The baron’s help came with a high price. He’d been attempting to make her his mistress since she was a girl of fifteen and they’d met in Germany. She’d managed to repel his advances since then, but it hadn’t been easy.

She led him into the front parlor, buying time to think of a way out of this predicament.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to extend such largess, Lord Sprague. We’ll move immediately.” But they had nowhere to go, and no money to rent a new house.

“You can’t leave right now. Louis is so close to finishing the symphony. He wrote to me and told me so and I was ecstatic to hear the news. I’ve been waiting a long time to hear it. I think I’ll stay here a few nights a week so that I may be near to hand when he finishes it. Then we’ll all celebrate together.”

His words and the way he stared at her made Viola’s skin crawl.

“I can’t live in the same house as you, surely you understand, Lord Sprague. I’m an unmarried lady. My employment as music instructor to the Duke of Westbury’s five sisters requires that my conduct be unimpeachable.”

“You lost that position, did you not? I believe you left without even a reference from His Grace.”

He knew too much about her. It was almost as if he’d hired someone to spy on her.

“You can’t live here with us,” she said firmly.

“I can live wherever I want. Would you rather be cast out onto the street? Do you think your father could finish his symphony at the poorhouse?”

“I have powerful friends. Someone will help us.” Many of her friends were still at their country residences, though they would be back in London soon.

“I wish you would be slightly more accommodating after everything I’ve done for you. You will be mine. It’s inevitable. You can just stop fighting it and let it happen.”

“I’m not a form of currency.”

“And I say that you are. Your father is deeply in debt to me. And now I own the very roof over your head. If he doesn’t complete the symphony and deliver it to the Philharmonic Society in one month’s time, my patience will be exhausted, and I’ll demand back every shilling I’ve invested in your father for breach of contract. A woman in your position has very few choices.”

A wave of revulsion, swift and bile bitter, crested over her. She’d never become his mistress. He thought of her as a helpless female. He didn’t know that she had fierce friends who’d taught her to stand up for herself. Taught her to defend herself against men who sought to break her, to bring her low to make themselves feel large.