Price of Desire

by Goodman, Jo

  “Perhaps.”

  Sensing her wariness, Griffin did not underscore the point. “Will you finish your tea, Olivia?” He leaned forward, touched the side of her cup. “It has not yet grown cold.”

  Olivia dragged her eyes away from his and glanced at the tea service and uneaten toast points. For once, the rumble in her stomach was pleasant, not ominous. A bit self-consciously, she pressed one hand to it, then returned to her chair.

  “What did you mean about Mr. Gardner?” she asked.

  The abrupt shift in subject tugged at Griffin’s mental balance. “Pardon?”

  “Earlier you said that asking Mr. Gardner for information about me would put you in his debt for all eternity. I wondered what you meant.”

  “Oh.” He felt as if he were once again righted, though it was a narrow thing. “Gardner has a faculty for discovery, I suppose you’d call it. One can apply to him to set all manner of things right again.”

  “Such as finding Lady Breckenridge.”

  “Yes. That is one example.”

  “Why did you not ask for his help at the outset?”

  “Because I have only recently learned of his peculiar talent. He does not seek out his clientele; indeed, he does not assist everyone who applies to him. Word of mouth brings people to his door, then he decides what he will do.”

  “And he agreed to help you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Now you are in his debt.”

  “Yes, and he trades in favors, not currency, so I have no idea when or how I might be asked to return it.” Griffin did not miss Olivia’s flash of disappointment. “There is something you would like to ask of him?”

  “I’m not…that is, no…no, I don’t think so.” She shrugged. “In any event, what favor could he possibly gain from an association with me?”

  “That is for him to decide.” When she said nothing, he prompted gently. “Why don’t you ask it of me? Perhaps it is something that does not require Gardner’s extraordinary skills. Is it outside all possibility that I might be of service?”

  His rather obvious cajolery raised her smile. “I cannot decide if you mean to be modest about your own talents or wounded that I did not apply to you first.”

  “Which approach will have the greater chance of disarming you? Tell me, and I shall refine it.”

  Olivia was not proof against his honesty. Her smile deepened as she shook her head. “I am disarmed. Completely. I do not thank you for it, nor for making me admit it.”

  It was only fair, Griffin thought. He should not be the only one without weapons at the ready. Suspecting that she would not believe him, he held his tongue and waited for her to name the service he might do for her.

  “Do you recall the four gentlemen who came here together awhile back, all of them so deep in their cups that you were forced to show them the door?”

  He did not require further clarification. “I do, indeed. There was one that—” He stopped, rubbed his chin with his knuckles. “Whiskey. Gin. Two pints of ale. Am I right?”

  “I think so. It’s been some years.”

  “And the one who spoke to you? Tried to place your face? Which one was he?”

  “The whiskey. Or I believe he might have been.”

  “You could have told me then.”

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t have. I denied the truth to myself.”

  Griffin understood well enough how that was done. “What is it you want?”

  “As you said, peace of mind, I suppose. They know what happened afterward. I never have.”

  “If they meant to come forward, they would have by now. Years ago, in fact.”

  “I thought so, yes. I listened wherever I went, hoping to hear something as much as I dreaded the same. I could never learn what had become of Rawlings, but then I might have mistaken his name. I was too afraid to return, so I kept going. I believe what you said about defending myself…most of the time. It is what I did when I was confronted by the intruder in my room. It was as if Rawlings was given a second chance and I…” She fell silent, shaking her head. “There is guilt, though, that I left Rawlings to others and fled, and fear of what is still unknown.”

  Griffin understood her vulnerability. “How were you called when you were employed at the inn?”

  “Livvy. Livvy Cole.”

  “Would they have learned it that night?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you never think of taking another name? That you opposed the idea when I suggested it seems to fly in the face of common sense.”

  Olivia touched her fingers to her temple and pushed back a wayward strand of hair. “I suppose we see it differently.”

  “But when you were at the inn, weren’t you hiding from your father?”

  “In hiding? No. What a peculiar notion. It is truer that throughout my life he hid me away.”

  “How?”

  “At school, of course. There are such things for girls, you know, if one’s parents aren’t inclined to employ a governess. As you have mentioned, my father likes to take a position on the moral high ground, so it should not surprise you that confession and repentance figured largely in my education.”

  Griffin’s eyes narrowed as he considered what he knew about the schools available to young girls. If Sir Hadrien was determined to put his daughter away, then the school would be isolated and have little in the way of interference from the outside. “A convent school,” he said, looking to Olivia for confirmation. “Confession and repentance. I’m right, aren’t I? You were educated in a convent school.”

  “You are rather too proud for coming to it on your own when you only had to ask. Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

  He could imagine that she had been required to learn and recite a great many proverbs. “How old were you when you were sent away?”

  “Six.”

  He owed it to her, he thought, not to let pity creep into his expression. “And when you left?”

  “Twelve.”

  Griffin nodded slowly. He knew what to make of the half dozen years between her sixth year and her twelfth. Only the most depraved mind could reconcile what she’d learned at the school as part and parcel of a young girl’s education.

  “You are thinking the whole of it must have been terrible,” she said quietly. This time it was Olivia who slid her hand across the table and beckoned him with an open palm. He fit it in hers and her fingers closed around his. “It wasn’t. Or if it was, I choose to remember it differently. There were kindnesses. I was well educated, sheltered, and fed. There were games. Giggling. Silly gossip. We had books and instruments. Some girls played; others sang. We had prayers, of course. You will not be shocked that there was an extraordinary amount of praying. Also lessons in deportment. In drawing and sewing and conversation. French and Italian were spoken. Latin, also. History. Geography. Penmanship. Poetry. There were riding and dancing lessons. We learned such things as to make us comfortable companions. There was no hardship in that, save for my own lack of interest in all but the books and conversation.”

  Her brief account was not so different from his own experiences at Hambrick Hall, but he would not have described the purpose of such things as to make him a comfortable companion. Had she realized even at so early an age that she was being prepared for something that was perhaps beyond the pale? He decided not to turn the conversation in that direction but asked instead, “What sort of student were you?”

  “Can you not guess? A diligent one. Most desirous of pleasing. In the beginning it was to please my teachers, but in the end it was to please me. There was no way to avoid all punishment, but I was not called forward as frequently as others. A palm lashing was common. Canings were relatively rare. The punishment chair was the most feared.”

  “Punishment chair? What is that?”

  “It was not used at your school?”

  “Until you tell me what it is, I have no idea.”

  “It’s simply a chair with
the center of the seat removed. There were several of different heights so that as a girl grew taller there was always a chair sufficiently high enough to cause her feet to dangle just above the floor.”

  Griffin began to have a picture of it in his mind. “Her legs would have become numb,” he said. “Swollen as well, I imagine.”

  “Yes, if she had to sit in it long.”

  “I should think twenty minutes would be long enough to get the desired effect. How long were girls required to sit?”

  She shrugged. “Half an hour for minor infractions. An hour or more for the important ones.”

  A muscle jumped in Griffin’s cheek. The line of his scar became pronounced. “No one could possibly stay on their feet after so long in the chair.”

  “Not easily, no. I imagine that’s why they applied the strap when a girl faltered and fell. How long it took to rise from the floor depended on her strength of character and will.”

  Griffin wondered if his face was as cool and colorless as it felt. He was careful to speak quietly, certain she did not deserve to hear his thoughts at the volume he heard them in his own head. “Bloody hell, Olivia. Strength of character and will be damned. That is nonsense. You are describing an abomination. Torture, not punishment, and in no wise discipline.”

  She blinked. “It has never been done to you?”

  “God, no. The dons, house masters, and proctors at Hambrick Hall were strict and embraced the efficacy of the rod, too much so for my tastes, but even they would shy from what you are telling me. Who stood over you while it was being done? The sisters?”

  “No. Oh, no. They prayed for us. They could not…would not…no, the sisters had no part in that.”

  They had also deliberately turned their heads, but Griffin did not say so. “A priest, then. Was it a priest?”

  “Sometimes.” She could not be certain when she ceased to hold his hand and he began holding hers.

  “Sometimes,” he said softly. It meant there were other tormentors. “Olivia, who were the men that forced themselves on you?”

  Olivia flinched a little, but he held her fast. She had wanted him to know that she had memories of light and laughter that were separate from the darker recollections and that she was shaped by both experiences, not one exclusive of the other. “I should not speak of them.”

  The childlike tenor of her voice startled them both, but it was Griffin who frowned. She had spoken the words as though she had learned them by rote and was now obliged to recite them.

  As if testing the waters, she said them again. “I should not speak of them.”

  “Is that what you were told, Olivia?”

  “I don’t remember. It seems as if it must be, doesn’t it?”

  He squeezed her hand gently. “Perhaps it is something that one cannot come at directly. It’s possible you never knew their names. What can you speak of?”

  “Not all of us were chosen. The girls, I mean. I remember that. We were not all selected to go.”

  “To go where?”

  “To wherever it was that we went.” She drew her hand back and chose one of the cold toast points. “I was a child. I cannot say more than that. I don’t know where I was or where I was taken. It was a very small world and was not made significantly larger by being taken beyond the convent walls.”

  “Did you go alone?”

  “Alone. In pairs. Never more than three. I told you once that I went willingly that first time. Do you remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “My greatest shame is that I wanted to be chosen. There were presents afterward. Sweets. Ribbons. Gloves. Lace. Pretty bonnets and slippers. I was envious of what I saw other girls receiving. I had nothing from home. No letters. No packages. I learned quickly that I should never expect to receive anything from my family, so when girls returned from their carriage rides and showed the gifts they’d been allowed to take, I wanted the same.”

  Griffin thought of his sisters. He imagined them elbowing one another out of the way, leaping across prostrate bodies to reach the waiting carriage first. They would have been eager, even greedy, and they would have been made to pay dearly, just as Olivia had been made to pay. But for the grace of God, there went Jenny, Kate, and Juliet. “You did nothing wrong.”

  “I know it, and yet it does not always seem so.”

  “That is because when you reflect upon it you think you had a choice. You didn’t. Never once. Not even at the first.”

  Griffin’s implacable features were softened by Olivia’s tears. She knuckled them away impatiently. She required him to be uncompromising in the position he took and in the position he took it from. She wanted to be—needed to be—convinced. “How can you know?”

  “You would know it as well but for the fact that it happened to you.”

  “I was called out to one of the carriages many times.”

  “Do you say that to punish yourself?”

  “I say it so you will know what I am.”

  “I know what you are, Olivia, and it is not what you think they made you. You said you were not a whore, but I am no longer certain that you believe it.”

  “Their gifts paid for me.”

  “Their gifts paid for your silence. That is what they purchased. They could have had you for nothing.”

  Olivia simply stared at him. As often as she’d drawn back the curtain on her past, she had never seen it in such a light before.

  Watching her, the left side of Griffin’s mouth edged upward. He had managed to trip her up in the best possible way. He could see her taking in the view, examining it from this new perspective. Her splendid green eyes were narrowed just enough to sharpen her glance, and her mouth, her very tasty mouth, remained parted on an indrawn breath. A curling tendril of flame-red hair fell over her brow and dipped low enough to hook her lashes. She thrust her lower jaw forward and blew up, the action a mixture of irritation and impatience, and dislodged the curl. It settled at the corner of her eye and she allowed it to remain there.

  “It makes an awful sort of sense when I hear you say it,” she told him. “It makes me think that the time will come when I’ll be able to speak of them.”

  “I would not be at all surprised.”

  Olivia prepared to choose another piece of toast and saw that her plate was empty. She could not recall that she’d eaten any of it. Similarly, her cup was drained.

  “Hungry?” Griffin asked, divining her thoughts.

  “Ravenous.”

  He stood. “Then attention must be paid.”

  Olivia did not anticipate that Griffin would want to accompany her on her walk. She was standing at the front door, fastening the frog closure on her mantle while she waited for Mason to reappear with his gloves in hand, when Griffin came down the stairs dressed for the out of doors. Her eyebrows rose in tandem. Too late she realized that her expression was not simply one of surprise but hinted at the fact that she found him indecently handsome to look upon. His quick half-grin made it clear that he’d had a hint of her thoughts and approved of the turn they’d taken.

  Olivia pivoted, giving him her shoulder. He had a cheval glass in his bedchamber and therefore no need to view his reflection again in her eyes. She thought she heard him chuckle as he came abreast of her, but when she cast him a suspicious sideways glance he was perfectly stoic.

  It was no good. She sighed. “You have the profile of a Roman god,” she said, “and that is all I am prepared to say on the matter of your exceptionally fine countenance.”

  She was already on the lip of the second step by the time Griffin caught up with her, and this time she was quite certain he was laughing. A smile edged her mouth, deepened, and in another moment she joined him.

  They walked to Moorhead Street, turned, separated briefly as they dodged a stack of crates that indicated a move to or away from the district, then made a diagonal crossing in the direction of the park. Griffin helped Olivia adjust her sable-trimmed hood as the wind kicked up and gave her the lee side of his bod
y. Thus sheltered, she was able to speak without the accompaniment of chattering teeth, though she liked their companionable silence well enough. He was the one who finally breached it.

  “I went to see my sisters yesterday,” he said. “After I spoke to Gardner and we agreed that he would bring Elaine to London, I decided that calling upon my sisters was in order.”

  “To inform them?” asked Olivia.

  “To warn them. They do not know the particulars of why my marriage collapsed, but they have supported me in their own way. That means they make free with such criticisms and advice as they believe will help me and form a protective phalanx about me when anyone outside the family is wont to do the same.”

  “I do not suppose they could demonstrate their great affection for you in any better manner.”

  “I suppose not, no.”

  “Nor you for them. You show considerable tolerance. What could very well be an annoyance becomes a source of amusement.”

  He smiled because she understood so completely. It astonished when one considered that she had so little experience with family herself, but she had neatly defined the workings of his. “Jenny was rather less disagreeable than Kate or Juliet upon hearing my news, but she is the one who will insist that they meet to strategize. Jenny favors strategy. Kate and Juliet have a tendency to simply charge into the fray, so she must save them from themselves. At least that is how she explains the fact that she has always been their leader.”

  “They sound formidable.”

  “Amazons. Brave men have been known to quiver in their presence.” He drew Olivia closer as they stepped aside to make way for a nursemaid with two young children in tow. The children, rosy-cheeked and giggling, seemed oblivious to the elements, while their nurse walked with her head down and shoulders hunched, oblivious to everything else.

  “Have you nieces and nephews?” Olivia asked when the trio moved on and they resumed walking.

  “Five. Kate has twin girls; Juliet, a boy and an infant girl; and Jenny, another girl. I had not seen any of them since Mathilda’s christening. She’s Juliet’s baby. It seemed like a good idea to spend time with them yesterday. With Elaine’s arrival imminent, it is unclear when the opportunity will present itself again.”