Price of Desire

by Goodman, Jo

  Griffin approached the desk and drew Olivia to her feet. He lifted her chin with the cup of his hand. “I prefer to believe I don’t give a damn.”

  She nodded, met his gaze. “I know,” she whispered. “It is the same for me.”

  Olivia returned to her brother’s house in Jericho Mews the following morning. She didn’t have to explain why she was choosing to leave just then. Griffin anticipated her departure the moment he’d confirmed that his wife’s arrival was imminent. For his own sake as much as hers, he did not accompany her. Foster and Drummond, accompanied by the lads, made the short journey from Putnam Lane to respectability in a hansom cab that Griffin hired for her.

  Mrs. Beck was glad to see her and even wept a little. This show of emotion embarrassed the housekeeper enough that she did nothing to stop Olivia’s entourage from trudging through the house in muddy shoes, trunks thumping in their wake.

  When the time came for them to leave, they were not easily dismissed. Foster and Drummond pushed the boys forward a few steps but barely budged themselves. Olivia held Griffin responsible for that. Their discomfort at going without her was palpable. They easily looked up and down the street a half dozen times in search of the gentleman villain before they were satisfied he had not dared to follow them.

  Olivia stood outside her home until the cab disappeared. Only then was she able to go to her room and begin unpacking. She brought everything Griffin gave her, not because she thought she would be gone so long, but because she did not want Lady Breckenridge to stumble upon her altered castoffs. No woman would appreciate that.

  Alastair was not entirely welcoming, but neither did he turn her out. He required some time to accustom himself to the idea of her return, no matter how brief it was supposed to be. To make amends for his initial lack of warmth, he offered to hire a maid for her since he’d released Molly Dillon from the staff. Olivia thanked him for his generosity and politely refused it.

  “I would rather that Father does not learn you are living here again,” he said as they dined that evening.

  “So he has restored your allowance. That is good.” She took a small bite of the soused fish. Cooked in vinegar with onions and peppers, the fish had a pungent taste that did not agree with her, and she set her fork down to sip from her glass of wine. “I will go no farther than the park if you like, and at such times when it is unlikely to be crowded. That way you can be assured that no word will reach him from any quarter.” She saw it made him uncomfortable to state that it was indeed his preference, but she would not carry his discomfort for him.

  “I would prefer it. Mother is likely to hear you have returned first, and we know she is a tattle.”

  “So you say. I do not remember her well.” Olivia regarded her brother over the rim of her glass. “Before I thrust myself into your life, Alastair, had you ever spared a thought for me?”

  He shifted uneasily in his chair. “Yes. Yes, of course. You were a great mystery to me growing up. Mother sometimes spoke of you, just incidental comments that seemed to surprise her when she heard them aloud, as if the words had escaped. I wondered about it, but questions were not encouraged. She once tried to tell me that you died, but I never believed her. There was no vault in the mausoleum to account for it, and I was old enough by then to know when I wasn’t being given the truth. I supposed that if she felt compelled to lie to me, no one else would be inclined to impart the truth.”

  “You never told me that.”

  “No, well, it is not the sort of thing I thought you’d ever want to know.” He tilted his head to better take her measure. “I have almost no memory of living with you at Coleridge Park.”

  “That is not surprising. You were hardly more than an infant when I was sent away. I was uncertain you would even know who I was when I sought you out at university.” Olivia had never forgotten who she was, but there had been a concerted effort at Coleridge Park to put her away. “You did know me, though, and never once hesitated to invite me in.”

  “I was curious,” he said, “and possessed of a certain amount of guilt. I wish I could say I was generous, but you know now that I am not that man.”

  “Your honesty gives me hope that you will be some day.”

  “Ah,” he said, flushing a little at the rightness of her words. “You know just where to drive the nail.”

  They ate in uneasy silence after that, but when she retired to the drawing room, he followed her. Olivia picked at the stitches of a tablecloth she’d begun to embroider months earlier and abandoned when Alastair had gone missing. It had not been an inspired effort from the beginning, merely a way of passing time, and now she undid her work and wondered what it would be like to tug at the threads of time in the same manner.

  When Alastair turned away from poking at the fire he caught sight of his sister’s gentle smile. “Are you in love with Breckenridge?”

  Olivia’s smile remained unchanged. She didn’t glance up. “If I am, you will not be the first person I tell.”

  “You will probably find it strange, Olivia, but I like him. I know he does not return my regard, but it does not change my respect for him.”

  “You were enjoying the affections of his mistress while she was still under his protection. I think it is difficult for him to respect that.” She lifted her head. “Have a care how you respond, Alastair. You gave me to him, remember.”

  “It wasn’t like that. Or not precisely like that. I never meant that you should—”

  Olivia stopped him with a look. “Let us not speak of it. I am content, and you did no more than our father before you.” Perhaps it was the way of the Cole men to make whores of their women. She bit her tongue on this last thought and returned her attention to ripping the uneven stitches. “Are you still visiting Mrs. Christie?”

  Here was a subject Alastair did not wish to pursue, yet he was startled into replying. “She is under my protection, yes.”

  “She is significantly older than you.”

  He shrugged. “Father approves. I told him about her. He cautioned me against losing my heart and making a mad, foolish, and wholly unsuitable proposal, but that was the extent of his concern.”

  “I’m sure it was.”

  “He is a practical man, Olivia, with sensibilities of entitlement. In his prime I imagine his lovers were legion.”

  Olivia jerked, pricked her finger. She turned her hand to keep from staining the tablecloth with blood and raised her finger to her lips. When Alastair inquired after her, she merely nodded to indicate she was fine even as memories best forgotten began to churn.

  She’d bled the first time she’d been taken from the convent. Other times as well. Her hand shook with fear that she might bloody the tablecloth. They would make her scrub it clean, erase the evidence of her sin. Was she the sin? Was she the sacrifice? It had been an age since that particular memory had come to her, but no amount of time was too far in the past. Now, tasting blood on the tip of her finger, it was as if it were happening in this very moment. Look at what you have done, my sweet girl. My own dearest child. Can you smell the blood?

  “Olivia?” Alastair left the fireplace and dropped to his haunches in front of her. “You are pale. I don’t think—”

  She pushed the tablecloth off her lap with such force that Alastair almost toppled backward when he tried to gather it up. She stood, stepped around him, and murmured her apologies before she fled the room as if she were about to be set upon by all the demons of hell.

  “It was most peculiar,” Alastair said, lying back to cradle his head in his palms. “I tried to speak to her later, but she would not open the door to me. I think she had been weeping.”

  Alys Christie made appropriate consoling noises. “Then she would not want you to see her in such a state. It does not matter that you are her brother. You are a man, and no woman is fond of being looked upon at such moments. Unless she cries prettily; that is altogether different. In that event, she does well to be seen as it can often be employed to her advantage.�
� She walked her fingers down the center of his chest. His skin was pale and smooth and firm. Her nails left faint pink crescents wherever she pressed. She felt a surge of tenderness toward him and that pleased her. He was very young, she thought, but not entirely unschooled, and that pleased her as well. “Does your sister cry prettily?”

  Alastair sucked in a breath as Mrs. Christie’s fingers slipped under the drawstring of his drawers. She had the lightest touch when she teased him. He could feel his cock stirring. What had she asked him? “Prettily? No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then ease your mind. There is nothing she expects from you.” She turned a fraction more in to him and kissed him on the mouth while her hand slipped lower. “You were right to leave her. I cannot be sorry for it has brought you here.”

  He caught his breath again as her fingers wrapped around him. “Did you enjoy the theatre tonight?”

  “I did.” She took full advantage of his young body’s resiliency and worked him quickly to a cockstand. “I missed you, though. I had to sit between Mr. Landis and Baron Collison’s eldest son, who bathes as infrequently as his father if I am any judge.”

  Alastair caught her hand, interrupting her rhythm before she made him come in his drawers. “The play’s the thing.”

  She laughed, kissed him again, and kept her hand still. “Has Breckenridge finished with her?” she asked with perfect indifference. “You have not said why she returned.”

  “Didn’t I?” It still astonished him that he could speak at all in this woman’s presence, but at the moment of his crisis he never knew what would spill from his lips. He recalled his father’s caution, but it was difficult to keep it front and center when she was milking him dry. He eased his hand away from hers and did not discourage her when she threw a leg across both of his, rose up, and straddled him. “I thought I did.” He groaned as she pressed on his fly with her palm just before she released him. He sprung erect, a fine soldier in want of inspection. She was thorough, as always. “Olivia returned because of Lady Breckenridge.”

  Mrs. Christie’s cool smile edged closer to scorn. “Oh? She is only now learning that he is married? My, but she was an innocent. I had no idea.” She lifted her hips and eased herself slowly onto him. He pulsed inside her. “I suppose she has come to understand he will not marry her. Dashed hopes.” She drew her nightgown over her head and flung it away, then bent forward to kiss him. “What a pity.”

  Alastair murmured something incoherent against her mouth. It was only as she was sitting up again that he was able to give distinction to the words. “I don’t know what hopes Olivia harbored, but it is Lady Breckenridge’s return to London that sent her packing.”

  “Her return?” Mrs. Christie removed Alastair’s hands from her breasts and set them firmly on her thighs. “Do you mean to say that he’s found her? She’s really alive?”

  Alastair dug his heels into the mattress, seeking purchase so he could pump his hips. “Of course she’s alive,” he said between clenched teeth. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “Because everyone thinks she’s dead. There are still a great many people who believe he murdered her.” She thwarted his movement by seating herself more heavily on his groin and ignored the rush of air that left his lips.

  Alastair felt beads of sweat form just below his hairline. He allowed that there were less pleasant tortures than the one he was experiencing now, but God’s truth, he was praying for her to rotate her hips just so. “Everyone seems to be wrong,” he said, appealing to her reason. “If it is rumor, it is certain to be a very old one. I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Not that old. Naturally, you would not know it. You only patronized his hell. You did not rub shoulders with Breckenridge’s intimates.”

  The sharpness of her tone warned Alastair that he had offended her. Apparently using the word “old” had been enough to poke at her sensibilities. “I doubt his intimates are the ones wagging their tongues.” He felt her thighs tighten as she pinched him between her knees. Her frustration was likely to take the breath from him, but Alastair was quite certain it would be worth it. He eased his hands out from under hers and cupped her hips. His fingertips pressed the smooth skin of her buttocks.

  Alys stared down at him, more amused by his single-mindedness than aroused by it. She made herself tight around his erection and drew a small moan from his parted lips. When he urged her upward, she didn’t resist his effort. She circled her hips. “Is this what you want, my darling boy?”

  Alastair bucked under her in response, driving himself deeply into her even before she’d fully settled on him. He surprised a sweet moan from her. “Is this what you want?”

  He was not such a boy after all. She rose and fell again, watching his eyes darken at the center and his skin flush. He was a beautiful young man, prideful as well. Already there were signs that she would not always be able to lead him around by his cock, but just now he gave himself over easily enough. She moaned again, this time as she let her head fall back. She drew her hands between her thighs, then higher across her belly until she cupped her breasts. The square cut emerald ring that she wore on her thumb glowed in the candlelight. Twenty-one diamond chips sparkled as she rubbed it over her budding nipple. She closed her eyes, confident that he was watching her, seeing the ring, and feeling all kinds of powerful as he drove himself hard into her.

  Alys Christie permitted him to make himself proud.

  Olivia frequently had breakfast in her room. Alastair, if he was in residence, did not rise until much later. In the afternoon, he made calls upon his friends or visited the clubs, and because there were deliveries from Bond Street, Olivia knew he also shopped. As she had no interest in the same, she walked daily in the park that was the centerpiece of Jericho Mews. Mrs. Beck was not always available to act as a companion, so there were mornings that she walked alone. Griffin would not have stood for it, but Alastair made no objection.

  While her brother was often gone of an evening, he did take tea with her. It was in this manner that she was kept abreast of the activities in town, those that he attended as well as those he only read about in the Gazette. He had remarked on several occasions that there was no word of Lady Breckenridge’s presence at any of the affairs that drew the notice of the paper. He’d also heard nothing whispered in any quarter that she’d returned to London, and while he no longer visited Breckenridge’s hell, his friends had observed no change in the operation of the establishment save for the regrettable absence of Miss Ann Shepard, more familiarly known as Honey, at the faro table. This last was communicated to her in reproachful accents.

  Olivia did not try to explain what she did not understand, and her resolute silence on the subject of Lady Breckenridge both irritated and impressed her brother, though she’d had no particular wish to do either.

  She read in the drawing room where the light was better. Sometimes she applied herself to the tablecloth and accepted Alastair’s critical observation that she took as many stitches out as she put in. She played card games with him when tedium would have otherwise strained their tempers, but resisted showing him all the clever tricks she’d been taught, afraid that he’d use them unwisely and make himself the target of a pistol ball.

  Olivia avoided asking about the state of the household accounts. When Mrs. Beck sought her out with some concern, she resisted the urge to settle the matter and turned the housekeeper in Alastair’s direction. It was obvious to her that he’d been managing his affairs in her absence. He might prefer to rely on her to attend to the details he found onerous, but preference was not the same as need. In truth, once again, she required more of him than he required of her.

  Olivia pushed this last thought to the back of her mind and laid out a row of seven cards. She dealt from the deck, adding to the piles in a neat and orderly fashion. She did not often play solitaire, but she’d brought out the cards in anticipation of Alastair’s return. The teapot and cups rested on the silver tray to her right, ready for service upon his arrival. She
kept her hands busy to refrain from stealing a biscuit. He’d look at the tray, count the sweets, and know she’d pilfered one. His teasing would not be entirely kind.

  Her head came up as she heard the front door open. She cocked it to one side at the sound of him stamping his feet to remove the wet from his boots. He had not let the day’s steady drizzle stop him from leaving the house and was likely soaked through. It was easy to imagine him throwing off water droplets like a puppy, sending a cold spray into the far corners of the entrance hall.

  Her faint smile faltered when he came through the door. He’d given over his hat, but Mrs. Beck was trailing after him trying to relieve him of his coat. His movements were uncharacteristically brusque and his eyes were grim. She started to rise but what she saw in his face had her sitting again. The cards slipped from her nerveless fingers.

  Alastair pressed his coat into Mrs. Beck’s hands and waved her out of the room. Turning, he withdrew a folded copy of the Gazette from under his frock coat and advanced on Olivia. Complementing his impatient stride and bleak expression, the tone he took with her was severe.

  “You will have to read it yourself, Olivia. You will not want to hear it from me.” Using the folded edge of the paper, he pushed aside her cards. He opened the Gazette and placed it before her. “Page three.”

  Frowning, Olivia smoothed the paper with her palms. Her fingers, she noted, were trembling ever so slightly. Alastair was already walking away, turning his back to her at the fireplace as she carefully turned the page. Even without further direction from him, it took her only a moment to find.