She turned to him expectantly and, when he did not speak, prompted, “That is you. Your uncle is the agreeable Harner and you are the terrible Harner.”
He gave her the pursed-lip look he so often did, which cheered her enormously. It was a pleasure to annoy someone so deserving. The sight was disappointingly short-lived, though, as he turned to speak to Amy.
“I have suspected since you invited this…person” – he made a vague gesture in Marie-Anne’s direction – “back into your life that your doubts were not unfounded. That is, your doubts that you might be unequal to the demands that will be placed upon you as my wife. But I persevered, as you know, in helping you to prepare for such a role despite your obvious deficiencies.”
“What a saint you are,” observed Marie-Anne drily, but it was lost under Mr. St. James’ “Her deficiencies!” and Phyllie’s heartfelt “Swine!”
“Nevertheless,” Harner continued, doggedly refusing to acknowledge the others, “I can see now that my efforts have been misplaced. It saddens me to say it, but I fear we will not suit.”
Amy had been looking very pale throughout this entire ordeal, but now her cheeks began to grow pink. She blinked rapidly, frowning in concentration as though she were translating his words from some unknown language.
“I agree with you, sir,” she finally said. It seemed for a moment that she would remain composed, her usual decorous self – until Harner gave an excessively pleased smile that clearly incensed her. Her cool façade dropped away and suddenly she was nearly as loud as her sister. “We are not suited because you are a liar! And you seek to blame me for it all, as you always do, but I tell you, sir, that it is not you who has decided to end this connection, it is me. I would not have you if you begged me on your knees to be your wife, not for all the...the tea in India, do you understand me?”
The terrible Harner looked appalled at this absolutely delightful eruption of emotion, but he did nothing. He only stood there with his pursed lips and his general air of long-suffering patience until Amy burst out at him again.
“There! The door is there!” She shouted, raising her arm and gesturing heatedly at the exit. “Why do you tarry? You are not welcome – not in this room or in this house, sir!”
She veritably chased him out the door, and actually slammed it behind him. She turned back to them, breathing hard and pushing her curls away where they bounced in her face. Then she ruined her coiffure by giving a vicious yank at the ribbon that was wound around her upswept hair and flinging it away with a sound of disgust.
Marie-Anne reflected that the Shipley sisters really did provide far more entertainment than even she had anticipated all those weeks ago when she had received Amy’s letter. But how splendid it was to see Amy become more like her old self again, animated and full of opinions. The dear girl seemed slightly astonished at herself.
“You didn’t just happen to meet Mr. Harner’s uncle, did you?” Phyllida asked, looking in sudden comprehension at Mr. St. James. “You sought him out.”
Mr. St. James did not reply. He had truly never looked more handsome, though he seemed to have exchanged his fashionable clothes for a more severe suit and his hair was not artfully windswept. He looked rather boyish, standing very still and stealing uncertain glances at Amy.
Amy looked up at him, and then to Phyllida, back and forth between the two as though trying to understand something. “Did you?” she asked him. “Did you seek him out?”
He spoke haltingly. “I thought to – I took the liberty…that is, my suspicions…” He stopped and took a very deep breath, and then met Amy’s look fully. His heart was in his exceedingly beautiful eyes. “I could not bear to see you treated so.”
Marie-Anne gaped at him, prepared to settle in for a very good show indeed. But Phyllida grasped her arm and began hauling her toward the door while the other two looked at each other, captivated. “A walk in the garden, Marie-Anne!” she proclaimed enthusiastically. “It will be so refreshing, won’t it? Such a lovely day!” she called over her shoulder as they exited.
The last thing Marie-Anne saw before the door closed was Amy was throwing herself into his arms, and the beginning of a thrillingly passionate kiss.
Phyllida urged a stunned Marie-Anne through the short portrait gallery until they reached the empty music room. When they stopped, Marie-Anne turned to her and found the girl wore a brilliant smile.
“I’m sorry to pull at you, but Amy is so circumspect I feared she might turn shy if we were there to watch.” She took a deep breath. “Isn’t it wonderful? Oh, say you think it’s wonderful, Marie-Anne!”
Marie-Anne was still trying to get over the shock. It wasn’t caused by the sudden knowledge that Amy and St. James might have fallen in love, nor even that Phyllida seemed thrilled at the idea. It was that she herself had been completely and utterly unaware.
“But when did this happen? I thought she disliked Mr. St. James very much!”
“Too much,” agreed Phyllida, rather smugly. “I didn’t see it until after I broke with him, but then she defended him to me – long past the point that I even cared. And then I caught them talking once, in private in the hedge maze, and the way they looked!” She smiled broadly, delighted.
“You amaze me,” said Marie-Anne. “You were so taken with him that I would think you could not stand to see him with your sister.”
Phyllida crinkled her face in distaste. “Oh but that was ages ago. And I’d grown a bit disenchanted with him even before he decided to abandon a life of poetry. There was always a bit of the lawyer in him, under the veneer of poetry – and how can a man of law hold any appeal for me, or inspire any woman to jealousy! But it is perfect for Amy. And did you see how she looked at him?” She gave a deep, dreamy sigh. “He is exactly what she needs. Just a touch of passion.”
Marie-Anne found herself staring at the girl as though she had sprouted an extra head. It had never occurred to her that Phyllie could be right in any matter concerning love. And yet here they were. “Is this possible? She has become passionate and you have become practical. And there is a romance under my nose that I do not even see! Now the pigs will fly and the chicken will have teeth, the world is upside down.”
Phyllie laughed. “I am not as brainless as everyone thinks, you know. I hold true passion in the highest esteem, and so it does not escape my notice. I daresay it is also why you failed to see what was between Amy and St. James.”
“I missed it because I do not hold passion in high esteem?” asked Marie-Anne, mystified.
“Not that.” She had the most impish grin. “It’s because you have been too occupied in falling in love with Mr. Mason.”
“Have I?”
“Yes, and what’s more, he’s terribly busy falling in love with you too.”
Marie-Anne felt suddenly very hot. It seemed every pore had opened in unison to flood her with perspiration. “Now you speak nonsense,” she said, and heard the irrepressible note of hopefulness in her voice. “We are only friends, he and I.”
“Falling in love is not nonsense.” Phyllie’s smile was replaced with an expression of great earnestness. “There is nothing more foolish than to ignore one’s heart. Surely you must know I learned that from you and Richard. It was one of the greatest privileges of my life, to witness how my brother looked at you, and it is not nonsense to say that Mr. Mason looks at you in that same way. I do hope you will act on it.” She smiled again. “And that you will tell me all about it when you do!”
Marie-Anne threw up her hands. “Impertinent little hussy!” she said with affection, sliding an arm around Phyllie’s waist and giving her a faint squeeze.
“I shall take that as the greatest compliment,” giggled Phyllida, and said no more about it.
Chapter Sixteen
Freddy was getting anxious, and rightly so. The only reason for Mason to be at this gathering of fine people was to glean material for the pamphlets. Without that, his presence here was a purposeless inconvenience that made the exchange o
f instructions and drawings an ordeal and forced Freddy to operate alone in London. Worse by far was that they were starting to lose money now that there was nothing to distinguish their publication from others that shared the same stale gossip.
It was fake wealthy businessman Mr. Mason, not Freddy, who got invited to the parties, who was in a position to overhear all sorts of useful information. And they could not take advantage of that if he stayed here in the country listening to secrets he couldn’t use. So of course Freddy wanted him to come back to London.
As an added temptation, some of these nabobs (as Freddy called them) were seeking Mason out. They wanted to hear more about investing jaw-dropping sums of money in the virgin forests of America and the blindingly successful, utterly fictional timber business. Mason had only thrown that lure out there in the beginning as a way to test the waters, and then again just a few weeks ago to Ravenclyffe – but mostly because he couldn’t resist toying with a cretin who judged a man by his skull shape and gave far too many lingering looks to Marie-Anne’s bosom.
He had no plans to go through with the swindle. He hadn’t needed to resort to that kind of fraud for years, but there was no denying that it held a lot of appeal at the moment. Men like Ravenclyffe had more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes, and they hadn’t exactly come by it honestly themselves. Only stubborn pride stopped Mason from doing it, the determination not to revert to what his family had taught him to be.
He could avoid it, if the drawings were profitable enough. They just needed to keep making money from the gossip papers, and to do that he’d have to go back to London soon. There was no reason to stay here, whiling away the hours in idleness and splendor, while the business lost all the ground they’d gained.
No reason except that Marie-Anne was here. Delectable Marie-Anne, who ravished him nightly and did indescribable things to his body, to say nothing about what she invited him to do to hers. Marie-Anne, who regularly made him laugh a dozen times before breakfast without even trying. Who looked with reverent eyes at his feeble artistic efforts – the ones closest to his heart, that he had never dared to show anyone – and detailed all the ways they were wonderful. Who told him he should see the art in Paris, that perhaps he might take a trip to Holland as she’d heard the Dutch had many beautiful paintings, and that he must go to Italy above all.
That was ridiculous. He knew it was. No matter what she said, he knew it was just an absurd dream – so absurd that he’d never even bothered to consider dreaming it. But she put it in his mind now, for the first time. She talked about finding a patron, someone to introduce him to the right people so he could find an apprenticeship. She wondered idly what the costs might be, and where he might find lodgings. Always with the tone of curiosity, like it was an interesting question to ponder from time to time. And that’s how she made him ponder it too. He knew it was what she was doing, and it still worked.
“The portrait of the old man,” she said as they lingered in the silly little building made to look like a Roman ruin. She sat astride him in the aftermath of lovemaking, satisfied for the moment, her arms curled around his head and her fingers playing with the hair at his temple. His legs were beginning to fall asleep and anyone might stumble upon them here, but he didn’t care. “And the one of Charlotte reading, and the hands of the hermit – the people are the most fascinating of your drawings. I wonder which would be best to assemble. To show to someone more experienced, I mean. In Paris I knew an artist who could tell us. Delphine posed for him.”
“Marie-Anne, stop.” There was no way to explain to her the way it made him feel, to think about it as something he could actually do: assemble some pages covered in his scribbles, hand them to a professional, ask to be considered and evaluated. Terrifying only began to describe it. He’d even had a nightmare about it, for god sakes.
And she knew it, he was sure. That’s why she very agreeably kissed the top of his head and spread her fingers through his hair as she shifted in his lap and changed the subject in that playful way. “Stop? How can you wish me to stop this, hm?” Her hips curled up against him, both of them bare beneath her skirt. She turned his head up and gave his lips the lightest peck. He kissed her back until she was breathless.
“Mmm, not a stop,” she smiled against his lips. “Only perhaps a pause. Until tonight.”
But she had put it in his head, no matter how laughable, and now he found himself thinking through every page already drawn and what else he might still put down on paper, and which would be good enough to be shown to someone who knew art. He wouldn’t, of course. But he thought of it. Then he made the mistake of mentioning some he hadn’t shown her – his cousin singing in front of the fire, the view of the Ohio River as he remembered it from their house – and she smiled and said she wanted to see them. He said he would dig them up and show her sometime, and that should have been the end of it. But it was only the beginning of something else.
He fell asleep with her beside him one night, which only happened because he’d been up so late preparing sketches for Freddy the night before. Every few nights the lack of sleep caught up with him, and he’d wake up in the full light of morning with Marie-Anne long returned to her room. But this night, after he’d drifted off, something woke him long before dawn.
He opened his eyes to find her there in the candlelight. She sat beside him on his bed wearing only her thin shift, looking down at him. It was a wonderful but worrisome look, full of affection and an unusual gravity that filled him with apprehension. Maybe it was just that she was so beautiful in the candlelight. Even in the dead of night, wearing only a chemise and her hair spilling down her back, she looked too good for him. Lovely and worldly and wise, used to wearing silks and instructing servants, despite what she came from. Even barely clothed, she was like a fashion plate of a real lady, the kind he used to glimpse when he turned the pages of old magazines with his dirty pilfering fingers.
“Is something wrong?” He asked it as casually as he could manage.
She smiled faintly, her soft mouth softening further, warmth radiating out from her as always. He only noticed the hint of reserve because it was so uncharacteristic.
“There is something I must say to you.” He tensed, and she traced a finger down the line of his jaw, and then over his hand where it lay on the bed between them. “You know that I loved Richard. So very much. When he died, I thought…” She gave the slightest shrug. “I thought, well, that is all for me. I have had more love than anyone can ask in life, just in that short time with him, and I do not need more of it. I was filled up, like when you eat so much that another bite is impossible. You know?”
He watched her fingers move softly across his wrist, and bit his tongue against asking her why she had woken him in the night to tell him about her love for another man. He could hear the hint of tears in her voice, and he was doing his best not to hate a ghost for making her sad.
“I knew I would not love again in that way,” she continued. “I was very sure. It cannot be possible. But then…you came. You.” He held his breath and looked up at her. She seemed to glow in the candlelight, perfect blue eyes fixed on him in absolute sincerity. “I am falling in love with you. No – already I have fallen.” She gave the barest shake of her head, wonder and disbelief together in her face. Her lips moved in a tremulous smile. “I know love, you understand? And I am in it, with you. I love you very much, Mason.”
Before he could say anything, she pulled her hand away and shifted her weight just barely. It called his attention to the paper she had put beside her, lower down on the bed. He lifted his head to see it, and felt his heart drop out of his body. It was the forgotten sketch of her friend Helen, playing the coquette whore to radical revolutionaries.
Marie-Anne tented a hand over the page, her fingertips barely touching the surface as she looked at it and spoke very calmly, very gently.
“If you hurt my friend, I will never speak to you again.” She blinked, and there were tears there. It was not a
ghost that made her sad. It was him. “It will break my heart to do it, and I will not hesitate for an instant. Even with this very great love for you inside me. Do you understand?”
He was afraid to move. One wrong word could blow everything apart, and for once there was no thrill in the danger of it. At least a few times in his life, he’d felt as miserable as this – but it had been a very long time ago, and it had never come with quite the same flavor of despair.
“I understand.”
And he did. He knew nothing about her friendship with Helen or why harming her reputation should be more unforgivable than anything else, but he knew she meant it. She meant all of it, including the miraculous fact that she loved him.
Marie-Anne nodded once, then blinked rapidly to clear the tears from her eyes.
“Burn it,” he said. “Put the candle to it. Or rip it to pieces.”
She made a sound like laughter, but there was no humor in it. “Oh yes, and I will break your fingers too? You can always make another. I cannot stop you.”
“You have stopped me. I’m stopped. Right now, no more, never again. One word from you, that’s all it took.” She didn’t answer, and still didn’t look at him. “I wasn’t going to publish it. I forgot it was even there.”
She grimaced and looked across the room to where his traveling case was open. There were neat piles of things she’d pulled out of it to get at the false bottom where he kept his sketches. The folder that held other drawings he’d put far away and forgotten was open on the desk. Careless idiot that he was, he’d told her weeks ago that she was welcome to look at any of his work. She knew where he kept it.
“I wanted to put together all of your best work. So I dug very deep, as you see.” She took a breath, looking at the open case thoughtfully. “Now I am wondering where are the other things you do not wish me to see, and how many they are.”
He took her hand, glad that she let him. “I’m not trying to hide anything from you. Not that, or anything else. There’s plenty I’d prefer you don’t see, but it’s…just details. From before. Nothing now.”
House of Cads (Ladies of Scandal Book 2) Page 22
