Price of Desire

by Goodman, Jo

  There were a few murmurs of disappointment as she left her station, but the pair of gentlemen cheats could barely contain their excitement. No one spoke to Sir Hadrien as he passed, and Olivia was struck again by the command he enjoyed in any situation. He was an unfamiliar face to those around him, yet he was shown deference by all. Sir Hadrien Cole did not frequent gaming hells, nor associate with those who did. If card play was his pleasure, then he arranged entertainments for his friends at Coleridge Park. He was rarely found in town, preferring country amusements to brushing shoulders with his current company.

  He did not offer Olivia his arm, and for a brief moment she felt grateful toward him. The thought of taking his elbow, of touching any part of him, filled her with a dread so profound she experienced it as a sharp punch in her stomach.

  “This way,” she murmured, and led him toward the stairs to Griffin’s private rooms. “Lord Breckenridge’s study is available to us.”

  Upon entering the room, Olivia went immediately to the desk. She indicated the liquor decanters on the cherrywood table but made no offer to serve him refreshment. Except to raise an imperious eyebrow, he did not take issue with the slight. She watched him thread his way among Griffin’s carefully arranged clutter to the drinks table and pour himself three fingers of whiskey. Her insides were wrenched again when she saw the depth of his pour. It was his way to nurse a drink, and Olivia prepared herself for a lengthy interview.

  She waited, and in the end proved that her tolerance for the drawn out silence was greater than his own. What she did not anticipate was how quickly he would turn it to his advantage.

  “I despaired that you would ever learn how very becoming quiet is to one of your kind.” He raised his drink, watched her over the rim. “It seems you have. Kudos, my dear. It suits you well.”

  Olivia decided she would bloody her own tongue before she’d take that bait.

  Sir Hadrien smiled. “Very well indeed.” His cool pewter eyes traveled over Olivia slowly, the indifference of his public regard gone as he studied her with interest that was also insult. The cast of his features was no longer expressionless but bore the unmistakable stamp of attraction. “Miss Ann Shepard. The name is familiar, yet I cannot place it. How do I know it?”

  “She was my nanny.”

  “Oh, yes. So she was.” He rolled the tumbler of whiskey between his palms. “I seem to remember you had some other name for her, though for the life of—”

  “Honey,” said Olivia. “I called her Honey.”

  “By God, that is it exactly. What became of her? I wonder.”

  Olivia did not respond, nor did it seem her father expected that she would. She was careful not to twist her hands together or fidget with the folds of her gown. He would see through both those things to the very heart of her fear.

  “It is no matter, really. She was an unpleasant sort, as I recall, though you seemed to like her well enough. Is that why you’re using her name?”

  “Should I have used my own?”

  Sir Hadrien ignored that. “You are under Breckenridge’s protection, is that right?”

  “I am his mistress.”

  “His whore.”

  “No.”

  “His whore,” he repeated. “He knew who you were at the outset, and he still made you his whore.”

  Olivia wondered what she might say. I was your whore first. She pressed her lips together to keep that thought silent. “Perhaps you should tell me why you’ve come.”

  “Reparations, naturally. I confess, it did not occur to me that you didn’t know. I’m here so amends might be made.”

  Amends? She could not help but frown. That her father should be speaking in such a fashion was unnatural. She was not so naive that she supposed he was bent on making amends toward her. Had he not just called her a whore? She settled on the only explanation that made sense. “So you are here to settle Alastair’s debt, then. I should fetch Breckenridge. He has the full accounting of what is owed.”

  Sir Hadrien set his glass down hard. He had the satisfaction of seeing Olivia start. She had already taken one step away from the desk and toward the door, and now she stood perfectly still, wary and waiting. He gathered the threads of his composure because he could afford to be generous with her now. “Is it possible that you have become so foolish, my dear? You very much mistake the matter. I am here for what is owed me.”

  Knowing that Sir Hadrien fed on her fear, Olivia forced herself to fully face him. She set her hands behind her and curled her fingers around the edge of the desk. There was little she could do about the heat and color in her cheeks, but she managed to draw a breath through narrowly parted lips and release it very slowly. Her heart thrummed, one beat indistinguishable from the next.

  She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. “I’m unaware of any debt that is owed you.”

  “I see I must say it more plainly, though it is a disappointment. I am here for the ring, Olivia. I will have it returned to me.”

  “Perhaps I am as foolish as you’ve noted, but I fail to understand how you mean to take it back without settling Alastair’s debt.”

  “Your brother settled his debt twice over, once when he surrendered the ring, and again when he offered you in place of it. Now Breckenridge is in possession of both, and I find that insupportable.” He took up his drink again and sipped. “The alternative is that you leave with me, but you can imagine I am reluctant to ask it of you.”

  Olivia was glad of her grip on the desk. Her knees felt as if they might give way. “I am of no value to you on the marriage mart.”

  “I believe you overstate it. Let us agree that it is difficult to gauge how advantageous a marriage you might make. I am fully appreciative of the effort that has been made to separate your behavior and circumstances from the family name. There is no blemish attached. That was well done of you.”

  “It was well done of Breckenridge. I was all for acknowledging my own name. It is a source of pride to me, after all.”

  Sir Hadrien did not miss Olivia’s subtle ironic inflection and chose his response carefully. “Ah, yes, you would sacrifice your nose for your face. It was ever your way.”

  Olivia merely shrugged.

  “I can think of several gentlemen of my acquaintance who would be willing to settle for a wife such as you might be.”

  “Truly? I’d always imagined your friends held the same lofty standards as you.”

  Showing impatience with her tone, his mouth flattened briefly. “Reginald Sewell, for one.” When she looked at him blankly, he clarified, “Lord Pearce.”

  “The name means nothing to me. I have been out of society.”

  “So you have, but that was your own doing. Pearce might be a good prospect. He was recently widowed, and his children are grown with children of their own. He would not expect you to bear him a child.”

  “His expectations are of no account since I will not have him. You are mistaken also if you believe that I will not inform any prospective suitor of my association with Breckenridge. Our family’s good name will remain above scandal as long as you do not force my hand.”

  “You are threatening me?”

  “You may characterize it in any manner you choose. I am merely explaining what I will do. I do not desire marriage to any gentleman of your choosing and will expose your name to ridicule if you proceed along that path.”

  His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “You are changed, Olivia, but I cannot think that you are improved. Insolence is not attractive in a child.”

  “I am not a child.”

  “You are my child.”

  Olivia wanted to clap her hands over her ears. My own sweet girl. My own. My very own. The voices she heard, however, did not come from her father as he stood before her now, but as he’d stood before her once, and placing her hands over her ears had never served any purpose but to amplify the echoes of her past. My dearest girl. Come sit on your papa’s lap.

  “You look unwell,” Sir Hadrien said. “Are
you unwell?”

  Olivia fairly recoiled when he took a step toward her. The desk at her back kept her from going into full retreat. She moved herself along its edge, ignoring the pain in her hip when she caught the corner, and stopped only when she was able to put the desk at least partially between them. “It is nothing,” she said. “A slight megrim.” And an urge to release the contents of her stomach at his feet. “I will take a headache powder before I return to the faro table.”

  “I suppose you are eager to do so, though I understand none of it. That you would use your considerable talent in the service of Breckenridge and his hell seems rather lowering, even for you. There are gentlemen’s clubs, you know, where discretion is practiced as a matter of course, that would better suit you.”

  “I am content here.”

  Sir Hadrien shook his head, mystified. “Let us come to terms regarding the ring, then. I will expect it on the morrow. Your stepmother will be away from the town house the entire afternoon. It is then that you should come as she will not want to see you.”

  Olivia would have pointed out that she was of a similar mind, but coming to terms about the ring was more than deciding on the time of its delivery. “As I have said before, you will have to speak to Lord Breckenridge about the ring. It may be that he has decided to forgive Alastair’s debt entirely and means to keep the thing for himself.”

  “He would not. That is unconscionable.”

  “Is it? I confess, I am not familiar with the gentlemen’s agreements that cover such arrangements, but if you say that it is so, I will defer to your judgment. You should know, however, that Breckenridge will act as his own conscience dictates. Your opinion will not matter in the least.”

  Sir Hadrien stopped rolling the tumbler. His fingertips pressed the glass with enough force to whiten them. “Your manner is increasingly impudent. Does he permit you to speak to him in that fashion?”

  “He encourages it.” Olivia was not surprised to see she’d provoked her father’s scorn, but it had the odd effect of steadying her. Before she thought better of it, she stepped away from the desk. The tightness in her chest eased, and she straightened, this time in a way that communicated confidence, not defiance. She folded her hands loosely together, presenting herself as a woman unbowed. “There is nothing about speaking my mind that threatens him.”

  Sir Hadrien set the tumbler down once more, this time softly. He covered the distance to Olivia in four easy strides. “Do you think I am threatened? Speak up, Olivia. Say what you think now.”

  A fine line of tension seized her, but she held her ground. “You are deserving of nothing so much as my pity, but I have none for you. I also have no rage. No fear. No disgust. Certainly no love. It’s happened, I think, that I have no feelings at all to spare for you, unless indifference is a feeling. In that event, it is everything that I know. And, yes, I think you are threatened, doubly so that you cannot touch me any longer.”

  She’d chosen the wrong words. In retrospect, she knew it, but at the time they seemed to be exactly right. His arm came up so swiftly that she had no time to recognize the danger, nor react to it.

  The blow was powerful. He caught her full on the side of her face with the back of his hand. She staggered sideways, tasted blood in her mouth, but managed to stay standing. Her vision blurred with the sting of tears. Bright bits of color floated in front of her.

  “Shall I touch you again?” Sir Hadrien asked. He was breathing hard but perfectly in control. “Shall I?”

  “You must do as you like,” she said, facing him again. “I will neither give you permission nor beg you to do otherwise.” She did not look away from his cool, disdainful gaze, but held it calmly and without the rejoinder of a challenge. When he did not raise his hand a second time, Olivia was careful not to indicate her relief or gloat in her victory.

  Sir Hadrien took a step back, then another, and this time it was he who put one corner of the desk between them. Olivia wondered at his retreat, whether the distance was in aid of restraining himself or protecting him from her. She hoped it was the latter, that he’d come to understand that she was capable of retaliation. Nothing had outwardly changed, yet Olivia did not think she was imagining there’d been a shift in power.

  She had taken her own back.

  “You should leave now,” she said. “If you desire to speak to Breckenridge on the matter of Alastair’s debt, then return tomorrow in the early afternoon. I will be gone from the house, and as I don’t wish to see you again that time is also agreeable to me.”

  Allowing him no opportunity to protest, Olivia went straightaway to the door. She opened it and turned her hand in a gesture indicating his interview with her was at an end. She had no clear idea what she would do if Sir Hadrien stood fast, but it was not something she had to contend with. He did not surrender a fraction of his imperious air, but he took his leave nonetheless.

  Olivia watched him turn toward the stairs and listened for the diminishing sound of his footfalls. When the noise from below covered them, she finally shut the door and leaned heavily into it. She closed her eyes against the rush of emotion and still she trembled with it. There’d been no running from him this time, no withdrawing into herself. She’d faced him down, and every part of her felt the effort now as a physical pain.

  She had no idea how long she remained there, but she never once felt any urgency to move. It was only when her heartbeat calmed and the wave of sickness passed that she pushed away from the door and went to the fireplace. She removed her wig and tossed it aside, then rubbed at her face with the back of her hand to erase the artifice of powder and paint. After plucking the pins from her hair, she shook it out and combed it with her fingers. A wave of ginger curls framed her face and fell softly over her shoulders. She caught all of it in one fist and ruthlessly pulled it back.

  Olivia examined herself in the mirror, not for evidence of any injury that Sir Hadrien might have done, but to see if she was marked from her struggle with him in some other, more subtle way. She’d survived a battering, and the blow he’d struck was the very least of it, but what she observed in her face, in her carriage, was not a wounded warrior, but one already healed and made stronger by experience and sense of purpose.

  And also so bloody tired.

  She released her hold on her hair and smiled wryly at her reflection, acknowledging the limits of a healed soul and strength of character. Bone weary, she wanted nothing so much as to lie down. She picked up the rug lying over the back of a wing chair, removed a stack of books from the foot of the chaise, and lay down. Mason could manage the faro table for a while longer, she decided. It was her last thought before she fell deeply asleep.

  Griffin found her there well over an hour later, though coming across her in the study was happenstance rather than planned. He’d removed himself from the gaming rooms only a few hours after they’d opened the doors to look in on Nat. The battle being waged in the boy’s room was one that Griffin had discussed at length earlier in the day and rather than insist Nat resume Caesar’s conquest of Gaul on the morrow, Griffin dropped to his knees and took up the cause of the soon-to-be-defeated army.

  They’d positioned their men around the table and chair legs to lend the illusion of the forest that divided the Roman and Gaul forces. Nat’s new major general was now Gaius Julius Caesar, credited to be a wily commander in the field. Griffin’s men put up a good fight, but they were no match for the trained and disciplined soldiers from Rome. The end came exactly as history dictated it should, and after surrendering to Caesar, Griffin hauled Nat up, slung him over his shoulder, and dropped him on the bed.

  He did not know how he’d been convinced to join the boy. Certainly his own father had never done the same with him, yet Griffin allowed that it was not an unpleasant task to keep the child company until he slept. What he had not anticipated was drifting off in a like fashion.

  Griffin found a spot on the chaise where Olivia’s bottom curved out and her knees curled in, and he sat. The ru
g was haphazardly drawn across her. Her feet poked out at the bottom and her shoulders were bare. He set his candle on the stack of books that had been moved from the chaise, then gently shook Olivia’s arm.

  She stirred but did not open her eyes. Her response was sufficient to make Griffin stop shaking her arm and stroke it instead. She liked that infinitely better and murmured her pleasure to make certain he knew it.

  “Are you well?” he asked.

  Olivia nodded. “Merely fatigued. Have I slept long?”

  “I don’t know.” He explained the cause of his disappearance from the gaming rooms. She rewarded him with a beatific smile that made his heart trip over itself. He bent his head and kissed her cheek. “You were still at the faro table when I left and doing most excellently. Did William and Bennet Allworthy trouble you at all?”

  She snapped her fingers. “Allworthy. Of course. I could not recall their name. I’m afraid I left their comeuppance in Mason’s hands.” She cocked her head toward the mantel, opened one eye, and regarded the clock. It was gone midnight. That put her on notice immediately. She bolted upright, narrowly missing bumping heads with Griffin. “I need to get back. Mr. Mason must wonder what’s become of me. You also.”

  “Not enough, apparently. He has not sent anyone to find us, has he? You know what explains it, don’t you?”

  Olivia shook her head as she threw off the blanket.

  “Lady Rivendale.”

  She stopped wrestling with that part of her gown that was trapped under her legs and stared at him. “Lady Rivendale? You think she’s come in?”

  “It would not at all surprise. Would you care to wager?”

  “I never bet against the house.” She resumed tugging on her gown and allowed Griffin to assist her. “Would she know my father, I wonder?”

  “I couldn’t say. She knows who you are, though.”

  “She does?”