by Anne Mallory
“Simply a matter of some advice. Linking resources together. Helping where you can.”
She frowned. She hardly needed to be paid to give advice, but before she could ask anything else, the door opened.
A large man ambled in with an odd sort of gait. His hair was carefully combed and his shirt freshly pressed, but he appeared uncomfortable as he nodded to both of them quickly, then sat behind the desk. He appeared out of sorts, brushing by social consideration and going straight to business.
He put his hands on the top of the desk. “Merrick ain’t be telling your name, and that’s how we gonna keep it. Name’s Sam. I’ll be calling you Lady.”
It took a moment before she was able to form a reply. She very slowly leaned forward in her chair. “Very well, Sam.”
“Look, I don’t know how they be doing it in yur parts, but I like straightness.”
Luckily inborn replies were automatic. “Straight works well.”
“Good. Here’s the matter. Our money’s no good some places. And we don’t care to spread it much, but the missus wants to do a lil bluh”—he coughed, sending Roman a nervous look before looking back her way—“sweepin’.”
She stared at Sam, unknowing how to respond, or of what he was even speaking.
“ ’Bout time for a lil swa—cleanin’, sweep the bluh—dratted, bug—blighters.”
An odd feeling settled. Was this to be an etiquette lesson then? To clean up his language? She somewhat hoped so, or she was going to be hard-pressed to figure out exactly what he was saying.
“Not every woman wants to remain a tro—prostitute, as ye know.”
No, no she didn’t know. The odd feeling changed into something that was suspiciously more alarming.
“Some women just do it to fur—make a lil money, get a cu—leg up. Others have nuthin’ better. Lil work and bad bluh—money in the as—factories.”
If she weren’t stunned into stupidity at the moment, she might have nodded for him to continue. As it was, thankfully, he didn’t need the encouragement.
“We want to change the bluh—conditions. Prison, alley, abb—er, brothel. Get some ’greements. Lor ’knows that when I was whor—hirin’ Sally out, I started to feel a bluh—pinch about the emotions.”
“I . . . see.”
Roman Merrick had asked her here in order to give a whoremaster advice. A whoremaster. And the man’s . . . wife? About how to spread money to help women working the streets?
Sam looked relieved. “Ah, good. Cuz there’s nothin’ to be doing for us bluh—street types. Even when’s we fall into money. Need backin’ from Tur—named money. Who have the ear of Perlament.”
Charlotte decided to divide the rather odd conversation into compartments. She concentrated on the task rather than the participants. “Do you have specific ideas, or did you want to allocate money to groups that support your aims?”
“Both.” He settled into his chair, looking more relaxed. “Right good of you to de—figure it, Lady.”
She could almost feel the amusement at her back, but there was something more serious in the air behind her as well. She pushed the question of it aside, concentrating on the man seated in front of her as he spoke about specifics.
Half an hour later, Sam exited the room, more excited and relaxed than when he’d walked in. His shirt had been pulled loose from his trousers, in comfortable disarray. He had obviously been uncomfortable putting on whatever show he had thought he needed to perform when he’d first entered.
She stayed facing forward in her seat for a long moment before turning. Roman was still lounging in his chair, pulling the leather through his fingertips.
She waited until he met her eyes. “I believe you have something to say?”
He raised a brow in question.
“Something that might start with, ‘My apologies, Charlotte, I didn’t realize what I was asking you to do’ or maybe ‘Wake up, Charlotte, you’ve been abed too long.’ ”
A lazy smile curved. “If only it could be the latter.” His face grew serious a moment later. “Will you help?”
She examined him, the lazy posture with just a hint of tightness to it.
“Yes.”
He smiled again, everything about him relaxing.
“His—their?—aims are good, and he has some interesting ideas,” she said. “There are a few well-placed women who champion such causes. I know with whom to speak.” She shook her head. “Not quite sure how I will introduce the subject, but I do know the right ears for this.”
“Thank you.”
She examined him again. “You could have asked the Delaneys.”
“Why, when I could ask you?” He smiled slowly.
“The Delaneys have more power than I do.”
For now. Someday . . .
“But then I’d be beholden to them when I’d much rather be beholden to you.” His smile stretched lazily.
“You don’t need to be beholden at all.” Bad idea to release the winning cards already in her possession, but pride was pride. “This is something I will do without payment. Surely you know that.” Active participation in her charities was something that cleansed her soul. To accept money would go against her every principle.
And if he knew anything about her . . .
“Yes.” His eyes dropped, lips still curved. “Though I will settle a few of your father’s debts anyway. A selfish desire, I assure you. As I want you free.”
“Why are you helping Sam?”
He looked up at her through lazy eyes. “Need to clean money sometimes. Need to care for different types of employees. I’m not doing it because I’m kind.”
She narrowed her eyes. His name wasn’t mentioned in charitable circles—beyond his singular appearance at the Delaneys’—so his selfish words made sense. Still, he seemed terribly interested in her charity work whenever the subject was raised. And when speaking on the subject, the lines of his body belied the amusement invariably present in his face.
She left her high-backed chair and walked over to sit across from him in one more comfortable.
He watched her, that insufferably light smile about his lips.
And she thought of her options. Of what she had been feeling every night before she fell asleep, every morning as she woke. Every time his lips or fingers touched her.
She could . . . choose her fate. Or at the very least, she could choose the way she fell. Cold and brittle, shattering upon the stones. Or hot and writhing and . . . alive.
“I wish to pay my debt. To give you the night I owe. I can clear my schedule tomorrow and say I’ve taken ill.”
He continued to lounge in his chair, but his eyes were alert, quick. “Why?”
She met his eyes boldly. Thinking of all she knew—and had yet to learn—about the man in front of her. She posed her own question in answer. “Don’t you wish to meet on even ground?”
His eyes sparked, he scooted forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, the lash forgotten. “Oh, Charlotte. You play with fire.”
“Do I?”
Roman looked at the woman in front of him, calm and collected, but there was heat there, such precious heat that was straining. Offering.
It only took one second for the words to form and emerge. “Consider the debt of the night wiped free.”
He saw her blink. Stunned.
Watched the disappointment form. He felt nearly giddy as her disappointment formed.
“What, but—”
“But what?” He smiled, loving the look on her face, even the desire that was slowly shuttering—for he would obliterate those shutters with his next words. “You think I am freeing you?”
Uncertainty. Delicious uncertainty. She pulled her bottom lip in. “Aren’t you?”
“No.” He leaned forward, pressing on his elbows, until his lips were so close to hers that he could feel the heat of her, soft and delicious. “I am a selfish man.”
“A selfish man takes what is offered to him.” Was that doubt in her v
oice, doubt of her charms?
“No, a selfish man destroys what is offered to him and demands more. He demands everything.”
He touched her chin, pulling his finger beneath it, bringing her lower lip to brush against his. “I am a selfish man, and all of you, Charlotte . . . that is my demand.”
Chapter 12
If she thought it had been a hell of a week, it had proven to be a crazed monster of a morning. Confusing, overwhelming, unnerving. Giddy with desire, knots of tension overtaking rational sense.
“Charlotte, come into my study.”
She stiffened when her father imperiously waved her forward. What was he doing home so early in the morning again?
As a child she had entered the room to a myriad of warm accents and plush fabrics, beautiful, leather-bound books, and lovely paintings. But like everything in her world, it had been stripped and bared. They should have sold the house last year and rented a smaller home in a less prestigious section of town, but appearance was everything to her father, and they would cling to these crumbling walls until the bitter end, when there was nothing left.
“Where have you been?” he snapped.
That Charlotte had been out wasn’t the issue. That she had been taking an early-morning walk in the park down the street wasn’t either. That she had left Anna behind, and that someone had obviously gone looking for Charlotte and had not found her was.
She assumed the proper demure stance behind one of the uncomfortable, upright chairs in front of his overly grand desk—the last piece he would ever part with. “I was out for a walk in the park and took the long way around. I needed to clear my mind.”
He was prowling behind the desk, lifting papers and discarding them as was his recent habit when agitated. “Don’t do it again. Do you want us ruined?”
“Of course not. But a walk in the early hours is not a social crime. The ton isn’t even awake yet.”
“Any breach of protocol is detrimental for us right now.”
“I will remember that.” The best time to remember would be when her lips were about to be pressed to Roman Merrick’s, and yet that was when those thoughts were farthest from her mind.
“Foul rumors are making the rounds.”
She kept her breathing even. “Oh?”
“And you do nothing.”
Had someone seen them? Finally? In the shadows, the devil seducing the virgin? Hades seducing Persephone?
“Your mother is working against us.” He clenched his fists. “Someone remarked about her fading looks. Her lack of status. That you only have another good year or two in you. That you are aging quickly. And they are right.” He slapped a hand against the desk.
She stood perfectly straight and unmoving. The relief when she didn’t hear Roman’s name quickly falling to cold emptiness at her father’s words.
“Scandal looms upon us, girl. The walls are closing in. And we must play the hand we have now.”
She loosened her jaw enough to say, “I have heard nothing concerning your bet. And there are those who would not remain silent if they knew.”
His mouth twisted. “Don’t be a fool.” His eyes went to the scattered papers on his desk.
She pushed the feelings down into the pit, concentrating on her father’s bills and credit notes instead. “What do you have there, Father?” she asked. Breathing room. What had Roman done? “It looks like a bill that has been paid.”
Paper crumpled in his fist. “It is none of your concern.”
Frightened that it had been paid? Or was there something more . . . something worse?
“If it isn’t that night, then—”
He slammed a hand on the desk, scattering the papers. “Your concern should be working your wiles and securing a title. No more drifting through ballrooms and pasting on smiles. You show no urgency.”
She pasted on her calmest smile. “My apologies, Father. But it seems beyond vulgar to show our desperation.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Don’t get impertinent with me.”
Her eyes locked with his, volatility shifting the cold. “How many offers have you turned down in the past two and a half years?”
“They weren’t up to par!”
“I will marry well.”
“I have seen no evidence of this!”
“Just last night I danced with—”
“Dancing! What difference does that make?”
“Dancing isn’t purely a physical and joyous pastime, Father. And it doesn’t simply entail moving across a floor.” She took a breath, controlling herself. “But you know this.”
“I don’t see any progress. Any urgency on your part. Even now.” He swiped a hand toward her. “You stand there as if you have no life within you.”
“I assure you I have a heartbeat.” And that it far outstripped his.
“Then show it,” he said viciously. “Get them panting at your skirts instead of admiring you from afar.”
She stood rigidly. “I think you unsure whether you want me to be the trophy or the vixen.”
“Be both!”
A smile twisted her face. “Perhaps you should encourage more card games to teach me the other side.”
He advanced rapidly around the desk and grabbed her chin in his hand. Anger underlined the embittered anxiety she could see in his eyes. “You will hold your tongue.”
His hand shook. Nothing to drink yet then. She held herself stiffly.
His fingers gentled. “You are superior to every woman in society. My prize. I knew it when you were thirteen. Nurtured it. You have the makings of perfection. Flawless.”
She didn’t reply, just stared at him.
“Do this. God knows your sister is useless.”
She wrenched her chin away. “Emily is far better than you—”
He grabbed her arm, though he was careful not to mark her. Her father knew better than to mark his art. “I’ll marry her to Lord Kinley.”
“You wouldn’t.” The distention hardened into something dark and deadly.
He narrowed his eyes. “He offered for you once. I could talk him around. He likes them young.”
The darkness reached up. “I’d make sure she was widowed the night of the wedding.”
Her father laughed without humor. “Then maybe it should be done posthaste.”
Charlotte mourned as the last warm feelings for her father slipped away. For the softer father he had been before debt and drink had turned him to the edge of anger and despair.
“Trant will make an offer soon,” she said evenly, bitter cold and heated fury mixing, leaving numbness behind. “And I’m sure it will be a generous one. I wouldn’t even need to work my wiles on him.”
His lips tightened.
She shook her head, a cheerless laugh upon her tongue. “Trant’s not enough for you, even now, pressed and desperate. Even now you look toward a bigger pot.”
“You could be a duchess, given time and opportunity.” He reached out to touch her cheek, but she slowly, deliberately pulled back. “My grandson, a duke. But Trant has made subtle threats. I made a mistake not wrestling Downing to the ground immediately your first season. Our timetable must be advanced. We do what we must with the hands we have been dealt.”
No. Her father had dealt himself—and her—their hands.
He released his grip and retreated behind his desk. “I talked Trant around to wait to offer for you until the end of the season. But . . .” He quickly pushed a paper beneath others littering the desk. “Events have occurred that give us time and yet choke us with the same. You have six weeks to find a better prospect. Work your wiles, girl. We have been hoping for the Duke of Knowles, but the blasted man hasn’t shown his face. We might have to push and invite ourselves to his home, get you compromised.”
Bitterness drifted through her that he was even thinking of engineering such a plan.
“Until then, the Earl of Tewksbury. Marquess Binchley. Net one, and we will hush up any gossip that emerges from Trant’s mouth
.”
The Duke of Knowles, an extremely wealthy and reputedly handsome, man, had disappeared into the country four years before—the phantom crown of the marriage mart. The Earl of Tewksbury, not a day under sixty. And the Marquess, an inveterate drunk.
The cavity had never been deeper or more empty. Desperately needing something to fill it.
Something that could give her . . . relief. She swallowed, feeling the tiny ivory crown of the chess piece as if she were stroking it in her fingers.
“Six weeks.” She grasped the time as if it would somehow knit her family into an affectionate whole. As if the answer to everything lay at the end. As if she could find freedom in the ticked calendar squares. “Not a day less.”
His fist thumped against the desk. “Do it.”
She usually loved Vauxhall. The spectacle, the lights, the merriment, the people from all walks of life. The ease with which one could enjoy the festivities.
But with her father’s words ringing in her ears and stuck in a dining box, the cloth walls felt like they were closing in on her. The supports bending, ready to break. Marquess Binchley belched next to her.
She could feel the eyes of the crowd watching her movements as if the king himself had entered her theater box. She was an actress playing a role in a cloth tomb, fragments of remembered lines upon her tongue.
She touched her napkin, creasing the fabric, and maintained a cool smile about her lips. The papers would praise her for it.
Sudden pleasure slipped over her like a shift warmed in front of the fire, sliding heatedly down her bare arms, her breasts, her hips, brushing her ankles.
She tensed. Only one man elicited those feelings. She looked into the densely mixed crowd, scanning each group, until her gaze fell upon golden hair. Even surrounded by masses of people, he dominated his own space. She recognized the two men who were earnestly speaking to him. At him, really, for he didn’t seem to be paying them much attention. When her gaze locked with his, he slowly smiled and turned his attention back to the men, speaking as if he had never glanced her way.
Charlotte, however, was incapable of looking elsewhere. The urge to vault from the box, to embrace the night shadows, nearly drowned her in its intensity.