When Lucey walked him over to the philosopher, Foye was speared by a pair of iron gray eyes that would have been at home in a man forty years his junior, they were that bright and perceptive. He did not believe it was an accident that he should think back on his university days with some sense of dread. This man would have had no compunction whatever about sending a prince packing for want of preparation. No more a mere second son—all that Foye had been in those days.
Foye bowed when Lucey completed the introduction. Already the object of much curiosity on account of his appearance, more stares came his way when his titles were pronounced. Lucey, unfortunately, knew the entire list. Marquess of Foye. Earls of Eidenderry and DeMortmercy. He was used to them now, at last accustomed to the change in his identity from Lord Edward to Foye. There were days now when he could hardly recall a time when he hadn’t been Foye. His first titled ancestor had been ennobled before the reign of Charlemagne. The Marracks of Cornwall had never been viscounts. Their nobility had begun with an earldom.
It was with him that the Marrack line would end. With the death of his brother without any living children, he was the last of the Marrack men. When he died, his properties and titles would revert to the crown. What a failure to take to his grave, to leave no one to carry on the name.
“Well, well, young man,” Sir Henry said, laboriously craning his neck sideways to look at him. “That is a mouthful of names.”
Foye smiled despite himself. He had not been called a young man for a good many years. It wasn’t as though he was old, but at thirty-eight, he wasn’t a boy anymore. Godard held out a gnarled hand for Foye to take, which he did, gently. The philosopher was crippled with the gout, and his skin was hot to the touch.
“Yes, Sir Henry, it is, indeed, a mouthful.” He smiled, aware of Miss Godard’s attention to their exchange. Would he tell her, if the opportunity arose? He ought to but didn’t know if he would. She seemed to have made a life for herself here, far from England. Why bring up what could only be painful memories for her? Because, Foye thought, if he were her, he’d want to know the truth. “I hope you were not bored listening to all that.”
“Not at all.” Sir Henry bobbed his head. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, my Lord Foye.”
“The pleasure is mine, Sir Henry.” Foye was aware that Miss Godard had stopped her inspection of someone’s teacup—what nonsense that business was—to listen to the introduction.
Did she recognize his name from his connection with Crosshaven? Perhaps she did not know he and Cross had been friends and that Foye knew what had been done to her. Or perhaps she did, and now wondered if her reputation was to be ruined again by someone else who knew only the lies.
“Foye. Foye,” Sir Henry said, tapping his chin with a finger permanently hooked into a claw. He narrowed his eyes and gave him a sideways look. “A King’s College man, weren’t you?”
Foye bowed. For a split second, he racked his brain for the essay he must have failed to write. “Yes, sir.”
“Your elder brother, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You are not.”
“I thought so.” Sir Henry grinned and nodded. “You were Lord Edward then, not Foye. That’s why I didn’t know who you were until you were close enough for me to see you.” He pulled at a blanket spread over his lap. “Took a first in mathematics, didn’t you?”
“I’m astonished you should know such a thing.” It was at university that Foye had learned there were women who cared more for what he offered when they were intimate than for what he looked like in broad daylight. He’d also discovered he had a talent for pleasing his partners. He’d made himself an assiduous student of the delights to be had between a man and woman. Well. No more of that for him. Those days were long gone. He was done with that life.
Godard waved a misshapen hand. “I made it a point to acquaint myself with the names of all the young men of promise. If we were at home, I would send Sabine to find my entry on you.” He smiled, and the effect was disconcertingly sly. His niece looked in their direction at the mention of her name. “I kept a ledger, my lord. I followed you in Parliament, you know. Heard your maiden speech. I am rarely, wrong in my predictions.”
“Am I to be flattered by that?” Foye asked. He did not look at Miss Godard, though he burned to do so.
“I should think so. I saw you once or twice at university.” He chuckled. “No mistaking you for anyone else.”
He smiled again. “No, sir.”
“I should think you learned early on it’s better to have something here”—he tapped his temple—“than to have a handsome face. Too many young men these days spend hours primping at the mirror when they would profit more from improving their minds.”
“Godard,” his niece murmured. She put an arm on her uncle’s sleeve in a gesture familiar enough to be habitual. Foye could easily imagine her needing to restrain her uncle’s bluntness. For all Sir Henry’s rudeness, he rather liked the man for it. He wasn’t a pretty man, after all.
“What?” Sir Henry said, turning his torso toward his niece. “With a face like his, do you think he bothers much with enriching his tailor over his bookseller?”
“I think Lord Foye is very smartly dressed,” she said.
“Thank you,” Foye said. In point of fact, he was vain of his appearance. Even as Lord Edward, he had never walked out of his house without clothes that made other men beg him for the name of his tailor.
“Look at him.” One thin arm shot into the air. “Do you think he spent his time at King’s with his mistresses instead of in the library?”
Good God. Foye held back his shock at Sir Henry’s speech. Miss Godard, too, felt the indiscretion, for her cheeks pinked up. Sir Henry didn’t seem to think anything of his declaration.
“Godard.” She slid a glance at Foye, and their eyes met Hers were brown. There was nothing extraordinary about her eyes, but for the intelligence there. She was no ordinary girl, he thought. “Forgive him,” she murmured.
“For what?” Foye said. “It’s true. I am no model of masculine beauty. I am not offended by Sir Henry pointing that out.” Age had its privileges, after all; and Sir Henry had to be nearer seventy than sixty. He had decided to be amused. There was brilliance yet in the old man.
“Sensible of you, my boy.”
Foye nodded to Sir Henry, but he was absorbed by Miss Godard. She was a far more interesting woman than he’d expected. All this time, whenever he thought of Crosshaven and what he’d done that night, he’d been imagining a sweet young woman, weeping for her lost reputation. Naive and mourning the infamous wrong done her. Miss Godard was hardly naive.
“Have you been in Anatolia long, my lord?” Sir Henry.
“No,” Foye replied.
Miss Godard was how indisputably a part of their conversation. He could not help but look at her. Her eyes were not a common brown after all, but something a more poetic man might call dark honey. From the shape of her mouth, the tilt of her eyes with their thick, dark lashes, to the sweeping line of her throat to her shoulders, she was the sort of woman who made a man think of darkened rooms and whispered endearments. He understood very well why Crosshaven had chosen her.
“I arrived in Constantinople yesterday,” Foye said to Sir Henry. “And you?”
Sir Henry folded his crippled hands on his lap. “We have been in Buyukdere coming onto a month. Is that correct, Sabine?”
She answered without hesitation. “In Anatolia, forty-three days. In Buyukdere, twenty-one, Uncle.”
Again, Foye felt his understanding of Miss Godard to be maddeningly incomplete. Not a woman wronged and mourning her fate. Not a pretty girl who knew and used the power her looks gave her over a man. And to speak so crisply, with such unhesitating precision. He preferred it when the people he met fell into neat categories. Irascible old man. A young woman wronged. Foye did not yet know where to fit Miss Godard.
“Twenty-one days, my lord,” Sir Henry told him with a smile that conveyed his
pride in the precision of his niece’s recollection.
The naval officer whose tea leaves she’d been reading bid Miss Godard adieu. She nodded, said good-bye, and though the officer waited for her to say something more, she didn’t. For the moment, her table was empty of a companion, yet all the other men who had been waiting for their chance found themselves dismissed without a word.
“You have an able assistant, sir.” There was an awkward silence during which Foye expected to be introduced and was not. He cleared his throat and returned a bit of the older man’s directness. “May I meet your niece, Sir Henry?”
“What for?” Sir Henry’s eyes scalded. Foye could only thank the Lord he’d never been in one of Sir Henry’s lectures when he was at Oxford. He would have quailed under that gimlet eye. Because, in truth, he had spent more time with his various mistresses than with his studies.
“Godard,” Miss Godard said, firmly this time.
Sir Henry tipped his head toward her. “Very well. I suppose there’s no hope for it. Sabine, will you meet the Marquess of Foye?”
She stood to curtsey but did not extend a hand to him over the very small table at which she sat. He bowed in return. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, my lord.”
“My niece, sir. Miss Sabine Godard.”
“Miss Godard.” He was aware he was staring too hard. She was still so very young. He doubted she was much beyond twenty. Crosshaven ought to rot in hell for what he’d done to the girl.
She cocked her head at him, and at that moment he would have given anything to know what she was thinking.
“Would you read my future?” he asked.
Sir Henry snorted. “It’s nonsense, my lord,” he said. “She knows that, too.”
Miss Godard’s gaze flicked to her uncle; she remained unruffled. “If he is on your list of men who will make something of themselves, Godard, I daresay he is well aware my tea reading is a nothing more than an amusing way to pass the time.” She turned to him. “My lord, have you a cup you’ve been drinking? If not, you’ll need fresh.”
He pointed in the direction of the table on which he’d set his tea. “There.”
“That should do.” She smiled at him, but with no particular interest in him beyond what was polite and no indication that she cared anything for his title or his consequence. Or his lack of beauty, for that matter. How egalitarian of her. “I’ll wait, my lord.”
He returned with his nearly empty cup and sat on the chair opposite her. His legs were too long to fit underneath the table, leaving him no choice but to sit sideways or remain as he was with his thighs wide open. He turned on the chair. Miss Godard took his cup and looked into it. “Can you bear to drink another mouthful or two?”
He nodded. He would tell her, he decided. He would tell her about Crosshaven and then apologize for his role in her ruin, limited as it had been. He took back his cup, drank it nearly empty, and extended it to her.
“No,” she said, refusing his cup. “Hold it just so and swirl the contents thus.” She demonstrated the desired motion with her arm.
“Nonsense, all of it,” Sir Henry said.
“Yes, Godard,” she said without looking at her uncle. But he saw a smile lurking on her mouth. “Excellent. Now upend your cup on the saucer.”
“Shall I first cross your palms with silver?” Foye asked.
“Certainly not.” Her eyes, her very fine eyes, flashed with humor. There was more to Miss Godard than she meant to let on, he realized. “If I allowed you to pay me in order to learn your future, my ability to accurately assess what tomorrow and beyond may hold for you would be compromised.”
“Consider the offer rescinded, miss.”
Her mouth quirked. “Anyone who takes filthy lucre is no better than a rank charlatan.”
Obediently, he swirled his cup and did as directed, upending the cup over the saucer. Though he did not like to admit it, she interested him. What was she? What had she become since Crosshaven? “And you, being above remuneration, are no charlatan, I presume?”
Her smile became a direct and knowing connection with his gaze. “I am the worst charlatan in Christendom if you believe a word I say, my lord.” She righted his tea and stared into it. “This is utter nonsense, as you well know.”
“My future?” He sighed. “I feared as much.”
Miss Godard laughed softly. “Divination, my lord. As much as I admire the great civilizations of the past, I have concluded there is a reason men of modern learning do not maintain a belief in the ancient ways. Just as there were no gods on Mount Olympus, there is no magic by which one can infer the future from random patterns made in tea leaves.” She quirked her eyebrows at him. “Or the entrails of a goat, for that matter.”
He very nearly laughed. Nearly. My God, she was quick witted and not afraid to show him. “Nevertheless, this”—he indicated the teacup—“is, as you say, quite a charming pastime for a lady to have.”
“Thank you.” She raised her voice. “You see, Godard, that I am vindicated by Lord Foye.”
“What’s that?” Sir Henry said.
“The marquess finds the reading of tea leaves to be an amusing occupation.” She spoke so drolly and with such affection for her uncle that Foye was hard-pressed not to grin. Miss Godard handled her irascible uncle quite well.
“More the fool he,” Sir Henry said.
Miss Godard lifted a hand and pressed the other to her upper bosom. “A moment of silence while I read the portents, my lord.”
She could have been an actress; the gesture and tone of voice were so perfectly done. No wonder the officers vied for her attention. For one thing, she was miserly with it, and when she did look at you directly, there was so much there to see in her eyes, a man could not be faulted for wanting more. He leaned his side against his chair, his elbow over the back, and stretched out one leg while he watched her. “I believe,” he said in a low voice, “that we have a mutual acquaintance.”
Without taking her eyes from his cup, she replied in a soft voice, “Not a mutual friend, I am afraid. Unless you mean someone besides the Earl of Crosshaven.”
“I do not.”
Her expression closed off. “You have a bouquet of flowers, here.” She pointed to a mass of leaves. “That signifies you are to be happy in love.”
“I was,” he said. “Once. But no longer.”
She looked at him. “I am not reading your past, my lord, but your future.”
“Happy in love?” he said, looking into her eyes. “I fear that is quite impossible.”
“The tea leaves never lie,” she replied.
He wriggled his fingers over his cup. “Pray continue.”
Chapter Three
How loud her heart beat in her ears. Her fingers would be shaking if she hadn’t curled them around the teacup in front of her.
Sabine kept her attention fixed on the leaves clinging to the interior of the marquess’s teacup and wondered how much Lord Foye knew about her. Safest for her to assume that the man sitting across from her had heard every boast Lord Crosshaven had ever made concerning her, all of them lies, whether said in relative private to his cronies or pronounced at some assembly to which she and her uncle would never have been invited. Lies to which a rebuttal proved impossible.
How many thousands of miles from England did she have to go before she could live without fear of being thought a whore? Or would Lord Foye, whom she had not met when she and Godard were in London, be like the others who had assumed she was now fair game for seduction? She flicked a glance at him, resentful and apprehensive at the same time. He might do her a great deal of damage if he desired. Better she find out now than later.
He was a physically formidable man, which she did not care for. Not only tall but muscular, with broad shoulders and chest, and thighs shaped by vigorous activity. And unlike Godard, she was well aware that his clothes were exquisitely made. He probably did spend hours before his mirror.
Lord Foye was head and shoulders taller than
she. His hair was dark, not quite black, and quite willful in its curls. His eyes were the same blue as the Mediterranean. His nose was hooked, and the remainder of his features were set irregularly in his face, as if someone had put the parts together and then given him a hard shake before everything had quite settled into place.
She had, in her life, never met a peer until she and her uncle went to London where he was knighted. The aristocracy she’d found terrible in the extreme. They were a proud lot, too aware of their consequence and too overbearing in their expectation that she would be transported by the honor of an introduction.
Her mistake in believing the same of Foye became clear the moment he sat down to have her read his tea leaves. Not so much a proud man, she decided, as reserved. His consequence fit him like his clothes: exquisitely and without ostentation, but underneath there ran a river too deep to sound.
No one could spend five minutes in a room with the Marquess of Foye and not understand that here was a man to be reckoned with. Despite his title, despite his connection to Crosshaven, and even despite that he quite obviously knew every word that had been said about her, Sabine wanted very much to like him.
She was no longer so willing to believe the best of anyone.
Lord Foye sat sideways on his chair, one leg crossed over the other. When she looked up, he caught her glance. She’d been silent in her thoughts for too long.
“You have a complicated future,” she said.
“Take your time,” Foye replied. He had a deep voice. He spoke quietly, sure of himself, with a fullness of tone in his words that suggested nothing but that he hoped to be amused. There was no mistaking his voice for anything but that of a mature man, which, to be honest, was a pleasant change from the eager young soldiers and sailors she found so tiresome. “I should like my fortune read properly, Miss Godard.”
She returned her gaze to his teacup. “I endeavor, my lord.”
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