Bewitching the Baron (35 page)

“I cannot stay in your house much longer, at least not in your bedroom,” Valerian said. “Everyone knows I am your mistress, but I do not wish to flaunt it. It pains Charmaine.”

“Does it pain you?”

She turned her head to meet his eyes. “No. Except that it will grow awkward with many of your staff. It is not bad right now because they are understanding of what has happened, and they know you have not been sharing my bed. But that will change.”

“Do you want to stay with me, Valerian?”

She looked back at the sea. “Until we can work something else out.”

“I was not referring only to whose roof is above your head.” He took her hand in his, his thumb rubbing gently over her knuckles, drawing her eyes back to him. “I want you to marry me, Valerian.”

Her lips parted, and she stared at him, all thought flown from her mind. “I beg your pardon?”

He smiled at her. “You heard me. Marry me. It will solve everything. You will be safe and protected, your cousin cannot possibly object, you will have a place in society, and we can be together. Openly.”

She tried to tug her hand loose from his, but he would not let her. “Your family, Nathaniel. They would never approve. Your friends would not approve. Putting me in a silk gown will not make me one of them.”

“You are the granddaughter of King Charles II. You already
are
one of them.”

“The illegitimate, impoverished granddaughter with no family, descendent of a long line of mistresses and witches. They will have every reason to object.”

“My family will be glad to see me married.”

“Nathaniel, you are deluding yourself,” she tried to explain, as if speaking to a misguided child. “You feel sorry for me, and responsible for my well-being. You do not want to spend the rest of your life with me. I am completely unsuitable to be the wife of a baron.”

“Would it be better for me to marry someone my parents chose, based upon her family and the dowry that would come with her? Do you think I would live a better life that way?”

“You might.
She
might. Can you see me dressed in stays and hoops, my hair done up, spending all day indoors sipping tea?”

“I have seen you in silk, with your hair done up. You are ravishing. As ravishing as you are in the clothes you wear now, your feet bare, hair coming free of its braid. You could move easily into my family’s world, if you wished.”

“My place is not there,” she begged him to understand. “I would be even more of an outsider than I am here in Greyfriars. I am not a child of the city, or of grand houses. I would not know how to live in either.”

“We will spend at least half the year in the country, at one of my family’s estates, or even here, at Raven Hall, if you wish.”

“Nathaniel, no. It would be a mistake.”

He looked at her intently. “Tell me. If we were of an equal station, would you marry me?”

She considered for a long moment, trying to find an honest answer. “I cannot say. I am happy when I am with you, and you know more about me than anyone else, but still we have not known each other for so very long. I have never spent more than half a day in your company. How do we know that we would be so intrigued by each other if we lived together day in and day out?” And how would she be able to stand it if he married her, and found a year from now that he regretted the decision? If he found that he had married her out of a feeling a responsibility rather than love?

“At least you admit to being intrigued by me. I suppose I should be happy for that.”

“Nathaniel . . .”

“No couple knows how they will fare alone together until they try it, Valerian. I sometimes suspect that is the purpose of chaperonage: to keep the pair from choosing a celibate life over the aggravation of their companion’s exclusive company.”

“I am not jesting,” she said.

“Neither am I. At least tell me you will think about it. There can be no harm in that.”

“Then will you think about it as well, and consider that you may be mistaken to ask this of me and of yourself?”

“Fair is fair.”

She shook her head in a frustration as deep as his own. She did not believe he would reconsider, at least not as long as she was the pathetic creature that she was now, alone and miserable in this world. She could not fool herself—she needed him right now, his comfort and his protection, but she cared too much for him to take advantage of him by making their relationship permanent, and live to see his regret. She would not do it, even though had the circumstances been different she could have found great joy in being his wife.

“Then, if you will not yet agree to marry me,” he continued, “I think it only fair that you grant me a lesser favor.”

“I am afraid to ask.”

“Come to London with me.”

“London?” The suggestion took her by surprise. “I thought you had to stay here. I thought your family had banished you.”

“Well, yes, but there was never a specific time frame.”

“A few months could not have been what they had in mind.”

“You have said it yourself, you cannot remain here much longer.”

“I never meant to go to London,” she protested feebly, but the idea was not unappealing. It was, indeed, growing upon her with each mention of the name. In London she would be anonymous, allowed to go her way without question by strangers on the street. “Where would I stay? Not in your house, surely.”

“I will set you up in your own rooms. I am not filthy rich, but I can at least afford that.”

Valerian wondered if Theresa was watching from above, laughing. And what would her parents think? But the idea had its appeal. She could spend a few weeks in London, and then when Nathaniel saw that she was able to take care of herself again, and saw as well how poorly she fit in London, he would forget this notion of wanting to wed her, and she could go on her way, however painful that might be for herself.

“I would like to see London, if only once,” she finally said.

He kissed her hand and looked at her with an intensity that made her wonder if she had seriously misjudged his determination to see them wed.

Chapter Twenty-nine

“No more than three,” Valerian insisted.

Nathaniel gave a beleaguered sigh. “Three, plus the one that you will leave here wearing.”

Valerian tightened her lips, her eyes narrowing. “Only if I make all the choices in material and style.”

“You can choose colors and styles, but the material must be of silk.”

They locked eyes, judging each other for weakness. “You will wait in the corner; you will not sit here and argue with me as I choose?”

“I will leave the premises entirely if you wish,” he finally gave in, his voice turning soft. “I never meant outfitting you with suitable clothing to be a source of contention between us.”

Valerian was not so quick to be wooed. “But you do understand how I feel about this?” she asked in the low, intense tones she had been using throughout, aware of the seamstress waiting several feet away, face turned away but ears listening. The dress shop had only one other patron, paging through designs, and doubtless not nearly so interesting a focus of attention as this little disagreement.

“I suppose I do, although I do think that you are being entirely unreasonable.”

Valerian just stared at him until he gave a shrug of his shoulders and went to go sit down in the chairs provided for long-suffering males accompanying their women on shopping expeditions.

She could understand a bit of his confusion. After all, he was paying for her room and board, the wages of the two servants he had hired to tend her, and would be paying as well for any entertainment or transportation. So why quibble at a new wardrobe?

The answer was clear enough to her: because it made her a completely kept woman, and because she would be leaving him. It bothered her to accept tangible things from him, in a way that accepting the room and board did not.

Valerian let herself be led by the seamstress into a more private area, to be shown drawings and fabrics. “A relative has recently died,” Valerian told the woman. “So I will be wanting dark colors, and simple dresses devoid of decoration. Can you do that?”

Nathaniel sat and mulled over the past couple of weeks, resigned to several hours in the dress shop. He had shopped with his sister Margaret on more than one occasion, and knew that even the purchase of a single item could take well over an hour. It was beyond him how a simple task could be turned into such a torturous endeavor.

But it did give one time to think, provided one had a quiet corner in which to do so, as he did now.

Valerian was holding up much better than he had expected, but there was a distance between them now that he did not know how to bridge. He had not slept with her since before the night at the millpond, the night that her aunt had died. It did not seem right, somehow, to ask that of her now, when she was mourning. And then there was also the issue of this newly recognized respect he had for her.

He wanted to give her everything, to see her living in beautiful surroundings, with clothes made of silk. He wanted her never to have to worry about money, or about who might try next to attack her. He wanted as well to have her in his bed every night, and see her face across from him at the breakfast table each morning. And he could do all of that, it was true, with her as his mistress.

She could be his mistress, and all that he gave her would be seen as an exchange for her sexual favors. He would make of her a high-class whore—but that he could not do. His own feelings for her demanded he do better for her than that.

The only solution was to marry her, only now she seemed further away from him than she ever had. She was quiet much of the time, her thoughts turned inward. She had hardly spoken during the entire journey to London, except to ask a question about a passing sight or to talk to Oscar in his cage.

She felt so distant, it had been a relief to have her argue with him about the dresses. There had been a spark of fire in her eyes during that exchange, and a connection with him, even if of anger. He almost wished she had tried to limit him to one mud-brown wool dress.

He would not have let her win that argument. There were reasons he wanted her clad in silk, and they were not solely to increase her beauty or appease her long-ignored vanity.

His thoughts went to his family. He had been in town for nearly a week now, and he would soon have to call on them. He had, in fact, chosen rooms for Valerian directly across the wooded park from his parents’ house, to make it easier to visit them.

He loved his family, and had no wish to hurt or upset them, but he would not allow them to dictate his actions, either. When it came down to it, his “banishment” to Raven Hall had been voluntary, and the choices he made now would be his own, as well. It was his hope, however, to accomplish his ends gracefully, with the minimum of familial pain and disappointment. He knew that in this world appearance did matter, and his family would more easily accept Valerian as a lady if she dressed as one.

His thoughts were interrupted by the rustle of silk, and he raised his eyes to see Valerian approaching, sheathed collar-bone to floor in a dark royal blue gown without so much as in inch of lace. No ribbon, no trim, not a single contrasting border or falling ruffle. The tight, narrow sleeves reached all the way to her wrist, the outside edges of the cuffs slightly elongated, concealing part of her hand and making her white fingers appear all the longer and more delicate. The smooth bodice ended in a sharp point, the material of the skirts falling in neat pleats over her hips.

“The woman who originally ordered the gown decided she did not care for it before the trim and decorations were added,” Valerian said with a touch of defiance. “But I find it suits me.”

Even he could see that it was not a fashionable gown, and the only hint of expense was in the dull sheen of the silk. A careless glance might mark her as no one of import, but Nathaniel doubted that anyone seeing her would find it possible not to stare.

The very simplicity of the dress made it striking at a time when even the common city folk embellished their clothing with designs of flowers, and collars and ruffles of lace. The dark color set off her pale skin and blue-black hair, and intensified, if that were possible, the blue of her wolfish eyes. If she had looked like a country witch before, with her rough purple skirts and black bodices, she looked like a sorceress now, fit to cast fortunes for the king.

She looked elegant, and intimidating. And completely Valerian. He felt a slow smile spread across his face, and he rose, taking her hands in his and holding her arms wide so he could better see the gown. “Stunning. Simply, elegantly, stunning.”

The questioning, uncertain wrinkle of her brow amused him. “If you had let me interfere,” he said, “I doubtless would have chosen something brighter, with embroidery and lace, and a neckline that showed at least a hint of what lay beneath. And I would have ruined the gown entirely.”

“I am glad you like it,” she said uncertainly.

“If I did not know better, I would think you were lying.”

She gave him a crooked smile, and shrugged one shoulder. “I had expected another argument, or at least displeasure.”

“Perhaps if we put our minds to it, we can find something else to fight about.” He waggled his eyebrows at her suggestively, and felt his heart trip when a true smile came to her lips. She tugged one of her hands free to push him playfully on his arm.

“Rake,” she said.

“Prude.”

“I take offense at that.”

“As well you should, you heartless wench.”

She laughed at that, and he wanted nothing so much as to seize the moment and hold it tight, and forever keep the shadows from returning to her eyes.

If he could not do that, he could at least hold her safe from the world.

“I hear there is a wonderful production of
Volpone
at the Athenaeum. Would you like to go?” Nathaniel asked, as their carriage rumbled by the theater in question.

Valerian yawned behind her hand. The fittings at the dressmaker’s had been more tiring than she had expected, and truth be told she had about had enough of the sights of London. Nathaniel had delighted in showing her the palaces, cathedrals, shops, galleries, and entertainments of his city, but it was all beginning to wear on her. “Would you mind terribly if we stayed in tonight? I do not feel quite up to another evening out.”