He made an exasperated sound. “It was a very fast horse racing against slow horses. I knew this definitively. And my instincts are excellent. Have you considered, Miss Vale, that what you read in the broadsheets is . . . an interpretation of me? That they report on my comings and goings and pastimes like so many anthropologists and draw conclusions about my character from a scattered few things? And that perhaps they’ve got it wrong?”
She took this in. “If it’s wrong, why do you allow it to continue?”
“It provides hours of entertainment for the ton. I see no need to correct impressions. Sometimes it’s useful not to be known.”
“Magnanimous of you.”
His mouth twitched. “Mmm. Use more words like that, please. Schoolmistress words. Long, impressive ones.” He’d made the last three words sound like an innuendo.
“Will incorrigible do?”
“Odd, but it sounds like flattery when you say it.”
“I assure you, it wasn’t meant to be.”
“You seem to have a gift for it, teaching. I do admire the way you made those young ladies hop like subalterns in Postlethwaite’s shop. I wish I’d thought to threaten the men under my command with Marcus Aurelius.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a gift. I can impart knowledge and employ strategies to keep girls in line precisely because I was a girl once like . . . just like they were. I know what works, and how to engage them. So I scarcely feel I can take credit for it.”
“You are too modest.”
“I assure you, I speak truth.”
“Will you miss them when you leave for Africa?”
She smiled faintly. “Oh, yes, I suppose I will. For a time. But I’ve been a teacher for four years only, and I suspect they’ll forget me soon enough. I’m confident the ones I’ve taught will eventually make socially advantageous marriages and in all likelihood rule their households with velvet fists. Teaching is something that just . . . happened to me. Though I am grateful for the position and I do enjoy it.”
“Something that just happened to you,” he repeated, after a moment. Thoughtfully. As if it was something he intended to remember. “Nevertheless, I maintain you have a certain natural authority, and trust me, I recognize that sort of thing when I see it.”
“In other words, I’m not delicate or expensive.”
He smiled at that. “Is that the real reason why you’re running so far, far away? So you can choose what you want to be or do?”
She jerked her head toward him, astounded. “Running?” she said between her teeth. When she could speak again. “Away?”
Judging from the way his eyes brightened, he was obviously silently congratulating himself on being so astute.
“I have never run from anything in my life. And what on earth can you mean by ‘real reason’?”
“This is what I mean. Of all the choices of all the things you can have in the world, is Africa really your first? Africa? Not a husband, not a family?”
“I never said I objected to a husband. Recall our discussion of the variety of men I am destined to meet.”
“You just don’t think you’ll find one in England.”
“Perhaps not.”
“In aaaalll of England. No likely husbands.”
She shifted impatiently. “Why the interview, Lord Dryden?”
“Why the circumspection, Miss Vale?”
“Because if I dodge it long enough I’m hoping to bore you into abandoning the topic.”
He gave a short laugh. “Patience is nothing to me when I want something.”
She was tense as a drawn bow now. Want. Want want want. Want was the reason she was here at the Redmonds’ at all. She wanted to be here because he was here, and she wanted to be talking to him, and she wanted him to leave her alone, and . . .
What precisely did he want from her? And why?
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, as though the inspiration were only just dawning, “your life story could be your gift to me.”
The sudden cold little knot in her stomach told her she didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking. “Oh, honestly. I’m hardly Scheherazade.”
Too late she realized the comparison might be unfortunate, given that it was a story of a vengeful Arabic despot who beheaded three thousand virgins until he found the one—that would be Scheherazade—whose storytelling amused him enough to spare her life. For 1,001 Arabian nights she told him stories. Upon which the violent old sod fell in love with her and married her, but not until she’d had three of his babies.
“Scheherazade,” he repeated wonderingly, giving each syllable a fascinated emphasis. Amusement and a certain prurient speculation was written all over his face. “Another long and excellent word. You’re quite the reader, Miss Vale, aren’t you? And I don’t mind remarking that’s a rather scandalous story.”
She sighed. “It’s a well-known tale.” That she’d forbidden the younger girls at the school to read until they were older.
“And as intrigued as I am by what you might have in common with the story’s heroine, I’m hardly going to demand that you tell me 1,001 stories for 1,001 nights in a row. Nor is your very life at stake. All I want is one story. The story of your life. Succinctly.”
Bloody hell.
It was really the last thing she wanted to give him. Because she didn’t want to watch his face change when he heard it.
She tried to sound bored, flippant. “But surely you already have everything you need.”
He looked amused. “It isn’t so much about needing it, Miss Vale. I want it. I want it because I value the rare and singular. I have that in common with the despotic Arab king of the story.”
“But her stories fascinated a king who was arguably homicidal. My story, I assure you, is very mundane.”
“Oh, I doubt it.”
“Why should you doubt it?”
And curiously, he hesitated. As if he was actually giving careful consideration to what he was about to say, or considering whether to say it at all. He looked back toward the gathering, his eyes touching on the people there, one by one, as if taking inventory, but she didn’t think he actually saw them. When he spoke, his words settled over her like mink.
“Because it’s yours.”
She didn’t look at him. For an instant it was difficult to breathe, and she almost closed her eyes against the sudden surprising onslaught of emotion. Dangerous, dangerous. The voice, the request, the man, the perfect, perfect words. Dangerous and clever. Because in truth she’d never truly belonged to anyone, her story had never particularly meant anything to anyone, and his words had slipped past her battlements and ambushed a need she’d long ago exiled. She’d almost—mercifully—forgotten it existed.
She hadn’t lied about one thing: Her story was mundane . . . in some circles.
“But you haven’t yet given a gift to me, Lord Dryden.”
Flirting was an excellent way to dodge a question. Then again, he brought it out of her. The way rain brought out the flowers. Or heightened the stench in St. Giles, for that matter.
His head went back in surprise, and then came down again on a little smile. “Well played. Very well, then, Miss Vale. A gift for a gift. I will give you a gift once you give one to me. For I find I am forever giving gifts but seldom receiving them. What do you say?”
This struck her as odd. But a moment later, she thought she understood. In all likelihood everyone assumed he had everything he wanted. And then again, he was so legendarily particular about the things he acquired everyone dreaded the judgment rendered by silence and one of those upraised eyebrows. This? You deign to give this to me?
She silently watched Lisbeth across the room. She was now speaking to Lord Argosy, who had become, so rumor had it, a veritable rake, complete with genuinely reckless wagers, which, unlike the marquess, he often lost, and an affair with a scandalous widowed countess. He laid all of this at the door of the notorious Miss Cynthia Brightly, who had allegedly broken his hear
t by marrying Miles Redmond instead of him. She couldn’t help but notice that despite the air of ennui he’d adopted, he seemed to be enjoying himself very much indeed. He hadn’t yet acquired an air of dissipation. His golden curls were glossy. His eyes bright.
When contrasted with the marquess he seemed . . . unfinished. A boy, playing at being a rake. When contrasted with Lisbeth, they seemed like . . . part of a set. The way a silver breakfast service, the teapot and the jam pot and all the little spoons, all clearly belonged together. From her perspective of belonging nowhere and to no one at all, they all looked so different and yet so very much the same.
She was certain she would be a source of fascination for the marquess for about as long as he wondered about her.
“I was born in London,” she said.
The marquess’s head swiveled toward her.
She pretended not to notice she was fixed in his gaze. She idly continued surveying the crowd from a distance, tapping her foot as if listening to spritely reels in her head.
“And?” he prompted.
“And if we know each other for 1,001 days, Lord Dryden, perhaps you’ll hear the rest of the story.”
She eased away from the window and tossed an enigmatic smile over her shoulder as she dashed for the staircase.
His gratifying expression of bald, astonished admiration was the last thing she saw.
She got up the stairs and stopped, and pressed herself against the landing wall, because that’s when her bravado gave out. She laid one cold hand against her throat, amazed at the hammering speed of her heart. But the fact that she was warm everywhere was a helpful reminder that she was, indeed, playing with fire. She suddenly wished she had a fan.
The fan of course reminded her of Lisbeth.
Ironically, that proved effective, indeed, in cooling her temperature.
She went up to fetch Lisbeth’s bloody reticule. The stairs seemed inordinately long.
Chapter 7
Dinner that night was a peculiar, delicious, lonely punishment, as she’d been relegated to the far end of the table next to a nearly deaf elderly gentleman who shouted mundane pleasantries at intervals to her, causing her to shout back agreements, which made everyone look at her with faint astonishment each time she did, whilst Lisbeth and the marquess were at the other end, side by side. Phoebe felt it keenly as a lash every time his head turned to address something to Lisbeth.
His eyes met hers four times—Phoebe counted.
He’d been the one to catch her gaze. And she’d been the first to look away every time.
Out of preservation: of her pride, her heart, and her sense of mystery.
Later that evening, she’d stalked to her room across the courtyard, seized her sketchbook, flipped it open, and tried again. This drawing featured more detail. She now knew about the little white scar near his mouth, for instance.
In the end, she’d made him look regal and saturnine, which wasn’t quite right. She wasn’t getting it quite right because he remained out of reach, just as he had at dinner. She stuffed the sketchbook with great dissatisfaction in her trunk, and flung herself backward on her bed.
She woke up after a night of fitful dreams and to her chagrin found herself still dressed.
It rained the whole day.
Not torrents, but it was a steady, discouraging rain. Phoebe soon learned this meant she would be imprisoned—that was, pleasantly ensconced—in one of the Redmonds’ myriad plush, heated parlors with Lisbeth, embroidering and listening to Lisbeth natter on while all the male houseguests disappeared to God knows where to do God knows what. She suspected they were at the Pig & Thistle drinking and throwing darts—the younger ones, anyhow. The marquess had retreated with Isaiah Redmond after a brief appearance at the breakfast table, to discuss money, or whatever it was that men of their ilk and means enjoyed discussing.
Fanchette Redmond joined Phoebe and Lisbeth for a time, bringing her embroidery hoop and an icy, vague imperiousness with her. She stitched a few flowers, consulted the mantel clock, and then disappeared again with a pleasant impersonal smile, much to Phoebe’s relief. And to Lisbeth’s, too, she suspected. Lisbeth didn’t chatter nearly as much when Aunt Redmond was in the room. One was tempted to assume she was a vapid woman, given her blond beauty and limited conversation and the offhand affection with which her children clearly regarded her, but Phoebe had never felt comfortable in her presence. Even in church, when she sat several pews away. Vapidity, she suspected, was an excellent disguise for many qualities, few of them safe ones.
“Music this evening, Phoebe.” Lisbeth’s eyes were sparkling with delight. “Uncle Isaiah has arranged for a surprise!”
Oh, God. Phoebe very much enjoyed playing pianoforte, but she had skill and no real talent, whereas Lisbeth, who had been planted before a pianoforte since she could walk, was actually very good. She didn’t look forward to this being reemphasized.
Lisbeth correctly interpreted her expression.
“Silly, you likely won’t be asked to play, but you may turn the pages of my music, as I expect I shall. If that’s the sort of thing my uncle has in mind. But I don’t think there will be time. Neighbors are coming from miles around for just a few hours this evening—Uncle Isaiah has engaged Madame Sophia Licari, the famous soprano, to sing for us!”
She clapped her hands together and beamed beatifically.
Phoebe had read of Signora Licari, of course, in the newspapers. “Is she a very wonderful singer?”
“Oh, my goodness. Haven’t you heard her sing, Phoebe?”
The answer to this ridiculous question was of course “No.”
“Her voice is a marvel, and she’s so very haughty and beautiful and a little bit frightening. She is said to . . .” she lowered her voice to a hush “. . . take lovers.”
Lisbeth was flushed with her own daring and the sheer sophistication of such a word.
“Never say lovers! Imagine an unmarried grown woman taking lovers.”
Lisbeth missed the irony.
“Scandalous, I know, but she is very worldly and sings so well no one seems too mind.”
Perhaps I ought to take up singing, Phoebe thought. “Particularly the men, I should imagine.”
“Phoebe!” Lisbeth pretended to be scandalized, because she suspected she was supposed to, but in truth Phoebe suspected no one spoke to her of such things, and now she was curious.
Because there followed a little silence.
“Do you think the marquess does that sort of thing? Jules?”
Jonathan and Waterburn and Argosy wandered into the far end of the room and flung themselves down before the fire on settees. She hoped for the sake of the maids they weren’t muddy, too.
Phoebe was feeling mischievous. “What sort of thing?” So it was Jules, was it? The diminutive of Julian.
She wasn’t going to discuss the marquess and mistresses with Lisbeth. For God’s sake, Lisbeth could read a broadsheet as well as anyone else. Perhaps she would hand her own stack over to Lisbeth with the appropriate pages marked and sternly inform her, “You will be tested.” Invariably the mistresses were coyly described as breathtaking. One young man had broken an ankle tumbling out of an opera balcony in an attempt to get a look at the marquess’s latest one.
“You know . . . do you think he . . .” She widened her eyes and gave her eyebrows a wag.
“I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning.” She was doing a brilliant job not laughing.
Her eyes were wide, wide, wide. Keeping company with Lisbeth was honing her ability to take passive revenge.
“Takes. Lovers,” Lisbeth said irritably, emphatically. And a little too loudly, because all the male heads swiveled in their direction.
Phoebe furrowed her brow. “Takes them where?”
Lisbeth was scarlet now. “Now I think you are teasing me.” She sounded wounded. Lisbeth was much too literal a creature, and took herself a trifle too seriously, to know what to do about teasing. She found it incompatible with her s
tatus as diamond of the first water.
Which meant Jonathan enjoyed torturing her, because she invariably became red and began squeaking, while Phoebe took little pleasure in it, because Lisbeth didn’t play along, and Phoebe liked conversations to be between equals, if at all possible.
“I’m certain he does. Or has. Honestly, all men of significant means do, Lisbeth.”
It was certainly the truth. It was also hardly the sort of thing anyone’s mother would want a paid companion to say. She was also aware her motive in saying it wasn’t entirely benign. Let Lisbeth toss and turn with uncertainty at night, too, she thought.
Lisbeth was subdued for a moment, considering this. In the end, she seemed to take it in with a certain amount of equanimity. After all, men did all manner of things that women were simply expected to endure even if they didn’t condone them.
“Of course he wouldn’t do such a thing when he is married.” It sounded like she was asking Phoebe another question.
Phoebe almost rolled her eyes. Who had allowed this girl to grow up so ignorant of men? She had Jonathan for a cousin, for heaven’s sake. And her other cousin, Mr. Miles Redmond, had written a book about his South Sea travels that famously described affectionate native women who went about wearing nothing above their waists all day.
But she was reminded that Lisbeth liked to acquire information by asking for it.
“Of course not,” Phoebe humored. “What on earth would he need with a mistress if he had a wife?” Phoebe said it for the sake of amusing herself. For all she knew it was true with regards to the marquess.
This mollified Lisbeth.
“Everyone would like to see a match between us,” Lisbeth confided on a lowered voice. She was flushed with pride and awe.
Phoebe slowed the stabbing of the needle in and out of cloth.
Not everyone.
“What do you want, Lisbeth?”
For God’s sake. They were scarcely two years apart in age. She was a young woman, too. She shouldn’t have to adopt a soothing maternal tone, as if she were a governess, or someone to whom men and sex and the like were uninteresting or unavailable. But her innate sympathy, curse it, did battle with her wits, and her wits wanted to flay Lisbeth.
How the Marquess Was Won Page 7