And not once in the past three days of scouring the city’s most depraved haunts had Darius been judged, ridiculed, or scorned. The soiled doves and molly boys hadn’t hesitated to share their resources. They hadn’t even taken his coin in exchange for what he so desperately needed.
“You have a fourteen-year-old daughter,” Darius said, “growing up in Ireland in the home of your cousin’s steward. Most of your jewels are paste, though I made sure the ones you tossed to me were real enough. You’re dying your hair—the hair on your head—and I know this because you’ve made the mistake of keeping the candles lit when I pleasured you.”
Her jaw dropped, and Darius felt the surging satisfaction of a well-executed ambush. “Shall I go on?”
“You would not dare.”
“I would dare. I dared to take coin for that which no gentleman should, and I would dare to cheerfully ruin you not for taking advantage of me—for I was taking some advantage of you as well—but taking unfair advantage, backed up by unconscionable threats to innocents who owe you nothing. We can part without further hostilities, or we can declare war. It’s your choice.”
He held her gaze a moment longer, making sure she read the resolve in his eyes.
“Lucy was the one who suggested we take your sister,” Blanche said, her expression becoming desperate. “I had nothing to do with that. She said the girl was already ruined, and you were getting too difficult.”
Darius went still, while he heard a roaring in his ears and his vision dimmed. His hands fisted, his jaw clenched, and he held himself back from throttling the miserable female before him only because he’d kill her if he laid a finger on her.
And he’d enjoy it.
“She came to no harm,” Lady Cowell babbled on. “Really, there was no harm done. Reston saw to that. We were just going have her drink a bit of absinthe, set her down in a gambling hell. There’s no real harm in that.”
Merciful God. Drugged and disoriented, Leah would have ended up in a brothel before dawn.
“You say there was no harm,” Darius growled, stalking across the room, “when my sister will never feel safe in the park again.” He loomed over her, his voice lethally soft. “You say leaving an innocent woman to the mercy of the pimps, drunks, and bounders would have been no harm? I should tell your husband what you’ve been up to and send word to The Times as well.”
“Please.” Blanche dropped her gaze. “Please. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Darius forced himself to breathe evenly. She had bullied him unmercifully, for her entertainment, for her pleasure. He would not bully her. “Do we understand each other, Lady Cowell?” His voice was even and yet laden with menace. “Answer me.”
“We understand each other, and I will make sure Lucy understands as well.” She met his gaze long enough to nod once.
“That will not be necessary.” Darius sketched an ironic bow. “The pleasure of enlightening your sorry friend and familiar will be entirely mine.” He cleared the room so quickly he didn’t see the look of stunned horror on Lady Cowell’s face, or the way she dropped into a chair and sat staring into space long after he’d gone.
His interview with Lucy Templeton was even more to the point, though he also allowed her the courtesy of closeting herself with him before he threatened the future she’d assumed was secure.
“You accepted payments from French sympathizers to keep certain contraband from coming to the attention of excise men quartered near your husband’s seat. The punishment for treason is hanging.”
“I would never do such a thing! You lie, Darius, and poorly.”
“Now, Lucy,” Darius nearly purred as he came to stand too close to her, “I have no reason to lie. I’ve been a naughty man, true, but I’ve never paid for the pleasure of whipping children nigh to death. What would your husband think, did he learn of such an excess of temper?”
“My husband is devoted,” Lucy said, her eyes venomous.
“Devoted, indeed, to the mistress who bore him two sons, for whom he provides well. He apparently had no trouble functioning with his mistress, unlike his situation with you. All he’d need is an excuse to have you sent to one of those pleasant, walled estates for women with nervous constitutions.”
Color drained from her face, and Darius observed with curious dispassion that the woman might have once been pretty, had not vice and bitterness twisted her expression.
But he hadn’t yet finished with her.
“And if you truly dispute the charges of treason”—he nailed her with a frigid look—“then charges of attempted kidnapping of my sister might still see you in jail, my lady. Your footmen can be bribed as easily as any, and Reston—Earl of Bellefonte, now—would do anything to see those who threatened his countess brought to justice.”
She sank onto the sofa, his words landing with more gratification than well-aimed blows.
“I’ll leave you to contemplate your sins, but be warned that Bellefonte’s brothers are yet at university, and they will be admonishing their entire forms to avoid the likes of you, and making sure their younger brothers are warned as well. Do we understand each other?”
“We do.” Her answering croak was in the voice of a woman who knew when she was… beaten.
“I suggest you and Lady Cowell take a repairing lease somewhere as distant as, say, the Italian coast. Latin men are notably solicitous toward older women. Good day.”
***
Casting off the pall of association with Blanche and Lucy should have left Darius euphoric. Mightily relieved, in any case. Instead, it was overshadowed by four things that deflated positive feelings considerably.
First, Darius had bid good-bye to the only family member to share his household, the only bright spot in much of his recent years.
Saying good-bye to John when the boy left for Belle Maison had hurt, but not Leah, not Trent, not even John himself seemed to comprehend Darius’s loss. Nicholas, oddly enough, had pulled Darius aside for a fierce hug and promised him the child would come to no harm and visit Darius often. That assurance had been so desperately needed Darius had found himself blinking back tears.
Crying, for God’s sake, and on another man’s shoulder. What did Darius have to cry about?
The second development of great proportions in Darius’s life was that Nick had confronted Wilton with evidence of the earl’s mishandling of funds—and worse—earlier in Leah’s life. Wilton was effectively banished to Wilton Acres out in Hampshire, and the maternal inheritance Darius’s father had pilfered from him was being repaid, with interest.
When a man learned to live on next to nothing, a sudden and deserved influx of capital created challenges: What to do with it, how much to invest, where, on what…? It all took time, concentration, and a focus Darius had to force himself to maintain.
The third development was more alarming still, in that Trent, drifting along into a shambling sort of widowerhood, had to be taken in hand. Darius escorted his brother bodily to Crossbridge, the estate Trent owned free of any entail, and set his brother down a considerable distance from the brandy decanter. Trent’s children were sent out to Nick and Leah in Kent, and Darius was left to pace and fret and pray that his brother pulled out of whatever malaise had him in its grip.
The fourth development was the worst: Vivian left Town.
The other matters—losing John, maybe losing Trent, being inundated with business decisions—Darius could manage those, relatively. He could not manage losing all contact with Vivian. She would be approaching her confinement, and likely concerned about it, and he…
He had no right to offer her reassurances, no right to comfort her, no right to look forward to the birth with her, and yet, she’d been right: in this regard, they’d been cheated.
He couldn’t help himself. When Lord Valentine Windham offered an invitation to rusticate in Oxfordshire just a few miles from Longcha
mps, Darius leapt at the chance.
***
Pregnancy scrambled a woman’s brains.
Vivian reached this profound conclusion within days of returning to Longchamps. True, London was miserable in summer, but she and William traditionally stayed in the city until Parliament adjourned in August. And William had stayed there, which only proved to Vivian that her wits had gone begging.
William was… failing. Dying. She’d admitted it to herself only as he’d deposited her into their traveling coach and she’d seen the way his shoulders were more stooped, his gaze less clear, his gait slower. She was losing him, and now of all times, she didn’t want to lose the closest thing she had to an ally.
Still, she’d been so intent on putting distance between herself and a certain Darius Lindsey that she’d left William in Town with no one but Dilquin to fuss over him, and hied herself back to Longchamps.
Where Portia’s hovering presence was going to move Vivian to murder. The woman was an atrocity, and Vivian’s sympathy for Able grew with each hour. Portia suggested changes to the house, as if she knew William’s health were precarious and she planned to take over as lady of the manor when William was gone. Able brushed off her plans and schemes and shared the occasional sympathetic look with Vivian.
But worst of all for Vivian was that distance, which she’d intended to help her get some perspective on Darius Lindsey, was only making his presence in her imagination harder to eradicate.
Would the child look like him? Would Darius come to the christening? Was he thinking of her, or was he sauntering around with one of those horrid women on his arm, in his bed, at his side? Had “very soon” come to pass that he’d parted company with them, or were they still commanding his escort when Vivian could not?
That last question hurt. He’d been honest with her, told her exactly who and what he was, but it still… hurt. If Darius were nothing but a cicisbeo, bought and paid for, what did that make Vivian?
She tortured herself with questions like that, even as she took long walks all over the ripening countryside. To see the crops growing, even as she grew, was a comfort, though her ambling became more and more deliberate.
Darius had told her to walk, to resist the urge to become sedentary as well as gravid.
To escape Portia, Vivian frequently took a blanket and a book—Byron was her most frequent choice—out to the stream running behind the orchard a half mile from the house. The roll of the land protected her from the view of the manor and its outbuildings, and the distance was just right to give her a sense of peace.
Which was disturbed past all recall when she felt something tickling her nose. She batted at it, not quite ready to be done with her late-morning nap, but it returned.
“Shall I kiss you awake?”
She opened her eyes, and her mind told her Darius Lindsey, whom she had not seen for weeks, was on the blanket with her, but she refused to accept such a reality.
Pregnancy scrambled a woman’s wits that badly.
“Go away.”
“Soon.” He did ease away, but not before Vivian saw a light dimming in his eyes. This was a good thing, lest he think he was still welcome to kiss her or hold her or take her hand in his.
But what he did was worse. He shifted to sit a foot away from her.
“How are you, Vivvie?”
Vivvie. His name for her, delivered with unmistakable concern. Unmistakable caring.
“I’m fat,” she huffed, making it as far as her elbows, but anything approximating lying on her back was no longer comfortable, so she flailed around until Darius boosted her to sitting, smiling at her shamelessly.
“You’re glorious,” he said. “Your face looks thinner. How are you feeling?”
She glared at him, arranged her skirts, and felt tears welling. She loved his eyes, loved the way he could communicate intimacy without saying a word, and right now, those eyes were tormenting her with the tenderness they offered.
“I feel pregnant. Ungainly, a little worried. What are you doing here?”
“William is taking good care of you?”
“William is doing his best.”
“Vivvie?” He was closer, though she hadn’t seen him move. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She scooted a little away, the better to see him and avoid his scent, because as pregnant as she was, she wanted to make herself drunk on his fragrance.
“You have no business showing up here and accosting me.”
“I’ve done a great deal more than accost you.” The humor was back in his tone. “That gives me the right to at least inquire about your well-being. William stayed back in London, didn’t he?”
She nodded, glancing away.
“What can he be about?” Darius eyed her searchingly. “Leaving you out here among the servants to go into your confinement?”
“You think he meant for you to come and inspect his broodmare?” Even Vivian was shocked by the bitterness in her tone.
“Perhaps.” Darius’s tone gave nothing away. “I was more concerned for the mother of my child. You’re cranky, and that’s to be expected. Shall I hold you?”
“No.”
He shifted, sitting behind her, a leg on either side of her, and drew her against his chest. “I went through this with John’s mother.”
Vivian felt his chin resting on her crown, and the tears constricted her throat. She should fight him off, but it had been so long, and she was weak with longing for just this.
“She was weepy and grouchy, and so worried for her child she could hardly carry on a civil conversation for the last few weeks. Fortunately, Gracie was on hand, and little moods and snits didn’t alarm her in the least.”
“You loved John’s mother?”
“I pitied her. I do not pity you, much.”
“Damn you.” Vivian did try to shove him off, but he held her gently.
“Vivvie, calm yourself.” He propped his cheek against her temple and kept both arms around her. “John resides with Leah and her husband, Bellefonte.”
“You miss him.” Vivian sighed against Darius’s chest. “You miss John, and you can’t pester him to write to you because you want him to be happy.”
“Hush.” He stroked her back in slow circles, and Vivian felt her eyes grow heavy.
“I’m angry with you.”
“I know, love.” He brushed a kiss to her hair. “You’re furious and disappointed. You have every reason to be.”
She dozed off, and he held her, and when she woke up, he was still there, and when she’d managed not to cry for weeks, that made Vivian cry.
***
Had God in all His wisdom created a sweeter experience than to allow a man to simply hold the mother of his child? Darius hoped Vivian would sleep for hours, but in fact she dozed only for a few minutes.
She was angry with him, but all trust hadn’t been destroyed, or she would never have let down her guard to rest in his arms this way. He assured himself this was true, and assured himself she was in blooming good health as he took a cautious inventory of her appearance.
Her face was thinner, more mature, and more lovely than ever.
Her pregnancy was advancing visibly, and the sight was dear and erotic and amazing to him. He locked the eroticism away behind high walls of respect and guilt.
Her breasts were magnificent, her hips voluptuous, and her shape… Slowly, Darius slid a hand over her belly, his patience rewarded when the child shifted slightly, causing Vivian to move in his arms.
Ye gods, ye gods. A child, their child, alive and safe under his hand, under her heart. He had to blink and swallow and blink some more as he prayed Vivian didn’t choose that moment to wake up.
He wasn’t going to rush his fences this time. Vivian had been hurt enough by all his vacillation, and she wasn’t going to give up ground easily. But just to
hold her… to hold her and know she was confiding in him and at least allowing herself the comfort of his embrace, it was enough.
It would have to be enough.
Vivian stirred, rubbed her cheek against his chest, then sat up and speared him with a look.
“You have to leave, Darius.” She tried to wiggle away. “I can’t tolerate any more of your hot-and-cold, here-and-gone treatment. It’s good of you to inquire about the child, but I’d appreciate it if you’d take yourself off now.”
***
“Able, not now.” Portia shoved him away and slid the letter she’d been writing off to the side—since coming home from London, Portia was doing a prodigious amount of letter writing. “You smell like a stable.”
“And here I thought breeding women were supposed to be affectionate.” Able obligingly withdrew, but he’d bothered to wash thoroughly before presuming to kiss his wife’s cheek, and the rebuke disappointed.
Portia gave him an exasperated look as she recapped the inkwell. “What do you mean, breeding women? Go maul Vivian if you’re attracted to breeding heifers.”
Able lowered himself into one of the chairs facing the desk, since Portia appeared unwilling to yield his proper place to him. “I’m not talking about Vivian. How far along are you, Portia?”
Her mouth opened as if to deliver another broadside then snapped shut with a click, and Able realized his wife hadn’t been being coy about her condition; she simply hadn’t known.
And now that she did, she wasn’t pleased.
“This is your fault.”
At least she was predictable. “I certainly hope so. The date of the child’s arrival will likely shed light on those particulars.”
She tidied a stack of green ledgers that needed no tidying. “And just what do you mean by that?”
“We’ve been married for years, Portia, and you’ve never caught before. A little trip up to Town, and there’s a blessed event in the offing. You don’t know how far along you are, do you?”
“I’m not… regular,” she hedged. “It’s hard to tell.”
She wasn’t ir-regular, but Able saw she was worried, and knew a moment of exasperation with the Almighty. Managing, scheming, grasping Portia might be, but she wasn’t enough of a steward’s wife to have timed her indiscretion so there was at least some possibility the child was Able’s.
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