It was a very good thing she found uphill climbs invigorating, then. Even fortifying.
And the wind soon took the rest of the marquess-inspired mortification flush out of her cheeks and then set to work scouring it red again, putting the Sussex back into it.
Chapter 4
The seats of his landau were as plush as his last mistress’s thighs, but when Jules leaned back and closed his eyes, his thoughts were hardly sensual.
And besides, his last mistress had tried to kill him with a vase.
He half dozed, eyes lowered, but as usual his responsibilities ran through his mind like beads on a rosary. He’d hired excellent people to work for him, to worry for him, to manage his properties and oversee his investments, and yet vigilance remained almost a pleasurable vice. He found it difficult to release. He hadn’t slept solidly since he was seventeen, when his reckless Roman candle of a father, in his final spectacular act, had gotten himself killed in a duel over a woman . . . who wasn’t his wife. He’d loved her, he told the ton at large. And love was worth dying for.
All this, of course, after years of steadily losing properties and money and stature in games of chance.
And by all accounts, having the time of his life doing all of it.
He’d left behind debts, disaster, and disgrace, all of which Jules had methodically righted. The years had been harrowing; but he was clever and strategic and shrewd and coldly, ruthlessly determined. He never put a foot wrong. He’d regained family property, amassed a new fortune, and gained untold power and influence. His dignity was unassailable, seemingly impenetrable.
And while his father had been a glorious, gorgeous wreck, at the mercy of his impulses, in the end, despite his ancient title, a subject of mockery . . . no one dared mock Julian Spenser.
He ran his thoughts over another bead. His family was safe and comfortable. His sisters married well. Crises and needs came and went; they turned to him to solve them, and it was what he did, because he did it best.
And then there was bloody Waterburn. Who was really a minor irritant, but seemingly omnipresent. Like a gnat, if a blond giant could be said to resemble a gnat. He’d never forgive Jules for winning the favors of the lush Carlotta Medina, or, for that matter, for being Julian Spenser: always ahead of him in school, promoted ahead of him in the army, a better shot, and by all accounts, a better lover, whose cool discrimination—not to mention the looks he’d inherited from his father—women found maddeningly compelling.
Of course, in hindsight, the victory was rather hollow, since Carlotta had been fiery and acrobatic in bed and really quite unmanageable out of it. Mad as a hatter, demanding and spoiled and very confusing, all told. An alarming episode.
Not that he didn’t sometimes still imagine Carlotta in bed, and for that he would always be grateful.
Women. He smiled to himself.
No wonder everyone wanted to be Lord Dryden.
The irony was that not even Lord Dryden was really Lord Dryden. And this, too, mostly suited him.
And almost no one remembered his father now.
No one, of course, but Isaiah Redmond. Because Isaiah Redmond held the final piece of land that Julian wanted.
Needed.
But over the years Julian had acquired the vision and finesse of a chess master, assessing the social and business landscape in order to make the proper moves at precisely the right moment, the ones that assured his victory, the ones that assured he got exactly what he wanted.
The fan was part of that. He fingered the tissue-wrapped package. It was an excellent choice for a gift, an excellent place to embark on his new campaign. He knew a quiet satisfaction.
Only one thing stood between him and the estate in Sussex that had been his mother’s dowry.
Perhaps he would finally rest when it was his.
As it inevitably would be.
He lowered his eyelids, closing out the rolling Sussex landscape, but he didn’t sleep.
Phoebe raced up the stairs to her room, clawed the ribbons of her bonnet undone and flung it aside, jerked her chair out from her desk, whipped out a sheet of foolscap so swiftly Charybdis, her striped cat, shot to his feet from his feline languor on her bed. He collapsed again, yawning, when he saw it was only her.
They’d both been scrawny underfed ill-tempered scraps prone to rebellion when she’d dragged him here from London as a young girl. Both had become refined and filled out and grateful for their comforts.
But both were still wild at heart.
Charybdis was in fact a fluffy trap. He liked to sleep upside down, his tempting soft belly exposed to the world. When unsuspecting visitors reached down to sink a hand into all that downy fur—SNAP! He closed all his limbs and clung with teeth and claws and wouldn’t let go. It had proved embarrassing more than once. Also, very funny. It kept curious students from even considering exploring her room.
Bloody aristocrats, she thought. Why would I want to spend another moment in their presence? Especially if he might be there.
She plunged her quill into the well of ink and began:
Dear Lisbeth—
Thank you so much for your kind invitation, and as delightful as it would be to see you again, I fear I will not be able to—
She jerked her head up from her foolscap when the tap sounded at her door.
She sighed gustily enough to send her half-written message fluttering, pushed back her chair, abandoned her work, and flung the door open.
The maid standing there leaped backward, perhaps to get out of the reach of the flames shooting from Phoebe’s eyes.
With an effort, Phoebe composed her face into more placid planes. Mary Frances, who was short and round and had springy rusty red curls, offered the sort of wobbly conciliatory smile you might show an armed looby to discourage them from lunging. She dipped a little curtsy.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miss Vale, and sorry to interrupt yer important work,” she peered curiously past her into the simple room, at the two thick rag rugs, the bed covered with an eccentric quilt she’d stitched from dresses and pelisses she’d dismembered when she couldn’t coax any more wear from them. “Miss Endicott would like a word with you before she leaves.”
Phoebe drew in a steadying breath. Mary Frances thought they were all very clever and did important work here at the academy, which was rather sweet and soothing.
“Thank you, Mary Frances.”
Miss Endicott was about to leave on holidays, too, she knew, but she’d left the running of the academy in the hands of senior teachers Mrs. Bundicraft and Mrs. Fleeger.
Phoebe turned to the oval mirror nailed up over her bureau and gave her fine, fair hair a cursory smoothing, shook out her skirts and gave them a cursory smoothing, and then hurried down the long hallway and darted down the winding stairs, one hand sliding along that deliciously smooth banister polished by generations of recalcitrant young ladies doing that very thing, just as she had when she was young.
She came to a halt in the doorway of Miss Endicott’s office to avoid colliding with a big black wall.
The wall turned around slowly and proved to be the marquess.
“Ah, there you are, Miss Vale.” Miss Endicott managed to make it sound as if she’d been waiting for her all afternoon. She was dressed for travel in an elegant gray wool dress and matching pelisse and a splendid gray-lavender felt hat. A packed portmanteau sat atop her great polished desk. A trunk was lined up next to it on the floor.
“I’d hoped you’d show the marquess at least one of the upper-floor classrooms, as I must leave at once or miss the mail coach, and my sister, I assure you, will never forgive me if I arrive an entire day late for our visit as she has a full program of entertainments devised.” She pulled on a pair of gloves as she spoke. “I felt it of value that His Lordship should speak with one of our teachers in residence. He mentioned he had the pleasure of making your acquaintance in Postlethwaite’s.”
Miss Endicott’s eyes were small, blue, and piercing. She was a
nother in a long line of Miss Marietta Endicotts who ran the academy with the skill of a general, the finesse of an orchestra conductor, and business wiles that might make even Isaiah Redmond blush. She was in fact very kind, a secret all the girls in the school eventually uncovered.
Mind you, it took a good deal of digging to uncover it.
And she was kind, but never weak. Implacable was in fact a better word for her.
A decade or so had accustomed Phoebe to the gaze, and yet she had never been able to defy it or lie to it. Not once. And she’d once been able to defy everything.
Her skin heated again from a mix of emotions and sensations, none of them compatible.
“Of course,” Phoebe said evenly. “We had the . . . pleasure.”
Miss Endicott paused in her glove pulling-on and stared at her with mild incredulity until Phoebe dipped a desultory curtsy in the general direction of the marquess. He returned the favor by nodding in her general direction.
Neither of them had looked at each other.
The marquess in fact showed no sign of being affected by her presence at all. The same suppressed impatience rolled in waves from him, the kind that made one want to shift their feet or fidget, do something, anything, as long as it was his bidding. He was casting his eyes over the furnishings of Miss Endicott’s office and lightly slapping his hat against the palm of his hand. Whap . . . whap . . . whap. As if marking off how many more precious minutes of his life he’d need to devote to his tedious visit to a school for girls.
“I shall be grateful if you would show me a classroom, Miss Vale,” he said at last.
He was exquisitely polite. Though he likely would have said “I should like you to stuff it, Miss Vale,” in the same tone.
He was looking at her now.
“I shall be happy to do it.” She could be exquisitely polite, too. Still, she directed this to his left eyebrow, to avoid looking straight into his gold eyes.
He nodded, as if there had never been any question of this. He turned to address Miss Endicott.
“My sincere thanks, Miss Endicott, for your time, and I hope you enjoy a safe and pleasant journey.”
“Thank you. I expect to, Lord Dryden,” she said briskly, and no journey would ever dare defy Miss Endicott by being anything other than pleasurable or uneventful.
So Phoebe curtsied to Miss Endicott, too, but Miss Endicott swept past her, gave her a kiss on one cheek, followed it with a little kid-clad pat as if to drive the kiss into Phoebe’s very soul, and then tugged on the bell for a footman.
She stared after the departing headmistress.
Phoebe supposed it was evidence of the fact that she was no longer strictly a green girl that the headmistress saw naught amiss with sending her to the upper floors alone with a handsome marquess.
She was only twenty-two! For heaven’s sake. And in a single day she’d received a letter asking her to chaperone a girl hardly younger than she was, and had then been deemed unkissable.
“If you would follow me, Lord Dryden.”
She spun on her boot heels and aimed for the staircase. She was tempted to scale them two at a time, to bolt away from him. Over the years, Phoebe had learned to keep her rebellious impulses in check by shoveling in information the way one fed coal to a furnace. She was an excellent teacher, but primarily because she understood recalcitrant girls so well it bordered on unfair. Certainly she could keep those impulses in check now.
He followed her, and in seconds was flanking her, despite her insultingly brisk pace. She sensed he was politely matching his pace to hers. He called to mind a tethered stallion who had decided to humor her with temporary docility.
Her pace accelerated. She risked a glance over her shoulder. She saw a short white hair—his own?—clinging to the arm of his coat. For an instant it made him seem unbearably human. Accessible. An absurd notion, no doubt.
She knew very well how to spout pleasantries and to charm. Still, she stubbornly refused to speak.
So he did. “I’m given to understand that teachers here at the school advocate solving the problems of . . .” He was delicately searching for a word.
“Recalcitrance?” she completed brightly.
“. . . very well, then, recalcitrance—by filling the girls’ minds with facts?”
Odd. He sounded . . . well, she might have said half-amused. Perhaps skeptical.
“Engaging intellectual curiosity, Lord Dryden, and instilling intellectual discipline, keeps them too busy to misbehave. Though naturally they will try.”
“Naturally.”
“All, shall we say, misguided high spirits, can be transmuted into grace and confidence and respect, if such is expected of them, and such is extended to them. And if much is expected of them.”
“Ah. Quite the philosophy. A straw into gold sort of thing?” He sounded ironic again. And doubtful. And weary.
Which made her wonder about the girl he was proposing to install here.
“If you wish. May I inquire for whom you are investigating our premises?” She did have a duty to the young lady who might soon be joining their numbers here.
She was impressed with herself so far. She was very, very polite. She was very, very prim. No nun would ever be so sedate, so proper, so disinterested.
It would all be so much easier, of course, if he didn’t smell so wonderful.
Starch and very good tobacco, maybe a bit of . . . horse? But she liked the smell of horse. A hint of sea breeze, as if he’d actually walked for a bit out in the hills. He smelled manly. He smelled like wealth.
She wouldn’t have minded in the least licking him, and she’d never had a thought like that in her entire life.
Unkissable, she reminded herself.
“My niece was caught smoking a cheroot. Twice. Among other things. She’s twelve years old and her father is on his third wife in six years, and the latest one cannot tolerate her. I’m given to understand that the feeling is mutual. I’m here on business for my brother, who is away in Northumberland at present. Since I’d planned to be in Sussex I offered to do . . . reconnaissance.”
“Her third mother? Good heavens. The poor thing. I suppose you should be grateful she hasn’t taken to drink.”
He turned his head toward her sharply. She sensed he was uncertain whether to smile or frown, and was tempted to do the former, but was uncertain of her.
Perhaps it had been a bit too impulsively said. And she’d gotten such excellent control over her impulses over the years.
“Do the girls emerge quite ruined for marriage after you stuff them full of knowledge?”
And now she suspected he was sending out a subtle foray to test her wit . . . or marital status. And again, here was that suspicion that he was so bored with the proceedings that he’d decided to do anything at all to divert himself, and that included goading her.
Perhaps he was attempting to charm her in order to make her more kissable.
“I should imagine most of our girls emerge less tolerant of fools, if that’s what you mean.” She added, “Ha-ha!” unconvincingly when he looked genuinely startled.
“You’ve naught to fear, Lord Dryden,” she placated hurriedly, remembering that regardless of where she wound up living in the world, she liked Miss Endicott and the academy could use the marquess’s money. “We’re proud of the diversity of skills imparted to the young ladies here. They will leave prepared to raise families, run large households, play the pianoforte, embroider, and pore over their husband’s books to ensure their Men of Affairs aren’t stealing from them. In short, we prepare them to manage nearly any circumstance.”
“Or nearly any man.”
That was so quickly said she didn’t have time to bite back a surprised laugh.
He smiled then. No baring of white teeth, mind you, just a curve of the lips, a show of dimple, a crease at the corner of his eyes. But suddenly he reached out and drew a casual finger along the fine moulding lining the hallway. Like a boy might do. Almost as though he was enjoyi
ng himself. Relaxing into her company.
He wouldn’t find any dust, of that she was certain. The school employed a battery of maids.
Unkissable, she reminded herself.
She wondered again if the party he was attending was hosted by the Redmonds.
“And languages,” she added pointedly. “We try to make certain our girls can speak at least one other language fluently. Such as Italian. For instance. Which I speak. Fluently.”
“Do you?” he said absently. “Languages are useful. Tell me, since you speak so many languages . . . do you know what . . .” he tipped his head back in thought and recited carefully, as if from memory ‘¡Esto es lo que pienso en su regalo, hijo de una puta!’ means? I believe it’s Spanish.”
Mother of God.
He turned to her, eyes wide and hopeful.
It was Spanish, all right.
“Were the words . . . shall we say, shouted at you, by any chance, Lord Dryden?”
“They might have been,” he allowed benignly.
She studied him closely; his face was blandly patient.
“Because it means ‘This is what I think of your gift!’ ”
It actually meant, “This is what I think of your gift, you son of a whore!” and she was positive the devil knew this full well and likely spoke Spanish fluently. Given that he’d allegedly once had a temperamental Spanish mistress.
Or so the broadsheets would have one think.
“Huh! Imagine that.” He sneaked another sideways look at her. Inviting her, daring her to laugh.
Oh, bloody hell. The trouble was, she was picturing this man with his mistress, which effectively sent her thoughts scattering like billiard balls. She took a deep breath.
A mistake! In came the scent of him again, and her head swam.
This wasn’t going at all the way she’d intended.
“We were speaking of curriculum,” he prompted mildly. When it seemed she would never speak.
Mary Frances was scurrying toward them from the far-end of the hallway, bearing a feather duster. They could see her eyes from ten feet away, big and round and more white than pupil thanks to the marquess.
How the Marquess Was Won Page 3