Darius Read online

  “He was as pleasant as a serious man can be.” Vivian looked preoccupied rather than offended. “And you’ve talked with him quite enough, thank you.”

  “Now he’s serious and reserved both.” William grimaced, thinking of the tedium of schemes that came unraveled. “Did he offend, Vivian? Make you doubt your choice?”

  “Doubt my choice, yes. I’ll be doubting my choice when your son takes his own bride, William Longstreet. I know if I let you, you’ll list any number of cronies and familiars who raised children conceived by similar schemes, but I can’t like it.”

  William set his letters aside. “I know you don’t like it, and it isn’t my preferred choice either, but you’ve met the man. Is his person offensive?”

  “He’s taller than I thought. Bigger.”

  “Believe it or not, child, back in the day, I was an impressive specimen, though perhaps not quite as tall as Lindsey. He tends to his toilette adequately?”

  “He’s clean, and he uses some exotic scent.”

  “Oil of fragrant cananga,” Lord Longstreet said. “I find it pleasant, incongruously so, given his saturnine personality. You know, Vivian, you needn’t spend much time with him when you’re down in Kent. Bring your books and journals, have the Gazette sent down, ride out when the weather allows. You can limit your dealings with him to fifteen minutes at the end of the day.”

  “William…” Her tone was as repressive as it got with him, so he paused to consider her. Young people today were both overtaken with sentiment and constrained by propriety. It was an odd world, and William, for one, was glad he wouldn’t be spending much more time in it.

  “Vivian.” His tone suggested marshaled patience, as he’d intended it to. “You are young. He’s comely and willing. For God’s sake, enjoy him.”

  “It doesn’t seem right. You’re asking a lot of me, William, but do you realize what you’re asking of him?”

  She would raise this. “I’m asking him to have his pleasures of my pretty wife for several weeks and be paid handsomely for it,” William said a trifle impatiently. “This isn’t a grand tragedy, Vivian, it’s a little holiday in the country that will solve many problems for people who are neither better nor worse than most of St. Peter’s clientele, provided you catch.”

  “There is that detail.” She rose, pausing to tuck his lap robe more snugly around him. “And that much, at least, we can leave in the hands of the Almighty, in whom we are regularly exhorted to trust. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  “Sweet dreams, my dear.” William smiled absently as she left and returned his attention to the letters Muriel had written him when he’d first gone off to Vienna without her. Within minutes, he had mentally turned back the clock thirty years, when the world was a less complicated, more exciting place, and wives understood that loyalty was a far more meaningful asset in a spouse than simple-minded fidelity.

  ***

  “Join me in a nightcap?” Trent Lindsey held up the decanter so the brandy caught the firelight.

  Darius nodded, shrugging out of his greatcoat. “I’m surprised you’re still awake.”

  “Laney’s cutting a new tooth.” Trent yawned then poured them each two fingers.

  “I thought she already did that.” Darius accepted his drink and sank onto the sofa facing the fire. Everybody, it seemed, could afford adequate heat except him.

  Trent settled in beside him. “She has been doing that since just before we buried her mother. I’m told she’s particularly good at it.”

  “It has been a year since Paula died, hasn’t it?” Darius lifted his glass an inch in a personal salute to a long, hard year all around.

  “Just this week. Suppose we can take down the black, though I’m dreading it.”

  “You dread putting off mourning?”

  “I do.” Trent thunked the stockinged version of two large male feet onto the low table. “I do not want to remarry, Dare. Not ever, but these children need a mother.”

  “You’re managing,” Darius said, but in truth, Trent looked like hell. He was as tall as Darius and even more robust, typically, but since his wife’s death, Trent had been slowly wearing away, losing muscle and life, and, Darius feared, the will to go on.

  “I’m managing.” Trent yawned again. “You must be deranged to be out sporting around on a night like this.”

  “I had a dinner engagement.” Darius sipped his drink, finding it inferior to what he himself stocked, which was puzzling. “How much do you know of Lord William Longstreet?”

  “Viscount Longstreet is one of the senior members of the Lords.” Trent crossed his feet, getting comfortable with the recitation. “He has at least ten years on our sire, maybe closer to twenty, and he’s universally respected.”

  “What about the wife?”

  “Second wife,” Trent said, suggesting the heir to the Wilton earldom still bothered to keep himself informed of these things. “He married his first wife’s companion, but rather than be considered a pathetic old billy goat, he was regarded as a white knight. The girl’s family was unable to provide much of a send-off for her, and the daughters of earls marry where they must.”

  “Daughters of earls?” Vivian was a lady then, had been from the moment of her birth. The notion… rankled.

  “The title was…” Trent frowned, sipped his drink, then shook his head. “I can’t recall, but the fellow died, the title and means went to some cousin, and the countess remarried one of those grasping younger sons who enjoys flaunting his titled wife. He had plans for the daughters, and actually matched the first one up with some… a printer, I think, or publisher. I forget which.”

  Darius set his drink aside rather than consume inferior spirits simply for their ability to dull his senses. “Teething makes a man forgetful. And the other daughter?”

  “She upped and went into service when she was eighteen.” Trent closed his eyes. “That’s how Lord Longstreet met her. Damned lot of work, if you ask me, taking on a wife young enough to be one’s granddaughter.”

  “She’d be done teething.”

  “Not if she were my granddaughter.” Trent settled a little more heavily against Darius’s side. “So why were you keeping such august company, Dare? You thinking of running for a seat?”

  “Assuredly not. It’s all I can do to manage my one little farm and keep up with Leah’s social schedule. I have no coin to campaign on.”

  “I’m out of mourning now,” Trent said sleepily. “I can help with squiring Leah about and so forth.”

  “You’ll need new evening finery. You must have lost two stone, Trent.”

  “Teething.” Trent nodded, not opening his eyes. “What are you doing for the holidays, little brother? Will you join us here?”

  A pang lanced Darius’s chest. He adored Trent’s children, though he ought not to be permitted around them.

  “I’ll bide in Kent. I can use the peace and quiet, and you’ve reminded me you’ll be free to escort Leah about, should she need it, for a few weeks.”

  Trent opened his eyes and frowned. “Why doesn’t Wilton take his own daughter about?”

  “You’d wish him on Leah? The only time she gets out from under his eye is when she has an invitation to some ball or musicale.”

  “She’s received, then?”

  “She’s received. Not exactly welcomed.”

  “Society has a damned long memory,” Trent groused. “The poor thing has been back from Italy for several years now.”

  “But a duel was allegedly fought in her honor, and the only thing that allows her admittance at all is our father’s title. She’s also too old and too self-effacing to threaten anybody’s darling daughter.”

  “Makes one want to fight a duel in truth and blow the ears off Polite Society.”

  “You’re teething,” Darius said charitably. “We’ll make allowance for that remark.”<
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  “See that you do.” Trent was soon snoring gently on Darius’s shoulder, a comforting, warm weight on a cold, confusing night. Darius rose without disturbing his brother, covered him up with an afghan, and departed for his final stop of the night. This one would take some time, unfortunately, but it provided the coin he needed to go on. So… despite the cold, the dark, and the bitter resistance in his soul, he let himself into the back gate of Blanche Cowell’s townhouse, used his key, and silently slipped up to her room. As he divested himself of his coat, hat, gloves, and scarf, he heard her stirring behind her bed curtains.

  “You are late.”

  “Be glad I fit you into my schedule, Blanche.” He sat to remove his boots and stockings, unbuttoned his waistcoat, and went on with the routine of undressing in a woman’s bedroom while she watched.

  “Stop.” Blanche emerged from the bed, a flannel night robe belted tightly around her waist, her red hair cascading about her in disarray. “Light more candles first.”

  He obeyed. He was paid to obey—up to a point. Blanche delighted in defining that point as unpleasantly as she could.

  “Shirt next.” Blanche walked around him, considering the merchandise as she did. “Breeches last.”

  Her bedroom wasn’t cold, thank God, because Blanche Cowell—Lady Blanche Cowell—wasn’t about to be uncomfortable while seeking her pleasures. Darius stood naked while she perused her human toy; then her eyes landed on his semierect cock.

  “You pretend indifference, Darius, but I can see you’re only half succeeding.” She smiled a little while she said it, and Darius’s heart sank. He hated it when she smiled, but to show anything besides indifference would violate both common sense and the rules of their game.

  “I am not at all indifferent to your coin.” He scratched his chest and yawned—his niece was teething; he was entitled to some fatigue. “If you intend I earn it tonight by simply letting you gawk, then gawk away.”

  “You are so arrogant.” Blanche advanced on him, and only as she came into the light did he see she had a riding crop in her right hand. It was a short, heavy-handled jumping bat, and the sight of it gave him relief. Blanche’s dithering over their choice of activities was more tedium than he could bear at this hour.

  In his mind, he had names for her various diversions. Tonight they would play Naughty Pony, one of her less demanding inventions.

  “On your hands and knees, Darius.” She caressed his thighs with the crop then flicked the lash over his most vulnerable parts. He permitted it long enough to make the point that she was not intimidating him, then dropped to his knees before the fire.

  “You were late,” she repeated, drawing the tip of the crop down his spine. “And that’s bad.”

  She started whaling on his buttocks, telling him what a disappointment he was to her, how she’d make him pay, and all the while, he brought to mind the images that would encourage arousal. The skill of separating his physical and mental realities was one he’d learned early and well, and one result was he could conjure an erection almost without noticing it. Blanche wanted to believe she was sexually stimulating them both with her antics, and thus Darius accommodated her.

  It was a salable skill, and every pony needed at least one trick if he wasn’t to end up going to the dogs at the end of the knacker’s rope.

  ***

  “You’re restless tonight,” Lady Leah Lindsey commented as Darius shifted on the carriage seat beside her.

  Restless was one way to describe his condition after last night’s outing. “Sometimes it’s hard to be comfortable in one’s own skin,” Darius replied.

  Leah studied him with a sister’s casual curiosity. “And yet, you seem to do this so effortlessly. The teasing repartee, the dancing and flirting. I don’t know what I’d do without you, Dare.”

  Neither did he, particularly when he considered Leah was still living under their father’s roof. “You’d manage, and you’d bring Trent out of hiding perhaps.”

  “He’s put off mourning at least.”

  “And he says he’ll be squiring you about more.” Which would be a considerable relief, not that Darius begrudged his sister an escort.

  When they arrived at their destination, Darius watched Leah swan off to the ladies’ retiring room while he scanned the assemblage for those who would treat Leah with less than perfect courtesy. The company was bland enough that he could relax, until a voice at his elbow had him clenching his jaw.

  “Mr. Lindsey.” Lucy Templeton, Lady Milne, smiled a brittle, knowing smile. She was in some ways much more trouble than Blanche. “Won’t you sit with me?”

  “That won’t be possible.” Darius’s smile didn’t reach his eyes, not when Lucy was breaking one of his most steadfast rules by approaching him in decent company. “I’m here with Leah.”

  Lucy scanned the crowd while she sipped her punch. She was arrayed in gold tonight, and while the color did not flatter her blond hair, the symbolism was appropriate.

  “Your sister will be behind the ferns, as usual. One does wonder what happened all those years ago with the Frommer boy. Lady Leah is the least noticeable woman ever to claim she’s looking for a husband.”

  “She’s not looking, and you’ll excuse me.”

  “Until tonight,” Lucy said, quietly. She knew better than to risk more, but even that much was pushing Darius to the limits of his patience.

  And she knew that too, and no doubt enjoyed his disquiet thoroughly.

  “Not tonight,” Darius replied just as quietly. “Perhaps tomorrow night. I have responsibilities to my family that preclude accommodating your plans.”

  She didn’t like that one bit. Darius saw her displeasure in the thinning of her lips, the narrowing of her eyes. “Do you think you can tell me what to do, Darius?”

  “I honestly wouldn’t bother.” Darius’s smile should have been visible at twenty paces. “It’s the behavior of your pin money I’m interested in. Until we meet again.”

  He strolled off, feeling daggers in his back from Lucy’s expression. She was getting bolder, less willing to abide by the terms they’d struck months ago. In her way, Blanche was the more biddable of the two—she was merely miserable and taking out on Darius the temper she ought to be turning on her somewhat dense, negligent husband.

  Lucy, though, had a true mean streak. Something in the woman wasn’t quite right, wasn’t… sane.

  And dealing with her, with his grieving brother, with his nasty excuse for a father, and his forlorn and vulnerable sister, was beginning to drive something inside Darius past reason as well. This mix of woes and worries had been his primary motivation for accepting Lord Longstreet’s scheme—there was coin involved, a great deal of it. Enough to free Darius from the Lucys and Blanches of his life, to provide a small dowry for Leah, to look after Darius’s responsibilities in Kent.

  Relief of that magnitude was worth thirty days of dropping his breeches for Vivian Longstreet. Darius had dickered and bargained and feinted and sparred with the lady’s husband at such length because he’d been convinced Lord Longstreet’s plan was his last shot at righting the things off balance in his life.

  Before he did something he wouldn’t live to regret.

  ***

  Tomorrow, Vivian would travel to Kent, there to bide with Darius Lindsey until after the New Year. If anybody asked, William would say she was at Longchamps, and at the end of her month in Kent, to Longchamps she would go.

  But as her town coach took her home from a visit to Angela’s busy, noisy townhouse, those thirty days loomed like a prison sentence. In retrospect, she could see she hadn’t used her dinner with Mr. Lindsey very well. She should have been setting out terms—hers—not the dry, legal details William had no doubt focused on, but the pragmatic realities.

  She didn’t want Lindsey intruding willy-nilly at any point in her day. She wanted him confined to ce
rtain hours or certain parts of the house. In truth, she didn’t want to take meals with him, but to refuse would be insulting.

  She didn’t want him entertaining her as if she were a guest, expecting her to ride out with him, risk meeting his neighbors, or God forbid, attend services.

  She didn’t want him in her bed, in fact. They’d have to limit themselves to his chambers or maybe a guest room.

  And she most assuredly didn’t want him kissing her again. Kissing was by no means necessary to the mechanics of conception.

  And she didn’t expect to have to… entice him…

  “Blast.” The coach came to a halt in the Longstreet mews, and Vivian’s heart sank further when she saw a groom walking a handsome bay gelding with four white socks. The day needed only a visit from Thurgood Ainsworthy, perpetual stepfather at large.

  “Speak of the devil,” Vivian muttered as her butler took her wrap. “Has he been served tea?”

  “He virtually ordered it, my lady.” Dilquin’s tone was disapproving. “The knocker has been down since his lordship left yesterday, but that one… Shall we bring a tray?”

  “No. Ainsworthy will linger as long as he can over a mere pot of tea. If you could interrupt in about fifteen minutes, I’d appreciate it.”

  Dilquin’s lined face suffused with relief, and his gaze went to the eight-day clock in the hall. “Of course, my lady. Fifteen minutes, precisely.”

  Vivian spared him a smile then squared her shoulders and prepared to meet her stepfather. It was easy to see—still—why her mother had fallen for the man. Even now, Thurgood was handsome—tallish, though not so tall as Darius Lindsey, say—with soulful brown eyes and blond hair going to wheat gold. He had a superficial charm he put to good advantage when consoling a new widow, and he was clever.

  Too clever to underestimate.

  “Daughter.” He took Vivian’s hands and drew her close enough that he could kiss her forehead. By sheer force of will, Vivian endured it without flinching. “You look tired, my dear. Should I be concerned?”