The sister.
“Justina,” Phoebe said and stepped away from him.
The wide-eyed girl looked back and forth between them and then her smile grew, dimpling her cheeks. “Oh, hello.” She loosened the strings of a ridiculously large, garish, purple bonnet then lowered it.
Splotches of red slapped Phoebe’s cheeks.
When it became apparent Phoebe intended to say nothing further, Edmund filled the silence. He threw his arms wide and sketched a respectful bow. “The Marquess of Rutland. It is a pleasure.”
A merry light twinkled in the girl’s eyes. This one would be ruined with far more swiftness than her sister had managed. The young lady dropped a curtsy. “My lord.” She looked to Phoebe and cleared her throat.
“Oh, er…yes…my lord, this is my sister, Miss Justina Barrett.”
“Miss Barrett, how do you do?”
A tittering giggle bubbled past her lips. “Very well.”
Phoebe’s blue eyes darkened and she frowned at the both of them. Ah, the lady was jealous. Her sister. In his mind, he mentally ticked off another of the lady’s weaknesses.
The young Miss Barrett sidled closer to her sister and slipped her arm through Phoebe’s, interlocking them at the elbows. “Is he the one?” she whispered loudly.
“Justina,” Phoebe bit out. The color of her cheeks deepened to the shade of a crimson berry and he suddenly had a taste for the sweet, summer fruit.
He gave a crooked grin and reclined against the bookshelf, taking in the exchange with renewed interest. The one? The lady had been speaking to her sister of him, only confirming the supposition he’d come to yesterday morn—he’d fully ensnared Phoebe in his trap. This oddly light sensation in his chest felt a good deal different than the rush of victory he was accustomed to. Perhaps when she served her ultimate purpose and he ingratiated himself into Miss Honoria Fairfax’s graces and thoroughly ruined Margaret’s beloved niece—then there would be the sense of triumph. As it was, there was an otherwise inexplicable thrill in knowing she spoke of him to her sister. “Have you spoken of me, Miss Barrett?” he asked of Phoebe. And then, rusty from ill-use, the muscles of his mouth quirked up in a grin.
The ladies responded as one. “No.”
Justina Barrett leaned closer. “She just has the look.”
“The look?” he spoke over Phoebe’s protestations, interested to know more about this look the younger sister spoke of, particularly as it pertained to Phoebe.
“The longin—ouch.” She swung a wounded, accusatory gaze at Phoebe. “Did you pinch me?”
Phoebe darted out the pink tip of her tongue and trailed it over her lips. Another surge of lust slammed into him; once again filling him with a desire to lay claim to that mouth and more. She cleared her throat. “Er…yes…but only because I’d meant to ask whether you’d seen the display of Captain Cook’s hats at the back of the shop?”
Joy lit the young woman’s eyes and she jammed her bonnet onto her head. “Indeed? I do not know how I missed such a thing.” Likely because there was no such display. He said nothing on that score as he was eager to be rid of the other Barrett sister. “I’ve been wandering around this infernal shop, but haven’t seen anything of remote interest, to me that is.”
He winced as the young woman prattled on and on. This was his punishment for involving the Barrett sisters in his plans for revenge. This young woman and her infernal jabbering.
“Oh, yes,” Phoebe said, her features schooled in a mask. “It was several rows back, down the bookshelf.” He eyed her. All creatures practiced deception. Even she. Only some, however, were skilled in matters of treachery and untruthfulness.
“I shall go have another search.” Justina Barrett dropped another curtsy. “It was a pleasure, my lord.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” he said with the same trace of the charming gentleman he’d demonstrated years ago.
The young lady skipped off, leaving him and Phoebe alone—yet again. When he returned his gaze to her, he found her staring after her sister. She troubled the flesh of her lower lip, lost in thought. “I fear the day she makes her entrance into Society,” she said quietly, more to herself. “With her beauty and…” She gave her head a brusque shake, remembering herself, and likely remembering too late that, but for a handful of carefully orchestrated meetings, he was little more than a stranger to her. “Forgive me,” she apologized, clasping her hands together.
Odd, she should worry after her own sister’s naiveté and fail to realize she was nothing more than a pawn in his scheme for revenge. Is she…? He forcibly thrust back the fool question. Of course, she was. If there had been no betrayal by Miss Margaret Dunn, there would have been no duel, and humiliation and moment of weakness in caring for anyone other than himself. Then there would have been no Miss Fairfax. He dipped his gaze down Phoebe’s lean frame, lingering on the generous swell of her breasts, and then raising it to meet her eyes. And there would have been no Phoebe. What a travesty that would have been.
He wandered closer. “There is nothing to forgive.” Not where she was concerned. Edmund lowered his lips to her ear. He inhaled, drawing in the fragrant scent of lilies that clung to her skin, the innocent scent crisp and clean, putting him in mind of things long forgotten—lush countrysides and pure, blue skies, the shade of her eyes. What madness was this? With their bodies’ nearness, he detected the faint tremble of her frame. “I wish to see you again, Phoebe. Not in stolen corners of establishments and museums in meetings of happenstance. Will you permit me to call upon you?”
For the fraction of a moment, he wanted her to say no. Wanted her to study him with the jaded cynicism he was deserving of. But for an equally terrifying moment, he wanted her to say yes. A panicky viselike pressure squeezed the breath from his lungs at his own apparent weakness for the innocent Miss Phoebe Barrett.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Edmund claimed her lips in a quick, hard kiss. He wrapped his arm about her waist and tugged her against him, aching to worship every curve of her glorious form with his mouth. She whimpered and he swallowed that breathless entreaty with his lips.
“Phoebe?” Her sister called from somewhere within the shop.
He swallowed back a curse and set her aside, placing three deliberate steps between them. Edmund yanked out a nearby book and thrust it into her shaking fingers. She eyed it in confusion just as her sister turned the corner.
“There you are,” she said with that same silly smile. “I cannot find the hats. Would you please help me?” The youngest Miss Barrett dropped her voice to a low whisper. “The shopkeeper is quite the curmudgeon.”
“Of course, sweet,” she said and then handed the book over to him, her hands far steadier than he would have imagined. “Thank you, my lord. It was a pleasure.” She spoke with a sincerity that ran ragged through him. No one welcomed his presence, nor desired his company. Within the depths of her unjaded eyes, however, there was warmth and a genuine desire for more than his body or the material things he might give—which was all he had to give. It drew him, more powerful than a serpent’s venom.
“The same, Miss Barrett.” He accepted the book with a murmur of thanks, deliberately brushing his fingers against hers.
Phoebe hesitated a moment, and then without a backward glance, hurried after her sister.
Chapter 8
The whole of the carriage ride home, Justina’s excited chattering filled the quiet and saved Phoebe from contributing to the discussion, that wasn’t really much of a discussion, about the shops they’d visited that morn. All the while, her mind raced to meet the speed of her thundering heart. He wanted to court her. The Marquess of Rutland, unkindly whispered about by all, desired more than just their fateful meetings. With that honorable request, so went all the reservations she’d carried after Honoria’s warning.
Yet, for all the harsh words spoken by her friends and gossips, she knew Edmund to be more—a man who, for all of the tons’ ill-opinion, believed in fate and d
reamed of a life beyond their glittering, cruel Society. Their shared love of Captain Cook and the wonders of the world united them, just as their position as gossiped-about figures of the peerage bound them.
A smile pulled at her lips. The carriage drew to a stop and she looked with some surprise to the window, realizing they’d arrived home.
“We’re home.” Justina clapped her hands together. “I cannot wait to tell Mama of all the bonnets and hats we saw at the milliner.”
Roger, the liveried footman who accompanied them on their travels, pulled the door open and helped Justina down first, and then reached a hand up. “Thank you,” Phoebe said. She trailed along at a slower pace behind her excited sister.
The butler pulled the door open and greeted them both with a grin on his wizened cheeks. “Hullo, Manfred.” Justina tugged at her bonnet strings and handed the revered item over to the ancient servant, a testament to her faith in his care. She didn’t trust her hats with just anyone.
“Miss Barrett, Miss Justina.” A twinkle gleamed in his eyes. “Master Andrew is—”
Justina’s eager shriek cut into his announcement and she went tearing down the hall that would have sent more staid mamas into histrionics. Mindful of appearances where her younger sister still was not, Phoebe followed along at a more sedate, though still quickened, pace.
Andrew was home. Two years younger than Phoebe, with his keen wit and brotherly devotion these years, he was everything their father had never been. The loud squeals of her sister’s laughter stirred emotion in Phoebe’s chest and, damning propriety, she raced the remainder of the way. She stepped inside the parlor.
He spun Justina around in a flurry of white skirts and then over her shoulder caught Phoebe in the doorway. “Ah, my sensible, protective, elder sister,” he said by way of greeting and set down Justina.
The youngest Barrett sibling slapped him on the arm. “Oh, do hush.”
“Andrew, it is ever so good to see you.” Skirts snapping noisily, she rushed over and flung her arms about him. But for her mother and sister, there was no one she loved more than her brother. For as horrid an existence they’d known as the children to the shameful Viscount Waters, they’d had one another, and the love shared had made everything else bearable.
Andrew enfolded her in his embrace. “Still unwed?”
She pinched him on the arm and stepped back. “You’re insufferable.”
Justina giggled. “I do not expect she’ll be unwed for long.”
Phoebe glared her into silence. Her efforts proved futile.
As one who’d delighted in vexing his two sisters, Andrew winged a blond eyebrow upward. “Oh?”
“There is a gentleman who has captured her notice.”
Heat scorched Phoebe’s neck and burned a trail up her cheeks. “There is no—” She promptly pressed her lips together. By Edmund’s own request just earlier that morning, he had every intention of launching a courtship and, as such, his presence would no longer be a secret to her brother or any of polite Society.
Andrew’s teasing grin slipped and he studied her with more maturity than she’d come to expect of him through the years. “You’re flying your colors, Phoebe.”
“My colors?” She furrowed her brow and looked questioningly to her sister, but Justina only lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. An equally befuddled expression marred her face.
The only Barrett son demonstrated the same relentless determination that he had with spillikins. “Come now, are you intending to become a tenant for life?”
An inelegant snort escaped her. He’d gone off to university and returned speaking a foreign language. “A what?” She buried a laugh in her fingers. But then, wasn’t that the way of young men?
Folding his arms across his wiry chest, he stared expectantly back at her. “Married,” he said, in the tones their nursemaid had practiced upon them as young children in the nursery. “Wedded.” Andrew took a step closer and tapped her on the nose. “And you’ve still not answered just who it is—”
At his subtle movement, a scent, a mixture of lavender and spiced wood wafted about, tickling her nose. “He’s…” She sniffed the air. “Egads, whatever are you wearing?” Phoebe scrubbed her nose in a bid to drive back a sneeze. “Achoo.”
Their sister’s unrestrained laugh filled the room and Andrew bristled with indignation. “This is all the scent.”
“All the what scent? The one to drive young ladies into a fit of sneezing?” Phoebe joined in her sister’s merriment.
Despite his eighteen, very nearly nineteen, years, he jutted his lower lip out the way he’d done as a young boy, unwanting to share his toy soldiers with two blood-thirsty sisters. Through her mirth, she took him in. Nearly a foot taller than her, at some point he’d grown from chubby young boy into this lean, tall figure she hardly recognized. “Oh, come, I’m only teasing.” She leaned up on tiptoe and ruffled his blond locks, arranged in the “frightened owl” fashion. Amusement tugged at her lips. “Er…”
“It is hair wax.” By the defensive note, she suspected she should let the matter rest.
“I feel that.” Then, having delighted in teasing one another through the years, she couldn’t very well cease now. “I feel a very good deal of that wax.” Phoebe dusted her hands together to rid her palms of the residue. He danced out of her reach, which only drew attention to the garish, canary yellow satin breeches. A groan escaped her as she took him in.
“What?” he sniffed the air, as if in search of that scent that had called attention to the transformation that had overtaken him this past semester at university.
“You’re a dandy,” she wailed, covering her eyes with her palm and shaking her head back and forth.
“Who is a dandy?” their mother called from the doorway, bringing the trio of siblings’ attention to the entrance of the room.
“Mama,” he took a quick step forward as though eager for a motherly hug as he’d been as a child, but remembered himself.
“Andrew,” she cried out and rushed forward.
He cleared his throat. “Mama.” Giving his garish lapels a tug, he rocked back on his heels. Phoebe stole a peek down, assessing those heels. Heels. Not boots. She sighed. Yes, a dandy, indeed.
Then, mothers were permitted liberties young men would never afford another. Mama clasped his face between her palms and leaned up on tiptoe and planted a kiss upon his cheek. “You’ve come home.”
His nose twitched. The movement so subtle anyone else might have failed to see, but she’d known Andrew better than anyone. “Why are you home?”
Crimson splotches of color stained his cheeks. “Can a son not return to see his mother?” He looked to his sisters. “Or a brother return to see his sisters?”
Justina skipped over and claimed his hand. “Do come sit,” she urged, tugging him over to the sofa. “I want to hear all your stories of university and the dashing, wonderful, young men you’ve met.”
Puffing his chest out with pride, Andrew claimed a seat and proceeded to speak on all the noblemen he’d come to call friend. Mama sat in the mahogany shell chair and seemed the only one to note that Phoebe remained standing. “Will you not sit?”
“I wished to read, Mama,” she replied.
Andrew ceased mid-sentence, a grin on his lips. “Your Captain Cook?”
Yes, her Captain Cook, but now another gentleman, one very much alive, occupied the better part of her thoughts these past three days. She inclined her head. “The very same. Will you excuse me?”
Just then, Justina asked her brother a question, calling his attention back and Phoebe slipped from the room. The tread of her slippers marked a silent path upon the carpeted corridors as she made her way to the pink parlor. She slipped inside. The stack of books neatly arranged into a pile on the mahogany, rose-inlaid table beckoned her. Not breaking stride, she swept the leather volume atop the small heap and carried it across the room.
Fanning the pages with her fingers, Phoebe slid onto the windowseat.
May I have permission to court you…?
The notorious nobleman, Edmund, Lord Rutland, wanted to court her. She’d resolved early on to never wed a reprobate such as her father and yet this man, with his tortured eyes and ability to speak of hope and share in her love of travel, had proven himself to be so very different than her father. For her friends’ warnings and Society’s whispers, she wanted to know more of him, ached to know all there was to know, and then learn those whispery secrets he kept even from himself, buried in the corners of his soul he didn’t realize existed within him.
Phoebe drew her legs to her chest and knocked her head against the leather volume. What madness had he wrought upon her that he’d so fully captivated her and ensnared her senses? A knock sounded at the door. “You’ve a visitor,” Manfred said from the entrance of the room, bringing her head up.
Likely Honoria arrived to debate once more the merits of Edmund’s worth. Drawing in a slow breath, she braced for the impending argument. “Honor—” The greeting died upon her lips at the sudden, unexpected appearance of the tall, commanding marquess. “Edmund,” she whispered.
A scowl formed on the normally stoic servant’s face. Edmund had clearly grown accustomed to those glowers of disapproval through the years, for he stepped past the other man and entered the room, a small package tucked under his arm. He passed a quick gaze about and then finding the parlor empty but for her, he fixed his intense stare upon her.
Phoebe hopped belatedly to her feet and dropped a curtsy.
A wry grin pulled at his hard lips. “Come, Phoebe, there is no need for such formality between us.” He winged an eyebrow upward. “Were you expecting another?” Even with the space between them, she detected the dark flare of emotion light his eyes.
Was he jealous? “Just my friend, Honoria,” she assured him. Her mind spun at his sudden appearance.
The flecks of gold glinted with a hardness that gave her pause, sending off a distant warning bell. She smoothed her palms over the front of her skirts, unable to account for his cool response to her admission, as in this moment he was transformed into the dark, dangerous figure her friends had warned her against. “M-my lord?”
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