She became conscious, now, of the sound of her breathing, loud in her ears. Her hands were clammy and her world was black as she kept trying to imagine herself into another one, only to slip back into the terrible present.
But the time stretched out and still, he didn’t make his move as she’d expected.
Confused, she opened her eyes and found him staring at her. As if he, too, was unsure what to do.
He was standing near her, towering above her, his hard eyes trained on her.
After she opened her eyes, he put out his hand and touched her shoulder.
“Nice,” he whispered, stroking her bare skin. A light crept into his eyes and his lips turned up. “You’re shivering. You like it then?”
Charity focused every bit of loathing into her response. “I hate it.
He looked surprised before his eyes darted to the sideboard. “I’m paying you handsomely,” he said, indicating what was, indeed, a sum tucked beneath the brandy bottle that would keep her for a week.
“I don’t want your money,” she whispered. “I want my freedom.”
He continued to stroke her, though more tentatively now as he asked, clearly offended, “You dislike me that much?”
“I despise you.”
Now, he stopped the rhythmic movement of his hand that had been tracing the line of her décolletage and regarded her with a look that suggested he didn’t know whether to be outraged rather than merely offended.
Either way, he’d resort to violence. This is what men did when they were insulted. Charity watched the play of emotions cross his narrow, angry face. She began the count-down in her head.
And then the odd, tense silence was broken by the sound of running footsteps in the corridor, followed by a cry of outrage as Hugo burst through the doors, knocking aside a table as he hurled himself upon Cyril.
Charity was quick-witted enough to dart behind a large armchair by the fire as the two men crashed to the floor.
“Fiend!” cried her beloved, gentle Hugo as he thrust his knee in the small of Cyril’s back and wrenched his arm behind him. His chest rose and fell and his eyes were wild as Charity had never seen them. “I’ll kill you if you’ve laid a hand on her!”
“She came willingly enough!” Cyril snarled, letting out a cry of pain as Hugo slammed his head upon the floor.
“Hugo, stop!” cried Charity as the blood from Cyril’s nose sprayed over the rug.
Cyril’s voice was muffled but she still felt the sting of his retort. “Good God! So she’s your little fancy piece. I had no idea.” He let out a surprised laugh, truncated with a cry of pain as Hugo slammed his head down upon the floor once more.
Chapter 8
Hugo took her to their special place. A house where no questions were ever asked. A house run by a kind matron who, perhaps, had her own reasons for turning a blind eye but who kept a neat, unremarkable lodging house where the rooms were clean and the bed was comfortable.
“I didn’t want to go with him,” Charity wept after Hugo had shut out the world and now cradled her in the warm, comfortable bed against his chest.
“My poor darling, I know that.” Hugo’s voice was thick with what Charity understood now were tears as she raised her head to look at him. They clung to his lashes but his voice was steady though his breathing was laboured. “Did he hurt you? Dear God, I’ll kill him! I’ll — ”
Charity shook her head as she raised her finger to his lips. “No, my love, he didn’t touch me. Well, only my shoulder. I promise you! You came just in time.”
She felt some of the tension drain out of him though his words were full of self-recrimination. “How will I protect you when I’m gone, Charity?” It was almost a cry of despair. “What will become of you? I can’t guarantee your security for the many months I’ll be away.”
“But you can guarantee my happiness now,” Charity whispered, tugging at the button that secured his collar. She’d soothe the worry from him as only she knew how. In the morning he’d be gone and Charity would be at the mercy of the world.
But for a few hours tonight, she could try and forget that. They both could.
And she’d do her very best to bolster his hopes that she would be safe.
He cupped her cheek and kissed her tenderly while Charity stroked his strong, young chest before wrapping her arms tightly about him.
“I will never forget you, Hugo,” she promised, revelling in the warmth and weight of him. He might be gentle but he was well built and well endowed. She might be innocent of other men but she knew her Hugo was more the lover than any of the gentlemen callers her friends entertained.
And more passionate.
“I won’t let you,” he vowed, his voice tight with promise. “You think I won’t come back to you? That I’ll fail in my promise to ensure your upkeep?” He rose above her on one elbow, his eyes bright. “I have managed, at least, to provide for you for the first two months I’m away. Madame has the money in trust so that you’ll not be turned into the street. I anticipate that by that time I’ll have managed to send you my wages after my first couple of months away. And I’ll write every day, Charity.” He took a deep breath. “I swear to you that in two years I will come back to marry you.”
“A Christmas wedding,” sighed Charity though she didn’t believe it. Still, it’s what he needed to believe when she farewelled him. He could face whatever hardships were in store if he truly thought he’d ensured Charity’s protection and that, not only would he be still alive and wanting to marry her in two years, he’d be allowed to.
Family pressure was a very powerful force. Old Mr Adams was not going to let his son marry a girl from the gutter without a fight, even if Hugo was a man of independent means.
“Yes, a Christmas wedding,” Hugo promised, as he rose over her, smiling that sweet gentle smile that never failed to make her insides roil with love and excitement as he stroked her into arousal. For the moment, he was hers. She felt he always would be, even if he never came back.
“With mistletoe in my bouquet,” she whispered, gilding the dream they both needed to pretend, for now, would become a reality.
“And my mother’s locket around your neck.” His fingers brushed across her throat and she shivered with anticipation as he positioned himself at her entrance. “For you will be accepted as my worthy wife, my precious girl. My father will — ”
She stayed his words with her forefinger, gently trailing it across his cheek as she shook her head. “Your father will never accept me, Hugo, but I don’t need that.”
“But I do.”
Charity drew in a breath and closed her eyes as he entered her.
With a sigh of ecstasy he whispered, “I swear on my life that I will come back and marry you, my darling.”
Chapter 9
“Just your trunks to seal, sir, and you’re ready to sail.” Keating, the butler stood to attention, waiting for the order as Hugo entered the drawing room. He would not be taking much. Two sturdy trunks were all he needed.
“This will be the making of you, my boy,” his father said, rising from his chair by the fire and walking towards him. He’d come down from the country, ostensibly to farewell his only child though Hugo thought it more likely that it was to ensure that Hugo would be travelling alone. His father didn’t even trust his brother to ensure Hugo brought aboard no stowaways.
Hugo nodded briefly but made no reply as he went to the writing desk where he’d been working on his last drawings and poems for Charity.
“What have you got there?” His father’s tone was genial as he moved to stand behind him.
Hugo ignored him. If his father wanted tacit forgiveness from his son he’d not get it. Hugo would never forgive him for his collusion with Cyril. The beatings and other punishments were forgivable. But not this. His father had garnished a deal that would make Hugo beholden to him; make him his slave. And Cyril had been only too happy to oblige. Hugo had always despised his cousin but he despised his father more.
&
nbsp; “A fine drawing. Very fine.” His father nodded at the finely rendered head and shoulders drawing of Charity. “She’s a beauty, to be sure, and you’ve captured that.”
Hugo studied his last work of art. The last picture that perhaps he’d ever draw of Charity when it was just the two of them together. The wistfulness of her expression had tugged at his heartstrings when he’d caught her gazing out of the window while Hugo had been telling her about his visit to Madame’s. A visit during which he’d gone through every possibility to ensure Charity was employed as anything other than a slave to the gentlemen who stepped over the threshold.
When he’d tried to reassure Charity she’d simply smiled. He knew she didn’t believe him but he had to try and keep up the pretence, if only to keep up her hopes when hope was all she had.
A woman had few options if she didn’t have connections. A woman without financial independence was at the mercy of the world.
And if her name were tarnished, or if she had lost her reputation; if she had no references to recommend her to an employer. Then all she had to barter was her body.
Charity was like so many women, Hugo thought bitterly, though God knew it was hardly her fault.
“A beauty, I’m the first to admit. And no doubt obliging and good-natured. Everything a man could desire in a mistress.”
Hugo remained tight-lipped, moving away as his father put out his hand to see the drawing better. The stack of drawings slipped from his hands and floated to the floor. More than a dozen sketches and paintings of Charity spread about them, her beauty painful to behold right now.
There was the only girl he’d ever loved gazing at the painter with gentle trust in one. Or with heart-breaking hauteur in another. Her hair was tumbled and her bosom a touch too much in evidence in another but the one he reached for first depicted her in a ballgown, every inch the equal of the heiress his father would have him marry. Yes, she had grace and dignity to equal any one of them.
“You’ll thank me one day, boy.”
Hugo turned at the low growl, making no attempt to mask his dislike.
“If anything happens to her when I’m gone I’ll despise you ‘til the day I die,” he said under his breath, before bending to gather up the rest of the drawings.
His father stopped him when Hugo would have brushed past him and out of the door for there was one final task he had to do before he sailed.
“I can see the attraction, Hugo, for you paint true to life. But she’d drag you down. And you’d come to resent her for it. What basis is that for a marriage? When you’d be bound to her for life?”
Hugo considered him a moment. His father had had the benefit of an education but he’d never been considered on an equal footing with his schoolfellows. He wanted this for his son more than he wanted anything else; hence the tortuous years at Eton, the miserable rounds of trying to mould him into the man his father wanted him to become.
“I should not care where she dragged me so long as she was my wife.”
The chasm between them had never yawned so deep. In the middle of a room boasting the trappings of wealth without softness, expense without taste, his father was as much a victim of his success as generations before him had been of their poverty.
He ran a hand through his thick white hair and his lustrous, salt and pepper moustache twitched. His watery blue eyes regarded Hugo with dislike. “I hope she knows you’ll not get a penny of your grandfather’s fortune if you wed her in haste before you leave.”
“Oh, she knows it well. But in less than two years I’ll be free to do as I choose.” Hugo turned at the door. “And I’ll be right back here. In London. Begging her to make me the happiest man alive and marry me. Romantic tosh, eh, father?” Hugo offered him a parting smile. Or, at least, the parody of one. “I’m the first to admit that it is inconvenient to have a heart, at times.” He pushed back his shoulders. “At least I can live with my conscience. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
He decided against taking a hackney the few blocks to his cousin’s townhouse and when he arrived Cyril was in the hallway donning his hat and coat.
“A good thing I caught you,” Hugo said, amused at the flare of anger in the other man’s face and the way Cyril’s hand went protectively to his nose, still swollen after the previous night.
“I hadn’t expected to see you again.” Cyril turned his back to pick up his umbrella before heading down the steps to the street.
“You weren’t going to see me off?” Hugo pretended surprise. “Good riddance and all that? Leaving you to enjoy what I can’t take with me?” He lengthened his stride so he was level with his cousin before gripping his elbow and jerking him so he was facing him, pressing him against a brick wall beneath an old bridge. Passersby looked at them strangely.
“I swear that if you touch Charity…if you cause her a single moment’s anxiety, then yesterday will be nothing compared with the way I’ll make sure you suffer when I return home.”
“You know I didn’t touch her yesterday, either.” Cyril sounded sulky as he pulled back his arm and carried on walking.
“Not for want of trying. I heard you visited Madame Chambon’s the very day after I told Charity I had to leave.”
“Curiosity. What well-intentioned cousin wouldn’t want to see if such a girl could be as pure and true as she was made out to be?”
“She’s known only me.” Hugo wasn’t saying it to boast. He couldn’t bear the idea that anyone should imagine that what he and Charity shared was any less pure than a union sanctified by God. “And one day she will be my wife.” He looked at his cousin while he fought the poison within him. “Just remember that. Thanks to you, that day will be longer coming than I intended.” He drew in a breath through his nose, his expression, he hoped, reflecting the force of his hatred. “Regardless of my father’s desires to the contrary, and your collusion, it will happen.”
Cyril seemed disinclined to be engaged. Taking advantage of a cooper’s wagon lumbering by, he dashed in front of it, swinging around angrily when Hugo followed him. They’d reached a small, fenced park into which Hugo was channelling him so as to be out of the public eye.
“For God’s sake, Hugo, leave it and go! As always, I get the blame!”
Hugo clenched his fists while he fought his temper. He’d never been quick to anger, unlike Cyril, but tomorrow he’d be sailing to a land far from Charity and the world he wanted to inhabit with her. His dreams had been cruelly dashed and his nemesis was before him.
He glared at Cyril. “It might have been Papa who put you up to this but you were a willing party. I don’t know what, exactly, he asked you to do but you leapt at the first opportunity to ruin me. Why? So, my father would have an excuse to send me away?” He heard his voice shake and was angry at himself. Why should he care that Cyril, with his broad shoulders, glib tongue, and clever cunning was far more the kind of son his father wanted than the dreamy, namby-pamby boy he’d derided from the cradle.
Hugo couldn’t help himself. He’d tried to have as little as possible to do with Cyril and the society he kept. He’d tried to hold himself to higher ideals. Ideals which should have precluded him saying bitterly, “Well, hasn’t he always favoured you? And weren’t you so willing to get into his good books by destroying what I had with Charity? Papa couldn’t bear that I should marry a girl he considered as lowly as his own mother but you were the first to step up and do his bidding. You didn’t care that you were hurting a girl who was tricked into crossing Madame Chambon’s threshold. A girl whose father came from the very world into which our own fathers wish to be accepted. Ironic, isn’t it? In terms of the blood that runs through her veins, Charity is better born than either of us. Yet, because she’s a woman and she’s illegitimate, she has none of the protections or ability to forge her own way in life, that we take for granted.”
“God, but you’re insufferably self-righteous, Hugo!” Cyril flung at him as he turned to confront his cousin. “I couldn’t care less about any of this! Not
who you marry or where she comes from or what your father wants or doesn’t want for you.” He threw out his arms in frustration, his umbrella spinning in the air. “The only reason I agreed to help your father see you sink a fortune was so that I wouldn’t be forced to spend the next year in a God-forsaken country learning the family trade. It’d be bad enough having to leave the comforts of London but having to spend any time in close proximity with my father would be like living a thousand deaths.”
Hugo squared his shoulders. “And you think I deserve that?”
“At least he won’t beat you senseless at every opportunity. I imagine you’ll be spared that since you’re only a nephew and will be required to get up and do a day’s work rather than be made an example of. He has no great expectations of you.”
He said it as if Hugo had never been considered up to much by the rest of the family. Cyril, by contrast, had enjoyed his rugby, cricket, and boxing.
Hugo chewed his lip. His anger had dissipated somewhat but his uncertainty was as great as ever. “You promise you won’t prey on Charity?”
“Prey on her? What do you think I am? A monster as bad as my father?” He gave a short laugh. “I might be a cheat and a bounder but I don’t go about forcing myself on vulnerable females and defiling any pretty thing that takes my fancy.” He hesitated. “I’m the first to admit that she’s a fine filly, your Charity. A real stunner. What she sees in you, I can’t imagine.”
“I can’t either,” Hugo said, dolefully, turning to leave this unsatisfactory conversation.
But the change in Cyril’s tone when he next spoke was far from reassuring.
“However, old fellow, if your sweet Charity chooses to avail herself of the comforts I can provide her which you — obviously — will be in no position to, then that’s her choice.” He chuckled. “How many weeks have you secured for her maintenance? No more than eight, is my guess. Well!” He sighed. “A girl’s got to live, hasn’t she?”
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