Free Arian by Iris Gower Page B

another volume.
    ‘I think this will interest you much more,’ he said. ‘It contains short biographies of the local businessmen. Some of them are leather barons, a subject I know interests you. Perhaps you should seek out one who is eligible for marriage, join him in business, as it were.’
    ‘I don’t much like the implication,’ Arian said, anger growing inside her. ‘I am many things but I am not a harlot who sells herself for a price, any price. I will make my own way in this life and without marrying a man to do it.’
    Calvin’s eyebrows were raised. ‘How is Eddie Carpenter getting along?’ he asked. ‘Is he qualified yet? I haven’t had a letter from him in some time.’
    Arian felt her colour rise ‘I was Eddie’s mistress, if that’s what you’d like to call it. That was not for gain and it was my choice. It’s no-one’s business but my own.’
    ‘The things I have heard about you and the cobbler Price Davies are not true then?’ he asked calmly.
    ‘I don’t know what you have heard.’ Arian felt her face grow hot. She had teased Price Davies with her charms just to learn his skills and in the end she had suffered for it. ‘I would prefer it if you did not speak about that part of my life, it is very painful to me.’
    ‘I suppose being betrayed is always painful,’ Calvin said and he sounded angry, ‘but some of us do not ask for it.’
    ‘I didn’t ask for what happened to me,’ Arian said, the blood pounding in her ears. ‘I was held prisoner and raped by the cobbler you talk about. Does that satisfy your curiosity, sir?’
    Calvin seemed taken aback by her outburst. He opened his mouth to say something but Arian went on speaking.
    ‘It was not pretty and I’m not proud of it but it doesn’t make me a whore so if you have given me a job with the idea that you can amuse yourself with me between the sheets then you can forget it.’
    ‘I’ve told you before, I am not interested,’ Calvin said his voice suddenly lacking emotion. ‘I will not be taken in by a pretty face ever again.’
    He moved away from her and the book felt heavy in her hands. Arian felt her anger fade. Calvin had suffered a blow to his pride; he knew what betrayal meant and he was only a man, for all his wealth, a man with feelings which went as deep as her own.
    ‘I don’t know what garbled tales you have heard about me,’ she said more softly, ‘and it would do no good to explain my life to you. I accept that you are not interested so can we just take each other on face value?’
    Her voice trembled and Calvin turned to her at once, his hand outstretched. What he might have said faded on his lips as Arian saw his glance move from her to someone in the hallway.
    ‘Yes, Mr Simples,’ he said, ‘what can I do for you?’ He was in charge again, Lord Temple, who owned a fine house and a great fortune and was master of his own fate.
    Arian bobbed a curtsy and putting the book on the table left the library, passing Simples in the hallway without looking at him.
    ‘If I may have a word, your lordship,’ she heard him saying, and then she was climbing the stairs to her own room, her cheeks still flushed, her hands clasped together to stop them from trembling.
    She sat near the warmth of the fire and tried to examine her feelings. For a moment there, she had felt a kindred spirit with Calvin Temple. He had reached out as though in friendship and she would have valued as a friend a man who was not interested in taking anything from her. A man who, like her, had been hurt. But Gerald Simples had ruined the moment. She was right about him, he was an omen for ill in the new life she was seeking to make for herself.
    Gerald Simples stood before Lord Temple and marshalled his thoughts. He had heard only part of the conversation between Arian and his lordship but when she had cried rape, it was undoubtedly the truth. He’d heard about Davies’s escapades of course, but had chosen to stay right away from any