by Mary Balogh
“I had better rent the house from you, Tresham,” he said while his brother continued to gaze at him, tight-lipped. “It won’t be for long, I daresay. She will probably go back to Pinewood once she knows that it is hers whether she likes it or not. You will be able to relax then. Your little brother will be safe from the clutches of a notoriously wicked woman. Unlike you. Everyone thought your mistress was an ax murderer.”
“By God, Ferdinand.” Tresham leaned one arm across the pommel of his saddle and tapped his whip against one boot. “Are you deliberately courting death? Some advice, my dear fellow. Point a pistol between my eyes and pull the trigger if you must, but cast no aspersions on the good name of my duchess. It is not allowed.”
“And I, damn you, will have none cast on that of Miss Thornhill,” Ferdinand said.
His brother straightened up. “What is this all about, Ferdinand?” he asked. “Will it upset you so very much to see her go?”
Life was going to be empty without her, that was all. There was not going to seem much point to it. But he would soldier on, he supposed. One did not die of such a ridiculous malady as a broken heart. And when had he started to feel quite this way about her, anyway? After sleeping with her? It was probably just lust that was bothering him. Nothing more serious than that.
“The thing is,” he said, “that I can’t help thinking that if I had not made over the property to her this morning or if I failed to hand her the deed, she would stay and be my mistress. I can’t help being tempted. But it would be wrong. It would, Tresh. I don’t care what she has done in the past. I daresay she had her reasons. But now, you see, she is Miss Thornhill of Pinewood Manor. She is a lady. And I can’t bear it because I have already defiled her and because I want to keep on doing so when she belongs back there. And I damned well can’t bear the thought of her going. And make one sneering remark about this babbling drivel that is spouting out of my mouth and I’ll drag you down from your horse and punch out all your teeth. I swear I will.”
His brother stared broodingly at him for a few moments before dismounting to stand beside him. “Come to Jackson’s,” he said, “and pound the stuffing out of me, if it will make you feel better—and if you can. Preferably not my teeth, though, if it’s all the same to you. Strange—I did not think you were into the petticoat line, Ferdinand. But perhaps that is the whole point. Perhaps I should have guessed that when you eventually fell, you would fall hard.”
It was much later in the afternoon before Ferdinand went back to the house. He had gone home with Tresham after they had sparred to a stalemate at Jackson’s. Angie had been there and had talked his ear off and forced both him and Tresham to view her new bonnet. He had played a vigorous wrestling game with his nephew, whom Tresham had brought down from the nursery for tea. Angie and Jane had vied for his company at dinner. Angie had won, though he had assured her that he would not go on to the Grosnick ball with her afterward—Heyward was to accompany her, she had explained, but Ferdie knew how much he danced, provoking man, which was absolutely not at all, while Ferdie was a divine dancer and would make her the envy of every other lady present.
Finally he arrived at the house. He was not really sure how he was going to proceed. Hand her the deed immediately and tell her Pinewood was hers whether she wanted it or not? Or keep the news until tonight? Perhaps they could go to bed this afternoon. Would it be dishonorable? Dash it, but honor could sometimes be a dreary killjoy of a weight on the conscience.
“Tell Miss Thornhill that I am here,” he instructed Jacobs after he had been admitted to the house. “Where is she?”
“She is not in, my lord,” the butler said, taking his hat and cane.
Damnation! He had not considered the possibility that she might be out. But it was a pleasant afternoon. She must have felt the need for some air and exercise.
“I’ll wait,” he said. “Did she say when she would be back?”
“No, my lord.”
“Did she take her maid?” Ferdinand frowned. She was in London now. He would not have her walking about outside without a chaperon.
“Yes, my lord.”
He went into the room with the pianoforte and looked about him. How on earth had he not realized the truth yesterday as soon as he set foot in here? he wondered. It had Jane and Tresham-with-Jane written all over it. It was a strangely cozy room, even though the embroidery frame and the easel and music stand were all empty. He would enjoy spending time here with Viola. She would feel like his companion as well as his mistress in here. They would talk and read and be comfortable together. She would feel almost like a wife.
But he did not want a wife, he reminded himself—or mistress either. He wanted Viola to be back at Pinewood, lady of the manor again. Even if it meant never seeing her again, because that was what she wanted.
He wandered restlessly from the room and upstairs to the bedchamber. He sat on the side of the bed and ran one hand over the pillow where her head had lain last night. He hoped—he swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat—he hoped she would go back home. Perhaps after some time had passed he could go down there, stay at the Boar’s Head, call on her, court her.…
He wandered into her dressing room. It looked empty. She had brought only the one bag with her from Pinewood, it was true, but there surely should have been a comb or brush or something on the dressing table. All that was there, propped against the mirror, was a folded piece of paper. He crossed the room with hesitant steps, knowing very well what it was. It had his name written on the outside in the now-familiar neat handwriting.
It was as terse as the last one.
“We agreed that we were both free to end our liaison at a moment’s notice,” she had written. “I am ending it now. Go back to Pinewood. It is where you will find the fulfillment for which you have been searching all your adult life, I believe. Be happy there. Viola.”
So she had escaped after all. She had intended it from the start, he realized. Now that he thought about it, he could recall that she had never said explicitly that she would be his mistress, only that she would come here with him and must be free to go whenever she chose. She had disappeared into the vastness of London. Last night had meant nothing to her. He meant nothing to her. She preferred the life of a courtesan. It made no sense whatsoever to him. But did it need to?
Would he never learn?
He crumpled the paper and dropped it to the floor.
“Goddamn you,” he said aloud.
And then he surprised and embarrassed himself—almost as if there were an audience—by sobbing once and then again and finding it impossible to stem the flow of his grief.
“Goddamn you to hell,” he said between sobs. “What do you want from me?”
The silence answered him loud and clear.
Nothing at all.
VIOLA WAS GOING HOME. Home to her uncle’s inn to see her mother and sisters. And to meet Daniel Kirby and come to some arrangement with him about her future. But even though she would not put herself through the agony of hoping, she intended to fight as far as she was able. Bag in hand, Hannah beside her, she made her way first in the opposite direction to the inn. She had a call to make.
She sat and waited stubbornly for three hours in a dingy outer office of Westinghouse and Sons, Solicitors, before being admitted for one whole minute into the presence of the most junior partner and assured that the late Earl of Bamber’s will made no mention whatsoever of Miss Viola Thornhill.
“Well, Hannah,” she said as they were leaving, “I did not expect anything different, you know. But I had to hear it with my own ears.”
“Where are we going now, Miss Vi?”
Hannah had been disapproving of last night’s destination. But this morning she had disapproved of their leaving. She had wanted Viola to throw herself upon Lord Ferdinand’s mercy, to tell him everything, to beg him to lend her the money with which to pay Daniel Kirby. Ferdinand was more than halfway in love with her, according to Hannah. He could be brought to of
fer for her if Miss Vi just played her cards right.
Never! She would not beg money from him, she would not burden him with her problems, and she would not entice him into a marriage he would bitterly regret for the rest of his life.
“We are going to call on the Earl of Bamber,” she said in answer to Hannah’s question.
It was halfway through the afternoon by the time they arrived there. It was very probable he would not be home. It was even more probable that she would be denied admittance even if he were. It was a shocking thing for a lady to call upon a single gentleman, even though she was accompanied by her maid. The look with which the earl’s butler regarded her when he opened the door to her knock confirmed her fears. She probably would not have succeeded in setting so much as a foot over the doorstep if chance had not brought the earl home while she was standing there arguing.
“Who do we have here, then?” he asked, coming up the steps behind her, his eyes raking over her.
He was short, portly, fair-haired, and florid of complexion. He bore no discernible resemblance to his father.
“I am Viola Thornhill,” she said, turning to face him.
“Well, damn me.” His brows snapped together. “The woman herself, standing on my doorstep. I am mortally sick of hearing your name. I’ll not have you bothering me, I say. Take yourself off. Shoo!”
“My mother was once your governess,” she said.
For a moment she thought he was going to tell her again to shoo, but then an arrested look came over his face.
“Hillie?” he said. “I only ever had one governess—before I went to school. She was Hillie.”
“Rosamond Thornhill,” Viola said. “My mother.”
She watched the glimmer of understanding come into his rather bloodshot eyes.
“You had better come inside,” he said ungraciously, and he led the way into the house and across the hall to a small salon. Hannah followed them and stood quietly inside the door after the earl had shut it.
“Who the devil are you?” he asked.
“My mother was your father’s mistress for ten years,” she said. “He was my father too.”
He stared at her, his expression grim.
“What do you want from me?” he asked her. “If you have come here begging for money—”
“I met him shortly before he died,” she said. “He was determined to provide for me. He sent me to Pinewood Manor. It was one of his smaller, unentailed holdings, he said. He had never even been there himself. But he thought it was in a suitably secluded corner of England and could offer me a decent living if it was well managed. He was going to change his will so that it would always be mine.”
“Well, he did not do so,” he said. “The very idea—”
“He loved me,” she said. “He always loved me. I never doubted his affection while I was a child, before my mother married. I doubted it afterward because suddenly he did not come anymore or even write. But that was my mother’s fault, I learned later. She had broken off her relationship with him and refused to let him even see me. She destroyed all the letters and gifts he sent me. It was quite by chance that I saw him in the park.… But no matter. The details can be of no interest to you. Did you persuade Mr. Westinghouse to erase the new clause from his will?”
The explosive blasphemy that was his first reaction convinced her that he was not the villain of this piece. “Get out of here,” he told her, “before I throw you out.”
“Could he have made a new will with someone else?” she asked, ignoring his wrath. “You see, it is not only Pinewood that is at stake. There was another paper, which he said he would file officially with his solicitor so that the matter could never be disputed. He paid off some debts to release me from an obligation and keep my mother out of debtors’ prison. He had the man who held the debts sign a paper stating that all the bills had been paid in full, that there were no more, and that he waived the right to claim for any other unpaid bill that preceded the date of the agreement.”
“What the devil!” the Earl of Bamber said.
“That man has now discovered other debts,” Viola said, “and is demanding payment.”
“And you expect me—”
“No!” she said. “My father rescued me … from the life of prostitution I had been forced into so that I could pay back the debt. He provided for my future so that I could live in peace and security for the rest of my life. I ask nothing of you, my lord. I ask only that my father not be denied his dying wish. That paper is of vital importance to me. Your father loved me. I was as much his daughter as you were his son, you see, even though I was born on the wrong side of the blanket.”
He stared at her for a while and then ran the fingers of one hand through his hair before turning abruptly away to stare into the unlit coals of the fire.
“Damn me,” he said. “Why did I go to Brookes’s that night? I have had nothing but trouble over that worthless property ever since. Well, he didn’t change his will, and that’s all about it. And there is no paper. Westinghouse would have said so. He would at least have recognized your name, wouldn’t he?”
“And there is no possibility there was someone else?”
He drummed his fingers on the mantel above his head. “I wonder if m’mother knew about Hillie,” he muttered. “And about you. I bet she did. M’mother always knows everything.”
Viola waited.
“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, turning abruptly to face her. “I can’t help you, you know. And I can’t send you back to Pinewood even if I wanted to—which I don’t particularly. Why should I? You are just m’father’s by-blow. Pinewood is Dudley’s. Go beg from him. I’m expected somewhere for dinner. You will have to leave now.”
There was nothing further to say. Viola left with Hannah. There was no way to save herself from her inevitable future, it seemed.
They began the long walk home.
19
HAVE NEVER KNOWN YOU SO OUT OF SORTS, Ferdie,” Lady Heyward complained. “I expected you to be bubbling over with stories about Pinewood and your two weeks in the country. But whenever one asks you a question, you say nothing whatsoever of any significance.”
“Perhaps, Angie,” he said irritably, “it is because trying to get a word in sideways in your company is an exercise in futility. Besides, the dinner is good and to be savored. Convey my compliments to your cook, will you?”
“Unfair!” she cried. “Is he not being unfair, Jane? Tell me, have I or have I not plied Ferdie with enough questions to get him talking about Pinewood? And have I or have I not paused each time to allow him all the time in the world to answer?”
“There really is not—” Ferdinand began.
“Of course there must be a great deal to say,” she said. “Who are your neighbors there? What—”
“Angie,” Ferdinand said firmly, “Pinewood no longer belongs to me. It is hardly worth talking about the place.”
“Jocelyn told me you have legally made over the ownership to Miss Thornhill, Ferdinand,” the Duchess of Tresham said. “I do admire you for doing something so very honorable.”
“You have done what, Ferdie?” His sister’s eyes were wide with astonishment.
“He has given Pinewood back to Miss Thornhill,” Jane explained, “because he believed it was more hers than his. I am very proud of you, Ferdinand. Jocelyn told me that it is a lovely place.”
“Was that wise, Ferdinand?” Lord Heyward asked. “It might have been a prosperous estate for you.”
“Now everything makes perfect sense!” Angeline cried. “Ferdie is in love!”
“Oh, good Lord!” he was startled into saying.
“You are in love with this Miss Thornhill,” she said. “How absolutely splendid. And so of course you have made the magnificent gesture of returning Pinewood to her. But you must go back there. She is sure to fall into your arms and dissolve into tears of gratitude. I simply must be there to see it. Do take me with you. Heyward, may I go? You spend all your days at
the House of Lords anyway, and you know it will be a relief not to have to escort me to evening entertainments for a week or two. There will be time before the Season ends to organize a grand wedding at St. George’s. We will have a great squeeze of a ball here. Jane, you must help me. I was deprived of the opportunity of doing it for you and Tresh when he whisked you off to marry you one morning with absolutely no one in attendance but his secretary and your maid. What a waste that was. For Ferdie I am determined to do much better.”
“Angie!” Ferdinand said firmly. “Take a damper.” He caught his brother’s eye across the table. Tresham merely raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips, and addressed himself to the food on his plate.
“I do believe you are embarrassing your brother, my love,” Lord Heyward said.
“Men!” Angeline exclaimed. “Always embarrassed at any mention of love and marriage. Are they not ridiculous creatures, Jane?”
“I have frequently said so,” the duchess agreed, looking with some amusement at Tresham, who did not rise to the bait. “But Ferdinand, who is Miss Thornhill? Jocelyn did tell me she is beautiful.”
“It was, of course,” Tresham said, “the first question Jane asked when I returned home.”
“Oh, not the first, you odious man,” she protested.
“She is the most irritating female I have ever known,” Ferdinand said. “She talked me into making a wager with her, Pinewood as the prize—and she won. She would not take it. Then I gave it to her as a gift. She ran away. I followed her and caught her before she reached London. Today I had Selby make the change of ownership legal, but when I went to tell her so, she had disappeared again. It seems she really does not want it.”
“How extraordinary!” Jane said.
“You must go back tomorrow, then, and get Selby to reverse the procedure,” Heyward said. “You ought to have come to me or Tresham before you did it anyway, Ferdinand. You have a strong tendency to act impulsively. It is the Dudley blood in you.”
“People are always impulsive when they are in love,” Angeline said. “Ferdie, you must find her. You must comb London for her. Hire a Bow Street Runner. How very romantic.”