Beloved

by Stella Cameron

  Her throat closed. “Thank you,” she muttered, loath to incite further unpleasantness. “Perhaps we should consider going home.” She could not look at Saber again, or at the gorgeous Countess Perruche, whom he clearly admired—if that was the appropriate term for his feelings toward the woman.

  “May I call upon Miss Ella tomorrow, Lord Hunsingore?” Pomeroy asked pretentiously.

  “I have appointments with the modiste tomorrow,” Ella said rapidly.

  “Perhaps you would allow me to accompany you,” Pomeroy said, his pointed teeth showing.

  “The devil she will,” Saber snapped. “What d’you think—”

  “Ella’s mother will accompany her,” Papa said, his dislike for Pomeroy evident. He turned his attention to Viscount Hawkesly, a handsome Cornishman, and his lovely wife. “Calum has spoken of you often lately. I hadn’t realized you were such close neighbors.”

  “I say,” Devlin said, stooping. “Some lady’s lost a gewgaw of some sort, what?” He flourished a piece of red chiffon aloft.

  Ella could not move.

  Devlin studied each of the females in the group. “Doesn’t look as if it belongs here.” He looked at the chiffon. “A lady’s topknot’s missing its crowning glory, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  Ella met Papa’s eyes. He smiled, and in his smile was reassurance, and a warning. She was not to react in any way to what might be a cruel joke, or merely a sickening coincidence.

  “Oh, dear,” Mama exclaimed suddenly. She reached for the wisp of scarlet material and took it from Devlin. “Now my surprise is out.” She tucked the piece into her reticule.

  Devlin folded his arms and grinned. “Surprise, my dear lady? Do you intend to appear at some masquerade ball as a harem girl? Dashed appealing you’d be, I’m sure.”

  Papa’s frown was thunderous.

  “Oh, no,” Mama said, laughing self-consciously. “Ella has such striking coloring, I decided we would dispense with tradition and have her wear red for her ball rather than something pale. You do not enjoy pale colors, do you, Ella?”

  “No.” Her own croaking whisper appalled Ella. “I am tired, Papa.” Poor, dear Mama. She knew the story and she, too, had overreacted to the chiffon. Red chiffon.

  She’d worn a blindfold as she was led into the room. “Ella.” The creature who had held her captive spoke imperiously and removed the blindfold. “It is time to take off your cloak.”

  Ella had clutched the neck of the velvet cloak tightly, but the voice barked out again, “Ella is an innocent. Such a prize. Take off the cloak, child.”

  The woman who had blindfolded Ella had issued a warning: “Do wot she says. Do it quick. It’ll go easier wiv yer if yer don’t fight. You’ll be sorry if yer fight.”

  “Take off the cloak.”

  She’d pushed the velvet from her shoulders and let it fall. And the men and women in the room—bejeweled and drunken, some half-naked, had gasped loudly. Men had begged her to come to them. Women had urged their partners on, demanding to “see more,” while some had laughed and said that there couldn’t be much more to see.

  Clad only in a dress fashioned of transparent red chiffon, she had stood before a room crowded with lascivious strangers.

  “Ella?”

  She heard Papa say her name and managed to smile at him. Anger toughened his lean, handsome face. “Does the hour grow late?” she asked him, at a loss for a more inventive remark.

  “Very late,” he told her.

  “Red chiffon for your ball, my dear,” Pomeroy said, his heavy eyelids drooping. “What a delicious vision you’ll make.”

  “We shall all look forward to that,” Devlin said heartily. “What say you, Saber?”

  Saber took a long while to answer, and when he did, it was without as much as glancing at Ella. “Will you all excuse us, please? I must escort Margot to her lodgings.”

  Holding Countess Perruche’s elbow, he walked away.

  Ella watched him go.

  “I shouldn’t care to wear red for my ball,” Precious said. “My parents would say it wasn’t at all the thing.”

  Mrs. Able chose that moment to put in a belated appearance. With her came a tall, stoop-shouldered man dressed entirely in black.

  “Mama and Papa,” Precious trilled. “Do persuade dear Ella that she shouldn’t wear red for her ball. Papa, you tell Ella and her mama and papa.”

  Devlin bowed his head. Taking advantage of the musicians’ enthusiastic play, he spoke quietly to Ella. “I don’t know what has happened here, but I want you to listen carefully to what I say. There is something not at all as it should be, and I mean to find out what it is.”

  Ella closed her eyes and shook her head slightly. He must not probe. No one must probe. And she would hope that the thing Devlin had found was, indeed, a gewgaw from some lady’s hair.

  “Leave it to me,” Devlin persisted. “And do not think badly of Saber. He is very fond of you.”

  Very fond. So fond he had left with a woman who was obviously far more than the object of his fondness. And he had walked away with that woman without as much as wishing Ella goodbye—after what had happened between them in this very house.

  Well, Lord Avenall had not heard the last of her yet. She had pursued him tirelessly before. Now she had even more reason to pursue him—at least until he had the courage to tell her he did not love her.

  Saber had not said he didn’t love her. He hadn’t said he did love her—other than as a friend. But she would not give up yet. She might not know a great deal about such things, but she was aware that men often sought the companionship of a certain type of female for comforts of a kind Ella could certainly guess at now. The thought of Saber seeking solace with anyone but her turned Ella’s heart, but she would be brave. She would prove to him that he didn’t need a ladybird because he could have Ella.

  “So deep in thought, Ella,” Pomeroy Wokingham said as if he were her conspirator. “And so pale beneath that golden skin. Let me take you for some refreshment. There is nothing like a little confection to put roses back into lovely cheeks.”

  “That’s another thing,” Precious said. “Red wouldn’t do a thing for someone with such a sallow complexion, would it, Mama?”

  Devlin offered Ella his arm, and she leaned gratefully upon it. Her parents moved closer together and began moving through the crowd. Ella and Devlin followed.

  “Well, it wouldn’t,” Precious said. “And you said you were taking me for refreshments, Pommy.”

  The last thing Ella heard “Pommy” say was “Shut up, Precious!”

  Chapter Eight

  Pomeroy Wokingham’s father belched and spread his legs farther apart. “Fool,” he spat at Pomeroy. “Never should have listened to you. Should have insisted on going with you.”

  Pomeroy leaned from the purple velvet divan to pour more Madeira. The drink slopped over the rim of the glass and splashed the knee of his trousers. “A pox on it,” he shouted, screwing up his eyes to focus. “Not my fault, I tell you. How was I to know that damned North fella would be there to turn her head. Then Avenall, in the name of the devil! Avenall, with his destroyed face. And she looks at him as if he’s a God!”

  The faces of gaudy putti ran together on panels that covered the walls and ceiling of the salon in the Wokinghams’ Grosvenor Street house.

  Father hitched his embroidered, Chinese silk robe over his bare, skinny thighs. “Should have gone with you,” he said into his glass, and sucked the contents greedily. “Never send a boy, and all that.”

  If only he didn’t need the old bastard, Pomeroy thought. If only he could find a way to get his hands on enough blunt to be free. He’d change things around here. And he’d have heard himself called a boy for the last time.

  The room was warm. Satin-fringed green velvet draped the windows, closing in heavy Jacobean furnishings. Ornate crystal lamps shone on father’s collection of statues. Nude females in sexual poses.

  Pomeroy wanted a nude female in a sexual pose. He w
anted a live one, and he wanted her now.

  “You should have found a way to get her outside,” his father said, and coughed, spewing droplets of liquor-laced phlegm. “You said Hunsingore was off talking to Casterbridge—and you couldn’t have your way with a bit of a female?”

  “I told you things went wrong. Then North was there monopolizin’.”

  Father waved his glass unsteadily. “North’s a nobody. New money. New money, Pom! People like the Hunsingores don’t waste even their so-called daughters on new money. I should have … What the bloody hell is that?”

  Voices were raised in the hall, one female, the other no doubt belonging to Boggs, the useless butler father refused to dismiss.

  “It’s three in the morning,” Father grumbled. “Damned impudence. Visitin’ at this hour of the night.”

  “Morning,” Pomeroy amended.

  His father tried to point at him but succeeded only in stabbing the air in numerous places. “Respect, boy. That’s what I expect from you. Respect.”

  “And I expect what you promised me,” Pomeroy said, tired of pretending submission. “I want that girl. She’s mine.”

  “ ’Course she’s yours. We’ll get her—whatever it takes. Any way we can. Tell Boggs t’stop that racket. Tell him he’s a whore’s arse. Tell him that.”

  “My pleasure,” Pomeroy assured him, but before he could rise, the object of his hatred entered.

  Muddy of complexion, with a bulbous nose and eyes sunken between beetling brows and fat cheeks, Boggs puffed as he approached his employer.

  “What’s the bloody fuss?” Father demanded, flapping a hand toward the vestibule. “You’re useless, Boggs. Nothing but a whore’s arse.”

  “As you say, my lord,” Boggs intoned, bowing. “There’s a young female to see you. I’ve told her to go away, but she refuses. Very insistent, she is, my lord. Lord Wokingham will see her, so she says. Says you’d want to see her if you knew what she wanted to tell you. Whatever that means.”

  Boggs never used one word where four or five were a possibility.

  Pomeroy sat straighter. “Young female, y’say? Name of?” Ella had come to her senses and decided to throw herself on his mercy. Her righteous papa had told her they’d better play along.

  “Name of Precious,” Precious Able said, giggling as she tripped into the room. At the sight of Lord Wokingham, she stopped and frowned. “Who’s he? I thought you said this was your house, Pommy.”

  “Get out, Boggs!” Father yelled. “Explain yourself, Pom. Who’s this baggage?”

  “Baggage?” Precious shrieked as Boggs, still bowing, closed the door behind him. Her red hair was freshly arranged and she now wore a swansdown-trimmed blue cloak over a paler blue gown. “The old man called me a baggage, Pommy.”

  “The old man,” Pomeroy said, smiling at her, “is Lord Wokingham. My father.”

  “Oh!” She dipped, and sent a pouting moue in Father’s direction. “I should have looked more carefully. I’d have seen where you got your handsome face and fine physique, Pommy. Good evening, my lord. I must have forgotten you were in residence. In fact, I need to speak to both of you. Pommy and I have become friends. I hold him in the highest regard.”

  “Do you indeed?” Father’s eyes rested on her breasts where they spilled from the low neckline of her gown. A row of little, blue-jeweled buttons strained against buttonholes the length of the bodice.

  “Pommy and I understand each other, don’t we, Pommy?”

  “Do you, Pommy?” Father asked, his teeth bared in a lascivious leer Pomeroy recognized well. A thrill of anticipation raised his cock against his trousers.

  “You were at our house in Lancashire, my lord. You visited my father. He’s the Reverend Able of—”

  “My father isn’t interested in such matters,” Pomeroy told her hastily. “I had intended to join you that day, Father, but I ran into Precious when I was stabling my horse and became, er, diverted?”

  Lord Wokingham chuckled, his belly jiggling inside the fine, thin silk of his robe. “What’s a clergyman’s daughter doing in London for the Season, then? I take it that’s why you’re here?”

  Precious undid the frog at the throat of her cloak and took it off. She draped the garment over a chair. “My mama and papa know I’ve got prospects. I’m their only child, and they decided to make sacrifices to give me a chance of making a— a happy match.”

  “Y’mean they’ve taken a flyer on some fool buying those big tits of yours for enough to keep the family in comfort.”

  Pomeroy raised his brows and enjoyed his father’s reaction to Precious’s satisfied nod. “Something like that, my lord. Can’t blame them, can you?”

  “Suppose not,” Father said. “Hardly protectin’ their invest-ment by allowin’ you to chase around London at this hour, are they?”

  “They don’t know. I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. I’ve seen what I want.” She dimpled at Pomeroy. “We’ll do very nicely together. And from the looks of this place, there’ll be plenty to spare for a little nest egg for my parents. Just to keep them quiet. If you make proper use of my possibilities.”

  Pomeroy steepled his fingers. The girl was no fool, yet she behaved as if she had something—other than a lush body— that might give her a hold over him. “Why should we be interested in an arrangement like that?” he asked her.

  “We?” she said, walking toward the fireplace, her hips swinging with every step.

  “Lord Wokingham and I. We share everything, y’know, Precious.” He met his father’s glittering eyes. Without his powder and rouge, the old man’s face was a flaccid mask of crazed purple veins.

  Precious turned to regard them, one by one. “Nothing would suit me better. I’m more than enough for two, I can tell you.”

  Pomeroy had already managed a brief sampling of what Precious was enough for—both in Lancashire and earlier in the evening in the gardens of the Eagletons’ house. He wiggled a little on the divan. He hadn’t sampled quite enough— and he was bored.

  “What do you want?” he asked, suddenly tired of talking to Precious Able. There were other uses to which she could be put—then quickly discharged. No one would believe any stories she chose to tell later, especially since she’d been foolish enough to venture out alone.

  “I’ve told you what I want.”

  “Preposterous,” Pomeroy said. “But I see no reason not to enjoy this visit, do you, Father?”

  “None at all,” Father said, his tongue passing over his lips. One of his legs swung away from the other, opening the robe to show him ready for the enjoyment he anticipated.

  “I’m sure you’d like it to be that easy,” Precious said, strolling close enough to stare at Lord Wokingham’s bared crotch. “Nothing wrong with your wares, my lord,” she said, idly making circles with one forefinger over her left breast.

  “Take your clothes off,” Father ordered, his voice thick. Pomeroy never failed to be impressed with his parent’s appetite for sex—even when he was foxed.

  “Now, now,” Precious said. The outline of her large nipples showed through fine muslin, and she applied a massaging thumb to each one. “I didn’t come here like the addle-pated girl you think I am. Oh, I want some of what you want, all right. Probably more than the two of you can give me. But there’s other things I want, and I’m going to get them.”

  Pomeroy stood and took off his coat. “Come here, Precious.”

  “In my own good time. You’ve got yourself in a bad way, haven’t you? Queer bungs, that’s what they say about you. Hardly a penny between you. Pinched purses. Empty.”

  With his hand at the fastening of his trousers, Pomeroy froze. “The devil you say.”

  “I do,” Precious agreed, tilting her head. “My papa knows the truth of it, because there’s those who’ve come to him asking how to get payments from you.”

  Lord Wokingham cursed volubly. “And the clergyman violated things spoken of in confidence,” he spat.

  “Bu
t not in confession, my lord,” Precious said. “Be that as it may. I know. You should be glad, because I’m going to help you.”

  Pom’s cock wilted. “Get out.”

  Smiling, Precious sauntered to sit on the divan instead. She leaned back on her elbows. “I want one of you each side of me. Cozy, that’ll be.”

  “She’s dangerous,” Father said.

  Precious fingered the buttons on her bodice. “Little me? No such thing. You want Ella Rossmara, because she comes with so much money you’ll never have to worry again. And I’m going to help you get her.”

  Pomeroy swallowed, and swallowed again.

  “Lord Hunsingore’s made it plain how much his darling bastard daughter’s worth. We’ll just have to make sure you and your papa are the recipients of all that lovely money. You, your papa—and me, of course.”

  Breathing heavily, Father got to his feet. Scarcely taking his eyes off Precious, he refilled his glass and then poured a second. This he took to Precious. “Drink it,” he said.

  To Pomeroy’s amazement, she promptly drained the glass and handed it back to Father. “Another,” she demanded.

  “Why should you be any part of this?” Pomeroy asked her. “If there’s a shred of truth to what you say, which there isn’t.”

  “Which there is,” she said. “I’m a part of it because I’m what you really need—not that gypsy of a girl who was probably born in a gutter. And I do know you’re living on loans. You’ve a pile of notes, notes that are going to come due and cost you everything you own shortly.”

  Lord Wokingham supplied her with more Madeira and said, “Pull up your skirts, girl.”

  She ignored him while she drank. “My mama and papa do know where I am. If I don’t return, they’ll call a constable. They’ve got a letter from me explaining. And if you don’t do what I say and take care of me, I’ll tell all of London that you’re ruined. And that you’re trying to get your fingers into Lord Hunsingore’s deep pockets.”

  Pomeroy trembled with fury. “You can’t assist me with the Rossmara girl.”