She wondered what he was thinking.
She didn’t have long to wonder. A few moments later, he turned to face her, and it was clear that he had regained control.
“Livy, listen to me.” His voice was stern. “What happened tonight was a mistake. I understand what it is like to be young and impetuous, and while you may think you know what you want, you do not. You are a young lady, with your future ahead of you. One day, you will find a gentleman who is deserving of you and who will give you what you want—but that gentleman is not me.”
Her throat constricted. “Why can’t it be you?”
“I am too old for you, to start with. I have done and seen too much to believe in the kind of love you seek.” He exhaled. “Keep your dreams for the man who will cherish them, who will cherish you.”
Her pain was a physical thing, a rough tearing in her chest.
“But I don’t want anyone but you,” she whispered. “You are the only man I could ever love. If I can’t have you, then I won’t marry at all.”
He closed his eyes briefly. When his eyelids lifted, Livy found herself staring into sapphires bleeding with darkness.
“That shows how innocent you are,” he said quietly. “You think you know me, but you do not. If you did, you would not want to waste yourself on a man like me.”
“I do know you, and I’m not innocent.” Prodded by desperation, she blurted, “I saw you with Lady Foxton.”
He froze, his stillness that of a cornered beast of prey.
In for a penny.
“It was last year at Aunt Bea and Uncle Wick’s house party,” she confessed. “I was looking for you to see if you wanted to play a game. I ended up at the stables.”
A muscle stood out in his jaw, but he said nothing.
“I heard strange noises coming from one of the stalls,” she continued in a rush. “I went over to investigate, and there was a hole in the stall door, so I looked through it and saw you. With Lady Foxton. You had her bent over a bale of hay, her dress lifted up, and you were…spanking her.”
A harsh breath broke from him, and his gaze was grimmer than she’d ever seen it.
“I wasn’t hurting her,” he said roughly. “Not in the way you think.”
“Oh, I know you weren’t,” she reassured him. “Why else would she have been, um, begging you for more?”
His expression was pained. “Goddammit, Livy—”
“Eventually, she pleaded for you to…to do something else to her.”
Livy swallowed. As bold as she was, she couldn’t force herself to say the words that had cemented themselves in her deepest, darkest fantasies. Fuck me, Hadleigh. Put that huge cock of yours inside me. Master me like the splendid beast you are.
“I knew then what I wanted from you,” Livy said, her voice trembling. “I wanted you to touch me, kiss me. To be with me the way you were with her.”
“You do not want that,” he snapped. “Lady Foxton meant nothing to me, nor I to her.”
“And I do mean something to you?” Livy said hopefully.
“Ah, Livy.” He drew a ragged breath. “You know you do.”
Rejoicing, she said, “Oh, Hadleigh, I knew—”
“You are the sweet little sister I never had. That is how I think of you.”
Each soft word struck her heart like a hammer.
“And that will not change.”
She stared at him. His face was carved from granite, his body rigid. Her hopes dashed against his implacability like a bird against a glass pane.
His little sister. That is how he sees me…how he’ll always see me.
“But I love you,” she said brokenly. “I will always love you.”
“You think that because you are young and innocent. When you see more of the world, you will find a better man. One who will give you everything you deserve…or he will have to answer to me, hmm?”
Hadleigh’s gentleness somehow hurt more than his firmness, a feather-tipped arrow that struck into her tenderest core. She had always known that she had his protection and care. If she could only have his love and desire as well, then she would have had…everything.
But you don’t. Despair seeped through her. You never will.
“Come, dry your eyes, silly chit,” he murmured. “Then I had best escort you back inside.”
She realized that he had pressed his handkerchief into her hand and wetness was trickling down her cheeks. His concern was more than she could bear.
“I can see myself back in,” she said stiffly. “Good-bye, Hadleigh.”
“Livy…”
She dashed toward the house without looking back.
4
You hurt Livy, you bastard. She is like your sister, for Christ’s sake. The only good, pure thing in your life, and you’ve ruined everything—again.
The sound of the gong cut through the maelstrom of Ben Wodehouse’s thoughts.
He opened his eyes, returning to the Spartan room. Dimly lit by candles, the walls were bare and the floor covered in mats of woven bamboo, from which his fellow attendees of the nightly contemplation session were rising. The crowd was a mix of Chinese, Lascar, and Spanish sailors, as well as a few Englishmen who had found their way to Master Chen’s clinic in Whitechapel.
Chen was a Chinese healer who specialized in the treatment of opium habits. The drug’s tentacles reached all strata of society and could pull you into the depths of oblivion, no matter where you came from or the color of your skin. Even a title and wealth were no protection; Ben had found this out the hard way.
Two years ago, after a visit to an opium den in Whitechapel, he had been ripe pickings for a gang of cutthroats. They hadn’t been satisfied with taking his money; they’d wanted to punish him, a well-dressed nob, for daring to tread through the streets they considered their own. Lying half-conscious in that filthy alleyway, agony radiating from broken bones and torn flesh, Ben had been
