She had him there. “One of these days, Mouse, I’m going to take you to a gaming hell. With a face like that, you could make a fortune.”
To his surprise, she looked intrigued rather than horrified. “A gaming hell,” she said slowly, almost to herself. “Yes. I think I’d like to see one. Do they permit ladies?”
“Not generally,” he said, spearing the last of his roasted potatoes. “But for me, Mouse, an exception will be made, I assure you.” He set his fork down at last and asked, “Are you quite finished?”
“Finished?” she inquired, picking daintily at the remnants of her dinner.
“With dinner.”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes. I suppose so.”
“Then, as I seem to have acquired a pianoforte I did not even want, I would suggest you put it to use,” he said, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet.
“You want me to play the pianoforte?” she asked, blinking in bewilderment. “For you?”
It wasn’t so much that he wished her to play, but rather that she had developed the habit of disappearing into her room after dinner, and he did not want to surrender her company just yet. “That is what I said, yes,” he replied.
“No, it wasn’t,” she returned. Her fork dropped to her plate; her palms landed on the table, flattened upon it, bracing herself. “Ask me.”
“I beg your pardon?” His gaze flitted across the array of footmen standing at the ready against the walls, each one studiously avoiding his eyes.
“If you wish me to play the pianoforte for you, you will ask me. Like a gentleman.” She tilted that obstinate little chin up, but the sly smile hovering about the corners of her mouth suggested she was enjoying her moment. Seizing her power, secure in the knowledge that she would play only at her discretion, not his.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, to mask his discomfort. And then, just to irritate her, he added, “I don’t have to ask, Mouse. I own you.”
“Then I’m afraid I must decline.” She rose to her feet, all faultless grace, and dipped a perfectly correct but somehow impudent curtsey. “Good evening, my lord.” She turned to leave.
Grey felt his hands clenching into fists. And before he could think better of it, he found himself saying, “Please.”
She turned, the yellow silk of her gown swishing across the marble floor, her blond brows arching toward her hairline. “My lord?”
Grey gritted his teeth, torn between annoyance and a begrudging respect. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Please, will you play for me?” The very fact that the words had not curdled in his throat suggested he had been afflicted by some sort of madness.
And as Mouse smiled beatifically, clasping her hands before her as she said, “I’d be delighted,” Grey was struck with the unpleasant sensation that she might very well have been training him how to treat her. Rather like a dog.
∞∞∞
Serena adjusted her skirts over the bench before the pianoforte and rifled through the sheets of music as if she were selecting a piece to play, but beneath her eyelashes, she watched Grey. He had slung himself onto a couch in a sulk, and now he lounged there with a beleaguered expression, sipping at a glass of scotch. His dark hair was tousled by the hand he’d run through it, and a lock fell over his forehead in an artfully disheveled manner that she would have laid good money on some gentlemen taking great pains to perfect.
She selected a Hadyn piece, but played instead a sonatina by Pleyel that she had long since memorized, since it did not require much concentration, and she doubted Grey, who clearly did not play, would be able to tell the difference.
“That doesn’t sound like Haydn.”
Serena bit back a sigh. “And how would you know, my lord? Have you developed some musical ability in the last few minutes? Because if you were capable of playing yourself, I fail to see why my presence should be necessary.”
“One need not possess the ability to play an instrument to recognize a piece,” he said. “And as to your point, I could play if I wanted to.”
She gave an inelegant, disbelieving snort. “Certainly. It’s as simple as that.”
“For me it is.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I simply never saw the point in music.”
“The point in music?” she echoed incredulously. “Why must there be a point? It feeds the soul.” The sonatina came to an end, and Serena withdrew her hands from the keys. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “Music takes time, practice—”
He shrugged. “Perhaps some of the more complex pieces would indeed take me some time to master,” he said. “Alas, my fingers are not quite as nimble as my brain. But that piece sounds simple enough.” He rose to his feet and moved across the room to stand behind her, setting his glass down atop the pianoforte. “Play it again, if you would. Let’s say the first few measures.”
Dutifully, she repeated several measures, conscious of his presence at her back as he studied the movement of her hands across the keys.
“Good,” he said. “Now shove over.” Sliding onto the bench beside her, he positioned his hands over the keys, and began to play—perfectly.
Serena felt her mouth drop open. “What—How—”
“I have a memory that borders on the uncanny,” he said. “But it’s just blind repetition. I haven’t the passion for music, so it lacks something to the ear, some heart that true musicians lend to the pieces they play. Which is why,” he added, “I’d prefer to hear you play.” But though he moved away from the center of the bench, he did not desert it, and so they sat, shoulder to shoulder, as she placed her fingers once more on the keys.
“That is so unfair,” she said petulantly as she began another piece. “I came honestly by my skill.”
“Most do,” he replied.
“How did you develop such a thing? It must be very useful.”
“I have no idea,” he said, reclaiming his glass from where he had set it atop the pianoforte. “I suppose I was simply born with it.” He sipped thoughtfully, and confessed, “I was persona non grata at every gaming hell in London before I was twenty.”
Her fingers tripped over the keys, mangling the piece. “Why?”
“I was a bit too good at gambling for their tastes,” he said. And then, when that failed to elicit more from her than a blank stare, he clarified, “I counted cards, Mouse. From the moment I entered the doors, the House was guaranteed to lose. Of course, in the time it took them to realize, I’d made a fortune.”
“Oh.” She picked up the melody again, delicate high notes wavering in the air. “Are you truly certain they’ll make an exception to admit me, then? If you’re persona non grata?”
“They’d damn well better,” he said. “I own controlling interest in more than a few of them now.”
Again she stumbled in her playing, the dissonant chord echoing through the room. “My brothers?” she asked. “Is that how…?” She let the question drop, uncertain how she ought to phrase it. How you ruined my family seemed unnecessarily judgmental, given that he’d merely given them the rope with which to hang themselves. It had never been his fault that her family had come to ruin, not really.
He let the question hang between them for a few beats of silence as if mulling over how to answer. “Yes, Mouse,” he said, finally. “Neither your brothers nor your father are particularly skilled at games of chance, and they like to play for higher stakes than they can afford. Hugh especially,” he said. “He thinks he’s always just one hand away from a win, that the odds are in his favor, even when he’s down hundreds of pounds. Thousands, even. They wagered away your future on the turn of a card, a throw of the dice.”
Serena dropped her hands into her lap and studied her nails. Unfortunately, it had the ring of truth—Hugh and their father had had some terrible rows over his gaming debts, which his allowance could not hope even to dent.
“Aren’t you going to ask if I had him fleeced? If I had the games manipulated to facilitate the outcome I preferred?” Grey in
quired, a note of irritability in his voice suggesting that he expected her judgment, her disdain.
Her head jerked up, her brows furrowing in confusion. “No, I—it hadn’t even occurred to me,” she said, surprising herself with the realization.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Really,” he said flatly, in a patent tone of disbelief. “It did not occur to you that I might have set them up to fail. That I, a man without an ounce of mercy in my soul, might have lured them into playing fast and loose with their money, thereby securing their debt for my own ends.” He said in such a manner of derision, as if she were foolish for not having come to the natural conclusion, that it sparked an ember of ire within her.
“As my brothers have always been perfectly able to embroil themselves in messes of their own making, no,” she snapped. “It did not occur to me. However, if you’re going insult my intelligence by suggesting otherwise, then of course I shall consider it immediately.”
Grey threw back his head and laughed. It sounded more natural this time, like a muscle being worked into shape once again. Not practiced, per se, but easier than it had been. She couldn’t imagine what he had found so amusing, but at last his humor ended on a sigh, and he discarded his glass once again, setting it aside atop the pianoforte.
A moment later, he drew her into his arms and kissed her.
And she let him, and marveled at the fact that this man who had turned her life inside out could somehow make her feel that she had come out the better for the experience. That she could want to kiss him and hit him in equal measure.
That in his house—in his arms—she had become more herself than she had ever been. That for the first time in her life, she had discovered within herself something dangerously close to happiness.
Chapter Fourteen
Grey cast aside the report on Andover’s movements that had arrived from his solicitor that morning and rubbed at his eyes. Everything was proceeding directly to plan thus far—Andover had attempted to secure a loan that would rid himself of his debt to Grey, but had been soundly denied. Even more unfortunately for Andover, the end result of it had been swirling rumors of his financial insolvency with nothing to show for it but the tarnish of his reputation amongst his peers. It was not enough to destroy the man—yet—but Grey could not doubt but that it would come.
So why was he unsatisfied? The pieces were falling into place, the walls shifting at his direction, and yet the thrill had gone out of the game. The sweet victory he had hoped to savor had become a bitter draught instead.
Because of Mouse, no doubt. She had poisoned his perfectly executed revenge with her very existence, stirred up feelings his mind did not know how to process, how to reconcile.
He did not much like himself for how he had used her. He had not expected the guilt that had come over him when he had dragged her to the park, but it had seethed in his chest and stabbed at his gut. Nothing—not the humiliation they’d delivered to her father, not the widely-circulating rumors, not the social censure that Andover would no doubt endure—nothing had been worth placing that terrible wounded expression on her face. He had never felt so small, so low—and he had determined then and there that if she ventured out of the house again, it would be her choice.
He would not parade her about. He could not. Not even to hasten his scheme.
He was swiftly becoming someone he did not recognize.
Biting back a curse, he began to rifle through documents, collecting them once more into a neat stack, endeavoring to put himself to work in an effort to exorcise Mouse from his mind.
“What are you doing?”
Grey glanced up to see Mouse standing in the doorway, her fingers tapping out a soft rhythm upon the frame. Of course she would choose so perfectly imperfect a moment to make an appearance. “Nothing that would interest you,” he said shortly, irritated by the way the sun pouring in through the window in the hall fell about her, ringing the crown of her head in an ethereal halo of light. Somehow, over the last several weeks, he had become accustomed to her presence in his house, as if they had somehow fallen into a comfortable rhythm together, and it jarred him to realize it—to recognize that it felt as if she belonged here as surely as he did. That she had somehow made his home feel instead like theirs.
“I don’t believe you’re qualified to say what interests me,” she replied, and the soft skirts of her green gown swished as she sashayed into his office, effectively destroying any hope he had held of plodding through paperwork.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m deciding who I’ll rake over the coals this week, if you must know, Mouse,” he said, determined to irritate her into leaving. “The Devil always collects upon his debts—and your sort owes me a great deal.”
With a soft snort, she took a seat, all effortless elegance in a way that, frankly, disturbed him. “I don’t believe you’re the Devil, either,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. “For all that your table manners are appalling, I’ve yet to see you once eat a child—or claim possession of a bartered soul.”
“I’ve told you I prefer kittens,” he said, affecting a nonchalance he did not feel. He could not have said why she so disturbed him; she hadn’t initially seemed the sort of woman to have much of a presence at all—but she had become one. He felt her in every inch of the house, as if she’d begun to leave indelible smudges of herself on every wall, in every corridor, in each room. Like footprints to match those she’d left in his drawing room, but these were marks only he could see, the evidence of her in his house etched into his memory.
“Let me see,” she said, holding out her hand. “Perhaps I can be of assistance.”
And he—he found himself interested in her opinions. What would she say of the debts he had collected, of those from whom he was owed a great deal? Would she cry mercy for men he had already judged unworthy of it? Would she instead evince ruthlessness for those that had turned their backs on her, cast her from their illustrious ranks?
Against his better judgment, he slid a stack of papers over the desk to her and watched as she began to thumb through them. It was information—financial information, at least—that most ladies would never have been privy to. Polite society, such as it was, tended to shield women from such things, though it baffled Grey as to why, given that they would be as much affected by a bad turn as their husbands, their fathers.
Mouse was living proof of it, after all.
For long moments she perused the documents, and he watched the myriad expressions chase across her face. From surprise, to shock, to anger, to grief—she ran the gamut of them with each new revelation, each discovery of the true financial states of her peers.
“This one,” she said finally, pulling a paper from the rest. “Lord Buford. He’s dreadful. If you must make an example of someone, let it be him.”
“Interesting,” he said. “He’s got a fondness for—” He caught himself in time. For all that she had fallen a long way from where she had once been cradled in the bosom of society, Mouse was still a lady—and one did not discuss with ladies anyone’s perverse sexual proclivities. “Never mind,” he said. “You’re right. He is dreadful.”
“The best homes won’t have him,” she said, rifling through the papers once more. “But there are still some that give him welcome, unfortunately. Here,” she said, passing him two more sheets of paper. “These ones—they don’t owe so very much, but if you have any mercy in you at all, you will forget these debts.”
“I don’t forget debts, Mouse.” He didn’t forget anything.
“Then forgive them,” she urged. “They’re no threat to you at all.” Her face softened, her lips pursed. “Lady Peveringham—she is a widow whose husband did not adequately provide for her. She cares for her deceased sister’s children, all five of them, on only one hundred pounds per annum. And this one, Lord Hammond…he inherited his barony from his brother, who bled the estate dry and left their poor mother in penury before he died. He’s been trying to set things to rights, but you must
know as well as I that the aristocracy is not what it once was. He will need a little more time to make good on the debts he has inherited—or perhaps you could offer him advice. You are a businessman, are you not?”
“But I do not run a charity.” He leaned back in his chair, linking his fingers. “Why ought I render my assistance to them? To any of them?”
“Because it is the right thing to do.” As if his regard made her uncomfortable, she rose to her feet unsteadily and began to walk the boundary of the room, examining the books on the shelves, the folios, the sparse decorations. “I don’t doubt,” she said, “that you could bring the whole of London to its knees, if you had a mind to do so. But I’m also certain that it is equally within your grasp to do it without force, without threat. You could make them love you instead.” She paused to stroke her fingertips along the spine of a leather-bound book, seemingly awaiting his response.
“Why should I want that?” he asked. “You know I have no great regard for the nobility.”
She shrugged. “I would think it would be more of a challenge. It’s simple enough to make a man kneel—but to make him want to kneel? That would be a coup worthy of celebration.”
Grey heaved a sigh. “Mouse, you seem to be laboring beneath the misapprehension that I am a kind man—”
“But you are.” She walked her fingertips across the spines of the books as she traipsed along the right wall, and her words were so serious, delivered so evenly that they momentarily took Grey aback. “You are, and you don’t even know it.” A soft laugh danced around the room. “I hadn’t even realized how unhappy I was until you brought me here. I thought—I truly thought my life had ended.”
That stray jab of uncustomary guilt speared him again. “It did. And I took it from you, Mouse—how, then, can you judge me kind?”
“Because you gave me a better life. One I hadn’t even known I wanted,” she said simply. “When I was younger—perhaps fifteen or sixteen—there was a story that was in all the papers for…oh, weeks and weeks at least. An heiress went missing—she’d run away in the dead of night and simply disappeared. Violet Townsend, her name was. I used to imagine where she was, what she was doing. In my mind, she had the grandest of adventures: she had run away to France or to Italy, or become an actress and taken to the stage, or perhaps she had sailed to America to make a new life for herself.”
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