How the Marquess Was Won

by Julie Anne Long

  Interesting that she should have that in common with the marquess.

  She peered around the parlor doorway to get her first glimpse of the soprano. Signora Sophia Licari stood next to the pianoforte, one hand resting atop it as though it were a beast trained to do her bidding and simply awaiting her next command. She was a gorgeous beast herself, a lioness, with masses of golden-brown hair piled up high and stabbed into place with sparkling pins. Her dress was a melodramatic crimson and very snug. Her bosom was majestic. Her waist tiny. Her eyes were all but closed, her long, long lashes lying over her cheeks, as her head tipped back as inhumanly glorious sound poured from her.

  The diamonds around her throat were as subtle as a breastplate on a Viking warrior.

  They didn’t look like the sort of diamonds the marquess would choose, which would naturally be tasteful, expensive, and blindingly pure. Perhaps she’d moved on to another protector. In all fairness, Signora Licari didn’t look like the sort to hurl a humidor out of outraged pride. Her dignity, like the marquess’s, was a palpable thing. And there was an otherness about her that Phoebe was certain was apparent to everyone who saw her: I am not ordinary, it announced. Rather, I am extraordinary. Proceed at your peril, mere mortal.

  But he was no ordinary man. Even goddesses like this one had succumbed to him.

  I would never take the loss of him lightly, either, if he’d ever been mine.

  But here was the thing: even as he’d spoken about her, she’d been certain he’d never truly belonged to Sophia Licari. She knew it the way she knew the color of her own eyes, or the freckle next to her mouth, or that the sun would rise again.

  Because he’s meant for me.

  She huffed out an impatient breath, blowing the dangerous, ridiculous thought away.

  Phoebe peered in at the audience, savoring it with unguarded wonder. She would tell Postlethwaite about it later: how the rows of beautiful people looked lit by the Redmonds’ gaslight and enormous chandeliers, their cheeks flushed from the extravagant heat and all those bodies snugly packed together on velvet-cushioned chairs. Lord Waterburn was fast asleep, head thrown back, mouth open, arms crossed over his chest. Jonathan Redmond and Lord Argosy were in the back row pretending to pay rapt attention, but their hands were moving surreptitiously, and she suspected they were playing some kind of card game balanced on their thighs. She saw Jonathan hand over a rolled-up note of some kind, likely a pound note.

  Her intimidating hosts, Isaiah and Fanchette Redmond, were ensconced in the front row, seemingly riveted by the performance.

  Isaiah reached for his wife’s hand, brought it over to his lap.

  Phoebe was fascinated by the gesture. Was it staged for the guests, or was he indeed moved enough to clutch his handsome, frightening wife’s hand? It was such a human thing for a man like him to do.

  Lisbeth was leaning forward as far as she could, as though the music was a beam of light.

  She hadn’t noticed Phoebe standing at the entrance at all.

  Phoebe smiled ruefully. She was pleased Lisbeth had lost herself in the music. But no matter how often she looked at her, she never became less beautiful or appealing or less perfectly suited to be the wife of a marquess.

  Or less determined to be the wife of a marquess. She was clutching her fan as if it was the marquess himself.

  The song ended with a note Signora Licari teased into lasting a quavering eternity. She must have lungs like bellows, Phoebe thought admiringly.

  Signora Licari regally ducked her head when applause crashed around her.

  Phoebe took that opportunity to scurry into the room and slide into her chair next to Lisbeth. She nudged her gently, and Lisbeth’s hand absently reached out for the shawl. She scarcely glanced at Phoebe, so enraptured was she by the glorious creature that was Signora Licari. Too enraptured, with any luck, to notice the marquess’s continued absence.

  “Thank you. Did you hear her, Phoebe? Isn’t she marvelous?”

  “I’ve never heard anything quite like it. Thank you for inviting me so I could hear her.” She said this quite sincerely. No matter what, she would never forget it.

  Lisbeth turned then, eyes wide with surprise, indecision, and the expression she finally decided upon was benevolence. “Oh, Phoebe. I’m glad that I could share it with . . .”

  Her face blanked peculiarly.

  She blinked.

  She lifted her shawl to her nose . . . and lowered it slowly again to her lap.

  And then she leaned forward abruptly and sniffed the air near Phoebe.

  Phoebe reared back.

  Lisbeth stopped sniffing. Her lovely brow furrowed, as if she was undecided about what she was about to say.

  “Phoebe . . . ?”

  “Goodness. Is aught amiss, Lisbeth?”

  “You . . . you smell like cheroot smoke.” This last part she said on a reproachful hush.

  Christ!

  Phoebe’s stomach plummeted. She stared at Lisbeth.

  Who stared back at her. Looking troubled but vaguely hopeful, like a child who hopes to be reassured no monsters are under its bed.

  Phoebe wanted to speak. Really she did. A number of excuses occurred to her and she would have produced any of them, if only her mouth and brain were in communication, not clubbed into a stupor by guilt and terror. Her mouth simply wouldn’t move at all.

  “It’s not Phoebe, it’s probably me, you goose.” Jonathan leaned over back of her chair so suddenly both girls jumped. “Besides, she can’t afford the kind of cheroots we all normally smoke.”

  He was teasing, she knew; she saw the glint in his eyes. But then he flicked a glance at Phoebe. She saw his eyes travel to her gloves and linger, and widen infinitesimally. Some expression—surprise?—she couldn’t quite identify twitched across his face, there and gone. He looked up into hers, and his expression was still kind.

  She still hadn’t quite recovered from the urge to faint. But she produced a smile that probably looked as sickly as it felt. She rejoiced in the fact that her mouth could move again, at least.

  “I suppose you’re right.” Lisbeth sniffed at Jonathan. “You do rather stink, Jon.” She wrinkled her nose, sniffed her shawl again, frowned—only Lisbeth could make a frown seem pretty—shrugged, and then decided stoically to drape it over her shoulders.

  And Jonathan helped her in a very gentlemanly and cousinly fashion. As if tucking the question of the cheroot stink decisively away.

  And as he did he looked up at Phoebe. He didn’t wink at her. But something speculative and—dare she say it?—sympathetic lingered in her eyes. Odd, but she’d never thought Jonathan Redmond capable of appearing enigmatic. Or of being complex.

  But then she thought of Isaiah Redmond reaching for his wife’s hand. And the marquess walking a tightrope. The one thing she’d been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one’s own prejudices.

  Does one ever really know anyone? the marquess had asked her.

  The pianoforte music started up again. Phoebe and the smoke were forgotten as Lisbeth folded her hands rapturously beneath her chin again and curved her mouth into a little smile. It looked to Phoebe very much like another pose she’d practiced in front of the mirror.

  When Signora Licari opened her mouth to sing, Phoebe could feel her voice vibrating in her chest, as though her heart was singing along. And she ducked her head and, with great hope, surreptitiously sniffed her own shawl. She said a silent hosanna. It, too, smelled like smoke.

  Which meant it smelled like him.

  She closed her eyes and surrendered to a moment of weakness. She imagined the weight of his coat draped over her, warming and protecting her, simply because she belonged to him.

  The church bells hadn’t yet rung, the sun was barel
y a suggestion in the sky, but Mr. Postlethwaite had already hung out his sign and was just about to take his first sip of tea. He sighed with happiness instead when the bells on his door danced and in walked Lord Deep Pockets.

  He peered out the window. No carriage today, alas, advertising to the world his presence and luring curious crowds who would want to, need to, buy something where Lord Dryden had purchased something. He’d instead tethered a horse—an enormous black one, as glossy as the toes of the man’s boots—outside the shop. Which Postlethwaite assumed was the marquess’s version of arriving incognito.

  He replaced the teacup in his saucer with a clink, and bowed low and deep.

  “A pleasure and honor to see you again, my lord. Did the lady appreciate her gift, or have you had an opportunity to give it?”

  “I believe the lady sincerely did appreciate it, and thank you again for your assistance, Mr. Postlethwaite.”

  Postlethwaite was tickled by the opportunity to speak so formally. “May I help to find something else? We’ve a selection of gloves for gentlemen.”

  The gloves again! Jules could have sworn there was a devilish glint in the shopkeeper’s eye.

  And then the marquess said the words he’d been dreading uttering. But the compulsion could not be denied, and he wasn’t fundamentally a coward.

  “I find today I am in need of a bonnet.”

  Mr. Postlethwaite was silent.

  And then his eyes crept toward the marquess’s hairline.

  “It will be a gift for a woman, Mr. Postlethwaite.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  The marquess wished the “of course” sounded a bit more sincere. He’d scarcely been in the shop for more than three minutes and already his dignity was fraying.

  But he’d actually lost sleep contemplating and rejecting strategies with the seriousness one might plan a military campaign. And while he planned, he tried to ignore the fact that he’d decided to do this was wholly irrational, and that he’d never yet done anything irrational in his life.

  But there was no question that he would do it.

  In the end, it all came down to whether he could imagine giving the instructions to a footman or to his valet for the purchase he wanted to make. And he simply couldn’t countenance it.

  “Would you like to peruse the bonnets for a time, my lord, or did you have a particular one in mind? I can show you—”

  By way of answer, the marquess merely raised one finger: Hold. Because the only way he could be certain he had the right one had to do with . . . geography.

  Mr. Postlethwaite watched, riveted, as the marquess followed the instructions he would have needed tell a footman, as carefully and methodically as if he were walking off a treasure map:

  Stand in the corner of Postlethwaite’s shop, the one brightest at three o’clock in the afternoon. Likely it is not so bright at half past seven in the morning. Align yourself directly opposite the mirror behind the counter, because that’s where she was standing when you first saw her. Make sure you can see yourself clearly in the mirror.

  Then turn around quickly again, and seize the bonnet immediately to your right. The ribbons on it are a sort of deep lavender, and the silk flowers are various shades of purple.

  With a certain amount of triumph and ceremony, he lifted it off the stand.

  Yes. This was the one. Fine-woven, deep gold straw, it would frame her face. That was the extent of his guess regarding the reasons for her passion for it. He hadn’t the faintest idea whether the color of the ribbons or flowers would suit her; he suspected she knew. Women invariably did. All he knew it might as well have been the grail for the way she’d been yearning after it with her eyes when he entered the shop.

  Women, he’d thought then.

  And now he was wildly, humbly (humble wasn’t one of his usual conditions) grateful he’d noticed, because he for some reason had never before wanted so desperately to please someone.

  “Ah. A lovely bonnet, that one. And it’s a bit dea—”

  He’d been about to say “dear,” but the marquess severed his sentence with a mere look. The very notion that something might be too dear for him, let alone a bonnet, was absurd.

  And Postlethwaite was almost surprised to immediately find himself behind the counter, as much to do the marquess’s bidding as to put a little distance between him and the intensity radiating from the man.

  “It’s a fine thing you’ve rescued that particular bonnet. A certain young lady was about to stare a hole clean through it before I sold it.”

  “It’s a very good thing, then, isn’t it, Mr. Postlethwaite, that I rescued it from such a fate?”

  The room was cool, the gray light filtering in through the parted curtains told her it was just past dawn, and her chest was too light. Perhaps it was because a fat striped cat wasn’t sprawled atop it. She patted her hand along the bed searching for fur; she recalled where she was when she heard the soft clanking sound of the maid building up her chamber fire.

  The maid heard the rustle of her sheets as she sat upright.

  She smiled shyly. Her white cap was sliding off of her head, and she pushed it back and put a coal thumbprint on her forehead when she did.

  Phoebe smiled back. And then the maid was upright and quick as a wraith at the door again. Keeping fires burning and candles lit around the vast house was a Sisyphean chore.

  She paused. “There was a box for ye at the door, miss. I brought it in.”

  And she was gone.

  A box? Phoebe leaned forward in her not-quite-for-servants bed and looked about her not-quite-for-servants chamber, and saw it. Large, and round, of the sort that might contain a . . .

  . . . might contain a . . .

  She practically toppled out of bed and lunged for it.

  She recognized at once it was from Postlethwaite’s shop. Had Postlethwaite sent a gift to her? This seemed very unlikely, unless he’d undergone a conversion to a mysterious religion and had decided to divest himself of his possessions. He attended services every Sunday along with the rest of the town, but his allegiance—after his Maker—was to the almighty pound note. Phoebe harbored no delusions that he might be fonder of her than he was of profit, though she was certain she ranked highly enough in his esteem.

  She sat cross-legged upon the carpet spread out before the new fire and tucked her bare toes beneath the hem of her nightdress.

  And then with a certain amount of ceremony she shimmied up the lid and began to paw gently through layers of tissue.

  She thought she glimpsed purple.

  Oh, God.

  She was so overwhelmed she needed to stop entirely for a moment. She paused, glanced stealthily back toward the bed, half expecting to see her sleeping form in it, still dreaming.

  She began unwrapping again, the tissue rattling in her shaking hands. Her head was a bubble, light, floating.

  When she uncovered her first glimpse of gold straw, she cast her eyes toward the ceiling and mouthed Hallelujah!

  As she did, a half sheet of foolscap, ragged-edged, tumbled out of the box.

  She took it up in awkward fingers and read. The note said, in a script she’d never before seen, tall, emphatic, and very neat:

  I should like to know you.

  A signature was hardly necessary, and there was none.

  Joy was a sunburst in her chest. She gave a short, wondering laugh, feeling wholly mischievous, alive.

  She’d demanded a gift. And he’d actually given her a gift.

  She thought she’d better open her eyes again quickly, lest the bonnet disappear.

  Better yet—she lowered it onto her head and carefully—and quickly—tied the ribbons. There. It felt at home there.

  Like it was made for her.

  She didn’t know how she would send word down to Lisbeth that she would be spending the morning gazing at herself in the mirror. Because it was really all she wanted to do.

  She stood up now, and did just that, turning her head this way and t
hat.

  How had he known?

  It was yet another lesson that threw off her equilibrium. She’d thought the marquess had walked into Postlethwaite’s and reviewed the shop with dispassion at best, or judgment at worst. But he’d swept it more the way an army scout takes in the lay of any battlefield, taking note of everything, including the plain disheveled young woman gazing with unrequited loved at a specific bonnet.

  I should like to know you.

  She tested a number of theories, because she always wanted to know the why of things. She considered whether it was a game for him, if he was indeed a bored aristocrat distracted by novelty she presented, or by how she could dodge and feint with words like any talented fencer. Whether he was looking to form another association in the absence of one . . . though she was hardly his type. He wanted the finest. The best. The Signora Licaris of the world.

  But she now knew something no one else in the ton truly understood: he wasn’t a frivolous or reckless man. He did nothing without a reason. Surely the bonnet represented . . . a strategy . . . at the very least.

  Theories flitted in and out of her mind, but it was no use. They were all eventually incinerated in her joy. Like moths in a flame.

  No one talks to me the way you do, he’d said.

  She thought of the marquess scooping a moth out of the air and releasing it again, only to watch it head straight for the lamp again.

  Helpless not to risk its whole existence for light and warmth.

  Chapter 11

  Phoebe was wrong. Jules had no bloody idea why he’d purchased a damned bonnet.

  And nothing had ever troubled him more than this realization.

  He’d only just become aware that he’d been on a kind of trajectory, as though he’d been shot from a catapult without his permission. It had culminated in him buying a bonnet. He’d been helpless not to buy the bonnet. And he couldn’t trace how he’d arrived at that moment, the moment where became at the mercy of something immune to his reason, and he disliked this as much as he disliked regret.