Bronwyn Scott (17 page)

Chapter Eighteen

G
reer had found clarity by the time he reached the door of her room. The walk upstairs had given him time to collect his thoughts even if it hadn’t provided him any answers, at least not answers he liked. Common sense would recommend he walk away right now. It is what his mother would advise. He could hear her voice in his head: there was a reason the classes didn’t mix. Their values and lifestyles were too different.

But his heart was far too engaged with Mercedes to simply walk away because she wasn’t a nobleman’s daughter. Before he walked, there were things he needed to know. Hastily made decisions weren’t always the wisest. He raised his hand to knock and heard permission to enter. The door was unlocked. She’d been expecting him.

‘You hit him in my defence and now you’ve come for your answers, is that it?’ Mercedes turned from the window, letting the curtain fall across the wide pane. Distress was evident on her pale features.

‘I came to see how you are,’ Greer amended. ‘I won’t lie and say I care nothing about answers, but neither did I come solely out of my own selfish need. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’ He paused. ‘Are you?’ He flexed his right hand. It was starting to hurt now that his adrenaline had ebbed.

Mercedes noticed. ‘Maybe I should be asking you the same thing. We need to get ice on this. I’ll have the staff send some up.’ She took his hand, feeling and flexing each of his fingers in turn. ‘Father won’t forgive me if you’ve ruined your hand on my behalf.’

‘Stop fussing, Mercedes. My hand will be fine in a couple of days.’ Greer covered her hands with his free one, but Mercedes would not be thwarted.

* * *

When the ice arrived she packed it around his hand. He insisted it was not necessary, but the colour had returned to her face by the time he was settled to her satisfaction on the little sofa in her sitting room, his hand in ice. The unintended distraction had worked, creating a sense of normality between them, elusive as it might be.

There was nothing left to do but return to the reason for his visit. ‘Would you like to tell me about him?’ Then he hastily added, ‘Not because I am entitled to anything, but because you want to? Ghosts only have power when they aren’t exorcised.’

He’d been wrong on the stairs. It wasn’t the question of whether or not Talmadge’s comments were true that mattered. It was this, right here. If she couldn’t tell him, it would be between them always and there was no future in that. He held his breath. Everything hinged on this.

‘I was young and foolish,’ she began, sitting down on the sofa beside him. Greer began to breathe again. There was hope yet.

‘I was seventeen and my head was easily turned by the attentions of a good-looking man.’ Her throat worked and it was clear it was hard for her to say the words. ‘I was stupid, so headstrong when it came to Luce Talmadge.’ She gave a short, deprecating laugh. ‘Forgive my hesitation. Saying it out loud makes my mistake much more real.’

‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ Greer offered. He meant for it to be encouraging, but the words sounded empty even to him.

She raised a dark brow. ‘Mistakes aren’t usually of this magnitude. My father was already a renowned champion in our circles when Luce took up with us. If I’d been smarter, I’d have seen that Luce was using me as access to my father. Luce was, and is, a consummate user of people, only he’s not very subtle at it, which makes falling for him that much worse.’

She shook her head and traced a pattern on the sofa cushion, unable to look at him. ‘I mistook his lack of subtlety for boldness and tenacity. When we’re seventeen, I suppose we don’t make those distinctions. My father tried to warn me, but I was too stubborn to listen. Anyway, my father took Luce on a short tour to advertise the Brighton room. He was good at billiards and even better at separating people from their money. I went with them and it was heady stuff for a girl fresh out of boarding school.’

Much the same as it was now. The comparison between the two situations was not lost on him. It was the second time in as many hours he’d been cast in the role of Lockhart’s protégé, and the label did not sit well with him. He was about to protest that this time was different, but Mercedes read his mind. ‘Now that I’ve started, you have to let me finish.’ She put a soft finger to his lips.

‘Luce convinced me he was in love and that he wanted to marry me. He painted a compelling picture. We’d be the most dazzling couple in Brighton and I was not immune to the images he conjured. They were exciting and I entirely overlooked the reality that all of Luce’s dreams were built on my father’s subscription room. He’d assumed I would inherit the club. It was only one of many assumptions Luce made about my connection to my father’s wealth.

‘We married three days before we returned to Brighton, a secret wedding in the morning in a church in a tiny sea-coast village. Luce told me I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He wooed me with kisses and a solid gold ring. He’d even been a bit misty-eyed when he slipped it on my finger.’

Mercedes shrugged. ‘In truth, I was having misgivings before we married, but in my stubbornness I shoved them away, blaming it on my father. I wouldn’t let myself be influenced by him. I was going to make this decision on my own.’

Greer wanted to punch the man again. He knew men like Luce Talmadge, who preyed on the susceptibilities of young girls. Fortune hunters existed at all levels of society. It just proved that ‘susceptibilities’ came in all forms; her own inherent stubbornness had been as lethal to Mercedes as a weaker woman’s belief in false flattery. But he could well imagine an obstinate Mercedes, a formidable force even at seventeen. Words would not have stopped her once she’d set her mind.

‘We didn’t tell my father until we got back. He was furious. He said a real man would ask permission, a real man wouldn’t slink off behind his back and marry a man’s daughter. We were in my father’s study and I remember very clearly how my father looked at me and said, “He’s only after your money, Mercedes.”’

Greer’s gut clenched in anticipation of what would come next: a deal of the kind Lockhart loved to make, the kind where no man was forced to do anything other than what his nature motivated him to do, like the greedy man in the club tonight. The only difference was that tonight, the man had been his own victim. In this scheme, it had been Mercedes.

‘Of course, Luce made all the requisite noises about being offended by my father’s brash assumptions. Then my father stood up and went to his safe. He pulled out a stack of pound notes and a document. He set them on his desk. He opened the document and showed it to Luce. It was his will, in which he left the subscription room to Kendall Carlisle. In the event that Carlisle preceded him in death, it comes to me in the form of a trust to be overseen by my father’s solicitor. It’s never mine directly.’

‘Let me guess—Talmadge didn’t like that arrangement?’

Mercedes gave a sad laugh. ‘At the time, I thought he was going to faint. It’s rather funny now, at a distance. But I assure you, it was not humourous then to look the man you thought you loved in the face and see quite clearly that your love was a one-way thing.’

Promise me you won’t fall in love with me.
Was that because she didn’t feel the same way? Had she extracted that promise in order to protect him? ‘What did your father do next?’

‘He tapped the pounds notes with his hand and said, “There are a thousand pounds in this stack and I’ll write you a personal cheque on my account in London for nine thousand more if you take the money, declare the marriage false and walk out this door today with the promise that you will make no further claim on Mercedes.” I don’t think it took Luce even a minute to make up his mind. I had not seen him in six years until this evening.’

Tears threatened. Greer could see them swim in her grey eyes. She swiped them away with a dash of her hand. But they weren’t tears for Talmadge. ‘It’s embarrassing beyond words to know you were sold for ten thousand pounds. In my girlish dreams, I’d thought forever would cost a bit more.’ She shrugged and tried for a smile.

‘I think you have it backwards.’ Greer said thoughtfully, his eyes on her. ‘You weren’t sold. Your freedom was bought.’ Whatever he might think of Lockhart, the man had done this one good deed.

She nodded. ‘I’ll always owe my father for that. He’d warned me. I didn’t listen and yet he was still there, in his own way, to pick me up.’

It was one of the ways in which Lockhart had a nobility of his own. Greer saw that. But he also saw the prison it created for Mercedes and he liked that even less. Lockhart was not above using people, even his own daughter. Greer had seen him do it on two occasions. Lockhart knew precisely what he was owed by others, Mercedes included.

Greer pulled his hand out of the ice and flexed it experimentally, slowly. ‘I’m glad I hit him.’ He knit his brow. ‘Is this the reason you didn’t want me to fall in love with you? You didn’t want me to find out about Luce?’ He hoped it was as superficial as that and not his earlier supposition.

‘Something like that.’ Her answer was not reassuring.

‘But not quite? Talmadge and I are not the same. I’m not using you, not looking to trap you. You’ve said you’re not using me.’ He could not make it any plainer without breaking his promise to her. He
would
break it, but not yet. An inspiration struck him.

‘Why did you come on this trip?’ Based on what she’d revealed, coming made very little sense, especially if she saw too many similarities between these circumstances and the previous ones.

He could see this question bothered her more than anything she’d told him about Luce. She rose and paced the room, going back to her curtain at the window and looking out. So he couldn’t see her face when she lied to him? He didn’t want to believe that.

‘Well, Mercedes?’ he prodded. ‘What is it you wanted badly enough to put yourself through this?’ The pieces were coming fast and furious to him now. This trip was a proving ground for her, a chance to claim...something... The fight in Beckhampton... The madness of the Bath brothel. Yes. He had it.

‘You...’ Greer began, grappling with the reality that flooded him. ‘You wanted to be the protégée.’ She had coveted what he would throw away, what he felt distaste for. He had unwittingly stolen something from her that she cherished.

She turned back from the window, her face fierce. ‘Yes, I wanted to be the protégée. I wanted to show him I could not only train you, but beat you. I did and it still made no difference.’

Because she owed Lockhart. Perhaps he’d been too hasty in suggesting Lockhart had bought her freedom. He’d merely transferred it from one gaoler to another. This was the side of Lockhart that Greer could not countenance. Everyone had a purpose. Greer wondered what his was. He was not naïve enough to think he would be the one singular individual to escape Lockhart’s machinations. He wondered, too, if he could free her. Would she ever leave her father? Tonight was not the time to put the question to her.

‘I should go.’ Greer stood. He needed time to think, time to sort this all out and his place in it as well.

She came to him and ran a finger down his shirtfront. ‘I think you should stay.’

Greer trapped her finger with his good hand. ‘Not tonight. We both have too much on our minds. I don’t think there would be room in bed for all of it.’ Not when she was vulnerable, not when she might be tempted to use sex as a way to bind him to her. He kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘Goodnight, Mercedes. I’ll see you in the morning.’

But he couldn’t help wondering as the door closed behind him if things would ever be the same between them. His mind was far too restless for sleep. A walk would do his body good and the gaslights of the city centre made Birmingham safe enough if a man was careful.

* * *

The irony of what occupied his mind, however, was that his thoughts were not on Luce Talmadge and the brief, ridiculous marriage.
He’d
been the first to show her true pleasures. In his more fantastical moments he hoped to be the last and only man to do so some way, somehow.

Knowing about Talmadge made it far easier to understand Mercedes and her reticence to admit this relationship between them was anything more than sex. But that would also be the easy answer. Did she return his feelings or was she using him? Was he still merely a tool to get what she wanted from her father? Was she so determined to wrest it from her father that she was willing to sleep with the enemy? Did she still hate him for being the protégé?

The real issue that occupied his mind as he walked Birmingham was what to do about Lockhart. The longer he thought about it, the more convinced he became that Lockhart was the villain of the piece and he wanted no more part of it—no more inns, no more days on the road, no more nights watching Lockhart trade on his celebrity in big towns or adopting false aliases in small towns in order to ‘pluck peacocks’ or some other game. Lockhart liked toying with people, determine their price.

Greer felt shame that he’d let Lockhart toy with him for so long. Lockhart had been in his element in Bath, introducing him as Lord Captain Barrington. And Greer had let him, convinced that such a use of his title could buy Mercedes acceptability. In part, he’d begun to believe in his own mystique, charmed by his own growing celebrity as he won game after game, as he danced with Mercedes in his arms, distracted by beauty, lust, and money.

It had been a glorious life for a few weeks. He wanted to be angry at Lockhart for leading him into such iniquity, but there was no one to be angry with but himself. Lockhart had simply dangled the carrot—something the man was very good at doing. No one had made him take it. No one could make him stay.

Birmingham had a direct train route to London. He should be on it first thing in the morning. But truly, he didn’t want to go to London. He wanted to go home, to the rich fields of Devonshire, fields he hadn’t seen in three years. There would be sense in Devonshire, equilibrium, even if there was a reckoning to go with it. But he couldn’t go, not without Mercedes. If he left her now, he would not get her back. If there was one thing he didn’t regret about this madcap trip, it was her. Could she say the same for him? Would she come? There was only one reason to come and many reasons to stay. Would she refuse because of Luce?