Vanquished (32 page)

But of course, such a lovely fantasy was just that, a flight of fancy, a dream not ever meant to be. Hadrian's coming into her life was a gift, to be sure, but he wasn't nor would he ever be hers to keep. The best she could do was savor whatever time he chose to give her and then when the time came let him go with as much grace as she could muster. Even so, God willing, that time was yet to come. In the interim, she meant to embrace life, and Hadrian, with all the joy she might.

In high spirits, she stepped inside the entrance to her aunt's house to find Teddy waiting in the parlor. Tamping down a disloyal pang of disappointment, she said, "Teddy, what a lovely surprise."

Lottie, smile wooden, rose from her chair by the fire. "I'll leave you two young people alone." On her way out the door, she whispered to Callie, "I'll be in the kitchen with Jenny if you need me."

As soon as they were alone, Teddy turned on her and said, "That attache case you purchased earlier this month, it was for him, wasn't it?"

Had Hadrian confronted her with such blatant jealousy, she would have been tickled down to her toes. But this was Teddy, a dear friend but only that. Reminding herself she owed him no explanations, she said, "That rather depends on precisely what
him
you've in mind."

"You know well enough. Hadrian St. Claire, you're in love with him, aren't you?"

"What rubbish."

Squaring his narrow shoulders, he took another slug from his sherry glass. Glancing to the near-empty decanter, she wondered just how many he'd had. "That's not an answer."

"No, it isn't, is it?" Chin raised, she held her ground. "I wasn't aware I owed you one."

They stared each other down for a long moment and then all at once he folded like a balloon on the receiving prick of a pin. "Even if he disappeared, you still wouldn't marry me, would you?"

Seeing him so sad-eyed and dejected, she felt her annoyance ebb. "No Teddy, I'm afraid not. Whatever I may have said or done to give you false hope, I am sorry, so very sorry."

And she was sorry, truly she was. Whatever his name, she loved Hadrian with all her being--body, mind, and heart. That he didn't return that love, and likely never would, made her feel for Teddy all the more.

He sank down onto the chair seat. "Not as sorry as I am, old girl."

She hesitated, wondering if she should lay a hand on his slouched shoulder or if touching him under the circumstances wouldn't just make everything that much worse. Deciding it was likely to be the latter, she held back, waiting. When he still didn't speak, only buried his head in his hands, Callie could bear it no longer.

"Oh, Teddy, we've been friends for years now. Can't we just forget all this nonsense about you wanting to marry me and go back to the way things were?"

Uncovering his face, he looked up at her, eyes streaming. "No, I'm afraid we can't."

This time she did reach for him, she couldn't help it. "Oh, Teddy, why ever not?"

"Because once I tell you what I've just done, you're going to despise me."

"I could never despise you. Whatever you've done, it can't be that bad." Even as she said so, she felt a pang of anxiety.

He looked up at her, eyes bleak. "I shouldn't be so sure of that, old girl, I shouldn't be so sure."

Back at his studio, Hadrian could do little more than pace the shop floor. Callie to marry that fop! Try as he might, he couldn't credit it. Yet what right had he to approve or disapprove? None, he knew which only made him feel that bloody much worse. He was the one who'd made a point of saying he wasn't a marrying man, that they had no future together. Certainly she was under no obligation to make an accounting of her personal life to him.

While he hadn't made any promises to her, she hadn't made any to him either. Small wonder the night before she'd accepted his terms so readily. She'd already promised to marry "Teddy" of the limpid eyes and waxed mustache. In that case, she'd like as not considered one night of passion before tying the knot as no more than her due. Or perhaps she was like the other society matrons he'd known over the years who fancied they could have their cake and eat it too -- appearing in public with their staid, conventional husbands while keeping a lover on the side. Likely he was the worst of hypocrites, but the thought that Callie might view him as little more than a whore to service her made him sick inside. Rationally he knew he hadn't the right to jealousy, and yet he felt it burning a hole through him all the same.

Would they end up as a cliche, the proverbial two ships passing in the night, their contact limited to him reading newspaper accounts of her or the occasional posted letter? Or perhaps she'd had a change of heart and meant to retire from public life altogether and set up her nursery while there was still time. She'd certainly seemed taken with those rugby-playing lads in the park. Perhaps she would stay in occasional touch, even bring her growing brood into his shop from time to time to have their portraits made. The latter image sufficed to send him searching out the gin, and yet hadn't he been the one to tell her what a wonderful mother she would make?

So why then did he feel so patently empty, so abundantly ill?

The clanging of the shop bell roused him from his moribund musings. He looked up to find Josiah Dandridge hobbling through his front door.

"Where the devil have you been? When I came by earlier, your sign was turned over to C
LOSED."

"Your snitch must be falling down on the job, Dandridge, otherwise you'd know, wouldn't you? It's just as well you're here--you've saved me a trip."

"You've the photograph, then?"

During the long walk back from Gavin's to clear his head, he'd decided to swallow his pride and accept the money from Rourke as a loan. No doubt it would take him years, perhaps the better part of his lifetime, to repay his friend, but at least he would be off the hook with Dandridge so far as money went.

"There won't be any photograph, not now and not ever. I'm calling off our arrangement. I'll need a few more days, but I mean to repay you the money in full. Consider us finished."

He'd expected Dandridge to be furious but instead the older man tossed back his head and laughed. "Oh, I don't think so, Mr. St. Claire . . . or should I say, 'Mr. Stone'?"

Hadrian froze. Like the photographs drawing in his darkroom, he felt raw, naked,
exposed.
He raked a hand through his hair, the fingers cold as snow against his scalp.

Dandridge's bloodless thin lips twisted into a farce of a smile. "Does it surprise you that I know your true name? Do not, young man, imagine for a moment that there is so much as a single day of your history I do not know in full. I know not only who you are but what you are. Fail me and I will make certain all of London knows it, too. I very much doubt the son of an East End whore, a former pickpocket, would find many well-heeled patrons willing to let him photograph their wives and daughters."

Exposure, ever the worst of his adult fears, and yet now that he found himself facing it, Hadrian felt strangely . . . calm. Shrugging, he said, "I'll take my chances."

Dandridge scowled. "Don't be a fool. Play the game out and you can still have a bright future ahead of you. If you don't fancy staying on in London, there's no reason not to go to Paris, set up there. Now be a good lad and get me that photograph."

Be a good lad, a good lad, a good lad. . .

Without warning, the voices from the past came back to Hadrian with crystalline clarity.

"Keep away from me mum, you bastard."

"Sir, J.D., please, I'm begging you. He's only a boy."

Only a boy, a boy, a boy . . .

Like the slides projected from a Magic Lantern, the bits of fragmented memory rushed back--Mum cowering in the corner, the dark bruise blighting the smooth skin of her cheek; his beloved box camera, the one he'd built from scratch from the scraps he'd scrounged along the river bank, reduced to bits of broken wood and shattered glass; the soul-sinking feeling of being pushed down onto that rocking mattress, finger tracing the rose and ivy counterpane pattern while he searched for places to hide out in his mind.

Josiah Dandridge. The bad man he'd grown up knowing only as 'J.D.,' the well-heeled regular at Madame Dottie's who'd taken a fancy to his mum. The same man who'd beaten her and then smashed his camera when he'd tried to use it to give evidence against him. The pederast who'd raped him of his innocence, showing him just how very bad a bad man might be.

He swung around to the MP, now shrunken with age, and said, "My God, it's you. It's been you all along. You're J.D. No wonder you know my name, you bastard!"

He vaulted across the room, grabbed Dandridge by the collar and, plowed his fist into that patrician nose, more than a decade of fury fueling the blow. Blood spurted, a near perfect arc. Hadrian let go. Dandridge folded to the floor, no longer the villain of his youth but an arthritic old man near to helpless without his cane.

Cupping his bleeding nose, Dandridge looked up to where Hadrian towered over him, arms folded and legs spread. "You've no proof, Stone. It's my word against yours, the word of a whore's by-blow against the distinguished record of a respected Member of Parliament, a pillar of society. No one will ever believe you."

For the span of several heartbeats, Hadrian gave serious thought to killing the cock-sucking bastard. Were it not for Callie, he well might have. But as much as he'd enjoyed making the MP bleed, finishing him off wouldn't help Callie or him, either. He'd be hauled off to jail, maybe worse. How then could he hope to protect her?

Reining in his temper, he cracked his knuckles for effect and said, "I wouldn't be so certain of that, Dandridge. I may just have more proof than you credit. And know this, if you ever try to harm Caledonia Rivers in any way ever again, I will expend my last breath on Earth ensuring that you live to regret it as will your dear son, Gerald." The MP blanched and pressing his advantage, Hadrian continued, "Ah yes, I know all about the broken off engagement. It would seem that brutishness runs in your bloodline."

Taking advantage of Dandridge's stunned state, he reached down, hooked a hand about the old man's thin arm, and hauled him to his feet. Dragging him across the shop floor much as he'd been dragged all those years before, he opened the door and shoved him out onto the sidewalk, tossing his cane after him.

"Stay away from Caledonia Rivers, Dandridge. Stay far, far away."

He slammed the shop door amidst the clanging of the bell. Bolting it behind him, he felt as if he were shutting the door on the past with all its pain. Though the future might be far from secure, he no longer need be haunted by his history. After fifteen years of hiding, Harry Stone was finally free to live his life. Smiling to himself, he allowed that no matter what else befell him, that was a very good feeling indeed.

"I speak only for myself individually who are of the opinion that women have not the voice they ought to have in the selection of the representatives of the kingdom; but I warn you that there is no question at present which divides parties more completely, and I am not certain even whether I express the opinion of the majority of my own party . . ."

--R
OBERT
G
ASCOYNE-
C
ECIL,
Marquis of Salisbury, Address to the Primrose League, 1896

F
or Callie, the meeting with Lord Salisbury had been the cause of a great many sleepless nights. Now that the day was upon her, she found herself quite simply glad to get the thing behind her. As she followed Salisbury's personal secretary up the grand double staircase of the Foreign Office and then leftward down the first-floor corridor with its barrel-vaulted ceiling and stenciled walls, her thoughts drifted back to Teddy's revelation of the night before. At first she'd been furious with him for so egregiously misrepresenting their relationship, but anger had been quick to ebb, particularly when he'd tearfully confessed that like his idol, Oscar Wilde, he was guilty of "the love that dare not speak its name." He'd fought against his true nature all his life and in desperation thought that marriage to a woman who was also a dear friend might serve as the cure. Looking back, she suspected she'd always known his devotion didn't go deeper than friendship, and yet he'd been a good friend to her in so many ways. As eager as she'd been to seek out Hadrian and set the misunderstanding to rights, she couldn't very well toss Teddy out the door in such a state. They'd sat up talking late into the evening, and for the second day in a row, she'd missed supper. At this rate, she'd be winnowed down to a sylph in no time at all.