The Price of Temptation Page 5

  And there, just arriving, was her great-nephew Stephen. She sighed. Stuck to him like a boil was that dreadful Julian Jeffries. Her nephew, too, was in desperate need of financial advice, but he was in no shape yet to take it. Always a bit of a playboy, in the months since Robert’s death he had thrown himself into vice with a vengeance, and she calculated that it would already take some years to settle the ensuing debts. At least he would always have the St. Joseph estate to back him. Matilda had helped her brother, Stephen’s grandfather, tie the capital up into so many legal knots and entails that even the owner couldn’t get his hands on the principle without years of court battles.

  It was time to make her entrance. Matilda signaled to the orchestra, and they struck up a fanfare to announce her descent. Even at eighty years of age, she could hold a crowd’s attention. Good carriage was a must, of course, but the diamond tiara she had copied from an ancient Roman original for the occasion didn’t hurt. She quite expected to see many more like it in the coming weeks.

  Matilda made her way through the crowd, stopping for a word here and there. By God, she would have made twice the duchess of Lady Alice Bywater, if she’d consented to marry George when he’d asked her. Lady Bywater still dressed like the simple country lass she’d been fifty years ago, and it seemed too late to change her now. Inevitably she found herself in front of her nephew. “You’re looking peaked, my boy,” the grand doyenne told Stephen. “Perhaps it’s the company you keep.”

  Julian, resplendent in a new waistcoat embroidered in a delicate green to match his eyes, smiled with faint reproof at his lover. “I’ve been telling him he’d be happier if he’d just pay more attention to me. His neglect has been shocking.”

  Stephen shrugged. “Still trying to get my household in order. I don’t know how Robert and Mary managed so well on the allowance from the estate. I’ve heard the harvests were especially good this year; I don’t suppose there’s any chance—”

  “There isn’t,” Aunt Matilda said. “You’ve a very generous portion, Stephen. If you weren’t gambling like a fool, and spending every loose farthing on entertainments that are well beneath you—” She cast a significant glance at the actor.

  “Oh, come now, Auntie,” Julian said, with the smile that doubtlessly fluttered hearts in the cheapest rows. “The gambles you’ve taken in your investments are legendary. Surely you can’t begrudge a man for emulating you?”

  Matilda prided herself on having a remarkably stiff back for a woman of her years. “I took calculated risks on business ventures that I knew had a good chance of success. I never risked a fortune on the flip of a card.”

  Stephen seemed relieved to see a friend approaching, suggesting that his luck had failed to turn yet again at the faro tables last night. “Excuse me, Aunt Matilda—I haven’t seen Drake since the wedding, and need to offer my congratulations. Julian?”

  The actor tossed his golden curls. “Not just now. Auntie and I can have a comfortable coze.” When they were alone, Julian leaned his head closer to Matilda’s. “Darling, you are so wonderful with financial advice. I’m really at my wits’ end.”

  “Not such a long journey, was it?”

  He smiled brightly. “Such a tease you are, Auntie. I fear I must speak plainly: as much as I adore Stephen, it’s difficult to make ends meet lately. He would be so heartbroken if I were forced to look elsewhere for help. Isn’t there anything you can do, for the sake of his happiness?” He batted his remarkable eyes.

  “You know, Julian, perhaps I can help.” One crabbed hand delved into the reticule she always wore on her wrist, and emerged proffering a single coin.

  Julian’s smile faltered. “Half a crown? What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Oh, but darling,” Aunt Matilda said, “as you well know, it’s the fee for an hour’s rental of one of the freelance rooms at Madame Novotny’s. You won’t get the price you commanded twenty years ago, but a couple of nights on your knees should see you back on your feet.”

  Julian was speechless just long enough: probably trying to decide which was the greater insult: the implication, however true, that he had begun his career in a brothel; or the insinuation that his age was somewhat greater than he claimed. Not giving him the chance to come up with a stinging reply, Matilda pressed the coin into his palm and patted him on the arm.

  “Run along now, darling,” she murmured. “There’s enough left of the evening that you could even pay for that dreadful waistcoat yourself.”

  “Look at us,” Julian said later that night, in the house in Floral Street, having refused to take Aunt Matilda’s excellent advice. It wasn’t hard to follow his direction: as soon as Stephen had installed him here, the actor had festooned the bedroom with mirrors, allowing them to view their activities from a variety of clever angles. Stephen approved of the effect, less so of the many shades of red satin, silk and velvet Julian had upholstered every available surface with. It was meant to be sensuous and erotic, he supposed, but it was rather like living inside a surgeon’s tent. “See?” the actor said again, “We look so good together.”

  It was hard to disagree. Even fully dressed, the contrast of Julian’s golden fairness with his own dark smolder was striking, and once they were naked it would be even more so. Striking. Titillating. Arousing. Stephen watched in the glass as he bent his head to lick at Julian’s neck. “I need you tonight,” he whispered, nuzzling one perfectly-formed ear. “I need to lose myself inside you.”

  “Inside me?” Julian laughed. “Not tonight, sweetheart. You were so rough last time, I don’t feel quite recovered even yet.”

  It was your idea to play Mad Captain and Innocent Cabin Boy, Stephen wanted to point out. But it wouldn’t do any good. Julian, as a lover, practiced a very studied unpredictability, and part of his allure was that Stephen never knew what would be forbidden or insisted upon on any given occasion. He sighed. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I’m feeling particularly generous tonight.” Julian’s smile was arch.

  Then give me what I want. He held his tongue. No need to pick a fight. “Meaning?”

  The Golden One tugged at Stephen’s cravat, undoing Charles’ careful work in an instant. “You’ve been far too tense lately. So first, I’m going to relax you with a nice massage. Then I’ve been saving a little surprise for you.” He stopped undressing Stephen long enough to remove an object from a drawer in the bedside stand.

  Stephen stared. The form was something he was quite familiar with, but it was disconcerting to see it detached from its usual place. The size and shape were exact, to the very veins and wrinkles. It even had a slightly perceptible curve to the left. “That looks exactly like —”

  “Me, of course.” He pressed the dildo into Stephen’s hand.

  “How in Hades did you make it?”

  “I had my dresser Bertie help me make the mold from plaster of Paris, then we cast it with pink beeswax. Incredibly lifelike, don’t you think?”

  “I’ve had no complaints about your stamina, Julian.” He picked his cravat up from the floor with his other hand, stuffing it into his pocket. “A dildo is really not necessary.”

  The actor’s lips tightened. “We’ve used toys before. I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Pleased? I’m wondering if it isn’t more that this way, you don’t even have to make love to me yourself. In which case I’m hardly getting my money’s worth.”

  “To get your money’s worth,” Julian said, gritting his teeth, “there would have to be some money involved, wouldn’t there?”

  Stephen thought of the mounds of bills cramming the desk drawer in the library at home. “The house, the carriage, the endless clothes, for God’s sake. They don’t count for anything?”

  “You haven’t paid my allowance in six weeks.”

  “I haven’t paid my staff in six months.”

  Julian stamped his foot. “Oh, bugger your staff!”

  In response, Stephen tossed him the dildo, not certain why he w
as so angry. “Julian, bugger yourself.”

  Chapter Six

  Stephen sat at the library table after lunch the following day, thinking Mr. Riley was looking quite well. He had done something to his hair, of course, but what else? Perhaps the blue satin waistcoat. It was cut close to the secretary’s body, emphasizing the elegance of his build. And the lace on his shirt, falling down to brush his knuckles, drawing attention to the small, fine-boned hands. Very distracting indeed. But it was chiefly the animation in the young man’s face that drew his eye, the rapt attention he gave to the columns of figures on the table in front of him. If Julian gave me that much attention, he mused irrelevantly, I’d fight dragons for him. With an effort he dragged his mind back to what Mr. Riley was saying.

  “ —so even with the new housemaid, we’re that much better off.”

  Jamie looked expectant, so he nodded. “Yes, I see. Very good, Mr. Riley, please go on.” What had he been saying? Something about saving enough money by switching butchers to afford another mouth to feed. Which sounded deuced odd, but if it brought such pleasure to his secretary, he wasn’t going to quibble. Maybe, if he was lucky, he’d get another glimpse of that intriguing dimple. The lace slipped down over the back of one hand, and Jamie pushed it away with the other. Well, you know what they say about small hands. Small nose, too, but hang it, the boy was compactly built all over, it wouldn’t be surprising if—

  “There are several other areas in which Mrs. Symmons and I think we can save considerable expense,” Jamie continued. “For instance, your brandy.”

  Stephen blinked, aghast. Was he joking? “I need my brandy, Mr. Riley. I know it’s expensive, but you can’t expect me to become a teetotaler overnight, just to save some blunt.”

  “I don’t, my lord. In fact, I was going to suggest buying more brandy in bulk, not less.”

  “Buying in bulk? That might save us something in the long run, but the smu — ah, traders I deal with insist on cash payment. It would be awkward to come up with the necessary sums.”

  Jamie hesitated. “Actually, my lord, I had something else in mind. From the evidence I’ve gathered, one doesn’t really taste a liquor much after the first few glasses. Is that true, my lord?”

  Stephen nodded. “Yes, I suppose.”

  “Then wouldn’t it make sense to have a second decanter, next to the first? Nothing too dreadful, of course, but a nice English brandy, perhaps?”

  He sighed, supposing he should make an effort. “All right, Mr. Riley. Two glasses of ambrosia, and then I’ll drink myself to sleep on the second-best.”

  “And then there are the roses, my lord.”

  “Not negotiable.”

  Jamie looked up. “But surely—”

  “No, Mr. Riley. Go on, please.”

  “My lord, Charles buys fresh roses for the household every day, year round. The expense is enormous. If we must have fresh flowers, it seems to me—”

  “I can imagine how it seems to you. But Charles did me a particular favor once, and I promised him the reward of his choice.”

  “Perhaps, if you asked him, Charles would understand.”

  Oh, no. They were never going to discuss that incident again, if Stephen could help it. “I made a promise, Mr. Riley. I will not go back on it now.”

  “Admirable, my lord,” Jamie said, sighing and crossing out a line on the sheet in front of him. “I’m sure there are other items we can economize on, instead.” He looked back at his notes. “Like candles, my lord.”

  “Candles?”

  “Yes, candles. Right now we have wax in every room, when tallow would do just as well in some places. Some of the servants’ rooms, for instance.”

  “Some? Why not all?”

  “Well, Charles sometimes sews in the evening. And Rebecca has been studying her cookbook—her eyes aren’t strong, so she needs good light for that.”

  “And you, Mr. Riley? Don’t you read in your room at night?” A picture came unbidden into his mind, of Jamie curled up in bed in his nightshirt, lace falling over his hand as he turned a page, face rapt.

  “Not usually, my lord. My chimney smokes, so I tend to read in the library.”

  “Does it really? Perhaps it just needs sweeping. I’m sure we could afford that.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I tried poking an umbrella up there, to see if there might be a bird’s nest or something blocking the flue. Several bricks fell out instead. I’m afraid part of the chimney has collapsed, and it will be quite a job to repair it.”

  “Do we have another room?” Stephen asked. There were five spacious bed chambers on his own floor, four of them unused, but surely the secretary knew what he meant. Those rooms were hardly appropriate for servants. No matter how sweet their hands.

  “Not really, my lord. I like being up on the top floor, and besides, it wouldn’t be suitable for me to be on the hall below with the girls. There are other rooms up top where I am, my lord, but they’re being used for storage, my lord.”

  Oh yes. Robert and Mary’s possessions, and the boys’ too, of course. Five lifetimes of things Stephen couldn’t bear to look at, not just yet. The change in his expression must have been apparent.

  “It’s all right, my lord,” Jamie hurried to assure him. “I don’t mind. And I’ve learned that if the peat is very dry, it doesn’t smoke nearly so bad. I have to avoid coal, of course, which is a pity, because it’s much cheaper, but on the other hand, since I’m not in there until I go to sleep, I hardly need wax candles, do I?”

  Stephen found himself smiling, despite the stir of painful memories, and without thinking he reached out and squeezed Jamie’s hand. His secretary wasn’t such a bad sort. For a mouse.

  It was cold that night, so Jamie attempted a fire again, feeling foolish. Like this time the chimney’s going to decide to draw. Still, the peat was dry and should burn cleanly, and if he kept the blaze small, he might not get smoked like a winter ham. And in fact it wasn’t too bad, at least when he first went to bed. He lay on the narrow mattress, unable to sleep. Counting his victories, wrestling with the challenges still unmet. So far, the food was better, thanks to Sam’s coaching of Rebecca and a first edition of Susannah Clark’s The Frugal Housewife he’d dug up from the library. And cheaper, too: he’d been right about the butcher, and had his suspicions about the dairyman as well. They were saving enough money just there to pay the wages of the new housemaid, Maisie. She was a find: a thin, grey ghost of a woman who worked like Sisyphus on any task put in front of her. She and Betsy got on well together, which wasn’t that surprising when you consider that Betsy was motherless and Maisie had recently lost her only daughter. Maisie’s presence relieved the burden on the other servants, but didn’t put them ahead—yet. Where else could the household trim expense?

  The candles, the brandy; why wouldn’t his lordship compromise on the roses? What could the favor Charles did for him be, that he had to reward it at such expense? The cost was so enormous for the out-of-season blooms, that it would be cheaper to build a damned greenhouse and grow them at home.

  He sat up in bed. Why not? It really would be cheaper, in the long run. There was plenty of room in the back garden. A billow of smoke from the fireplace cut off his ruminations. “Blast,” Jamie muttered, rising to close the damper. There was a sound from somewhere below him in the house. Someone else up late? He paused to listen, ears intent, and heard the unmistakable creak-click of the door to the kitchen garden. Charles, deciding to join Sam? Or Rebecca, sneaking out for a rendezvous with her footman fiancé? But both were open enough about their activities that they should have ventured out at a more sensible hour.

  Maybe one of them woke up with that sense of longing, he thought. The one that hits you in the middle of the night, when you just can’t stand being alone anymore...

  Lucky Charles, lucky Rebecca. To have someone to go to, when they needed it.

  A few days later, the earl stopped in briefly to change his clothing before going out to dinner. Charles found d
ressing his master twice the task it usually was, and by the time they had decided on an ensemble the dressing room attached to Stephen’s bedchamber was littered with cast offs.

  “Sorry, Charles.” Stephen picked up a discarded cravat from the surface of the dressing table, searching for something. “But I have to look my best tonight—I need confidence for the task ahead. Where’s the box with my cufflinks?”

  “Here. Did you want the jade ones?” Charles rifled through the carved wooden box, a present Robert had sent from a visit to India.

  “Yes, perfect. How do I look?”

  Charles regarded Stephen in the full-length mirror, satisfied with his efforts. The new jacket, of dark green wool crepe, was so tightly fitted to the earl’s form that he had been sweating with exertion when he had finally shoehorned his master into it. Stephen had been vague so far on his night’s plans, but said he wasn’t going anywhere formal, so after some discussion they had eschewed knee breeches for a pair of sleek fawn trousers. Any dandy would be proud of the paisley waistcoat, its dark blue and green pattern discreetly enhancing the color of the jacket he wore over it. And it had taken nearly a dozen tries, but Stephen’s cravat was a triumph: Charles had mastered the difficult Waterfall at last.

  The valet nodded, handing over a fresh pair of gloves. “Can’t remember when I’ve seen you look so well.”

  Stephen looked at his reflection, straightening his back. “Good. Expect me home by midnight. Now ask me why.”

  “All right, Stephen, why?” The valet held his breath while he waited for an answer.

  “Because it’s over with Julian—and I mean it this time. Almost certainly. Lord, what a scene.” Stephen put a hand to his temple. “Any headache drops, Charles?”

  “I don’t think so. I can ask Mrs. Symmons. Mr. Julian—he’s moving out of the house on Floral Street, then?” Charles tried not to sound too hopeful.