The other man departed, and with his departure, the situation suddenly seemed far too intimate for her peace of mind. “I should be going as well,” she said, but Denys’s voice stopped her before she could stand up.
“At least stay and have your dinner. After all,” he added, gesturing to the basket, “I can’t possibly eat all this by myself.”
Lola hesitated. Lingering here, having dinner with him would give Denys ample opportunity to probe further into her past. She’d left her real name behind her over ten years ago, along with that dingy saloon in Brooklyn, and the last thing she wanted to do was talk about it, especially with him. “Given the possibility of gossip,” she began, but he interrupted her excuse.
“It’s a bit late to stop that, as we’ve just been discussing. And as partners, we will have to talk about the Imperial from time to time, whether in front of others, or alone. We can’t do business together and simultaneously avoid each other.”
That made her smile a little. “This is quite a turnabout from two weeks ago. Now you’re the one wanting to cope with our situation.”
“And you want to avoid it. Why?” he asked before she could reply. “Because you don’t want to tell me your real name?”
“That just slipped out,” she mumbled. “I never intended to tell you anything about it.”
“An admission that hardly helps you in your quest to regain my trust,” he countered dryly.
She was hardly in a position to argue it. “What if we discuss my proposal instead?” she countered lightly. It was clear she hoped to evade any inconvenient questions by changing the subject, but he had no intention of letting her do so.
He studied her for a moment, considering his options. A gentleman should not probe into a woman’s private affairs, especially when she so clearly did not want to discuss them. On the other hand, after her rather shattering announcement at Covent Garden, she could hardly expect him to leave it there. He’d been trying to do that for three days, without success, and when he’d looked out the window earlier this evening and seen the lights still on over here, he’d seized the opportunity to find out more without a moment of hesitation. “Before we discuss your proposal,” he said at last, “something else needs to be done first.”
“What is that?”
“We have to introduce ourselves. After all, we can’t dine together if we don’t know each other, can we? The more you evade this,” he added, smiling as she made a sound of exasperation, “the more curious you make me.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she muttered, “I don’t see why it matters. There aren’t any legal considerations, if that’s what’s worrying you. I had my name changed by deed poll over ten years ago.”
He didn’t reply. He merely reached into the basket and pulled out her business proposal, which he’d instructed Dawson bring over with the sandwiches. He held it up, giving her an inquiring look across the table.
She scowled back at him, and for a moment, he thought she was going to refuse to answer, but after a moment, she surprised him. “Charlotte,” she said with a sigh. “My name is—was—Charlotte Valinsky.”
Lola, of course, was a shortening of Charlotte, and the first syllable of her surname echoed that of her stage name, but any similarities ended there. The impressions conveyed by the two names were as different as chalk and cheese.
“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Valinsky,” he said, and bowed to her across the table. “Viscount Somerton, at your service.”
That made her smile a little. “I’m not sure it’s done this way,” she murmured as she began unwrapping her sandwich. “Isn’t someone else always required to make a social introduction?”
“In this case, I think we can bend the rules a little.”
“To what end?”
“To give ourselves a fresh start.”
“A fresh start,” she murmured, and her smile faltered. “I seem to need a great many of those.”
“Two’s not that many, Lola.”
“I’ve had more than two, I’m afraid.” She didn’t elaborate. Instead, she gestured to the basket. “Is there something to drink with these sandwiches? I’m thirsty.”
Another diversion, he noted. “So, Miss Valinsky,” he said as he opened the basket and pulled out a bottle of beer, “now that we’ve introduced ourselves, why don’t you tell me more about yourself?”
She licked her lips, looking a bit desperate. “Why do you want to know things about me? I don’t see why it matters now.”
“It always mattered, at least to me.” Holding the bottle in one hand, he rummaged in the basket for a corkscrew. “But after our conversation the other night, I’ve come to appreciate that you were right. In many ways, I don’t really know you. And when I think back to our time together, I realize that though you were always very good about listening to me talk about my life, my family, my friends, you somehow always managed to avoid telling me anything about yourself. You shared almost nothing with me about what your life was like before we met.”
“Perhaps because I didn’t want to do so,” she suggested, and though her voice was light, he wasn’t fooled.
“I daresay.” He paused, one hand in the basket, watching her, waiting.
The silent scrutiny seemed to goad her. “For a man with such good manners, you’re being terribly nosy,” she grumbled. “Don’t the British consider it bad form to pry into someone’s private life this way?”
“Very bad form,” he agreed, and pulled the corkscrew from the basket. “But in this case,” he went on as he began to open the beer, “I think it’s necessary. Trust is important to any partnership.”
She laughed, but he didn’t think she was amused. “If you think knowing my past is going to help you trust me, you couldn’t be more wrong. The opposite is probably closer to the truth.”
“I disagree. It’s not what you tell me that signifies. It’s the act of doing so.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I think you do,” he said, “but I’m happy to explain. I want you to—what is the American expression?—go out on a limb. Take a risk. Show some vulnerability. If you want this to be a true partnership, you’ll have to earn back my trust.” He paused, watching her as he pulled the cork from the bottle. “Which means you’ll have to offer yours.”
“You want me to tell you something about myself? All right, I will.” She lifted her chin, bristling, rebellious, her gaze meeting his across the table. “I used to take off my clothes in front of men when I danced, for money. Is that far enough out on the limb for you?
“Sailors, mostly,” she went on when he didn’t speak. “In the taverns by the docks in Brooklyn before I moved to Paris. I sang and danced and took off my clothes, and the sailors would toss money at me.” She paused, looking steadily at him across the table. “The more clothes I took off, the more money I made.”
Denys managed to hold her gaze, for he saw the defiance in her eyes, daring him to be repulsed, but repulsion for her was not at all what he felt. Instead, he felt anger, anger at those sailors, at the tavern keeper, at her relations. God, she couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old. Where had her family been, and how could they have allowed her to come to such a pass? Why hadn’t they taken better care of her?
He thought of what it must have been like for her, to be young and alone and desperate, and it hurt, imagining her that way, with lusty men all around her. Still, he wasn’t about to veer off just because what she told him was hard to hear.
“Well?” she demanded when he didn’t say anything.
“Well, what?” He pushed anger aside, knowing the worst thing he could do right now was show it, for she’d surely misunderstand its cause. Instead, he looked steadily back at her. “Am I supposed to be shocked?”
“I don’t know! You’re the one who comes from a world of rectitude and propriety.”
“I’m not shocked, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, Lola.” He held out the bottle to her. “B
eer?”
She didn’t move to accept it. Instead, she scowled, seeming almost put out by the fact that he was taking her bald announcement with such equanimity. “All right, perhaps you’re not shocked. But you can’t possibly approve.”
“No, but why should that matter?”
She took the bottle from him. “It doesn’t.”
“But it does,” he said, noting the proud tilt of her head, realizing the truth, startled by his discovery. “Is that why prying answers out of you has been like opening oysters?” he asked. “Because you thought I wouldn’t approve of your past?”
“No,” she said at once, and watched him raise an eyebrow. “All right, yes, a little. Damn it, Denys,” she added, as he began to smile. “I don’t see what’s amusing about this.”
“You care what I think,” he said, and laughed a little in sheer disbelief. “Another turnabout. Life is full of surprises.”
“I don’t know why it’s such a revelation.” She lowered her head, staring at the bottle in her hand. “I always cared what you thought of me. Why do you think I never told you anything?”
He studied her bent head, his momentary amusement fading at her soft confession, and he didn’t know what to say. There had always been a part of her that had seemed out of reach, untouchable. Perhaps that had been the very thing that had always made him so determined to have her and keep her. And yet, in the end, she’d still slipped away from him.
“Anyway,” she said before he could think of a reply, “what I told you ought to have shocked you right out of your proper British sensibilities. Why it didn’t, I can’t think.”
“I suppose . . .” He paused, considering as he unwrapped his sandwich and began to eat. “I suppose in the back of my mind, I suspected you might have had some experience of that sort,” he said at last, licking a bit of tongue paste from his thumb. “But I didn’t dwell on it.”
“You didn’t want to dwell on it, you mean.”
“No,” he admitted. “Either way, I’m sure you had good reasons for the choice you made.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I just liked doing it.”
He heard the defiance in her voice, but he refused to be drawn. “That’s possible,” he said. “But I doubt it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Simple logic. If you liked it, I assume you’d still be doing it.” He nodded to the bottle in her hand. “Don’t you want that beer after all?”
“Beer?” She turned the bottle in her hand to read the label, and when she did, her expression of distaste made him laugh again.
“Really, Lola, you at least have to taste it before you turn up your nose. It’s from my own brewery.”
“Your family owns a brewery?”
It was another deflection, he knew, but he didn’t press her to return to the subject of her past, not yet. Instead, he decided it was best to give her a bit of room to breathe. “Not the family. Nick and I own it. We started it three years ago. My father put up the initial capital, but we paid him back.”
She looked at the label again and smiled. “Lilyfield’s,” she read, and looked up. “Why that name? Another partner?”
“Not a partner, no. More like a story. A wink and a nod to true love.”
“True love?” She looked at him dubiously. “And beer?”
“It sounds incongruous, doesn’t it? Nick was courting Belinda at the time, and she told him she wouldn’t have him because he was a lily of the field, and that if he wanted to prove his worth to her, he had to find himself an occupation.”
“A lady of the ton demanding a peer work for a living?”
“Belinda’s American. But it wasn’t just that. Nick was rather an irresponsible scapegrace—we all were back then, as you know. Nick was stone broke and thinking his only way out of the mess was to marry an heiress. So he hired Belinda to find him a wife and ended up by marrying her himself. I’m not sure if you know, but Belinda is quite a famous matchmaker.”
“I did know that. As I said, I read the society papers.” She began to laugh. “So now, Nick and Jack are not only friends, but also brothers-in-law. That must make for some rather wild family parties.”
“On the contrary, they’ve both settled down quite happily to matrimony. But when he was courting her, Nick had to prove to Belinda he wasn’t a lily of the field, so he decided to form a brewing company and make beer. His estate, Honeywood, grows hops, you see. My estate, Arcady, does the same, which is why he pulled me in to be his partner. We manage it together.”
“I see.” She lifted the bottle to her lips, took a swallow, made a face, and set the bottle aside.
He laughed. “Is it so terrible?”
Her answering look was apologetic. “I don’t much care for beer, so I’m not a fair judge. But it must be good.”
“If you don’t like beer, then how do you know?”
“She married Nick, didn’t she? So I’m assuming you two must have made a success of this brewery.”
“We have, actually. Nick wasn’t the only one whose life changed. So did mine. The brewery enabled me to pay off my debts. In addition, I started taking responsibility for my life. My father saw that I was serious about turning over a new leaf, and he began handing over management of the family’s investments to me, one by one. Along the way, I discovered—much to my surprise—that I had a genuine talent for business. Most peers don’t, my father included. He was happy and relieved to be able to hand all the family investments over to me. He’s quite proud of how I turned my life around, I think.”
“I don’t doubt it. You’re the apple of his eye.”
“No, I’m afraid my sister, Susan, holds that honor.” He leaned back with his beer and his sandwich, studied her for a moment, and decided to try again to satisfy his curiosity. “But don’t think I haven’t noticed this latest attempt to divert me, Miss Valinsky,” he said gently. “We were discussing you.”
“I suppose you want to know how I came to such a pass,” she murmured. “Taking my clothes off, I mean.”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“I did it for the same reason most girls do. I needed money.”
“What about your family?” he asked and resumed eating.
“My family.” She smiled a little. “My father was a Lithuanian immigrant, a butcher by trade. He went west, and he ended up in Kansas City, where he set up his shop.”
This was the first time she’d ever mentioned a thing about her family—another topic she’d always been adept at avoiding. “And he met your mother there?”
“Not exactly. My mother was from Baltimore. Miss Elizabeth Breckenridge, of the Baltimore Breckenridges. Very wealthy and very high-society.”
He couldn’t help being a bit surprised, perhaps because Lola had been so positive in her assurance that marriages across class lines didn’t work. “A girl of good society married a butcher? She must have been very much in love.”
“Love?” Lola laughed, but she didn’t seem amused. “She married him before ever meeting him. He wanted a wife, you see, and in the frontier towns, there wasn’t much of a selection. So he did what many other men did. He advertised for a wife in the Eastern papers. My mother answered his advertisement. They corresponded for a few months, then she married him by proxy and came west to join him.”
“You read about such things in penny dreadfuls,” he murmured. “I didn’t think they happened in real life. Why did she do it?”
“She was very young, not even sixteen. When I try to imagine her motives, I think she must have been very romantic, very idealistic, and probably a reader of those penny dreadfuls you mention. Her own life must have seemed terribly boring by comparison to the wild western frontier.”
“In other words, she ran away from home?”
“I think she must have done, but I don’t know for sure. The truth is, I don’t remember her very well. She left when I was five.”
“Left?”
“She went back to her people.”
“
What? She abandoned you?”
“I suppose reality wasn’t as romantic as the penny dreadfuls.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter. “Anyway, her father was a very powerful man, and somehow, he got the marriage annulled, very discreetly, of course. Which means that I . . .” She paused and looked at him. “I’m a bastard child. Legally, anyway.”
“If you ever feared I’d judge you for that, your fear was misplaced,” he said gently. “I couldn’t care two pins.”
“Yes, well, my mother remarried, a very wealthy man of her own class, a Mr. Angus Hutchison, and she had five sons with him.”
“I’m sorry.” Such easy words to say, and so inadequate.
“I went to see her once. When I was living in New York, before I went to Paris, I took the train down to Baltimore. She wouldn’t see me. She told her butler to tell me she didn’t have a daughter, she didn’t know who I was or what I was talking about. She wiped me out of her life, you see. Like wiping a slate clean.”
Denys’s anger, banked for a short while, came roaring back, and he vowed that if he ever returned to America, he would pay a call upon Mrs. Angus Hutchison of Baltimore.
“In America, one can do that, you see,” Lola said, breaking into his thoughts. “Start over, change your name, become someone else. It’s different here—at least, it is for people like you. If I had married you, there wouldn’t have been any way out of it, for either of us.”
“You think I would have wanted a way out,” he said slowly. “You think I would have abandoned you?”
“I . . .” She frowned, staring down at the bottle of beer on the table. “I don’t know. But either way, I couldn’t have made you happy.”
He tilted his head, studying. “I’m beginning to see why you think so.”
She roused herself, shaking her head. “Anyway, my father was shattered when my mother left. He took to drink. He stopped working, lost his butcher shop, he even sold his knives. He wanted to die. He finally succeeded. He drank himself to death when I fifteen.”
“Is that why you had no money?”
She nodded. “I’d been taking in laundry, singing in the local saloon, trying to make enough to keep body and soul together, and my father hadn’t been much help. After he died, and the rent came due, I didn’t have quite enough to pay it. I knew the girls who served the whiskey in the saloon got tips if they . . . smiled pretty, if they flirted. So that night, when I sang, I lifted up my skirt a bit—not much, just enough to show an ankle, and one of the cowboys tossed me two bits.”
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