The Price of Desire (21 page)

Dominic hailed the cab and settled into it for a dismal ride home. The telegram from his lawyer had understated, rather than overstated, the extent of the problem. And now it looked as though it was too late to do anything about it.

Arnold Turfrey, his trusted partner and business manager, had ruined him. Worse than that, he had deceived and betrayed him. And for so little gain.

It could not hurt any worse if Turfrey had taken a knife and plunged it into his ribs and twisted it viciously in the wound.

The accounts had been cleverly manipulated for months to hide the small losses that Turfrey had been making in stock purchases and sales. Purchases and sales that he should never have been making with company money in the first place.

Then, just a fortnight ago, Turfrey had bought stock in what he clearly thought was a sure thing, in the hopes of recouping all the money he had lost over the last year.

The purchase had gone disastrously wrong. Unable to face up to what he had done and take the consequences, he had compounded his folly. He had cleaned out every penny that was still left in the company accounts and fled. Probably to his family in Italy, the lawyer suspected, or possibly Greece.

At any rate, Dominic’s business was ruined, all his ready cash was gone, and he was left with debts that the sale of all his remaining assets would only just cover.

He was ruined. Utterly and inescapably ruined. And all for the sake of Turfrey’s foolish greed and incompetence.

He did not mind so much for himself, but for Caroline. Even if she were to fancy herself a little fond of him, as he had lately suspected she did, she could not stay with him now. He could offer her nothing, not even a decent home to live in. What woman worth her salt would stay on such slim prospects as that? He could not ask her to make such a sacrifice.

The lights were still on in the parlor when he arrived home, weary and sore at heart. Caroline must have waited up for him after all.

He stumbled into the parlor and sank onto the sofa. Her face, though pale, was composed, but her back was unnaturally straight and she did not look surprised to see him collapse exhausted on the couch.

He shut his eyes so he could not see the hurt in her eyes when he gave her the news. Though the temptation to wait and tell her in the morning was strong, he thought it was better to face her now than later. The news would not get any better if he delayed until the morning. And the more he brooded on it, the worse it would be to tell her.

“You are late, Dominic.” Her voice was soft, calm, with no accusation in it.

He opened his eyes again and sat up straight. There was no help for it. He had to face his future like a man, not like a sniveling coward. He would not run from the unpleasant truth as Turfrey had done, hiding away in Italy to avoid having to see the consequences of his embezzling. Hiding from the truth would make him no better than the man he despised.

No, he was better than that. Still, he had best confess while his courage ran strong in his veins. “I am ruined, Caroline.” The thought of losing her, of seeing her walk away from him and into the arms of another man who would be able to give all the things that he was no longer able to give her, made him feel green. He swallowed the bile that rose up in his throat. Now was not the time to show such weakness.

“Ruined?” She nodded once, as if confirming to herself what she already suspected. “Completely ruined?”

“Not completely.” He gave a wry smile. “There is enough left of the ruins of my fortune to keep me out of the poorhouse. But that is all. I will have to sell this house, dismiss the staff, and start all over again. If I live frugally, I will have enough to pay off all my creditors and have a pittance left to finance my next new venture.” He ran his hands through his hair distractedly. “God willing, it will prove to be more worthwhile than the last one.”

“You will not be destitute, then. I am glad of it. That is an uncomfortable situation to find yourself in.”

She was taking the news calmly. Too calmly. “You understand what I am saying, Caroline? I cannot afford to keep you any longer. I have no money for expensive presents or holidays in the country. Not even enough to run a decent establishment. I will have to let you go.”

Her face was white as milk, but her expression was as serene as ever. “Of course I understand. You have no obligation to me. I was expecting nothing more.”

She was worthy to be the consort to a king. He could not ask her to share his poverty. Never had he been more glad of the ruthless bargain she had struck with him at the beginning of their liaison. Her property in Hertfordshire had escaped the wreck of his fortunes. His lawyer had put it in her name just in the nick of time to save it from Turfrey’s predations. Given that it was no longer his, none of his creditors had a single claim on it. Her future, at least, was assured. Whatever happened to him, she would not die in a ditch from cold and hunger. “You are young and beautiful. You will find another protector.” The words did violence to his soul. “Once it is known that I have had to give you up, the vultures will be circling around you in no time.”

“I’m sure they will be.”

“You will not suffer financially from my loss. Everything that I made over to you is still yours. No one can touch it.”

“Are you going to shoot yourself?”

Her calm words, and the calm manner in which she spoke them, sent chills running through his body. Was death so familiar to her that she could talk about it so calmly? Did she really think he would take the coward’s way out of his troubles? “What kind of a question is that?”

Her face turned pale pink at the vehemence in his voice. “A reasonable one, under the circumstances, I should think. After all, plenty of men have found a similar escape. My own father included.”

“I do not intend to find peace at the wrong end of a pistol.”

“I would not judge you if you wanted to take such a way out of your difficulties. I nearly did. That night when I first met you at Mrs. Finsbury’s soiree.” Her brittle laugh cut through to his very soul. “That is why I allowed you to take me in the conservatory. I had already decided that we should all die, and I thought it would matter little enough if I disposed of my virginity first. But my courage didn’t last. There were plenty of moments in the workhouse when I wished I had had to courage to kill us all as I had intended.”

“What stopped you?” He could not help but ask, ghoulish as the topic was. She had never before even hinted at her reason for allowing him to seduce her in the conservatory. And he had been so glad to find her again that he had not thought to tackle her reserve on the matter. More concerned about the future than the past, he had wanted only to secure her as his mistress, and not to scare her off by probing too deeply into her previous life.

“The noise of the pistol cocking woke Teddy up. He opened his eyes and looked at me and told me he was not afraid to die.”

That was her secret, the key to her soul. “But you could not do it.” Whatever she may have planned in her darkest moment, she was no murderess. How ironic that he had stumbled on her secret just when she was about to leave him forever. He had the key, but there was no longer any treasure chest for him to open. He had lost his right even to try.

“I could not shoot him when he was awake. I misfired, shot into the floor instead. And that woke all the others and by then my courage was gone.”

She had known what was coming, then, when she had taken her siblings to the workhouse, and thought to escape it the only way that had been left to her. From the bottom of his heart he thanked Teddy’s light sleeping. Had he known that evening that Caroline was walking away from him with such murderous feelings in her heart, he would never have allowed her to leave.

“So now you know the worst of me, the reason why I could never condemn another man for taking his own life.” She gave an uneasy shrug. “I have been too close to that desperation myself to blame you if you chose that way out.”

He could at least set her mind at ease on that score, and ease her mind from the worry of seeing him hanging from the chandelier or lying on the floor of his study in a pool of blood when she came down for breakfast in the morning. “My circumstances are not as desperate as that, not as desperate as your father’s were. True, I have lost most of what I have made over the years, but no matter. I am young and energetic enough to start all over again, and too proud to let one small setback defeat me. My straitened means are only temporary, I can assure you.”

At least he hoped they were only temporary. It would take a run of excellent luck to lift him from his poverty again. Luck, and a lot of hard work. “It is just that in the meantime, much as I would like to, I cannot afford to keep you.”

“It is late now,” she said, “but I will not trouble you any longer than necessary. I shall leave for Hertfordshire in the morning.”

He bowed his head, covering his face with his hands to his anguish. Her calm acceptance of his decision only made it worse. He had thought that maybe she was growing fond of him in his own right, that he meant more to her than the presents he made and the gifts he gave. How wrong he had been about her. Indifferent to the core, she did not care a fig for him or his troubles.

Her serenity was proof of her utter indifference to him, when all he could think of was his hopeless, unrequited love for her. “The carriage will be at your disposal until noon to take you to the station. After that, I am afraid, it will be gone.” Better men than he was had lost their hearts to a courtesan and survived. He would, too, no matter that it felt like his soul was being ripped screaming from his body.

Hertfordshire was, if anything, colder and grayer than London.

At any other time in her life Caroline would have gloried in the estate that was now hers, with its small but comfortable country house and the acres of good farmland that went with it. The house was not as grand as Dominic’s town house nor as large as her father’s house had been, but it was hers, all hers. She had earned the right to be here, and nobody could take that right away from her.

The land itself, however, did not look to be in the best shape. Even through the haze of depression that settled on her after she had left Dominic in London, she knew instantly that it had been badly run. Her examination of the estate records confirmed her first impression. Someone, she was quite sure, was skimming the profits that the place ought to be making, stripping the place bare instead of reinvesting for future growth.

Judging by the shifty look in his eyes and the way he would not meet her gaze, the steward was well aware of his failings. And she quickly learned from the servants’ grapevine that his wife had aspirations above her station, and he was keeping a pretty young girl on the side, as well. Two terrible temptations to cook the books.

Though he tried to bluster about the last harvest being poor and not having enough money to modernize his agricultural techniques sufficiently, he folded quickly enough in the face of her stiff-backed determination.

His attitude made her smile. She had faced far worse things in her life than a lazy and dishonest steward who deserved to be transported as a thief. Did he really expect that just because she was a woman, she would crumble under a few harsh words? If he had not stolen so much of hers, and Dominic’s, money, she would have been tempted to laugh.

As it was, she simply informed him in no uncertain tones that he was now dismissed and he had until the end of the week to clear his belongings off her property. Though he alternately sulked and stormed, by the end of the week he was gone.

The rest of the household staff, seeing how quickly she had dealt with the steward, gave her little trouble. Their minor depredations into used tea leaves and candle ends she could live with—they were the accepted perks of staff in a large household—but she would not tolerate any pilfering on a larger scale.

This estate was hers, and she had to run it well. Teddy and Dorothea’s school fees had been paid for the term, but in a few weeks she would have to find the money for the next term’s fees. They depended on her. She would not let them down, or have them worry about the family finances yet again. They had faced enough hardship and done enough worrying for a lifetime.

It was not just the school fees that concerned her. Any hope of dowries for her older sisters had gone the way of the rest of Dominic’s fortune. If they were to have any hope of marrying, she would have to pay them each a dowry out of the savings she could make from the farm. The weight of the pigs in the piggery and the length of wool on the backs of her sheep took on a personal meaning for her. They were Teddy’s hope of a profession and her sisters’ hopes of a family of their own.

As the days wore on, the heaviness of her heart was not lifted by being in charge of her own household once again. Though she had everything running smoothly in the house, and was fast learning how to run the farm on top of that, she was not happy. The autumn weather was cold and damp, and no matter how many heated bricks she had placed in her bed of an evening, she could not get warm. She missed Dominic’s solid presence in the bed beside her, she missed the feel of his body pressed against hers, she missed his strength and the protection he lent her. And most of all, she missed his kindness.

For he
had
been good to her while it lasted. Though she had been hurt to the quick by the speed with which he cast her off when he got into financial difficulties, still, he had been kind to her.

After all, he owed her nothing more. They’d had only the semblance of a relationship, a faint shadow of the real thing. Nobody knew that better than she, who had bargained for everything that he had given her. But now that it was over and they had parted, she would have given a good deal to have that semblance back again.

Sunday afternoons were the worst, she decided, as she sat disconsolately in the parlor, going over the accounts for the week. The weather was so bleak that although it was barely past noon, she had already lit a gas lamp to help her make out the figures. Despite the coal fire in the grate, the room was damp and cold and she shivered as she worked. There was nothing worse than being cold when one was trying to do accounts. The figures refused to add up.