More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress

by Mary Balogh

  Would he come back?

  Hannah was in her room, hanging up her newly laundered and ironed traveling dress.

  “Your mother asked that you go to her as soon as that man left,” she said.

  Viola sighed. “Did she say what she wanted, Hannah?”

  “No,” her maid said, though Viola had the feeling that she knew very well.

  She sighed again. Her mother probably wanted to share her delight at Mr. Kirby’s promise to help her daughter find employment, Viola thought as she opened the sitting room door and stepped inside.

  Lord Ferdinand Dudley was sitting by the fireplace.

  “See who has come to call upon me this morning, Viola,” her mother said, getting to her feet and hurrying closer. “He needs no introduction to you, of course.”

  He rose and bowed as her mother turned to smile warmly at him.

  “Miss Thornhill,” he said.

  “Lord Ferdinand has just traveled up from Somersetshire,” her mother explained, “and has come to pay his respects to me. Is that not a kind courtesy, Viola? He has been telling Maria and me how highly thought of you are at Pinewood.”

  Viola looked at him with silent reproach. “It was kind of you to call, my lord,” she said. How did you find me? Why did you find me?

  “Do sit down again,” her mother told their guest as she drew Viola to sit beside her on the love seat. “I have been explaining, Viola, why you could not join us immediately.” She looked back at their visitor. “My father was a gentleman, you see, but he lost his fortune in some unwise investments, and so my brother had to forge his own way in the world, as did I. I was a governess too. Viola’s father was a gentleman. So was my late husband.”

  Her mother was on the defensive, Viola thought.

  “No one who saw Miss Thornhill manage a country fête could possibly doubt that she is a lady, ma’am,” Lord Ferdinand said, his eyes smiling into Viola’s.

  He proceeded to tell her mother and Maria about the May Day celebrations at Trellick. He soon had both of them laughing and exclaiming in delight. The ability to charm almost any audience was one of his personal gifts, of course. It had annoyed her at Pinewood. It annoyed her now.

  “We are glad to have Viola home with us again,” her mother said at last. “Of course, she will probably be teaching again soon. Mr. Kirby has promised to help her find a respectable position, as he did once before.”

  Viola watched Lord Ferdinand, but he gave no sign of knowing the name.

  “I came to town just in time, then, ma’am,” he said. “I might have missed Miss Thornhill if I had postponed my visit to a later date.”

  “Yes, indeed,” her mother agreed.

  “I wonder if I might beg the favor of a private word with your daughter, ma’am?” he asked.

  Viola shook her head imperceptibly, but no one was looking at her. Her mother got to her feet without any hesitation.

  “Of course, my lord,” she said, sounding inordinately pleased. “Come along, Maria. We will see what help we can offer downstairs.”

  Mama thought he had come courting, Viola thought as her mother, her back to their visitor, gave her a significant look. Then she left, taking Maria with her.

  The clock ticked with unnatural loudness on the mantel.

  Viola spread her hands in her lap and looked down at them.

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  “You said your uncle was an innkeeper,” he said.

  Had she told him that?

  “I started searching yesterday morning,” he said. “I began with the coaching inns and the slim hope that your uncle was still in business and bore the name of Thornhill.”

  She looked up at him. “Why?”

  He had got to his feet when her mother rose. He stood now in front of the fireplace, his hands at his back. He looked large and powerful. She felt at a distinct disadvantage. She saw him draw a deep breath and release it slowly.

  “Mainly for this reason, I suppose,” he said, reaching into his coat pocket and bringing out a sheaf of papers.

  “How many times do I have to say no before you will believe me?” she asked.

  “Pinewood is yours,” he said. “I have had the title legally transferred to you. It is yours whether you want it or not, Viola.”

  He held out the papers, but she made no move to take them. It was too late. Daniel Kirby had heard about his winning Pinewood and had concluded that if her father had not changed his will, he had probably not kept that receipt either. He had guessed that he had her in his power again. Pinewood would not be able to help her now. He would make sure that the rents were not quite enough to cover payment on the debts.

  Lord Ferdinand moved toward the table and set the papers down beside Maria’s books.

  “It is yours,” he said again.

  “Very well,” she said, her eyes on her hands again. “Your task has been successfully accomplished. Good day to you, my lord.”

  “Viola,” he said softly, and she heard him sigh with exasperation.

  The next moment, she saw his riding boots almost toe-to-toe with her slippers, and then he came down on his haunches and captured both her hands in his own. She had little choice but to look into his eyes, on a level with her own.

  “Do you hate me so much?” he asked her.

  The question almost broke her heart. Perhaps she had not realized until this precise moment just how much she loved him. Not just how much she was in love with him, but how much she loved him.

  “Do you find it so hard to believe,” she asked in return, “that I could wish to be my own person rather than your mistress?”

  “I offered you Pinewood,” he said. “You told me it meant so much to you only because the late Earl of Bamber gave it to you. Did you love him so much more than me, then? He must have been old enough to be your father.”

  His words might have been funny under other circumstances.

  “Fool!” she said, but she spoke gently. “Ferdinand, he was my father. Do you think I would have accepted a gift like that from a lover?”

  His hands tightened about her own and he stared at her in astonishment. “Bamber was your father?”

  She nodded. “I had not seen him since my mother married Clarence Wilding. He had been in poor health for years. He did not come to London often. He came then to consult a physician, but it was hopeless. He knew he was dying. I will forever be thankful that I saw him and recognized him in Hyde Park and called out to him before I could stop myself. He explained why I had not heard from him during all those years. And he tried to atone, to do for me what he would have done if we had not been estranged by my mother’s marriage. It was too late for him to arrange a decent marriage for me—I had been working for four years. But he gave me Pinewood and the chance of a new life. It was a precious gift, Ferdinand, because it came from my father. It was a gift of pure love.”

  He bent his head and closed his eyes. “This explains why you will not believe that he neglected to change his will,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Ferdinand lifted her hands one at a time to his lips. “Forgive me,” he said. “I behaved like a prize ass when I came to Pinewood. I should have gone away immediately. You would still be happy there now.”

  “No.” She gazed earnestly at him. “You behaved quite reasonably under the circumstances. You might have thrown me out that very first day.”

  “Go home,” he urged her. “Go back there. Not because I want you to but because your father did. And because that is where you belong.”

  “Perhaps I will,” she said.

  “No, dash it.” He got to his feet and drew her to hers. “I can tell by the look on your face that you are humoring me. You have no intention of going there, have you? Because it comes from me. It brings me back to my original question. Do you hate me so much?”

  “I don’t hate you.” She closed her eyes.

  It was a mistake. He stepped closer, wrapped his arms about her, and set his mouth, open, over
hers. She was powerless to end the embrace, even though he did not hold her imprisoned. She twined her arms about his neck and allowed all the defenses she had erected about herself in the past few days to crumble away. She kissed him back with all the yearning, all the passion, all the love in her heart.

  For those few moments, impossibilities seemed possible. But passion did not have the power to drown out reality for very long.

  “Ferdinand,” she said, drawing back her head, though she kept her arms about him, “I cannot be your mistress.”

  “No, you dashed well cannot,” he agreed. “The position is no longer open. It was all wrong anyway. I was not made to have mistresses. I cannot bed a woman and carry on with the rest of my life as if she did not exist. I want you to marry me.”

  “Because I am the daughter of the Earl of Bamber?” she asked, her hands slipping to his shoulders.

  He clucked his tongue. “Illegitimate daughter. You forgot that juicy detail,” he said scornfully. “No, of course not for that reason. I asked you once before, long before I knew who your father was. I want to marry you, that is all. I miss you.”

  He had not said he loved her, but he did not need to. It was there in the way he looked at her, in the way he held her, in the words he spoke. Viola knew a few moments of intense temptation. For she knew that with one word—yes—she could turn her whole life around. He loved her. He wanted to marry her. She could tell him everything—he already knew the worst about her. She had no doubt that he could and would pay off all of Clarence Wilding’s debts and so free her family from the threat of ruin. She herself would be freed forever from the power of Daniel Kirby and a life of prostitution.

  But she loved him. He could not marry her without sacrificing everything that was dear to him—his family, his position in society, his friends. He might think now that he did not care—he always had that reckless, dangerous eagerness to take up any challenge—the more outrageous, the better. But this was a challenge he could not win. He would be unhappy for most of the rest of his life. And therefore, so would she.

  “Ferdinand,” she said, and she retreated behind the contemptuous half smile that was second nature to her whenever she needed to protect herself from hurt, “I refused to marry you because I have no wish to marry you or any man. Why should I, when I can have any man I please whenever I please and still retain my freedom? I never did agree to become your mistress. I slept with you the night we arrived in London because you seemed to want it so badly. And it was pleasant, I must admit. But you really do not know yet—forgive me—how to please a woman in bed. I would become restless within a week or two if I stayed with you. I have been feeling restless at Pinewood for some time. You did me a favor by coming there and forcing me into doing what I have been wanting to do—resuming my career, that is. I find the life exciting.”

  “Don’t do that.” He was gripping her arms hard enough to leave bruises. He was also glaring into her eyes, his own suddenly very black. “Goddamn you, Viola. Don’t you trust me? If you loved me, you would. I thought perhaps you did love me.”

  “Oh, Ferdinand.” She smiled and spoke softly. “How foolish of you.”

  He swung away from her and picked up his hat and his cane from a chair inside the door.

  “You could have trusted me, you know.” He looked back at her when his hand was on the doorknob. “If he has some sort of power over you, you could have told me so. Dudley men know how to protect their women. But I can’t force you, can I? And I can’t make you love me if you don’t. Good day to you.”

  The door was closing behind him as she reached out one arm toward him. She clapped her hand over her mouth so that she would not call after him. The ache in her throat was almost too painful to bear.

  He did know who Daniel Kirby was.

  You could have trusted me … you could have told me so. Dudley men know how to protect their women.

  She did not know where he lived. She would not know where to find him if she changed her mind.

  Thank God she did not know. Temptation was beyond her reach.

  21

  ERDINAND HAD STILL NOT QUITE ADJUSTED HIS mind to thinking of his brother as a family man. But when Tresham’s butler led him all the way up to the nursery of Dudley House and announced him, he walked in to find Tresham actually down on the floor building a precarious-looking castle out of wooden blocks with his three-year-old while the baby lay on a blanket beside them—out of range of falling masonry—kicking his legs and waving his arms. Their nurse was nowhere in sight. Neither was Jane.

  The arrival of an uncle was more appealing, at least for a few minutes, it seemed, than the castle. Nicholas came hurtling across the room, and Ferdinand scooped him up and tossed him at the ceiling.

  “Hello, old sport,” he said as he caught the shrieking child. “By gad, I almost missed you. You weigh a ton.”

  “Again!”

  Ferdinand tossed him again, made a great to-do about staggering and roaring with alarm as he caught the boy, and then set him down before bending to tickle the baby’s stomach.

  “Where is Jane?” he asked.

  “Calling on Lady Webb—her godmother,” Tresham explained, in case Ferdinand had forgotten. “Angie went with her and so I did not. About the only common sense our sister has ever shown is her attachment to Jane. This notion that during the Season it is bad ton for husbands and wives to be seen anywhere together, or at least to remain together for longer than two minutes after their arrival at any entertainment, is damnably irritating, Ferdinand. I am taking my duchess back home to Acton at the earliest opportunity.”

  This was what his brother had become? Ferdinand thought, looking at him in some fascination. A man who spent much of his time with his children and grumbled when his wife was not with him? After four years, Tresham was still not fretting against his leg shackle?

  “I need some information,” Ferdinand said with deliberate casualness. “I thought you might know.”

  “Well, the devil!” his brother exclaimed as the castle suddenly came crashing down. “Was that my fault, Nick? Or was it yours? Did you poke it with your finger again? You did, you rascal.” He caught his giggling son before he could escape and wrestled with him on the floor.

  Ferdinand watched with some wistfulness.

  “Now.” Tresham got to his feet and brushed at his clothes, even though he looked as immaculate as ever. “What is it, Ferdinand?”

  “You know Kirby, I suppose,” Ferdinand said. “Do you know where I might find him? Where he lives, I mean?”

  His brother paused midbrush and looked up in obvious surprise. “Kirby?” he said. “Good God, Ferdinand, if it is a woman you want, there are far more direct—”

  “Did he manage Lilian Talbot’s career?” Ferdinand asked.

  The duke looked sharply at him. “Pick up the blocks and put them away, Nick,” he said, “before Nurse comes back.” He glanced at the baby, who appeared contented enough, before crossing the room to stand facing the window. Ferdinand joined him there.

  “They were talking together this morning,” Ferdinand said. “Kirby and Viola Thornhill, that is. And then her mother told me that he is helping her daughter find a governess’s position, as he did once before. She seemed to believe it too.”

  “I assume, then,” Tresham said, his hand closing about the handle of his quizzing glass, though he did not raise it to his eye, “that your question about his being her former manager was rhetorical?”

  “I need to find him,” Ferdinand said. “I need to ask him none too gently what hold he has over her.”

  “Has it occurred to you,” his brother asked, “that she might have contacted him because she wishes to return to work?”

  “Yes,” Ferdinand said curtly. He gazed down at his brother’s crested town carriage, which had drawn to a stop outside the front doors. His sister and his sister-in-law were descending from it. “But that is not the way it is. She knows Pinewood is hers, but she will not go back there. She was happy t
here, Tresham. You should have seen her the first time I did, organizing a sack race on the village green, flushed and laughing, her hair in a plait down her back, a bunch of daisies here.” He gestured to a point above his left ear. “She was happy, dammit. And now she insists she does not love me.” It was a non sequitur that he did not even notice.

  “My dear Ferdinand—” His brother sounded genuinely concerned.

  “She is lying,” Ferdinand said. “Devil take it, Tresham, she is lying.”

  But their conversation was cut short by the opening of the nursery door and the appearance of Jane and Angeline. For a few minutes there was a great deal of noise and confusion as the children were picked up and hugged and Nicholas prattled loudly to his mother and his aunt about building a castle as tall as the sky and Uncle Ferdie throwing him up so high that he almost dropped him—and the baby set up a loud wailing. Fortunately, the children’s nurse arrived on the scene to rescue the adults, and they were able to retreat to the drawing room for tea.

  “Well, Ferdie,” Angeline asked as soon as they were settled there, “have you found her yet?”

  “Miss Thornhill?” he said warily. He was not sure how willing Heyward would be to have Angie fed information about one of London’s most notorious courtesans. “Yes. At the White Horse Inn. Her uncle owns it. Her mother and half-sisters live there too.”

  “How splendid,” she said. “Are they dreadfully vulgar?”

  “Not at all,” he said stiffly. “Thornhill is actually a gentleman by birth. So was Wilding—Miss Thornhill’s stepfather.”

  “Clarence Wilding?” Tresham said. “I remember him. Got himself killed in some brawl, if I remember correctly.”

  “But a gentleman nonetheless,” Ferdinand said, realizing even as he spoke that he was on the defensive, just as Mrs. Wilding had been earlier. “Miss Thornhill is the natural daughter of the late Earl of Bamber.”

  Tresham raised his eyebrows. Angeline looked ecstatic.

  “Oh, Ferdinand,” Jane said, “that would explain why she was at Pinewood Manor. Now I am more glad than ever that you have given it back to her.”