“Walter,” she said, her voice bright as she moved to kiss both his cheeks.
She slipped her arm through his and used the motion to help him to a seat without making too much of a fuss about it. He smiled up at her as he settled into his place.
“An old trick, girlie. I see you’re trying to fuss over me.”
She laughed as she retook her seat across from him. “I cannot help it. Long-held habits are hard to break.”
“Yes. You always did take good care of me. It was a blessing,” he said, his tone suddenly far away.
Vivien shifted under the uncomfortable weight of memory and emotion. She grabbed for the parcel she had brought with her and held it out to him.
“Your favorites.”
His eyes twinkled as he pulled away the ribbon and layer of thin paper to reveal a box of truffles imported by Niles Chocolatier from a chocolate shop in Switzerland.
“The only chocolates Niles does not make in his own shop, though how he imports them when the Swiss are part of Napoleon’s regime is beyond me,” she said as Walter pulled the box top away and ate one of the sweets with an expression of bliss.
He held the box out, but she shook her head. He put the box on a table at his side and settled back to stare at her. “I cannot believe you have only come here to bring me chocolate and talk to me about import and export of the same. Though I could probably tell you a bit about it.”
“You think I have an ulterior motive for my appearance here?” she asked. “No, I have only been thinking about you of late. You taught me very valuable lessons during your time as my protector.”
He tilted his head as if he did not understand where she was going with the conversation. A point of pride for her, since normally Walter was seven steps ahead of anyone who played a game of verbal chess with him.
“What lessons did you learn at my feet, dear Vivien?”
“You were my first protector,” she explained, pushing to her feet as she suddenly felt quite restless. “You taught me how to hold myself when I was on your arm, how to be polite and comfortable in all parts of Society, low or high, and what to say in every situation.”
He waved his hand. “Any protector could have taught you those things. You were eager and quick to learn.”
She didn’t look at him, but out the window as she pondered that. “I suppose any protector could have done this, but most wouldn’t have wasted the time. They would have kept me as a whore, not a mistress. Or they would have decided I was not worth the trouble.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “You were beautiful and talented in the ways of your path. You would have been worth the trouble to anyone with a brain.”
She smiled at his attempts to soften what she knew to be true. This man had saved her when most others would not have. She owed him a boon even if he played it off as nothing.
“There was one more lesson you taught me.”
He smiled. “What is that? How to lace your shoes?”
She laughed, though she was utterly serious when she whispered, “You taught me how to keep my heart separate from the feelings of my body.”
“Ah.” He pursed his lips together as his smile faded. “Those lessons. I suppose they were a good thing. In theory.”
She tilted her head. Walter had always been firm on the fact that one should never allow a lover too far into one’s heart. Now he wavered on the same notion?
“What do you mean?”
He fingered a loose thread on the settee, drawing her attention to the worn fabric. It was different than it had been during her last visit, but she could see now it was not of better quality.
He sighed. “I suppose I mean that as I grow older and closer to death—”
She caught her breath. “No!”
He arched a brow. “Don’t be foolish, girl. Look at me. I’m a shadow of my former self. Death will visit in the next few years, I wager.”
She said nothing, for she could not deny the terrible toll life had taken on him. Nor the consequence of the death he now expected.
“And now that I have reached the end of my life,” he continued. “I sometimes regret separating my heart from my body. It cost me friends, lovers, even my own children, who do not call on me except when it is required.” He sighed softly. “Loneliness is a difficult pill to swallow, even if it is entirely of one’s own making.”
“Yes,” Vivien found herself whispering and caught her breath as she heard the word in her own voice. “Not that I am lonely.”
“Even during the nights where you do not fill your home with partygoers and lovers?” he asked, his tone and expression benign for such a volatile question.
She hesitated. “I suppose those nights are long,” she admitted. “But I fill them with my own pursuits.”
“Reading, sewing, conversation with friends, I know what you mean. And I suppose there are rewards in those things.” He shook his head. “But there is nothing like the love of a partner. Someone who is not obligated to care for you because of blood ties or financial ones.”
He frowned and she saw a line of loss across his face that brought tears to her eyes a second time. She blinked them away again, but felt sorrow remain. For him. For herself. In twenty years, thirty years, forty years…she would face the same end as her old friend now did. Isolated in another country, she would rely on casual acquaintances and paid help to send her off to her final rest.
Not Benedict. Not her children.
“You are still young,” Walter’s voice broke into her reverie and forced her to remember that she stood in his parlor. She had floated away for a moment. “I hope you might still leave room for love, despite what I taught you.”
“And what if that love cannot last?” she asked, thinking of the stares of Benedict’s friends, the dismissive tone of his brother and the shock of his sister-in-law.
He shrugged. “Even if it cannot, the memories will fill some of the emptiness when it is gone, will it not?”
She jolted at the thought. She’d always considered the memories associated with love as potentially painful, but she could also see how they might be a comfort. Any moment she shared with Benedict was one she could live over in her mind, replaying like a story where she was the heroine of the piece.
She had a great deal more to think about than she had imagined when she came here hoping Walter could straighten her head. Instead, she was more jumbled and confused than ever.
She shook her head. There were other reasons she had come and now she could use those to change this tender subject, at least until she had had enough time to consider it further.
“You know, this is not why I have come here either,” she said.
He cocked his head. “Always protecting yourself from delicate subjects. Then why did you come if not to hear me wax poetic on the benefits of emotion?”
She shifted. “I have heard you have perhaps had some hardship beyond your illness,” she said, pressing into this very delicate subject with the greatest of care. Walter had been a proud man when they were together.
To her surprise, he chuckled at her question rather than avoid it. “You are referring, I suppose, to my disastrous loss of fortune?”
She hesitated and then nodded slightly. “If you wish to tell me about it.”
He waved a hand as if it were meaningless. “The money that was not bound up in entail was drained away by empty endeavors and poor investments. Since I turned over all the estate business to my son, a bit of balm on the wounds I caused all those years ago, it is coming back. But my home here and my lifestyle are greatly reduced, I admit.”
Vivien nodded. “I owe you a debt, Walter.”
He lifted both eyebrows as her statement sank in. “No.”
“Yes,” she said, with as much strength as his denial. “I would have been on the street if it had not been for your assistance all those years ago. You took your reputation and placed it over me, making me a commodity other men desired. And you settled me well enough that it began my rise. S
o I owe you this.”
He stared at her. “Why? Why now?”
She pondered how to respond and decided the truth was the best way. “Walter, I am leaving London. This Season shall be my last.”
She wobbled a little on her feet. Since making her grand announcement to her servant a few weeks before, she had not spoken her decision out loud. Now she heard the words, felt their finality, and it staggered her.
It seemed to do the same for him. He blinked at her, face blank as if he hadn’t understood the language she spoke. After what seemed like an eternity, he said, “I beg your pardon.”
“I am going to go to the continent and start over. Buy a little home, create a new name. I’ll call myself a rich widow and have a different life.” She sighed. “But there are things left to do here. Words to be said. And people, like you, to thank.”
He reached out a hand and she rushed to him, taking it as she settled in next to him.
“Vivien,” he murmured.
She smiled. There was so much to just her name. So much understanding that passed between them. She squeezed his fingers gently. “I’m going to deposit a sum in an account for you.”
He jolted. “No, Vivien, truly—”
“Tush,” she interrupted as she slipped her hand from his. “Allow me to settle my debt with you and cross it from my ledger.”
“You owe me no debt,” he insisted, but his tone grew weaker with every word.
She leaned across and gently kissed his cheek. “I wish to repay it, regardless. Hire a pretty nurse with it. Let her take care of you…in more ways than one.”
He burst into laughter that put the youth back into his eyes. “When you put it that way, how could I refuse?”
She pushed to her feet. “Excellent. I will send word to you this afternoon once the deed has been done.”
He watched her but did not stand, proof yet again of his weakened state. “Will you see me again before you go?”
She nodded. “I will. Now do not trouble yourself by seeing me out. I can do that myself. I’ll let your servant know.”
He smiled his goodbye and she slipped from the room and from his home with only a few words. Outside, Greenley had returned from his own visit and was standing beside her vehicle with a satisfied smile.
“I trust your sister is well?” she asked as he helped her into the carriage.
He nodded. “Oh yes, ma’am. Right as rain. I hope your visit was just as pleasant.”
She smiled and he stepped away. As soon as he was gone, her smile faded. Seeing her old friend had been a bittersweet pill indeed. And his remarks on love left her spinning.
But the more she pondered them, the more she wondered—could she dare to allow her heart to rule her, even for a few weeks? Would she be able to survive on those memories for years to come? Did she have the nerve do it and know that the pain at her parting from Benedict would be far greater than anything she had ever known?
Chapter Fifteen
The latest party his mother had dragged him to had been a failure of nightmarish proportions and Benedict’s head pounded as he entered his foyer. He waved off his chattering butler and trudged up the stairs.
His mother knew about Vivien. She wasn’t so indelicate as to state her knowledge outright, thank God, but her desperation in matchmaking and her comments about appropriate brides made it clear that his brother had taken his concerns to a whole new level.
Now debutantes were being thrown at him like tomatoes at a street skirmish and because of his title and fortune, not a one seemed to care about Vivien’s appearance at the earlier party. He had danced until he was certain he had a blister and the empty, cloying chattering of chaperones echoed in his mind.
He pushed open his chamber door and slammed it behind him with the heel of his boot. Boots he immediately began to remove even as he made for the bell to call for his valet. Before he could do so, a voice stopped him.
“I would be happy to stand in Mr. Aubrey’s stead if you are in need of assistance.”
His hand still hung in the air, inches from the bell, and he could not bring himself to turn right away for fear he would find the room empty.
“Benedict?” the voice repeated.
He finally forced himself to move toward that voice and sighed with relief as he saw Vivien standing beside his bed, watching him. Her blonde hair was down around her shoulders and back, her dress had been removed at some point and she was wearing a thin, silky white negligee in its place. In the firelight, her body was perfectly outlined beneath it.
He swallowed past a suddenly thick throat.
“I did not expect to see you here,” he whispered.
She moved a step closer. “I hope that doesn’t mean I’m not welcome.”
He shook his head. “Most welcome, I assure you.”
She slipped closer, but he held out a hand. “I need to say something. I know I hurt you at the ball the other night. When you did not return my missive the next day, I believed you wished to end our affair. Not that I blamed you.”
She held out a hand to him. “Oh, Benedict, firstly it was I who thought up the idea of how to handle Beecher that night, to trade on my less-than-stellar reputation. I had no right to be affronted by what my own words wrought. It was churlish to do so. And the reason I did not reply to your missive was because I pondered ending our affair, for your good as much as mine.”
“You did?” He stared, confused by her openness, as much as her presence. “And yet you are here despite your thoughts about ending our affair. Unless I am dreaming.”
She laughed. “You are not dreaming lest it is a shared dream between us. I am here because what is between us has always been so much more complicated than I have ever admitted. Leaving, breaking from you…it has never been as easy for me as it should have been.”
He drew back. In the years they’d known each other, that was the closest thing to a confession of emotion he’d ever heard.
“I’m not ready to be parted from you again,” she whispered as she lifted his hand to her breast. “So please don’t ask me any more questions. Let us leave analysis for another day. Just be with me, here, tonight.”
If he had protests or further inquiries about her decisions, they melted from his mind as he slipped his free hand into her hair, tilted her face and pressed his lips to her. Being with her was the one thing he knew how to do. If she desired pleasure, he could most definitely do that for her…with great satisfaction.
His opposite hand, which she had placed on her breast, began to move, gliding the back of it up and down, brushing the nipple through the thin fabric of her nightrail until she shivered against his lips and made a sound of pleasure deep in her throat. She slid her hand up his chest, past his shoulder and draped it over the back of his neck as she lifted herself in eagerness to be closer.
He guided her to his bed and when he laid her against the pillows, he looked down at her. Closer was always what they had fought to be, at least in bed. Even when she pushed him aside emotionally, she had opened her arms to him physically.
Perhaps it was her only way of accepting him. Perhaps that was the only way he could sooth her fears and make her feel safe and loved.
He dropped his lips to hers a second time, but this time the kiss was gentled. He stroke his tongue over hers, tasting her slowly, savoring every second that he was so close. He felt her relax with his ministrations, which was in itself a movement of trust. One he intended to prove he was worthy of.
He pulled back and moved to his side, cuddled close to her. He fingered the lacy strap of her night rail. “This is beautiful.”
She looked up at him and her surprise was evident. “Thank you. I had it made years ago, but never wore it.”
“Never?” he repeated in surprise.
The corner of her lip quirked up. “No one else would have appreciated it as much as you.”
“I doubt that, but I encourage it if only so that I will be the only man ever to see you in it.” He leaned over h
er to press a kiss against the front of her shoulder, around the strap he had been fingering.
She let out a little sigh. “That is very nice.”
“Indeed,” he agreed, his breath coming short as he kissed lower, where the strap connected to the gown itself. “As is that.”
He pushed the strap from her shoulder and revealed the smooth globe of her breast. They were the perfect breasts, really. Sized just to fit into his hands, rounded and peaked with dark, dusky-rose nipples that currently strained and were hardened by desire.
“I have always been fascinated by your breasts,” he said as he flicked his thumb over the peak once, twice.
She shivered, but laughed. “My breasts or breasts in general?”
He glanced up at her with a playfully stern expression. “Both, I suppose, but mostly yours. Their sensitivity has long been a study of mine.”
To accentuate the words, he leaned over and stroked his tongue over the nipple, swirling it in a tight circle around the peak while Vivien cried out with pleasure that made him laugh against her skin.
“You see, my research is proven,” he teased, returning his attention to lightly thumbing the now-wet nipple.
“I can see that I must abandon myself to this, for it is quite important work,” she said, her tone playful but strained by desire. “The ramifications could be far reaching.”
He chuckled, loving this lightness between them. “Indeed. All womankind could benefit from your brave bearing of my experiments.”
“Then experiment away,” she breathed.
She smiled up at him and his breath caught. Had she ever been so lovely? Relaxed and playful, he could see something girlish in her. Something she hid from the world behind that façade of the knowing, experienced mistress to the important and rich. Tonight he truly was with someone no other man had seen or touched, a fact that gave him great pleasure.
Her Perfect Match: Mistress Matchmaker, Book 3 Page 12
