How to Master Your Marquis (4 page)

“Proceed with your questioning, Mr. Duckworth,” said the judge, “and stick to the facts, if you please.”

“I beg your pardon.” Mr. Duckworth patted his brow. “As a father myself, I find the subject close to my heart. Sir John, I will rephrase the question, in deference to my learned colleague’s delicate sensibilities. Where would you judge that the Marquess of Hatherfield spent the chiefest part of his time: at your house, or at the home of the Duke and Duchess of Southam, God rest her soul?”

Sir John looked neither at the duke nor at Hatherfield. He fixed his eyes on Mr. Duckworth, and his expression no longer sagged under the oppressive weight of the late July heat, but had hardened into a mask. “At my house.”

Stefanie’s fingers grew damp around her pen. She glanced at Hatherfield in his box. He stood with his usual expression of mild interest, hands resting lightly on the rail, a small smile curling the corner of his beautiful mouth. As if they were not discussing his father and stepmother at all, but rather two strangers whose names escaped him at the moment.

Mr. Duckworth smiled and turned to the jury. “Thank you, Sir John. I believe that settles the question of Lord Hatherfield’s filial affection to the court’s confident satisfaction.”

TWO

Cadogan Square, London

November 1889

A
mong the many virtues owned by Her Royal Highness Stefanie, youngest Princess of Holstein-Schweinwald-Huhnhof, the earliness of her hours was not conspicuous.

“One final admonition,” Miss Dingleby had said, sharp of eye and sharp of voice, that last morning in Devon. “You are now a member of the professional classes. Early to bed, early to rise.”

“Of course!” Stefanie had replied cheerfully, lifting her teacup in salute. “The easiest thing in the world. Healthy, wealthy, and wise!”

That was yesterday morning, however, with a civilized breakfast spread out before her and a decent cup of tea spread out inside her. This morning, the picture was altogether different. Stefanie opened her eyes in a bare little bed to a bare little room, no breakfast within sight, no tea within scent, while a cold rain rattled against her gloomy window glass. She did the sensible thing. She rolled onto her empty stomach and went back to sleep.

An instant later—it seemed like an instant, anyway—a furious knocking started up in Stefanie’s brain. She cracked open one eye.

To her mild confusion, the knocking seemed to be coming from the door instead of her head. Well. How terribly rude.

She said so.

“How terribly rude!” she called out. “There’s no need for that sort of thing!”

A slight pause in the racket. “Sir?”

Oh. Her voice. Of course. Stefanie cleared her throat and added a little heft. “There’s no need for all that knocking. I shall be up in due course.”

“Sir!”
Knockknockknock.
“Sir John, he says you’re to come downstairs directly this moment, he’s to leave for chambers in ten minutes!”
Knockknockknock.
“Come on, now, sir! He’ll have me head if you’re not dressed and ready!”

Stefanie heaved herself up and shook her head. She glanced at the plain white clock on her plain white nightstand—seven forty-six, how ghastly—and then at the plain white nightshirt covering her torso. Her wits began to gather themselves.

Slowly.

Slowly.

Oh, Lord. Now she remembered.

The long, wet day of travel yesterday, crushed up against the massive thighs of the Marquess of Hatherfield. The steely glare from that steely china doll, Lady Charlotte. Sir John, buried in papers. The train, the carriage to Cadogan Square. The austere supper of bread, cheese, and Madeira with a silent Sir John in the Gothic dining room (Lady Charlotte had flounced upstairs to take supper on a tray). The rain, the rain. The itch of her glued-on mustache. The dull black necktie, sinking her further into gloom.

The rain.

The weight of all these recollections sank into her dismal mind. Really, it was a wonder she could stir herself at all this morning.

“Coming,” she called, sotto verve.

Knockknockknock.
“Now, sir! They’ll have me head, they will!”

Stefanie swung her legs to the floor and summoned herself. “You may tell Sir John,” she said, quite deeply and quite clearly, “I shall be downstairs, dressed and shaved and ready, in exactly three minutes.”

Another slight pause. “Very well, sir.” Footsteps, in blissful retreat.

So much for the knocking, then. Now for the toilette.

The shaving part was easy, as she had no actual whiskers to whisk off, only a bristling dark mustache to glue on. (She had thought it rather dashing, yesterday. Now she cordially hated the itchy thing.) Instead, Stefanie found her black trousers and thrust her legs into them; she found a shirt and buttoned herself in. She applied jacket and necktie in swift strokes; she splashed her face with icy water and slicked back her auburn hair with oil. Toothbrush, tooth powder. Dabs of glue, then the mustache. Shoes. Damned buckles.

She clattered downstairs at double time and came to a perplexed halt at the bottom of the steps. “Sir?” inquired a passing footman, bearing a tray.

“The breakfast room?” she gasped.

“If you’ll follow me, sir.” The footman moved off at a stately pace. Stefanie jogged behind him. The scents trailing through the hall made her want to swoon: rich and meaty, toasty-browny, spice and milky. Tea and all good things. Stefanie adored breakfast. On Sunday mornings, when Miss Dingleby allowed the lesson schedule to relax a trifle, Stefanie might linger over the table for an hour, stuffing herself silly, a dollop of this and a fat sausage of that. Tea and more tea. That dreadful section of grapefruit, upon which the governess insisted.

Stefanie’s belly made a prolonged and undignified sound, to make its intentions clear.

The footman swerved to the left, and Stefanie followed him into an elegant breakfast room, plated at one end by a set of French doors that allowed in as much light as the weather and the surrounding houses would permit. But Stefanie’s eyes didn’t linger curiously at the gray view of Sir John’s courtyard garden, not when a sideboard full of breakfast stood promisingly to her right. She veered foodward and snatched a plate.

Sir John’s voice ground into the air behind her. “Why, good morning, Mr. Thomas. At last.” The last two words bit deep.

“Good morning, Sir John. A trifle gloomy, wouldn’t you say?”

“My dear young man,” said Sir John, in a way that suggested she was anything but. “Whatever are you doing?”

“Gathering breakfast, of course.” Stefanie placed an egg in her cup and hovered between the sausage and the kidneys. “The most important meal of the day, according to that American fellow, whose name escapes me. The chap with the electricity.”

“Indeed.” Dryly. “Which is why I so deeply regret that you will miss it.”

“Miss it? Whatever for?”

“Because we depart this house for my chambers in four minutes, Mr. Thomas.”

A faint titter.

Stefanie turned from the sideboard, plate in hand, mouth open to object, and only then did she realize that the room contained three occupants. Sir John at the head, gray of hair and flushed of face. Lady Charlotte, exquisite at his right, like a pastel drawing of a medieval shepherdess.

And the Marquess of Hatherfield.

He sat to the left of Sir John, with his back to the sideboard, wearing a pale gray suit of fine wool that stretched and stretched across the width of his shoulders. But he had turned his head in her direction, and Stefanie’s gaze drifted to a halt somewhere in the middle of his amused blue eyes, the fresh-scrubbed skin of his cheeks and neck. He looked delicious and dewy and edible, every muscular, lovingly crafted inch of him, and he seemed to be suppressing something in his throat.

Something rather like a prodigious bout of laughter.

“I beg your pardon, your lordship,” Stefanie said. “Were you going to say something?”

He dabbed at his lips. “Benjamin Franklin.”

“Benjamin Franklin?”

“The American chap. With the electricity. Though he was not, in fact, a notable proponent of breakfast, merely early hours in general.”

“Oh, right. Of course. Thank you.” Stefanie eased herself into a chair and signaled for the footman to address her with the teapot. “In any case, I shan’t be above ten minutes, Sir John, I promise. Thank you, my good man.” This to the footman, who set down the teapot with grave ceremony. She poured herself a cheerful cup and bent close to inhale the scent. “Have you any fresh toast? This seems to have cooled.”

Another titter.

Stefanie eyed Lady Charlotte from the rim of her teacup. She had spent all day yesterday enduring her ladyship’s telling titters, her superior giggles, and really. Enough was enough.

“Something amuses you, Lady Charlotte? Or does the old lace itch something dreadful this morning?”

A slight movement of his lordship’s shoulders at her side.

“Not at all,” said Lady Charlotte. “I was only observing the expression on Sir John’s face.”

Stefanie turned in surprise to Sir John. The chandelier overhead, wired for electricity and blazing with unseemly enthusiasm, illuminated his face in lurid detail: the purpling skin, the wide-open eyes, the outraged brows, the staggered chin.

A gulp of hot tea, which had been on the point of swishing itself comfortably down Stefanie’s esophagus, spilled over into her windpipe.

“I say,” said the marquess, pounding her back. “Nasty thing, tea.”

Sir John rose from his chair and tossed his napkin atop his empty plate. He pulled a gold watch from his pocket—quite needlessly, for a clock ticked away on the nearby mantel—and consulted the dial. “My chaise departs this door every morning for Temple Bar at eight o’clock precisely.
Precisely
, Mr. Thomas. In consequence, if you yourself are not present on the front doorstep at precisely eight o’clock, you shall be obliged to make your own way to my chambers. We begin work at eight thirty, Mr. Thomas.”

Stefanie nodded helplessly to the rhythm of Hatherfield’s open palm on the back of her drab black coat. Through her watering eyes, she saw Sir John stride out the door in a flash of electric light against his gray head.

“I suppose we ought to have warned you about my uncle’s punctual habits.” Lady Charlotte smiled benevolently.

The tea had finally found its way out of Stefanie’s lungs. “Really. A matter of a few minutes. Is he ordinarily so inflexible?”

“How unfortunate it’s raining. You won’t find a cab, poor fellow.” Lady Charlotte spread another slice of toast with the thinnest possible layer of butter. “But no doubt the walk will lift your spirits.”

“Your concern touches me deeply.”

“Lady Charlotte is renowned for her generous spirit,” said Hatherfield. He folded his napkin neatly and laid it next to his plate.

Lady Charlotte turned to him. “Are you leaving, James?”

For some reason, the intimacy of Hatherfield’s given name on those flawless rosebud lips made Stefanie’s innards revolt. She set down her fork.

“I’m afraid I must,” Hatherfield was saying, “loath as I am to leave poor, young, unsuspecting Thomas trapped between your playful claws, my dear.”

There was an odd silence. Stefanie glanced up from her tea.

Lady Charlotte’s gaze rested to Stefanie’s left, on Hatherfield’s rising body. Her lips had parted slightly, her eyes had grown wide and uncertain.

But the expression lasted only an instant. In the next, Lady Charlotte turned to Stefanie herself, all softness and solicitation. “Yes. Poor Mr. Thomas. You must have an umbrella. I shall see to it myself. Must you leave your breakfast behind, however? A horrid shame. Tyrannical Sir John. He really is impossible.”

The Marquess of Hatherfield was on his feet. “Indeed. On second thought, I perceive a splendid solution to this unfortunate dilemma.”

“You do?” said Lady Charlotte.

“You do?” said Stefanie, setting down her empty teacup.

“I do. Mr. Thomas, you may finish your breakfast at your leisure, and ride in perfect dryness and comfort to Sir John’s chambers.”

“Really, James? Are you going to head out into the rain and fetch him a hansom yourself?” asked Lady Charlotte dryly.

“Not at all. I shall simply take him there in my own hansom, which awaits us in the street outside this very moment. Mr. Thomas? Does this suit you?” Hatherfield turned to Stefanie and made a little bow.

Stefanie returned Lady Charlotte’s astonished gaze with a wink. She finished her toast, dabbed her mouth, and rose from her chair, all the way up to the tip of Lord Hatherfield’s straight golden nose.

“How very kind, your lordship. I should like that very much.”

T
he rain crackled earnestly against the window of Hatherfield’s hansom, filling in the silence. He settled into the corner and crossed his arms. Young Thomas had his—
her
—hands twisted together on his—
her
—lap. She stared at the window as if counting the raindrops on the glass.

“Nervous?” he asked.

“Me?” She turned to him. “No, not at all. I’m not the nervous sort. I was only reflecting.”