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“You are headstrong.” Madame’s tones were clipped, as she half led, half tugged Vivianna toward the door. The room’s inhabitants turned to stare—someone laughed. The doorman in his red coat was waiting, his battered face stern. Suddenly Vivianna was glad she still had her riding crop.
Madame drew Vivianna’s attention back to herself. “You must learn to rein in your impetuosity, mon chou. To give some thought to your actions. To come here was a grave mistake, Miss Greentree, because you have given him the upper hand now. Remember, a man like Oliver Montegomery cannot be bullied, he can only be led. Persuaded.”
Vivianna, about to object to being called “my cabbage,” turned her head to stare. “What can you mean?”
Madame met her eyes thoughtfully. “You are not a fool,” she said, “and neither do I think you are a prude. Most ladies would have fallen into a faint as soon as they set foot in here. You did not. Indeed, I think, Miss Greentree, it would take a good deal to make you faint! And you understand very well what I mean. Oliver is no more selfish than any other gentleman, and he can be got around. He finds you amusing and refreshing. Play upon that. Maybe he even desires you—it is clear that his tastes are jaded and he is looking for something new and different. Play upon that, if you dare. If you are skillful enough you can achieve your aim.”
Vivianna’s face had begun to burn long before Madame had finished. She pulled away from the older woman.
No matter how fascinating I find lovely, bossy women.
Oliver Montegomery’s voice mocked her.
She ignored it.
“I would rather give myself to a snake than try and please that man,” she said furiously, and strode past the doorman and out into the chilly night.
Behind her she heard Madame give a rich laugh, as if she could tell bluster from truth, and then the door closed with a thud. As promised, there was a hansom cab awaiting her.
“You for Queen’s Square?” the cabbie asked her.
“Yes, I am.” Vivianna climbed in.
“You just come from inside there?” She felt the driver’s eyes assessing her from his seat behind and above her compartment.
“Of course not,” Vivianna retorted, although he must have seen her hasty exit.
He gave as much credence to her answer as she had expected. “That’s Aphrodite’s, ain’t it? Best academy in London!”
Vivianna was sudden
ly very tired, too tired even to care that she had left her cloak behind. She leaned her head back against the squabs, ignored the talkative hansom driver, and closed her eyes.
Persuade Lord Montegomery? Use her feminine wiles on him? Her mouth quirked. That was assuming she had any wiles, which she had not. Vivianna told herself she was not the sort of woman to flirt, or to speak in other than a plain and direct fashion. She had never had the time or inclination to ponder the mysteries of desire and physical passion.
It was true she had once perused a booklet called Mr. and Mrs. England, which dealt with the ways in which married couples could consummate that passion without conceiving. Books on such matters were illegal in England, although there were those, like Vivianna, who thought that in the right hands they were important and necessary. At the time, Mr. and Mrs. England had not pertained to her; it had fallen into her hands by chance and she had read it through curiosity. But now the images in it came back to her with surprising and disturbing clarity.
Persuade him.
“No!” Her voice was unnaturally loud in the compartment. She would use reason and logic. That was what was needed in this situation—reason and logic had worked before, and it would work this time.
Feminine wiles indeed!
But as the cab rocked her gently through London’s dark streets, Vivianna could not help but remember the intimate feel of his lips brushing against hers, the warm and expert touch of his long fingers on her skin, and the expression of unwilling fascination in his dark blue eyes.
Chapter 3
Oliver didn’t stay at Aphrodite’s Club after all. Not long after Miss Vivianna Greentree left, he discovered that the desire to spend a few hours with one of Madame’s lovely protégées had fled. Their beautiful faces and scantily clad bodies were suddenly stale. Dull. Miss Vivianna Greentree, with her passionate belief in her cause and her honest hazel eyes and her soft sinful lips, had taken the shine off them.
He didn’t like to admit it, and he certainly didn’t understand it. He had realized who she was almost at once, but had pretended to mistake her for one of Madame’s girls. He had set out to embarrass her, to frighten her with his attentions into catching the very next stagecoach northward. The last thing he needed now was this added complication. But he had seriously misread her character. Instead of putting her off with his mauling, it seemed he had lain down a gauntlet, and he had little doubt that she would eagerly pick it up. In hindsight, he should have allowed Hodge to send for the constables.
The encounter had left him feeling baffled and irritable. Not least because what had begun as an attempt to frighten her had turned into something else entirely. One moment he had been playing the rake, and the next he had forgotten everything in the need to have her beneath him on Aphrodite’s chaise lounge. That loss of control wasn’t something that had happened to him recently, in fact not since he was a randy lad first discovering how different girls could be.
He sent his carriage on ahead of him and waved off the offer of a link boy to light his way. Tonight he preferred to walk through the quiet streets of London, alone with his own thoughts. For the last year it seemed to Oliver that he had been on a journey to nowhere—a hellfire journey through the stews of London. He had let it be known that his life had ceased to matter, that he did not care what happened to him, and that he was a threat to no one.
The truth was, since his brother Anthony’s death, he had stopped feeling anything much, apart from the single-minded determination that drove him toward a goal that was yet to be achieved. Pleasure, well yes, sometimes there was that, and sometimes it helped. The heat of passion in a woman’s arms, the rush of gratification when he won at cards, the sharp excitement when his horse came first in a race. There was some pleasure to be found in those things, but it never lasted long. Strangely, before Anthony died, he had believed the life of a rake might be quite nice, but now he longed to draw a halt to the charade. Perhaps he was growing old, because he found himself dreaming of quieter, more mundane pursuits.
But for now Oliver must carry on existing in this barren winter landscape.
