by Heather Snow
“I’m sorry I kept you waiting.”
Malcolm shot to his feet as Phoebe glided into the room. And glide she did. He blinked once, then twice, at the lovely picture she presented. God in Heaven… The Phoebe he remembered was all elbows and knees and exuberant energy, too much to be contained within demure femininity. She’d been bundled in her heavy cloak earlier, so he’d had no reason to imagine she’d changed—especially given how she’d been twirling on the ice when he saw her again.
But this Phoebe…
She was a vision in wine silk netting. Her ivory underdress, which boasted long sleeves in deference to the season, served to lighten the color to a deep rose that reminded him of an innocent’s blush. Hell, the way the low-cut bodice and delicate flowered embroidery emphasized her creamy skin and soft curves, he damned well might blush himself.
Not that her dress was indecent, by any means. No, he’d seen far more skin in the ballrooms of London, but this was Phoebe. Phoebe wasn’t supposed to elicit feelings of desire. She was his friend. She was…
He swallowed hard.
…a very alluring woman. There was no denying it.
Her long hair shone with a healthy glow, piled atop her head with a few curls left free to frame her face. Her cheekbones had become more defined with age, but they still reminded him of apples. Her chin was as strong as ever, and her lips were a bit fuller.
And her once gamine frame had rounded in all the right places.
“You’re worth waiting for,” he said simply, truthfully.
Phoebe’s cheeks turned the color of her frock. She lowered her gaze, and a smile that was both hopeful and cynical graced her lips, as if she relished his words but didn’t believe them for one second.
A fierce anger boiled through Malcolm. He damned well should have thrashed Harvey and his cronies right there on the street instead of just calling them unmitigated asses. A lady as beautiful and brilliant as Phoebe should never have to doubt herself.
But if they deserved thrashing, he deserved to be flogged. It had been his words that had fueled those fools.
“Phoebe, I—”
She looked up at him then and his tongue stilled. He hadn’t noticed it when she’d walked in, blinded as he’d been by her, but her nose was suspiciously red and her eyes shone bright with what had to be unshed tears. Hell and damnation. Was this his doing? Seeing him again must have stirred up terrible memories for her, memories he could only guess at.
Devil take it, he had no idea how to make things better.
He strode over to her, and turned his body so he could present her with his upper arm. “Hit me,” he commanded. “As hard as you can.”
Phoebe’s eyes widened and she blinked rapidly. “Wh-what?” she asked with a startled laugh.
“Knock me a wallop, right here,” he said, making an X with his finger on her favorite spot of old. “I mean it, Pheebs. Give it everything you’ve got.”
Her lips had turned up, probably in confusion, but that was better than sadness. “Whyever would I do that?”
“Because I deserve it. You said so yourself,” he reminded her, even though he hadn’t known then what she’d meant. “And because it will make you feel better. It always did.” He gritted his teeth—mostly for effect, but also bracing himself. He knew how hard she could hit. “Now have at me.”
“Oh, Malcolm,” she said, giggling in earnest now. “That’s very…sweet. I’m not sure what you’re about, but I thank you for it. I needed the laugh.” Her eyes softened as her laughter trailed off. “Besides, it wouldn’t help, you know. It never made me feel better. I just didn’t know any other way to express myself, immature as I was. Forgive me.”
Her apology was a gut punch, much worse than any blow she could have visited on his arm, especially given that he was the one who needed to beg her forgiveness. But at least now he knew exactly what to say.
Malcolm took one of Phoebe’s hands in both of his. “No, it is I who was the childish one. I treated you abominably five years ago—”
She gasped and tried to tug her hand from his, her other hand hurrying to cover her eyes like a small child who thought perhaps if she couldn’t see you, you couldn’t see her either. “What—why are you saying this now?”
He held firm, trying to soothe her by circling one of his thumbs over the top of her hand. “I should have apologized long ago. I just didn’t—” He stopped. Any excuse he gave would ring hollow. He’d been a damned fool. And then his father had died and he’d left London and the man he’d been behind him.
But she hadn’t had that luxury. There had been social repercussions for her that he had never even imagined.
“Harley, Davies, and Smythe saw us together at the fair,” he went on. He couldn’t help but feel her flinch at their names. “They told me how things have been for you. I’m so sorry, Phoebe,” he said quietly, shame burning in his gut. “I never thought you would pay such a price for my thoughtless words.”
Phoebe stopped trying to pull away. Her other arm dropped to her side and she took a deep breath. “It was so long ago,” she murmured. “There’s no need to—”
“Yes, there is.” He squeezed her hand gently before releasing it. He couldn’t bear the intensity of her gaze as he said the rest, so he returned to a slow pace before her. He had to say things properly. She had to know that it had never been her that was lacking.
“This is not an excuse,” he began, “but perhaps it will help you to understand. My father had no use for Town, or Town manners. You’ll remember that unlike most boys, I didn’t go away to school.”
She nodded.
“Father felt that a tutor—and time spent with him learning how to run our estates—was more than sufficient an education. My mother, bless her soul, browbeat him into allowing me to go to university, but as you can imagine, when I arrived at Cambridge I was completely out of my depth. Not scholastically, but socially.
“That only intensified when I came to London and began moving in Society. Harvey, Davies, and Smythe had attached themselves to me at Cambridge—not because of my winning personality,” he gave her a self-deprecating smile, “but because I would inherit a title and wealth greater than theirs one day. I accepted that, because I wanted something from them, too. They knew their way around the ton. It was second nature to them, and I did my best to emulate them. Even when they were less than kind.
“When you arrived in Town…” He stopped, not sure how to go on.
“Fresh from the country?” she supplied. “Naïve and always babbling on about some thing or another while following you about like a spring lamb?”
The shame that had been simmering inside him tightened his throat. He’d never said anything of the sort, but others had. “I never should have denigrated you, Phoebe, nor allowed anyone else to. No matter your faux pas, you were my friend. I should have been a bulwark for you, and instead I let you be rolled under a tide of mockery. All because I feared I was one rogue wave away from being fodder myself.” He hung his head, remorse weighing him down. “Forgive me.”
Silence reigned in the drawing room, broken only by the ticking of the clock.
He felt the soft brush of Phoebe’s hand against his knuckles before she slipped her tiny palm into his and curled her fingers around his.
He looked up to find Phoebe’s gaze steady on him. She wasn’t smiling, but her eyes were soft and…gracious. She squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Malcolm.”
Those three words, said with quiet strength, were a balm to his guilt, not relieving it entirely but soothing it. He squeezed back and released her, taking a deep breath. “I wish I could take back many things, but particularly what I said at the Davenport’s ball. I like to think that had my father’s death not pulled me from Town, I would have redeemed myself. I was a callow youth, but I hope that I would have intervened before I allowed Harvey and the others to push things so far. You have to know, Phoebe, I was never aware of it.”
She shook her head. “Don’t think on it
any longer. Besides, we both know that I have always been a bit of a whirling dervish—”
He winced, knowing what he’d said about her had been used to insult her most grievously in the years since that night.
“No,” she said and held a hand up. “I have. And I like that about me. So fret no more about the past. Had things not happened as they did, I may have tried to conform. I may even have married and now be miserably trapped in a drafty old manor somewhere with an equally miserable husband who thought he was getting a biddable wife.”
She laughed, but the sound cracked a bit at the edges, like precious china that has been ill-used.
“Believe me,” she went on, “I’m much happier this way.”
Malcolm pressed his lips together. He believed she meant her words, but they saddened him. Phoebe wasn’t made for the shelf. She had too much life in her to never know passion, to never share her joy with children of her own. From what Harvey had told him, her prospects were slim, and despite her forgiveness, he bore some culpability for that.
“I am glad that you are content, Phoebe,” he murmured. “Still, I wish there was some way I could make amends.”
She tilted her head and gave him a small smile. “Funny you should mention that…” She sat, perching herself on the edge of the settee, patting the brocade with a nod that told him she wished him to sit as well.
He did, curious.
“There is a favor I would ask of you.”
“Anything,” he promised.
Her hands clenched and unclenched on her lap, and her cheeks colored once again. She seemed to lose her nerve.
“What is it you need?” he prompted when she still didn’t go on.
Phoebe closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then she opened them quickly and said, “I need you to fwoo me.”
He blinked, opened his mouth and shut it again.
Her eyes flew wide. “Woo me!” she blurted. “I meant woo me.”
What the devil? “You want me to…woo you?”
“Pretend to woo me, that is,” she rushed on. “Only a little. Just enough to lead my father on for a bit. No public declarations or anything. You wouldn’t even have to put out much effort—a few tokens, really. Perhaps some candies, a nice note, an afternoon call or two—”
“Wait,” he said, trying to catch up to her. “Let me understand you. You want your father to think that we’re courting?”
She scrunched her face up, but nodded.
He had to ask the obvious question, because God save him, he couldn’t answer it for himself. “Why?”
Phoebe pursed her lips. Then she explained how her father was planning to marry her off to a wealthy merchant twice her age—in four weeks, no less—because he thought that was the best she could do.
“But you see, Father is a terrible snob,” she said. “If he thought…” She shrugged.
“If he thought a viscount had you in his sights, he might postpone his plans to see if anything comes of it,” Malcolm concluded.
Phoebe sighed. “Precisely.”
“And when your Father realizes that this…woo-age, for lack of a better term, is a sham? Won’t you just end up in the same predicament?”
She shook her head quickly. “No. I’ll be long gone from here by then,” she said with a finality he didn’t care for.
He furrowed his brow, trying to discern her meaning. Was she planning to run away? How? And with whom? “Do these plans of yours have anything to do with that Ellison chap?”
Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open a tad, but she covered it quickly. His jaw tightened. They did, then.
“Are you planning to elope?”
“That’s really none of your—”
“Phoebe,” he warned.
She narrowed her eyes, but he didn’t relent. Finally she sighed. “Nothing like that.”
He crossed his arms. He didn’t like this one bit. Phoebe had always been a chatterbox. There was a time he’d despaired of her ever shutting up. But when it came to this man, she was uncharacteristically tight-lipped. And that couldn’t be good. He tried again. “But they do have something to do with this Ellison, don’t they?”
“Yes,” she said tightly. “Not that you should care.”
He leaned back, bending his leg so that his left foot rested upon his right knee. He was trying to appear nonchalant about this, though inside he was far from it. “Oh, I don’t know. What if this Ellison bloke is the jealous sort and gets wind that his love is being wooed by another man? I have the right to know if I should be looking over my shoulder, don’t you think?”
She huffed. “You needn’t worry there,” she said. Then a tiny frown pulled at her lips. “Oh. I didn’t think that you might— You’re not already wooing someone, are you? I would hate to ask you to jeopardize any plans you have.”
He lifted his hand and shook his head. “No. While I am entertaining the idea of marriage this season, there is no one.” He tucked his hand back into his crossed-arm stance and regarded her thoughtfully. “Yet.”
Phoebe blinked several times. “Oh, good. Well then, what say you?”
“I’m not certain,” he hedged. “How long did you have in mind?”
“Easter, at the most. Likely much less, if my plans succeed. Regardless, it will be finished one way or the other well before the Season gets going in earnest. You will still have ample time to hunt for a bride,” she assured him.
Malcolm drummed his fingers along his opposite forearm, thinking. He wanted to know more about these plans of hers. He should make certain she’d be safe and well taken care of. He definitely wanted to know more about this Ellison. But most of all, he wanted to help Phoebe. He wished to undo some of the damage he’d done, if he could.
“I’ll do it,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting as her face lit. “On one condition,” he added.
Her smile froze, sliding into wary territory. “What would that be?”
“I’ll send along the requisite gifts and pay calls as I should. I’ll even come to dinner a time or two with you and your father, if you wish. But I want you to come out into Society with me.”
She frowned, shaking her head. “Why?”
He straightened. Because he hoped that by squiring her about, he might restore to her some social standing. That by showing some interest in her, he might open up some other opportunities for her, so that she didn’t have to choose between becoming a merchant’s wife and whatever she’d cooked up as an alternative. But all he said was, “Because I have, just this afternoon, alienated my only Society friends by pointing out to them that they are complete arses. I am in dire need of new companionship.”
She continued to frown, which formed the most adorable V between her brows. “But I don’t wish to go out into Society.”
“That is my condition.” He lifted an eyebrow her direction. “Now, do you want to be wooed or not?”
She grumbled something beneath her breath, but said, “Wooed.”
A smile split his face. “Wooed it is.”
Chapter 5
“I have never met a woman more difficult to woo than you, Pheebs.”
Phoebe jerked her head up from her artwork, startled by Malcolm’s voice just behind her. She turned at the waist, given her seated position on a bench inside her favorite public conservatory, and looked up. Indeed, he loomed over her right shoulder.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he lifted a finger to forestall her.
“Before you complain about my sneaking up on you, let me point out that had you been home once in the past three days when I’ve tried to call, I wouldn’t have to resort to such tactics. Truly, you leave a beau no choice.”
He stepped between the stone bench where she was seated and the adjacent one, claiming the space in front of it. “You know, the first two afternoons, when I was told you weren’t at home, I assumed it meant you were simply not at home to visitors,” he said as he doffed his topper and laid it on the bench.
His greatcoat follo
wed, and Phoebe couldn’t help but notice the leonine way he moved as he slid out of his outer garment, all sleek yet controlled. Sunlight streamed in from the conservatory’s glass-paneled walls and ceiling, limning him with the glow of an angel—or a god.
His wide shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, accentuated by the fine cut of his navy tailcoat. Tawny buckskin breeches molded themselves to muscular thighs and perfectly proportioned knees, while black boots covered calves and feet that were planted in the arrogant stance of a man who knows his place in the world. Were she an anatomist rather than a botanist, she’d relish illustrating his form. She swallowed, her mouth suddenly very dry.
“It quite hurt my feelings at first—” he was saying, and she snapped her gaze to his face, trying to catch up. Fortunately, he hadn’t noticed her staring as he’d been removing his gloves. “—standing out there on your doorstep, hat in hand, only to be turned away. I mean, why would you not be at home to me after you’d just asked me to woo you? I thought perhaps you’d changed your mind and were too embarrassed to see me.”
His gloves landed atop his coat, and then he straightened, tugging his waistcoat into place. The rich fabric was a shade of deepest wine that reminded her of the Mexican Dahlia she’d only been able to see in Botanical Magazine, as no English gardener had yet to keep one alive more than a season or two.
“But yesterday, I wised up,” he said, shooting her a crooked grin that was as breathtaking as any exotic flower that had ever graced that magazine’s pages.
“Oh?” was all she could manage.
“Indeed. After being told once again that you weren’t at home, I flat asked your man if you weren’t ‘at home’ at home, or really not at home. He admitted you were away, but wouldn’t divulge where you’d gone for anything.”
“Then how did you find me today?”
He sat down on the bench next to his discarded outerwear. The shade cast by a large row of potted trees beside them rendered him human again. But even without the sun’s supernatural enhancement, he was beautifully magnificent.
“I waited outside your townhouse all morning until I saw you come out,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to have done. “And then I followed you.”