Private Passions

by Felicia Greene

  ‘Oh, sir. Stop.’ She playfully batted him away; he caught her palm, kissing it as she laughed. ‘You have already seen me at my most abandoned. I cannot bear to have you watch the aftermath.’

  Victor’s brow furrowed. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘No.’ Isabella sighed happily. ‘Look at me forever.’

  Forever. She hadn’t meant to say the word, but it came so naturally. She sighed again as Victor’s mouth covered hers; the kiss was light, deceptively light, but full of all the sentiment she felt building in her own soul.

  Had she really told him that she loved him? Good; she knew it whole-heartedly, with the conviction of the truly infatuated. The fact that Victor had not replied… well, she could put that aside for a little while.

  Had it all happened too quickly? Of course. But Isabella knew how quickly fortunes could change, and was determined to seize all the happiness she could.

  For several long, golden minutes she bathed in the feeling of being adored, relaxing into the pleasure in the same way a cat sleeps joyfully in a sunbeam. Why, they could stay in this immensely comfortable bed, trading kisses and murmurs and more kisses, kisses on lips and wrists and the soft corners of each other’s mouths, for days and days at a time…

  … Until they had to stop. Until the future came upon them, and they were forced to act.

  ‘What do we do?’ Isabella swallowed as she looked at Victor, the real world bleeding into the edges of her happiness like frost across a window-pane. ‘I… I cannot be without you. Not now.’

  ‘Do you really think I could be without you?’ Victor’s shy smile gave her courage. ‘I would fare much worse than you.’

  ‘Nonsense. You would ride, and hunt, and perhaps find a war to fight in. Or you would go and brood in a castle on the coast, with a noble spaniel resting its head on your knee.’ Isabella shook her head, leaning back in her pillows. ‘Ladies are not given space and time to brood. I would be forced to paint on my proud face, and dance all night.’ She shuddered. ‘And marry someone perfectly awful.’

  She gasped, laughing, as Victor pulled her into his arms. He held her close, his voice a low, soft murmur in her ear as he stroked her hair.

  ‘You will not have to do that.’ He kissed her temple. ‘Not while I live.’

  ‘I don’t particularly wish to do it after you die, come to that.’ Isabella buried her face in his strong shoulder, blinking away a sudden, unexpected tear. ‘Ladies are allowed a little time to brood by tombs. Perhaps I can stretch my allotted brooding to a period of years, and die conveniently of a chill before I have to wear colours again.’

  ‘Now, now. As the gloomiest man in any room—well, when Lord Grancourt is otherwise indisposed—I insist we do not speak of such a future.’ Victor teasingly bit her earlobe; Isabella laughed gratefully. ‘I am yours. Think of that, if you must think of anything.’

  ‘Yes…’ Isabella realised, with a small chill of sadness, that the time had come. ‘But I find myself thinking that I have said important words, sir—three very important words, that remain unanswered.’

  Victor, his face suddenly grave, looked away. Isabella, her chill deepening as fear crept into her, couldn’t help but keep speaking.

  ‘I understand that both the speed and strength of my sentiments must be ludicrous to you. Please feel free to dismiss them as part of the foolishness that comes with youth, and the first flush of surprise—of novelty.’

  ‘I do not think them ludicrous.’ The quiet seriousness of Victor’s tone calmed her. ‘I loved you from the first. Before we had even been in the same room. Everything I have come to know of you since then, and every part of yourself you have shown me, has merely confirmed the strength of my original impression.’

  ‘Then why can you not say it?’ Isabella looked at him beseechingly. ‘Here and now, to me?’

  ‘Because…’ Victor looked down, a shadow passing over his expression. ‘Because if I am truthful to you, then I am false to my friend.’

  ‘I understand that this has something to do with your friendship with Lord Wetton. A trust… a confidence.’ Isabella reached for his hand, stroking it. ‘I cannot precisely understand it, myself, but—’

  ‘He saved my life.’ Victor’s voice had grown quieter. ‘He saved me from the beast that attacked me.’

  Isabella raised her head from the pillows. ‘…I see.’

  She had deliberately never spoken of Lord Wetton in company. She had never dared to ask questions of her friends; she had even absented herself when they had begun to speak of the Bad Dukes Club. That way, she had reasoned, she would never know anything that would mar her original impression of Victor Bale… but this, this fact, would have been useful to know.

  ‘That debt… it is difficult to repay.’ Victor turned back to her; Isabella’s eyes widened as she saw a glimmer of tears. ‘Especially to a man who grows less and less deserving every day.’

  ‘I cannot understand how that would feel. It would be presumptuous of me to even attempt such an understanding.’ Isabella rested her head against Victor’s shoulder, wishing she had known before. Now, his loyalty was just as irritating, but it was more than understandable.

  ‘I must speak to him. I tried to speak to him today, but the man was making all sorts of arrangements. Arrangements for a proposal, I believe.’ Victor’s brow furrowed. ‘He was even looking at a church.’

  ‘Oh, Lord.’ Isabella buried her face in the pillow, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. ‘Then you are going to have to speak to him soon.’

  ‘I will speak to him tomorrow morning. I will follow him wherever he goes.’ Victor’s voice was newly firm. ‘This will be resolved.’

  ‘Good. Then I will invent an engagement for the both of you, in company, tomorrow night—a night of whist, or something. Anything’ Isabella slowly emerged from the pillow, rubbing her forehead. ‘This way, our courtship can become public as quickly and smoothly as possible.’

  ‘Public?’ There was a slight touch of fear in Victor’s expression; Isabella watched his hand dart unknowingly to the scars on his cheek. ‘It will mean scandal for you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Isabella slowly drew away. ‘But it will mean sadness for me, the most excruciating sadness, if this illusion of Lord Wetton’s sentiments is allowed to continue.’

  ‘And if Lord Wetton does not agree?’

  Isabella tried not to sound too frustrated. ‘You will make him agree.’

  There was a moment of slightly awkward silence. Isabella lay still, suddenly full of the fear she had been trying to keep at bay; the fear of old loyalties drowning new sentiments before they could begin. It was only as Victor slowly pulled her back to him, his mouth soft and lingering on hers, that she found the peace that came with being close to him.

  ‘I will solve this.’ His murmur in her ear was full of feeling; Isabella tried to believe it. ‘I will.’

  Simpkins was grey and rain-lashed in the early morning; Victor growled as he ducked through the door, wishing the place had a covered entrance. He slipped past the sleeping doorman, made his way to the room full of basins and fresh water, and made himself vaguely presentable with a bar of soap and a shirt stolen from a nearby rack.

  He didn’t have enough time. He should have told Isabella to organise an engagement in three day’s time—not rush everything by making it tonight. He was ready to declare his love for her in the middle of the street, if necessary, but the conversation with Lord Wetton could easily become ugly. The man could call him out—there could be a duel—

  Wait. Victor stopped in his tracks. He was ready to declare his love for Isabella Thurgood in public… where had this sudden flowering confidence come from?

  From her. He smiled to himself, in the cigar-scented darkness of his empty Club. He let love warm him for a few precious seconds, giving him courage for what needed to come, before preparing to leave Simpkins as quickly as possible.

  Where would Lord Wetton be, at this hour? At breakfast, probably, or in one of the Covent Gard
en rookeries. He would be angry when Victor confessed his feelings, there was no avoiding it, but if he could just think of the correct way to approach the issue…

  A low, drunken bubble of laughter filled the corridor. Victor stiffened, checking that his mask was fixed, before realising that the sound was coming from the firmly closed cloakroom door.

  ‘Oh, I am jelly. All wobbly.’ Lord Wetton’s voice was low, and slurred; the man was clearly deep in his cups. Victor wondered what on earth could have caused the man to get so drunk at such an early hour; Lord Wetton had never been much of a drinker, despite his many other vices. Still, his tone carried through the quiet corridor; muffled, but distinct in parts that made Victor’s muscles tense.

  ‘... He’s the nicest chap. Really—a splendid one, all told. All the other ones are measly old sots, they never do anything for me…’ There was a hiccup of laughter. ‘But Bale does everything they could do, and more.’

  A soft, feminine giggle met his final sentence. Bale, trying to fight the rapid tide of nausea that threatened to overwhelm him, knew that he couldn’t leave now that his name had been mentioned. Wetton had a woman in the cloakroom; forbidden by the Club rules, especially when the woman was there as a professional engagement rather than a personal one. From the faintly dutiful air that rang through the female laughter, Victor knew that she was in the cloakroom with Lord Wetton because she expected to be paid handsomely for it.

  ‘Lord, he’s ugly.’ The careless sentence floating through the keyhole made Victor close his eyes. ‘Do you know, my lovely little thing, there’s probably no-one in this world I feel more sorry for.’ Another wet hiccup of furtive, childish laughter. ‘Well. Apart from any poor girl he pays to look at him. You wouldn’t like to look at him, hey?’

  The answering laughter had a real air of duty now. Victor, grimly forcing himself to stand by the door, to listen to everything that was being said, knew that it was poor consolation—that the woman paid to be with Lord Wetton found the man as utterly unpleasant as Victor did.

  Still. The woman could take her money and vanish merrily into the sunset, congratulating herself on having bled such an easy mark almost completely dry. Victor, bound by the enormity of his debt and the betrayal he had already committed, had no such luxury.

  ‘You really are the—the finest piece I’ve seen in a long time.’ Lord Wetton’s tone was unpleasantly lascivious. ‘And I really think you care for me. I know it.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The woman’s voice dripped with a contempt that she would never have been able to get away with, had it been a sober gentleman she was talking to. ‘Of course I do, dear.’

  ‘Good.’ There was the sound of a suppressed belch; Victor shuddered, as he imagined the woman did too. ‘You’re… you’re like a little cat. Would you like to hear a secret, little cat?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The woman had scented a clear blackmail opportunity. Why settle for one paid encounter with a titled gentleman, when one could receive lifelong payments for keeping one’s silence? Victor knew he should probably be saving Lord Wetton from a future full of economic uncertainty, but didn’t feel like doing so in the slightest.

  ‘Good. Now don’t you tell a single soul.’ Lord Wetton paused, presumably to add dramatic effect. ‘Bale’s big nasty scars… they came from a big nasty dog. And I saved him from that big, nasty dog. Did you know that? Have I already told you that?’

  ‘No, dear.’ The woman’s voice couldn’t have sounded less surprised. ‘You certainly haven’t mentioned that before.’

  ‘That’s because I’m an immensely discreet… person.’ This time Lord Wetton belched openly. ‘Well, poor Bale… I saw him laying in that alleyway, that big nasty dog ready to rip his throat out… I was walking with my father.’

  ‘Yes?’ The woman was trying not to sound too eager. Bale wanted her to urge him; he had half a mind to bend his head to the keyhole and egg the man on himself. His body felt unpleasantly light, as if it were floating. ‘Go on, dear.’

  ‘Bad news for pater, that day. I had to tell him I’d made an awful mess at Oxford… well, they had been saying that they wouldn’t allow me back. Bastards.’ Lord Wetton’s voice trailed off for a moment, self-pity in every syllable, before coming back. ‘I was feeling ever so demoralised, and awfully sick, and—and when I saw Bale, and the dog, I… I believe I froze.’

  Victor froze as he heard the words. He stayed close to the door, hardly breathing.

  ‘I froze for a good long while, little cat. I think Father was expecting me to do something—he looked at me for what felt like an age, while the damn thing was savaging Bale. It was only when he realised I couldn’t do anything that he ran over and dragged him away.’ Lord Wetton paused. ‘And—and then I ran to him. And then three people came out of a coffee-house—rough people, you know—it just came out of mouth. I got him away from that beast. And Father… well. He never mentioned it.’ His words had a plaintive air of wonder. ‘We have never mentioned it since.’

  Victor took a single, jerky step away from the cloakroom door. He sat heavily on the floor, thumping against the carpet, not knowing or caring what would happen if someone heard the sound.

  ‘My goodness.’ The woman’s voice washed over Victor; he could hear how repelled she was, fascinated. This secret was sure to be an immensely lucrative one. ‘How astonishing.’

  ‘I know.’ Another bubble of wet laughter. ‘I am astonishing, aren’t I?’

  Victor swallowed, bile filling his throat. Unable to rise completely to his feet, he scrabbled away.

  He sat in the room full of basins, tears falling. Tears of rage, of sadness—of mourning all the wasted years. Years of favours, a waterfall of favours, all of which were given for something that had never been true. The urge to drag the man out of the cloakroom and soundly beat him, possibly to death, was overwhelming—only Isabella’s face, her words, kept Victor from doing something unwise.

  Isabella. He bowed his head, teeth clenched; he could have loved her from the first, openly, whole-heartedly, without the creeping sensation of guilt. At least he could tell her tonight; tell her everything, all of it, and let her briefly take the weight of his emotional burden…

  A thought struck him. A devious one, that made his lip curl.

  Yes. He would tell Isabella. And he would punish Lord Wetton as thoroughly, and publicly, as possible.

  ‘My dearest Isabella.’ Brenda Hartwell clapped her hands with innocent-seeming glee, even as her eyes sparkled with malice. ‘What a delightful little soiree. Why, this small affair is almost more enjoyable than a grand, overly-planned evening.’ She laughed archly. ‘Of course, such spontaneous things are so much easier to bring into being when one is unattached.’

  Isabella smiled sweetly, hoping that Brenda would catch a chill as soon as possible. Brenda Hartwell had been the unquestioned darling of the ton until Isabella’s sudden inheritance, and the resulting pain of being cast aside still clearly rankled. An engagement to the exceedingly rich and elderly Earl of Collesbrooke was meant to have cured all petty jealousies—but alas, in Brenda’s case, one or two still bubbled to the surface.

  As Brenda stalked discontentedly back to a group of whist-players, clearly hoping to find an easier victim, Isabella took in the room with a stab of anxiety. Everything had been so carefully arranged, even at the last minute; candlelight dim enough to invite scandal, an abundance of gossips well-fortified with champagne, invitations sent in a hand that all but promised events of a revealing nature… and yet, Victor did not come.

  It was well past the hour. Isabella, smiling and exchanging any number of pleasantries with her hastily-invited guests, began to brood.

  She should not, under any circumstances, have talked of love. There was a warning against revealing one’s sentiments; men were bound to grow frightened at such ardency… but Victor? Victor, who had loved her from the first?

  No. Her love would not be the sticking-point. But there was Lord Wetton, odious man that he was, and his feelings to
consider—and there was, of course, the matter of declaring it publicly.

  Perhaps that was the sticking-point. Isabella, looking at the room she had painstakingly prepared, was suddenly sick of the sight of it. It was too public, too quickly—she should have let Victor dictate the manner of his declaration.

  But then, if she had let Victor direct events… would they ever have spoken to one another at all, face-to-face?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden hum of conversation. Isabella placed her champagne glass on a nearby table, heart suddenly racing, as Victor and Lord Wetton entered the room.

  She imagined the whispering groups around her were asking the questions hidden deep in her own soul. What had occurred—and what would occur now? Would there be a declaration—and how would it be done?

  Would she be left happy—or hopeless?

  Briefly allowing her mask to slip for a few precious moments, she searched for Victor’s face. When she found it—scars concealed, hair artfully tousled—the look in his eyes shocked her.

  He was angry. Furious, if Isabella was any judge. But at the same time, she was absolutely certain that everything would be alright… all that remained to understand was how.

  They were coming closer; Isabella saw the sly, jealous glances that followed Lord Wetton, and the pitying ones following Victor. She turned, knowing that she had to be glowing with anticipation, frightened and elated at the same time.

  ‘Miss Thurgood.’ Lord Wetton bowed, impeccably correct; as Isabella curtseyed, she caught Victor’s eye again. With an improbable, crooked smile, he winked.

  ‘My lord Wetton. Your Grace.’ Isabella smiled as the conversation in the room quietened. ‘I am so terribly glad that my little attempt at merriment has found you free to enjoy it. It would not have been the same without your presence.’ She risked a look at the fiercely gossiping guests; if only she had a sister, or a maiden aunt, to make such niceties in her stead! Fortune without family really was more trouble than it was worth. ‘Are you both well?’