by Sharon Page
The sun slanted low, glinting on the rippling surface of the Serpentine. It was as lovely as she’d always dreamed. Devon’s London home, March House, was close by. It was one of the enormous mansions overlooking the park. Of course, she dared not go there. She couldn’t call. It might be only several feet from where she stood, but it was a world away.
She shook off the heaviness around her heart. She was free. Almost four weeks ago she had traveled to Devon’s house, determined to become his mistress. Determined to escape. To build an independent life. She had done all those things.
She did feel relief and happiness and joy. For the first time, she could look toward the future with hope. But she felt a strange sadness she could not shake.
Behind her, men laughed and hooves thudded in the sand of Rotten Row, the track used by the ton for riding. Anne turned. Sunlight limned the two riders and blinded her. The gentlemen stopped and one challenged the other to a race. Then the man’s gaze settled on her. “Moreton, take a look. It’s lovely Annalise. She used to work at Madame Sin’s. Tasty morsel, isn’t she? Read in the news sheets this morning that she was cleared of the madam’s murder. Apparently Viscount Norbrook clubbed the woman’s head in. He took his own life in the middle of St. James’s Street.”
“Shocking affair,” said the second man. He lifted his hat to her, the gesture exaggerated. He gave a low, suggestive laugh. Anne felt her cheeks prickle. She knew him. He used to come to her at Madame’s. He had done so regularly on Wednesday nights for two months.
Should she acknowledge him? Did politeness dictate it? The thought immobilized her on the spot. What were the rules in polite Society about meeting a former brothel client?
She didn’t want to say a word. She wanted to pretend none of it had ever happened. Her stomach churned. Anne whirled away from the two riders, but she heard the first man say, “Rumors are flying that she’s now the Duke of March’s mistress.”
“Lucky man,” the second drawled. It surprised her he didn’t give a hint of what he and she had done at Madame’s. Some madness made her look back at them. The second man smiled. His gaze lingered audaciously on her bosom. He gave a suggestive wink.
A blush scalded Anne’s cheeks. With desperate strides, she hurried back toward the entrance gate. A walk in the park on a sunny day no longer seemed like a pleasure.
She would always be what she was in Madame’s brothel. She would always be considered a courtesan. Men would gape lasciviously at her breasts, assess her with undisguised lust, and think about how much they were willing to pay for her.
Never again. After Devon decided on his future wife and ended their relationship, she would never take another protector. She couldn’t face the thought of touching another man, of being with any man but Devon. And now that Devon had slept a night without a nightmare, he was healing, he was putting war memories behind him. He could marry now. It was his duty.
But, more than that, he deserved to find love and happiness. She had seen how gentle he was with Thomas. She remembered how lovingly he had cradled his sister’s newborn child. He deserved to be a father.
A mad thought popped into her head. Was it possible for a duke to marry his mistress?
Oh, God, what was she thinking? It was impossible. Even if she hadn’t been ruined by her time at Madame’s, she still couldn’t dream of becoming Devon’s wife. Dukes also did not marry daughters of viscounts. They aspired much higher.
Anyway, Devon had never spoken of marriage. This morning he’d told her he was pleased to have the chance to do the things he’d promised in their contract. He planned to give her all sorts of pleasures but to treat her like a mistress.
Now she knew the reason for the painful tug around her heart. She wasn’t free at all. She might never be. It wasn’t only a matter of having her heart broken. She didn’t think she would ever stop loving Devon. Hopelessly. Just as Kat had said.
Chapter Twenty-five
IS MOTHER ASSESSED him with a shrewd gaze that traveled over him from head to toe. “You certainly look sound. And you are telling me the stories I heard were exaggerated—that you were not almost killed in a fire while rescuing your mistress?” She spoke in a low voice, for they were in the nursery and little Peregrine was sleeping in his cradle, but she was pale.
“Isn’t gossip always exaggerated?” Devon said lightly. He had told her most of what had happened when he and Anne escaped the fire, though he did omit the part about the building collapsing just as he got out.
“Perhaps. But knowing you, I wonder …” His mother tickled Peregrine’s stomach through the covers. A little smile curved the baby’s lips, though Cavendish had told Devon that such smiles were likely gas. “Anyway, now that you have found your missing people, as you put it, you will be ready to court a potential bride.”
There was no point in trying to ease gently into this. “You believe I should marry for love, Mother, but what if I’ve fallen in love with someone inappropriate, someone Society will say I shouldn’t marry? What if I plan to ask for her hand?”
His mother blinked. He’d thrown a lot at her, but she asked with admirable calm, “How inappropriate is she?”
“She’s my mistress.” He took his mother’s hand and kissed it, then led her away from the sleeping baby. He told her everything: Anne’s flight from her home into the slums, the time she had approached him outside the Drury Lane theatre, and how he’d turned her away. Her imprisonment in a brothel. The way she had seduced her way into his life. The way she had coaxed him to heal. “I don’t want any other woman as my wife. I love Anne Beddington.”
His mother was pale. “Surely you can find another who captivates you as much—”
“No, there will never be anyone else.”
“You thought no one could replace Rosalind, yet you have found this girl. You will find someone else, Devon.”
His mother had championed love, but he’d suspected it would not be stronger than scandal. He shook his head. “I love Anne more than I loved Rosalind.”
His mother’s eyes widened in shock. “You pursued Lady Rosalind with single-minded determination and caused scandal to possess her. I presume nothing I say will change your mind.”
Three years of regrets and pain crashed into him. His last argument with his father washed over him. “I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I am willing to weather scandal. There was a great deal of gossip when you stole Rosalind from your friend. I worked very hard to quell it, Devon, for Rosalind’s sake. The cruel things that were said, the pointed fingers—it hurt her. If you marry your mistress … It does not matter if it hurts me, Devon; I’m certainly strong enough to cope. What I cannot do is let you hurt your sisters. That would materially hurt Win’s and Elizabeth’s chances of making good matches.”
Anger surged, along with icy pain, at the stupidity of Society for punishing his sisters for a choice he would make, but he knew his mother spoke the truth. And after putting his sisters through three years of pain and worry, he could not hurt them again. “You’ve always ranked love so highly, but, in truth, love doesn’t conquer all.”
Deep lines bracketed his mother’s mouth. In that instant, she looked old. “You will fall in love again, Devon,” she whispered. “I am sure of it.”
He shook his head. “I very much doubt it. If I marry—”
“Devon, you must. It is your duty to wed and have an heir. And you are far too young to spend the rest of your life alone, without a wife, without a family of your own.”
He thought of Anne cradling Thomas in a swift embrace to make him feel safe, how she spoke to him as if he were a man to soothe his pride and help ease his shame. For all Devon was male, he hadn’t understood that a twelve-year-old boy would have his sense of manhood hurt by what had happened to him. Anne would make a wonderful mother. What in Hades should he do? He couldn’t bring pain to his family by marrying Anne. And he didn’t want to marry for duty alone.
“If you had been
killed in battle …” His mother stopped and took a shaky breath. “What do you think your last regret would have been?”
“That the last words I said to Father were in anger, I believe. That I put you through pain—”
“I think you would have regretted the loss of your future and the fact that you would not have another chance at love. You came home, Devon. Take that chance. Please.” His mother rested a shaky hand on his wrist. He hated hurting her.
But how could he marry for duty when he was deeply, intensely in love with Anne?
Hyde Park. The fashionable hour. Even in September, the ton came to see and be seen in the late afternoon. Walking alongside Tristan, Devon cast a jaded eye over the ladies and grimaced. They all looked the same to him. Each girl wore much the same dress, twirled a lace-trimmed parasol, and each wore an identical placid expression on her face.
Before he’d left his hunting box in pursuit of Anne, he found her scarlet gown in the wardrobe in his bedchamber—the gown she wore to come and seduce him. She would have looked like a delicious treat in it. In gowns, in breeches, in nothing at all, she was breathtakingly lovely. Anne was intriguing in a way no other woman was.
“Christ, I just realized why you wanted to come here.” Tristan’s exclamation of surprise made Devon jerk toward his friend. “You’re looking for a wife.”
“Last week I promised my mother I would consider courting.” He glanced toward his mother, who was chatting with several ton matrons while Lizzie and Win giggled with the women’s daughters. It hadn’t taken long to realize his mother had barely been out in Society since he’d left.
His mother had not been going out; Win and Lizzie hadn’t married. It was as if they’d stopped their lives for the three years he’d been at war. At least Caro and Charlotte had not done so; their babies were evidence of that. How did he make up for three years he’d taken from their lives?
He turned and walked with Tris, aware of a dozen ton mamas peering at him through lorgnettes. For his mother’s sake, he was here, making an attempt to do his duty. To not do it would break his mother’s heart. But his own heart was not in it.
“Dev? You don’t seem to be paying attention to the eligible misses.”
He groaned. With his sight back, he could see all these pretty English ladies, but he wasn’t looking at them. They were part of the background, a blur of fluttering dresses and parasols. All he could see were Anne’s large green eyes, her fierce determination, her beautiful smile.
He had no interest in spending interminable hours in inane banter with any of these giggling debutantes, knowing he could never ask the most important questions.
Would you be willing to charge into a brothel to rescue a boy? Would you have forced me to shave my face and give up brandy, when I was blind? Would you have walked in the rain to teach me I could listen to the sound of it on the trees?
He walked away from the chattering crowd, toward the Serpentine, Tristan following. He was almost at the lake when a hand clapped on his shoulder, and a deep, mocking voice said, “So, how is the murderess in bed? Has she tried to hit you with a poker the way she did to her madam? Can’t understand why you would take a dockyard whore as your mistress.”
Devon spun around. The words were like flame to a cannon’s fuse. Inside, he was sizzling. The man goading him was the Earl of Duncairn—they had been enemies at school. Duncairn had also been Gerald’s friend and had hated Devon for breaking Gerald’s heart over Rosalind.
“Let it go, Duncairn,” Devon growled between gritted teeth.
“I’d like to know if she’s any good, March. Madame Sin whipped her girls well if they didn’t perform as they should.”
“I said be quiet,” he warned.
“Or what? You’ll call me out? Over a whore?”
“Yes,” he snarled, but in that instant Duncairn’s fist came at Devon’s face and slammed into his nose. He’d pulled back, saving his nose from a break, but blood spurted. His battle instincts surged and he drove his right fist into Duncairn’s gut, his left into the man’s jaw. War had made him stronger. It had also made his blows a lot more lethal. Duncairn thudded to the ground.
Women screamed and men exclaimed in protest. Devon saw his mother shake her head grimly and restrain his sisters from running to him. After all, a gentleman did not knock another man senseless in the middle of the fashionable hour.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Tristan shoved a white monogrammed handkerchief at his face. Devon pressed it to his bleeding nose. He crouched beside Duncairn, pushing aside the man’s friends. He wanted to make sure he hadn’t killed the earl. Fortunately, Duncairn was still breathing and Devon had restrained his anger enough to avoid breaking the earl’s jaw.
“You do realize you were fighting over your mistress’s honor, Dev?” Tristan snapped.
Devon dabbed the handkerchief to his sore nose again. He lifted it away. It was soaked with bright red blood—red coats didn’t show blood, but white shirts did. How many white shirts had he watched soak completely with blood in a matter of seconds?
He thought of Anne, and the battle memories receded. “I know exactly what I was doing.”
“Dev, it’s a fool’s game to fall in love with a mistress. Makes life damnably miserable. You wouldn’t know that—your father and mother were notoriously besotted. My father had the sexual morals of an alley cat, and it made my mother’s life miserable. Consequently she was always angry, unhappy, and brittle. Look at Prinny. He fell for Maria Fitzherbert. Did it make him happy? By all accounts, he got dead drunk on the night of his duty wedding and heaved his guts in the fireplace. Dev, are you listening?”
He was. But mainly he was turning Tristan’s words over in his head. He loved Anne, and he knew he could never settle for anything less than a marriage made for love. There had to be a way he could claim the woman he adored without hurting his family.
Nerves had Anne shredding her handkerchief. She glanced toward Devon, who sat beside her in his ducal carriage. For the third morning in a row, she had thrown up her breakfast. She’d kept it a secret from Devon, but she knew what it meant. She was carrying his child.
Should she tell him about the baby? Or wait for him to guess for himself? Surely he would do so soon. Her breasts were already tender and fuller, and while her belly was still flat, it wouldn’t be long before it began to expand too.
A woman of courage would tell him. She was going to lose him anyway when he found a bride. He had a right to know about his child. Their contract stipulated he was to take charge of the baby. Perhaps he would decide to place the infant with a family. Often gentlemen did that with their bastards. Loving parents would raise the baby as their own, and the gentleman would provide funds for the child’s care. She might never see the baby again. It would be for the best, of course, so the child would never bear the stigma of being a courtesan’s child.
“We’re here.” He leaned toward her window.
Bewildered, Anne peered out too. The carriage had stopped in front of a house so enormous it appeared to encompass half the block. Window upon window reflected sunlight. Sweeping steps led to large doors. A gleaming wrought iron railing surrounded it all. Anne blinked. She remembered this house from a long time ago—she had walked past it with her mother when she was young, when her parents were alive. It had been one of the times her family had visited Town and stayed in their London home, the one Sebastian had inherited.
She whirled on Devon. “Why have you brought me here? This is my great-grandmother’s home. I cannot go there! She disowned my grandfather and never acknowledged my mother!”
He leaned over and gave her the sort of slow, tingling kiss designed to whisk away a woman’s wits. Over the last few days, she’d seen a whole new side of him. With his guilt eased, Devon’s nightmares were coming less and less often. He no longer acted out battles in his sleep. And he was surprisingly playful—he enjoyed teasing her both in bed and out. Delicately, he held her chin, but his touch was firm enough that s
he couldn’t escape his violet eyes. “I came here yesterday and coaxed your great-grandmother to speak to me,” he said. “She wanted desperately to know where you are.”
Anne didn’t quite know why, but she wanted to demand they drive away. She had the unbearable urge to bang her fists against him. Why had he done this? She didn’t want this. She asked, as though she was only curious and her stomach was not churning into knots, “Why would she want to find me? She disowned the family over my grandfather’s marriage.”
The carriage door opened, but Devon instructed his footman that they needed a minute before leaving. Anne had no intention of going into the house. What would be the point? “We couldn’t go to her when Sebastian attacked me. My mother said we couldn’t. She said my great-grandmother would let us starve in the street rather than help us.”
She clasped her hands tightly, trying to control her anger. And her … fear. She did not want to see this woman. She did not want to be rejected. Devon caught her wrists and she struggled to break free. He had forced this on her—he was not going to quell her. She didn’t care that she’d signed a contract promising to please him. “Did you tell her everything? Did you tell her what I’ve become?”
He lifted a brow, utterly, irritatingly calm. “Why did you not tell me you are a great-granddaughter to Lady Julia de Mournay? She is the last of one of the oldest and most important families in England, and one of the wealthiest women in the country.”
“And for that reason she wanted nothing to do with my mother or me.”
“That’s not true, love.”
“My mother explained why she could not go to her family when we had to leave our home. She knew they would not help. My great-grandmother had disowned her son—my mother’s father—over his marriage. He had fallen in love with my grandmother while she was an opera dancer on the Drury Lane stage. They ran away to marry. I never met any members of my mother’s family except my grandfather.”
“He was the one who was blind?”