by Enslaved
The sight made Max feel weary and wistful and irredeemably old. Turning away, he eyed the nearest bench, the one end occupied by a smartly dressed woman of his age or thereabouts. Though her delicately lined face was shadowed by the brim of her bonnet, something about her struck him as exceedingly familiar. He squinted, blinked, and then looked again before it struck him. The woman sedately knitting and occasionally glancing out onto the green was his old friend, Lottie Rivers. He hadn’t seen her since the Stonevale charity ball where her niece-by-marriage, Caledonia, had come in the company of Gavin’s photographer friend, whom she married under somewhat sketchy circumstances. Good Lord, had a year really passed by so quickly?
For a fleeting moment, he considered turning away and leaving before she saw him, but all at once she looked up, snagging his gaze. She smiled and raised a glove hand, beckoning him over, and courtesy demanded he pause long enough to at least say hello.
Reaching her, he said, “I thought it might be you, but I wasn’t certain at first.”
Shielding her eyes from the sun with the edge of one slender hand, she looked up at him and smiled. “I thought it might be you, too, but without my spectacles I couldn’t be sure.”
“I didn’t know you wore spectacles.” Staring down at her, he noted how the years had softened her once brilliant violet eyes to an equally lovely shade of gray-blue. Whatever their color, it would be a shame to hide their light behind glass and wire rims.
“I don’t. That’s my very problem.” She tapped him with her closed parasol and let out a little laugh, the sort that brought to mind a hand bell’s tinkling or the clinking of champagne flutes joining in a toast, and against all odds Maximilian found himself laughing with her.
“Do have a seat, Max.” She patted the vacant space beside her and shifted over to make room.
He hesitated and then settled beside her, the stiffness in his knees scarcely bothering him at all. “Thank you.”
They sat in companionable silence for some time, looking out onto the park, and it occurred to Maximilian it had been a very long time since he’d sat with a woman thus. So long, in point, he’d come close to forgetting what an exceedingly pleasant feeling it was.
At length, Lottie turned to him and said, “If you don’t mind my asking, what brings you here, Max?”
Not yet ready to surrender the serenity of the moment, he regarded the knob of his walking stick and shrugged. “Can’t a man seek sojourn on a park bench and enjoy a fine spring day if he chooses?”
“Of course he can only I’ve never before known that man to be you. I come here and sit nearly every day when the weather is fine and today is the first I’ve ever crossed paths with you.”
Giving up the game, he turned to her and admitted, “I’ve just had an interview with a young woman, an actress, and I’m afraid I muddled things rather badly.”
She arched one half-moon brow and regarded him. “An actress, Max, at your age? Why, I’m not certain whether I should offer my congratulations or rap your knuckles and give you a good dressing down.”
“Neither will be necessary.” He felt his face heat though his hat brim more than shielded him from the sun. “It wasn’t … that is to say, it wasn’t that sort of, er … interview.”
Looking over at her, he saw she was smiling again, a mischievous and rather sexy smile that shot a funny little fluttering sensation in the vicinity of his heart. Leave it to Lottie to tease him out of his sourness.
“What sort was it, then? I don’t mean to pry but you look … troubled.”
She’d always had a canny knack for reading him. “It’s a rather long and involved story, I’m afraid.”
Reaching over, she patted the top of his hand. “That’s all right, Max. At our age, what have we but time?”
“Very well, but once I’ve done, don’t be surprised if you don’t find yourself wanting to poke the point of that knitting needle into my eye.”
She cocked her head to the side and regarded him. “That bad, is it?”
“Worse, I’m afraid.”
He took a deep breath and recounted the story. Not sparing himself, he started with the day fifteen years before when he swept into the headmaster’s office at Roxbury House hell bent on erasing every painful memory in Gavin’s past, including his year-long stay in the orphanage, by sheer force of will.
She listened in patient silence. Only when he concluded with the recent disastrous meeting with Daisy did he dare glance her way. He steeled himself to see loathing in her lovely face, but instead he saw only compassion and sadness.
“Oh Lottie, what am I to do? If I’ve misjudged the gel then I may have lost my grandson his chance at happiness. And yet, even if she does love Gavin as she claims, she’s an actress, even worse, a former dance hall girl. I want Gavin to be happy, but how can I possibly give my blessing to such a union?”
“How, indeed?” Regarding the knitting lying neglected in her lap, she took a moment to gather her thoughts. “Let me ask you this: were you happy married to your Rose?”
Even wondering down what path she was leading him, he didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I was.”
“Rose and I attended the same French finishing school. We were chums, if you recall, or had you forgotten?” When he admitted he had forgotten, she added, “Would it surprise you to learn that Rose was considered quite scandalous in our day? She was always finding ways to sneak out at night and during our last term there was even a flirtation with a French dancing master that very nearly got her expelled. You knew about that, of course.”
“I’d heard … talk. It all took place so very long ago, I haven’t thought about it in years.”
“But at the time you knew and yet you married her anyway and, as you’ve just said, you were happy with her.”
Swallowing against the sudden tightness banding his throat, he nodded. “She was the light of my life.” He turned away, feeling moisture dampen his eye. “Until Lucy ran off and eloped, there was never a cross word between us. She never forgave me for not bringing our daughter and her husband home.”
“In that case, don’t make the same mistake a second time.”
“I’m afraid it’s too late.”
“Poppycock, as long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying it falls to you to find the means to set matters between Gavin and his actress to rights. Do whatever you must, Max, but above all make it right.”
For Daisy, the rest of the afternoon slipped by in a sort of semi-recollected haze. She navigated the dress rehearsal without conscious thought or deliberate action much as she imagined a sleepwalker might. Several times the director had to stop to feed her a line she memorized weeks before but only just forgot, or to call out a cue she missed for the very first time. By the end of Act Three, both he and her fellow players were thoroughly exasperated with her, not that she faulted them for it. Rosalind was the pivotal character of the play, after all. The success of the performance rested heavily on her shoulders. If she failed her first night out, the critics would lambaste the performance, and her theatrical career would be finished before it had even begun. And yet more than worrying over forgotten lines or slighting reviews, she couldn’t stop thinking about Gavin. It was as if the real play, the real drama, was taking place not onstage but in her head.
Back in her dressing room, she stripped off her costume, slipped on her silk dressing gown, and tied back her hair. She was reaching for her pot of cleansing cream when she heard raised voices in the hallway outside her door. Mr. St. John returned? She certainly hoped not. The visitation by her lover’s grandsire was not an experience she cared to repeat this day or any day thereafter. She opened the door and poked her head out. Somehow she wasn’t really surprised to see Gavin striding down the barrow hallway, two burly stagehands in tow.
He gained her door along with the stagehands who rushed in behind him, apologies bubbling forth. “Sorry, miss. He slipped straight by us.�
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“No, really, it’s perfectly fine, lads. Mr. Carmichael is a … friend.”
They bobbed their capped heads and backed out, pulling the door closed. Knowing what she must do, Daisy hated to see them go.
Gavin came toward her, arms open, a bouquet of daisies clenched in one gloved hand. “A friend, am I? I rather hoped at this point I was more to you than that. Serves me right, I suppose. I’m late delivering that good luck kiss I promised you this morning. Better late than never, I hope?” He leaned toward her.
She turned her head so his lips fell upon her cheek. “The rehearsal ended a few minutes ago. I was just about to wash my face. You’ll get paint on you.”
“It won’t be the first time or the last, for that matter. A spot of stage paint here and there is one of the hazards of keeping company with an actress and an altogether trifling price to pay for kissing such sweet lips as yours. I believe I’ll risk it.” He reached for her again.
“Is that what we’re doing? Keeping company?” Such a thoroughly proper phrase made it sound as though she were a debutante at her come-out ball and Gavin her suitor rather than what they were—lovers who could never be more.
Gavin slid a single gloved finger down the line of her throat, drawing a shiver from her. “Among other things.”
Even with her heart breaking, she couldn’t help wanting to be with him one more time, couldn’t help thinking how easy it would be to simply open her robe and her legs and take him inside her.
She saw the flash of desire in his eyes just before he reached for her. Not trusting herself to resist, she held out a hand to stay him. Flattening a palm against his chest, she made herself push him away. “Gavin, I said no.”
“I see.” Smile slipping, he handed her the bouquet, a far more reputable bunch of daisies than he’d given her the last time. “I take it the rehearsal went poorly?”
She turned away. “It did indeed.”
Coming up behind her, he laid warm hands atop her shoulders. “It’s only a rehearsal. Nerves are to be expected, but once the curtain goes up on the real performance, you’ll be splendid, you’ll see.” He pulled her against him and for a brief moment she let herself fall back into all that masculine strength and pretend everything could still be made right.
“I intended to wait until you came home but I couldn’t, or at least I didn’t want to.” He stepped back and turned her in his arms to face him. “This may not be the most opportune time to give you this, but I confess I can’t wait any longer.” Eyes beaming, he pulled a velvet-covered ring box from his jacket pocket.
“Oh, Gavin.” Reaching for him, she slid her hand into his silky hair, wishing they might stay in the moment forever and never move beyond it.
But of course, that was fantasy. She could no more stall time than she could conjure a magic wand and wave it to transform herself into a proper lady instead of what she was, an actress with a scandalous past and an illegitimate child.
“I love that you asked me, but you must know my answer can only be no.”
The light went out of his smile and his eyes. “Why is that?”
“Do you even need to ask? Surely you must know I’m no fit mate for you?”
He shook his head. “You’re my soul mate, the queen of my heart, the love of my life. What else might possibly matter?”
He was so unspeakably earnest, so impossibly honorable and dear it broke her heart to send him away but send him away she must. “Oh, Gavin, it’s a lovely fairytale we’ve been living these past weeks, but it’s coming time for it to end so we can both move forward with our lives. I’m an aspiring actress with a sketchy past and nothing to recommend me beyond a pair of dancer’s legs and a trunk full of musty costumes and paste baubles.”
“You’ve a great deal more to recommend you, and we both know it. And I love you. I should like to think that counted for something?”
Fearing she would weaken if he didn’t leave, and soon, Daisy reached inside herself for the one thing certain to drive him away forever.
“I had a visit earlier today … from your grandfather.”
The scowl that admission prompted put her in mind of his grandfather indeed, making her aware of a fleeting family resemblance. “What the devil did he want? Never mind, I’ll ask him myself and while I’m at it tell him to mind his own bloody business.” He turned as if to go.
“No, wait, don’t.” She reached out and caught at his coat sleeve. “Your grandfather offered me money, a great deal of money, in exchange for my promise to walk out of your life forever.”
He blew out a heavy breath. “The old badger never ceases trying to run my life. He must have been shocked when you turned him down. I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when you told him to sod off.” Unable to meet his gaze, Daisy dropped hers to the floor. He raised a dark brow and regarded her. “You did turn him down … didn’t you?”
Biting her bottom lip, she shook her head. “No, Gavin, I didn’t. I … I accepted. I’m … I’m sorry but five thousand pounds is a great deal of money for a girl like me, and I’ve a daughter to think of.”
“I would have provided for you and Freddie both, cared for her as though she were my own flesh and blood. Christ, Daisy, I was even thinking to legally adopt her.”
“Gavin, I’m … sorry.”
“Sorry?” He stared at her as though she’d just sprouted a second head—one crowned by devil’s horns and a great many hairy moles and hideous warts. “Can it be that’s all you have to say for yourself? You’re sorry?”
She’d done her work well, perhaps too well, because judging from the glacial gleam in his eyes and the cutting coldness of his voice, he well and truly hated her. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? In a span of mere minutes she accomplished precisely what she set out to do. She’d driven him away once and for all. Huzzah for her. Whether she called herself Delilah du Lac or Daisy Lake no longer mattered, not really. Either way, she was a far better actress than anyone, herself included, had supposed.
Every sinew of her being screamed out for her to take back the lie and set things right with him while there was still time. For Gavin’s good she tamped down the temptation and forced herself to meet the raw pain in his gaze without flinching. “What else is there to say?”
“What else, indeed?” He threw back his head and let out a crack of laughter sharp as shattered glass.
“I am sorry, Gavin.”
“I’m sorry, too, Daisy—royally sorry I ever set eyes on you, sorrier still I let myself fall in love with you all over again. I do love you, you know. Greedy, grasping bitch that you are, God help me, I still want you in my bed and in my life. As it is, I’m not entirely certain how I’m to get you out of my head let alone my heart, or the scattered scraps left of it, and go on again.”
Tears sliding down her cheeks, Daisy shook her head. “Oh, Gavin, don’t you know Shakespeare had the right of it?” Swallowing hard, she recalled the one line of Rosalind’s she managed to miss several times earlier in rehearsal but now recalled with crystalline clarity. “'Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.'”
Staggering out onto the street, Gavin felt as though the future he built for himself was falling down in flames around him. The ring he left behind on Daisy’s dressing table, not because he’d forgotten it but because he never wanted to see it, or her, again.
But there was someone he despised far more than Daisy at the moment and that someone was his grandfather. He stormed into the old man’s law office only to have the buttoned-up secretary inform him Mr. St. John had not yet returned from luncheon. According to the ticking grandfather’s clock, it was coming on four o’ clock. For a man who typically took his meals at his desk, such an extended absence was noteworthy.
“Shall I tell him you came by?”
“Don’t bother. I’m sure I’ll find him.”
Gavin lost no time in heading for his grandfather’s townhouse. Situated within view of the Marble Arch on fashionable
Park Lane, its Palladian façade always struck Gavin as more like a public building than a private home. Ordinarily he avoided the place as he might avoid the plague. He had myriad memories of finishing out his adolescence there, at least on school holidays, but few of them could be called happy.
His grandfather’s butler greeted him beneath the fanlight-crowned entrance. “Master Gavin, how nice to see you.”
Stepping inside the foyer, Gavin was amazed at how the sterility of the place still stifled him. Marble busts of Greek and Roman philosophers were set in the recessed wall panels and the furniture and silver pieces polished to a high gloss.
“And you, Wentworth.” The butler must be nearing seventy. Gavin remembered looking up to him as a boy but now the old man barely reached his shoulder. “Is my grandfather in?”
“He’s only just returned home. He’s in his study. Shall I inform him you’re here?”
Gavin shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. I am well acquainted with the way.”
In his boyhood, he’d been summoned to his grandfather’s sanctum often enough, usually to be dressed down for some supposed transgression, rarely to be praised. He vividly recalled a caning or two. Leaning over the desk with his trousers riding his ankles and his teeth gritted to keep from crying out, those episodes counted as the most humiliating of his life.
The door to the study stood ajar when he approached. He gave the perfunctory light rap and stepped inside.
Seated behind the mahogany desk, his grandfather looked up. “Given the turn our luncheon took, I hadn’t thought to see you again this day or soon again.”