The butler appeared in the foyer, and every girl swiveled toward him expectantly.
“The Marquess Dryden is here.”
Chapter 20
Jules knew the route to The Row from St. James Square well; he knew it, in fact like the back of his hand. He was surprised, however, to find that they’d arrived and he hadn’t recalled one moment of the journey.
“You’ve scarce said a word, Jules,” Lisbeth teased. She sat her gray mare beautifully. She’d likely been hurled up into a saddle before she could walk.
“Haven’t I?”
This surprised him, as his thoughts had been so noisy. Perhaps it was because he’d suffered a shock.
And he was usually entirely in command of such circumstances. He had instead remained silent, and taken in the pale Lisbeth, who was tense about the jaw but resplendent in a blue riding habit; the Silverton sisters, who were pink-cheeked and whose brown eyes held the residual glitter over some mischief or private joke . . .
. . . and Miss Vale.
Shiny, a bit disheveled, holding a hissing basket.
He’d spent a day acclimating himself to the idea of a life without her, of nursing his unlikely rejection, of pulling the components of his life around him like a snug blanket . . . and the bloody woman appeared in London. And like a green lad he’d simply stood dumbly in the Silverton foyer, said nothing, and stared at the wrong woman for too long.
Until Lisbeth proprietarily touched his elbow and led him toward the door.
“Handsome riding habit.” Compliments were a life-saving reflex. “Blue suits you.”
“Thank you.”
He really ought to attempt more of a conversation. They were in The Row now, and the day was crisp and, for London, anyway, marvelously clear. He knew they were being watched by everyone in the vicinity who possessed eyes, and he peripherally recognized nearly everyone who rode by. He didn’t really see them, however. And he greeted no one, though tentative smiles were offered. And fell away when he didn’t respond. Wondering, nervously, what they might have done to offend the powerful marquess. And thusly he effortlessly and obliviously ruined the moods of a number of equestrians.
“Did Miss Vale accompany you to London?” He knew this wasn’t the sort of conversation he should have. It was the only thing he was currently capable of saying, however.
Lisbeth seemed puzzled by the question. “Oh, no.”
“Did she simply call upon the Silvertons for a visit?” he pressed. Perhaps a little too urgently.
A peculiar hesitation. “She was invited, if you can countenance it by the Silverton sisters. They sent for her.”
What about Africa? He’d thought she’d be preparing to leave. People ought to be in his life or out of it, he thought self-righteously. Not lingering on the periphery like a mirage, slipping away when one reached out. There was a reason he liked black and white as a combination of colors.
“Do you know why they sent for her?”
Lisbeth looked mildly amazed by the question.
He was unforgivably poor company presently, he knew. He was also aware that it hardly mattered, as Lisbeth likely didn’t notice when he was good company or poor.
This suddenly made him feel bleak.
“Because they’re easily bored,” Lisbeth said intelligently enough. “You haven’t yet complimented my new mare!”
“How remiss of me. Perhaps she left me speechless.”
And Lisbeth laughed, having coaxed him back into the sort of conversations she enjoyed, about things, and about herself, and about the people they knew.
She talked a good deal as they rode around, and she graciously greeted with a nod members of the ton, including, naturally, Waterburn, who was out riding with a Lord Camber. His Aunt, Lady Windemere, trundled by in a barouche that he’d helped pay for. She blew him a kiss and winked. She was seldom entirely appropriate, his aunt.
The hour passed without his involvement, it seemed.
Back at the Silverton town house, he reined in his mount and loosely tethered it at the gate, and then lifted Lisbeth down from her horse.
He felt surprise, and a moment of real pleasure, when his hands spanned her narrow, taut waist. It had been some time since he’d thought of her as a woman, with all the delicious things this meant, and not as a beautiful prize.
Had he ever thought of her as a woman?
Perhaps he had no right to feel bleak, since he’d made as much effort to know her as she’d made to know him. And yet she probably thought she did know him. As a series of adjectives employed by the broadsheets.
He resolved to do better. She deserved better.
So in the spirit of this, and because he was a man, and because she was a woman, he lingered ever so slightly to look in her eyes as he lowered her to the ground again, and was gratified by her blush.
She seemed so young.
She was only two years younger than Phoebe.
His hands lingered momentarily at her waist. She was closer to him than she’d ever before been.
And then she stiffened suddenly and recoiled.
He released her immediately. “Lisbeth . . . is aught amiss?” Was she the sort who shrunk at a man’s touch? He was appalled to have offended her.
“No. No! That is. I apologize. I thought . . . I thought I smelled . . . smoke.”
He frowned slightly. He sniffed the air. He smelled London, which was a cornucopia of scents and stenches, all of which reached his nose, swept along by sea breezes. “Of the coal variety or the burning building variety or of the cigar variety?”
“The latter.”
The girl could certainly go for a long while without blinking, he’d noticed. She’d blue eyes, very dark blue.
“Ah.” He smiled. “Your uncle and I smoked cheroots at White’s. Likely it’s what you smell. My apologies if it’s so very overpowering—I would have worn a different coat, you know, but I was in such a hurry to see you.” It was a sin, it really was, how he knew the right things to say. “I know it’s a singular blend, but is it truly offensive?” he teased gently.
Her relief was instant. She was almost dramatically reanimated, softened from the hard mask her face had become. She smiled, charmed.
“Of course! That’s what it is. Were they Uncle Redmond’s cheroots? He smokes a particular and expensive brand, or so Jonathan would have me believe.”
“I’m certain he does smoke an expensive brand, but I shared my own with him. El Hedor, they’re called. Imported from Spain by a pair of gentlemen who keep a tobacconist’s shop in Bond Street.” Recommended by a former mistress. He’d kept them in the humidor hurled at him by Signora Licari. “And I’ve no idea of the cost,” he said disinterestedly. “They simply send them over to my town house once a month.”
Of course he knew what they cost, he knew the cost of everything, but it contributed to his legend to say such things.
And it helped to remind Lisbeth how very, very wealthy he was, and that he wouldn’t countenance even the whiff of a suggestion to the contrary.
“I shall think of you if I smell it again,” she said.
Well.
He was taken aback. It seemed like such a nearly . . . romantic . . . thing to say, almost provocative. And yet somehow cryptic. And Lisbeth, in his experience, had always been more of a gracious recipient of attention. A basker in it. She accepted it as her due so prettily that one enjoyed giving it to her. But it might be the reason she’d never acquired any of the skills of a coquette, nor did she seem to come by them naturally as did Phoe—some women. Which might well be a merciful thing, as combined with her looks she might have nearly too much to bear. Rather like her cousin Violet, who’d been revered and feared by every blood in the ton until she’d married perhaps the only man he could imagine wed to Violet Redmond, the unlikely Earl of Ardmay.
Then again, if she’d been more like Violet, Lisbeth might have been more . . . traitorous though . . .
. . . interesting.
He didn’t allow
it to show in his eyes. “Better you think of me than your uncle.”
He’d struck the right note of flirtation. It wouldn’t frighten her or tax her coquetry skills.
She smiled at him winsomely. Winsome smiles she did brilliantly. He was peculiarly relieved she didn’t attempt more flirting.
A silence as her mare tossed its head. A groomsman appeared and led her away with a touch of his forelock, and neither the marquess or Lisbeth paid any note of him at all.
“Will I see you tonight at Lord and Lady Kilmartin’s ball?” He should have asked this. But she did.
“Yes. I shall look forward to seeing how you stun the masses senseless with whatever dress you happen to be wearing.”
She laughed at this. He was reminded guiltily that she wasn’t without a sense of humor.
He felt guilty about asking the next question, too, and he took pains to ask it conversationally. Even as his heart pounded peculiarly. “And will your friends be attending?”
There was a moment’s hesitation. She mounted the first step of the town house. He could almost sense the eyes peeping out between the almost-but-not-quite-entirely drawn windows of all the town houses. He expected to read something about it in the broadsheets tomorrow.
She mounted another step. Her peacock feather swayed in a breeze.
And then she cast a look over her shoulder through lowered eyelashes, angling her chin over her shoulder. A precisely aimed beam of her sapphire eyes.
“I expect many of my friends will be attending,” she said. As lightly, disinterestedly as he’d asked the question.
He wasn’t to know it, but she’d practiced that look in the mirror. A dancing partner had pronounced it “bewitching” and that was quite enough for Lisbeth to install it permanently in her quiver.
It was, in fact, such an excellent look that during the narrow second’s worth of time she’d produced it and the time Lisbeth had mounted the next step, he’d stopped thinking about Phoebe Vale.
Who hadn’t, not for one moment, stopped thinking about him.
Not entirely, anyway. He was ambient thought, the background against which all of her other thoughts played. Against which she heard all conversation. Experienced all sensation.
And her sinking misery had been replaced by something that by rights shouldn’t really have cheered her. But there really was no disguising the wonderstruck look he’d worn when he’d seen her, and he hadn’t said a word to anyone. Not one word. Until Lisbeth had steered him out of the house.
If nothing else, her pride was assuaged.
Assuaged pride would likely animate her enough to enjoy a ball. And she would see him, and she would dance with other men . . . and he might catch her eye, and accidentally fling Lisbeth across the room again . . .
She was cheering more by the moment.
Her room was luxurious. No governess had ever slept in it, of that she was certain. The porcelain basin that held lavender-scented water was painted all over in tiny pink and red roses, and the carpets were a variety of shades of pink, from blush to crimson, patterned in more roses, nearly as plush as Charybdis’s fur, and fringed. The curtains were heavy brocade and a sort of blush shade. It was an almost absurdly feminine room, but she loved it. She felt like the pearl in an oyster.
Lady Marie, who Phoebe had begun to think of as the Instigator, while Antoinette was the Enthusiastic Supporter, had brought up a blue ribbon to tie about Charybdis’s neck and a kipper, his weakness. They were fascinated by the notion of winning over such a pretty, temperamental animal. After much coaxing and flattery and crooning of nonsensical things, he finally emerged from beneath the bed (which was of the fat, feathered variety, as lush as everything in the room) and consented to be stroked from his nose to his tail by both sisters, and even purred. They pronounced themselves enchanted. He ate the kipper, batted three times at the fringe on the carpet, and then sat down and hoisted one of his hind legs to lick between them, bored with all the women now that his needs had been met. So like a male.
Phoebe thought he’d take to the ribbon with as much enthusiasm as he would a noose. She was wrong. So far, anyhow. He looked very handsome and deceptively domestic, and was now lounging on her featherbed with the abandon of a pasha who’d come home after years crossing the desert.
The twins, faces uniformly shining with minx-like excitement, had finally backed out of the room and urged Phoebe to dress for the ball.
And she didn’t know whether Lisbeth had returned or not. Likely she had, for out her window, her view was of a brilliantly, uniformly orange sunset, and he would not have kept her out so long. The giddy enthusiasm of her reception and her queenly quarters was going a long way to both strengthen and weaken her. She was more resistant to blandishments and bribes than even Charybdis, though the girls would never know it, as she’d far more experience with saying the right thing and producing the right smiles and maintaining a guard. But she had to admit she felt herself sinking into their warm welcome and cheerful attention the way her bare feet sank gratefully, wonderingly, into the carpet. And it was very difficult not to do it.
She slipped into her dove gray dress, which was cut much like her green one, but was shinier and exposed more white throat and bosom. She thought with longing of the springing pin curls the Silverton sisters sported, and settled for brushing her hair until it gleamed. She pinned it up as she normally did, as she hadn’t been offered the services of a Lady’s maid.
In a fit of inspired whimsy, she plucked a white hothouse blossom from the vase in the corner and tucked it behind her ear. She pinned it in place.
She’d only the one pair of gloves. She pulled them on over her arms and inspected the result in the mirror.
The creamy kid of the gloves echoed the creaminess of her skin and the blossom; the gold trim round them colluded with her hair to make her . . . gleam.
It was absurd, but she very nearly took her own breath away, so surprised was she by her reflection. She imagined the expression in the marquess’s eyes when he saw her . . . and hope was a shard in her chest. She breathed in deeply, breathed out, willing it away.
“You will stay here in this room,” she told Charybdis. “Which means no molesting the parrot. No becoming acquainted with the Pekingese. I’m going to close the door now, but I shall return.”
He yawned his indifference.
If the marquess attempted to claim a waltz . . . perhaps she’d do the very same thing.
Phoebe smiled and tossed her head and smiled with an entirely new bravado, and descended the stairs.
As it turned out, Lady Silverton, Marie and Antoinette’s mother, was a vague, wispily pretty woman thoroughly bemused by her vivacious daughters. She showed no symptoms of being a concerned chaperone or an aggressive matchmaker, likely believing fate would take it in hand if she exposed her girls to enough titles, as it had with her. She greeted Phoebe with a vague furrow of her brow.
“You’ve met Miss Vale, Mama,” Lady Marie lied wickedly.
“Have I?” She tipped her head and studied Phoebe, as if angling her brain in a different direction would aid her memory. She seemed puzzled by the flower.
“Of course,” Antoinette added. “You told us you liked her very much, and told us you wouldn’t mind having her to stay.”
From behind her mother, Marie winked at Phoebe.
“It was very kind of you to invite me.” Phoebe was astonished by how little goading into mischief she needed. “It was such a pleasure to meet you, Lady Silverton. I’m delighted to see you again.”
“I say so many things,” Lady Silverton allowed vaguely, pleasantly after a moment. “Welcome, my dear. Shall we? Your papa will meet us later.”
Phoebe’s confidence had flickered when she saw the other girls.
The beauty of their clothes found the chink in her armor, and she knew a fleeting, futile, fathomless yearning, the way she’d once looked at the bonnet in Postlethwaite’s shop. Marie and Antoinette were hopelessly sophisticated in shades of ros
e silk, and Lisbeth was in evening primrose, magnificent with her hair and eyes. They were all wearing jewels, real ones from the looks of things, rubies on the twins and a sapphire on Lisbeth, and the three of them sported complicated hair, curled, twisted, sparkling. Lisbeth was wearing a coronet, her signature, as it approximated a halo.
“I would never have thought of wearing an orchid, Phoebe! You are a picture!”
This came from Lady Marie and the compliment seemed genuine, as did the twins’ smiles and the sense of inclusiveness. Lisbeth, she suspected, smiled because it would have seemed wrong if she hadn’t. But while Phoebe had half expected one of Lisbeth’s pitying looks something speculative twitched across her face instead.
I must look well, indeed, Phoebe thought happily. Well enough for me, anyhow.
“My pink chamber inspired me,” she told the girls somberly.
“My pink chamber inspired me . . .” Marie repeated slowly, wonderingly. Exchanging a rhapsodic look with her sister. They still found her enchantingly singular.
And off they went.
Chapter 21
In the carriage they all giggled at nothing at all, almost ceaselessly, as if the very air of the night was champagne and they took it in with every breath. Lady Silverton shushed them once.
“Surely you shouldn’t laugh so very much.” She sounded doubtful. “You’ll burst your stays and ruin your dresses.”
Which sent them into gales of giggles.
The Kilmartin ball promised to be a crush. Carriages had long since clogged the square so that no new arrivals could even get near, and now a river of silk-and-satin-clad humanity moved toward the town house, forced to disembark and walk gingerly the rest of the way. Footmen nodded at them as they passed (finally) into the house, and Lady Marie gripped Phoebe’s elbow with breathless anticipatory glee, as if this were her very first ball and not just another of dozens she’d attended. No one glared at Phoebe as though she were an interloper, an enemy breaching class lines. The smiles aimed at her were all pleasant, even slightly bored. These people all knew each other and saw each other again and again at parties and balls, and yet here they were again.
How the Marquess Was Won Page 20