This Wicked Gift (7 page)

After all, William thought bitterly, what
else could mere mortals do but jump to perform his bidding? The thought almost
put him in charity with the man standing nearby. The viscount slowly
straightened.

“What I don’t understand,” William said
quietly, “is why you don’t buy your own carriage.”

Lord Wyndleton turned to him. This close,
William could see the golden brown of his eyes—predator’s eyes, or at least, a
predator in training. Like any wolf cub caught in a trap, he snapped in anger
at anything that came near.

“He’s holding the purse strings, you idiot.”
He straightened and wiped his hands on his sleeves. “My grandfather is sacking
you, yes?”

“He’ll get around to it.”

Gareth Carhart, Viscount Wyndleton, picked
up the valise. He nodded sharply. “Excellent,” he said, and then he walked out
of the room.

T
HE END OF THE DAY ARRIVED,
 
but Lord Blakely
and his grandson still had not returned. This meant that William had still not
been sacked.

Winter struck directly through William’s
coat as he left his place of employment. Yes, he’d had a reprieve—albeit a temporary
one. He knew the marquess’s tactics. Once he got a man in his sights, he did
not let up. Today William survived. Tomorrow…It was going to be another damned
cold night, one in a string of damned cold nights stretching from this moment
until death.

“Mr. White.”

William turned. There, in virulent yellow
waistcoat, burgeoning over an ample belly, his locks pomaded to glossy
slickness, stood Mr. Sherrod’s solicitor. The corner of William’s lip turned up
in an involuntary snarl.

“Do you have another taunt to deliver on
your late employer’s behalf?” William pulled his coat around him and started
walking away, brushing past the unctuous fellow. “As it is, I must be on my
way.”

The solicitor’s hand shot out and grabbed
his wrist. “Nonsense, Mr. White. I’ve come to a realization.
A
 
profitable
 
realization.
I wanted to…to
share it with you.”

William stared at the chubby fingers on
his cuff, and then carefully picked them off his sleeve, one by one.
The digits felt greasy even through his
gloves.

“Adam Sherrod,” the man said, “left the
bulk of his fortune in his final testament to the serious little stick of a
woman who served as his wife. Given the informal agreement he made with your
father, you might contest the disposition of his estate. I had, in point of fact,
hoped that you would. You accepted your fate with surprising grace the other
day.”

“Is there any chance of overturning the
testament? I assume the document was valid and witnessed. And it was only an
informal agreement between the two men, after all. I’ve heard that excuse often
enough.”

“Hmm.”
The
man looked away and rubbed his lips. “To speak with perfect plainness, you
could claim he was not in his right mind. You see, before he married, he
actually had intended to keep his word. He’d left you half his fortune, five
thousand pounds. It would be easy to argue that he did not see sense. After
all, he did marry
 
her
. Overturn his latest version of the will, and
you stand to win a great deal.”

In William’s experience, any time someone
claimed to speak perfectly plainly, his words were rarely plain and never
perfect. First, Adam Sherrod had been merely despicable, and not mad. Even
setting aside this tiny detail of reality, the solicitor’s suggestion felt as
oily as his hair. It took William a moment to pinpoint why he was uneasy.

“You’re his solicitor,” he accused.
“You’re the trustee of the estate, are you not? This advice of yours cannot be
in the estate’s interest. Why are you giving it?”

The man licked his lips. “Mr. White. Must
you ask? I don’t like to see an upstanding young man deprived of what ought
rightfully to be his. It doesn’t sit well with my conscience.”

The solicitor bounced on his toes and
lifted his chin, unburdened by anything so heavy as a sense of right and wrong.
William kept silent, staring at the man. The man
 
rubbed the back of his neck uneasily.
He shifted from foot to foot.

That dance of guilt was all too familiar
to William. He’d felt that itch. The knowledge that he’d made an irretrievable
error had nestled deep in his stomach all day. He’d
 
known
 
what he’d done to Lavinia had been
wrong as he was doing it. He’d done it anyway.

“At what point in your legal
apprenticeship did you acquire a conscience, then? And when did you first
betray it?”

“Well. It’s not so much a betrayal as…as a
renegotiation, if you will. If you must know the truth, if you could tie up the
estate in Chancery, the fees to the trustee from administration of her estate
would be substantial. It’s a profitable plan for us both. I’ll protest,
naturally, for form’s sake. And you—you’ll be able to strike an open blow at
the man who had you put out on the streets when you were fourteen. You could
have him declared mad, and destroy his reputation.”

Greasy though the man was
,
he knew how to tempt William. There would be a delightful
symmetry in ruining Mr. Sherrod’s legacy just as William’s father’s had been
ruined.

“And then what?” William demanded.

“Well, after a short, insignificant delay
in the courts of Chancery—really nothing to speak of—you’ll get his five
thousand pounds.”

“A short, insignificant delay,” William
said drily.
“Naturally.
Chancery
being known for its alacrity.
And
 
you
must
mean,
five thousand pounds minus the tiny fees
for estate administration that would accrue over that infinitesimal delay.”

The solicitor bowed.
“Precisely
so.”

It would hardly be so smooth. The process
might take years. Still, the money called out to him.
Five
thousand pounds.
Five thousand pounds in the safe four-percent funds
translated into a good two hundred a year.

As if sensing William’s temptation, the
solicitor continued. “Think on the money. You could buy your own home. You
would not need to labor like a common man.
You could buy yourself a new coat.”

The solicitor reached out and flicked
William’s sleeve, where the fabric had become shiny with age. William recoiled.

“Mr. White, you would need never feel cold
again.”

The man misunderstood the nature of
temptation. It wasn’t himself he clothed in new finery. Instead, his breath
caught, thinking what he could give Lavinia. She could have any dress she
wanted. Every last penny she deserved. He could fashion himself into a
gentleman. He could become a man she would respect, instead of one she gifted
with her virginity out of pity.

He need never feel cold again.

But then, there was a catch. There was
always a catch, and this one stuck in his skin like some barbed thing. He’d
have to enter into
a collusion
with this unnatural
creature. He would have to lie to the court. He’d
 
have to cheat Adam Sherrod’s widow—his
 
innocent
 
widow—and dispossess her of funds that
she deserved.

What did a little thing like his honor
signify? He’d toss his own grandmother to hellhounds if it meant he could have
Lavinia.

He’d won a reprieve from the marquess. Now
he’d gotten this offer.
A little oil, a little grease.
What was a little extra dishonor, atop the mountain he’d already constructed
for himself?

The solicitor jogged William’s shoulder.
“Don’t take too long. It took me weeks to track you down. The time for filing
an appeal is disappearing. Stop by my office tomorrow morning to go over the
details.”

William opened his mouth to say he’d do
it. The words filled his mouth, bitter as rancid lard, but they would not come
out.
 
I’ll
do it,
 
he thought.
 
I’ll do it.

He conjured up the thought of Lavinia—but
he could not imagine how she would forgive him, promise of money or no. And
with the money…if he agreed to this scheme, he’d not be able to wash the stench
of this bug of a solicitor from his skin. How could he beg for her absolution
if he could not even face himself?

How could he have her at all, if he did
not accept this desperate possibility?

What he finally said was, “Tomorrow.
I’ll decide tomorrow.”

T
HE LIBRARY BUSTLED
 
with customers
that Monday evening—six of them, to be precise—and they kept
 
Lavinia very busy indeed, as none were
willing to browse on his own. She was reaching up, up for the newest set of
Byron’s poetry when she heard the shop door open behind her.

A blast of cold air greeted this newest
arrival. Yet it was not the temperature that had Lavinia’s skin breaking out in
gooseflesh. Without looking, she knew it was
 
him.
 
She
froze, hand above her head. Her heart raced. But she could not react, not in
this room, not with all these people here. And so she retrieved the
leather-bound volume and handed it to Mr. Adrian Bellows before she allowed
herself to turn.

Mr. William Q. White was as tall and
taciturn as ever. This time, though,
 
he
 
caught
her glance and ducked his head, coloring.

Oh, how the tables had turned. Two days
ago she’d been the one to blush and turn away. Two days ago
 
she
 
had wondered, in her own giddy and
foolish way, what he thought of her.

But then yesterday they’d come together,
skin against skin. He’d had her; she’d had him.

Today the question on her mind was: What
did
 
she
 
think of
 
him?

It was not a query with an easy answer. He
dawdled until the others trickled out, one by one. Even then he did not
approach her. Instead, he studied a shelf of Greco-Roman histories so
intently,
she wondered if their spines contained the secrets
of the universe. When she walked toward him, he turned his back to her. He
 
bent, ever so slightly, as if he
carried a great weight in his jacket.

Lavinia supposed he did.

“I am sorry,” he said, still faced away
from her. “I ought not to have come. If my presence distresses you, say so and
I shall leave at once.”

“I am not easily distressed.” She kept her
voice calm and even.

He turned toward her and looked in her
face, as if to ascertain for
himself
whether she was
telling the truth. “Are you well?” His voice was low, lilting in that accent
that he had. “I could not sleep, thinking of what I had done to you.”

She had not slept, either, reliving what
he had done, touching herself where he had touched. But the expression on his
face suggested that his evening had not been spent nearly so pleasurably.

“I am very well,” she said. And then,
because he looked away, his eyes tightening in obvious distress, she added,
“Thank you for asking.”

Politeness didn’t seem enough after what
had passed between them, but she was unsure of the etiquette for this occasion.

“Miss Spencer, I know I can never hope for
forgiveness. I dishonored you—”

“Strange,” Lavinia interjected, “that I do
not feel dishonored.”

He frowned as if puzzled, and then started
again. “I ruined you—”

“Ruined me for what? I am still capable of
working in this shop, as you see. I do not believe I shall turn toward
prostitution as a result of one afternoon’s pleasure. And as for
marriage—William, do you truly think that any man worth having would put me
aside for one indiscretion?”

“Put you aside?” His gaze skittered down
her breasts to her waist, and then traveled slowly up. “No. He would take you
any way he could have you.”

She was not one bit sorry that she’d given
herself to this man, however foolish and impulsive the gift had been.

“As I see it,” Lavinia said carefully,
“you are feeling guilty because you attempted to coerce me into your bed. Then,
believing I was forced, you took me anyway.”

He flinched, looking away again. “Yes. And
for that, I ought to be—”

“I was not forced, and so you did not
dishonor me.”

“But—”

“But,” Lavinia said, holding up one
finger, “you believed I was, and thus you dishonored yourself.”

His expression froze. His eyes shut and he
put his hand over his face. A shaky breath whispered through his fingers. “Ah.”
It was not a sound of understanding or agreement, but one of despair. “You are
very astute.”