“I hope someone finds your cat,” Lisbeth said very kindly, after a moment. Her stare very fixed.
“You’d best.” Phoebe still hadn’t blinked.
Gratifyingly, Lisbeth paled and dropped her eyes.
If nothing else, she wanted Lisbeth to worry about sleeping under the same roof with her.
Lisbeth cleared her throat. “Jules is late for our ride in The Row. I hope nothing befell him, too.”
Jules. Jules Jules Jules. How Lisbeth loved to use his name.
Use it all you want. Marry him. He’ll never really be yours, and you’ll never know it.
Or maybe you will.
Lady Silverton drifted into the room again, Franz in her arms. He seemed happy to be safely back in the harbor of the woman’s arms and not down on the vast treacherous sea of marble.
“Oh, my dear Miss Redmond, I see that you’re dressed for riding. I neglected to tell you that the marquess was here momentarily, but he dashed out again. Is he afraid of dogs, by any chance? Because I fear Franz was barking when he arrived, and he turned around and ran right out the door.”
“It seems everyone is fleeing our town house today,” Lady Marie chirped.
Twenty minutes later, striding past a series of wide-eyed crowds who crossed the street to avoid him, Jules arrived at White’s. Charybdis only stopped making noise when they entered the club. He in fact fell so abruptly silent the marquess glanced down to ensure he hadn’t expired from an excess of ill temper.
But no, the cat was looking around curiously with those big intelligent green eyes, for all the world like a prospective member who found the place wanting.
Jules ignored the footman who reached out for his coat and hat, then retracted his hands in shock, eyes bulging, when he saw Jules’s bundle.
And as he strode through the place, the cat’s fat tail continued switching, which helped clear the omnipresent layer of smoke.
The tail smacked right into Waterburn as he strolled past.
“What the devil—” The blond giant swiveled, looking ready to call someone out. His eyes widened.
“Handsome beast,” he said to the marquess, in his usual tone of reluctant admiration. “How much did you pay for it?”
“It’s surprising what can be had for no cost at all, Waterburn. Why don’t you pet it?”
Waterburn stretched out a hand.
“MeeeOWRReeeoooooowwwwwwrrrrrrrr!”
Multisyllabic, operatic, blood-chilling. It was the sound of a hungry, angry, treed panther preparing to fling itself down onto unsuspecting humans.
Colonel Kefauver shot bolt upright, eyes wild. “Fetch me my blunderbuss at ONCE, Haji!” he bellowed. “That demmed tiger ate those villagers! We’ll get ’im this ti . . .”
He blinked a few times, then slumped and surrendered again to the arms of Morpheus.
It was safe to say that everyone in White’s had frozen in mid-motion. Had lowered newspapers. Had paused their drinks on the way to mouths. Even the steam seemed to cease curling from teacups.
Jules would not have been surprised to learn if later one of the gentlemen present wet himself.
Eyes, every last pair of them, were on the marquess and his cat.
The marquess calmly strode to past a frozen Waterburn to where Isaiah Redmond sat. He was equally as riveted as the rest of the club.
Jules’s wounds were beginning to itch. Damn cat.
In the strange silence, his voice seemed to ring as if he was orating. “My deepest and sincere apologies, Redmond, but I fear I must delay our appointment. I’ve an urgent errand.” He gestured with the cat, as if this was self-explanatory.
“Certainly,” Redmond said, after a moment. To the cat. Not to the marquess. He was eye-level with the cat, after all, and its green gaze was as compelling as Isaiah’s.
The marquess could still feel the breeze of the tail swishing to and fro. It batted at his ribcage like a stick wielded by a Charlie.
Redmond looked up at Jules searchingly. His eyebrows were a little troubled. But Jules was certain he found the marquess’s expression as haughty and impenetrable as usual. If not more so than usual. It was an expression of the strongly discouraged questions, even from the likes of Isaiah Redmond. An expression that implied that everything he did was trustworthy and beyond question and above all, sane, and was of course rooted in style and sense and purpose.
All balderdash lately, of course. But he still had command of the expression, at least.
Jules bowed, and the cat dipped along with him.
Before he departed, he did one final anomalous thing.
Everyone watched, heads turning in unison, as the Marquess Dryden for the very first time paused by the betting books at White’s. He shifted the cat beneath one arm, turned the pages.
The first wager caught his eye because it was so unexpected:
Lord Landsdowne wagers Lord Calloway five thousand pounds that he will have Miss Olivia Eversea’s hand in marriage before the year is out.
Only fools and masochists wagered anything regarding Olivia Eversea. It was new, dated yesterday, and the first-ever bet concerning her.
He turned the page, following the sort of instinct that usually preceded winning thousands of pounds. Only this time his suspicions were sinister.
Here were the wagers he wanted to read:
Lord Waterburn wagers Sir d’Andre two hundred pounds that M.V. will have a nickname before a fortnight is out.
Sir d’Andre wagers Lord Waterburn five hundred pounds that M.V. will receive hothouse bouquets before a fortnight is out.
Lord Waterburn wagers Sir d’Andre two thousand pounds that a duel will be fought over M.V. in a fortnight.
The first two wagers were recorded as already settled.
M.V.?
Oh, God.
Miss Vale.
Her success was a result of a fit of aristocratic whim. She was a pastime for a pair of bored aristocrats who were profiting from her hunger for beauty, to belong. Waterburn had employed the Emperor’s New Clothes stratagem to great effect—she was a sensation because they had made her one.
London society would not take its humiliation lightly if their ruse was revealed.
I never would have had an inspiration if not for you, Waterburn had said to him the night of the Redmond ball.
It was his fault. The spotlight was forever on the supposed enigma that was the Marquess Dryden, and this was how he’d, in a moment of weakness, cast the spotlight on Phoebe. And what was it he’d overheard in White’s when he’d returned to London? They’d been debating something regarding the hothouse flowers . . . something regarding proof . . . what had they said?
“We’ll just ask the girls.”
Jules briefly closed his eyes. So the Silverton girls were privy to it, too. Had in all likelihood invited her to London for the express purpose of playing the game.
He stood motionless in the silent club, transfixed by the casual evil of those little bets, the cat’s tail whapping against his ribs.
And he turned slowly around again and fixed Waterburn and d’Andre with a gaze so calmly, uncompromisingly black and searching it likely withered the leaves remaining on trees all the way in Holland Park.
The cat gazed green at them.
“Interesting wagers, Waterburn.” His voice fair echoed in the room.
Waterburn fidgeted. But then he managed to hoist a pair of fair brows in mock innocence.
“I dislike dull wagers, as well you know.”
Jules took some comfort in the conviction that the notion of a duel was absurd. The bloods of the ton often behaved like sheep, but he couldn’t imagine anyone rash enough—or bored enough—to shoot each other over Phoebe Vale. At least inside a fortnight.
She would of a certainty be ruined, if a duel was fought over her.
But she was leaving for Africa.
He stared an inscrutable threat at Waterburn. A threat he didn’t dare voice. Willed it to sink into Waterburn’s very bones. And he thought of Phoebe’s
glowing face, and her laughter, and he said a prayer, and he wasn’t a praying man:
May she never learn of these wagers.
And then he swiveled and exited White’s, winding out through the frozen statuary of the crowd. Beneath his arm, a fat fluffy tail continued switching to and fro, to and fro.
It smacked the hand of one of the footmen as he maneuvered past bearing a tray of port.
“Oh! Soft!” The footman exclaimed and smiled.
A murmuring went up and became a buzz after the marquess departed.
Waterburn doubled back to pull a chair up to a table where d’Andre sat. Turned it around and sat with his arms folded over the back of it. “Why a blue ribbon, do you suppose?”
“I should think it’s part of his family crest? The color blue?”
“Perhaps it’s a message about fidelity? Blue is for fidelity, after all.”
“Why does he have a cat at all?”
And so they discussed the Marquess Dryden with the intensity of conspirators against the crown.
Chapter 25
Since he couldn’t very well walk back to his town house—which was closer to White’s than the Silverton town house, and he couldn’t go to the Silverton town house, though his horse was even now stabled there, because of Lisbeth, whom he’d abandoned in mad, reflexive pursuit of a cat—he flagged a hackney and gave the driver his direction.
He wanted to be alone with Phoebe when he returned the cat to her. Nothing else mattered right now. And he suffered from impatience, because he could feel her suffering as surely as if it was his own. It howled across his nerve endings.
And so he tolerated the ruminative, cheekily amused stare from the gap-toothed bloke atop the hack.
“Five pounds for a to-and-fro journey. I’ll pay you when we arrive at my town house.”
The driver skimmed the marquess with an up-and-down glance. Took in the cat, the Hoby boots, the coat, the buttons, the cat . . . and then settled, riveted, upon the expression on the marquess’s face.
Whereupon his smile faded, and he shifted in his seat. “At yer service, guv. But that beast best not piss in me hack.”
Oh, God. Jules hadn’t even considered the possibility of pissing.
“Worse things have happened in this hack, I would wager my life on it.”
Fifteen minutes later, during which Charybdis seemed to doze in his arms, he at last stalked up the stairs of his town house.
Marquardt, who’d seen through the window the arrival of a battered hack and the disembarking of the marquess, greeted him at the door.
Jules shifted a now sleepy Charybdis beneath one arm like a parcel. Marquardt followed the motion eyes wide and fascinated, as though his head were leashed to the cat.
Jules began issuing orders. “Send that hack below straightaway to the Silverton place on St. James Square. Tell Miss Vale it’s urgent she come. I have her cat. ”
“Are we to compose a ransom note to send along, too, then, sir? Would you like to sign it, or shall I spend some time cutting out letters from the newspaper and affixing them to a sheet of foolscap?”
“How much am I paying you to be witty, Marquardt?”
“Not nearly enough, my lord.”
“Just ensure it’s done quickly, and that the message is delivered verbally only to Miss Vale.”
“What if she possesses the wits to refuse to board a carriage that hasn’t a crest? What if she isn’t in?”
“Ah. This is what I pay you for, Marquardt. Tell her . . . tell her . . .” He couldn’t very well send his own carriage or a message sealed with his own seal or written in his own hand into the Silverton household, particularly since Lisbeth was in residence, and he’d abandoned her. He’d abandoned her.
“Tell Miss Vale . . . she’ll think twice about ever wishing to throw a humidor at me once she sees Charybdis.”
Marquardt listened sympathetically, nodding and nodding. He was clearly reviewing the words over and over in his head.
“Had rather a good deal to drink at White’s, did you, my lord?” was his careful and sympathetic conclusion.
“No, Marquardt,” he said irritably. “I only wish that I had. Have that message delivered to her. Word for word. She’ll understand it. And do it now.”
“And if she isn’t in?”
Charybdis, bestirring himself, and finding himself in new surroundings, growled low in its throat.
Even Marquardt blinked and paled.
“Pray that she is.”
A quarter of an hour later, the driver, who’d rehearsed his cryptic message all the way to St. James Square, delivered it personally to Miss Vale. It had taken some negotiation with the stuffy liveried fellow at the door before Miss Vale was fetched, however, which was insulting. Time was money when one drove a hack. And unfortunately, as if they were moons in Miss Vale’s orbit, two astonishingly clean, identically lovely women appeared behind her, followed by another one who looked like a painting she was so pretty.
They refused to budge.
It was proving to be one of the strangest days the hackney driver had ever had, and given that this was London, it was not a thing he lightly thought.
“I’m to give the message only to Miss Vale,” he tried.
“I’m Miss Vale!” the Silverton sisters chorused. Then giggled.
“I’m Miss Vale,” Phoebe said firmly, in her best schoolteacher voice.
Five pounds wasn’t enough for this nonsense, the driver decided. He directed his message to Phoebe, as she seemed the least full of silliness.
“I’m to bring ye to yer cat. Summat about a humidor thrown at a head.” The delivery was rushed and desultory. He waited.
“Ooooh, how exciting!” Marie and Antoinette clasped their hands beneath their chins and bounced on their toes. “Is it a game played by an admirer? Did someone kidnap wee Charybdis? Ought you to have a care about—”
Phoebe bolted out the door, scrambled down the stairs, her skirts hiked in her hands. She took a soaring leap from the bottom step into the waiting carriage and pulled the door shut behind her. The driver hastened after her, clambering aboard, as the ribbons were cracked over the backs of the horses.
Leaving the Silvertons and Lisbeth gaping in her wake.
The door swung open even before she’d an opportunity to hoist the impressive brass knocker. Revealing a short, unassuming, mostly bald man of indeterminate age, elegantly turned out in black and white. She would have wagered his bemused expression was permanent.
“Told . . . he . . . has . . . my . . . cat . . .”
“Ah,” the man said mellifluously. “You must be Miss Vale.”
He stepped aside and motioned for her to enter.
He looked her over. His eyebrows twitched but his mouth clearly thought better of frowning. He cleared his throat.
“The marquess has informed me I’m to . . . send you up.” His face was composed in carefully bland planes, but he couldn’t disguise the faint dubious note. Clearly she wasn’t the sort of woman who was usually “sent up” the stairs of the marquess’s town house.
She would think about that later.
“And if you would take this to him, Miss Vale? Turn left when you reach the top. Doubtless you’ll hear the creature’s unearthly yodels.”
He handed her a small white rag and a jar meticulously labeled in spidery script no doubt belonging to someone’s housekeeper, “St. John’s Wort.”
Oh, dear. Clearly Charybdis had left his mark.
Charybdis had already recognized her footfall and came running for her, the marquess in pursuit. He came to such an abrupt halt when he saw her that he nearly toppled down the stairs.
She didn’t look at him at all. She dove for her cat and swept him up and wrapped her arms around him, holding on tightly, as if the cat was the thing that anchored her to earth. She rubbed her cheek against him. The damn thing purred. And purred and purred. Deafeningly. It did nothing by halves, clearly. It purred with the same gusto with which it growled.
Jules could watch her forever. He greedily drank in the sight of her, her eyes closed, her entire face luminous with joy and relief. At the moment he could think of no finer accomplishment, nothing else he aspired to. I did that. I made her this happy. He would consent to be clawed over and over again to put that expression on her face.
“Thank you,” she murmured. Her voice was muffled by fur. She hadn’t yet quite looked at him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He found he couldn’t speak.
She finally looked up and opened her green eyes. And before he knew what he was doing, he reached out and with a thumb brushed away one teardrop glistening in that mauve crescent beneath her eyes.
And then he looked down at his thumb, and rubbed the tear out of existence, right into his skin. As if he could erase any sadness or hurt she’d ever felt that simply. As if he could bear it for her.
She dropped her eyes again, abashed.
For a time there was no sound but absurdly loud purring.
She cleared her throat. “Are you very wounded?” Her voice was soft. Careful. Reminding him that the last they met they’d argued bitterly and parted on a stalemate. “Your man sent me up here with St. John’s Wort.”
“Mmm . . . D’you know,” he mused, “I’ve been bayoneted, before. But the Frenchman wielding it didn’t go on stabbing me. This creature is possessed. I would send a message to the archbishop. Perhaps he knows of an exorcist.”
She was struggling not to laugh. “Possessed of tiny teeth and claws.” She held up a great furry mitt illustratively. The thing allowed her to do it, as if it were a stuffed bear, and not a savage predator in an adorable cat suit.
“The beast is misnamed. It should be named for something with talons. A dragon or a phoenix or some such. No—minotaur. There. That’s what you should have named it. Minotaur.”
She laughed, and turned the now pliant fluffy thing around and kissed him on the orange nose while the marquess looked on with rank disbelief. And then she lowered the beast to the floor, whereupon it strolled over and wrapped his whole sinewy fluffy body, including that tail, around the marquess’s shin. And gazed up at him limpidly.
“He’s trying to lure me into complacency in preparation for another attack.”
How the Marquess Was Won Page 24