Delicious (14 page)

And tossing street thugs ten feet into the lamppost. And peeling a boiled egg with delicate swiftness. He sliced the boiled egg in two, set the halves on another plate, and dropped a pinch each of salt and pepper next to the egg halves. Then he held out the plate toward her.

She looked down and was surprised to see that she’d already eaten everything on her plate. They exchanged plates. The egg was still warm, the white firm, the yolks just barely set.

The French had five hundred ways of making eggs. But there was something in the wholesome goodness of a fresh egg respectfully boiled that held its own against the multitude of fanciful preparations. This egg was not as fresh as those from Fairleigh Park’s own henhouse. And it was boiled fifteen seconds past optimum. But still, it was a pleasure on the tongue, the yolk rich and sensual, the white so smooth she could taste the individual grains of salt on it.

She tried to prolong the pleasure, but finished in no time at all. “That was a good egg.”

“I’m glad you liked it,” said her wouldn’t-be lover, folding the handkerchief with which he’d carefully wiped his fingertips. “Have the rest for breakfast.”

With a little start she realized he was about to leave, as he’d said he would, now that she’d eaten.

“Would you hand me a slice of cake?” she said.

He looked up sharply, as if she’d requested he kiss her instead. Their gaze held a long moment, until the air around her became too taut to breathe. She began to wonder if she had indeed issued an invitation of the carnal sort. He looked away and did as she asked, bringing her two slices of cake.

“The cake is good, too,” she said, somewhat stupidly, after a bite.

“Do you like cake?”

She felt his eyes on her, his attention a palpable heat on her cheeks, as if she were standing in her kitchen, not far from a stove on full bore.

“I like everything. A full stomach is a luxury that never galls.” She bit into the moist cake again, exploring the crenellations of a dried currant with the tip of her tongue. “Thank you for the food. I was quite starved after I came back. And the thought of spending a hungry night was agony.”

“My pleasure,” he said simply.

She bowed her head. “I’m sorry that I was quite rude earlier.”

“There’s nothing wrong in putting your own well-being ahead of my sensibilities. Let’s not forget that I wanted much from you.”

Her face flamed. She stuffed her mouth with cake so she didn’t have to respond.

“It’s getting late,” he said after a minute. “I should go before the streets of London are no longer safe even for a man.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good night, Cinderella.”

She set her plate down. “Good night. And thank you again for everything.”

His lips pulled into an expression that half resembled a smile. “Let me know when you have found your true prince.”

He crossed the scant distance that separated the table and the door, lifted his hat from where he’d left it on the coat tree, and reached for the door.

“Wait!”

He waited, his hand on the door handle. She took a napkin from the table, wiped her hands, and approached him.

“I would like to shake your hand,” she said.

She extended her hand. He turned around and glanced at it. For two full seconds he did nothing. Then he leaned forward, grabbed hold of her shoulders, and kissed her.

His kiss was nothing like his precise formality, but exactly like his burst of violence. She felt as if she’d been picked up off the ground and thrown ten feet into a lamppost. Her head spun. All the breath was knocked out of her. Her arms fluttered by her sides like a pair of confused old ladies.

Then she put her arms to use. She clutched him to her, as if she were a grasshopper and he the last day of summer, and kissed him back.

Chapter Eight

L
izzy walked the smooth, even embankment that had been built along the Ure. The sun had just climbed above the horizon. The river was illumed in a fragile light the color of watered beer. The world seemed new, the air clear and cold, so pure after London’s sooty vapors that it almost hurt to breathe.

There was a time when she would have found Fairleigh Park wanting, when she’d have overlooked its fresh loveliness because it did not possess the mass and grandeur to rival Lyndhurst Hall, the Arlingtons’ ancestral manor, or Huntington, Lord Wrenworth’s seat.

But that was so long ago, when she’d believed that a mere batting of her eyelashes could cause a tempest in a man’s heart, any man’s heart. The young Arlington heir had certainly seemed susceptible to her charms, but he had loved her less than he’d feared his mother, who didn’t think Lizzy’s connections quite good enough for her exalted family.

She’d next set her cap on the Marquess of Wrenworth, whose mother had been long dead and who had the greatest fortune among all the titled men of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The marquess, despite Lizzy’s assiduous courting, would marry a woman of no connections whatsoever.

The twin failures and her mother’s death from what everyone had thought a mere seasonal cold had plunged Lizzy into a state of rudderless misery that had led to the disaster with Henry. And
that
had led to a deep melancholia from which she’d thought she’d never emerge. But emerged she had, weak and uncertain, to find herself almost on the shelf, her prospects of a good marriage—of any kind of marriage—halving with each passing year.

It was better fortune than she deserved that Stuart had at last decided to marry—and that he’d been receptive to her overtures. As a girl, she’d entertained thoughts of marriage with him, until she’d realized that while he was handsome and well thought of by her father, he had neither the importance nor the wealth that she’d decided was her due.

In the years since, while she’d blindly chased after the impossible match to satisfy her vanity, he’d risen high in the world. There was talk that after the passage of the Irish Home Rule bill, he would be given the portfolio of the Home Secretary. A Great Office of the State at his age could augur only one thing: a career at 10 Downing Street.

And now this very fine, very beautiful estate.

She sighed. He could have chosen any woman. He chose her. Years ago she’d have been smug and superior about it. Now she was only grateful. She was determined to be a perfect wife to him. She would make him happy, and make sure that he never had cause to regret his choice.

“Are you quite all right, Miss Bessler?”

She jerked around at Mr. Marsden’s voice. He stood a few feet away, an expression of apparent concern on his face. “You stopped walking and you’ve been standing in place.”

How long had he been there, watching her? Had he followed her from the house? And why must her first reaction to his presence be a quiver of excitement?

“I couldn’t be better, thank you,” she said coolly.

He had behaved himself last night, at dinner and afterward. He could be quite the charming guest when he tried, which made her resent him even more for his deliberate provocation on the train.

“I understand that congratulations are in order, even though the official word will not be in the papers for a few days yet,” he said.

“And now you need not trouble yourself on why I haven’t married, despite all my sterling qualities,” she said.

She resumed walking in the direction of the house, for a lady did not stand and converse with a gentleman. He fell into step beside her. “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”

“Quite,” she said.

“And what a tremendous dinner last night. The best I’ve ever had.”

“I can’t agree more.”

“And Madame Durant is beautiful, or so they say.”

There was something prurient in his tone. Lizzy glanced at him. He again wore that speculative dirty look.

Enough was enough. She would be Mrs. Somerset in a matter of weeks. She did not have to put up with this insolence from a mere secretary. She halted. “The way you look at me makes me intensely uncomfortable, Mr. Marsden. I would be most obliged if you would desist.”

The obsceneness receded from his eyes. He had gray eyes that matched the cashmere scarf about his neck—yet another example of his vanity. She would not be surprised at all to learn that he wore padded shoes so that they would stand at exactly the same height of five foot ten.

“I’m sorry. Have I been so obvious?” he said, sounding more amused than anything else. “So you’ve noticed that I couldn’t stop looking at you.”

His admission set off a strange thrill.

“I would appreciate it if you made an effort, since it would be best for us to remain on amicable terms for Mr. Somerset’s sake,” she said grandly.

“Perhaps we might not need to maintain amicable terms,” he said. “I haven’t decided whether I’ll let Mr. Somerset marry a woman of your…unconventional ways, and I’ve still a few more days to make up my mind.”

“I beg your pardon?” she cried.

But her indignation wasn’t what it should be. Instead it was lined and stuffed with fear. Did he know about Henry? In what other way could she be described as “unconventional,” a label she’d assiduously avoided, as it usually referred only to suffragettes and bluestockings and women otherwise unfit for the upper echelons of Society?

And if Mr. Marsden chose to take it upon himself to inform Stuart, who was to say that he wouldn’t see it as his further duty to inform the rest of the world? Once her conduct with Henry became common knowledge, she’d be banished to some bleak cottage in the moors to live out the rest of her life in disgrace and ostracism.

“Paris. Madame Belleau’s house. The burgundy chamber with the mirrors,” he said.

She stared at him, understanding nothing at first. Then she did.

“Deny it,” he prompted her. “Laugh at me and tell me it was only my sordid imagination. That you would never, ever do such a thing. That you never even knew such a thing was possible. What an abomination!”

“Oh, please.” She was almost giddy with relief. What Mr. Marsden had witnessed was the merest of trifles, something she and Stuart could laugh about were he to learn of it. “Let us not insult Mr. Somerset’s intelligence. Do you think he would care that I once allowed an omnivorous Frenchwoman to kiss me? I assure you that far worse things happen at the best finishing schools on the Continent.”

“I think he might care if his fiancée preferred his cook to himself.”

“Which I most decidedly do not, or I would have eagerly participated in the goings-on at school. And Madame Belleau only caught me at a moment of great ennui. Believe me, when she disrobed and beckoned to me from her overly gilded bedstead, I had absolutely no intention or desire to ravish her.”

Mr. Marsden looked at her a long time, as if trying to decide whether she was telling the truth, and as if that decision held some great personal significance to him. “A good thing,” he said at last. “Since her husband walked in a minute later.”

“A good thing indeed.”

“I always thought it a masterly performance that you put on, holding her hand, wiping her brow, and telling him that she’d succumbed to a particularly virulent case of the vapors.”

It
had
been a masterly performance, if Lizzy said so herself.

“A depraved couple,” she said. “She acted shocked enough, diving under the bedspread and giving me all those panicky looks, but I’m not convinced that his arrival was an accident.”

Mr. Marsden chortled, with what seemed to be surprised glee. There was still something enigmatic about his mirth, but compared to what she was used to from him, it was as guileless as a baby’s burble.

“A pity, really, that your Sapphic inclinations weren’t more overwhelming,” he said. “For I do love a good melodrama.”

“You must look for it elsewhere, sir,” she said. “Now, if you are done blackmailing me, good day.”

He nodded. “Until the funeral, Miss Bessler.”

She walked off, but as she turned to climb up the steps that led toward the house, she saw that he’d remained in place, watching her, his scarf streaming in the morning breeze.