The Proposition (43 page)

Empty tins. Empty again. Insufficient. When everyone else's seemed full.

* * *

Winnie stood talking to her former student, the young duchess, while waiting for Mick in the antechamber near the servants' door. He'd gone downstairs again. A footman had arranged for him to talk to a cook who'd been in the duke's household for years. As Winnie spoke with her friend, Jeremy Lamont caught her attention. He came toward her, looking harried, then motioned her aside with urgency. She excused herself to speak with him.

Jeremy shook his head, unhappy, then told her, "Arles wants you in his study." He pointed to a room at the other end of the long anteroom, the distress on his face compounding. He gave her a pained look. "We hadn't planned on an interview, but he wants Tremore, too. He wants to talk to him, to talk to all of us. Where is he?"

"Who? Mick?" She pretended to look around, then shrugged. That was when she saw him. She couldn't believe it.

Winnie lifted her pince-nez and frowned through the lenses. Yes, Mick entered the room at the far end, coming from the reception room again. He'd gotten to it somehow through another service stairway. The man was certainly familiar with below-stairs avenues.

Then as she stood there with Jeremy squirming, full of anxiety, a horrible feeling of her own suddenly descended into the pit of her stomach. Mick's cloak. He kept leaving and was clearly doing something more than talking to servants. She remembered once before, when his ferret had not been doing well, he'd taken the creature into his pocket.

And tonight, when she'd felt something small and soft in his cloak, he'd even admitted it. Freddie.

No, she thought. Oh, no. Not tonight, Mick. No one could overlook a ferret. Not with several people in the room who had even been in Abernathy and Freigh's when Freddie had last made herself publicly known. No, oh, no, she groaned inwardly.

To Jeremy, she said, "There he is. You go on. I'll get him."

* * *

Winnie avoided Mick instead, racing toward the cloakroom. A ferret. Only ratcatchers had ferrets. Gentlemen had
…
horses and setters or perhaps a pet parrot. But ferrets
…
Oh, they would be discovered. She would be humiliated in front of—if not
by—
a
cousin who enjoyed humiliating her.

She told the man who watched over and fetched people's wraps, "I've left my face rouge in my fiancé's cloak. It's the long black one with the dark purple lining."

He wouldn't let her take it, but only come into the back to go through its tucks and pockets. Happily, someone else came along, needing the man's attention. Winnie wedged herself between a pile of hats and a rack of hanging wraps. There she ran her hand down Mick's cloak and—oh, with a plummet felt the soft little weight.

"O-o-oh, no," she groaned.

She reached into the pocket in the lining, squinching her eyes tight, clenching her teeth. She had to get it out, get rid of it, but,
ewww,
what was it like to touch? She felt around, digging down into the cloak lining, then suddenly she had it. Through her glove, it was smooth-coated, warm and wiggly—like a snake in a slippery-slick mink coat.

Ugh.
She let go with a choked little breath, her hand coming out empty. She had to steel herself to try again. Calm down, she told herself. Get the thing into—what? Her purse. Would it fit into her purse? Yes. Put it in your purse, she told herself, then carry it out to Georges at the carriage. He could take it back to London, give it to Milton, who could put it in its cage, then come right back. If Georges left now, he'd return just in time to take them home.

That would do it. Perfect. She reached in again. The little thing was frightened. So was she. She rubbed the back of her gloved knuckle along it, feeling the resistance of bone, possibly a little skull. She got her fingers under its belly and lifted, aware of its little bones, the way it braced its claws, fearing her, trusting her.

With her back to the room for shelter, Winnie pulled the little animal out into view—oh, ugh, she thought again and shivered. She looked it in its little animal face, and it made a little sound, a kind of hiss at the back of its throat. Its parted mouth, the view of its tiny teeth, made Winnie shudder again. Then the ferret took a good look at her and began to run its legs, wiggling its body. It didn't like her holding it any more than she liked having it in her hand.

She lost her grip of it. Freddie dropped into her skirts, a light plop, then slid down the silk, making Winnie squeal and step back from fright. The thing looked stunned for a second. She thought she'd killed it. Oh, God. A new dread. Mick would be furious. But the second Winnie reached for the ferret again, it skittered—straight into the coats and wraps, burrowing into them.

She dug through for a few moments.

Someone—the man who checked and watched over the coats—tapped her shoulder. "Miss, may I help you find the gentleman's cloak?"

She looked up and around. "No, I have it." Indeed, she still held Mick's evening cloak. Which left her with no excuse to keep digging.

"What are you looking for then?"

She didn't dare say. "Nothing." Out the corner of her eye she saw a little brown tail-thing skitter out the door and into the main reception room. "Oh, dear God."

She threw the cloak at him and ran after the ferret. The reception hall, though, was crowded. The last she saw of Mick's ferret was its tail as it disappeared between the trouser legs of a lordly secretary from the College of Arms.

* * *

A moment later, Mick appeared at the far end of the entry room. He spotted her, but it took a minute or more for him to make his way to her. A full minute to suffer over what she had done.

Oh, what to say, what to tell him? Her apprehension grew, spiraling into gigantic proportions.

As Mick came toward her, suavely excusing himself past people, smiling as he went, she wanted to shake him. She wanted to scream,
Stop!
Stop it! Stop being as I remember Xavier, only more so. Stop being so … frighteningly competent and polished, so damnably fearless.

Lord, he reminded her of Xavier's hauteur when he moved, of the cocksure way that Xavier had carried himself years ago. Mick was taller and more limber, but he had something like Xavier's bumptiousness to him, a manner that everyone had put up with in Xavier because, like Mick, he had somehow managed also to be charming—and because her cousin had been the most likely heir to a duchy. No, part of her wanted the ratcatcher revealed. This man, this Lord Bartonreed, made the hair on her neck stand on end.

As he came nearer, she shrank back, determined to say nothing about the ferret, like a miscreant under death-sentence, waiting for the axe. He'd find out. But until then, distraught at what she'd done, she would hide there inside her own quiet.

Yet Mick was wrong to have brought the animal, wasn't he? For a moment more, she felt confused: ashamed and fearful, but angry, too. The old terror didn't quite take hold. Worse than empty tins, she reprimanded herself. You look like a mantis and think like a mule.

Yet no. She hadn't meant for this to happen. Her original intent had been to safeguard them, not expose them further. She had meant to take good care of the ferret. And besides, a voice said, you needed to be a
mule to survive your upbringing. Outwardly shy and retiring, a proper young lady; inwardly as strong as a donkey.

As Mick smiled and touched her shoulder, Winnie frowned, putting the tips of her gloved fingers to her mouth. Then she brought them down and told him, "I lost your ferret."

"You what?"

"Freddie. I thought I was sending her home, but she got away from me."

"What the hell—" He didn't like it.

"Don't be angry."

"She's ill."

"She certainly ran fast enough."

He scowled. "Where did you lose her?"

"Right here somewhere."

"Why did you do it?" he asked. He bent toward her, putting himself nose to nose with her.

She whispered, vehement, "Because at least two of the couples from the teahouse six weeks ago are right here—"

"It would have been fine—"

"It would have been odd beyond measure: A gentleman does not bring a ferret to a ball."

"You don't know that." He made a harsh, put-out face. "There could be a ferret in every cloak here: You didn't look. You expect everyone to play by the same rules you do."

And
still
she didn't crumble. It amazed her. "I'm sorry," she said. "You're right. I shouldn't have done it. I should have spoken my fears to you. But I didn't. Now help me find her."

They tried; they looked. They wandered through the crowd, communicating with each other through heads to ask by facial expression,
Have you seen her yet?

The answer was always no. Then Winnie lost sight of Mick entirely. She could find neither. Not Mick. Nor Freddie.

Someone grabbed her elbow. Emile. He hissed. "He wants us now. We're late. Get going."

Oh, grand. Xavier. This was all she needed. Now of all times to have to face him. But there was no help for it. She would go and placate him till Emile or Jeremy were able to bring Mick along.

* * *

When Winnie walked into the study, Jeremy was already there. Emile came in a few minutes later. He'd spoken to Mick who was coming. Shortly, he hoped. On their way here, they'd been separated when an animal of some sort had attacked the Russian caviar and crème fraiche, then beat a path through the foie gras. Mick had gone berserk trying to catch the thing.

The ferret. Since it was just the three of them, she told them about the animal, two souls with whom to lament. They all groaned.

"And Xavier will make us wait at least half an hour," she told them. "He likes to keep people dangling."

So they sat, while her stomach churned.

She felt ill. Oh, and she thought she'd been embarrassed—shamed—before. Wait till everyone heard
this.
Winnie Bollash was thrown out of the Duke of Arles's ball for having brought a ratcatcher and a ferret to it. No one would ever bring their daughters to her again, no matter how good she was at phonetics.

They only waited a few minutes, however, before the duke's study door creaked open, and a stooped old man came through it, walking slowly with the use of a cane, a woman hovering behind him.

Xavier. He was thinner and more feeble than Winnie remembered. She lifted her pince-nez and had a good look.

He was himself, yet he wasn't. She could barely credit how he'd changed. Withered and bent, he had to have help—his wife attended him—all the way to the desk, where he sat like a bag of bones dropped into the chair.

"You let go too soon," he snapped at her, his voice raw. She stepped behind him, less the trophy than Winnie had imagined, more a nursemaid. Attentive, fussing, she reached for his arm, trying to take his cane. Imperiously, he snatched it out of her reach. Then from his chair, as from a throne, he settled the cane across the desk and stared about the room, glowering at everyone.

Oddly, he didn't seem powerful so much as crotchety. Though, no doubt, he had power. Just not the kind Winnie had always accorded him: He had no power over her.

His wizened body didn't keep him from quick words. The second his eyes settled on her, anger straightened him like a rod down his spine.

"You stubborn, obnoxious girl," he said. "Like all the rest, you come to play on an old man's pain. Well"—he looked around, speaking to them all—"where is he, this Michael?" He said the name with distaste.

"He's coming," Emile told him.

"I've seen him," the old man said directly. "I looked him over when he came down the ballroom stairway, then I left. That was enough. He's an imposter." He added, "Whom I shall unmask with a few pointed questions, then have you all thrown in jail."

Jail. Winnie's heart sank. They were all going to jail.

Just then, footfalls outside the room made everyone's head turn. Just beyond the door, footsteps approached. They were Mick's; Winnie knew their confident rhythm. They tapped, separating out of the crowd in the anteroom, came closer, then paused, and the knob turned.

Mick stepped in, handsome, dashing, looking as if he could carry off anything. Ah, there was what she wanted. There was what she stood to lose that was greater still. How to have him? How to get out of all this somehow and run away with him somewhere?

He stared from one to the other, puzzled by the gathering. Then his eyes stopped on the old man behind the desk, and a look of surprise crossed his face.

After which a single word came out Mick's mouth, with his looking more surprised still, as if it came out on its own and he couldn't hold it back.

"Poppy," he said. The way someone might ask,
Poppy, what are
you
doing here?

Chapter 28

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X
avier Bollash's chin tightened till it dimpled. He brought his lip up, mashing it against his teeth, while his glaucous, watery eyes grew fierce.