Diana blinked at her.
“I’m sorry,” Lavinia said abruptly, climbing to her feet. “I’m just tired. I don’t mean to be such a dragon.”
“I know you miss your mother,” Diana said, and hugged her. “Your birthday is tomorrow, isn’t it? The first birthday after my sister died, when my mother had banished me, I missed them both dreadfully.”
“Actually, I might pay my mother a visit tomorrow,” Lavinia said. “Lady Knowe says that she is not well enough to come here, but the sanitarium is only an hour’s drive.”
“Parth can escort you,” Diana said. “He can ask your mother for your hand at the same time. What a lovely birthday present!”
Lavinia had so many blasted emotions swirling inside her that she felt positively ill. What happened to the days when Willa mocked her for being endlessly cheerful? When she thought that any difficult situation could be eased with a smile?
She pictured confessing Lady Gray’s thievery to Parth, and no smile appeared. She thought about her mother, alone in a sanitarium, and couldn’t curl up even one corner of her mouth.
Chapter Twenty-four
Meanwhile
It had been six weeks since Parth had last seen Lavinia, though he was secretly embarrassed by his precision. He helped Elisa from the carriage with barely concealed impatience, after which he had to introduce her to Prism, who summoned Aunt Knowe, who summoned the duchess.
Then all three ladies chattered about the journey, about Italy, about Parth’s luxurious carriage.
Finally, finally, they bore Elisa away to her chamber to bathe and ready herself for luncheon. Elisa’s eyes were shining as she bid him goodbye. She was ecstatic to find herself in the bosom of the Wildes.
Parth bowed, and took off for the north tower. He bounded up the steps two at a time. He paused outside the sewing room, and just as he was about to enter, Lavinia’s voice floated into the open corridor.
“Prince Oskar and Lord Jeremy are rich, but that’s not good enough. Parth was the only one who could really help me.”
A grin spread over his face. Damned right, Oskar and Jeremy weren’t good enough.
“I told you Parth was the man to marry, Lavinia, back when I sent you in to propose marriage,” Diana crowed. Lavinia murmured something he couldn’t hear.
“But you didn’t give up,” Diana cried. He could hear the triumph in her voice. “My cousin never gives up!”
The air in his lungs felt queerly hot, and it occurred to him that he was eavesdropping, like a housemaid hovering in the corridor.
Parth’s stomach knotted. He felt like a prize awarded after a horse race.
“Now I am hoping that you don’t end up with a three-month baby because you traded your virginity for that victory,” Diana said.
God, he did too. He turned and headed for his chamber before he could hear Lavinia’s answer. He felt pity for her, he decided. That was why he felt sick. He felt an edge of contempt as well, and that was dangerous.
Whatever the emotion, it was bitter on his tongue. Lavinia had needed a rich husband, and she and Diana had chosen him. Focused on him. He knew that. Bloody hell, she’d told him everything, and he’d offered to find her a husband who was rich enough.
Why, in that case, did he feel so angry?
Air sawed through his chest and images, unbidden, started coming to him. What had Lavinia been doing outside Felton’s in the pouring rain, her soaked clothing pasted against her admittedly magnificent chest? No lady went out the back door of an establishment and stood in the alley. She must have known that his carriage had pulled out of Oxford Street.
It had been a deliberate seduction.
Coming to his bedchamber hadn’t worked, but the wet gown certainly had. From that moment he abandoned serious thoughts of Elisa. Lavinia had scooped him up as neatly as she had those other men who had offered her a ring.
A cold bleakness descended over him.
Lavinia had maintained that she didn’t want to announce their betrothal until he asked her mother for her hand in marriage—but she had slept with him. Lady Gray had no choice in the matter; neither did he. No gentleman breaks off an engagement after taking a lady’s chastity.
His jaw tightened so much that he could feel his back teeth clenching.
It was . . .
Nothing.
Not important.
He was a rich man and he would not have backed out, whether Lavinia had bedded him or not. She had given him something priceless in return for his money: her virginity. Her . . . her pleasure. Her future.
That was enough.
This was nothing more than a shock. Lavinia had needed a rich, powerful husband, and he happened to be the rich man who was lucky enough to be chosen.
He rubbed his chest as he entered his bedchamber, as if something thornlike pricked him there. He found his new valet, Bell, waiting to help him change from his traveling garments.
“Belowstairs, sir,” Bell said abruptly, “they seem to be under the impression that you are courting a young lady here in the castle.”
Parth merely nodded. Bell brushed an invisible speck of dust from the coat he held, adding, “Rather than the contessa.”
If Bell imagined that he and Parth would share a warm intimacy in which they discussed Parth’s love life, he was mistaken. Parth gave him a steady look.
“As your valet, sir, I frowned on such impertinent speculation, but I thought you should know about the erroneous impression.”
“I intend to marry Miss Lavinia Gray, not the contessa. I was very good friends with the contessa’s late husband.”
At that, Bell demonstrated the intelligence that Parth required in a valet, and held his tongue while Parth changed clothing, after which Parth headed down to the drawing room to wait for luncheon. His mood lifted when he found North there, a glass in hand.
North came to his feet and they met in a rough hug that two gentlemen would never exchange in public. “Thank God you’re here,” North said.
“Missing Alaric?” Parth asked.
“And Horatius.” North raised his glass. “In honor of whom . . .” He took a healthy swallow.
“What’s that you’re drinking? And how’s Diana?” Parth crossed to the sideboard and considered a glass of whisky. “When last I saw her, she was unable to keep anything down.”
Diana had certainly sounded well when he’d eavesdropped on her celebrating Lavinia’s “victory.”
“She’s not my wife yet,” North said. “I keep remembering that Godfrey’s father died before he could marry, before he even saw his own son.”
Something hot and angry was still beating in Parth’s chest, but he made himself listen to North. “Is Aunt Knowe worried about her or the baby?”
“No. Diana keeps down food now, though nothing before noon. She looks better.” His voice trailed off. “I’ll go see how she’s feeling.” He set down his glass with a sharp click, and bounded from the room without looking back.
Parth sank into a chair, enjoying the abrupt silence in the room. Lavinia was . . . what she was. He knew who she was. Hell, he could afford a hundred bonnets.
For God’s sake, he’d already known that she’d decided to woo him. Could a woman be more candid than Lavinia? She’d come to his room and proposed marriage. She had told him that she needed to marry a rich man.
That’s what made the air in his lungs feel painful. He had wanted to do the pursuing. The idea he’d been stalked—as one of the richest men in England—and then scooped into a net by a drenched bodice and a pair of wide blue eyes didn’t sit well with him. Especially given Diana’s smug claim that they’d bested him.
He wasn’t surprised when Lavinia entered the room before anyone else; it was that sort of day.
Her dress was made of a peachy fabric that looked silky, as soft as her hair, and she’d piled all her ringlets on her head. She ran through the door and looked about, freezing when she saw him.
“Parth!” Her voice was so lovely, throaty
, and full of affection—and she ran straight toward him.
He was damned lucky to have her—no matter how he got her, or why. He forced a smile and strode over to her, bowing and kissing her hand.
“My hand?” Lavinia asked, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “But we’re alone.”
Parth looked down into her eyes and knew it was a watershed moment. “I want you to know that there’s nothing to confess,” he said, his voice as soft as he could make it.
“Confess?” Her eyes filled with apprehension.
He stepped back. Perhaps they should conduct this conversation somewhere else. But, damn it, he hated the distance that lay between them. He could tell her it didn’t matter, and then . . .
Well, she would have to promise not to lie to him again.
“It’s not important now,” he said.
“Parth?” She was utterly still, like a nocturnal animal caught in the glow of a lantern. “What isn’t important?”
When he didn’t answer immediately, she asked again, “What isn’t important, Parth? What are you trying to say?”
“That you made up your mind to marry a rich man. That you—that you chose me.”
“You already know that,” she said. Her eyes glittered, and for a moment he thought she was tearful. But no, because oddly enough, the corners of her mouth tipped up. She was smiling. A bit.
“It’s not as bad as you think. I will bring you a dowry. The money my father left is gone, but if we wait to marry, just a year or so, I can supply my own dowry.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, that I am making commissions from planning trousseaux,” Lavinia said.
He noticed that her hands were shaking. “You can provide your own dowry.” The words dropped into the silence like pennies onto flagstones.
“It won’t be as large as it might have been, but I won’t come to you empty-handed.”
No one had ever surprised Parth as much as Lavinia Gray did. Probably no one ever would. “I don’t need your dowry, no matter where it came from,” he said flatly.
“I know you don’t need it. But I would rather have it.”
His mind was slowly catching up to what she was revealing. “In essence, the odious Lady Blythe is supplying your dowry?”
Lavinia nodded, her eyes wary.
“That’s hogwash,” he said, the words rasping from his mouth.
She flinched.
“I want to bring a dowry,” she said haltingly.
“No!”
“No?”
“You will not work for a wretched woman like Lady Blythe. No wife of mine will be beholden to a woman like that. Ever.”
“But what I do for her is important,” Lavinia said.
He was too angry to listen. “I don’t care that you schemed to catch my attention. I can pay for all your bonnets and frivolities, all the things you squandered your dowry on. I’ll give you an allowance, Lavinia. You can spend it any damned way you please.”
The moment the words left his mouth he knew he’d made a mistake.
Chapter Twenty-five
Lavinia sucked in a breath of air in a futile attempt to stop her chest from tightening. Parth’s eyes were so cold. She opened her mouth to defend herself—to explain everything to him about her mother’s thefts—but then she saw it would make no difference.
What mattered was the look in his eyes and the tone in his voice. She knew that look, that tone. He was back there again, or maybe he’d never really left there. Perhaps he’d never stopped believing she was shallow as a puddle.
They were back to those cursed bonnets.
“You believe that I recklessly wasted my dowry, don’t you?”
He raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Lavinia. You love clothing. You likely had no idea what kind of money you were running through. Did you?”
Lavinia couldn’t lie; she had had no idea. He thought of her as a frivolous butterfly, who had bought every color that struck her fancy. And yet . . . hadn’t she been precisely that?
The scorn in his voice fed directly to the chilly whisper in the back of her head that had told her the same. She was no good at anything.
No. She stopped herself. Only now was she cobbling together a sense of pride in herself, and she could not allow that precious part of her heart to be trampled.
If Parth didn’t know what she was like now, then there was no point to this marriage.
Despair wrapped around her heart and twisted hard. “Is this because of Elisa?” she asked impulsively. “Would you prefer to marry her? Have you changed your mind while you were in London?”
His eyes narrowed. “Is that what you think of me? That I would leave for a few weeks and change my mind? After sleeping with you?”
“That needn’t stop you,” Lavinia said, keeping her voice steady. “I am not carrying a child.”
“I am a man of honor!” The words roared from his mouth.
“I know,” Lavinia said, scrambling. Parth’s eyes burned with anger. In that moment, she envisioned a marriage in which her husband would roar at her for being frivolous. Day after day of facing the sort of censure she was being subjected to now. Asking her scathingly if she’d overspent her allowance. Or asking her kindly.
It hardly mattered.
The truth was that he thought nothing of the commissions she’d earned. He scorned them.
Why not spend her days shopping? He wouldn’t expect anything else.
“I’m sorry, Parth, but I cannot marry you.” Anguish caught at her throat but she made herself continue. “I have changed my mind.”
Because, she said silently, deep down, you believe I’m an idiot. Because you believe I have a head stuffed with feathers. Because you believe that I . . .
Because you agree with all the worst things I think about myself.
“You refuse to marry me because I don’t want your dowry?”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
“That is the only piece of new information between us,” he said, his voice so chilly that she felt the fine hairs on her arms stand on end. “Well, that and the fact you ventured into the rain to lure me with a wet bodice. Entirely successfully, by the way.”
“What are you talking about?” Lavinia asked incredulously. And then, shaking her head, “It doesn’t matter. My dowry has nothing to do with my refusal to marry you.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Then?”
“It’s the way you look at me,” she said raggedly. “The way you see me.”
“I look at you with desire. And possession. You will be my wife. You are mine.” His voice growled from some place deep inside him.
“You look at me as if I’m shallow and extravagant,” she said, choking back a little sob. “It’s because you see me that way, Parth.”
He started to say something and she held up her hand. “I know you’ve said otherwise, but the truth is that whenever you’re annoyed with me, the truth comes out, as it just did.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way you looked at me when you said I didn’t know how much clothing cost. When you implied that I had squandered my dowry.” Her voice trembled, and she had to stop for a moment to recover herself. “You were right. I did not know the cost of the things I bought.”
His face softened. “But I have seen how much you’ve learned.”
“Yet you neither respect nor sanction my occupation,” she said dully. “I cannot marry you, Parth.” Despite herself, tears spilled down her cheeks. “I consider myself to be so much more dull-witted than Willa.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I am the one who bought eight bonnets. I’m also the one who never reads ancient Greek history, who failed at French, and who adored Lord Wilde. I’m the one who’s shallow as a puddle.”
She saw him flinch, and a muscle ticked in his jaw. “You are not shallow and you can buy fifty bonnets if you like!” His eyes were dark with . . . something. It c
ould be torment. Guilt, perhaps. He wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings. He was a gentleman.
“I know.” She turned away, heartsick. “But it hurts, Parth, and if you cannot see why, then I cannot explain it.”
“Please try, Lavinia. Help me to understand.”
She dashed tears away from her cheeks, cursing her inability to keep her emotions under control. Then she forced herself to meet his eyes. He deserved that. It wasn’t his fault, after all.
“You’re a good man, and you deserve a woman who is as—as splendid as you are.” For a moment she almost lost composure again, and caught herself. “I will always disappoint you, Parth, and I can’t bear that. I am . . . I am all those things you believe of me. But despite that, I still deserve—I still deserve—”
Sobs overtook her, and words became impossible.
His arms closed around her like steel. “Please don’t cry, Lavinia. Please. I’ll do anything to make you feel better.”
“Then let me go,” she said, her voice shaking. She pulled away, and summoned what inner strength she had. “I no longer wish to marry you, Parth. I hope you can forgive me.”
With that, she turned and slipped from the room, closing her ears and her heart to the low, hoarse shout that followed her down the corridor.
“Lavinia!”
No.
She walked faster, but he didn’t follow. Once in her room, she sank onto the bed. Parth’s infatuation with her had been a glimmer that skimmed the surface of what he really thought about her. Her shallow puddle had been disguised by a thin layer of glittering ice for a while that readily cracked.
Perhaps even more readily, she thought dully, because she had played the loose woman. She had gone to bed with him, and she hadn’t been ladylike about it. She had let herself be seduced in a tower, where anyone might have entered. She had virtually torn off his clothing in a corridor. Behaviors that confirmed his opinion of her that she was manipulative, and would do anything for money.
The pretty, deceptive ice was shattered. Feeling as if her heart, too, was shattered, Lavinia got up. If she stayed here, in her bedchamber, he would find her.