Everything I Ever Wanted (6 page)

She would say nothing, of course. She could not imagine that the words would ever come properly to her mind when she would be in need of them.

India sank more deeply into her seat, gentled by the steady rocking of the cab and syncopated beat of the horse's hooves on the cobbles. She closed her eyes for but a moment.

India missed the viscount's awakening, but he did not miss hers. He was turning from paying the driver when he saw her stir. He paused, waved off the cabbie, then sat back in the seat and awaited India's return to full consciousness. She came to it with an abrupt little jolt as though breaking a fall. South knew he would not like to awake so rudely. There was no peace in the sleep that came before, and usually no peace in the living immediately after.

"Miss Parr," he said, inclining his head. "May I assist you from the carriage?" He permitted himself a small smile when she stared at him blankly, though he was more troubled than amused. There was no recognition in her eyes, no sense of her surroundings. She was thoroughly unprotected in that moment and remained unconscious of it for several more.

"What?" She blinked slowly. "Oh. Oh, why, yes. I slept, didn't I? Odd, that's never happened." This last was said more to herself than to him. Her chin jerked, a small, birdlike movement as she heard the sound of her own speech as though from a distance. She fell silent, trying to orient herself.

Southerton waited no longer. He ducked out of the carriage and turned to offer his hand to her, grasping her wrist when she did not avail herself of his assistance. His pull was light but inexorable, and he drew India to her feet and then outside without a show of force or even effort. The driver flew ahead of them to the small stoop outside India's unexceptional gray stone home and applied himself to the brass knocker. The door swung open, held there by a distracted young maid in a twisted gown and skewed cap, just as South and India reached it. The driver forgot himself long enough to stare openly at the flustered maidservant before the advance of his passengers reminded him of his place. He made a slight bow and disappeared.

South noticed India lift a single brow in her maid's direction, a gesture that managed to be censorious and tolerant at the same time. She would never have any discipline among the ranks while giving those opposing orders. Mildly amused and more than a little intrigued by this lack of discipline, South escorted India to a sitting room on the main floor. Miss Parr found wits about her enough to tell the maid to bring some light repast for them from the kitchen; then they were alone.

"Please," India said softly, "you will make yourself comfortable."

The way she phrased it, with that slight inflection at the end, South thought the invitation was more in the way of discovering if he could be comfortable here. Looking around, he very much decided that he could. He had not thought that he might have preconceived some notion of how the actress lived, and he realized now that this was not the case. He must have given it some fleeting thought since the moment of their first meeting, or perhaps since the colonel raised the specter of such a meeting, because this room, at least, seemed to him wholly unexpected.

It was sparely furnished with a chaise longue, a Queen Anne settee, and a single chair near the fireplace. The hearth itself was not an elaborate green-veined marble affair but plaster. The mantel gleamed whitely against light blue walls and darker wainscoting. There were two small round tables with ball and claw feet situated so they could be reached easily from wherever one was seated. One held the remnants of material that spilled over the side into a basket on the floor; the other held a stack of three books still bound with carrying string from the booksellers. The appointments were centered by the Aubusson rug. The perimeter of the room had a narrow sideboard, a window seat that overlooked the front street, and a table near the door, which held a Delft blue vase abundantly filled with hothouse flowers.

Southerton removed his hat and gloves and placed them on the table beside the vase. Miss Parr stepped toward him as he began to unfasten his coat, belatedly realizing that her flustered maid had taken no measures to secure these items from him. South waved away her concern and laid his coat over the back of the chaise. He walked slowly around the room, studying the occasional figurine, reading the spine of a book lying on its side. He was aware of India watching him but wholly unconcerned by it.

"This is a pleasant room, Miss Parr," he said.

"I am glad you find it so. I have been told it is rather too spacious a room to be so meagerly appointed, but there is nothing I wish to add."

He shrugged. "Then you should not. You enjoy the late-morning light here?"

"Yes. For reading and sketching. Sometimes I sew."

He nodded, his glance going from the books to the basket of colorful fabrics. "And for entertaining?"

"I no. That is, I do not" India sat down abruptly on the settee. Her shawl slipped over one shoulder, and she made no attempt to reposition it over her in spite of the fact that she was chilled. "I have only the rare visitor," she said after a moment. "I suppose it comes of being so often surrounded that I find a great deal of peace in being alone."

"But not lonely?"

"No," she said. "Not here." Only sometimes , she could have added but did not. It was more often that she felt as one out of step in the middle of a dressing room filled with admirers than she did in here. Standing onstage, accepting the accolades of an approving audience, was on occasion an experience of profound and disturbing loneliness. That admission was difficult enough to make to herself. It was not the sort of thing one confessed to a stranger.

And he was a stranger, no matter that he seemed oddly familiar to her. That was the stuff of fanciful dreams, she chided herself. In truth, she had taken a risk by inviting him here, though not as great a risk as it may have seemed to the uninitiated. This was more in the fashion of a calculated risk. If she was correct, then the viscount was biding his time as well, taking his direction from her. If she was wrong, then then she would accustom herself to the fact that she must never see him again. It might come to that end anyway.

Southerton went to the fireplace and stoked the coals, making them give up a little more heat and light. "I was uncertain if you would accept my invitation," he said. "That I should then find myself in a position to accept yours was most unexpected."

"You were clever to send Doobin. You would not have reached me otherwise."

"My thinking exactly ." Without conscious thought he moved his jaw sideways, the gesture reminiscent of working out the kink she had put there on their first encounter. He turned more fully in her direction and found her gaze had narrowed on his chin. "It no longer hurts," he told her.

"There's a faint bruise."

"Yes. But no scarring." He touched the corner of his mouth, where her earrings had cut him. "Pity, that. My sister says it would have improved my standing in society to have a scar just there."

One of India Parr's brows lifted in a perfect arch. "You did not believe her, I hope."

"Certainly not. She is my sister, after all, and given to the worst sort of encouragement and wild tales if she thinks it will serve in humbling me."

Since he said this with a certain amount of affection in his voice and a gleam in his eye, India accepted that Southerton found his sister's attempts not at all provoking. "Had she told you a scar would have improved your countenance," she said,"you may have depended upon her word. But your standing in society? I think not. It is not as if such a scar was earned at the point of a rapier. There is not much standing to be gained from an encounter with a lady's fist, especially when one expressly asked for the delivery of the very same."

Southerton stared at her. "Improve my countenance?" he said after a moment, as if it were the only part of her speech that mattered. "Do you truly think so?"

He delivered these questions with such perfect self-absorption that India found herself wondering if she had mistaken the man. She held his gaze, searching for some crack that would indicate a facade. There was none. What she saw instead was a look of keen, penetrating intelligence, unwavering in its return regard, so that she could not help but be touched by it. "Indeed," she replied in dry accents. "A scar is just the thing."

Southerton laughed. "I believe you would delight in wounding me."

"I think what I should like is making the acquaintance of your sister."

The viscount's smile faded. There was an imperceptible straightening to his figure, more an absence of the relaxed mode he had been enjoying than an alteration in his posture.

India did not fail to miss the change in her guest. She was embarrassed by the wistfulness that had crept into her own voice when she had imagined an introduction to his sister. No, that would not be possible. Not at all. "Forgive me," she said softly. "I spoke without thinking. I did not mean"

The scratching at the door interrupted India, and supper was wheeled into the room. The larger table was cleared of fabrics, the basket moved to the side, and dishes set out. A footman appeared with two chairs and placed them at the table. The maid, looking again as if she had her wits about her, worked efficiently and quietly, and both servants took their leave at India's dismissal.

Southerton regarded the late supper with some surprise. There was a hot, clear soup for their first course, the aroma of roast lamb from under one of the covered platters, and, if he wasn't mistaken, the fragrance of fresh, crusty bread slipping out from another.

India encouraged her guest to begin. "I often eat late, though alone. The odd hours of my profession."

South knew that something of his thoughts had been related to her, and he wondered how he had given himself away. A less perceptive woman would have assumed his surprise had been only for the supper, yet India Parr sensed more than the obvious and unerringly targeted the things he had not said. He had found himself doubting the truth of her earlier statement about entertaining infrequently in her own home. Now she underscored it again.

Southerton tasted the consomme and discovered the stock was seasoned to perfection. Miss Parr had found herself a diamond of a cook. "Is it so important that I believe I am the exception to your rule?" he asked, deciding they might as well confront his doubts openly rather than delicately step around them.

India's spoon hovered a few inches above, her bowl."You are direct, my lord."

"When it suits me."

She nodded once, accepting this, and lifted the spoon to her mouth. The broth went down easily, and that struck her as odd, because she had not thought swallowing would come so simply with his clear gray eyes watching her. "I suppose I do not wish to seem a foolish woman to you, nor a promiscuous one. I know what is said about actresses. Indeed, I should have a head full of cotton otherwise. It is generally held that we are little more than Cyprians, hardly discernible from prostitutes for all that we walk behind the footlamps rather than in front of them."

South cocked one dark brow. "You are also direct, Miss Parr."

"When it suits me." Her imitation of his timbre and tone was impeccably done. She liked that he immediately recognized himself and had the capacity to find humor in her well-intentioned mockery. "There are exceptions, of course. I am referring once again to the actress-as-prostitute. Respect is hard won. The great Mrs. Siddons comes to mind."

He waited for her to expand on that theme. When she did not, he nodded in sympathy. "Society is not kind to independent women."

"It depends on the nature of their independence. Widows enjoy a certain freedom."

This was true. Southerton thought of Lady Powell and their renewed acquaintance earlier in the summer at the Battenburn estate. By all accounts, Grace had been a faithful wife to her much older husband. As a widow she conducted herself discreetly, choosing lovers with care and caution.

She did not squander her dead husband's fortune and played within society's rules by observing mourning and respecting Lord Powell's memory. It mattered to no one that she accepted all manner of gifts, if not precisely in exchange for sexual favors, then as part and parcel of her liaisons. It was expected, even when the liaison was brief, hardly more than a flirtation. No one among the ton thought of Lady Powell as a Cyprian. Her brothers would have demanded satisfaction.

"I take your point," South said.

"Courtesans enjoy the most freedom," India went on. "But they are prostitutes, no matter how one refines upon it."

"Governesses," South said.

"Perfectly respectable, though not necessarily respected. Remunerated hostages."

True enough, South thought. "So you accept society's characterization of your profession as the true price of your independence."

India smiled. "Something like that. But it does not mean I wish you to accept it. We will enjoy a more companionable evening together if you trust at the outset that it will not end in my bedchamber. I am cognizant of the fact that inviting you to my home could have raised the opposite expectation."

"Yes, but feeding me is an inspired diversion. The consomme is most excellent."

"You are a man of simple tastes, then."

He saluted her wordplay with a small lift of his spoon. "How is it that you became an actress?" he asked.