Her Perfect Match (16 page)

“Thank you, Greenley. I should be at least an hour if you would like to visit your sister at the Warren residence. It is only a few doors down, is it not?”

He smiled. “Yes, miss. Thank you, miss. I’ll get the carriage situated and I will take a walk down there as you suggest.”

She patted his hand, then moved up to the house she had once known so very well. The first time she visited here, she had been terrified, but it had eventually become a safe
home
for her. The first one she’d ever really known.

The door opened before she could knock and she was led to a parlor by a cheery housemaid. The place had been redone since her time here. The walls had been repapered and the furniture was fresh and new. Time marched on, no matter what.

A fact proven even further when the door to the parlor opened and the Duke of Sandcombe entered. It had been only ten years since their affiliation, but he had aged twice that number of years since. Illness made him thin, grayed his hair, stooped his back. Tears flooded her eyes at the sight, but she blinked them back, knowing he would not wish for, nor appreciate her pity.

“Walter,” she said, her voice bright as she moved to kiss both his cheeks.

She slipped her arm through his and used the motion to help him to a seat without making too much of a fuss about it. He smiled up at her as he settled into his place.

“An old trick, girlie. I see you’re trying to fuss over me.”

She laughed as she retook her seat across from him. “I cannot help it. Long-held habits are hard to break.”

“Yes. You always did take good care of me. It was a blessing,” he said, his tone suddenly far away.

Vivien shifted under the uncomfortable weight of memory and emotion. She grabbed for the parcel she had brought with her and held it out to him.

“Your favorites.”

His eyes twinkled as he pulled away the ribbon and layer of thin paper to reveal a box of truffles imported by Niles Chocolatier from a chocolate shop in Switzerland.

“The only chocolates Niles does not make in his own shop, though how he imports them when the Swiss are part of Napoleon’s regime is beyond me,” she said as Walter pulled the box top away and ate one of the sweets with an expression of bliss.

He held the box out, but she shook her head. He put the box on a table at his side and settled back to stare at her. “I cannot believe you have only come here to bring me chocolate and talk to me about import and export of the same. Though I could probably tell you a bit about it.”

“You think I have an ulterior motive for my appearance here?” she asked. “No, I have only been thinking about you of late. You taught me very valuable lessons during your time as my protector.”

He tilted his head as if he did not understand where she was going with the conversation. A point of pride for her, since normally Walter was seven steps ahead of anyone who played a game of verbal chess with him.

“What lessons did you learn at my feet, dear Vivien?”

“You were my first protector,” she explained, pushing to her feet as she suddenly felt quite restless. “You taught me how to hold myself when I was on your arm, how to be polite and comfortable in all parts of Society, low or high, and what to say in every situation.”

He waved his hand. “Any protector could have taught you those things. You were eager and quick to learn.”

She didn’t look at him, but out the window as she pondered that. “I suppose any protector could have done this, but most wouldn’t have wasted the time. They would have kept me as a whore, not a mistress. Or they would have decided I was not worth the trouble.”

He shrugged one shoulder. “You were beautiful and talented in the ways of your path. You would have been worth the trouble to anyone with a brain.”

She smiled at his attempts to soften what she knew to be true. This man had saved her when most others would not have. She owed him a boon even if he played it off as nothing.

“There was one more lesson you taught me.”

He smiled. “What is that? How to lace your shoes?”

She laughed, though she was utterly serious when she whispered, “You taught me how to keep my heart separate from the feelings of my body.”

“Ah.” He pursed his lips together as his smile faded. “
Those
lessons. I suppose they were a good thing. In theory.”

She tilted her head. Walter had always been firm on the fact that one should never allow a lover too far into one’s heart. Now he wavered on the same notion?

“What do you mean?”

He fingered a loose thread on the settee, drawing her attention to the worn fabric. It was different than it had been during her last visit, but she could see now it was not of better quality.

He sighed. “I suppose I mean that as I grow older and closer to death—”

She caught her breath. “No!”

He arched a brow. “Don’t be foolish, girl. Look at me. I’m a shadow of my former self. Death will visit in the next few years, I wager.”

She said nothing, for she could not deny the terrible toll life had taken on him. Nor the consequence of the death he now expected.

“And now that I have reached the end of my life,” he continued. “I sometimes regret separating my heart from my body. It cost me friends, lovers, even my own children, who do not call on me except when it is required.” He sighed softly. “Loneliness is a difficult pill to swallow, even if it is entirely of one’s own making.”

“Yes,” Vivien found herself whispering and caught her breath as she heard the word in her own voice. “Not that I am lonely.”

“Even during the nights where you do not fill your home with partygoers and lovers?” he asked, his tone and expression benign for such a volatile question.

She hesitated. “I suppose those nights are long,” she admitted. “But I fill them with my own pursuits.”

“Reading, sewing, conversation with friends, I know what you mean. And I suppose there are rewards in those things.” He shook his head. “But there is nothing like the love of a partner. Someone who is not obligated to care for you because of blood ties or financial ones.”

He frowned and she saw a line of loss across his face that brought tears to her eyes a second time. She blinked them away again, but felt sorrow remain. For him. For herself. In twenty years, thirty years, forty years…she would face the same end as her old friend now did. Isolated in another country, she would rely on casual acquaintances and paid help to send her off to her final rest.

Not Benedict. Not her children.

“You are still young,” Walter’s voice broke into her reverie and forced her to remember that she stood in his parlor. She had floated away for a moment. “I hope you might still leave room for love, despite what I taught you.”

“And what if that love cannot last?” she asked, thinking of the stares of Benedict’s friends, the dismissive tone of his brother and the shock of his sister-in-law.

He shrugged. “Even if it cannot, the memories will fill some of the emptiness when it is gone, will it not?”

She jolted at the thought. She’d always considered the memories associated with love as potentially painful, but she could also see how they might be a comfort. Any moment she shared with Benedict was one she could live over in her mind, replaying like a story where she was the heroine of the piece.

She had a great deal more to think about than she had imagined when she came here hoping Walter could straighten her head. Instead, she was more jumbled and confused than ever.

She shook her head. There were other reasons she had come and now she could use those to change this tender subject, at least until she had had enough time to consider it further.

“You know, this is not why I have come here either,” she said.

He cocked his head. “Always protecting yourself from delicate subjects. Then why did you come if not to hear me wax poetic on the benefits of emotion?”

She shifted. “I have heard you have perhaps had some hardship beyond your illness,” she said, pressing into this very delicate subject with the greatest of care. Walter had been a proud man when they were together.

To her surprise, he chuckled at her question rather than avoid it. “You are referring, I suppose, to my disastrous loss of fortune?”

She hesitated and then nodded slightly. “If you wish to tell me about it.”

He waved a hand as if it were meaningless. “The money that was not bound up in entail was drained away by empty endeavors and poor investments. Since I turned over all the estate business to my son, a bit of balm on the wounds I caused all those years ago, it is coming back. But my home here and my lifestyle are greatly reduced, I admit.”

Vivien nodded. “I owe you a debt, Walter.”

He lifted both eyebrows as her statement sank in. “No.”

“Yes,” she said, with as much strength as his denial. “I would have been on the street if it had not been for your assistance all those years ago. You took your reputation and placed it over me, making me a commodity other men desired. And you settled me well enough that it began my rise. So I owe you this.”

He stared at her. “Why? Why now?”

She pondered how to respond and decided the truth was the best way. “Walter, I am leaving London. This Season shall be my last.”

She wobbled a little on her feet. Since making her grand announcement to her servant a few weeks before, she had not spoken her decision out loud. Now she heard the words, felt their finality, and it staggered her.

It seemed to do the same for him. He blinked at her, face blank as if he hadn’t understood the language she spoke. After what seemed like an eternity, he said, “I beg your pardon.”

“I am going to go to the continent and start over. Buy a little home, create a new name. I’ll call myself a rich widow and have a different life.” She sighed. “But there are things left to do here. Words to be said. And people, like you, to thank.”

He reached out a hand and she rushed to him, taking it as she settled in next to him.

“Vivien,” he murmured.

She smiled. There was so much to just her name. So much understanding that passed between them. She squeezed his fingers gently. “I’m going to deposit a sum in an account for you.”

He jolted. “No, Vivien, truly—”

“Tush,” she interrupted as she slipped her hand from his. “Allow me to settle my debt with you and cross it from my ledger.”

“You owe me no debt,” he insisted, but his tone grew weaker with every word.

She leaned across and gently kissed his cheek. “I wish to repay it, regardless. Hire a pretty nurse with it. Let her take care of you…in more ways than one.”

He burst into laughter that put the youth back into his eyes. “When you put it that way, how could I refuse?”

She pushed to her feet. “Excellent. I will send word to you this afternoon once the deed has been done.”

He watched her but did not stand, proof yet again of his weakened state. “Will you see me again before you go?”

She nodded. “I will. Now do not trouble yourself by seeing me out. I can do that myself. I’ll let your servant know.”

He smiled his goodbye and she slipped from the room and from his home with only a few words. Outside, Greenley had returned from his own visit and was standing beside her vehicle with a satisfied smile.

“I trust your sister is well?” she asked as he helped her into the carriage.

He nodded. “Oh yes, ma’am. Right as rain. I hope your visit was just as pleasant.”

She smiled and he stepped away. As soon as he was gone, her smile faded. Seeing her old friend had been a bittersweet pill indeed. And his remarks on love left her spinning.

But the more she pondered them, the more she wondered—could she dare to allow her heart to rule her, even for a few weeks? Would she be able to survive on those memories for years to come? Did she have the nerve do it and know that the pain at her parting from Benedict would be far greater than anything she had ever known?

Chapter Fifteen

The latest party his mother had dragged him to had been a failure of nightmarish proportions and Benedict’s head pounded as he entered his foyer. He waved off his chattering butler and trudged up the stairs.

His mother knew about Vivien. She wasn’t so indelicate as to state her knowledge outright, thank God, but her desperation in matchmaking and her comments about appropriate brides made it clear that his brother had taken his concerns to a whole new level.

Now debutantes were being thrown at him like tomatoes at a street skirmish and because of his title and fortune, not a one seemed to care about Vivien’s appearance at the earlier party. He had danced until he was certain he had a blister and the empty, cloying chattering of chaperones echoed in his mind.

He pushed open his chamber door and slammed it behind him with the heel of his boot. Boots he immediately began to remove even as he made for the bell to call for his valet. Before he could do so, a voice stopped him.

“I would be happy to stand in Mr. Aubrey’s stead if you are in need of assistance.”

His hand still hung in the air, inches from the bell, and he could not bring himself to turn right away for fear he would find the room empty.