Forged by Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 4 (7 page)

Virginie’s mother shook her head. “I am not. I am as you see me, a poor mortal given the gift of a daughter who is so much more than her mother will ever be. I have devoted my life to protecting her and I will not stop now.” She offered a small smile, a ghost of an expression. “Please, my name is Deirdre. I was born the daughter of a bishop, but a poor one. My papa never entered the higher echelons of the church and he rarely attended Parliament. His bishopric was one of the smallest in the country and his children were consequently indigent. I have tried to live as he would have wished. He died without leaving us adequately provided for, and we were forced to make our own ways in the world. I told my employers that my father was a cleric, but not his rank, since some might have taken that amiss.”

Harry gave a great sigh, his chest heaving, and he blew out a breath. “At last we have something we can work with! Let me talk to Amidei. I will do nothing without your permission, but we might find a way out of this mess. One that doesn’t include running away.”

He turned his head and snared Virginie’s gaze. “Will you agree to staying in town for the immediate future? I swear I will keep you informed all the way. If you do not wish to attend social events, then let it be known that you are ill, rather than hanging your head in public. It won’t be for long.”

What could she do but agree? She had never realised her maternal grandfather was a bishop. But her father? Although there was a name in the parish register of her birth, she had strong suspicions the man didn’t exist, but was a figment of her mother’s imagination. Like her mother’s marriage. And that would make her a bastard.

Harry arrived back at the Pantheon club in time to witness Amidei leaving by the front door at a speedy pace. He paused to greet Harry. The harassed look on his fellow immortal’s face made him fall into step next to him instead of allowing him to stop.

“Are you being pursued, old man?”

Amidei shot him a wry grin. “Clever of you to spot that. Yes, since Mrs. Davenport left I’ve had to hunt about me for another housekeeper.”

“What did she say to you at your interview?”

“She came with excellent character references, some of them with immortal households, so while she’s mortal, she knows our ways and what we need. Lightfoot worked well with her, and he’s not an easy person to get along with.”

They crossed the busy thoroughfare, barely skirting a hackney carriage taking the corner at a fast clip. Harry felt the breeze as the driver’s whip skim past his ear and guessed the gesture wasn’t accidental. They ignored the cabbie’s curses.

Amidei rounded the corner and slowed fractionally, now they were out of sight of the club.

“Are you regretting opening the Pantheon?” Harry asked.

“Certainly not! It aids my mission considerably.”

“Ah. Your mission?”

“Mercury is messenger of the gods. It’s mainly my responsibility, trying to contact those we have lost and getting them to a place where we can band together once more. We cannot allow the rebels to win.”

“The Titans?”

“They’re not all Titans and they’re not all immortals. They are idiots who think the world would be better controlled by a dictator, rather than the result of choice and free will.” He glared at Harry. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought it.”

“Not seriously. Only in passing.”

“Humph.” They rounded another corner. Amidei was heading for Green Park. Harry supposed it was time he visited his tailor in Bond Street, and that was on the way. His plain country clothes served him well and lasted a long time. Maybe he should make more of an effort at evening events, especially if he was wooing the most beautiful woman in London. “Well, now I need another housekeeper, and this time I’ll go for an immortal, if I can find one. Lightfoot is an excellent factotum, but he is too fond of collecting favours. I thought I’d go down to Thomas’s Registry Office and make enquiries. If they can’t find anyone, then she is not to be found and I must resign myself to Lightfoot’s gentle mercies.”

Outside the fencing studio on the corner of the street, Amidei glanced back, then turned and faced Harry. “I don’t think we’re being pursued. Everybody wanted everything today, so I left matters to my factotum.”

“I’m surprised you have a person of his ilk as a trusted servant.” He meant
satyr
,
but to say it aloud might attract attention from the throng of passers-by.

“He’s proved willing and he works hard. Besides, I’m hardly in a position to search for
two
key members of staff.”

Harry nodded. People jostled past, but none showed any interest in joining them, although they received a few greetings and acknowledgements. Amidei glanced at him perceptively and started off again, heading through the gate into the park. People strolled at leisure here, the park much less crowded than the thoroughfares outside. They could speak in relative privacy. “So you’re not expecting Mrs. Davenport back?”

Amidei raised a brow, his mouth quirked up. “Do you need an answer to that? How is the beauteous Duchesse de Clermont-Ferand?”

“Beautiful.”

“As I expected. Otherwise?”

“Concerned.” In other circumstances he might have enjoyed their journey through the park. Green Park was more select and smaller than Hyde Park. Also less popular with the fashionable, unless they genuinely wanted to take the air. Couples strolled, chatting to one another instead of ensuring they were being watched, and parents and nannies brought their charges here. He vastly preferred this place to the fashionable haunts.

Amidei glanced at Harry’s cane and slowed considerably. Harry hated that. “I’m of a size to keep up with you,” he said. “I’m used to it. It doesn’t give me much trouble.”

“Sorry. For racing ahead and for making my concern obvious. You’re probably on the receiving end of that a lot.”

Harry nodded. “Virginie is distressed, but she doesn’t intend to disavow Mrs. Davenport, who is indeed her mother.”

Amidei sighed. “I was afraid of that. This will make her an outcast. Damn it all, we need all the immortals we can find. Traps are closing, nets dropping, and we need to fight back. The world is hurtling into war, and the immortals are set to create their own. We need that balance.”

“I know. But all may not be lost.”

“Don’t tell me. You’re going to marry her and hope society ignores her origins? Not much chance of that, I fear. Mrs. Davenport cannot cross the green baize line.” Servants’ doors were often lined with baize on their side to soften the sound when the doors closed. Silent and efficient.

“She might.” Harry broached the subject with difficulty. “Mrs. Davenport is the daughter of a bishop.”

Amidei stopped dead and turned to face Harry, who stumbled before he regained his balance.

“You don’t say,” Amidei said.

“I do. According to her, the bishop was not an important one.” He rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he could take off his hat and wig and hurl them to the ground. The day was too warm for such accoutrements. He’d be much happier in the country.

“But we can work with that. A bishop!”

“If you called Mrs. Davenport your hostess, that would help. Not your housekeeper.”

Amidei gazed into the distance, his light grey eyes far-seeing. “We’re skating close to the edge.”

“When did the gods do anything else?”

He choked a laugh. “That’s true. We’ll have to speak to whoever employed her before. Perhaps a little persuasion is called for.” Stretching out his hand, he waggled it from side to side.

“Ah.” Yes, mental persuasion. Something the gods rarely did, even though they could. “To my mind that’s skirting on control.”

“I know. But there are no straight lines in this. Is it permissible to bend the rules to aid a fellow immortal?”

Harry tapped his cane on the ground. “Is this solid? Or is it liquid? I work with material that I render liquid before I change its form into something else. I have no answers for you, Amidei. But if it can be done without harm, then we might consider taking that course.” It was a grave step, but for Virginie, he would do it. She didn’t deserve this treatment. Nobody did. Why should anyone be judged by what their parents did?

And who was he to tell other people how to think? Damnation, this philosophical meandering would drive him to drink.

“Can you persuade her to stay in town? Or at least in the country?” Amidei asked.

“I’ll do my best.” Harry needed to give Virginie the best choice he could. Except in one thing. He was determined to marry her.

“There are people who hate us, Harry. Not just the few who know who we are. They resent us, our wealth, our position, and they are looking for reasons to denounce us. If we stand by Virginie now, they could destroy us all.” Amidei kicked at a stone, spun it up the path.

Indignation surged through Harry. “Are you suggesting we abandon her?”

“It has to be your choice, of course, but we have to think of our cause.”

“Which is to fight against tyranny, is it not?” He had to consciously force himself to lower his voice. “This is tyranny, forcing a woman out of her place of birth.”

“Nobody is doing that,” Amidei said. “And it’ll be a cold day in Hades before I abandon any of my fellow immortals, but we might have to trim our sails somewhat.” They had run out of park.

Outside, the world continued in its mad way, but Harry had come to one firm decision. He would not turn his back on Virginie. Ever.

That evening Harry saw his fellow immortals off to the various entertainments. All promised to spread the word and discuss the possibility of Virginie’s return to society. He cared for nothing else. As far as he was concerned, Lyndhurst could take care of his own. He had some peripheral responsibility and in good time he would pay attention to it.

Chapter Seven

Virginie’s fingers trembled as she drew the tattered note from her pocket, the light breeze nearly whipping it away.
Our usual place, at four
,
it read, but she didn’t need Marcus’s signature to tell her who the note had come from.

Her broad-brimmed bergère hat covered her bright curls, and the linen cap underneath finished the job. She wore a simple gown and, despite the warmth of the day, a heavy cloak. She was alone.

Thanks to her past she could not only dress like a servant, she could move and behave like one too. She had banished her usual graceful, haughty demeanour to the series of clothes presses that held her fine gowns. This gown, she told her lady’s maid, was for simple tasks and travelling.

Getting out of the house was trickier, but she had perfected a mixture of gentle mind-suggestions and changing the way she moved and acted. When her mother had left the house, she’d claimed a headache and gone to bed, ordering the staff to leave her alone.

Clandestine affairs were more trouble than they were worth, she reflected sourly. She and Marcus had started that way, secret meetings and swift encounters at balls, but recently they had thrown caution to the winds. They were adults, they had nobody to please but themselves, but their antics had shocked the most jaded of gossips. By then they had given up caring.

Now they had come full circle. A beginning and an end.

When she entered the little room above the nondescript inn down one of the alleyways in the City, Marcus sprang to meet her, as he always did. Virginie flinched and held up a hand at the same time as he halted, stamping his feet to the floorboards in a determined gesture.

“We cannot, Marcus.”

“I know it. I desperately want one more time.” He glanced at the bed, already made up with fresh linen. “But we cannot. What got into us, Virginie?”

“Madness,” she said briefly. “Eros only enchanted us into each other’s arms, but made it a fleeting attraction. We did the rest ourselves. Or someone saw our vulnerability and did it for us.”

Marcus bit his lip, a bead of blood appearing on his mouth before he licked it away. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his drab coat. Did he want her in his arms as much as she longed to be there? “We could have married.”

“Could have?” That was not what she had come to hear. “We are both unmarried, Marcus. Are you so influenced by society that you would turn your back?” And receive nothing by way of punishment. They would not condemn him as they were denouncing her. He would be a dog, a rascal, a rake, but he wouldn’t be barred from society and all that meant. “Can we not marry now?”

Lord, she’d just proposed to him. She sounded desperate. Perhaps she was. She was doing everything possible to hold her head up. Apart from her panicked reaction of a few days ago when she ordered everything packed up. The thought of marrying Marcus didn’t have the same appeal it had a week ago. Then she’d have accepted him with alacrity.

The woman? Marcus had no proof they were even his children, let alone that he had a wife.

Marcus rubbed the back of his neck. “After our adventure at the theatre I would have jumped at the opportunity. I should have proposed to you then and not left it until today.”

She wasn’t at all sure what he meant. Did he intend to marry her? “What of Miss Simpson?”

“Yes, what of Miss Simpson?” He laughed bitterly shook his head. “I cannot turn my back on her, Virginie. That would be the act of a coward, and I am not that.”

She folded her arms. Otherwise she might cross the room and embrace him. A week ago she wouldn’t have hesitated. That so much could happen in such a short space! Doubt nudged at the powerful feelings of lust still surging through her. The temptation to step forward was so great. If she started the process, then Marcus would follow. She knew that for sure.

One more time? Try to persuade him?

No, no, no.
But when she denied herself, she hurt. From her stomach, down her legs, and up to her shoulders, she ached. Perhaps she was starting a cold. That would have nothing to do with this yearning, it was just an annoyance, as summer colds always were.

“What will you do about her?” she asked.

“I met her,” he said reluctantly. “She’s a respectable woman.” He closed his eyes tightly. Something dreadful was coming. Desperately she wished to turn back the clock, stop him telling her whatever he was about to announce.

He opened his eyes, stark with pain. She didn’t look away. “I knew her,” he said. “I had her.”

Her heart stopped, then started again as if to make up for its miss, beating against her chest like a hammer on an anvil.

“You did?” She could think of nothing else to say. It sounded inadequate and stupid, but she couldn’t think of anything else. She couldn’t think of anything at all. She tried again, clenching her hands into fists to stop herself clutching her chest to try to quell the pounding of her pulse. “The children are yours?”

He winced. “As far as society is concerned, they could be.” He hesitated. “I was on a visit to my estate. I had no idea she was respectable. She told me she was a maid, and I thought she meant a maidservant.” He snorted. “She certainly wasn’t the other kind of maid.”

“She was not a virgin?”

“Believe me, I’d know.” She believed him. “But the world believes the babies are mine. Virginie, they are not. I have looked deep inside myself. If I had got children on her, I would know, or the god part of me would know. It does not. But since society believes it so, that is of little use.”

Her reasoning returned to her in a rush. She breathed more easily as a question burst into her mind. “But a god may decide when the person they are with conceives.” She’d done that often enough in France.

He groaned and covered his eyes. “I was drunk. Blind drunk, but I did not release fertile seed into her.” He lowered his hand, and his expression was bleak as ever.

He took a step towards her. She stepped back. “No. If you touch me, we’re lost. You know that. I’m barely holding on as it is.”

He lifted his arms from his sides and let them fall again with a slap. “What can we do? Eros—”

“It’s not Eros, Marcus. Not anymore. He started us, gave the initial push, but we continued it. We should have worked harder to break the connection.”

His voice deepened, warmed with remembered passion. “There was no need. We’re different people now, Virginie. We could have married.”

Could have?
Yes, he was right. He had responsibilities that did not include her. Perhaps if she’d willed it, become pregnant—but now, she would not do that to any child. Children were not pawns or levers, they were beings in their own right—mortal or immortal.

It was beginning to sound as if Rhea Simpson had done exactly that. A respectable single woman had to be desperate indeed to take those measures. Unless Marcus was right, and he was the dupe, not the father. As a fellow Olympian, she believed him. But they could not tell that part to society, who would forever condemn him for a cad and a base seducer.

“It doesn’t matter, Marcus, does it? Even if there was a way of announcing that you were not the father for sure, it would not stop the gossips.”

He grimaced. “You’re right. I’ve been trapped by a human. Who said gods were invulnerable?”

She took a few steps to the nearest chair and trailed her fingers along the back of it. She needed to touch something. The uneven bumps from the slightly worn, badly upholstered material nudged her fingers. The texture proved a slight distraction from the problem, enough to keep her from bursting into useless, humiliating tears. The thought of being without him hurt almost too much to bear, wrenching her stomach. But they had to face it. Better like this than in public. They’d lived their affair in the eyes of a delighted, scandalised society. She had no reason to end it the same way. At least she could try to get back her dignity.

This was the end. It had to be. She’d been facing the possibility for the last few days, but certainty stared her in the face. Time to hold her head high and walk away.

Some semblance of reality edged its way into her mind, though not her heart. Not yet. She didn’t know if it ever would. She couldn’t imagine never seeing Marcus again, never touching him. Such a deep tear, right through her heart, she didn’t know if she could recover from it.

“I can’t help you with this.” She cleared her throat, aware her voice had grown weak.

“I know.” His dark eyes were sombre. None of the light that she’d seen in them when he laughed with her, made love to her, was left. “We must stay apart. I would like to think we would always be friends, but it must be at a distance.” He stuck his hands in his breeches’ pockets, and by the way the fabric bunched he’d clenched his fists. “We cannot even write to each other.”

“One day,” she said softly. Her nails scored the pattern of a flower in the fabric. “But what will you do now?”

“Marry her, I suppose.” He couldn’t have sounded more unexcited if his grandmother had stripped in front of him.

“She is pretty, she seems biddable.”

“She’s a deceitful bitch.” For the first time, his hard tones repulsed her. How could he say that about the pitiful woman she’d seen at the club?

Virginie considered the girl desperate rather than malicious. “You should not speak that way of her.”

“If she is not, then someone behind her is. I’ve been manipulated into this!”

An ominous thought struck her. “Do you mean to make her pay for it?”

He cocked a dark brow. “In what way, madam?”

It was the first time he’d called her “madam” in those formal tones for months. But Virginie would not be gainsaid in this. If he married Rhea only to mistreat her, Virginie would take the woman into her own home and defy convention. God knew she’d done it enough recently. “Do you mean to make her life a misery?”

“What kind of a man do you take me for? Am I then to be classed with the gods of vengeance? No. I will answer, though it chokes me to do so. I thought you knew me better than that, Virginie.”

“So did I,” she said, refusing to be silenced or cowed. She clutched the chair.

“The answer is no. Any woman I make my wife will be treated with respect, and all the affection I can muster for her.”

Though it wouldn’t be a great deal. Torture, to be in love with him and not have him return it!

Another cloud cleared. When she was a little girl her mother had told her if there was enough blue in the sky to make a sailor a pair of britches, then it wouldn’t rain. Perhaps her personal storm was clearing and the sky would be bluer a little further on.

Given time and a chance for the madness between them to settle down, or at least to mature, they could have found happiness together. Damn the gods and their fated stories, she knew it to be true.

But it had never happened. Too caught up in their unholy passion, they had never spent much time actually getting to know each other enough for love to flourish.

No, Marcus was handsome, striking, dizzyingly good at lovemaking, but she couldn’t say she loved him. Only that the potential was there. And now they would never know, not in this lifetime, because he was obliged elsewhere.

“I wish you and your bride all felicitations for the future.” She would leave this place with her head high. Metaphorically at least, because if anyone spied her at this stage it could prove disastrous. Even more disastrous.

“Thank you.” His nod was one friend to another. It marked the end of what was, and the beginning of what is. She would accept that, and take his lead.

“I can make it easier for you both. Eros isn’t the only person who can cast love spells.” Although it would kill her to do it. She wanted him for herself, but for Virginie marriage was a serious business. Even if both parties agreed to go their separate ways, that was their decision and not one she would have a hand in forcing.

Rather, she’d leave Marcus completely alone to find his own way. If, in six months, he came to her and confessed he and his wife had agreed to live apart, she might change her mind. She did not need marriage, and she did not need children.

Or love. For others, they could have it, come to her for help, but she didn’t want it to herself. Love was the most weakening emotion there was.

To her relief Marcus shook his head. “No, but thank you. I know what that offer cost you. My marriage will be honest and truthful. We will face the future together. Even though the children are not mine, I will raise them with honour. They cannot inherit the dukedom, of course, so I must get more children on her.”

Virginie gritted her teeth to suppress her flinch. This hurt so much. No, love was not for her. If this was what lust was like, she didn’t want anything that went deeper.

Any children born outside wedlock could not inherit an entailed estate or a title. If Marcus wanted the Lyndhurst title to persist, he would have to beget a son on his wife. Even the distant, Biblical way she phrased it in her mind made her heart ache. She didn’t know how long she could carry on, but she must. She would have nobody to help her in her efforts, and she could trust nobody. This was her only course.

Marcus and she would go their separate ways after today. Society would have to find another scandal to amuse it.

She stepped out from behind the sanctuary of her chair and gave him a gracious nod. “Goodbye, Marcus.”

He snapped a formal bow. “As gods we will meet and no doubt act together. Until then,
au revoir
. From start to finish you have been a complete delight. Thank you.”

At least she had that.

Virginie curtseyed, using her arm for balance and to flourish her fan at the close. Without another word, she left.

Outside, the rain seethed down, the fine rain that got a person wet without effort. She welcomed it. There were fewer people around. Those that passed her were too busy keeping themselves covered to bother about a woman in a wilting straw hat who hurried past with her head down.

The moisture that dripped off her chin was entirely due to the rain. Nothing else.