How the Marquess Was Won (8 page)

All of this seemed unduly significant. He was wary and fascinated, as though he’d stumbled across some undiscovered species.

W
hen Phoebe returned to her room, she sat down at her desk, and looked down at the letter she’d begun earlier.

Then crumpled it into a ball and hurled it over her shoulder to Charybdis, who effortlessly caught it in his paws.

And because she was wild at heart, she selected another sheet, dipped in the quill.

Dear Lisbeth,

Thank you for the invitation. I should be very happy to join you for a few days. I very much look forward to seeing you again. Thank you for thinking of me.

With affection,

Phoebe Vale

Chapter 6

S
he smoothed her walking dress and reached out a hand, immediately seized by a footman. She managed to step down from the carriage the Redmonds had sent for her without showing her stockings and garters to him, though doubtless his expression wouldn’t change at all if she did, so trained were they.

“Phoebe!”

Lisbeth rushed down the marble steps of the enormous house, swept her into a hug, shot out her arms to examine her face with fulsome affection, and then pulled her back to plant a kiss on each of her cheeks, which struck Phoebe as very continental of her.

It took a moment for her head to stop spinning when it was all over.

“I’m delighted to see you! You look wonderful, Phoebe! Very healthy!” she declared.

“Why, thank you! Every girl dreams of looking healthy, Lisbeth.”

Lisbeth missed her irony, because Lisbeth was a literal creature.

But she was fundamentally kind. Lisbeth had doubtless taken note of Phoebe’s walking dress, correctly identified it as the same one she’d seen the last time Phoebe had visited two years ago, and resisted the temptation to issue the rote compliment which was the traditional part of exuberant greetings exchanged between young women everywhere. Phoebe’s dresses were adequate at best. They both knew it.

“And I you! I must thank you again for thinking of me. You’re so beautiful, Lisbeth!”

This was true, and she could say it with only a little hitch of envy. Two years had melted away the vestiges of Lisbeth’s girlish plumpness. She’d wide-spaced blue eyes and a nose like a delicate blade and a mouth doubtless compared a hundred times over to blossoms this season alone.

It was obvious she’d gained confidence and poise and exuberance—maybe just a little too much of all of them—from all the attention and activity and had become a bit like a child overexcited by Christmas festivities.

Lisbeth linked her arm with Phoebe’s and marched her into the grand foyer of Redmond House, while silent, bewigged, liveried footmen bore her trunk away with the same solemnity they’d carry a state coffin.

But they didn’t carry it up the marble staircase, which was where the family and distinguished guests would be sleeping.

Phoebe watched as they proceeded through the foyer and disappeared after bearing left, which was a door that opened upon a courtyard . . .

. . . beyond which were rooms that were used for staff.

Not the housekeeper and footmen, per se. The governesses and tutors and men of affairs and visiting bailiffs and the like. People who
worked
for the Redmonds for a living. She wondered how many other Redmond
friends
had been installed in those quarters.

Lisbeth followed the line of Phoebe’s gaze.

“Aunt Redmond has ordered rooms to be prepared for you in the South Wing. They’re lovely! They really are!”

Fanchette Redmond was scrupulously aware of the boundaries of class. It had likely never
occurred
to her to install Phoebe on the floors with the Redmond family.

Phoebe wasn’t surprised. Well, not very surprised, anyhow. Still, it required a moment’s worth of composure-gathering before she could speak.

“I’m certain it will be beyond compare, and perfectly suitable for me.”

Lisbeth nodded, as if this went without saying, and that was the end of the topic. “I’m so happy you could join us at such short notice! We shall have a lovely time of it. Only think, Phoebe! We’ll have some distinguished guests for a few days, too, and wait until you meet them! Your jaw will surely drop. I’ve decided we shall go on a walk to sketch the ruins if it doesn’t rain, so I hope you’ve brought your sketchbook. Uncle Isaiah has arranged for a surprise for all of us, he says, as an evening entertainment. Dinners will be lovely—we shall be having my favorite, lamb in mint!—and we shall all go to church together on Sunday. And just wait until I tell you my news. Well, it is not so much news as a hope, but I
do
think things will be different after the ball. And we are to have a salon this evening, where our guests can meet each other, so you’ll wear a very good dress and I’ll even send my maid over to do your hair.”

Phoebe was reminded that Lisbeth possessed a brain but never saw a need to exercise it, and she was content to ask Phoebe for the answers to anything she grew curious about. And it was pleasant to walk alongside her and listen to her chatter the way it was pleasant to sit in a garden and listen to birdsong. Too much of it would drive Phoebe to distraction, as she liked conversations to be directed and occasionally
about
something, but she ought to manage through three days of festivities.

And if Lisbeth considered her a friend, very well then, she would consider Lisbeth a friend.

Despite the fact that they slept in very different wings.

And despite the fact that Lisbeth would never be truly privy to Phoebe’s deepest thoughts, and would in fact be startled speechless if she heard them.

“Here, Mrs. Blofeld will direct you to your rooms. Come downstairs in two hours, do! We’re having a gathering for guests in the salon.”

T
he room
was
pleasant. Even if she could hear snoring through the wall. Possibly a bailiff who had come to report to his liege, Isaiah Redmond, about the condition of one of the other Redmond properties.

The carpet was thick. The bed was, too, and filled with feathers. She gave the pillow an exploratory punch. More feathers! She thought of Charybdis, who would have loved napping atop it, but he was being cared for by Mary the maid of the academy. A writing desk was pushed beneath a window, and while the carpet was hardly Savonnerie, a term she’d learned from the broadsheets, it was nothing like the rag rug that covered her floors at Miss Marietta Endicott’s school.

She hung up her dresses in the wardrobe, which took no time at all. And then she lifted her sketchbook from her trunk. She sat down, and idly flipped open a page. After a moment’s hesitation, her charcoal flew across the page in bold, nearly unconscious, almost urgent strokes.
Just
in case she never saw him again, it seemed important to capture his image, lest she forget it.

And when she was finished, he seemed made of darkness and flame, angles and hollows, which was ironic for a man whose nickname was Lord Ice.

She quickly turned the page, hiding him from herself, and tucked the sketchbook into her trunk again.

T
wo hours later Phoebe dutifully took herself downstairs and followed the sound of voices to the salon, a big warm room dominated by a hearth carved with cherubs and autumn vegetation, and sprinkled about with a variety of settees and a few gas lamps, as Isaiah Redmond liked the modern innovations.

She donned her neutral social smile and slid into the room surreptitiously, hugging the wall. It was crowded with guests, all of them dressed in the first stare of fashion. The first person she saw was patriarch Isaiah Redmond. He was tall and older and handsome but had eyes sharp as chisels. He had a reputation for being an unforgiving man, she knew, and it was generally assumed he was dangerous if crossed, but these qualities were gilded in deceptively easy charm. She’d heard the murmured rumors—who in Pennyroyal Green had not?—about the lengths he would go to in order to achieve his ends. The mutters were particularly voluble when it had come to Colin Eversea’s near-demise on the gallows. Some even said he’d driven his oldest son and heir, Lyon, to disappear. But most everyone in Pennyroyal Green laid the blame for that at the feet of Olivia Eversea and the legendary curse that claimed an Eversea and a Redmond were destined to fall in love once per generation—with disastrous consequences. Olivia Eversea herself laughed it off as nonsense, but not even Waterburn ventured to record a single whimsical wager regarding the likelihood of a wedding in the betting books at White’s. He was as fond of winning as anyone else, and he knew the odds were against him. The beautiful Olivia appeared to be aspiring to spinsterhood.

Phoebe scanned the room, grateful there was no chance of seeing Olivia
here
. She saw Jonathan Redmond at once, for he looked more like his brother Lyon every day. Next to him was the familiar handsome face of his friend Lord Argosy, a frequent guest in Sussex, and who often joined Jonathan at the Pig & Thistle and at church.

Her heart accelerated when she saw the big bored blond hateful Waterburn . . . for if Waterburn were here . . .

She rubbed her palms along her skirts, as they’d gone damp. He’d said to the marquess that he suspected they were invited to attend the same party. She hardly dared look, but she sensed him before she saw him. Or rather, saw his unmistakable . . . back. Jonathan and Lisbeth were perched on a striped settee, and Lisbeth appeared to be talking. The marquess was leaning toward her, the better to hear what she had to say.

He turned slightly, perhaps sensing the intensity of a particular gaze between his shoulder blades.

And when he saw her he turned abruptly. Straightened slowly to his full height.

And went still.

Lisbeth merrily laughed at something then, perhaps her own joke, and the sound echoed in Phoebe’s ears like shrill cascading bells. And noticing the marquess had turned away from her, Lisbeth gave his arm a playful tap . . .

With a cream and ivory fan.

Scattered all over it were pale pink blossoms and twining, fine green stems.

Phoebe stared at it until it blurred before her eyes. A ringing started up in her ears. And for an instant—a bloody
ridiculous
instant—it felt as though the bottom had dropped from beneath her world and she pressed her back against the hard wall to feel something solid, to keep from sliding to the ground.

Well, of course. The marquess purportedly wanted only the finest. The most beautiful and rare and singular.

And he was rumored to be seeking a wife.

And according to the letter she’d written to Phoebe . . . Lisbeth had a surprise to share with her.

Apparently his silence and inattention had gone on too long. For Lisbeth looked up at the marquess, and then sharply followed the line of his gaze.

A momentary puzzlement flickered over her face, but then she must have decided that the marquess was staring because Phoebe looked decidedly out of place. Because Lisbeth beckoned cheerily with little scoops of her hand.

Phoebe remained rooted to the spot. Her feet wouldn’t seem to carry her forward.

Lisbeth beckoned with more vigor.

And somehow Phoebe got to the other side of the room, step by step. She felt like a recalcitrant bull being dragged by a rope and hoped it didn’t look that way.

“Phoebe, would you be a dear and fetch my reticule for me? It is upstairs in my bedchamber. I want the one I left atop my bed.”

What the
devil
. . . ?

Phoebe stared at her.

Lisbeth gazed back at her. Her face pleasantly expectant. And when Phoebe remained silent, her expression became just a trifle insistent.

She wasn’t a
servant
. She hadn’t been hired to run about and fetch things. At least, this hadn’t been mentioned in the letter.

She suspected Lisbeth knew this full well. Clearly she was testing her social power. Or making a point about Phoebe’s presence to the marquess.

“I’m Lord Dryden,” the marquess said, when it seemed Lisbeth would forget her breeding and forgo an introduction.

Phoebe curtsied. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, my lord.” She heard her own even, pleasant voice as though she were hearing it through a layer of glass. “It seems Lisbeth wants her reticule. If you will excuse me?”

She turned abruptly and departed the room the way she came in. Swiftly and unnoticed.

By all but one person.

A
funny thing, but the moment Miss Vale left the room seemed darker. Though it was afternoon, and the sun was pouring profligately in through the tall windows, as if the Redmonds felt entitled to more sunlight than everyone else.