“It’s just . . . well . . .” She took a deep breath. “Honestly, Lord Dryden, aren’t you ever bored with the same pleasures and pursuits? Don’t you ever feel . . . confined?”
Imagine anyone asking him such a question.
“What makes you think I indulge in the same pleasures and pursuits often enough to bore of them?
“I read the London broadsheets.”
Oh.
“It hasn’t been all unrelieved debauchery, you know. I am particular about my pleasures.”
“You don’t say.”
His mouth tipped up at the corner. “I have a number of pressing duties.”
“Attending to your estates.” She lingered on that final S with gentle mockery.
Well, it was true he had as many estates as he had titles. More, in fact. His responsibilities were legion. His skill at delegating them was unparalleled. Because he of course, with an unerring instinct, hired the very best men for the jobs.
Would that he could hire men of affairs to manage his family.
“They are an ever-present responsibility, yes. The gossip sheets don’t write about the fact that I’ve arranged for new drainage ditches in my Hereford estates.”
“Is that so?” She sounded fascinated. “Drainage ditches?”
“Or that I’ve acquired an excellent herd of sheep and am profiting greatly from wool.”
“Wool is one of England’s finest resources.”
“And I served as an officer in the army.”
“Very impressive. I’ve been told that war is boredom interspersed with violence and terror.”
So she had known a few soldiers. In what way had she known the soldiers? he wondered. He could imagine the soldiers serving under his command being enchanted with her. It was the lively women they met on the Continent to whom they were ultimately grateful for making the war more bearable, not necessarily the beautiful ones.
“Oh, that’s not all it is. If a man really applies himself in the army, he can learn an untold number of curse words and catch all manner of diseases. Not to mention acquire a few interesting scars.”
“Have you any diseases?” Unflatteringly, she sounded more curious than concerned.
“None that have a prayer of killing me or you in the course of this conversation.”
Her smile appeared again, starting slowly and spreading. He liked the slow smile, because then it seemed to last longer, and light her face gradually, and it was like watching the sun rise. Or watching a . . . beginning. Of any kind.
He was perilously close to feeling . . . well, happy, for lack of another word . . . in an unusual way, and yet his nerves felt pulled taut as harpsichord strings. It had been some time since he’d felt surprised by a conversation. Let alone a conversation with a woman. He couldn’t anticipate what she would say next, and this wasn’t true of anyone else he knew.
Then again, he didn’t think he’d ever had a conversation with a schoolmistress.
Confined.
And now that she’d said it, he could almost feel the sides of an invisible box all around him.
“And a man can make friends for life, too, in the army,” he said evenly, feeling the need to defend the institution. “It’s helpful to know who will die for you.”
“And do you know?”
“I do know. Do you?”
Odd, but he thought a shadow darkened her eyes then. Whatever it was, it was there and gone just as quickly. And he’d learned in the space of this conversation that her eyes disguised very little.
“Friends are important,” she agreed, instead.
He raised his eyebrows to let her know he knew full well she’d dodged the question.
She regarded him evenly and gave him back nothing but a pair of similarly raised brows. He suspected she would have grave difficulty ever hiding her thoughts completely, given how her eyes lit with humor and intelligence. The person she was, a crackling, complicated one, seemed to shine through.
He really ought to attend to the business at hand.
“Are you often bored, Miss . . . ?” Bloody hell. He’d breeding enough to be ashamed at the loss of her name.
“Vale,” she reminded him, sweetly. Not offended. Amused.
He couldn’t help it: he was genuinely curious. It had never occurred to him that any of the women with whom he was acquainted might be bored enough to bolt to Africa, of all places. They seemed so occupied, with things that mystified and often charmed him but when taken altogether, or God help him, discussed in his presence, sent him into the sort of foot-shifting, eye-darting, finger-drumming panic that not even having a pistol aimed his way could achieve. The minutiae of aristocratic womanhood. Embroidery and modistes and the like.
And this was a woman who worked. Why should she be bored?
“I am grateful for my work at the academy. The girls are a pleasure and Miss Endicott a very fair and kind employer. I suppose one must be cursed with an imagination to be bored.”
“And you are cursed with such?”
He asked it neutrally. Carefully. Because he was acquainted with one or two “imaginative” women. They wrote florid poetry and read horrid novels and sang with an excess of passion during evening musicales, attacking the pianoforte keys like pouncing animals and pulling faces. They often took the form of mistresses who threw vases at one’s head when one took their permanent leave of them by way of a quick, polite farewell and an expensive gift.
“Perhaps.”
“Hence Africa. The imagination caused it.”
“I suppose.” She clearly wasn’t eager to expound. He wondered if she was bored with him.
“Your imagination has an impressive reach.”
“Or my boredom an impressive scope.”
He smiled again.
She drew in a short sharp breath. There was some emotion she was suppressing at that moment, he was certain of it. Something very like pain. She dropped her eyes and sent them in search of something else to fix upon, which turned out to be the globe. He had the strangest sense that she was waiting until whatever she’d felt to pass, and it involved not looking at him.
“Perhaps it’s the company you keep, Miss Vale.”
She looked up. “I keep excellent company,” she reproved.
They stared evenly at each other.
Who? he wanted to know desperately, suddenly. And he felt a twinge of . . . surely it wasn’t jealousy? For this was what prevented him from asking.
It was strangely exhilarating and dangerously too comfortable to look her in the eye.
“I shall take that as a compliment, given my presence here.”
“Please do feel free to take it however you wish, Lord Dryden,” she said politely. “Shall I presume you no longer wish to kiss me?”
She’d deftly snatched the conversation from him, steered it with coquetry, and now here she was casually dropping the word kiss into it again, like one spilling a grenade onto a pillow.
It detonated in his mind a moment later.
And all he could think about was what it might be like to kiss her, and how unlikely it seemed now that she’d called him on his ambivalent game.
He wasn’t certain whether he liked her. Though he was fairly certain he liked this conversation. At the very least, he wouldn’t soon forget it.
Or her.
“If you’d like to get kissed in the future, might I suggest a different type of conversation?” he suggested dryly.
“It’s not so much about whether I’d like to simply get kissed or not,” she explained mildly, not at all offended or nonplussed. “Perhaps I’m particular about who does it.”
His eyes went to her mouth then, for how could they not? Small and . . . pillowy, he would have described it. The palest shade of pink. Half of a heart sitting atop a generous lower curve.
Something familiar and yet very surprising sizzled along his spine. Like a lit fuse.
She noticed him staring. That half-a-heart tipped up at the corner.
“Have y
ou been kissed before?” He for some reason needed to know.
“Why? Are you worried you’ll pale in comparison should you kiss me?”
Christ, but she had a volley for everything and a very direct gaze, and he suspected she knew full well the effect she was having on him. He supposed her eyes were . . . green? They were clear and large and her lashes were blond at the tips and her eyebrows were fair near to invisibility and shaped like little wings. She was altogether comprised of muted shades, which a man ought to find soothing.
She was anything but.
“You’ll forget you’ve ever been kissed before once I’ve kissed you.”
The words were quick and fierce.
He actually saw her breath catch, and then she went so still. And though he was certain she was even now silently cursing the fact, a faint flush slowly invaded her—admittedly fine—complexion. It was like watching dawn flood into the pale sky.
In short, he’d managed to shock both of them. The words had somehow managed to bypass reason on the way out of his mouth. And this rarely happened.
So she was not impervious to him as a man. Nor was she as worldly as she’d like him to believe. Perhaps it was just that she flung flirtation at men as a way of keeping them at bay.
What was she afraid of?
He wasn’t certain how much he cared.
And having chased the conversation to an unnerving crescendo, a fidgety, awkward little silence ensued between them.
“I might be more persuaded of the truth of that, Lord Dryden, if I wasn’t certain you’d said that very thing to a legion of women in your lifetime,” she finally said lightly.
Though he thought he detected a hint of a question in it.
He wasn’t going to take that question up.
The trouble was, he was fairly certain he hadn’t ever said such a thing before to anyone, ever. He was shocked he’d said it at all. If he wanted a kiss from a particular woman he generally got one without taxing his powers of persuasion overmuch. He was the Marquess Dryden, he was wealthy, and he looked . . . well, he looked the way he looked. He imagined he could count himself fortunate to have inherited his father’s eyes and not his character.
But if even his original thoughts rang like clichés to this woman, then impressing her was going to be—
Had he really begun to think in terms of impressing her? The schoolteacher?
It was time to remember who he was and why he was here.
“Alas. And here I thought it had the ring of spontaneity.” He took pains to sound bored.
She tipped her head slowly to the side, perhaps to examine him from another angle, one she found less boring, but if she came to any conclusion her expression didn’t betray it.
And then one of her shoulders went up, came down.
She wasn’t even troubled enough to shrug completely.
He ought to be amused. Instead, he was silent. He was uncertain how to speak after they’d banked the conversation to such a pitch.
She had no trouble speaking. And once again he had cause to admire her self-possession.
“I’ve a group of young ladies to instruct this afternoon. Miss Endicott is very fair but strict and I shouldn’t like to be tardy.” She was all gracious, deferential, distancing apology.
She took his silence for acquiescence. Then she turned and continued up the hall while he remained still. And perhaps because his equilibrium was shaken, he noticed a dozen distinct little things about her at once, as though she were a faceted gem turning into the light: Her neck was long and white, and her narrow back flared into a pair of pleasingly consequential hips, and the hair that traced the nape of her neck shone every bit as fine and golden as his sister’s most expensive embroidery silks, which was as florid as he was willing to allow his metaphors to become.
All of this seemed unduly significant. He was wary and fascinated, as though he’d stumbled across some undiscovered species.
When Phoebe returned to her room, she sat down at her desk, and looked down at the letter she’d begun earlier.
Then crumpled it into a ball and hurled it over her shoulder to Charybdis, who effortlessly caught it in his paws.
And because she was wild at heart, she selected another sheet, dipped in the quill.
Dear Lisbeth,
Thank you for the invitation. I should be very happy to join you for a few days. I very much look forward to seeing you again. Thank you for thinking of me.
With affection,
Phoebe Vale
Chapter 6
She smoothed her walking dress and reached out a hand, immediately seized by a footman. She managed to step down from the carriage the Redmonds had sent for her without showing her stockings and garters to him, though doubtless his expression wouldn’t change at all if she did, so trained were they.
“Phoebe!”
Lisbeth rushed down the marble steps of the enormous house, swept her into a hug, shot out her arms to examine her face with fulsome affection, and then pulled her back to plant a kiss on each of her cheeks, which struck Phoebe as very continental of her.
It took a moment for her head to stop spinning when it was all over.
“I’m delighted to see you! You look wonderful, Phoebe! Very healthy!” she declared.
“Why, thank you! Every girl dreams of looking healthy, Lisbeth.”
Lisbeth missed her irony, because Lisbeth was a literal creature.
But she was fundamentally kind. Lisbeth had doubtless taken note of Phoebe’s walking dress, correctly identified it as the same one she’d seen the last time Phoebe had visited two years ago, and resisted the temptation to issue the rote compliment which was the traditional part of exuberant greetings exchanged between young women everywhere. Phoebe’s dresses were adequate at best. They both knew it.
“And I you! I must thank you again for thinking of me. You’re so beautiful, Lisbeth!”
This was true, and she could say it with only a little hitch of envy. Two years had melted away the vestiges of Lisbeth’s girlish plumpness. She’d wide-spaced blue eyes and a nose like a delicate blade and a mouth doubtless compared a hundred times over to blossoms this season alone.
It was obvious she’d gained confidence and poise and exuberance—maybe just a little too much of all of them—from all the attention and activity and had become a bit like a child overexcited by Christmas festivities.
Lisbeth linked her arm with Phoebe’s and marched her into the grand foyer of Redmond House, while silent, bewigged, liveried footmen bore her trunk away with the same solemnity they’d carry a state coffin.
But they didn’t carry it up the marble staircase, which was where the family and distinguished guests would be sleeping.
Phoebe watched as they proceeded through the foyer and disappeared after bearing left, which was a door that opened upon a courtyard . . .
. . . beyond which were rooms that were used for staff.
Not the housekeeper and footmen, per se. The governesses and tutors and men of affairs and visiting bailiffs and the like. People who worked for the Redmonds for a living. She wondered how many other Redmond friends had been installed in those quarters.
Lisbeth followed the line of Phoebe’s gaze.
“Aunt Redmond has ordered rooms to be prepared for you in the South Wing. They’re lovely! They really are!”
Fanchette Redmond was scrupulously aware of the boundaries of class. It had likely never occurred to her to install Phoebe on the floors with the Redmond family.
Phoebe wasn’t surprised. Well, not very surprised, anyhow. Still, it required a moment’s worth of composure-gathering before she could speak.
“I’m certain it will be beyond compare, and perfectly suitable for me.”
Lisbeth nodded, as if this went without saying, and that was the end of the topic. “I’m so happy you could join us at such short notice! We shall have a lovely time of it. Only think, Phoebe! We’ll have some distinguished guests for a few days, too, and wait until you meet
them! Your jaw will surely drop. I’ve decided we shall go on a walk to sketch the ruins if it doesn’t rain, so I hope you’ve brought your sketchbook. Uncle Isaiah has arranged for a surprise for all of us, he says, as an evening entertainment. Dinners will be lovely—we shall be having my favorite, lamb in mint!—and we shall all go to church together on Sunday. And just wait until I tell you my news. Well, it is not so much news as a hope, but I do think things will be different after the ball. And we are to have a salon this evening, where our guests can meet each other, so you’ll wear a very good dress and I’ll even send my maid over to do your hair.”
Phoebe was reminded that Lisbeth possessed a brain but never saw a need to exercise it, and she was content to ask Phoebe for the answers to anything she grew curious about. And it was pleasant to walk alongside her and listen to her chatter the way it was pleasant to sit in a garden and listen to birdsong. Too much of it would drive Phoebe to distraction, as she liked conversations to be directed and occasionally about something, but she ought to manage through three days of festivities.
And if Lisbeth considered her a friend, very well then, she would consider Lisbeth a friend.
Despite the fact that they slept in very different wings.
And despite the fact that Lisbeth would never be truly privy to Phoebe’s deepest thoughts, and would in fact be startled speechless if she heard them.
“Here, Mrs. Blofeld will direct you to your rooms. Come downstairs in two hours, do! We’re having a gathering for guests in the salon.”
The room was pleasant. Even if she could hear snoring through the wall. Possibly a bailiff who had come to report to his liege, Isaiah Redmond, about the condition of one of the other Redmond properties.
The carpet was thick. The bed was, too, and filled with feathers. She gave the pillow an exploratory punch. More feathers! She thought of Charybdis, who would have loved napping atop it, but he was being cared for by Mary the maid of the academy. A writing desk was pushed beneath a window, and while the carpet was hardly Savonnerie, a term she’d learned from the broadsheets, it was nothing like the rag rug that covered her floors at Miss Marietta Endicott’s school.
She hung up her dresses in the wardrobe, which took no time at all. And then she lifted her sketchbook from her trunk. She sat down, and idly flipped open a page. After a moment’s hesitation, her charcoal flew across the page in bold, nearly unconscious, almost urgent strokes. Just in case she never saw him again, it seemed important to capture his image, lest she forget it.
How the Marquess Was Won Page 5