Julie Anne Long - [Pennyroyal Green 08]

by It Happened One Midnight

  “He isn’t here,” Argosy said gently.

  And all at once the bottom dropped out of her stomach. She stared at him, too stunned to speak, and this in itself was quite damning.

  “Forgive me, Lord Argosy, but I’m not sure what you . . .” Her voice was too weak. She heard it, and nearly winced.

  “Redmond is in Sussex. Or at least, if he has returned to London, I haven’t yet seen him.”

  She gave a nervous little laugh. “Forgive me, Lord Argosy, but I still don’t—”

  “You keep looking at the place next to me, as if you expect to find someone standing in it, and when you don’t see him, your face quite loses its light. ”

  She was speechless. Imagine, Argosy seeing her as a human for the first time. Her feelings must be transparent indeed if this was possible, and that would never do.

  The silence between them became awkward. And yet she could find nothing to say.

  He saved her with a little half smile. “You could do worse than Redmond.”

  She found she was able to produce a reasonably convincing smile. “I think you’re mistaken, Lord Argosy.”

  “I’m not,” he said easily.

  She was still too stunned to respond properly. A silence more honest than any of the conversations they’d held so far descended between the two of them. And while Argosy looked at her, she looked down at her slippers. And then she stared at his dazzling buttons, saw her tiny face reflected in them. She gazed unseeingly out over the salon, as if it were the sea.

  “Do you know that I lost my first love to Jonathan’s brother Miles?” he said finally. Conversationally. Without a shred of melodrama.

  She studied Argosy, whose dark eyes were watching her, not without sympathy. With something akin to wryness.

  “Surely I’m not your love, too, Mr. Argosy,” she said gently.

  He paused. He seemed to be contemplating what to reply. Such a gloriously handsome man by anyone’s standards, and he likely would become more so as he grew older, and yet he moved her not at all.

  “No,” he admitted after a moment. “But one occasionally desires the feeling of romance, without the potential pain of it, and you, Miss de Ballesteros, are intoxicating after the fashion of champagne.”

  Ah, that word. Pain. It was what leaped out at her from that sentence. It frightened her. It seemed so inextricable from “romance,” as he called it. He’d just delivered a strange compliment, and a truth. She was a pleasant diversion, anesthesia, a way for him to forget. She was that for many of the man here, but they likely had mistaken this for desire. Very like the way Prescott had.

  Somehow she wasn’t insulted by Argosy’s statement. She liked truth better than she liked illusion.

  She wondered if Argosy understood that romance and love were two different things. Love, she suspected, was warm arms wrapped around you while you wept your loss and humiliation into a man’s shirt. Love was a man throwing himself into the Ouse to retrieve a scrap of metal and fabric that anchored you to whatever family you might have.

  At this realization, a light seemed to fill her chest. She wanted to close her eyes to be alone with this newly discovered truth.

  She wondered if Jonathan knew that he loved her.

  Or even if he did know, what difference it could ever make.

  She wondered if that’s why he’d disappeared.

  She collected herself. “I am delighted I can help keep your flirtation prowess honed, Lord Argosy, until the day comes when love finds you.”

  She wasn’t sure if he noticed the distinction she gave the word. He quirked the corner of his fine mouth, as if he doubted the day would come. “Regardless, I expect we shall go on enjoying each other as we were, Miss de Ballesteros.”

  “Naturally. Thank you, Mr. Argosy. And you are quite mistaken, you know, regarding . . . Mr. Redmond.”

  It needed to be said, even if they both knew she was lying, and Argosy knew she knew that she was lying. It quite simply wasn’t something she could or would ever admit aloud.

  “Yes. Just as I’m certain you don’t interest him at all.”

  She tried and failed not to smile slowly at that.

  And another little silence ensued.

  “Would it please you to know that your compliments are the finest?” she soothed.

  He smiled at that, somewhat mollified. “I have you to thank for the inspiration.”

  She twirled her empty glass in her fingertips, and looked away from him.

  “Does Mr. Redmond know what a good friend he has in you?” Her voice was low.

  “He does. Even if it’s all I can do to tolerate his inexplicable need to make money. I do understand it.”

  “From what I understand, he possesses a . . .”

  A tall gangly figure had just moved into the room. Every muscle in her body went taut. Prescott didn’t look at her directly, not immediately. Perhaps he hadn’t yet seen her. She watched him speak to others present, watched him as he was deferential and charming to the countess.

  She would need to make her escape now.

  “Lord Argosy, if you will excuse me?”

  And for fifteen minutes she was like her father’s campaign medal bobbing in the Ouse, drifting from conversation to conversation just out of reach of Prescott, again and again. But she felt him on the periphery of awareness like an approaching storm. Not that he intended any destruction. It was just very clear that Lord Prescott was quite full of something, some sort of news, some intent, that would very much change her emotional weather.

  She hoped it wasn’t more suggestions about her potential sexual prowess.

  A woman could only drink so much champagne without needing to visit the loo. And if she did, she would need to leave the room, and Prescott would corner her. But there came a time when she could postpone neither for another minute.

  And predictably, as she returned from the water closet, Lord Prescott emerged from the shadows of the small parlor that separated the water closet from where the countess’s guests mingled.

  “Miss de Ballesteros. May I have a word?”

  She halted, a good five feet from him. Just out of reach of his arms. “Lord Prescott. At least you didn’t leap out at me this time.”

  “I never mean to startle. I hope you’ll forgive me. It’s difficult to find a moment to speak with you alone.”

  How about that. Then my plan is working.

  “I shall be brief,” he said. “I have given some careful consideration to what you said the other day, Miss de Ballesteros. And since my fortune is substantial, and I am not constrained by my family’s requirements, I may marry as I please.”

  Constrained by my family’s requirements. A statement that described Jonathan Redmond rather well. And very unusual for an aristocrat not to be constrained by his family’s requirements.

  Then the word “marry” knelled in her mind. She was suddenly paralyzed by what she sensed was about to happen.

  “And if my name is what is required for me to partake of the pleasures of your body, Miss de Ballesteros, I should be pleased indeed if you would consent to marry me.”

  There was a buzzing noise in her ears. Marry me, marry me, marry me.

  The words seemed to echo, double, reverberate in her mind. I’m going to faint, she thought. Surely this was impossible. Of all the things she’d experienced in her life so far, a proposal from a viscount who was a virtual stranger shouldn’t be the one thing that caused it.

  He stepped closer to her.

  She couldn’t disguise a reflexive flinch.

  The ramifications swarmed her mind like bees. She would be Lady Prescott. Lady. She would have endless funds at her disposal, a carriage, servants, fine clothing, an allowance. She would forever be a part of the family tree of this ancient title; likely her portrait would be made and would hang over the mantel of his town house, or one of their country homes, Prescott wearing a self-satisfied expression, his hand resting on her shoulder, their gangly children leaning against his knee
s. She might even be able to persuade him to use his influence politically, to forever abolish child labor.

  No more living in a rickety, thumping building. No more living hand to mouth, from day to day.

  No more freedom, and no more excitement, and no passion, and no love.

  And the only price for immediate comfort and safety was to lie in bed next to this man, and to submit to being touched by him, and to touching him, for the rest of her days.

  To bear his heirs.

  To marry this stranger with whom she’d primarily shared flattery and witticisms about the king’s many indiscretions. She scarcely knew him. He of a certainty knew her not at all.

  She could hear her own swift panicky breathing now.

  One man might have offered her comfort and the shelter of his arms in which to weep.

  This man offered her forever.

  And if Prescott had asked a month ago . . . If he’d asked the day before she’d encountered Jonathan Redmond at midnight outside the Duke of Greyfolk’s house . . .

  Ah, but she was a different woman now. One kiss had changed that.

  And a ballroom orgasm.

  What made Prescott think she was worth it? She longed to ask. What was it about her, in particular? She was aware of her beauty, but then, the ton was filled with beautiful women, all of whom seemed to have danced with Jonathan Redmond at that ball. Was it the fantasy of her, that Argosy had described? The desire to win over all the others that every wealthy men seemed to share?

  If only her investment in Jonathan and Klaus’s business had paid off by now.

  “Lord Prescott.” Her voice trembled. She cleared her throat. “Your offer honors and humbles me. I am quite bowled over and flattered and quite astonished, truly. I beg of you a little time to consider your proposal.”

  He exhaled, and his head went back in some surprise. And he was silent, mulling her. Apparently she’d done the unexpected yet again.

  “Very well. But bear in mind that I won’t ask again, Miss de Ballesteros. I know I don’t need to explain to you that offering you my name and title truly is an honor and not without some risk to my reputation. I shall expect your reply within a month. Surely that is time enough to . . . weigh your other offers.”

  She stared at him. Well. She’d underestimated Lord Prescott. Or perhaps, more accurately, she hadn’t fully estimated him. Simmering beneath that surface was yet another man certain of getting what he wanted. Because he likely always had.

  He wasn’t pleased at being made to wait for a decision as momentous as this.

  The men who hold the power are all alike, Tommy thought. Astonished when someone cannot be bought.

  She jerked her chin up high.

  “Thank you, Lord Prescott. It’s helpful to know that your desire for me will expire by a particular date.”

  “Much like the desirability of any woman. You of all people should be fully aware that a woman’s bloom doesn’t last forever. Nor does her ability to bear children.”

  Threats! How very romantic.

  “Thank you for reminding me. It slipped my mind, temporarily.”

  He nodded, smiling a little, acknowledging her little barb. “Good day, Miss de Ballesteros. I am not a man without feeling, and I think I shall depart now, to recover from the decidedly ambivalent receipt of my proposal.”

  She smiled a little at that.

  “Good day, Lord Prescott. Perhaps I should retire, too, to preserve my bloom.”

  He bowed and left her, presumably to collect his hat and coat from the footman.

  She backed into a corner to wait for him to leave. She couldn’t return to the salon, not in the wake of this. And she closed her eyes, and counted to one hundred very deliberately to prevent herself from thinking of anything or anyone else at the moment.

  And she, too, fled, without saying good-bye, and darted on her labyrinthine path home, lest anyone attempt to follow her, find her, know the real her.

  Chapter 25

  “THANK YOU FOR THE marzipan raspberries,” was the first thing Violet said when Jonathan was finally allowed to see her alone.

  He paused. “Are you delirious?” he whispered.

  She gave a weak laugh. His beautiful sister looked as though she’d been dragged along the bottom of the Ouse. Damp and white and exhausted and hollow-cheeked. But her eyes glowed, and there was an inner light to her. A sort of private joy. Imagine, a peaceful Violet. It had only taken nearly killing her to do it.

  “Are you truly all right, Vi?”

  “Yes, I’m fine, or I will be if I lie still for a few days and allow people to wait upon me, but that’s enough about me for now.”

  Enough about me. Words he’d never heard her say in his entire life.

  He was about to ask if she felt different now that she was a mother, but she’d just rather answered the question.

  The culprit, the baby, was cocooned in white, and making little clucking sounds, waving fists the size of tea cakes. She was almost as formless as a blancmange, with a tiny little nose and mouth. Tremendously solemn blue eyes looked back at him. A thick fluff of dark hair topped her.

  He peered down. “I’m your Uncle Jonathan.”

  She waved a fist like a maraca and gazed somberly as a clergyman at him.

  He tentatively gave one of those little waving fists a finger and she held onto it, like an anemone.

  “What is her name?” he asked softly.

  “Ruby. Ruby Alexandra.”

  “I like it,” Jonathan replied, as Ruby tried out her new hands and squeezed his finger.

  “Ow,” he teased her gently.

  “Don’t feel too special,” Violet said. “She squeezes everyone.”

  He laughed lightly. He allowed Ruby to hold onto his finger. How silky her skin was. What a dangerous, amazing thing it was to be a baby. He suspected Violet and the earl would be the equivalent of having a lion and lioness for parents. This child would be safe and fiercely loved. She will break hearts.

  “What was all that bit about children and mills, Jonathan, last night? I wondered if you were delirious. You sounded rather . . . impassioned. Almost as if you . . . cared about something.”

  As if this was a condition he’d never before suffered. She sounded insufferably amused.

  He didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer. And he wanted to admire Ruby. Or rather he studied her curiously, since, if he was being very truthful, she looked more like something that oughtn’t to have left the cocoon yet.

  “I’ll be your favorite uncle,” he vowed.

  Violet just watched him and smiled knowingly. “It’s a woman,” she announced. And then a thought occurred to her. “Dear God, it’s not Olivia Eversea, is it? But she’s been seen out walking with Landsdowne.”

  He snorted at that. And ignored the question. But he rather understood Olivia Eversea. Almost . . . almost rather wished her well. He sent a silent message to his brother: Lyon, wherever you are. Your woman is out walking with Landsdowne.

  He wasn’t his brother, and thank God for that.

  “Vi?”

  “Mmm.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t die.”

  “I love you, too, Jonathan,” she said.

  “Will you promise to stay alive while I return to London? There’s something I need to do there straightaway.”

  “Of course,” she yawned.

  He believed her.

  He lightly touched Ruby’s little nose, because it was like a button, and how could he not?

  And then he kissed Violet’s cheek and departed.

  THUD, THUD, THUD.

  Tommy winced as Rutherford walked from one end of the room to the other. London on the whole seemed noisier than usual lately. But perhaps that was because her nerves were abraded since Prescott had issued his proposal, and her thoughts were an almost ceaseless cacophony. She tried to read a horrid novel loaned to her by the Countess Mirabeau, and failed, and stared at the swinging pendulum on her little ormolu clock instead. Perhaps she c
ould be mesmerized into some measure of calm.

  It was no use. She almost regretted knowing how it felt to be held by Jonathan, because now it was all she wanted. It was the only thing that would soothe her.

  A knock sounded on her door. An urgent one.

  She nearly leaped out of her skin.

  A fancy one. A long complicated one.

  She sprung off the settee and smoothed her skirts, scrambled through the passage and down the stairs, and peered through the peephole.

  There really was no mistaking the tall figure that stood out there, despite the fact that she could see only from about his second button to his cravat. She threw all the various locks on the door, and swung it open for him.

  They stood in dumb silence, absorbing the intoxicating impact of each other on their senses.

  His expression when he saw her was at first startled, then rapt, and then relieved. As if there had been a moment when he thought she might have entirely been a figment of his imagination.

  He was strangely pale and a little nervy. He plucked his hat from his head.

  “May I come in?” he asked politely. When it seemed neither of them would speak.

  She stepped back. “I . . . yes. Of course. You look as though you could use some strong tea. Or maybe a whisky.”

  “Tea would be grand.” His voice was threadbare. As though he hadn’t slept in days.

  She led him into her rooms, and he followed silently.

  Where were you, she wanted to demand, when a viscount was proposing to me and warning me about my perishable bloom?

  She said nothing. She allowed the silence and the tension to speak for her.

  He’d done a somewhat perfunctory job of shaving, she could see, and his eyes were shadowed beneath. But he was staring at her with an undisguised fierceness. She would have called it intent.

  As though she was the heart of the target.

  Eventually, it stole her breath.

  She found her voice. “I’ll . . . I’ll make tea.”

  “Tommy . . . wait.”

  She stopped.

  But he said nothing more. He remained motionless, looking about her rooms as if he’d never seen them before. He didn’t sit.

  “Jonathan . . . is aught amiss?”