Master of Love

by Catherine LaRoche

  Then and there, he determined to find out more about this woman. And to stop thinking about her.

  That those two intentions were contradictory was a problem.

  But he was the Master of Love, damn it. He had such matters all figured out.

  At least, that’s what the gossip rags said about him.

  Chapter 7

  The knock at the door surprised them all.

  Callista and her family hardly ever had callers anymore. She cringed at the thought that it might be a Sunday-afternoon visit from the Saint George’s Ladies’ Benevolent Society. That must have been the last time they’d had callers, when the good ladies came by to solicit a donation for the Christmas fund last November. She still winced at the memory of the look on their faces over the pittance she’d been able to offer.

  The only reason they even heard the firm knock was because they’d thrown open the French doors at the back of the morning room and were out on the terrace. For all their socializing and meals, the family used the small morning room on the ground floor furnished with attic castoffs. Callista tried to assuage her shame by telling herself the space was more comfortable anyway than the formal drawing room upstairs her mother had decorated with such care, now stripped empty and left unheated. When the weather was fine, like today, they moved their table outside to dine alfresco, as they had so often in France.

  They’d returned home from services at Saint George’s, a short walk down Hart Street from Bloomsbury Square, where they sat at the rear, in an obscure pew. Their midday Sunday dinner of Yorkshire pudding and calf’s head employed a most economical cut of meat and produced a fine broth for another meal or two later in the week. Callista had then changed her gown for some spring gardening, dismayed at how wild the plantings had grown through her neglect. The garden was supposed to be her responsibility, but it was another of those tasks for which she never had time. The warmth of the beautiful day got to her, however, and she ended up rolling on the grass with Margaret’s five-year-old daughter, Suzy, and playing pirates with Daphne and Billy.

  And so Callista was caught in full parry and thrust when Margaret announced on the terrace steps, calling card in hand, “Dominick Avery, Viscount Rexton.”

  At Callista’s startled glance, the maid reddened, realizing too late she should have left their caller in the hall while she inquired if her mistress was receiving. Mrs. Baines scooped up Suzy and the big bowl of spring peas she’d been shelling and headed back inside.

  To Callista’s everlasting surprise, it was Lady Mildred who saved the day, and Callista’s dignity.

  Looking sprightlier than Callista had seen her in a long time, her great-aunt rose from her chair and, leaving her cane behind, advanced toward their visitor.

  “Rexton, what a pleasure to have you stop by!” She held out her hand to him, as if they entertained viscounts in their garden on a regular basis. “Please, do come in.”

  It was only then that Callista came to her senses and dropped the sturdy chestnut branch serving as her sword. She wiped her hands on her skirts. “Lord Rexton, may I present my great-aunt Lady Mildred?”

  “Ma’am.” He bowed over her hand and then raised it for a kiss, dark eyes twinkling. “It’s an honor to finally meet you. Your great-niece has spoken of you very fondly. Now I see from where she gets her lovely hair.”

  Her aunt simpered—actually simpered! He’d somehow unerringly honed in on her one vanity: her hair still kept some of the copper glow from her youth.

  “Yes, the women in our line do tend to have ginger hair”—she patted at her coiffure, smiling coquettishly up at him—“although our Daphne’s is more on the blond side. They both take after their dear mother and, of course, their great-grandmother, the late Duchess of Galbridge.”

  Callista blushed at how little time it had taken for her great-aunt to work that connection into the conversation. She clearly wanted Lord Rexton to know with whom he was dealing.

  Too flustered to pull herself together—what was he doing here?—Callista watched with amazement as her great-aunt proved the consummate hostess, performing introductions all around and even discreetly telling Margaret where she could dig up a few shillings to send out for greengage-jam tartlets and cinnamon buns at their favorite bakery in Bloomsbury Market. Marie, meanwhile, chatted with the viscount about his mother’s imminent return and the wardrobe she and Lady Rexton had already begun to plan through Mr. Danvers.

  “We’re about to have tea—you must stay!” said Lady Mildred. “Or perhaps you’d prefer something a little stronger? We have an excellent Madeira that Callista’s father, rest his soul, acquired direct from a Portuguese merchant in Lisbon.”

  All this was true, although until this moment Callista had had no idea her often fuzzy-minded great-aunt remembered the details of their wine stock. The house was stripped of everything else of value but still had the remnants of a good cellar laid down by her father in flush times an eon ago. It was one of the ways he’d tried to provide a lifestyle for his wife similar to that of the high ranks into which she’d been born. Callista had sold off most of the wine and spirits to a local merchant in High Holborn six months ago—along with another slice of her pride—but hadn’t been able to bring herself to part with it all. A household without at least a small cellar lost all claims to gentility, and she wasn’t prepared to admit to that state quite yet.

  Marie cut in. “Callista, you’ve finished cutting back the tulips, haven’t you? Why don’t I help you change out of your gardening gown whilst Lady Mildred takes Lord Rexton on a tour of the flower beds? We’ll be back down before Mrs. Baines has the tea laid out.”

  Marie had her dress changed and toilette refreshed in record time.

  When they returned, Lady Mildred was on Rexton’s arm; he was whispering in her ear, making her laugh and slap at his hand. “Rexton, you have your mother’s naughty charm, as well as her good looks, my boy. When will dear Celeste be back from Paris?”

  If the viscount was surprised they ate off heavy and chipped dishes formerly relegated to the nursery, the likes of which he mustn’t have seen since he emerged from his own schoolroom, he gave no indication. The afternoon passed in a blur of his flirting outrageously with her great-aunt, treating Marie with the greatest of courtesy and attention, challenging Daphne to a game of checkers, and even teaching Billy proper fencing moves with the chestnut branches—“Always point at your opponent with your lead foot and your sword arm will follow.” He was at his most charming and seemed completely at home in this houseful of women.

  Callista, however, he practically ignored.

  Finally, when the last cinnamon bun had disappeared, Lady Mildred stood and announced her knee was aching, always a sign of upcoming rain. The sky, of course, was a warm blue, without a cloud. But Lady Mildred and Daphne had to go in, and she knew Marie had that work to finish this afternoon as well, but surely dear Rexton would like to stroll the garden with Callista, especially to view the lilacs in the back corner, always so lovely in the spring.

  And so Callista finally found herself alone with the man who occupied far too much of her thought these days.

  “You should have had a harem—you could charm the birds from the trees.” She shook her head, dabbed primly with her napkin after her last sip of tea, and tucked the linen’s frayed edge out of sight by her cup. “Actually, I suppose you do have a harem, according to the society rags.”

  “Miss Higginbotham, you shock me!” he teased. “To know of such things, and to read and repeat such gossip!”

  “I doubt there’s much that shocks you, my lord. What a show that was!”

  “Your family is charming, Callista. There was no show.” He smiled at her warmly, and it seemed genuine, not what she’d come to think of as the Master of Love smile he used on the ladies.

  But because it was so unbelievable he’d be whiling away his time with them on a sunny Sunday afternoon, she ducked her head. “You mock me,” she said.

  His brows raised in surp
rise. “Not at all! I enjoyed myself very much. There’s great warmth in your household.”

  She straightened her spine and forced herself to look him in the eye. “Lord Rexton, much as we’re honored by your call, may I ask what it is you’re up to?”

  “I came to see you, Callista.”

  “You’ve barely spoken to me all afternoon.” The sulky words slipped out before she could stop them.

  “I’m speaking with you now.” He reached across the table for her hand and turned it over. “A fine gardener you are. Do you get many blisters?”

  She wanted to pull away at the odd heat of his touch but didn’t dare let on how much it affected her. Surely Lady Barrington didn’t react like a ninny every time he held her hand. “Why would you come to see me?” she asked.

  “I like you, Callista,” he said simply.

  She didn’t believe him, of course. Or he only liked her, in that way. She withdrew her hand. “Are we back to that, my lord? I seem to recall telling you once before I wasn’t a light-skirt.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Such a mind you have, Callista. Would I stay for Sunday tea with your family if I had such intentions? I simply wanted to see you in your home and meet your family.”

  “Well, such as we are, you’ve seen us now.” She laughed painfully, sweeping an arm around the overgrown garden, the terrace table draped in a tattered cloth any genteel family would have cast off long ago, and the scruffy morning room beyond with the threadbare rug and meager scratched furnishings. Her cheeks pinkened as she thought how he must have seen the dressmaking shop where the dining room should have been.

  Apparently unconcerned with all that, he stood to tuck her hand onto his arm and lead her off the terrace onto the few paths of the garden. “Come, let’s walk, and you can tell me about your home. Did you lease it out whilst you were on the Continent?”

  She sighed and gave in to his request. “Yes”—she strove to match his nonchalance, as if she promenaded with peers in her backyard all the time—“we were gone six years, the first three traveling quite a bit in Germany and Italy and the last three settled in Paris. Luckily, we had wonderful tenants here the entire time—a Methodist doctor and his family. Teetotalers, you know; they never touched the wine cellar. We’d just heard they were taking on a missionary post to the Orient when my father received word about the title. It seemed fated we return to London to take up residence again.”

  “Was it your mother’s death that had prompted your father to move you all to Europe?”

  His question was a painful one, but his tone was so nonthreatening, the sunshine so warm, his presence at her side so sturdy and comforting, that she felt lulled into trusting him with her story. The rhythm of their slow and easy pace around the garden settled her nerves and reminded her how nice it was to talk to a friend.

  She’d had three very close friends growing up: Beatrice, Lenora, and Genevieve, four young girls brought together by their mothers, who’d shared a coming-out season. Shortly after their marriages, the four mothers had founded the Christian Ladies’ Charitable and Reform Society of Love. They’d become very active in London philanthropy, and their daughters had become inseparable friends—until Callista’s mother died and the Higginbotham family left England. Since her return, she’d been too busy with her father’s ill health and then too embarrassed by her reduced circumstances to look them up again. Marie was now the only friend she had.

  “Yes.” She nodded in reply. “Once Daphne was old enough to travel, we left England. My father took my mother’s death very hard. Theirs was a rather unusual love match.”

  He covered her fingers on his arm with his other hand and squeezed. “Tell me.”

  “It involves some old family history, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m in no hurry; I’d like to hear the story.” His warm invitation pierced a dam in her heart and words began to spill slowly forth.

  “My great-aunt Mildred and her older sister, Lady Mavis, were the only children of Mortimer Willette, the fourth Duke of Galbridge. Their father died when they were still in the schoolroom, and the title passed to a cousin in a feuding family branch. The new duke was apparently disinclined to take responsibility for the two girls beyond paying out their portion from the entailed property. Great-Aunt Mildred had nothing else in the way of dowry and there was some shadowy story of a broken heart in her past, so she never married. Her sister, Mavis, however, found herself a handsome colonel. Together, they apparently shared a penchant for living beyond their means. It got to the point where they counted on their only child, Elizabeth, to replenish the household coffers through a brilliant marriage. They hoped she’d replant their wilting branch of the family tree firmly back among high society.”

  He nodded. “A common enough story. What happened then?”

  “To her parents’ horror, Elizabeth, my mother, married for love.” Callista kept her voice light, kicking at wayward twigs on the path as they walked. “She met my father in a bookshop during her second London Season. He was a student of the classics finishing up at Oxford. His father was a vicar near Shrewsbury up in Shropshire, third son of the original Baron Higginbotham. My father was perfectly respectable but so far down the line of succession that Mama’s parents considered him completely without prospects. They decided there was nothing for it but to elope. Mama’s family was furious and cut her off completely—all except for her aunt, my great-aunt Lady Mildred. She always loved us.” A poignant sadness stabbed at her heart, but she disciplined her breath to the even pace of Rexton’s steps. “I never met my grandparents, not even at Mama’s funeral. They died whilst we were away.”

  He rubbed his fingers lightly across hers, and it was enough to distract her with the sensation of shivers up and down her spine. “That’s a difficult family history to grow up with.”

  She shrugged, more to shake off the disconcerting tingle than out of any bravado. “I didn’t feel deprived. My parents loved me and each other, we had this house, and it was always full of books and laughter and wonderful conversation. Father’s clients—particularly the writers and intellectuals here in the neighborhood—came over often to pick up their orders. He never had his own shop. He preferred to obtain rare and foreign books on behalf of private collectors and scholars or to work with bookshop owners on special commissions. He eventually had quite a network of buyers and sellers throughout England and the Continent.”

  “When did you start helping him with his work?”

  “I was around twelve when I began to serve as his clerk for some correspondence. He schooled me well in Latin and Mama taught me French and Italian, so I came to handle many of the foreign orders.” She paused to swallow hard. “It was after my mother died that I took over more of his trade.”

  “You said your father was shaken badly by her death. Did you take over Daphne’s care at that point also?”

  She smiled sadly. “In many ways, I feel more Daphne’s mother than a sister twelve years her elder. She was only four when Mama died. Daphne had caught a bad lung fever that fall. Mama nursed her through it, but then fell sick herself. I . . . I couldn’t bring her back to health.”

  Their steps slowed to a halt in front of the lilacs along the rear wall. Thick with blooms and wild from lack of pruning, the bushes swayed heavily in the breeze. They’d been her mother’s favorite. Callista’s breath still sometimes hitched in her chest at the terror of having so unexpectedly to take over her sister’s rearing and the management of the household as well as her father’s business correspondence. Even more frightening had been her father’s lost vagueness until well past Christmastide as he came undone with grief. When he’d slowly returned to himself, as if from a long and distant voyage, he’d apologized in the new year, kissing her brow, saying, “But I knew I could count on you to handle everything.”

  “It sounds like your father burdened you with a lot. And he left his family in rather dire straits.” His tone had grown sharper. He twisted a branch on the lilac bush. “Had he let his
financial affairs decline so much you were forced to go into trade to survive?” The head of pale lavender snapped off, releasing a waft of perfume.

  She glanced at him sideways and frowned. “That’s not quite fair. I love the book trade and am good at it—or at least I would be if clients trusted me with their commissions.” She heard the bitterness in her voice and closed her eyes on a deep sigh. “My father didn’t intend, of course, for us to live in such reduced circumstances. He’d hoped settling back on British soil with his new title would create opportunities. He wanted to provide dowries for Daphne and me so we could marry well. He had plans to rebuild his London client base, especially for foreign book sales, now that we had so many contacts among European dealers. That’s part of why Lady Mildred moved in with us after our return, to be our chaperone and sponsor. As the new Lord Higginbotham, my father hoped their two titles combined could help launch Daphne and me in society.”

  “But it didn’t work out that way.”

  “No”—her eyes skittered away from the penetrating intensity of his chocolate-brown gaze—“it didn’t.”

  Why was she telling him all this, letting him drag the whole sad story out of her? Enough—she turned, thinking to lead them back into the house, but he caught at her hand. He enclosed it warmly within his much larger ones and brought it up for a kiss. The gallant gesture was one she’d seen him perform dozens of times on the visiting ladies of Rexton House. But surely those ladies didn’t feel this melting heat in the pits of their stomachs at the mere touch of his lips to their skin. The gesture felt different in other ways as well. When she risked another quick glance into those dark eyes, she had the oddest impression he’d dropped his usual mask painted with the self-assured Lord Adonis smile. Instead, his look seemed almost pleading. In place of his normal patter of compliments, he uttered but one word, more entreaty than command: “Stay.”