Lizzie Tempest Ruins A Viscount (Felmont Brides Series Book 1)

by Maggie Jagger

Chapter 3

  Lizzie hid in the shadow of Felmont’s Folly on a quest to bargain with the Beast. Morning dew still lingered underfoot close to the walls. Soon it would be discovered she had escaped from her bedroom through a jib door in the paneling. A convenient bolt-hole added at little cost when her stepfather went insane from syphilis and began to wander the house looking for her dead mother.

  The stables crawled with the viscount’s friends. They seemed to prefer the company of grooms to that of the Felmont family. Who could blame them?

  She eased away from the golden stone to look up at the library window. She hoped the Beast had not drunk himself into a stupor in there. Drat the man! Why could he not just have explained the problem like a civilized man? Instead, he had to threaten to burn the house, and use his justified distress for an excuse to touch her. Yes, he did have reason to be angry, but he had no reason to blame her when she knew nothing about it.

  Escaping from her bedroom had been easy. Escaping from her fate was impossible. She had not a penny to spend, but she was worth a fortune to any man able to force her into marriage. She did not need reminders from Aunt Tempest that the roads around Felmont’s Folly were perilous.

  Highwaymen terrified her since a French one had robbed her mother of the Felmont family jewels and he’d deliberately broken Lizzie’s arm by stepping on her. No doubt, to make her mother obey him.

  To be found wandering friendless surely meant a fate worse than death.

  Lizzie had cleverly captured two of the youngest footmen to assist her when she almost fell over them on the service stairs. They were not happy to spy on the Beast, but by sheer force of will Lizzie had persuaded Charles Thwaite to balance precariously on his twin brother’s clasped hands.

  Arthur, teeth gritted, held Charles up so he could peer over the library’s windowsill. The slope of the land, up towards the fell that loomed behind the Folly, meant there was no rustic layer under the north side of the house. Entering through the French doors on the low terrace was out of the question, they led to the reception room where a host of female Felmonts sipped tea and plotted against her.

  If her uncles discovered her skulking in the shadows, the next time she met the Beast would be at the altar. Lizzie had to negotiate with him before then to have any hope of buying his good behavior.

  “Arthur, you’ll have to get me a ladder from the stables. There must be one there.” She stepped closer to the wall, not wanting to be seen from the windows.

  The young man gave a hiss of distress and released his grip on his brother’s foot. They both landed in a heap on the grass at her feet.

  “You can’t go in the window, Miss.” Arthur scrambled to his feet and helped his brother up. “You ’ave to go round by the door. Our Jim will beat us into tomorrow if we let you climb a ladder.”

  Charles, very red in the face, whispered something incomprehensible to his twin. They huddled under the window and seemed to speak a foreign tongue to each other. Frequent hand waving at the library window attested to the young man’s distress at what he had seen.

  Arthur shook his head, now as red in the face as his brother. “Never! Gawd!”

  Lizzie interrupted, not daring to let her hysteria show. “What is going on in the library, Charles? Surely the viscount has not had time to debauch anyone yet?”

  His words came out in a mad rush. “What is going on in there is something no gentleman should do to another gentleman. I am not going to say more, it’s not proper. But I do think the doctor is checking ’im out for you, Miss Tempest.” The reproof was plain in his tone of voice.

  Lizzie colored to her ears. If her uncles could make him submit to so loathsome an examination, then they had him firmly under their control. There was no hope left. The viscount would be in no mood to listen to reason after that—not that he had ever listened to reason in his life.

  But he was a Felmont, a poor Felmont. And what Felmont couldn’t be bought for a large enough sum? Lizzie was going to have to bribe him or die in the attempt.

  “We will wait a few minutes, then you must go back up and see if they have finished,” she ordered.

  But minutes later neither young man could be persuaded to risk it.

  “Then I’ll see for myself.” What else could she do? If anyone caught sight of her, she was doomed!

  Shocked, the twins refused. If she didn’t prevail on them soon, they’d be off to tell the world where she was hiding.

  Arthur asked respectfully, “Shall I go round by the door to see if our James ’as finished holding the viscount down, Miss? Shall I fetch him for you?”

  “No. You are being most unhelpful. Clasp your hands, both of you, and lift me up to the window. My very life depends on it! Charles, Arthur, didn’t your mother tell you to do as I bid you?”

  Mrs. Thwaite, the twins’ mother, had nursed the Beast at her breast then fostered him for seven years until he was sent to school. It was rumored she treated him like one of her own, which meant she fed him and beat him in almost equal proportions.

  The Thwaite family had fallen on hard times recently. Lizzie employed members of the family to aid them. It had also annoyed the Beast’s father—always a worthy cause.

  Chastened, the two youths heeded their mother’s command to obey her and braced themselves against the golden stone.

  Lizzie stepped into their hands and within moments found herself clinging to the windowsill, trying to see over it. She was too short or those annoying footmen were not lifting her high enough to allow her to see inside the library. She clung to the golden ledge with her fingertips, looked down and whispered, “Higher….”

  The window opened.

  Strong hands plucked her upwards at an alarming rate. Lizzie’s scream faded away to nothing. The Beast did not drag her into his lair. It was only James.

  His handsome face wore a horrified look as he dragged her through the window. His presence reassured her that she did not have to face the Beast alone.

  Her hip scraped against the edge of the stone sill. Her feet tangled with one another. James seemed not to know where to place his hands and dropped her as soon as she was safely through the window. The carpet broke her fall.

  If only she had not landed on the Turkey rug, not far from the viscount’s sprawling limbs. He glanced quickly at her ankles and then slumped deeper in his chair with his eyes closed.

  “You are displaying your witchy sticks, Lizzie. I do hope nothing is broken. Be warned, the doctor has cold hands and no sympathy whatsoever,” he drawled in a weary voice. His right arm lay in a sling across his chest. “If he tries to examine you, tell him I’ll run him through. Damn! That didn’t stop him from touching me, did it Jim?”

  Lizzie covered her ankles. James Thwaite, under-steward and foster brother to the Beast, helped her to rise. The two men were almost the same age, but James was everything the Beast was not—safe, sensible and sober, with a nose of decent and modest proportions, with a character to match. She ignored his apology and just held his gloved hands until she’d recovered.

  “I am sorry, Miss Tempest, I thought you were one of the twins. I saw someone peeping in earlier.” James retreated to shut the window, leaving the rest of his rebuke unspoken.

  He looked very much a Thwaite with his curly brown hair, which he wore cropped short. They were a handsome family. Lizzie had depended on his aid when her stepfather had raged in madness, she depended on him now.

  The Beast gave a low laugh. “Dearest Lizzie, were you spying on me? Perhaps you have lain awake languishing.” His gaze swept over her, lingering only on her hand rubbing her hip. “Are you hurt?”

  Lizzie stopped easing her pain. She tried to restore herself to some modicum of dignity. A straggling lock of hair fell over one eye. She stroked it back behind an ear.

  The Beast was in his shirtsleeves, showing her his powerful shoulders. At the throat, his shirt was open enough for her to see a little of his chest at the neck. She could even see slightly through his shirt. He wore noth
ing underneath it but a bandage for his shoulder. Where was his coat? A gentleman did not display himself like this in front of a lady.

  A fire burned in the hearth to counteract the morning chill. The new rugs gave a warm note to the golden slate floors. It was not her fault that no books lined the walls. The Beast’s father had taken them when he had looted everything else movable.

  The viscount closed his eyes. Did he mean to doze off in front of her?

  He had shed his boots and now he stretched out his long legs. Clad in dark buckskin that fit him like a glove, revealing the muscles of his legs and the rounded swellings of his horrid male parts, which no doubt ruled him. His stocking-clad feet toasted by the hearth while he rested his head on a tapestry cushion, looking like an oriental despot with his high cheekbones and long Felmont nose.

  Lizzie smoothed the creases from her dark dress and composed herself so she could speak calmly. “I have a proposition to put to you, Felmont.”

  A weary upraising of his left hand denied her speech.

  Its effect was immediate. Drat the man! Her knees began to shake. What was she going to do? Why should he listen? She was doomed.

  He said, with a strange glint in his eyes that did not bode well, “Only going to listen if I can look at you, Lizzie. Can I? It has been over ten years since you banned me.” He crossed his legs at the ankle and turned a little in his deep chair to examine the pattern in the carpet next to her feet.

  He had obeyed her command not to look at her face, only to show her how foolish she was. It had not helped diminish her fear of him. “Yes, you can look at me.”

  His gaze slid over to her feet then traveled up her body. She felt suddenly as if she had not enough clothes on. He lingered with a despairing expression at her breasts and then looked upwards to stare into her eyes. It made her shiver to feel the intensity of his gaze—not a Felmont stare of disdain—could it be a look of longing? It made her frisson of fright worse to think she might be the object of his lust. Whatever he felt, he swiftly hid it as his mouth quirked down in a wry smile.

  “Thank you, Miss Tempest, I have seen enough. The door is over there.” He studied her reaction to his insult with an innocent expression on his face.

  “Beast!” she muttered, stifling an urge to say more. Of all the men in England, he must be the most annoying.

  Her anger made her feel better, stronger. The tremble in her knees ceased. She resisted the urge to swat him.

  “The problem, dear Lizzie, is that I am not beast enough.” He glanced over her head at James. “Get the lady a chair, Jim.”

  James took care to place the side chair so she could look at the viscount’s profile while he stared at the fire. She felt safer keeping him in sight.

  “Care for a brandy, Lizzie?” the Beast asked, as though he knew she was in need of something to steady her nerves.

  “Thank you, yes.” Lizzie could only hope it helped.

  “Will you join us, Jim?” asked the viscount.

  James refused with a shake of his head. He brought two small satinwood tables nearer their chairs for their glasses, then stood behind her, on guard, as he had so many times before.

  Her very first taste of brandy burned her throat on the way down. She coughed. “I must talk to you, Felmont, about marriage.” There, she had said it.

  His long face lit up with amusement, or was it relief?

  “Be careful, Lizzie.” He studied the shifting embers. “I have precious little resolve left to refuse you. If you’ve just had an earful of threats from one Tempest brother, know that I received some choice words from the other. I am bankrupt. My father’s fortune, small as it was, has gone to repay part of the debt to you. I no longer own the Priory and have not their permission to live there.”

  “So I have just found out. I’m very sorry for your loss. My uncles told me nothing about ruining you.” Lizzie took another deep breath. “We must make a pact. I am willing to solve all your financial problems.”

  “Are you sure the price will not be too high?” The Beast rubbed his shoulder. “Open the window, Jim, I can’t abide the smell of liniment.”

  “I regret striking you on the shoulder, I didn’t know you had been wounded there. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you,” Lizzie apologized fervently and hoped he wouldn’t offer to show it to her. She was relieved to see him sip his brandy with no threats of vengeance or thoughts of exposing his wound. A vague nod was his only reply.

  She looked to see if James had returned to stand behind her. Lizzie gave him a quick encouraging smile before returning her attention to the Beast.

  “I see Miss Tempest smiles on you, Jim. It is more than I ever had from her. Go and see if Rackham has managed to escape the aunts.” He waited for the under-steward to obey him.

  James didn’t move. She knew he wouldn’t leave her.

  “Are you refusing a direct order?” For some reason the Beast found his question amusing. He laughed out loud. “I should fire the lot of you. Worst servants I ever came across.”

  “Please be quiet, Felmont. They will hear you outside. I want you to know the Thwaites will always have employment in my house.” Lizzie hastily added, “Wherever that might be.”

  The Beast obeyed her command for only the second time in his life and lapsed into a gloomy silence.

  Lizzie hurried into her first attempt to buy a life of safety away from him. “If you feel yourself trapped, without resources, then let us marry and lead completely separate lives. You shall have half my fortune to spend as you wish.”

  “If I married you I’d get all of it, and you into the bargain.” His tone made clear his distaste for her. He appeared to have gone into a sulk, staring at the fire.

  “You don’t get me, absolutely not—except in the legal sense, not in the physical one. Besides, you have made it perfectly clear I turn your stomach.” Her own churned at the thought of close proximity to him. “However, if you did marry me in name only, I’d let you have two-thirds of my fortune. You’d be free to do anything you liked. Live in any house, do as you wish. I’d live far away. Scotland, perhaps.”

  “Let me remind you of what I want, so you can stop trying to buy me with your fortune.” He sighed and leaned an elbow on the arm of his chair. “Please do not mock me for my simple needs. I want a wife, children, and a home. I want to fall in love and marry for love. I want to have a family, Lizzie. A family of my own. A wife I can love, who loves me. Not one who tries to poison me. Not one who hates me. Not one who prayed for my death every night of her life, or so you said.”

  “I was eight! You threw me into the lake then waded in to drown me.” She was not going to let him get away with rewriting their history.

  “I was trying to rescue you, Lizzie.”

  “I would not have needed rescuing,” she snapped, “if you had not thrown me in!” The lock of hair fell down over her face. She pushed it back with the wrong hand and if James had not reached out to take her brandy, she’d have poured it over herself, and it would have been the Beast’s fault.

  “Pax, dearest Lizzie. I apologize for the lake and for the countless times I tormented you by my presence. If you’ll forgive me, I promise you may keep all your fortune under your control, if you agree to bear my children.”

  His low voice vibrated through her. The Beast wanted her to share his bed? A rush of dizziness swept over her. She could barely get words out through her clenched teeth.

  “Never! You may have all my fortune, if you let me live apart from you.” Drat the man! Now was not the time for her voice to start quavering.

  “I need an heir, Lizzie. I want to have legitimate children. If we marry, you have to bear them.” He stared over at her with a frown creasing his brow. “Lizzie, don’t look at me as if I have a forked tail.” His sigh reverberated down to her toes. “Don’t look so scared, I’ll trouble you as little as necessary.” He gave a muttered curse, “Hellfire and damnation. This is useless. I cannot do it.”

  The viscount put a prot
ective hand on his shoulder and got out of his chair with a look of such disgust on his face that Lizzie shrank back until her chair creaked.

  James brushed past to shield her from view. “You had better lay on the divan, my lord, if you know what’s good for you. I want you to remember Miss Tempest has been kindness itself to us.”

  “Go to hell, Jim. If you start my lording me, I’ll throw you in the lake.” The viscount swayed on his feet while James dragged the long divan nearer the fire, closer to her chair. “You’re right, I should lie down. Wouldn’t like to faint at Lizzie’s feet at the thought of marrying her. That wouldn’t be polite at all.”

  The Beast reclined perilously close to her knees. He spoke in a low, cajoling voice. “Carry on bargaining with me, Lizzie, it’s most entertaining. Takes my mind off the pain. Where had we got to? Oh, yes! You get to keep your money, though you’d have to pay the bills. There never was a Felmont who could manage money. I get to have children. Seems fair to me. You can hope you will conceive quickly. You can be sure I’ll strive mightily to do my part.” He turned to look at James. “I’m not putting you to the blush, am I?”

  Lizzie squirmed on her chair to better face the Beast. “You can have children with your mistress. You could visit me in Scotland and return with the babies, pretending they are ours.”

  Groans came from the Beast, even James gave a snort.

  “Do you really think your uncles will be satisfied with us marrying and leading separate lives? Society will think I have shunned you.” He paused to stare above her head at James who seemed to be mouthing words to the viscount behind her back. “We can only hope our children get your nose, not mine. What was your insult? My satanic nostrils?” The corner of his mouth curved in a half smile, he tilted his head to one side. “What is that noise?”

  Lizzie had not noticed. She could hear it now. The servants were taking chairs to the chapel. Her mother had wanted a conservatory to adjoin the ballroom. Asking for a chapel had been an easy way to pry the funds from Uncle Tempest. Felmont’s Folly had the only consecrated conservatory in Christendom.

  There was Uncle Percy leading a search party as he called her name. The last place they would think to look for her was in here with the viscount. She had to make him see sense.

  “Jim, go and tell them to work quietly. Tell them I am asleep, refreshing myself for the wedding night.” He turned to her. “Lizzie, there is really no need to get agitated. We’ll just have to hope I recover from your violence eventually or there can never be any activities that make children.” He waved James away. “Out, Jim. We must have our reunion another time. I think Miss Tempest means to have me, and these negotiations must be private.”

  “James.” Lizzie darted after the under-steward. “You will wait by the door? In case I need you?”

  “Of course, Miss Tempest.” He called to the viscount, “Treat her right or you’ll get a clattering from Ma, my lord.”

  “Out Jim! Lizzie, come back here. How can we get married if you won’t be alone with me?”

  The door closed. Lizzie returned to stand behind her chair. “I have not agreed to marry you, Felmont. Unless you agree to a marriage in name only, I shall never marry you.”

  The Beast sat up to stretch his legs along the length of the divan. He looked almost sympathetic. “The one thing I wanted, the one thing I dreamed of to keep me sane in the madness of war, was my home with a wife and children to love.”

  He gave a weary sigh. “I am ruined financially and socially if you don’t marry me and I forfeit everything I yearn for if you do. Bargain with me, Lizzie. Negotiate some way for us to have children together. At least give me that. I swear you will not have to suffer me often if you cannot stand my touch.”

  A tear slid down her cheek. She firmly quelled another by scrunching her toes fiercely inside her shoes, a useful trick learned in trying times. “If I did marry you, Felmont, and we–,” she gulped a frantic breath of air. “And we had children together. I’d expect you to be faithful to me. Do you really expect me to allow you to catch a disease to infect me?”

  She knew he understood exactly what she feared and why she feared it. Her mother had caught syphilis from her Felmont husband and they had both died from it.

  “I am aware of the dangers and will take every precaution needed to keep us both safe. If you deny me a mistress, you’d have to share your body with me.” He spoke in a soothing voice as if he didn’t speak of wickedness, as if they were talking of breeding orchids or roses. “Are you sure you want that? Wouldn’t it be easier to just bear my children and let a mistress take care of the rest?”

  He picked up his glass from the table beside him. “To be honest, I must warn you I yearn for a woman’s love, to have and to hold, whenever it pleases me to please her.” He seemed to drift off into sinful thoughts. “Can you satisfy those urges in me, dearest Lizzie, or would you deny me my wants and scold me for them?” He gave a look of mock sorrow as if he sympathized with her plight. “I think you must agree to a mistress.”

  “It would not be—when you please or how you please.” Lizzie had heard of some of the disgusting ways men used women when her stepfather had raved in madness.

  Lizzie held her head high and lied like a Felmont. “I shall never marry you if you insist on a mistress. As for your appetite for sin, I might consent to endure it occasionally. Once a month is all I offer. Surely you can live with that? It isn’t as if you find me the least bit attractive.”

  Lizzie saw him try to quell his laughter as he signaled his refusal of her offer.

  She slid into her chair before she spoke again. “Then once a week, if you are going to insist on being depraved.”

  He gave a half shrug with his one good shoulder. “Lizzie, I’m a Felmont. I can only promise not to bother you more than I have to.”

  “No! There must be rules!” She arranged her dark skirts to make sure her ankles were not showing.

  “Set them at your peril,” he warned in a gentle voice. “If you insist on fidelity, you get all of me and I get you, to please as often as I yearn to. Think well before you demand fidelity, Lizzie.”

  He set down his glass as a tremor shook him. A drop of brandy drizzled down to wet his hand. “Tell me your rules, and they had better include every day and every night, or allow me a mistress.”

  Every night? To use her as he pleased? It cheered her to think he found her so unattractive that he shuddered with disgust at the idea. How could she endure him? Yet she must give in to get him to live by her rules in this matter, to win some measure of safety. She’d agree to whatever she must to be safe from that dreadful disease. There was no choice about marrying him, so she had to make him agree to be faithful.

  How often was the least he’d need her? Every night if she had to, but not every day. Surely even Felmonts could find other interests during the day?

  She took a deep breath. “I will come to you at midnight and you can behave like the Beast you are. After you have finished sinning, I shall return to my room and you will have to wait until the next midnight to satisfy your horrid urges.” What was she saying? Could she even endure it once? How was she going to stand his attentions night after night?

  The fire sighed in the hearth as he whispered, “Every midnight? You’d come to share my bed?”

  She answered in a rush. “I shall leave after you have finished and you must content yourself with waiting until the next midnight. I shall not be importuned any time you feel like using me. My mother was never left alone.”

  Lizzie shuddered at the thought. “I could not live, worried you might decide to have an urge. Never knowing when, and fearing to be subject to your lust at any time, Felmont. I could not endure it.”

  “So we are agreed, every midnight you will sin with me?” He propped his chin on his hand, devilment written on every plane of his face, though he tried to hide it.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” she snapped.

  “Like what, Lizzie?”

 
“As if you are having an urge!” Lizzie couldn’t meet his amused gaze. “Be warned, I shall leave you if you are not faithful. That is part of the pact. You must agree to let me go.”

  “Dearest Lizzie, I shall agree to your terms on one condition. During the day we appear to be a devoted couple. You do not abuse me verbally. You dine with me, every meal including breakfast. If I cannot have a wife who cares for me, then let me have one who pretends to. If you drink tea at any time, night or day, you must invite me to join you. And, Lizzie, you must never strike me.”

  “The same rules apply to you.” She tried to think of something she could deny him.

  He placed a hand on his heart. “I have never struck you, Lizzie.”

  “You have never stopped verbally abusing me, not for an instant.” The look of injured innocence on his long face made her furious. “If you wish to share my tea, then you must agree to drink only the brandy I pour for you. And you must promise the instant you stray—I am free.”

  “Agreed!” He leaned forward to toss the dregs from his brandy glass into the fire. Flames blasted from the hearth as if she’d made a deal with the devil. “Say it, dearest Lizzie, and let there be peace between us from now on.”

  “Agreed!” She had only to catch him being unfaithful to be free of him. Felmonts were neither faithful to their wives nor discreet in their affairs, and they died from the consequences, as she might.

  “Shall we seal our pact with a kiss, dearest Lizzie?” He paused to smile at her. “If you are going to turn pale at the thought of kissing me, it is with relief I remind you that I am injured and unable to manage my husbandly duties tonight. You must be gentle with me and pray I recover eventually.”

  Perhaps she had damaged him for life! No, she didn’t wish him harm, she just wanted to be safe from his Felmont nature.

  “Dear betrothed, as you are fitter than I, it is your duty to cross the few feet of carpet that separates us and kiss me. On the lips, dearest Lizzie, or our pact is useless, for if you cannot do that then I cannot marry you, because all your promises are lies.”

  Feeling lightheaded, Lizzie struggled to her feet. She walked over to him on shaky legs. The Beast smelled of liniment mixed with brandy. He slid down to rest his head on the back of the divan and closed his eyes. She bent over him and hesitated on how best to approach close enough to kiss him.

  She leaned over him. Her troublesome lock of hair fell down to hit him squarely on his long Felmont nose. His eyes flew open. She gave a gasp and held onto the divan for support. “My apologies for startling you, Lizzie,” he said through gritted teeth. “If I may point out that you are holding my injured shoulder.”

  He moved her fingers to pull her lower and lower, until at last her lips skimmed over his.

  She had kissed the Beast.

  His bristly chin had not touched her. She had managed it quite well. The thumping sounds reverberating through her were from the servants moving chairs in the ballroom, not from her cowardly heart.

  His warm fingers stroked her hand.

  “What are they threatening you with, Lizzie? It must be something truly awful. What is it?” His concern sounded sincere. For that reason alone, she answered.

  “An insane asylum. Uncle Tempest says if I don’t marry you, I make him look foolish for allowing me to save Felmont’s Folly. Bankers live by their reputations, you see, he will have me locked up.”

  Lizzie pulled her fingers away to stop his disturbing touch. “I must marry you, Felmont, to escape a worse fate.”