Vanquished

by Hope Tarr

  Jenny busied herself with tidying the room, including shaking out the crumpled evening gown with a giggle and murmured exclamation of "My, my," confirming Callie's suspicion that both the maid and her aunt knew full well what time she'd got in. Averting her eyes, Callie surveyed the contents of the tray where all of her very favorites were assembled: a basket of oven-warm muffins and scones, a succulent hot house peach and a pot of creamy chocolate in lieu of her customary coffee. When Jenny assured her she'd be back directly with her newspapers, Callie hesitated for a moment and then told her not to bother. There would be plenty of time later to hear all the spoiling news. For one morning out of her life she wanted to linger over her breakfast and let the world feel fresh and full of newfound possibilities.

  The door clicked closed. Once more alone with her thoughts, Callie tucked into her breakfast. She hadn't realized how ravenous she was until she took her first bite. Then again she had missed supper the night before albeit for the very best of reasons.

  Hadrian. Chewing, she asked herself what word he'd used to describe her figure. Oh yes, generous. At the time she'd rather thought he was the one who was generous but now curiosity compelled her to have a look for herself. Licking the butter from her thumb--and really, why not when there was no one about to see--she set the tray to the side, kicked back the covers, and got up. Barefoot, she padded across the floor to the mirror, reached up and pulled the flannel nightgown over her head. Tossing the garment over the chair, she took a deep breath and stared into the mirror.

  The wide-eyed woman with the mussed hair trailing her back wasn't a sylph by any means but nor was she the hulking beast, the milcher, she'd imagined ever since the night of her engagement ball. Her breasts were full--all right, large--but not particularly bovine. They were, if anything, firm and rather nicely shaped. Moving on to examine her middle, she had to admit that though her waist wasn't exactly narrow, at least it cinched in where a woman's waist ought. Were she to bear children, it would likely thicken, but that would be years away, if indeed it ever happened at all. Her legs were long, her thighs and calves firmly muscled, not unlike the photographs she'd seen of the music-hall girls in their fishnet stockings and shortened skirts. An image of herself similarly clad for an audience of one, Hadrian, flashed through her mind, and she felt her face heat even as a giggle tickled the back of her throat. That left her posterior, the last but hardly the least of her. She took a bracing breath and turned sideways. Not small there either, not by any means, but also not nearly as hideous as she'd envisioned.

  Yet for so many years she'd viewed her body as ugly, the enemy. Starting today, this very moment, she was calling a truce with her physical self. More than a truce, she meant to make her peace with the past, lay to rest her old insecurities and fears once and for all. Hers was a woman's body, neither grotesque nor goddess-like. It had its good points and its bad, but it was healthy and she could appreciate the inherent beauty in that, in herself. For the first time in more than ten years she saw what others saw, what Hadrian seemed to see: a healthy still-young woman with a healthy young woman's needs and desires.

  Desires which last night he had fulfilled beyond her wildest imaginings, her most secret fantasies. Even so, she wanted more from him than the mechanics of mere physical release. She wanted him to be her lover in every sense of the word. She wanted not only his body, glorious gift that it was, but his mind and soul, too.

  If we go to bed, it won't be long before you'll want something more from me, something permanent. And I'm telling you now, Callie, I'm not capable of giving you or any woman more than this.

  For the first time since leaving his bed, she felt her euphoria dim. Rationally, she knew she ought to be content with whatever little of himself he was willing to give. Fair was fair, after all, and it wasn't as if he hadn't warned her. Yet now that she'd had this taste of bliss, how could she possibly go back to her old ways, her old life?

  Always wanting more, hadn't that ever been her fatal failing?

  Callie wasn't the only one to spend a sleepless night. Hadrian had spent the hours since depositing her in the hansom walking the London streets. Eventually his rambling footsteps led him to Gavin's door.

  When Gavin's manservant showed him into the flat's small dining room, he wasn't surprised to find Rourke there. The two men looked up from plates heaped with deviled kidneys, buttered eggs, and toast when he entered.

  "Harry, by God, you look bloody awful." Impeccably dressed though it was scarcely nine o'clock, Gavin rose from the head of the table. "Have a seat and some breakfast before you keel over."

  Ignoring the sideboard of silver-covered rashers, Hadrian pulled out a chair and sat. "Got anything to drink?"

  From across the table, Rourke shook his head. "I dinna think he means coffee. Here lad, this'll wake you up." Rumpled shirt rolled over muscular forearms, Rourke handed over his flask. "The finest Scotch whiskey. No true Scotsman would think of leaving home without it."

  Hadrian accepted the flask and downed a fiery swallow. Replacing the stopper, he handed it back. "Better, thanks."

  Gavin studied him, expression thoughtful. "For a man who disappeared before supper last night with the lovely Caledonia in arm, you look less than glowing."

  "I took her home, end of story."

  "Aye, but to who's home, hers or yours?" The Scot shot Hadrian a conspiratorial wink.

  Mindful of his promise to Callie he'd not tell another living soul, he asked, "How went it with Lady Kat?" Anything to turn the subject from his own sorry self.

  Gaze sobering, Rourke shrugged. "She'll come 'round. I'm growing on her, mind."

  Hadrian winked. "Like a vine of poison ivy, no doubt."

  Rourke reached across the table and dealt him a good-natured cuff upside the head that brought him back to when they were boys.

  Pouring more coffee for them all, Gavin interjected, "In point, we were just discussing the nature of love when you walked in. Our flinty friend here"--he nodded toward Rourke--"maintains it either doesn't exist or exists only as a form of temporary lunacy. I, on the other hand, am a proponent that every soul has its one perfect life's mate." Ignoring Rourke's snort, he went on, "By way of a case in point, my parents were deeply, passionately in love. When my mother defied her family to marry my father, she walked away from absolutely everything--her family and friends, standing in society, and yes, money--and not once did I hear her utter so much as a word of regret. In retrospect the walk-up where we lived was a dreary place, but they made it more of a home than most grand mansions will ever be."

  His voice dropped off and he made a show of stirring sugar into his coffee, no doubt carried back to the day when, as a boy of ten, he'd returned to his family's East End tenement to find the building ablaze. Both of his parents and baby sister had perished, leaving Gavin orphaned and with a lifelong need to save everyone and everything in trouble that crossed his path. Even as a boy, Gavin had exuded an ethereal quality that had set him apart from other children. "Saint Gavin," they'd jokingly called him, although as far as Hadrian knew there weren't any saints by that name. Though Hadrian loved him as a brother, he'd never really understood Gavin in the way he understood Rourke.

  Unstoppering the flask, Rourke poured a generous measure of the spirit into his cup. "That's a verra touching story, and perhaps your parents were the rare exception to the rule, but I still say 'tis an addle-pated man indeed who'd let himself fall in love with the likes of Kat Lindsey, or any woman. All I want of Lady Kat or any wife is for her to warm my bed, birth my bairns, and grace my dinner table, and I'll consider the bargain well met. Right, Harry?"

  Hadrian hesitated. A few weeks before, he would have found himself agreeing with his friend wholeheartedly. But since Callie had come into his life, things had changed. He had changed. For a man who'd grown up thinking of sex as a service, something done to earn one's keep, making love with all his mind and body and yes, heart engaged was a life-altering experience on par with Saul's journey on the road to Dam
ascus or Daguerre's discovery of a method for fixing the images from a camera obscura. Miraculous. Wonderful. Terrifying.

  But because he'd come too far to turn back now, because he'd sooner let Dandridge have him torn apart limb by limb than see so much as one hair on Callie's head harmed, he swallowed his pride and admitted, "I'm in trouble."

  Gavin and Rourke looked at him and then exchanged worried glances. Never one to waste words, Rourke said, "Go on with you, then. Out with it, man."

  Without sparing himself, he recapped the chance meeting with Callie in Parliament Square, the episode in the alleyway with the two gaming-hell henchmen, and finally Dandridge's visit to his shop and the terms of the bargain they struck.

  He'd scarcely finished when Rourke slammed his beefy fist atop the table, sending plates and cutlery bouncing like rubber. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what were you thinking, man? I would have loaned you the tin. To hell with loaned, I'd ha' given it to you outright. I will give it to you outright. Give Dandridge back his blunt and tell him to go to the bluidy devil."

  Hadrian shook his head. "If only it were that simple. I know too much for him to allow me to live. He's as good as threatened to off me, not that my life at this point is worth terribly much. But if I don't come up with the photograph he's after, it'll only be a matter of time before he finds some other way to get at Callie, vanquish her as he cares to call it. If this suffrage bill of hers makes it to a third and final read, her life may be even more in danger than mine."

  "Bastard!" Jaw blanketed with reddish-brown stubble and hair still bearing the imprint of last night's pillow, Rourke made a ferocious sight indeed. "We could go to the papers."

  "Right now it's my word against that of a respected Member of Parliament. Given our respective backgrounds, whose story do you think would hold greater weight with the Fleet Street lot, his or mine?"

  Gavin, quiet until now, spoke up, "He has a point. We have to find another way." Fixing Hadrian with solemn eyes, he added, "Of course you have to tell Caledonia the truth, the whole of it, if only to warn her."

  Hadrian scraped the fingers of one hand through his mussed hair, thinking how good Callie's gentle fingers had felt on his scalp and indeed everywhere else. "I know I must. She'll hate me, of course, but then that's no more than I deserve."

  Gavin shook his head. "I shouldn't be so certain of that were I you. At least give her the chance to forgive you. She just might surprise you."

  Rourke grinned. "Aye, if she doesna cut off your bollocks first."

  Feeling marginally better now that he'd unburdened himself, Hadrian rose and headed for the door.

  Gavin looked back over his shoulder. "Where are you off to now?"

  Lost soul though he might be, he'd be damned indeed before he'd drag Callie down to hell with him. "Back to my flat, to make myself presentable before I see Callie." He drew the door closed on their astonished faces.

  Stepping out into the bracing air, it occurred to him that before Callie sex had been something that took place outside of him, a means to an end or an interlude into which he'd wandered without much or any conscious thought. His body had been engaged but his brain had been far, far removed. As for his heart, well, it had been a very long time since he'd given that particular organ any consideration.

  But loving Callie had changed all that. Even if he never set eyes on her again after this day, these past weeks together had altered him. Irrevocably. Forever. He'd never be remotely the same and though his heart hurt like hell and he was scared shitless, he also felt . . . relieved. Keeping up with Hadrian St. Claire now struck him as a hell of a lot of work, more trouble than it was worth, and in general a royal pain in the ass. Whoever Harry Stone was, he was finally ready to welcome him back to life.

  Lord and Lady Stonevale kept a modest Georgian-style townhouse on Arlington Street. Walking up the marble steps to the facade of mellow brick, Callie felt her first pang of nerves. Contemplating the brass doorknocker shaped in the head of a dog, she mentally reviewed what she knew of Stonevale's political career. Before inheriting his earldom, his lordship, then plain Simon Belleville, had been a protegee of the late Conservative prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli. During his fifteen years in the Commons, he'd earned a reputation as being both shrewd and fair-minded. On more than one occasion, he'd crossed the House floor to back a Liberal bill concerned with the welfare of women and children.

  Keeping that latter thought foremost in her mind, she felt her confidence rise sufficiently to let the knocker drop. The butler who answered was a pleasant-faced chap with a wide smile and a broad girth, scarcely the starchy, svelte sort she would have expected to find in the employ of a Parliamentary front bencher. Instead of having her wait in the hallway while he ferried her calling card forth, he simply bowed and beckoned her to follow him with a, "This way, if you please, miss."

  He led her through the tiled foyer to the back of the house, bypassing the front parlor in favor of the oak-paneled library. The door stood open. Looking over the butler's shoulder, Callie saw Lord and Lady Stonevale holding hands before the library fire, a tabby cat curled upon her ladyship's lap and a black-and-white-and-tan mongrel dog with floppy ears lounging at his lordship's feet. Chockfull of bric-a-brac, framed photographs, and the miscellaneous clutter of family life, the library apparently functioned as the heart of the house. Indeed, peace and contentment seemed to float in the very air.

  Laid out before her like the backdrop to a diorama, the homey scene helped set Callie at ease, but it also caught at her heart. Before her was the very reason that centuries of poets and philosophers had expended so much paper and ink extolling the virtues of hearth and home. In the past, she'd viewed such writings as sentimentalized rubbish to rationalize female subjugation, but now she considered that perhaps she'd missed the point. As busy as the Stonevales were with their respective careers and causes, they had this oasis to come home to. They had each other.

  She was almost sorry when the butler's light rap brought the homey tableau to a close as lord and lady turned to the doorway.

  "Callie . . . Miss Rivers, I am so very pleased you were able to call." Smile radiant, Lady Stonevale set the cat on the empty seat cushion beside her and rose.

  Lord Stonevale stood as well, and seeing them side by side, Callie was struck by what an exceedingly handsome couple they made. Tall, broad-shouldered, and athletically built, Stonevale could easily have passed for a man in his forties rather than one coming on sixty. As for her ladyship, dressed in a simple tea gown that complimented her sylph's figure, she glided across the floor to shake hands with the natural grace of a born dancer.

  Lady Stonevale ordered tea to be sent in, and then gestured Callie to one of the pair of overstuffed wing chairs set on either side of the mantel. Seated once more, his lordship honed his keen-eyed gaze on Callie's face. He's taking my measure, she thought, and made certain to hold her shoulders back and her spine straight.

  They chatted about desultory topics, including the weather, until at length he said, "I have been following your efforts and the progress of your proposed bill with great interest, and since meeting you last night, my wife has talked of little else. I assure she is not easily impressed, which is why I agreed to meet with you."

  "I am honored, your lordship, and I appreciate both you and Lady Stonevale taking the time to see me."

  "My wife speaks highly of you, Miss Rivers, and I assure you she does not give her endorsement lightly."

  The arrival of the tea tray stalled further conversation. While Lady Stonevale poured and passed around cups and plates, Callie contemplated what she knew of Stonevale's private life gratis of Lottie. He had met and married his wife under unconventional if not precisely scandalous circumstances. After twenty-five years, five children, and several grandchildren, the couple was said to still be famously in love. Catching the warm looks that passed between them, Callie could well believe it.

  Once they'd settled in with tea and finger sandwiches, Stonevale picked up the thre
ad of conversation. "As I was saying, Miss Rivers, while I can appreciate the merits of your argument, I do hold some reservations."

  Looking up from her steaming teacup, Callie met his flinty gaze. "And they are, milord?"

  "There is a certain contingent of your group who seem to think smashing shop windows and other destruction of property is a fine means of getting their point across. I can assure you that such methods find you few friends in Parliament or elsewhere."

  He was testing her. She sensed it in the intensity of those dark eyes trained on her face. Determined to hold her own, Callie replied, "I assure you, Lord Stonevale, that such militancy is not countenanced by either the London Women's Suffrage Society or the national confederation with which we are aligned. That said, the ladies' frustration is not without basis. It has been more than twenty years since John Stuart Mill first put forth a Parliamentary bill for women's suffrage and still we continue without representation, without voice. Plainly put, it is a case of taxation without representation, a circumstance on par with what prompted the American colonies to revolt more than a hundred years ago. It is quite simply wrong, milord, and with all due respect, the time for change is now."

  He shook his head, toying with the untasted tea biscuit on his plate. "Female suffrage on the national level is a radical concept to many. Like all young people, Miss Rivers, you have yet to learn the art of patience. If there is anything my time abroad in the Orient has taught me, it is that the British are glad enough to impose change on others but painfully slow to accept it on their home shores."

  Callie took a sip of her tea before answering, "And yet, milord, our countrywomen have held voting privileges in most localities for two years now, and British society is none the worse for it."