The Louise Allen Collection: The Viscount's Betrothal / The Society Catch. Louise Allen
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‘Mama has been winding my father around her little finger for thirty-five years and I have never known her wrong yet.’
‘Yes, but you are hardly engaging in dissipation, are you? What sort of dissipation, anyway?’
‘Cards, horses, um…’
‘Um?’
‘I do seem to be having the most improper conversations with you, Miss Fulgrave! Wicked widows and fast matrons is what my outrageous mama had in mind, I think.’
‘More than one mistress at once?’ Joanna asked, trying to imagine her own mother recommending such a course of action to William in fifteen years’ time and failing utterly. ‘Isn’t that terribly expensive and complicated?’
‘As I have never had more than one at a time I have no idea. Expensive, certainly. But complicated?’
‘I shouldn’t imagine they would take very kindly to sharing you,’ Joanna said, frowning over the practicalities. ‘You would have to keep them apart and remember what you had said to each… Have you had many?’
Giles sank his head in his hands with a groan. ‘Oh lord, what have I let myself say! Your mama would have fits if she knew. Yes, I have had mistresses, in Portugal and in Spain, and only one at a time, and we parted very amicably in every case, before you ask! And, no, I am not going to tell you about any of them.’
‘I am sorry,’ Joanna said penitently. ‘I did not mean to put you to the blush, but I feel that I can ask you about things that no one else will explain. I mean, it is obvious that lots of men in society have mistresses, and even I can guess that some ladies are, well…not entirely faithful to their husbands. But no one ever says anything about it and it seems a bit late to find out after one is married.’
‘I cannot imagine,’ Giles said, putting one hand over hers and squeezing it reassuringly, ‘that any husband of yours would contemplate setting up a mistress for one second. Especially this mysterious suitor you are so imprudently fleeing from. He seems most devoted!’
Joanna ignored the reference to Lord Clifton, for she was fighting the urge to curl her fingers into his and return the pressure. Somehow it hadn’t hurt to know there had been other women in his life: she had expected it, the man was not a monk. But being so close to him, his kindness, almost overset her.
‘I don’t expect to marry,’ she said, attempting to laugh it off and freeing her hand to reach for an apple, ‘so it really doesn’t arise. I meant, it was a bit late for young ladies in general to find out about that sort of thing.’
‘Not marry? Why ever not?’ Giles took the apple from her hand, picked up a knife and began to peel it, the ribbon of red skin curling over his hand.
Joanna shrugged, trying not to look at his long fingers dexterously wielding the knife. What would it be like to be caressed by them? She shivered. ‘My mysterious suitor, as you term him, is not someone whose regard I return—in fact, I dislike him excessively. My affections are engaged elsewhere, but the man I love, loves someone else.’
‘Is that what upset you at the Duchess’s ball?’ He handed her back the apple. ‘You found out about it?’
‘Mmm.’ Goodness, how had she let herself talk about this?
‘But just because one man has let you down, it doesn’t mean you should give up on the entire sex,’ Giles said, watching her with a frown between his straight brows. ‘There are many other men—the one who is attempting to make you an offer, for example. Are you sure you know him well enough to have formed such a negative impression?’
‘Quite sure! I dislike the way he looks at me—and he tried to blackmail me after I had got into a scrape.’ She caught his quizzical expression and nodded, ‘Yes, that night at Vauxhall. And, yes, it is Rufus Carstairs, I suppose you have already guessed. But as for marrying someone I do not love—how can you say that?’ Joanna was hurt and surprised that he could fail to understand. ‘If the lady you love spurned you, could you just shrug and walk away and think “I’ll find someone else”? Of course you could not, not if it were true love! I will never feel like this about anyone else, and I will not marry anyone I don’t love.
‘Imagine being tied to someone you did not hold in the deepest affection! I know some unfortunate women find themselves having to accept distasteful suitors, or men have to make duty marriages to restore their family fortunes, and I truly pity all of them. I would rather remain a spinster than marry anyone other than…him. And,’ she added vehemently, ‘I cannot like or trust Lord Clifton.’
Giles appeared taken aback by her vehemence, but, although he had raised his eyebrows on hearing who her suitor was, he said nothing, so she asked, ‘Will you obey your father in the question of your marriage?’
‘No!’ he retorted hotly. ‘I will not!’
‘You see? In matters of the heart, feelings run very deep.’
He regarded her thoughtfully over the rim of his glass. ‘You are sure that this unfortunate experience has not made the entire business of marriage distasteful to you?’
‘Oh, no,’ Joanna looked directly into his concerned grey eyes and smiled ruefully. ‘Oh, no, not if it were marriage to the man I love.’
That evening brought a report that Milo Thomas had been intercepted near Lincoln and three distressed young women rescued. Joanna wondered anxiously about the reception they would receive when they returned to their homes and whether they would have the reassurance and support she was enjoying from Giles and from the Geddings.
‘And what about the ones who are already in those dreadful places?’ she asked vehemently as they sat down to dinner. ‘What is going to happen to them?’
‘I will be laying evidence with the Bow Street magistrates,’ the Squire said reassuringly. ‘They will check all of the addresses in Thoroughgood’s notebooks and ensure that every young woman there is free to leave. If any have been kidnapped and, er…forced, then the justices will take the appropriate action.’
‘Yes, but what becomes of the women?’ Joanna persisted. ‘What on earth happens to them?’ There was an uncomfortable silence around the table. ‘When I get back to London I am going to do something about this.’
‘My dear,’ Mrs Gedding said gently, ‘there is nothing that an unmarried girl of good family can do about it.’
Joanna knew that was likely to be only too true. ‘Oh, I wish I were a rich widow!’ she declared vehemently. Giles sat back in his chair with a gasp of laughter and she caught his eye, defiantly. ‘Well, I do! Not that I would wish anyone dead, of course not, but it seems to me that the only women who have any freedom of action at all are rich widows.’
The Squire looked faintly scandalised and, although Mrs Gedding sent her an amused look of understanding, Joanna thought it best to take herself off to bed as soon as possible at the end of the meal.
When she woke the next morning, it was to the feeling that she had been ill, in a fever, and that now she was back to normal. The spectres of the Thoroughgoods and her terrifying experience had become less nightmarish, although her determination to do something about the plight of the girls forced into brothels was no less ardent. Perhaps Hebe, when she had recovered from the birth, would be able to help.
But with the sense of recovery came the anxiety about how her parents would react and the more pressing realisation that not only was she in the same house as Giles but that she had been having conversations of quite shocking frankness with him. As she dragged the brush ruthlessly through her hair, she thought it was only by some miracle that he had not guessed the identity of the man she loved, the man whose presence she was fleeing from.
She was so preoccupied with these thoughts that she walked straight into Giles