Flawless

by Carrie Lofty

  “But . . . why help us?”

  Standing, Viv took the woman’s hands in her own. “My father and I weren’t close in the traditional sense. He was not a man to tolerate sentimentality. But I asked him once why he had decided to found an academy for immigrant children. Why these fifty students, when there are thousands roaming the streets?”

  Alice’s expression had taken on the hopefulness of just such a child. “And his reply?”

  “He said, we have to start somewhere.”

  In that moment he had revealed a great deal. His relentless financial ambition had been birthed by deplorable conditions Viv would likely recognize. Never before or after had she felt as close to the remote man who had fathered her, abandoned her . . . then rescued her.

  “We can start here, then,” Alice said quietly.

  “I think so.” After one quick squeeze, Viv released the woman’s hands. “I’ll be back in a week. If you need anything before then, send word with your husband when he comes in to work.” She ushered Mr. Kato inside, where he deposited the gift basket without word or fanfare. “Good day to you, Mrs. Penberthy.”

  “And to you, my lady.”

  She turned to leave before Alice either refused or cried; she looked ready to do both.

  Fifteen minutes later, Viv and Mr. Kato emerged from the shantytown. Her corset permitted no deep breaths, but she did her best to clear the stink from her lungs.

  “You did well by her pride,” he said.

  “My husband is still a better judge of people than I am.” She blinked, wondering why she had revealed such a personal observation to an employee.

  Mr. Kato grinned. He had the most brilliant white teeth and eyes that crinkled almost shut when he smiled. What a singular human being. “Maybe, but he is not . . . subtle.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  She forced a smile, but in truth, she felt lightheaded. No matter her success at helping Alice, the cloud of thick memories refused to dissipate.

  She was walking away from a slum. She had done so before, slowly, with the progress of years. Never had the contrast between her childhood and her new life jammed so tightly in her chest. An unclean feeling made her skin itch. But why? The good she would do for Alice and other such women was rare in a city that judged worth only by carat weight. But Viv didn’t need to live in a shack, sleep on an infested mattress, or bathe a newborn babe in putrid water. Her boots claimed more and more ground until she was nearly running. Breathless, as terror scratched in her throat, she dreaded an invisible hand poised to drag her back to hell.

  A fancy open-air carriage rumbled to a nearby stop. A coachman in livery more suited to Mayfair sat on the elevated bench. A blond man wearing a fine top hat opened the half-door and descended. He was well-groomed, thick-limbed and sported a walking cane. His clothes were immaculate and fashionable, and he kept a neat mustache.

  “How do you do?” he said, tipping his hat. “Forgive the intrusion, but are you by chance Lady Bancroft?”

  “I am.”

  “Oh, what luck.”

  He offered a courtly bow. Viv hadn’t seen its equal in months. But she also saw the hours of practice behind it—the same slight hesitations she had worked for years to erase. Whatever his airs and dandyish clothing, he was no aristocrat. “I’m Neil Elden. I’ve had the honor of meeting with your husband.”

  “Yes, I recall.”

  What she recalled was Miles offering a few crude details. But compared to the filth of the slums, this man was positively angelic. Furthermore, she recognized in him another self-made soul. Someone who had escaped.

  “A pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  Mr. Elden smiled benignly. “The pleasure is mine, I assure you.”

  He had fair skin that wasn’t sallow and blue eyes that weren’t overly bright. A rather ordinary man, actually, but one who held himself with such confidence as to exude the impression of good looks. Her father had been such a man—straightforward and aggressive, winning people with his command of what so many envied: pure ambition.

  “My lady,” Elden said, “I understand that this is quite forward, but I wonder if you would take tea with me? I was just on my way to Child’s.”

  Child’s was a tearoom more frequented by men of business who preferred crumpets to cards and gin. Women dined there, too, as did those who couldn’t afford the Kimberley Club’s high membership fees.

  Jamie Shelby arrived with his carriage. Adam sat with him on the driver’s bench. “Just catching a lift home, my lady. Are you ready?”

  “In a moment, Adam.”

  “Purely business,” Mr. Elden said. She felt him pressing the advantage of her hesitation. “As I understand it, you are the manager of Christie Brokerage, are you not?”

  “I am.”

  “Then I should like to get to know you better. Perhaps our partnership might benefit.”

  Adam made a nearly imperceptible noise, like a mouse being strangled. “My lady, you have plans for this evening, do you not?”

  Viv stilled. Plans?

  Ah, yes. Supper with Miles.

  Dear God, what had she been thinking in agreeing to his request? Some mania produced by that torrid kiss—a kiss that had nearly become something far more dangerous. In the sunroom!

  Now the prospect of dining with him only added to the unease she’d battled back when walking clear of the slum. All through supper, he would stare at her in that unnerving way, daring her with his eyes. Beneath the table, he might even touch her calf with the toe of his shoe or, as he had during many a dinner party, he would lay a hand on her leg, his fingertips grazing the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. Bite by bite, course by course, he would leave her aroused, eager, and unable to resist.

  Two weeks remained before she would make good on her promise. Such a dinner might be as much a torment to him, but Viv needed time to hide her heart. It was far too vulnerable to him right now.

  “I would be happy to, Mr. Elden. Adam, can you see Jamie and Mr. Kato home?”

  Adam’s expression tightened. “And what should I tell Lord Bancroft?”

  Even as she took Neil Elden’s hand and stepped into his carriage, Viv recognized her decision for what it was. She was running. Plain and simple. The shantytown had addled her so thoroughly that her knees still jittered. At that moment, she wanted to take tea with a self-made gentleman who didn’t burn her from the inside out. Something uncomplicated and refined.

  She would endure the consequences later.

  “Tell His Lordship that Mr. Elden and I have much to discuss.”

  Miles stomped up the porch steps, refusing Mrs. Shelby’s offer to have a bath drawn. “Not now,” he growled, feeling vulgar and surly.

  She’s at tea, Adam had said. Much to discuss. With Neil Elden.

  Smacking his fist at regular intervals along the hallway wallpaper, Miles yanked at his ascot until it hung limply at his throat. Upon reaching his door he rested his head against the cool wood.

  She hadn’t come. He’d waited at the Ford, but she hadn’t come.

  Once, long ago, they’d done the impossible. They’d made absolute magic, and that magic had scared him witless. She blamed him for the petrified missteps that had followed, and rightly so, but neither had she found the courage to see if they might make it happen again.

  No. He was being ridiculous, letting her whims get the better of his pride and patience. Had he actually been contemplating earning her respect? What a mockery. And he was an even greater fool for not having pressed the physical advantage of their reunion. It was just sex, after all. A fever to be burned out of him.

  Especially when she chose tea with Neil Elden over dinner with her husband.

  Miles pushed away and crossed to her door. He pounded out three succinct knocks. “Let me in, Viv.”

  Rather than talking to him through a crack, she let the door open wide and stepped aside, silently inviting him in. “I thought you’d want to see me.”

  The bruised tone of her voice
and the direct way she confronted the topic tempered Miles’s righteousness—tempered, but did not erase.

  He closed the door. The frustration he couldn’t ignore twisted his gut. The urge to forego his promises, march right over to the Kimberley Club, and drink until he couldn’t stand rode him like a cruel master. Why was he trying to obey her dictates when she had so little inclination of bedding him, let alone with the passion they’d once shared?

  He liked to think that she gloried in reminding him of her decision to leave, such as abandoning him that evening, but he honestly believed that she rarely revisited the topic. She held such power over him, an unnatural power borne of an infatuation he’d never wanted to yield. Yet she still considered him some no-account gambler whose thoughts began and ended with the pursuit of pleasure.

  He hadn’t been that man since departing for the Cape.

  “And how was tea, my dear?” he asked, looming over her where she sat on a chaise.

  He might have expected some other reaction, maybe anger or shame. Instead, with her flaxen eyebrows drawn together, she studied him as if deciphering a dead language. “Tea was just tea.”

  “With that Elden chap.”

  “Yes,” she said. “He stopped on the street to introduce himself after I visited Alice Penberthy. He wanted to talk business at Child’s.”

  She was as pale as the white damask on which she reclined. Only her irises—so dark as to nearly obliterate the flecks of green—and her unnaturally red lips, worried and chapped, lent color to her face. Had she been this tired for two weeks?

  “And you preferred that to dinner with me.”

  Her jaw tightened. “I’d quote you the number of times you chose another hand of poker over a meal with me, but the number eludes me. Delicate feminine brains shouldn’t count so high.”

  “So this is punishment? At least have the courage to admit as much.”

  “Call it what you will. I choose to call it managing connections of a different sort. In business, the flattery of a woman can be just as important as the competition of a male rival.”

  “Mocking my aid, my lady?”

  “No, simply reminding you of our agreement to divide and conquer. We’re a business arrangement, remember? Our marriage has been little else.”

  He crossed his arms and looked down at her. None of it helped. She had him strung too tightly. The blazing sense of betrayal was more than he would’ve thought to expect. How did a man prepare for a pain he’d never experienced?

  “Lord knows you’ve displayed similar sentiments in the past,” he said. “I should be grateful, perhaps, that we’re only discussing tea and a missed dinner engagement rather than your departure for another continent.”

  She flinched. “Don’t play games.”

  “Does that bother you, Vivie? You cringe at any reminder that we are, in fact, wed.”

  “It never should have happened.”

  He aligned his fists together, knuckles to knuckles, and pushed until the bones cracked. “You truly believe that?”

  “Yes, of course I do.” She hesitated. “You don’t?”

  That limp frown eased off her lips and her seductive eyelids lifted slightly. She looked . . . hopeful? With a start, Miles was reminded of how she’d regarded him during the first few weeks of their marriage, full of a childlike faith that had slowly dimmed.

  Moving with a slowness that sat at odds with his temper, he sank to one knee. Her hand in his felt like a branding iron, hot skin swathing the fragile skeleton and tendons beneath. “You deny what we had. How?”

  “What, exactly, did we have, Miles? Your insolence and your vices?”

  “I gave up my vices, remember?”

  She edged backward, her cheeks glowing pink. “We made love behind a stairway, for God’s sake. Like heathens.”

  “You enjoyed it.”

  “Like an addict enjoys opium. You never gave me a choice! And then to learn where you spent the night afterward. Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

  He grimaced. “That was a mistake.”

  “Just like our marriage. God, Miles, every one of Society’s rules I’d labored to learn—you ridiculed them and coerced me into breaking them right along with you.”

  The room was too hot. His blood surged as if trying to escape his skin. But her words sank in, despite how staunchly he wanted to focus on the physical. He had never intended his mockeries toward her, but toward the stultifying society in which he’d been raised. Had she really been so resentful of his scorns and petty rebellions? So . . . frightened? He wouldn’t have believed the daughter of Sir William Christie frightened of anything.

  He traced a finger down her cheek, then pushed a tendril of hair behind her ear. “You laughed with me, Vivie. You sank into the most beautiful sins, right there with me—as my wife, not some harlot. Why this resentment of the good we shared?”

  “You never let me breathe. I was always waiting for the next embarrassment you’d foist upon me.”

  “But we’re changed people here. I don’t know what to do with myself, my head buzzing with ideas and impulses. That isn’t me—I know. But it’s like a dare I can’t walk away from.”

  A wobbling smile fought to curve her lips. “You said that once about me.”

  “True then.” Smoothing his thumb along her bottom lip, he dipped inside to find a trace of moisture. “True now.”

  That same look of wonder was back, but rather than flashing like the strike of a match, it lingered. The hard set of her hazel eyes softened, glittering with tears she would deny. So he didn’t press. Instead he held fast as if his next intake of air depended on utter stillness.

  “I cannot fathom you,” she whispered. “You treat nothing with respect—no fear, no worry. How? What kind of person can just laugh at that which terrorizes everyone else?”

  “A lucky person?”

  “The money is all I want, Miles. My parents had no noble blood to give me, so money is all that will keep me safe. I have nothing else.”

  “For now, at least, you have me.”

  She looked away. “I don’t know what that means.”

  This wasn’t proceeding as he had imagined. He’d wanted revenge and shouting and maybe seduction. Instead she was peeling back layers of need that had nothing to do with her body.

  “Well, then,” he said, pushing her vulnerability away with both hands. “Good thing we still have our deal. At least one day I’ll have what I want from you. For now, a kiss. Show me you mean to give me what I deserve.”

  “No,” she said, the word grinding out of her throat.

  Miles found either side of her trim waist with his hands and dragged her flush against his chest, legs, groin. “Come now, Vivie. Show some of that backbone I know you have and we’ll both enjoy this a lot more.”

  The tilt of her jaw promised more fight. “I will not.”

  “Careful. Dares are very much like gambling, and you know how passionate I am about long odds.”

  He dug his fingers into the soft flesh along her hip, her softness matched only by the ridge of steel that kept her backbone immobile. Yet her gaze had taken on a sleepy laxness, a silent invitation. She licked the lush swell of her lower lip—swear to God, just to taunt him. Miles bit back a groan. He yearned to punish her for the turmoil she swirled into his life. He wanted to grind his erection against her mons. More dares. More proof that they shared an undeniable passion.

  He trailed his hands up, up to her breasts and cupped the gentle swell along each side. He continued until he could lace both hands behind her nape. With patience that belied the stormy fervor of his pulse and the hot insistence of his erection, he plucked a dozen pins from her hair. Silken blonde curls draped down around her, tickling the backs of his hands and forearms. The scent of rose water and Viv splashed over him. Twining his fingers into those curls, he forced her to look up, to refuse him eye-to-eye if she would refuse him at all. Her breathing had gone heavy and fast. Color stained her cheeks like a sunburn.

>   “Kiss me, Vivie.” He paused. His need to know would ruin everything, but it was just that: a need. Greater than desire. Certainly greater than his pride. “Unless Mr. Elden has already left you satisfied.”

  She flinched. “That’s the second time you’ve insinuated that I’m capable of being unfaithful. Liars always suspect their own dishonesty from others. Perhaps the same goes for adulterers.” Lips pursed, expression unyielding, she pulled his hands from her hair. “Get out, Miles.”

  He straightened. The bones of his spine seemed to creak as he did, protesting the distance his mind forced between their bodies. He could tell her—Vivie, my love, I never did. But she was hardly in the mood to hear the truth, and he needed to decide what the bloody hell he truly wanted from his wife.

  Sixteen

  He’d smelled of fried meat and stale ale. The food stench made her hollow stomach contract. Viv’s mouth watered, but she was going to vomit. His lips had been like two wet slabs of fish pressing against her cheek. His snaking tongue pushed into her mouth.

  Then her mother—she’d swung a pipe. The metal made a spongy sound against his ribs. He’d bellowed and raged until she hit him again, square on the face.

  Viv awoke screaming.

  Disoriented in the dark, she struck out and screamed again when her fists met flesh. Hands were grabbing her, holding her down. She flared to life once more. Her feet kicked and her body bucked with a terrified energy she didn’t want to control.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Viv, good Lord—Viv! Wake up!”

  Strong hands held her shoulders until the last embers of her dream went cold. And all the while a low, beguiling voice eased her out of that realm of old fears and hideous memories. “Come back to me, Vivienne. Come back. Calm down. It’ll be all right now.”

  Oh, God. Miles.

  What had she said? What did he know?

  Frightened for entirely different reasons, she laid her hands over his. Her heart wouldn’t quiet. “Miles, I’m here.” She tried to swallow, but her throat was lined with gravel. “Stop, please. I’m awake.”