I am excited to be here at Mrs. Penworthy’s School of Feminine Deportment, finishing school being the next step in accomplishing my dream, that of becoming a lady. Still, I worry I shall never quite fit in. The other girls are all so refined and sure of themselves while I am constantly in peril of saying or doing the wrong thing. I have heard them making fun of me behind my back, but mostly they simply ignore me. In a way I am grateful. I fear, should the secret of my low birth be known, I would be ostracized completely.
A memory of the letter slowly faded. Justin restlessly paced in front of the slow-burning fire in his bedchamber. Though the rain had stopped and the storm had moved on, the August evening was chill, the leaves on the trees still dripping wetly onto the muddy earth.
He was tired tonight, bone-weary in a way that had nothing to do with his long journey home and everything to do with disillusionment and utter disappointment. They were rare emotions, since he had long ago accepted that life was little more than a series of disappointments. It was strictly the way things were.
He reached for the poker beside the hearth, then knelt to stir the red-orange flames, his mind replaying the scene he had come upon in the Red Room. Anger rose up as it had before, making his fingers tighten around the heavy length of iron.
His long-awaited meeting with Ariel Summers was nothing at all what he had imagined. Never once in his musings had he expected to find the sweet young woman in the letters wrapped in the arms of the most notorious rake in London—his most bitter enemy, Phillip Marlin. Justin damned the girl to hell for the betrayal he felt and silently congratulated himself on not losing his temper far worse than he had.
Setting the poker aside, he walked to a carved wooden sideboard and poured himself a brandy, his thoughts on his longtime rival. He and Phillip had been classmates at Oxford. With his golden good looks and powerful family name, Phillip was spoiled and arrogant, willing to use his sizable allowance to cultivate a circle of sycophantic friends. He was the sort who drew pleasure from ridiculing others, who preyed on other people’s weaknesses.
As a youth, Justin had battled the boys who taunted him about his bastardy, using his fists to repay them for their cruelty, being caned more than once for fighting in the school yard. Eventually, he simply withdrew, keeping more and more to himself. He learned to control his anger, his pain, replacing it with a cynicism that kept people at a distance and shielded him from the world.
He kept himself well away from Phillip Marlin and his spiteful, taunting words—until the night Justin happened upon him with Molly McCarthy in an Oxford tavern. Molly was a saucy, irreverent bit of baggage who earned a few extra coins seeing to the needs of the local males. She made no secret of it, but Phillip’s ego was so large he mistakenly believed her favors were reserved just for him. The night he caught her in bed with one of his friends he went insane, tearing the room apart, then unleashing his wrath on Molly, breaking her arm and beating her until Justin, who happened to be passing down the hall, had no other choice but to stop him.
The battle had been brief and painful for Phillip. Brawling with a man who had learned to defend himself with his fists had left Marlin with two black eyes, a broken nose, and a bloody lip.
It left Justin with a powerful enemy.
His jaw clenched at the memory. He took a sip of the brandy he rarely drank, then grimaced as the fiery liquid burned down his throat. In a bedchamber down the hall, Ariel would be sleeping, her flaxen hair spread out across the pillow, her pretty pink lips softened in slumber. It had never been his intention to demand she fulfill his father’s loathsome bargain, but when he had seen her with Marlin—wearing the expensive clothes he had paid for—something inside him had snapped.
He’d wanted to kill Phillip Marlin.
Justin took another sip of brandy, then set the snifter down on the hearth. What should he do? Did he really mean to make the girl his mistress?
Unwillingly his mind conjured shadowy impressions of pale pink nipples, long, shapely legs, small stocking-clad ankles, and the downy silver-gold triangle that marked her womanhood. With her flawless skin and fine features, Ariel Summers had surpassed his father’s highest expectations.
Edmund Ross wouldn’t have had the slightest qualms in demanding she warm his bed, especially after he had caught her in the arms of another man.
But Justin was nothing like his father. At least he hadn’t thought so until today. The truth was he wanted Ariel Summers. Had wanted her, perhaps, even before he met her. He closed his eyes against the sudden wave of desire that washed over him, making him go hard inside his breeches.
Perhaps he should pay a visit to Madame Charbonnet’s House of Pleasure. Celeste Charbonnet prided herself on providing beautiful women skilled in the art of pleasing a man. He hadn’t been there for quite some time, too long, it would seem, by the painful ache he now suffered.
Justin sighed into the silence. He didn’t want one of Celeste’s trained courtesans. He wanted Ariel Summers. He had bought and paid for her—why shouldn’t he have her? By damn, the girl belonged to him.
Whether or not she was Phillip Marlin’s lover no longer mattered.
Justin intended to have her.
* * *
Ariel awakened covered in a fine sheen of perspiration, the sheets kicked down to her knees, her nightgown bunched up around her hips. She had suffered a nightmare, she knew, and though she couldn’t recall what it was, she had a strong suspicion it had something to do with the earl.
Ariel shivered, gooseflesh rising against the cold that pervaded the room. She slipped from the bed and drew on her quilted silk wrapper, fastening the buttons up the front.
A light knock sounded and the lady’s maid the earl had provided walked in, Silvie Thomas, a dark-haired girl in her twenties with round hazel eyes and an equally round, slightly pudgy face. “You’re up early, miss. You should have stayed in bed till I came to add coal to the fire.”
“Yes, well, there are matters I need to attend to this morning.” That was a half-truth. What she intended was to head for the park, hoping she might see Phillip. She needed to speak to him, try to straighten things out between them, but mostly she wanted to escape the house before she encountered the earl.
“Well, if you’re heading off, then we had better be getting you dressed.”
Ariel let Silvie fuss over her, thankful to have something to do to occupy her thoughts. In a gown of pale blue muslin, her hair pinned up in curls, she grabbed a fringed India shawl and headed down the stairs and out the door, grateful to escape without being noticed. It was early. If Phillip appeared at their usual meeting place—which she very much doubted he would—it would yet be some hours away. She wandered about for a while, strolled into a bakery and bought a sweet cake and a cup of cocoa.
As she pulled a coin from her reticule to pay for the items, she suffered an unexpected pang of guilt. As the earl had so harshly pointed out, she was gowned in clothes he had paid for, enjoying food purchased with the allowance he had sent. When she was a child, desperate to escape her miserable, battered existence, it hadn’t mattered what she did to get away. Now it bothered her to think of the false promises she had made.
Greville is right, she thought. I owe him. Everything she had learned, everything she had become, was a direct result of the earl’s generosity. She owed him an insurmountable debt, but surely there was another way to repay him, aside from the use of her body.
With a sigh, Ariel made her way to the plane tree she came to each morning. The grass was moist with dew, the morning chill still in the air. She pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and waited, praying that her golden-haired prince would arrive.
Relief filtered through her when he did, since she had been more than half-certain she would never see him again.
“Ariel, my darling girl.”
“Phillip … I didn’t think you would come.”
He reached out and captured her hands, his eyes taking in her pale face and obvious distress. “A dozen Grevilles couldn’t have kept me away. I’ve been so worried. I shouldn’t have left you … not knowing the earl as I do. I was angry and confused.”
Ariel summoned a smile, though it wasn’t all that easy. “It’s all right. I am just so glad you are here. I have so much to explain, so much to tell you. I should have done it sooner, but I … I was afraid.”
Phillip pulled his handkerchief from the pocket of his coat and dabbed at the tears she hadn’t known were spilling from her eyes. “Come. Sit down over here.” He used the handkerchief to wipe the dew from a bench beneath the tree, and they sat down holding hands. Phillip listened with a growing frown as Ariel told him the truth of her low birth, having to force each painful sentence past her lips.
“… So you see, Phillip, I am not the person you believed. I am not … not truly worthy of your attentions.”
He gently squeezed her hand. “Don’t be foolish. Your past is unimportant. It’s the woman you are now that matters.”
Ariel glanced away. How fortunate she was to have met a man like Phillip.
“You say your father was the old earl’s tenant?”
“Yes.”
“Is that the reason Greville decided to help you?”
Ariel bit down on her lip. When she had come to the park, she’d intended to tell Phillip everything, admitting her low birth and that she had sold her body to the earl in exchange for fancy clothes and an expensive education. She had told him the truth of her past, but there was something different about him today, an almost fanatical gleam in his eyes when he looked at her. She remembered the enmity that had burned like fire between Phillip and Greville, and the memory kept her from revealing the rest of the story.
“My father drank too much. When he did, he could be cruel. I asked the earl to help me and he agreed.” It was the truth—not all of it but all she had the courage to divulge. “I didn’t realize the first Lord Greville had died and that my … gratitude … now belonged to his son.”
“His bastard son.” Phillip nearly spat the words. “He never would have become the earl if his father hadn’t fallen ill. Justin was the only male child he had sired and he was desperate for an heir, even if his son was the by-blow of a whore.”
Ariel blanched at the term, disturbed more than a little by the hatred in Phillip’s voice, knowing if she was forced to fulfill her bargain, he would be using the same word for her.
His fingers tightened over hers, a little too warm and slightly moist. “I’m sorry. You’re a lady. I shouldn’t have spoken to you in so coarse a manner.”
“How … how do you know so much about him?”
“We were classmates together at Oxford.”
“Will you tell me about him?”
Phillip stared off toward the stream that meandered through the park. He was heart-stoppingly handsome, every woman’s dream, and yet she couldn’t help comparing his fine blond features to the seething dark beauty of Greville.
When he returned his attention to her, there was a different, unreadable look in his eyes. “He’s a cruel man, Ariel, a dangerous man. You’re not safe in that house with him.”
A little shiver ran through her. She remembered the cold, remorseless way he had demanded that she remove her clothes and tried not to think what might happen to her in his bed.
“In school he stayed mostly to himself,” Phillip continued. “His father stood by his obligations and supported him and his mother, but I doubt the earl saw him more than a couple of times over the years. His mother was the daughter of one of the local squires. She ran off with some married European noble when Justin was still a boy. His grandmother raised him for a couple of years, until he was shipped off to boarding school.”
It sounded like a dreadful existence to Ariel, nearly as painful as her own. “Perhaps that is the reason he seems so hard and uncaring.”
“Don’t make excuses for him, Ariel. He doesn’t deserve it.”
“Lord Greville has been extremely generous. I owe him a very great debt.”
His mouth tightened. “A debt he surely means to collect. Justin Ross doesn’t do anything unless there is something in it for him.”
She thought of the bargain she had made and suppressed a second shiver.
“There was a woman when we were away at university,” Phillip said. “A tavern maid named Molly McCarthy who worked in the village. One night I accidentally chanced upon the two of them together. Justin was angry at something poor Molly had done. He beat her savagely. I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t forced him to stop.”
Ariel bit hard on the inside of her cheek, fighting against the brutal image. A memory of the terrible scene in the earl’s bedchamber rose up. If she hadn’t obeyed his commands, would he have beaten her? She tried to imagine him raising those hard, dark fists against her, but somehow she could not.
“I have to go,” she said, suddenly weary as she came to her feet. “They’ll be looking for me if I don’t return soon.”
“When will I see you again?”
“Are you certain you want to?”
He cupped her chin with his hand, stroked a finger down her cheek. “How could you doubt it?”
“I know where you live. You drove me by your town house the day we rode in your carriage. I’ll send word as soon as I am able to get away.”
He looked into her face, raised her hand to his lips. “You know the way I feel. Don’t make me wait too long.”
Ariel didn’t answer. She had no idea what her future held, no idea if she even had a future. Perhaps she should have told Phillip the truth of her situation, begged him to help her.
Next time she would, she vowed. If he cared for her as he seemed to, he would help her find a way to repay the earl.
* * *
Justin paced the floor of his study, one ear cocked toward the entry. Where the devil was she? Had she run away with her lover? Was she lying in his bed even now, her slender arms wrapped around his neck as she lay naked and writhing beneath him? Innocence and purity, bah! He knew better. He couldn’t believe he had been such a fool.
He heard a noise and stopped his pacing, listened to the light sound of footsteps in the entry, knew that Ariel had returned, and strode toward the door.
Gowned in pale blue muslin, her face flushed prettily from her time out-of-doors, she lifted her skirt and started up the wide stone stairs.
“So … you have decided to grace us once more with your presence.” His deep voice halted her midway to the top.
She slowly turned to face him. “My lord?”
“I’d like a word with you, please—in my study.”
Some of the color bled from her cheeks. Her shoulders straightened a bit as she resolutely descended the stairs. Justin led the way down the hall, waited until she swept past him into the room, then quietly closed the door.
He pinned her with a glare. “I was looking for you earlier. Where have you been?” He tried to keep his tone even, but it was impossible to disguise the slight thread of anger in his voice.
Ariel lifted her chin. Her eyes met his and did not look away. “I went to the park, as I have done each morning since my arrival. I won’t lie to you, my lord. If we are to form a friendship, it must start with the truth. I went to see Phillip Marlin.” He stiffened. “I felt he deserved an explanation for the scene he witnessed here yesterday. And the truth about my past.”
Anger made his jaw feel tight, though he couldn’t help admiring her candor. He had once believed in her honesty. He wanted to do so again. “And what did Mr. Marlin have to say?”
A look of unease stole over her features, and he knew in that moment that Marlin had relayed the sordid truth of his birth.
“He said … he said that he knew you at Oxford.”
“He told you that I was a bastard.”
Her eyes flew to his face. He wondered if there was something in his tone that betrayed how much the notion pained him.
“Phillip told me a number of things. Perhaps he shouldn’t have, but I gave him little choice.”
“Why?”
“Because whatever happens between us, I would like to know the man you are, the man who has helped me become the woman that I am.”
“And I suppose, with Marlin’s help, you now believe that you do.”
“I believe your past was as troubled as mine. Do you think I am proud of being the daughter of a drunkard? A man who beat me whenever he felt the slightest urge and without the least remorse? Do you think I enjoyed telling Phillip I was an illiterate peasant until you and your father sent me away to school?”
There was so much pain in her face Justin could feel it like a tangible force. His eyes moved off toward the window. It was gray and overcast outside, a weak sun hidden behind a wall of clouds. “Perhaps we are alike in some ways.”
“Yes … I believe we are. Your mother abandoned you. Mine died when I was so small I can’t even remember her. Your father, in his own way, was every bit as cruel as mine. If an unpleasant past is all we have on which to build a friendship, it is more than most people have.”
He moved away from the window, walked over to where she stood. Such a lovely face, so full of innocence. Or was it all a sham?
He reached out and caught her chin. “You must not see Marlin again. When it comes to women, he’s a very dangerous man.”
“That is exactly what he said about you.”
And after the things he’d done yesterday, why shouldn’t she believe it?
“Phillip told me about a woman you were seeing,” she went on, “a tavern maid named Molly McCarthy. He said that you beat her.”
Astonishment shot through him. “Marlin beat her! He might have killed her if I hadn’t stumbled across them when I did.”
She let the denial pass. “What of yesterday? Upstairs in your room … if I hadn’t done exactly as you commanded, what … what would you have done?”
A muscle bunched in his cheek. “I don’t beat defenseless women, if that is what you are asking.”
Her gaze remained steady and he was amazed at the will it must have taken to press him as she was. “If you hadn’t believed I was a virgin, would you have taken what you wanted by force?”
Would he have done such a thing? Watching her disrobe, seeing her lovely, slender body, he had wanted her more than any other woman he could remember. Would he have raped her? Pressed her down on the mattress and savagely thrust his hardness inside her? He closed his eyes against the brutal image and slowly shook his head.
“I would not have forced you.” When he looked at her, he saw that she studied his face. She didn’t believe he had told her the truth about Marlin, but he could tell by the slight relaxation of her shoulders the exact moment when she decided that she was safe with him.
“Then there is hope for us, my lord.”
Hope. It was a word that was dead to him. As cold as the unfeeling heart that beat inside his chest. “I meant what I said. I don’t want you going near Marlin again. I forbid you ever to see him.”
Something flickered in the blue of her eyes; then it was gone. That faint spark of hope he had witnessed seemed to slowly fade away. “As you wish, my lord.”
He wondered if he could believe her.
Then he wondered if she truly believed him.
* * *
Justin sat at the wide mahogany desk in his study three days later, his jacket off, his shirtsleeves rolled up. Unconsciously he rubbed his weary eyes, then returned his attention to the ledgers he had been studying, but his mind wasn’t on profit margins or money lending. It was on the girl upstairs, Ariel Summers, the woman he meant to make his mistress.
Images of the pale, slender body beneath her thin chemise rose into his mind and his loins quickened. He could still feel the softness of her lips when he had kissed her, taste the sweetness of her mouth. Only one other woman in his life had tortured his senses as Ariel did—Margaret Simmons, the woman who had betrayed him.
A light knock sounded at the door, two quick raps, then a third, and his painful recollections slowly faded. The silver knob turned. He smiled as his best friend, Clayton Harcourt, walked in. Clay, an acquaintance he had made in school, was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Rathmore. It was their bastardy that had drawn them together. At the time, it was the only thing the two of them had in common.
“I figured I’d find you here,” Clay said, “poring over the books. Do you never do anything but work, old man?” He was nearly as tall as Justin, slightly heavier in the chest and shoulders, with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Where Justin was remote and too often brooding, Clay was outgoing, casually arrogant, and, when it came to women, a completely conscienceless rogue.
“Actually, I haven’t got much of anything done—not for the past few days, at least.” Justin rose from his desk, strode toward Clay, and the two of them shook hands.
“I suppose I should be grateful you’re such a dedicated sod, considering the money you’ve made me over the years.” In the days since they’d finished their schooling, Clay had wisely entrusted Justin with the management of the small inheritance he had received from his mother, as well as any monies the duke doled out and whatever he managed to scrape together himself. As Clay had hoped, Justin’s knack for investing had turned the sum into a tidy little fortune that no one but the two of them knew about.
“So … shall I guess what is keeping you from your labors?” Clay asked. “She has arrived, hasn’t she?”
His friend knew about Ariel, her letters, and the bargain she had made with his father. “She’s here. As we speak, she is fast asleep upstairs.”
“Not in your bed, I take it.”
His mouth curved faintly. He would hardly be down here if she were. “Unfortunately, no.”
“Is that a note of regret I hear in your voice? I thought you said you had no interest in making the girl your mistress.”
Justin didn’t answer. Perhaps he hadn’t, not at first. Now he had every intention of doing just that. Unfortunately, after their last conversation and the forthright way she had spoken, some of his original beliefs about her had begun to surface again. He wanted Ariel more than ever. But he wanted her willingly in his bed.
“There is no point in lying. I want her, Clay. I have since the moment I met her.” He told his friend everything that had happened since her arrival, including Ariel’s involvement with Phillip Marlin.
“Marlin—how did that bastard manage to get his hooks into her so quickly?”
“By chance, I gather. She claims she hasn’t slept with him. There is no way to know for sure.”
“Oh, there’s a way. Once you bed her, you’ll discover whether or not she’s the innocent she claims.”
His jaw tightened at the thought. “Yes, I suppose I will.”
Clay threw himself down on the brown leather sofa and lounged back against the arm. “So … how do you plan to seduce her? Forcing a woman isn’t your usual approach.”
“You’re the expert on women. What would you suggest?”
Clay uncurled his big body and sat up straighter. “I’d probably buy her something—flowers, candy, some pretty little trinkets. I might try taking her out, showing her around the city.”
“She is living in my house. Should the fact be known, she would be considered a fallen woman, whether I am bedding her or not. I could hardly take her out among the ton.”
Clay pondered that. “True enough, but hardly a problem. I could make a list for you, places I take Teresa.” Clay’s current mistress. “There’s a little out-of-the-way theater called the Harmony in Covent Gardens. Or perhaps she’d enjoy gaming at one of the Jermyn Street hells. In truth, there are far more interesting places to take a whore than there are to take a lady.”
Justin frowned at the use of the word. He didn’t like to think of Ariel in that way. “Unfortunately, I don’t have time. Day after the morrow, I leave for Birmingham to check on the progress of my new factory. After that—”
“Take her with you. Women are hardly immune to you, Justin—even if the ones you usually bed are far less naive. Give her a chance to get to know you—the real you, I mean. Not the man you show the rest of the world.”
Justin’s glance strayed upward as if he could see through the plaster ceiling into her room. “I’ll give it some thought. Aside from my problems, there must have been some reason for your late-night call. What is it?”
Clay grinned. “Actually, I saw your lamp through the window. I knew you’d be working. I thought maybe I could convince you to join me at Madame Charbonnet’s.”
It was an idea Justin had considered himself, in light of his current situation and the ache he suffered every time he thought of the girl upstairs. “All right. Give me a minute to get my coat and I’ll be right with you.”
“Saints be praised! How long has it been?”
“Too long,” Justin grumbled. “Too damned bloody long.”