Lawson gave Oliver a wink. “I don’t know, Oliver, you used to have quite a reputation where the ladies were concerned. Strange, but my information is you were more interested in gazing into her eyes than watching the opera. But you’re not the man you were, Oliver, are you? Maybe these days you need someone else to hold her down for you, open her legs while you find the right—”
“I don’t…don’t know what you’re talking about.”
His voice was tight and hard, his hands clenched at his sides. If Lawson had wanted to flush the truth out of him, then he had almost succeeded. Oliver swallowed his fury and looked away from those ice-blue eyes and hoped he had not given himself away.
“Well then,” Lawson said softly, sounding pleased with himself, “you won’t mind if I take an interest in Miss Greentree, will you, Oliver? Between us we might be able to save Candlewood for those poor little children.”
Oliver stiffened.
Those cold eyes stared into his, and Oliver couldn’t think of a thing to reply. Lawson smiled, as if he had won some bet with himself. “Good, good. I thought not.”
Oliver felt his stomach drop away. Anger and dismay made his hands shake, and he had to slip them into his pockets. It could be that Lawson was just amusing himself, that perhaps he believed that Oliver was in love with Vivianna and he simply wanted to cause him pain. Revenge for the inconvenience Oliver had been causing him for over a year now. But Oliver did not think so. Lawson had another agenda. He was suspicious. He was beginning to doubt. And he saw Vivianna as a way of forcing Oliver out into the open.
“I’ll be keeping an eye on your niece, Toby. Can’t have the girl corrupted by a rake like Oliver, can we?”
Toby sniggered.
Oliver promised himself that one day soon he would bloody Toby’s nose, but not before he had saved Vivianna from Lawson’s clutches.
If, that is, she would let him.
Chapter 14
“I made a mistake.”
Aphrodite was watching her in her usual aloof manner. “You are a novice, mon chou, you will make mistakes.”
“No, I…I thought the moment had come to tell Oliver what I wanted from him. He seemed so approachable, so tender, and I believed he would listen to me and grant me my wish.”
“So you asked him to give you Candlewood?” Aphrodite prompted.
Vivianna nodded, swallowing tears. “He said I was selling my body for Candlewood, and that he had had enough ‘love for profit.’”
Aphrodite was silent, and Vivianna wondered if the courtesan was insulted. After all, love for profit was what she herself sold.
“I don’t want him to despise me,” she went on quietly, her head bowed, and a tear dropped onto the cloth of her skirt. “I realized then that I don’t want him to think I am only pretending to enjoy his company for the sake of Candlewood. I know he is a rake, but he…that is, I know that I can…I can…”
“Save him?” Aphrodite said woodenly.
Vivianna looked up in surprise and realized that there was a deep compassion in the courtesan’s dark eyes. Aphrodite pulled a lacy scrap of handkerchief from her sleeve and passed it over, watching as Vivianna tidied her tears.
“It is your nature,” the older woman said at last. “You cannot help but believe the best of people and want to help them. I should have foreseen it. You see a man like Oliver, a rake whose life revolves around his own pleasure, and you immediately begin to believe he is redeemable.”
It sounded so very like what Vivianna had been thinking that she was shamed into silence.
“Perhaps, despite what you think, he wanted you to admit to it, mon chou, so that he could bargain with you. He wanted you to say to him, ‘Yes, I am willing to sell my body for Candlewood,’ and then he would not have to pretend to care to get what he wanted. Some men think they have to play a game, a part.”
Play a part? Vivianna remembered when they had run into Lord Lawson at the opera, and Oliver had pretended to be a drunken fool. But surely that wasn’t the sort of part Aphrodite was speaking of, it was only one more mystery that Vivianna had yet to solve.
“You think I should bargain with him, then, honestly and openly?” Vivianna asked, her fist closing over the sodden lace. “You think he never cared for me, only for what he could get from me?”
Aphrodite made a face. “I am tempted to say that it is so. For the past year, Oliver has certainly given all who know him the impression that he is on his way to hell. And yet, mon chou, I have sometimes wondered if Oliver is being completely honest with us.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are very strongly attracted to him, oui? Your body longs for his?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I ache for him.”
Aphrodite reached out and clasped her hand. “Then you must do something about it. You should take him, Vivianna. Not with your heart, but simply with your body. Enjoy what he has to give you and then walk away from him and forget him. A single night, oui? One night of passion and then, psht! Over. It is the best thing.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Vivianna said, gazing into those black eyes. “I don’t know if I would be able to walk away.”