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No. The fifteen pounds she collected from the sale of this dress would be a temporary solution only. Quarterly rent on these rooms. Fifteen pounds would give her time to investigate her loss at the bank more closely, to see if anything could be done to recover her savings. She would be able to think through her options carefully, rationally. Find some position, somewhere, without need for panic. It would see her through the three coming months of summer. Three months of his touch…She could honestly expect no more. Dung beetles, not dogs.
At the end, there would be enough left to take her away from London, if that’s what she decided.
It wasn’t what she’d hoped for in her most secret dreams. But there was, after all, a reason she kept those foolish desires secret.
FOUR DAYS of Jenny’s precious week elapsed. Three nights of Gareth’s touch. Four days spent walking the city. Reading advertisements. Trying to find some possibility for her future.
She’d spent four days hoping without reason, and she still had no answer to the question that burned inside her: how could she stay Gareth’s lover without becoming his mistress?
Her question was finally answered on the fourth evening. Gareth came to her rooms as he always did, at the point when the sun tinged the streets with red. He was dressed formally: black trousers and jacket, crisp white shirt and a yellow striped waistcoat with a silk cravat.
“Are you going somewhere tonight?” she asked.
He shrugged, more somber than usual. “Here. That’s all.”
“And do you plan to attend the opera in these rooms?”
“See here,” he said. “Just shut your eyes.”
She did, and lifted her face, expecting a kiss. Instead, his hands brushed wisps of hair off her shoulders. He reached behind her. And then heavy, cold orbs tumbled against her collarbones.
Her eyes snapped open as he hooked the clasp around her neck. She couldn’t see what he’d given her until she pulled the heavy stones away from her chest. Big sapphires, as thick as her thumb, linked together with intricately worked gold. The largest stone at the bottom twinkled a dark, clear blue where it hung in the valley between her breasts. The necklace dragged around her shoulders.
The piece must have cost thousands of pounds.
It felt like it weighed thousands of pounds.
She fumbled at the clasp behind her neck. The hook eluded her.
“Take it off me,” she said. She was trembling, unable to think.
“You don’t like it.” He enunciated each word carefully, tasting them as if ascertaining that the wine had truly gone to vinegar.
“Of course I like it. It’s beautiful.”
But the neckline of her blouse was fraying. Against those gray threads, the sparkle of the stones seemed incongruous. She finally managed to unhook the necklace from about her neck. She dropped the messy tangle of jewels into his coat pocket. “I like it. But. Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
How could she explain? Don’t cheapen this. Don’t turn this into money.
“Don’t pay me,” she finally whispered.
Perhaps what she meant was don’t tempt me. Because she never again wanted to be the kept mistress of any man, let alone this one. The stones choked her, silently screaming that she was his purchased thing, to be discarded at the very moment she became inconvenient.
He looked away. “It’s not money,” he finally said. “It’s jewels. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do in a circumstance like this? Buy you jewels?” His voice rumbled through her, dark and forbidding.
“What kind of a circumstance do you think this is? I don’t want things.”
A corner of his mouth turned down. “Damn. It’s all wrong again. I knew I should have asked White.” He looked at her. “Very well. I can’t give you furniture. I can’t give you jewels. Tell me, what am I allowed to give you?”
If things were simple between them, she would take his coin and his necklace. But what then? It was a trap. As soon as she took them, he would begin to despise her. It would put him in a superior position. And what could she hope for then?
Only that he continued to desire her even after he’d conquered. And that she could respect herself, when she’d let him reduce her to a pocketful of polished minerals.
He tipped her chin up. “What do you want, Jenny?”
She wanted him, arrogant, awkward creature that he was. But that wasn’t all.
His eyes seared hers and Jenny thought of all the things she yearned for. Respect won for her own achievements. Independence. His love, free of entanglements. None of the answers seemed right as she tried them on the tip of her tongue.
The word Jenny was looking for, she realized, was marriage. Oh, she didn’t mean the ecclesiastical joining of man and wife in Anglican ceremony; that would have been too much to hope for. But she wanted a union. The kind that ebbed and flowed with the ups and downs of life. One where gifts were intended as kindness, not as financial shackles, forcing one party to her knees in stultifying dependence.
“Gareth.” Jenny choked on his name. “I’m not sure what I want. But I don’t want the kind of partnership where you buy my participation with cold stones.”
“Is there another sort?” he asked quietly.
“The sort where…” she started slowly, and then stopped.
She wanted his respect. She wanted him to never look down on her again. She wanted him to cast those cold stones away, and she wanted this gulf between them—his title, her penury—to vanish like so much smoke into windy air. But the thought of depending on him shook her. She couldn’t depend on him, because he would leave.
And that was how Jenny discovered the answer to her question. How could she remain Gareth’s lover without becoming his mistress?
She couldn’t.
The only question was whether this affair would end in three months or three days.
ONE MORE DAY was half over before it was interrupted.
“Madame Esmerelda?”
Jenny looked up. Spring sunshine streamed in through the door she’d left open to air out her quarters. The light tangled with dust motes, spangling the air before her. It lit the sandy-brown hair of the woman before her into a glorious mass, almost white with energy. Jenny jumped, and her pulse raced in recognition.
“Feathers!” Jenny exclaimed. “I mean…it’s Miss Edmonton, isn’t it? Whatever are you doing here?”
Gareth’s sister was attired in a smart walking dress, all black-and-white stripes, wide starched cuffs and collar framing her face and wrists. She clutched a beaded reticule in white-gloved fists.
“I have a question for you.”
Jenny winced, and imagined Gareth’s reaction if he found his sister conversing with the woman he was bedding.
“Miss Edmonton,” Jenny said, “I should tell you I am not a fortune-teller, no matter what Ned says. It was all invention.”
Miss Edmonton raised her hand to her mouth in polite dismay.
“My name,” Jenny said, “is Jenny Keeble.” And your brother once promised if I interfered with you, he would destroy me.
Miss Edmonton’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t—that is to say, I have nobody else to talk with. And I desperately need advice.”
“Nobody else?” Jenny ran through everything she knew of Gareth’s family in her mind. It was surprisingly little. Mother—dead. Grandparents—dead. Miss Edmonton’s father was not dead, but according to Gareth, he was not particularly intelligent. Then again, that was according to Gareth. A similarly scathing indictment would likely have been forthcoming no matter who he’d discussed.
“Surely your brother, your father…Either seems a more appropriate choice than I would be.”
Gareth’s sister shook her head. “Madame—I mean, Mrs. Keeble, it’s a woman’s problem.” She wrung her hands around the tiny reticule in her hands. “I can’t talk to my brother about it. You see, I have no mother. I am to be married in a few months, at the end of the Season. And I just had this talk with—well,
with my aunt Edmonton.”
“That talk?”
“Yes, Mrs. Keeble. That talk.”
Jenny shut her eyes. “I really must tell you. It’s Miss Keeble.”
Miss Edmonton grimaced. “Really? Drat. I was hoping the part about your being a widow was true. So you don’t know what happens on the night of—”
“Actually,” Jenny interrupted, “I do. And that is precisely why you should find somebody else to talk with. It’s not proper for you to talk with me.”
A bright blush splotched Miss Edmonton’s cheeks. She lifted a dainty hand to cover her mouth. Jenny waited for the woman to turn away in a swish of starched skirts.
But what the lady said instead was: “Excellent. I need improper. Will you answer my questions?”
Jenny thought about what Gareth would say if he found his sister in her rooms, asking improper questions. He’d be furious. And she could hardly blame him. A gently bred young lady should never spend time alone with a woman like her. Voices from her past surrounded her, mocking. That Jenny Keeble, they whispered. You never can trust her.
