Virginia And The Wolf

by Lynne Connolly

  But she wouldn’t tell that to Wolverley.

  “I have to shift for myself, since my parents do not come to town. Neither do my other relatives.” Exactly as she liked it. Virginia kept a careful distance from her parents.

  “I have no relatives, or none who will acknowledge my mother. Therefore I do not acknowledge them.”

  Although he finished brightly, Virginia knew how much he cared. His lovely, clever mother had committed the worst sin of all; she was the daughter of a yeoman farmer, and therefore completely unacceptable to his relatives. Wolverley’s father had discovered her working in her father’s dairy.

  The scandal, though old, retained much of its power. Wolverley was grudgingly received at court, though to Virginia’s knowledge he had gone only once. His fortune went a long way toward canceling out gossip about his low-born mother.

  Wolverley was devoted to his mother. He would not go anywhere the countess was scorned, and he refused to keep her a secret. Society would be happier if he did.

  Virginia liked Lady Wolverley and saw no reason to avoid her now that her own husband wasn’t here to reprove her. Ralph had disapproved of the upstart, as he’d put it. Virginia had no such scruples, so after her period of mourning, she’d made a point of visiting the lady.

  “People are leaving London for the country,” he said, reaching for another scone. “Town is almost empty.”

  The plate contained only one scone now, testament to Wolverley’s prodigious talent for making food disappear. If a person did not watch closely, it would appear that the offering melted away by magic.

  He put his plate down, then turned to meet her gaze, his own serious. Society would not recognize the amusing rogue in this grave man. But she did.

  “To our business, if I may. I want to buy a house that is currently in your possession. Combe Manor.”

  She heard the words with a kind of dull inevitability, as if Wolverley could read her mind, which was far from the case. He couldn’t have Combe Manor, and Virginia could not tell him why. That put her in a devilish awkward position.

  “I have not visited it for years,” she said lightly, “but Ralph was fond of it. He used to go sea fishing there. It’s small but substantially built. Ralph told me smugglers lived there, but I think he was teasing me.” Not that Ralph had done much teasing. An army general, already retired when she’d met him, her husband had a stern demeanor that descended into irritability with increasing frequency. “I plan to pay it a visit this summer.”

  “Why are you going there?” His expression had not changed, but his voice was tighter.

  “To assess its condition. I would have my man of business look it over, but I am heading that way soon, so I thought I would do it myself. If you must know, I plan to establish an orphanage there.”

  “An orphanage,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it.

  Since Ralph’s death, Virginia had made quite a name as a philanthropist. She had opened ten orphanages in Devonshire and Cornwall, and planned to open ten more. In her late husband’s memory of course. “You have an objection?” she added frostily. What she did with her property was none of his business.

  This grave-eyed, serious man stared at her with none of his usual insouciant protection. His emotions were completely bare.

  Virginia swallowed. What had she provoked here?

  He was tight-lipped, angry, but a bleakness lay behind his eyes. He wanted this property badly, she guessed.

  It was as if a stranger had walked into her parlor, a handsome man she found irresistibly attractive, even more than the carefree Wolverley he showed to society. This revealed his soul, his heart.

  But he was gone in a flash. If she had not seen that side of him before, she’d have thought it was her imagination, so quickly did his expression change to his usual mien.

  “What is it?” she said softly. “Why do you want that house so much?”

  He changed to brisk and businesslike, but although he didn’t fool her, she let him guide the conversation and show her what he wanted to. “Combe Manor was my mother’s childhood home. Her parents rented it from your husband’s family before she met my father. When she was ill in the spring, she spoke of it often. I would like to buy it for her.”

  Lady Wolverley had suffered a severe bout of influenza, so bad that her doctor had feared for her life.

  “She has the dower house. Surely that is better than a run-down manor.”

  “The house would be my gift to her.” He got to his feet and strode to the fireplace, touching one of the two cherubs she had just carefully arranged. As if he’d touched her, Virginia shivered.

  “I am not inclined to sell.” By the terms of her husband’s will she could not, but he must not know that.

  “It’s a small part of what you own,” he said, still not looking at her but staring at the porcelain putto. “The unentailed part of the estate was larger than the tail, and you inherited it all. What is a small Devonshire mansion to you?”

  He put the figurine down so carefully, it barely made a sound. Then he turned to face her, eyes hard, lines bracketing his mouth. “I can recompense you handsomely.”

  His gravity disturbed her. It reached a part of her deep inside that nobody else had even discovered, that core of her she kept to herself.

  “I will not sell.” Could not.

  She could, however, tell him as much as possible, try to make him understand. Because Wolverley was not an easy man to cross, and like a dog with a bone, he would not let go.

  “Before Ralph died, he spoke to me about the orphans he’d encountered in his military career. He’d come across a child wandering across a battlefield after the conflict, searching for his parents in the piles of bloody bodies, and the sight struck him to the heart. It was his dearest wish to care for at least some of those children. I establish the orphanages for children of soldiers left alone through war, and I am glad to have the resources to do so.”

  Ralph had made a bargain with her. When he’d made his latest will, he’d offered her everything he could leave her. In return for the property, she had to create the orphanages for him.

  “Promise me!” he’d said, and pushed an old Bible at her. “You will follow my instructions to the letter. In return, you may have everything else. Or I will leave you nothing, and you will have to return to your parents.”

  That didn’t bear thinking about. Life before her marriage had been hard enough. To return to them, a woman too old to marry, with no fortune to offer, didn’t bear thinking about.

  Placing her hand on the book, she’d sworn an oath to establish the orphanages. Since there’d been no witnesses, the oath wasn’t legally binding, but Virginia didn’t care about that. She would never renege on her vow to him. Promises were important.

  “I can give you a better house in exchange,” he suggested. “One more suitable for an orphanage. Or are you intent on denying my mother her wish?”

  “I’m sure your mother will be glad to know that her childhood home is being put to such good use.”

  “I see.” His voice was hard now. Virginia could almost be afraid of him. But she did not choose to be afraid of anyone, and for her, fear was a choice. “It isn’t suitable for your orphanage. It’s too close to the sea and too small. Let me give you another house further inland instead.”

  “No.”

  “What difference can it make where you house your brats? Sell to me.”

  Her brats? The word revealed his annoyance.

  She countered with her own annoyance. “I don’t plan to sell to anyone. My plans will not change.”

  “Hoarding your property?” Now he was ice-cold. He stared at her as if she was something stuck to the sole of his boot. “I never took you for a miser, Virginia.”

  He was inviting her to justify herself, but she refused to do so. Apart from her promise to Ralph, she owed nob
ody—including the Earl of Wolverley—an explanation. She glared at him.

  “Very well.” He shrugged as if the matter was trivial, which she knew it was not, and just like that, his flirtatious, warm mood returned. He donned it like a coat.

  Virginia felt bereft, as if that brief glimpse he’d given her of the man within was all she was getting. She had offended him, and she was sorry for it.

  Rising, she nodded at the door. “They will most certainly talk if you are here any longer. People are always watching.”

  “I know. And they watch you because you are eligible and expected to marry again soon. Dulverton has been gone four years now. You are, Virginia my dear, ripe for the plucking.” A cold smile curved his mouth. A shiver of danger shimmered between them.

  She wished he would not use her name like that, but saying so would draw his attention to it, and he would do it even more once he knew she disliked it. So she let it be. “I have no mind to be plucked,” she said tightly. “And no plans to remarry.”

  “Oh, but you must!” Approaching her, he bore a particularly wicked smile, but no humor lit his steely eyes.

  Lifting her hand, he pressed a kiss on the back, the kind a suitor would give to a lady he was planning to court. Gentle, respectful, but with an edge of danger. Few men had the skill to do that with one kiss, but Wolverley could. She’d seen him do that often, even though his intentions were never honorable. Now, on the receiving end of that tactic, she understood its power.

  He took in every inch of her silk-clad body, scanning her insolently. His gaze stopped at her throat. “What is this?”

  Next to the medallion she always wore, the gold coin Ralph had made into a pendant brooch for her, was a new pin, intertwined letters in silver.

  “Oh.” She put her hand over the metal, then dropped it again. She was dressed perfectly respectably, a fichu wrapped over her shoulders and tucked into her gown, but he made her feel bare, as if nothing covered her breasts at all. She wanted him gone.

  “That is the pin of the SSL. The Society for Single Ladies. Miss Childers has established a club for us. Why should we not have somewhere to go, to meet?”

  “Ah! I have heard of it. It is not merely to gossip, is it?”

  She shrugged. “Some of the ladies engage in other activities.”

  Society knew about the SSL now. They had not kept their activities secret for long. Two sensational cases, and people had come to the right conclusion about the purpose of the society.

  “Terrifying. What can women not do if they discover their collective power?” he said.

  “I’m sure people will find out.”

  If he was trying to distract her, he was succeeding. Her body had come to life the moment he’d touched her. And from the satisfied expression on his face, he knew it. He hated her refusal to sell him Combe Manor, and he was looking for another way to persuade her. She was not so rustic that she didn’t know that.

  “You should leave,” she said abruptly, moving away from him with a swish of skirts and a haughty lift of her chin. She’d learned a few things herself.

  “Of course.”

  She did not turn when he left the room.

  Chapter 2

  Francis’s anger choked him. His mother deserved better. She deserved everything. As Virginia’s front door slammed at his back, Francis swore he would change her mind.

  What was Combe Manor to her? A small, out-of-the-way house with nothing to commend it, too close to the coast for comfortable living. An odd choice for an orphanage, since it was at the top of a cliff. Surely something inland would serve her purposes better.

  He strode down the side of the fashionable square, ignoring the calls from the beggar crouched by the railings of a house further up and the jovial greeting of someone across the street. He was in no mood to be social. If he walked down to Tom’s Coffee House, he would probably have exorcised the worst of his mood by then. Three miles should just about do it.

  Virginia was hugging her inheritance like a child clutching a favorite doll, refusing to release so much as a hair off its head. Estates such as hers were to use, to put to work, to make more prosperous. But her attitude when he’d asked what he thought a modest favor, as if he’d tried to rip the clothes off her back…

  The vivid picture of Virginia, silk dripping off her naked skin like petals off a rose in a heavy downpour, came to his mind and he could not shift it. His body stirred, responding to his imagination instantly, as it always did when he thought of her. But that was his secret, and nobody, least of all Virginia, knew of it.

  He had started calling her by her first name when he discovered it irritated her. During her marriage, they behaved distantly but with cordiality. He had wanted so much more that he hadn’t trusted himself. Even then they had met frequently, mostly at social events. After her husband died, he continued to visit her because—because he found her name on his lips tantalizing. He always had, since he’d first seen her as a new bride of eighteen. But he’d seen the summary dismissal she’d given to the men who flocked around her after Ralph’s death, and fearing the loss of the tenuous connection they shared, he’d held off courting her.

  Although he dearly wanted to.

  Her cool, dark beauty held him as no other woman had ever done. That glossy, near-black hair that she rarely powdered, the glittering blue eyes, the graceful stature—she entranced him, and she had no idea she was doing it.

  Maybe he could get his revenge another way. One far more public, and one which suited him better. People did not ignore him these days or treat him as if he did not matter. He’d vanquished that demon years ago. He suspected Virginia was following her husband’s directives, not her own, as if Ralph could treat him as inferior in death, as he had in life.

  His parents had broken the two rules society lived by; they came from different social spheres, and they were in love. Marriage was a business, not a personal choice. After his father’s death, when Francis was eighteen, society had chosen to turn its collective back. So Francis had set out to change their minds.

  On his Grand Tour, an event his mother insisted he indulge in, instead of wasting his time with whores and substandard art, Francis had made a number of interesting contacts. And because of that, he was now wealthy, untouchable. He’d turned a venerable title of doubtful value into a glossy, prosperous series of ventures. Society could not ignore him now.

  And now he wanted Virginia. He’d waited long enough.

  Whether she knew it or not, Virginia had issued a challenge, and he had no hesitation in snatching up the gauntlet.

  What possible use would she have for Combe Manor? If she’d seen it, she’d know it was not at all suitable as a house for small children. It was miles away from the nearest village, so supplies would be difficult to obtain, and it was too close to the cliff edge to be safe. On the other hand, if one wanted to dispose of a number of infants, it would be perfect. Perhaps she would change her mind after she’d seen it, but he did not intend to wait on her whim.

  When his father had met his mother, she had been living at the manor. Her father was a yeoman farmer, reasonably prosperous, but they rented the house from Lord Dulverton. Celia had control of the dairy after her mother’s early death, ensuring that society would forever call her “the dairymaid.”

  And now Francis wanted the house back. His mother’s recent illness made him anxious to give her something that meant a lot to her, and he’d settled on Combe Manor.

  He could combine his natural desire for Virginia with his other aim. Perhaps get the manor and the woman.

  He would pay Virginia court over the next few weeks. Cling to her, get her to acknowledge they were more than friends, even though they were not. Single her out. In short, pester her until she acceded to his request.

  Although the season was drawing to a close, one event remained. He would make the most of Lady Conyngham’s ball.


  Her response when he’d kissed her hand—that was his clue. Although it was also hers. He’d meant the gesture to be mocking, but it had not ended that way.

  When he’d touched her, magic had thrilled through his fingers, chasing his original intentions out of his head. The instinct not to release her hand but to draw her close and find out what her lips tasted like had overwhelmed him. Only his common sense reasserting itself had stopped him from taking it further. Every time he touched her was like that for him. Even though he expected it these days, it still struck him like a mallet to the brain.

  Virginia prided herself on her reputation for correctness. Not a stain marked her character, even since she had re-entered society a year after Dulverton’s passing. Francis would show her how easily that could be overturned. If he pursued his attraction to her in public, if he made his admiration clear, then others would follow. They always did. London might be thin of company, but it was not bereft of it. And Francis had always led, never followed.

  His gamble would not be half-hearted on his part, because he wanted Virginia badly. If his play ended with their union, then he for one would not be sorry.

  He’d faced the sorry fact years ago that he had fallen desperately in love with her on sight. Although he’d worked very hard at falling out of love, it had not happened yet.

  There was the problem of her fertility. Society had decided Virginia a barren wife, and Ralph had often jokingly remarked that it wasn’t for want of him trying. He’d had a particularly carrying voice, so everyone who used the same club as he did knew that.

  Even if she was not barren, bearing a first child at the age of thirty would not be an easy thing. And Francis feared for her. The conundrum had tangled him up for years. He knew the ways of preventing conception, but none of them were anywhere near foolproof.

  Virginia might not be the wealthiest lady in society, but she had a tidy sum, and it was all disposable. No entails, no compulsion to retain the property for the next heir. The fortune hunters went wild. Again. She had deterred them once, but without his help, she’d find it difficult to accomplish that again, if he signaled that she was ready to be courted again.