Master of Love

by Catherine LaRoche

  She’d wasted precious hours arguing with them and had had to bully Marie ferociously, but once she let her friend know of her suspicions regarding Dominick’s safety—and, she feared, betrayed something of her confused feelings for the man himself—Marie relented and helped with her plan. Billy offered to go in her stead or to accompany her, as he claimed the idea was far too dangerous for Miss H. to undertake alone. But the task seemed too delicate for the sometimes hotheaded boy. In the end, although he remained deeply disapproving, a direct command that she needed him to stay and watch over Daphne got him to cease his protests. He bought her the third-class ticket from the Euston station and the clothes she required to fill out the set she’d used before as “Callum Higginbotham.” He’d handed over the items with a silent glower, putting his own cap on top like a reproach. She’d then wasted precious funds she couldn’t afford to spare on an expensive emergency rush order to print one hundred broadsides at a press shop in Great Russell Street.

  She arrived in Edinburgh Monday morning with a crook in her neck and looking even scruffier than when she’d left London. The dust and coal soot from the voyage helped with her disguise, however, so she passed up the water pump in front of Waverley Station, double-checked her satchel for the broadsides, and headed into the city on foot. The traffic in Princes Street outside the station was chaotic, with carriages, wagons, passersby, and hawkers of all sorts out in the busy thoroughfare. As she hadn’t eaten since luncheon the day before, she stopped to buy a hot apple dumpling from a pie man with grizzled hair and a greasy apron. She got directions from him as well to the Royal Society of Edinburgh’s assembly house, where the conference was due to start that very morning. From the plans Dominick and the rest of the London party had made, she knew they’d arrived two days earlier and settled into the Oak and Dove Inn. They, no doubt, were well rested and well fed. She, however, was exhausted, starving, filthy, and eating her breakfast in the street, on a mad mission to protect the life of a gormless viscount who wrote brilliant essays he wanted no one to know were his.

  Why, she asked herself grumpily, am I engaged in an act so insane?

  Honest to the core, she feared there could be only one answer.

  She shied away from it like it was the plague.

  Munching on the pastry, she followed the pie man’s directions through St. Andrew Square and down George Street to the corner of Hanover, where the stately porticos and domed copper roof of the Scottish national academy gleamed in the May morning sunshine.

  Callista wiped her fingers off on her trousers—the requirements of hygiene were so much simpler as a street boy, she thought darkly—and pulled a broadside out of her satchel to review her plan. It was a simple one. Hawk the broadsides to the conference attendees, expose Amator Philosophiae for who he truly was, and turn tail back to London before Dominick was any the wiser.

  It could work.

  She hoped.

  She took a deep breath and walked up the building’s steps.

  A stream of gentlemen-scholars headed inside with her, in eager and companionable groups of two or three, making their way to the grand lecture auditorium. Her timing, at least, had worked out perfectly; the conference was about to begin. According to the program posted in the marble entrance hall, Dominick Avery, Viscount Rexton, distinguished patron of the British Philosophical Society, was to deliver the opening address. He would then introduce four professors for a symposium on Continental versus British philosophy due to go on until noon, when a luncheon banquet would be served in the Great Hall. As the first speaker of the day, Dominick was surely already onstage, so she should safely have two to three hours to distribute her posters in the academy’s lobby.

  Her palms were slick with sweat. She wiped those on her trousers too, before pulling out her thick sheaf of broadsides. The dumpling rolled queasily in her stomach, and she cleared her throat against nerves at the caper she had to pull off. Billy’s cap kept sliding into her eyes over the slippery mass of her braided and pinned-up hair. The poor fit seemed a good thing, however, as she feared her disguise wouldn’t bear close scrutiny if people peered too closely at her soot-darkened face.

  Luckily, as a street boy, she found she was invisible, although her broadsides caused an immediate uproar. She barely had to squeak out more than “Learn the true identity of Amator Philosophiae!” before conference-goers began to flock around.

  A rumpled professor tossed her a penny for the first one. “Good Lord,” he exclaimed, holding up the poster for his equally shaggy companion. “Have a look at this!”

  “Lord Adonis, Master of Love and Lover of Philosophy!” screamed the bold title. Under it, Marie had drawn a cartoon that mocked Dominick most viciously. Callista’s talented designer friend had sketched an excellent caricature, clearly recognizable as Rexton to those who knew him, but with his shoulders ridiculously broad, his jawline impossibly squared, his eyelashes preposterously long. Bevies of ladies swooned at his feet, yet he had eyes for none but “Lady Philosophia,” whom he ravished in his arms, her diaphanous Grecian gown scandalously awry.

  The broadside had turned out quite wonderful—or truly awful, depending on your perspective. Callista had wanted the association to stick, so none would ever forget the essays were Rexton’s—and no one else’s.

  “Who made these up, boy?” demanded one man.

  “It were reporters in London, sir, who found out the truth,” she replied gruffly, ducking her head. But the how and why of the matter seemed of less interest to the crowd, as more and more scholars asked for copies.

  “Here, lad, I’ll take two.” Another man thrust coins at her, practically grabbing the broadsides from her hand. “Listen to this, Hodgson”—he turned and read to the man beside him—“you’ll never believe it!”

  A small crowd gathered to hear the text she’d composed. “The mysterious learned writer Amator Philosophiae, author of five essays published over the past two years in the prestigious journal Philosophers’ Quarterly, has had scholars everywhere guessing after his real identity. The truth is he is none other than Dominick Avery, Viscount Rexton, popularly known as Lord Adonis, the Master of Love!!!”

  The crowd gasped—literally gasped—and she would have been pleased, except for the shocked exclamations of “That’s impossible!” and “Rexton’s no scholar; he’s a gadabout ladies’ man!”

  Please don’t let Dominick hear any of this, she thought, sending up a silent prayer.

  The man went on to read her list of the titles and dates of Amator’s five previous essays on the philosophy of love, along with a notice to look for his newest essay forthcoming in the journal’s next edition.

  Within an hour, she began to fear her plan was succeeding a little too well. She hadn’t counted on the extreme level of interest her revelation would arouse among the conference scholars. A steady stream of gentlemen came out of the auditorium, jostling each other to buy the broadsides before returning excitedly inside to show them to colleagues. A buzz was rising up from the audience in the lecture hall.

  She had only a dozen or so left when the crowd parted, first on a stunned hush and then to shouts of “Is it true, my lord?” and “Rexton, are you really Amator?”

  Oh no. Oh no. Please no.

  She started to run, but someone caught her arms from behind and wrenched her around in place.

  And then there he was.

  Dominick arrived in front of her, looking every inch the outraged aristocrat with haughty glare and tossed-back shoulders. She suspected she alone saw in his stiff neck and the whitened corners of his mouth the scared and humiliated boy who’d been caught out.

  She wished—oh, how she wished!—the floor would open and swallow her whole. She’d have done anything to avoid this moment, to avoid hurting him. Her last hope was that he wouldn’t recognize who she was.

  He stood in front of her, clearly furious, and then suddenly narrowed his eyes. “You!” he exploded. “What are you doing here?”

  She swallowed
. “What d’ye mean?” She tried to brazen it out, keeping her voice deep and her accent rough.

  It was a mistake. His face darkened further. “What the devil is going on?” He took a step toward the man holding her. “Let go, there!” Dominick pushed him roughly aside, with a glare like he wanted to tear out the man’s throat, then grabbed her arm himself and started pulling. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  The crowd had grown to fill most of the entrance hall. She spotted Mr. Thompson at its edge, clutching a broadside and staring at her intently. The men burst out with questions:

  “Rexton, are the essays really yours?”

  “How did the reporters find out?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  He turned toward them all, still holding her arm tight. She felt the tension radiate from his broad frame as he took a deep breath. “It’s true. The essays are mine,” he said. “I wrote them under the pseudonym Amator Philosophiae. Apparently, someone I trusted with that knowledge chose to betray my trust, and this urchin”—he glared daggers at her and gave her arm a shake—“is peddling the betrayal. I promise you I’ll find out why. Gentlemen, please carry on without me.” He bowed and began to stalk away with her in tow.

  “Wait, my broadsides!” She managed to grab her satchel off the floor and swing it over her shoulder before he dragged her out of the hall. An excited babble rose up behind them.

  “I think you’ve done enough with those.” He reached into her bag for the remaining copies and tossed them over his shoulder to the sound of a mad scramble as he pulled her through the doors. “They’ll become quite the collector’s item, I suspect.”

  She tried giving him a weak smile.

  He didn’t return it.

  “It’s not what you think. Not exactly.” She chewed nervously on her lip. This was not going to be easy to explain.

  “I have no bloody idea what to think, except you’ve gone insane.”

  As the same thought had occurred to her this morning, it was a hard accusation to deny. But she couldn’t go down without a fight. “Would you please let go of my arm before you rip it out of the socket!”

  He loosened his grip but didn’t let go. “You’re coming back to the inn with me, where we can discuss this in private. I’ve got to get you out of the public eye. Has anyone else recognized you?”

  “No! It’s a good disguise! It took me a long time getting ready yesterday, especially to rub all the coal soot in evenly.”

  “Oh, that’s just charming,” he sneered. “And your disguise, I’ll have you know, is pitiful. I could spot you as a female a mile away. You’re only making a huge fool of yourself.” He hauled her down George Street at a pace that had her jogging to keep up; the gray stone buildings of Scotland’s capital whizzed by in a blur. “I hope to God you’ve got Billy here with you.”

  “Umm, I’m afraid not,” she said, panting. “I made him stay back in London, to help out there. I’m here by myself.”

  “By yourself! God, Callista, anything could have happened to you! Where are you staying?” he demanded.

  “Nowhere. I arrived on the morning train and was planning to leave again this afternoon before you got off the stage. We weren’t supposed to meet at all.”

  His breath hissed out between clenched teeth. “You slept on the train? With all the riffraff? Did anyone bother you? Have you had any problems?”

  “No—I’m fine, Dominick.” Save for a sore neck from sitting up and listening to men snore all night. “You needn’t worry. All has gone very smoothly.” She swallowed hard at the black scowl he shot her way. “Until now.”

  “Well, you’re going back to London tonight, if I have to put an armed guard on you.”

  This last was too much. “You can’t order me around!” She dug in her heels as they crossed Castle Street, with Edinburgh Castle rising to the south.

  Her abrupt stop caused Dominick to collide with a costermonger’s barrow traveling in their wake. “Oi!” yelled the monger, clutching at his piles of gooseberries and currants to keep them from tumbling into the dust. “Watch where ye go, ye fancy tosh! Sum of us got t’work for our livin’!” The irate street vendor looked askance at Dominick’s hard grip on the arm of a smooth-cheeked street boy. “I’m not surprised a lordling as pretty as ye goes for the lads, but do ye have to drag ’em off the streets to serve yer pleasure?” he said mockingly.

  Dominick’s glance slid from the costermonger to her and back, his countenance flushing even darker with anger. He snarled a curse and took off with her again without loosening his grasp.

  “You’ll do what I tell you, my girl. Or have you some other plan for ruining my life? Your mischief isn’t done yet?”

  “I’m not trying to ruin your life! I’m trying to help you!”

  “Ha! This is the most bizarre show of help I’ve ever seen. Now be quiet before I strangle you. You can explain when we’re in my room.”

  He finished dragging her around the corner off Rose Street to the elegant inn that was the Oak and Dove. He marched her past the gathering lunch trade in the common rooms to his private chamber upstairs, tossed her through the door, and locked it shut behind them. “You will scrub your face and get out of those disgusting rags,” he ordered contemptuously. “You should be ashamed of yourself, appearing in public like a bedraggled chimneysweep.”

  She lifted her chin at his insults. “Turn your back.” If he could issue orders, so could she.

  Truth to tell, she was eager to clean off the filth. She stood at his washbasin and scrubbed hard at her hands, face, and neck. After her first pass with the soap, she realized she’d have to strip off her boy’s jacket and shirt to get fully clean. Although Dominick’s back was to her at the moment, stiff with angry disapproval, he would at some point turn around and see her in naught but the linen strips binding her breasts and her slim breeches.

  She shivered.

  Instead of shaming her further, the thought of standing so clad in front of him filled her with a strange sense of power. And with something more.

  But he was still prattling on with his scolding. “Callista, you took such risks—for your safety, your reputation! A woman traveling alone—anything could have happened to you!”

  To punish him for going on so, she did strip off her outer layers. “Nothing happened, Dominick,” she grumbled. “I was perfectly safe.” It suddenly struck her she was safe, here with him, no matter his present anger. And he was safe, too, now that his secret was out. The worry and strain of the journey were over. She’d accomplished her goal—more or less.

  A mood began to grow on her.

  He went on, tapping a foot angrily. “And for what? What were you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to shame me, the absurd Lord Adonis who dares to think he’s a scholar?”

  “I swear I wasn’t trying to shame you, Dominick,” she said hotly as she returned to scrubbing. “You must know that. You are a scholar—an excellent one! I esteem your essays highly.”

  “But you knew I didn’t want them made public as my own. Why did you force the issue, and in this ridiculous way?”

  “I . . . I can’t exactly tell you why.”

  “Why the bloody hell not?”

  His crossed arms pulled his finely tailored frock coat tight across his shoulders, and Callista admired again the breadth of his strong back. He truly was a most superb specimen of manhood. “Would you please cease your cursing? You sound like a sailor. And I can’t tell you because it’s a matter of honor. Someone else is involved, and their reputation could be at stake,” she said staunchly, wringing out her washcloth. If she were wrong about Mr. Thompson, she didn’t want Dominick’s confidence in the young man destroyed.

  “Not you and your damned honor! Who are you protecting now? When will you ever learn you only get yourself into trouble when you try to guard everyone around you, all on your own? And how can you talk about honor when you’ve dishonored my trust in you, in the most egregious way? I think you owe me an explanation!
”

  She thought it through, patting herself dry with a clean cloth and unpinning her hair for good measure. “You’re quite right. And I will explain all—I promise. Just not yet.”

  “You’ll tell me now,” he snarled. Then he turned and froze, speechless, as his eyes went wide. The dark, angry light in them shifted to something hot as his gaze swept up and down her length.

  She laughed and raised her arms to shake out her hair. “Or what? You’ll ravish me like some Barbary pirate?” The absurdity of the situation came over her, here in this inn room in Edinburgh. There was something very interesting about Dominick, flushed and aroused with temper.

  When he stalked over and pulled her hard against his chest, a thrill shot through to her core. “Don’t get fresh with me, missy,” he said. “I’m very angry with you.”

  “I know,” she said soothingly, and somewhat breathlessly, “and you’re fully justified.” She tried to sound contrite but actually felt quite liberated and rather . . . playful. “I am sorry. Truly sorry. Perhaps I can help you find it in your heart to forgive me.” She didn’t know where it came from, the boldness that had her reach down between them. But it felt delicious, as did the heavy weight of him in her hands.

  “Callista!” The expression on his beautiful face filled her with delight.

  “Yes, my lord Lover?” She giggled—when was the last time she’d giggled?—as she fluttered her eyelashes at him and ran her fingers over his rapidly expanding length. “Do you have some need with which I may assist you?” Even through the fine wool of his trousers, she could feel his blistering heat. An answering warmth pooled low inside her, and, more than anything else, she suddenly wanted to be with him again. When else would she be in a private room in a faraway city with a man such as this: someone who loved books as much as she did, a man so beautiful and intelligent and proud and tender he made her weep?

  Here they were, alone, together, now. She arched up to press her lips to his neck and breathed in his scent—sandalwood soap, fresh linen, and the warm musk of his exotic maleness. So different than the scents of her female household.