Kitabı oku: «Regency Affairs Part 1: Books 1-6 Of 12», sayfa 40
Today had proven to him his attraction to her went far beyond the passion. He’d suspected it had long before now, but he wouldn’t be the first man blinded by the power of sex. Today, she’d listened to his stories about home, about his mother’s garden and she understood what that garden meant on a fundamental level that had transcended the conversation. How would he ever give her up when the time came? Therein lay the burgeoning fantasy: maybe he wouldn’t have to.
‘Greer, I asked if you wanted the last scone?’ Mercedes poked him with her finger, a most unladylike gesture.
‘Let’s share it.’ Greer picked it up and broke the pastry. The scone crumbled into unfair halves and they laughed together. His heart soared from the simple joy of it. Never had it felt like this, never. This was good and he’d have to find a way to fight for it. He’d fought for England—surely he could fight for Mercedes.
Chapter Seventeen
The subscription room was sophisticated and avant-garde, allowing women to sit on the sidelines and watch the men play. It was a novel experiment and not necessarily one that was succeeding.
The women, Mercedes noted, were well dressed, but with a tinge of that inherent gaucheness often attached to those who are newly come to money. Their clothes bordered on garish, their jewels on gaudy. These women were not the fine ladies of Bath with their understated elegance and fifth-generation pedigrees.
The men were no better with their brightly striped waistcoats and colourful jackets. Expensive to be sure, but tasteful? One look at the room’s population and Mercedes knew exactly what her father wanted to do. He wanted to run ‘plucking peacocks’, his favourite gambit.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked Greer quietly, taking up residence at the brass railing that separated the tables from the viewing section.
He rolled his eyes and consented before moving off to the bar to fetch them champagne. They’d done smaller variations of ‘plucking peacocks’ before. She knew he disliked it. He thought it was dishonest. She had laughed the first time, arguing that it wasn’t their fault people were stupid. A smart man would never take the bet. It certainly wasn’t her fault there were so few smart men in the world.
‘Remember, Greer,’ she prompted, taking her glass from him. ‘We aren’t making anyone do anything against their will. If they bite, they bite.’
They settled in to watch. Her father was playing very well. She’d not seen him play any of the newer versions of the game before where there was no longer any alternating of turns. Instead, players put together runs and shot until they missed, making it possible for a player to clear the table without the other getting a single turn.
Her father potted the last ball to a smattering of applause. She tossed Greer a quick glance. That was their cue. A little way into the next game, she leaned over and blew in Greer’s ear. The public display drew a few looks their direction. Now it was Greer’s turn. He started to heckle. ‘Good shot, old man. I’m surprised you can see the ball well enough to hit it, let alone sink it.’
Mercedes laughed and kissed his cheek, earning them a few censorious looks. But her father had chosen this crowd well. It was before dinner, so ‘crowd’ was a relative term. The population in the club wasn’t nearly as large as it would be later in the evening and these men weren’t gentlemen, merely apeing them. A little action wouldn’t be terribly amiss to them. It would be exciting.
Her father shot them a withering look and went back to his game, making a difficult shot. Greer gave a mocking round of applause. ‘Bravo. I’d like to see you make that shot again.’ His sarcasm was evident. He made an aside to Mercedes loud enough to be overheard. ‘He’s a lucky old bastard. I bet he couldn’t do that again. It’s one shot in twenty.’ They laughed and then she kissed him full on the mouth, becoming very distracting for everyone in the room.
‘We’re trying to play over here,’ her father’s opponent called over, pointedly gesturing to the money stacked on the table to indicate the game was serious.
Greer grinned and rose. ‘Oh, there’s money on this?’ He took in the pile of pound notes. He withdrew a wallet from his pocket and pulled out some bills. ‘You want to make some real money? I’ll bet Grandpapa here misses the next shot.’
Her father’s opponent leaned on his cue and gave Greer a look of disbelief. ‘Are you joking? My opponent’s had the devil’s own luck this afternoon and the next shot is easy.’ It was, too, Mercedes noted, just a soft straight shot into the side pocket. But she already knew just how her father would play it. It wasn’t all that different from the shot she’d missed the evening she’d played Greer.
‘Exactly. I’m betting his luck just ran out.’ The room had gone silent, everyone watching Greer make his offer.
‘Double it, darling,’ Mercedes called out in sultry tones.
Greer gave a cocky grin. ‘Seems my lady wants me to sweeten the pot.’ He tossed down another stack of notes.
That did the trick. The man fairly drooled at the sight of easy money. ‘Well, all right, mister. If you’re aiming to give it away, I might as well take it.’
Her father chalked his cue and gave a fair imitation of feeling the pressure. He even tried to talk the man out of the wager for good measure. Then he aimed, a soft rolling shot positioned a little too high up on the ball. It hit the edge of the pocket and slid away to the amazed groans of the room, no one more amazed than her father himself. His opponent paid up, be-grudgingly, and not without a few deprecating words for Greer, who tucked the pound notes away and simply smiled before looping an arm around Mercedes and walking out. Only Mercedes sensed the tension simmering in the muscles beneath his coat. She didn’t have to be a mind reader to know a storm was coming.
‘I’m not doing it again,’ Greer announced as soon as they sat for dinner in the hotel dining room.
Ah, the storm was breaking. Mercedes settled her napkin in her lap and looked steadily at her lobster. Her eyes drifted covertly between her father and Greer.
‘You were absolutely brilliant.’ Her father ignored Greer’s comment by overriding it with a compliment. He turned to Mercedes, seeking to draw her in as a neutral buffer. ‘And you, my dear, were a genius. “Double it, darling.”’ He chuckled. ‘Brilliant. Couldn’t have done it better myself.’
‘It’s not right,’ Greer said again with more insistence. ‘That man had no idea.’
Her father set his fork down. ‘Of course he didn’t. However, such is the nature of any gamble a person takes in any aspect of his life. No one made him take the offer. He considered his options and decided he would.’
‘But his options were an illusion.’ Greer laid down his fork as well. Eyes clashed across the table. ‘There was never a chance to win.’
‘You listen here, Barrington …’ Lockhart took the challenge.
Mercedes drew a sharp breath. How many conversations had begun that way over the years? But Greer was a man and an officer. He could not be handled like a recalcitrant child. It was doubtful he could be handled at all.
‘There was nothing illegal in what we did.’
‘That doesn’t make it right.’
The men were halfway out of their seats and Mercedes cast about for a way to divert the impending scene, anything …
‘Why, Allen Lockhart! I thought that was you.’ The masculine depths of the intruding baritone froze Mercedes in her seat. Anything but that, not him. It was what she’d feared in coming to Birmingham, although her father had assured her that in a city of thousands the odds were in her favour. She schooled her features and looked up into the chiselled features of Luce Talmadge. His arrival may have squelched the quarrel brewing between Greer and her father, but in the future she’d be more careful about what she wished for.
‘Ah, Mercedes.’ Luce grinned, flashing straight teeth. He took a lot of pride in those teeth. They were quite the luxury when one grew up in the rougher neighbourhoods of Birmingham. ‘You’re as lovely as ever. Lovelier even.’ He pulled up a chair without being invited, audacious as always and just as tenacious. It was hard to believe she’d once found those traits attractive.
Luce sat and then half rose when it became apparent no one was going to introduce him to Greer. ‘I’m Luce Talmadge.’ He leaned over the table and offered his hand, but to her great satisfaction Greer merely inclined his head and offered nothing more than a glacial stare.
‘Shall I order champagne for everyone? We should celebrate running into one another.’ Luce pushed forwards, undaunted by Greer’s snub. ‘It’s been ages since we’ve all been together, but I still recall how much you liked champagne, Mercedes.’ He tossed her a wink that made her stomach curdle. How had she ever found him appealing? He was a boor, even if he was good looking. Greer would never have put a lady in such an untenable position, would never have insinuated himself into a conversation where he was not welcome, let alone someone else’s dinner table.
‘I hear there’s a tournament in Brighton, an All England Championship. It’s your doing, I suppose?’ It was Luce’s usual strategy—how it all came flooding back to her. He’d just keep talking, a rapid chatter filled with bonhomie until people just gave in and tolerated his presence or forgot they hadn’t invited him.
Her father broke in and she could have kissed him. ‘You’re not welcome here, Talmadge. I must ask you to please leave.’ Greer was tense beside her, ready to second her father’s request, even though moments before Luce’s arrival he’d nearly been at her father’s throat.
‘Surely, Lockhart, you’re not going to let the past keep us from friendship. That was nothing more than the foolishness of youth.’ Luce waved a hand dismissively. ‘Hardly worth carrying a grudge over. We’ve grown up and moved on.’
When her father didn’t budge, Luce’s smile turned mean as his attention focused on Greer. ‘I was once sitting where you are. It’s the good life, isn’t it? Doing Lockhart’s bidding? I think of all I learned on the road with him: how to win, how to lose, how to hustle, how to live the high life, which wine to order, which fork to use. Those were good years and they made me into the gentleman I am today.’ He held out his arms to indicate the expensive suit he wore.
Mercedes gave a snort of disbelief. The suit was garish and he looked more like the peacocks at the subscription room than a subtly dressed gentleman. Greer would look like a gentleman dressed in a potato sack.
Luce glared at her and rose, finally understanding his welcome wasn’t going to get any warmer. He was leaving. She started to breathe easier, thinking she might get out of this encounter unscathed. But Luce wasn’t done yet. ‘I think of those days with nostalgia, Mercedes. However, I see things have turned out for the best.’
He nodded in her father’s direction. ‘Best of luck with your new protégé and, Mercedes …’ his dark eyes rested on her with the devil’s own intentions, ‘… best of luck with your—what shall we call him? Your new lover? Your husband? Well, maybe not a husband. After all, I am fairly hard to replace and you aren’t into long-term arrangements.’
How dare he! White fury gripped her. Mercedes seized her water glass and threw the contents straight into his face seconds before Greer’s fist found Luce’s jaw with a blow that made casualties of the dishes lying between them. The blow took Luce and most of dinner to the floor. Well, she hadn’t had much of an appetite for the lobster anyway.
The bastard! Greer’s blood was pounding by the time he was straddling Talmadge, the lapels of his gaudy green-checked coat in his hands. Some vague part of him was aware that his hand throbbed. He shoved the pain aside. Greer dragged Talmadge to his feet. Talmadge protested the brutality, looking entirely aggrieved as if he were the wronged party. ‘We are both gentlemen here,’ he sputtered, trying to simultaneously clutch his jaw and swipe at the water running down his face.
‘One of us isn’t. You work out who that is,’ Greer snarled. He caught Mercedes’s eye. She was pale and her hand shook where it clutched the stem of her empty water glass. ‘Excuse me for a moment, my dear, I have to take out the rubbish.’
Greer roughly escorted Talmadge to the door, pointedly ignoring curious looks from the serving staff and the other diners. So much for discretion, but he’d be damned before he let a man treat a woman as poorly as Talmadge had treated Mercedes.
‘You can have her, you know.’ Talmadge tried to jerk free. ‘She and that meddling father of hers will never mean anything but trouble to any man. They’re users, both of them.’
Greer’s answer to that was a hard shove that set Talmadge staggering into the lobby. He watched Talmadge disappear into the street still reeling and off balance.
Certain the bastard was gone, Greer gripped the door frame, finally letting Talmadge’s comments sink in. He was reeling too, albeit in a far different way. Mercedes had been married and apparently divorced to the likes of Luce Talmadge, a bounder on all accounts. Impossible.
Greer fought the urge to race back to the table and demand the truth in the hopes that Talmadge had been lying. But that was a slim hope indeed. The pallor on her face at the sight of him was proof enough. For a woman of Mercedes’s remarkable steel such a reaction was telling in the extreme.
Racing back to the table would solve nothing if his emotions weren’t under control. He needed to face Mercedes with a cool head. He’d punched Talmadge mostly for Mercedes’s sake but also in part for himself. He was not Lockhart’s protégé. He was nothing like that man, had no intentions of being like that man. But it did raise the question of guilt by association and it was high time he grappled with that particular dilemma. This evening in the subscription room, he’d glimpsed just how far he’d fallen and he hadn’t even realised it.
By the time Greer returned to the table, Mercedes had gone. While he’d been marshalling his emotional troops, she’d been marshalling hers. It was just as well. Anxious as he was for answers, this was a conversation best held in private. As for the fantasies he’d harboured about showing her his mother’s gardens, they’d just become a little more complicated.
Escorting her around London was the least of his worries. Now she wasn’t merely the daughter of a celebrity billiards champion, she was also a divorced woman. Of course, she’d been that from the start. She just hadn’t told him. He had to wonder what else she hadn’t told him? What else was there to discover? What other reasons were being hidden behind the promise that he not fall in love with her? More importantly, did those reasons change how he felt about her? Her absence made it clear she thought they would.
Chapter Eighteen
Greer had found clarity by the time he reached the door of her room. The walk upstairs had given him time to collect his thoughts even if it hadn’t provided him any answers, at least not answers he liked. Common sense would recommend he walk away right now. It is what his mother would advise. He could hear her voice in his head: there was a reason the classes didn’t mix. Their values and lifestyles were too different.
But his heart was far too engaged with Mercedes to simply walk away because she wasn’t a nobleman’s daughter. Before he walked, there were things he needed to know. Hastily made decisions weren’t always the wisest. He raised his hand to knock and heard permission to enter. The door was unlocked. She’d been expecting him.
‘You hit him in my defence and now you’ve come for your answers, is that it?’ Mercedes turned from the window, letting the curtain fall across the wide pane. Distress was evident on her pale features.
‘I came to see how you are,’ Greer amended. ‘I won’t lie and say I care nothing about answers, but neither did I come solely out of my own selfish need. I wanted to make sure you were all right.’ He paused. ‘Are you?’ He flexed his right hand. It was starting to hurt now that his adrenaline had ebbed.
Mercedes noticed. ‘Maybe I should be asking you the same thing. We need to get ice on this. I’ll have the staff send some up.’ She took his hand, feeling and flexing each of his fingers in turn. ‘Father won’t forgive me if you’ve ruined your hand on my behalf.’
‘Stop fussing, Mercedes. My hand will be fine in a couple of days.’ Greer covered her hands with his free one, but Mercedes would not be thwarted.
When the ice arrived she packed it around his hand. He insisted it was not necessary, but the colour had returned to her face by the time he was settled to her satisfaction on the little sofa in her sitting room, his hand in ice. The unintended distraction had worked, creating a sense of normality between them, elusive as it might be.
There was nothing left to do but return to the reason for his visit. ‘Would you like to tell me about him?’ Then he hastily added, ‘Not because I am entitled to anything, but because you want to? Ghosts only have power when they aren’t exorcised.’
He’d been wrong on the stairs. It wasn’t the question of whether or not Talmadge’s comments were true that mattered. It was this, right here. If she couldn’t tell him, it would be between them always and there was no future in that. He held his breath. Everything hinged on this.
‘I was young and foolish,’ she began, sitting down on the sofa beside him. Greer began to breathe again. There was hope yet.
‘I was seventeen and my head was easily turned by the attentions of a good-looking man.’ Her throat worked and it was clear it was hard for her to say the words. ‘I was stupid, so headstrong when it came to Luce Talmadge.’ She gave a short, deprecating laugh. ‘Forgive my hesitation. Saying it out loud makes my mistake much more real.’
‘Everyone makes mistakes,’ Greer offered. He meant for it to be encouraging, but the words sounded empty even to him.
She raised a dark brow. ‘Mistakes aren’t usually of this magnitude. My father was already a renowned champion in our circles when Luce took up with us. If I’d been smarter, I’d have seen that Luce was using me as access to my father. Luce was, and is, a consummate user of people, only he’s not very subtle at it, which makes falling for him that much worse.’
She shook her head and traced a pattern on the sofa cushion, unable to look at him. ‘I mistook his lack of subtlety for boldness and tenacity. When we’re seventeen, I suppose we don’t make those distinctions. My father tried to warn me, but I was too stubborn to listen. Anyway, my father took Luce on a short tour to advertise the Brighton room. He was good at billiards and even better at separating people from their money. I went with them and it was heady stuff for a girl fresh out of boarding school.’
Much the same as it was now. The comparison between the two situations was not lost on him. It was the second time in as many hours he’d been cast in the role of Lockhart’s protégé, and the label did not sit well with him. He was about to protest that this time was different, but Mercedes read his mind. ‘Now that I’ve started, you have to let me finish.’ She put a soft finger to his lips.
‘Luce convinced me he was in love and that he wanted to marry me. He painted a compelling picture. We’d be the most dazzling couple in Brighton and I was not immune to the images he conjured. They were exciting and I entirely overlooked the reality that all of Luce’s dreams were built on my father’s subscription room. He’d assumed I would inherit the club. It was only one of many assumptions Luce made about my connection to my father’s wealth.
‘We married three days before we returned to Brighton, a secret wedding in the morning in a church in a tiny sea-coast village. Luce told me I was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He wooed me with kisses and a solid gold ring. He’d even been a bit misty-eyed when he slipped it on my finger.’
Mercedes shrugged. ‘In truth, I was having misgivings before we married, but in my stubbornness I shoved them away, blaming it on my father. I wouldn’t let myself be influenced by him. I was going to make this decision on my own.’
Greer wanted to punch the man again. He knew men like Luce Talmadge, who preyed on the susceptibilities of young girls. Fortune hunters existed at all levels of society. It just proved that ‘susceptibilities’ came in all forms; her own inherent stubbornness had been as lethal to Mercedes as a weaker woman’s belief in false flattery. But he could well imagine an obstinate Mercedes, a formidable force even at seventeen. Words would not have stopped her once she’d set her mind.
‘We didn’t tell my father until we got back. He was furious. He said a real man would ask permission, a real man wouldn’t slink off behind his back and marry a man’s daughter. We were in my father’s study and I remember very clearly how my father looked at me and said, “He’s only after your money, Mercedes.”’
Greer’s gut clenched in anticipation of what would come next: a deal of the kind Lockhart loved to make, the kind where no man was forced to do anything other than what his nature motivated him to do, like the greedy man in the club tonight. The only difference was that tonight, the man had been his own victim. In this scheme, it had been Mercedes.
‘Of course, Luce made all the requisite noises about being offended by my father’s brash assumptions. Then my father stood up and went to his safe. He pulled out a stack of pound notes and a document. He set them on his desk. He opened the document and showed it to Luce. It was his will, in which he left the subscription room to Kendall Carlisle. In the event that Carlisle preceded him in death, it comes to me in the form of a trust to be overseen by my father’s solicitor. It’s never mine directly.’
‘Let me guess—Talmadge didn’t like that arrangement?’
Mercedes gave a sad laugh. ‘At the time, I thought he was going to faint. It’s rather funny now, at a distance. But I assure you, it was not humourous then to look the man you thought you loved in the face and see quite clearly that your love was a one-way thing.’
Promise me you won’t fall in love with me. Was that because she didn’t feel the same way? Had she extracted that promise in order to protect him? ‘What did your father do next?’
‘He tapped the pounds notes with his hand and said, “There are a thousand pounds in this stack and I’ll write you a personal cheque on my account in London for nine thousand more if you take the money, declare the marriage false and walk out this door today with the promise that you will make no further claim on Mercedes.” I don’t think it took Luce even a minute to make up his mind. I had not seen him in six years until this evening.’
Tears threatened. Greer could see them swim in her grey eyes. She swiped them away with a dash of her hand. But they weren’t tears for Talmadge. ‘It’s embarrassing beyond words to know you were sold for ten thousand pounds. In my girlish dreams, I’d thought forever would cost a bit more.’ She shrugged and tried for a smile.
‘I think you have it backwards.’ Greer said thoughtfully, his eyes on her. ‘You weren’t sold. Your freedom was bought.’ Whatever he might think of Lockhart, the man had done this one good deed.
She nodded. ‘I’ll always owe my father for that. He’d warned me. I didn’t listen and yet he was still there, in his own way, to pick me up.’
It was one of the ways in which Lockhart had a nobility of his own. Greer saw that. But he also saw the prison it created for Mercedes and he liked that even less. Lockhart was not above using people, even his own daughter. Greer had seen him do it on two occasions. Lockhart knew precisely what he was owed by others, Mercedes included.
Greer pulled his hand out of the ice and flexed it experimentally, slowly. ‘I’m glad I hit him.’ He knit his brow. ‘Is this the reason you didn’t want me to fall in love with you? You didn’t want me to find out about Luce?’ He hoped it was as superficial as that and not his earlier supposition.
‘Something like that.’ Her answer was not reassuring.
‘But not quite? Talmadge and I are not the same. I’m not using you, not looking to trap you. You’ve said you’re not using me.’ He could not make it any plainer without breaking his promise to her. He would break it, but not yet. An inspiration struck him.
‘Why did you come on this trip?’ Based on what she’d revealed, coming made very little sense, especially if she saw too many similarities between these circumstances and the previous ones.
He could see this question bothered her more than anything she’d told him about Luce. She rose and paced the room, going back to her curtain at the window and looking out. So he couldn’t see her face when she lied to him? He didn’t want to believe that.
‘Well, Mercedes?’ he prodded. ‘What is it you wanted badly enough to put yourself through this?’ The pieces were coming fast and furious to him now. This trip was a proving ground for her, a chance to claim … something … The fight in Beckhampton … The madness of the Bath brothel. Yes. He had it.
‘You.’ Greer began, grappling with the reality that flooded him. ‘You wanted to be the protégée.’ She had coveted what he would throw away, what he felt distaste for. He had unwittingly stolen something from her that she cherished.
She turned back from the window, her face fierce. ‘Yes, I wanted to be the protégée. I wanted to show him I could not only train you, but beat you. I did and it still made no difference.’
Because she owed Lockhart. Perhaps he’d been too hasty in suggesting Lockhart had bought her freedom. He’d merely transferred it from one gaoler to another. This was the side of Lockhart that Greer could not countenance. Everyone had a purpose. Greer wondered what his was. He was not naïve enough to think he would be the one singular individual to escape Lockhart’s machinations. He wondered, too, if he could free her. Would she ever leave her father? Tonight was not the time to put the question to her.
‘I should go.’ Greer stood. He needed time to think, time to sort this all out and his place in it as well.
She came to him and ran a finger down his shirtfront. ‘I think you should stay.’
Greer trapped her finger with his good hand. ‘Not tonight. We both have too much on our minds. I don’t think there would be room in bed for all of it.’ Not when she was vulnerable, not when she might be tempted to use sex as a way to bind him to her. He kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘Goodnight, Mercedes. I’ll see you in the morning.’
But he couldn’t help wondering as the door closed behind him if things would ever be the same between them. His mind was far too restless for sleep. A walk would do his body good and the gaslights of the city centre made Birmingham safe enough if a man was careful.
The irony of what occupied his mind, however, was that his thoughts were not on Luce Talmadge and the brief, ridiculous marriage. He’d been the first to show her true pleasures. In his more fantastical moments he hoped to be the last and only man to do so some way, somehow.
Knowing about Talmadge made it far easier to understand Mercedes and her reticence to admit this relationship between them was anything more than sex. But that would also be the easy answer. Did she return his feelings or was she using him? Was he still merely a tool to get what she wanted from her father? Was she so determined to wrest it from her father that she was willing to sleep with the enemy? Did she still hate him for being the protégé?
The real issue that occupied his mind as he walked Birmingham was what to do about Lockhart. The longer he thought about it, the more convinced he became that Lockhart was the villain of the piece and he wanted no more part of it—no more inns, no more days on the road, no more nights watching Lockhart trade on his celebrity in big towns or adopting false aliases in small towns in order to ‘pluck peacocks’ or some other game. Lockhart liked toying with people, determine their price.
Greer felt shame that he’d let Lockhart toy with him for so long. Lockhart had been in his element in Bath, introducing him as Lord Captain Barrington. And Greer had let him, convinced that such a use of his title could buy Mercedes acceptability. In part, he’d begun to believe in his own mystique, charmed by his own growing celebrity as he won game after game, as he danced with Mercedes in his arms, distracted by beauty, lust, and money.
It had been a glorious life for a few weeks. He wanted to be angry at Lockhart for leading him into such iniquity, but there was no one to be angry with but himself. Lockhart had simply dangled the carrot—something the man was very good at doing. No one had made him take it. No one could make him stay.
Birmingham had a direct train route to London. He should be on it first thing in the morning. But truly, he didn’t want to go to London. He wanted to go home, to the rich fields of Devonshire, fields he hadn’t seen in three years. There would be sense in Devonshire, equilibrium, even if there was a reckoning to go with it. But he couldn’t go, not without Mercedes. If he left her now, he would not get her back. If there was one thing he didn’t regret about this madcap trip, it was her. Could she say the same for him? Would she come? There was only one reason to come and many reasons to stay. Would she refuse because of Luce?
Only the densest of people would fail to see the parallels there in his request. Or would she refuse because it meant choosing another man over her father, who had rescued her once before and to whom she felt indebted? Or would she refuse because she’d been using him all along? If he was gone, she could be the protégée just as she had planned.
