by Mary Balogh
Now, without a blink, she had changed tactics yet again, but this time she was comfortably within the realm of her expertise. She had made a handsome living on her back. Famed for her beauty and her seductive charms and her prowess in the sexual arts—and for the clever ploy of granting each client only one night of her favors—she had been in greater demand than any other courtesan within living memory.
She chuckled low in her throat. “I can seduce you, you know.” She moved another step closer, set one forefinger lightly against his chest, and traced a light path upward with it, over his neckcloth toward his bare throat.
He clamped a hand about her wrist and returned her arm to her side. Anger and desire and revulsion all warred within him. “I think not, ma’am,” he said. “I prefer to make a free choice of my bed partners.”
“Ah, but you do enjoy a wager,” she said. “Especially when the stakes are high.”
“If you are suggesting that I wager Pinewood,” he said, “you are wasting your breath. You would lose.”
“But according to you, I already have lost,” she said, turning away and crossing the room to run her fingers over the bare surface of the desk. “You really appear to have won, do you not?”
“I dashed well have,” he said, glaring at her. “And you have diverted me from my purpose in summoning you down here.”
“Ah,” she said, turning her head to smile at him, “but you changed your summons to a request, Lord Ferdinand. Mr. Jarvey told me so. You like to think of yourself as a gentleman, do you not? And you consider yourself weaker than your brother, who does not care what anyone thinks of him.”
She was uncannily perceptive. But then, an understanding of men must have been necessary in her career.
“I want you out of here before nightfall,” he said. “I do not care whether that gives you enough time to pack your things or not. You will leave. Today.”
She was still looking at him over her shoulder. “What, Lord Ferdinand?” she said, amusement in her voice when he had steeled himself for either tears or anger. “You are afraid to accept a wager? Afraid that you will lose? How you would be derided in all the gentlemen’s clubs if word were to get out that you were afraid of being bested by a woman. By a whore!”
“Don’t call yourself that,” he said before he could stop himself.
Her smile deepened and she turned to face him fully, her fingertips still lightly stroking the desktop.
“Give me one week,” she said. “If I cannot seduce you within that time, I’ll never again challenge the authenticity of that will. I will go away and never trouble either your person or your conscience again—I do trouble your conscience, do I not? If you lose, of course”—she caught him completely off guard by smiling dazzlingly at him—“then you will be the one to leave. You will also relinquish your claim to Pinewood in my favor—and in writing. With witnesses.”
“Nonsense!” he said. But the thought struck him at the same moment that it would be an easily enough won bet and that in one week he—and his conscience—would be permanently rid of her.
“But before you left, Lord Ferdinand,” she told him softly, her voice sultry again, “you would enjoy a night of such exquisite pleasure that you would spend the rest of your life pining for more.”
Despite the revulsion her boast caused him, he also felt an unwilling surge of pure lust. Had she been dressed like a harlot—as she had been at the theater—he would more easily have resisted her. One expected an expensive harlot to speak in such a way. But she was clad in a dress of virginal white. Her hair was dressed for elegance and practicality. She was Viola Thornhill, for God’s sake. Talking about going to bed with him.
“I never disappoint,” she said, lifting her hand away from the desk, moistening her forefinger slowly with her tongue and running it along her lower lip. More of the air seemed to have gone from the room, leaving Ferdinand gasping for breath and fighting to disguise the fact.
“By God!” he blurted, his temper snapping. “I want you out of here. Now. Sooner.”
“Would it not be better to have me leave quietly after one week than screaming and biting and kicking and shedding copious tears today?” she asked him. “And stopping in the village to scream and weep some more?”
“Do they know?” He frowned at her and for the first time took a few steps farther into the room. “Do these people know who you are?”
“Who I am? Yes, of course,” she said. “I am Viola Thornhill of Pinewood Manor. They know that I am a connection of the Earl of Bamber’s.”
“They believe a lie, in fact,” he said indignantly. “They do not know you are a whore.”
“Present tense?” She laughed softly. “But no, they do not know. And what a weapon I have just handed you. You may reveal my dreadful secret, Lord Ferdinand, and doubtless they will gather behind you in a righteous mob to run me out of Somersetshire.”
He glared at her, white with fury. “I am a gentleman,” he reminded her. “I do not go about spreading such unsavory tidings. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you,” she said with mocking carelessness. “Is that a promise, my lord?”
“Devil take it!” he retorted. “I have said it is so. A gentleman does not need to promise.”
“And yet,” she reminded him, “it would be an easy way to rid yourself of me for all time, would it not?”
“That is already done,” he said. “I daresay you read the declaration signed by both Tresham and Westinghouse that I handed you last evening. Bamber changed his mind, if ever he intended to make you a permanent gift of Pinewood. I daresay he thought it too extravagant a gift for the services you had rendered him.”
She stood very still, her finger still resting against her lower lip, staring at him blankly, her faint, contemptuous smile fading. And then she returned her hand to the desk and smiled again.
“You will never know,” she said, “unless you avail yourself of those services, Lord Ferdinand. You can only take my word for it that you will not consider Pinewood too extravagant a wager at all. I am very, very good at what I do. But you are convinced, of course, that you can resist me. And perhaps you can. Or perhaps not. It would be an interesting wager. You will forever consider yourself a coward if you refuse to accept it. Come.” She walked toward him, her right hand extended. “Shake my hand on it.”
“You would lose,” he warned her weakly instead of simply repeating his order that she leave before nightfall.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She held her hand steady. “Are you really afraid of losing to a woman? Having won Pinewood at cards, are you now afraid of losing it at love?”
“Love?” he asked with undisguised revulsion.
“A euphemism,” she admitted. “Lust, if you prefer.”
“I am not afraid of losing anything at all to you, ma’am,” he told her.
“Well, then.” She laughed and looked for a disconcerting moment like the Viola Thornhill with whom he was more familiar. “You have nothing to fear. This will be the easiest won wager you have ever agreed to, Lord Ferdinand.”
“Dammit!” He slapped his hand onto hers and squeezed it so hard that she visibly winced. “You have your wager. One that you will lose, I do assure you. You have one more week here. If I were you, I would use the time wisely and begin to pack and make plans. You will not be staying one day longer than a week. That is a promise.”
“On the contrary, my lord,” she said, drawing her hand free of his. “It is you who will be leaving—the morning after you bed me and turn over the deed of Pinewood and sign the necessary papers.”
She turned then and left the room. Ferdinand stood where he was, looking at the door through which she had disappeared. What in thunder had he just agreed to? Another week spent under the same roof as Viola Thornhill? No—Lilian Talbot.
He had just made a wager with Lilian Talbot. A wager that she could seduce him within a week, Pinewood as the prize if she succeeded.
His temper had got the better of hi
m, as it often did. And his inability to resist a wager.
He would win, of course, as he always did.
But he did not want to share a house with Lilian Talbot. Especially when she looked almost identical to Viola Thornhill—to whom he had come within a whisker of offering marriage just yesterday. What a fortunate escape he had had, he thought suddenly.
But he did not feel fortunate. He felt somehow bereft.
VIOLA MADE HER WAY upstairs, thankful that the butler was not in the hall as she passed through it. Her hands were shaking, she noticed when she held them before her, her fingers spread. She really had thought Lilian Talbot was dead, consigned forever to the dust. But how very easily she had been resurrected. How quickly she had bundled all that was herself deep inside so that he would not see her raw pain in confronting her past.
He had called her a whore—after objecting to her calling herself that.
She had begun—oh, yes, there was no point in denying it—to fall a little in love with him.
He had called her a whore.
Hannah was still in her dressing room, packing the large trunk Viola had brought with her from London two years before.
“What happened?” she asked sharply. “What did he want?”
“Only what we expected,” Viola told her. “He gave me until nightfall to leave.”
“We will be ready long before then,” Hannah said grimly. “He knows, I suppose. That duke told him?”
“Yes.” Viola sat down on the dressing table stool, her back to the mirror. “But we are not leaving after all, Hannah. Not now or ever.”
“Is there any point, Miss Vi?” her maid asked. “You read me that paper last night. There is no court in the land that will believe you.”
“We are not leaving,” Viola said. “I am going to win Pinewood from him. I have a week to do it.”
“How?” Hannah straightened up from the half-packed trunk, her expression suddenly suspicious. “How, lovey? You are not going back to work?”
“I have talked him into a wager,” Viola said. “One I intend to win. Never mind about the details, Hannah. Put my clothes back in the wardrobe. They will get creased in the trunk. And have the trunk put away in the attic again. We are staying.”
“Miss Vi—”
“No, Hannah.” Viola looked at her with set jaw and hard eyes. “No! This is where I belong. This is where he wanted me to be. I will not give in just because there has been some fraud. Lord Ferdinand Dudley has made a wager with me, and he will abide by its terms. That at least I can be sure of. He is a gentleman, you see—almost to a fault. It is a wager I will not lose.”
Hannah came and stood in front of her, her head tipped to one side. “I don’t think I want to know exactly what you are up to,” she said, “but I do know you need to lie down for an hour or so. You are as white as any ghost. Turn around and I will brush out your hair for you.”
That had always been Hannah’s solution to any problem. Viola could not remember a time when her former nurse had not soothed her by brushing her hair. She turned on the stool and felt Hannah’s capable hands unpinning and then unraveling her braids.
Just yesterday, Viola thought, closing her eyes, she had run down the hill into his arms, and he had twirled her about and kissed her with a fierce passion to match her own. Today he had called her a whore and ordered her to get out of Pinewood.
Tomorrow or the next day or the next she was going to entice him into bed and pleasure him there with the cold sensual arts she had learned and practiced to perfection.
She was going to do those things with Lord Ferdinand Dudley. To him.
One more time.
And then she was going to have to live with herself for the rest of her life. At Pinewood. It would be hers—indisputably and forever.
But would there be any dreams left to dream?
12
URING THE NEXT TWO DAYS FERDINAND BEGAN to think that perhaps the week would pass faster and more painlessly than he had expected after agreeing to that mad wager. Perhaps she had come to regret it herself. Certainly if she intended to win it, she was going a strange way about it. He scarcely saw her.
He had a dinner engagement the first evening. It was only when he returned that he learned she had been out too, and still was. He went to bed, taking a book up with him. He heard her walk past his room an hour or so later. Her footsteps did not slow outside his door.
He saw her briefly at breakfast the following morning. She was finishing her meal as he entered the dining room after an early ride. She was looking her usual neat, wholesome self. She would be gone most of the day, she informed him. It was her regular day for visiting the sick and elderly. It struck him that it was not the way one would expect Lilian Talbot to spend her time, but he was happy enough that she would not be going to the school to help out. He had already promised that he would go there himself to give another lesson to Jamie, the would-be Latin scholar.
He intended to call on the boy’s father afterward to see what could be arranged for the boy’s future education. Jamie needed to be at a good boarding school. Ferdinand was quite willing to finance the whole venture himself, but he had a parent’s pride to deal with. He would have to talk of scholarships, Ferdinand thought, rather than financial assistance.
“Will you be attending the assembly tomorrow evening?” Viola Thornhill asked before she left.
There was to be a dance at the assembly rooms above the inn. He had heard about it wherever he went. He certainly planned to attend. It was important to him to be an active participant in village life.
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “You may ride in my carriage with me.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. “But I will be dining at Crossings and will go to the assembly with the Claypoles.”
The Claypoles, he thought, would have a heart seizure apiece if they knew the truth about her.
He did not see her again for the rest of the day. He dined at home, but she did not. He went to choir practice at the church, but she did not. He learned when he returned home that she had been delayed at the cottage of one of the laborers, helping to care for five young children while their mother delivered a sixth.
She was going to be missed when she left Pinewood, Ferdinand knew. His neighbors treated him politely. A few had even warmed to him. But he sensed that most of them still resented the fact that he had come to turn their Miss Thornhill away.
This time he did not hear her come home. He fell asleep with his book open and his candle still alight. She had returned at four o’clock in the morning, he learned at breakfast—from which meal she was absent.
When he came back to the house after a session with Paxton, she had already left for the school.
He did see her during the afternoon, when the ladies’ sewing circle gathered in the drawing room again. She was sitting demurely sewing when he went in there, shamelessly to charm the ladies and to read them another few chapters of Pride and Prejudice. Viola Thornhill stitched on through it all, just as if he were not there, her neck arched delicately over her embroidery frame. The sunlight pouring through the windows picked gold and auburn highlights out of the predominantly dark red braids of her hair. She was wearing one of her simple, pretty muslins.
If Tresham had not said it, he thought, he would be doubting the evidence of his own eyes now. How could she be the same woman as that voluptuous courtesan in Gnass’s box, with her haughty, contemptuous half smile? Or the same woman who had forced a wager on him two days ago?
He dined alone before proceeding to the assembly. She had gone off with the Claypole ladies. Five more days after this one was over, he thought. Then he would be free. She would be gone, and he would never see her again.
Five more days.
But the thought did not cheer him nearly as much as it ought.
DURING HER WORKING YEARS, men—titled, wealthy, powerful, influential men—had pursued Lilian Talbot relentlessly. Viola Thornhill had no idea how to entice a man who was determined no
t to have her. It was not that Lord Ferdinand did not want her. She knew he did. He had kissed her on four separate occasions. On the night he had broken the urn, he had come very close to going beyond mere kisses. No, it was not lack of desire that would make him difficult to seduce. It was his love of a wager, his determination to win it at all costs.
She could use none of her more obvious seductive arts on him. They just would not work. He would resist them. The best way to proceed, she had decided that very first day, was to convince him that she was not proceeding at all. It would be best to confuse him with the illusion that she was Viola Thornhill, that Lilian Talbot was indeed dead and gone. It would be best to tease him with only the occasional glimpse of her when he must expect to be bombarded with her company and full-blown sexual allure.
She would win the wager. She was determined to do so. Her resolve strengthened after she received a letter from Maria, telling her how much Ben was enjoying school, how much he wanted to work hard and become a lawyer when he grew up, how very kind it was of Uncle Wesley to pay his school fees.
There would be no more money to send. Pinewood’s income was now Lord Ferdinand Dudley’s. The little money Viola had brought with her to Pinewood had gone into the estate and to her family. What the estate had earned in two years had gone back into further improvements—and to her family. Uncle Wesley would continue to care for them, of course. They would not be destitute. But Ben would have to leave school, and there would be very little money for all the extras that added comfort to life.
There would be no more money to send unless she won her wager. She was determined to win it.