How the Marquess Was Won (26 page)

She couldn’t speak. She was weak from the pictures he’d painted, from hope and astonishment.

“Do you
want
me?” he demanded on a hoarse whisper.

“I want you.” She choked.

“I promise. You will see me often—whenever you please.”

Wait.

She went rigid.

He went on. “Where do you want to live? Tell me, and I’ll buy a house for you in London and see you whenever I can . . . a house wherever you want. And it will be yours, always, no matter what happens . . .”

She felt the plummet and the landing so physically the breath left her body. She nearly put her hand up to ward off the blow, as if the ground was rushing up to meet her.

And still he was kissing her throat, as if he hadn’t yet realized he was kissing a statue and not a woman.

She couldn’t believe how steady her voice was when she spoke. She heard it through a ringing in her ears.

“And where will your wife live?”

His hands stopped moving.

She pressed her hands against his hands, gently but firmly pushed them away from her body. And then she pulled out of his arms, backed up three steps.

“So what you propose is . . . a business arrangement.”

“If you . . . if you wish to call it that.” He actually sounded confused by her indignation.

“When
I
throw a humidor, Lord Dryden, I don’t miss. And I have no need of diamonds.”

“Phoebe . . . I have never been dishonest with you about my plans. I’ve upset you . . . please tell me why.”

The bastard was confused.

“You don’t know me at all.” She said it slowly, astounded that she thought he had.

The cool air was a slap to her feverish body. She wrapped her arms around her torso. They were a poor substitute for his. Already she felt bereft. She shook her head roughly.

“At least . . . take my coat . . .”

“As a souvenir?”

She sounded so bright, so brittle. Like the hard jagged edge of a broken porcelain cup.

Possibly a porcelain cup hurled at the marquess’s head.

He flinched.

Good.

The two of them were patently ridiculous now, with their clothing in disarray, his trousers open, her dress unlaced, the aftermath of an absurd fever. What had she expected, anyway? The past several days had been comprised of one magical moment layered upon another. She’d gotten spoiled and complacent. For a moment in time she’d expected his narrative to end the way Cinderella’s story had, and not the way a Greek myth would. With the poor molested nymph turning herself into an olive tree or some such to free herself from one of the god’s clutches.

She couldn’t do that. But she could go to Africa.

She pulled the top of her dress up to cover her breasts, pushed her sleeves up over her shoulders.

“Good night,” she said firmly.

His hands, hovering where he’d last touched her, as if she’d indeed been a mirage, finally dropped to his sides. And from where she stood, she could see his face go closed and hard and inscrutable.

She’d hurt him. In all likelihood, more specifically, she’d hurt his pride. It was a survivable wound, of that she was certain.

And a self-inflicted wound, Lord Dryden.

“Very well,” he said softly.

If he’d said nearly
anything
at all more she might have stayed. She might have been persuaded. If he had tried. But it was so clear that there were only two options for him. She fit into one box and Lisbeth another.

She gave a short sardonic laugh and shook her head, slowly, to and fro, like a teacher disappointed in a pupil. Even as the shards of her heart clogged her throat.

And then she turned, skirts whipping across her ankles, and fled across the cobblestones, hearing her own footsteps echo over them.

Chapter 18

P
hoebe, awakened by a maid poking up the fire, tossed her a quick smile over her shoulder.

And then she sank back down onto her pillow. Argh. A mistake. Her head felt like a throbbing boulder.

She was amazed, given how her dream had ended, to find herself still in a featherbed in the Redmond house. She ought to be barefoot, dressed in rags and staring in bemusement at a pumpkin and four mice.

“You’ve a message, Miss Vale.”

Hope, the traitor, catapulted her out of bed, and she nearly skidded to the tray upon which the message rested.

And then balanced herself, because she came very near to casting her accounts as her stomach spent some time sloshing to a halt.

She didn’t recognize the seal.

She slid her finger beneath it.

And she read it once. And then again. And then looked at her reflection, puzzled.

For it seemed the fairy tale had acquired a second act.

We would be delighted if you would join us in London, Miss Vale. We’ve festivities planned—two balls and a party. Don’t worry about the proper dresses! We’ve lots! Do say you’ll come for at least a fortnight. You may bring your cat.

With great affection,

Marie and Antoinette

With great
affection
? They were an exuberant pair, those two wicked pixies.

She stared at it. But this . . . this was a fairy tale she’d never before read, and she had no idea what she ought to do. There was no precedent.

At the moment she was alone at the breakfast table but for Lisbeth. The service was informal, tureens of food plunked on the table rather than on the sideboard in acknowledgment that most of the guests had departed the night before: eggs, kippers, fried bread, marmalade, coffee.

“Is aught amiss, Phoebe? Your face is so funny.” Lisbeth lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “Should I avoid the kippers? Do you need the chamber pot?”

Phoebe looked at Lisbeth. Lucky Lisbeth. Whose own face would under no circumstances ever be construed as
funny
.

“It seems I’ve been invited to London to stay with the Silverton sisters. And to attend . . . parties and balls.”

A silence.

Lisbeth went very still. “But . . . I’ll be staying with the Silverton sisters in London. Papa and Mama gave me their permission to stay with them for at least a fortnight, as Mama will be visiting my cousin in Devonshire. Papa will be in London. They invited
me
.”

“Well, then.” Phoebe offered a noncommittal smile. “They invited the both of us.”

Another silence. And then Lisbeth tried for a smile, and failed. It was more of a grimace. She fingered her teaspoon with feigned casualness. “And you’ve been invited to attend the same parties and balls . . . I’ll be attending?”

Another uninflected sentence, pitched a bit higher than usual.

“I’m uncertain. Do you normally attend the same parties and balls as the Silverton sisters?”

“Yes,” Lisbeth said carefully.

“Well, then,” Phoebe said again. And smiled another neutral smile. And in a morning where she thought everything would be covered in a fine gray haze of heartbreak, she found herself perversely enjoying Lisbeth’s discomfort.

Lisbeth placed her spoon down very gently, lining it up precisely in its place. As though she wished she could do the same with Phoebe. Line her up where she
belonged
.

“They’re a bit . . . fast, you know. The Silverton sisters.”

Oh, I
know
, Phoebe thought with a sudden surge of reckless delight.

She didn’t respond.

Another little silence.

“And when you go to these balls you will go to . . . dance?”

To hold your reticule
. “Presumably.”

Lisbeth stared at her. And though no furrows appeared on her snowy brow, her abstracted eyes made it clear that she was struggling, as Viscount Waterburn had done just the night before, with translating
her
experience of Phoebe—the companion, the schoolteacher, the person she ordered about and upon whom she bestowed occasional largesse—into the sort of person who received coveted invitations. Their worlds were
parallel
. They could not intersect. It was quite simply a natural law, as far as Lisbeth was concerned.

I shall be a schoolteacher in my thoughts until the day I die,
Phoebe thought.

“I should love to see you in London,” Lisbeth claimed, finally. “It will be such fun! But will you have the proper clothes?”

She flicked Phoebe over with a look that seemed to take in every worn fiber of her dress, the faintly yellowing lace at the collar, even the minute fray at the hem. It was a second’s worth of breathtakingly scathing pity.

Entirely supplanted by an expression of sympathy a second later.

Oh,
well
done, Lisbeth, she felt like saying. It was a look that Phoebe suspected had always been in Lisbeth’s arsenal but had never before been deployed, at least in her direction. It was effective. All the Redmonds seemed to possess the innate ability to terrify and judge with the twitch of an eyebrow or a flinty second’s worth of inspection from their perfect eyes.

Phoebe’s own character was forged in a particularly effective furnace, however. She was shaken, not bowed.

“I’m told I oughtn’t to worry about the proper clothes.” Phoebe said this evenly.

“Everyone worries very much about proper clothes in London,” Lisbeth said in all seriousness.

Jonathan staggered into the breakfast room, then flung himself noisily into a chair, lowered his chin into his palm, reached for the silver coffeepot with his other hand, closed his eyes again, aimed for his teacup, and poured.

And poured.

And poured and poured and poured.

The coffee waterfalled gently over the rim of the cup, into the saucer, onto the tablecloth. He’d dozed off.

“Jonathan!” Lisbeth squeaked.

His eyes snapped open, and he smoothly hoisted the pot and eyed his brimming saucer and the tablecloth in some surprise.

“Don’t squeak, Lisbeth. It hurts.” He placed the coffeepot gently, gently down again, rubbed at his eyes and yawned cavernously.

“Will you please pass the sugar, Miss Vale?” he said very politely, though his voice was shredded from tobacco and all the happy drinking and shouting he’d done over the dartboard at the Pig & Thistle the night before after the ball.

Phoebe pushed it over to him.

“My thanks,” he said with great gravity. He tonged three lumps into his coffee.

The housekeeper appeared at the table and froze when she saw his sloshing saucer and the brown ring round it on the snowy tablecloth.

And then she lifted the saucer deftly and bore it away without spilling a drop.

A moment later she returned bearing a tray of kippers and hovered behind Jonathan.

Jonathan’s eyes went wide when the scent wafted up to him; he visibly paled. He put a hand to his mouth like a swooning maiden.

“Would you care for some kippers, Master Jonathan?”

“You’re a sadist, you are, Mrs. Blofeld,” he declared darkly, through his hand. “Take them away at once.”

She smiled and bore the tray away, having made her point about the tablecloth.

“Phoebe has been invited to London by the Silverton sisters, Jon,” Lisbeth told him brightly.

“Capital!” he pronounced immediately.

“Isn’t it?” he asked, mildly bewildered, when Lisbeth and Phoebe remained silent and it became clear that the silence contained layers and layers.

“I haven’t decided whether I ought to go,” Phoebe said.

“Of course you ought!” he rasped. “Balls and parties, excellent music and food and drink, dancing, escorted to and fro by the naughty Silverton sisters—I cannot imagine a finer way to
OW
!”

He jumped. The coffee slapped at the sides of his cup but none escaped.

And thusly Lisbeth made her position on Phoebe’s presence in London clear with a boot toe to Jonathan’s shin.

He frowned blackly at Lisbeth. His mouth opened. And then he closed it again, composed his face smoothly.

His eyes went speculative.

While she and Lisbeth pretended nothing of the sort had taken place.

There was no sound for a time but for the clink of a tiny silver spoon against the sides of his porcelain cup. He winced and went at his stirring with more precision, avoiding the porcelain. All the while he was watching the faces of the two girls.

Phoebe found herself herding her scrambled eggs around her plate, as though they were recalcitrant sheep. She wasn’t hungry.