by Mary Balogh
She had no idea whether Lord Ferdinand and the Duke of Tresham intended to dine at home. She had no idea if she would be denounced and banished from the dining room if they were there. But she was no coward. She would not hide away in her room. Neither would she go quietly if they tried to rid themselves of her company for dinner. After all, she was still living here under the assumption that she belonged here, that it was they who were the usurpers. No proof to the contrary had yet been shown her.
They were both in the dining room, both wearing black evening clothes with white linen, looking very much like the sons of Satan. They rose and bowed at her entrance.
They dined together, the three of them, in a strange charade of civility. Both gentlemen were meticulously polite, making sure that she had everything she needed, careful not to choose any topic of conversation that might exclude her. Under other circumstances, Viola thought, she might have enjoyed herself. But these were not other circumstances. She was scandalously alone with two gentlemen. One of them knew who she was—or who she had been. It was impossible to tell if the other did too. But he would soon.
Viola did not afterward know quite what had been served for dinner or how many courses there had been. All she took away with her was the impression that Mrs. Walsh had excelled herself in deference to the presence of a duke at Pinewood. She found the meal interminable and rose to her feet as soon as she decently could.
“I will leave you to your port, gentlemen,” she said. “If you will excuse me, I will bid you good night and go straight to my room. I have a slight headache. I trust you are happy with your room and have everything you need, your grace?”
“Everything, thank you, ma'am,” he assured her.
“Miss Thornhill.” Lord Ferdinand Dudley drew a folded piece of paper from a pocket of his evening coat. “Would you oblige me by reading this in your own time?”
The will? But it was just a single sheet. The Earl of Bamber's will would surely be a fat document.
“Yes.” She took it from him.
It was not the will, she discovered when she had reached her room. It was not really a letter either. It was some sort of declaration, written in a bold, black hand. It stated that although the will of the late Earl of Bamber was not for copying or perusal by anyone unconnected with its contents, it had been produced and read in its entirety by the Duke of Tresham, his claim to an interest in its contents having been acknowledged. The paper asserted that beyond any doubt the will made no specific mention of Pinewood Manor in Somersetshire and none of Miss Viola Thornhill. It was signed by the duke in the same bold, black hand, and by George Westinghouse, solicitor of the late Earl of Bamber.
Viola folded the paper and held it in her lap for a long time while she stared into space. He simply would not have changed his mind. And he would not have delayed. He had known that his health was poor. He had not expected to live more than a month or two longer. He would not have forgotten.
She would not lose faith in him—not again.
The will must have been changed without his knowledge. But there was no way on earth she was going to be able to prove that, of course. And so she had lost Pinewood. How sad he would be if he could know! She felt as sad for him at that moment as for herself—she could feel only numbness for herself. He had thought she was safe and secure for life. He had been cheerful, even happy, as he had bidden her good-bye forever—they had both known it was forever.
A tear plopped off Viola's cheek and darkened the fabric of her skirt.
The Duke of Tresham stayed only until early afternoon of the following day. He was interested in seeing the house and park and home farm, all of which Ferdinand showed him during the morning, but he was eager to return to London and his family. The baby was colicky, he explained, and Jane needed his support during the nights of disturbed sleep. Ferdinand listened to the explanation in some fascination but without comment. Was it not a nurse's job to stay up with a fussy baby? Did Tresham really allow his sleep to be disturbed by a child?
Was it really possible that a marriage that had begun four years ago as an apparent love match had continued as such? With Tresham, of all people? Could he possibly be steadfast in his devotion? And faithful to Jane? Could she be faithful to him? Even now, after she had dutifully borne Tresham two sons—an heir and a spare, to use the vulgar parlance? Jane was a beautiful woman, and a spirited one too.
Was there really such a thing as true, lasting marital love? Even within his own family?
But it was too late to take any real interest in learning the answer. One day too late. Yesterday she had been Viola Thornhill, wholesome, lovely, innocent. Today she was Lilian Talbot, beautiful, experienced—and deceitful to the core of her cold heart.
“I wish you had let me have a word with her this morning, Ferdinand,” the duke said as they stood together outside his traveling carriage. “You lack the necessary resolve for performing unpleasant tasks. And you are emotionally involved. I could have had her out of here by now.”
“Pinewood is mine, Tresham,” Ferdinand said firmly. “And everything concerned with it, even its problems.”
“Take my advice and don't allow her to spend another night here.” His brother laughed shortly. “But Dudleys have never taken well to advice, have they? Will we be seeing you in London before the Season is over?”
“I don't know,” Ferdinand said. “Probably. Maybe not.”
“A decisive answer indeed,” Tresham said dryly, and took his seat in the carriage.
Ferdinand raised a hand in farewell and watched until the carriage disappeared among the trees. Then he turned and walked back into the house with firm strides. It was time to get rid of the intruder. It was time to harden his heart and behave like a man. Like a Dudley.
The butler was hovering in the hall.
“Jarvey,” Ferdinand said grimly, “have Miss Thornhill in the library within the next two minutes.” But he paused when his hand was on the doorknob and the butler was already on the second stair. “Jarvey, ask Miss Thornhill if she will wait upon me in the library at her earliest convenience.”
“Yes, my lord.”
He stood at the library window, looking out, until he heard the door open and close behind him. He had not even been sure she was at home. He turned to look at her. She was dressed very simply in a light muslin day dress. Her hair was in its usual neat coronet of braids. He looked her over from head to toe. Perhaps after all Tresham had been mistaken, and his own memory had played tricks on him.
“Good afternoon, Miss Talbot,” he said.
She did not answer immediately. But his foolish hope died an instant death. A faint smile played about her lips. It was just the expression she had worn at the theater—and in the hall yesterday when he had presented her to Tresham.
“You address me by a name that is not my own,” she said.
“You knew very well where I had seen you before,” he said, his eyes raking her again, with anger this time. How dare she look just so at him! He had been kind to her. But then, she would despise kindness. Good Lord, he thought as if realizing it for the first time, he had been sharing a house with Lilian Talbot.
“On the contrary.” She raised her eyebrows. “Where did you see me, Lord Ferdinand? It was not in any bed you have ever occupied. I believe I might have remembered that. Of course, despite your claim to be wealthy, you probably could not have afforded me, could you?”
Her eyes were sweeping over him as she spoke, giving him the peculiar notion that he was being stripped naked and found wanting—rather as if he had regressed ten years or so to the time when he had shot up to a gangly, spindly height, all legs and sharp elbows and teeth too large for his face.
“At the theater,” he said. “With Lord Gnass.”
“Ah, yes, Lord Gnass,” she said. “He could afford me and liked demonstrating the fact.”
He could hardly believe how she had been transformed before his eyes.
“I suppose,” he said curtly, “Viola Thornh
ill is an alias. No wonder Bamber has never heard of you. I suppose no one at Pinewood or in the neighborhood knows your real identity.”
“Viola Thornhill is my real name,” she said. “Lilian Talbot died a natural death two years ago. Are you disappointed? Were you hoping to sample her favors before you toss me out? I was always too expensive for you, Lord Ferdinand. I still am, no matter how large your fortune is.”
She was regarding him with that sensuous, scornful half smile. He was repulsed by it and by her words. But he felt his temperature rise despite himself.
“I would waste not a penny of my fortune on purchasing the favors of a whore, Miss Talbot,” he told her. He probably would have felt instant shame at his choice of words if she had shown any sign of mortification or even anger. But the look on her face merely deepened to amusement.
“I could not be tempted,” he added.
She came closer then, stopping just beyond touching distance—and after he had taken an involuntary step back until his heels clicked against the base of the wall behind him. Her eyes had become heavy-lidded. Bedroom eyes, he thought. With a voice to match, he observed a moment later when she spoke again.
“That sounds very much like a challenge,” she said. “I am very, very skilled, my lord. And you are very, very male.”
She seemed somehow to have sucked half the air out of the room, leaving precious little to supply the need of his lungs.
“Would you care to make a wager?” she asked him.
“A wager?” He felt deuced uncomfortable, though he would not take another step back even if he could. He was already trapped against the window, looking like a bloody idiot. How had he maneuvered himself into this awkward position anyway? He was the one who had summoned her. He had been going to give her a piece of his mind before ordering her to leave before sundown.
“That I can seduce you,” she said. “Or not. However you want it phrased. Bed you. Pleasure you. Cater to all your deepest and darkest sexual fantasies.”
Fury held him speechless. This was the woman he had pitied? Grown to like? Even fancied himself half in love with? Considered marrying? Was he indeed so gauche? Such a dupe? So easily manipulated? For he could see clearly now that he had been clay in her hands from the first. She had soon realized that she could not drive him away and so had planned a different solution to her problems. She had accomplished her goal with humiliating ease—humiliating for him. If Tresham had not arrived when he had and recognized her, there was no knowing what the rest of the day might have accomplished for her. He might be betrothed to her now. He might at this moment be at the vicarage, arranging to have the first banns read on Sunday.
Now, without a blink, she had changed tactics yet again, but this time she was comfortably within the realm of her expertise. She had made a handsome living on her back. Famed for her beauty and her seductive charms and her prowess in the sexual arts—and for the clever ploy of granting each client only one night of her favors—she had been in greater demand than any other courtesan within living memory.
She chuckled low in her throat. “I can seduce you, you know.” She moved another step closer, set one forefinger lightly against his chest, and traced a light path upward with it, over his neckcloth toward his bare throat.
He clamped a hand about her wrist and returned her arm to her side. Anger and desire and revulsion all warred within him. “I think not, ma'am,” he said. “I prefer to make a free choice of my bed partners.”
“Ah, but you do enjoy a wager,” she said. “Especially when the stakes are high.”
“If you are suggesting that I wager Pinewood,” he said, “you are wasting your breath. You would lose.”
“But according to you, I already have lost,” she said, turning away and crossing the room to run her fingers over the bare surface of the desk. “You really appear to have won, do you not?”
“I dashed well have,” he said, glaring at her. “And you have diverted me from my purpose in summoning you down here.”
“Ah,” she said, turning her head to smile at him, “but you changed your summons to a request, Lord Ferdinand. Mr. Jarvey told me so. You like to think of yourself as a gentleman, do you not? And you consider yourself weaker than your brother, who does not care what anyone thinks of him.”
She was uncannily perceptive. But then, an understanding of men must have been necessary in her career.
“I want you out of here before nightfall,” he said. “I do not care whether that gives you enough time to pack your things or not. You will leave. Today.”
She was still looking at him over her shoulder. “What, Lord Ferdinand?” she said, amusement in her voice when he had steeled himself for either tears or anger. “You are afraid to accept a wager? Afraid that you will lose? How you would be derided in all the gentlemen's clubs if word were to get out that you were afraid of being bested by a woman. By a whore!”
“Don't call yourself that,” he said before he could stop himself.
Her smile deepened and she turned to face him fully, her fingertips still lightly stroking the desktop.
“Give me one week,” she said. “If I cannot seduce you within that time, I'll never again challenge the authenticity of that will. I will go away and never trouble either your person or your conscience again—I do trouble your conscience, do I not? If you lose, of course”—she caught him completely off guard by smiling dazzlingly at him—“then you will be the one to leave. You will also relinquish your claim to Pinewood in my favor—and in writing. With witnesses.”
“Nonsense!” he said. But the thought struck him at the same moment that it would be an easily enough won bet and that in one week he—and his conscience—would be permanently rid of her.
“But before you left, Lord Ferdinand,” she told him softly, her voice sultry again, “you would enjoy a night of such exquisite pleasure that you would spend the rest of your life pining for more.”
Despite the revulsion her boast caused him, he also felt an unwilling surge of pure lust. Had she been dressed like a harlot—as she had been at the theater—he would more easily have resisted her. One expected an expensive harlot to speak in such a way. But she was clad in a dress of virginal white. Her hair was dressed for elegance and practicality. She was Viola Thornhill, for God's sake. Talking about going to bed with him.
“I never disappoint,” she said, lifting her hand away from the desk, moistening her forefinger slowly with her tongue and running it along her lower lip. More of the air seemed to have gone from the room, leaving Ferdinand gasping for breath and fighting to disguise the fact.
“By God!” he blurted, his temper snapping. “I want you out of here. Now. Sooner.”
“Would it not be better to have me leave quietly after one week than screaming and biting and kicking and shedding copious tears today?” she asked him. “And stopping in the village to scream and weep some more?”
“Do they know?” He frowned at her and for the first time took a few steps farther into the room. “Do these people know who you are?”
“Who I am? Yes, of course,” she said. “I am Viola Thornhill of Pinewood Manor. They know that I am a connection of the Earl of Bamber's.”
“They believe a lie, in fact,” he said indignantly. “They do not know you are a whore.”
“Present tense?” She laughed softly. “But no, they do not know. And what a weapon I have just handed you. You may reveal my dreadful secret, Lord Ferdinand, and doubtless they will gather behind you in a righteous mob to run me out of Somersetshire.”
He glared at her, white with fury. “I am a, gentleman,” he reminded her. “I do not go about spreading such unsavory tidings. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you,” she said with mocking carelessness. “Is that a promise, my lord?”
“Devil take it!” he retorted. “I have said it is so. A gentleman does not need to promise.”
“And yet,” she reminded him, “it would be an easy way to rid yourself of me for all time, w
ould it not?”
“That is already done,” he said. “I daresay you read the declaration signed by both Tresham and Westinghouse that I handed you last evening. Bamber changed his mind, if ever he intended to make you a permanent gift of Pinewood. I daresay he thought it too extravagant a gift for the services you had rendered him.”
She stood very still, her finger still resting against her lower lip, staring at him blankly, her faint, contemptuous smile fading. And then she returned her hand to the desk and smiled again.
“You will never know,” she said, “unless you avail yourself of those services, Lord Ferdinand. You can only take my word for it that you will not consider Pinewood too extravagant a wager at all. I am very, very good at what I do. But you are convinced, of course, that you can resist me. And perhaps you can. Or perhaps not. It would be an interesting wager. You will forever consider yourself a coward if you refuse to accept it. Come.” She walked toward him, her right hand extended. “Shake my hand on it.”
“You would lose,” he warned her weakly instead of simply repeating his order that she leave before nightfall.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She held her hand steady. “Are you really afraid of losing to a woman? Having won Pinewood at cards, are you now afraid of losing it at love?”
“Love?” he asked with undisguised revulsion.
“A euphemism,” she admitted. “Lust, if you prefer.”
“I am not afraid of losing anything at all to you, ma'am,” he told her.
“Well, then.” She laughed and looked for a disconcerting moment like the Viola Thornhill with whom he was more familiar. “You have nothing to fear. This will be the easiest won wager you have ever agreed to, Lord Ferdinand.”
“Dammit!” He slapped his hand onto hers and squeezed it so hard that she visibly winced. “You have your wager. One that you will lose, I do assure you. You have one more week here. If I were you, I would use the time wisely and begin to pack and make plans. You will not be staying one day longer than a week. That is a promise.”
