Forsaking Hope (Fair Cyprians of London 2)

“I looked after you, didn’t I? I bought you pretty things and took you dancing. I spent a fortune trying to please you.”

Hope felt his hand tremble despite his efforts to make his point in as passionless a manner as he could. Wilfred did not enjoy passion except when his needs were being gratified.

She tossed her head. “And then you sold me to the highest bidder.”

“Quite simply, I couldn’t afford you, my dear.” His hands fell away, and his hooded eyes blazed beneath their reptilian lids though his words were measured.

“Why, Wilfred?” Hope asked the question that had puzzled her for so long. For the moment, she was more perplexed than angered. “I’d been your mistress for eight months when you simply abandoned me. I had no friends. You made sure of that. There was no one who could help me. You took me unwillingly from my family, my home, and you made me dependent on you. Why? Only so you could dispose of me with as little compunction as you would an old coat. Did you despise me so much?”

“It was clear the feeling was mutual.”

Hope shook her head. “Did you really expect me to love you?”

Wilfred made a noise of irritation as he flung around and took a few steps towards the window, turning to rest his hand on the back of the green velvet sofa and shaking his head at her. “Lord, Hope. We were both scorched that day. It was not my intention to take you with me. Heavens, you’d go so far as to say I kidnapped you when nothing could have been further from my mind. You know you were as much to blame as I. Everything that happened that day was unfortunate. An accident.” He sighed. “I’ve told you a thousand times how much I regret it, but it doesn’t matter now. What’s done is done.”

“You ruined me, Wilfred!”

“Only because you were too stupid to seek the other avenues I offered you.”

“I tried.” Hope said it under her breath. Bitterly. “Papa died that very night. I was supposed to be on a boat heading for the Continent. I received no answer to my letters, my pleas.”

“Precisely. Which is why the responsibility of looking after you when I had not a feather to fly with landed on my shoulders.” He looked outraged at her suggestion that he was culpable. But then, Wilfred had a knack for turning the blame back on the other person. “You could have continued to Leipzig.”

“How? The boat had gone. I had no ticket, and you had no money, you said, to pay my fare. I wrote. I tried everything to get out of the situation you placed me in. Nothing you say excuses drugging me, kidnapping me, making me your mistress, and then selling me to a brothel madam!”

Wilfred put up his hands. “I had no intention of doing any of those things! You drank from the flask Annabelle offered you. I didn’t realise it was all but undiluted laudanum. Before I knew it, you were fast asleep. I tried to remove you, in as gentlemanly a manner as I could. I had the door half open, and I was contemplating where I could leave you.”

“It was freezing. The snow was three feet high. I’d have died. You could have made some excuse.”

“I could have,” he conceded. Then his tone changed, and he looked like a petulant schoolboy with a perpetual sneer at being the butt of life’s misfortunes. “If you want to blame anyone, blame your high-and-mighty Mr Durham. Just as I was about to carry you out of the carriage and leave you by the church door, there he was, coming towards me, passing the vestry where I’d hoped to be rid of you. I knew he’d jump to conclusions; he was always so protective of you.”

Hope gasped, her hands jerking at the shock of this surprise revelation, causing her drink to splash over her skirts. “If you’d been a gentleman you’d have thought fast enough to say whatever necessary to protect my honour which was not besmirched at that point, Wilfred.”

His mouth twitched and not with humour. “I might have had he not incited me.”

“Incited you?”

Wilfred nodded. “He was ten feet away, striding towards me through the snow. He shouted something.”

“What?”

Wilfred shrugged. “He was threatening me.”

“Threatening you? How?”

“He was walking towards me in a very menacing manner. He’s never liked me. I knew the moment he saw me with you unconscious in my arms he’d orchestrate some smear campaign. So, I leapt back into the carriage and ordered the coachman to continue. “

“The train station was only ten minutes away. That’s where I was destined. You promised my parents you and Annabelle would take me there after the snowstorm blocked the drive. Mama believed I had only to travel as far as the train station in order to catch the boat.”

“And you were in the deepest stupor. Believe me; I went to the station. I tried to rouse you.”

Hope gasped. “You were afraid! Too afraid to take me back to my home because I was alone, drugged in your carriage.”

He looked through the window. “By God, I cursed you at that moment. I drove around for hours until finally I was in London. I arrived at my lodgings and you were still asleep. By that stage, I feared you were dead. So, I carried you inside but there was only one bed made up.” He shrugged again. “There was nowhere else to put you and nowhere for me to sleep, and you were so damned enticing, I’ll admit.” A slow smile curled his lip. “What choice did I have? I didn’t want to be saddled with a penniless governess for a wife, but you have no idea how much I’d wanted you, Hope. And for how long. And now you were in my care.” He shrugged as if he truly did not see himself as an opportunistic predator. “I looked after you when you needed a protector. Wasn’t it more fun dancing until the small hours than improving the minds of a pair of German infants? I saved you from all that. There’s no changing the past. I refuse to have my future, or that of my sister, blighted by your stupidity and the threats of Felix Durham.”

Hope’s first instinct was to throw herself at him and rip her fingernails down his cheek. But she held her head steady, and even though her vision blackened with emotion, she retained her dignity, just as Madame Chambon had taught her girls. Hope had more self-possession than the man before her would ever have.

“So, you admit you ruined me, Wilfred. Then, you can do just one thing for me. One thing so you can rest easy with your conscience.” She tried not to show how much it meant to her. Wilfred thrived on vulnerability. So she added, perhaps unwisely, “Or fear retribution from my hand.”