“But you let them hurt you,” Vivian pointed out because it bothered her, exceedingly.
“A few whacks with a crop is hardly worth quibbling about, and they enjoy it sufficiently to make it worth my while. It’s of no moment.”
The teasing tone was gone from his voice, and Vivian had the sense she was now in bed with the real Darius Lindsey, not the strutting, teasing, flirting facade he’d offered her earlier.
“Do you bring them here?”
“We’re not going to discuss this.” He kissed her cheek this time, in apology for his words—she hoped.
“I don’t want to be like them, Darius.” She felt him closing himself off from her, and surprised herself—him too, based on his expression—by hiking a leg across his thighs then straddling him. Her nightgown made the whole business more complicated, but when she was snuggled down onto his chest, the effort had been worth it.
His arms came around her, and his cheek rested against her hair. “How is it you don’t want to be ‘like them’?”
“You let them take advantage of you,” she said. “If they weren’t whacking at you, they’d just find some other man to abuse. You aren’t a person to them.”
“Another naughty pony,” Darius said. “Perhaps.”
“Not perhaps.” She nuzzled at his sternum, then shifted up and slipped a hand around the back of his head. “I want to beat them with a crop for treating you thus.” She clasped him to her chest and put a name to what she was feeling: protective. Protective of a great, strapping lout with no sense whatsoever.
“Vivvie.” He wrestled her away a little. “Look at me.”
She turned her face from him—she was straddling him, and nightgown or not, there was nowhere to hide.
“Look at me.”
He brushed her hair back with such tenderness she wanted to cry, but then he anchored his hand in her hair to turn her face back to his.
“You have to learn, Vivian Longstreet, not to let your heart get tangled up in the physical sensations. We’re going to be repeatedly, gloriously intimate. I’ve promised you pleasure, and I can assure you I’ll be sharing in it abundantly. But you have to decide right now it’s only pleasure, like an ice on a hot day, a good gallop on a fall morning. It means nothing more than that. It can’t.”
“You decide that,” she accused, “or those beatings would have significance you can’t allow them.”
“Hush.” He brought her back down to his chest. “You’re disconcerted and tenderhearted, and you’ll see the sense in what I’m saying.”
He fell silent, and Vivian lay there in his arms, listening to the steady beat of his heart and wanting to cry—for herself, but also, incongruously, for him.
“For pity’s sake, Able, you have to ask him.” Portia Springer set her teacup down with the sharp bang of fine porcelain used roughly.
“You’re ghoulish, Portia.” Able rose from the kitchen table. “I can’t ask my own father what’s in his will.”
“Whyever not?” She rose too, and paced behind him across the kitchen. “You’ve managed this estate for him for years, Able, and shown one handsome profit after another, and the land is entailed.
“Not the work of a moment.” Able rinsed his cup off then went back to the table for hers. “The work of several moments, felonious, expensive moments, and I am not in the habit of forging marriage lines. The person providing that service would be in a position to blackmail me and all my children, Portia—your children.”
Which they were unlikely to have, the silence around them declared, as long as she was so parsimonious with her marital favors.
“I’m twenty-eight,” she spat. “There’s plenty of time for that.”
“I’ll not see thirty-eight again,” he countered, using a thumbnail to scrub at the sugar stuck to the bottom of her cup. “I’d like to be on hand to raise my children, Portia. I’ve no doubt William has left his current viscountess in peace, in part because he understands the need for a father to raise his own children.”
“You’d raise his children,” Portia muttered, though Able knew by her tone she was regrouping.
“He hasn’t any other children left. This is a moot discussion, and I cannot relish the task of raising half siblings four decades my junior. Leave it, Portia, please.”
“If the land goes back to the Crown,” she started up again, fists propped on ample hips, “you have nothing. Twenty years of slaving for that man, and nothing to show for it.”
“If the land goes back to the Crown, somebody still has to manage it, and we’ve money set aside, Portia. I’m a good steward, and there’s work to be had for such as me, and for thirty-eight years, my father has provided either directly or by means of furnishing me a livelihood.”
“Like hell.” She shifted to block his exit, and Able knew for the thousandth time some sympathy for men who beat their wives. “Stewards are invariably poor relations, and that old man is the only person you’re related to, and he’s looking worse each year, Able Springer. Each season.”
Able couldn’t argue that, not when his father was indeed showing his considerable age. “He has been generous with us, Portia, and you’ll not be pestering him now regarding his will. His lordship has had enough of death and grief these past few years.”
“Not so much he couldn’t remarry well before his mourning was up,” Portia snapped. “You must get all that strutting and pawing in the bedroom from him.”
He was torn between the urge to lay hands on her and the urge to emigrate to the Antipodes—alone. “Portia, dearest wife, if I could recall the last time you permitted me the pleasure of strutting and pawing in the bedroom, I might comprehend your remark, but for a woman who’s intent on inheriting a title and wealth, you’re doing precious little to secure the succession.”
He departed on that volley, not sure he’d know what to do if she did allow him intimacies. Eight years ago, she’d seemed like such a catch—practical, knowledgeable about the running of an estate, and comely enough for a man of his station. He’d hoped they could be friends.
His father hadn’t commented on his choice of wife, and a few years later, Lady Muriel had succumbed to the illness plaguing her. He’d liked Lady Muriel, and thought Portia might share a few of her more interesting qualities. More fool him.
He found his father in the breakfast parlor, noting again the older man’s gauntness, and felt a sweeping sense of loneliness. They didn’t know each other well, but, by God, they were the last of their line.
“Good morning, your lordship.” Able took a seat at the table. “I trust you slept well?”
“I slept.” Lord Longstreet’s smile was fleeting. “As one ages, that becomes a practice of dozing between trips to the chamber pot.”
“You miss your wife,” Able said. “Perhaps you’d sleep better in her company.”
“Vivian?” Lord Longstreet’s eyebrows rose. “One can hardly imagine such a thing. When are you and Portia to present me with some grandchildren, Able? It’s been what, six, seven years?”
“About that.” Able topped up Lord Longstreet’s teacup. “The Lord hasn’t seen fit to bless us.”
Lord Longstreet stirred his tea. “Is it the Lord being stingy, or your lady wife?”
The morning was to be a series of interrogations. “Is there a reason for such blunt inquiry?”
“An old man’s nosiness. A father’s nosiness. The male line in our family is not known for its fecundity. You might have to work at it, do you want children, if you’re like I was.”
“You had three sons. Many families make do with less than that.”
Lord Longstreet took a sip of his well-stirred tea. “Is she hounding you?”
“My lord?”
“Portia, is she hounding you regarding the estate?”
Able studied his tea—into which he had not put even a dash of sugar.
“You never call me father, Able.”
“You’ve never invited such familiarity,” Able said, wondering if everybody in the household had gone daft. “And you do not call me son.”
Lord Longstreet considered him from across the table. “You are certainly acknowledged. You always have been.”
