Darius: Lord of Pleasures

not mean you are to be inside doing likewise.”

“Go.” Darius said, parting with his son—that he should give the boy into Valentine’s keeping made it marginally less difficult. He spotted Vivian sitting at the back of the church. A nattily dressed middle-aged man was bent low, whispering in her ear, and Vivian’s expression was carefully blank.

A parliamentary crony of William’s, haranguing her over her husband’s absence, perhaps? But no, Vivian would handle that easily. This had to be her stepfather. Darius quickened his pace.

“Lady Longstreet?” He inserted himself beside her pew, causing the man bothering her to take a step back. “If you’re ready to go, the carriage and your son are waiting.”

“I don’t believe we’ve been introduced,” the other man said. “I consider my daughter’s welfare my concern, so all in her ambit are of interest to me.”

Vivian rose and handled the introductions, but Darius barely heard her words. She was pale, more pale than she’d been earlier in the morning, and a mask was over her features that spoke more to upset than fatigue.

“If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Ainsworthy.” Darius tucked Vivian’s hand over his arm. “Her ladyship is anxious to get the baron home.”

“Vivian.” Ainsworthy lifted her other hand and bowed over it, so each man had a grasp of one of her hands. “You will take my words to heart this time.”

The fool made it sound like a scold, which was reason enough for Darius to loathe him.

“Thurgood. My thanks for your felicitations.”

Darius led her away, though he could feel Ainsworthy’s stare boring into his back. “What an unfortunate example of a stepfather,” Darius remarked. “Is he always given to such melodrama?”

She ignored him, or hadn’t heard him. Unease crept across the warmth in Darius’s heart, an emotional cloud on an otherwise sunny morning. A superstitious man would have said somebody walked over his grave.

They collected the baby from Val, who elected to ride up with the coachy, and Darius situated mother and baby in his conveyance. He presumed on the day’s benevolence by taking a place beside Vivian on the forward- facing seat.

“I can take the baby, Vivvie, and you can close your eyes for a bit.”

Paternal of him, but William’s admonition to look after mother and child rang in Darius’s ears. He’d take care of them, he’d love them, and when the coach got to Longstreet House, he’d somehow find a way to say good-bye to them too.

“Darius—” Vivian turned her face into his shoulder.

He didn’t think. He wrapped an arm around her, the only comfort he had to offer. “Don’t cry, Vivvie. The day has been trying, I know, but we’ll get you off your feet…”

She was shaking her head from side to side, and to Darius she didn’t look like she was holding the baby so much as clutching the infant to her chest. Alarm threatened his composure, but he kept his voice steady. “Vivvie, talk to me. Tell me what’s amiss.”

“Thurgood. Thurgood recognized your coach. He knows I visited you last year, and he says you’re Will’s father. He says he knows you’re Will’s father, and, Darius, he’ll use that knowledge to take this baby from me.”

* * *

Childbirth was painful, but that pain was productive, bringing forth a precious new life. The suffering that engulfed Vivian in that comfortable traveling coach had no purpose and no end.

She cried while Darius held her, and then cried because he was holding her, the child tucked between them. Her tears were for William, for Darius, and for herself—most of them were for herself.

Darius passed her a handkerchief, one with his soothing, exotic scent. She let him take the child—perhaps the last time he’d hold his own son—and tried to sit up.

“I can hold you both, Vivvie.”

Vivvie. Nobody called her that, in just that caressing tone, except Darius.

“I’m sorry. I’m not typically lachrymose.” She would be apologizing for a lot before she got out of the coach.

“You are exhausted, William is dying, and your reptile of a former stepfather has overset you. Talk to me.”

How fierce he sounded. That fierceness had drawn her to him; it would let him hate her eventually. “I understand something now.”

He waited. He was ever patient with her.

“I understand how hard it was for you to turn away from me, to show me indifference and disdain because it was the only way you could protect me.” She glanced at the baby sleeping in the crook of Darius’s arm. “To protect the child.”

“Our child.” He spoke softly but not casually.

Vivian closed her eyes and inhaled Darius’s scent. The moment called for ruthlessness, not sentiment, and certainly not honest sentiments like Darius had just uttered.

“Thurgood has acquired literary aspirations. He is penning a tale about an aging lord’s young wife being taken advantage of by her husband and a dashing rake. He will share this tale with any number of publishers and scandal sheets. He is considering drafting a second version, about a young wife rescued by a noble old peer from a dire fate, only to play her husband false. When the truth of her selfish folly is revealed, all of Society condemns her, as well they should.”

She expected Darius to withdraw his arm. If anything, his hold became more secure. This suggested he had yet to grasp her point.

“Darius, William told me last night that his will is written such that whomever I marry in the first three months following William’s death will become Wilhelm’s guardian. If I fail to marry in that time, Able becomes the guardian by default. William is confident Able will not take the child from me, but I think—” She stopped. This was Darius. “I fear William underestimates the mischief Portia could wreak. She became quite close with Thurgood during her stay in London.”

A beat of quiet went by while the horses clip-clopped along. Vivian noticed they’d slowed to a sedate walk, indicating Darius had signaled the coachy at some point in her fit of the weeps.

“So you will permit Ainsworthy to choose your next husband, Vivian, is that it?”

Now his tone conveyed the detached consideration of a man who’d endured many beatings—all without flinching—while Vivian’s throat ached with more tears. The consequences Ainsworthy would bring down on them all if she married Darius were unthinkable, and yet Darius was the only man she could envision sharing her life with.

“Thurgood says it will be a decent match, and unless my husband sets me aside, I’m likely to share a household with my son. If it means I see the child for fifteen minutes before tea each day, Darius, if it means I get letters from him when he’s at school… I will not abandon my son. I cannot.”

“Our son.” He imbued the words with a touch more steel. “It seems you have become a lioness, Vivian.”

“I have become a mother.” Darius had given her that, and now she must refuse him even the crumbs of the paternal banquet due a child’s father.

More silence. The coach made yet another turn, confirming Vivian’s suspicion they were walking in a circle.

“I have been a whore, Vivian”—the chill in Darius’s voice was arctic—“and I have learned things plying my trade, so please heed me: your husband will be Thurgood’s creature entirely. Thurgood will hold the man’s vowels, his secrets, something, and through this husband of yours, all of your wealth and all of your happiness will rest in Thurgood’s hands.”

Darius paused and surveyed her with what looked like pity. “Your husband will resent that, and he will be the man to sire your other children. Count on that. He will couple with you because it is his right, and the only way he can compete with Thurgood’s influence under his own roof. This is how sexual commerce works in the hands of those who trade in such things.”

“You must not—”

He went on speaking with a precision and gravity that might have been gentle, except for the meaning of his words. “These men will control your fate, which may be your choice to make, but they will also control the welfare