Zachary took an agitated step about the study, his fists clenching and unclenching spasmodically. “I could not believe it when I asked Chambers where you had gone with Pip and why he was preparing that suite of rooms for occupancy.” Zachary laughed bitterly. “He is loyal to you, do you know that? It took every ounce of charm I possess and a downright threat of force to get the truth out of him.” He threw Royce a look of utter loathing. “I thought better of you! She was here under your protection! You were supposed to protect her from the one-eyed man, and instead, you bloody well seduced her yourself!” Almost despairingly he demanded, “How could you do such a thing?”
There was no easy explanation, nor was Royce used to explaining himself. Staring broodingly at the amber liquor in his glass, he muttered, “It happened! Let it go at that!”
Zachary swore softly under his breath and, without another look at Royce, flung himself out of the room.
Pouring himself another snifter of brandy, Royce glanced at the nearly empty decanter and grimaced. A caustic smile curved his mouth. He wondered grimly if he was drinking to obliterate the harsh reality of Morgana’s words or to keep himself from mounting the stairs and taking what was rightfully his—after all, he was paying for her, wasn’t he? Royce couldn’t tell.
The next morning he went to see George Ponteby, and upon George’s recommendation, Royce hired a respectable estate agent to procure a tidy little house for him. A house, he admitted cynically, that he intended to turn over to the delectable little slut upstairs who occupied a damnably inordinate portion of his thoughts, and that situation did not change as the days passed.
Telling her brothers that she would not be joining them when they left for America had not been pleasant. Royce had not spared himself anything and had quite bluntly explained the circumstances to them. He was surprised and yet not surprised when Jacko and Ben seemed to be not unduly concerned with what had happened, and the repulsive suspicion that he had been deliberately set up by the three Fowlers had taken firm root in his brain. Oh, perhaps they had not hit upon their despicable scheme at that very first meeting when he had caught her picking his pocket, but he was not entirely convinced that they had not immediately seized the opportunity to leave temptation in his path. Perhaps, Royce considered blackly, the one-eyed man didn’t even exist. It was possible all the incidents blamed on the one-eyed man—Stafford’s actions and Lady Whitlock’s offer—were genuine. Even the beating given the Fowlers could have been administered by someone else. Perhaps the one-eyed man was simply a fantasy they had concocted for his benefit. A compelling reason to keep their sister in his house. He had believed in the one-eyed man implicitly in the beginning, but now ... now that Pi—no, Morgana, had shown her true colors, he wondered bitterly if he hadn’t been spun a Canterbury story.
If telling the Fowlers that he had seduced their sister and intended, with her approval, to set her up as his mistress had been unpleasant, having to face his own servants with what he had done, even if he didn’t offer any excuses or explanation for his actions to them, had been even more distasteful. Though they were extremely well trained, Royce was sourly aware of a strong feeling of disapproval emanating from several of them these past days, and he was resentfully conscious that they viewed Morgana with a great deal of sympathy, laying all the blame for the current situation squarely at his feet. They would not dare voice their disapproval, and while they still gave him excellent service, some of the obvious admiration and affectionate esteem with which they had previously regarded him was missing. He didn’t really blame them in the least for feeling as they did—he had committed a black sin indeed, and no one was more gallingly aware of it than he!
Finishing off another brandy some ten days later, Royce was prowling restlessly around his study, cursing the day Morgana had entered his life, cursing his own folly for not instantly having turned her over to the Watch for incarceration in Newgate, and cursing himself for being such an immoral, lascivious bastard that he could not keep his hands off her! He was also paying a bitter price for his folly—these past ten days, he and Zachary had barely spoken to each other, and Zachary had taken to staying away from the house on Hanover Square as much as possible, his displeasure with the situation clear.
Moodily finishing off the last of the brandy, Royce wandered about the room, studiously keeping his gaze from the sofa where he and Morgana had made love. One thing was positive, he thought dismally—mounting Morgana as his mistress was certainly causing him far more pain and frustration than pleasure! He laughed harshly to himself. He was indeed frustrated, and Zachary’s defection as well as his servants’ ill-disguised disapproval had brought him pain, but—and this was most bitter of all—he knew in his heart that he would not undo what he had done. He wanted Morgana, and he wanted her at any price, even if it meant losing the esteem of everybody around him. She was his, and in his darkest moments he suspected that he would do just about anything, short of murder—and he wasn’t even certain about that—to keep her in his possession.
It was a painful admission. Until her advent into his life, Royce had always considered himself an honorable, fair-minded, level-headed man. He was not given to fits and starts; he lived his life in a sedate manner and could be counted on to be the clear-thinking one in a crisis. In the past he had laughed at the follies committed by other men while under the spell of an innocent miss or in the throes of a mad infatuation with some clever harlot, and had always considered himself aloof from such antics. Such was not the case any longer. He was infatuated with Morgana, he admitted sourly; nothing else could explain his uncharacteristic actions over these past several days.
Tossing ceaselessly in his bed at night, remembering vividly Morgana’s soft form thrashing beneath him, he was burningly aware that he had merely to walk through the adjoining sitting rooms that separated their bedchambers to find the source of all his discomforts. Find the source of discomfort and sweet oblivion, too. Night after night, his body tight and aching for release, he had fantasized about taking that short walk, about entering her bedchamber and climbing into that big bed of hers and seeking the sheer carnal pleasure he knew he would find in her soft, corrupt flesh. Only pride and a stubborn determination not to let her know how completely she had enslaved him kept him from doing just that. But oh, how he was tempted ...
It wouldn’t be long now, he reminded himself tautly, not long at all, until he could bury himself once more in the scalding warmth of her slender body. Not long until he could take his fill of her, slake this uncontrollable passion she had aroused within him. Thomas Grimsly, the estate agent he had hired, had called on him that very afternoon and had discussed a few of the houses that might meet Morgana’s demands. Royce was certain that in a very short time, perhaps only mere days, he would have fulfilled the last of her damned requirements. Soon she would have her bloody house, and if Grimsly thought him extravagant for buying his mistress a house of her own, so what? It was his money, and if he wanted to squander it on a greedy little strumpet, that was his business!
A mirthless smile curved his mobile mouth. He had already spent a fortune on the scheming baggage. Buying things for her gave him a curious pleasure—pain: He wanted her to have everything a woman could desire, even if she was a conniving little slut willing to sell herself to him, and he could not seem to stop himself from purchasing for her whatever caught his eye. But while the thought of her wearing and using all the items he had purchased for her delighted him, his delight was also mixed with a strong feeling of regret. Precisely what he regretted, he couldn’t say, but he could not dispel the odd feeling of pain that knotted in his chest whenever he thought of the cold, hard fact that Morgana was selling herself to him—that all of the objects he had purchased for her were simply part of the price he was paying to enjoy that supple little body of hers.
The arrangement with Morgana shouldn’t have bothered him at all—he had been keeping a mistress off and on since he was seventeen years old, and it had never before given him
a moment’s qualm that he was paying for the woman’s time and the use of her body. Granted the women had not been virgins, nor had he ever expended the excessive amount on them that he would on Morgana by the time he bought her the house she wanted, but ...
Scowling furiously, he tossed off the last of his brandy, determined to waste no more time thinking about the wretched, grasping little hussy, no doubt sleeping soundly upstairs, happily dreaming of the fortune he was spending on her. Consoling himself with the knowledge that soon enough, her nights would not be given to sleep, he left the room.
Departing the house in search of entertainment that would keep his thoughts off Morgana, a short while later, he wandered into White’s. The club was crowded at this time of night, and spying George and several of his cronies indifferently playing cards in one of the rooms set aside for such purposes, Royce joined them.
Curiously, after all the interest his first encounter with Morgana had caused, no one in the ton seemed the least surprised that he had made his little pickpocket his mistress. Oh, there were a few matrons who looked at him askance, and of course, there was the occasional congratulatory remark made by some of the more ungentlemanly gentlemen, but for the most part, society was indifferent. After all, these things happen, m’dear!
But if most of society appeared indifferent, there was one household in polite London in which the news of Morgana’s very existence, let alone the fact that she had become the mistress of a certain wealthy visiting American, aroused both abject fear and utter fury. The Earl of St. Audries may have originally taken an irrational dislike to Royce Manchester, but the news his wife poured with furious agitation into his ear when he arrived home at her urgent request from a stay in Brighton crystallized the irrational dislike into sheer hatred.
His gray eyes blazing with disbelief, he had at first angrily dismissed her words as the height of folly. They were alone in the handsome library at St. Audries house on Brook Street, the Earl looking tall and elegant in his gray breeches and dark blue, formfitting coat of superfine. Irritably pulling off his gloves after having listened in growing incredulity to his wife’s story, he replied peevishly, “Oh, don’t be more stupid than you already are, you silly slut! The child is dead! And has been dead for these past twenty years!” Throwing his fulminating wife an exasperated glance, he added grimly, “Good God! I was there when the bloody little thief tried to rob him. I saw the filthy creature then and I can tell you it wasn’t Morgana! ”
“That may well be—but at that time it wasn’t even known that she was female!” Forcing her lips into the semblance of a smile, Lucinda asked with cutting sweetness, “So if you didn’t know the child was female, pray tell me how you knew it wasn’t Hester’s brat? Did you even look at her?”
The Earl shot his wife a glance of dislike. “All right! I didn’t pay any attention to the creature, I’ll admit that, but I still say that you are hallucinating if you think you saw Morgana Devlin at Royce Manchester’s! Morgana Devlin died nearly twenty years ago! Can’t you get that through your skull? Perhaps a stay at Bedlam would clear your mind!”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d do just about anything to rid yourself of me, wouldn’t you?”
He nodded amiably. “Provided no blame fell on me, of course ... But then, you’ve always known that, my dear.” His eyes darkened, the hatred in them obvious. “You’ve known that ever since you had the bad taste to prefer my brother over me! ”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Lucinda burst out irritably, “don’t tell me you’re still harping on that! It was over and done with years ago, and you know it—besides, you never made your intentions clear until after Andrew started courting me.”
“Courting? Is that what you have deluded yourself into thinking it was?” the Earl asked sarcastically. “From my observation, it appeared more like a sow in heat displaying herself for a notoriously well-known rutting boar!”
Lucinda’s hands clenched into fists and her eyes narrowed with loathing. It was obvious from her stance that she would have enjoyed nothing more than actually physically attacking him, but as the moments passed, she visibly brought herself under control. Giving him a thin-lipped smile, she finally said, “You have your opinion of that time and I have mine.... That incident is in the past, but if something else from the past is not to destroy us, you must believe me when I say that the young woman in Manchester’s house has to be Morgana!”
If Lucinda had continued to rail at him and had even, as she had all during their stormy marriage, flung herself at him, clawing and kicking, Stephen would have easily dismissed her words and actions as sheer spite, but the fact that she had deliberately brought her formidable temper under control gave him pause. Only something of great importance could have caused her to forgo the pleasure of continuing this ugly confrontation. A slight frown marred his forehead. “What makes you so certain?”
“I saw her, I tell you! There is no mistaking those features.”
Stephen shrugged. “So. Even if she is the very image of her mother—it proves nothing.”
“She is not the very image of her mother—she is obviously a Devlin, too, but a Devlin whose features clearly bear Hester’s stamp. And that’s what has me worried.”
“Oh, come now, if she looks like a Devlin, she is probably one of Drew’s by-blows and nothing for you to get in a snit about,” the Earl said dismissingly. “As for looking like Hester, I think you are imagining things.”
Lucinda, her bronze-green silken skirts rustling, crossed the room to stand next to her husband. Her lovely face was filled with anxiety and frustration as she laid her hand on his arm and said urgently, “Stephen, you must listen to me! I am not simply trying to vex you. That young woman is real, and while at first one notices only the Devlin features—they are unmistakable—if one knew Hester, it would be equally obvious that she is her daughter. It is true she has the Devlin eyes and the well-known look of the Devlins, but there is something about the shape of her face, her nose and mouth, that brings Hester forcibly to mind. If it weren’t for the dark hair and those scowling brows and gray eyes, she would be the very picture of Hester.”
Lucinda’s grave manner as well as the urgency in her tone caused him to take a long, considering look at his wife. What he saw in her eyes and face caused a ripple of disquietude through his entire body. Whether it was true or not, Lucinda obviously believed that she had seen Hester’s daughter. He still did not credit it, but a note of nervousness in his voice for the first time, he said, “It can’t be—the one-eyed man promised me he’d take care of the brat. Why would he lie when he has everything to lose by not fulfilling his part of the bargain? No one would ever trust him again! He would be ruined!”
“I can’t believe he did it deliberately,” Lucinda muttered despairingly. “But something obviously went wrong. I don’t know what happened—mayhap he couldn’t bring himself to kill an infant and pawned the child off on someone, never dreaming that she would ever be catapulted into our midst this way.”
“My God!” Stephen cried hoarsely. “If the creature really is Morgana ... and it could be proven ...” A shudder went through him. Everything, he would lose everything—he might even hang if the entire truth of the matter came out. Once someone started looking into the events of nearly twenty years ago, who knew where it would stop ... what would be uncovered?
“Now do you see why I wrote to you so frantically?” Lucinda asked quietly. “Something must be done before others notice the resemblance.”
“I know! I know!” he muttered, agitatedly pacing the confines of the library, forcing himself to banish his fear and to concentrate on the most immediate danger. “It might not be quite as bad as we think.” At Lucinda’s look of incredulity, he added quickly, “No one really knew Hester as we did. Who is likely to remember her or even what she looked like? That old uncle of hers was her only living relative and he died years ago.” He frowned slightly. “I vaguely remember a miniature of her that had been painted for An
drew, but over the years, Lord knows what happened to it—I haven’t seen it in ages, at any rate. At present I believe there is only one portrait of her, and that is at St. Audries—it can be hidden in the attics and another portrait of some other ancestor substituted. No one is likely to notice the substitution, and besides, we are seldom there.” His face darkened and he shot her a venomous glance. “Only your bloody son enjoys staying there, and it is highly unlikely that he or any of his friends would even spare a look at the portrait gallery, much less realize that something was different. We have nothing to fear from that end.”
Straightening his shoulders, a confident expression now replacing his earlier nervousness, he added, “And if, by chance, this creature really is Morgana and her identity is discovered before we can settle the matter, no one can connect us to her disappearance—we can be as shocked and distressed as anybody. We had nothing to do with any of it! It was a dreadful time for us, losing first our dear sister-in-law and then her baby, too. We were simply too overcome with grief to know what was going on then. We were told the child died—why should we have believed any different? We shall loudly and vehemently proclaim our outrage that our sweet niece had been taken away in such a dastardly manner ... and we will let everyone know how overjoyed we are that the truth has finally come out and she has been returned to us.”
Reluctantly Lucinda nodded her head. “It will serve if the worst happens,” she agreed thoughtfully. They exchanged looks. “But we don’t intend for the worst to happen, do we?” she asked coolly.
Stephen appeared to study the mirror shine of his black Hessian boots. “No,” he finally said in a careful tone. “We don’t intend to let it happen.”
A bit uncertainly Lucinda inquired, “Should we arrange to meet with the one-eyed man? If he is unaware of what has happened, perhaps he can settle the problem for us—especially since he was supposed to have taken care of everything years ago!”
Whisper To Me of Love Page 25