Page 24 of Lord Appleby's Gorgeous Imposter
“I do not want your salvation.”
“But you need it. They are nothing like you. They are without any bounds and will do whatever they wish.”
“Stop following me. Stop tormenting me!”
“I won’t. You are precious to me, and—”
“Am I? How good to know.”Precious but never loved.
“Let me help you. I can. I will. I have always wanted to give you all you desired.”
She sniffed. Oh, the arrogance of him. To think she’d take him as hers, when all he felt was duty. Angry that he pitied her, she lashed out at him. “You failed.”
Her accusation froze him. But only for moment, then he pressed against her. His body was a shield she could stand beside to fight the world and all its tragedies. But he’d never loved her…only stood by her because he believed he owed her and her family for not rescuing Diane.
“Viv, sweetheart, I came to find you last year. You were gone.”
“Too bad.” She covered her mouth, lest he hear the sob that rose in her throat.
He anchored her to him, his arm around her waist a band of iron. “My year of mourning was over. I came to ask you to be mywife. To tell you all I wanted for us. All I wished to propose we have.”
Ironic, wasn’t it, that when she finally stopped hoping he’d ever want her, he’d come to claim her and offer her a loveless marriage? Simply tragic, but none of that could ever be.
She stepped from his arms.
He cursed under his breath. “You won’t stop this…this lie?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You would die!”Oh, hell.What good could come of his knowing that? She shook her head and took one stride away.
“Viv?” He held her wrist. “If I could die, then you would too.”
“I must cultivate these people.” She swallowed all her tears and anger. She shook back the tendrils of blonde curls obscuring her vision of his ravaged features. God, she had hurt him. Hell surely awaited her for that. He had suffered enough for his failure to get Diane. “And I will do it. You will not dissuade me.”
Impossible man, he caught her elbow and stood so close her head swam with his nearness. “Why not?”
“I have promised!” she blurted. She hated herself for divulging that. But she shook him off.
“Promised what? To whom?” he called after her, his voice that of a hopeless man searching for salvation.
She understood the feeling. But she would not allow the negativity to stop her.
“Retribution,” she threw at him, and he balked.
She could not wait for his reaction and headed for the vestibule, the grand salon, and those she had to court. She stared out at those assembled, then glanced over her shoulder at the exquisite man who had always been her champion and was now her nemesis.
*
Tate seethed ather word. Retribution was so scurrilous an ambition. He took his carriage home that night, went to his library, and had his man bring up tea, sandwiches, and a good bottle of brandy. Then he sat at his desk, naming all whom he could think of who had ever hurt her or her family.
Tate had come into their lives early in 1791 when he was wandering the Continent, tired of his travels and not wishing to go home. He went to Neufchateau. The vicomte received him like long-lost family, which indeed he was. Tate was a distant fifth or sixth cousin by marriage of a Massé girl to one in his line.
But the vicomte, for all his many lascivious ways, was a gracious host and loving father. That he had also been a man who had loved many women, not all of them his wife, was a matter of public gossip in his little estate in the east of France and in Paris. In the capital city, he kept his grandhôtel particulierand a smaller house on the rue du Four. That townhouse he had purchased for his last and favorite mistress, Madeleine de Massé, the sister of his wife and the widow of his brother. By Madeleine, whom he always claimed was the love of his life, he had wished to sire males. His ambition was not so much to get a boy who would inherit, because under French inheritance laws, a bastard could never do so. But the vicomte wished to prove his manhood by getting a boy from Madeleine. The lady loved him and did not care he used her for a broodmare. Alas, by his wife, his other women, and by Madeleine, only females were his progeny.
Of the three children, Tate considered Diane, second born, the wisest and drollest. Charmaine, the eldest, self-indulgent and mean. Vivienne, the daughter of the vicomte and Madeleine, naturally disarming and, yes, vivacious.
