Until this mention of his late father, it had not occurred to Vere that being caught in Miss Edgerton’s scheme would lead all the way to the altar. After all, he’d known her for only three days. He had not touched her in truth. And he was an idiot, for God’s sake; surely some consideration must be given to that fact.
But that was apparently not the way Lady Avery’s mind worked. He had compromised a young lady of good standing—never mind that the young lady had a loose-moraled mother; never mind that the young lady engineered the encounter herself—and therefore marriage must follow suit. And Vere, publicly at least, was a nice, docile idiot, not the sort to willingly stand by and watch a girl go to “ruin.”
He put on his most thickly bovine expression, rose to his feet with a stumble and a grunt, and looked around. “Sorry for the nice ship-in-a-bottle, Miss Edgerton.”
“It’s quite all right,” she said in a small voice.
“Arrangements, children, arrangements,” chided Lady Avery. “Arrangements must be made. Isn’t the archbishop of Canterbury your second cousin, Lord Vere? He will no doubt be glad to issue a special license to you.”
“Oh, is he? My second cousin? I had no idea. Perhaps I shan’t bother him, just in case he isn’t.”
“Banns then?” Miss Edgerton asked hesitantly.
She did it very well, this virginal timidity.
“Absolutely not. Very quaint, but not the thing to do at all, especially not under the circumstances,” proclaimed Lady Avery. “You should ask your uncle to apply for a special license for you, Miss Edgerton.”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“When your uncle comes home, you will explain the matter to him. He will meet Lord Vere. He will obtain the special license. Then we will all be delighted to attend your wedding.”
Miss Edgerton said nothing.
“Very good. Now to bed,” said Lady Avery, satisfied. “And no more secret meetings between the two of you. You are to be married. And that means your days of clandestine lovemaking are behind you.”
* * *
But the ordeal was far from over.
The other gentlemen had gathered outside the small parlor—no doubt drawn by the fearsome crashes Vere and Miss Edgerton had caused during their struggle. Lady Avery and Lady Kingsley, after putting Miss Edgerton back into her dressing gown, quickly whisked her away, leaving Vere behind to fend for himself.
“What happened?” Wessex asked, even though it couldn’t be more obvious what had happened.
Vere ignored the question, walked past Wessex, marched out of the front door of the house, and did not stop until he was in the middle of the garden. And even then, it was only to pull out a cigarette and light it.
“I’m sorry,” said Freddie, who had followed him out. “I should have said something.”
Vere expelled a lungful of smoke. “What would you have said?”
“I was—I was thinking of telling you to be more careful.”
The irony. “Me, be more careful?”
Freddie stuck his hands into his coat pockets. “Last night I was out walking late—and I saw the two of you, just the two of you, going back into the house. And in the morning, I thought you might be having your nightmare again. But when I opened my door I saw her coming out of your room.”
Vere sucked hard on his cigarette. Christ.
“I thought at the time that surely there was an innocent explanation for everything—you know, that she’d heard your nightmare and come to check on you…”
Vere threw down his cigarette and crushed it under his heel.
Freddie sighed. He took the cigarette case and the matchbox out of Vere’s pocket, lit another fag, and handed it to Vere. Vere sighed and accepted Freddie’s offering. How could he be angry at Freddie?
“I’m sorry,” Freddie said again.
Vere shook his head. “It’s not your fault.”
Freddie, who usually refrained from tobacco, lit a cigarette for himself. They smoked in silence.
“Will you be all right?” Freddie asked, after they’d had two cigarettes apiece.
Vere stared up at the starry sky. “I’ll be fine.”
“Well,” Freddie said, hesitating, “I have seen the way you look at her. And since she does return your regard…I mean, you have been trying to find a wife for a while, haven’t you?”
Had any man ever been so perfectly hoisted with his own petard? Next thing Vere knew, people would be genuinely delighted for him, that by hook or by crook he finally landed himself a wife. And once they’d had a look at her bosomy comeliness, he’d be the subject of a thousand congratulatory slaps on the back.
“She is very cheerful,” Freddie continued. “And she listens when you speak.”
When you speak, Vere wanted to retort.
He yanked off his necktie. “I think I’ll go for a walk now, if you don’t mind.”
* * *
As it turned out, one walk wasn’t enough. Lady Kingsley was waiting for him in his room, nodding off, when he returned at two o’clock in the morning. The conversation she desired necessitated another trip out of the house.
He thought she wanted to speak of the ramifications concerning the investigation at hand. But that was not at all the case.
“Just now she came to my room and begged me to help her,” said Lady Kingsley.
He glanced at her sharply.
“She said her uncle will kill her if he learns what happened. She wants to be gone from Highgate Court before he returns.”
“And you agreed to help her?”
“I know you are not one, but the world is full of awful men who do unspeakable things to women who depend on them. I have no reason not to believe her. And since you must marry her anyway, I told her I would arrange for a special license for the two of you and that we will leave at first light for London.”
“Is that all?” he asked coolly.
“She wants to bring her aunt along.”
“Well, then, the more the merrier.”
Lady Kingsley looked at him uncertainly, then placed a hand on his sleeve. “I don’t know whether to console you or to congratulate you. I know you didn’t quite have marriage in mind when you began your assignation, but if she gets you this carried away, marriage is not the most terrible outcome.”
He’d expected better from Lady Kingsley. He’d expected her to know that it was entirely out of character for him to be this carried away and therefore to harbor at least some suspicion of foul play on Miss Edgerton’s part.
Instead it was Freddie all over again, with the implication that Vere was largely, if not entirely, responsible.
“If you will excuse me,” he said. “I’m quite exhausted.”
Chapter Nine
Elissande packed, first in her own room, then in her aunt’s. Aunt Rachel sometimes woke up in the middle of the night and took another dose of laudanum—which made her difficult to awaken in the morning—and Elissande needed to prevent that.
She finished packing at quarter to five. At five o’clock she began to rouse her aunt. Aunt Rachel was confused and sluggish. But Elissande was determined. She finished Aunt Rachel’s usual morning ablutions, fed her a good portion of arrowroot pudding, and brushed her teeth.
It was not until she brought out actual clothes that Aunt Rachel first realized this was not to be another ordinary day in the Douglas household.
“We are leaving,” Elissande said to Aunt Rachel’s unspoken question.
“We?” Aunt Rachel croaked.
“Yes, you and I. I’m getting married and I need your help in setting up my new household.”
Aunt Rachel clenched Elissande’s hand in hers. “Married? To whom?”
“If you wish to meet him, dress and come with me.”
“Where—where are we going?”
“London.” Lady Kingsley had told her that she would help Elissande obtain a special license from the bishop of London.
“Does—does your uncle know?”
�
��No.”
Aunt Rachel trembled. “What if—what will happen when he finds out?”
Elissande took Aunt Rachel into her arms. “My fiancé is a marquess. My uncle cannot harm me once I’m married. You come with me now and you need never see him again either: Lord Vere will protect us.”
Aunt Rachel shook harder. “Are you—are you sure, Ellie?”
“Yes.” She was a terrific liar: Her smiles were her best lies, but she was no slouch with words. “We may put our absolute confidence in Lord Vere. He is a prince among men.”
She did not know whether she convinced Aunt Rachel completely. But Aunt Rachel became pliant enough that Elissande had no trouble dressing her in a pale green silk morning gown trimmed in white chiffon, and a hat of green velvet to match.
Unfortunately, real clothes only emphasized her aunt’s grayish pallor, stick-thinness, and that particular shrinking quality she had, as if she yearned at all times toward invisibility—but she looked presentable enough. For Aunt Rachel’s sake, Elissande could only pray that Lord Vere would appear half as formidable as she’d made him out to be.
Aunt Rachel started upon meeting her soon-to-be nephew-in-law. Elissande could well relate to that sense of delightful surprise. Inspecting him from the point of view of a stranger, she could not deny that he was a very impressive-looking man.
He was beautifully attired: all buttons properly aligned with their intended buttonholes, trousers free from food stains, and necktie not the least bit crooked. He spoke minimally—stunned into near silence by the enormity of the situation, she didn’t doubt. And he dutifully proclaimed himself honored and delighted at the “bestowal of Miss Edgerton’s hand.”
When she had shoved that hand deep down his esophagus.
He gave her one look, a quick scan of her person. She was dressed demurely in gray chiffon broadcloth—not that she could fool Lord Vere anymore as to what kind of woman she was. The thought suddenly came to her that perhaps she hadn’t needed to be entirely naked, that it might have been good enough to have been caught in his arms in her combination undergarment.
Instead he’d seen all of her.
She swallowed, looked down, and was glad when Lady Kingsley ordered everyone into the carriage.
* * *
Vere made sure he and Freddie traveled in a separate train compartment, away from the women. He slept while Freddie sketched next to him. Upon reaching London, Lady Kingsley warned him not to stray too far from his house, so she could inform him of the hour and location of his wedding.
The women left to do what women did when faced with imminent nuptials. Vere declined Freddie’s offer of company and sent a note for Holbrook to meet him in the same hidey-hole where they’d last met.
The whorehouse—their sobriquet for this particular hidey-hole—had always amused Vere with its indelicate colors and its clumsy but wholehearted attempts at elegance. But today its faux tiger-skin rug and its purple lamp shades chafed his vision and chafed it badly.
Holbrook arrived in short order. Vere tossed down the coded dossier. “From Douglas’s safe. It’s yours for the day.”
“Thank you, my lord. Well done, as always,” said Holbrook. “I shall have it duplicated in no time.”
He handed Vere a glass of Poire Williams—fruit brandies of all types fascinated Holbrook. “I understand that congratulations are in order.”
Vere refrained from mentioning that Holbrook hardly had cause to offer another man matrimonial felicitations, since the late Lady Holbrook had once stuck a knife in him. “Thank you, sir.”
“What happened?”
Vere lit a cigarette, took a drag, and shrugged.
“Not the proudest moment in an otherwise distinguished career, was it?” Holbrook commented lazily.
Vere flicked the barely forming ashes from his cigarette.
Holbrook played with the bead fringes of an antimacassar. “The suspect’s niece, no less.”
“My appeal is universal.” Vere drained his glass. Enough chitchat. “There was a relative with whom Douglas lived for a while in London, wasn’t there?”
“There was. Mrs. John Watts. London Street, Jacob’s Island.” Holbrook possessed an unerring memory. “But she’s been dead a long time.”
“Thank you.” Vere rose from his seat. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Are you sure, sir? On your wedding day?”
What else was he to do on this day? Whore and carouse? Drink himself into a ditch? Form an opium habit?
“But of course,” he said softly. “How better to enjoy this day and all that shall come with it?”
* * *
“I still can’t believe it. Penny, getting married,” said Angelica Carlisle, Freddie’s oldest friend, chortling.
She and Freddie were taking coffee—her new continental habit—in the drawing room of the town house that had once belonged to her mother.
Freddie had attended many a tea and dinner party here, read most of the books in the study, and regularly visited on Sundays, the day of the week strictly reserved for family and closest friends. Angelica had already mentioned the changes she intended to make to the interior of the house. But she was still settling in—she’d been back in England only a month. The house remained unaltered. And the very familiarity of the setting—comfortably faded rose-and-ivy wallpaper, lovingly preserved watercolors by long-perished spinster aunts, commemorative plates from Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee, thirty-five years ago—made the difference in her person all the more startling.
He’d always thought her handsome, strong boned and strong featured, remarkable rather than pretty. But during the years of her brief marriage and widowhood, she’d acquired a certain seductiveness to her person. Her eyes, instead of the wide-open alertness he recalled, were now heavy lidded and mysterious. Her smiles, usually just a slight upturn of one corner of her lips, somehow also radiated sultriness, as if while she conducted herself with perfect decorum, she’d been harboring very naughty thoughts beneath that façade of propriety.
And he, to his own dismay, began thinking of her as an object of desire for the first time in his life. Angelica, who’d always been like a sister to him, a pesky, too-honest, merciless younger sister who told him that his tailor was blind and incompetent, that he needed to brush his teeth at least three minutes longer, and that if he’d had more than two drops of champagne, he was not allowed to dance the waltz for the sake of public safety.
She took a sip of her coffee, chuckled again, and shook her head. One coil of her hair, artfully loose, stroked the edge of her jaw, lending a new softness to the angularity of her features. As if aware of the fascination that one curl held over him, she pulled it straight between two fingers, then let go.
Somehow she imbued even such a minor motion with the full potency of her new powers, with the seduction of Eve.
He realized he hadn’t answered and hastened to speak. “Penny is twenty-nine. He has to marry at some point.”
“Of course that is the case. It’s the scandal that shocks me. As much as I might roll my eyes at some of his antics, Penny isn’t one to get himself into serious trouble.”
“I know,” said Freddie. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have let my guard down.”
He’d been fifteen when Penny’s riding accident happened. It had been the rare summer week they’d spent apart: he with their late mother’s cousin in Biarritz, Penny in Aberdeenshire with Lady Jane, their paternal great-aunt.
For the first few months after Penny’s accident, Freddie had been worried sick. But after a while, it became clear that while Penny would never again lucidly trace the history of the Plebeian Council or make a devilishly persuasive case for granting women the right to vote, he also did not need a nursemaid all hours of the day. It had been a small mercy in a devastating turn of events, the unfairness of which still haunted Freddie. His brilliant, brave brother, who had claimed Freddie’s mistakes as his own before their unkind father, and who could have had a significant career in Parliamen
t, reduced to an expert in little more than his own daily schedule.
“You did say you didn’t think Miss Edgerton was after Penny merely for his title and fortune.”
“Her uncle has a diamond mine in South Africa and no children of his own. I don’t think she is after him for his fortune, at least.”
Angelica took a bite of her Madeira cake. He watched her absently wiping away the butter the rich cake left on her fingers, almost as if she were caressing the napkin. He imagined her fingers caressing him instead.
“So what do you think of this Miss Edgerton?” she asked.
He had to reel his mind back from the sensual, and sometimes shockingly explicit, thoughts it had a tendency to engage in these days—thoughts that never failed to involve Angelica in some state of undress. “Miss Edgerton, ah, well, she is very pretty, amiable, smiling. Doesn’t have much to say, though, except to agree with whoever is speaking.”
“That should suit Penny. He likes it when people agree with him.”
What neither of them said, out of loyalty to Penny, was that a girl of middling intelligence and not many original thoughts was probably the most Penny could hope for.
“It’s been thirteen years since his accident,” said Angelica. “He has managed remarkably well. He will manage this too.”
Freddie smiled at her. “You are right. I should have more faith.”
They said nothing for a minute or so, she nibbling on another piece of Madeira cake, he turning an almond biscuit in his fingers.
“Well,” they said at nearly the same time.
“You first,” he offered.
“No, no, you first. You are my visitor; I insist.”
“I—I’d like to ask you for a favor,” he said.
“In all my years of knowing you I don’t remember a single instance of your ever asking me for favors. I will admit it might have had something to do with the fact that I was constantly thrusting my opinions and wishes on you.” Her eyes twinkled. “But please, go ahead; I am resolutely intrigued.”
He loved the shape of her mouth when she almost smiled. Why had he never noticed before the magnetic pull of her near-smile?
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