More than a Mistress/No Man's Mistress (76 page)

Ferdinand grimaced. “It is to be hoped that Jane will steer her away from her usual garish choice,” he said. “Our sister was born with the severe handicap of no taste whatsoever.”

“She was wearing a puce monstrosity today,” his brother said, “with a canary yellow plume at least a yard tall nodding above it. I made the mistake of looking at it through my quizzing glass. I was thankful it was my duchess who was to be seen in public with her and not me.”

“I'll say,” Ferdinand agreed fervently. He continued without giving himself time to think. Tresham was not the most comfortable person in the world to be telling such things to, even though it was none of his business. “I called on Selby just now. I have made Pinewood over to Miss Thornhill.”

His brother looked down at him with an inscrutable stare. “You are a fool, Ferdinand,” he said at last. “But one must look on the bright side. She will return there and be out of your life. It is not wise, you see, to fall in love with one's mistress. Especially one of such notoriety.”

Something clicked in Ferdinand's brain. That room last night—the one with the pianoforte and the easel—and the embroidery frame. There was something about it that had teased at his mind. Tresham played the pianoforte.
He also painted. But they had both been hidden, repressed talents until Jane had gone to work on him. Their father had brought his sons up to believe that art and music were effeminate pursuits. He had made his heir ashamed of indulging his talents. Even now Tresham rarely played for anyone but Jane. And he painted only when she was with him, sitting quietly in a room with him, working on her embroidery. She was wonderfully skilled with her needle.
That room
.

“But
you
did it,” he said, looking up with narrow-eyed intensity into his brother's eyes. “You fell in love with
your
mistress, Tresham. You married her.”

He found himself at the receiving end of one of Tresham's famous black stares.

“Who told you that?” Tresham's voice was always at its quietest and most pleasant when he was at his most dangerous.

“A certain room in a certain house,” Ferdinand told him.

But it was not just the one room. There was the bedchamber too, with its unexpectedly elegant green and cream colorings. He would bet a pony Jane was responsible for that room. She had exquisite taste in design and color. She had been Tresham's
mistress
. He understood now at least why his brother had not sold the house.

“I had better rent the house from you, Tresham,” he said while his brother continued to gaze at him, tight-lipped. “It won't be for long, I daresay. She will probably go back to Pinewood once she knows that it is hers whether she likes it or not. You will be able to relax then. Your little brother will be safe from the clutches of a notoriously wicked woman. Unlike you. Everyone thought
your
mistress was an ax murderer.”

“By God, Ferdinand.” Tresham leaned one arm across the pommel of his saddle and tapped his whip against one boot. “Are you deliberately courting death? Some advice, my dear fellow. Point a pistol between my eyes and pull the trigger if you must, but cast no aspersions on the good name of my duchess. It is not allowed.”

“And I,
damn
you, will have none cast on that of Miss Thornhill,” Ferdinand said.

His brother straightened up. “What is this all about, Ferdinand?” he asked. “Will it upset you so very much to see her go?”

Life was going to be empty without her, that was all. There was not going to seem much point to it. But he would soldier on, he supposed. One did not die of such a ridiculous malady as a broken heart. And when had he started to feel quite this way about her, anyway? After sleeping with her? It was probably just lust that was bothering him. Nothing more serious than that.

“The thing is,” he said, “that I can't help thinking that if I had not made over the property to her this morning or if I failed to hand her the deed, she would stay and be my mistress. I can't help being tempted. But it would be wrong. It would, Tresh. I don't care what she has done in the past. I daresay she had her reasons. But
now
, you see, she is Miss Thornhill of Pinewood Manor. She is a lady. And I can't bear it because I have already defiled her and because I want to keep on doing so when she belongs back there. And I damned well can't
bear
the thought of her going. And make one sneering remark about this babbling drivel that is spouting out of my mouth and I'll drag you down from your horse and punch out all your teeth. I swear I will.”

His brother stared broodingly at him for a few moments
before dismounting to stand beside him. “Come to Jackson's,” he said, “and pound the stuffing out of me, if it will make you feel better—and if you can. Preferably not my teeth, though, if it's all the same to you. Strange—I did not think you were into the petticoat line, Ferdinand. But perhaps that is the whole point. Perhaps I should have guessed that when you eventually fell, you would fall hard.”

It was much later in the afternoon before Ferdinand went back to the house. He had gone home with Tresham after they had sparred to a stalemate at Jackson's. Angie had been there and had talked his ear off and forced both him and Tresham to view her new bonnet. He had played a vigorous wrestling game with his nephew, whom Tresham had brought down from the nursery for tea. Angie and Jane had vied for his company at dinner. Angie had won, though he had assured her that he would not go on to the Grosnick ball with her afterward—Heyward was to accompany her, she had explained, but Ferdie knew how much he danced, provoking man, which was absolutely not at all, while Ferdie was a divine dancer and would make her the envy of every other lady present.

Finally he arrived at the house. He was not really sure how he was going to proceed. Hand her the deed immediately and tell her Pinewood was hers whether she wanted it or not? Or keep the news until tonight? Perhaps they could go to bed this afternoon. Would it be dishonorable? Dash it, but honor could sometimes be a dreary killjoy of a weight on the conscience.

“Tell Miss Thornhill that I am here,” he instructed Jacobs after he had been admitted to the house. “Where is she?”

“She is not in, my lord,” the butler said, taking his hat and cane.

Damnation! He had not considered the possibility that she might be out. But it was a pleasant afternoon. She must have felt the need for some air and exercise.

“I'll wait,” he said. “Did she say when she would be back?”

“No, my lord.”

“Did she take her maid?” Ferdinand frowned. She was in London now. He would not have her walking about outside without a chaperon.

“Yes, my lord.”

He went into the room with the pianoforte and looked about him. How on earth had he not realized the truth yesterday as soon as he set foot in here? he wondered. It had Jane and Tresham-with-Jane written all over it. It was a strangely cozy room, even though the embroidery frame and the easel and music stand were all empty. He would enjoy spending time here with Viola. She would feel like his companion as well as his mistress in here. They would talk and read and be comfortable together. She would feel almost like a wife.

But he did not want a wife, he reminded himself—or mistress either. He wanted Viola to be back at Pinewood, lady of the manor again. Even if it meant never seeing her again, because that was what she wanted.

He wandered restlessly from the room and upstairs to the bedchamber. He sat on the side of the bed and ran one hand over the pillow where her head had lain last night. He hoped—he swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat—he hoped she would go back home. Perhaps after some time had passed he could go
down there, stay at the Boar's Head, call on her, court her.…

He wandered into her dressing room. It looked empty. She had brought only the one bag with her from Pinewood, it was true, but there surely should have been a comb or brush or something on the dressing table. All that was there, propped against the mirror, was a folded piece of paper. He crossed the room with hesitant steps, knowing very well what it was. It had his name written on the outside in the now-familiar neat handwriting.

It was as terse as the last one.

“We agreed that we were both free to end our liaison at a moment's notice,” she had written. “I am ending it now. Go back to Pinewood. It is where you will find the fulfillment for which you have been searching all your adult life, I believe. Be happy there. Viola.”

So she had escaped after all. She had intended it from the start, he realized. Now that he thought about it, he could recall that she had never said explicitly that she would be his mistress, only that she would come here with him and must be free to go whenever she chose. She had disappeared into the vastness of London. Last night had meant nothing to her.
He
meant nothing to her. She preferred the life of a courtesan. It made no sense whatsoever to him. But did it need to?

Would he never learn?

He crumpled the paper and dropped it to the floor.

“Goddamn you,” he said aloud.

And then he surprised and embarrassed himself—almost as if there were an audience—by sobbing once and then again and finding it impossible to stem the flow of his grief.

“Goddamn you to hell,” he said between sobs. “What do you
want
from me?”

The silence answered him loud and clear.

Nothing at all
.

V
IOLA WAS GOING HOME
. Home to her uncle's inn to see her mother and sisters. And to meet Daniel Kirby and come to some arrangement with him about her future. But even though she would not put herself through the agony of hoping, she intended to fight as far as she was able. Bag in hand, Hannah beside her, she made her way first in the opposite direction to the inn. She had a call to make.

She sat and waited stubbornly for three hours in a dingy outer office of Westinghouse and Sons, Solicitors, before being admitted for one whole minute into the presence of the most junior partner and assured that the late Earl of Bamber's will made no mention whatsoever of Miss Viola Thornhill.

“Well, Hannah,” she said as they were leaving, “I did not expect anything different, you know. But I had to hear it with my own ears.”

“Where are we going now, Miss Vi?”

Hannah had been disapproving of last night's destination. But this morning she had disapproved of their leaving. She had wanted Viola to throw herself upon Lord Ferdinand's mercy, to tell him everything, to beg him to lend her the money with which to pay Daniel Kirby. Ferdinand was more than halfway in love with her, according to Hannah. He could be brought to offer for her if Miss Vi just played her cards right.

Never! She would not beg money from him, she would
not burden him with her problems, and she would not entice him into a marriage he would bitterly regret for the rest of his life.

“We are going to call on the Earl of Bamber,” she said in answer to Hannah's question.

It was halfway through the afternoon by the time they arrived there. It was very probable he would not be home. It was even more probable that she would be denied admittance even if he were. It was a shocking thing for a lady to call upon a single gentleman, even though she was accompanied by her maid. The look with which the earl's butler regarded her when he opened the door to her knock confirmed her fears. She probably would not have succeeded in setting so much as a foot over the doorstep if chance had not brought the earl home while she was standing there arguing.

“Who do we have here, then?” he asked, coming up the steps behind her, his eyes raking over her.

He was short, portly, fair-haired, and florid of complexion. He bore no discernible resemblance to his father.

“I am Viola Thornhill,” she said, turning to face him.

“Well, damn me.” His brows snapped together. “The woman herself, standing on my doorstep. I am mortally sick of hearing your name. I'll not have you bothering me, I say. Take yourself off. Shoo!”

“My mother was once your governess,” she said.

For a moment she thought he was going to tell her again to shoo, but then an arrested look came over his face.

“Hillie?”
he said. “I only ever had one governess—before I went to school. She was Hillie.”

“Rosamond Thornhill,” Viola said. “My mother.”

She watched the glimmer of understanding come into his rather bloodshot eyes.

“You had better come inside,” he said ungraciously, and he led the way into the house and across the hall to a small salon. Hannah followed them and stood quietly inside the door after the earl had shut it.

“Who the devil are you?” he asked.

“My mother was your father's mistress for ten years,” she said. “He was my father too.”

He stared at her, his expression grim.

“What do you want from me?” he asked her. “If you have come here begging for money—”

“I met him shortly before he died,” she said. “He was determined to provide for me. He sent me to Pinewood Manor. It was one of his smaller, unentailed holdings, he said. He had never even been there himself. But he thought it was in a suitably secluded corner of England and could offer me a decent living if it was well managed. He was going to change his will so that it would always be mine.”

“Well, he did not do so,” he said. “The very idea—”

“He loved me,” she said. “He always loved me. I never doubted his affection while I was a child, before my mother married. I doubted it afterward because suddenly he did not come anymore or even write. But that was my mother's fault, I learned later. She had broken off her relationship with him and refused to let him even see me. She destroyed all the letters and gifts he sent me. It was quite by chance that I saw him in the park.… But no matter. The details can be of no interest to you. Did you persuade Mr. Westinghouse to erase the new clause from his will?”