good morning,” Letty managed, “and not fair, that you have already used the tooth powder.”
“Of course I have. I have company in my bed. One observes the civilities under such circumstances.”
A proposal of marriage was a civility? “Well, let me up, your lordship, so I can observe the civilities and perhaps have a bit of privacy.”
“No privacy for you,” David replied, but he lifted off of her, and when she cast around for his dressing gown, he reached behind him and handed her her own brown velvet instead.
“I sent for some of your things.”
Letty bit back the castigating lecture that welled up, because David looked so… guilty. So vulnerable.
“You have every right to be angry,” he said, tugging the dressing gown closed over her chest. “I should have asked you first, but I gave the order, and didn’t think better of it until the footman had gone. I’m sorry, Letty. I know you asked for my discretion.”
She tied the sash on her own garment, though his was the more luxurious and bore his scent. “Once you ordered me a bath in your chambers, your staff knew we weren’t exactly discussing business up here.”
Though they needed to discuss business, because to all appearances, someone was stealing from him.
“I meant what I said, Letty.”
“About?” She left the bed to find her very own toothbrush by the wash basin.
“I want you to marry me.”
She glanced at him in the mirror over his dressing table, then slipped behind the privacy screen and set about brushing her teeth. Not “Will you please marry me?” but “I want you to marry me.”
Though bended knee and pretty phrasing would have made no difference to her answer.
“I’ll fetch breakfast,” David said, perhaps knowing Letty wouldn’t be pushed into the discussion he apparently meant to have. When he’d left, Letty tended to her more personal needs and set about rebraiding her hair.
What on earth had got into David now, that he was talking about marriage? For God’s sake, it would never do, never do at all, and Letty saw with brutal clarity that she was going to have to hurt him even more than was inevitable. And worse yet, as much as she was going to hurt him, she was going to hurt herself more.
If Letty married David Worthington, Olivia would make good on every one of her threats, Daniel’s prospects with the church would be in ruins, and little Danny would suffer for the rest of his life—to say nothing of the mischief Olivia might wreak even on a viscount’s good name.
By the time David reappeared with breakfast, Letty had decided on an air of amused curiosity.
“Is there a reason you’re proposing now?” Letty asked, helping herself to a slice of buttered toast when David had seated her at a table near the window.
“Because I want to marry you,” he replied, his own breakfast apparently of no moment to him. “You are a vicar’s daughter, after all, Letty. It isn’t as if you were whelped in Seven Dials.”
And girls who were born in the slums didn’t deserve pretty proposals on that basis alone?
“I am a whore, David, and you are a wealthy viscount. We would never be received, and we will not suit.” Despite how convincing his little game had been, they would never suit.
He sat back, no longer the lover, but once again the shrewd, aristocratic negotiator. “We spent all night in that bed, suiting marvelously. I rather hope we suit some more in the near future. I don’t care two farthings for being received at court, and you do care for me, so what is the problem?”
Letty set down her toast and busied herself with the tea service—antique Sevres of course, the colors exactly matching his eyes. Amused curiosity was insupportable. “That was sex, and you know it.”
“It was more than sex, and you know it.”
She did. Even in her relative inexperience, she knew what had passed between them had been different. Special, God help them both.
“Please, can we not argue about this? I have reasons, David…” What plausible lie could she manufacture? What version of the truth wouldn’t have him galloping off to tilt her windmills into submission?
He eyed her teacup, which shook minutely in her hand. “What reasons, Letty?”
“There are things you don’t know about me,” she said, a safe enough truth. “And if you did, you would not be making this very generous, rash, unthinkable proposal.”
She managed a sip of tea, realized she’d forgotten to add sugar, and set it aside.
He looked, if anything, more determined. “Are you married then, Letty?”
“I am not now, nor have I ever been married,” she said, adding a silent thank God. Oh, there had been pressure on her to marry—very, very c
onsiderable pressure.
“Is it that you fear you could not bear me an heir?” he asked, a hint of the physician creeping into his eyes. “My opinion is knowledgeable, Letty, and I can assure you I’ve found no signs of problems with your reproductive health.”
This from the very fellow who’d suggested she might be barren? “Were you examining me?”
“Of course not.” He added cream and sugar to her tea, then poured himself a cup as well, and his hands shook not at all. “But I notice things, Letty, like the fact that all your parts are working, in the right location, and of the proper dimensions—and I observe with all modesty mine are as well. There is every likelihood we would have children—scads of them, in fact.”
Letty rose abruptly, lest she smash her teacup. She could not, could not allow her imagination to stray off into thoughts of what it would be like to marry David, to have his child. A single child, much less scads of children.
The sitting-room window overlooked a snowy back garden. All was bright and clean under new-fallen snow and sparkling morning sun, while inside Letty’s heart, all was gray, bleak, and dirty.
David’s arms slipped around her from behind.
“I do not want to hurt you, but you must see that I am not a suitable wife for you. For the sake of your children, David, you shall put this notion from your head.”
She sensed the shock that coursed through him at her words. He would understand, having been raised as a bastard, what scandal could do to a child’s world.
“I am disgraced, David,” she reminded him. “I have been seen at your establishment by many, many titled gentlemen. I may not have spread my legs for them, but that detail will not resurrect my good name.”
Nothing would resurrect her good name, but his good name was still hers to protect.
“Are you running away, Letty Banks? Are you saying my attentions were distasteful to you, and that I must let you go now?” She could feel anger boiling through him, but something else, too, something she was loath to hear in his voice—bewilderment.
“I’m not asking you to end our association. I am asking that you drop this notion of marrying me. In fact, I insist on it.” She had the power to insist because he’d handed it to her willingly, though now she wished he had not.
“You insist because you have been at The Pleasure House, or because of these things I do not know?”
Damn him, his tactical mind, and his gentle, unbreakable embrace. “Both.”
He stroked a hand over her hair. “I know more than you think I do, trust me.”
David Worthington knew entirely too much about too many things, but not everything.
“Perhaps you do. That doesn’t change the fact that sooner or later, you, or our children, would resent me and resent my past. When you marry, your wife must be above reproach in every way.”
“My sister, the marchioness, is a bastard,” he said, his hand on her hair heartbreakingly gentle. “Heathgate married her, not knowing if it was possible to whitewash that. The truth of Astrid’s birth was known to Greymoor when he insisted on making her his countess. Douglas had to face down the formidable Duke of Moreland to win Gwen’s hand. We are not saints, Letty.”
“And all of those secrets,” Letty replied, “are buried beneath the lives of their children. They could explode at any point, and the children would be among those who suffer. You know this, David. You’ve lived with the consequences of parental missteps, allowed them to separate you from your sisters, watched your mother suffer for them. You of all men understand my concern.”
Apparently the vicar’s daughter could deliver a convincing sermon. David turned her in his arms and held her while an eddy of cold air trickled across her bare feet.
“Stay here today,” he said. “I have matters to see to, but they won’t take me all day, and I would like it were you to remain here.”
His quiet suggestion was a strategic move, as if he knew she would not refuse him this request when she had just refused something of much greater moment. A ruthless streak, indeed…
“And what am I supposed to be doing,” she asked, looping her arms around his waist, “while you are off on the King’s business?”
“I have a well-stocked library, and you brought your ledgers with you. You can read, you can work on the ledgers, you can keep me company, or you can soak in your bath all morning. Or perhaps you’d like to visit the shops and indulge in a few feminine fripperies. Have you seen the Menagerie?”
“I have not.” Nor would she, with him, for seeing the sights was as public as attending the theatre together. “When one’s livelihood is in question, touring the sights doesn’t rate very high.” Then too, she’d no desire to gawk at caged animals, regardless of their species or gender.
And she really should spend time with the ledgers, because something was off about The Pleasure House’s accounting.
He kissed her cheek, bringing Letty a whiff of tooth powder and sandalwood. “And when your livelihood wasn’t in question?”
“If I ever reached a point where I felt all the work to be done was taken care of, I might like to see Richmond gardens, but until that day…”
“Your education,” David said, kissing her forehead, “has been neglected. Recreation is important, Letty, as is appeasing one’s curiosity, and getting out of ruts from time to time. You’ll find some of your clothing hanging in the wardrobe in the dressing room. When you’re dressed, meet me in the library.”
He stepped away and disappeared into the dressing room himself, and Letty had the sense of a fairy tale coming to its necessary, if not ideal, conclusion. With the quickness characteristic of him—when not in bed—David was moving into his day, their interlude in his bedroom taking its place under the heading “recreation,” no doubt.
Exactly where it should be.
When she arrived to the library, David was sitting at his big desk, impeccably attired in a gentleman’s informal day wear.
“Do you use a valet?”
“On occasion, but seldom in the mornings,” David said without looking up from his reading. Letty stood a few feet from him, feeling more than a little out of place.
David held out an arm, still without looking up from his reading. “Come here.”
Reluctantly, Letty stepped to his side, much of her joy in the past twenty-four hours draining from her. Marry me. Come here. Meet me in the library.
Their interlude hadn’t been recreation. She was the recreation.
David looked up from his reading and wrapped his arm around Letty’s waist.
“This morning, I will be busy. First, Thomas will come and harangue me about various business matters, ordering me to do this and that, and see to the other. He is quite the martinet, is Mr. Jennings. Then I will see to my correspondence until luncheon, which is usually served at one of the clock. I have two social calls to make this afternoon, between which I will ride in the park, but I should be back here by four of the clock to take tea with you.”
His recitation of the day’s schedule was rapid-fire, his diction precise. He had an empire to run, and run it he did. If he moved at this pace every day, and often stayed late at The Pleasure House, when did he sleep? When did he see his many nieces and nephews? When did he make use of this impressive library?
And why did Letty abruptly feel as if some of the tears aching in her throat should be for him?
“So what, Letty Banks, would you like to do this day?” he asked, pulling her onto his lap.
She’d like to marry him, of course.
“I would like to spend the morning at my house, and do some shopping this afternoon. I also have mending—Monday is for mending—though I can meet you for tea, if you like.”
The mending would keep, or Fanny could see to it—the woman had done little enough since making plans to leave Letty’s household—though stitching together what had torn was
an oddly soothing undertaking.
“You don’t want to laze about naked in my chambers all day, on the off chance that I might enjoy your favors rather than the occasional cup of tea?” David nuzzled her breast, but when Letty made no reply, he stopped.
“Letty, I was teasing.”
“Were you?”
“Mostly.” He rested his brow against the fullness of her breast. “I am new to this… situation, just as you are. Be patient with me, Letty, please?”
Had any man, ever, asked for her patience?
“You would have me set up in a tidy little house in a quiet neighborhood. All my bills sent to you, and my schedule always open for your pleasure?”
And what was wrong with her, that she hadn’t allowed it?
“If asked a year ago,” he replied, sitting back, “I might have said that is exactly what I wanted from a mistress. I wanted a pleasant convenience and value for my coin. But you are not my mistress, are you?”
“No. I am not.”
And she could not be his wife, which left a vast, cold desert of unfulfilled wishes and frustrated longing between them.
“I want as much as you are willing to give me, on your terms and at your convenience. This is an affair, Letty, not an arrangement. By your order, it cannot yet be more.”
“Yet?”
“You have refused my suit,” David said, dropping his arms from around her. “I do not give up easily on my objectives.”
“I am not an objective.” Not a convenience, not a wife. What on earth was he doing with her?
He stroked a hand along her cheek. “You are so serious. We are involved for the sake of mutual pleasure. If you want to spend the day at your house, then we’ll have the carriage brought ’round, and I’ll see you at four. It needn’t be complicated.”
“A plain coach.” A sop to her dignity. “And I will see you at five.” She’d see to her mending, knowing it was a kind of penance imposed by the vicar’s daughter on the woman who would never be anybody’s wife.
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