Don't Tempt Me (13 page)

“Never mind, sir,” Marchmont said, pitching his voice so that she'd hear him. “I promised I would see this thing through, and I shall, no matter what.”

Zoe might have become calmer and more rational if her sister Augusta hadn't condescended to join the family after dinner that evening.

She had nowhere else to go, she said. She still did not dare show her face to her acquaintance. She wondered if she ever would dare, or whether she ought to remove to the country permanently.

“After Zoe's carryings-on this day, I do not see how even the Duke of Marchmont can restore the family honor,” she said.

As Marchmont had predicted, news of their contretemps, in Grafton Street and in the dressmaker's shop, was already making the rounds of the Beau Monde. Augusta enlightened their parents.

“Oh, Zoe,” Mama said. “How could you?”

Even when Zoe gave her version of events, her father, to her dismay, did not take her side.

“Marchmont was right to shout at you,” said
Papa. “In his place I should have done the same. That was damned reckless of you, to pull a child from an overturned carriage. You should have left it to Marchmont. He's perfectly capable of dealing with such matters.”

“You made him look ridiculous,” said Augusta.

“I?” Zoe said. “I have not noticed you or any of my other sisters showing him any respect. All of you criticize him and say he is useless and lazy—”

“We don't say it in
public
. But you act like a ten-year-old child—and an ill-bred ten-year-old at that. Throwing a vase at him. Does that not strike you as childish?”

“It was a book!”

“Oh, Zoe,” said Mama.

“You are very lucky he came back, after the vulgar display you treated him to,” said Augusta. “But he at least thinks of Papa and his obligation to him. You think of nobody but yourself.”

“Obligation?” Zoe said.

“He's under no obligation to me, I'm sure,” said Papa.

“You know he has always regarded you as a father,” Augusta said.

Did you think I wanted to find that your father had been taken in by an imposter? Did you think I wanted to see him made a fool of?

The words hung in Zoe's mind. She remembered Jarvis's interpretation of his words:
Everybody knows he don't care about much
,
but what he said to you means he cares about your father.

Now the memories flooded in, of the summers
when Lucien and Gerard joined the Lexhams in the country. The two families had often spent weeks together, but she didn't remember the early times, when the boys' parents were alive. She didn't remember what the duke and duchess looked like or sounded like. She remembered vividly, though, the dreadful time after Gerard was killed, when Lucien shrank into himself and avoided everybody. Papa took him away, only the two of them, for what had seemed to her a very long time: months and months. When they returned, Lucien was himself again, or nearly.

Marchmont had returned to the dressmaker's shop because of Papa. Zoe looked at her father.

“Obligation has nothing to do with it,” Papa said. “Everyone knows that Marchmont would never run away from a fight. Everyone knows that he regards his word as sacred.”

I promised I would see this thing through
,
and I shall
,
no matter what
, he'd said.

“It's all pride, and nothing to do with me,” Papa said. “Really, Augusta, you have a knack for twisting things about.”

She did have that knack. Augusta was a killjoy of the first order.

Pride or obligation, it hardly mattered, Zoe told herself. For her, Marchmont was simply a means to an end. She needed to remember this. She needed to remember this was all he was to her.

Perhaps Papa's reproof subdued Augusta temporarily. Or perhaps she couldn't at the moment devise another way to abuse her sister. Whatever the reason, she reverted to the subject of Almack's.

Mama and Papa, who did not find this subject nearly as stimulating as Augusta did, moved away, Mama to her needlework and Papa to the chair beside her and a book.

Would she one day find a man with whom she'd sit in that way? Zoe wondered. Would she and this unknown husband ever be quietly content in each other's company? While such a prospect might not be fashionable, Zoe decided it might not be as boring as some might think.

“Marchmont will be there,” Augusta said, drawing Zoe from a domestic reverie in which a man who too closely resembled the duke sat by the fire with her.

“Where?” Zoe said.

“Almack's, of course,” said Augusta. “Were you not listening? The patronesses will be devastated if he doesn't appear. He's as important to them as Brummell used to be.”

“I think they'll be devastated tonight,” Zoe said. “He said he had an engagement at eight o'clock.”

“That leaves plenty of time for Almack's,” said Augusta. “The doors don't close until eleven. His engagement is no doubt with Lady Tarling,” she added, lowering her voice so that their parents couldn't hear—not that they offered any signs of listening to what was said on the other side of the room.

“Lady Tarling?” Zoe quickly ran through the names she'd memorized from the newspapers and scandal sheets. This one was unfamiliar.

“His mistress,” Augusta whispered.

Zoe felt a sharp stab within, which she told herself was foolish. He was a handsome, rich, and powerful man. All the virgins would want him for a husband.
All the not-virgins would want him for a lover. “He must have many concubines,” she said.

“I am sure I know nothing of such things,” Augusta said. “However, he and her ladyship are exceedingly discreet, which is all propriety requires. She is a widow, after all, and widows and married women are allowed more freedom, as I am sure I have explained to you.”

“All widows have freedom but me,” said Zoe.

“Nobody knows what you are,” Augusta said. “How can you be a widow when by rights you could not have been properly married because the man already had a wife?”

Zoe doubted she'd been properly married in any sense, even by the standards of the world she'd escaped. She was a widow who couldn't really be a widow because she hadn't really been a wife because she remained a virgin. There was a social conundrum if ever she'd seen one.

“I can promise you that Lady Tarling will not accompany Marchmont to Almack's,” Augusta went on. “Lady Jersey hates her and refuses to put her on the list. Lady Tarling pretends it doesn't signify. She makes a point of going to bed before midnight on Wednesday, in order to rise at dawn to ride in Hyde Park. She's a fearsome horsewoman. Everyone says that's what attracted Marchmont to her in the first place.”

Zoe doubted it was the lady's horsemanship that attracted Marchmont, but she filed away the information. She pondered it later that night when she woke from a bad dream about the harem.

The next morning, she, too, was up at dawn.

Marchmont House
Early Thursday morning

Jarvis stood in the anteroom, clutching her umbrella.

Under Dove the butler's disapproving glare, she spoke rapidly to a barely awake Duke of Marchmont.

“I am so sorry to trouble you at this hour, Your Grace, but Lord Lexham has already gone out and Lady Lexham is in bed with a headache and not to be disturbed and none of Miss Lexham's sisters or brothers has called yet this morning and I did not know what to do.” She took a deep breath and hurried on, “Your Grace, so far as I know, Miss Lexham has not been on a horse in twelve years, and she doesn't know London. She took a groom with her, but I fear he doesn't realize how long it's been since she rode or how little she knows of London and I'm sure he doesn't understand my mistress at all and it is very easy for her to—er—confuse the servants, especially the men.”

In other words, Marchmont thought, Zoe had gone out against her father's orders and lied to the stablemen to get her way…exactly as she used to do.

He was not amused.

He had not slept well.

On Tuesday night the Duke of York had assured him that the Prince Regent would invite Zoe to the Birthday Drawing Room.

On Tuesday night, Marchmont had felt confident the matter was settled. He was not so confident at present.

Last night at Almack's, the Duke of Marchmont was once more the topic of conversation. A highly exaggerated and distorted version of events in the Green Park, on Grafton Street, and in the dressmaker's shop circulated through Almack's ballroom.

He'd made light of it, as he always did. When Adderwood asked whether it was true that Miss Lexham had thrown a footstool at him, the duke replied, “I heard it was a book of fashion designs. In any event, it would hardly be the first time a lady has hurled a missile at my head and is unlikely to be the last. Harriette Wilson once threw a snuffbox at me, as I recall.”

He knew that wouldn't be the end of the matter. White's betting book would be full of Zoe today.

This didn't worry him. Nothing the ton was talking about was scandalous, merely entertaining. The abortive embrace was nowhere mentioned.

What worried him was the Queen. She was a stickler of the first order, and if she owned a sense of humor, she hid it well. She was polite and gracious and suffocatingly correct. He was not sure what she'd make of the stories. He supposed it was too much to hope they wouldn't reach her.

For all he knew, the invitation had not yet been sent. Even if it had been, it could be rescinded. If it wasn't rescinded, Zoe could still be snubbed. At a Drawing Room, this would be catastrophic.

Such thoughts were not conducive to tranquility.

Now, roused from a not-so-sound sleep and hastily dressed by a fretful Hoare, His Grace was not in the best of humors. His narrowed gaze moved from the maid to his butler.

“I do apologize for troubling Your Grace,” said Dove. “I explained to this person that she ought to have brought her problem to Lord Lexham's butler. We at Marchmont House have no control over the doings of Lord Lexham's stablemen. Despite my earnest entreaties, she was most insistent upon speaking to you.”

She must have threatened Dove with the umbrella, Marchmont thought.

“Mr. Harrison is out buying provisions, Your Grace, else I should have consulted him,” Dove added.

“What the devil has Harrison to do with it?” Marchmont said. “Do you need him to tell you the matter is urgent? Was the maid's anxiety for her mistress not plain enough? Send to the stables. I want a horse.
Now.
”

 

The Hyde Park Zoe discovered in the early morning was amazingly quiet and stunningly beautiful. A faint mist hung over the place, making the leaves of the trees shimmer. There was green, green, green as far as the eye could see, and the sheen of water in what her groom had told her was the Serpentine, a man-made river created in the time of King George II on the orders of his consort, Queen Caroline.

The view Zoe took in was easily worth the guilty conscience. She'd lied to the grooms. Wearing her mother's habit, she sat upon her mother's saddle on her mother's horse. None of these articles, including the horse, fit her. She could only hope that she didn't end up as a tangled heap of broken bones.

Ahead of her at present stretched the King's Private Road. This was the road known as Rotten Row, the
groom explained. It was strictly for riding, he said. Only the reigning sovereign was permitted to drive along this particular road.

At this hour, Zoe knew she'd little chance of encountering any sovereigns driving to or from Kensington Palace. At the moment, she didn't even see another rider.

But as she was taking in the acres and acres of glistening greenery, a slim, elegant rider on a superb gelding approached. The horse's dark coat matched the lady's hair. Her wine-colored habit was of the highest quality and latest fashion. Her groom's livery was splendid.

This had to be Marchmont's concubine.

Zoe felt the twinge again, but sharper, augmented by envy. The lady was breathtakingly elegant and utterly sure of herself.
She
didn't need lessons in how to stand or sit or pour tea.

As she neared, Zoe touched her crop to her hat. She couldn't remember whether it was proper to acknowledge a rider to whom one hadn't been introduced. On the other hand, failing to do it might be construed as a snub.

Zoe didn't want to snub this woman.

She wanted to kill her.

It was wrong and stupid to feel this way, of course, but she couldn't help it. She was uncivilized.

To her surprise, the lady returned the salute. She didn't pause to speak, though, but rode on.

Zoe let her pass, then followed, slowly at first. But as Lady Tarling's horse picked up speed, Zoe encouraged hers to do the same. Before long, Zoe was riding alongside the lady on the broad path.
Lady Tarling glanced her way, smiled, and raised her eyebrows in inquiry. Zoe returned the smile and nodded. And so the race began.

 

By the time Marchmont found them it was too late to do anything. They were galloping headlong down the hill from a stand of trees. He dared not get in their way, lest he distract them and cause an accident.

In his mind an image flashed of Zoe, in the summer before she vanished, galloping ahead of him on a narrow bridle path. She'd bolted and taken a fractious mare for a mount—daring herself and everyone else, as she too often did—and he'd gone after her, his heart in his mouth.

When he caught her and scolded her, she told him he was stuffy. She complained of her French lessons and mimicked her French tutor's efforts…until Marchmont was clutching his stomach, laughing helplessly.

In less than a twelvemonth she was gone, and all the brightness went out of his world.

Now he watched, heart pounding, until at last the two riders slowed and turned onto the road that would take them across the Serpentine. When they returned to Rotten Row they seemed to exchange words, but briefly. He made his way back to the Row and waited.