The Virgin's Auction (20 page)

She bit her lip, her hands dropping to her sides. Her comparisons were drawn from her previous inviolate state. It was true she had made the choice – albeit reluctantly – to surrender that state long before she ever saw or knew him.

But she had forgotten that detail, and demonised him as if he was the sole cause of her new circumstances. She turned her head away, feeling shame creep over her. It was still the case she did
not want to see him in her life again. But perhaps he was not so evil as she had been thinking.

“I am sorry,” he said softly. “I should not speak of it, knowing it is no pleasant memory for you.”

She pressed her lips together, breathed through her nose. Then conceded: “It was not pleasant. But in all fairness, it was the auction itself that was most heinous. And while I was frightened for most of the rest of that night,” she paused, took another breath and steeled herself to give the devil his due: “I cannot in all honesty say I suffered greatly at your hands. I regret the necessity of it. The actuality was . . .”

“Not awful?”

“No,” she rolled her eyes. “Not
awful
, Mr Carstairs.”

“You relieve my mind astonishingly, Miss Merry. Behold me all gratitude.” He captured her unwary hand in his and lifted her gloved fingers to his mouth, where he pretended to drop smacking kisses on them.

She snatched her hand back with a smothered exclamation and a blush, turning away to scramble up into the curricle, wondering at him and his unfailing ability to discompose her.

She measured the distance between his leg and her skirts with her eyes and found it exactly the same as before. At least with all his blandishments, he was not straining her to breaking point by sidling closer. 

She went back to pleating the fabric of her skirt while he concentrated on passing a farm wagon.

“I do wish you would let me be of more service to you in the matter of finding your brother,” he persisted
once the obstacle was passed, making her clench her fists with dismay, crushing the fabric within them. “I do not like the idea of you running about alone looking for him, and no doubt distressed.”

“I am well used to seeing to my own affairs, Mr
Carstairs,” she said tartly. “And I
cannot
think why you should want to take on such a burden.”

“Truly I cannot either. But there it is. I do. So you would be kind to be more accommodating and allow me my head. I promise to do my utmost – despite any and all temptation – to divert my pernicious attentions from causing you distress.”

For the first time she allowed herself to consider what it would mean to say yes to him, rather than refuse his offer: Several days in his company; dangerously exciting, awful company. Wicked man that he was, and wicked things he made her feel and do.

It was odd to think of accepting help from anyone. Let alone a man. She was so used to standing alone. Even such assistance as the women of
Bourton had offered her had left her feeling uncomfortably beholden.

She was not one to accept help easily.

But she wanted it. She found underneath every other instinct and emotion was a desire to lean on him; to accept his strong arm beside her as she sallied forth onto the streets of London; the streets that quite frankly terrified her. It would take so little effort to have her abducted, should Black Jack find her. No one would know where she had gone. No one would think to look for her. She would be lost.

He exuded such an air of calmness, of capable confidence – quite apart from the evidence of his size and strength – he seemed the perfect person to whom a woman might turn in a crisis.

If she was inclined to turn to another person; or to depend on any man, for anything.

Which of course she was not.

Yet she found herself wishing she could. Could just surrender her burdens for once into the arms of someone else, and trust in him to help her bear their weight. What a luxury that would be, to be sure.

“Let me help you,” he said again. “You do not need to do this alone. I am not asking you for anything in return. I want to see you
safe, and your brother too.”

He had no idea it might involve more than simply driving about until they found Peter. No idea of the potential risks involved. But then none of those risks might become reality.

Black Jack might never learn of their return. She might catch Peter lurking about their old neighbourhood, directionless in his search for creditors, and nab him before he could get up to mischief. And certainly if it were a matter of manhandling an unwilling boy, subduing him and hauling him away for a good talking to, a man might be a very useful thing to have around. Should Peter be inclined to run off rather than patiently listen to his sister.

So then . . .

Could she? Did she have the courage to take such a risk?
To become beholden to him? Or at least, more beholden than she was. And expose herself to whatever risks lay in his company?

It was easy to feel she did not really have a choice. But then there was always a choice, truly. No matter how unpalatable.

He might well be the least of several evils. Certainly she could not think of a better option for her search. Truly.

“Very well, sir. It shall be as you say. Though I warn you, there may be more to the search than either of us yet know. And there may also be matters I wish to conceal, and I ask if that be so you will not press me.”

He considered this gravely, though she thought there was a laughing gleam lurking in his eye as he said: “I shall make no promises, but I do bear your words in mind.” And with that she had to be satisfied.

Frank talking done with, she introduced a neutral topic of conversation and he promptly followed her lead. She felt better for the opinions they had exchanged, she would admit, yet was still certain it was a dangerous thing indeed to be too open with him. Secrets meant safety.

So she was relieved he was content to discuss the birdlife in the fields they passed – he could identify some species, but not all; the likelihood of a certain stream they crossed containing trout, and how one might catch said trout; the value of a particular straight of road for young men racing horses or
carriages. When she asked, he described his student days in Oxford, and related tales of reckless student pranks and foolishness.

“But did you not apply yourself to your studies at all?” she exclaimed, envious of such opportunities for Peter and also for herself, and incredulous they should be wasted.

“I did not take it so very seriously, it is true. I was rather too busy enjoying life,” he said carelessly, and she bit her lip against the censure that rose to it. He looked at her expression, and smiled. “Would you have done better?”

“I rather think I should!” she said crossly, provoked by his apparent derision.

He laughed outright, throwing up a hand in a warding gesture, as if to see off a blow. “I’ve no doubt, if you say so. I have met the occasional female scholar and – while I would not have guessed a bluestocking hid under this exterior, I am quite prepared to believe anything you tell me,” and he gave her a look that was all wide-eyed innocence or – possibly – bucolic stupidity.

“What is wrong with my appearance?” she asked quietly, with a faint air of menace.

“In my own experience, the women who apply themselves wholeheartedly to study and erudition are those who have the resources to make leisure an option, and a disinclination for Society due to its unrewarding nature. No woman with your looks could possibly find Society unrewarding. It would fawn over you, and fall at your feet. You need only the leisure to enjoy such a life. And since you are in fact an industrious seamstress, I must declare you fail the test for a scholarly female on both points.”

“But I could be one if I wanted to, and had the funds.”

“Certainly.” There was a long pause, as he negotiated a curve and the dog carriage that immediately appeared around the bend, flying around first one and then the other in dashing style that made her take a firm grip on both her hat and the side of the carriage.

When the road was again clear before them he asked: “So is that your truest desire? Should I have dangled such delights before you when I attempted to lure you into carnal dalliance?”

This made her eyes widen, as he caught her unawares. She blushed furiously, pressing her lips together.

“Is it? Would you like to establish a salon for learned discussions, philosophy and erudition? Such places exist among the demimonde, you know. You could have your own library, even attend lectures. None of that would be out of your reach, if you only wanted it enough.”

She opened her mouth to hotly rebut his delusions, yet unwilling honesty stopped her. This was in truth more tempting than anything he had said thus far. This new picture he painted of a life beyond the bedroom, of what she could have as his mistress in addition to everything she had – all unwilling – heard from him before, was so much more tantalising than her deadly boring role as a working class woman who plied a needle in solitary virtue.

The picture sprang into her mind almost fully formed, dancing before her eyes. She saw candlelit rooms full of conversation and refined
laughter, saw herself soaking up information and ideas, even taking part in those debates. Living in a world where the quality of her mind was to be admired, even if her connections were shady, her social position beyond the pale.

She also saw Mr
Carstairs at her side, nodding benevolently as she spoke, holding her hand in his, raising it to his lips as he smiled in pride at something witty she said. Drawing her aside to a balcony or private room, to steal a kiss or – oh! – into the darkness of her bedroom with the guests all gone, naked and so much more wicked.

It was a better picture than the other: a spinster in her brother’s house, his housekeeper until he took a wife and then . . . nothing. The pitied and dwindling older woman, never married, an inconvenience.

She breathed a harsh sigh, painful after she had held her breath so long, suspended in her theatre of the mind. “No,” she said, an automatic response, bald and unadorned, her head spinning and her heart pounding with everything that lay behind that one word.

A rejection of her own longing, more than an answer to his question, though he took it as such and lapsed into silence.
Side by side but worlds apart they drove on through the bright day, the road spinning away under the wheels of his curricle.

Chapter Seventeen

They stopped again at four for a late luncheon and change of horses, ordering mugs of ale and pasties to be brought to the wheel side so they need not disembark; though later Melissa wished they had as she became stiff and tired from the hours in one position. Her tension had long since lapsed, impossible to maintain with the sway of a carriage, but her inner state was so uncomfortable she had little to say. Mr Carstairs left her in silence.

She didn’t want to think and worry more about Peter. She was hurrying to his side with all possible speed, and other than that there was nothing more to be done. Instead she circled around to Mr
Carstair’s offer again and again in her mind. She was not likely to find one better. It was indecent, a path to a precarious existence; but so much richer in every way.

Since she was a little girl she had always put herself last, never asking herself the question ‘what
do
I
want?’ It was a futile question anyway. Life was never going to give her what she wanted. The appropriate question was ‘how can
we
survive this?’ Always in her mind it was she and Peter, together.

It still astounded her that Mr
Carstairs really
saw
her. He saw her clearly, despite her misdirections. He persisted beyond anyone she had ever known, determined to figure her out and know her. No one did that. Not since mother’s death had anyone made a study of her to determine how to please her.

She who had stood in the background, made herself as small as possible to avoid Father’s notice. Who ran the household to create a home for her and Peter and to smooth out every hitch and difficulty from Father’s path to try and keep him from his inexplicable rages.

She had commanded a shrinking staff, finally settling on just two as the bare necessity she could afford, and even then had been standing at Cook’s shoulder, learning how to cook in preparation for the inevitable moment when the woman would have to be let go and Melissa would replace her.

She had made a study of everyone else, picking up every piece of knowledge she could to look after Peter properly, nurse him when he was sick, to keep the house, clean it, manage the accounts and somehow afford what they needed.

When she needed a skill and could find no one to observe, books had taught her nearly everything else she knew, for once Mama died there was no tutor for her other than the servants, and only her to teach Peter.

To maintain an air of gentility so they could still fit into their social circle, talk properly on the right subject, look correct, know the right manners, obey all the rules. She was a master at keeping up appearances and turning her hand to anything that needed doing, always thanking God that no one took the time to really
see
her and her life, to see all the imperfections she was certain permeated her facade.

More than that, she wanted Peter to have the life of a gentleman to which birth had entitled him. But there was no money for schooling, for tutors. If he was to enter a profession one day and have a reliable income and a place worthy of respect in the eyes of all, he must have an edu
cation. So she became the tutor. She devoured books from her family’s neglected collection and haunted the lending library to learn the skills of mathematics and management, accounting and investment.

The classics had been a mystery, beyond the stories her mother had told her as a small child, Greek tragedies and dramas alongside fairytales and nursery rhymes. But she had found them again on the shelves of the library, borrowed them to read to Peter.

They debated together, awkwardly but enthusiastically; Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Diogenes as a starting point, and Peter making bold forays into Euclid, Ptolemy and others more obscure. He kept a brilliant mind under that golden hair of his. If only he could lay claim to as much common sense.

She had siphoned as much money as she dared to keep the whole shaky ship afloat – thrusting bank drafts under father’s nose as he slept off inebriation in his chair, shaking him just awake enough to scrawl a signature, then cursing the ones that bounced and revealed an account once more drained to the dregs – keeping the house in funds, the small staff paid and food on the table.

She kept nasty, smelly chickens in the handkerchief-sized yard at the back of the townhouse, doves in a cote on the roof, to raise extra small amounts.

She had sworn if ever money came her way she would treat it better and with more wisdom than her father, who squandered everything within his grasp.

As for her own education, practicality had – of necessity – been always her priority. But the fantasies, the foolish girlish dreams into which she once escaped had her either a mother – with husband all but absent, misty and marginalised – or a scholar.

Yet why had she never done anything about either while she had the chance? Always putting herself last, following the rules, keeping her head down, too preoccupied to reach out for something better.

This was her
life
. Her one and only life. And here she was once again determined to hem herself about with a constricting set of rules, to bind herself into one narrow, circumscribed path and keep herself there with fearsome self-control, and never look at her other options.
Why
?

The silence spun out between her and Mr
Carstairs, and still she said nothing, choking down that horrifying wave of longing that threatened the very foundations of the new life she was trying to build.

The only way, the
only
way she could see her way through this uncertain present to the prosperous future she envisaged for Peter was if she focused on it and believed in it utterly. It was hard enough, dull enough, claustrophobic enough already without his temptation. Without Mr Carstairs watching her, puzzling her out so he could offer her exactly what she wanted.

She had her goals, she had her plans,
she had her
life
. . .

She had . . .

As if it did not already lie in wrack and ruin about her, with Peter fled and herself taken off into the countryside with a man, unchaperoned and with no immediate plans of return. Would there be anything left of her place once she came back to it?

Ought she to simply give up? Was that the better choice in this moil of confusion? The price of the life he described was a fall far down the ladder of social standing.

Yet she had already fallen down that ladder; had done so to earn a living with her brother by her side, far from the dangers of London. She was still the gentleman’s daughter but only in her own mind.

Was that not simply self-deception?

All she had left was the appearance of modest respectability. Why did she cling to that so hard? What did it give her? She was never going to take a husband, because of her dreadful secret, so it was not about retaining the prospect of marriage. Miss Parsit would probably not employ her if she were not respectable, but did that pitiable income matter if she was sponsored by Mr Carstairs?

Mr
Carstairs. James. That vital, laughing, charming man; so strong and capable, his commanding presence sweeping aside obstacles. What would it be like to let him wrap her up and care for her? To stop worrying and plotting and scrimping. What would it be like to have his patronage? To surrender the dull, arduous grind of her life for the exciting ride he offered her?

How would it be to go to bed with him at night, to wake to him in the morning?
To repeat those strange, wonderful hours of the auction night over and over again. Could the human body bear so much pleasure? Was it possible?

She remembered how he had looked when he spoke of his sister, all tenderness and indulgence, teasing and cosseting. Would he treat his lover like that? She tried to imagine it and found the p
icture frighteningly compelling; compelling because she longed for it so intensely; frightening because of the loss of control. Could she really hand the reins over to another and let him direct her?

Life with Father had taught her that control was the only way to deal with the anxiety of life ruled by a man. His unpredictability meant anxiety, chaos and pain. Nailing down every detail, holding the reins firmly, sitting in the middle of the web, whatever metaphor she chose to use, the truth
remained the same: she felt safe when she had control, anxious and terrified without it. 

That was why she bounded herself about with rules. In the midst of chaos, rules gave a structure and a certain course to follow.

Rules upon rules upon rules. Those of society, of God and filial duty, of care and protection of a helpless little brother, and the tactical rules involved in the avoidance of an unhinged drunkard’s fists.

And now the newest set of rules: those of a working girl, humble, hard-working, grateful, without ostentation. Dress plainly in drab dresses that display nothing to advantage, so as not to attract unwanted attention. Do not make eye contact with your betters. Bow and scrape. Be polite, deferential, don’t offer your opinions,
don’t speak up. In effect, so far as you are able, disappear entirely as a person.

She was good at it, too. Good at learning the rules, at following them so closely she could fit in with people’s expectations and be liked as a pleasant, sweet young miss. But oh! Sometimes she longed to run wild, and screech and carry on like she was demented, sick of the boredom of it and the underlying, grinding fear of others’ disapproval. Of being ruined by a thoughtless misstep.

With Mr Carstairs there were no rules. No comfortable, safe path to tread, narrow and controlled. But equally there were no rules to be constrictive, to choke the very soul from her.

With him she felt terrified by boundlessness and trying to resolve that freedom with the rest of her
existence. She could not know him and be safe, in control, living a predictable life.

Beyond that lay the awful, alluring possibility she could know him and be free. Be truly herself – her intellectual, assertive, tempestuous,
hedonistic and – now she found – vulgarly sexual self. The person she kept locked up inside so tightly she never escaped, because life had taught her there was no place for a girl to be like that.

A mistress could be like that. A woman of pleasure: r
unning her own household, her only duty to entertain a particular man with earthly delights, and intellectual pursuits if she so chose.

She could enter for the first time the salons of London. Not fashionable London, to be sure. Not somewhere she might encounter the young ladies who were her friends. Nor be acknowledged by anyone of standing in the eyes of the world. But safe from Black Jack under an assumed name, far from his aegis, she could be a part of infinitely exciting society.

She might launch Peter, if Mr Carstairs were true to his word; Eton and then Oxford or Cambridge under his own name, never entering London and his connection to her a secret, no relationship acknowledged between them.

Of course she would have to put herself under the power of a man, where she had sworn she would never be again in that moment she knew she was free forever from Father.

Though less under his power than she would have been under a husband, if she had married as she had once thought she would. For a married woman was truly her husband’s possession. At least a single woman could keep her own money and property.

If she did become pregnant any child she bore would be a bastard. That was the stone cold truth of it. She would condemn them to wretchedness. But perhaps there was a way around that. She could take whatever money she had and go settle again in a small community, styling herself a widow and raising her child alone. Perhaps Peter would come and visit her incognito. If she was quiet, pleasant and respectable she might be accepted and thought well of. It might be a good life.

And a child. A little baby. She remembered Peter as an infant. He had been the focus of her young life, a golden boy. She could have another baby as she had  had her little brother, but a baby of her own this time, to raise, to nurse and cuddle, a child of her body to send forth in the world.

And there would be bright, shining months or maybe even years in London in the society of intelligent men and women, feeding her mind, blossoming under the influence of education and ideas. Even if Mr
Carstairs soon tired of her, with a house and a place of her own she could get by very frugally there if she did not become pregnant. That at least was one skill she had for certain.

Most of all – and it made her head spin to think of it, think of him this way – there was the particular man himself. If she allowed herself to think of him not as the nemesis of her goals, but as the agent of them; not as the man who would tempt her from her path, but as the one who would smooth
it, why then she could stop shutting her eyes and ears to him, look at him and truly
see.

So she did. She sat short inches from him, at a slight angle, and examined him under her lashes. A beautiful man, really, with a profile like a carved statue, noble and fine, dark hair waving back f
rom it, tucking into his collar; smartly dressed in a caped greatcoat that made his shoulders – already broad – look impossibly wide. Leaning forward slightly, hands gloved, strong and steady on the reins. He thrummed with masculine power, controlled and brooding.