The Proposition (42 page)

He bent in a low, graceful bow before the duchess and said, "Your grace. Good evening. Thank you for inviting us." He was happy to be here and said so.

Winnie followed suit with a deep curtsey, wondering with bewilderment what could be simpler. Sincere appreciation, directly expressed.

The duchess seemed relieved herself. She nodded.

Then before anyone could agonize further, Mick pulled Winnie by the hand, taking her by the waist, and drew her into a turn. He spun them both out into the room.

He smiled as he did it, as if to say, Xavier could be rude, but they needn't be. They could enjoy themselves. Well, he could anyway. Winnie looked up into his face, into his confidence and perfection and
…
frowned; she quaked. How had he done that? So unruffled. Without a moment's distress.

He reminded her of
…
someone. Of someone who made her feel timid and disheartened without lifting a finger.

He
undid her tonight. He turned her around, inside out.

"What's wrong, loovey?"

She glanced up at the endearment, biting her lip. For a moment, he was her sweet Mick. "You overwhelm me," she said.

He clicked his tongue. "No, no, loov. Don't let it happen. I'm just playing. Play with me." As if to illustrate, he said in an ever-so-dramatically upper-class voice, "Aah, Miss Bollash, you do dance divinely." Then he winked at her and added, "Of course, you do have the best equipment for dancing of anyone in the room."

Her legs. The thought made her smile. Then frown, then blink, then smile and frown, both, shyly and perpetually dazed by the seeming earnestness of his admiration.

He pulled her closer, too close for etiquette, but the best distance for pivots. He took them into this step. Round and round they went till she was faintly dizzy from it, held against his starchy shirtfront, her nose filling with the warm, lemony talc scent of his fresh-shaved cheek.

He eased and led them into a fluid waltz rhythm. She kept up, moving with him smoothly, with growing satisfaction. Yes, they did move remarkably well together. Let people watch if they hadn't anything better to do. She tipped her head back, enjoying the twirl of their waltzing under a ceiling of paintings coffered deeply into other paintings, a ceiling of cherubs and gods, wreaths and battles, ornaments, clouds, all sixty feet or more overhead.

"Look up," she said. And he did. They spun in the light of old-fashioned chandeliers aflame with real, flickering candles, illumination augmented discreetly with gas jets.

"What a place," he said as they passed a woman who waved her fan at them. The Baroness of Whitting, becoming rather bold in trying to gain their attention. Or Winnie thought it was she. She wasn't certain, she couldn't see perfectly without raising her lenses, which she pointedly refused to do. They danced past a man who, she believed, was one of the Lamonts, movement and lack of eyesight making him, too, impossible to determine precisely. They left them all behind as Mick said again, "What a place, Winnie."

Yes. She loved Uelle. Uelle itself was something. She had just breathed her first easy breath inside its walls again, just gathered her first nice moment, when Mick said, "Suppose the Lamonts brought me here to pose as someone."

She frowned, saying quickly, "They didn't."

He only laughed at her. She stared up into his crooked, handsome smile.

"Suppose," he continued, "I'm to impersonate someone. Who?"

"Oh, Mick, don't. Don't weave stories or start trouble."

"I'm not starting any. I'm going to end it." He wiggled his eyebrows in his wicked way, then told her, "I'm going to catch rats."

"No! Oh, no," she groaned. "You mustn't! Mick, I'm so nervous. Don't complicate things."

It was like pleading to a wall, though. His mind was elsewhere. He couldn't stop speculating. He said, "So this person I'm to impersonate likes purple and trains. No," he corrected, "cabooses. Purple and cabooses. Someone whose name is perhaps Michael. Do you know anyone who fits that description?"

She shook her head, lamenting his obsession with the Lamonts. "Oh, Mick, do you seriously believe Jeremy and Emile have set up something so elaborate? Then would try to carry it off here, of all places?"

He took her aback. "Without doubt, Win," he answered. Then repeated, "Purple and cabooses."

She frowned at him. "It sounds like a child."

"Yes!" he said. "A child, yes!" He thought a moment. "A child, grown up into me." He pondered the idea to a left turn, then a right. "And money," he added. "There's money in it somewhere, for me being
this
child." He frowned, perplexed. "Can you think of anything from there?"

"No." She shook her head and danced with a man who moved as naturally as if he'd waltzed all his adult life.

He kept them dancing, turning, swooping to the music as they avoided everyone who might want their attention.

Then
Winnie
missed a step. "Wait," she said. Oh, no. She frowned. She half-hated to tell Mick, but something did occur to her. She said, "The year I was born, there was a tragedy. I only heard about it. But one of my cousins"—she thought it out particularly—"my second cousin once removed was kidnapped: Xavier's grandson." She looked up into Mick's face, pressing her lips together. She truly didn't like the rest of what she had to say. She sighed, disappointed to lend credence to his theory that the Lamonts were swindlers. "There was a very large reward," she said. "Oh—"

He broke away.

"Wait. Where are you going?"

He headed toward a doorway through which a servant had just come into the room, a servant carrying a tray of champagne. Winnie followed. He stopped the fellow long enough to take two glasses, handing one to her.

"Wait," she called again. Then repeated the question he hadn't answered, "Where are you going?"

He pointed to another servant, whose champagne tray was empty. "Wherever he goes," Mick answered. "I'm going down into the kitchen, wherever I can find a servant who might have been here thirty years ago. I want to know more about this grandson."

"Oh, Mick—"

He was gone. He disappeared between the arches into the series of anterooms that ran along one side of the ballroom.

Winnie stood there, holding a cold glass of champagne, feeling uneasy. She took a sip, then another, then a long swill. It was good. She took another drink. Then she blinked, for it seemed she saw Mick again, only walking between the same arches in the other direction. She lifted her pince-nez to confirm the oddity. It was indeed Mick, going the wrong way. He was carrying something. Food.

She called, "No. You want the door at the other end."

He started, as if surprised to see her still standing there, watching him through her spectacle lenses. Then he smiled, shrugging off his momentary fluster, and answered, "I decided to get my cloak first. I think I left something in it."

His cloak? She tilted her head, puzzled. He was taking food to his cloak?

* * *

Mick was taking food to Freddie. He stood out on the river walk in the dark, his cloak over his arm, that hand holding a plate, while his other dipped into the place in the lining he'd made for the animal. He pulled her out. She felt listless, but warm and breathing, happy to see him. And well she should be: He offered her slices of cooked liver he'd found in an antechamber that was serving it. He'd found, in fact, a virtual ferret feast: liver, some of the fattest, biggest goose liver he'd ever seen, some sort of fish row with cream, and chopped, hard-boiled egg; plus he'd brought the champagne. Surprisingly, the ailing ferret ate the liver. She loved it, then liked the fish row even better. She lapped up the thick cream, nibbled some hard-boiled egg, but wouldn't touch the bubbly wine.

"There you go, duck," he told her, pleased to see her eat. "You fight the good fight. Keep your strength up."

Once she'd finished, he settled her back into his cloak, smoothing it over his arm, feeling her weight in its lining. Then he walked around the corner, out of the dark, and smiled at the servant who held the door for him. "Fine night," he said.

The fellow looked startled, then smiled. "Yes, m'lord." The man seemed quite cheerful to have been addressed.

At the cloak counter, Mick handed the garment back to the fellow who would hang it. "No," he said sadly. "I didn't leave my notecase in it. Nor it is outside where I thought I'd dropped it. Sorry to trouble you. Hang it carefully, please."

* * *

Half an hour later, Winnie was standing with Mick, a member of Parliament, and the MP's wife, when the baroness finally caught up with them. She waved at Winnie, still several heads away, just as the MP asked Mick, "Bartonreed, how long have you been in London?"

"Six weeks." Mick didn't even hesitate.

After more than an hour, Winnie knew him to be frighteningly good, frighteningly bold in his charade. She kept watching people, waiting for someone to call him out over the hoax. No one did. No one even seemed to suspect. In fact, people liked him. As the evening had progressed, more and more he was sought out.

"Six weeks? Yet we haven't seen or heard of your being here," said the MP's wife. She smiled and batted her fan against her chest,
thwap, thwap, thwap.
"Where have you been hiding yourself?"

Mick lowered his eyes as if hesitant to say, then smiled and explained, "Lady Bollash has, um, taken most of my time."

Winnie looked at him. Oh, no, she thought. He wasn't going to begin with his courting-her nonsense again, was he?

Then worse, the Baroness of Whitting wiggled her way through the last cluster of people, calling, "Michael!" She thought to add, "And Winnie!"

The MP and his wife turned, making a place for the woman among them.

"Oh, Michael," continued the baroness. "And Win. How lovely to see you again." She leaned and bussed both their checks like old friends. With a look of smugness, she announced to the others, "Winnie and Michael are engaged. Isn't that delightful?"

"No, no—" Winnie protested.

"Unofficially," the baroness corrected, then winked, pleased with herself.

"Your lordship," the MP's wife asked, "where are you from?"

The baroness chimed in, "Paris."

The other woman frowned at her. "That's odd. He doesn't sound as if he's from Paris."

"Actually I'm not," Mick said. "I'm from Cornwall. I'm sorry"—he reached for her name then, surprisingly, found it—"Blanche. I was having you on a bit."

The baroness loved the use of her given name with its implied coziness.

The other woman didn't. She questioned Mick, "Well, you don't sound as if you're from Cornwall either."

"Ah." He looked around for a reason, then found, "That's because I was educated elsewhere."

Winnie was entranced. He simply kept going, spinning bits of the truth into long, believable threads, while no one seemed to think anything of his ludicrous answers.

"Where?" the MP asked affably.

Mick frowned at him. "Where what?"

"Where were you educated?"

He was only nonplused a moment, then smiled in Winnie's direction. "Why, um, the same place Winnie was," he said, taking her hand.

"Girton?" his wife asked. "Girton is a girls' school."

"No, not Girton," Winnie said, giggling nervously. "Cambridge. I was at Girton when Michael was at Clare. That's how we met, at Heffer's, the bookstore. I dumped over a stack of books, and he helped me pick them up."

Mick stared at her, then beamed.

A few minutes later, as they danced, she told him, "It was rather fun, that last bit. I saved you."

"You did."

But who would save her? She danced with a man who was bold beyond her bravest dream, who moved as easily in this crowd as the one at the Bull and Tun. Confident, elegant— It suddenly occurred to her whom he reminded her of, and the notion made her stumble and stop: Xavier. Only younger and handsomer. And kinder.

Though this fact disturbed her, Winnie managed to relax a little. The evening became pleasurable in its way. She caught up with two friends who had tried to stay in touch, but whom she had avoided because she'd been too ashamed of her circumstances. How ridiculous. It was pure fun to hear about their lives and realize she still liked them very much.

Mick disappeared again. Sometimes she spotted him among people. Sometimes he was nowhere to be found. Mostly, she enjoyed suddenly coming upon him in a crowd. She played a game, Find the Ratcatcher, as she tried to catch glimpses of the man he used to be.

He seemed to control it. He could smile out at her, call her
loovey,
then disappear behind Lord Bartonreed—a man who nonchalantly named himself after the sterling on his tea table, then carried the masquerade off as seamlessly as if he were truly the lordly fellow he pretended.

She realized it wasn't the ghost of the English lord she feared. It was the real gentleman, the sterling article she didn't feel up to.

As she watched Mick, she thought, her problem was not as she'd supposed, that she couldn't run off with a ratcatcher. Oddly enough, that didn't sound so difficult anymore. No, her problem was that she was afraid of Lord Bartonreed. The man whom everyone looked at, who could have any woman he chose, who, if he lived among these people, would be deluged with finer possibilities than an elocution and deportment teacher.