Heartless (24 page)

“You're … you're sending me away?”

“Think of it more as putting an end to your employment.”

She looked stricken. “But what about … what we just did?”

“I didn't summon you here for the purpose of fornication, but it does make a rather nice parting memory, don't you think?”

A strangled sound came from her throat. Ariel's face went paper white and she gripped the edge of the table to steady herself. “You're telling me it is over between us. You're saying that you no longer … no longer want me.”

He shrugged. “You're a fetching little piece. Bedding you is hardly a burden. There is simply someone else I want more.”

Her eyes filled with tears. Big shiny drops began to slide down her cheeks. In the past, he would have ached at the sight of them. Not anymore.

Ariel brushed at the wetness with a trembling hand and lifted her chin. “I'll need to find lodging. Give me a day or two—”

“It would be better if you left today.” He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, plucked out a single gold guinea, caught her wrist, and pressed it into her palm. “That ought to keep you for a while, long enough to find a new protector.” With Marlin waiting in the wings, it wouldn't take any time at all.

The thought of them together made the bile rise in his throat. Justin clenched his jaw so hard a muscle spasmed in his cheek.

Ariel's fingers tightened around the coin and she lifted her eyes to his face. “I was right about you in the first place,” she said softly. “You're vicious and cruel. You're the most heartless man I've ever met. How could I have been such a fool?”

Justin said nothing to that, just watched as she raised her chin, squared her shoulders, and walked with quiet dignity across the room.

If anyone was a fool, it was he. But he wouldn't be one again. He thought of the beautiful ring he had purchased, the life he had envisioned with Ariel, and a sharp, squeezing pain stabbed into his chest. It hardened into a thick wall of ice that blocked all other sensation as she walked out of the room and closed the door.

*   *   *

Fighting back tears, numb with shock and pain, Ariel closed the door to the armoire in her bedchamber, leaving the expensive clothes Greville had bought her inside. Instead, she gathered those few possessions she would need, said goodbye to a teary-eyed Silvie, picked up her small tapestry satchel, and left the house.

Once she reached the street, the tears she'd been fighting came with a vengeance, blurring her vision until she could barely see.

Oh, God, oh, God, how could he?
A bitter sob slipped from her throat. She had thought she knew him. She had trusted him. She had fallen in love with him.

But she didn't know the cold, detached, ruthless man she had encountered in the study. A man who had made love to her to satisfy his momentary lust, then cast her aside like a worn-out shoe.

Oh, dear God.
Ariel wrapped her arms around her waist and doubled over, a soft moan seeping past her lips. In all the years of her father's abuse she had never hurt like this, never felt such agony, such unbearable pain. She had never been so totally and completely lost, felt so utterly without direction. She had nowhere to go, only the small bit of money he had given her, and not the vaguest notion what to do. The only friend she could go to for help was Kassandra Wentworth, and Kitt was somewhere in Italy, hundreds of miles away. In the past, she might have gone to Phillip, but after what he had done, she knew better.

Phillip was just like Justin. Callous and unfeeling. Lying and deceitful. Perhaps the two men's hatred had risen from the fact they were so much the same.

Swaying unsteadily along the paving stones, her heart aching, her eyes full of tears, Ariel stumbled and nearly fell. She caught herself and leaned against a wrought-iron fence to catch her breath, trying to think what to do, where she should go, but her mind was fuzzy and numb, and as the hours passed, her legs simply carried her aimlessly from one street to the next.

The day was slipping away. Soon it would be dark and she would need shelter. She looked down at one of her hands, feeling as if it were detached from her body, saw that she still carried her small tapestry satchel, remembered that it contained her belongings and the coin the earl had given her. If she was careful, perhaps there would be enough to survive until she could find some sort of employment.

She took a steadying breath and glanced around her. She had wandered farther than she'd realized. The buildings in this section were slightly run-down, some of the windows cracked, shutters hanging loose on their hinges. She had no idea where she was, and the neighborhood was far shabbier than the one she'd left behind, but there was a small hotel in the middle of the block up ahead. Perhaps she could find inexpensive lodging.

She walked into the dingy lobby, set her satchel down on the threadbare carpet. “Sir? Could you be so good as to help me, please?”

The ruddy-faced clerk looked up from his paperwork and scowled, peering at her from beneath a brown leather visor that partially covered his thin fringe of hair. “You want a room?”

“That's right. Nothing expensive, just something simple.”

He glanced around, saw no one else. “A room just for you?”

Ariel nodded. “Yes, please.”

He studied her clothes, a simple brown wool day dress with a white muslin fichu at the neck and a plain brown bonnet she wore tied beneath her chin. “Where's your husband? You run away from him?”

“No! I'm not … I'm not married.”

The clerk's scowl deepened and he shook his head. “Sorry. Your kind's nothing but trouble. We don't want no trouble round here.”

Ariel's face burned crimson. Dear God, he thought she was a lady of the evening! “I assure you, sir, I am not … not that sort. I was … I was just…” Frantically she searched her muzzy brain for a plausible story, anything that would account for a young woman being alone in the city. “I was supposed to meet my cousin here today. Something must have happened. She must have been delayed. I'll just need a room until she gets here.”

He only shook his head. “Try someplace else.”

She could see it would do no good to argue. Ariel stumbled back out on the street, blinking against a fresh wash of tears. Justin must have known what would happen when he sent her away. Everything she'd believed about him was wrong. He'd never cared about her. She meant less than nothing to him. Her heart ached unbearably.

She tried two more hotels without success and finally wound up in a stuffy attic room above an inn in the Strand. A taproom sat directly beneath. Ribald laughter drifted up the stairwell, but at least the room was clean and there was a lock on the door.

Ariel sank down on the narrow bed shoved against one wall. She thought of Justin and tried to imagine how she could have made such a terrible mistake. Why hadn't she seen the man he really was? How could she have been so wrong about him? But no answers came, and as the hours slipped past and darkness settled in, she curled up on the mattress still wearing her clothes and tried to fall asleep.

She was still lying there, still awake, still numb with pain and grief, when the sun came up the following morning. She tried not to think of the tender, caring man Justin had pretended to be, but again and again, the memory reappeared. They were laughing together in Tunbridge Wells. She was helping him with his ledgers, making plans to build stone cottages for the workers in Cadamon. Making tender love in the cozy house he had rented.

The morning grew later, slipped into afternoon. She tried to convince herself to leave, but she was so exhausted, so completely drained, she couldn't think what to do, and even if she knew, she didn't have the will to do it. Instead, she sat there unmoving, her hands and feet numb with cold, feeling the sluggish beat of a heart that was broken in two.

Another day passed. Thoughts of Justin grew fuzzy; the torment of her hopes and dreams began to fade. It was all a lie, she knew. His rare, beautiful laughter, his gentle care of her, his concern, none of those things had been real. Little by little, she banished the memories of them, shoved them to the back of her mind, buried them deep inside her heart.

By the time she came out of her room the following morning, weak from not eating, her eyes swollen and red from the tears she had shed, Ariel had accepted that Justin Ross was exactly the cold, heartless man he had been in his study the day he had sent her away.

And she hated him for it.

She hated herself, as well, for being so easily taken in. She vowed she would never again be so naive, so utterly trusting of another human being. She had learned a painful lesson, but she was young yet, and life went on. She would find a way to survive, just as she had done when she was fourteen.

Only this time, she would do it on her own. She would owe no one. She would make her own way, no matter what it took. No matter how hard she had to work, no matter the sacrifice she would have to make.

Whenever she despaired of failing, she would think of the cold, unfeeling man she had once thought she loved. And she would simply be grateful that at last she was free of him.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

Clayton Harcourt walked into the study of Justin's house in Brook Street. He hadn't seen his friend in over a week. Justin had never arrived at their scheduled meeting at the club, had only sent word of his regrets the following day. Clay still hadn't heard from him, and frankly, he was worried.

If nothing else, it simply wasn't like Justin to let his business interests go by the wayside.

Clay found him working behind his desk. He rose at Clay's approach and Clay's feet stopped moving at the sight of him. Thin and sallow, his cheeks slightly sunken in, he had the look of a man who had recently fallen ill. But it was his eyes that made Clay's chest go suddenly tight. They looked empty, completely without emotion, and Clay knew in an instant whatever had happened had something to do with Ariel Summers.

“It's good to see you,” Justin said, coming from behind the desk with an outstretched hand. Clay returned the handshake. “I'm sorry about our meeting.… Something unexpected came up.”

“I thought I had better check on you. It isn't like you to put off pressing matters of business.”

“Yes, well, I'm sorry about that, too. I've signed the necessary papers. We can close the deal on the mine anytime you wish.”

Clay just nodded. He couldn't take his gaze off the hollow-eyed man in front of him. “It's obvious something has happened,” he said gently. “Whatever it is, it has to have something to do with the girl.”

Justin turned away. “I'd rather not talk about it, if you don't mind. Suffice it to say, the wedding is off.”

“Just like that?”

Justin shrugged his shoulders. “It is probably for the best. I was hardly cut out for the role of husband.”

“Where is she?”

Justin reached toward the stack of papers perched on the corner of his desk, began to sift through it. “I imagine by now she has found another protector.”

He said the words with a casual air, but when he glanced up, there was so much pain in his face Clay felt it like a blow. He wanted to ask again what had happened, but pressing Justin for answers wouldn't do the least amount of good. His housekeeper, Mrs. Daniels, had friends among the servants in the house. He would ask her if she could discover what had occurred.

“Are you certain you're all right?” Clay asked. “You don't look very well.” Only one other time in his life had he seen his friend so remote, so painfully withdrawn—after he'd discovered Margaret Simmons in bed with Phillip Marlin.

Marlin?
Surely not. God wouldn't be so cruel. But Ariel had been involved with Marlin when Justin first met her, and Phillip had always had a way with women.

“I'm fine,” Justin said. “Just a little tired is all.”

From the look of him, that was the understatement of the year. Clay forced himself to smile. “Since you are once again unattached, why don't we make a visit to Madame Charbonnet's?” He only asked to test the waters and watch his friend's reaction.

Justin's lips curved up in the coldest smile Clay had ever seen. “That sounds like a very good idea. I've a brief trip to make out of town, but as soon as I return, I'll hold you to it. After all, one woman is as good as another, once they are flat on their backs beneath you.”

The bitter words, harsh even for Justin, sent a shiver down Clay's spine. If Justin had been cold and wary before, he was a man of ice now.

Clay thought of Ariel Summers and wished he could wrap his hands around her slender neck and squeeze the life out of her.

Just as she had done to his friend.

*   *   *

The biting fall winds whistled through the cracks in the walls of the small attic room above the Golden Partridge Inn. Ariel shivered and tried to keep warm. Her money had run out long ago, but the owner had agreed to let her work in the kitchen, filling in for Daisy Gibbons, who was ailing in her last weeks of pregnancy. But money was tight and he had enough help already. Once the baby was born, Daisy would return to work and Ariel would have to leave.

“What am I going to do?” she said more to herself than to Agnes Bimms, the cook at the inn, as she scoured the burnt bottom of a huge iron kettle in the kitchen. “Mr. Drummond has done his best to help me, but Daisy's baby is due any day now. She needs the money. She'll be returning to her job as soon as she can. I've answered ads in the paper, knocked on doors, tried to find work through an employment agency. I've done everything I can think of. Without references, no one will hire me.”

“And a cryin' shame it is, too, what with your fancy schoolin' an' all. Ye'd make a fine governess, ye would, fer one of them rich nabobs in the West End. A shame is what it is.”