by KJ Charles
“No, you are right. I’m sure you’re right. I cannot believe she is selling herself for a coronet merely out of cold ambition. That is not her nature. I need to make her understand that she can believe in me. That I have something to offer far above a coronet, that she can trust me to be faithful unto death. I will swear it is what she truly wants. Thank you, Hart, you’re a genius. I honestly didn’t expect you to be helpful.” Giles jumped to his feet.
Hart had a distinct sinking feeling, in large part because he was sure Miss Loxleigh was extremely keen to sell her person for a coronet. He’d tried to work up a sympathy he didn’t truly feel, for Robin’s sake and in order not to insult Giles’s sentiments, and now look what he’d done. “Wait. What are you going to do?”
“Plead my case, and do it properly. I have to go to her. Tachbrook is expected to declare himself at any time.”
“But—”
He’d promised Robin not to impede Marianne in any way. It would be a gross breach of his word if he told Giles his secret. But for Hart to let him pursue a woman from whom he would recoil if he knew the truth—and suppose his friend prevailed? Suppose Miss Loxleigh did abandon her ambitions and Giles married her in ignorance of her character? The Verneys were not the most notable of families, but their name was old and respected and had never been tainted by scandal. He couldn’t imagine the devastation if Giles invited such a cuckoo as Miss Loxleigh into the nest.
He’d told Edwina so smugly that she needed to let Alice make her own mistakes. What a fool to think that was easy.
Marianne would say no, he told himself. Of course she would say no, because she was an ambitious schemer marrying for money. She had to say no, and then she would have her riches, Giles would forget his sentiments, and Hart would not have broken his promise to Robin.
“Good luck,” he said weakly, and hoped that his words would have no effect.
Chapter Nineteen
Two days later, Robin was waiting at home for Marianne. She had been invited to luncheon at Tachbrook’s mansion once more. This was, surely, it. Tachbrook had paid such marked attentions that he’d be vilified if he didn’t propose, and it was three o’clock now: she’d been there for hours. When she came back, she’d be all but a marchioness.
Robin wished he were happier about it.
Marianne had been...wrong, these last days. She was as lively and charming as ever in society, but silent and bleak-faced when she was not observed by anyone but Robin, who didn’t count. He’d tried to discover what was wrong, and been roundly told to mind his own business.
He’d have liked to mind his own business. He’d have liked to do nothing but enjoy every remaining moment he had of the dwindling month with Hart, without care for anything else. He didn’t even want to come back to his own bare rooms, still less to worry about why Marianne looked like she’d lost everything when she was about to win it all, and he very much didn’t want to think about what he’d do when the month was over.
He’d need to live off something and he wasn’t convinced it would be Tachbrook’s money. Marianne would find it easier to act the marchioness if she wasn’t saddled with a parasite brother reminding her of her old life. No, he would not hang off her sleeve. Which meant he’d need to do something else.
He could keep gaming but he didn’t know many rich old gamesters. You could do well for a time, but time always ran out. So did youth. Robin’s face might not be the fortune Marianne’s was, but he could still trade on it for now. That wouldn’t last forever.
A small, frightened part of him wished he’d asked for terms rather than flatly declining Hart’s offer. There could be nothing better for him than to be kept by a kind, wealthy, generous man who was a good fuck and a good friend and a joy to please, and with whom he’d been reasonably honest, for once. He’d been prepared to marry for money: this was infinitely better. It was so obviously the perfect answer that he hadn’t dared tell Marianne he’d had the offer and declined, in case she threw things at him.
He simply couldn’t do it. His chest had constricted as Hart spoke; he’d had to restrain himself from putting his hands over his ears. An absurd overreaction to a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Hart had money, he didn’t, and a carte blanche was hardly an insult under the circumstances. The offer had been thoughtful, kind, and considerate, and Robin hated everything about it.
Why? he imagined Marianne demanding. It’s perfect! You like him, he likes you, what’s wrong with it?
Because he likes me. Because I like him. Because I want something else, something that I already know I can’t have, but if I take his money I will make it certain.
It was about money from the start, the imaginary Marianne reminded him.
Robin didn’t have a glib answer to that. Everything’s about money. I want one thing in my life that’s better.
Do you deserve something better? Marianne asked in his head, except Marianne would never say that. She’d tell him he deserved Hart to lavish him with riches and treat him like a prince, and she would refuse to listen to him argue otherwise.
Robin wished he could make himself agree. Hart was going to return to the subject, he was sure. The question was whether it would be an offer to keep him so that Robin wouldn’t pursue wealthy women or cheat at cards, or if he would simply suggest they continue their relations while ignoring how Robin lived off other people. They could see how long that lasted.
It was, he now realised, a bloody awful idea to pose as someone’s fantasy lover when you were quite so unsatisfactory in reality. Hart didn’t believe Robin was a worthless parasite. Hart looked at him with wonder and happiness. Hart was hopelessly cockstruck and bedazzled by Robin’s performance, living in a dream, and one day he’d wake up and realise he could find a respectable gentleman to shag instead, one who wasn’t a sham from the gutter. Robin didn’t want to be there when he woke up. He didn’t want to see Hart’s face then, because he knew how the waking felt.
Robin had lived in his own dream once, he and Marianne together. They’d both thought they’d found care and affection, and they’d been wrong. Marianne had vowed she would not be fooled again, and set out, a virgin reborn, bent on taking some idiot gentleman for everything he had. Robin, lacking both her drive and her ever-smouldering rage, would have preferred to forget about the whole sorry business. But he couldn’t, because he kept remembering that plunging, sick, stupid feeling as he realised that he’d been held in contempt all along, and imagining Hart feeling that same baffled hurt towards him.
He didn’t want that to happen, but it would. Hart was deceiving himself, and when he stopped, he’d believe that Robin had deceived him and either blame him for it or, even worse, blame himself for being deceived. Neither would be fair to a man who had tried so hard to do right by him, and who didn’t deserve another leech in his life, and Robin was not going to take advantage of him just because he’d never had a solid tupping before. Which was inconceivable, by the way, and made Robin quite angry. Could not a single backdoor gentleman in the whole city tell a good thing when they saw one? Was he truly the only man who noticed Hart’s kindness, and passion, and thighs? The vast majority of Society’s shallow, self-centred fools deserved whatever came their way and Robin would happily have taken any of them for all he could get, but instead he’d found himself with the one man who didn’t deserve it. Typical.
Robin wished he were more like Marianne. Marianne thought about things in advance, and made clear-sighted decisions. She was going to make a bargain with Tachbrook, who had all the choices he could possibly want in life and had used exactly none of them to make anyone happier. She would take the money and the title and wear them like a cold queen, as a damn-your-eyes to the aristocratic world that had used and rejected them, and Robin wished quite desperately that she wouldn’t.
He was relieved when he finally heard her feet on the stairs. He was no sort of company for himself today.
She came in, walking steadily, her face unreadable, closed the door behind her, st
ood. Robin jumped to his feet. “Well?”
“I said yes. He told me he would marry me, and I said yes.”
Robin had imagined this moment many times. A month ago she would have shrieked it, and he would bound over and lift her off the floor and swing her around in their triumph. They ought to be celebrating, but instead they stood together, caught in stillness.
“His exact words were that he would stoop to elevate me,” she added after a moment. “That he proposed to overlook the manifold ways in which I do not meet his station. And the Dowager Marchioness told me I must always be sensible of my husband’s great condescension. Did I say she was in the room for the proposal? Not that it was a proposal, as such, because that implies asking, and he did not ask.”
“Marnie—”
“Marianne.”
“Marnie,” Robin said. “Is this worth it?”
“It’s what we wanted. It’s what we did everything for. It’s the point.”
“You’re going to be as miserable as sin.”
“I’m not going to be happy anyway.” Her stormy eyes met his. “Giles Verney asked me to marry him. Two days ago. He told me—he said— He doesn’t know me!”
Robin put a careful arm around her. She was as stiff as a lamp-post. “He said he loved me. That he could not offer me anything except love, but he would never falter in that, and try every day to make me happy. And it was a lie, Rob. Such a lie.”
“How do you know?”
She made an impatient movement. “He loves the woman he thinks I am. Not me, because he doesn’t know me, so he is lying to me. And if I married him without revealing the truth, I would be lying to him. Suppose I told him, my mother was a doxy, my father a drunken wreck, my education all in the service of shamming and stealing. Do you think he’d propose to me then, Rob?”
“I don’t know. If he loves you—”
“Men have died, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”
She quoted that line a lot. Robin sighed. “And you couldn’t just not tell him? Would he ever find out?”
Her face hardened. “If I must lie to my husband every day, I will make sure he deserves it.”
“Then tell him. There’s nothing to lose, is there? See what he says.”
“There is everything to lose. I don’t want to see him turn from me in disgust or anger, still less for him to tell Tachbrook what he is marrying. Give him the truth and be left with nothing? No, thank you.”
“Do you think Verney would do that?”
“He’d want to revenge himself for the mistake I didn’t let him make, because he’d feel a fool for wanting to make it. There is very little cruelty a man won’t stoop to if you dent his self-esteem. You should have learned that by now.”
“I don’t, and people dent my self-esteem all the time,” Robin pointed out. “It’s a wonder it still works so well.”
Marianne’s arms came round him then. He hugged her properly, and she put her head on his shoulder and held on to him, and after a moment, she started to cry.
TEARS PROVIDED A TEMPORARY relief, but not a solution.
“We wait until he gives you the ring, I clean out the tables at the Laodicean, and then we run away,” Robin said as they sat on the settle together, supplied with gin and cake. The situation definitely called for cake. Marianne was on her third slice.
“No.”
“You marry him, get a settlement, and run away with Verney.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I borrow a dress and a wig and go through the ceremony in your place?”
“Shut up.”
“You never listen to me,” Robin complained, and saw the reluctant twitch of her lips.
“You’re too optimistic,” she said. “It’s unbearable. And what about Hartlebury?”
“What about him?”
“Other than that you are heels over head for him—”
“Am not.”
“Yes, you are. Whenever you see him, or are going to see him, you look like a dog that expects to be taken for a walk. All bright eyes and frantic wagging tail.”
“I do not.”
“Of course you do. I don’t know why you can’t have a tragic love affair and stare into the abyss of your hopes like everyone else.”
“I’m being well tupped. It helps.”
“I find that astoundingly hard to believe. The man’s a gargoyle.”
“He is not,” Robin said, with a startling wave of anger. “What rubbish. He’s got the most magnificent legs, and beautiful eyes, and I adore his nose, and actually he’s had plenty to scowl about but if you ever looked at him properly, you’d see—”
Marianne was giving him an exceedingly smug smile. Robin thought back. “Cow.”
“Heels over head. And if you were a marquess’s brother-in-law—”
“No.”
“Listen. You’d be respectable, you’d have status. You’d be safer. You could go and stay with your friend the baronet at his country house and nobody would think twice.”
“That would be very nice. If you were happy marrying Tachbrook, I’d be delighted about it.”
“I’m marrying Tachbrook, happy or not, so we might as well get the benefits. I’d be happy if you were secure, Rob. That would make it worth while to me.”
“Indulge me a moment,” Robin said. “Suppose you believed Verney.”
“Rob...”
“Suppose he didn’t care about where you came from, only who you are, and he still wanted to marry you, and you did. What would that look like?”
She knocked back most of her glass. “Tachbrook angry and humiliated at being jilted for a penniless younger son, perhaps bringing suit for alienation of affections. A notorious wife for Giles to support. The scandal doing him out of his position.”
“Would that happen?”
“I don’t know. Probably. Ruined prospects and disillusionment, and scrutinising his children for signs of bad blood—”
“All right, all right. But maybe it wouldn’t look that way to him. Maybe he sees what I see,” Robin said. “Someone clever and wonderful and loyal unto death who is worth defying the world for.”
“Maybe he saw a nice pair of tits and got overexcited.”
Robin sighed heavily. “If you didn’t think you’d hurt him, would you marry him?”
“But I would hurt him, so it doesn’t arise.”
Robin slid onto the floor so he could wrap his arms round his knees. “You’re determined not to be positive about this, aren’t you?”
“When I marry, that is the end of my choices unless my husband dies. I will not throw my one chance away for sentiment.”
Robin sighed. “Marry Tachbrook and be Verney’s mistress, then.”
“He’d be shocked at the very idea. Why did I have to meet a virtuous man, Rob? Couldn’t he have been a wealthy rake who wouldn’t care?”
“I still think you should tell him. If he’s worth it, if he’s the man you think, he’ll forgive you.”
“I’m not going to beg forgiveness for what I can’t help,” Marianne said harshly. “He doesn’t know me, and he fell in love with a liar, or with a lie. More fool him. I am going to be rich, titled, and safe, and stop trying to argue me out of it.”
“Have you a date for the wedding?”
“September will be convenient, I am informed. An announcement is being sent to the newspapers. We are to attend the Aylesburys’ ball as an engaged couple—the ring will be ready then, it is a family heirloom, but the Dowager has fingers like twigs and it must be resized. You will have to meet Tachbrook.”
“Oh God.”
“Be charming. Don’t get caught at anything.”
“I won’t.”
“And I will marry him and we will be secure and in a year’s time, I will be a fashionable, beautiful, adored marchioness, and all will be well and we’ll wonder why we made such a fuss,” Marianne said. “So you needn’t look at me like that. What are you doing tonight? I’m going to the masquerade in
Vauxhall.”
“Marnie—”
“I’ll be back late, I expect. If it’s very late I may stay with Florence. Don’t wait for me. And don’t look at me like that. I will do very well and I don’t want to hear any more.”
Chapter Twenty
Robin had no particular plans for the evening. He went along to his club, where he played a few desultory rounds of hazard because he didn’t have the energy for cards.
“Something wrong, Loxleigh?” Mowbray asked. “You look worried.”
“Do I? I’m just a little worn down. Burning the candle at both ends, I suppose.”
“Go on a repairing lease,” Tallant advised. “Best thing for it. Bit of country air.”
“He lives in the country, you fool,” Mowbray said. “This is his repairing lease.”
“That’s right,” Robin said. “I just don’t have the stamina of you town-bred men.”
“Always suspected it. I say, you will mention it if I can help, though? If you’re short of the readies or what-not? Happy to do you a service if I can.”
“That’s...very kind of you. Thanks.” Robin searched his mind to discover what Mowbray might be after and came up with nothing. He was after nothing. He wasn’t clever, or scheming. He was just expressing concern for a man he thought was his friend.
“Thanks,” Robin said again. “Very much. I have to go.”
He left the club quickly, almost running. He wasn’t even sure what he was running from, only that he couldn’t stand still while his and Marianne’s decisions caught up with them. He wasn’t supposed to go to Hart’s until later, but he couldn’t wait. He wanted, painfully, to talk to him. Or even not talk, just to be together and pretend that none of it was happening.
Robin was Hart’s fantasy, a likeable, enthusiastic, accommodating fuck who didn’t offer complications or difficulties or the word ‘no’. He wasn’t meant to bring troubles to his door. That was what you did with a real lover. He had a terrible feeling Hart would react as a real lover might, that he would be kind and caring and supportive, and that would put paid to one more line of defence between Robin and a broken heart. But he kept walking anyway because he needed Hart and he had nowhere else to go.
