The Courtesan's Daughter (38 page)

“But if we aren’t to speak of me,” she said, sitting down gracefully, one might even have said
languidly
, on the yellow silk sofa, “then I must insist we speak of Ashdon and Caroline before we go into dinner.”

“I am not staying for dinner. It’s enough that I’m in the same room with those … those …” he said, gesturing not at all discreetly in the direction of her brother and his sons.

“Relatives?” she cheerfully supplied. “But we are all related now, darling. Let’s learn to enjoy it, shall we?”

“You enjoy it, that’s plain,” Westlin said. “What a devious revenge, to have my grandchildren, the heirs to the earldom, be part savage.”

“One hopes the greater part,” Sophia said in liquid tones, which she knew would annoy him … well, savagely.

“Give over,” Staverton said. “You’ve been on this for years, Westlin, and what’s it got you? Indigestion and bile and little else.”

“You’ve always been enamored of that in her,” Westlin said to Staverton.

“And you haven’t? ” Staverton countered.

Really, she hadn’t heard Staverton speak so much in years. Having Westlin attack his choice in a bride must have stirred up something rather violent in him. How delicious for Anne.

“Come, come,” she said with a smile, “as much as I enjoy having men fight over me, I must in this case insist that we stay on topic, and the topic is Ash and Caro. Agreed? Now,” she said, without waiting for anyone’s agreement since it was always such a waste of time, “I propose the most miniscule of truces between us, Westlin, for the sake of our children and our future grandchildren, the little savages.” She paused to smile, enjoying the blaze of disgust that flickered in Westlin’s dark blue eyes. He really was the most entertaining victim. It was most obliging of him. “This is what I want to do; I want you to give the happy couple that lovely house you have rented out on Curzon Street. They should do nicely there, such a pretty location.”

“I will not!” Westlin responded, predictably. “As you say, it’s rented out.”

“And you need the money from that rental, poor darling,” she supplied. “I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of income, Lord Westlin, particularly as I know how desperately you need every shilling. I presume you aren’t aware of it, but I have acquired not a few of your debts. I will call your debt to me canceled if the happy couple may take possession of the Curzon Street house. I shall want the papers drawn up to my satisfaction, naturally.”

“Which means?” he snarled. Again, most predictable of him.

“In Caro’s name, of course,” she said sweetly, “and fruit of her loins, to put it poetically.”

“How much? How much in debt to you am I?”

“Darling, does it matter? More than you can afford, obviously. What’s that old saying? If you have to ask, you can’t afford it? Give them the house, Westy, so much simpler, really.”

He grunted and crossed his arms over his chest. She took it that he agreed. What choice did he have, poor darling?

“You haven’t asked what I will give the bride and groom, so I shall tell you. You remember the pearls, don’t you?” Westlin started and uncrossed his arms. Of course he remembered. The pearls were what had started the whole thing, that and the blanc de Chine cup. “I’m going to give Ashdon his mother’s pearls, that lovely strand you gave to me all those years ago. You really shouldn’t have, Westy, especially as they were your wife’s pearls, from her side of the family, and not really yours to give. From Charles II, weren’t they? Treasured by her family and her most valued possession? Really not the sort of thing one gives away.”

“You understand nothing of English law,” he said. “Those pearls were mine. Everything of hers was mine the moment I married her.”

“I understand everything about English law, darling, I just don’t happen to like most of what I know. In any regard, Ashdon shall have the pearls. They belong to him, and I daresay he has a new appreciation for the value of a fine pearl necklace, don’t you?”

“Your girl’s going to be draped in pearls, Sophia,” Staverton said, “what with the Cavendish pearls of Ashdon’s mother and the strand he’s got off of the Duke of Calbourne. I suppose he could return those, if he chose.”

“I should be very much surprised if Lord Ashdon did not require Caro to be drizzled in pearls morning, noon, and night,” Sophia said. “He has the funds to pay for Calbourne’s pearls, now that he’s won his wager. Oh, yes, and speaking of wagers, I have a gift for you, Lord Westlin, in a gesture of peacemaking between our separate houses now joined.”

“What?”

“Because your poor wife is dead and because her pearls are back where they belong, I have decided to forgive you for that farce of a meeting you arranged between us all. It is quite one thing to have a discreet affair and another altogether of forcing your faithful wife and the mother of your heir into a face-to-face confrontation with your current mistress. That I was wearing her pearls was simply beyond the pale, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sophia’s voice was cold as she remembered that day. The hurt in the Countess of Westlin’s gentle blue eyes had haunted her for a year. She had broken it off with Westlin that night, an act he had not even begun to forgive and, because he could not look too closely at his own culpability, had blamed an old rival, her darling Dalby. And then there was the matter of the blanc de Chine cup.

“It was between us,” Westlin said.

“I assume you mean between you and your sweet wife. I couldn’t agree more, though I think you had the advantage of her in both will and force. What you should never have done was drag me into it. But once I was in, darling, what could I do but play to win?” Sophia smiled coldly.

“I tried to make it up to you,” Westlin said.

Staverton mumbled some excuse and joined Markham in conversation across the room. They were starting to draw looks from the other side of the salon. She really did not want Markham to know what had happened all those years ago as it had absolutely nothing to do with him, but might put him off Caro’s new husband. Things could get so complicated when past grievances bled into present associations. She couldn’t think of a war that hadn’t been begun on just such a footing, and while it was mildly entertaining to watch England and France engage in war after war, it was not conducive to family harmony to have the same thing going on.

“Yes,” she said, “but not very well. By then, of course, I was experienced enough to understand that you had no skill for this sort of thing, Westy. A clear case of the flesh being willing, but the spirit …” She shrugged. “You never should have approached me as you did. My darling Dalby dead not a year and you having gifts delivered to my home. My reputation as a distraught widow of a distinguished man was almost shattered. How did you think it would help your cause to treat me like the most trifling light-skirt?”

“That cup is worth over one thousand pounds!” Westlin shouted.

All in the room turned to look at him. Sophia smiled and shrugged a single shoulder. They all, as a body, turned away. Clearly, Westlin was overmatched, and they knew it to a man. It had always been so, only now she was old enough to know it. And revel in it.

“Yes, darling,” she soothed, “but I am worth so much more. It was very crass of you not to realize it. The Countess of Dalby does not accept stray gifts from unwelcome men.”

“I did not think I should have been unwelcome,” Westlin said stiffly.

“But you quickly learned otherwise, didn’t you? How clever you are. How easily taught,” she said silkily. “Now here is the thing, Westlin. You may have the cup back. It has quite served its purpose and I daresay I’ve quite outgrown my delight in it. Take it. Sell it if you wish. I’m quite certain I don’t want my daughter to be saddled with the debts to your estate that will certainly be revealed upon your death. What an unhappy day that would be.”

They both knew she was not referring to his death, merely to the dismal likelihood of debt. It was common knowledge that he’d run through his wife’s money in the first five years. Westlin, like most of his sort, lacked self-discipline. Sophia’s gaze slid over to Markham; he was listening intently to something George was saying, John putting in a word now and then. It shouldn’t be long now, perhaps even by dessert. She would save her son from Westlin’s fate, no matter the cost.

“You always were the most damned prickly woman, taking offense at the unlikest of things,” he said in a soft growl.

“Are you certain of that, Lord Westlin? I was under the impression that you were simply the most dull of gentlemen, unable to see an insult unless it was directed at him exclusively. Ah, well, I suppose we must agree to disagree. And now, I think dinner must be served. You are staying.”

It was not a question. There was no confusion as to that.

“I’ll just go see what’s keeping Caro, shall I? Poor Ashdon must be tended by now, don’t you think?”

She wasn’t asking, and she didn’t wait for a reply. Nodding to John to carry the duties of host in her absence, she left the yellow salon and made her silent way up the stairs to Caro’s room, only she didn’t get as far as Caro’s room as Lord Staverton, as well as Caro and Ash and Anne, were all clustered in apparent confusion in Anne’s room. Oh, dear. Could they not even dress without supervision?

“I don’t care a whit what anyone says,” Staverton was saying to Anne’s back. “I shall marry you and no one else. Westlin can go to the devil.”

“Didn’t I tell you, Anne?” Caro said from her spot on the small recamier, her torn and muddy shoes hanging over the edge. “Any man would be a fool to give you up.”

“Darling,” Sophia said to her daughter as she entered the room, “go and change for dinner. And see to this poor, bedraggled husband of yours. Surely Mark must have something that will suit him. We dine in minutes and I would so hate to keep Lord Westlin waiting on this, our first of what I am certain will be many cozy family dinners.”

That got everyone’s attention.

It was with some apparent relief that Ashdon left the room, dragging Caro by the hand behind him. She didn’t look at all put out by it. How well that was working out. Staverton left with a final, lovesick look at Anne. She could hardly have been more pleased. When she and Anne were alone, Sophia sat on the recamier and patted the silk cushion, motioning for Anne to sit beside her. Anne did so, though not especially eagerly.

“You are upset about Lord Westlin,” Sophia said bluntly. “You think he is your father, and I will admit, he well could be. And you think that he will ruin your chances with Staverton and, even more to the point, your life among the ton as Staverton’s wife. Have I got it right?”

“Exactly right,” Anne said, dry-eyed. She was a practical woman, who had been, in the kindest of terms, practically brought up. She had seen life’s worst and chosen to reach for life’s best. Sophia sympathized completely.

“Anne, your fears are based on fact. I will not deny it. But you do not have possession of all the facts, and I do, or at least more than you do. Westlin spread his seed upon every possible, that is to say, every available field.”

“And my mother was available.”

“That she was,” Sophia acknowledged, “as were a great many other women, from the highest ranks to the lowest. You may not know it, but Westlin was rather the thing in his day, and many women, I’m certain he would say
most
women, were more than willing to give him a go. You are not the only redhead in England, you know.”

“But I am the only one whose mother was a courtesan.”

“Ridiculous. I can think of three off the top of my head, but of course, I am including actresses. In any regard, what you do not know is that I am most directly responsible for Lord Westlin’s tearing about through town in some typically misguided effort to prove some obscure point about his masculinity or irresistiblility or some such other stupid nonsense that gets into a man’s head and blinds him to all reason.”

Anne was staring at her with her mouth open.

“Yes, well,” Sophia continued, “because I feel responsible, I feel responsible for
you
, the possible fruit of his delirious overindulgence. I will not see you cast down or cast out. You
will
have your lovely marriage to Lord Staverton and you
will
be accepted into the ton, if that is your wish. For myself, I think the thrills are highly overrated. Now, the only thing left is to ask you if you have confidence in my ability to see it through.”

Of course, there was only one answer to that and they both knew it. Sophia dared to say that everyone in London knew it.

Anne threw her arms around Sophia’s neck and whispered, “Thank you. You are the most wonderful, the most amazing woman.”

It was a sure bet that everyone in London knew that as well.

 
THE moment they were in Markham’s rather Spartan room, Caro turned to Ash and said, “I shan’t be put off a moment longer, Ash. Did you marry me for love or for money? Was it only to win the bet that you seduced me in Hyde’s dressing room and made a ruined woman of me?”

“I think everyone knows by now that it was
you
who ruined me with those vicious breasts of yours, popping out at all times and places, grabbing a man and not letting him loose,” Ash said, practically ignoring her as he lifted his torn shirt over his head and giving her an unobstructed view of his naked torso.

It was the first time she had seen his naked anything. She was enjoying the view immensely.

“I should hate to rummage through your brother’s things,” he said, unbuttoning his trousers casually. “Would you find something for me?”

“Call for his valet. He knows where things are. I certainly don’t,” Caro said, mesmerized by the sight of Ashdon’s heavily veined hands moving about his narrow hips.

“Oh, I’m not going to call for his valet, Caro. I don’t want him to see what I’m going to do to you.”

Her stomach dropped three inches, exactly.