Gavin was fond of children, but beyond the rare occasion when a client carted his or her brood to his office from necessity, he hadn’t much experience around them. Having Daisy’s daughter entrusted to his care, even for a few hours, struck him as an enormous responsibility. Small wonder Daisy watched over her daughter with a fierce vigilance not unlike the mother mountain lion and cub they observed from the other side of the caged enclosure. That Daisy, his Daisy, had shouldered the burden of motherhood at such a tender age, and without a husband’s help, filled him with awe and admiration. For the first time since stumbling upon the truth of Freddie’s existence, he considered what it must have been like for her all these years. She hadn’t been more than a child herself when Freddie was born and yet she had to be both mother and father to her small daughter while serving as the main wage earner for her aging adoptive parents. Had he been thrust into such an adult position at such a young age, Gavin wasn’t sure he could have managed half so well, but judging from Freddie, Daisy had done a great deal better than manage. She’d done a marvelous job.
Precocious and high-spirited yet surprisingly well-behaved for one her age, Freddie was just the sort of little girl he would have been delighted to call his own. When a passing matron remarked on what a “pert and pretty little daughter” he had, and added he must be a proud papa indeed, he hadn’t the heart to correct the error.
Freddie dragged her attention from the caged mountain lions and turned her cornflower blue eyes up to his face. “That lady thinks you’re my papa.
Are
you?”
If only it might be so. Not only did he want to marry Daisy but he wanted to be a family with her and her daughter. The realization rocked him to his very core. Stepping in to parent another man’s offspring didn’t at all fit the way he envisioned his life, but as the afternoon wore on, he found that the identity of Freddie’s father didn’t matter half so much as it had a mere day before. Freddie was Daisy’s child and that sufficed to make her the most wonderful little girl in the world, his world at least.
He shook his head, feeling genuine regret. “No, Freddie, I’m afraid I’m not. I’d very much like to be your friend, though. Would that be all right?”
She hesitated and then, as if coming to a decision, answered with a definitive shake of her glossy black curls. “A papa would be better but a friend will be all right, too, I suppose.”
“Thank you.”
Freddie’s expression turned worldly.”
Maman
fancies you—a jolly lot.” In the course of the afternoon, he’d found her French phrases interspersed with vernacular English to be charming.
“Really? What makes you think so?” he asked, knowing he was fishing, hoping he didn’t sound overly eager, overly … desperate.
Freddie gave a shrug of her small shoulders. A maddening silence ensued during which she occupied herself with sucking the melted candy from her thumb. Drawing the digit from her mouth, she finally answered, “After you left the other day, she smashed two vases and then the china tea urn—the
good
one, from Sevres. Grandmama Lake said she was to stop right there, that we’d be taking our tea out of crockery and putting our flowers to water in jelly jars if she kept on so. Afterward, she said she’d never seen
Maman
in such a state, not even after the Duke.”
“The Duke?”
“Uh-oh.” She cast him a guilty glance and clamped a sticky fingered hand over her mouth, a child once more. “I expect I wasn’t to say anything about him.”
“I expect not,” he allowed, feeling his gut tighten. “But since the proverbial cat is out of the bag, why don’t I buy you an ice and you can tell me the whole of it?”
“You touch’d my vein at first: the thorny point
Of bare distress hath ta’en from me the show
Of smooth civility …”
—W
ILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,
Orlando,
As You Like It
P
leading a cold, Daisy begged off rehearsal and “instead waited for Gavin to bring home her daughter. In preparation for bed, she combed her hair and washed the paint from her face and changed back into her wrapper although it was scarcely past six. Ordinarily she would be thinking about beginning her day starting about now but the earlier argument and bout of crying had drained her. One eye fixed upon the closed door, she sat in the worn armchair twisting a daisy stem around and around her finger and allowed she’d let Gavin do the one thing she vowed never to let a grownup man do.
He’d hurt her. Hurt her these past weeks with his arm’s-length civility and his perfect manners and his frozen smiles and his absolute refusal to let her close enough to touch any part of him that might mean something, that might matter. He’d hurt her, he was hurting her still, deeply and lastingly, sharply and truly, and the warm trickle tracking her cheek might as well have been blood.
At the sound of the door knob turning, she jerked up her head and dashed a hand across her eyes. The door opened and Freddie rushed inside. Clutching a cloth-covered doll with black button eyes in one hand and a large, sticky lollipop in the other, she’d obviously had quite a day. Gavin came up behind, his tall, broad-shouldered frame filling the doorway, the sight of him stealing her breath and setting her poor, sad heart aflutter.
God, must he always have this effect on me?
Hoping he wouldn’t see how flustered she was, she rose and shifted her gaze to Freddie who was all but dancing on the balls of her feet. “Did you have a good time, poppet?” Her daughter’s mouth wore several layers of sweets, answering the question already, but talking served to fill up the silence as well as to distract her from Gavin’s quietly studying gaze.
“Oui, Maman,
jolly good.” Freddie’s intermingling of French words with the English vernacular, the latter picked up from the Lakes, could always bring out Daisy’s smile.”
Monsieur
Carmichael took me to the zoo. We saw an elephant as big, no bigger, than this house, and a giraffe, too. He was so tall he could see straight down to the trees.”
Freddie looked back over her shoulder at Gavin, and the beaming smile she sent him slashed at Daisy’s heart like a razor.
She should have been his. She bloody well should have been his.
Careful to smooth out any rancor from her voice, she smiled and said, “That sounds splendid, darling. Now run along and have Grandmamma help you wash your face.”
Turning back to her, Freddie’s expression turned fretful. “But
Maman.”
Determined to circumvent any whining, Daisy gave a firm shake of her head.
“Vite, vite!”
“D’accord.”
Freddie shuffled toward the back of the flat.
Daisy called her back. “Fredericka, don’t you have something you wish to say to Mr. Carmichael before you take your leave?”
The child turned about and bolted to Gavin. Throwing herself at his knees, she looked up and said,
“Merci beaucoup, monsieur
.”
He knelt down so they were closer to eye level. “You are most welcome, Freddie. I hope you will accompany me soon again.”
She cast a look back to her mother. “I hope so, too.”
“Freddie, love, come to Grandmamma.” Flora’s voice coming from the other room had Freddie scampering away.
Daisy lifted her gaze to Gavin, a slow, simmering anger taking possession of her. “It sounds as though you two had quite a day.”
“We did.” He let the door drop closed and came toward her. “She’s a remarkable child. You must be very proud.”
Daisy lifted her chin. “I am.”
They stared at one another for a long moment, and Daisy counted out the seconds by each pound of her heart. “It’s the oddest thing,” Gavin said at last. “We were standing outside the lion pen and a woman came up to us and complimented me on what a charming little daughter I had.”
Arms crossed over her breasts, Daisy regarded him, feeling the heat of tears and fifteen years of lost dreams welling up inside her. “You both have dark hair and blue eyes. It was a natural mistake.”
Gavin hesitated. “I suppose so only it didn’t feel like a mistake. It felt, well … right somehow.”
Flora’s voice calling out to them saved her from answering. “Mr. Carmichael, I was afraid I might have missed you.” She waddled inside the room, a damp apron thrown over her forest green plaid skirts. I just wanted to thank you for taking Freddie on such a grand outing. I expect she’ll speak of little else for the rest of the week.”
Gavin transferred his gaze to Daisy’s adoptive mother. “As I was just telling your daughter, it was my pleasure, but I wonder if I might ask a favor of you and your husband.”
Daisy tensed, wondering what he might be up to now.
“Oh, anything, Mr. Carmichael,” Flora gushed. The way she fawned over Gavin set Daisy’s teeth on edge. “You’ve only to ask.”
“I wonder if you and your husband would be so kind as to take Freddie out to supper. You’d all be my guests, of course.”
Two hot spots appeared on either of Flora’s apple cheeks. “That won’t be necessary, sir.”
Daisy’s father must have been listening close by for he popped his head through the alcove as if responding to a stage cue. “Aye, we’ll be happy to take the little one for a stroll and a bite. Come on with you, Freddie. I spotted a sandwich shop around the corner.”
“There’s a pub not far from here called the Hart and Dove. The whitebait is the specialty of the house. I trust you’ll find it to your liking. You’ve only to tell the proprietor you’re my guests, and he’ll see you accommodated.”
Bob shook his graying head. “That’s very kind of you, sir, but it sounds a bit rich for our blood.”
“Bob!” His wife reached out and swatted his arm.
Rubbing the spot, Bob turned to his wife. “There’s no point in putting on airs, Flora. A canny chap like Mr. Carmichael can see we’ve scarcely one penny to rub against the next. This isn’t the Claridge, after all, though it suits me well enough, m’dear.” He cast an apologetic glance at Daisy.
“Will there be fish and chips?” Freddie stood in the alcove, a soapy face cloth pressed to one partially scrubbed cheek.”
Maman
says the fish and chips are one of the things she missed most about England. What are chips?”
Bypassing Daisy, Gavin crossed the room and bent down to rub his nose against Freddie’s soapy one, drawing her giggle. “Why, Freddie, I can’t say for certain that fish and chips will appear on the menu, but if you tell the waiter that’s what you fancy, I’ve no doubt he’ll find a way to accommodate you, and then you can taste for yourself how delicious chips are. For now, though, finish washing your face.”
Freddie giggled and scampered from the room. Gavin straightened and turned back to the adults.
Flora beamed at him. “You’re so good with her, Mr. Carmichael. He’s what I call a natural father, isn’t he, Bob?”
Daisy cringed and Bob cast his wife a warning look. “Now, Flora, mind that chat we had about meddling in other people’s lives.”
The comment earned him a scowl from his wife. “I’ll just go and fetch our things. If my memory serves me, springtime in London can be a chilly affair at night.”
It took several minutes for the Lakes to collect bonnets, wrappers and, of course, Freddie, who insisted the new doll from Gavin must come to supper, too.
Daisy had gone from dreading Gavin’s arrival to counting out the minutes until she might be alone with him if only to give him his comeuppance. As soon as the door closed behind the happy trio, she rounded on him. “You’ve no right to use my family against me.”
“I wasn’t aware I was using them.” Determined not to back down, Gavin tossed his hat into the empty chair seat and strode nearer her. “But for argument’s sake, I’ll point out that you certainly use them well enough when the fancy strikes you—the fancy to hide, that is.”
She swung her head from side to side, looking very much like that little girl who’d been caught in the act of pilfering pies from the orphanage kitchen. “That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? You’ve had innumerable opportunities to tell me you had a daughter. The night we first made love, you might have told me then. Even when I found your letter to her you let me go on thinking you were another man’s mistress. Why, Daisy, why?”
“I have been another man’s mistress—several men’s mistress, though not at the same time, at least not usually.” She smiled what he’d come to think of as her Delilah smile, and the result was so painful she might as well have plunged a knife into his heart and twisted it.
“Stop it.”
She quirked a perfect half-moon brow and stared at him. “Stop what?”
“Stop working so hard at shocking me. After the other day in the park, I think I may be beyond shock or at least halfway to numbness.”
“I wouldn’t wager on it, Gavin. Besides, I’m only being honest. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Complete honesty, no secrets, your precious truth unmasked in all its ghoulish glory. Do you fancy hearing about Freddie’s father? Pierre was a good deal older than I and a bit of a bastard, but he had a look of you about him and, well, I was far from home and lonely. He didn’t have to work terribly hard at seducing me beyond telling me I was pretty and brushing up against my breasts a time or two. Oh, and he bought me my first absinthe—did you know that as well as having narcotic properties, the wormwood acts as an aphrodisiac? But more powerful than that, it was the look he had of you that won me to him. When I closed my eyes and spread my legs for him, I could almost believe it was you—almost but not quite.”
“Daisy, I—”
She held up a palm to silence him. She’d waited fifteen years for this moment, and she quite simply wasn’t finished with hurting him, not yet at any rate.
“There’ve been a number of men since Pierre, quite a rogue’s gallery, all in all. If you must know, I’d be rather hard-put to name them all.”
“Stop it.” He closed the distance between them in two long strides.
Refusing to back down, she lifted her chin and laughed though she felt as if her heart was breaking. It turned out that hurting Gavin meant hurting herself, too. She hadn’t counted on matters working out that way. And yet she couldn’t stop or at least she wasn’t yet willing to. Surely she’d feel good, or perhaps better, at any moment, if only she stayed the course.
“Shall I start out with the stage manager who shared me with his twin brother, the acrobat, or would you rather hear about the Duke who called in his pretty young housemaid to join us? She was French, too, and a jolly good fuck from the looks of it. He certainly seemed to enjoy her, or maybe it was my watching he enjoyed so much.”
“Stop it.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a sharp shake. When that didn’t work, he covered her mouth with his in a hard kiss.
Breaking free, she backed away. “See, it’s changed already. Yesterday you touched me as though I were made of finest china, something precious and fragile and so dear you couldn’t bear to think of it breaking. But now you know better, don’t you, Gavin? You know well enough to use me like the whore I am. Don’t just stand there. What are you waiting for? You’re stronger than I am and you’re angry, I can see it in your eyes. Did you know that your top lip all but disappears when you’re in a mood? It has ever since you were a boy.”
“Stop it.”
But the wildness was upon her and there would be no turning back. “Stop what, being so bloody honest? Very well then, we’ll call it your turn, shall we? Why don’t you be honest and confess what you’re really thinking? Say it, Gavin. Admit that despite everything you want me now. You want me more than ever, only this time you want me rough.”
He shook his head. His eyes were very dark, his face flushed. “I want you, God help me, that much is true.”
“Well, then, what’s stopping you? Pull up my skirts and have me. That table over there should suit me well enough. Softness is wasted on a woman such as me.”
“Stop this, Daisy. I want you, but not like this.”
“The name’s Delilah, sport. Look, I’ll even make it easy for you.” She opened her dressing robe and gave him an eyeful. “What’s the matter, Gavin? Yesterday you couldn’t get enough of me. Now you can barely bring yourself to look at me. Don’t you want me? Shall I start without you?” She lifted her breasts, a silent offering.
“Of course I want you, but not like this.”
“Sorry, love, but this is the only way that’ll serve. Take it or leave it, what shall it be?”
“God help me, yes.”
She fell upon her knees. There would be bruises tomorrow but for tonight it felt right, it felt good. With so much pain to be reckoned between them, a feather soft mattress or even her present lumpy one would never do. “Good call, love. In a bit I’ll give you the ride of your life, but first I’ll give you this.”
She anchored her hands to his waist and pressed an open mouth kiss to his erection, tongue circling the bulge, dampening the wool.
“God, Daisy.” He speared hard hands through her hair, anchoring her to him.
Now they were getting somewhere though he needn’t have bothered. The bald truth was there was nowhere else she’d rather be. She turned her head to the side and stroked him with her cheek.
Gavin’s desire was a traitor to his higher purpose. Even as his mind and heart recoiled from what they were about to do—soulless sex, bodies for barter—his manhood shot to life, penis hard and thick, balls heavy and aching.
“God, Daisy.” He laid a hand on either side of her jaw and turned her back to face him.
Looking up at him with triumphant eyes, she rested her chin on his crotch. “Yes, Gavin?”
“You’re right. I do want this—you.”
“I thought as much.” She unbuttoned the front of his trousers and took him between her hands.
She brought his trousers down to the floor with her. Standing with them in a puddle about his ankles, he suddenly felt ridiculous, like a circus clown.