With her heart slamming violently in her chest, she searched for the right words. Words that would explain what she wanted without looking like the wanton trollop that Doctor Langton probably already thought she was.
"John," she said, and took a step toward him then stopped. She needed the distance if she had any hope of getting this out. "I loved my husband." Oh God that sounded horrible. Especially considering what she was about to ask him. "At least in the beginning." Oh bloody hell that was even worse. "And at the end. Kind of."
She closed her eyes and shrank in on herself as she searched for a way to explain herself.
"He wasn't a kind man?" he asked.
Without opening her eyes, she shook her head. "No, he wasn't a mean man, John. He just..." Alison straightened up and looked at the man in front of her again. She could see the confusion on his face and knew she had mucked it up badly. She needed to say something to make him understand what she was trying to say. "We changed. Over time, we just kind of..." she shrugged her shoulders, "drifted apart. He had his life. And I had the girls."
John gingerly moved to the edge of the bed and regarded her with a contemplative look. One she was sure he had perfected over the years as a solicitor.
"Alright. Go on Ali. I'm sure there is more to this, or you would not be struggling so."
He did seem to understand, which made it easier. She turned, walked over to the chair by the bed, and dropped lifelessly into it. After taking a deep breath, she fixed him with what she hoped was a somber look.
"Phillip was a good man. But toward the end of our marriage he was rarely... around. In fact, he never saw Phyllis-our youngest child- before he died. I loved him but by the end of our marriage he wasn't the man I fell in love with. But he gave me my two greatest treasures, Rebecca and then Phyllis. And I shall forever be grateful for those wonderful gifts."
She shifted in her chair and then pressed on. "Actually, he gave me one other parting gift that I am very grateful for. He left me well situated so that neither I nor my daughters will ever have to worry about money, or a home, or how to put food on the table, which is more than I can say for a lot of the war widows that I know."
He nodded his head. "I have done free work for many of the women left in such circumstances."
She knew he had. It was one of the many things they had talked about. She nodded and then pressed on. "As a consequence, I do not have to marry. Nor do I wish to. Which is the intended purpose of courting."
His eyes clouded over and narrowed as he regarded her from behind hooded eyelids. He shook his head and asked, "Ali, what is it you are trying to tell me?"
She took a deep breath. In for a pence, in for a pound. "I do not wish to ever be a wife again. But," she swallowed the huge lump in her throat, "I have recently realized I have... certain..." Alison bit her lip because she couldn't go on.
"Needs," he supplied. Her eyes flew to him and she was not surprised at the non-judgmental tenderness she saw on his face. She swallowed and slowly nodded her head.
"Then, you wish to... be..." he said, and then faltered before finally getting it out. "What? My mistress?"
Alison fervently shook her head. "No, no. Not your mistress. I don't want or need your money. I just thought we could be..."
The light seemed to come on in his eyes. "Lovers," he breathed out. "You're asking me if I want to have an affair with you. Aren't you?"
She heard the hopeful note in his voice and closed her eyes and breathed before saying, "A very discrete affair. Or more like friends who just happen to be occasional love... lovers." Alison opened her eyes and fixed them on him. "I still have my daughters to think about, so it would have to be extremely discrete. I cannot afford to have any kind of scandal attached to my name."
He slumped back on the bed and regarded her intently. "Bloody hell," he softly hissed. "Bloody everlasting hell."
Chapter 6
"I've never felt so stupid in my life."
"Ali, you are not stupid. Nor do I think you are being ridiculous," Katie said.
"But you didn’t see his face or hear what he said when I made that... that scandalous proposal."
After a week of reliving what she now saw as the most mortifying moment of her life, Alison needed someone to talk to. So, she had decided to tell Katie what she had done. Because, despite their age differences, Katie was the closest thing she had to a best friend. Not to mention that Katie had spent the better part of the weeks Alison had been taking care of John subtly pushing them together.
For this kind of talk she didn’t want even a chance of someone overhearing them, so she had begged her friend to meet her for an early morning walk.
"Then I'm just a wanton. A fallen woman. The very trollop Doctor Langton believes me to be."
The good doctor hadn't asked her to stop volunteering at the hospital. He hadn't dared, not with the fearsome Duke of Belfort breathing down his neck. But he had made it clear he was not happy with her behavior. So much so that she had quit volunteering the day before. Now she had all the time in the world to contemplate her great folly.
"You are none of those things," Katie admonished. "And quit saying things like that. Before your girls or someone else hears you."
Her girls. Alison looked over at her daughters as they played alongside the Serpentine. Phyllis was quacking in an attempt to call her favorite duck to her, and Becky was patiently feeding the ducks the stale bread Cook had given them.
They had been excited when she had told them that they were going to Hyde Park for their morning walk instead of the small park near their home. This was another good reason to quit volunteering at the hospital. She rarely had the time to bring them all the way to Hyde Park when she was working so much.
"They are the reason I know I made a horrible mistake the other day," Alison said. And the reason she was trying to correct her mistake, but the man wasn't being cooperative.
"Balderdash," Katie retorted. "You are a grown woman. And you've been a widow for five years now."
Alison glanced down at Katie’s still flat stomach and started to tell her that she would understand one day, but she didn’t want to be that churlish with her friend.
Instead she said, "Be that as it may, I have no right endangering my daughters' future with my insanity."
"What insanity?" Katie asked. "You like the man. You've admitted as much to me. And I know he likes you as well."
Alison closed her eyes. She knew he liked her. He had said as much. But what he wanted was something she couldn't give him. And what she offered him was something she had no right offering to any man. And judging by his reaction to her proposition, it was something he didn’t want with her. Thanks to her husband, Alison knew men were strange like that. Men like Phillip and John married women who were good for them socially or for their career. They didn’t make them their one-time lover.
"That isn't the problem and you know it."
"Then what is the problem?" Katie demanded.
She blew out a breath and then filled her lungs. "I can't marry him, Katie. And I can't be his, or any man's, long-term mistress."
"Can't or won't?" her friend asked.
Since revealing her scandalous proposal to her friend, they had discussed it repeatedly. Argued was a better description of their conversations. Katie, it turned out, had a much worldlier attitude about the whole mistress thing than Alison. She stared at Katie with what she hoped was determination. "Won't, Katie. And you know why."
She saw her friend roll her eyes. "What proposition are we now talking about? His courting you? Or you becoming the man's lover?"
A cold chill fluttered through her heart. "I can't marry him. And it's not him. I don't wish to marry anyone."
"Not every man is like your husband."
She hesitated. Alison knew Katie was right, and she had a strong feeling that John wasn't anything like Phillip. But she wasn't willing to take that kind of a chance ever again.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Alison hedged.
"He refused my offer." Not really. But he hadn't accepted it either.
"Ali," Katie said, and tugged on her arm.
She turned to her friend and she could feel her face beginning to burn. Every time she thought about her scandalous proposal, she wanted to crawl into a hole and cover herself. At least until he was too old to remember, or she was too old to care.
"I've been your friend for more than five years," Katie said. "And I think I've gotten to know you fairly well in that time. You deserve happiness. If not in a marriage, then with a lover. Someone who will be extremely discreet. Widows do it all the time and nobody cares a wit, as long as it's done discreetly."
Alison could feel tears choking her. From frustration or sadness, she didn't know. "Katie, I won't be his mistress. I don't need his money. I have my own. And besides, I've changed my mind anyway."
Her friend's mouth tightened up and she could swear she heard Katie growling. "Not all mistresses are paid, and you bloody well know it too."
Alison noticed that her friend had completely ignored the part about her changing her mind. Something she had done a dozen times since leaving him that day, but by that night she had been resolute that she had to withdraw the offer.
Unfortunately, after being away from John for a week, Alison no longer knew what she wanted. She had convinced herself that what she felt for him was mostly physical. A kind of heavenly answer to her desire to find a lover. But it wasn't just the physical attraction she felt toward him. She missed the light banter they had engaged in. The serious discussions and debates they’d had. But mostly what she missed was their comfortable companionship. Something she had never shared with her husband.
"It doesn't matter what I know or don't know. He has refused to see me since he has gone home," she said, and hated the break in her voice.
"Ali," Katie said, and pulled her in for a hug. "He hasn't refused to see you. You saw him two days ago. We all did."
"That's not what I'm talking about," she cried out in frustration. "I asked him to come and see me, and he refused."
"He didn't refuse. He sent a note saying he couldn't get away from work. Which only makes sense with him being away for so long," Katie said.
"Maybe," she agreed. "But what about the letter I sent to him last night? He hasn't even bothered to reply to it. What about that?"
"Ali, you're being ridiculous. He replied to it the same way he did to the first one."
"Not to me," Alison said in a small voice.
Katie smiled. "He is a bachelor and you are a respectable widow, so he sent his replies to me and asked that I pass them on to you."
"He still refused to see me," Alison said mutinously.
"No, he said he would see you Saturday at our house for dinner," Katie replied.
She grouched, "I'm not sure I'm going to be able to attend. I'm not even sure I want to see him any longer."
"Patience my dear, patience," Katie replied.
Summoned like a recalcitrant schoolboy. John just might have to revise his opinion of Alison. She might not look like a governess, but she sure knew how to act like one. At least in her letters.
He was still reeling from her proposition. She wanted to become his lover. No, correction. She wanted to become his friend and occasional lover. Not his mistress or his full-time lover but his, whenever-she-was-in-the-mood-for-sex lover. It wasn't exactly how she had phrased it, but it might as well have been. But the one thing she didn't want to become was his wife.
Up until her proposition, he hadn’t even considered either possibility. He knew she liked him as a person. Might even view him as a new friend. He certainly viewed her that way. But he hadn’t seriously thought about courting her. He most certainly hadn’t thought about making her his occasional lover.
But the instant she had propositioned him, images of Imogene had flashed through his mind. Not of her laughter, or wit, or extraordinary beauty, but of the gravesite as he wept over his dead wife and child. And close on the heels of that, he saw the horrors he had seen in his secret life as an investigator. The dangerous men like Reginald Stoughton he worked to bring to justice. Evidenced by his broken hand, right eye that he still could not see clearly out of, and deep scars on his face that would never disappear. Men like that would think nothing of killing an innocent woman like Imogene. Or like Alison Sheiling.
Unfortunately, the reality of his life had not been able to completely squelch the allure of being with Ali, even for just a night or two. Which is what he now believed she had meant by her outrageous proposition. And that had left him unsure how to respond to her request.
Regrettably, he had a sneaky suspicion he knew why she wanted to talk to him so badly. He had seen it in her eyes minutes after she had made her proposal. She was going to rescind her offer, which should have alleviated his anxiety over the whole thing, but it hadn’t. It had made it worse. So, he had taken great pains to avoid her the last week.
He did not want to completely sever connections with her. And he suspected that was what she was intending on doing, now that she’d had time to think about it.
John had put the meeting off as long as he could. Or as long as he dared. She had already shown up at his offices. And he had shamelessly used the duke and his wife as a barrier between them the other day. Something he couldn't keep doing. Not that he expected anything he did to keep her away for long. Or keep her from saying what she had to say to him.
So, he had spent the last week preparing for this meeting as if it were one of his more challenging court cases or investigations. And he had finished preparing his strategy just in time. This morning he had been summoned to Hyde Park for an early morning meeting. Not by Alison, but by the Duchess of Belfort.
She had worded it as a request, but John had spent enough time in politics and around his father to know an order when he read one. Not that he always heeded them. But in this case, it served his purpose to do so. Katie had also told him to bring his landau and not ride his horse to the park. He had laughed at that. With his right hand still bandaged he wasn’t likely to be riding anyway. But the duchess’s order confirmed his suspicions that she was still matchmaking between him and Ali.
The rest of her instructions were just as concise. He was to drive around Carriage Road until he got to the east end of the Serpentine. There he was to pull off the road and walk toward the lake between Rotten Row and Carriage Road. What he was supposed to do then had been unsaid, but he had a fair idea since Ali had told him that her youngest daughter loved to feed the water fowl there. Especially a mallard she had named Davy.
Even before the Serpentine came into view, he could hear the loud quacking of water fowl. A grin broke across his face even before he crested a slight hill and spotted his prey a hundred yards to the right.
She was engaged in what appeared to be an ardent conversation with the Duchess of Belfort, and neither woman looked very happy. Then a childish shriek to his left drew his attention to the water's edge.
There he saw a very small, white-haired girl chasing after a group of ducks. Whom, he noted, were in full retreat. Following behind the ragamuffin at a more sedate pace was a younger, taller version of Ali.
Glancing back at Ali and the duchess, he watched them as they continued to argue and began strolling away from another group of ladies descending on them. He waited as he considered the prudence of approaching two angry women or the children playing by the edge of the water. He chose the safer option and headed toward the two girls.
It wasn't cowardice. It was sound strategy. At least that was what he chanted as he approached the older girl, Rebecca, if he remembered correctly. The murky smell of the Serpentine assailed his nostrils as he drew closer, and the distant hum of voices drifted on the air.
The girl must have seen him coming, because as he came closer she stopped feeding the birds and turned to face him. Light blue eyes, just like her mother's, regarded him cautiously and then her nose squished up in a funny yet inquisitive way.
The gi
rl glanced down at his bandaged hand and then seemed to catalogue his scarred face. "I presume you are the Mister Netterman my mother has been taking care of for the last couple of months."
Startled, he blinked and then pasted on his most winning smile, the one that had helped him win a number of court cases. "I have that honor," he said, and sketched her a bow. "And I assume you are Miss Rebecca Sheiling. You have your mother's looks."
She regarded him as if he was a noxious odor that had drifted too close. "And I assume you are the reason my mother was fired from her job the other day."
The pit in John's stomach did a somersault and then crashed. He swallowed and said, "I was unaware that your mother had been fired from her job."
The girl looked him up and down and then fixed her eyes on his. "She wasn't. At least not officially, since she only volunteered at the hospital. But the torrid rumors about you and my mother made it impossible for her to continue working there."
Oh bloody hell. It was even worse than getting her fired. He had embroiled her in a scandal, and they hadn't even done anything but talk about lovers and mistresses and such. But no one knew that except the two of them. Yet he had still somehow managed to get her fired and cause a scandalous rumor to be started about her.
"Sissy, stop being so mean." A sweet little girl's voice interrupted his self-flagellations. "You know mummy quit that awful job so she could spend more time with us."
"She did not," the older girl snapped.
"She did too."
"Did not."
"Did too," the little girl said, then stuck her tongue out, putting an end to the debate. This scene was so reminiscent of the fights he’d had with his siblings while growing up.
A twinge of guilt assaulted him. Then he recalled some of the other things he had learned about Alison Sheiling. She had been a volunteer army nurse. Her husband had been a man of some wealth. As the fourth son of a baron he had had a small fortune of his own, both a small inheritance and what he had earned as an officer in the army for more than fifteen years of service.
Alison's Scandalous Affair (The Fallen Angels NOVELLA series Book 1) Page 5
