“What does a marquess do with the run of the house?” she asked.
“The sort I am, not much,” George said. “Northbrook is a courtesy title translating to ‘Is the oldest or only son and will be a duke someday, but for now has nothing much to occupy him since his father is disinclined to share responsibility.’”
Her lips twitched. “Here I thought Northbrook meant the north side of a brook.”
“It’s a rough translation. But were you asking about me in general, or wondering about this room?”
“Both,” she answered. “This room smells of oranges. Like you. I noticed it as I walked down the corridor.”
He hadn’t thought about his own scent in some time. A man usually didn’t. “I sometimes work with chemicals that have an unpleasant scent. The orange oil covers it, and I got in the habit of having it added to my own soap lest I drag the results of an experiment about with me.”
She trailed a fingertip over the nicked surface of the long table. “I wondered if perhaps you’d captured a schooner from the tropics.”
“Sorry.” He did his best to look contrite. “I could say I had if you’d be impressed.”
She ignored this irrelevancy. “What do you use these wooden boxes for? You said you conduct experiments here. Will you tell me about them?”
The man had never been born who could resist a question such as that. George loped into the room to stand beside her, looking over the camerae obscurae. They must appear curious to her. One was a little peak-sided box of wood with a glass top hiding behind the wooden sides; the other was more than double the size of the smaller, about the length of a man’s torso, and with a hinged lid. Each had a hole in one side, filled with a metal-mounted glass lens like a telescope’s end.
“Each of these cunning boxes,” he said, “is a camera obscura of a different sort. They are meant for making pictures. Or they would be if I were a better artist or scientist.”
“Pictures—like the paintings that hang all over this house?”
“They can be.” He plunged his hands into his pockets, considering how to explain. “Artists have been using them to help with paintings for centuries. I’m trying something quite different, though. I hope to hit upon a way to fix images from life using sunlight and chemicals.”
Her eyes widened. “Images from life? You mean people as they really look, without the trouble of sitting for a portrait in paint?”
“That’s the hope. I’ve had no luck yet, but there’s got to be a way. I’ll show you my work sometime, if you’re really interested.”
But his fumbling fingers had touched the gold circlet in his pocket, and he remembered his earlier errand. “For now,” he said, “I’ve a gift for you.”
“No.” She shook her head. “No gifts. Ours is only a tie of business.”
She sounded so formal that he blinked. “Right. That’s what I meant. This isn’t a gift at all; it’s part of a costume. A business costume.”
He pulled the ring from his pocket, dropping to one knee on the acid-scarred carpet that covered polished floorboards. “Pretend I’m a dashing but cruel Italian, presenting you with this ring under false pretenses.”
With a wondering expression, she took the ring from his palm. It gave him a queer feeling about his heart to watch her examine it, then slip it onto her fourth finger.
“Would I keep wearing your ring,” she asked, “if you were cruel to me and I had fled from you?”
I would never be cruel to you. “Certainly you would.” Grabbing the table edge for support, he stood and shook out his legs. The carpet did nothing to soften the floor. “Just look at it. It is a very pretty ring, and worth a great deal. You’d hardly leave it behind. Though if it matters, my mother’s lady’s maid knows I’ve got it from the jewelry box here. I told her you left your real ring behind with your other belongings, but I wanted you to appear respectable.”
“And if the lady’s maid knows it, the other servants soon will.” She understood. “Very well. I do have a few more questions, though.”
“Ask away. I am an open book inscribed with all the knowledge of the world.”
“I am the luckiest of all women,” she said drily. “First question: Why should anyone connected with the tontine care to know me? Second question: What shall I do for clothing if I go out in society?”
Clothing was a simpler matter to answer, so he took that question first. “Because you’re meant to be a relative, my sister can kit you out. We’ll have to tell her who you really are, as we told my father. Selina will be reasonable about the matter. She doesn’t want our father killed any more than I do.”
“All her tonnish friends will recognize her clothing, surely.” Cass twisted the ring, a delicately worked gold band set with a single emerald. “Ah, well. I will embrace the secondhand clothing cheerfully. I’ll be mad with gratitude that my cousin has loaned me her clothing, since everyone knows I own nothing to speak of. I fled with the clothes on my back and would be in nary a stitch without the kindness of family.”
“Er—yes. You don’t need to go on about your potential nudity to that degree, but that sounds fine. As for why anyone should care to know you, well . . .”
He fumbled for words. Look at you, was on the tip of his tongue. Listen to you.
He had paused too long, and she filled the silence herself. “Even as a duke’s bastard, I’m plain and I’ve no fortune. And illegitimacy is nothing to boast about.”
“But you have connections,” he said, though this was not the right sort of reply. “And you are notorious—or you will be, if you can manage it.”
“I will, and gladly.”
They shared a smile. This was the first time George could remember that they were smiling for a united purpose, and not at cross-purposes or with one of them about to run off.
“Don’t worry too much,” he said. “My plans generally go as I expect they will.”
“That is the sort of statement that makes people want to throw things at your head.” She sighed. “Such schemes and secrets are much like a romantic novel. What comes next, George? You will give me lessons in how to behave in society, and I will fall wildly in love with you?”
Why wouldn’t she stop touching the ring? It was most distracting. “I wouldn’t argue with the second part,” he said lightly, “but the first sounds like far too much work. And I’m sure you’d give me one of those withering glances if I even tried.”
“Very true. Glad we’re in agreement.” She stepped back, turning toward the door. “And just so you know, falling in love with you sounds like too much work for me, so I likely won’t bother with it.”
George laughed.
As he’d predicted, she fired a withering glance over her shoulder. “I wish you wouldn’t do that when I mean to puncture your pride. It entirely undoes my efforts.”
He laughed again. “I can’t do without my pride. It’s my prize possession. Now, whenever you need me, I’ll be in here or in my bedchamber next door to this one.”
She lifted a hand, touching her cheek. “Next door? That’s hardly any distance at all from my own room.”
“It’s as much distance as you want it to be,” he said. “I vow that to you, as ours is a tie of business.” He enjoyed the pink tint that overspread her cheeks, then added, “Now, what do you need to begin work?”
Chapter Five
The next morning, George hoped to see Cass at breakfast. But she’d arisen and eaten before he ventured downstairs, and his morning meal was its usual solitary affair.
Even so, the house felt different around him. Brighter, maybe, and richer and prettier. It was not due to the weather; his camerae obscurae had revealed nothing unusual about the amount of light spilling into his experiment room. No, it must be the brightness of having a plan.
The brightness faded as soon as he peered into his mother’s room to bid her good morning. Even at full noon on the sunniest day of summer, the space surrounding the duchess was gray and dim—and today was an ordi
nary drizzly, foggy London morning. The scent of dried flowers was stronger today, along with the bitter scent of laudanum. Her Grace must have just taken a dose.
Gatiss, the lady’s maid, bustled into the room. Her usual implacability bore cracks. “I’m afraid it’s not a good day, Lord Northbrook. Her Grace doesn’t care to dress or go downstairs today.”
In the bed, the duchess slumbered silently, her cheeks flushed from the influence of her favored drug. The only sign she was aware of the world around her was a puckered brow, a downward curve of the mouth.
Such was her reaction to a morning greeting from her son. George turned away. “There never seem to be good days anymore.”
He’d been frightened when she’d taken too much laudanum the year before and almost died; frightened enough to stay up all day with her rather than falling into bed after a wasted night of . . . Lord, he’d no idea what he’d done.
She had lived. And he’d changed the way he lived, a little. He’d been getting pale and puffy and weary, living for nightfall and roistering. If his mother’s example had taught him one thing, it was not to squander his health as she did.
He had never again managed to be frightened for her. Instead he was impatient, and guilty that he was impatient, and annoyed that he felt guilty.
“Isn’t this Her Grace’s day to receive callers?” he asked the lady’s maid.
“It is, my lord.” Disappointment etched lines about Gatiss’s square features. “She’s never missed her callers before.”
Well. He couldn’t make the duchess discard her laudanum bottle, just as he couldn’t keep the duke away from cards. He was powerless in the face of their compulsions.
But no more of that now. Bright! Elegant! Plan! Cass! He tried to return his thoughts to the hopeful cast they’d worn before breakfast.
“I’ll need your assistance later this morning, Gatiss. In a short while, my sister is going to bring over some gowns for our guest, Mrs. Benedetti.” That would do; let the servants fill in any gaps in his explanation with their own gossip. “I am sure she will need the gowns fitted to her, and as quickly as you are able to accomplish it. Mrs. Benedetti and I will be going out tonight.”
He and Cass had decided the previous day that they’d dive into society as soon as possible. He had selected an invitation almost at random from the ones always scattered over the occasional table in the foyer . . . the desk in his father’s study . . . the foot of his mother’s bed. This one was on heavy paper and beautifully engraved, which meant the hosts were trying to impress.
Which was just the sort of environment in which gossip flourished.
Gatiss looked pleased at the unexpected task. “I shall be ready, my lord.” She hesitated, glanced at the duchess, then added, “It’ll be nice to work with some pretty clothes. I’ll be pleased to help the lady dress for the evening, too.”
George thanked her and left the room, thundering down the stairs to the first floor of the house. Here were the drawing room—no Cass in there—and the music room—ditto—and his father’s study.
George pushed the door open slowly so as not to rouse a flurry of barks and growls from the duke’s dogs. Great hounds of bad temper and a particular dislike of George, they settled like bookends to the duke wherever he established himself.
But this morning they didn’t bark, or snarl, or growl, though a whip-thin brown tail thumped the carpet. Mystified, George opened the study door all the way—and there was Cass, garbed in a pretty green gown and sitting on the floor with the two huge dogs around her like furry pillows.
“Good morning, Father,” George replied to the duke’s grunt of greeting, then looked down at the figure on the floor. “Hullo, Cass.”
Either Gog or Magog—George could never tell which was which—picked up his heavy head and growled.
“Good morning.” Rather than looking up at George, Cass took hold of the growling dog’s scruff and looked him in the eye. “Calm,” she said.
When the dog settled, its gaze dropping, she turned from him and petted the other dog as if he were the best-behaved creature in the world. “What a good boy for staying quiet.”
“Surely,” said George, “these are not the same terrifying watchdogs that no one but the great Duke of Ardmore has been able to tame.”
The duke, his hair iron gray and eyes ice blue, grunted again.
“That must have been so annoying for you all,” Cass said. “They started barking earlier when I stepped in to speak to His Grace, and I asked if I might try calming them.”
George stepped farther into the room and crouched beside the non-growling dog, who looked at him with wariness—but kept its silence. “How do you know how to make them mind?”
Cass scratched behind the ears of the non-growling dog, causing its yellow-brown eyes to squeeze shut in delight. “If I didn’t know how to handle an aggressive dog, I’d always have one at my heels as I walked about the city.” She grinned, an expression of pure mischief. “Dogs are rather like the ton.”
The duke grunted yet again. He could play a symphony with grunts, pitching them for every timbre and mood. George had sorted out their translation only imperfectly, but he rather thought this one meant, “How intriguing. Tell me more.” Not that Cass would be able to interpret it.
“It falls to me,” George said, “to ask how dogs are like people of the ton. Consider it done.”
“They are social beasts,” she explained. “They want guiding, and if they get it, they’ll fall right in line with the behavior one desires.”
He opened his mouth—then shut it. “I would protest, but that is precisely the behavior we’re hoping you’ll elicit as Mrs. Benedetti.”
“Damned nonsense,” said the duke, shuffling papers. “I was never in any danger before. No need for all these elaborate schemes.”
George looked at Cass. She lifted her hands, declaiming responsibility, as the non-growling dog whuffed a protest at the pause in the ear-scratching. “I have tried to persuade him to the contrary.”
“You persuaded me in the end,” the duke said.
George craned his neck to examine the features of the duke. “How did she do that?” he asked, as wary as the dogs. Because Ardmore never smiled, yet his steely eyes held a touch of humor now.
“She said if I went along with the plan, I never had to get you a gift again. Not for your birthday, not your wedding, nothing.”
“Oh.” George sank to the floor, stretching out his legs along the carpet. The dog that had growled slunk over and put its head in his lap. Idly, he petted the canine head, thinking over the consequences of no gifts. Everyone liked getting gifts. “What about Christmas?”
“Nothing,” Ardmore and Cass chorused.
He cast about for another occasion. “Midsummer Day? Or what about Easter?”
“No,” came the chorus again.
“That seems hard on me, Father, considering this plan is for your benefit.”
The duke grunted again. This one was percussive and meant “Shut it.”
George did not shut it.
“I moved into this house four years ago at your request,” he reminded his father. “To help you keep watch on my mother, because you were worried about her health. Now I’m worried about you and I’ve moved someone in to keep watch on you.”
The duke glared.
“You’re welcome!” George said heartily. The formerly growling dog that was now not growling picked up its head and looked at him with disappointment, then collapsed to the floor again for more petting.
The duke grunted, but just quietly enough that they could ignore him.
So George did. He turned his attention to Cass. “What are you doing here? The dogs are keeping watch now.”
“I know. I wanted to meet them after they gave me such a loud greeting yesterday.” She smiled. Her red hair was a braided coronet that made her eyes as warm and bright as amber.
Steady, George. “You’re joking,” he said. “No one wants to meet these dogs.”
“Indeed I did. I introduced myself by looking them in the eye, then holding them by the scruff. To a dog, it’s like a bow or handshake. See? It’s just here.” She laid a hand on the neck-adjacent region of the better-behaved dog.
“I know what a scruff is,” George lied, trying to sort out where it would be on the dog draped beside him.
“You must take hold quite calmly,” Cass added, “as if you’re entitled to your position. That is what convinces them you are.”
“You were right. It really is the same at many parties I’ve attended. Less neck-grabbing, of course, but the confidence and pretense . . . yes.”
“I told you it was a good analogy. When Gog growled at you, I gave him the cut direct. Just as one would to someone who got drunk at a party or cheated at cards. That sort of behavior won’t do.”
So Gog was the one toad-eating him now, jealous of the ear scratches Magog was enjoying. “How do you know which one’s Gog? I can never tell them apart.” They were equally unpleasant to his eye.
“He’s a little bigger. And look, his paws are quite black, and Magog has one that’s a light brown. Gog thought he was in charge, but he must learn that he’s not.”
“I am,” said Ardmore.
“Of course, Your Grace,” said Cass in a tone that did not indicate agreement.
The duke met her eyes. She met his right back and smiled. George had the feeling that given another moment, she’d bounce up from her seat on the floor and take his father by the scruff of the neck.
George would dearly love to see that, but it would not contribute to his father’s peace and safety. He rose to his feet, then extended a hand to Cass. “Let’s leave the duke to his work. It’s nearly time for you to get fitted for your evening as Mrs. Benedetti.”
This was only an excuse to remove her from the tenuous good cheer of the dogs and the decidedly absent cheer of the duke. But as they stepped into the corridor and made their way to the stairs, George heard the front door of the house open and his sister’s voice float up from the entrance hall.
“I decided not to bring my cat this time,” she reassured the butler. “Ardmore’s dogs are intolerably rude to poor Titan. She stays at home with Lord Wexley.”
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