Two Little Lies

by Liz Carlyle

  Viviana turned her head away. It was not worth the fight. “I am yours,” she whispered.

  “Look at me, Viviana,” he insisted, quickening his thrusts. “Look at me when I do this to you. Sometimes, I swear, I think you mean to break my heart. Say it again. You are mine, and no one else’s!”

  She returned her gaze to his, defiant. “I am mine, Quin,” she said, her voice low and tremulous. “I am my own person. But I have chosen to be with you. There is a difference.”

  But Quin seemed not to hear her words. He had closed his own eyes now, and the flesh was taut across the hard bones of his face as he rode her more furiously. She felt her pelvis arch to his against her will, urgent and greedy. Oh, God, he had such a gift for this! She wanted to lose herself in this pure, physical act. Wanted to feel nothing but the joining of their bodies.

  He sensed it, and the urgency drove him. In this one way, at least, he understood her. “Si, caro mio,” she crooned. “Ah, yes. Like that.”

  Sweat had beaded on his temples. His face was etched with strain, stark and beautiful. “God, Vivie!” he groaned. “Oh, God, I worship you!”

  She jerked her hands from beneath his, and clutched at him, gasping for breath. He thrust again and again, harder still, then one last sweet, perfect stroke. Viviana cried out, her whole body trembling. The pleasure washed over her, engulfed her, drowning out common sense.

  He fell across her body, his chest heaving, the weight of him bearing her down into the softness of the bed. She stroked one hand down his taut, well-muscled back and felt tears spring to her eyes. “Oh, amore mio,” she murmured. “Oh, ti amo, Quin. Ti amo.”

  And in that moment, she did love him. She loved him with all her heart, though she had never once allowed herself to say the words—not in any language he could comprehend. Soothed and spent, she simply listened to the sound of his breathing for a time. It was the simplest of pleasures, she had discovered, to lie in the arms of a beautiful man—no, this man—sated and happy, and simply listen.

  But the peace, of course, did not last. Soon they were quarreling again about the events of last night. Quin had apparently taken note of every man who had so much as kissed her hand or fetched her a glass of champagne. It was foolish, almost sophomoric behavior which had worsened with her ascending fame, and Viviana gave no quarter. She had reached her wit’s end, and she told him so.

  Quin reacted badly. “God, how I hate the way we must live!” he finally shouted. “I have the right to protect you. I have the right, Viviana, to show the world that you are mine.”

  “Quin, amore mio, we have been through this a thousand times,” she whispered. “Such news would kill my father. He did not sacrifice everything to send me to England so that I might become a rich man’s mistress.”

  Indeed, her father had sent her for precisely the opposite reason. But there was no point in saying as much to Quin. It would only serve to make him angrier.

  “Signor Alessandri does not worry about this fast theater crowd his daughter runs with?” he retorted. “He does not care whose eyes are undressing you? And Lord Rothers! Good God, Vivie! His patronage comes at a price. He has bedded half the actresses in the West End.”

  “Well, he hasn’t bedded me,” she returned. “Nor will he. Nor does he wish to. My God, Quin, he was with his wife. What do you think happened? A ménage à trois on Chesley’s dining room table?”

  His mouth thinned, and he moved as if to turn his back on her. “Yes, go ahead. Make a jest of it, Viviana. Make a jest of me.”

  She laid a hand against his chest. “Oh, caro mio, you are so young!”

  He turned back to her at once. “Damn it, Vivie, I hate when you say that!” he swore. “Stop acting as if I’m some ignorant pup. I’m almost one-and-twenty now.”

  “Yes, and we agreed, Quin, at the start of this—”

  “I know, dash it!” he interjected, laying his hand over hers and squeezing it almost violently. “I know. I shall keep my word, Viviana. But I bloody well don’t like it.”

  A heavy silence fell across Viviana’s bedchamber for a time, broken only by the distant clamor of Covent Garden beyond their windows. Eventually, however, she rolled onto her stomach and propped up on her elbows to study him, as she had done so often at the start of their tumultuous relationship.

  Dear heaven, but he was beautiful, this half man, half boy she had come to love with such a breathless intensity. And she realized, quite suddenly, that despite it all, she could not bear to lose him. Even after all the harsh words—plenty of them, on both sides—she could not imagine a life without Quin. But was there any hope? She prayed there was, and not just for herself.

  “Quin, caro mio,” she said impulsively. “Tell me something. Where is life going to take you?”

  He lifted his head from the pillow, and looked up at her strangely. “What do you mean, Vivie?”

  Viviana shrugged lamely. “I am not perfectly sure,” she said. “Have you ever considered…oh, going away, perhaps? Abroad, I mean?”

  “Abroad?” he said bemusedly. “Good God! To where?”

  “To the Continent?” Viviana lifted her brows. “To Venice or Rome, perhaps?”

  He laughed. “Why on earth would anyone leave England?”

  Viviana felt a prick of anger. “Perhaps because it is a stifling, moralizing place?”

  “Vivie, it is my home,” he said, stroking a hand down her hair. “Let’s have no more talk of anyone going anywhere, all right?”

  “But what of your future, Quin?” she persisted. “What do you mean to do with your life?”

  “Live it, I daresay,” he returned. “What else is one to do?”

  “But have you ever thought that we might—” She stopped and swallowed hard. “Have you ever thought, Quin, of…of marriage?”

  His eyes widened. “Good God,” he said. “To you?”

  She tore her gaze away. “To…to someone that you worship,” she managed to answer. “To—yes, to me.”

  His expression gentled. “Oh, Vivie,” he whispered. “Oh, if only life were so simple.”

  She pressed on, fully conscious of the hurt her pride would endure. “Perhaps it is that simple, Quin,” she answered. “You say you cannot live without me. That you wish to claim me as yours. I ask you, how badly do you wish for this?”

  He cut her a sidelong glance. “Is that what all this hesitance is about?” he asked. “Are you holding out for marriage? Oh, Viviana! You knew I couldn’t marry you when we started this. Didn’t you?”

  Viviana shook her head. “I am not holding out, Quin,” she answered. “It is not like that.”

  But Quin was still looking at her incredulously. “For God’s sake, Viviana, I’m heir to an earldom,” he continued. “Have you no idea what an obligation that is? When I must finally wed—which will be at least a decade hence, I pray—Mamma will marry me off to some pale, flaxen-haired English miss with a slew of titles hanging off her papa’s name and fifty thousand pounds in the three-percents, and I shall have little say in the matter.”

  Viviana’s eyes narrowed. “Oh! So I am too old and too foreign and too bourgeois for the grand Hewitt dynasty? Is that it?”

  “Now, Vivie,” he chided, sitting up fully. “I never said that.”

  “I think you hardly need to!” Viviana curled one fist into the bedsheet, grappling with the nausea again. Why in God’s name had she raised such a topic? He was right. She had known all along this would not last. But she had asked, and there was no backing away from it now.

  “In a few weeks, Quin, you will be one-and-twenty,” she said, her insides trembling with rage. “Then, whom you choose to marry will be up to you. Do not dare pretend otherwise. You insult my intelligence.”

  “Aww, Vivie!” He screwed up his face like the impatient young man he was. “We have our whole lives before us! I am not marrying anyone anytime soon. Why spoil what we have now?”

  She gave him a mordant smile. “Si, it is a tedious business, this future, is it n
ot?”

  Quin did not catch the sarcasm. “That’s my girl,” he said, kissing her again. “Look, Vivie, I brought you something. Something which will cheer you up.” He climbed from the bed and rummaged through his coat pockets, returning with a small box. “Open it,” he commanded.

  Viviana lifted the lid and gasped. The box held a ring; a wide, ornately carved band set with one large, square-cut ruby. It was a truly magnificent piece of jewelry. Viviana started to hand it back. Why did he insist on showering her with gifts? What she wanted was something his money could not buy—and this ring had undoubtedly cost Quin far more dearly than even he could afford.

  Quin pushed the box back at her. “Put it on, Vivie,” he insisted. “Put it on, but just promise me one thing.”

  Reluctantly, Viviana slid the ring onto her right hand. “I…yes, I shall try.”

  “Promise me you will keep this one,” he said. “Promise me you will never sell it, and that you will wear it once in a while, and think of me.”

  Viviana was still staring at the ring, and blinking back tears of grief and rage and love and about a hundred other conflicting emotions. “I never stop thinking of you, Quin,” she whispered.

  “As I never stop thinking of you, Vivie.” But there was mild skepticism in his eyes. “Now, what time are you due at the theater?”

  “Six,” she said hollowly.

  “Yes, and I must go soon,” he went on. “We are wasting precious time when we could be enjoying one another. I could be telling you, Viviana, that you are the most beautiful creature on this earth. That your eyes make my breath seize, and that your breasts nearly make my heart stop. Lie down, my dear, and let me make love to you again.”

  So it was lovemaking now. Not his earlier, more vulgar phrase.

  She should have refused him. She should have told him to leave her bed that very moment. But the memory of a sweeter, happier time had drawn painfully near, and the future stretched out bleakly before her. So Viviana turned onto her back and let him join his strong, vigorous body to hers one last time.

  Quin rose from her bed some hours later, his mood improved, but his gaze still wary. She watched him dress, drinking in his lithe, slender beauty, and wondering, not for the first time, what he would look like in the full splendor of manhood. Already, his shoulders were wide, and his face shadowed with a stubble which matched his heavy, dark hair.

  He dragged his shirt on over his head, and she marveled again at the perfection which was his face. That patrician forehead, the thin blade of a nose, lean, high-boned cheeks, and the most stunning feature of all, eyes the color of the Aegean at dusk. Oh, it was no wonder he had caught her eye. But how had she been such a fool as to let him steal her heart?

  She tried to watch dispassionately as he drew on his stockings and hitched up his trousers. It was not anger she felt toward him, no. It was more of a resigned acceptance. Nor did she blame him. It was her own passionate, romantic nature which had got her into this. Ah, but one could not sing without passion. And one could not truly live without romance. Viviana accepted the fact that, on this earth, one took the bad with the good, and lived a full life in return.

  He pulled on his coat, then leaned across the bed, setting both hands on the mattress. He held her gaze for a time, his eyes so intense, she felt, fleetingly, as though he could look into her soul. “Tell me something, my dear,” he said quietly. “Do you love me?”

  It surprised her a little, for it was a question he had never asked. And she knew what was in her heart, just as surely as she knew what her answer must be. She had at least a little pride left. “No, Quin,” she answered. “I do not love you. And you do not love me.”

  He looked at her with the eyes of an old man. “No. I suppose I do not.”

  She shrugged. “It is best, is it not?”

  He straightened abruptly. “Well, Viviana,” he said. “At least you are honest.”

  But she was not honest. She had just told him a blatant lie. And as she watched him stride toward the door, she wondered, fleetingly, if perhaps he just done the same.

  No. No, it was not possible.

  The door slammed behind him. Viviana exhaled the breath which she had been holding, then closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry. She listened to the heavy tread of his footsteps as he left her. One warm tear rolled awkwardly down her nose, then landed on her pillow with a soft plop!

  Abruptly, she sat up in bed. No, by God, she would not cry. Not for him. Not for anyone. Not even for herself. One tear was too many—and if another followed, there might well be no end to it.

  Lucy came back into the room just as Viviana was drawing on her dressing gown. “Shall I tidy up now, miss?” she asked.

  “Grazie.” Viviana went to the small writing desk beneath the window. “Tonight is my last performance as Konstanze, Lucy,” she said, unlocking the little drawer which held her meager savings.

  “I know, miss,” said the maid as she began to neaten the bed. “It’s been a grand run, hasn’t it? What will you do next, I wonder? Pr’haps you ought to go down to Brighton for a rest. Perhaps Mr. Hewitt would take you? ’Tis beautiful there, I’ve heard.”

  Viviana was already relocking the drawer. “Actually, Lucy, I’m to go home tomorrow,” she said, handing a pitifully small roll of banknotes to the maid. “Here. I wish you to have this. Lord Chesley need know nothing of it.”

  The girl looked at her incredulously and pushed Viviana’s hand away. “Why, I can’t take your money, miss!” she said. “Besides, it ain’t like you’ve got it to spare—which heaven knows it’s not my place to say, but there. I’ve said it.”

  “Lucy!” she chided.

  “What?” said the girl. “Do you think I don’t know, miss, that you’ve been sending every spare penny home—and selling your jewelry and eating day-old bread, too? Besides that, Lord Chesley pays me well enough to look after you, which I’ve been glad to do.”

  With a wistful smile, Viviana put the money in the maid’s hand and forcibly curled her fingers around it. “Take it,” she insisted. “Where I am to go, neither Papà nor I shall need it. And I wish you to go back to Lord Chesley’s estate and marry that handsome footman of yours. This money is my wedding gift. You must buy a cradle, a very beautiful cradle, for your firstborn, and think of me when you use it, si?”

  Lucy uncurled her hand and stared at the banknotes. “But how can you just up and leave England, miss?” she asked. “What’s to become of you, so far away, and in such a foreign place?”

  Inwardly, Viviana’s smile deepened. The poor girl was so naively provincial—just like Quin. “It is my home,” she said quietly. “It is time I returned to it. Now, you must wish me happy, Lucy. I have just learnt that I, too, am about to be married.”

  The girl’s face broke into an impossibly wide smile. “Oh, lawks, miss!” she cried, throwing up both hands. “I just knew it! I just knew Mr. Hewitt would do the right thing, soon you told him! I just knew it would all come aright somehow.”

  Viviana felt a hot, urgent pressure well behind her eyes, and turned at once back to her desk. “I think, Lucy, that you misunderstand,” she said, pretending to neaten her pens and papers. “I am returning home to marry someone who used to…well, someone I used to know.”

  “Oh, no, miss!” She felt Lucy touch her lightly on the arm. “But…but what about Mr. Hewitt?”

  Viviana regained her composure, and turned around again. Opera required one to be not just a good singer, but a competent actress as well. “Oh, I think we have come to an understanding, he and I,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “Well, I can’t see what it could be!” said the girl.

  “Hush, Lucy.” Viviana set her hands on the maid’s shoulders, and swiftly kissed both her cheeks. “I am leaving England, my faithful friend. Do not grieve for me. All good things must come to an end, si?”

  One

  In which Lord Chesley plans a Grand Aventure.

  Autumn, 1830

  A h, well, al
l good things must come to an end,” murmured the Marquis of Devellyn as he peered into the bay window of Piccadilly’s most exclusive jeweler. “Try to look upon marriage, my friend, as the beginning of a new life; one which is rich with possibilities.”

  “Yes, and a bloody awful lot of impossibilities, too,” said the Earl of Wynwood.

  Devellyn grinned slyly. “Such as?”

  “Such as my setting up Ilsa Karlsson in a quiet little house in Soho, which has long been a notion of mine.”

  Devellyn nodded. “A tragedy,” he agreed. “Though Ilsa is a touch above your usual fare, old boy. In any case, we are here to buy a wedding gift for your bride-to-be, are we not?”

  Wynwood pointed at a bracelet set with large red cabochons. “Well, what of that one?” he asked. “I rather like the color. Rubies, are they?”

  “Merely garnets, I fear,” said Devellyn. “So do not even think of it; neither the garnets nor the talented Miss Karlsson. The cheaper stones your new bride may not notice, but that dragon of an aunt of hers most assuredly will. And Ilsa, well, she never goes unnoticed. For you, Quin, it must be real rubies and true fidelity, I am afraid.”

  Lord Wynwood made a pained expression, and seized hold of the door handle. “Well, come along, then,” he said. “We might as well go in and get something.”

  A little bell jangled high overhead as they entered. A fulsome young woman was polishing away at the expanse of glass which topped the wooden cases, and the tang of vinegar was sharp in the air. “Why, good afternoon, my lord,” she said, flashing Devellyn a knowing smile. “And Mr. Hewitt, is it not? I trust you both are well?”

  “Fine as a five pence, ma’am,” said the marquis cheerfully. “But Mr. Hewitt is Lord Wynwood now. Accordingly, you may charge him extra.”

  The woman laughed throatily. “My lord, how you do jest!” she said. “I fear my husband is out on an errand. May I help you until he returns?”