Darius: Lord of Pleasures (19 page)

He’d no doubt repeated that litany to himself endlessly. The only person he’d allowed close, the person he seemed to love most in the whole world, and now this.

“I need your handkerchief, Mr. Lindsey.”

He smiled a sweet smile and waved a little square of linen at her. “You are the dearest woman. John is very happy. Trent is sending his children out to Belle Maison for a summer outing too. I’m promised regular letters.”

“But you’re
alone
,” she said, blotting at her eyes even as the scent on the handkerchief ripped at her composure further. “I hate being in this condition. I have no dignity, I have no airs and graces, I have—”

Cold and sweetness bumped against her lips. “Your ice is melting, Lady Longstreet. It will taste sweeter for thawing a little.”

Damn
him.
Bless him. She took the bite he offered and took courage from the simple affection with which Darius regarded her. “Do not lecture me about queer starts, Darius Lindsey. I will not have it.”

“When do you repair to Longchamps?”

The change of subject was intended as a kindness. Vivian wasn’t having any of that either. “Are those women still plaguing you, sir?”

The look he sent her was chilly indeed. “I have every confidence my path will depart from theirs very, very soon, though at present I’m told they’re each rusticating.”

It wasn’t what she had expected to hear and wasn’t at all what she’d wanted to hear, either. The entire encounter palled, because
very
soon
was no comfort at all, and had
those
women
not been rusticating, Vivian would not now be enjoying Darius’s company.

He sent John away but did not put from him the women who tormented him, and to all appearances, he avoided Vivian except for chance encounters.

She should have him summon a cab immediately and hope they didn’t run into each other again for a good long while.

“I’d like another ice. Chocolate, I think, and you’re not to steal even a bite of my treat.”

His gaze dropped to her belly, and his smile was not sweet in the least. Nor was it cool. “Bit late for that, isn’t it, Vivvie?”

He crossed the street to order her a third ice without further comment, only to stop in his tracks as he reemerged from the shop and a stylish lady with reddish hair came swanning up to his side.

“Why, Mr. Lindsey! What a lovely surprise.”

He did not even glance at Vivian, seemed determined not to glance at her, in fact. Vivian balled his handkerchief up and stuffed it into her reticule, signaled for her maid, and quitted the square without sparing him a glance either.

The prudent course was obvious: there could be no more meetings with Darius Lindsey, not by chance, not by design, and not by anything in between. Vivian vowed she’d leave for Longchamps in the morning—and stay there.

“This is an unexpected pleasure.” Blanche eyed Darius up and down, the way she’d look at a decadent dessert or expensive pair of new shoes. Darius’s flesh crawled at her inspection, but no more than it had a week previous, when he’d barely been able to leave Gunter’s without ripping her to shreds in public.

And then pelting after Vivian for all the world to see.

“Unexpected, perhaps, a pleasure, most definitely not.” He handed his hat and gloves to one of the handsome footmen Blanche insisted on employing and met his hostess’s gaze. “You will want to hear me out in private.”

“I want you in private,” she agreed, “but as for listening to you carp and bark, I think not. You have more worthy attributes than your speaking voice.”

Darius let her shut the parlor door behind them, but when she moved to embrace him, he stepped back.

“Playing hard to get has limited charm between well-acquainted lovers.” Her tone was reproving, and again Darius felt a spike of nausea.

“We are not,” Darius said softly, “nor will we ever be, nor have we ever been, lovers. I accommodated you for a price. Your usefulness is at an end, and I am doing you the courtesy of informing you of this in private. I will do likewise with Lucy Templeton.”

“This straining at the leash is ill-mannered, Darius,” Blanche said, smiling as if anticipating a rousing argument. “You will continue to accommodate me and Lucy, and whomever else we choose to direct you to. Have you no sense of what Wilton would do to you were he to learn of your nocturnal schemes? Cease your nonsense, or there will be consequences.”

Darius crossed the room, his back to her for a long moment while he marshaled his temper and tried to calm the turmoil in his gut. This was what hatred felt like, corrosive, heavy, and lethal.

When he turned to face her, he saw the first flicker of real fear on her face, but it gave him no satisfaction.

“For all intents and purposes, Blanche, I have whored for you, but it is a whore’s prerogative to accept or decline the customer or the encounter. Even those rules you’ve disrespected in your dealings with me. I went to my own kind, to the streetwalkers and courtesans and prostitutes, and found what I needed to enforce the rules.”

And not once in the past three days of scouring the city’s most depraved haunts had Darius been judged, ridiculed, or scorned. The soiled doves and molly boys hadn’t hesitated to share their resources. They hadn’t even taken his coin in exchange for what he so desperately needed.

“You have a fourteen-year-old daughter,” Darius said, “growing up in Ireland in the home of your cousin’s steward. Most of your jewels are paste, though I made sure the ones you tossed to me were real enough. You’re dying your hair—the hair on your head—and I know this because you’ve made the mistake of keeping the candles lit when I pleasured you.”

Her jaw dropped, and Darius felt the surging satisfaction of a well-executed ambush. “Shall I go on?”

“You would not dare.”

“I would dare. I dared to take coin for that which no gentleman should, and I would dare to cheerfully ruin you
not
for taking advantage of me—for I was taking some advantage of you as well—but taking unfair advantage, backed up by unconscionable threats to innocents who owe you nothing. We can part without further hostilities, or we can declare war. It’s your choice.”

He held her gaze a moment longer, making sure she read the resolve in his eyes.

“Lucy was the one who suggested we take your sister,” Blanche said, her expression becoming desperate. “I had nothing to do with that. She said the girl was already ruined, and you were getting too difficult.”

Darius went still, while he heard a roaring in his ears and his vision dimmed. His hands fisted, his jaw clenched, and he held himself back from throttling the miserable female before him only because he’d kill her if he laid a finger on her.

And he’d enjoy it.

“She came to no harm,” Lady Cowell babbled on. “Really, there was no harm done. Reston saw to that. We were just going have her drink a bit of absinthe, set her down in a gambling hell. There’s no real harm in that.”

Merciful
God.
Drugged and disoriented, Leah would have ended up in a brothel before dawn.

“You say there was no harm,” Darius growled, stalking across the room, “when my sister will never feel safe in the park again.” He loomed over her, his voice lethally soft. “You say leaving an innocent woman to the mercy of the pimps, drunks, and bounders would have been
no
harm
? I should tell your husband what you’ve been up to and send word to
The
Times
as well.”

“Please.” Blanche dropped her gaze. “Please. You don’t know what it’s like.”

Darius forced himself to breathe evenly. She had bullied him unmercifully, for her entertainment, for her pleasure. He would not bully her. “Do we understand each other, Lady Cowell?” His voice was even and yet laden with menace. “Answer me.”

“We understand each other, and I will make sure Lucy understands as well.” She met his gaze long enough to nod once.

“That will not be necessary.” Darius sketched an ironic bow. “The pleasure of enlightening your sorry friend and familiar will be entirely mine.” He cleared the room so quickly he didn’t see the look of stunned horror on Lady Cowell’s face, or the way she dropped into a chair and sat staring into space long after he’d gone.

His interview with Lucy Templeton was even more to the point, though he also allowed her the courtesy of closeting herself with him before he threatened the future she’d assumed was secure.

“You accepted payments from French sympathizers to keep certain contraband from coming to the attention of excise men quartered near your husband’s seat. The punishment for treason is hanging.”

“I would never do such a thing! You lie, Darius, and poorly.”

“Now, Lucy,” Darius nearly purred as he came to stand too close to her, “I have no reason to lie. I’ve been a naughty man, true, but I’ve never paid for the pleasure of whipping children nigh to death. What would your husband think, did he learn of such an excess of temper?”

“My husband is devoted,” Lucy said, her eyes venomous.

“Devoted, indeed, to the mistress who bore him two sons, for whom he provides well. He apparently had no trouble functioning with his mistress, unlike his situation with you. All he’d need is an excuse to have you sent to one of those pleasant, walled estates for women with nervous constitutions.”

Color drained from her face, and Darius observed with curious dispassion that the woman might have once been pretty, had not vice and bitterness twisted her expression.

But he hadn’t yet finished with her.

“And if you truly dispute the charges of treason”—he nailed her with a frigid look—“then charges of attempted kidnapping of my sister might still see you in jail, my lady. Your footmen can be bribed as easily as any, and Reston—Earl of Bellefonte, now—would do anything to see those who threatened his countess brought to justice.”

She sank onto the sofa, his words landing with more gratification than well-aimed blows.

“I’ll leave you to contemplate your sins, but be warned that Bellefonte’s brothers are yet at university, and they will be admonishing their entire forms to avoid the likes of you, and making sure their younger brothers are warned as well. Do we understand each other?”

“We do.” Her answering croak was in the voice of a woman who knew when she was… beaten.

“I suggest you and Lady Cowell take a repairing lease somewhere as distant as, say, the Italian coast. Latin men are notably solicitous toward older women. Good day.”

***

Casting off the pall of association with Blanche and Lucy should have left Darius euphoric. Mightily relieved, in any case. Instead, it was overshadowed by four things that deflated positive feelings considerably.

First, Darius had bid good-bye to the only family member to share his household, the only bright spot in much of his recent years.

Saying good-bye to John when the boy left for Belle Maison had hurt, but not Leah, not Trent, not even John himself seemed to comprehend Darius’s loss. Nicholas, oddly enough, had pulled Darius aside for a fierce hug and promised him the child would come to no harm and visit Darius often. That assurance had been so desperately needed Darius had found himself blinking back tears.

Crying
, for God’s sake, and on another man’s shoulder. What did Darius have to cry about?

The second development of great proportions in Darius’s life was that Nick had confronted Wilton with evidence of the earl’s mishandling of funds—and worse—earlier in Leah’s life. Wilton was effectively banished to Wilton Acres out in Hampshire, and the maternal inheritance Darius’s father had pilfered from him was being repaid, with interest.

When a man learned to live on next to nothing, a sudden and deserved influx of capital created challenges: What to do with it, how much to invest, where, on what…? It all took time, concentration, and a focus Darius had to force himself to maintain.

The third development was more alarming still, in that Trent, drifting along into a shambling sort of widowerhood, had to be taken in hand. Darius escorted his brother bodily to Crossbridge, the estate Trent owned free of any entail, and set his brother down a considerable distance from the brandy decanter. Trent’s children were sent out to Nick and Leah in Kent, and Darius was left to pace and fret and pray that his brother pulled out of whatever malaise had him in its grip.

The fourth development was the worst: Vivian left Town.

The other matters—losing John, maybe losing Trent, being inundated with business decisions—Darius could manage those, relatively. He could not manage losing all contact with Vivian. She would be approaching her confinement, and likely concerned about it, and he…

He had no right to offer her reassurances, no right to comfort her, no right to look forward to the birth with her, and yet, she’d been right: in this regard, they’d been cheated.

He couldn’t help himself. When Lord Valentine Windham offered an invitation to rusticate in Oxfordshire just a few miles from Longchamps, Darius leapt at the chance.

***

Pregnancy scrambled a woman’s brains.

Vivian reached this profound conclusion within days of returning to Longchamps. True, London was miserable in summer, but she and William traditionally stayed in the city until Parliament adjourned in August. And William had stayed there, which only proved to Vivian that her wits had gone begging.

William was… failing.
Dying.
She’d admitted it to herself only as he’d deposited her into their traveling coach and she’d seen the way his shoulders were more stooped, his gaze less clear, his gait slower. She was losing him, and now of all times, she didn’t want to lose the closest thing she had to an ally.

Still, she’d been so intent on putting distance between herself and a certain Darius Lindsey that she’d left William in Town with no one but Dilquin to fuss over him, and hied herself back to Longchamps.

Where Portia’s hovering presence was going to move Vivian to murder. The woman was an atrocity, and Vivian’s sympathy for Able grew with each hour. Portia suggested changes to the house, as if she knew William’s health were precarious and she planned to take over as lady of the manor when William was gone. Able brushed off her plans and schemes and shared the occasional sympathetic look with Vivian.

But worst of all for Vivian was that distance, which she’d intended to help her get some perspective on Darius Lindsey, was only making his presence in her imagination harder to eradicate.

Would the child look like him? Would Darius come to the christening? Was he thinking of her, or was he sauntering around with one of those horrid women on his arm, in his bed, at his side? Had “very soon” come to pass that he’d parted company with them, or were they still commanding his escort when Vivian could not?

That last question hurt. He’d been honest with her, told her exactly who and what he was, but it still… hurt. If Darius were nothing but a cicisbeo, bought and paid for, what did that make Vivian?

She tortured herself with questions like that, even as she took long walks all over the ripening countryside. To see the crops growing, even as she grew, was a comfort, though her ambling became more and more deliberate.

Darius had told her to walk, to resist the urge to become sedentary as well as gravid.

To escape Portia, Vivian frequently took a blanket and a book—Byron was her most frequent choice—out to the stream running behind the orchard a half mile from the house. The roll of the land protected her from the view of the manor and its outbuildings, and the distance was just right to give her a sense of peace.

Which was disturbed past all recall when she felt something tickling her nose. She batted at it, not quite ready to be done with her late-morning nap, but it returned.

“Shall I kiss you awake?”

She opened her eyes, and her mind told her Darius Lindsey, whom she had not seen for weeks, was on the blanket with her, but she refused to accept such a reality.

Pregnancy scrambled a woman’s wits that badly.

“Go away.”

“Soon.” He did ease away, but not before Vivian saw a light dimming in his eyes. This was a good thing, lest he think he was still welcome to kiss her or hold her or take her hand in his.

But what he did was worse. He shifted to sit a foot away from her.

“How are you, Vivvie?”

Vivvie.
His name for her, delivered with unmistakable concern. Unmistakable caring.

“I’m fat,” she huffed, making it as far as her elbows, but anything approximating lying on her back was no longer comfortable, so she flailed around until Darius boosted her to sitting, smiling at her shamelessly.

“You’re glorious,” he said. “Your face looks thinner. How are you feeling?”

She glared at him, arranged her skirts, and felt tears welling. She loved his eyes, loved the way he could communicate intimacy without saying a word, and right now, those eyes were tormenting her with the tenderness they offered.