by Mary Balogh
She had been nineteen years old. She had a mother who was in a state of nervous and physical collapse after the death of her husband. Claire had been nine years old, the twins six. Uncle Wesley had already paid off a few debts, which seemed trifling in comparison with these—there was no way he could pay them. And Mr. Kirby, of course, knew it. Viola had been able to see no way out but compliance with his demands.
The arrangement had been that eighty percent of all she earned was to go toward the reduction of the debt. She was to live on the remaining twenty percent. It behooved her, then, to work hard, to establish a reputation for herself, so that her twenty percent would enable her to keep body and soul together.
Later, when she was already working, she had been informed that only twenty of Mr. Kirby’s eighty percent could be applied to debt reduction. The remaining sixty paid Mr. Kirby’s fee for housing her, procuring clients for her, and looking after her best interests. To all intents and purposes, Viola had been a slave. But she had used the little power she had to insist upon working no more than one night a month and to refuse to be any man’s exclusive mistress. She had quickly become more sought after than any other courtesan in London.
By some strange miracle, she had kept the secret from all of her family. Only to Hannah had she rashly poured out her heart as soon as she knew the truth of what her future held. Hannah had insisted upon going with her even though Mama had warned that a governess would not be allowed to have her own personal maid. Her family still believed she had been a governess for four years before coming to Pinewood. Her mother had been furious with her for leaving such respectable employment in order to accept the gift.
The debts had not been significantly reduced in four years. The interest had eaten up the bulk of her payments. She had known Mr. Kirby would hold her in thrall for the rest of her working years, but she had not been able to think of a solution. It had seemed that she was caught in a lifelong trap. But then she had met the Earl of Bamber. And he had discovered the truth—she had poured her heart out to him one night, seated beside him on the plush sofa in her living room, his arm securely about her shoulders, her head nestled on his shoulder. She had told him everything she had kept bottled inside for four long years, and he had kissed her cheek and told her she was a good girl and he loved her.
A good girl. Love.
The words had been like a spring of pure water in the middle of a desert. Balm to an aching soul.
He loved her. She was loved. She was a good girl. She was three-and-twenty years old and a veteran at her profession. But she was a good girl and she was loved. He loved her.
He had called on Daniel Kirby and persuaded him to produce all the bills still owing. He had paid them all off and obtained a signed, witnessed note that there were no more. And then he had asked Viola if she would like to go to Pinewood Manor to live. It was a long way away, in the middle of nowhere, to use his own words, and as far as he knew it was probably shabby. Certainly it did not fill his coffers with income. But he would send her there if she wished, and he would send a good steward down to get everything sorted out for her, and a good butler to set the house to rights and hire other servants. The manor would be hers. He would leave it to her in his will.
She had buried her face in the hollow between his shoulder and neck and wrapped her arm about his portly middle. She had felt safe and loved and strangely clean for the first time in four years.
“Oh, yes,” she had said. “Oh, yes, please. But I don’t want to leave you.” She had known he was gravely ill.
He had patted one large hand against the side of her face and kissed her temple. “I will be going home to the country to die,” he had said gently. “My wife is there.”
Grief and love and gratitude and happiness had soaked his cravat and neckcloth with a flood of tears.
The sound of booted feet on stone brought Viola back to the present with a jolt. She was sitting on the bench in the box garden at Pinewood, Claire’s letter clutched in both her hands. Lord Ferdinand was striding toward the house from the direction of the stables. He always looked his most enticing in riding clothes, she thought. He paused for a moment, seeing her, and touched the brim of his hat with his whip. She half raised one hand in greeting. He did not come down the steps to join her but continued on his way into the house. She breathed a deep sigh of relief.
Claire was in terrible danger. The meaning of the message was very clear. Daniel Kirby wanted Viola to return. Although she was twenty-five years old, rather aged for a courtesan, she had retired at the height of her fame. She would still be remembered. There would surely be a rush of prospective clients, at least for a while, if word spread that she had returned to town—and Mr. Kirby would see to it that that happened. She could earn far more money for him, at least for a year or two, than Claire could do as a raw novice, who might never take as well as her sister even after training.
Viola swallowed once, and then again. For a minute or two she had to concentrate very hard not to vomit. The very thought of Claire …
If she did not return, he would use Claire. That was the threat he held over her head. He had kept back at least one of the bills. She was going to have to pay it off by going back to work.
Unless she owned Pinewood.
It was prospering. It was true that she had planned to put most of the profits back into improvements. It would be many years—if ever—before she could consider herself a wealthy woman. But the profits did not have to be reinvested. They were hers, to be spent as she wished. She could make payments on the debt. They would be endless payments, of course, but there was little she could do about that. She could …
But Pinewood was not hers. It was Lord Ferdinand’s.
Unless …
Viola closed her eyes and crumpled the letter in her hand.
Yes, unless.
FERDINAND WOULD HAVE DINED at the Boar’s Head except that he had been told that Viola Thornhill was to spend the evening with the Misses Merrywether. He was counting down the days. There were two to go. He was stubborn to a fault. He knew that. He had made a decision, but even so he was going to torture himself for two more days with brief glimpses of her—like this morning in the box garden—and short encounters with her. He wanted her with every beat of his pulse, but he was determined to win his wager, to be able to throw that, at least, in her teeth.
She was being very foolish, of course. There had been no glimpse of Lilian Talbot since the day of their wager. Only of Viola Thornhill. How could she hope to seduce him like this?
He dressed for dinner even though he would be dining alone—it was the habit of a lifetime. He was humming as he entered the dining room, but he stopped abruptly. She was standing by the sideboard, talking with Jarvey, and there were two places set at the table. She was wearing a gold silk gown without any jewelry or other adornment. The garment itself was of such simple design that Ferdinand knew at a glance that it was very costly indeed. It shimmered over her curves in a way that would have made further adornment quite redundant. Her hair was a smooth, shining, dark red cap over her head. Her braids were coiled at the back, low on her neck. She was beauty and elegance personified.
Ferdinand checked his stride. For a moment he misplaced the rhythm of his breathing. She smiled, and he was not at all sure whether she was Viola Thornhill or Lilian Talbot. He suspected that she was wearing one of the latter’s gowns. But it was a sweet smile.
“I thought you were dining with the Misses Merrywether,” he said.
“No.”
There was nothing for it, then, but to seat her at the table, take his own place, and make the best of the situation. They conversed politely on a number of topics. She told him how she had started the ladies’ sewing group as a social outlet for the women of the neighborhood and observed with a smile that even when they were being sociable, women liked to be useful too. He told her about Tattersall’s and the horse auctions that were held there every week.
They talked about the weather.
She told him how the river walk had been so overgrown when she first came to Pinewood that she had thought the area was mere wilderness. When she had discovered that there was a well-defined path there, she had set the gardeners to work and had even sent some of the farm laborers to help them. He told her about Oxford and the delight he had taken in the libraries there and the conversation of men who were unashamedly intellectual.
“It is a wonder,” she said, “you did not stay there and become a lecturer or a professor or don.”
“No.” He laughed. “By the time I had finished my studies, I was vowing never to open another book in my life. I wanted to live.”
They talked about the weather.
She told him that her one real extravagance since coming to Somersetshire had been buying books. She sent to London and Bath for them. Several of the books in the library had been added during the past two years, including the copy of Pride and Prejudice from which he was reading to the ladies. He talked about the book, and they embarked on a brief but spirited discussion of its merits.
They talked about the weather.
When she rose at the end of the meal and announced that she would leave him to his port, he breathed a silent sigh of relief. It was over for another day. She was incredibly beautiful. She was also charming and intelligent and an interesting companion. It was easy to relax into the pleasure of her company and forget that after two more days he would never see her again.
He found it a rather depressing thought.
He left the dining room a mere ten minutes later, not having drunk any port, and made his way to the library. But Jarvey intercepted him.
“I have carried a tea tray up to the drawing room, my lord,” he said, “at Miss Thornhill’s request.”
Did she expect him to join her there? But it would be churlish of him not to.
“She asked me to inform you,” the butler added.
She was pouring a cup of tea for herself when he entered the room. She looked up, smiled, and poured another for him.
“You did not stay long,” she said.
She took her own cup and saucer and sat down to one side of the fireplace. She had had the fire lit, he saw, even though it was not a cold night. But it was almost dark outside and the candles were lit. The fire added coziness to the room. He took the chair at the other side of the hearth.
She did not speak. She was drinking and gazing rather dreamily into the flames. She looked relaxed and elegant at the same time.
“Why did you become a courtesan?” he asked, and could have bitten out his tongue as soon as the words were spoken.
She transferred her gaze to his face and her expression changed so slowly and so subtly that for a while he was unaware of it. He was aware only of acute discomfort.
“Why else does one work?” she asked him. “For money, of course.”
He had been pondering the question a great deal during the past few days. He had never thought much about whores and their motivation. But when he did think about them, he concluded that they must enter their profession for one of two reasons—love or money. Which had it been for her? She had answered the question. But she had been London’s leading courtesan for a long time, and she had charged a fortune for a fee. Surely after the first year or so she had not needed to continue to work for money. She must have made enough on which to retire quite comfortably.
“Why did you need the money?” he asked.
Her smile, he realized suddenly, was not Viola Thornhill’s. “Asked like a true son of the aristocracy,” she said. “I had to eat, my lord. Food is necessary to survival. Had you not realized that?”
“But you must have made a fortune,” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Yes, I did.”
“Did you enjoy it? Your profession, I mean?” He understood now that he was talking to Lilian Talbot—the amusement in her eyes was faintly mocking. Her voice had become lower pitched, more velvet in tone.
She laughed softly and began to run one finger lightly along the neckline of her gown, beginning at one shoulder. “Everyone, male and female, hungers for sex,” she said. “Is it not a dream profession to work and earn one’s living doing what one most enjoys? It is far preferable to making up beds and emptying chamber pots for a pittance.”
He was slightly shocked. He had never heard a lady use the word sex or speak openly about sexual hunger.
“But with so many different men?” He frowned.
“But that is part of the allure,” she told him. “It is said, you know, that no two men are identical, that each has unique gifts. I can vouch for the truth of that.”
Her finger had paused at the slight shadow indicating the valley between her breasts. She hooked the fingertip down inside the fabric of her dress. He felt an uncomfortable tightening in his groin.
“And it was the challenge of my profession,” she said, “to satisfy the individual needs of each client. To give so much pleasure that each man would plead for more. And never forget me.”
Who had started this? he wondered, leaning farther back in his chair as if to put more distance between himself and her. And why the devil had the fire been lit on such a warm night?
She seemed to be having the identical thought. “It is very warm in here, is it not?” she asked, and she reached down a little farther into her décolletage to pull the silk of her bodice away from her flesh before returning it and sliding the finger up inside the bodice to her shoulder again.
He was mesmerized by the sight of that long finger. When he looked up into her eyes, they laughed knowingly at him.
“I should have had my maid dress my hair up off my neck,” she said, raising both arms and sliding her fingers beneath the coiled braids there. She closed her eyes briefly and tipped back her head. And then he realized that her fingers were working at the braids, her movements quite unhurried. She drew out pins and set them down neatly on the table beside her. The braids uncoiled and then fell, two of them, down her back. She drew one over her shoulder and unraveled it. Thick, wavy hair spread over her bosom and down to her waist as she drew the second braid over her other shoulder and unraveled that too. She shook her head when the task was completed, and her hair fell about her in luxurious, disordered waves.
Ferdinand’s mouth was dry. He had not taken his eyes from her. Neither of them had spoken a word for several minutes.
“That is better,” she said, looking across at him with heavy-lidded eyes. The sharp, mocking look had gone. “Are you overwarm too? Why do you not remove your neckcloth? I will not mind. There are just the two of us. I have told Mr. Jarvey that we do not wish to be disturbed.”
He was not so dazzled that he did not know exactly what was happening. She had decided that tonight was the night, and she had gone into action. She intended to bed him within the next hour and banish him tomorrow. For all the heavy sensuality of her eyes, he could not miss noticing their essential emptiness. She was working. This was business to her. And she was an experienced worker.
But very, very good. Every bit as good as she had promised. She had not even touched him yet. She was sitting several feet away from him. She was fully clothed; so was he. But he was wearing silk evening breeches. It would have been foolish to try to disguise his arousal. How would he do it? Grab a pillow and set it on his lap? He made no such attempt. Her eyes had not dipped, but he felt no doubt at all that she knew very well what effect her voice and actions would have on any red-blooded male.
He might have fought her. He might have jumped to his feet, fully aroused though he was, and walked from the room. He had always had good control over his sexual urges. But it was perhaps part of her skill, he thought as he reached up and unknotted and removed his neckcloth, that she could seduce even a man who knew he was being seduced and had sworn it could not happen.
The point was that perhaps it would be better this way. He had decided that he was going to give her Pinewood, that he was going to walk away from it, figuratively as well as liter
ally, and buy himself property elsewhere. He would give her what was rightfully hers—the old earl should never have promised and broken his promise. A gentleman just did not act that way. The trouble was, she might spurn the gift from him. There was no predicting her reaction when he told her.
Perhaps he should simply let her win her wager.
And he wanted her. Desire had become indistinguishable from pain. His erection pressed against the tight, confining fabric of his breeches.
“Open your shirt at the neck,” she said, leaning back in her chair and laying her head against its rest so that it looked in the candlelight as if she were already laid back against pillows, her hair spread in a dark red cloud of waves about her. “You will feel cooler.”
He doubted it, but he did as she suggested and ran one hand inside his shirt. His chest was damp. She was watching him and moistening her lips, the tip of her tongue moving slowly across her upper lip.
“Has anyone told you how beautiful you are?” she asked him.
No one had. He was deeply embarrassed. What man would enjoy being called beautiful? At the same time, it felt as if Jarvey must have crept in invisibly and built the fire halfway up the chimney.
“You are, you know,” she said. “Incredibly beautiful. Even with your clothes on.”
He shot out of his chair then and closed the distance between them in a few strides. He held out a hand for hers, and she placed her own in it and allowed him to draw her to her feet and straight into his arms.
“Witch!” he said, before fastening his open mouth to hers.
But she drew back her head and set her two forefingers against his lips.
“You are impatient,” she said. “I wanted to make love to you with words for an hour or longer, but I cannot do that when you are touching me. Do you not like making love with words?”
“I think we had better go to bed,” he said. “I want action, not words. I am conceding defeat, you see. You win. I will pay dearly for you. Pinewood in exchange for one night in bed with you. You have promised that I will never regret it. Live up to your promise, then.”
