by Thea Devine
Julia swallowed convulsively, trying to get control. "I can hardly assimilate the news, or what it means to anyone so unlucky as to capture his interest. She will be debilitated within a month and take to her bed forever."
"Surely she must get an heir before—" Jenise said astringently, and stopped abruptly. That is what has changed. Even a hedonist must grow old and lose his vigor. And he is the last
132 / Thea Devine
of his line. What pressure must there be for him to get a legitimate son after all the bastards he's littered around the countryside.
Yes ... that makes sense... that explains why—marriage and a virgin. The unconscionable beast—
"... that," she finished distractedly.
"Poor girl," Julia muttered, "if she does, and then comes to this point with him..." She waved her hand at herself and cried, "Oh, dear heaven, how can I bear this news after what he did to me? I should never have come ..."
"But it was time, my darling," Jenise said. "It was time to come out of the grave and into the light where some wonderful man will appreciate and love you."
"And yet, here I sit, yearning for the one man I can never have. And now with this news, I might just as well be—"
"Don't say it, don't think it, don't open your mouth..." Jenise interrupted violently, "Oh God, if only I could flush the thought from your brain, if I could destroy it somehow, some way—if I could find for you that one perfect one who would adore you and make you forget the beast..."
"He can never be forgotten..." Julia moaned. "Never. Not the things he said, the things he promised, the things he did I will never tell—and I will never forget..."
Jenise went cold. Things he did... ? Julia, too? He had corrupted Julia on top of everything else?
She would kill the man. She would conquer him, flay him, destroy him, cut off his head, his private parts, hang him from the tower. Dear God, if only, only, only there were some way to wreak vengeance on a man who was so completely above all moral law ...
There had to be a way—she couldn't bHtr to look at Julia and believe there was no way. Julia suffered. Julia took nothing lightly, so trusting was her nature. And the beast had taken it, disrespected it, used it, abused it, and tossed it away.
Someone had to teach the beast a lesson. Someone had to pierce his heart, destroy his confidence, and toss him away.
Her Lord and Master / 133
Could she ... ?
How—?
Could Julia stand it?
What was she thinking?
"We'll go home," she said despairingly. There was no other answer for Julia's distress. "We'll just pick up, pack up, and leave before this gets so out of hand it can't be dealt with. Just you and I—mother and father can stay in town, and we'll go spend the season quietly at Wanford, and you need never know anything about wh ... what is going on."
"Would that it were that easy to forget..."
"Well, you must. Four years, Julia. Four years the beast has had this power over you ..."
"Has it been? Four years? It feels like four weeks."
"Never say so. Dear Julia, you must wipe every vestige of the beast from your soul."
"Could you?" Julia asked mournfully.
"I would like to hope so," Jenise said cautiously, "but I have never been so much in love that it has mattered. And I have found most men easy to excise from my consciousness."
"He could seduce even you, his appeal is that powerful, that strong."
Jenise thought not but it seemed as if Julia's words were an omen, a challenge almost, and she leaped on them without thinking, without caution.
"Then perhaps I should seek to be among those he considers for this new stage in his life."
"My dear, my dear, my dear ..."
Jenise froze.
Her mother's voice from the doorway as she bustled into the room.
"Was I not just thinking the same thing? How attuned we are. My two daughters. You both have everything to recommend you, with sensibilities as different as day and night. So if the gentler daughter would not do, perhaps the more aggressive daughter would suffice."
134 / Thea Devine
Julia burrowed down farther against the pillows as her mother sank into the other end of the couch.
"I have been trying to tell your sister this age that a man like Wick..."
"A beast like Wick," Jenise interpolated maliciously.
Her mother raised her eyebrows. "You cannot be thinking like that if you are even half serious—but you aren't, are you?"
"I don't know." And she didn't—except that it was such a perfect vehicle for avenging her sister, she almost felt beside herself with the need to do it. But that was not for her mother to know. Nor Julia, for that matter, until she could ascertain how upset her sister would be if she pursued such a course.
"In any event, I have tried and tried to tell Julia that a man like Wick needs a headstrong woman to go toe to toe with him at every patch. A nature such as Julia's is far too easy for a man to ride roughshod over. He will trample her every time. And then what? She withers and ..." Her mother glanced at Julia and decided not to finish that thought. "Well, for myself, I'm grateful for Wick's uncommon consideration not to put Julia through that, and for crying off before things went too far. But I cannot convince Julia of the delicacy of his feelings, and that her union with him would have been misery personified, and a complete and utter disaster."
"The beast—delicacy? Mother—too droll to say his name
and those words in the same sentence. He is an animal, ever
sniffing around until he catches the scent of some willing prey.
And what does he do then? He pounces, he takes his pound of
flesh and then throws the doe away. Delicacy of feelings? He's
an abomination, a beast..."
"Oh no, you are wrong," Julia piped up. 'There is no want of feeling within him. Except of course, at the end ..." her voice petered off. "But he wasn't brutal, even then ... he just ... went away—"
"Oh good God," Jenise said disgustedly. "I wash my hands of this. Let Julia pine away forever for the beast, and let him
Her Lord and Master / 135
go and disgrace and defile some other gobbleheaded girl who does not know better."
She rose to leave and her mother put out a hand to detain her.
"But he will marry," her mother said softly with maternal practicality. "Some gobbleheaded girl will be his wife and share his fortune—why can it not be you?"
Jenise was horrified. Her mother was truly thinking that way, in those terms?
Never mind she had just had that same thought. Her desire to lay into him was something very far apart from that hard-headed matronly approbation that saw the opportunity in the negative, the gold in the dross, and saw it in spite of Julia's experience, and his reputation ...
She turned away—her mother couldn't know, her mother could not have heard the worst of the scurrilous gossip, could not know the depths of licentiousness and hedonism to which the beast had descended even before his abortive ghost engagement to Julia.
Nor could her mother begin to comprehend his depravity, which was only whispered about at balls and parties, and generally by eligible virgins, appalled mamas, and disapproving dowagers who were both in awe of and utterly terrorized by his legendary prowess.
Her mother couldn't possibly know any of it if she could even suggest Jenise might be as eligible to marry Wick as anyone. She was as good as giving her carte blanche to play Wick's game.
But then, she thought trenchantly, none of it mitigated this one fact, so dear to a mother's heart: nothing about a libertine earl mattered, as long as the man was marriage-minded, had fifty thousand a year and could pay penance in pin money.
And it oughtn't matter to her either, because a man would ever be a man, and a woman always had to pay.
She looked at Julia, who had shriveled back against the cushions and closed her eyes to hide the tears trickling out from under
her lashes.
136 / TheaDevine
Not this time. Not this time.
If only Julia would give her tacit consent as well...
... then, oh then—she could think long and hard about pursuing her plan to avenge Julia's honor.
And this time, in sweet vengeance, Wick would be made to pay.
Chapter Two
And then, it was one thing to consider it emotionally, and quite another to parse out the practicalities. Simpering virgins were just not in Wick's line, and none of Jeriise's friends, who were turning the news top over bottom, could see him with some slender pale Venus who hadn't any conversation, style, or wit.
Or was he just trolling for a breeding sow?
There was something more there, Jenise decided, as she settled herself at the table for yet another round of dinner and cards. Wick was the sole topic of conversation at every gathering; how could he not be when his volte-face was so intriguing.
And yet, he hadn't come forth himself. All of this gossip and speculation had been fueled by something in passing he'd told a friend who'd told another and another until the news spread like wildfire.
No one dared ask Wick, who moved about the normal societal doings with his usual air of cool disdain, and every once in a while taking his quizzing glass and looking over a bevy of naive young things as if they were cattle.
"God, this is the most fun we've had in years," Ellingham declared late one night at Heeton's when they'd all come from the Gladneys' annual masquerade ball. "Everyone circling around Wick, everyone speculating and gossiping. No one
138 / Thea Devine
daring to ask, to question, to censure ... My dear man, were you in business, you'd be launched to great success and pots of pounds just on the way your name is on everyone's lips."
"And not a pair to kiss within a league of here," Wick said repressively. "I am not in harmony with this idea that I must keep myself pure until my vestals are chosen."
"We are narrowing it down." This from Max Bowen. "There are too many sweet, young eligibles this season. So we made a list of qualities we thought were Wickian ..."
"Do tell," Wick drawled. "Wickian? Qualities? In a green girl? There's only one quality I care about—will she spread her legs without coaxing, prodding, or pretty pleas. But do go on—this might have some amusement value."
"Well, there it is," Max went on. "You've viewed them all now, and even we can see that no one vestal stands out above the other. They are all very much alike—too coy, too restrained, too pale, too dark, they giggle too much, they have little conversation, not that that necessarily is a point on our list... but it comes to this: no one of them can be recommended above the other. And we have not yet found three who would do for the parameters of our experiment. So ..."
"Yes, so ..." Ellingham took up the thread. "We come to round two. And with it, the list." He pulled out a piece of paper and brandished it in Wick's direction. "To hone in, to refine it down to the three most luscious virgins in the whole of London who might—just might—have the capacity to appreciate this grand scheme of corruption and reward. But to do that, they need to have these qualities—to wit: they must be beautiful beyond beautiful; they must be approachable; and better still if they would be flirts—you can easily coerce a kiss from a flirt; they must be, in a word, touchable without all the usual maidenly fussing and blushing; and if you can proceed from there in the cloakroom, you have the perfect girl who is biddable, trainable, and ready for the Wick stick."
"And who is going to test all the green girls?" Wick asked lazily.
"Why, we all are," Ellingham said with a trace of indigna-
Her Lord and Master / 139
tion. "You didn't think we would leave you to go through this terrible ordeal alone, did you? We'll feel and fondle your virgins for you, and we'll come up with just the right girls for the grand experiment. Remember, under the skin, they're all whores. One just has to give them permission to be. Give us time—and we'll have them primed. And then, my dear Wick, they're yours ... while we get to watch the fun. I swear, I'm frothed already that you'll have the pleasure of humping them first."
"All these promises, and yet the well is dry," Wick said caustically. "Abstinence does not become me. It's draining."
"Just store it up, dear boy. And then let it loose in a virgin hole in the name of queen, country, and your putative heir. There is something to be said for restraint."
"I can't say a thing for it," Wick interpolated irritably. "I'm bored. Stiff. So this virgin cattle prod had better turn up a likely cream jug—and soon."
******************
The rumors flew thick and fast. Wick was looking. Wick was not. His friends were looking. His mother was exerting pressure. His fortune was not all that healthy. He was looking for an heiress. He was looking for the purest of the pure. He wasn't looking at all. The whole thing was a hum and Wick was off in the usual dens of depravity doing all the obscene things he usually did.
Wick, Wick, Wick—he wanted a virgin. No, he wanted a woman with some experience. A proven breeder. No, he wanted a maidenhead. She didn't have to be rich. She had to be mannered, of good breeding stock, she had to sign some agreement to look the other way once she'd got him a son.
The amount of money he was willing to pay grew astronomical. Thousands of pounds for one virgin to spread one time to get an heir. His mother was desperate. He was desperate. He was growing old and had to set his affairs in order.
And where was Wick? In his town house in St. James, amused, but by no means laughing as the noose tightened around his neck. The moment was coming soon when he
140 / Thea Devine
would be presented with three nubile virgins willing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of his, reproducing a son like himself.
One might choke at the thought, except that the grain of truth within was somewhat galling. He might well get a brat that would turn out very like him, even with the civilizing influences of Madam Mother and the gilded lily who would ultimately consent to marry him.
He ought send them all to purdah when the deed was done. Out of sight, out of mind. Gone and forgotten within a fortnight. His mother still held sway in the dowager house at Holcombe. The least he could give her was a brat and wife to dominate as well.
And indeed, he had to admit there was some pleasure in restraint. In knowing he could just summon a maid within his household and bang her on the floor, but choosing not to. In electing to tame his nature, save his cream, and savor the moment when he would pour it into the pure, undefiled hole of a virgin sacrifice.
The thought almost made him weak with anticipation. The only thing worth doing in life, fucking. And even that had its limitations ... the partner, the time, the energy, the drain.
Yes, this restraint business had something to recommend it. He couldn't stop thinking about the demands of his penis. His imagination ran riot at the thought initiating a virginal innocent into the pleasures of her flesh.
Yes, a pair of innocent eyes adoring him would be a novelty after all the experienced, vain and self-centered trulls he'd had. And none of them worth the time spent on them.
And her inexperienced hands all over his body—groping, seeking, grasping, holding ... it made him squirm to think of how it would feel to be handled by an untrained houri who wanted just him, his body, his juice, his child.
His money.
Her reward.
It dulled the prospect after all.
"Negative thinking," Ellingham chided him.
Her Lord and Master / 141
"And how far along are we?" Wick asked, his voice deceptively gentle.
"We're having a delightful time digging for virgin treasure," Ellingham assured him blithely. "It won't be long now, my dear Wick, until we present you with the cream of the crop in which to spend your fill."
******************
There wasn't anywhere in London that Wick was not being talked about. From the mercantile stores to the lending lib
raries, Wick's wife-to-be was the ongoing topic of conversation.
Jenise could barely hold her irritation in check. "How has the beast managed it?" she wondered aloud to her mother as they made their rounds one morning. "His desires are now so in the consciousness of everyone that no one can avoid hearing about them. As if we had not heard enough before. I would give what fortune I have to be the one to teach him the lesson he so richly deserves."
"You?" her mother murmured. "Oh, my dear, you do not want to be thinking in those terms, if you wish to excite his interest; you are no match for the likes of him on that level."
"I would be more of a match than Julia. You said so yourself. He fair devoured her for breakfast. And now he's serious about matrimony; every mother in London is plotting and planning this very hour how to catch the eye of his sycophants to gain his favor. And I should be among them."
"So I said," her mother said. "I do not disagree."
"Except for Julia," Jenise said. Except for Julia and the things he did that Julia would never tell. "And her knowledge that the marriage, did he come to point, would have to be real."
"Fifty thousand a year can smooth away many things," her mother said. "A woman adjusts. Julia's feelings can be of no consequence if it comes to pass."
"But I cannot bear to see his rejection of her go unavenged. Yet how will she feel if I am chosen to be among those presenting themselves as candidates to be his bride?"
142 / Thea Devine
"She understands why," her mother said. "She as good as said so the other afternoon over tea."
"And still it would mitigate nothing," Jenise said wretchedly. "But I can't stand by and watch this circus, knowing he will choose some mealymouthed creature with no wit and much guile who will slough him off as soon as she gets him an heir. He must be punished somehow for this travesty. Someone has to do it, Mother. It is the only reason 1 would even consider it. It is killing me to stand by and watch it, and watch Julia suffer every day like this."
