Master of Love (8 page)

Marie was slightly more petite, requiring a tighter lacing of Callista's corset this morning to fit the gown. The effect produced a more bountiful silhouette than that to which Callista was accustomed. The unfamiliar sensation of the constriction at her nipped waist and the sight of her more prominent bosom, all wrapped in the sleek silk, conspired most oddly to make her aware not only of Lord Rexton—epitome of male perfection that
he
was—but of her own much more pedestrian person as well. Her body was something to which she rarely gave much thought. This new awareness was a disconcerting distraction. She smoothed down her skirts with hands gone tingly and felt a sudden surge of regret that she hadn't allowed Marie to dress her hair—the one argument Callista had won.

God help her, was she wanting to primp for the man?

She stroked the book's soft kid covering to hide a tremble in her hand. “I get the impression, Lord Rexton, this collection means more to you than you let people know.”

He made no reply, only abruptly stood and with a small stiff bow exited the room, leaving his coffee to go cold in his cup and her to stare after his retreating back.

Two weeks of blissful books, a puzzling and far-too-handsome viscount, and the tiniest hope for the first time in many months that maybe, just maybe, her father was correct:
'Twill all come right, some day or night.

And then disaster struck.

Chapter 5

M
r. Garforth was a heavyset man with a bulldog neck that disappeared into the folds of a messy cravat. His meaty hands, when he shook hers at the door of his office, left damp marks on her cotton gloves.

She'd had a bad feeling about this meeting and so had left the worry-prone Billy at Bloomsbury Square to run errands for Marie. In a risky move, her friend was committing the last of her meager inheritance to properly outfit her new dress shop with stock. Marie had offered Callista the money instead, for the next two quarters' household expenses, but Callista had refused. They both knew the only way to give Couture by Beauvallon a fair chance at success was to invest the funds to set it up properly, so Billy was off helping Marie purchase bolts of fine fabric from the wholesale warehouses. If this last-ditch move didn't attract more customers and commissions, they'd be left with empty bank accounts and a houseful of silk and satin, yet the gamble seemed a necessary one.

It was Wednesday afternoon—her half day off. Callista had told her household she'd be doing research at the library of the British Museum after work at Rexton House, but instead she was keeping her appointment with the Duke of Bedford's land agent. She'd wasted precious funds on a hackney cab to double back to Garforth's office after Meacham dropped her off at the museum. Such convoluted deception went deeply against her nature and only added to the anxious dread that gnawed at her stomach.

“Take a seat, Miss Higginbotham.” Garforth waved her to a chair in front of the desk as the clerk who'd shown her in pulled shut the door leading to the outer office.

“Thank you, Mr. Garforth. I trust you are well? I must confess your letter caught me by some surprise. You seemed to suggest the possibility of a change in arrangements and increase of our household land rent.” She nervously smoothed out from her reticule the amended lease he'd included two weeks ago in his letter to her.

“There was no mere suggestion or possibility,” he replied. “Your full year's land rent, doubled from last year, is due two days hence, on Lady Day.”

“I beg your pardon?” She frowned and shook her head at this impossibility. “There must be some mistake. No grounds exist for doubling the land rent, and my family has always paid in quarterly installments. We've had this arrangement with the present Duke of Bedford and his father for almost thirty years. Since my own father passed away, I've met every quarter payment on time and in full.”

“There's no mistake.” Garforth leaned back in his chair, waistcoat buttons straining against a too-tight fit as a gloating smile played about his thick lips. “You yourself have provided the grounds to change the arrangement—you and that French chit. You've set up a shop and turned a family residence into a place of business. That alters the nature of the lease. His Grace is perfectly within his rights to both increase and change the payment arrangements on the land rent. Consult your solicitor if you don't believe me. You owe me a doubled year's rent on March twenty-fifth, missy, and there's no getting around it.”

“But I haven't that much in funds available to make the payment!”

“Oh, really?” He stretched forward across his desktop and leered. “Whatever will you do?”

It took a second for his intent to sink in. “What are you suggesting, Mr. Garforth?”

“If you are not able to make your full payments on time, my dear, I might be moved to clemency in your case. You wouldn't want to lose your house, would you?”

A coldness gripped her insides. “No, of course not! My family is in residence—my younger sister and great-aunt and other members of our household. Other than our time on the Continent, my family's been settled in Bloomsbury ever since my parents' marriage, after the earlier duke tore down his old Bedford mansion and built our terrace row in its place.” She thought of Marie's dress shop and of Daphne, who was the darling of the local shopkeepers and their neighbors. They couldn't move now, not on top of everything else.

“Your sister is quite a lovely girl, isn't she? She's growing up to be a fine young woman.”

“She's but thirteen years old! Hardly a young woman.”

“My mother, bless her soul, was only fourteen when she married.”

The man's interest in her sister was most disturbing. “Mr. Garforth, what exactly are you saying?”

“You're a smart one, Callista. You don't mind if I call you Callista, do you? A lass such as yourself should be able to understand the situation.”

“You want all the rent by Lady Day, or . . .” She trailed off slowly, her horror growing.

“Or I want something else,” he said, standing up to move from behind the desk. “Something to make me charitable about looking the other way at your late rent payments. I've got rooms around the corner, over in Dexter Street, not too far from Rexton House. You could come visit me there. We'll say you're my sister-in-law, so it sounds all proper-like.”

He perched on the desk directly in front of her, and his gaze moved lecherously up and down her length.

“Mr. Garforth, are you suggesting I become your mistress?”

“Certainly not! I wouldn't be setting you up, now, would I? You'd just be visiting me from time to time, say once a week.”

She thought she might be sick. She hadn't thought herself naïve but had never dreamed of having a conversation like this. “Mr. Garforth, you must know what you are suggesting is completely impossible,” she sputtered. “It's despicable and wrong.”

“It feels right to me”—he leaned forward to stroke her cheek with stubby fingers—“very right, indeed.”

She turned her head away, trapped in her chair, unable to stand or flee without coming into closer contact with his heavyset form. “You must know I don't welcome your touch. What sort of a man would force an unwilling woman into his bed?”

“Well, I suppose it could make things interesting”—he chuckled lewdly—“if that's the way you want to play it.”

Fear beat a hard pulse in her chest. “I don't want to play at all!”

“Think of your choices. Would you rather lose your house?”

“You can't take our home! What you're doing is illegal! I'll approach the Duke of Bedford directly and let him know how poorly you represent his affairs!”

“He cares naught, as long as he receives his rents,” Garforth sneered. “If you refuse, perhaps you'd prefer to send your sister on your behalf.”

Her jaw dropped open at this suggestion, and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. “My sister!” she choked out. “How dare you make such a disgusting suggestion! If you so much as touch my sister, I swear to God you'll regret it!” His visit to their home made sense now—dear Lord, he'd stayed to tea because of Daphne!

He laughed, an ugly sound. “Oh, you are a lively one. You'll do fine, but your sister is a sweet thing too. Come round to my rooms after you get off work Friday, you or your sister, or I'll post an eviction notice against you for breach of rent.”

“You can't do this!”

He lost his humor then. “Try me,” he snarled. Heavy arms pulled her up roughly and crushed her against his chest. Too surprised to cry out, she felt her stomach turn as he forced a wet kiss on her. She tried to drive a knee into his groin—a trick Billy had taught her—but her heavy skirts cushioned the impact. She had better luck driving her heel into his instep.

“Bitch!” he roared, letting go. “You'll watch your manners when you're with me, or I'll make you sorry.”

She turned and fled.

Hours later, she was still walking. The Thames flowed murky and dark under Blackfriars Bridge before she realized she'd crossed the city on the Strand and Fleet Street, barely aware of her surroundings. She'd stumbled out of Garforth's offices and made it to an alley around the corner before being sick to her stomach. Her feet ached. She could feel where her right boot had rubbed her heel raw. She stared blindly into the muddy river, oblivious to the people pushing by and the fog rolling in with the late afternoon's darkening sky.

What was she to do? Allowing her family to be cast into the street was unthinkable. Could they find elsewhere to live within the next two days? Even if she had weeks to arrange it, she was loath to disrupt the household. Her great-aunt's health was precarious. And Daphne had been through so much already in the past two years, with their move from Paris, their father's death, and the steady decline in their fortunes. She'd tried to shield her sister, but the girl was bright enough to gather the gist of their situation. Thinking of Daphne made her remember again Garforth's most loathsome suggestion. With a rush of bloodlust so powerful it shocked her, she knew she'd kill him before she let him touch her sweet sister.

But what were her options? Could she raise the money somehow? She'd already sold off everything of value among their household goods. When the bills had started to come in, barely a month after she'd buried her father, the fine plate had been first to go, followed by her mother's best china. Paying for the roof repairs had consumed a frighteningly large chunk of the savings her father had left. Within six months, she'd sold off the rest of their quality silver and all the good furniture: her parents' lovely mahogany dining room set, the contents of the drawing room—including their prized early Turner landscape—and the master bedroom suite of intricately carved oak.

Only Marie had some inkling how close they were to the edge of true poverty. A few months before Lord Rexton's commission magically landed in her lap, her friend had come to Callista with a proposal that the Frenchwoman seek a rich protector. It wasn't Marie's first choice, as she desperately wished to develop her small circle of clients into a successful dress shop for ladies of quality seeking French flair. But she was pragmatic enough to realize few people got to achieve their dreams. “We need to keep the roof over our heads and food on the table somehow,
chérie,
” she said, shrugging. “Women do it all the time; it wouldn't be that bad.”

Callista had been so horrified she'd lied and invented a story of foreign book orders coming in the next week, to discourage Marie from thinking such things again.

The only thing worse had been when her great-aunt returned one day with muddy skirts and wild eyes from the sale of her one remaining fine piece of jewelry. Wanting to help, Lady Mildred had asked Billy to find her a place to pawn her handsome cameo-and-pearl brooch, but the part of town near the docks where they'd ended up was a world away from the genteel London neighborhoods she normally frequented on her few outings to shops and church. It was the only time Callista had raised her voice to Billy, until the lad tearfully explained how the lady had insisted she take him. Callista could well imagine Lady Mildred drawing herself up to her full five-foot height and using her “I am the daughter of a duke” voice on poor Billy. She'd sent him to the kitchens. Then she'd retreated to her room and wept.

That's when she'd put on the market the remains of her father's private book collection. The early edition of Milton's complete works, the illustrated medieval book of hours, the signed copy of Jonathan Swift's
Gulliver's Travels
—her last links to him—gone, forever. The only items she'd kept were the battered copy of Cicero's letters he'd used to teach her Latin and the page cutter with its mother-of-pearl handle that her parents had given her on her twelfth birthday—a necessary tool of her trade, she'd told herself.

There was nothing left to sell.

Except, apparently, her virtue.

Or—the thought lurked at the back of her mind—her pride. One last possibility remained, so shameful she could barely stand to contemplate it.

Sighing deeply, she pushed away from the bridge wall and searched for an omnibus. She hadn't coins for another hackney. The ride was slow and crowded but got her to the offices of her father's old solicitor just as the gentleman was preparing to leave for the day. She smiled grimly—
My one piece of luck
.

Mr. Timmins took one look and seated her with a gentle insistence that she have a cup of tea. The solicitor had helped with the will and meager inheritance after her father's funeral and had a general knowledge of her financial state, although not of the precarious precipice on which they'd balanced even before her present dilemma. She was far too embarrassed to discuss with the avuncular Mr. Timmins the particulars of Garforth's vile proposition but handed over the amended contract and outlined the proposed change.

“Can the duke change our land lease in this way and increase the rent, merely on the basis of a small and informal dress shop set up in the dining room?”

Mr. Timmins rubbed his balding head absently as he read over the rumpled sheets of the new financial agreement.

“Your previous contract clauses are listed here as well and do specify the house will be used for a family residence. Changing the nature of the occupancy to a mixed retail and residential purpose does create grounds, I'm afraid, for amendment of the payment and terms.”