The Truth About Lord Stoneville (17 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Oliver sat in his usual chair drinking brandy, while a succession of Polly’s whores paraded in front of him. And he felt . . .

Nothing. No stirring in his cock. No urge to tup. Just a bone-deep disgust with himself.

When had Polly’s whores started looking so . . . sad? The madam had done her best to please him, offering her choicest ladies to pique his interest. Yet their soft words and lush bodies and erotic gestures were wasted on him. For the first time, he saw the falseness in their smiles, the boredom they tried hard to hide.

Worse, he kept comparing them to Maria. Her smiles were never false. They might be rare, but when he won one it felt like a real triumph, precisely because it was genuine. Because she gave it to him by choice.

What triumph was there in winning the smile of a whore, when all she wanted was the contents of his purse? Not that he’d ever thought they would clamor to bed him without the money, but he could usually maintain the illusion enough to forget himself in their bodies. Sunk in his own misery, he generally paid no attention to theirs.

Now that was all he could see. Seemingly overnight, they’d transformed from genial companions in wickedness to everyday women living a hard life where they only survived by satisfying men’s urges.
His
urges.

Being moral and disciplined is hard work. Being wicked requires no effort at all—one merely indulges every desire and impulse, no matter how hurtful or immoral.

He knocked back the rest of his brandy in a vain hope that the fiery liquor would purge Maria’s words from his mind. What did she know about it? And why did he even care what she thought? It was none of her concern how he chose to forget his troubles. He paid for his pleasures, damn it, and he paid well.

While his estate suffered. While his tenants worked their farms from dawn to dusk. While his servants relied on him for their livelihood, and his siblings looked to him to save them all.

A cold chill swept over him that even the brandy couldn’t warm.

“Milord,” Polly said, perching on the arm of his chair with a salacious smile. “Perhaps you need something a bit more fresh and sweet to tempt your palate.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d offered him a “virgin.” He’d always refused politely but firmly, uninterested in that unsavory part of the trade—country girls who came to the city, eager to see the world, only to find themselves forced onto their backs because of clever women like Polly.

This time, the very idea of it revolted him. He kept seeing Maria landing in such a situation through no fault of her own—sometimes the line between respectable woman and fallen woman could be paper thin. He knew that better than anyone. Why, even his sisters, if taken advantage of . . .

“No,” he said hoarsely, pushing himself to his feet as his stomach churned. “God, no.”

He stumbled from the brothel to retch in the street. It was the brandy, that’s all. The damned cheap brandy, mingling with his morbid mood to make him unable to find pleasure in his usual pursuits.

Deuce take it all, he
would
find pleasure if it killed him! There were other places he could go, places less sordid. That’s what he needed.

Reaching the opera house just as the night’s performance was ending, he went backstage to where half a dozen dancers were entertaining admirers in their dressing room. They were fun girls, always ready for a night on the town. Fun girls were what he needed right now.

Yet after ten minutes of their flirtations, he’d had enough. He kept thinking that any man of consequence would please them—if he dropped dead in their presence right now, they would mourn him with a drink and a dance, and forget him by next week.

Suddenly, that wasn’t enough.

The realization staggered him. Swearing foully, he left there to go to a tavern, then a club, then a party that someone in the club dragged him to, where the demimonde were sporting with their protectors. But all he could rouse himself to do was drink, and even that he was sick of by the end of the evening.

It was no use. Maria had infected him somehow with her morality. He would have to purge her from his mind and body before he could return to his usual pursuits.

If he ever could. The sobering thought plagued him as he ordered his coach around and had the man head for home.

Home? Halstead Hall wasn’t home! This was what came of letting a sweet little virgin capture your eye. You started considering the future, letting the weight of responsibility color your actions. You started hoping for the impossible. You started thinking that perhaps you could actually—

A groan escaped him as he settled against the squabs. This obsession with her was mad. He’d spent his entire night on the town without once plunging his cock into a willing whore, without even
wanting
to. It was insanity!

Yet it was Maria who consumed his mind on the journey home, Maria and the light in her eyes as she’d said he wasn’t doomed. Maria and her lush, innocent kisses and how they made him feel.

He didn’t want to feel, damn it! He’d survived all these years without feeling. Now all the feelings he’d kept in his strongbox were spilling out, no matter how much he held down the lid.

As soon as he reached Halstead Hall, he passed through the courtyards until he came to the staircase that led to the floor where her bedchamber lay. Then he stood hesitating, his obsession making him ache to see her. Did he dare to try, despite the hour?

The debate became moot when male voices drifted down from above. His brothers were up there. What the devil?

Half inebriated, he vaulted up the stairs to find them lolling in chairs in the hall outside Maria’s door. Gabe clasped a bunch of violets in his hand while Jarret held a rolled-up piece of parchment in his.

“What are you two louts doing here in the middle of the night?” he growled.

“It’s nearly dawn,” Gabe said coolly. “Hardly the middle of the night. Not that you would have noticed, in your drunken state.”

Scowling, Oliver took a step toward them. “It’s still earlier than you, at least, ever rise.”

Gabe glanced at Jarret. “Clearly, the old boy doesn’t remember what today is.”

“I believe you’re right,” Jarret returned, a hint of condemnation in his tone.

Oliver glared at them both as he sifted through his soggy brain for what they meant. When it came to him, he groaned. St. Valentine’s Day. That sobered him right up. “That doesn’t explain why you’re lurking outside Maria’s door.”

Jarret cast him a scathing glance as he got to his feet. “Why do you care? You ran off to town to find your entertainment. Seems to me that you’re relinquishing the field.”

“So you two intend to step in?” he snapped.

“Why not?” Gabe rose to glower at him. “Since your plan to thwart Gran isn’t working, and it’s looking as if we’ll have to marry
someone,
we might as well have a go at Miss Butterfield. She’s an heiress and a very nice girl, too, in case you hadn’t noticed. If you’re stupid enough to throw her over for a bunch of whores and opera dancers, we’re more than happy to take your place. We at least appreciate her finer qualities.”

The very idea of his brothers appreciating anything of Maria’s made his blood boil. “In the first place, I didn’t throw her over for anyone. In the second, I am damned well not relinquishing the field. And I’m certainly not giving it over to a couple of fortune hunters like you.”

The sound of footsteps coming down the hall from the servants’ stairs made them whirl in that direction. Betty walked slowly toward them, one hand shading her eyes.

That’s when it hit him. His brothers were here because of that silly superstition about a maiden’s heart being joined to that of whoever was the first man she spotted on St. Valentine’s Day.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Betty murmured as she approached, carefully avoiding looking at any of them.

A devilish grin lit Gabe’s face. “Betty, catch!” he cried and tossed a violet at her.

She didn’t even move a finger to stop it from bouncing off her and falling to the floor. “If your lordships will excuse me,” she said in a decidedly snippy tone, “my mistress rang the bell for me.” With a sniff that conveyed her contempt for them, she slipped inside Maria’s room and shut the door firmly behind her.

“That was shameful,” Jarret told Gabe. “You know bloody well that Betty and John are sweethearts.”

“It’s not my fault that John didn’t show up this morning so she could see him first,” Gabe said with a shrug.

“He couldn’t,” Oliver ground out. “John was with me.”

His brothers turned their gazes on him again. “Right,” Jarret said coldly. “At the brothel. We know. We all know. And so does
she
.” Eyes glittering, he tipped his head toward Maria’s door.

An icy rage swelled in Oliver, directed mostly at himself. Of course she’d heard about his night in town. How could she not? Servants had a tendency to talk, and he’d been a fool to ignore that yet again. But he’d been so desperate to get away from here . . .

Now she would despise him even more.

He stiffened. All right, so he’d have to get past that. And he would, too. He wasn’t about to allow his brothers to step in and woo her.
He
was the one who’d discovered her.
He
was the one who’d brought her here and paid for her gowns, and they weren’t going to enjoy the benefits of that. The very idea of it made his stomach knot.

A groan escaped him. There he went again—being consumed by jealousy. It was like a pox; it ate at him day and night. There was only one way to cure himself of it—he had to bed her.

Yes, that was the answer. Once he reached his release in her arms, this obsession would surely end, and he could find himself again. He could go back to living his life as he pleased and ignoring the ramifications of his behavior. That’s what he must do. Scratch his itch. No matter how much his deuced family tried to interfere.

He’d had quite enough of their shenanigans this week. He’d allowed them to play their games and carry her off wherever they wished, but no more. She was his. All he had to do was convince her of it. And if that meant heeding some stupid superstition on St. Valentine’s Day, then by God he’d do it. To hell with them all.

“All right, you two,” he announced, “you’ve been having a grand time at my expense, but that’s over now.”

With a smirk, Jarret glanced over at Gabe. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. Do you?”

“Not a clue,” Gabe replied.

“Then perhaps I should demonstrate.” Oliver grabbed the violets out of Gabe’s hand, then knocked on Maria’s door, planting himself across the doorway before either of them realized what he was up to. After a second, the door swung open, and she blinked at him. “Oliver! What are you doing here?”

Words utterly failed him. She wore a white cotton wrapper over her linen night rail, both buttoned up to the chin and chaste as a nun’s habit. Yet just the sight of her in such attire aroused him as none of Polly’s girls had managed to do. All he wanted was to back her into the room and swive her senseless.

Instead, he thrust the violets at her. “For you. For St. Valentine’s Day.”

Her blue eyes turned to ice. “Take them to your friends at the brothel. I want none of them.”

“Please, Maria,” he said hoarsely, “let me explain.”

“You owe me no explanation.” With a glance at Betty, who had her back to them but was clearly listening avidly, she murmured, “I’m only your pretend fiancée, after all. So if you’ll excuse me—”

“I won’t.” If he hadn’t caught the glint of tears in her eyes, he might have walked away. But he’d be damned if he’d do it now.

He’d hurt her. He’d sworn never to hurt a woman, which was why he’d kept his relations with women casual. If they became attached, he broke with them before it could turn nasty.

Yet he’d still hurt her, the one woman he’d least wanted to hurt. He didn’t like how it made him feel. Right now he would give anything, do anything, to wipe that wounded expression from her face.

“I’m the first man you saw today,” he pointed out, “so I’m officially your valentine.”

She let out a harsh laugh. “Because of a silly superstition? I think not.”

“Because I want to be,” he said in a low voice. “And because you want me to be, too.”

Her gaze would have skewered a stone. “Want a drunken debaucher fresh from some whore’s bed as my valentine? Not if you were the last man on earth.”

She slammed the door in his face.

His brothers laughed, but he ignored them. He couldn’t blame her for being angry; he’d given her good reason to be so.

But it didn’t change a thing. He’d be damned if he let her go now. One way or the other, Maria Butterfield was going to be his. One way or the other, she
would
share his bed.

Chapter Seventeen

Maria managed to avoid Oliver for most of St. Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t difficult—apparently he spent half of it sleeping off his wild night. Not that she cared one bit. She’d learned her lesson with him. Truly she had. Not even the beautiful bouquet of irises he’d sent up to her room midafternoon changed that.

Now that she was dressing for tonight’s ball, she was rather proud of herself for having only thought of him half a dozen times.
Per hour,
her conscience added.

“There, that’s the last one,” Betty said as she tucked another ostrich feather into Maria’s elaborate coiffure.

According to Celia, the new fashion this year involved a multitude of feathers drooping from one’s head in languid repose. Maria hoped hers didn’t decide to find their repose on the floor. Betty seemed to have used a magical incantation to keep them in place, and Maria wasn’t at all sure they would stay put.

“You look lovely, miss,” Betty added.

“If I do,” Maria said, “it’s only because of your efforts, Betty.”

Betty ducked her head to hide her blush. “Thank you, miss.”

It was amazing how different the servant had been ever since Maria had taken Oliver’s advice to heart, letting the girl fuss over her and tidy her room and do myriad things that Maria would have been perfectly happy to do for herself. But he’d proved to be right—Betty practically glowed with pride. Maria wished she’d known sooner how to treat them all, but honestly, how could she have guessed that these mad English would
enjoy
being in service? It boggled her democratic American mind.

Casting an admiring glance down Maria’s gown of ivory satin, Betty said, “I daresay his lordship will swallow his tongue when he sees you tonight.”

“If he does, I hope he chokes on it,” Maria muttered.

With a sly glance, Betty fluffed out the bouffant drapery of white tulle that crossed Maria’s bust and was fastened in the center with an ornament of gold mosaic. “John says the master didn’t touch a one of those tarts at the brothel last night. He says that his lordship refused every female that the owner of the place brought before him.”

“I somehow doubt that.”

Paying her no heed, Betty continued her campaign to salvage her master’s dubious honor. “Then Lord Stoneville went to the opera house and left without a single dancer on his arm. John says he never done that before.”

Maria rolled her eyes, though a part of her desperately wanted to believe it was true—a tiny, silly part of her that she would have to slap senseless.

Betty polished the ornament with the edge of her sleeve. “John says he drank himself into a stupor, then came home without so much as kissing a single lady. John says—”

“John is inventing stories to excuse his master’s actions.”

“Oh no, miss! John would never lie. And I can promise you that the master has never come home so early before, and certainly not without . . . that is, at the house in Acton he was wont to bring a tart or two home to . . . well, you know.”

“Help him choke on his tongue?” Maria snapped as she picked up her fan.

Betty laughed. “Now that would be a sight, wouldn’t it? Two ladies trying to shove his tongue down his throat.”

“I’d pay them well to do it.” With a sigh, Maria turned for the door. “He only refrained from bringing his tarts home because of his grandmother and sisters. In Acton, he was running a bachelor’s house. Here it’s different.”

Betty’s face fell. “I suppose that’s true.”

“But thank you for trying to cheer me up,” Maria said softly. “You’ve been very good to me, and I appreciate it.”

The servant beamed at her. Honestly, it took so little to make Betty happy.

She headed downstairs, relieved to notice that the others were already below her in the great hall. She wouldn’t have to be alone with Oliver. If his servants were making excuses for him, she could well imagine the ones he’d start making for himself. Or worse,
wouldn’t
start making for himself. She had no claim on him, and whether he went to a brothel should be none of her concern.

She could only blame herself for the fact that she felt like it was.

Especially when he glanced up to follow her descent, his hot, intense gaze burning her body. Lord help her, but he looked splendid—too handsome for his own good, as always. His blend of sin and sophistication made a woman want to sink down with him into any sort of degradation, whatever it took to have him.

He wore an opera cloak of dark blue wool over his usual black evening attire, which made his hair shine blue-black in the candlelight. White silk gloves encased his long, narrow fingers, the same fingers that had stroked her cheek. Mercy, had that only been yesterday? It seemed a lifetime ago. She couldn’t stop thinking about the tender way his hand had swept her hair from her forehead.

She scowled at her traitorous memory. No wonder women trailed after him everywhere. How could they not when he did such things? And when he gazed at her as he was now, with a hunger he didn’t bother to mask even in front of his scowling grandmother, he fairly took her breath away.

Curse him for that. She was
not
going to lose her breath, her heart, or anything else to him. Not after last night.

He approached her with a smile. “Any gown that looks so perfect on you deserves something extra to set it off.” He drew out a velvet box.

When he opened it to reveal a lovely pearl necklace with a diamond-encrusted clasp, she sucked in a breath.

“Clearly this belongs with that gown,” he said, and held the box out to her. “The necklace was my mother’s.”

She glanced at his siblings, who all looked shocked. His grandmother looked fit to be tied.

She lowered her voice. “I don’t think this is proper—”

“You’re my fiancée. No one will take it amiss if I give you a gift.”

A gift? Heavens alive, she’d thought it a loan at best. “It’s too expensive.”
And you do it only to make me forget last night.

“Don’t you think I would have sold it by now if it were that costly?”

A good point. Still, it had to be worth something. And it was of great sentimental significance, which was farcical under the circumstances. “Surely it should go to Minerva or Celia.”

“Oh, it’s far too heavy for me,” Celia said airily, having recovered with surprising speed from watching her brother offer her mother’s necklace to a virtual stranger. “I’d look like a chicken with an anchor around her neck.”

“And I don’t like pearls,” Minerva added.

Maria met Minerva’s gaze. “You realize he’s only trying to buy my forgiveness for his . . . transgressions.”

As Oliver stiffened, Minerva cast her a sly smile. “All the more reason to accept it. He deserves to pay. That doesn’t mean you have to forgive him.”

“Perhaps you should stay out of it, Minerva,” Mrs. Plumtree cut in, her voice frigid. When they looked to her, she added, “They’re
my
daughter’s pearls, after all. If anyone should say who gets them, it’s me. At least Miss Butterfield has the good sense to realize that.”

As an awkward silence fell upon the company, Maria felt her cheeks heat with mortification. The arch look Mrs. Plumtree shot her grandson showed that she didn’t at all approve of his giving so important a family heirloom to a nobody.

Occasionally during the past week Maria had thought she saw Mrs. Plumtree looking at her with a certain softness in her face, but clearly she’d imagined it.

“They belong to
me,
Gran,” Oliver snapped. Removing them from the velvet box, he walked behind Maria and clasped them about her neck. “And I will give them to whomever I wish.”

“Please, Oliver,” Maria murmured as the heavy weight of them settled about her throat. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble.” He moved up beside her to offer her his arm, with a dark scowl for his grandmother.

Maria stole a glance at Mrs. Plumtree, but the woman wouldn’t look at her, obviously still appalled by Oliver’s reckless gift. Why did it matter what the woman thought anyway? It wasn’t as if Oliver actually meant to marry her. If Mrs. Plumtree despised her, then Oliver was more likely to win his strategy, and Maria would be done with this at last.

Yet it
did
matter. Truth was, Maria had grown to like Mrs. Plumtree. She couldn’t say why, except that the lady’s acerbic remarks often matched exactly what Maria herself was thinking.

Two carriages pulled up in front. Freddy announced that he wished to ride in the first one with Jarret and Gabe, whom he’d clearly begun to idolize, and Celia said she’d go along. The young woman did always seem more comfortable with the men than the women.

As Freddy climbed up into the carriage, Maria couldn’t resist one last bit of advice. “Remember to follow the lead of the other gentlemen at the ball. They may do things differently here than in America.”

Freddy thrust out his chin with youthful belligerence. “I’m not a child, Mopsy. I know how to handle myself.”

When that carriage left, and the next one pulled up for her, Oliver, Minerva, and Mrs. Plumtree, Oliver patted Maria’s hand. “Freddy will be fine,” he reassured her in his smooth-as-chocolate voice. “I’ll make certain of it.”

As Oliver was handing his grandmother up into the carriage, Minerva laughed.

With an arch of one eyebrow, Oliver handed Maria up next. “You find that amusing, Minerva?”

“Given the trouble you and Foxmoor and the others routinely got into when you were Mr. Dunse’s age, don’t
you
find it amusing?”

It was the first time any of his family had mentioned Oliver in his youth. Maria tried not to be intrigued but failed. “I can only imagine the sort of havoc Oliver must have wreaked as a boy.”

Oliver handed Minerva in, then climbed in to sit beside her. “We weren’t that bad.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Minerva exclaimed, her eyes twinkling. “One dull evening, he and his friends went to a ball dressed in the livery of the hired footmen. Then they proceeded to drink up the liquor, flirt and wink at the elderly ladies until they were all blushing, and make loud criticisms of the entertainment. After the lady of the house caught on to their scheme and rounded up some stout young men to throw them out, they stole a small stone cupid she had in her garden and sent her a ransom note for it.”

“How the devil do you know that?” Oliver asked. “You were, what, eleven?”

“Twelve,” Minerva said. “And it was all Gran’s servants could talk about. Made quite a stir in society, as I recall. What was the ransom? A kiss for each of you from the lady’s daughter?”

A faint smile touched Oliver’s lips. “And she never did pay it. Apparently her suitors took issue with it. Not to mention her parents.”

“Great heavens,” Maria said.

“Come to think of it,” Oliver mused aloud, “I believe Kirkwood still has that cupid somewhere. I should ask him.”

“You’re as bad as Freddy and my cousins,” Maria chided. “They put soap on all the windows of the mayor’s carriage on the very day he was supposed to lead a procession through Dartmouth. You should have seen him blustering when he discovered it.”

“Was he a pompous idiot?” Oliver asked.

“A lecher, actually. He tried to force a kiss on my aunt. And him a married man, too!”

“Then I hope they did more than soap his windows,” Oliver drawled.

The comment caught Maria by surprise. “And you, of course, have never kissed a married woman?”

“Not if they didn’t ask to be kissed,” he said, a strange tension in his voice. “But we weren’t speaking of me, we were speaking of Dartmouth’s dastardly mayor. Did soaping his windows teach him a lesson?”

“No, but the gift they left for him in the coach did the trick. They got it from the town’s largest cow.”

Oliver and Minerva both laughed. Mrs. Plumtree did not. She was as silent as death beside Maria, clearly scandalized by the entire conversation.

“Why do boys always feel an urgent need to create a mess others are forced to clean up?” Minerva asked.

“Because they know how much it irritates us,” Maria said.

“I don’t know how Oliver turned into such a scapegrace.” Mrs. Plumtree surprised them all by breaking her silence. “At fourteen he was a perfect gentleman—rode out with his father to visit the tenants, spent hours with the steward learning how to balance the accounts . . .”

“I wasn’t
that
perfect, Gran,” Oliver said, an edge to his voice. “I had my faults.”

“None of real consequence until after your parents—”

“Have you forgotten the trouble I got into at Eton before then?” Oliver said.

“Pish, that was nothing. Boyish shenanigans after you took up with those other rascals. When you came home for the holidays, you behaved like a dutiful son and the future heir to a great estate. You applied yourself to your studies and sought to improve the house. You were a responsible young man.”