Whisper Always

Blake opened his eyes in time to watch Cristina disappear through the open door. Forcing himself to walk to his favorite chair, he gingerly eased his body into the comforting depths. He stared at the dying embers. There was no point in trying to sleep. Not while his mind insisted on replaying Cristina's exit. The sight of her tight, rounded buttocks and the slim legs that seemed to go on forever--and the pink welts and purplish-yellow bruising from the strap that damned barbarian had used to try to impose his will upon her--would keep him company throughout the rest of the long night.

 

  My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd;

  And I myself see not the bottom of it.

  --WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 1564-1616

 

  *Chapter Ten*

 

  "Nigel, you've got to take her," Blake insisted. "She can't stay at Lawrence House any longer. Not even with Aunt Delia in residence."

  The two friends sat at a corner table in the lounge of the St. James Club, Piccadilly. Both were drinking coffee. Blake sported a white bandage on his right hand, a bandage that covered three of Nigel's tiny stitches. He was also nursing the remains of a monstrous hangover.

  "I can't take her, Blake," Nigel told him. "You know Beth won't be back for another week. And I'm not admitting her to my hospital. If she can go rifling through your desk in the wee hours of the morning, she doesn't belong in a hospital."

  "Then what the devil do I do with her?" Blake demanded of his best friend.

  Nigel grinned.

  "That's the bloody problem!" Blake admitted. "It's all I think about. Dream about. She's driving me mad. I can't eat. I can't sleep. All I can do is drink myself silly each night. But I can't function with these cursed headaches every morning."

  "So what's the problem?" Nigel laughed as the frown between Blake's brows intensified. "Send her home."

  "To be beaten again?"

  "What other choice do you have?" Nigel asked.

  Blake stared at his friend.

  "Don't look at me. I've given you my reasons. And they're all valid. Besides, I'm not her legal guardian and neither are you."

  "I know, but sending her home is out of the question. She doesn't want to go home and I won't force her. There has to be another solution." Blake took a sip of his coffee. "Besides, I called at Fairhall this morning. I was going to attempt to negotiate with her mother, to try to work out some arrangement to provide for Cristina and her safety, but the servants were closing the house. It seems Patricia has left for the Continent."

  "What?"

  "That's right, my friend." Blake signaled for more coffee. "Lady Fairfax has left London and her daughter behind without so much as an inquiry as to Cristina's whereabouts. The story the housekeeper told me was that Miss Fairfax's staying in the country with friends until her engagement is announced."

  "What a crock!"

  "Exactly." Blake lowered his voice as the waiter refilled their cups. "Especially when Cristina's maid is still at Fairhall. What young lady goes to the country without her lady's maid?"

  "So Patricia thinks she's with Rudolf?"

  "I doubt Patricia has thought about her daughter at all, but I'm hoping that's what she supposes." Blake drained his coffee cup.

  "Where is Rudolf now?"

  "When I left his rooms this morning, he was packing for the weekend at Sandringham with the Prince of Wales. I'm expected to join them in the morning."

  "Did Rudolf say anything about his redhead? The young woman you hired to take Miss Fairfax's place?"

  "He believes the story Patricia put about. It seems his little redhead disappeared before he woke up."

  "Then you and Rudolf have a lot in common."

  "I'm surprised she and Cristina didn't pass each other in the halls. He thinks Cristina's in the country and he's eagerly awaiting her return to London."

  "And now you're trying to foist her off on me."

  "Nigel, you've got to take her. She can't go home and she can't stay with me."

  "I told you before, I can't keep her, Blake. Besides, you're going to Sandringham for the weekend. You won't be at Lawrence House for two or three days. Let her stay there until you get back. Maybe I'll come up with a plan while you're gone." Nigel had no intentions of coming up with a suitable plan. He was enjoying Blake's "little problem." He hoped it would continue, right up until they purchased a special license and rang the church bells. Nigel stood up. He had rounds to make at his private hospital and he wanted to include a visit to Lawrence House and Blake's fascinating house guest.

  Blake nodded his head in agreement. "You're right. We'll think of something. God, I must have been mad to get involved. It wasn't any of my business if her mother auctioned her off. I should have ignored it and her. Damn those green eyes."

  "Cheer up," Nigel told him. "If it gets too bad, you can always give her to Rudolf."

  Blake's dark gaze raked his friend. Nigel could almost feel the fire.

  "That's a hell of a thing to say. You know what kind of life she'd have as Rudolf's mistress. I didn't risk my neck and my reputation saving her from Rudolf just to give her back!"

  "Then I guess you'll just have to keep her," Nigel shot back.

  Keep her. The words echoed in Blake's mind a thousand times during the long afternoon. It wasn't such a bad idea. He'd already admitted he wanted her. And if her kiss was any indication, she wasn't immune to him. He could keep her. He could set her up in a little house somewhere close by. A discreet little house. It was done all the time. Instead of becoming Rudolf's mistress, she could become his. The idea had merit except for one tiny thing. If he did that, he was no better than her mother, selling her to the highest bidder. No better than Rudolf buying her ...

 

  Cristina confronted Blake as soon as he entered the front door of Lawrence House later that afternoon.

  "I'm ready to leave."

  "What?" Blake was in no mood for a confrontation.

  "I said I'm ready to leave." Cristina repeated her words slowly as if he were deaf or simpleminded.

  "I heard you," Blake told her. "It's out of the question." He walked past her into his study. Where had that come from? Hours earlier, he'd been practically begging Nigel to take her home with him.

  Cristina followed him. "I don't think my staying here is a very good idea." She'd spent the day thinking about Blake's kiss. It was the second time he'd pushed her away. She didn't understand why he'd gone to all the trouble to buy her if all he intended to do was kiss her and push her away. Unless he had done it just to prove he could buy her--that she did have a price. And if that was the case, she didn't want to stay at Lawrence House a minute longer than she had to. "I really don't want to be your houseguest."

  Stung by her frankness, Blake snorted. "I really don't recall asking you."

  "Maybe I'd feel differently if you had," Cristina allowed. "But now, I'd appreciate it if you'll just turn my necklace over to me, so I can be on my way."

  Maybe I'd feel differently if you had. He felt his chest tighten at her softly spoken admission. "Where do you intend to go? Your mother has left London for the Continent. Fairhall is closed."

  Cristina sank down on a leather footstool. "She told me that's what she was going to do and I believed her at the time, but somehow it doesn't quite seem possible." She knew her mother was capable of abandoning her--had in fact, sold her--but it hadn't seemed real. Until now. Fairhall closed? Where was Leah? Surely Leah hadn't abandoned her as well?

  "It's true. I went by this morning." Blake hadn't meant to be so harsh when he told her, but then, he hadn't expected her to confront him with her desire to leave him. "But"--he looked down at the girl sitting almost at his feet and tried to soften the disappointment--"your maid was still there. Along with the butler and housekeeper. It seems your maid refused to leave without you. She stayed at Fairhall to wait for yo
ur return. I asked the butler to have her pack some of your things and I sent my coach for her late this afternoon. She should arrive any minute."

  "You sent for Leah?"

  "Now that you're up and about, you'll need a lady's maid to help you. And as you can see, I don't have many running about." Blake smiled. "Although I'm sure Aunt Delia has been more than generous in sharing hers, I thought you'd like to have your own while you're here."

  "So you bought Leah, too," Cristina said, bitterly. "I suppose I should be happy about that?"

  "Well, yes," Blake said. "I thought it would make you happy."

  "How much more am I going to owe you?"

  "I can well afford to pay one lady's maid."

  "I don't doubt that, Lord Lawrence. I think you could probably afford to buy just about anything you wanted."

  Something about her tone of voice ignited the fuse on Blake's already short temper. "Is that why you were attempting to break into my safe last night?"

  "I told you, last night I was searching for my necklace."

  Suddenly they were standing toe-to-toe, facing each other like pugilists in a ring.

  "You mean my necklace," Blake said. "That necklace belongs to me."

  "It belonged to you before you sent it to my mother to buy me," Cristina corrected him. "Now it belongs to me."

  "Before I what?" Her words stopped Blake in his tracks.

  "You heard me." Cristina flung the words at him before she began to pace the room.

  "I couldn't have heard you correctly." Blake's voice was deceptively gentle. "Repeat what you said, please." The last, polite phrase he added on as an afterthought.

  Cristina turned to face him, her green eyes glittering with anger, clenched fists propped on her hips. "I said the necklace belonged to you before you sent it to my mother. Now it belongs to me."

  "You actually think I bought you?" Blake was incredulous.

  "I think you're despicable," Cristina cried. "As despicable as she is." She turned away from him, trying to choke back the tears that threatened to overflow.

  "I--" Blake started to defend himself.

  "No, you're worse than she is," Cristina continued. "You bought me just to prove you could. At least she was honest about her reasons. While you--"

  "While I what?" Blake waved his handkerchief over her right shoulder. Her anger was easier to cope with than her tears.

  Cristina snatched the handkerchief from him. "You just did it to humiliate me. To prove all women can be bought for a price just like you said. You did this just to prove a point. You don't want me."

  Blake shook his head in disbelief. Not want her? She was complaining about his not wanting her? He was consumed with wanting her. Obsessed with wanting her. Tormented with wanting her. But she was too damned much of an innocent to recognize it.

  "You obviously don't understand the meaning of the word," Blake muttered. He reached out to touch Cristina's shoulder, encouraging her to turn around and face him. "I didn't..." He started once again to tell her that he hadn't bought her, but stopped himself. It was better for her to think he was the villain than for her to know the truth. It would hurt her far less to think he had purchased her out of a warped sense of pride than to know she'd been sold at a public gathering of jaded aristocrats.

  "Do you really think I'd go so far just to prove a point?" Blake asked her.

  "I don't know what to think anymore," Cristina admitted. "I knew you were angry at me, but I never thought you'd stoop to bartering with my mother or sending an anonymous necklace. I never dreamed I'd be sent to Marlborough House, then wake up and find myself in bed with you. I shouldn't have let you pull me in. I should have jumped when I reached the end of the sheets."

  "You'd probably have broken your little neck," Blake reminded her.

  "Maybe. But I'd be free."

  Blake studied her face, the earnest gleam in the depths of her green eyes. The longing for something she needed. He recognized the longing. He knew what it was like to feel trapped, coerced, used by another person. He understood her need for self-determination. But another part of him was wounded by her lack of faith in him.

  "Is that what you want, Miss Fairfax?" His voice was low, husky, full of emotion, his dark eyes compelling. "Do you want to be free of me?"

  She wanted him to kiss her again. She wanted him to pull her into his arms and tell her he wanted her. She wanted the safety and security of his hard body. She wanted the something she saw in his eyes, but she couldn't name her feelings, couldn't put them into words. So she resorted to evasions. "I want to leave. I want you to let me go."

  Her reply stung him.

  "Fine." Blake whirled around and stalked to his desk. "You're free to go." He was tired of being maligned, tired of playing the hero for an ungrateful slip of a girl. Tired of wanting.

  "Fine," she agreed. "Give me my necklace and I'll be out of your life."

  "I'm afraid that's out of the question." Blake's face was set in harsh, unyielding lines. He shuffled some paperwork around on his desk, pretending to give it his undivided attention. "You're dismissed. You may go."

  "I'm not leaving without my necklace." Cristina's voice was firm.

  "Then you might as well make yourself comfortable." Blake assured her. "You're free to go. The necklace stays here."

  "But I need it for traveling expenses," Cristina tried to reason with him. "I don't have any money."

  "I'll loan you money." He picked up his silver pen and dipped it into the inkwell on his desk. "I'll write you out a bank draft."

  "I can't repay a loan."

  "Fine." Blake looked up at her. "Then I'll give you the money."

  "No." Cristina leaned forward and placed her hands on the top of his desk. "I won't take money from you."

  "How much do you need? Five hundred pounds? A thousand?" He took a leather bound book from his drawer, opened it, and wrote out a bank draft.

  "You can't soothe your conscience that easily," Cristina stated. "I don't want your thirty pieces of silver. I want the necklace."

  "That's your misfortune."

  "You gave me it to me."

  "Gave, Miss Fairfax?" Blake raised one eyebrow. "Minutes ago you were accusing me of sending it as payment. Payment for services to be rendered, I believe."

  "I rendered the service," Cristina informed him. "I spent the night with you."

  "Did you?"

  "You know I did. At Marlborough House. You owe me the necklace."

  "We shared a bed, Miss Fairfax, nothing more."

  "Well?" Cristina demanded, as if that were proof of intimacy.

  "Allowing you to share my bed while you're in a drunken stupor does not constitute payment for services rendered. Any self-respecting mistress knows that." Blake threw the insult at her as an afterthought to see what she'd do next. "If you want the necklace, Miss Fairfax, you'll have to earn it."

  Cristina sucked in a breath, then released it in fury. "You don't have enough money to buy me."

  Blake looked her right in the eyes. "I thought I already had."

  He waited.

  She looked as if she wanted to slap him, then thought better of it. Reaching across the top of his desk, she touched the small silver pot.

  She wanted to throw it. Blake could see it in the depths of her green eyes. She wanted to bounce it off his chest. But she didn't. She looked him in the eye, then carefully and with great dignity settled it back into place on his desk and walked out the door.

  Brilliant strategy, Lawrence, he berated himself. To push her into a corner like that. Now if she ever did come to him, he'd never know if it was because she wanted him or the damned necklace.

  Christ, what a tangle! Blake cursed the necklace. He cursed Patricia Fairfax and Rudolf. And he cursed Meredith for her duplicity. But most of all, Blake cursed himself for always wanting wha
t he could not have.

 

  Blake was sitting in his favorite chair beside the fireplace in his study deliberately polishing off a bottle of brandy when his Aunt Delia entered the room and announced in a voice loud enough to wake the dead, "Perryman says that Miss Fairfax's maid has arrived and that she's asking to see you or Miss Fairfax, or both."

  "Tell him to show her to Miss Fairfax's room." Blake rose from his chair as his aunt entered the room. Although his aunt was hard of hearing, he tried very hard not to shout at her. He'd noticed that she seemed to understand what was said around her much better when she could look the speaker in the face, so he placed his snifter of brandy on the mantel and walked over to stand in front of her. He didn't like shoving the task of seeing Cristina's maid properly settled into the household off on his butler, his housekeeper, or his aunt without having first welcomed her himself, but he was in no condition to acknowledge her arrival. Not while he was still fuming over her young mistress's erroneous assumptions about him. Not while he was trying very hard to drink his thoughts of Cristina away.

  "What did you do to the gel?" Aunt Delia asked.

  "Why?" A vision of Cristina hanging from the upstairs window on a rope of slashed bedding flashed through his mind.

  "Miss Fairfax isn't opening her door," Aunt Delia informed him.

  He blanched. "I'd better send someone around back to check her window."

  Delia narrowed her gaze in suspicion. "And why would you need to do that?"

  "To see if she's still in her room," he answered automatically.

  "She's there. She's threatening to brain anyone who tries to open the door, but she's still there."

  "Good." The note of relief in his voice was unmistakable. He exhaled the breath he'd been holding. "She's upset with me, but she's forsaken the bed sheets."

  Delia stared at her nephew as if he'd lost his mind. "Blake, dear boy, she's threatening to bash us over the head."

  "With what?" Blake asked, more out of idle curiosity than out of any real concern.

  "With a vase. She said to tell you it was Chinese porcelain, probably early Ming." Aunt Delia paused. "If it's the vase in the carved niche by her dressing table, I suspect it's a few decades older than Ming. But I'm not an expert. And Chinese porcelain is rather difficult to date at times because each generation of artisans tended to copy patterns of the previous generation. But the glazing and firing techniques did improve. Still, I suppose the only real way to be certain about the date is to locate the household manifest and see when it was purchased or to allow Cristina to break it. The sand used in Ming porcelain is very, very fine...."

  Blake held up his hand. His aunt was an amateur antiquarian and prided herself on her patronage of the London Museum of History. "Aunt Delia, please tell Miss Fairfax her maid is here and that if she breaks the vase, it'll go on her account for services owed."

  "Blake Ashford!" Aunt Delia was outraged by the suggestion. "You wouldn't!"