Chapter 5

T he further the carriage went, the finer the buildings became. Gardens appeared behind iron fences, and the buildings grew high, white marble in black sky.

Isabel clutched the unbound pages to her chest, needing them for reassurance even as she tried not to crush them.

She must call to the driver and stop him. This was exactly what she must not do. Lord Hartwick would not take kindly to her visit; it would fix his impression of her as a beggar, or worse.

And what if she saw Lady Hartwick?

As the wheels rolled on and the buildings grew grander, she settled on plans that quelled her panic.

She must see Lady Hartwick, she decided. Asking for him would be too presumptuous. And before she tossed her morals away, she ought to judge for herself whether this marriage was completely unworthy of him.

Because away from his presence, she remembered more of his dark-sunk eyes, the harshness of his approach, the way he’d struck the man who accosted her. Knowing the man for a few hours was not the same as knowing a man all her life. She’d hoped for marriage with two men before and been disappointed; she had better watch her steps, for when she did not even hope for marriage, how might such a man as Lord Hartwick disappoint her?

The wheels kept turning and so did her thoughts. He would think the worst of Isabel, appearing on his doorstep; he would not believe her story of the driver. He would think Isabel asked the driver to bring her to his house. Heavens, he might accuse them of conspiring.

The poor driver might end up in gaol.

So might she!

Steadying herself against the carriage with one hand and clutching her pages with the other, Isabel felt a sharp welling of panic.

She stopped it by sucking in a deep breath of cold, damp air. Her heart was beating hard in her chest; in fact it was pounding. Nothing had ever made her heart beat this fast before. If she wanted to live a life outside the lines her parents had drawn for her she had better bear up.

Round a lush square of tidy shrubs and cropped green—Isabel could not see the sheep that kept it so, but there must be some—and past a row of tightly built grand houses, the carriage rolled on and on till Isabel feared she was being kidnapped. She might wake up in Scotland. She might wake up on a ship to the Continent.

Or not wake up at all.

Finally the carriage rolled to a stop.

Blinking against the dark and the unknown, Isabel opened the door herself.

“I’ll help ye, lass, mind the grass,” the driver called down, but she was already out. The long hop down to the path jarred her knees and lifted her skirts; hurriedly she shook them down to the dirt path. There were no paving stones here.

She was doing everything wrong already.

That feeling doubled when she hurried forward and put her foot straight into an icy puddle, plash, where the hard-packed path ended and the grass began.

Perfect. A poor woman with a wet, dirty stocking.

Isabel stopped for a moment. She should get right back in the carriage, never mind how to pay for it. She should walk back to the center of London, even if the water now in her shoe froze her toes solid. She should do anything but knock at the door of a house like this.

It wasn’t a new marble temple. It was old, its age conveyed by its weathered brick and the ivy draped over its corners. It had gray stone steps that marched in an arc up to its front door and down the other side again and a bewildering array of windows.

And chimneys! Isabel never imagined one house could have so many chimneys.

Well, she couldn’t stand here forever and she couldn’t walk home. The driver had brought her on promise of payment, and his payment she must attempt to get. Anything else would not be right, no matter how humiliated she felt.

Printed pages flattened to her bosom, she turned to wave upwards. “I’ll just be a moment. I must ask the house to fetch your fare. You’ve driven such a long way.”

He only laughed, his round belly jumping in his coat and his red cheeks glistening from the night-time fog. White curls of hair peeked around the edges of his bowler hat. “It’s Christmas Eve, ma’am! Such a sweet little wife oughta be with ‘er ‘usband on Christmas Eve. Let go whatever might’ve come between you.” He looked up at the brick house-front. “Tell yer man to keep watch on his treasures henceforth.”

And with that, he hy-ucked the reins, and drove the horses, and the carriage, away.

She’d thought she knew what panic was. She’d been mistaken. It flooded her now, making her shake from her feet to her hair, as reality bore in upon her and she realized what a fool she had been to climb into that carriage.

Lord Hartwick was likely home, but so would his wife be, and what would she tell either of them?

Who would believe that a hackney driver would bring her all this way without being paid?

They would take her for an adventuress. Someone bent on besmirching his lordship’s name.

Her feet felt like lead as she dragged them up one gray stair, then another. The looming brick wall might topple on her head. She would be glad if it did.

Still searching for a way to explain herself besides her burst of selfish, imagined passion, she pulled the bell rope.

She tried to slow her breath. It didn’t. Her chest heaved as though she had run all the way here.

What would he say? What should she do?

She was no longer concerned with her parents tossing her out of her establishment in Leicester Square. She was concerned with keeping out of prison.

After a million hours of waiting, the door cracked open.

The little maid there, in starched white apron and snowy linen cap, peered suspiciously at her.

Isabel recoiled. It crinkled the paper against her breast and she had one last cogent thought.

“I’ve come to deliver a book,” she gasped out.

The little maid squinted at her skirts. Isabel refused to look and see if she’d splashed them with mud, too. She splayed her hands across the tied paper pamphlets.

“You shouldn’t be in front.” The young woman had a slight lisp. “You should be round back. You ought to know that.”

“Yes, of course.” Desperately Isabel hoped the girl couldn’t see how her chest heaved with every fast breath. She’d never minded her stays before; they helped support where she was heavy. Now they were strangling her. “Should I walk round?” She waved vaguely to one side with the hand that wasn’t clutching pages to her chest.

The girl blinked. “Just come through,” she whispered as if committing a crime herself.

Terrified that she was about to meet Lady Hartwick in the hall and be surprised in the act of attempting to seduce her husband, Isabel stepped over the threshold.

Victor’s mood had gone from heavy to foul.

Why on earth had he left the poor girl there in a bookshop alone? Hadn’t he already witnessed one man accosting her? How would she travel home after dark? Doubtless walk, given her clothes.

She couldn’t have been as luscious as he remembered. In his mind, she took on all the qualities of cake that existed only in dreams. Her smile could not have been as sweet as he remembered, nor her eyes so large. The golden curls that escaped her bonnet could not fall as delicately as he remembered them; nor would it have rewarded him as much as he imagined, had he removed that bonnet and seen their entire glory.

It was only the roundness of her figure that had caught his notice. Hungry as he always was, to him she had seemed the epitome of comfortable ease.

He could easily imagine sinking into the softness of her and never wanting to rise.

Lust. Another burdensome inheritance from his father. He never indulged it; apparently it would continue to grow and dog him until it drove him insane.

So be it. One more bitter gift from his father’s grave.

Such thoughts raked him over and over like poisoned thorns till it was a relief when the butler interrupted.

“I beg your pardon, Lord Hartwick. There is a caller.”

“What?” No one in London knew he was here; and none would bother to call, certainly not at this hour, certainly not on Christmas Eve. “Of course not.”

The butler bore being contradicted very well. “As you say, sir.”

The quickness with which he turned to go pricked Victor’s unease. “What caller?”

“A Miss Snow, she says, sir.”

Some lightskirt of his father’s. Perhaps a mistress come to find out why his father had stopped sending for her. No lady would drive all the way out here this time of night.

His stomach turned. Eating was a trial at the best of times, and now the housekeeper was surly as he’d delayed dinner.

He considered asking the butler for another bottle of liquor. “I don’t know any Miss Snow.”

“Very good, sir.” The butler turned and left him in peace.

Victor closed his eyes and sank back in the heavy leather chair. It stank of whiskey and smoke.

He would wind up just like his father. He detested his father’s cigars, yet occasionally smoked cigarillos; the stimulating smoke helped him stay at his work while others refreshed themselves with food he could not eat.

But whiskey went down just fine.

The burn of it felt clean, and it nourished him enough to keep the spark of life alive.

He thought again of the woman in the bookshop. Those lips had been so alluring when flushed with the heat of her blood. He couldn’t help but wonder if his touch could ever arouse a woman that much. His father had so drummed into him that he was a failure of a man in every way that he had never imagined before that he could really do it, that he could satisfy a woman, not with his father’s title and money, but with himself. With his body.

Perhaps he ought to cultivate his conversation. The woman in the bookshop who wouldn’t give her name had not been bold, but neither had she been terrifically shy. His conversation had been enough to keep her?—

He shot to his feet.

The woman in the bookshop had not been bold, but neither had she been shy, and he did not know her name.

“Mr. Cargill!” He ran out down the long corridor as fast as he could. “Mr. Cargill, wait!”

“If I may just see Lady Hartwick for a moment.”

The lisping maid looked more confused than suspicious now. “What, like, her portrait?”

Having reached the kitchen alive, Isabel’s breathing had slowed. Warmth and delicious smells swirled around her but every limb remained tense with the possibility of confronting the less-than-satisfactory Lady Hartwick. “No. I wish to see her.”

With wide eyes the girl pointed to the wall. “Churchyard is yonder. Don’t bring back any ghosties.”

A woman of wide hips and stained apron abandoned one of her pots and bustled towards the two of them. “Alice, don’t be foolish. The woman clearly doesn’t know.” Her soft face turned to Isabel. “She’s gone many a year, miss.”

“What?” Isabel’s glance flicked to the brick wall, then back again. “You mean she’s in the... the graveyard?” she whispered.

Just then the butler, a man of narrow shoulders and even narrower eyes, marched back into the kitchen. “His lordship is not at home,” he announced briefly before giving the maid a quelling look. “Alice, remember yourself. We know what to do with the women callers.”

This straightened the girl’s spine. “Oh yes,” she said, surveying Isabel’s gown and forgetting her fear of ghosts.

The picture kept changing. Poor Lord Hartwick had lost his wife. No wonder he was so grim and so thin.

Though why he was thin when the kitchen smelled this good still confused her.

And clearly he had many lady callers. Isabel flushed. Probably like her, inappropriately arriving late at night.

Her insides steadied and she ignored the squelch in her shoe. It helped that they expected her. She was a lightskirt come to visit in the dark of night, and no other woman was standing in her way.

Unless he was still caught up in the memory of her.

Though how could he be, if lightskirts were common in the house?

“How many women callers?” she said before she could stop herself.

“Miss Snow.” The butler performed a particularly crisp intonation of her name.

Behind him the maid put her hands together and mimed an explosion with her hands. Whoosh .

Did she mean there were that many women callers? Or that the butler was about to lose his temper?

The butler did not see. “We can offer you a plate of supper and then the driver will take you home. Mrs. Reed, can you see to it?”

The cook smiled her pink smile and nodded. “Just you sit here, m’dear, we’ll feed you up straight as a ruler.”

Isabel did not know what that meant, but she could clearly understand that she was to be fed and sent on her way.

She would never take another chance like this.

She was not ready to let it go.

“But I have a book.” The pages rustled again as she clutched them close. Conscious of how she had crushed them for the last half hour, she loosened her grip and tried to slide them back into a semblance of stacked pages. “He wanted?—”

“Wanted to be his father after all, apparently,” the butler said dryly, and just waved her towards the little table in the corner where the maids clearly had their meals. “He isn’t in the mood tonight.”

“ Walks in Wales —” She was here. He was here. Somewhere in this house, sad and alone. She could not simply leave him here.

“If you don’t wish to eat, I’ll have the carriage brought round. Alice, ask Mr. Bottle?—”

“I sent Mr. Bottle home.” It was him .

He stood in the doorway. His black coat, his deep-set eyes, all just as stark as she remembered. Unforgiving-looking. Hard.

Yet those tousled curls atop his head and those pillowy lips reminded her of his keen interest, the generosity of his observations, his rare smile.

He looked like he too was breathing a bit heavily. “I was mistaken, Mr. Cargill. I do know Miss Snow. Madame. To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

She felt the smile spreading over her face. She could not stop it. Seeing him lifted her heart. She had spent many an hour sitting in a parlor with her two previous suitors and never been half so glad to see them again.

He was no suitor. He was her ruination. She was so grateful for a real chance at ruination.

“I brought your book.” The words sounded foolish.

But his smile was as sweetly surprised as a little boy’s. “Did you, indeed? Impatiently, I see. Mr. Cargill, we’ll have supper. In twenty minutes, so Mrs. Hopp may sulk a little first. Miss Snow. May I show you something of the house? I am sad your first visit begins in the kitchen. I assure you the rest of the house is more comfortable.”

He offered her his hand.

His smile was like the sun breaking through clouds.

No wonder he was an accomplished rake. It was a heady combination, his darkness and lightness constantly coming and going like quick weather.

She put her gloved hand in his. “Thank you.”

The warmth of his touch was not like she had remembered.

It was better.

Isabel found the thought bracing. It would not be pleasure, it would be torture, to feel like this and then miss him for days, perhaps weeks, between visits. Such was the lot of a mistress, she supposed.

But if she forgot a little what it was like to be near him, it would be more bearable when he was away.

He didn’t seem to notice the rustling pages clutched to her bosom until she drew nearer; then he looked down. Isabel stopped breathing.

“Alice,” he looked away into the distant corner of the room, neither at her nor the maid, “do take these book pages so Miss Snow may not be burdened with them.”

“Oh, no! I mean—I thought we might read them together.”

She doubted the word hit him the way it hit her. She had never said such a forward thing in her life.

He smiled down at her, now looking right into her eyes with a kind of heat she had never seen before but still recognized. “Did you?”