How the Marquess Was Won (14 page)

She’d shied away.

She was a schoolteacher and a paid companion and he was a marquess, and really, he oughtn’t to hang his coat over her shoulders any more than he ought to hang it over the cook’s shoulders. And she’d never really known how to let someone take care of her, anyway.

“Lisbeth plays pianoforte very well,” he mused after a moment, sounding a little too hearty and casual. “One might even say she possesses actual talent.”

And money. And beauty. And prospects. And family. And beautiful clothes. And a fan that reminds you of her.

Does she have your heart?

Or is your heart subject to “business arrangements” only, too?

“That she does,” she agreed softly. Because she was above all things honest, and because it was the right thing to say and do in the circumstances.

The
safe
thing to do.

Nonsense. It was the cowardly thing to do, she told herself, suffering.

Suddenly Lisbeth’s Chinese silk shawl burned in her hand. She turned her head nervously back toward the door. Bloody hell! How long
had
she been gone?

He must have sensed she was poised to bolt, because his voice came quickly.

“I’ve never told another soul about the vases and the humidor and . . . the like.”

She froze.

She drew in a breath, and her suddenly racing heart made the breath shudder out when she exhaled. A part of her was furious and impatient. It was very unfair of destiny to arrange for her to be alone in the dark with a soul-stirring man and soul-stirring music. She was only human, too, and though she was strong she had nowhere near his fortitude. She wanted to stomp her foot.

Don’t burden me with your friendship. Don’t gift me with your thoughts! Don’t seek me out. Nothing good will ever come of this. I’m only twenty-two! I haven’t the answers. I just wanted to be near you.

“Perhaps you told me because I’m . . . safe.”

I’m nobody. I wouldn’t dare gossip. I’m leaving the country.

Even she didn’t think that was true. She did, however, want to hear what he would say about it.

He lifted his head slowly. And as she followed the clean line of his profile with her own eyes, it felt as though it were being etched into her heart, one curve, one angle, one hollow at a time.

When he spoke, his voice was soft again. Mildly incredulous.

“Oh, you’re not safe, Miss Vale.”

Meaning rippled out from the words. Like water disturbed by the skip of a stone. They contained warning and promise, bemusement and bittersweet irony.

And because, despite uncertainties and gulfs, they were both rogues at heart, their smiles were simultaneous, crooked, slow.

She shook her head. Wonderingly or warningly or exasperatedly, she wasn’t sure.

The space between them, both the distance and the nearness, just shy of inappropriate, was suddenly fraught with meaning. It seemed ridiculous, when really, by right of natural law, she ought to be in his arms.

And then something spritely and raucous began on the pianoforte, and she jumped.

“I’ll go inside and listen to her now.” She was all bright babble now. “After all,
I
didn’t jilt Signora Licari, and her voice is beautiful and rare. And loud. At least you shall know when it’s safe to return, because it shall be apparent when she stops.”

He sighed, acceding to the broken spell. “Is she staying beneath this roof tonight?”

“One can hardly send a famous soprano to the Pig & Thistle to sleep in the room behind the bar. But I understand she has another engagement in London, so she’ll be leaving straightaway. Perhaps even this evening.”

“Perhaps
I
should sleep at the Pig & Thistle.”

“There’s always the barn.”

He grinned suddenly again, looking like a boy. She wondered if he was relieved that the moment had been shattered, too.

How long
had
she been gone? The length of an aria, at least. However long an aria was. And now the panic was a thing with claws. She hadn’t the time to fetch her own shawl now. She held up Lisbeth’s shawl. “Lisbeth might be in there shivering even now. So—I—”

She spun on her heel and almost dashed. She could hear her own footsteps, and it worked on her nerves as though someone or something was in pursuit of her.

My own desires,
she thought melodramatically.

She was nearly to the door when his voice rose, called after her.

“
Where
in London, Scheherezade?”

She turned and walked backward a few feet before deciding to answer. He was asking where she’d been born.

“Seven Dials.”

Mull
that
out here in the dark, Lord Dryden.

“And you owe me a gift,” she added.

Her heartbeat matching the staccato beat of her footsteps, she disappeared into the house.

Chapter 10

S
he hadn’t realized quite how cold she was until she burst again into the heat of the house and began to rush back to the salon, her slippers nearly skidding over marble. She deliberately slowed her pace to the sedate one expected of a schoolmistress/paid companion, straight-spined and square-shouldered, one foot in front of the other and . . . well, how about that. Very like walking a tightrope.

Interesting that she should have that in common with the marquess.

She peered around the parlor doorway to get her first glimpse of the soprano. Signora Sophia Licari stood next to the pianoforte, one hand resting atop it as though it were a beast trained to do her bidding and simply awaiting her next command. She was a gorgeous beast herself, a lioness, with masses of golden-brown hair piled up high and stabbed into place with sparkling pins. Her dress was a melodramatic crimson and very snug. Her bosom was majestic. Her waist tiny. Her eyes were all but closed, her long, long lashes lying over her cheeks, as her head tipped back as inhumanly glorious sound poured from her.

The diamonds around her throat were as subtle as a breastplate on a Viking warrior.

They didn’t look like the sort of diamonds the marquess would choose, which would naturally be tasteful, expensive, and blindingly pure. Perhaps she’d moved on to another protector. In all fairness, Signora Licari didn’t look like the sort to hurl a humidor out of outraged pride. Her dignity, like the marquess’s, was a palpable thing. And there was an otherness about her that Phoebe was certain was apparent to everyone who saw her:
I am not ordinary
, it announced.
Rather, I am extraordinary. Proceed at your peril, mere mortal
.

But he was no ordinary man. Even goddesses like this one had succumbed to him.

I would never take the loss of him lightly, either, if he’d ever been mine.

But here was the thing: even as he’d spoken about her, she’d been certain he’d never truly belonged to Sophia Licari. She knew it the way she knew the color of her own eyes, or the freckle next to her mouth, or that the sun would rise again.

Because he’s meant for me
.

She huffed out an impatient breath, blowing the dangerous, ridiculous thought away.

Phoebe peered in at the audience, savoring it with unguarded wonder. She would tell Postlethwaite about it later: how the rows of beautiful people looked lit by the Redmonds’ gaslight and enormous chandeliers, their cheeks flushed from the extravagant heat and all those bodies snugly packed together on velvet-cushioned chairs. Lord Waterburn was fast asleep, head thrown back, mouth open, arms crossed over his chest. Jonathan Redmond and Lord Argosy were in the back row pretending to pay rapt attention, but their hands were moving surreptitiously, and she suspected they were playing some kind of card game balanced on their thighs. She saw Jonathan hand over a rolled-up note of some kind, likely a pound note.

Her intimidating hosts, Isaiah and Fanchette Redmond, were ensconced in the front row, seemingly riveted by the performance.

Isaiah reached for his wife’s hand, brought it over to his lap.

Phoebe was fascinated by the gesture. Was it staged for the guests, or was he indeed moved enough to clutch his handsome, frightening wife’s hand? It was such a
human
thing for a man like him to do.

Lisbeth was leaning forward as far as she could, as though the music was a beam of light.

She hadn’t noticed Phoebe standing at the entrance at all.

Phoebe smiled ruefully. She was pleased Lisbeth had lost herself in the music. But no matter how often she looked at her, she never became less beautiful or appealing or less perfectly suited to be the wife of a marquess.

Or less determined to
be
the wife of a marquess. She was clutching her fan as if it was the marquess himself.

The song ended with a note Signora Licari teased into lasting a quavering eternity. She must have lungs like bellows, Phoebe thought admiringly.

Signora Licari regally ducked her head when applause crashed around her.

Phoebe took that opportunity to scurry into the room and slide into her chair next to Lisbeth. She nudged her gently, and Lisbeth’s hand absently reached out for the shawl. She scarcely glanced at Phoebe, so enraptured was she by the glorious creature that was Signora Licari. Too enraptured, with any luck, to notice the marquess’s continued absence.

“Thank you. Did you
hear
her, Phoebe? Isn’t she
marvelous
?”

“I’ve never heard anything quite like it. Thank you for inviting me so I could hear her.” She said this quite sincerely. No matter what, she would never forget it.

Lisbeth turned then, eyes wide with surprise, indecision, and the expression she finally decided upon was benevolence. “Oh, Phoebe. I’m glad that I could share it with . . .”

Her face blanked peculiarly.

She blinked.

She lifted her shawl to her nose . . . and lowered it slowly again to her lap.

And then she leaned forward abruptly and sniffed the air near Phoebe.

Phoebe reared back.

Lisbeth stopped sniffing. Her lovely brow furrowed, as if she was undecided about what she was about to say.

“Phoebe . . . ?”

“Goodness. Is aught amiss, Lisbeth?”

“You . . . you smell like cheroot
smoke
.” This last part she said on a reproachful hush.

Christ!

Phoebe’s stomach plummeted. She stared at Lisbeth.

Who stared back at her. Looking troubled but vaguely hopeful, like a child who hopes to be reassured no monsters are under its bed.

Phoebe wanted to speak. Really she did. A number of excuses occurred to her and she would have produced any of them, if only her mouth and brain were in communication, not clubbed into a stupor by guilt and terror. Her mouth simply wouldn’t move at all.

“It’s not Phoebe, it’s probably me, you goose.” Jonathan leaned over back of her chair so suddenly both girls jumped. “Besides,
she
can’t afford the kind of cheroots we all normally smoke.”

He was teasing, she knew; she saw the glint in his eyes. But then he flicked a glance at Phoebe. She saw his eyes travel to her gloves and linger, and widen infinitesimally. Some expression—surprise?—she couldn’t quite identify twitched across his face, there and gone. He looked up into hers, and his expression was still kind.

She still hadn’t quite recovered from the urge to faint. But she produced a smile that probably looked as sickly as it felt. She rejoiced in the fact that her mouth could move again, at least.

“I suppose you’re right.” Lisbeth sniffed at Jonathan. “You do rather stink, Jon.” She wrinkled her nose, sniffed her shawl again, frowned—only Lisbeth could make a frown seem pretty—shrugged, and then decided stoically to drape it over her shoulders.

And Jonathan helped her in a very gentlemanly and cousinly fashion. As if tucking the question of the cheroot stink decisively away.

And as he did he looked up at Phoebe. He didn’t wink at her. But something speculative and—dare she say it?—sympathetic lingered in her eyes. Odd, but she’d never thought Jonathan Redmond capable of appearing enigmatic. Or of being complex.

But then she thought of Isaiah Redmond reaching for his wife’s hand. And the marquess walking a tightrope. The one thing she’d been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often
right
. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one’s own prejudices.