Three Weeks With Lady X (15 page)

“I don’t think we’re friends,” India observed.

“In that case, what are we?”

She ducked under his arm and walked away without answering, because there was no good reply to that.

He shouted when she had almost reached the door. “India!”

She turned.

“You forgot your nighttime reading!” The book hurtled through the air, and she instinctively put up her hand and caught it.

That smile again.

Chapter Fifteen

Early the next evening

The drawing room, Starberry Court

I
ndia, darling, I insist that you go to bed early this evening,” Adelaide said. “You look half-dead.”

India felt a pulse of pure shame. The truth was that she had stayed up far too late, absorbed in the exploits of Francis Feather. “I cannot. I have only one day left before the duke and duchess join us.”

“I am exhausted myself,” her godmother said. “I shall take supper in my room, and I recommend you do the same. When do Mr. Dautry and Rose arrive?”

“Tomorrow morning,” India said.

“That young man will have to mind his language in the next week. I’m astonished that dear Eleanor wasn’t able to do more with him. After all, he lived in their house from an early age.”

In India’s estimation, it wouldn’t matter at what age Thorn had entered the duke’s house: it would have been too late.

“Of course, he
is
his father’s son,” Adelaide continued. “Those eyes are his father’s, and that hair, all the rest of it.”

“But for the personality,” India pointed out. “I have always found the Duke of Villiers to be as courteous as he is witty.”

“That’s because you know Villiers only after he married. Years ago he reveled in upsetting people: imagine the scandal when he first appeared in society after bringing six illegitimate children, from five different mothers, to live under his roof.”

“I don’t believe that Mr. Dautry is emulating his father’s footsteps by strewing children across the countryside,” India said.

“I agree.” Adelaide walked out of the drawing room, heading for the stairs. “In my experience, people whose parents led irregular lives tend to be quite conservative. Just look at you, my dear.”

India followed her up, automatically checking to make sure that every speck of dust had been removed from the shining banister. “What have I to do with this? I am not the product of an irregular union.”

“Of course you are not! Your parents were married in St. Paul’s Cathedral on an absolutely beautiful day, though it did rain later in the afternoon, as I recall. But they were not, shall we say, entirely traditional in their nurturing, were they?”

As most parents didn’t send their children out into the woods to forage for mushrooms for supper, India offered no defense of them. Still, “I don’t think my parents’ eccentricities made me conventional,” she observed.

“You guard your heart,” Adelaide said, reaching the top and pausing. “Don’t you, child? You talk about choosing between your various suitors as if you were choosing dining room chairs.”

“How else should I do it?” India replied, stung. “That’s what my father would have done, if he were alive and if he had been an entirely different man.” She was all too aware that had her father still been alive, she might well have been running around his estate without proper shoes to this day, unless she’d been married off to a cowherd.

“With your dowry and title, you have your choice of men. I’m merely saying that you could choose on the basis of love, if you wish.” Adelaide turned into her bedchamber, rang the bell, and sat down before the fireplace.

“That did not work well for my father and mother.” India, who had followed Adelaide into her room, bent over and kissed her on the cheek. “You do know that it was the best day of my life when you took me in, don’t you?”

Adelaide smiled, but shook her head. “It wasn’t the best day of your life, it was the worst, because your dear parents had left you. They didn’t mean to, but they left you.”

Personally, India felt that parents who’d spent their time being artists and worshipping the moon—as opposed to ensuring that their daughter had been properly fed and clothed—had left that child years before they’d run away to London and died in a carriage accident.

But she also knew that Adelaide preferred to believe that the marquess and his wife had been merely flighty. Eccentric. Different.

She kissed her godmother again and went to her own room, falling onto her bed. Unfortunately, as soon as she lay down she proved to have more than enough energy to think about the way Thorn made her feel: silly, and feminine, and weak in the knees. Which was absurd.

She rolled over on her back, biting her lip. She had to stop thinking about him. He was a man who knew what he wanted, and he wanted Lala: a girl who was lovable and uncomplicated, like sunshine. And beautiful. India wasn’t falsely humble about her own looks, but she didn’t have Lala’s perfect features and sunny blue eyes.

What’s more, India had a hard shell, built up over those lonely days while her parents had cavorted and she’d been hungry and hadn’t known what to do with herself. When there had been no cook, and no footmen, and nothing but a huge, decaying house.

She sighed and rang the bell to ask Marie to fetch her some supper. It was stupid to feel slighted by the fact that Thorn wanted to marry someone else.

It wasn’t as if
she
wanted
him,
after all.

T
he next morning Thorn decided to ride to Starberry Court, leaving Rose, Twink, and Clara to follow in the carriage. He was well aware that he was irritable. To begin with, the rubber band machine had broken down yesterday, a disaster that followed a morning drive with Laetitia that left him a little concerned.

She hadn’t said a word. Not a single word. She’d just sat next to him, her hands folded, as beautiful and as mute as an English rose.

India was no English rose. She was a wildflower, something brighter and uncultivated that stirred your heart with its beauty.

Tomorrow, when Laetitia arrived for the house party, she would surely have more to say for herself. Perhaps she had simply been lulled into a companionable silence by the trotting horses, or the fresh air.

As he dismounted before Starberry Court, the great front door opened and a man—clearly a butler, given his lack of gloves—emerged, two footmen at his heels.

The butler bowed. “Mr. Dautry, my name is Fleming. Lady Xenobia engaged me to serve as your butler, should I prove satisfactory.”

Thorn handed Fleming his coat and listened while the man told him that the Ladies Adelaide and Xenobia had not yet risen. After that he asked Fleming enough questions to get the lay of the house; incredibly, in all his visits he’d never managed to go above the ground floor. It seemed the family chambers were situated in one wing, and the guest rooms were in the other. “Isn’t the nursery generally on the third floor?” he asked.

“Lady Xenobia believes that modern mothers prefer a less old-fashioned arrangement,” Fleming stated. “Her ladyship converted a large sitting room in the family wing to a nursery, with a small attached chamber for the nanny.”

Thorn headed up the stairs, thinking about India’s restoration of Starberry Court. She hadn’t simply painted the walls; she had actually made decisions about how he and his new family would live their lives.

He strolled into the nursery, amused to find a large rocking chair on the hearth, flanked by a smaller rocking chair and a tiny chair obviously meant for Antigone. Rose would be delighted.

What’s more, India had lined an alcove with bookshelves and stocked them. Rose would love
The Adventures of the Six Princesses of Babylon
. He picked up a book of fairy tales and looked at the painting of Cinderella on the cover. Lala was prettier. Hell, India was prettier than that.

Though India wasn’t conventionally
pretty
. Not with her odd combination of white-gold hair and darker eyebrows. And the beauty mark just next to her lip. She looked like a sensual painting, like one of those Titians for which the painter used his mistress as the model.

Of course, Titian’s mistresses had sleepy, placid expressions, nothing like India’s. She was a pain in the arse, but something about their exchange of letters was as much fun as sparring with Vander. But subtly different—probably because she was a woman.

Back in the hallway, he opened the door to the master bedchamber. He had told India that he disliked red; naturally she had papered his walls a dark crimson. Once inside, he saw she’d had an alcove built there as well. But whereas Rose got books, he got the Cellini.

Strolling over to inspect, he realized that India had turned the sculpture in such a way that anyone lying in the bed had an unobstructed view of both figures, their mouths barely touching in a kiss, their bodies entwined.

There was a note stuck to the satyr’s shoulder.

Dear Thorn
,

I tried to make this room a refuge for those of passionate sensibilities. Perhaps it will inspire you to new heights.

India

He snorted. But he pulled the note off and tucked it in his pocket. He was keeping her letters, if only for the novelty. He had never corresponded with a woman before.

The guest rooms were on the opposite side of the house. No self-respecting person would be in bed at this hour in the morning, so Thorn decided to rouse India. It wasn’t hard to guess which bedchamber was hers; there was a faint trace of her perfume lingering outside the door.

Light filtered through the curtains, and Thorn could see that the bed was hung in translucent amber silk; he only barely made out a sleeping figure through it. Pulling back the bed curtain gave him a peculiar feeling, as if he were discovering an enchanted princess. Like one of the stories India had bought for Rose.

She was curled on her side, all that pale hair of hers spread across the pillow. Surprisingly, she looked sweet in her sleep. But still erotic: her lips were naturally ruby colored, and he could just see her beauty mark. It was a mark that made a man look harder at her lower lip, made him dream about what that mouth could do.

Hell.

The funny thing was that looking down at her now made him think back to when he was a mudlark, before the Duke of Villiers had come out of nowhere and declared himself to be his father. He had never seen a woman with skin like India’s, like the inside of a flower petal.

He hadn’t even known such women existed. As the daughter of a marquess, India was everything he wasn’t, and everything he would never be. All that privilege and birth was bred in the bone, and it showed in her face.

With a sudden surge of irritation, Thorn sat on the bed, expecting the motion would wake her. She opened her lips and made a funny little huffing noise, flung an arm above her head, and slept on.

Once, when he was a boy and it was cold, just beginning to snow, he’d seen a girl in a warm woolen coat whose mother had held out her hand and said, “Come on, sweetheart.” The girl hadn’t even seen him, but she’d walked away with all the love he’d never known.

No wonder sitting beside India made him feel every inch the mudlark. She’d had all that: all that money and gloss and love and protection.

He reached out and shook her shoulder, and not terribly gently either.

She opened her eyes, and the look in them went straight to his cock. She had a hazy look about her, as if she’d just made love for hours. As if she was waking after a night of it, and she wanted still more.

As if . . .

Her eyes popped open all the way and she sat up. His hand went over her mouth. “Please don’t scream. God knows the last thing either one of us wants is for you to be compromised. I will never marry a woman just because society thinks I ought to.” His voice came out harder than it should have.

He dropped his hand.

Her eyes had lost that hazy sweet look, and for a second he felt a pulse of regret. Instead, she was glaring at him. “What are you doing in here?” she hissed. “Don’t you dare think that because you employ me, you have the right to personal services!” She began to grope around behind her.

Outrage surged up his back. “You think I would come to your bedchamber for that?”

“You wouldn’t be the first!” she snapped. She brought up her arm, and damned if she wasn’t wielding a club, covered in flowered flannel. “Touch me again and I’ll hit you!”

“What the hell is that?”

“An iron bar that I will use on your skull if you don’t get off my bed and out of my room!”

“Are you telling me that some man dared to enter your bedroom and accost you? Is that what you’re saying, India?” Their eyes met, and he reached out and took the weapon away, weighing it in his hand. “This wouldn’t do very much. It wouldn’t stop a man who was truly determined.”

“It did what it had to,” India replied proudly.

“Who?” He knew his voice came from his throat like a gunshot. “Who did that?”

“I took care of it.”

“
Who was it
?”

“That’s none of your business!” She picked up all that gorgeous hair of hers and swept it behind her shoulders. “Now, you—”

He bent over and growled it, right in her face. “India, who dared to come into your bedroom and frighten you?”

“Besides you?” But she added, “Sir Michael Phillips. I struck him in the ear with my iron bar.” Her smile made her eyes light up. “He complained the next day that he had lost his hearing and wouldn’t be able to sing in tune!”

Thorn fought back another growl. The bastard was going to be taking the castrato part once he got his hands on him. But there was no need to disclose that fact to India.

“Phillips, who has a house in Porter Square? Went to Oxford? Silly little beard that only covers half his chin?”

“Yes,” she said, pushing more hair behind her shoulders. “Adelaide and I visited his mother, because she had influenza. After she was out of danger, he seemed to believe that I would take care of him as well.”

“Anyone else do that?”

She frowned at him, so he put it a different way. “Where did you get the idea of the iron bar, India?”

“My godmother keeps one just like it in her bed when she’s traveling. In an inn, for example. A woman should always be prepared.”

If a woman didn’t have a man sleeping at her side, she probably should have an iron bar. In fact, it wasn’t a bad idea. In fact . . . he might be able to make bars for just this purpose.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked suspiciously.