Playing to Win (13 page)

"You are frightened of shadows, Miss
Feeney. Only think how your situation has improved already! I hope
I am not a great coxcomb to say so, but I can't help feeling that
being a guest of Trevor Whitlatch is pleasanter than being a
prisoner of La Gianetta."

A faint smile curved the corners of her
mouth. "Yes, it is. But I cannot stay a guest of Trevor Whitlatch
indefinitely."

"Well, I don't know why not." He
stretched his booted feet toward the fire. "I'm a very rich man,
you know. One is not supposed to mention it—God knows why!—but
under the circumstances I feel compelled to just point it out, in
case you are fancying that your presence here imposes a hardship on
me."

This time he did not succeed in coaxing
a smile from her. Her expression was desolate as she stared into
the flames. "It imposes a hardship on me, sir. My destiny is
dependent upon the opinions others form of my character. I have no
hope of securing respectable employment if I am known to be living
here at your expense! Nothing could be more ruinous to my
future."

"I disagree," he said
softly.

She looked up at that, her brows
knitting. "How can you disagree? I have only stated what must be
obvious to anyone."

Trevor straightened in his chair and
leaned forward, his eyes holding hers. "Your views are very clear,
Miss Feeney, but it's my belief you have formed them with blinders
on. You have not considered all the angles because you have not
seen the entire picture. I am asking you to remove those blinders
and look round a bit, before making any firm decisions about your
future. You must open your mind to the possibility that you have
been wrong."

Confusion flickered in the blue depths
of her eyes. "Wrong about what?"

He sat back in his chair, a wry smile
twisting his mouth. "Why do you wish to be a governess? Let us
start there. Do you know anything about the life of a
governess?"

"Why, certainly! It is the only
respectable profession for a woman in my circumstances. It is the
only alternative for an educated single woman who lacks family or
fortune."

His expression hardened. "It is a life
of drudgery, poverty and loneliness."

"But—surely not! I enjoy children. I
enjoy teaching."

"You won’t enjoy being a governess! It
is a miserable life. A governess’ station is slightly above the
other servants, and slightly beneath the family, which places her
outside the social sphere of either. She must endure the resentment
and hostility of the rest of the staff, and the snubs and
condescension of the lady of the house. For this she is paid a
pittance, barely a subsistence wage in more cases than not. She is
frequently required to help with housework. She must tolerate the
children's tantrums, and then be blamed for their bad behavior. A
governess finds herself the butt of jokes, the scapegoat for all
the children's various failings, and an object of scorn or pity to
the young ladies who owe her their accomplishments! She must
sometimes fend off the sexual advances of her employers, or their
sons, or their male guests. And she will have no ally, friend,
confidante or champion anywhere in the house to comfort her. Is
this the life you want?"

Clarissa's eyes reflected bewilderment
and pain. "Why do you tell me these things?" she said faintly. "I
have studied all my life to become a governess."

"Just as I thought!" he exclaimed,
leaning forward again. "You have aimed your life in this one
direction, never looking to the right or left to see if there was
any alternative. You have not considered that you might find a
superior situation. An easier life. A better life."

She cocked her head to one side, as if
to hear him more clearly. Her brow was still knit with puzzlement.
"Is there such an alternative? I do not understand."

"Not for everyone. For you, there
is."

Clarissa’s gaze suddenly sharpened and
her nostrils flared like an animal scenting danger. "What are you
saying?" she asked coldly. "That I should become someone’s mistress
after all? Yours, perhaps?"

By God, the wench was magnificent.
Damn. Mr. Whitlatch, caught between admiration and annoyance, swore
under his breath. He had rushed his fences! Clarissa knew exactly
where he was heading with his devil’s arguments. Well, hang it
all—if that were the case, it was time to take the gloves
off.

"In a word, yes," he said bluntly. "Why
not?"

Clarissa shrank against the back of the
chair.
"Why not?"

Mr. Whitlatch realized he had
frightened her, as well as angered her. "Take a damper!" he advised
her testily, crossing one booted leg negligently over the other.
"I'm not going to attack you."

She did not visibly relax. Her
expression was eloquent of horror, incredulity and
revulsion.

"And you needn't look at me as if I'd
suddenly turned into a scorpion!" he added. "I know you think I've
insulted you, but I haven't. It's those blinders you're wearing
that make you think so."

"Blinders!" she cried. "I don't know
what you mean!"

"No, I can see you don't. I'll explain
it to you, if you give me half a chance."

"No, thank you!" she said, her voice
shaking. "I don't want to listen. I don't care what you say. It’s
wicked."

"Is it?" He forced himself to shrug.
"Then let us drop the notion. I will exert myself instead to secure
you a post as a governess, or a nursemaid, or whatever appeals to
your wooden-headed sense of respectability. By all means, Miss
Feeney, waste your life, destroy your beauty, ruin your health, and
die in poverty! It's all one to me."

Taken aback, she blinked at him in
bewilderment. Had she angered him? He sounded so fierce! Why was he
contemptuous of her desire to be respectable? Wooden-headed, he
called it. She had never encountered such a sentiment in her
life.

"You have the most extraordinary
ideas!" she exclaimed. "What is so odd about my wish to find honest
work? How can anyone sneer at such a simple ambition? All I desire
is to live respectably. You seem to think that is
foolish."

"Yes, by thunder! I think
your
notion
of respectability is foolish. I think you have drawn
boundaries for your life that are too narrow, Miss Feeney. I
believe you have, without thinking, ruled out certain
occupations—one in particular—that deserve your rational
consideration."

A spurt of anger shot through Clarissa.
"Without thinking!" she cried. "You may be right. But only because
‘certain occupations’ are unthinkable."

"Oh, for God’s sake!" Mr. Whitlatch
flung himself out of his chair and took a hasty turn about the
room.

"Yes, sir, for God’s own sake!" she
countered swiftly. "You cannot advance your cause by pursuing this
line of conversation, believe me! I will not, I will
never
,
follow the path my mother took!"

He stopped pacing, an arrested look in
his eyes. "Will you not, Miss Feeney? That is fine talking! You
sound so superior! So very
right!
But have you ever stopped
to think what might have become of you, had your mother followed
some other path?"

A bitter laugh escaped Clarissa.
"Daily!"

"Indeed?"

"Yes! I might have been born with a
name,
sir!"

"You would not have been born at
all!"

He seemed to be under the impression he
had flung down an unanswerable argument. She stared at him,
shaking. He did not understand. He could not understand.

"Yes, I would not have been born at
all. And I tell you truly, sir, that would have been for the
best."

She had shocked him, she could tell.
What did it matter? She suddenly felt very tired indeed. Exhausted,
she leaned her head once more against the chair’s silk-padded wing.
She heard his swift tread crossing the floor toward her. The
footsteps halted beside her chair.

"Now,
that,"
he said quietly,
"is wickedness."

She stared up at him. Baffled and
shaken, she could not think of a reply. She was so tired. And her
future was so uncertain. And he had—yes, he had hurt her, she
realized with faint surprise. She felt not only insulted, she felt
betrayed. It wounded her, to hear him suddenly revert to this idea
of making her his mistress. Why was that?

As she looked at the harsh-featured
face frowning down at her, the answer came immediately. She had
begun to think of him as a friend. She liked him. He was clever,
and funny, and she had thought him kind. He had made her laugh out
loud for the first time in many weeks. She had started to trust
him. And then he had presented her with this shocking idea—why, he
was actually
propositioning
her! And in one stroke, she
felt, he had destroyed their budding friendship.

To her, it was a crushing blow. But of
course it would not strike him the same way. If she packed up and
left tonight, he would forget about her in a week. Trevor Whitlatch
doubtless had many friends. But Clarissa would feel a loss. She
would feel it keenly. She felt it keenly now. Friends had been few,
far between, hard to make and hard to keep, for the baseborn
daughter of a trollop.

Tears came to her eyes. Annoyed, she
tried to blink them away. This would never do! She returned her
gaze to the fire and tried to get a grip on herself.

But her emotions were defeating her.
She was too tired to fight them off. Curled in the wing chair, she
hugged her knees tightly and laid her cheek against them, closing
her eyes against the tide of tears. She found herself struggling
not to sob. Dear God, what would Mr. Whitlatch think of her? This
was disastrous. She was humiliating herself. She must stop. She
must stop.

Gazing sternly down at Clarissa, Mr.
Whitlatch saw the confusion and anger in her eyes melt into pain.
That surprised him. Why pain? Then suddenly her face crumpled, and
she was hugging her knees and weeping.

Remorse and chagrin rose up to choke
Mr. Whitlatch. He shoved the heels of his hands over his eyes and
groaned. Idiot! Bully! Oaf! He upbraided himself savagely. What a
cow-handed way to go about seducing an innocent girl!

Without further thought, he knelt
beside her chair, taking her rather clumsily into his arms. "I'm
sorry," he whispered, rocking her like a child. "I'm so sorry. Shh!
It's all right. I'm sorry, sweetheart. I'm sorry."

Somehow she slid, or he pulled her, off
the chair and onto the hearthrug with him. Now she was crying in
earnest. She clung to him and sobbed as if her heart would break.
He continued to rock her and murmur soothingly, inwardly cursing
himself for his clumsiness. Why the devil had he tried to reason
with her? Reason with a woman! And from a distance! What was the
matter with him? This misstep might set him back weeks.

On the other hand, he couldn’t have
alienated her entirely. She was plastered against his waistcoat and
showed every inclination to stay there.

Mr. Whitlatch fumbled in his pocket and
managed to extract a handkerchief. He pressed it against as much of
her face as was available to him. She was evidently trying to
speak, but her words were impossible to make out between the
sobs.

"What?" he asked.

She repeated it, but again he could not
understand her. Grasping her shoulders, he pulled her firmly away
from his chest. "When you address your remarks to my armpit,
Clarissa, I cannot understand them."

She uttered a loud sniff, gave a watery
chuckle, and wiped her face with his handkerchief. "I'm sorry," she
gulped. "I d don't know what c came over me."

"Come, that's better! Are you feeling
more yourself now?"

She nodded. He could not resist pulling
her back against him. He held her with one arm in what he hoped
would feel to her like a brotherly gesture. She seemed to interpret
it thus, for he felt her relax against him.

"I did not mean to make you cry," he
told her. "It was thoughtless and stupid of me, and I beg your
pardon."

"Oh, no! I never meant to be so
troublesome. It is I who should beg your pardon, Mr.
Whitlatch."

"Trevor," he corrected her
firmly.

She sat up, distracted. "I cannot call
you by your Christian name! We are not related in the slightest
degree."

He assumed an air of mock solemnity.
"Even in the best circles, once a lady has wept all down a
gentleman's waistcoat it is considered high time to dispense with
formality."

He saw refusal in her eyes, and reached
out to place one finger gently against her lips before she could
speak. "You need not, if you don't wish to," he told her quietly.
"But it would gratify me very much."

She eyed him doubtfully. "I don't think
I have ever called a man by his Christian name."

Somehow that pleased him.
"Really?"

"I have no male relatives, you
know."

"Ah. That would explain it." He pulled
her back into his arms, trying to make the gesture seem casual, and
propped his back against the sturdy seat of the wing chair. He was
delighted when she snuggled against him and rested her head on his
shoulder. Her innocence definitely had its advantages.