The King of Threadneedle Street

by Moriah Densley

  She didn’t mean to scoff; it came from her mouth anyway. “That is a distasteful suggestion, my lord. I would never come between Lord Preston and his wife.”

  “The one you love is not always the one you marry. Again we come full circle on the subject of duty. Alysia,” he said with surprising tenderness, “I do not ask this of you out of animosity. I rather regard you very highly, and have on more than one occasion wished circumstances were such that you could marry my son with my blessing.” He pressed against his temples, a sign of distress unusual for Lord Courtenay.

  “Do it for him, Alysia. Unless you cut him off, he will not let you go. Allow me to set to work on it for you. Forward your address to me, and I will arrange for you to meet eligible gentlemen. Perhaps you may genuinely like one of them and not be unhappy after all.”

  Alysia cocked one eyebrow and sealed her lips against the sarcasm on the tip of her tongue.

  He took a pen and paper from the desk. “Where shall I send my correspondence?”

  “Rougemont, in Devonshire.”

  He dropped the pen, and it clattered to the floor. “Preston is sending you to the Montegues?” he nearly roared.

  “I am to tutor Lady Devon’s ward while she is expecting the baby.”

  “I should have known the moment I saw Lady Chauncey!” He swore under his breath, also unusual for Lord Courtenay. “What the deuce is he about?”

  Alysia didn’t know if it was a direct question or if he was wondering aloud. When she determined he was waiting for an answer, she said, “There is no plot, my lord. Lord Preston was only taking into account my desire to live in the country and work on my art. He thought I would be safe at Rougemont.”

  “He is up to something, I know it.” Lord Courtenay shook his head. “I allow Preston entirely too much freedom. He exploited it and made himself one of the most powerful men in England. If it were not so disturbing, I might be proud.”

  Alysia didn’t dare mention he was years late arriving at that conclusion.

  “There is not much time, then. You shall hear from me again soon.” He stood to take his leave. “Thank you, Miss Villier, for being candid. For what it is worth, I think you are twice the woman most peeresses are. I wish the fates were kinder.”

  He inclined his head in a nearly polite bow and walked swiftly from the room, leaving Alysia to wonder how Lord Courtenay’s arrangements were the final word, without her ever agreeing to it. She would marry someone of his choosing, then. Or so it seemed. Important men had a way of imposing their will. It left her reeling and confused.

  Alysia sank into the chair, blowing a strand of hair from her forehead. She felt unaccountably weary. She should have known such an exquisite evening could only be followed by its opposite. That was the rhythm of life; high, low. She tried to imagine telling Andrew she was engaged, or worse, married. He wouldn’t know the true reason why, and she could envision his reaction. It was painful even to consider.

  It seemed she had two choices; disappear again, or be forced into a marriage of convenience. Or a third — run away with Andrew. If only.

  She had to find a way to stall until she could access her inheritance, then live like the Queen of Sheba somewhere in India. There would be interesting things to paint, limitless subjects. There she would see only dusky, exotic men who wouldn’t remind her of Andrew. The idea had merit, but already it sounded so lonely. If she acquiesced to Lord Courtenay’s desire that she marry… it would be just as lonely.

  What else could she expect, being a courtesan’s bastard daughter?

  Andrew barged through the doors his father had passed through only minutes before. Out of breath, he grasped the desk. “My father was here?”

  “You just missed him.”

  “I am sorry I left you to handle him alone, Lisa. I went to see to a matter of business.”

  “Tumble any fortunes this morning?” she asked while pouring him a cup of tea.

  “I always do.” He flashed her favorite lopsided smile, the mischievous and boyish one. He took the cup and sat, appearing aimless without a battle to fight. “What did he want?”

  “He came to check the sheets.”

  Andrew grimaced. “What?”

  She explained, “Lord Courtenay wanted reassurance there would be no by-blows, among other things.”

  Andrew cursed under his breath and shot from his chair. Alysia pulled him back down. “He didn’t say anything he has not told me before, nor anything I didn’t expect,” she lied. “But he knows you are sending me to Rougemont and is displeased. He thinks you are up to something.”

  Andrew set the cup back on the table then twirled the saucer on his finger. “Right straight I am up to something.”

  “He is worried you have misplaced your sense of duty.” She watched him over the rim of her cup.

  Andrew snorted. “He is afraid I will act to secure my own happiness. What is all the fuss about anyhow? It’s not as though I must marry an heiress for money. I even have the support of some influential peers.”

  “Is that why you are sending me to the Montegues?”

  “I am sending you to Devonshire because I believe you will be happy and protected there,” he replied sternly. “And I cannot deny it is part of my plan.”

  “About this plan of yours, Andrew—”

  “Let me guess. My father wants you to marry one of his sycophants so I will cry off?” He smirked at her startled expression. “Know this, Alysia. If you try to marry the greedy fop my father throws at you just to get rid of me, I will storm the chapel and carry you away, and to the devil with them all!”

  “You sound like a spoiled brat when you speak that way.” She set her cup down more roughly than necessary. “I refuse to revisit this argument with you, Andrew.”

  One moment she blinked, and the next Andrew was out of his chair and attacking her lips with a violent, possessive kiss. He pressed her into the back of the chair, his arms caging her in. He breathed in between rough kisses, “Then… do not… argue.”

  He knelt in front of her and moved his lips over her neck, holding her arms so she couldn’t move away. “You are mine.”

  A sigh escaped her throat but her mind screamed in protest.

  “I liked waking next to you this morning, Lisa.” He nipped her earlobe, and she yelped. “Only, that thing you were wearing, the slip of black silk with the lace straps falling off your shoulder? It gave me ideas, and I found it necessary to flee temptation.” He nudged her sleeve away — with his teeth! — and brushed his lips over her shoulder.

  Instead of pushing him away as she ought, Alysia gripped the hair at the back of his neck and tugged hard, pulling him closer. With a strangled cry that could have meant either Stop that! or How I love that, Andrew went straight for her neck. The gentle, caressing way he had kissed her neck last night? A memory. He was angry now. He nipped and pulled, digging his lips into her skin then smoothing the spot with his tongue.

  She threw away a thought for the marks he would leave, too delirious to care. Everywhere, nowhere. Both giddy and maudlin. This drunken, frozen-in-time feeling had addictive properties. Andrew was branded in her brain as the source of it. How had she thought moments ago she could ever walk away from it?

  “Tell me to stop.” He dragged his hands up her sides and trailed his open mouth down her throat. “Make me stop,” he groaned, cooling her skin with his breath. He slid his hands stiffly down to her knees as though restraining himself.

  She slipped her hands inside his collar and rubbed over his shoulders in slow circles, a touch meant to soothe, but the sheen of perspiration on his skin made her fingers slide as though she meant to provoke.

  “Always with you I am never sure of what to do, Lisa,” he mourned. “I kissed you to punish you. Self-righteous little—” he blew a gust, likely in place of calling her a name. “But now all I can think about is…” He ran his hand up and down her thigh, as though contemplating following his words with action. Temptation roared in her mind, and she
wouldn’t have bet a farthing on being able to resist if he did.

  “Remind me why I shouldn’t do it.” His stroking made her arch toward him, she couldn’t help it. “Stop that!” His hands froze but he didn’t move away. “Sorry, Lisa. I apologize.”

  She couldn’t move either. The raw hunger burning her from the inside out cooled so slowly, by degrees. Part of the problem was not wanting to let it cool. Finally her wiser self crawled back out of the hole she had stuffed it into the moment Andrew kissed her. She rubbed the corner of his jaw, teasing him to unclench it.

  “Yes, it is time to stop, I agree.” She sighed, feeling her wanton half screech in protest. “And now you know just how powerless I am against you. Apparently I am all too willing.”

  He cursed and squeezed her thigh, too hard, and it reminded her to move her straying hands from his chest back to his shoulders. “You siren! That is no speech to deter me.”

  “Then remember the ugly prospect of by-blows. I am a by-blow and don’t recommend the circumstance.”

  “There are ways around it. Lisa, I am so tempted.” He grazed his nose down her throat and inhaled. It nearly undid her. “What do you want? Tell me, and that will be the final word.”

  What did she want? She wanted to give in. Shameful. Wanton as her French courtesan mother. And she knew all about the ways around the problem, as he said, but nothing was purely reliable. Her very existence was proof of that.

  “Yes, there are ways around it, Drew, but best not risk it, as you wisely said last night.” She gave him a shove on the chest, pushing him away. “I was wrong to encourage you. I take my part of the blame. It won’t happen again, I swear.”

  Andrew seemed to concentrate on controlling his breath. He brushed the hair from his forehead and answered with wild eyes, “I think I had better send you to Devonshire. Soon.”

  Chapter Ten

  But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

  As You Like It, William Shakespeare

  Spring of 1872, Rougemont Park in Devonshire, England

  It had been a few months, and still Alysia woke clutching a pillow to her chest. She had flipped it sideways, trapped with her knee, as she had held Andrew those last few nights in Paris before coming to Rougemont. If she purposefully conjured the memory, which she did often, she thought she could still smell his cedar-and-leather scent and remember his messy hair tickling her cheek.

  So clearly she remembered how close she had come to being deflowered, as Andrew called it, in broad daylight in an office chair. They had shared a cup of tea and a mild argument, and then somehow moments later found it necessary to decide whether to ravish each other or refrain.

  Alysia didn’t know what had possessed her later that night, but she had been drawn from her bed as though summoned and crossed the hall to Andrew’s room. She didn’t knock or ask permission. Knowing it was potentially a foolish mistake, she climbed into his bed and wrapped her arms around him from behind. He may have been asleep or not; without a word he rubbed his arms over hers and drew her against his back. With her face resting against his neck and her hand over his heart, she drifted to sleep feeling his heartbeat.

  She came to him the next few nights until her last night in Paris. Andrew didn’t push the encounter beyond its innocent nature, and she didn’t tempt him to. He didn’t leave early in the morning, but let them wake together, much to the amusement of the servants and the delight of Lady Chauncey. It was remarkable how warm two bodies became when held together so long. She missed how his scent lingered on her skin like a scandalous perfume.

  Just before they parted, Andrew had taken her face in his hands and kissed her tenderly for a long time, long enough that the footmen wandered away. He joked that surely there was no more deserving winner of the Herculean Self-Control Award than himself. “I just might be out of my mind, or perhaps I truly love you.”

  She had waited until she was alone then wept most of the way across the English channel.

  There was a small stir in her room. Alysia blinked awake and sat up before the chambermaid caught her fondling the pillow. Instead she saw Miss Mary Cavendish sitting in the bedside chair, turning the pages of a fashion periodical. Miss Cavendish, Lord Devon’s niece, was the second of three orphaned sisters, eighteen years old, and had made friends instantly with Alysia when she arrived at Rougemont.

  Mary had a flair for the dramatic and amused Alysia by using phrases such as “disconsolately bewildered” to mean “confused.” She adored mythology and anything else fanciful. She heartily appreciated Alysia’s unusual art.

  Alysia had loaned her one of her own gowns from Paris, one of the more conservatively cut ones. It fit nearly perfectly, and Mary had said she was grateful to have the advice of a lady who wasn’t “rail thin,” meaning her slender sisters and the willowy Lady Devon.

  “I heard once that some women have a figure fashion adores, but it’s better to have the figure men adore,” Alysia had told her, and Mary beamed as though Alysia had quoted scripture instead of a modiste. Alysia winked at Mary, and they were friends, as simply as that.

  Alysia looked at Mary, engrossed in the fashion plates in her lap, and greeted her, “Good morning, Mary.”

  Mary startled and put a hand to her heart. “Oh! I do apologize profusely for the intrusion into your chambers, Alysia.”

  “No matter, Mary, you are most welcome. Studying fashion this morning?”

  “Oh, yes. Sophia says we may expect a visit from the modiste this week.” When their elderly, regimental Aunt Louisa was away, Mary and Madeline Cavendish addressed Lady Devon informally, which apparently the countess preferred. Lady Devon had invited Alysia to call her by her first name, as though they had been childhood playmates or equals in rank, but she didn’t dare.

  Alysia slipped a dressing robe on over her nightdress and Mary looked with her mouth slightly open and her eyebrows raised. “I beg your pardon, Alysia, but that is a deliciously scandalous thing to wear to bed! Lace, and silk, and cut so sparsely.”

  “It’s the Parisian style. Married women and, ah, fallen women often wear it, and I have become partial to the style. Perhaps I shall give you one for every night of the week when you are married.”

  “Yes! Aunt Sophia would never allow me to wear such a thing now,” she mourned. “Although I am sure I would feel rather grown up and romantic if I did.” Mary cocked her head. “Since you are not married, are you implying that you are a fallen woman?” It seemed Mary found the idea fascinating rather than disgraceful.

  “I have earned the distinction.” Alysia saw no sense in being reserved with a girl of eighteen, who might be eligibly married at any time. “If you want to know about making love with a man I can’t tell you much from experience.”

  Mary giggled. “Do you mean you could tell me some? Is it the mysterious man who sends you purple roses and chocolate?”

  “Yes, and yes, I suppose. But I can’t have him, so don’t be overly pleased on my behalf.”

  “Ooh.” Mary’s eyes went wide. “Is that why you are here? Hiding from a forbidden lover? And he sends you clandestine tokens? How tragic!” She sighed. “How romantic. Do you not despair, Alysia?”

  Every day. “I try not to dwell on it. I fill my time with pleasant things, such as browsing fashion plates. What will you order from the modiste?” Alysia pointed to the illustrations, hoping to change the subject.

  They bent over the drawings, and Alysia had to talk Mary out of a few of the designs. “My dear, the lady modeling that gown could fit both of her bosoms on one side of your bodice. Such a cut of the neckline is not for you.” The chambermaid had come in and chuckled at her comment. Alysia added for good measure, “And she would no doubt weep with jealousy.”

  Alysia flipped over a few pages and pointed to a heart-shaped pleated bodice. “There. You need something form-fitting in the waist. That would be a flattering style.”

  After breakfast Alysia found Madeline waiting in the
library. Madeline was the most serious and earnest girl she had ever met. Fourteen going on forty, she was astoundingly well-educated and brilliant. Difficult to believe she had obtained nearly all of her knowledge of the Romance languages, arithmetic, literature, and music in only the four years she had studied with Lady Devon. But then, the countess was famously academic herself. A shameless bluestocking, as her own bookish husband teased her.

  Madeline reminded Alysia of Christian, both of them always with their heads bent studiously over a book, puzzling over the intricate workings of the universe as no normal adolescent would.

  When Alysia had been introduced to Madeline, the girl blurted, “My, but you are quite beautiful!” She added breathlessly, “And you have purple eyes. How fantastical!”

  Alysia had tried to disguise a smile at Lady Devon’s startled gasp. “I got them from my mother, and I think I shall like you very much, Miss Madeline.” And it had turned out that she had, as instantly as she liked Mary.

  Lady Devon had done a fine job of teaching Madeline to draw; her proportions were accurate as well as her use of shading. She hadn’t been taught to paint. And she had yet to study the human body, but Alysia didn’t suppose Lord and Lady Devon would approve of a trip to the art schools of Paris to sketch the nude models, as Lady Mercoeur had done with Alysia when she was fifteen. The same year her mother had died, she remembered sadly.

  Madeline didn’t notice Alysia as she came in. She looked intently at a drawing on a large sketchpad. It took Alysia a moment to notice it was hers. And as luck would have it, she studied the portrait of Andrew — the drawing of his head and thankfully not the other. But that did not mean Madeline hadn’t seen it. Alysia had never found the fortitude to remove the drawings, and she looked at them often. At the moment her concern was what Lady Devon would do if Madeline had seen the nude and admittedly erotic drawing of Lord Preston.

  Madeline saw Alysia approach. Instead of startling and being ashamed of snooping, she said reverently, “He is the most beautiful man I have ever seen. His lines are masculine and angular, yet with an elegance and comeliness that hardly seems fair for a man to possess.” She looked up. “You didn’t exaggerate his features?” Alysia shook her head, no. “Not the length and thickness of lashes? His jaw is so square and his nose so straight? And such artistically perfect hair; I have only seen the like in a DaVinci. Only he has the rough look of a warrior, which is contradictory, considering his beauty. He has a Byronic air, I would say.”