Hope Tarr - [Men of the Roxbury House 02]

by Enslaved

  Possibly the worst part of the whole dismal affair was that Daisy hadn’t lied to him, not really. Any lying that had taken place was by him. From the moment they’d shaken hands on their “arrangement,” he’d done little else but deceive himself that once the agreed-upon month was past, he would have won her over. The passion between them had gone a long way in fermenting the lie. Even now when he was holding the black-and-white proof in his hand, he still couldn’t wrap his mind about the humbling truth that she was already making plans to leave him for another man.

  But there was one bittersweet pleasure left to him—confronting her and tossing the evidence of her duplicity back in her face. Wherever it was she’d gone off to, she had to return home eventually, and when she did she would find him ready and waiting. Who knew but if his acting abilities held out—and all lawyers had a touch of the thespian in them—he might try making her believe that he didn’t give a damn, that he, too, was looking forward to being free.

  If only he might convince himself as well.

  When Daisy walked in from rehearsal late that afternoon, Gavin was sitting on the serpentine-backed parlor sofa apparently waiting for her. Despite the drizzling weather, she was in a fine mood. The run-through had gone splendidly and afterward she’d even done some shopping. When she came upon the blue felt bonnet trimmed with a black velvet band displayed in the window of a Mayfair millinery, she thought, Freddie will adore this, and that had settled it.

  And now she’d come home to find Gavin waiting. She hadn’t even slipped off her cloak and already she was wet for him. Anticipating several hours of uninterrupted lovemaking, she set the bandbox down and came over to kiss him. “What a lovely surprise.”

  He pulled back. “It’s been quite a day for surprises all around.” He slammed his half-finished drink down on the table and stood.

  Taking in his hard gaze, set jaw, and caustic tone, she gathered he was in a mood. “Gavin, whatever is the matter?”

  “Who the devil is Freddie? Or should I say your ‘dearest darling Freddie'?”

  “I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied, though not very convincingly. The tremble in her voice must be a dead giveaway.

  Not wanting to meet his eye, she dropped her gaze and spotted the crumpled vellum in his fist. It took her a handful of seconds before it dawned on her just what it was he held. He’d found her half-finished letter to Freddie, the one it had never occurred to her to hide.

  She lifted her chin and forced her gaze up to his, confident her face must appear as angry as his. “That is my private post. You had no right to read it, even less to rifle my room.”

  “I wasn’t rifling your room. I came home early to make love to you. When you didn’t answer my knock, I thought you must be napping and went inside, hoping to surprise you. Instead, I was the one who received the surprise in coming across this.” He raked his gaze over her as though she were some creature, some monster, whose heinous motives he could scarcely fathom. “My God, Daisy, it wasn’t as though you went to the trouble, or some might say the decency of hiding it.”

  “I didn’t think I had to.” She pinned him with a pointed look as though he were the one of them in the wrong.

  In typical female fashion, she’d somehow managed to turn the tables on him and put him on the defensive—so much for his supposedly brilliant legal brain. When dealing with Daisy, soft emotion, not flinty logic, seemed to rule the day.

  “I wouldn’t have found the bloody thing if you hadn’t left it sitting out with your script.” Even with the evidence of her subterfuge in hand, it felt important she not think he stooped to going through her things. “I could almost believe you meant for me to find it and catch you out.”

  The barb hit home. Cheeks as bright pink as if he had slapped her, she said, “I don’t have to justify my life to you, Gavin, or anyone else. As for our arrangement, I mean to pay you back every farthing you’ve spent on the acting lessons and the books and, well, all of it. It will take me a while, years I expect, but some day I will repay you.”

  Good God, she must be a cold-blooded creature to bring up the terms of their arrangement at a time such as this. She’d stolen his heart. Compared to that, what did he care for a few hundred pounds?

  “I don’t want money from you. Whatever help I’ve given you has been out of … friendship.” He almost said love but stopped himself before he did and made himself look even more of a fool.

  She shook her head, mouth pressed into a firm line. “I don’t want you to think of me as your mistress or yourself as my keeper. Whatever we’ve done together in bed, whatever pleasure I’ve given you, I’ve done so of my own free will. I want you to think of our time together as a gift, not a business arrangement.”

  “I believe the fashionable term is ‘protector’ and I thought, hoped, to be more to you than that. What we had was never a business arrangement, not to me, but it hardly matters now. You and this … Freddie … have you some sort of understanding?” He despised himself for asking, and yet he quite simply had to know.

  She shifted her gaze away. “I suppose you could call it that.”

  “What would you call it?”

  She whipped her head about and met his gaze head on. “Love, Gavin. I call it love.”

  “I see. You love this … Freddie. And yet you let me make love to you. No, not let me, seduced me, made me so mad for you I’m all but your slave. What was the point of it all?”

  She had the effrontery to shrug. “A month is a long time to sleep alone. I wanted you. You wanted me. If we choose to barter our bodies, why shouldn’t we? We’re both adults. Where’s the harm?”

  “Damn it, Daisy, when I came to your bed, it wasn’t just to fuck you. It was to make love. I thought we were making love.” I thought we were falling in love. At least I was.

  “Men and women share their bodies all the time without involving love. Matters go off a good deal more smoothly without adding messy emotions to the mix, or so I’ve always found.”

  The latter allusion to all the other men in her life wasn’t lost on him. Whoever Freddie was, he was hardly her first lover and, the steamy letter aside, Gavin was coming to think he wouldn’t be her last, either.

  Hurt beyond his wildest imagining, he rounded on her. “What are you so bloody afraid of? That we might be happy together, that I might actually love you?”

  The questions rattled her, he could tell. She backed away, not because she was frightened of him—she must know by now he’d never harm her—but because he suddenly must have become a mirror for all the things about herself she didn’t want to see.

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m not afraid of anything.”

  “Then prove it. Let me come with you when you tell this Freddie of yours it’s over between you.”

  She shook her head, expression resolute. “I’m sorry, Gavin, truly I am. Hurting you was the very last thing I set out to do. You’ve been good to me. More than good, you’ve been the soul of generosity. I’m very grateful—”

  He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “I’m not interested in your gratitude.”

  “I wish things might have turned out differently, but I’m afraid it’s too late. This time together will always be very special to me. If you believe nothing else, I hope you’ll believe that.”

  A sudden fear seized him, for it sounded as if she meant to end things between them, not in another week, but then and there. That he might never again know the magic of touching her, tasting her, looking into her beautiful eyes and watching her come was almost more loss than even he could bear.

  Anger was, if not an escape, a temporary refuge from the raw, bloody hurt. “I don’t know why I should believe anything you say. Since we met again, virtually every word from your mouth has been a bald lie. And I swallowed them all, every bloody one, but then, you see, I wanted so very much to believe in you, in the possibility of us. And you made me believe. You didn’t need those acting lessons after all. You’re a natural actress
or a born liar, take your pick. I’m supposed to be a rather smart fellow, and yet I started to believe we might have a chance at some sort of future together. But then you’re very good, Daisy, not only the consummate actress but also a top-tier whore. Keep the money. You’ve more than earned it.”

  Faced with her open-mouthed stare, he felt as if there wasn’t enough air in the flat to sustain the both of them. Though the room was on the chilly side, he was sweating as if the four walls were ablaze. “Stay or go as you please, it’s your call.” He brushed past her and headed for the door.

  She took a halting step in his direction. “Gav, wait, don’t go off, not like this.”

  He whirled on her. “Don’t you ever call me that again, do you understand?” He stabbed a finger into the air to punctuate the point, vaguely aware that sweat had broken out all over his body. “Calling me familiar is a privilege of friendship. You, Miss Lake, no longer have that right.”

  He tore his coat from the back of a chair and walked out the door, letting it slam behind him.

  Later that evening, Daisy sat tucked up in a quilt on the carpet in Gavin’s study, settled in to wait. Sooner or later Gavin would have to come home and when he did she meant for them to talk. The younger, more impulsive Daisy would have packed her bags and left that very night, but at twenty-four she was getting too old for such offstage theatrics, or at least she liked to think so. Even though the Whitechapel flat was hers for another week, she wasn’t foolish enough to venture forth in the infamous criminal district alone past dark with luggage in hand. But more than any practical considerations, she didn’t really want to leave with their quarrel still burning like a red hot brand in her brain. Perhaps once Gavin came home from wherever he’d stormed off to, they might talk things over rationally and afterward part as friends?

  She left the study door ajar on purpose so she’d be sure to hear him when he came in. Instead of a key turning in the lock, she heard the ubiquitous clearing of a throat she’d come to associate with household servants. A moment later, Jamison poked his silvered head inside. “Will you require anything further, Miss Daisy? I took the liberty of keeping your dinner warm. Shall I bring it to you before I retire?”

  Even if he was only performing his servant’s duty, he really was a very dear man. “No, thank you, Jamison,” she said, forcing a smile. “I shall be fine until morning.” Her stomach was too queasy with nerves to think about eating. At any rate, she’d grown accustomed to sitting down to supper with Gavin. Dining was but one of the many things she would miss sharing with him once she’d gone. The admission prompted a hitch in her heart.

  He nodded and backed out into the hallway. “Very good, miss. Goodnight then.”

  “Goodnight.”

  The short interchange was fraught with meaning. The elocution practice sessions, torturous as they had been, had paid off, yet one more thing about which Gavin had been in the right. Anyone overhearing her say, “No, thank you, Jamison, I shall be fine until morning,” might have mistaken her for a lady. Beyond her cultured tone, what astonished her most was how comfortable she felt in the role of mistress of the manor, or in the present case, mistress of the flat. Gavin’s flat had come to feel entirely too much like a home, her home as well as his.

  She pulled the blanket tighter about her and took another sip of the small sherry she’d poured. Gavin was a creature of habit, and no matter what hour he returned, the study would be his first stop. They would have their chat in a calmer frame of mind and tomorrow she would see about moving her things back to the Whitechapel flat and starting the search for a nicer place. It was better this way, really it was.

  And yet if this was truly better, why did she feel so very badly?

  Fencing had been Gavin’s solace since his grandfather brought him back to London fifteen years before. The twice weekly lessons were one of the few aspects of his gentlemanly training in which he took actual pleasure, one of the few domains where he felt as though he could fulfill his grandfather’s expectations and still be himself. The sport provided a vigorous physical workout while requiring a sense of timing, strategic thinking and, above all, self-control. Prior to Daisy and he becoming lovers, the sessions had provided a desperately needed release, the surest means of salvaging his sanity—or what was left of it.

  When earlier that evening he stormed out of his flat, instead of drowning his sorrows in drink, he headed for his fencing club. Part gymnasium and part gathering spot, the London Fencing Club kept liberal hours to accommodate its members’ varying needs and schedules. There was a small, informal sitting room where one might take refreshment after a match, and a telephone for guests’ use. Gavin hesitated and then rang up Rourke, reaching his butler instead. The Scot wasn’t in at present, but the butler promised to relay Gavin’s message inviting him down.

  Rourke must have sensed Gavin needed more than a sparring partner, for Gavin had just emerged from the changing room when the Scot strolled in. “I’m more of a wrestler, mind, but I’ll do my level best not to disappoint.”

  Gavin sent him a grateful smile. “Thank you.”

  Ten minutes later, they faced each other in the fencing gallery, each attired in the requisite wire mesh mask, gloves, padded jacket, and white breeches and wielding foiled swords. It was the dinner hour, and they had the room to themselves.

  Standing the requisite number of paces apart, Gavin lifted his foil, the tip hovering about Rourke’s. “En garde.”

  A newcomer to the sport, Rourke couldn’t come close to matching Gavin’s skill, but he was a natural athlete and over the past year he’d picked up the basics easily enough. He was more than able to handle himself in a friendly sparring session.

  Only Gavin wasn’t feeling in a particularly friendly humor. He was out for blood, Freddie’s blood. In the absence of knowing that supreme satisfaction, he meant to make his friend sweat out every second. They had the safeties on their swords and wore the full complement of protective gear. In such controlled circumstance, where was the harm in pretending?

  They advanced and retreated, slashed and parried back and forth across the empty gallery, Gavin mounting an unforgiving assault.

  “You must have had a pisser of a day,” Rourke called out between labored breaths.

  “You’ve no idea,” Gavin shouted back and then lunged forward, aiming for the heart.

  The next few minutes were reduced to clashing steel and heaving breaths punctuated with the occasional grunt or oath. Sweat streamed Gavin’s face and neck, seeping through his white shirt into his padded doublet. Though he couldn’t see his friend’s face beneath the concealing mask, he knew Rourke would be in a similar state. At this point, he ordinarily backed off and gave the novice a chance to recover. Only in his mind it wasn’t Rourke he was fighting but Daisy’s lover, the faithless, feckless Freddie, nameless except for the absurd nickname. Gavin had never hated a fellow human being more.

  Envisioning a fair-faced Adonis with a head of honey-colored curls, he easily parried Rourke’s clumsy thrust and then went in for the kill, the point of his blunted sword stabbing into the left side of the Scot’s chest. Even with the safety on, such a blow would leave his friend with one hell of a bruise.

  “Jaysus, Gav, have a care.”

  “Sorry,” he said, though in reality he was too far gone to feel much of anything beyond an irrational anger, a heated hatred.

  Men and women share their bodies all the time without involving love. Matters go off a good deal more smoothly without adding messy emotions to the mix, or so I’ve always found.

  Daisy’s callous declaration interspersed with the sounds of their sword play echoed in his ears. Of all the things she’d said to him earlier, hearing that their making love meant absolutely nothing to her hurt the very worst.

  He went on full attack, thrusting ever harder and faster until he had Rourke backed into a corner. “Gav, what the devil’s got into you, man? Leave off. It’s just a practice match, for Christ’s sake.”

  Too
far gone to heed reason, Gavin went in for the kill. At the last minute, Rourke turned to the side, deflecting the blow and sending Gavin’s sword stabbing air. Committed to the attack as he was, the momentum carried Gavin forward. He caught a flash of steel coming toward him and the next thing he knew, pain seared his left shoulder. Holding onto his sword, he staggered back.

  “Gav, it was an accident, I swear it.”

  He slammed into the plaster wall, vaguely wondering why a bruise should hurt that much. A spangle of stars danced before his eyes. His knees buckled, sinking him as though he stepped upon quicksand.

  He opened his eyes to find Rourke kneeling over him, his arm beneath Gavin’s head the sole anchor in a suddenly topsy-turvy world. Visor up, the Scot’s tanned face dripped with sweat. “The bloody foil slipped. Are you all right? Speak to me, man.”

  Gavin shook his head. So many questions and focusing on any one suddenly seemed to require a Herculean effort. He tried for a shrug, and the pain that small movement brought about would have sent him to his knees were he still standing.

  Gavin moistened his dry lips. “It was my fault. I wouldn’t leave off. Can’t be as bad as it looks. Just a scratch, I’m sure.”

  Rourke’s grim face told him it must look bad indeed. “You’re bleeding like a stuck pig. I assume there’s a surgeon on the premises?”

  Gavin managed a nod, his head feeling as heavy as a stack of stones. Jaw clenched, he looked down and saw a scarlet stain spreading over the left side of his white doublet.