“Why do you hate me so much?” Hope asked, turning, resting her elbows on the window ledge. It was colder here. The fire was not burning as brightly as it was in the makeshift ballroom.
“On the contrary, I desire you more than I desire any other woman alive,” Wilfred replied conversationally. “The fact that I can’t afford you is what eats away at me. You can’t imagine my regret at having to pension you off to Madame Chambon.”
“Really.” Hope’s tone dripped scepticism. “I had very little say in the matter, as you recall.”
Wilfred shrugged. “As I’ve told you before, you were costing me a fortune, yet you showed no gratitude after your mother disowned you, leaving me the only person in the world concerned for your welfare. You were hardly a pleasure to come home to, and I was the one person standing between you and the gutter.”
“And what else might you have to say to me, Wilfred, when you know I am to become Lord Westfall’s mistress?” she asked. “What might he think if he came upon us speaking so intimately now?”
Wilfred shrugged. “You’re not his mistress yet, which means you are anyone’s—at the right price. Perhaps I’m negotiating. It might be in your interests if I raise your price.”
“You really think you could tempt me back into your bed?” Hope resisted the temptation to be more cutting. Wilfred could be unpredictable when his manhood was at stake. Yet she couldn’t help herself, saying under her breath, “Alas, you’ll never be able to afford me now, Wilfred. I would not offer you what you want at any price.”
He considered her a moment, his gaze speculative. “What about if I put in a good word for you to Felix? It might soften the rage and disappointment he showed when I revealed your touching loyalty towards me after I told him that our tender feelings for one another were the reason you stole the promissory note in order to return it to me? You could have us both. I don’t mind sharing.”
She stared him down. “I’d not trust you to follow through, even if you gave me your word.”
“Hardly the kind of thing a man of honour wants to hear, Hope.” Wilfred put his fingers around her wrist, but she tugged herself free and, in a fit of chagrin, swept over to the fireplace, glaring at him as she leant against the mantelpiece.
“Yours has never been a word of honour, Wilfred. Your word counts for nothing. And that doesn’t come from me. There are plenty who say it.”
The flare in his eyes revealed she’d touched a nerve, though he contained his anger as he walked slowly towards her. Hope wasn’t frightened. She could hear the music and the hubbub of voices quite clearly on the other side of the door.
She stood her ground defiantly as he loomed over her. “Look at you, Hope,” he sneered as he put his hand on her shoulders. She stiffened as he moved them lower, contouring her breasts, waist, and thighs in her clinging, ruched gown, so thoroughly upholstered yet so revealing. His nostrils flared. “Do you think you’d have been so expensively garbed if you’d remained at the vicarage? Your father was ever a disappointment to your mama. She complained endlessly to my own dear mater that she’d married a man of reasonable fortune who’d managed to see it all slip through his fingers.”
Hope breathed through her clenched teeth as she stared up at Wilfred. “My Mama’s love of adornment was a large reason for Papa’s pecuniary difficulties. Papa could refuse her nothing. Yes, her complaints were as endless as her demands for fripperies. Until finally, there was nothing left with which to appease her. My father inherited a fortune and a harpy for a wife, and he was no financier, but he did not kidnap and keep captive unwilling females.”
“Kidnap? Lord, Hope.” His mouth quirked. “You stayed with me for more than a year, but you were not a prisoner. It’s not as if I kept the door locked and you bolted within. You could have left at any time.”
Hope shook her head. She’d been so proud of keeping her emotions in check, but revisiting the time when her life had changed so irrevocably was proving too much. “Where was there for me to go, Wilfred?” Her voice broke. She took a deep breath and regained her composure. She’d had much training at regaining her composure when her dignity and peace of mind were threatened. “After Papa died, when Mama wouldn’t take me back, how could I even get respectable employment when I had no character? And now, having destroyed every hope I ever had for happiness, you want to rub my nose in the dirt. Somehow, you think it’ll make you feel more of a man to have me agree to the grubby arrangement you just put to me—you and Felix. Yet all that business before regarding the promissory note and my character blackened in Felix’s eyes was so your dear sister’s happiness would not be imperilled? You’re a liar, Wilfred. You will never let me near Felix. I’m too dangerous. I might take something away from your sister, and I might take something away from you. So, you want to crush me.”
Unexpectedly, Wilfred gripped her shoulders, bringing her face close to his. His eyes were black with anger. “By God, Hope, but for someone drilled in the noble art of the courtesan, you do not know how to please a man when it is in your interests.”
Hope shrugged herself out of his grip and took up her argument from further along the mantelpiece. “If you wanted my love and respect, you’d have had to have had a modicum of honour, Wilfred. You destroyed every claim to honour when you bundled me into your carriage, took me to your lodgings, and…raped me when I was unconscious. There’s no coming back from that for me.” She trembled with emotion. “Or for you.”
“And is that the story you put about? Do you cast aspersions upon my honour behind my back? Why would people believe a prostitute who’s parted on acrimonious terms with her former lover?”
“You were never my lover, Wilfred. I despised you from when you were a whining child. Felix was the boy I loved, and he turned into the man I loved. But your jealousy got in the way of that. You were determined that if I wouldn’t love you, then I would never have the man I really loved. Isn’t that true?”
Advancing a few steps, he shook her roughly, and her jewelled comb fell out of her hair and skittered across the marble hearth.
“Ever the bully, Wilfred!” Hope whispered as she bent to retrieve it, not prepared for the stinging blow he dealt her on the side of her head. Her knees gave way and she sank to the floor, staring up at him with more fury than fear as she touched her throbbing temple. “And so you hit me where no one can see the evidence of your violence. How manly of you.”
“Bitch!” He hissed, his hands flexing but Hope was ready, wresting herself out of his attempted embrace and landing awkwardly, though her voluminously swathed skirts broke her fall.
“Don’t you touch me again!” she spat. “Ever!”
“Don’t you tell me what I can and can’t do when your wares are available to any man who has the right currency!” Grabbing a hank of her hair, Wilfred pulled her to her feet and dragged her through the withdrawing room towards a door at the far end.
Before Hope could scream, he’d clapped one large, sweating hand over her mouth. “You’re about to realise there comes a point where even the most long-suffering man must defend his honour,” he muttered as he manhandled her out of the room and along a passageway.
He was too strong for her. Hope’s attempts to kick and bite her way to freedom were to no avail, and her first instinct after he thrust her through a door at the end of the passage was to take the deep, sustaining breath she so desperately needed.
Though there was a bed by the window, Wilfred pushed her down on the cold stone hearth, straddling her as he clamped his other hand over her mouth. “You’re about to see how good you had it when you were first under my care.” He sounded both aggrieved and threatening as he pushed his face into hers. “If you’d only known how to treat a man as he deserves, I wouldn’t have to show you who’s the superior being. You always thought it was you, didn’t you, Hope, with your scorn and your ingratitude.”
“The superior being?” Hope sneered on a lungful of air when he removed his hand in response to a sharp nip of her teeth.
“Always the bully, Wilfred.”
“It’s a clever man who knows how to get what he wants, even if that means using his superior strength, Hope,” he grunted, forcing her back to the ground when she struggled to rise, running his hands over her and groping her breasts before clamping her mouth again when she tried to scream.
Hope fought with everything she had, but he was too strong, hiking up her skirts while she lashed out at him, clawing at his face, whimpering for mercy, and then in rage though it was hard to breathe. She thought she’d pass out, and perhaps that was a preferable way to suffer the indignity he intended to inflict upon her.
But when his fingers parted momentarily and a sustaining draught of air filled her lungs, her seeking hands came upon something long, and hard on the ground behind her. Too starved of air to realise what it was, another gulp of oxygen made it clear it might be her only chance to gain the upper hand.
Drawing back her right arm, she brought the fire iron through the air with all of her might, landing a slicing blow against the side of Wilfred’s head.
He released his grasp, yelping with pain, his fury prodded to a fine point before, almost instantly he was looming over her, his mouth a rictus of rage, eyes bloodshot with fury. His hand shot out to seize the poker from her but Hope was too quick. Rolling onto her side, she aimed the point for the region of his eyes, closed her own, and with all of the strength she had left, lunged forwards and upwards.
A moment of silence followed. The world swirled behind her closed eyes in terrible shades of black and red.
Then, upon a terrible cry of agony, Wilfred’s heavy body came down on top of her.
Chapter 14
“I don’t care if she’s preparing to see the Prince of Wales, I just need to know where she is!” Still panting from the exertion of his strenuous walk due to a hackney carriage accident which had made the roads impassable, Felix stood on the front doorstep of Madame Chambon’s Nunnery and stared down the broad-shouldered custodian who’d been brought in as a reinforcement by the young maidservant after she’d failed to send Felix on his way.
“Where Miss ‘Ope ‘appens to be right now is of nobody’s bizness ‘cept her own an’ the gennulman wot’s payin’ fer her.” The beefy fellow wore no jacket, and his muscles bulged beneath his shirt sleeves. He flexed his meaty fists as if he was ready to do business.
Frustrated, Felix raked his hand through his hair, replaced his top hat and turned on his heel. There’d be no satisfaction this night, it seemed.
After his illuminating discussions with Charlotte and Annabelle less than an hour earlier, he’d left for his club. It was pointless trying to distract himself there. The fact was, despite the late hour and the fact Hope may well be entertaining, he had to see her at the earliest.
The past was the past and what had happened to her couldn’t be changed by what he did tonight or tomorrow, but the urgency to learn from her own lips the events that had taken place when she’d left the district threatened to send him mad.
He was a few steps along the pavement and about to hail a hackney when a tentative voice behind him made him turn.
“You’re the gentleman who visited Hope the other day, aren’t you?”
Felix was struck by the girl’s angelic looks. Wearing a clinging long-line gown in white and silver and standing on the top step of Madame Chambon’s, she looked like an angel in the gaslight.
“Where is she?” His urgency overrode good manners.
“Will she want to see you?”
“Perhaps you know the answer to that better than I.” His heart skittered as she appraised him.
The girl squinted as if trying to decide whether to engage him further. “Are you the gentleman who knew her before she came to London?”
“It depends which one. There were two of us.” Felix realised this only as he spoke the words. Wilfred had always wanted Hope. As much as Felix had.
“The gentleman with whom she only recently renewed her acquaintance?” The young woman put her head on one side. “The one for whom Hope was a special surprise. The only gentleman she said she’s ever loved.”
Felix did his best to resist any feeling that resulted from her words. “Then why did she steal from me? If she told you she loved me perhaps she told you the answer to that also.”
“Blackmail.” The girl said it matter-of-factly.
Felix’s suspicions hardened into a kernel of vengeance. The pieces of the puzzle were all coming together, and he’d soon be searching for Wilfred as diligently as he was now searching for Hope.
But Hope was his first priority, and he needed to find her before another day dawned, though it didn’t stop him asking, “She said she loved me?” It was a delight to hear it from anyone’s lips though he’d rather have heard it from Hope’s own.
The girl nodded. “You’ll find Hope at Skittles, if she’s still there. Lord Westfall took her for a night out, though he might have taken her back to his lodgings. You know he’s going to make her an offer tonight?”
“An offer?” For a ridiculous moment, Felix misinterpreted her until she said, laughing, “What kind of offer do you think? To set her up, of course. That’s what all the girls here hope for. And Lord Westfall is smitten. He’s a good catch.”
The imperative for Felix to scupper Lord Westfall’s offer and make good his own was suddenly too great for him to stand there talking any longer. Bowing his thanks, he hailed the next passing hackney carriage and was soon bowling through the cobbled streets towards the lively premises of one of London’s most notorious courtesans. Felix knew Skittles’ lodgings well.
* * *
The party was in full swing, as it usually was at three in the morning. Felix had been to Skittles before, with Millament and others. Good food, good conversation and lovely women were the order of the day. The drawing room was a long expanse from which the furniture had been cleared for dancing at the far end. Felix scanned the dozen or so couples who were taking up the available space in a fast Viennese waltz. He could not see Hope. At the rear of the room, a few tables were occupied by card players, while to the side a supper table laden with tiers of rich fare had attracted a small crowd.
Felix made his way through the throng, nodding at various people he knew until he was accosted by Millament.
“Back in the land of the living again, eh?” his friend greeted him. “I dropped into Lady Hunt’s and congratulated your future wife, though she seemed surprisingly out of spirits. No doubt it was on account of you leaving before your engagement announcement to go gallivanting about at a renowned courtesan’s lodgings—though I’m sure you didn’t tell her that!”
“I told her I was going to my club.” Felix continued to search the room, looking over Millament’s shoulder.
“Jolly good! Great progress since last week. I thought you were going to retreat back into one of those blue funks of yours. Last thing we all expected was an engagement to Miss Annabelle Hunt! Sly old devil. And there I was, thinking you’d lost your heart to a prostitute, though she’s more than that, eh? What a beauty! She could pass as a duchess, eh. She’s here, actually. With Westfall.”
Felix cut him off impatiently. “I see Westfall over there. And she’s not with him.”
Millament shrugged. “She’s probably dancing. Oh, yes, now I recall. She went yonder with that fellow I don’t care for who, regrettably, is brother to your betrothed so you’re going to have to suffer his company, which means I no doubt will too.”
Felix stared after his pointing finger and took a step towards a closed door at the far end of the room before Millament clapped him on the arm.
“I say, you’re not going after her, old chap. Not good form, I must remind you. Not been yourself, have you, so I feel justified—”
Felix removed his friends hand and ignored his call for restraint as he parted the throng of merrymakers in his pursuit of what he’d find on the other side of the doorway he pushed through.
If Hope was alone with Hunt, it didn’
t augur well, whether or not she was there of her own choice. Not that Hunt would have tied her up at Skittles and whisked her into a back room, with so many people about to witness his crime, he reassured himself.
Nevertheless, something malevolent was at play. Hunt was blackmailing Hope. The girl in the diaphanous gown had said it. She’d implied it was Hunt, and Hope had told Felix she’d been Hunt’s mistress before joining Madame Chambon’s establishment. What she hadn’t yet explained was how her fall from grace had come to pass.
The large room into which he stepped was empty. A few pieces of elegant furniture indicated it was a private sanctuary, but the half-open door beyond suggested Felix might find his quarry along the passage.
It was eerily silent as he made his way through the back of the house, opening doors but finding only neatly made beds and cold fireplaces.
Two more rooms until the last one. He stopped. He thought he’d heard a noise. It was muffled. A thud, a faint cry. The chink of something metallic landing on stone. He’d heard it often enough when the housemaid disturbed his morning slumber, dropping one of the fire irons upon the hearth.
Someone occupied the last room, and he didn’t care that he showed no restraint in bursting in. He gripped the brass knob, surprised and relieved that the door was not locked, and pushed.
The door did not yield immediately. Something was blocking the entrance so that he had to put his shoulders into it and shove with all his might in order to slide through the opening.
He was not prepared for the sight that met his eyes. Bathed in gloom, he could make out the figure of a woman, kneeling at the side of a man. A tall, large man in evening dress who lay, unmoving, blocking the door.
Felix was more worried about Hope than the unconscious man whom he was recognised as a horribly marked Wilfred Hunt.
“Hope?” Felix crouched beside her, his insides recoiling at the damning sight.
Forsaking Hope Page 12
