Lord of Deceit (Heiress Games Book 2) (4 page)

H
ours later
, Octavia sat in her bedchamber in Somerville House as her lady’s maid unpinned and brushed her hair. Octavia had a lovely house several blocks away, which Somerville paid for, and she slept there most nights. But when Somerville needed her to host his parties, she stayed at Somerville House after. It was easier than going home and more appropriate for the illusion they maintained.

When he tapped on her door a few minutes later, she smiled. “Shall I excuse myself, miss?” her lady’s maid asked.

Agnes had been Octavia’s maid during her debut season. She was the only person in London who still called her “miss.” “Madame Octavia” was the name Somerville had promoted — no one liked to call a mistress “Miss Briarley,” but Octavia couldn’t pretend that she had been married before, as so many mistresses did. Agnes had chosen to stay with Octavia despite the scandal. Most of her family’s servants were loyal, no matter how dark the deeds of their masters.

“You may go, Agnes,” Octavia said. “We may stay here tomorrow night as well — I will tell you in the morning.”

Agnes nodded and left, letting Somerville in as she departed. Octavia turned to greet him. “How did you find the party tonight, my lord?”

His eyes flickered over her. She no longer felt uncomfortable wearing her peignoir and nightrail in front of him. She always had Agnes undress her before Somerville arrived, since otherwise Somerville would have to undo her buttons for her. It had only taken one awkward night of that for Octavia to make sure she was always ready to receive him without needing to call Agnes back in after.

He didn’t notice anything about her attire, but he raised an eyebrow at her necklace. “Do you like the diamonds well enough to sleep in them?” he asked.

She laughed and touched the necklace at her throat. “I adore them. I think Agnes thought it was charming of me to wear them to receive you. I’m sure she expects that I shall thank you for them properly.”

“You could be the best courtesan in London if you chose,” Somerville said. He almost sounded admiring.

“Shall I thank you again for the lessons?”

Somerville snorted. “As though I could ever teach you anything. You seem to have been born for the role.”

He said it without a trace of irony. But she wasn’t offended. If a statement like that was enough to offend her, she never could have survived going to the shops and hearing the whispered comments from her former friends.

“Shall we discuss what we learned?” she asked, gesturing him toward the pair of chairs in front of her fireplace. “I thought tonight’s event was a success, but I cannot say that everyone is equally in favor of your anti-vice legislation. What did you think?”

They often sat there on evenings such as this one. She had come to expect those quiet moments, when she didn’t have to act as anything other than herself. She had his undivided attention in moments like these — not, perhaps, as a mistress might have expected to have his attention. But she had precious few friends with whom to talk, and Somerville was, if nothing else, an excellent conversationalist.

Granted, it was entirely on his terms. If he was busy, he didn’t always make time for her, and she didn’t ask him to. She knew how important his career was to him.

She also knew that her welfare was entirely tied up in his.

He took the seat she offered him, but he shook his head as he did so. “The legislation can wait, my dear. There is something else we need to discuss.”

“Would you care for brandy?” she asked, still composed — still unaware. “I can fetch you a glass.”

“No,” he said.

There was something about that voice that, for a single moment, transported her back to her modiste’s shop on the day Julian and Chapman dueled. Back to that feeling that the whole room knew something that she did not — that her life had hung on a precipice, and she had been too blind to see it until she was already falling.

She sucked in a breath, but calmed her breathing after that. She was older now. She wouldn’t panic. She looked at him. Really looked at him, as she hadn’t done in ages.

His sandy hair and hazel eyes, his slim build and pleasing height, and his perfectly cut evening suit were nearly as familiar to her as her own reflection. But the worried air he’d had for weeks had intensified. She suddenly realized that it might not be about his legislation — but about her.

“What is it?” she asked, her voice sounding harsher than she meant for it to.

“I think it is time for you to find a new arrangement.”

She felt as dazed as if she really had fallen off a precipice — as though she’d hit the ground, hard. “What?”

He looked more sympathetic than the women had in that shop so many years ago. But it didn’t change the resolve in his voice. “You’ve seen the caricatures, Ava. The gossip has been building for weeks. Castlereagh even told me he could maneuver my legislation more easily if I had a wife instead of a mistress — and the leader of the Commons has not been one to help me before. I cannot ignore his offer.”

Octavia had seen the caricatures. She’d dismissed all of them. It was easier to dismiss them now — she’d seen enough of them over the years. And at least the last round had been somewhat flattering to her. Personally, she would far rather be vilified for being the power behind Somerville’s throne than for her apparent lack of sexual morals.

But Somerville probably didn’t appreciate the distinction.

Perhaps she should have guessed his plans. He’d been murmuring about that year’s crop of girls on the marriage mart more than usual. He’d been to Almack’s at least three times this season — invited by Castlereagh’s wife, who was one of the patronesses — which was three times more than he’d gone the previous year. He’d gone without Octavia, of course. She wasn’t fit to be introduced to newly debuted girls.

She had known that Somerville would have to marry eventually, whether he wanted the girl or not. But….

She couldn’t stay silent. Not with him. “Are you really turning me out?” she demanded. “And do you really want to marry?”

“I don’t want to marry,” he said, ignoring her more important first question in favor of the easier-to-answer second. “You know that. I would happily let my nephew inherit the title. But if I’m to save England from sin and iniquity, I must pass this legislation. And it will be easier to do that if I have a wife, not a mistress.”

It was her turn to snort. “You do not give a bloody damn for sin and iniquity,” she said. “You want to be the prime minister.”

“Your language is deplorable,” he said, although he smiled as he did so.

“I learned it from your friends,” she retorted, not mollified by his attempt at humor. “And anyway, we both know that this campaign you’re waging against vice is meant to get you votes, not to save anyone. Does it really matter so much if you have a mistress?”

Somerville wasn’t quite as mercenary as she made him sound. He really did care about things like gambling, and cheap gin, and the proper care of fatherless bastards whom the parishes had to support. But he wasn’t a saint. And she suspected that at least half his motivation for this legislation was to keep anyone from looking too closely at his own morality.

Which is why she should have guessed that the caricatures bothered him more than her. If someone was targeting him, there was always a chance that his secret life could come to light.

And even at her angriest — even as the rage started to build within her — she didn’t want that to happen to him.

Somerville held up his hands. “If I thought I could keep you, I would,” he said. “I cannot imagine life without you. And I have been very grateful for the time you’ve given me….”

“Were the diamonds a show of your gratitude?” she asked.

He flushed.

Somerville never flushed.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I truly am. But you surely understand. You know the ton as well as I do. If I marry, it will keep other rumors at bay. And it will reinforce the belief that I am an appropriate leader.”

“Fox had a mistress forever. He even married her. No one ran him out of the government,” she pointed out. Waspishly, perhaps. A self-respecting courtesan wouldn’t have begged Somerville to keep her…but Octavia wasn’t playing a role tonight.

“Yes, but Fox led the House of Commons without campaigning on a platform of morality,” Somerville said. “And you know that whatever his secrets and scandals were, they weren’t the same as mine.”

She knew that. Still, she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him. “When do you expect me to leave? Shall I call Agnes and have her pack my dresses tonight?”

“Tonight isn’t necessary,” he said quickly.

He didn’t say anything else for a long moment. She narrowed her eyes. “You were the one who did this. Do you expect me to volunteer to leave?”

He winced. “That would make everything easier.”

“
Easier
?” Her temper was beyond anything she’d felt in years. Possibly not since the moment when she’d realized that Lucy had told Julian about Lord Chapman’s kiss — and that rage had been muted by shock, happening as it had over her brother’s still-dying body. “You want to make things
easier
? You should have thought of that before you turned me out on my ear. Would you like to wait until morning, then publicly toss me into the street so your precious Castlereagh knows I’m gone?”

He held up his hands again. “I’ve found another option for you,” he said. “One that could be as convenient as ours has been. I have a friend. A…good friend. He’s in rather urgent need of a mistress.”

Octavia frowned, straining to hear through the pulse beat of anger. “Are you becoming a procurer? Doesn’t that go against all of your anti-vice preaching?”

Somerville adjusted his cravat. “You know it’s not like that. It would be the same agreement we had. You would be his mistress in name only, hosting parties and attending events to which women of your status are welcome. No, er…no
favors
required.”

“You mean that I wouldn’t share his bed,” she said.

Somerville nodded.

“And how long would this arrangement last? Until he needs a wife? Until I become inconvenient to him?”

Somerville sidestepped the accusation in her voice. “He doesn’t wish to marry. But a long-standing mistress would prevent rumors. He could pass you off as a love match, one he might have married if the circumstances were correct. He suggested that the arrangement might, perhaps, become permanent.”

Octavia’s frown deepened.

“If, of course, you tolerate each other well enough,” Somerville added quickly. “But you and I got along famously. I expect you would like him just as well.”

“You’ve been planning this, haven’t you?” she asked.

He paused for a long time, speechless as she had never known him to be.

Then he nodded, once.

She had no romantic feelings for him at all. But that moment of betrayal was enough to break her heart.

She took a deep breath. She’d been betrayed before. She could survive it. And her Briarley heart was focused, now, entirely on survival. “May I ask the name of your friend?”

“No. He shared his need with me in confidence. I won’t break his trust until you are ready to sign the contracts.”

“How do I know we’ll suit?”

“You’ll suit,” Somerville said. “I’ve heard you say that you like him well enough. But you understand why I cannot tell you his name.”

She understood. And she didn’t blame Somerville, or his mysterious friend, for their caution.

She
hadn’t
understood when she had made her agreement with Somerville. He had offered her the same terms that he offered now — mistress in name only, no need to fuck him in exchange for a bed to sleep in.

Not that he’d ever used that word with her. He always treated her like the lady she used to be. She’d heard it from others, whispered in shadowed gardens or drunken masquerades, when Somerville wasn’t next to her and others wanted to lure her away. There was something heady and dangerous about that word, a word she never should have heard spoken in her presence — would never have heard, perhaps, if she had remained Miss Briarley.

She was supposed to have married some perfect prince of a man, one who would have swept her off her feet. One who would never say anything inappropriate to her.

One who would have left her in their townhouse, with their babies, too perfectly behaved for a word like “fuck,” while he pursued his real pleasures elsewhere.

Octavia was losing her composure. She fought to rein herself in. Wasn’t it better if she found a protector who didn’t want to use her body?

If Somerville’s friend shared his inclinations, she knew she’d never have to fear that the man would change his mind. She hadn’t entirely believed Somerville when he had said that he wouldn’t take her to bed — even at eighteen, she hadn’t been naïve enough to think that anyone would pay her way without demanding something in return. But what he used her for was exactly what he had said he wanted. He only required that she dress well, speak appropriately, and host grand parties for his political connections. He had never asked for anything more than that.

She chose not to dwell on that one night, six months into their arrangement, when she had tried to seduce him. She had worn the filmiest chemise she owned, dampened to translucence. She had waited for him, knowing he would come to her room after the party to compare notes on what their guests had said.

But he hadn’t kissed her. He had looked at her, disbelieving.

She had wanted to die from mortification.

He’d been sweet about it — almost painfully kind, telling her that she was the most beautiful woman in creation, and one of the smartest besides. She hadn’t believed any of it. Her flush had spread from her toes to her hair. Gooseflesh had raised against the dampened chemise and shame had burned through her veins until she’d wanted to cry. She had held back her tears and ordered him to leave.

He’d hugged her then.
Hugged
her, as though she were a child, not a woman he might have made love to.

And then he had whispered in her ear that there was no woman for him. That she would be it, if he were capable. But….