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“I’d always thought that particular household arrangement somewhat suspect,” said Stuart, as they approached Sloane Street. “I remember asking our governess whether it would be quite all right if Snow White lived with seven shortish men.”

They were in the midst of an improbable conversation on the private lives and thoughts of fairy tale characters. Only a minute ago, she’d declared that Cinderella would have little in common with Sleeping Beauty, who’d never done a day of hard work—sleeping for a hundred years, how idle and slovenly—but would welcome a chat with Snow White—keeping a house for seven was no mean feat.

She giggled. “And what did your governess say?”

“Fräulein Eisenmueller? She started shouting in German.”

“I don’t blame her. She was deliberately provoked,” said Cinderella, smiling still.

“Yes, poor Fräulein Eisenmueller. I suppose I did provoke her. I didn’t like the way she thought I was corrupt for my age, because I hadn’t led a sheltered life.” He felt himself grinning. “I dare say I knew more of what Snow White could conceivably do with all those shortish men than her spinster’s mind could comprehend.”

He shouldn’t speak of such things to her. It was inappropriate. And he was never inappropriate, beyond that one frustrated instance with Fräulein Eisenmueller. Bertie, who loved all the pleasures of the senses with the abandon of a Georgian roué, had called Stuart a dried-up prig.

“Your poor governess,” she murmured.

“Pity me instead. She made me think I was some sort of irredeemable degenerate until I got to Rugby, whereupon I immediately saw that the majority of boys were degenerates and I was but a year or ten ahead of my time.”

What was it about her that made him disclose—with such alacrity—aspects of himself that others couldn’t pry out of him with a crowbar and the patience of a Count de Monte Cristo?

She shot him a considering look. “What of men? Are they as much degenerates as boys?”

His heart beat faster. “They would like to be,” he said, keeping his tone matter-of-fact. “But most of them lose what audacity and passion they once possessed as lads, so they think the thoughts but dare not do the deeds.”

The distant clacking of hooves reminded him that despite his wishes otherwise, they weren’t out for a pleasant stroll before returning to his house. His time with her was limited.

He stopped and raised his walking stick.

She looked a little surprised, almost as if she too had forgotten the business about the hansom cab. “What of you?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Have you lost
your
youthful audacity and passion? Or are you still a degenerate at heart?”

His heart now pounded. He wasn’t so dense that he couldn’t tell when a woman flirted with him. She was flirting with him.

“Would you like to find out?” he said. He wasn’t a flirt. He could not take her question lightly.

Panic flashed in her eyes. The cab drew up next to them. The horse snorted. She let out a breath of relief. “Alas, we’ve no more time,” she said, her voice high-pitched, her words a rush. “Thank you again for everything. Best of luck with your promising young political career. And good night.”

He gazed at her a moment, then inclined his head. “Midnight comes. Godspeed, Cinderella.”

It wasn’t until the carriage pulled away, with her waving from the window, her face wistful, that he realized he’d hoped to be in the cab. With her.

There had always been those who claimed that Stuart had not blood, but cold water running in his veins. He found it a strange assessment, except when it came to matters of the heart and the loins.

He seemed to have been born with a monkish temperament where women were concerned. He found the fate of nations to be of far more interest than trim ankles and pretty shoulders. Making love was like shooting grouse, an activity he indulged in when the occasion presented itself, not something he particularly sought.

What, then, was wrong with him tonight?

He wanted her. He wanted to stare at her, to smell her, to have his skin again crackle with electricity from her nearness. He wanted to devour her, to help her—and himself—find out exactly how much of a degenerate he could be when he put his mind to it.

England could declare a new war tonight and he wouldn’t care.

“Where to, sir?” someone called out to him.

Another hansom cab had drawn up to the curb. The cabby looked at him expectantly. He forgot that he had not moved since she left, that he still stood at the edge of the street, as if he too were waiting for a carriage.

Wasn’t he? Her voice had been quiet, but it had carried to him on a playful breeze.
Sumner House Inn, Balham Hill.
Balham Hill was in Clapham, a good three miles away. He’d need a carriage.

He meant to shake his head, to take himself home and change for Lady Arlington’s ball. His life was Inner Temple, the Palace of Westminster, and the Season in full swing. There was no room for mysterious strangers and needless entanglements.

Besides, what innkeeper worth his salt would let him in at this hour? And what assurance had he that even if he could lie, cheat, and steal his way past the innkeeper, she’d allow his presence in her room for more than three seconds?

“Sumner House Inn, Balham Hill,” he told the cabbie.

Chapter Six

November 1892

Dear Madame,

 

I’d like to review your menus for the day.

Your servant,
Stuart Somerset

Dear Sir,

 

For luncheon, a roast beef sandwich.

For dinner, four roast beef sandwiches.

Yours humbly,
Verity Durant

Dear Madame,

 

A roast beef sandwich for luncheon is fine.

For dinner, with the future Mrs. Somerset in attendance, I need something more formal. I suggest one of your twelve-course dinners.

Your servant,
Stuart Somerset

Dear Sir,

 

Certainly. I will make sure that the future Mrs. Somerset is suitably impressed.

Many congratulations on your upcoming marriage.

Yours humbly,
Verity Durant

In accordance with the decision to delay the announcement of his engagement, Stuart had said nothing to Marsden as he dispatched his secretary to escort Lizzy and her father from London to Fairleigh Park. Nor anything to Mrs. Boyce or Mr. Prior.

He could have accomplished his objective with Madame Durant—a fancy dinner—without any mention of the future Mrs. Somerset either. And yet he’d wielded that name the way a Transylvanian caught abroad at night might brandish a braid of garlic.

Perhaps, in the end, it had only been a reminder to himself—that he was a betrothed man. That inexplicable surges of lust and curiosity where the cook was concerned were quite beneath him, however notorious and sexually rapacious the cook.

A reminder he shouldn’t have needed in the first place.

Lizzy knitted. She would miss this week’s meeting of the Ladies’ Charitable Knitting Circle, but she still hoped to finish the muffler she’d started the previous week, before she was to leave for Bertram Somerset’s funeral. It wasn’t to be. The doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of Mr. Somerset’s secretary. She grimaced, rolled up the muffler and the needles, and shoved everything into her knitting bag.

She’d turned on only the table lamp closest to her. In the drained light of a sunless November day, most of the drawing room was sunk in shadows. Before she could do something about it, the door opened, her butler announced Mr. William Marsden, and in came a man who could very well serve as the additional source of illumination the room needed.

Mr. Marsden was quite possibly the most gorgeous man alive—certainly Lizzy had met no one more beautiful. He had a thick head of gleaming golden curls, perfect eyebrows, long, expressive eyes, a strong nose, and lips that were really too sumptuous for a man, but somehow still managed to look chiseled and interesting on his face. And Lizzy loathed him with a passion that other women reserved for spiders that had crawled up their stockings.

She hated the showy and complicated knot of his necktie, the too fashionably snug cut of his coat, the sheen and luster of his hair that couldn’t have been achieved without regular applications of lemon juice and egg yolk. She deplored that her dear Stuart trusted and depended on this peacock to the extent that he did. And it made her grit her teeth that as Mr. Marsden was no mere plebeian, but a son of the seventh Earl of Wyden, she couldn’t very well ignore him and leave him waiting in the vestibule, but must receive him in her drawing room.

“Mr. Marsden, how good of you to come. Thank you for taking the trouble,” she said, her words a winter’s worth of ice under a thin gloss of politesse. She hadn’t wanted Mr. Somerset’s secretary to travel with them, but her father had been very much in favor of the idea.

“It’s my honor and my pleasure,” said Mr. Marsden, smiling slightly.

In her more lucid moments, she was somewhat alarmed at the intensity of her antipathy, given that Mr. Marsden had never done her any harm, nor even uttered an objectionable word in her presence. But then Mr. Marsden would smile, and her lucidity would find itself out in the back settlements of Australia.

Because it was a horrid smile, all filth and smut beneath a varnish of courtesy: a smile that said he knew something intolerable about her. And since it so happened that there was a wide swath of Lizzy’s recent past that could not be known without getting her banished from Society, her loathing was contaminated with fear—and an almost nauseous awareness that she never found him more handsome than when he had on one of those reviled smiles.