Satisfaction

by Thea Devine

  SATISFACTION

  BY

  THEA DEVINE

  They were adventurers and the closest of friends until the day Hugo Galliard deserted Edmund Renbrook in South Africa, robbing him forever of his diamonds, his woman, and his future. Now years later, a son and a daughter will meet to settle the score, using every bit of sensual cunning at their disposal……….

  EVERYTHING SHE BELIEVED…….

  Wild, beautiful, unwilling to bend to anyone's rules. .Jancie Renbrook is governed by one overwhelming desire: to make Lujan Galliard want her, and serve as the instrument of her father’s revenge. But life at the Galliard manor proves a treacherous den of iniquity, where Jancie is coveted by many, and the only man who could prove her ally is Lujan himself...

  EVERYTHING HE DESIRED...

  Lujan Galliard has cut quite a swath through the gambling dens and whorehouses of London. But at least lies an honest rakehell unlike his father who masquerades as a gentleman while gazing at Jancie as if she were a ripe piece of fruit for the taking. Not that Lujan believes for a moment that the girl is an innocent come to care for his dying mother. The only way to uncover her scheme—and thwart his father—is to seduce and marry her. But a taste of what he hungers for proves more tempting than Lujan can resist….and soon, he wants Jancie body and soul...

  EVERYTHING HAS ITS PRICE

  Blinded by vengeance, trapped by uncontrollable passion, two lovers have become pawns in a dangerous game of sin and secrets, and the only way out is to surrender to a love neither is ready to trust...

  POSSIBLE ERRORS:

  Vm or Tm should be “I’m”

  // should be italicized “if”

  An f at the end of a sentence or at the end of periods should be a question mark “?”

  In memory of our beloved calico, Emily

  …and, as always, for John…

  Brava books

  Copyright 2004

  Chapter One

  Waybury House, Darfield Hertfordshire, England

  Spring 1894

  This could have been mine . ..

  Feeling a little curl of bitterness, Jancie shifted forward in her seat in the rumbling dray as it turned into the gate and onto the drive to Waybury House.

  This could have been mine . . . all right, Father's—our family's . . .

  Everything exuded prosperity: the beautifully tended hedges, the wide swath of emerald green lawn, the crisp crack of oyster shell under the wagon wheels, and as they got closer to the house, the riot of flowers lining the drive and bursting under the windows of the huge stone house that suddenly loomed in front of her.

  Dear heaven. And I spent my growing-up years in that mausoleum of a girls' school while Father labored for a government pittance under the hot Indian sun?

  Don't think about that.

  2 / Thea Devine

  Don't think about what? All those years peeling potatoes? All those years belowstairs?

  All those years she was maligned and disdained because she was a kitchen girl... Kitchen girl. Working for her bread and board. Lower than vermin. Not To Be Associated With. To be teased, scorned, and mocked and looked down upon by the full-tuition girls.

  The kitchen girls ate scraps and soup. Sneaked a treat now and again. Banded together like ferrets. Lived on the topmost floors in the garrets and attics. Sat in the very last row in classes.

  And as the wealthier girls advanced in years, in grade, and in station, things got considerably worse. The kitchen girls now took their classes apart from the tuition girls. And there were lessons to which the kitchen girls had no access: dancing, deportment, art, music, French, and all the elegant things that young ladies of society needed to know—how to dress, flirt, arrange flowers, set a perfect table.

  All the extras for which kitchen girls had no money.

  They were called "dirty girls" then, the maids and kitchen girls who earned their room and tuition by dint of hard, honest work. They were to be pitied, used, derided, made fun of, treated like—well, dirt, and made to do onerous, malicious things, and never to be raised from the gutter.

  And on the horizon, there were social events during which the polished and finished young women from St. Boniface would mix and mingle with the top-notch and top-drawer young gentlemen of the Eccles and Bristowe Schools.

  Boys who lived in houses like this, boys whose fathers had money from commerce, inheritance, or perhaps from the diamond fields in South Africa.

  Boys like Hugo Galliard's sons, who had grown up with all the privileges that she had not.

  No place on the dance floor, or even the sidelines, for a kitchen girl. No dirty girls allowed. No money anywhere for anything.

  Nothing but servitude, and knowing that, but for fate—or Hugo Galliard—her own father could have been every bit as wealthy as those boys' fathers . . .

  How many times, in her childhood, her youth, her young

  Satisfaction / 3

  womanhood, had Jancie heard the story of Edmund Renbrook and Hugo Galliard, handshake partners and rogue miners? They had been in South Africa, seeking that one elusive, wealthy-beyond-all-measure, earth-shattering diamond strike—beyond even the strike at Kimberley, so crowded with dreamers and die-hards, and laddered with delegations and deals by the fortunate few who had gotten one of the 500 claim stakes, that there was no room for hope or day pay. And that didn't even include those who went and sold their stakes for thousands of pounds profit.

  But that was not for Hugo, and thus not for Edmund, who had been perfectly willing to do the work. Instead, they followed a hunch, a year-long search, for a kimberlitic vein that played out into an unlikely and already abandoned pit in a field in the middle of nowhere, south of the Kimberley fields. Just the two of them, eking out the pith and pebbles of precious diamonds one by one from the yellow soil, until the disastrous day of the explosion that left Edmund unconscious and alone in the veldt and Hugo at the mercy of murderers and thieves.

  This had been Jancie's bedtime story almost from the time she had any memory at all. She could recite it by heart. Her father awakened with no memory of what had happened, no memory of Hugo Galliard, or of why he was even there, blast-singed, in the rubble of ... of what? And how many years it had taken her father to walk and work his way back to Capetown, living on scrub and maggots; how many years more to earn the money to book passage to England?

  And then he met her mother, got married, went into the Indian service to support his new wife, all the while his memory slowly returning in bits and pieces, like the pebbles and rocks he had eked from the abandoned pit at Kaamberoo.

  Slowly, he remembered. Slowly, his memory returned, honing in on his truth, and one day, he put it all together: the partnership, the mine, the woman whom he and Hugo both loved, Hugo's first betrayal—marrying Olivia before they even left for South Africa. All of it, he remembered. The work. The pit. The strike. The blast.

  And then Edmund's wife had died in childbirth, and he simmered with a fine, keen rage that Jancie had to spend her first

  4 / Thea Devine

  years in India with him, subject to rampant diseases and even death, while Hugo's sons were being raised in luxury someplace in the English countryside.

  Jancie, on whom he pinned all his hopes and dreams.

  What hopes and dreams?

  She must be educated. She must take her place in that society as if Edmund had returned to England with that fortune in diamonds all those years ago.

  Edmund remembered that. All those little pebbles of diamonds they had pulled from the soil.

  A fortune in diamonds that instead had bought for Hugo Galliard and his family all of what Jancie saw before her, as the dray lumbered down the drive.

  All of this could have been her father's .. . hers. Sh
e could have been a tuition girl. She could have had everything that the wealthy girls had. She could have learned etiquette, drawing, dance, French. She could have had suitors, could have made a suitable match.

  Instead, she was exchanging one servitude for another.

  And she must suppress her welling anger besides. But she prided herself on being pragmatic. Another lesson from the kitchen. She must look at what was. The deed was done, after all. Life was unfair, and all she could do was continue on as her father wished— and this he did wish, most emphatically: that she repay Hugo's kindness by coming to Waybury House for as long as Olivia might need her.

  She never could comprehend what her father was thinking, and his insistence on her acceptance of this mission only added to her confusion. She would have thought Edmund would want her in India, with him, instead of waiting on his enemy's wife.

  And, in fact, when Edmund finally traced Hugo all those years ago, he hadn't gone off on a tear about the past; rather, he had asked but one favor: Hugo's help in keeping his motherless daughter far from the risks of living in India, and his assistance in sending Jancie to a suitable boarding school until she came of age.

  Jancie never did understand why her father didn't demand more. After all, Hugo had survived the blast, had returned to England, was living comfortably with his family in Hertfordshire.

  Satisfaction / 5

  So if Hugo could afford to pay her tuition, surely he could honor the terms of the partnership, and write Edmund a check.

  But Edmund had no contracts, no promissory notes, no signatures, no partnership papers, nothing in writing or anything binding. They had made a partnership on a handshake, on their honor. And so there was just the knowledge between himself and Hugo about what had been done.

  Hugo had an answer for all of Edmund's questions before they were even asked, and he was perfectly willing to explain the circumstances of having seemingly left Edmund in such dire straits— the murderers and thieves part—and he was only too happy to do a signal service in reparation for his old and valued friend.

  Olivia (did Edmund remember Olivia?) made the arrangements for Jancie's admission to St. Boniface's School for Young Ladies, and Hugo had arranged to pay her tuition and board until Jancie was old enough to earn her keep.

  He hadn't long to wait: the headmistress put her in the kitchen peeling potatoes not two years later.

  Edmund happily left her there. And nobody cared.

  And now, all these years later, her oh-so-kind benefactor, Mr. Hugo Galliard, had need of a companion for the same said Olivia, Olivia whom her father had loved all that long time ago, who was ill with some debilitating disease, and Hugo had the passing thought that perhaps Miss Renbrook might consider returning the favor he had done her father, in keeping her at St. Boniface for the last eleven years, by coming to Waybury House and helping him with his wife.

  No, she had thought furiously at first, / have no obligation to this man in this life to make restitution for all those years of peeling vegetables and being a maid. That was no kindness. That was Hugo Galliard's guilty conscience. He owes my father too much, and I owe him no consideration whatsoever. I have paid my way on every level. I will not wait another year, another moment. I am not going from one servitude to another. I am going to India.

  The India of her childhood memories. The impossibly hot and exotic India, where one could do what one wished, live like a queen, and forever be free .. .

  Not to go to India? That dream of going back to India had kept her going all those years at St. Boniface.

  6 / Thea Devine

  That—and Emily. Emily was her family, her cat.

  And so instead she and Emily came to Hertfordshire.

  India. Hertfordshire.

  Somehow, they didn't connect, there wasn't a straight line from one to the other that she could tell, but nevertheless, here she was, at her father's behest, feeling a grinding anger that she must repay this debt at all when Hugo Galliard owed herself and her father so much more.

  I could have lived here; my mother might still be alive. I could have grown up here instead of that hellhole of a school. I could have been a tuition girl. ..

  And then the wagon ground to a stop beside the shallow front steps of Waybury House.

  And Emily leapt out of her basket.

  And .. . "No cats."

  The voice was like the crack of a whip, from the thin lips of a tall, desiccated-looking man with paper-thin skin and formal dress who stood at the partially open door.

  Jancie climbed out of the wagon, and reached in for her one overstuffed suitcase. There ought to have been a servant for that, she thought grimly. Which just immediately put her in her place. And this old fossil had ought to be more respectful, no matter who she was.

  She lifted her chin. "Of course there's a cat. I'm Jancie Renbrook. I believe Mr. Galliard is expecting me. And the cat," she added boldly.

  "Not the cat."

  "Absolutely the cat." She had decided that the moment she had agreed to come, and this family retainer had no business telling her what she could or couldn't do in this house that might have been her father's.

  She felt a constriction in her vitals. Emily stayed—there was no question. Emily was her playmate, her family, her companion, her best friend, and her confidant—who never scolded, teased, or said no to her. The most practical cat with uncommon good sense. She couldn't live without Emily's companionship—anywhere. And especially here.

  Of course, the cat, and they had best get used to it—to her.

  "Otherwise, I cannot be of service here as Mr. Galliard ex-

  Satisfaction / 7

  pected," Jancie added firmly. "Kindly convey my regrets to him and Mrs. Galliard."

  "You'll have to walk. The wagon's gone and left. . ."

  She knew that, and she ought to have thought to ask the driver to stay. But who could have predicted this impasse over a cat? Well, it was too late now.

  She thinned her lips and bent down to scoop up Emily, who made a protesting owww. "Then I'll walk." This was a major bluff—the bag was far too heavy, being packed with everything she owned, and carrying Emily in the basket would be awkward—but she would do it, just to show this nasty old man, no matter how many miles she had to walk back to the village.

  Wherever the village was.

  To reinforce that decision, she thrust Emily into the basket, picked up her bag, and turned from the door.

  Down the steps, onto the oyster shell drive .. . with the desiccated old butler watching her with an eagle eye .. . and the dray already out the gate—and too far away to call it back.

  This was the life other people lived, with carriages and cabs and footmen to carry their bags. But not her, not her.

  Ah—no matter, she had done harder work than this, and her determination was rock-solid once she made up her mind.

  Of course, where she would go from here was also debatable. Hugo had paid for her ticket out, and it had only been one-way, and she had no appreciable money to pay her way back to London. She hadn't thought it would be necessary.

  No cats, indeed.

  Well, she would just find work in the village for a day if she had to—just enough for train fare—or stay long enough to pay her passage to India. How many years would that take? It reeked of her father's experience—and Hugo Galliard having the upper hand and the power, once again.

  She felt the anger unfurling in her belly. Always Hugo, always winning somehow . . .

  Don't be silly.

  Wise, wise Emily, looking at her with those knowing golden eyes.

  You'll find a way.

  She would. She always did.

  8 / Thea Devine

  She started walking, one foot after the other, her mind blank; she didn't want to think, didn't want to try to figure out how to breach this impasse. No cats. Inconceivable, when it was they who needed her.

  The truth was, she had no idea what she was getting into, whether she stayed or left. And with every c
runching step, she felt her anger mounting. She could hardly make the gate at this rate, let alone the village.

  "Well, what do I do?" she murmured, looking at Emily so she wouldn't have to look at the long distance between where she was and the gate.

  Don't trust the butler.

  That hadn't occurred to her. Of course. He was so old. So paper-thin. So disapproving—probably of everything.

  Of course he didn't want a cat upsetting things. Or a stranger from far away. And he didn't know Emily, so he couldn't know she would be most useful, especially if he needed an excellent mo user.

  Emily, a kitchen girl. ..

  That was a funny thought, imagining Emily in a ragged apron chasing mice, and so, distracted by that image, she didn't hear the thudding hoofbeats pounding relentlessly toward her until the rider was almost upon her, fighting for control of the horse, and veering wildly off to her right to avoid crashing into her altogether.

  And then, with consummate skill, he pulled up and slid off his panting mount, and strode toward her in a most menacing way.

  "What flower nearly tripped me up in this misbegotten Eden?"

  But she never heard the question. She saw only the raw beauty of his face, the firmness of his lips, his intimidating height, his stormy gray eyes, and the wildness in his soul that matched her own. And an arrogance that could only be met with a profligate defiance in kind.

  She was only sixteen, but she knew what that look was about, she knew how the gentry were, if only from overheard gossip, and she knew her response was wholly inappropriate. He scared her to death and she couldn't stop looking at him.

  Don't. . .

  The ever-pragmatic Emily. But it was too late. She knew it already.

  Satisfaction / 9

  "Oh God—you're . . . that girl—the family cross . . ."

  "Jancie," she whispered, mesmerized.

  But he didn't hear her.

  "Oh, hell. A cat? They won't let her in, you know." He took her bag, took her arm, and forcibly turned her back to the house. His voice was as burnished as cognac. She thought she might drown in it.