In the library, soaking himself in a decanter of whisky, he experienced a sharp sting of guilt. He should have gone with them, he realized. Instead he’d left Poppy to brave the censure of society alone, in what was almost certainly one of her wretched gowns. There would be talk, of course. One engagement in her company would not have quelled the rumors, and the Throckmorton ball had been a smaller event. He could only hope that Jilly was present, or perhaps Lady Ravenhurst, and that they would lend their support. Support he ought to have lent, to his wife who was still on the fringes of social acceptance.
At some point Mrs. Sedgwick had dropped off a dinner tray for him, but he’d left it untouched on the table beside him, content to drink his way through the evening instead. The clock had chimed midnight, then one.
Finally there was a stir in the foyer, the sounds of slippers sliding over the marble floor, the whisk of skirts, and then hushed giggles and the tromping of footsteps up the stairs as the girls hurried off to their rooms. David found himself waiting for Poppy’s footsteps on the stairs, as if he might divine her mood through the sound, determine whether the night had gone well or poorly in his absence.
Instead he heard the soft swish of skirts, the gentle pad of her footsteps sweeping down the hall toward him. She hesitated only briefly before the library doors, and for an instant he thought she would enter—but instead she passed by without even the slightest glance within. She had to have noticed the open door, the lit lamps. But she’d left him to his own devices nonetheless, as if his absence all day had conferred with it an unstated desire to be left alone, and she had decided to honor it.
Where had she gone? It was so late that he had expected her to go straight up to bed as the girls had done. She hadn’t even bothered to castigate him for abandoning his responsibilities to them. Perhaps she had learned already that such expectations would certainly lead to disappointment. That old familiar sinking sensation spread through him, the shame of having fallen so short of the mark once again.
This was where he belonged, sprawled out in a chair with a gut full of liquor, stewing in his deficiencies. A title and a tidy income might make a nobleman, but they did not a noble man make. He knew it better than most. Oh, Poppy might give an effort toward reforming him, make an attempt at molding him into the husband she supposed, with her idealistic inclinations, that he could be. But she would fail. And he would be left to watch those bright eyes go dull as she set aside her foolish hopes and saw him as he truly was. Feckless, shiftless. A child masquerading as a man, a boy who had never grown up.
He scrubbed at his face, attempting to cast the thought out of his mind. What did it matter? He was who he was, and that was all there was to it. It was who he’d always been, and it shouldn’t matter whether or not she admired him. But it did, just a bit. Just enough to crawl beneath his skin like a splinter.
He dragged himself out of his chair and swayed unsteadily on his feet. The silk-papered walls of the library blurred and shifted, and he fought back the surge of nausea that churned in his stomach. Hooking his fingers around the decanter of whisky, he stumbled out of the library and down the hall. He wasn’t certain why he had decided to go in search of Poppy, why he so badly wanted to see her face at the moment. But even the sharp lash of her anger seemed preferable to the generalized condescension the rest of his friends and acquaintances seemed to view him with.
He found her at last in the small portrait gallery toward the rear of the house. She sat beneath a portrait of his great-great-grand-something or other, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up beneath her heavy navy skirts. Her arms were looped around them, her chin resting atop one knee. A small lamp burned beside her, its soft, flickering flame fighting back the darkness, enshrouding her in a pale circle of light.
She didn’t look up as he staggered inside, though surely she must’ve heard him approaching.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
She heaved a small sigh, and her arms flexed about her knees. “Telling myself stories,” she said. “I never let myself dream, you know. Not once. Not even as a child.” Her voice was soft and muted, as if she wished to keep it constrained to the small circle of light she sat within. Her eyes were fixed on the portrait across from her: a severe-looking woman with cool blond hair and stony gray eyes, her mouth downturned as if everything that had ever passed before her eyes had been met with the same cold disapproval.
The remaining liquor sloshed in the decanter as he eased forward, and he braced himself against the wall beside her, sliding down until his rear met the cold floor and his legs stretched out before him. “Unusual, I’d guess.”
She shrugged. “I always knew that there was no purpose in it. Papa was a viscount, but he couldn’t hold onto enough money to feed us, much less to foster the hope of even a single Season for me or the girls. So I told myself stories instead. I told the girls stories—fairy stories, mostly. There’s hardly a happy ending to be found anywhere in the whole of the world, and pinning your hopes on silly dreams is a fool’s endeavor.” She unwound herself a bit, and the back of her head touched the wall. “There’s so much of life that’s uncontrollable. But I control my stories. Even if I could never afford the price of dreaming, I can wave away unhappiness for someone else with only a pen. I can create happy endings for sad and lonely people. I can give them dreams instead.”
The words carried a queer poignancy within them, and David cast his own head back and heaved a sigh. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you today,” he said. He hadn’t intended to apologize, really. It had just sort of bubbled out, a consequence, perhaps, of too much liquor.
She shrugged again, unaffected. “I spoke out of turn,” she said in that whisper-soft voice. “I shouldn’t have done it. I’d tell you I won’t do it again, but it would likely be a lie. I’ve never been terribly skilled at holding my tongue.” She held out her hand to him, and David realized that she wanted the decanter. He passed it off to her, and she took a desperate swig from it, coughing as the liquor burned down her throat.
“You’re a bit too perceptive for my tastes,” he said, because it seemed the sort of thing one said to one’s wife alone in the darkness of a deserted portrait gallery. “You shouldn’t attempt to make more of me than there is. I’m not skilled or particularly intelligent. I eschew the vast majority of my responsibilities; I’ve enough money to let the managing of most of them fall to someone else. I’ve never taken up my seat in parliament because I wouldn’t have the faintest idea of what to do with myself there.”
“How could you have?” she asked. “You came into your title at—what, eighteen?”
He gave a brisk nod.
“And your father—how old was he when he passed?”
“Forty,” he rasped, and suddenly it hurt just as much as it had all those years ago, when first he’d received the message while at Oxford that the scarlet fever that had swept through the village near Kittridge Hall had taken his parents with it. “Mother was just thirty-eight. Her birthday had been the previous month.”
“They should have had so much more time,” she said. “They were so young, and you were little more than a boy. There should have been years and years left to help you into it.” She handed the decanter back to him, and he swallowed another healthy gulp. “How could you possibly have risen to the responsibilities you’d inherited if there was no one to show you?”
A rough laugh scraped from his throat. “You did.”
She shook her head. “Mama was always delicate,” she said. “And Papa was always hopeless. I was never a child, not really. I was tallying the sums of our weekly debts to the butcher on my slate before I was even aware of what I was doing or why I was doing it. If I had had a privileged sort of life, I might have turned out very differently. Someone softer, maybe, or less of a shrew.”
It seemed so easy to catch up her hand in his and squeeze it in his fingers. “I like you even when you’re a shrew,” he admitted. She gave him a look that didn’t quite contain
a smile, but came close enough, and she dabbed awkwardly at her eyes.
“You shouldn’t punish yourself for failing at a task you’d never been taught,” she said. And then she struck the fatal blow, giving his own words back to him. “I believe you can do anything you set your mind to.”
He digested that in utter silence. Somehow, despite his selfishness and self-isolation, she had elected not to fall into disappointment and bitterness. He’d abandoned her this evening to the dubious mercies of a social set that would savage her, given half the chance, and still she sat beside him, holding his hand. “I might fail,” he said at last.
“You might,” she allowed.
“What then?”
She dropped her head back against the wall and sighed. “Then you decide whether or not you have it in you to pick yourself up and try again.”
He turned his cheek against her shoulder, and it was, for a moment, the only solid thing in his world which otherwise spun in a cloud of guilt and drunkenness and shame. “Would you pick me up?”
She was silent for a moment. Then her fingers squeezed his. “Yes,” she said. “If you needed me to.”
“I’m not an admirable man, Poppy.”
“I don’t think that’s for you to decide.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “It’s late. You should go to bed.”
“Only if you’ll come with me. I’ll probably kill myself trying to get up the stairs otherwise.” He smothered a mirthless laugh in her shoulder. “At least you’d be a wealthy widow.”
“Yes, and everyone would think I’d pushed you down the stairs to achieve that end. It would hardly do me any favors.” She paused. “Although I suppose at least I’d never need to scrimp and save ever again.” But she shoved herself away from the wall and climbed to her feet, then extended her hand to him and pulled him to his.
“Will you stay with me tonight?” he asked, letting her sling his arm about her shoulders in the service of supporting him as they approached the stairs and began to climb them, though it would have served her just as well, in all likelihood, to let him fall and crack his fool head open on the marble.
She huffed. “I don’t know why you’d want me to. I’m not such pleasant company.”
“I don’t want to be alone.” He wished he could turn his face into her neck, but she struggled beneath half his weight already. “I don’t know why you’ve been so kind to me, when I was so unkind to you.” Worse than unkind. He’d been cruel.
“What purpose is served in repaying unkindness for unkindness?” she asked. And then she added, rather needlessly, “You didn’t have to marry me.”
They’d reached the landing; a remarkable feat on its own given the leadenness of his legs. “Of course I did,” he said. “I compromised you.”
“But then you saved me. And the girls.” She readjusted his arm and proceeded to lead him down the hall. “You didn’t have to. No one could have made you.” She gave a soft flutter of laughter. “No one would even have thought less of you if you had refused. I daresay you would have been lauded for it.”
“But you would have been ruined.” He stumbled, the toe of shoe catching on the carpet, very nearly toppling the both of them to the floor. “I was angry—”
She snorted. “Bit of an understatement.”
“Don’t interrupt,” he chided. “I was angry, but I couldn’t let you be ruined. I said some things I’m not proud of, and I didn’t even believe them when I said them.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. They’d arrived before his door, and she caught the doorknob in her hand, wrenching it open. “I knew I would never be anyone’s first choice. Or second choice. Perhaps any choice. I never expected to marry at all.” She hauled him through the door. “Papa always called me a drab little crow, and he was right. Happily, Victoria and Isobel are the spitting image of Mama.”
He let her push him down to sit on the bed, watched her wrestle his shoes off and begin tugging at his shirt. “You’re not drab, Poppy. You’ve never been drab.”
“You needn’t try to spare my feelings. They’re not hurt.” She shoved his shirt over his head and cast it aside.
“Oh, all right,” he said. “Your gowns are drab, and you desperately require the services of a lady’s maid. But you are not drab.” Before she could retreat, he snagged her wrist and drew her close. He might’ve lost his balance, might’ve tripped over his own feet if he had attempted to walk somewhere—but he’d always had deft fingers, even deep in his cups. He slid them over her shoulders and began working the buttons that marched down her back. “You said you’d stay with me tonight.”
“I didn’t.” Her breath puffed out against his shoulder. “I said I didn’t know why you would want me to.”
“Stay anyway,” he invited. “And this time, don’t leave in the morning without waking me.”
Chapter Thirty
When Poppy emerged from between the drawn curtains of her bed a few days later, she found a stranger in her room. With a startled shriek, she scrambled back within the confines of the curtains. “There’s a woman in my room!” she hissed to David, who chuckled at her pique.
He flicked back the curtain just a hair and peered out. “Oh,” he said. “That’s just Vivienne. Don’t worry; she’s gone into the dressing room. She’ll likely stay there until summoned.”
“Vivienne?” she echoed. “Who the devil is Vivienne?”
“Your new lady’s maid. She’s French. French lady’s maids are all the rage, you know.” His tone was so casual, so bland, that she could only blink in the darkness, entirely nonplussed.
“I haven’t hired a lady’s maid,” she said, rather inanely. “Does she speak English?”
“Well,” he hedged. “I didn’t ask.”
“You didn’t ask.” She could have hit him. She should have done. “And yet, you also didn’t think to inquire whether or not I speak French?”
Silence followed, drawn out into a tense moment. Then, finally, he asked, “Do you?”
“Not a word.”
Another taut silence. Hesitantly, he offered, “Oops?”
She wanted to be angry. She really did. Instead she flopped onto her stomach and buried her face in her pillow in a futile effort to smother the helpless laughter that struck her.
“Poppy?” She heard him sliding across the bed, his fingers scraping across the sheets in search of her. “Are you very angry?” His fingers found her back and slipped up her spine, caressing up toward her neck. When she did not respond, he laid his palm over the back of her neck and leaned toward her to press a kiss to her shoulder. “This is probably not the time for me to mention I’ve arranged for you to have a new wardrobe.”
Her laughter faded into a groan of annoyance. “Oh, no,” she said. “I really can’t stomach another visit to the modiste—”
“She’s got your measurements,” he said. “There’s no need for any of that. As it happens, she was happy enough to charge me a truly exorbitant amount for a full wardrobe, over which she has been given creative control. If there are any alterations to be made after it’s been delivered, Vivienne will communicate to her what needs to be altered. That’s part of her job.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Really?”
“I didn’t want you to be shocked when things started arriving,” he said. “But you must know you needed a new wardrobe.”
She made a noncommittal sound, neither approval nor disapproval. “It’s just so tedious acquiring one,” she said. “I can think of about a dozen things I’d rather be doing than getting measured and poked and prodded and enduring less than flattering remarks about my bosom.” In a tone of sulky petulance, she added, “The modiste suggested padding.”
“I’ll send round a note and forbid any padding. I’m fond of your bosom as it is,” he said, sliding his hands beneath her, inching inexorably closer toward her breasts.
She slapped at his hands. “Vivienne is in the dressing room!” she hissed.
“She might not speak E
nglish,” he reminded her.
“She still has ears!” She gave a little wiggle, neatly evading his questing hands. “You need to leave!”
“Must I?”
“Yes!” With her index finger, she jabbed him somewhere in the vicinity of his chest—she hoped. “Since you’ve saddled me with a lady’s maid who may or may not speak English, now I must determine how to deal with her!”
“Ah,” he said. “I suppose you’re right.” But he sounded disappointed, and he hesitated as if he hoped she might retract her dismissal. When she did not, he heaved a great sigh, and poked his head through the bed curtains to verify that the room was still unoccupied. “I shall see you at dinner?”
“Hmph,” she replied. Amused at her pique, he chuckled on his way through the connecting door. Once she was satisfied he had left, she stuck her arm through the gap in the curtains and fumbled around the floor in search of her nightgown, which she struggled to pull on in the dark of the drawn curtains.
“Vivienne?” she called as she climbed out of bed at last, attempting to scrape her tangled hair into some semblance of order over her shoulder as she did so.
At once, the maid popped out of the dressing room, a hesitant smile lighting her face. She had lovely strawberry blond hair twisted into an elegant coif, and she wore a neatly-pressed gown in a soft lilac shade.
Poppy heaved a sigh. “I’m certain you shall have your work cut out for you,” she said. “I don’t know a thing about fashion, and I haven’t any fancy gowns just yet, and I’ve never been able to do a thing with my hair.”
Vivienne canted her head to the side, her smile unshaken.
“You can’t understand a word I’m saying, can you?” Poppy asked. Without waiting for a response, she added, “I’m afraid I don’t speak a word of French. I never had occasion to learn.” Striding over to the vanity set against the wall, Poppy sat heavily down in the chair and picked up her hairbrush. Giving a horrified gasp, Vivienne scrambled over and nipped it right out of her hands.
His Reluctant Lady Page 24