‘You don’t and I’ll see you at dinner.’ Draining his glass, Nicholas put it down on the table and walked out of the room.
In his own study he shut the door and leaned back against the cushioned header of his favourite chair. For twelve years he had been the quarry of countless feminine wiles and pushy doyennes all eager to marry him off and tie him down. For twelve years the gossips had run his name with this woman or that one until finally they had framed him callous and hardened. The ‘Heartless Duke of Westbourne’ was how he had heard his name bandied as the cream of each year’s débutantes were paraded before him and failed to rouse even the slightest interest. He ran his fingers across his temple and closed his eyes. Letitia Carruthers. Deborah Hutton. Alison Smythe-Finch. His consorts of the moment were all well bred, all well experienced. And all easily left. His father’s legacy personified. What stamp, then, did Brenna Stanhope make on him and why? He shifted in his chair and finished his drink.
Beautiful, clever, mysterious and with eyes the colour of Scottish heather after the rain. He shook his head at his sudden predilection for the way of poetry and smiled wryly before bending his head to the figures in a thick ledger on his desk.
Chapter Four
Nicholas spent the next morning at the London Ballet Company’s headquarters arranging a private session of La Sylphide to be performed as a matinée the following Wednesday. He then hailed his cabriolet and drove straight to Beaumont Street, running into Brenna as he stepped into the place. She was dressed today in a white smock splattered with colour, carrying a tray of spiky paintbrushes. Her hair was bunched up untidily upon her head, curling tendrils escaping down dark against the lightness of the uniform.
‘Hello,’ she said softly, and he was surprised by the deep blush on her cheeks as he came to stand beside her. Clenching his fists, he jammed them in his pockets just to make certain that he would not touch her.
‘You’re painting?’
‘I’m m…making a mural for one of the dormitories. The children are helping me, which explains the mess.’
She stammered slightly, both from the question and his demeanour. Today he seemed as far from the grand lord as she’d ever seen him.
‘May I have a word with you alone, Brenna?’
She frowned, both at his continued familiarity in using her Christian name and at the implications of a private conversation. She didn’t want to be alone with him, but under the circumstances there was little else she could do to prevent it. With feigned nonchalance she opened the door to her study, making sure that he sat before she went around to her desk, having no wish to leave him with the opportunity of shutting them in together.
Nicholas noticed a well-used copy of Alexander Kingslake’s revolutionary tract ‘Eothem’ beside her elbow. Why was he not surprised? ‘I have organised the ballet for Wednesday,’ he began. ‘The performance starts at three, but we’d need to be seated by at least a quarter before the hour.’
Brenna nodded, unsure as to her reaction to the whole thing. A ballet performed privately just for them pointed out to her his privilege, but also she understood, for the first time, the power that lay close to his hand should he choose to use it. It worried her, this sovereignty above others, accorded not merely because of his title but inherently there because of who he was. If he could organise an outing of this magnitude on just a whim, then think of what he could find out should he really set his mind to it. He would make a powerful foe and adversary, and a dangerous investigator should she cross the threshold of his curiosity and cause him to venture into the realms of mystery he might easily wish to dissipate—because of this she would need to be careful. Her uncle’s words came back to her from the morning of Nicholas’s first visit: I think he could be persistent… The whole of London treads carefully in his wake and it seems he owns almost half of it.
She forced her mind back to the present and her eyes narrowed doubtfully. All the problems of dress and shoes for the children presented themselves as her mind ran fretfully over the number of nights left for the sewing.
Nicholas, for his part, understood none of the reasons for her reticence, placing it, instead, to her fear of public places and he said, less gently than he meant, ‘I think, Miss Stanhope, that the children would definitely enjoy it even if you are determined not to.’
She caught his glance and replied coldly. ‘My feelings for such an outing hardly need figure here, your Grace—’
‘Then why do you hesitate?’ he broke in.
Brenna sighed and stood, turning to the window, arms wrapped tightly through each other as she replied, ‘It’s all so privileged and dreamlike, this world you offer us, and far from the reality that will ever be Beaumont Street.’
‘And you think that it’s wrong to want to share it?’ he countered, watching her with a growing interest.
‘I think it is wrong to want it.’ She turned to him now, eyes ablaze with intensity. ‘It’s like the children’s bedtime stories, endings that belie all sorts of beginnings, fairytales that only live in books or in a rich man’s world, for none of them will ever have what it is you so easily offer, though many here may want it afterwards. You can’t covet what you don’t know, you see. Ignorance counteracts want, just as knowledge fosters it.’
‘And where in your philosophy lies choice, Miss Stanhope?’ His words cut deep across her arguments and she was still as she answered him.
‘The freedom of choice has never belonged to any of these children, your Grace. It was gone before they ever had the means to exert it.’
‘So now you choose for them. They never had it nor are they likely to with your reasonings.’ His voice came louder with his own growing exasperation. ‘You think people, once choiceless, can never be empowered; you think opportunity must be dismissed in the face of a chequered past and all in the name of a changeless future. You think people can’t drag themselves out of a mire and triumph over adversity and disaster to spite circumstances over which they never had control in the first place?’ His fist came down hard upon her table. ‘Damn, Brenna, I don’t believe you or you wouldn’t be here trying to make the difference.’
Brenna jumped at the noise, her eyes large and dark in a paling face as she struggled against his anger, knowing that to lose his patronage would be a disaster and knowing too that his money did buy him the right to order things just as he willed it. Accordingly she withdrew into silence.
He watched her with a frown in his eyes. He wanted to cross the room right there and then and drag her away from all of this: his anger and her fears and a world of parentless children, the poverty of east London, a table of food set only with scraps, and a house that had seen better times. And Brenna herself, this dark-haired lady of mystery, whose world offered no path for friendship or understanding but, rather, buried the gifts he offered under the age-old resentment of privilege. He spread his hands wide in a gesture of defeat and said wearily, ‘Think it over and send me word of your decision tomorrow.’ With that he bowed his head slightly and left the room, this time shutting the door firmly behind him.
Brenna groped her way to the chair and leant her head against her arms, her mind running numbly over their dispute. ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered to herself. She was too old to feel like this, like a child who’d been castigated by a righteous and reasonable parent, though one fully ignorant of the very arguments themselves.
She lifted her eyes to the door, knowing the reaction Kate and Betsy would give to even
