by Darcy Burke
His chest tightened and he knew he couldn’t. He edged back. “Don’t.”
Her smile faded and she stared. “You won’t even try?”
Jesus. He buried his head into the velvet warmth of her neck, wanting to focus on her jasmine scent and her softness instead. He didn’t want to feel like a freak. All he wanted was this. Her.
“Ronan, what—”
“Don’t do this to me, Caroline. Don’t.” Tensing, he quickly guided his rigid cock into the tip of her wet warmth and tried to push into her, holding her hard against himself. Wanting her. Needing her.
She pushed at him, shoving him back and scrambled off, her bonnet bumping the side of his face.
He froze, his hands falling against the desk to catch himself.
She slid off him and back onto the floor, pushing down her skirts. She shook her head and kept shaking it. “No. I’ll not be taken like I was last night. I’ll not.”
Feeling his face burn, he quickly pushed his erection back into his trousers and buttoned the flap. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Caroline veered in, her arched brows coming together in an agonized expression. “Am I not worthy of an affection that goes beyond…this!” She gestured toward his trousers. “Am I not worthy of being kissed?”
His startled gaze met hers. He grabbed her arms. “Worthiness has no place in this. It’s not like that.”
“Then what?” She pushed away from his arms. “What is it? Say it! Would you rather kiss another? Is that it?”
“Another? No!” He tried to grab her back. “Caroline, for God’s sake, I can’t—”
“Don’t touch me!” She smacked away his hands and frantically dug out something from her bodice. She held up his gold sovereign. “Take it.” She grabbed his hand and shoved the coin into it, forcing his bare fingers to close around its warmth which he knew had touched her skin. “You made a promise to me that if I kept this for you, that if I cradled it, in return, you would give me anything I wanted. And though I doubt you have the means to keep that promise, do you know what I want? Do you?”
She took several slow steps back, distancing herself more and more, as tears streamed down her face. “You. All I ever wanted was you. But not like this. Because this isn’t you. This isn’t the man I fell in love with. This isn’t the man who played piquet with me for hours to keep me from being lonely. This isn’t the man who taught me French. The man you are offering me is one I don’t recognize or wish to know. I want Persuasion. Not…obscenity, Ronan. I never spent my hours thinking about…your cock! I spent my hours thinking about our first kiss. Our kiss. And if this is how you plan on entering into our marriage, thinking that what I value most is nothing and can be brushed aside to make room for what only you want, then there is nothing left for me to cradle here. Because I’m done giving you myself at the cost of myself. I’m done giving you everything while you continue to give me nothing. I want more. I deserve more! But something tells me this is all I will ever get. As such, don’t call on me. Don’t.”
She bowed her head curtly, the white curled lace within her bonnet fluttering, then turned and bustled toward the doors, her heeled slippers clicking against the wood floors. She slid open both doors of the parlor and disappeared, the harried clicking of her slippers continuing down the corridor and out of his life.
He staggered, unable to believe what was happening.
She was walking out of his life.
Ronan fisted the coin hard, letting it bite into the skin of his palm and scrambled up from the edge of the desk. “Caroline!” He darted toward the open doors, panicking at the thought of never seeing her again.
He skidded out into the corridor. “Caroline!”
Caroline, who already stood at the far end of the corridor, turned her slim figure toward him, her skirts rustling against the white marble floor in the drumming silence that spanned between them. The light from the windows from the rooms beyond illuminated her face and bonnet.
He held up the coin, shaking it and quickly made his way toward her. “You will get what you want. You will get Captain Wentworth if that is what you want. I just need time. Give me time.”
“Time?” she echoed. “When I have already given you seven years of my life without so much as a word of what you truly feel for me? No. I’m done giving you time. I’m done anguishing over what more I can give you. Because I don’t need you to be Captain Wentworth, Ronan, but I damn well won’t be settling for Sir Walter Elliot, either.” She glanced toward her mother who was lingering in the corridor, a choked sob escaping her. “We are leaving, Mama.” With a rustle of her skirts, Caroline hurried toward the entrance door, flung it open with a bang that rattled the walls and rushed out.
The dowager’s narrowed gaze met his from where she stood at the end of the corridor. She whipped a finger toward the open door. “For that girl to be walking away from you, Caldwell,” she said in a hardened and unforgiving tone, “means you have broken the last of not only her heart but her pride. Don’t ever call on our house again. If you need to see my son, see him outside the house. Do you understand? Move on. Because I will damn well ensure she does. In my opinion, Lord Gifford is twice the man you will ever be.” Sweeping away, she glared at him one last time and with a solid tug, slammed the door shut, leaving him in morbid silence.
Ronan stood there, his nausea returning. He stumbled toward the wall beside him and falling against it, slid down, down its length, letting the coin tinker out of his hand. Caroline, his sweet Caroline, had tried to kiss him, and he’d treated her as if she were Lady Stanbury in the flesh. He’d made her believe that what was sacred to her meant nothing to him. And even worse? He had almost forced himself on her like that bitch who had forced him.
He dug a fisted hand against his teeth in disbelief. He would never be the man Caroline wanted him to be. He would always be…this. A superficial bastard incapable of professing love. He had never been in love. What was love? This? To be at wit’s end? To stagger without breath? To be unable to think or know what to do?
He needed help.
Or he’d lose her.
And he couldn’t.
He had already lost everything in his life.
He couldn’t lose the closest he had ever come to knowing happiness.
He couldn’t.
Lesson Fourteen
Sensible advice for men regarding women is difficult to come by.
Which is why I created this school.
-The School of Gallantry
The Hughes estate
Evening
His uncle remained eerily quiet as the small clock on the marble mantle of the hearth ticked and ticked and ticked.
Ronan sat there, numb, rolling his ‘lucky’ sovereign between fingers and knuckles, and allowed everything he had said about Lady Stanbury, about Theodosia and about Caroline to penetrate not only his uncle’s mind but his life.
It was a lot for both of them to swallow.
Ronan let out a breath and shoved his coin back into his waistcoat pocket, not wanting to look at it anymore. It only reminded him of Caroline and how, for three years, she had carried it in honor of him, whilst he fucked another. It reminded him of how much he had failed Caroline. Not only as a man but as a…friend.
His uncle shifted and eyed him, his bushy brows coming together. He eventually broke the silence. “I understand why you didn’t go to your father when it happened. Believe me. You and he were never close. Especially after my sister died in that horrid, horrid event that changed our lives. But I wish you had come to me. For God’s sake, I wish you had told me about Lady Stanbury when it happened. I could have helped you. I could have done something. Anything.”
Ronan picked at the wool fabric of his trousers just above his own knee. Sometimes, just sometimes, he wished he would have been in that carriage with his mother that day. To spare him all of the misery he’d seen since that included his father staggering around senseless and Lady Stanbury riding him like the donkey that he was. �
�You were dealing with your own problems,” he muttered. “It was about the time you found out that sullied business with your wife. I didn’t want to add to your misery.”
His uncle rigidly pointed at him with the decanter of port he held. “Who was the one who paid for you to go to Eton? Who? Not your wastrel of a father who spent his money on everything but his son. I was the one. I was the one who paid for the things you needed. Why? Because you were the son I should have had. You were the son that goddamn wife of mine refused to give me because she was in love with some low-lying merchant son of a bitch I should have killed in a duel. Am I still bitter, despite the sixteen years that have long since passed? Yes. I am. Because she died giving birth to his bastard in my bed, and he lived. That son of a bitch lived. And it was anything but fair to her or me.”
Ronan sat there in angst. “I know.”
His uncle muttered something before saying, “And such is life. We all suffer in different ways. Some of us survive it and some of us don’t.” Hughes seethed out a breath not once but twice. Shaking his head, he trudged over to his writing desk on the other side of the room. “You want advice about how to go about telling Hawksford? And about how to win back your girl?” With the hand that wasn’t holding the decanter of port, his uncle took up a folded, cream-colored parchment from off the writing desk and approached. He snapped it out. “Here. She can help. I know she will.”
“Who?” Ronan’s brows came together as he slipped the folded, cream-colored parchment from his uncle’s thick fingers. “What is this?”
His uncle settled back down in a chair beside him with a huff. Holding up the entire crystal decanter of port in salute, he yanked his coat away from his belly that pushed against his gray waistcoat and said, “Just read it.”
Ronan unfolded it. He leveled his gaze at the printed letters that read:
Madame Thérèse’s School of Gallantry.
All gentlemen welcome.
Learn from the most celebrated demimondaine of
France everything there is to know about love and seduction.
Only a limited amount of applications are being accepted
at 11 Berwick Street.
Discretion is guaranteed and advised.
His brows flickered. He didn’t need to know how to seduce a woman. He needed to know how to keep one.
Ronan balled up the parchment with two mashes and whipped it back at his uncle, letting it bounce off the man’s booted feet. “You can be cruel sometimes, do you know that?”
His uncle took a long swig of port, causing the liquid to loudly slosh. He observed him over the ridge of the crystal decanter before lowering it to his knee. “You come to me asking for advice and I’m giving it to you. You can’t win back a woman you can’t even kiss. That, Ronan, isn’t normal. It isn’t fucking normal for a man to panic during a goddamn kiss. And I only know of one person capable of unraveling this. My Thérèse. What you just whipped at me happens to be one of the most exclusive invitations in London. Who better to give you advice than a courtesan? She deals with men from all walks of life on a regular basis and has seen it all. Hell, for all we know, she may have met a man like you.”
Christ. “So you’re suggesting that I go to this school?”
“Yes.”
“Are you serious?” Ronan echoed.
Hughes sighed. “She wants to help men like you, Ronan. Men who admit to having problems related to women. Men who will then be able to take her advice and make a better imprint on a society that doesn’t do much to tolerate or understand women. The idea is actually quite brilliant and one I fully support. She means to educate male perceptions about women that are usually brushed aside or kept quiet by society. She will be starting with a small group of men she is already in the process of personally selecting and plans to expand it from there. She will offer the first session May eleventh.”
Ronan’s lips parted. “So you expect me to go to a courtesan? For advice? Do you have any idea how wrong this all is?”
Hughes stared him down, his brown eyes sharpening. “Do you have a problem with the fact that she is a courtesan?”
“Yes, I do! I’m not interested in—”
“She fucks for money, Ronan. Which means you and she have a lot in common.”
Ronan felt the sting of those words and edged back into his chair. “I already know how to fuck, thank you,” he grouched. “I want to learn how to be…romantic. I want to be able to walk up to Caroline and make her knees wobble without even touching her. That is what I want.”
His uncle drank another swig of port. “You’re asking for a miracle.”
Ronan groaned and leaned far forward on his knees with his forearms. “I’m not going to some school for virgins.”
“Ronan.”
He stared down at the wood floor between his legs, annoyed.
“Ronan.” There was a creak of leather from his uncle’s seat. “Ey. Look at me.”
Ronan sighed and glanced up, meeting his uncle’s penetrating gaze. “What?”
Hughes leaned toward the side of his chair. Toward him. “Maybe it’s time you recognize that even at your level of experience with women, you know nothing. You may know where the tits are but you sure as hell don’t know about the power that beats behind those tits. And that, my boy, is the problem. Women want more. Women need more. And you don’t have more. You have allowed Lady Stanbury to strip you of everything you are.”
Ronan gritted his teeth until he felt the building burn in his jaw.
Hughes tapped a thoughtful finger against the crystal decanter. “Nothing in life comes easy. I thought you surely understood that much given everything you went through with your prick of a father who died during a drunken, sadistic sexual escapade gone wrong. Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t want to in the name of others. Sometimes, we have to swallow our pride in the name of others. Which means…you need to decide what matters most to you. Your pride or Caroline and whatever is left of your friendship with Hawksford. Because you know that man is going to hang you by more than the bollocks. Even if Caroline greets you with open arms.”
Ronan dug his fingers into the side of his head just thinking about it.
Using the tip of his boot, his uncle flicked the balled parchment on the floor, sending it skidding toward Ronan. “Go to Berwick Street tomorrow. I will let her know you’ll be applying for the school.”
Ronan cringed at the thought of being surrounded by nineteen-year-old male virgins all eagerly sitting at desks with their writing boxes and quills in hand. Shoving himself up from the chair and onto his feet, Ronan was quiet for a long moment, remembering how Caroline’s face had twisted in anguish when she had told him that he was not the man she had fallen in love with. It was pride or Caroline. And he, Ronan Henry Dearborn, the fourth Marquis of Caldwell, was damn well choosing Caroline.
Ronan rubbed at his unshaven jaw and gestured toward the parchment that was still on the floor between their chairs. “Is she trustworthy?”
Lord Hughes snapped his gaze to meet his. “Yes.”
Ronan shook his head given what he was about to do. He bent over and snatched up the folded parchment from off the floor. Straightening, he awkwardly shoved the balled advertisement into the inner pocket of his coat, burying it deep so it wouldn’t fall out.
His uncle smiled. “Go. Get some sleep. I will send Thérèse a missive tonight, explaining the situation, and that you will be calling on her. The best time to call would be in the afternoon. I suggest you arrive at Berwick Street at exactly two. I will notify you if that hour changes.”
Ronan sighed, already exhausted. “I’m going home.” He walked up to his uncle, leaned down and hooked an arm around the man’s neck. He lingered for a long moment, setting his chin against that gray head that was always there for him. “Aside from the fact that I am about to join a school for virgins, did I ever tell you how grateful I am knowing you are in my life? How grateful I have always been?”
His uncle reached up a
nd patted the side of his face. “If that is your way of telling me that you love me, know that you don’t have to say it. I know. I’ve always known. Now off with you.”
Ronan smiled brokenly, released him and stepped back. Putting up a hand, he left, more than ready to become the man Caroline needed him to be.
Lesson Fifteen
Embrace what I have created.
-The School of Gallantry
The following afternoon
11 Berwick Street
The clattering of carriages and the occasional shouts of various vendors selling wares in the far distance floated in the late spring air that smelled, not of countless flowers in bloom, but rather, of acrid coal smoke from surrounding chimneys.
It was a quaint but respectable neighborhood.
Using the tips of his gloved fingers, Ronan angled his top hat forward by the curved rim to shield his eyes from the bright sun. Letting his hand fall heavily to his side, he lingered outside the black iron fence of a pristine, whitewashed townhouse with shutters framing all of the large windows. It looked like any other normal townhouse in London. In fact, it looked like a bundle of respectability.
One would have never known there was a courtesan’s school inside.
He dragged in a breath and puffed it out. Caroline was worth it. She was worth this and more. Opening the small iron gate, he closed it behind him and jogged up the stone steps. The polished brass numbers ‘11’ beside the door glinted in the afternoon sunlight as he reached over beneath it and twisted the bell.
He glanced behind him toward the narrow cobbled street, waiting.
A small group of elderly women bundled in shawls strolled by with parasols, the ribbons on their bonnets floating on the warming breeze. They all slowed in unison as they passed the gate and paused. Several pinched faces eyed him and the townhouse. Quiet whispers were delivered behind gloved hands amongst them as they kept walking.