Viscount in Love, page 16
“Absolutely worth it,” Clara said. “Is this one good enough to hang on your father’s wall, or will you give it away?”
Torie gave her a one-armed hug. “I thought I might give it to my husband.”
“He’d better treasure it.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll take it away and send it to you. It’s just as well the piece is finished, given the wedding tomorrow.”
“I have to tell you something,” Clara said, her face suddenly pinched with worry.
“Is your family all right?”
Clara’s words tumbled out. “It’s Kelbourne, Torie. He took Gianna Peccati to Vauxhall last night. She was wearing a ravishing diamond necklace, and people say it was a gift to convince her to forgive his marriage.”
At first Torie couldn’t understand; Clara’s words had jumbled in her brain as if they were written down on paper. Then she turned away sharply, realizing her hands were shaking as she took off her pinafore and hung it on the wall.
“Did you know he still had a mistress?” Clara asked. “Because, of course, many women don’t care about such matters.”
Torie looked blindly out the window rather than at her friend’s face. “I didn’t.”
She hadn’t believed his dictum regarding his mistress pertained to her, to their marriage. Not given the way they were together. The things he said to her. Their kisses.
She had assumed . . . assumed! What an idiot she was. His life was continuing in its usual path, marriage or no. Obviously, that life included a mistress, just as Odysseus’s afterlife included a nymph—never mind the fact that Penelope had waited all those years for his return.
“Kelbourne wouldn’t have paraded that woman in front of all society if he were marrying Leonora!” Clara said, spitting with rage like a wet cat. “He wouldn’t have dared. He disrespected you, Torie. It wasn’t a masquerade night, and no one was wearing masks. He sat there beside her in the open, eating ham and drinking pink champagne.”
“Apparently her tastes haven’t changed,” Torie said, grimacing. She walked over to the sideboard and began to rub speckled paint from her fingertips with an oily rag. She felt sick with anger—at him and at herself. Leonora had clarified the question of faithfulness when she planned to marry him, so why hadn’t she?
She knew the answer. It was her own bravado. She had spent her time worrying about whether she would be enough for him—smart enough, interesting enough—but she assumed that she would be enough in bed, because she walked away from their kisses tingling all over, longing for their wedding night.
Now that emotion sickened her. Perhaps he had been kissing her and then taking his carriage over to Gianna’s house and—
Torie wrenched her mind away. She couldn’t bear to imagine him in bed with another woman. It wasn’t just that the Italian woman was reputedly so beautiful. Gianna was brilliant; she spoke three languages and could sing in several more. She was everything Torie wasn’t, except Torie was a lady. A possible viscountess.
Obviously, Dominic would have married Gianna, if his mistress had a claim to gentle blood.
“I’m so sorry,” Clara said miserably. “I hated to tell you, because I know you genuinely like Kelbourne. But I thought . . . it’s not too late to rethink this marriage, Torie.” She paused. “There’s a rumor going around that your father owes him ten thousand pounds, and you are being forced to marry him rather than the Duke of Queensberry as a result.”
Torie sank onto the sofa and put her face in her hands.
“It isn’t true, is it?” Clara asked. She plopped down beside her and started rubbing Torie’s back. And then, when Torie didn’t answer, she said dismally, “It is true. No wonder Leanora ran away! It’s so unfair, Torie. Why should you pay Sir William’s debts? It’s grotesque, like the old stories of wives sold at Bartholomew Fair to the highest bidders!”
Torie choked back tears until she trusted herself to lift her face. “That’s not true about my father’s debts.”
Clara pulled her into a hug. “Gentlemen aren’t supposed to behave like this, especially not when they’re about to be married. My father probably accompanies his mistress to Vauxhall, but only on a masquerade night when he couldn’t be recognized. Could you persuade Kelbourne to behave with more decorum after the wedding?”
“I doubt it,” Torie said, sitting upright again. “Remember, he told my sister that he would never be unfaithful with a lady, but that a mistress doesn’t count as adultery. Maybe he takes her to Vauxhall every week.”
“Poppycock!” Clara growled, her face as bulldoggish as was possible for someone often compared to a cherub. “What if you and I went to the gardens one evening, and there he was? Eating ham with her? Could there be a more humiliating moment in a woman’s life?”
Torie sighed. “Many men have mistresses. The practice is widespread, Clara. You know it.”
Sickeningly, this shame felt worse than being called addled. She was used to that. Starting in her second Season, she had stopped hiding her illiteracy, admitting her failures with a chuckle.
But this?
True, gentlemen had mistresses, but those men didn’t flaunt their coquettes before their wives—or almost-wives. How was she supposed to react? Was she supposed to chuckle when her husband strolled by, arm in arm with a diamond-clad woman?
He was the one who suggested they befuddle the ton by kissing in public, but how could she claim to be marrying him for any reason other than coercion when he paraded his mistress before Torie’s acquaintances two days before their wedding?
“Please rethink your betrothal. I have a terrible feeling about your marriage.” Clara clasped her hands together. “I know you didn’t read Castle Rackrent, but there’s a cruel husband named Sir Kit Rackrent who reminds me of Viscount Kelbourne.”
“Dominic is not cruel. He can be very kind.”
“Kind! Did you hear that he lost his temper the other day and shouted that Lord Bellybrook was ‘false as Hell’?”
“I expect that Bellybrook is one of those people arguing against the antislavery bill.”
“Yes, he does have sugar plantations, so my father says,” Clara agreed. “Bellybrook is despicable. But shouting? In the House of Lords?”
“Dominic is passionate. He cares. The bill is important to him.”
“I wish he cared as much for you,” Clara said flatly. “That you were as important to him.”
Torie swallowed hard. No matter how ignorant Dominic was about gossip columns, he had to have recognized numerous acquaintances last night; Wednesdays were the most popular night of the week to visit the pleasure gardens.
He surely knew that the truth would filter back to her.
Even worse than not caring for her reputation, he didn’t care about her feelings.
“Now everyone in London is whispering about your wedding again, and not in a good way,” Clara said.
“Luckily, my entire life has prepared me to walk down an aisle tomorrow morning with mocking whispers on both sides.” Torie managed to keep her voice steady.
“Oh, please, won’t you jilt him?” Clara implored. “I don’t believe you about your father, Torie. Even I know that he gambles to excess. Why should your life be sacrificed as a result?”
If it was just a matter of money, she would jilt him. She would walk the three blocks between their houses, scream an insult or two, and throw the emerald ring at his face, hopefully taking out an eye.
“The Duke of Queensberry has fallen into such a melancholy that he’s fled to Bath,” Clara continued. “He would marry you by special license, and you’d be a duchess. Just think, Torie: yours would be the romance of the Season! No one could call you ‘poor woman’ then.”
“I can’t jilt the viscount,” Torie said heavily. “It’s too late.”
She felt the truth of that statement in her bone marrow. Since their betrothal, she had spent time every day with the twins. Her feelings for them when Leonora ran away to Wales were nothing to how she felt now, after accepting them as hers, her children. She had so many plans for their happiness and well-being. The morning after the wedding, Torie planned to fire their grumpy nanny.
As if she were Persephone, she had eaten the pomegranate seeds and doomed herself to the underworld. She would do anything for Valentine and Florence.
“Pooh!” Clara cried. “Even my mother, who loathes a scandal, thinks you should jilt him. No one would blame you.”
Likely that was true. She would only blame herself.
“Shall we go have a cup of tea?” Torie asked, desperate to end the conversation.
Clara waved her hand before her nose. “You have need of a bath, my dear. All I can smell is turpentine. I’ll leave you to think about it. I don’t like Kelbourne, but please know that I will stand with you no matter what you decide.”
Perhaps no one liked him. Dominic wouldn’t give a damn.
After Clara trotted down the stairs, Torie sat down and tried to think clearly. She didn’t have to accept public humiliation. She could demand that her fiancé dismiss Gianna. Thinking about the woman’s neck glinting with diamonds made her feel positively feral.
She didn’t care for diamonds, but she’d turned into a possessive wretch.
Yet if she demanded that he let the woman go, issuing an ultimatum—keep her or marry me—what would happen?
Dominic was not a man who would respond well to an ultimatum. He didn’t like to be told what to do. He’d made it clear in small and big ways, in complaints and growls. So far, she had stubbornly growled back.
Her stomach screwed into an even tighter knot. If she gave him an ultimatum, he might choose Gianna. After all, they’d been together—if that was the proper term—for years. At least four years. Quite probably he loved her.
He was merely fond of Torie. His quixotic plan to fight anyone who humiliated her signaled affection, yet the shallowness of those affections was evident in the fact that he was the one who had humiliated her.
His actions told the world that he not only didn’t love her, but he had no respect for her.
After Torie took a bath to wash off the turpentine, Emily helped her put on a promenade dress, burnt sienna just like the final dabs on her painting.
“The color turns your hair to burnished silver,” Emily said, handing her a lacy parasol. “Are you certain you don’t wish me to accompany you, Miss Torie?”
“I’m only walking to Kelbourne House,” Torie said, looking in the mirror. “I think a bolder lip color, Emily, to balance the color in my gown.”
Emily darted over to the dressing table and came back with a round box. Popping open the cover, she proclaimed, “Love’s Last Sigh. Deep red.”
Brilliant.
Just brilliant.
Chapter 21
The whole three blocks to Kelbourne House, Torie counseled herself to keep her temper. She would calmly explain that her husband could not shame her by keeping a mistress in public or private.
Ever. Never. Not at all. In fact, he had to go over there and get rid of that horrible diamond-bedecked—
No.
She took a deep breath. She was used to charming men, so why couldn’t she seem to do it with Dom? With him, she lost her temper in a moment, and then he started kissing her, and then . . .
He got his way, all too often.
The Kelbourne butler opened the door with gratifying speed before she reached the top of the steps. “Miss Torie,” Flitwick said, welcoming her inside. “May I take your parasol? Lord Kelbourne is in his study, if you’d like to greet him.”
“Good morning, Flitwick,” Torie said, handing him her gloves and unpinning her hat. “How are the twins?”
“They spent the morning in Hyde Park, as you suggested. Miss Florence brought home several earthworms, much to Nanny Bracknell’s disapproval.”
“What does Florence intend to do with them?”
“Paint them,” Flitwick said, his eyes twinkling. “She has decided to eschew rabbits and try an animal that remains on the ground.”
“A very sensible decision,” Torie said. “I shall greet Lord Kelbourne. You needn’t announce me, Flitwick.”
When she pushed open the door to Dominic’s study, she froze for a moment, trying to determine why a mere glimpse of the man had such a heady effect on her. He was seated behind a huge walnut desk, his head bent over a letter.
True, he was unfairly beautiful; his cheekbones made him look as sensitive as one of the carved stone angels she stared at in church.
Sensitive? Ha. She couldn’t have found someone more insensitive. More bellicose.
Just now he was writing quickly because he was also so competent at everything he did. As well as passionate and self-assured.
“Are you coming in?” he asked, finishing his line.
“Yes,” she said shakily, moving away from the door and shutting it behind her.
He jumped to his feet, his eyes hungry. “I thought you were Flitwick,” he said, moving around his desk.
Torie instinctively reacted to his expression—and then loathed him, and her own response. How could he feel scorching lust for two women at once? Was she benefiting from Gianna’s sensuality, or was he taking all the desire that flared between them and returning to Gianna’s bed?
How could she want a man who was bedding another?
She forced herself to smile and curtsy. “Dom.”
He bowed. “I thought we’d moved away from formal salutations.”
“I did call you Dom,” she murmured, allowing him to steer her to a couch. As they sat down, he brushed tendrils of hair from around her face and dropped a kiss on her nose.
“May I kiss you?”
“I’d rather not,” she said, looking at her hands as she reminded herself not to lose her temper, remain calm, be charming, be . . .
All that.
For the first time in her life, she wished she’d asked Leonora for lessons on pretending to be a lady.
“What’s the matter?” He shifted closer, his hip touching hers. “Where’s your betrothal ring?”
Torie blinked. “I left it on the windowsill because I was painting this morning. I’ll retrieve it as soon as I go home. No need to worry, as servants never enter my studio.”
“I shall be very glad when you are living under my roof with servants who will enter your studio,” Dominic said.
Torie edged away from his hip and said, “I realized that before we marry, we should have the same conversation you had with Leonora.”
“Which conversation?”
“Don’t you remember how horrified you were that she shared details with me?”
Dominic was having trouble paying attention.
Torie was wearing crimson lip color, precisely the same shade her lush mouth turned when reddened by his kisses. Less than a day until they married. Hardly more than twenty-four hours. Then he’d have her in his home, in his bed. His arms.
Making that needy sound in the back of her throat as he put her on the bed and worshipped her body.
He had never found himself in the grip of a craving this intense. He no sooner began listening to a speech in the Lords before his thoughts were interrupted by an image of the two of them entwined on white sheets, his hand woven into her thick hair as she—
“I apologize,” he said, clearing his throat. “What conversation did I have with Leonora?”
“Regarding unfaithfulness,” Torie prompted.
He frowned. “What about it?”
“I won’t countenance adultery,” she said, casting him a glance from under her long lashes. “By which I mean,” she clarified, “I would feel hurt and angry if you had an affair. Everyone would . . . everyone would talk.”
“I agree,” he said.
“If you’re going to strut around half-naked, you’ll do it in front of me and no one else.”
Lewd thoughts flashed through Dominic’s head. “Agreed,” he growled. “The same is true for you. You’ll be faithful to me.”
It was a statement, not a command. Torie was infuriating, mischievous, exquisite—loyal. He was pretty sure that she was marrying him out of loyalty to the twins, out of love for them. He respected that.
Perhaps even loyalty to her father. He didn’t respect that, but he’d take it.
He had a bone-deep belief that she would never break her vows.
“I will be faithful as long as you are,” Torie agreed. “But what about your mistress?” She raised her stubborn little chin and fixed him with an imperious glare. “You told my sister that a mistress doesn’t count. I think a woman such as that does count, as I made clear in our discussion of Odysseus’s infidelities.”
Dominic felt a flare of irritation at her presumptive tone. She didn’t understand the private life of gentlemen. “I have never visited a brothel—”
Incredulity flickered across Torie’s eyes. “Am I supposed to celebrate your self-denial?”
He cleared his throat. “There are illnesses—”
“Syphilis, for example,” she cut in. “Otherwise known as the pox. Which, by the way, is not limited to the women who work in brothels. Mistresses are just as vulnerable. As are wives.” She spat the last word.
This conversation was getting out of hand, and Dominic could feel his temper flaring. The last thing he wanted was a wife who told him what to do, who curtailed what he did or who he spent time with. Who sought to control his behavior. He’d had enough of that from his father, and from the moment the former viscount died, Dominic had never again allowed himself to be leashed.
“The Duke of Queensberry has a mistress,” he said flatly. “Did you have this conversation with him?” The moment he asked, he realized that the duke would promise anything to marry Torie. The man was absurdly infatuated.
“If you keep a mistress, I shall take a lover.” Her blue eyes darkened to a seething lavender. He recognized that sign from the months of their betrothal: his fiancée had a temper like a bonfire.
“My wife will never take a lover,” he told her, keeping his voice even. No one—no one—sparked his temper the way Torie did. Those idiots in the House of Lords had nothing on her.
