Christmas Charity (Fair Cyprians of London 5)

Hugo considered him a moment. His father had had the benefit of an education but he’d never been considered on an equal footing with his schoolfellows. He wanted this for his son more than he wanted anything else; hence the tortuous years at Eton, the miserable rounds of trying to mould him into the man his father wanted him to become.

“I should not care where she dragged me so long as she was my wife.”

The chasm between them had never yawned so deep. In the middle of a room boasting the trappings of wealth without softness, expense without taste, his father was as much a victim of his success as generations before him had been of their poverty.

He ran a hand through his thick white hair and his lustrous, salt and pepper moustache twitched. His watery blue eyes regarded Hugo with dislike. “I hope she knows you’ll not get a penny of your grandfather’s fortune if you wed her in haste before you leave.”

“Oh, she knows it well. But in less than two years I’ll be free to do as I choose.” Hugo turned at the door. “And I’ll be right back here. In London. Begging her to make me the happiest man alive and marry me. Romantic tosh, eh, father?” Hugo offered him a parting smile. Or, at least, the parody of one. “I’m the first to admit that it is inconvenient to have a heart, at times.” He pushed back his shoulders. “At least I can live with my conscience. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

He decided against taking a hackney the few blocks to his cousin’s townhouse and when he arrived Cyril was in the hallway donning his hat and coat.

“A good thing I caught you,” Hugo said, amused at the flare of anger in the other man’s face and the way Cyril’s hand went protectively to his nose, still swollen after the previous night.

“I hadn’t expected to see you again.” Cyril turned his back to pick up his umbrella before heading down the steps to the street.

“You weren’t going to see me off?” Hugo pretended surprise. “Good riddance and all that? Leaving you to enjoy what I can’t take with me?” He lengthened his stride so he was level with his cousin before gripping his elbow and jerking him so he was facing him, pressing him against a brick wall beneath an old bridge. Passersby looked at them strangely.

“I swear that if you touch Charity…if you cause her a single moment’s anxiety, then yesterday will be nothing compared with the way I’ll make sure you suffer when I return home.”

“You know I didn’t touch her yesterday, either.” Cyril sounded sulky as he pulled back his arm and carried on walking.

“Not for want of trying. I heard you visited Madame Chambon’s the very day after I told Charity I had to leave.”

“Curiosity. What well-intentioned cousin wouldn’t want to see if such a girl could be as pure and true as she was made out to be?”

“She’s known only me.” Hugo wasn’t saying it to boast. He couldn’t bear the idea that anyone should imagine that what he and Charity shared was any less pure than a union sanctified by God. “And one day she will be my wife.” He looked at his cousin while he fought the poison within him. “Just remember that. Thanks to you, that day will be longer coming than I intended.” He drew in a breath through his nose, his expression, he hoped, reflecting the force of his hatred. “Regardless of my father’s desires to the contrary, and your collusion, it will happen.”

Cyril seemed disinclined to be engaged. Taking advantage of a cooper’s wagon lumbering by, he dashed in front of it, swinging around angrily when Hugo followed him. They’d reached a small, fenced park into which Hugo was channelling him so as to be out of the public eye.

“For God’s sake, Hugo, leave it and go! As always, I get the blame!”

Hugo clenched his fists while he fought his temper. He’d never been quick to anger, unlike Cyril, but tomorrow he’d be sailing to a land far from Charity and the world he wanted to inhabit with her. His dreams had been cruelly dashed and his nemesis was before him.

He glared at Cyril. “It might have been Papa who put you up to this but you were a willing party. I don’t know what, exactly, he asked you to do but you leapt at the first opportunity to ruin me. Why? So, my father would have an excuse to send me away?” He heard his voice shake and was angry at himself. Why should he care that Cyril, with his broad shoulders, glib tongue, and clever cunning was far more the kind of son his father wanted than the dreamy, namby-pamby boy he’d derided from the cradle.

Hugo couldn’t help himself. He’d tried to have as little as possible to do with Cyril and the society he kept. He’d tried to hold himself to higher ideals. Ideals which should have precluded him saying bitterly, “Well, hasn’t he always favoured you? And weren’t you so willing to get into his good books by destroying what I had with Charity? Papa couldn’t bear that I should marry a girl he considered as lowly as his own mother but you were the first to step up and do his bidding. You didn’t care that you were hurting a girl who was tricked into crossing Madame Chambon’s threshold. A girl whose father came from the very world into which our own fathers wish to be accepted. Ironic, isn’t it? In terms of the blood that runs through her veins, Charity is better born than either of us. Yet, because she’s a woman and she’s illegitimate, she has none of the protections or ability to forge her own way in life, that we take for granted.”

“God, but you’re insufferably self-righteous, Hugo!” Cyril flung at him as he turned to confront his cousin. “I couldn’t care less about any of this! Not who you marry or where she comes from or what your father wants or doesn’t want for you.” He threw out his arms in frustration, his umbrella spinning in the air. “The only reason I agreed to help your father see you sink a fortune was so that I wouldn’t be forced to spend the next year in a God-forsaken country learning the family trade. It’d be bad enough having to leave the comforts of London but having to spend any time in close proximity with my father would be like living a thousand deaths.”

Hugo squared his shoulders. “And you think I deserve that?”

“At least he won’t beat you senseless at every opportunity. I imagine you’ll be spared that since you’re only a nephew and will be required to get up and do a day’s work rather than be made an example of. He has no great expectations of you.”

He said it as if Hugo had never been considered up to much by the rest of the family. Cyril, by contrast, had enjoyed his rugby, cricket, and boxing.

Hugo chewed his lip. His anger had dissipated somewhat but his uncertainty was as great as ever. “You promise you won’t prey on Charity?”

“Prey on her? What do you think I am? A monster as bad as my father?” He gave a short laugh. “I might be a cheat and a bounder but I don’t go about forcing myself on vulnerable females and defiling any pretty thing that takes my fancy.” He hesitated. “I’m the first to admit that she’s a fine filly, your Charity. A real stunner. What she sees in you, I can’t imagine.”

“I can’t either,” Hugo said, dolefully, turning to leave this unsatisfactory conversation.

But the change in Cyril’s tone when he next spoke was far from reassuring.

“However, old fellow, if your sweet Charity chooses to avail herself of the comforts I can provide her which you — obviously — will be in no position to, then that’s her choice.” He chuckled. “How many weeks have you secured for her maintenance? No more than eight, is my guess. Well!” He sighed. “A girl’s got to live, hasn’t she?”

Chapter 10

For just a few moments more, Charity could revel in the warmth of Hugo’s body pressed against hers, his overcoat shielding them both as they stood in a sheltered corner of the dockyard.