For Desire Alone (23 page)

Vivien nodded. “I do and I’m angry about all of them, honestly.”

“Then this promises to be a most tedious conversation, I shall get myself some brandy.” He rose and moved to the sideboard. “Would you like one?”

Her lips pursed, but as he examined her more closely, he could see that anger wasn’t her main emotion after all. Concern was what lined her face. Somehow he preferred anger.

“Yes,” she snapped, but some of the heat was gone from her voice.

He half-smiled as he poured them each a drink. She sipped hers and motioned for him to return to his chair.

“You are correct that I do know a great deal about the situation now that I’ve spoken to Mariah.” She arched a brow, spoiling for a fight. “Do you judge her so harshly for her need to talk to a friend?”

John hesitated. Normally he would not like the idea of his privacy being invaded, but the circumstances were anything but normal.

“Mariah is under a great deal of strain thanks to…I assume she told you about my father.”

“I guessed,” Vivien said softly. “I had heard stirrings about his cruelty. Faint, but enough of them to give them a great deal of merit.” She set her drink down on the desk and leaned closer. “I hope you know my frustration or worry about this situation has nothing to do with blame. At least not for anything your family has done or may do. You are not at fault for their actions.”

She said the same words that Mariah had, but as before, they gave him little comfort.

“I am not the one who needs your assurance,” he said, grim. “The fact is that whether or not I am at fault for the man behind these threats, I am responsible for protecting Mariah now that they have occurred. And the best, and perhaps only, way I can do that is to marry her.”

Vivien shifted. “You are probably right on that score.”

He drew back. “That is certainly a most unexpected reaction. Truly?”

She nodded. “Yes, but, John, I hope you also realize that in the long run there will be more to protect here than just her life once this threat has past. Once she is your wife, there will be…there are other…”

Vivien broke off and grabbed for her drink. She took a long swig and John could see her struggling with whatever message she was trying to send.

“I’ve never known you to mince around any subject,” he said. “Don’t start now. What is your concern?”

She folded her arms. “Mariah may have been a mistress to your friend, she may be an experienced lover with you, but there are still parts of her that are very sheltered, innocent. She puts her…her heart into what she does, John. And once she loves, she will love until she breaks.”

John nearly dropped his glass as he stared at Vivien. Love?

“Are you telling me that Mariah loves me?”

Those words rolled from his tongue and tasted strangely sweet. But he did not want that. Not from anyone, especially not from her. Not when he could give nothing of the kind back.

Vivien shook her head and she had managed to hood her expression so that he could no longer read her concerns. She got to her feet.

“I am saying nothing except that once she is your wife, your responsibility toward her will no longer only be physical or financial or even sexual. You will make promises to her that go beyond those things. I hope you will try to keep them.”

He pushed to his feet. He could not continue this line of discussion with Vivien. He could not even
think
about this line of discussion, truth be told.

“I understand,” he choked out with effort. “And I do hope you know me well enough to know I would never hurt Mariah. Not if I could avoid doing so.”

Vivien moved to the door, where she paused and turned toward him. “I do know you would try. But I just don’t want to see her being kept as a mistress with a ring on her finger. That kind of union will only bring her great pain. Consider it, John, before you act any further.”

Then she turned and walked away, not waiting for him or for his servant to show her out. A polite host would have followed her and bid her farewell. But in that moment, John did not feel polite.

He felt confused. Tense.

Vivien had said love, even if she tried to play it off a moment later. If she had said it, she must fear Mariah already felt such a charged and dangerous emotion, or
could
feel it toward him in the future.

No one loved him. He made sure of it. Love was an inconvenient, irrational inclination that had led to more heartache than pleasure. Oh certainly, there were a few people in his acquaintance who seemed very well matched, but they were what, one or two out of a hundred? Those odds were not very good and he had learned how to gamble long ago.

Of course, he did care for Mariah. She was a friend, a lover, he had come to depend upon her and look to her for companionship, as well as passion. But that wasn’t love. Was it? Even if it felt like it. Even if the word sometimes bubbled up on his mind unbidden.

He couldn’t surrender to it, though. He wasn’t capable of all the expectations around it.

And if Mariah
did
have those kinds of feelings for him…the heartache that would likely follow was something he could not protect her from.

Mariah hesitated outside of John’s office, standing with her hand lifted but utterly unable to do what she had come to do and knock. Once she did, her entire life, her definition of herself, her very future, would be altered irrevocably.

But what other choice did she have? Everyone important in her life had made it very clear that this was now her only option.

She thrust her hand forward and rapped her knuckles against the smooth surface of the door.

There was a beat of hesitation and then John’s distracted voice said, “Come.”

She shivered as she entered. He had given her that same order numerous times before, with a very different meaning.

But as she looked at him, sitting at his desk, his gaze focused on a pile of paperwork before him, he did not look much like the passionate lover who dragged her headlong into passion so powerful that it swept her away.

He looked like a lord of the manor. A very important man. And for the first time she got a full glimpse of the entirety of what it would be like to be married to him.

He glanced up at her and the blood drained from his face.

“Mariah?” he said, his voice rough as he staggered to his feet. “I’m sorry, I would have come to you. You should have sent word through Swanson or another servant.”

She blinked, forcing herself to focus. “I am not so delicate or damaged that I could not make my way to your office myself, John.”

He waved to a seat and then to the sideboard. “May I get you something? Or call for tea?”

She frowned. What was this distance, this formality between them? He could scarcely look at her as he bustled about, trying to tend to her comfort when all she wanted him to do was sit down and talk to her.

“I’m fine,” she said firmly and the finality of her tone stopped him.

“Are you?” he asked, his eyebrow arching.

She smiled slightly. There was her John. He was still in there after all.

“Yes,” she said softly. “But you are making me dizzy running all around the room like this. Won’t you sit?”

She motioned to the chair next to her and hoped he would take it rather than the one with a desk separating them like an impenetrable fortress.

He stared at the chair, then his chair. Then he took the one next to her, though he looked anything but comfortable as he perched there.

“I have a decision for you,” she said softly.

He jolted straight in the chair like she had prodded him with some kind of electricity. “What happened to twenty-four hours?”

She pursed her lips. “I needed some space, what with you railing at me and the room spinning sideways. It turns out that once I had it, I did not need twenty-four hours to find my answer. Just a few.”

He swallowed. “Then what is your response to my question?”

“I do not wish to saddle you with a bride you clearly do not want,” she said softly and refused to look at him so she would not see the agreement to that statement. “But you are right that I have not the resources to protect myself from the kind of threats that now rain down on me.”

When she dared to look, she saw his frown had deepened, but he did not interrupt her.

“You say you can,” she hurried to continue. “And if this is your only option for doing that, I would be a fool to refuse. I
will
marry you, John, if you still believe this course is for the best.”

He was so quiet for so long that Mariah had no choice but to finally look at him. He was staring, not at her face but at her bandaged hand. Just staring at it, as if he could will it well by gazing at it with such intensity.

“John?” she whispered. “Is this still your suggested route or am I making an utter cake of myself by bringing up the subject?”

He jerked his gaze to hers and nodded. “Yes.” When she tilted her head in confusion, he clarified. “Yes, to this being the best course. No, you are not making a cake of yourself.”

She relaxed, at least a little. “Good. I would have felt very foolish if you had changed your mind.”

He reached out and traced her jaw with his fingertips. “No. There is no going back now.”

He leaned closer and she let her eyes flutter shut. At least he would kiss her. He would be hers to kiss her whole life. There was something very pleasant about that fact.

But instead of kissing her mouth, he brushed his lips against her cheek and then drew back. When he smiled, there was nothing true about it. He was a distant man being polite to a fiancée who had been arranged for him by forces out of his control.

And her breakfast stirred in her stomach quite unpleasantly.

“I shall begin making the arrangements right away,” he said as he got to his feet and moved away from her. Just around the desk, but it might as well have been all the way around the world. “And you should rest. The next few weeks will be eventful indeed.”

“Indeed,” she repeated, but her tone was flat and pained to her own ears. Somehow, though, she managed to get up and back from the room. Before she was even gone, he had returned to his books.

And she realized in that moment that she had lost him.

Chapter Nineteen

Mariah flexed her hand. After a few days, she no longer had to have her cut bandaged, a freedom she welcomed. She stared at the line that remained red across her palm. It certainly represented a great deal of pain. Not physical pain, or at least not much more now than a twinge now and then, an itch as the skin reformed itself into what she assumed would be a fairly substantial scar.

No, when she looked at the mark, it was a reminder of the terror of that night and a signal of the beginning of her marriage as much as the ring John would put on her finger in…she shut her eyes…just under a week now. He had been pulling strings and making inquiries to rush that process for days.

So much so that they had barely seen each other, barely talked, barely interacted at all since she accepted his proposal.

In the past, she’d sometimes heard the few married ladies who sneaked into Vivien’s manor complain about the way a husband treated a wife. The neglect. The utter lack of care beyond producing an heir. Mariah had always taken a little comfort in the fact that the particular end those women described would never be hers. If a man tired of his mistress, he settled her well and they both walked away. She with her independence furthered, he with his conscience clear.

That couldn’t happen once a wedding took place. Oh, she and John might be able to lead separate lives, but she would never again be truly independent because she would share his name and his purse. An allowance would be awarded to her, a generous one she was certain, but that was not the same as an account no one but she could access. A home that was separate. A life she called her own.

Mariah shook her head and got to her feet to pace around the room to the window. Outside, the city lights glittered and reminded her that at this time of night a week ago she would have been in John’s bed, making love to him with abandon.

Not anymore.

But her wayward thoughts judged John more harshly than she meant to do. After all, she had faith in him that he would never be anything but kind to her. Even during the past few days, when he had installed her into a bedroom separate from his own and avoided any meaningful contact with her, he had been
kind
.

But she hated to think that after the passion they had shared, “kindness” was all she could expect for the next twenty or thirty or fifty years of her life. That somehow her role as wife would wipe away any remnants of the other roles she had once filled for him—lover…friend…

She squeezed her eyes shut and pictured John coming toward her, John pressing his mouth to hers. John’s body pressed against her. Inside of her.

A shiver racked her as she jerked her eyes open.

“If you want it, take it,” she whispered.

That was a mantra Vivien often repeated to her. One she did not often dare to live up to. Except now, those words seemed her only option. If she wanted John, and if she wanted to remind him that he wanted her too, she would have to be the one who seduced. Who claimed.