Enslaved (15 page)

Daisy wasn’t much of a believer in living by rules but there was one rule she prided herself on following as though it was carved in stone: never ever under any circumstance let a man hold you after sex. Letting a man hold you meant letting him inside not just your body but your head and quite possibly your heart. It was simply best not to go down that path. For that reason, Daisy had always held firm that none of her lovers should spend the night. Whether a man finished with her in an hour or fucked her straight through to dawn, after giving him a few minutes to recover his faculties, she handed him his trousers and pointed him to the door.

But this time was different, this time was a first. This time her lover was Gavin, and the thought of sending him back to his own bed was something she simply couldn’t bring herself to do. It felt so very good, so very right to have him hold her, to trail her fingers down the length of his beautiful back and plant small, nuzzling kisses on his brow, the slope of his shoulder, even the tip of his aristocratic nose. And his lips … Dear Lord but she couldn’t get enough of kissing him, first one corner of his mouth and then the other, the smooth seam, the sexy indentation cleaving his firm chin. Kissing Gavin was akin to taking that first draught from a cool mountain stream, impossible to quench the raging thirst with one sip or even two.

He cracked open an eye and looked over at her. “Penny for your thoughts.”

She’d thought him asleep. Startled, she jerked her head from the pillow of his shoulder. “I was just thinking how warm you are, like a furnace.” That much was the truth, although of course there was so very much more she might have said, including how dangerously easy it would be for her to get used to this, to having him in her bed and in her life.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” The smile in his voice told her he knew what her answer would be and simply wanted to hear her say it.

“A good thing for me as I’m always cold.”

He lifted his head from the pillow. “You’re not ill, are you?”

“Oh, heavens, no, I’m healthy as a horse and always have been. It’s only …”

“Tell me, won’t you? You used to tell me everything when we were young.”

Back then she’d confided in him completely, but fifteen years was such a very long time ago. Deciding she could trust him this much at least, she said, “The first winter we were in Paris, it snowed so that the opera house where the Lakes worked closed its doors until the thaw. No performances meant none of the players were paid, and it wasn’t long before we ran out of the funds for fuel. It was so cold inside our flat that my fingertips burned even though I wore mittens. Ever since, I can’t abide the slightest chill, at least not without complaining bitterly. If I have my way, I’ll keep the stove burning well into spring.”

He slid an arm about her, drawing her back against the heat of his chest. “Oh, darling, I’ll keep you safe and warm for as long as you let me.”

Wrapped about him, Daisy tried to recapture her earlier ease only she couldn’t seem to settle. Her thoughts kept circling back to the feral kitten she found in the alley behind their Paris flat, coaxed inside, and tamed so he came when called and took food out of her hand. Puss, she’d called him, after the Puss n’ Boots character she so loved acting out at Roxbury House. The Lakes had insisted she release Puss when it came time to move on. He was an alley cat, after all, and would fend just fine on his own. The day before they left, she’d found him laid alongside their busy street, apparently struck dead by a passing carriage. Domestication had dulled the poor creature’s wits so he could no longer shift for himself. Daisy had cried all the way from Paris to Reims, but the experience had taught her a valuable lesson.

Letting someone tame you and keep you safe and warm—in the end, there was a heavy price to be paid.

Gavin left her late that morning with a languorous kiss and the promise to do his utmost to hasten home for supper before she had to leave for her first rehearsal. Alone once more, Daisy’s first clue something was different, something was wrong, came when upon rising she found herself putting off her bath because bathing meant washing away Gavin’s scent. Ordinarily after a night of sweaty, acrobatic sex, she couldn’t wait to wash. Even after emerging from the copper-lined tub, she kept coming back to the bed, snatching up swatches of the tumbled sheets and rubbing them against her cheek, inhaling deeply, closing her eyes and reliving every moment of their beautiful night together—how right he smelled, how wonderfully good he tasted.

Pathetic, Daisy, well and truly pathetic.

And yet she couldn’t help feeling that more so than any bath making love with Gavin had somehow washed her clean.

Like the flames of the Great Fire which once had devoured the capital city in four days and three nights, rumor soon spread throughout the London clubs, soirees, and sundry ladies “at-homes” that Gavin Carmichael, heretofore respectable barrister, heir to the St. John legacy, and frustratingly elusive bachelor, had taken an actress into keeping—and not any actress but the scandalous Parisian showgirl, Delilah du Lac. Gavin wasn’t oblivious to the rumor, nor did he have to puzzle over its source. Since encountering her at the Claridge Hotel, Isabel Duncan obviously had been brisk and busy spreading her venom. It occasioned him no great surprise when later that week his grandfather stormed inside his dining room while he was sitting down to breakfast.

Ignoring him, St. John barked, “What the devil do you think you’re about?”

Gavin set down his cutlery on the edge of his plate and replied, “At present I’m about breakfast. Would you care to join me?”

He counted himself fortunate Daisy hadn’t yet come downstairs. Given the hours she kept, she likely wouldn’t be up and about for another hour or more. He gestured to an empty chair. “Won’t you sit down and have some breakfast?”

“Dash it, boy, don’t play games with me. You know full well what I mean. By now, anyone in London who isn’t wholly deaf, dumb, and blind knows you’ve taken an actress into keeping.”

Rather than deny it, Gavin said, “Miss Lake is an old friend. We spent more than a year together at Roxbury—”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to mention the name of that infernal place in my presence?”

Gavin promised himself that this time he would remain calm and collected, treat the present situation as if it were a legal case and his grandfather the opposing counsel. Yet the old man possessed a canny knack for penetrating his armor to get at his most vulnerable places—and then twisting the knife for good measure.

He shot up from his seat. “Bloody fortunate for me a certain gentleman named William Gladstone bore me to that
infernal place;
otherwise I might be dead ere now or worse, one of those poor charity wretches who live one misstep away from the gallows.”

The black scowl riding Maximilian St. John’s brow had terrified Gavin as a boy, but now the primary response it prompted was a deep-seated dislike. “Had your mother been a dutiful daughter and married where she should have, you would have been born in comfort and safety.”

Comfort and safety—Daisy’s coming back into his life had shown him how very much more there was to feel from life than that. “My mother married for love as I shall. For love, grandfather, or not at all.”

“And I suppose you fancy yourself in love with this … this
actress?
“ Actress, the old man all but spat out the word.

This time Gavin had the prudence not to answer, only met the question with silence and a straight on stare. Daisy was adamant that a proper future together was out of the question but were she to change her mind, might he consider marrying her after all? Until now, he’d relegated the prospect of any permanence between them to the realm of fantasy but, if given the opportunity to have more with her, would he find the courage to take it?

His silence seemed to siphon most of the energy from his grandfather’s tirade. Gaze going to the door, he shook his head. “Young men will sow their wild oats and if you fancy doing so in your bachelorhood, I suppose I can’t fault you for it overmuch. Truth be told, when I first heard the news, I was half relieved to find you were human after all. Keep your doxy so long as she amuses you, but for your family’s sake as well as your own, leave off parading her about in public.”

“Miss Lake isn’t my doxy, and I resent you speaking of her as such.”

His grandfather lifted one salt-and-pepper brow. “If not your mistress, then what precisely is the gal to you?”

What was Daisy to him? A lover who swore she would not fall in love with him? A childhood friend who guarded her secrets with the same ferocity with which a society mama guarded her debutante daughter’s maidenhead? A protégée who more often than not was more teacher than pupil? How he missed those bygone days when she trusted him so completely she hadn’t thought twice before pouring out all the sad little secrets stored in her soul. He’d been her friend, her confidant, and her hero back then. They’d been too young to think of physical love at the time, but had they stayed on at Roxbury House rather than her whisked away to France and him shipped off to boarding school, he’d no doubt they would have become lovers in time.

“I’ve answered that already. She’s a friend, a very dear friend.”

“Friend, you say.” His grandfather lifted a brow. “Well, well, my boy, that’s not what we called ‘em in my day, but I suppose it will serve.”

Apparently Isabel Duncan’s mischief making wasn’t limited to gossip mongering.

Daisy received the summons from the London Vigilance Committee as one might receive a royal command. She was to report to the Committee’s board the next day at five o’clock in the evening. The hearing would be held in the Great Room at Caxton Hall in Westminster. The charge: that her prior music hall performances contained “lewd and lascivious acts” which threatened the public morality and therefore made her unfit to be a player in the company of a theater that had once held the royal patent for producing “legitimate drama” in London.

The plaintiff was none other than Isabel Duncan.

Daisy received the missive while in rehearsal at Drury Lane. She lost no time in seeking out Sir Augustus. She found him in the manager’s office pouring over the accounts ledger. He looked up, smiling when she entered. “Why, Daisy, this is a pleasant surprise.”