“This is an unexpected pleasure.” Blanche eyed Darius up and down, the way she’d look at a decadent dessert or expensive pair of new shoes. Darius’s flesh crawled at her inspection, but no more than it had a week previous, when he’d barely been able to leave Gunter’s without ripping her to shreds in public.
And then pelting after Vivian for all the world to see.
“Unexpected, perhaps, a pleasure, most definitely not.” He handed his hat and gloves to one of the handsome footmen Blanche insisted on employing and met his hostess’s gaze. “You will want to hear me out in private.”
“I want you in private,” she agreed, “but as for listening to you carp and bark, I think not. You have more worthy attributes than your speaking voice.”
Darius let her shut the parlor door behind them, but when she moved to embrace him, he stepped back.
“Playing hard to get has limited charm between well-acquainted lovers.” Her tone was reproving, and again Darius felt a spike of nausea.
“We are not,” Darius said softly, “nor will we ever be, nor have we ever been, lovers. I accommodated you for a price. Your usefulness is at an end, and I am doing you the courtesy of informing you of this in private. I will do likewise with Lucy Templeton.”
“This straining at the leash is ill-mannered, Darius,” Blanche said, smiling as if anticipating a rousing argument. “You will continue to accommodate me and Lucy, and whomever else we choose to direct you to. Have you no sense of what Wilton would do to you were he to learn of your nocturnal schemes? Cease your nonsense, or there will be consequences.”
Darius crossed the room, his back to her for a long moment while he marshaled his temper and tried to calm the turmoil in his gut. This was what hatred felt like, corrosive, heavy, and lethal.
When he turned to face her, he saw the first flicker of real fear on her face, but it gave him no satisfaction.
“For all intents and purposes, Blanche, I have whored for you, but it is a whore’s prerogative to accept or decline the customer or the encounter. Even those rules you’ve disrespected in your dealings with me. I went to my own kind, to the streetwalkers and courtesans and prostitutes, and found what I needed to enforce the rules.”
And not once in the past three days of scouring the city’s most depraved haunts had Darius been judged, ridiculed, or scorned. The soiled doves and molly boys hadn’t hesitated to share their resources. They hadn’t even taken his coin in exchange for what he so desperately needed.
“You have a fourteen-year-old daughter,” Darius said, “growing up in Ireland in the home of your cousin’s steward. Most of your jewels are paste, though I made sure the ones you tossed to me were real enough. You’re dying your hair—the hair on your head—and I know this because you’ve made the mistake of keeping the candles lit when I pleasured you.”
Her jaw dropped, and Darius felt the surging satisfaction of a well-executed ambush. “Shall I go on?”
“You would not dare.”
“I would dare. I dared to take coin for that which no gentleman should, and I would dare to cheerfully ruin you
He held her gaze a moment longer, making sure she read the resolve in his eyes.
“Lucy was the one who suggested we take your sister,” Blanche said, her expression becoming desperate. “I had nothing to do with that. She said the girl was already ruined, and you were getting too difficult.”
Darius went still, while he heard a roaring in his ears and his vision dimmed. His hands fisted, his jaw clenched, and he held himself back from throttling the miserable female before him only because he’d kill her if he laid a finger on her.
And he’d enjoy it.
“She came to no harm,” Lady Cowell babbled on. “Really, there was no harm done. Reston saw to that. We were just going have her drink a bit of absinthe, set her down in a gambling hell. There’s no real harm in that.”
“You say there was no harm,” Darius growled, stalking across the room, “when my sister will never feel safe in the park again.” He loomed over her, his voice lethally soft. “You say leaving an innocent woman to the mercy of the pimps, drunks, and bounders would have been
“Please.” Blanche dropped her gaze. “Please. You don’t know what it’s like.”
Darius forced himself to breathe evenly. She had bullied him unmercifully, for her entertainment, for her pleasure. He would not bully her. “Do we understand each other, Lady Cowell?” His voice was even and yet laden with menace. “Answer me.”
“We understand each other, and I will make sure Lucy understands as well.” She met his gaze long enough to nod once.
“That will not be necessary.” Darius sketched an ironic bow. “The pleasure of enlightening your sorry friend and familiar will be entirely mine.” He cleared the room so quickly he didn’t see the look of stunned horror on Lady Cowell’s face, or the way she dropped into a chair and sat staring into space long after he’d gone.
His interview with Lucy Templeton was even more to the point, though he also allowed her the courtesy of closeting herself with him before he threatened the future she’d assumed was secure.
“You accepted payments from French sympathizers to keep certain contraband from coming to the attention of excise men quartered near your husband’s seat. The punishment for treason is hanging.”
“I would never do such a thing! You lie, Darius, and poorly.”
“Now, Lucy,” Darius nearly purred as he came to stand too close to her, “I have no reason to lie. I’ve been a naughty man, true, but I’ve never paid for the pleasure of whipping children nigh to death. What would your husband think, did he learn of such an excess of temper?”
“My husband is devoted,” Lucy said, her eyes venomous.
“Devoted, indeed, to the mistress who bore him two sons, for whom he provides well. He apparently had no trouble functioning with his mistress, unlike his situation with you. All he’d need is an excuse to have you sent to one of those pleasant, walled estates for women with nervous constitutions.”
Color drained from her face, and Darius observed with curious dispassion that the woman might have once been pretty, had not vice and bitterness twisted her expression.
But he hadn’t yet finished with her.
“And if you truly dispute the charges of treason”—he nailed her with a frigid look—“then charges of attempted kidnapping of my sister might still see you in jail, my lady. Your footmen can be bribed as easily as any, and Reston—Earl of Bellefonte, now—would do anything to see those who threatened his countess brought to justice.”
She sank onto the sofa, his words landing with more gratification than well-aimed blows.
“I’ll leave you to contemplate your sins, but be warned that Bellefonte’s brothers are yet at university, and they will be admonishing their entire forms to avoid the likes of you, and making sure their younger brothers are warned as well. Do we understand each other?”
“We do.” Her answering croak was in the voice of a woman who knew when she was… beaten.
“I suggest you and Lady Cowell take a repairing lease somewhere as distant as, say, the Italian coast. Latin men are notably solicitous toward older women. Good day.”
Casting off the pall of association with Blanche and Lucy should have left Darius euphoric. Mightily relieved, in any case. Instead, it was overshadowed by four things that deflated positive feelings considerably.
First, Darius had bid good-bye to the only family member to share his household, the only bright spot in much of his recent years.
Saying good-bye to John when the boy left for Belle Maison had hurt, but not Leah, not Trent, not even John himself seemed to comprehend Darius’s loss. Nicholas, oddly enough, had pulled Darius aside for a fierce hug and promised him the child would come to no harm and visit Darius often. That assurance had been so desperately
