Master of Love Read online

  “And yet, they seem very happy.”

  Dominick’s shoulders tensed, as if Callista’s quiet words made him uncomfortable. He turned away from the glowing gaslight of the reception to face the gathering dusk of the London evening. “Yes, the poor fools do,” he muttered.

  Mr. Claremont and Mr. Plumptre rushed up then, all a-flutter about a mix-up in dates over when Professor Jamieson was to give his keynote address at the Edinburgh conference. Lady Bentley was insisting she and dear Jamesie had already made plans to travel to Ireland at that time, since the professor had assured her the conference wasn’t until a month later. The Philosophical Society president and secretary both begged for their patron’s assistance.

  With a sigh, Dominick settled Callista among the Cambridge tutors whom she met regularly at his luncheons, all in attendance tonight at Jamieson’s lecture and fiercely debating its merits out on the terrace. He headed back inside with the society officers to settle the dispute, promising Callista he wouldn’t be long.

  Mr. Thompson, the youngest of the scholars, politely asked what she thought of the lecture. He wasn’t yet a tutor but was up for consideration next academic year for the prestigious fellowship, which conferred both status and lifetime security of employment. She dove happily into deliberation with him and the others over the finer points of the Scottish versus the German Enlightenment.

  “And did you note,” asked Mr. Thompson excitedly, “how Professor Jamieson championed the Scottish Enlightenment in an almost point-by-point rebuttal of the argument laid out by Amator Philosophiae in his latest essay in Philosophers’ Quarterly?”

  “So you caught that, did you, lad? If only you could be so perspicacious in your own essays,” Mr. Walpole, the senior of the tutors, teased, stroking his impressive gray beard as Thompson blushed. “You’re referring to Amator’s paper ‘In Defense of Passion, Versus the Rationality of the Enlightenment.’ Brilliant stuff! That’s the sort of thing you should be writing, Thompson, if you want to make fellow. If you ask me, my money’s on Amator over Jamieson.”

  The group launched into an animated discussion of the mysterious anonymous scholar writing as the “Lover of Philosophy.”

  “He’s up to five essays now, isn’t he? All analyzing the nature of love?”

  “Did you read his piece ‘The Aesthetic Theory of Love’?”

  “Yes, and I hid it from my wife, along with that companion essay in the next volume, ‘On the Distinction Between Love and Desire’!”

  “What about his first essay, ‘On the Relation of Beauty and Morality’?”

  “The most original thing I read in ages! I’ve assigned it to my students for two years now as required reading.”

  “Wonder why he hides behind a pseudonym?”

  “Yes, who is he?”

  Callista had read the essays herself, as she made it a point to keep up with significant new authors; she agreed the scholarly articles were wonderfully incisive in their explorations of the philosophy of love, passion, and desire, from the time of Plato to the modern age. Speculation raged in their group about Amator’s true identity: an American professor trying to break into Anglo circles, a self-taught genius, a brilliant young prodigy schooled outside the Cambridge/Oxford system, perhaps a European aristocrat?

  Attracted by their lively debate, others joined in, while some of the tutors made their excuses and left for evening engagements. The stream of attendees heading down the terrace steps toward their carriages grew, until Callista found herself alone with two young gentlemen of the ton to whom Rexton had introduced her before the lecture began.

  And whom she’d caught pointing at her while whispering in each other’s ears after the lecture let out.

  She looked around, somewhat uncomfortable with the company now remaining, but saw Dominick still inside engaged with the scheduling debacle.

  “So you like books, do you, Miss Higginbotham?”

  She recalled the speaker as Lord Overton. As he puffed out a garish orange and green waistcoat, the impression he’d made earlier of an obnoxious popinjay deepened.

  “I don’t think she’d mind us calling her Callista, would she? No need to bother with formalities among friends.” His partner Mr. Harris was equally obnoxious, a tall and reedy American over for the grand tour with more money than manners.

  “We have just been introduced, sirs, and hardly know each other well enough for such liberty of address,” she said coldly. She moved toward the reception room, where she made out Dominick’s broad back bent toward the shorter forms of Mr. Plumptre and the professor, both gesticulating wildly.

  Lord Overton blocked her path. “We could get to know each other much better,” he proposed, leering into her cleavage.

  She pulled her half cape closed and pursed her mouth. She’d played this scene out before but hadn’t expected to have to do so today. She’d assumed the waves of gossip at the lecture were about the scandalous Lady Bentley and her open affair with Professor Jamieson. With a bolt of hot shame, she realized the gossip might also have been about her.

  “You work for Rexton, don’t you?” asked Harris.

  “Yes, I am a book dealer and librarian,” she answered stiffly, trying to edge away from the pair without causing a scene.

  “Is that what you call yourself?” chortled Overton. “Leave it to the Master of Love to become bored with tucking away a dancer or actress. Mark my words, Harris”—he dug an elbow into his companion’s ribs—“he’s setting a new trend. By next season, it’ll be all the rage for every man about town to keep his own ‘librarian’!”

  “So she’s under Rexton’s protection?” Harris asked his friend, as if they weren’t standing right in front of Callista, still blocking her way.

  Anger and humiliation rolled across her skin, kicking up a sheen of perspiration in the cooling twilight. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re implying!”

  “You’re a smart girl—I think you do,” said Overton, smirking. “Is it an exclusive arrangement, or are you free to ‘arrange book collections’ for other gentlemen as well?”

  “Yes, my book collection is quite in need of reorganization,” Harris said with a snigger. “I have a volume that could use attention right now, in fact.”

  “I am not available,” she ground out. Lord, these men were truly loathsome. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She tried to shoulder through them, but Overton grabbed her arm.

  “I think you should reconsider, Callista,” he hissed in her ear. “I’m sure Rexton wouldn’t mind. Harris and I are prepared to be generous.”

  “I am not what you take me for. Now let me pass!” She began to feel panicky and struggled to look past their bulk and catch Dominick’s eye.

  “You won’t hold Rexton long, you know.” Overton’s face twisted into angry lines in the dim light. “Everyone knows how quickly he moves on. You’d be wise to have your next protector lined up.”

  She pulled away, but her continued resistance seemed to further infuriate him and he wrenched hard at her arm.

  “Let me go!” The crack of her palm against his face resounded across the emptying terrace. All remaining heads turned toward them.

  Dominick was at her side in a few long strides as Overton and Harris stepped back.

  “Are you all right?” His touch to her shoulder was tender, but murder gleamed in the gaze he turned on the two men. “What have you done?” he demanded of them.

  “My apologies, Rexton.” Overton bowed. “ ‘Twas an unfortunate misunderstanding, is all. No harm done.”

  “I think your apologies should be directed toward Miss Higginbotham.” A pulse pounded in Dominick’s temple.

  “All is fine, Lord Rexton.” Embarrassment burned a tight knot into the back of her throat, and she wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Please do not concern yourself.”

  The popinjays both muttered apologies and bowed to her while keeping a nervous eye on Dominick. They backed up for a hasty departure.

  Callista was mortified. She’d
made everything worse by causing a scene. It wouldn’t take much imagination for the few people lingering on the terrace to guess what made her slap the man.

  “Come, let’s get you back to Bloomsbury. Meacham has the horses around the corner.” Dominick took her arm gently and said nothing more until he’d handed her into the carriage and settled her against the front-facing squabs.

  “What happened, Callista?”

  “You needn’t worry yourself, my lord. I’m fine.” She picked at the fraying threads on the thumb seam of her glove.

  With a sigh, he stripped off his own gloves. When his long fingers stroked down her cheek and raised her chin so she was facing him, she had to bite her tongue against a whimper that arose in her throat.

  “Callista, please look at me.”

  Reluctantly, she raised her eyes.

  “You were insulted whilst in my escort. It’s very much a source of my concern. He propositioned you, didn’t he?”

  “Actually, they both did.”

  His lips tightened into a flat line and he withdrew his hand into a fist. “I’m sorry, Callista. I’ll make sure those two pups understand the error of their ways and do not subject you to such insult again.”

  “They think I’m your mistress.” She blurted out the words. She wondered if Lady Vaughnley and Lady Barrington were responsible for the rumors that had come to this.

  That stopped him. “Those maggots.”

  He reached for her again and ran both hands down her arms. She inhaled sharply at the tender spot where Overton had wrenched her arm.

  “You’re hurt,” he said, frowning. “Let me see.”

  He moved to push aside her cape, but his concern only prodded like a poker at her shame to stir it into hot anger. “I don’t care about my arm! The problem is men making insulting suppositions and trying to coerce me into their beds!”

  He braced his elbows on his knees and reached across the small carriage space to take her hands in his. “My poor Callista, what have you been through since your father’s death?”

  His compassion was even worse. She pulled from his grasp and shifted away on the seat. “It’s not just me! London hosts thousands of women like me, on our own for various reasons, trying to earn a respectable living and support our families. Do you know how few avenues of employment are open to us? The assumptions men make? That we’re all whores”—she spit out the word—“available for your needs? You men amaze me.”

  “Callista . . .”

  But she was on a roll and not to be stopped, as all the indignation and humiliation of the day—dear God, of the past year!—tumbled out in a flood of boiling ire. “I’m sure it’s almost impossible for you to comprehend, as a man of power and wealth, but women like me are propositioned all the time. And I don’t mean because I have any great beauty or appeal, but simply because I’m a woman alone, without the protection of a father or husband or brother. Men can’t seem to conceive that we can exist without them, or that we’d prefer to earn our living other than on our backs.”

  “No man worthy of the name would ever use force against a woman, or try to coerce her with money against her will.”

  She swiped at her eyes. “I know. But guess what?” She spat out the bitter words. “It happens every day.”

  He fished in his inner pocket for a handkerchief and held it out. “I’m not like them, Callista,” he said quietly. “I’d never hurt you. Nor take advantage. Not all men are like that.”

  She took the crisp linen square and wiped at her traitor eyes. “Perhaps not, my lord, but are you really so different? The Master of Love,” she mocked snidely. “Isn’t your reputation legendary in that regard?”

  A muscle clenched along his jawline, and she was pleased to see him angry at her. Anything to spare her his pity.

  “You think I’m like those two vicious buffoons?”

  She grimaced and gave ground. “No—but I don’t know what to think of you! You certainly cultivate that reputation of devil-may-care lover in society. You have mistresses, too, just like them, don’t you? And you’ve looked at me the same way they did.”

  “Really? Is it the same way?” He straightened back against the seat cushion.

  She rushed on, ignoring the frigid dignity of his question. “Can you imagine how infuriating, how degrading it is, day after day, to have idiots like those two look at you and only see your sex, to have them judge you constantly by your looks and how they might get you into their bed? To have your abilities and ambitions disregarded, simply because you’re a woman? I’m far better educated than most men! I know books, I’ve studied collections, I understand the business of the trade, but no one takes me seriously, since I’m merely of ‘the fair sex’!”

  “Actually, I do have some idea, Callista.” He looked down to study a perfectly buffed thumbnail. “No one takes me seriously either. Too pretty, it seems.” He shrugged in apparent disinterest, cutting her a glance through dark golden lashes far too long and curled for any man.

  She blinked, mouth open, stopped dead in her tracks.

  She said nothing for a long moment, simply looked at him—really looked, for the first time ever. She held his gaze head-on to see past that blinding beauty to the man he was.

  Dominick kept his eyes on her, as if in a dare. It was like holding her eyes steady on the sun until scales burned away and dropped off.

  And then, suddenly, it all clicked in place. She saw him.

  The whole Master of Love farce, the way he hid his writing, the separations he maintained between his social circle in the ton and his friends among the city’s intellectuals. No one took him seriously. Not the philosophers he supported as patron, not the ton. Was it all just a role he played?

  She didn’t know what to say.

  He held her gaze, not moving an inch, and then said, slowly, “I take you seriously.”

  She swallowed and gave the smallest of nods. “Dominick.” His name slipped out. “Yes, you do.” It was all she could manage. London disappeared, and her world shrank down to this: her looking at him, and seeing him. Him, Dominick: his fierce nobility of character, the strength of his intelligence, the power of the man he was behind the face fate gave him.

  He did take her seriously. And in his dark liquid eyes she saw mirrored the soul-deep hurt that, all his life long, no one had ever returned him the courtesy.

  “I admit I think about you with desire.” He reached for her hands again. “You’re an intelligent, beautiful, fascinating woman. But I’d never insult you with a demand you serve me as mistress.”

  “I could never be your mistress,” she declared, and was surprised at how wistful her voice sounded.

  “What about a man’s esteemed friend and lover? Would you ever consider that, Callista?”

  The quiet question drained away the last of her anger. “What’s the difference?” she asked, dubious.

  “Lovers are equals. A mistress, in the end, is a financial arrangement.”

  “And why would a woman consent to such a relationship?”

  “Companionship, desire, pleasure. Surely even a paragon of strength such as yourself gets lonely sometimes.”

  It felt like an abyss opening in front of her. Looking into those dark eyes, she felt herself tottering. She was lonely, and often sad, and so tired of struggling alone. She hadn’t understood before but knew now the pull of desire to which he referred. But it was such dangerous new territory, from which there would be no return. Overton’s words came back to her: Everyone knows how quickly he moves on. And yet there was a steadiness in his gaze as he looked at her now.

  She swallowed hard and looked away. “I realize such things happen among the couples of the ton. But an unmarried woman has more to lose in such an arrangement. I can barely earn a living now. Were I known as your lover, my reputation would truly be in shreds.”

  “Some would care,” he admitted, “but others, the more interesting bohemian circles, wouldn’t. And we could be discreet. I could protect you. As you say, I�
�m rich and powerful. What use is being a viscount if you can’t turn your station to the advantage of friends?”

  She pulled her hands away and pushed back against the velvet of the cushions. “Why are you saying this?” she cried wildly. “I don’t need this!”

  “For some reason, I think we both need each other,” he murmured. “But you’re right, of course—as usual, my dear.” He straightened up, and she almost heard his Master of Love mask click back in place. “Wicked of me to make such a suggestion.”

  The horses pulled to a stop and Meacham held them still while the tiger jumped down to set the steps.

  “Thank you for the invitation to accompany you to the lecture this evening.” She looked down, more deeply rattled by this strange intimacy suddenly sprung up with Dominick than by her encounter with Overton and Harris.

  “I will see to your honor, Callista. You may rest assured on that front.”

  She glanced up, frowning. “What are you intending? Nothing foolish, I hope. Those two don’t deserve a second thought.”

  “You needn’t worry yourself over it. Nor about your reputation. I’ve been lax in attending to matters as I should, but I’ll see things are put right.”

  “I think certain rumors have been spread that may be hard to undo,” she said cautiously, not wanting to name names and unsure of his present relationship with Lady Barrington. “I accepted the commission to work unchaperoned in your home. I accept responsibility for the consequences as well.”

  With a sad smile, he cupped her cheek. “That’s your problem, Callista—you accept far too much. Even Billy sees that. The responsibilities you take on would sink a lesser soul.” He rapped twice sharply on the carriage paneling. “Now go put some ice on your arm.” The door swung open, and he handed her out to the tiger before she could reply.

  As darkness settled on the ride back across town, Dom formulated his plan. He’d stop at his clubs first, to track down that damned Overton and his friend Harris before the night was over. Tomorrow, he’d call on his sister and enlist her help. His mother was due back in town soon, but her reputation wasn’t the best for the social rehabilitation he needed performed on Callista’s behalf. And he’d have to call on Anna, Lady Barrington, as well. He’d hoped they could simply drift cordially apart but saw now that strategy had backfired badly. Not for him, but for Callista, if the dark looks Anna had thrown his way all evening were any indication. He had an idea, however, that just might resolve that situation.