For all of his reticence about the disastrous end of his marriage—which seemed more to do with common decency than a desire to truly conceal anything—Evie was an open book . . . or so she’d thought. For good or ill, he’d always been easy with his tongue, even when he probably shouldn’t have been. He’d always called a spade a spade, even when that spade was himself. He made no bones about his failings and had no problem pointing out the failings in others. He was as honest as Evander had been devious. She didn’t at all like the thought of Evie having secrets.
And locked drawers definitely contained those.
Likely it was merely the sort of illicit material men generally sought to keep out of the hands of the fairer sex. She’d discovered such things while snooping in her uncle’s rooms growing up—and her father’s, though she had to perform a mental scrub every time she remembered that particular, ill-advised invasion of the earl’s privacy—but Evie was being embarrassingly obvious about it. Those sorts of things were usually in stocking drawers or pressed between volumes of old sermons that no one wanted to read, on the top shelves of the library. Not in locked desk drawers.
Perhaps the contents were not so lascivious, but she was definitely determined to find out one way or another. Evie was just begging for her to open it.
So Betsy did just that . . . and recalled the tale of Pandora and her box much too late for it to do her any good.
TWO HOURS LATER, Marlowe turned up the gaslight on his library desk to find Betsy sitting in his chair, her cheeks ghostly white and her mouth hanging open like a dead fish.
He nearly jumped out of his skin at the rather unexpected—and unattractive—sight. He definitely jumped far enough to ram his hip into the edge of his desk and send a pile of books and papers clattering to the floor.
When Betsy didn’t react at all to the commotion or the curses that followed, he waved a hand in front of her face and called her name to make sure she was still alive. Only when he shouted her full name and title did she come to, her unfocused eyes finally snapping to attention on his face. When she recognized who it was, her dead fish expression was replaced by one of dawning horror.
His skin crawled with foreboding.
“What the devil are you doing sitting in the dark at my desk?” he blustered, for giving way to his irritation was a hell of a lot easier than giving way to concern.
Her pale cheeks flooded with a sudden heat, which was not reassuring at all. Could he not go one week without someone in his household falling ill or blundering into catastrophe? Sometimes he felt as if he were trapped in some Minerva Press disaster of a novel—and he wasn’t even cast as the hero, just one of the bumbling minor characters who got murdered early on and sealed in a cupboard to molder for centuries.
He had a feeling that wasn’t going to change until all of the females in his life were wedded and bedded—which meant he was stuck like this for the rest of his life, since he didn’t see himself letting any man wed and bed his daughters. Ever. Not while the blood still pumped through his veins.
“Are you ill?” he ventured warily, not looking forward to the prospect of yet another visit from Dr. Lucas and his judgmental gaze. The sawbones visited his residence even more often than Lady Blundersmith’s, and that was just embarrassing.
Betsy pulled a face and groaned. “If only I were of a weaker constitution, I’d have cast my accounts ages ago and felt the better for it.”
Then she proceeded to glare at him as if it were all his fault. He had no idea what “it” could be, however, so he just glared back in silence until she would crack and explain herself. She was the one behaving like an overwrought damsel, after all.
But then out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of just what he’d knocked off his desk earlier. All of his letters from Waverley and all of his books and notes on the project he’d abandoned for “The Alabaster Hip,” along with the ode’s various drafts, lay across the parquet floor like limp, wounded soldiers. There was no mistaking the evidence for anything other than what it was, but just in case he was imagining things, he glanced at the desk drawer—The Drawer—and found it hanging open and empty.
He cringed and faced Betsy once more. She waved a paper she had been clutching with white knuckles. It was from his latest effort—the damnable fairy epic he’d been too embarrassed to acknowledge he was writing, even to himself.
“I can explain . . .” he began.
She held up a hand to halt his words, looking even more pained. “Don’t even try to lie to me, Evelyn. I’ve sat here for hours reading everything. I know.”
“Whatever you think you know . . .”
“You’re Christopher Essex. You.”
He was a little offended she found the idea so incredible. “Don’t look too surprised,” he muttered.
“Surprised? Surprised?” Her red cheeks started to turn an alarming shade of purple-green. “You’re my brother! The stories I’ve written about you and . . . and me . . .” She broke off, looking as if her constitution might finally fail her. He certainly felt as if his might as her meaning sank in through his shock. He’d known she was stupidly infatuated with Essex, but not . . . this. Worse than a mere Misstopher, it seemed she was one of those fanatic commonplacers who wrote stories.
He felt his gorge rise.
“You’re one of those, then,” he said as calmly as he could, which was not calm at all.
“Oh, I’m definitely one of those,” she cried, equally frantic. “What part of me telling you I wanted to marry him—you—him—Oh, dear God—didn’t you understand?”
He scoured the room for a receptacle just in case both of their Leighton constitutions failed them. He’d read some of those stories. Women sent Waverley those stories, Waverley sent them to him, and he had made the mistake of opening those letters one too many times.
He squeezed his eyes shut and prayed as he hadn’t prayed in years. “Please tell me you didn’t write to me.”
“I’m Lady Hedonist.”
He gagged and collapsed on the edge of his desk. “Not the one about the love potion and the wand.” Dear Lord, the wand.
She looked both proud and slightly queasy. “My Tristan and Isolde tribute. My best work.”
He did the arithmetic in his head and gagged again. Nothing came up, but it was a near thing. “You couldn’t have been more than fourteen when you wrote that.”
Silence. “What can I say but that it runs in the family?” she offered.
“Fourteen! The wand, Betsy. How could a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl even know . . .”
“My imagination is very fertile, Evie,” she said dryly. “But it certainly doesn’t extend to incestuous fantasy. I leave that to Byron’s followers.” She paused. “And Byron, for that matter.”
He decided not to even touch that one. “You are Lady Hedonist,” he said again, just in case she might deny it this time around and spare them both.
He was not so lucky.
“Not anymore,” she said with a shudder. “I’m burning every single story I’ve ever written just as soon as my abject horror fades enough for me to be able to walk again.”
“You’re Lady . . .”
“Yes! Lud, Evie. How could such a muttonhead like you be Christopher Essex?”
“Maybe I’m just a very good actor.”
She snorted. “Not that good. You’re definitely a muttonhead. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“No one knows.” She snorted again and crossed her arms over her chest, her brow arched at such an obvious falsehood.
“Except my publisher,” he allowed. “And Sherry…”
“Sherry?” she demanded suspiciously. “Is that one of your fancy women?”
“Oh, for heaven’s…it’s Sebastian! The Marquess of Manwaring now,” he clarified. “And I’ve told Montford.”
She leaned back against her seat and waited.
“And Astrid,” he grumbled. “She’d have squeezed it out of him by now.”
She tapped her foot.
He sighed. “And Elaine. That’s all.”
“So everyone you love. Except me.”
“Betsy . . .”
She picked up a quill off the desk and chucked it at his head. It bounced off his temple.
“You are unbelievable. I can’t even . . . You’re Christopher Essex!”
Marlowe held his breath as Betsy’s face underwent a series of contortions he doubted even the most skilled linguist could decipher. He feared spontaneous combustion at any moment. Or tears. Oh, he was done for if there were tears.
Instead, she started to laugh. She laughed so hard she doubled over in her chair and slapped the desktop hard enough to make the inkpot bounce. The tears started to well up in her eyes, but they didn’t seem to be tears of someone who had been traumatized for life—thank hell. He held his breath nonetheless until she finally wiped at her cheeks, her laughter disintegrating into quiet giggles. She held up the paper in her hands again.
“Fairies?” she gasped. “Really?”
Damn it. “Keats did it.” It wasn’t as if he were gasping for her approval . . . except that he was.
“Keats could have brought off a fairy epic. I’m not so sure you could,” she said.
Now he was just confused. “And you call yourself a Misstopher,” he mumbled.
“I know your strengths,” she retorted. “Though I have to say I’m pleasantly surprised your main character is female for once. Less surprised that she could be Miss Jones’s twin.”
He could feel the blush creeping down his neck. “That is . . . ridiculous,” he spluttered. “And completely false . . . How could you even think . . .”
“‘Ebon hair bejeweled by the stars,’” she quoted, “‘storm-cloud eyes and marble-pale skin’?”
“Nevertheless, I deny the accusation,” he grumbled.
“‘Marble-pale skin,’” she enunciated, just in case he hadn’t heard her the first time, “‘from the alabaster mines of Italy’s ancient hills . . .’” A light went off in her eyes, and he knew he was in even more trouble. “Oh, oh! ‘The Alabaster Hip’! You wrote it about Miss Jones, didn’t you!” she cried.
He seriously contemplated strangling his sister, or at the very least gagging her until this was over. If it ever was over. He was beginning to fear she was going to torment him over this for the rest of his life. “Perhaps you might try that again. I don’t think the residents of China heard you properly,” he bit out.
She jumped up from her desk, smiling in delight. “Oh, good grapes, it’s true!” she breathed. “You didn’t deny it.”
He slouched down into his vacated seat and buried his face in his hands.
“Oh, Evie, you must tell Miss Jones,” Betsy said next, just as he’d been dreading.
“I know,” he murmured, tugging at the ends of his hair in frustration. “But how?”
Betsy’s glee faded as she saw how pained he was, and she slumped against his desk, considering his question. “You mean, how do you do so without her being extremely put out with you?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Betsy grimaced. “Well, I don’t see a way around that. But the longer you put it off, the worse it will be. She needs to know the truth about who you are.”
Betsy was right, but he’d been two different people for so long that he wasn’t sure who he was anymore. He wasn’t sure he’d ever known. He’d played the slightly belligerent, slightly oblivious court jester for years, first to protect himself from his father’s abuses and slights, then later as a preemptive shield against the rest of the world. If he’d not let Barming see his pain, then he’d damn well not let the rest of the world.
He’d become Christopher Essex for the same reason.
Along the way, he’d lost sight of who he was . . . or perhaps more accurately, he’d forgotten who he wanted to be. And he didn’t want to be just a buffoon or a navel-gazing poet. Of course, part of him would always be these things, but they weren’t all he was.
The longer he put it off, the harder it had become to tell the truth. Or more precisely, the truth had become something different—he’d become different. Besides, for the first time in his life, he was beginning to like who he was—all of who he was. With Minerva, who had little patience for his title or public opinion—and who had seen him at his worst and was, amazingly, still here—he was simply a man, without anything to recommend him other than his own character and strength of purpose. He was, at last, the man he’d always wished to be. And though their acquaintance was based on a lie, one single lie, he felt that he was more honest with her than he’d ever been before, to himself, to others.
It was self-deception perhaps. Obsession. But at night, before his head hit the pillow, he wished to wake up to a world in which the debauched Viscount Marlowe of his youth had never existed, and the war—and his hideous family—took up no space in his brainbox. He wished nightly, as his eyes closed and he prayed for pleasant dreams, that he’d wake up to discover Minerva next to him, that they had met years ago, before the war and Caroline’s betrayal had a chance to cripple him, and that she loved him as much as he’d already come to love her—for he was afraid that was what this was. Not merely like or lust, but love.
Sometimes, when the outside world intruded and he felt strangled with guilt, he went to bed at night with a different fantasy. He told Minerva the truth of who he was, and instead of hating him, she forgave him on the spot and took him in her arms. In this fantasy, they had dozens of children and lived happily ever after. Well. Maybe not dozens. One or two more. He’d leave repopulating the earth to Elaine and Brinderley.
But he knew, were she to find out the truth, that her reaction would be much different. She would hate him. The mere thought of her rejection made him sick and clammy all over, and he wondered if it were better to never let her know the truth.
Which was absurd, of course.
Sooner or later, she would find out. Because eventually he would slip up, as he’d done with Betsy. Eventually it would become just too unbearable to continue the charade.
Well, he’d never made things easy for himself.
Betsy patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Evie. She’s bound to forgive you. Eventually.”
She sounded much too doubtful for her words to be any sort of consolation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN WHICH THE VISCOUNT BRAVES ALMACK’S AND LIVES TO TELL ABOUT IT
MINERVA WAS QUITE sure that most governesses were not called upon to attend Almack’s with their employers’ families. Neither did she think the fearsome patronesses were likely to let someone like her through the door, even with the guest voucher the duchess had procured for her. Unfortunately, the knot on her head—and the mild cold she’d contracted—from the fountain incident had healed, so she was unable to cry off playing chaperone, though she still attempted to. All her protests did nothing to deter Lady Elizabeth in her determination either. Minerva was quite stuck.
Literally. With pins. From perhaps the clumsiest seamstress in London.
“You look splendid,” Lady Elizabeth proclaimed as she observed said seamstress fitting one of her gowns to Minerva.
Minerva winced as another needle pricked her waist, and didn’t bother to argue with Lady Elizabeth’s wild claim.
But as little as she enjoyed being poked and prodded by the seamstress—or the thought of the evening ahead—she had to admit she rather liked the gown Lady Elizabeth had insisted she take. It was a dark jeweled blue silk—far too extravagant a fabric for Minerva’s station in life, but of a sober enough cut and color not to make her feel too much like an imposter. She was no youthful debutante bound for the marriage mart, and she had no desire to pretend otherwise. If she were to attend the Assembly Rooms, she’d do so as unobtrusively as possible.
Though there was nothing unobtrusive about the puffed sleeves. Or a paid companion attempting to run the gauntlet of the lady patronesses. Minerva flicked at one of the sleeves and sighed. “I shall not make it past the guard dogs,
” she muttered.
Lady Elizabeth scoffed. “You are our particular guest and the daughter of a navy captain who died a war hero. Surely that shall bear weight. It’s Marlowe I’m worried about.”
Lady Elizabeth did have a point. Hopefully Marlowe would be distracting enough to the patronesses that they wouldn’t even notice Minerva trying to slip by.
“The duchess says we must put forth the effort of attending, and she’s right,” Lady Elizabeth said, sounding much too practical for her years. “My only hope of extricating myself from Father’s alliance with Poxley is to be seen publicly. At the very least, it may hold him off from acting until after the Season is done, for fear I should kick up a public fuss—which I am quite prepared to do, mind you.”
Minerva thought this a rather tenuous strategy, but she supposed they had no other at this point.
“And if I am to attend this horrid farce, I want you at my side and no one else,” Lady Elizabeth continued. “Besides, I need a chaperone, and Elaine is indisposed. The patronesses shall not begrudge me one, I am sure.”
Minerva hoped—and doubted—she was right.
The seamstress finished her stitching with one last prick, and she was finally allowed to turn to face the mirror. She sucked in a surprised breath. The gown was the loveliest thing she’d ever worn. The sapphire color made her pale skin look fetchingly dewy and her black hair less like an animal’s pelt. She wasn’t completely hideous after all.
Lady Elizabeth bounded up behind her with a sly grin. “Didn’t I tell you the sapphire would suit?” she said, fussing with the sleeves. She narrowed her eyes at Minerva’s uninspired chignon. “Though we shall have to do something about your hair.”
“It won’t hold a curl,” Minerva warned as she noticed Lady Elizabeth glancing thoughtfully toward her iron. Her hair had always been as thick, straight, and stubborn as a hedgehog’s quills. Lady Elizabeth was more likely to burn it off than make it curl.
Regency Romp 03 - The Alabaster Hip Page 13