Felix grinned. He’d never been a big gamester like so many of his friends. Still, he was in an impulsive mood tonight. He’d just sated himself with the woman he adored and he was addicted.
Yes, she’d been gone by the time he’d woken, but she’d given herself to him a second time in a manner that could leave hm in no doubt that she’d agree to his proposal. She’d agreed to be his mistress. He didn’t want to remember that she’d also agreed to his proposal to meet him at the church two years ago, and then failed to appear.
No, this was different. Miss Merriweather returned the feelings he had for her, he was sure of it.
“I say, Felix, what’s the matter old chap?”
It was Millament returning to his side, his dear concerned friend, always on the lookout for him since he’d moved into his townhouse after Felix’s spectacular disintegration six months before. Felix sometimes wondered if his mother were paying his friend to attend him so closely, or whether Millament truly was one of those friends in a million.
Felix shook his head and put up his hand to allay the concern directed his way, but the truth was, the familiar fog of despair had descended without warning.
He’d set out for an evening as if the answers to his problems were all but neatly solved but now suddenly he was flailing in a morass of uncertainty.
The acrid cigar smoke that swirled about him did not have the soothing effects the opium pipe delivered, and he coughed, gripping the arm Millament put out to steady him.
Blindly, Felix allowed his friend to steer him towards a large wing-back chair near the window.
“Please tell me I didn’t imagine the woman who came to me this afternoon—”
“You’ve not taken leave of your senses,” Millament soothed. “And I won’t go after her. On my oath.”
“Then she was real. I didn’t imagine it.” Felix blinked open his eyes and saw Millament staring at him with a look of sympathetic understanding.
“She’s the kind of woman a man dreams about, to be sure, but she certainly was real.” He patted Felix’s arm in a brotherly fashion. “And she liked you, Felix, my friend. That was very clear. You go and find her again if that’s what you want. I’m glad to see you lusting after a woman, truly. She’ll be good for you. Banish these black moods, once and for all.”
Felix nodded. “I will find her. I made her a proposition and I must find her and make it binding.” He took a deep breath. “I need her.” Saying it made him feel better, even if the mire of unpleasantness he’d have to pass through was equally on his mind. A vision of her black-eyed gaze, her skin so pale framed by ebony tresses, drifted tantalizingly through his mind.
Yes, he would find her, and he’d make her his, regardless of what it cost him.
An owl perched on the drainpipe of Wilfred’s lodgings. In the dead of night, it seemed a portent of doom, a symbol of unearthliness. Yet it was Wilfred’s malevolence Hope feared more. Nothing good would come out of this forthcoming interview, but she was duty-bound, for her sister’s sake, to follow through.
“Madam.” The butler inclined his head, eyeing her with scorn as he opened the door for her. A young, single, unaccompanied woman calling on a gentleman was beyond the pale in his eyes. In the eyes of anyone respectable, in fact. Especially so late at night.
She was used to it. In two years, she’d developed a thick skin to the mixed responses she’d received from members of the public who regarded her enviously for her beauty and boldness, at the same time as reviling her for daring to brazen it out in public on whatever mission she might be on.
“I’m here to see Mr Hunt.” She barely glanced at the disapproving retainer. He was beneath her, and he’d despise her even more for her autocratic tone that suggested she was on par with a duchess and that he was beneath notice. He’d loathe that, but then she loathed the way the servant class took the moral high ground. They, of all people, must know how hard it was not to starve without a benefactor. But then, had her scope of the world been no broader than that of a governess out of the schoolroom, what would she think of a woman of suspect morals? A woman like her?
“Miss Merriweather, what a delightful surprise.” Wilfred greeted her with a cool smile as the butler bowed himself out of the library to which he’d just led her. “Refreshment?” He waved her to a seat and went to the sideboard, raising the brandy decanter with an enquiring look.
Hope shook her head. “I shan’t stay. I came here only to give you what you requested.”
“You don’t wish to linger over past reminiscences?” He feigned disappointment.
“I’ve spent enough time in your company to last me a lifetime, Wilfred.” She shouldn’t have said it, and not in that cool detached manner that suggested she believed she was better than he. Wilfred was a man, which gave him so much more power, and he was a petty one at that. “You brought me into your orbit against my will, but it was you who thrust me into my current profession. I have no recourse to change the past or to change people’s perceptions of me, but I would ask one concession.” Her fingers tightened over the clasp of her reticule with its contents she was so loath to surrender.
The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece sounded loud in the silence as he took his time responding. His lips thinned. It was clear he did not like her attitude, and Hope wished she’d employed some of the tact Madame Chambon had drilled into all her girls when there’d be many an unsavoury assignation they must pretend to enjoy.
“Concession? Here, drink this.” Ignoring her refusal of brandy, he thrust a cut-glass tumbler into her hand. She glanced at it suspiciously and remained standing.
“I haven’t laced it with poison,” he snarled.
“Or laudanum? That’s what you put into my drink when you took me to London. When you had your way with me. When you defiled me. That’s why I’m what I am today.” She sent him a twisted smile. “Let’s talk about that, shall we, Wilfred? I have no memory of my first time. I only knew I was ruined, and I could never return to my parents. You told me I had to rely on you.” She shrugged. “What choice did I have but to stay with you. That is, until you’d had enough of me.”
His eyes flickered and he glanced away, but that was the only indication of any acknowledgement that he may have behaved in a manner to invite censure. Before a second more had passed he’d closed the distance between them.
&nbs
p; Hope stepped back as he gripped her shoulders and glared.