by JayneFresina
"Perhaps that young lady should learn not to make an exhibit of herself then and hold her temper."
"And others should hold their tongue? Especially those of greater maturity. After all, does not everybody make an occasional mistake that they might not care to have bandied about, to follow them wherever they go? What is the saying? Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable."
Two hot spots of color blossomed on her cheeks in the sun's glare. She reached around and shut the window.
"Lady Winstanley, I don't care for snakes in the grass and I believe, in Louisiana, they eat them. In a stew."
She leaned away from him until her head almost hit the glass. Her eyes widened.
"I wouldn't like to be on Mrs. Du Bois' bad side. I have seen her in a rage, and she's quite a fighter. So if I were you, I'd take care of the rumors I listened to about those women. I might even make an effort to put it about that they are very pleasant, virtuous, modest young ladies, and if anybody tried to whisper otherwise in my ear, being a friend of Mrs. Du Bois, I would take issue with it. I would put them in their place, set them right. Because it would be most unwise to make an enemy of your friend. And their friends." All this he said very evenly, quietly, his tone conversational. "Don't you think, your ladyship?"
She worked her mouth, her eyes watering. He suspected she'd bitten her tongue.
"It would be the decent thing to do," he added. "After all, one needs one's friends in this world. They are few and far between. And when one has a very good friend— regardless of where they came from— one never knows who their friends might be, or what powers they might have at their disposal."
Finally she cleared her throat. "Yes. I see. I shall look into it at once, and take steps if I find that anybody here has been—"
"Shoveling the horse-shit?" He shifted back a step and nodded solemnly. "I'm sure Mrs. Du Bois would be grateful, as would Mr. Prospero Piper and any friends of his."
"I see," she said again.
"Well, I shall leave you to proceed with your journey, Lady Winstanley. May you have a pleasant, quiet summer in the country." He gave a quick bow and walked out.
Lady Lucille Winstanley was one woman who would be in no danger of thinking him charming, he mused.
* * * *
He tried to put Miss Piper— her shoulders, her eyes, her lips, her hands and her curves— out of his mind by sating himself in bed with his lover.
It didn't work.
Lady Elizabeth might have appreciated the sudden burst of savage enthusiasm in her bed, but Damon felt only dissatisfaction and failure. And he didn't approve of failure.
He began to feel a sense of relief whenever Elizabeth had some obligation that kept her at her husband's side for a few days and when summer came she, along with the rest of "Society", fled to the country. Damon, enjoying the peace, threw himself into his work again, living a life that his brother mocked as "austere".
Lady Roper, who also remained in Town, probably to escape her husband's company, often called upon him for assistance dealing with crooked landlords, leaking roofs and over-flowing gutters. He refused his fee. These tasks didn't take up much of his time, and he liked the sense of accomplishment they brought to him. But the lady still insisted upon sending baskets of baked goods to his office and sometimes a bottle or two of very good wine.
Through a short note from Miss Piper's aunt, sent to Tobias Stempenham, he learned that they too were leaving London, but there was no mention of where they were going. A few times he rode by the house they had rented in Belgravia, but there was no sign of life within and soon the windows were boarded up, suggesting that even the servants were gone. There was nobody left to ask where they went. If Ransom had any further information about them, he didn't volunteer it, and Damon wouldn't ask. He knew better than to prod Ransom's curiosity any further on that subject and risk more taunting. He had felt the danger of getting too attached to her, too possessive.
But toward the end of that summer a new rumor surfaced quietly. One of the Miss Pipers was engaged to be married, and Lord Boxall was the gentleman hinted at in the matter. Damon hesitated to believe it of her. She was too clever, too determined to get her own way, to fall into that trap with Boxall. On the other hand, her aunt was also a force with which to be reckoned. Had Nonesuch finally put her pirate sword aside, allowed her resolve to be broken down, and accepted a man for his title?
"Those American girls are very bold, so I hear," Lady Roper said to him one day as they played chess in her parlor.
Startled, he looked up from the board. "American girls?"
"Yes. Those young girls you asked me and my dear friends to help put out into Society."
"Ah. Yes. They are quite bold. Confident. I am advised they do things differently in America."
She nodded. "They have their attractions, of course. Some men like that wild streak. Alicia Renwick is acquiring one of them for her appalling godson, Bertie, poor thing."
Which subject of that sentence, he mused, was the "poor thing".
"They are rich, of course." The lady sighed. "That brings the worms out of the woodwork, and Bertie spent through his fortune the moment he came into it."
"I'm quite sure those women can handle the worms," he said, managing a tight smile. "They're rather independent-minded."
But even as he attempted to remain cheerful, this conversation with Lady Roper seemed to suggest that the worst had occurred.
The weather changed and autumn swept in, blowing dead leaves across his path, sending fog to meet him in the early morning as he rode to the offices of Stempenham and Pitt. A chill set in, and it seemed to reach right inside to his bones. Shadows followed him wherever he went, echoes of Miss Piper's laughter, faint traces of her scent on the neck cloth she'd once retied for him— he left it unlaundered— and the bloody cheerful newsboy by the park railings, who was always eager to ask whether he'd seen her lately.
Then Elizabeth Stanbury returned to town. Traveling ahead of her husband and apparently eager to see her lover, she came to Damon's lodgings early one morning, waking him from his bed. Her iciness had thawed somewhat, her summer in the country being less enjoyable than she expected and making her— so she said— miss his company.
When he saw bruises on her wrists, she treated them lightly, but made no effort to deny they were her husband's doing.
"You should leave him," Damon told her, hastily pulling a shirt over his head, wondering why she surprised him with this visit after those summer months of no communication whatsoever. It had been his plan to end their affair as soon as he saw her again, but she caught him by surprise that day and, for once, there was a fragile vulnerability about her.
She'd never been to his lodgings before, and she looked terribly out of place in those tidy, but plain, sparse surroundings.
"Leave Lord Stanbury?" She'd laughed, and it was like ice cracking on a pond, a sharp, jagged sound that raised every hair on his body, and made him fear somebody might need rescuing. "And do what? Live in a place like this?"
Of course, Elizabeth refused to entertain the notion of separation from her husband. She was trapped in her unhappy marriage, as much as poor Lady Roper was in hers. To leave George Stanbury would mean leaving life, as she knew it, behind. It was unthinkable and so she put up with the hardships in order to enjoy the luxuries of financial comfort. Mercenary, but how could he fault her for that? He was not romantic either and understood the way the world turned.
"At least I have you, do I not?" she said to Damon, her blue eyes cool and brave as she drew a fingernail slowly down his unshaven cheek. "My one, simple pleasure. You cannot deny me that."
She came to him, and only him, with those bruises on her pale skin and the autumn chill clinging to her hair. There was no one else in whom she could confide, no one else to give her comfort. Or so she said. If he shut his door to her and he later learned that something dreadful had happened, he would never forgive himself.
Damon had many faults, but he could not turn his back on a woman in trouble. It was a failing he had only recently come to see in himself, although it must always have been there.
Elizabeth needed him, and she had no one else, it seemed.
"How I have missed you," she purred against his neck, "and...this."
There was nothing he could say in return, but she didn't notice his silence.
As she had said to him before, it wasn't his conversation that she needed, in any case. Unlike a certain other woman of his acquaintance, Elizabeth was not much of a talker.
It was their last time and over in a moment. Later he told her it could not continue. He would help her— find some way for her to separate from Stanbury. He could advise her, protect her. Eventually, perhaps, he could help her stand on her own two feet.
She looked at him with an expression he did not recognize.
Months later he would remember that strange look on her face and only then would he realize that she came to him that day— to his humble lodgings—for one reason only. It had made her seem more vulnerable than usual, when she was not surrounded by the luxury of her hotel suite. But when it was done she wanted no more "help" from him. He had served his purpose.
By the time he understood all this, of course, it was too late.
Part II
Mulier Est Hominis Confusio
"It's merely business."
- Damon Deverell 1850
Chapter Thirteen
December 1850
Somewhere on the Yorkshire moors
Fat fists of bitter cold, spiteful wind pummeled the sides of the carriage and rocked it violently from side to side, while other unseen, rioting hands pelted snow at the small window. Mother Nature and her minions shuddered and howled around him in a savage, primeval rage, as if some terrible, ancient injustice had been committed against her. Surely the world was ending and they would all soon be sucked into a void of despair. It was chaos, madness to be out traveling in such a storm.
Good. Perfect.
Tonight he relished the savage weather. It suited his vile mood. Suited him, in fact, in every way. Perhaps, he thought with dark humor, he'd finally found something that understood him. Somewhere he belonged. He'd become one with the tempest and traverse the countryside wrecking havoc. Why the hell not? Who could bloody well stop him?
With arms folded and chin buried beneath the high collar of his greatcoat, one booted foot propped up on the opposite seat of the swaying carriage, Damon Deverell stormily assessed his past, his present and his future, with the same ruthless, angry intensity in which he did most things.
It could never be an easy task, he thought grimly, for any son to bear upon his shoulders the weight of a father's greatest expectations. But when that father is True Deverell— a charismatic figure who, against all odds, raised himself from nothing and made his own fortune— the need to impress him, and the improbability of ever doing so, could become a weight of such unwieldy proportions that a young man's spirit is crushed beneath it.
And Damon, now almost five and twenty, had struggled restlessly under this encumbrance for many years.
Alas, although driven to succeed with the same powerful, natural urge that causes a dog to chase a rabbit, and often resented by his brothers for what they saw as favoritism, he suspected he still remained largely a disappointment to the one man whose approbation he'd ever wanted. His father's criticism came often; his praise rarely.
It had never stopped Damon trying or hoping, of course. Even when he told himself that he did neither. Looking back now, he saw how hard he had fought, how almost everything he did was done in some attempt to gratify his father.
Until now.
Six days ago, for the first time in his life, he had openly defied the man. Oh, he'd threatened to do so before, but for once his temper was stretched to the limit and in that moment of awakening— when he opened his eyes to what his life had become—he acted on that threat.
Years before, his father had said to him, "While I expect all my cubs to make the most of an education and the advantages I did not have, I anticipate the most from you. I see you going far, my boy. Farther than all of them."
So why was he singled out by True Deverell as the son with the greatest prospects? According to his father it was because he would never be led astray by his heart. Nothing would ever render a crack in his ruthless strength and uncompromising determination. His father recognized all that, even in Damon's youngest days.
"You're a fortress, boy. A merciless bull shark." Only his father could speak of those characteristics as if they were favorable. "We'll see you in parliament one day."
That was one of True Deverell's greatest ambitions for his fourth son, of course. Just one of them.
And what did Damon want? As a boy he would have joined the navy, given the chance. But his father steered him away from that idea and Damon, yearning— above all else— to please the man around whom his world revolved, let himself be steered. Apparently his "ruthless strength" was nothing when it came up against his father's will. But, as a certain young lady once said to him, two walls have nothing to do, except stand against each other.
Damon often felt his father's restless frustration and wondered why that usually perceptive man did not feel his in return. Perhaps True Deverell mistook it for something else, after all he had assumed his son had control of life. He'd assumed a great deal.
"You're not nearly as jolly good fun as your brothers," a woman said to him once, her tone accusatory.
"No," he'd replied somberly. "I don't have my siblings' capacity for rampant, carefree disorderliness. But then, somebody has to keep their wits about them."
Those who had known his father as a young man saw a remarkable resemblance in Damon. But was that, he wondered now, a result of nature, or of having molded himself into the instrument through which True Deverell might fulfill his own ambitions?
Damon matriculated at Cambridge university when he was just sixteen, graduated at nineteen, and then spent only two and a half years studying at Gray's Inn before being called to the bar. His meteoric rise, so he'd been told, was unprecedented. All this made him what his sister called a "prodigy". But really he thought it was boredom and restlessness that drove him to accomplish so much, so quickly. He could never get enough, never get quite what he wanted. He blazed through books like a wildfire through a dry forest, wrote faster than anybody he knew, absorbed information like a sponge, and remembered, down to the tiniest detail, every little thing he'd eaten at dinner on the eighteenth of February in the year 1840.
As a child, people had thought him odd. Then he learned to hide his unique skills and tuck them down inside. Perhaps that was why he created an imaginary friend, he mused. His friend, Nonesuch, didn't think him strange or annoying. She didn't mind his foibles and the way he had to keep everything in order. She held his hand without fear, without running away and exclaiming that she felt it throbbing with something dangerous.
The adult Damon took pride on being very much in control. While his siblings had a penchant for chaos and calamity, if Damon bumped into anything it was usually a calculated move to incapacitate his prey— like that bull shark with which he'd been compared.
Working in a law office he'd witnessed the turmoil and destruction that willful abandon and the pursuit of expensive pleasure brought to other men's lives, so he strove to avoid it. He was never generous on a whim, or foolishly extravagant. He hadn't gambled in years, never played games anymore, never let anybody pull the fleece over his eyes. Damon focused on his work and there was no room in his life for anything that he considered superfluous or purely decorative. His father wanted a bull shark, then he'd get one.
This desire to keep order, practicality and functionality was so rare among his siblings that it gave him the appearance of being a killjoy. He didn't mind that.
And sometimes it brought him frustration to a deadly degree. Which he did mind.
Damon Deverell was th
e son upon whom all hopes rested. A brilliant scholar with a steel-trap mind and the tenacity to succeed no matter what tried to stand in his way, he was supposed to get everything right. His father expected it from the son "most like" himself.
But, in the end, nobody knew Damon quite so well as they thought. Perhaps not even he.
Now, quite suddenly, order and business was in ruins around him. It had all begun to go seriously awry.
And why?
A woman, of course. Why else?
Ah yes, Lady Elizabeth Stanbury would pay for this when he caught up with her, he thought with dark relish, as the shuddering, lurching carriage bore him onward through the snow in as little comfort as if he were roped to a medieval wrack and left in the hands of the most accomplished inquisitor since Torquemada. Every ounce of discomfort he'd suffered on this journey would be added to the bill of what that female owed him. Then he'd collect with considerable interest.
No woman ran away from him. Especially not when she was carrying his child.
Few things, or people, had ever encouraged such an enraged reaction out of him that he threw aside his routine. Certainly nothing had ever caused him to turn his back on his father like this. That alone made it necessary to find Elizabeth and make this mess tidy again. If not, he had lost everything.
"You comprehend nothing of women," his father would mutter gruffly, if he were there tonight, sitting in the carriage with Damon. "You're four and twenty. I've got riding boots older than you, boy."
