“Calm down. I’m not about to steal her from you, though I’d hurry and stake your dibs before someone else lays claim.”
“What have you heard? What do you know about her?” Felix flung his feet over the side of the bed.
“Steady, old chap. Of course I know where she’s from. A bower where the princes of the realm are ready to bankrupt themselves for a night of her charms. I hope you know that pocketbook might take a beating if you fancy exclusive rights.”
Felix reached for his silk dressing gown and encased himself in its cool and sensuous folds. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll be downstairs,” he said, conscious it sounded more like a snarl although Millament, with his perpetual good humour would in all likelihood forgive him.
But his friend’s words had opened a chasm of fear that worried at the wound that had blighted him these past six months. It had begun to close over these last few hours as he learned, finally, what he needed to set his life to rights.
Felix had just tasted the closest to contentment and ecstasy, and it was even more addictive than the opium.
Even if the cost to his well-being might be greater.
Chapter 8
The Red Door was a favourite haunt of the young bloods. Felix hadn’t rubbed shoulders with his friends in such a den of debauchery since the tragedy over his sister. Now, however, a sense that normalcy might again reign—despite Millament’s unsettling words earlier—bolstered him to match the revelry displayed by Millament and the others whose company he’d eschewed for so long.
“Bold move,” mocked Ravensby, an old Cambridge colleague as Felix threw down what was in his pockets.
Felix grinned. He’d never been a big gamester like so many of his friends. Still, he was in an impulsive mood tonight. He’d just sated himself with the woman he adored and he was addicted.
Yes, she’d been gone by the time he’d woken, but she’d given herself to him a second time in a manner that could leave hm in no doubt that she’d agree to his proposal. She’d agreed to be his mistress. He didn’t want to remember that she’d also agreed to his proposal to meet him at the church two years ago, and then failed to appear.
No, this was different. Miss Merriweather returned the feelings he had for her, he was sure of it.
“I say, Felix, what’s the matter old chap?”
It was Millament returning to his side, his dear concerned friend, always on the lookout for him since he’d moved into his townhouse after Felix’s spectacular disintegration six months before. Felix sometimes wondered if his mother were paying his friend to attend him so closely, or whether Millament truly was one of those friends in a million.
Felix shook his head and put up his hand to allay the concern directed his way, but the truth was, the familiar fog of despair had descended without warning.
He’d set out for an evening as if the answers to his problems were all but neatly solved but now suddenly he was flailing in a morass of uncertainty.
The acrid cigar smoke that swirled about him did not have the soothing effects the opium pipe delivered, and he coughed, gripping the arm Millament put out to steady him.
Blindly, Felix allowed his friend to steer him towards a large wing-back chair near the window.
“Please tell me I didn’t imagine the woman who came to me this afternoon—”
“You’ve not taken leave of your senses,” Millament soothed. “And I won’t go after her. On my oath.”
“Then she was real. I didn’t imagine it.” Felix blinked open his eyes and saw Millament staring at him with a look of sympathetic understanding.
“She’s the kind of woman a man dreams about, to be sure, but she certainly was real.” He patted Felix’s arm in a brotherly fashion. “And she liked you, Felix, my friend. That was very clear. You go and find her again if that’s what you want. I’m glad to see you lusting after a woman, truly. She’ll be good for you. Banish these black moods, once and for all.”
Felix nodded. “I will find her. I made her a proposition and I must find her and make it binding.” He took a deep breath. “I need her.” Saying it made him feel better, even if the mire of unpleasantness he’d have to pass through was equally on his mind. A vision of her black-eyed gaze, her skin so pale framed by ebony tresses, drifted tantalizingly through his mind.
Yes, he would find her, and he’d make her his, regardless of what it cost him.
An owl perched on the drainpipe of Wilfred’s lodgings. In the dead of night, it seemed a portent of doom, a symbol of unearthliness. Yet it was Wilfred’s malevolence Hope feared more. Nothing good would come out of this forthcoming interview, but she was duty-bound, for her sister’s sake, to follow through.
“Madam.” The butler inclined his head, eyeing her with scorn as he opened the door for her. A young, single, unaccompanied woman calling on a gentleman was beyond the pale in his eyes. In the eyes of anyone respectable, in fact. Especially so late at night.
She was used to it. In two years, she’d developed a thick skin to the mixed responses she’d received from members of the public who regarded her enviously for her beauty and boldness, at the same time as reviling her for daring to brazen it out in public on whatever mission she might be on.
“I’m here to see Mr Hunt.” She barely glanced at the disapproving retainer. He was beneath her, and he’d despise her even more for her autocratic tone that suggested she was on par with a duchess and that he was beneath notice. He’d loathe that, but then she loathed the way the servant class took the moral high ground. They, of all people, must know how hard it was not to starve without a benefactor. But then, had her scope of the world been no broader than that of a governess out of the schoolroom, what would she think of a woman of suspect morals? A woman like her?
“Miss Merriweather, what a delightful surprise.” Wilfred greeted her with a cool smile as the butler bowed himself out of the library to which he’d just led her. “Refreshment?” He waved her to a seat and went to the sideboard, raising the brandy decanter with an enquiring look.
Hope shook her head. “I shan’t stay. I came here only to give you what you requested.”
“You don’t wish to linger over past reminiscences?” He feigned disappointment.
“I’ve spent enough time in your company to last me a lifetime, Wilfred.” She shouldn’t have said it, and not in that cool detached manner that suggested she believed she was better than he. Wilfred was a man, which gave him so much more power, and he was a petty one at that. “You brought me into your orbit against my will, but it was you who thrust me into my current profession. I have no recourse to change the past or to change people’s perceptions of me, but I would ask one concession.” Her fingers tightened over the clasp of her reticule with its contents she was so loath to surrender.
The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece sounded loud in the silence as he took his time responding. His lips thinned. It was clear he did not like her attitude, and Hope wished she’d employed some of the tact Madame Chambon had drilled into all her girls when there’d be many an unsavoury assignation they must pretend to enjoy.
“Concession? Here, drink this.” Ignoring her refusal of brandy, he thrust a cut-glass tumbler into her hand. She glanced at it suspiciously and remained standing.
“I haven’t laced it with poison,” he snarled.
“Or laudanum? That’s what you put into my drink when you took me to London. When you had your way with me. When you defiled me. That’s why I’m what I am today.” She sent him a twisted smile. “Let’s talk about that, shall we, Wilfred? I have no memory of my first time. I only knew I was ruined, and I could never return to my parents. You told me I had to rely on you.” She shrugged. “What choice did I have but to stay with you. That is, until you’d had enough of me.”
His eyes flickered and he glanced away, but that was the only indication of any acknowledgement that he may have behaved in a manner to invite censure. Before a second more had passed he’d closed the distance between them.
&nbs
p; Hope stepped back as he gripped her shoulders and glared.
“I looked after you, didn’t I? I bought you pretty things and took you dancing. I spent a fortune trying to please you.”
Hope felt his hand tremble despite his efforts to make his point in as passionless a manner as he could. Wilfred did not enjoy passion except when his needs were being gratified.
She tossed her head. “And then you sold me to the highest bidder.”
“Quite simply, I couldn’t afford you, my dear.” His hands fell away, and his hooded eyes blazed beneath their reptilian lids though his words were measured.
“Why, Wilfred?” Hope asked the question that had puzzled her for so long. For the moment, she was more perplexed than angered. “I’d been your mistress for eight months when you simply abandoned me. I had no friends. You made sure of that. There was no one who could help me. You took me unwillingly from my family, my home, and you made me dependent on you. Why? Only so you could dispose of me with as little compunction as you would an old coat. Did you despise me so much?”
“It was clear the feeling was mutual.”
Hope shook her head. “Did you really expect me to love you?”
Wilfred made a noise of irritation as he flung around and took a few steps towards the window, turning to rest his hand on the back of the green velvet sofa and shaking his head at her. “Lord, Hope. We were both scorched that day. It was not my intention to take you with me. Heavens, you’d go so far as to say I kidnapped you when nothing could have been further from my mind. You know you were as much to blame as I. Everything that happened that day was unfortunate. An accident.” He sighed. “I’ve told you a thousand times how much I regret it, but it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”
“You ruined me, Wilfred!”
“Only because you were too stupid to seek the other avenues I offered you.”
“I tried.” Hope said it under her breath. Bitterly. “Papa died that very night. I was supposed to be on a boat heading for the Continent. I received no answer to my letters, my pleas.”
“Precisely. Which is why the responsibility of looking after you when I had not a feather to fly with landed on my shoulders.” He looked outraged at her suggestion that he was culpable. But then, Wilfred had a knack for turning the blame back on the other person. “You could have continued to Leipzig.”
“How? The boat had gone. I had no ticket, and you had no money, you said, to pay my fare. I wrote. I tried everything to get out of the situation you placed me in. Nothing you say excuses drugging me, kidnapping me, making me your mistress, and then selling me to a brothel madam!”
Wilfred put up his hands. “I had no intention of doing any of those things! You drank from the flask Annabelle offered you. I didn’t realise it was all but undiluted laudanum. Before I knew it, you were fast asleep. I tried to remove you, in as gentlemanly a manner as I could. I had the door half open, and I was contemplating where I could leave you.”
“It was freezing. The snow was three feet high. I’d have died. You could have made some excuse.”
“I could have,” he conceded. Then his tone changed, and he looked like a petulant schoolboy with a perpetual sneer at being the butt of life’s misfortunes. “If you want to blame anyone, blame your high-and-mighty Mr Durham. Just as I was about to carry you out of the carriage and leave you by the church door, there he was, coming towards me, passing the vestry where I’d hoped to be rid of you. I knew he’d jump to conclusions; he was always so protective of you.”
Hope gasped, her hands jerking at the shock of this surprise revelation, causing her drink to splash over her skirts. “If you’d been a gentleman you’d have thought fast enough to say whatever necessary to protect my honour which was not besmirched at that point, Wilfred.”
His mouth twitched and not with humour. “I might have had he not incited me.”
“Incited you?”
Wilfred nodded. “He was ten feet away, striding towards me through the snow. He shouted something.”
“What?”
Wilfred shrugged. “He was threatening me.”
“Threatening you? How?”
“He was walking towards me in a very menacing manner. He’s never liked me. I knew the moment he saw me with you unconscious in my arms he’d orchestrate some smear campaign. So, I leapt back into the carriage and ordered the coachman to continue. “
“The train station was only ten minutes away. That’s where I was destined. You promised my parents you and Annabelle would take me there after the snowstorm blocked the drive. Mama believed I had only to travel as far as the train station in order to catch the boat.”
“And you were in the deepest stupor. Believe me; I went to the station. I tried to rouse you.”
Hope gasped. “You were afraid! Too afraid to take me back to my home because I was alone, drugged in your carriage.”
He looked through the window. “By God, I cursed you at that moment. I drove around for hours until finally I was in London. I arrived at my lodgings and you were still asleep. By that stage, I feared you were dead. So, I carried you inside but there was only one bed made up.” He shrugged again. “There was nowhere else to put you and nowhere for me to sleep, and you were so damned enticing, I’ll admit.” A slow smile curled his lip. “What choice did I have? I didn’t want to be saddled with a penniless governess for a wife, but you have no idea how much I’d wanted you, Hope. And for how long. And now you were in my care.” He shrugged as if he truly did not see himself as an opportunistic predator. “I looked after you when you needed a protector. Wasn’t it more fun dancing until the small hours than improving the minds of a pair of German infants? I saved you from all that. There’s no changing the past. I refuse to have my future, or that of my sister, blighted by your stupidity and the threats of Felix Durham.”
Hope’s first instinct was to throw herself at him and rip her fingernails down his cheek. But she held her head steady, and even though her vision blackened with emotion, she retained her dignity, just as Madame Chambon had taught her girls. Hope had more self-possession than the man before her would ever have.
“So, you admit you ruined me, Wilfred. Then, you can do just one thing for me. One thing so you can rest easy with your conscience.” She tried not to show how much it meant to her. Wilfred thrived on vulnerability. So she added, perhaps unwisely, “Or fear retribution from my hand.”
“A fearful threat, I must say.” He tossed back his drink then cocked his head.
Hope opened her reticule and held out the promissory note he’d requested. As he went to take it, she withdrew her hand. “This is to show you that I have done what you asked. I slept with Felix, as you would have me do.” She was tempted to tell him more. Of what a superior lover he was compared with Wilfred, but she was not that stupid. “I stole from him, just as you requested.” She licked dry lips and steadied her voice.
Wilfred tried once more to snatch the note, but Hope pulled back her hand again.
He glowered. “You came here to give me what I directed you to if you were to spare poor Charlotte the scandal and ignominy of knowing what her sister does for a living. That was our agreement.”
Hope sent him a level look. “If your intention in blackening my name in his eyes was so that he’d ask for Annabelle’s hand in marriage, then that is achieved. You needn’t brand me a thief into the bargain.”
“I like to hedge my bets, Hope. What does it matter? Felix won’t run you to ground and have you arrested if that’s what you’re worried about. He’ll just be very disappointed.”
“He intends to ask Annabelle to marry him. He told me. Now that he knows what I am, and that he can never have me for his wife, he’s accepted that Annabelle is the perfect candidate.” Hope heard her voice break and cursed herself for her weakness.
Wilfred looked at her suspiciously. “Then he still has feelings for you? Annabelle won’t like that. She needs to be sure you are absolutely no threat.”
“Felix is
going to ask Annabelle to marry him,” Hope repeated firmly. “Quite likely he will do that in the next day or two. That’s what you wanted. That is what both you and Annabelle want. Please, Wilfred. If Felix asks for Annabelle’s hand before Charlotte is married in two days’ time, then you’ll have achieved your aim. Felix marrying Annabelle is what’s important to you. Not blackening my name.”
He looked at her and the silence drew out.
“Why should you wish for the vestiges of his minimal regard if there is nothing between you and Mr Durham?”
Hope closed her eyes and heard the chink of glass as he poured himself another drink. When she looked up, he’d already tossed the contents down his throat. It seemed to give him renewed confidence.
“Think of it as the tiniest bit of atonement towards me,” she said in a voice that sounded small and puling. Hope was stronger than this. She’d had to become so over the past two, terrible years so why was she parading her weakness like this in front of Wilfred?
“Atonement suggests culpability, and I’ll not admit that!” The drink had fired him up. He strode across the floor and put his hands on her shoulders, staring into her eyes. They flashed fire and hatred. Hatred for what she’d made him feel. Less than a man. She’d made clear her contempt for him through their tortuous months together, but it was only at the end he’d hurt her. She flinched. Once was enough, though it was more than that.
“You set your sights too high, Miss Merriweather. Two years ago, my sister was all but betrothed to Felix Durham, and then you broke her heart at that damned Hunt Ball. I had her honour to protect.”
“So you destroyed mine.” Hope raised her chin. “And yours. You can never call yourself an honourable man again after what you did to me.”
Casting aspersions upon Wilfred’s honour was a big mistake. Hope saw that instantly.
But it was too late.
Chapter 9
Felix had drunk more than he usually did, but he had his faculties about him. Millament had spoken sense, soothing him and he was glad to closet himself in a dim corner for a while, going over in his mind everything that had happened that day.
Forsaking Hope Page 7
