by Mary Balogh
He moved resolutely from the window and went down for breakfast. It was early, but she was usually an early riser. He was disappointed not to find her in the dining room. He had steeled himself for meeting her there. He had planned exactly how he would look at her and exactly what he would say.
He forced himself to eat two slices of toast and drink a cup of coffee. He dawdled over a second cup, but she still did not come down. Perhaps she was avoiding him, he thought. Undoubtedly she was, in fact. Perhaps he should simply leave. Even so, he paced the hall, his boots ringing on the tiled floor, for half an hour or so after leaving the dining room. His carriage and servants and baggage had left long before.
She had had a late night. It had been after two o'clock when he came back to the house not long after her. She was sleeping late. Or more likely, she was deliberately keeping to her room until he left. He had told her last night, had he not, that he would be going away today? He had offended her with his foolish notion of a joke, and she was not going to forgive him.
Well, he would wait no longer, he thought eventually. The morning was already well advanced. He was wasting precious traveling time. He strode into the library. He would leave the deed and the letter on the desk. He knew she looked there every morning for incoming mail. He would tell Jarvey to make sure she checked there.
There was a letter already lying on the otherwise bare surface of the desk. Had this morning's post already come, then? It was addressed to him, he saw as he picked it up—and recognized the small, neat hand that kept the estate books. What the devil? She could not face him this morning and so had written to him instead? He unfolded the letter.
“We each conceded victory to the other in the drawing room last evening,” she had written. “It was a stalemate. Our wager was void. What happened afterward had nothing to do with any wager. Pinewood is yours. I am leaving.” There was no signature.
Ferdinand strode to the door.
“Jarvey!” he bellowed. For once the butler was not hovering in the hall. He came soon enough, though. Probably everyone in the house had heard the summons. “Go fetch Miss Thornhill now.”
The butler retreated in the direction of the stairs, but Ferdinand knew it was hopeless. She would not have put that letter there before going to bed. She would have put it there, as he had been going to put his, as she was leaving the house.
“Stop!” he called, and the butler turned on the bottom stair. “Never mind. Find her maid. And fetch Hardinge from the stables. No, forget it, I'll go there and talk to him myself.” He did not wait to see Jarvey's reaction to such confused and conflicting orders. He hurried from the house to the stables.
There was no carriage missing but his own. No horse either. And the groom looked as blank as Jarvey had when Viola Thornhill's name was mentioned. So did young Eli. Damn the woman. Goddamn her! Unless he had missed something in her letter—but how could he have, when it was as terse a letter as any he had ever seen—she had given no clue to her destination. She had simply gone. Probably to London.
“Is there a stagecoach that stops in Trellick?” he asked.
“It used to come right down to the Boar's Head, m'lord,” Hardinge explained, “but there were too few passengers getting on and off there, so now it passes on by and just stops to drop off the odd passenger on the main road.”
“Or pick up the odd passenger who happens to be standing there?”
“Yes, m'lord.”
Goddammit!
She had escaped. She had slipped through his fingers. She had punished him in the worst possible way for what he had said last night—as a joke, for God's sake. He had made light of what had happened between them by telling her she had won their wager. She had punished him by disappearing without a trace, leaving him in possession of an estate he no longer wanted. Neither did she, it seemed.
Did anyone in this godforsaken place know where she might have gone? How the deuce was he going to find her so that he could stuff the deed down her throat? Before he throttled her, that is.
Devil take it, he had been joking. They had been making love—at least that was what he had been doing. He could not speak for her—he was pathetically low on experience. But surely she would not have taken such stupid offense if she had not been making love too. If she just had a spark of humor in her body she would have been crowing all over him long before he made his stab at a joke. She would have been teasing him to death about one of the few wagers he had lost in his entire life—and to a woman. She could have made much of that.
One did not joke with a woman, he guessed, wincing inwardly as he strode back to the house, when one had just finished making love to her. It was probably wiser to whisper sweet nothings. He would remember that next time.
Next time—ha!
The stagecoach guard riding up behind the coach blew his yard of tin as a signal of something—that they were approaching an inn for a change of horses or that someone was about to pass them in one direction or the other or that there were sheep or cows or some other obstruction on the road ahead or that they were approaching a tollgate. The horn had been blasting at frequent intervals throughout the long, uncomfortable day. Sleep was impossible. Whenever Viola had come close to nodding off, she had been rudely jolted awake again.
“What is it this time?” Hannah mumbled from beside her. “I'll give that man a piece of my mind, I will, when we stop next.”
A fellow passenger agreed. Another hoped that the sound meant an inn and refreshments ahead—he was starved. They had been allowed only ten minutes at the last stop. The cup of tea and meat pasty he had ordered had not come in time. A spirited litany of complaints followed.
Viola looked out through the window beside her. There was no sign of any town or village ahead. But there was another vehicle passing them—from behind. The road was not wide at this point, and the coachman did not draw his vehicle to one side or even slacken its speed to let the other pass. This happened all too often, she thought, holding her breath and involuntarily shrinking back from the window as if to allow the curricle more room to pass. The road abounded with discourteous stagecoach drivers and reckless, impatient gentlemen with their sporting vehicles.
This particular curricle passed at high speed. It remained clear of the stagecoach by a mere few inches. The gentleman plying the ribbons drove with consummate skill and with criminal disregard for his own safety and that of the stagecoach passengers. Viola glanced up to the high seat of the curricle. Its driver glanced down into the interior of the coach at the same moment and their eyes met for the merest fraction of a second.
Then both he and his curricle were past.
Viola sat sharply back in her seat and closed her eyes.
“The fool!” someone said. “He might have killed us all.”
What on earth was he doing on the road to London? Had he not read her letter? Had he seen her? Of course he had seen her.
Viola kept her eyes firmly closed as her thoughts and emotions swirled. All day she had been remembering the night before and trying desperately not to remember. But the only other thing to think about was the future and all it would hold for her….
The guard blew the horn again and a passenger cursed. Hannah scolded him and reminded him that there were ladies present. The coach was slackening speed. It was an inn this time. And the first thing Viola saw as the stagecoach drew into the crowded yard was the curricle that had passed them on the road ten minutes earlier. An ostler was changing the horses.
“Hannah!” Viola grabbed her maid's wrist as the steps were set down and the passengers scrambled to get out and make the most of the short time they would be allowed. “Stay here, please. You are not desperate for anything, are you? We will wait until the next stop.”
Hannah looked surprised, but before she could question Viola's strange request, someone had come to stand in the doorway and was extending a hand toward Viola.
“Allow me,” Lord Ferdinand Dudley said.
Hannah drew in a sharp breath.
“No,” Viola said. “Thank you. We do not need to get out.”
But he was not the smiling, good-natured gentleman she was most familiar with. He was the grim, hard-jawed, arrogant, demanding aristocrat he had been that first morning at Pinewood. His eyes looked very black.
“Hannah,” he said, “get down, please. Go inside the coffee room and order yourself a meal. You need not hurry. There will be plenty of time to eat it. The stagecoach will be continuing on its way without the two of you.”
“It most certainly will not.” Viola bristled with indignation. “Stay where you are, Hannah.”
“If you wish to scrap with me in the inn yard with a score of people looking on, I am game,” he said grimly. “But you will not be continuing your journey on this stagecoach. I suggest we go inside to the private parlor I have reserved and scrap there. Hannah, please?”
Hannah took his hand without further argument and scrambled down from the coach. She disappeared in the direction of the inn without even looking back at Viola.
“Come.” He had reached his hand back inside.
“Our bags—” she said.
“Have already been taken down,” he assured her.
She was angry then. “You have no right,” she said, brushing aside his hand and descending to the cobbled yard without his assistance. Her bag and Hannah's were indeed standing side by side on the ground. “This is bullying. This—” She encountered the grinning face of an interested groom and clamped her mouth shut. He was not the only one who had stopped work in the obvious hope of witnessing a fight.
“Runaway wives need firm handling,” Lord Ferdinand remarked cheerfully, obviously for their further amusement. He took her elbow in a firm grasp and propelled her toward the inn while she listened indignantly to the purely male laughter behind them.
“How dare you!” she said.
“It's dashed fortunate I caught up to you before you reached London,” he said. “What the devil did you mean by running off like that?”
He led her down a long, low-beamed corridor to a small room at the back of the inn. There was a fire crackling in the hearth. A table in the middle of the room had been set with a white cloth and laid for two.
“I would be obliged if you would watch your language,” she said. “And my movements are none of your business. Or my destination in London. Excuse me. I have to fetch Hannah and have our bags put back on the coach before it leaves without us.”
He ignored her. He closed the parlor door and stood against it, his long, booted legs crossed at the ankles, his arms folded across his chest. He was looking less grim now.
“Was it that stupid joke I made?” he asked her. “About your winning our wager? It was a.joke.”
“It was not a joke,” she said, taking up her stand on the far side of the table. “You said you were going to give me the deed to Pinewood today. Don't tell me you were going to do it out of the goodness of your heart. Or out of a pang of conscience.”
“But I was,” he said.
“Was I that good?” She glared scornfully at him.
“I decided it yesterday,” he said, “long before I knew whether you were good or not.”
Her eyes flashed. “Liar!”
He stared at her for such a long time that her fury evaporated and a cold chill crept up her spine in its place.
“If you were a man,” he said at last, “I would call you out for that.”
“If I were a man,” she retorted, “I would accept.”
He reached into a pocket of his coat and drew out some folded papers. He held them out to her. “Yours,” he said. “Come and take them. We'll eat, and then I'll reserve a room here for you and your maid tonight and hire a private chaise to take you both home tomorrow.”
“No.” She stayed where she was. “I don't want it.”
“Pinewood?”
“I don't want it.”
He stared at her for a few moments before striding toward the table and slapping the papers down on it.
“Goddammit!” he said. “If that doesn't beat all. What the devil do you want?”
“Watch your language!” she said again. What she did want was to rush around the table, cast herself into his arms, and sob out all her misery. But since that was not an option, she regarded him coldly. “I want you to go away and leave me alone. I want you to take those papers with you. And if it is not too late, I want to get on the stagecoach.”
“Viola,” he said, his voice so gentle suddenly that he almost broke her reserve, “take Pinewood. It is yours. It was never mine. Not really. I daresay the old earl meant it to be yours but just forgot to change his will.”
“He did not forget,” she said stubbornly. “He would not have done so. He did it. It was the wrong will that the Duke of Tresham read.”
“Well, then.” He shrugged and she knew she had not convinced him. “All the more reason for you to take the papers and go back home. I'll continue on my way to London and make the transfer right and tight. Let me tell the landlord we are ready for dinner.”
“No!” He had already taken a couple of steps toward the door. He turned to look at her in some exasperation. “No,” she said again. “It would be a gift from you. Or the prize for a wager won. I will not accept it either way. Things would never be the same. It was a gift from him.”
“Very well, then.” He was definitely annoyed now. “We will just say that I am setting matters right.”
“No.”
He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled and unconsciously making himself look more gorgeous than ever.
“What do you want, then?” he asked her.
“I have told you.”
“What are you going to do in London?”
She smiled at him even though every muscle in her face felt stiff. “That is not any of your business,” she told him.
His eyes narrowed and he looked menacing again. “If you are planning to go back to whoring,” he said, “it dashed well is my business. You were happy enough at Pinewood until I came along. I am not going to have you on my conscience every time I see you about town with the Lord Gnasses of this world. You had better marry me.”
Her insides somersaulted, and for a moment she stared at him in utter astonishment. He looked hardly less surprised himself. She forced herself to smile again.
“I think I had better not marry you,” she said. “The Duke of Tresham would devour you for breakfast.”
“I don't care a tuppenny toss what Tresham says,” he said. “Or anyone else. I'll marry whomever I want to marry.”
“Unless she says no.” She felt engulfed in a huge wave of sadness as she continued to smile. “And she does say no. You think you know the worst about me, Lord Ferdinand, but you do not know all. I am a bastard, you see. When my mother married my stepfather, it was her first marriage. Thornhill was her maiden name. You do not want to be marrying a bastard and a whore.”
“Don't do that.” He frowned. “Don't smile like that and call yourself names like that.”
“But they are true names,” she said. “Come, admit that you are relieved by my refusal. You spoke entirely without forethought. You would be horrified if I said yes.”
“I would not,” he said, but he spoke without conviction.
Viola smiled again.
“You are not going back to whoring,” he told her.
“How vulgar!” she said. “I was never a whore. I was a courtesan. There is a world of difference.”
“Don't do that,” he said again. “Do you have any money?”
She stiffened. “That is none—”
“And don't tell me it is none of my damned business,” he said. “You don't, do you?”
“I have enough,” she told him.
“Enough for what?” he asked. “Your fare and your maid's to London? A few meals along the way?”
That was about it.
“If you won't go home to Pinewood and if you won't marry me,” he said, �
��there is only one thing left for you.”
Yes, she knew that. But she felt as if the weight of the universe had settled on her shoulders again. Had she really been hoping that he would be more persuasive over one of the other options?
“You are going to have to be my mistress,” he said.
16
They were driving into London in Ferdinand's carriage, everyone else in their entourage having been banished to horse or curricle. They were sitting side by side, as far apart as space allowed, gazing out of opposite windows. They had not spoken to each other for more than an hour. It was early evening.
Ferdinand did not feel as he imagined a man ought to feel with a new mistress. Not that she had yet agreed to accept the position. But she had adamantly refused to go back to Pinewood. She had insisted upon paying for her own room at the inn and had tried to purchase tickets for herself and her maid on today's London stage. That was after breakfast. He had threatened to revive the story about her being a runaway wife if she tried it. He would take her over his knee in some very public place and wallop her a good one, and there would not be a man or woman at the inn who would not applaud him.
She had retaliated with an icy stare and an assurance that if he laid so much as a fingernail on her she would inform everyone within earshot exactly why she had run away from her husband. He would not care to discover how very inventive she could be, she warned him, but he was welcome to find out, if he so desired. However, she would accept a ride in his carriage to London, since he had caused her to miss yesterday's stagecoach, for which she had paid.
“I suppose,” she said now, breaking the long silence between them, “you have not thought this thing through, have you? I suppose you do not know where you would take me. We cannot go to a hotel. It would not be respectable. You cannot take me to your rooms. Your neighbors would be scandalized. I have no rooms of my own—I gave them up two years ago.”
“There you are wrong,” he told her. “Of course I know where I am taking you. You are going to be my mistress, and I intend to house you in style. But I have just the house in mind for tonight and the next few days.”