The Proposition (29 page)

Her eyes grew larger, wider behind her eyeglasses. She looked afraid, yet full of hope. She was dying to believe him about something she couldn't see in herself.

"I don't like my nose," she said.

"You're so hard on yourself. I think your nose is the best nose I've ever met."

She gave a little snort. "You see? The best nose. Honestly. You aren't supposed to notice a woman's nose."

"Why not?"

"It's supposed to blend in, be part of the overall beauty of her well-proportioned face."

"Yours is part of your overall beauty."

She made a face at him, complete with tongue stuck out.

Which made him laugh outright. It took him a moment to recover.

While she watched him with her wide blue saucer-eyes, perfectly solemn, attentive. As he calmed, she asked, "Do you really think I'm hard on myself?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"You don't let yourself see how good you are. To begin with, how striking your looks are."
Striking.
It was a new word. He hadn't even planned on saying it. It simply came out.

She didn't seem to notice. She merely shrugged. "No one before you has seen me as striking."

"I doubt that. I'd bet dozens of men have eyed you."

"None that said anything."

"And if they did, you'd probably criticize their taste in women. That's what you do to me."

"I do?"

"If I say you're pretty, you tell me I'm wrong."

She looked puzzled for a moment. "Well, the people who were supposed to love me best never thought I was very presentable." She cast her eyes down. "My mother thought I was 'a fright of a child.' My father didn't see me at all. If you'd asked him what color my eyes were, he wouldn't have known."

"There must have been other people."

She shrugged. "Milton."

"There you go—"

"Look, Mr. Tremore—"

"Mick," he told her. She said it occasionally, though she tried not to.

"No, Michael, we've decided. Remember: Michael."

He nodded. "Right. Michael."

"Michael," she said, then realized she'd lost the volley of given names. She broke off, as if she couldn't remember what she'd been about to say. She exhaled a long, loud breath. "Don't be foolish, Mr. Tremore. My nose is huge."

He laughed. "Yes, it's a good-sized smeller, loov. If it weren't so pretty, I might have sympathy for you."

"Pretty?" She let out an insulted breath.

"Yes." This time, when he reached, she let him run his finger down the ridge of her nose before she jerked back. "So thin and delicate," he told her, "with long nostrils, and the nicest, slightest curve to it. It's upper-class, you know. You have a very classy nose, missus. Calls attention right away to your breeding. Wish I had one like that."

She twisted her mouth as if to say that, if he weren't out-and-out insincere, he was certainly misguided. "I have a funny face."

"Funny?" He stared. "I suppose. Your face
is
amusing. Like a pretty puppy's. You have a witty face, a lively mug of a face, Win. As if God made everyone else's then came back to you and gave you a few extra touches, to make you stand out; you're more interesting to look at than most women, Win."

"I'm not pretty," she complained woefully.

He frowned. "All right, perhaps you're not. But your face is much more riveting than a pretty one. Pretty faces are a guinea a dozen. So predictable. I'm tired of pretty faces already. Your face, though, I'd never tire of."

That put a
clunk
in the conversation. Why had he said it? He shouldn't have. Of course he wouldn't tire of her face. He wasn't going to see it after three days more,
was
he?

Three days till a ball, when, it had only recently occurred to him, he wasn't even sure what a ball was. A lot of dancing, he thought. Saturday, though, he'd find out.

He changed the subject. "Let's go somewhere. Let's put me to the test. Let's take that pretty face of yours out of the house." He wiggled his eyebrows wickedly and leaned forward. "Let's go back to the tearoom," he said.

She let out one of her gasping laughs. "No! They'd know you."

"No, they wouldn't." He sat up straight, touching his mouth. "I have no mustache. I have a new haircut, all new clothes. I talk completely differently. How could they possibly know me?" He raised one eyebrow. "I'm not at all the same," then winked. "But I'll know them, and it would be great entertainment to see some of the fools who chased me wait on me all afternoon."

He grabbed her hand and stood. He tried to lead her up and away from the table. "Come on," he said. He remembered brightly, "Oh, and I can wear that top hat, the one we like." The idea was sounding better by the moment. Then he thought of something else and turned too quickly—she ran right into him. He smiled down the few inches into her face and said, "No big hat. No big hat for you, all right?" His wagged his finger. "A little hat, if you have one. Or no hat. I want to see your funny face."

She squinched it at him, but her eyes behind her lenses were smiling. He laughed again, so amused by her. Oh, her sweet face
…
her dear face with all its infinite movements and twists.

She said, "No, sir. I'll wear any hat I choose, thank you. Now get out of my way. I want to dress for the occasion."

* * *

Winnie chose a little straw hat she hadn't worn in years, one with a small, forward brim. It was out of date, yet not too bad. Milly had put a new flower on it at the side and new ribbons. It was cheerful; yellow straw, little yellow roses, with dark green grosgrain.

Indeed, not too bad. Like Winnie herself. Not too bad from this angle or that, especially in a not-too-bad little hat. Yes, she had a strong, healthy, if quirky, sort of femininity, she thought. No nonsense. And then, of course, there were her legs, which were beautiful, she was coming to think. No matter what she believed, though, the amazing part was, when she looked in Mick's face, there was no mistaking his sincerity:
He
thought her pretty, and she could have looked at that information on his face all day long.

She looked forward to staring at it across a tea table at Abernathy's. Her heart was light, though her nerves were frayed. She wasn't certain he was ready for public inspection. She wasn't certain she was, for that matter. She had never gone to tea with a man, other than her own father.

For all her own nerviness, Mick seemed perfectly calm, happy, in fact. Charming. He asked Mr. Abernathy for a table for two, please. "Yes, sir," the man said, and Mick laughed out loud.

Winnie loved watching him act the gentleman, yet it terrified her to see him do it, too. Like watching someone on a high wire, someone she had put there, who carried somehow her fondest hopes, high, high up in the air overhead. She wanted to stand under him with a giant net. No, she wanted to get up there with him, hold onto his shirt, tie strings around each of his ankles. Don't fall. Don't let anything bad happen.

As they walked behind Mr. Abernathy into his main tearoom, entering its refined air of soft chatter and long-fronded palms, questions popped into her mind. Did he know not to remove his hat? Not to raise his voice? Had she told him every single rule regarding a gentleman's behavior in public? Probably not. Could he extemporize his way through the moments that depended on what she'd forgotten to tell him?

"Will this do?" asked Mr. Abernathy. He was seating patrons himself today.

The teahouse wasn't crowded, though it was relatively full. He sat Winnie and Mick at a small table near the door. Good for a quick exit, she thought, then sat nervously, laughing at herself.

They ordered tea and cake. The first five minutes went well, and she relaxed a little. Mick was beyond gentlemanly. He was attentive. He touched her hand at one point, and she blushed.

In the heat that flushed through her, her mind warmed to a little fantasy. Suppose they went to tea together next Wednesday, too, after the ball was over? Suppose they went to tea next Wednesday, or perhaps the opera?

Oh, yes, she answered herself. Imagine that—because that is the only way you'll see it, in imagination. Mick at the opera. Pah. He wouldn't like it. It wasn't his sort of entertainment. No, they had no future, not even one of Wednesday-afternoon teas. He didn't fit into her life—passing him off for an afternoon or an evening wasn't the same as passing him off for a lifetime. And she was hardly suited to catching rats—she'd proven that, when she'd all but climbed him like a pole then run away from fright.

She watched Mick raise his teacup to his mouth, ever so beautifully, especially when she remembered the last time she'd seem him do it in this tearoom. But then his cup stayed in front of his mouth without his drinking. His eyes grew still and intent as he stared fixedly over the cup across the room.

"Oh, no," he murmured. Then, "Don't look. But brace yourself. We have a visitor."

The baroness from the seamstress's shop six weeks ago, the one who had bought Winnie her garters, came straight over to their table.

Ignoring Winnie, she said to Mick, "Lady Randolf Lawnhurst, the Baroness of Whitting." She added coquettishly, "Blanche," then extended her arm toward him, her hand dropped at the wrist. "And we know each other, I do believe." Her face was smiling, though puzzled, one eyebrow was arched high in question. With relief, he realized, she couldn't remember the circumstances under which she knew him.

Mick started to rise, being a gentlemen at the moment, when he would rather have told her to go jump in the Thames.

She stopped him. "No, no, don't get up. I don't mean to intrude." She already had, of course. "It's just that I'm sure we've met, yet I can't remember where." She was asking him to explain her own confused memory.

Settling back into his chair, Mick smiled and shook his head. In his best, most posh syllables told her, "I'm sorry. I don't believe I've had the pleasure." He tried to look dismayed, disarmed.

"Oh, but I'm sure—"

"No," he insisted, smiling, "I don't think so."

She tilted her head, frowned, then smiled, then frowned, like neon flickering in a glass tube, off and on, off and on, all the while studying him. She shook her head, then her smile widened as she announced cheerfully, "You're wrong. I know you, I'm certain."

Ah, well. Since she was certain. "You do look familiar," he allowed.

Winnie made a sound, a surprised, censuring little click of her tongue. She was alarmed, no doubt, at hearing him go in this direction,

While the baroness openly flirted with him, flapping her eyelashes, rolling her shoulders under her boa. "Are you from here?" she asked.

"No," he said quickly.

"Where are you from?"

He blurted what was as far away as he could think of. "Paris."

Under the table, Winnie kicked him.

He laughed at the heady sensation of two women taking after him at once.

"Paris?" The baroness was delighted. "I love Paris! Where in Paris?"

He knew of only one landmark in that city, so he said it pleasantly. "The Eiffel Tower."

Behind the baroness, out of her line of vision, Winnie put her hand over her mouth, her eyes widening, part horror, part mirthful disbelief she held back.

"The Eiffel Tower," the baroness said, perplexed. "You live in the Eiffel Tower?"

He could hear in her tone this was wrong. "No, no," he amended, "I was suggesting we might have met there."

She thought the information over, as if trying to make his hypothesis plausible. "When did you last visit the Eiffel Tower?"

"Oh, I go there all the time," he said. When he saw on the baroness's face that this wasn't right either, he thought to add, "I know it's foolish. Even trite, since, well, the most common of persons knows of the place. But I can't help myself. It's simply so—" He had no idea what he was talking about.

She finished for him. "Yes, so amazing. And the fountains—"

"Oh, yes, especially the fountains. And—" And what? What to contribute to the conversation? He held out his hand. "And the tower itself."

"Oh, yes. A marvel. Those French."

"Indeed." He smiled and said, "Well, it was lovely meeting you again."

She blinked, seemingly at a dead end. Thank God. "Yes," she said. "Very nice to see you." She turned to go. He thought he was free of her trouble, but she turned all the way, full circle, and came back after only moving away a foot. "Your name," she said and smiled. "I don't remember your name. Please remind me." She eyed him with an interest that was a shade warmer than was polite and so reminiscent of their last encounter he wanted to shake her.

Remind her indeed. He dare not. If he repeated the name
Tremore,
she might remember its context. He looked down at his teaspoon, turning it over. He read the names off the back and flipped them over. "Bartonreed," he said. "Michael Edgerton, the Viscount of Bartonreed."

"Bartonreed," she repeated blankly. She couldn't seem to think of anything further to ask. "Well, then, Lord Bartonreed." She wanted more information, but had run out of latitude to acquire it. "A pleasure," she said.