“Thank you, Charlie. So, Mr. Brownlow, where does your employer actually live? Despite the fact that he and I are intimate, he hasn’t actually told me.”
Charlie looked a bit pink, and Jamie looked even more uncomfortable, but after a moment’s hesitation, he yielded up an address.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! The impossible weasel! He only lives a couple of streets away!”
Beatrice simmered, and was still simmering at two o’clock when she set out from South Mulberry Street in her walking jacket, and with her hat set at a determined angle. For more than a fortnight she’d been trysting with Ritchie at Belanger’s and other neutral locations, while the wretched man only lived around the corner.
So much he was keeping from her. So many secrets.
Of course, she reminded herself for the hundredth time that he owed her no revelations. She was his mistress, and a temporary one at that. She had no rights over him, and could entertain no expectations beyond their arrangement.
And yet part of her knew deep inside that it was more than that.
Are you keeping me at a distance because you want more, too? Because you care more than you should? Because your heart is engaged, just as mine is, and this liaison has become more than simply a confluence of our libidos and my debts?
She strode out on the pavement, a woman alone, so far beyond respectable convention now that she didn’t think twice about walking out unaccompanied. Jamie Brownlow had suggested he escort her to Ritchie’s house, but she’d squashed his offer in no uncertain terms.
Charlie had been beetroot-red in the face when his sister had refused accompaniment and announced that she would probably end up either boxing Ritchie’s ears or requesting him to fuck her until she couldn’t see straight.
Because yes, despite it all, her body still yearned for him.
On reaching 17 Prudholme Place, Beatrice rapped impatiently with the knocker, not giving herself a chance for second thoughts. She was going to beard the blond lion in his den whether he wanted her to or not. Waiting patiently at home and cooling her heels like a good mistress was not for her anymore. She had to make her voice heard.
After just a few moments’ wait, the door was opened by a smartly dressed middle-aged parlor maid. It seemed strange that Ritchie had a household and a life she knew nothing of, but she supposed his other paramours had never been interested in such minutiae the way she was.
“I should like to see Mr. Ritchie, if you don’t mind? I’m a friend of his. Miss Beatrice Weatherly.”
The maid, obviously used to protecting her employer’s privacy, seemed hesitant. Was Ritchie, the married Lothario with a locked-up wife, often hounded by other women after all?
“I’ll see if he’s receiving visitors. May I take your card?”
Beatrice considered simply pushing her way in regardless, but years of drilled-in politeness stifled that urge. Fishing a card from her bag, she handed it to the protective servant, and then was surprised to be ushered inside into a small reception room and invited to wait.
The room was quiet and pleasant, not cluttered with a thousand things as many such rooms were, including those in her own home. There were few ornaments, only one or two unobtrusive pictures on the wall, and absolutely no photographs to be seen anywhere, on any surface.
Well, he certainly wouldn’t want pictures of his wife, would he, if he’d shut her away somewhere to avoid seeing her?
But Beatrice didn’t believe Ritchie was as callous as that, not for a minute. Bitter Eustace had every reason to exaggerate and to malign his enemy, and he’d also wanted to hurt her for rejecting him.
The moments ticked by, marked by a small lacquered clock with a decorated enamel face. It was the fanciest thing in the room, and very pretty, but Beatrice wasn’t in the mood to appreciate its attractions. She just wanted the time it marked to pass, and Ritchie to appear, and she couldn’t sit down in one of the comfortable but elegant chairs until he did so.
Where are you, you wretch? she thought, pacing.
As if motivated by the power of her will, the door swung open with some force.
“Good afternoon, Bea. You’ve anticipated me. I was about to call on you when I’d finished my toilette, but alas now you’ve caught me in my dressing gown.”
He’d only been away a couple of days, but Beatrice’s eyes feasted on her lover as if they’d been apart for years. Despite everything, it amused her that she’d caught him in his dressing gown, just as he’d ambushed her in hers what seemed like a lifetime ago, when they’d first forged their arrangement.
Clad in his rich blue robe of paisley silk velvet, Ritchie was the very picture of freshly bathed male pulchritude, his jaw just shaved, his hair wet and curling, his eyes bright with unfeigned pleasure at the sight of her.
“You’ve caught me in less,” she answered quickly, her heart skittering, her fingertips tingling inside her glove with the need to touch him. He seemed more desirable to her every time they encountered each other, and no amount of deception and dark history could alter that.
Ritchie gave her a long look, pursing his lips. She could see him ticking off every sign she was exhibiting. Then he tugged the sash of his robe tighter, as if he were arming himself.
“If I’m not mistaken this isn’t a call to welcome me home from my travels with passionate lovemaking, is it?”
“No, I came in search of conversation, not carnality, Ritchie.” She felt herself twisting at the strap of her little bag and forcibly stopped herself. Fidgeting was revealing. “My status as a mistress, bought and paid for, decrees that I should refrain from asking questions and probing the secrets of your life, I accept that. But I’m afraid my nature is to seek enlightenment and knowledge…in order to give me strength.” His blue eyes flickered as she spoke. “Especially since the last time I was too trusting…well…I suffered the consequences.”
Ritchie drew in a deep breath. “Your reasoning is sound, Beatrice, and I understand it. Believe me, I know full well the perils of trusting that all will be well.”
Who had Ritchie trusted? Even with the clamor of her own questions and doubts, Beatrice heard the note of sorrow and bitterness in his voice. It must be his wife, his supposedly mad wife in whom he’d mistakenly put his trust.
“I don’t know where to begin,” she blurted out, at a loss in the face of how much she wanted and needed to know.
“Well, why not sit down, for a start.” Ritchie gestured to a leather-upholstered settee, hesitated, then took a seat himself, holding out his hand to draw her down beside him. “Please?”
Beatrice sat, keeping her distance from him, fiddling with first her bag, then her gloves, making a meal of taking them off.
“Ask anything you want, Bea. Anything.” She thought he was going to lean back, lounge against the upholstery, a challenge to her curiosity, but he didn’t. Instead he leaned forward, took her gloves from her, dropped them on the seat, then folded his hands around hers.
Yes, make it more difficult for me, you devil! His touch tingled like a galvanic current, radiating out from the contact to every part of her body.
“Are you married, Ritchie? I know it’s not my business, really, because I’m only your…your courtesan or whatever we choose to call it on any given day, but I’ve decided I would like to know.”
There, it was out. Perhaps the hardest question.
“Yes, I’m married, Bea. I’ve been married twice. My first wife died—” so much depth of sorrow in the quietly spoken little words “—but my second wife is very much alive.”
“But she doesn’t live with you?”
Ritchie let out a sigh, not of exasperation but of a resigned acceptance.
“No, Margarita doesn’t live with me. We haven’t lived as man and wife for years. She’s not in her right mind. She’
s been diagnosed as insane and resides in a private nursing home, in Wimbledon, where she can have as safe and comfortable a life as possible and be well cared for…and not hurt herself or anybody else.”
Ritchie paused, almost as if his mouth and jaw were locked by tension. Observing him, Beatrice recalled again his naked back and shoulders, and the scars. The wounds from cutting and from fire.
Margarita’s doing? It seemed the obvious explanation.
About to pursue the point, she hesitated. Ritchie looked as if a barrier had come down behind his eyes, to keep him from pain or memory. Or both. When she opened her mouth to quiz him, he broke in, his voice harder than before.
“What prompted the sudden desire to question, Beatrice? I expected gentle enquiries long ago—it’s a woman’s nature to want to know such things.”
Beatrice gritted her teeth, torn by conflicting emotions.
Sympathy. Aggravation. Curiosity. She wished she’d never come here, and yet she knew it would have been impossible not to.
She shook her hand free of him. Those hands of his made it difficult to think straight. “As I said, I didn’t think it was my place…but then someone paid me a visit and apprised me of certain home truths.”
“Eustace Lloyd.”
If a glacier of cold disdain could be two solitary words, these were they. Ritchie’s voice was flat and dismissive.
“Yes, the very man you’ve apparently ruined on my behalf, it seems.” Beatrice snatched up one of her gloves and began to mangle it again, not sure what she would have done if her hands were free. “Although if you’d stopped to consult me on the matter, you’d realize that wasn’t what I wanted at all.”
Ritchie took the glove out of her hands again, and tossed it and the other and her bag all aside. Removing ammunition? “Lloyd exaggerates. I merely saw to it that he was excluded from two or three choice business arrangements in the last couple of weeks. And that his memberships at two of my clubs—where he’s been repeatedly caught cheating at cards, I might add—have been rescinded.” He stared at her, his blue eyes steady, challenging her to protest. “That’s hardly ruin, Bea, and he’s a resourceful man. Perhaps he’ll find some other trusting young woman to pose nude for his camera, and recoup his fortunes in the pornography market?”
Anger bubbled like hot acid in Beatrice’s chest, all the more coruscating because she didn’t quite know where it was directed. At Ritchie? At Eustace? At Polly, or Charlie, or Jamie, or whomsoever had finally confirmed to Ritchie that Eustace had photographed her? Perhaps it was self-directed even, and that most of all? Bereft of her gloves to wrench at, her hands clenched into fists, and before she knew it she was pummeling Ritchie’s chest, thumping the front of his blue robe and the solid muscle beneath.
“Yes, very well, I was trusting. I admit that! And he put a little laudanum in my champagne to loosen my sensibilities,” she cried as he grabbed her wrists in a firm but not unkind grip. “But I wanted to do it, too. Do you know that? I wanted to do something daring and forbidden. I’m not a paragon of genteel womanhood, Ritchie, and I never was, really. Why on earth do you think I found it so easy to contemplate fucking you for money?”
Ritchie’s hands tightened. “He drugged you?” The face she thought so beautiful hardened. Ritchie suddenly looked older, and furious. Murderously furious. “I’ll kill him. Never mind ruin him, I’ll kill the bastard!”
“Don’t be absurd! He didn’t hurt me.” Ritchie’s fury was mighty to behold and a little frightening, but inside Beatrice felt a deep atavistic thrill. What was wrong with her? She should be horrified by his threats of murder on her behalf, and yet she exulted. For her, a warrior would fight…
And there were practicalities. Before Ritchie could protest, she went on. “But, Ritchie…if he’d never taken those photographs, we would never have met. You wouldn’t even have known I existed.”
Ritchie looked away for a moment, his hands still holding her. “We’d have found each other. I know that. One day I’d have looked across the room at a ball or a reception, and I’d have wanted you immediately.”
“And then where would we have been, might I ask? I might have been married, and then you’d never have had me.” The irony made her laugh. “I might be a notorious trollop now, but if I’d married, I would never have countenanced betraying my husband.”
They stared at each other. The thoughts and ramifications hurtled and circled through her head like images in a kaleidoscope, and she could almost see the same thing occurring behind Ritchie’s blue eyes.
Slowly, he relaxed, releasing her. Beatrice rubbed her wrists, realizing how tightly he’d held her, and almost immediately he took hold of them again, gently soothing and massaging the little hurts.
Then he sighed. “We seem to have landed ourselves in something of a conundrum, Bea, haven’t we?” There was fire in his eyes, but it was inward now.
“Yes, somewhat…I’d say.”
Ritchie gave her a long, appraising look as he let go of her. It wasn’t judgment, more searching, looking for something he had to face that was not entirely amenable to him.
“You want more, Bea, don’t you? More than this?” His gesture was slight, and openhanded, but it seemed to encompass their entire relationship.
More? Yes, I do want more. With you I want everything.
It was true and this time she didn’t suppress the notion. She did want to marry him, and be with him forever. And give him children.
And as so very often, she could tell he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“But you know I can’t give you that. I’ll never be able to.” His voice ached with regret, with sorrow.
Beatrice wanted to hold him, kiss him, and yes, even take him to bed right now in order to ease what was troubling him. And she felt a window open inside her, a window onto a new way of considering their future.
“Maybe I don’t want quite what you think I want.” She held his gaze boldly. “We don’t have to marry. I don’t care about that.” And as she said it, it dawned on her that she didn’t, not the marriage part. “We could live together, just as if we were married. I don’t give two pins for respectability. I said farewell to that concept quite a while ago.”
“No, that’s not good enough.”
“How so?” Had she misread him? She didn’t think so. She didn’t have his clever powers, apparent as they were, but she was intuitive enough.
“You deserve the very best, Beatrice. You deserve a wedding, respectability. A comfortable, secure place in society. Not a half life.”
Men! How could they be so stubborn? Whoever said that women were the more contrary sex was completely mistaken.
“I’ve told you. I don’t care.”
“But I do! I want to give you everything you lost, thanks to Lloyd.” His jaw tightened and he threw back his head to stare at the ceiling, as if for inspiration. “But I can’t.” He lowered his gaze, to look at her. “And I think it’s probably better that we conclude our relationship now, before I lead you on any further and cause you any more pain.” He drew in a breath as if the very passage of oxygen was agonizing. “If you quit me now, perhaps something of your reputation will be salvageable. With a bit of money behind you, you’ll soon attract another suitor. A man who can give you what I cannot. A decent man who’ll love you and make a life and a home with you.”
“Which you don’t want to, presumably?”
The room suddenly seemed frozen in ice. Why in the name of all that was holy had she said that? In her heart, she knew he cared for her—why had she goaded and insulted him so?
It was the madness of love. Perhaps he now had a mistress lacking in wits as well as a wife?
“Don’t be absurd, Beatrice.” If he was aware he was mirroring her own utterance, he didn’t show it. His face was like thunder, a brig
ht and righteous thunder. “I care for you, you stupid woman! Can’t you see that?” He drew her hand to his lips and kissed it passionately. “And that’s precisely why we should part now, for your own benefit. I’m done with ruining women’s lives. I’ll not hurt you further.”
The feel of his lips against her fingers, his breath against her skin was like a dousing with pure pleasure. A reaction which she was sure worked both ways, and made her more and more infuriated at him for being so obtuse.
“I’ve told you. I don’t care. Why must we go around in endless circles like this? And why has a notorious womanizer like you suddenly turned into such a paragon of moral decency to rival our Queen herself?”
He dropped her hands. Moved back on the settee, the slide slow and weary. And reluctant.
“I think it’s best if you leave, Beatrice. The longer we go on like this, the more difficult it becomes.” He reached for her gloves and her little bag and held them out to her. “But don’t worry, the money is yours, free and clear, as is the annuity and the sums committed toward your family debts. That’s the least I can do.”
“No! I will not be paid off!” In the folds of her skirt, Beatrice clenched her fists again. She was going to do something silly, she could feel it, so the tighter she held on to herself the better. “I’ll take only enough for Charlie’s debts and to set me up at typewriting school…but no charity!”
She straightened her spine and glared at him, daring him to contradict her.
The gloves and the bag hit the carpet. “Don’t be ab—” Ritchie stopped short, almost as if he was about to laugh, then his face seemed to mutate through a dozen changes of expression at rapid succession: anger, fear, frustration, despairing amusement.
Then something else.
“If I didn’t know what insanity was truly like, Beatrice Weatherly, I’d swear you’ve driven me to it.”
Drawing in a great sigh, almost a gasp as if she’d knocked the air out of him, he slid forward again on the settee, and before she could react, he hauled her into his arms and brought his mouth down on hers.
In the Flesh Page 29
