House of Cads (Ladies of Scandal Book 2)

by Elizabeth Kingston

  She looked at him a very long time, like she would be able to see any lies on him. He fought against the urge to put on his most innocent face, that guileless look he’d perfected as a boy. That look would be a lie, and he wasn’t lying. It was strange and wonderful and terrifying, to let someone see who he really was, with no pretending. To think that she loved who he really was.

  Finally her expression lightened a little, the unmistakable air of decision and her usual determination to move on to happier topics.

  “Well, you are hiding your very great talent from the world. And you hide this naked Frenchwoman in your room every night.”

  That made him smile and bring her hand to his mouth for a kiss. “I know how you feel about the talent, but I thought you approved of the Frenchwoman.”

  She didn’t give an answering smile, or lean down to kiss him. Instead she fixed her eyes on his hand where it held hers.

  “I am so sorry I must be serious again,” she said. Her lashes lowered, and he saw something on her face that was almost shame. “But I have been reminded of my friend, and I cannot pretend to myself anymore. I think we must stop this, you and I.” She disregarded his sound of protest, and only gave a sigh. “You do not understand this world, so I must explain. Hélène and her husband, they have used their reputation to tell all of their acquaintance that I am respectable. Stephen most of all – Lord Summerdale, he is so spotless and so respected that if he says someone is clean then everyone must believe. So he has told them I am clean – et voilà.”

  He could feel her holding herself back from him, how she wanted to lean down and stretch her body against his, but resisted. It was a little invisible barrier between them, put there by someone else’s idea of what was right and wrong. She took a breath and continued.

  “If we are discovered, you and I, then I am a terrible harlot again. I do not mind for me, but it is Hélène who will be treated badly. To have a friend like me, who behaves so, it reflects onto her and reminds everyone of her own past. They can be so cruel. I have been very selfish, not to think of this. But now I do think of it, and the risk is too great. So I think we must stop.”

  Her fingertip moved idly over the sheet and he watched it, the half-moon at the base of the nail bed, the curve of her palm. He had memorized the geometry of this woman – her nails, her hands, her navel, the arc of her cheek. The angles of her were in everything he saw, awake and asleep. She had become the shape of his world.

  “If we were married,” he heard himself say, “It wouldn’t be improper.”

  He felt her shrug. “No, it would be… Oh.”

  The silence was horrible. Her tiny caress had stopped, and he stared at her still fingers poised near his hand.

  “I’m sorry to be so serious myself,” he said. “But you didn’t give me a chance to say I’m in love with you too.”

  “Oh.”

  He waited. It was a very specific kind of hell. One in which he began to wonder how one would go about cutting out his own tongue or, even more tortuous, if there were any bits of Aloysius St. James’ poetry that might be of some use in this situation. If she didn’t answer soon, he’d start turning purple. He stayed frozen, wondering just who the hell he thought he was, to say such a thing, until she put a hand to his chin and turned his face up to her.

  “It is true? You love me?”

  “From the first moment you called me a cad,” he confirmed. “No, sooner than that. From the moment you said kangaroo.”

  “Oh, I am very glad,” she said with great earnestness. Relief rolled through him as her most dazzling smile burst onto her face. “It is so obvious to say, I know. But it is all I can think. You have made me simpleminded. You love me.”

  “I love you.” Her smile grew impossibly, and his matched it. It felt so good to say. It must be joy, this thing unfurling in his chest. “And you love me.”

  She nodded vigorously, sending a sheaf of her hair forward over her shoulder and into his face. He pushed it out of his eyes and mouth while she fussed and laughed and apologized. When he emerged from the mass, she pulled it back and raked her fingers through it. She stopped in the midst of gathering the golden strands with an arrested look on her face. The smile was fading.

  “What?”

  “To be married.” She bit her lip. “I don’t… You will think it strange, maybe, but this is something I have not been wanting.”

  That very effectively killed his smile, too. What a way to say no. Maybe it was politeness that made her so clumsy with the words.

  “Not strange,” he mumbled, wishing to God he wasn’t naked beneath this sheet, or that they were in her room and not his, so that he could say good night and leave. Walk into the sea. That sounded like a terrific plan. How far to the sea from here?

  “Oh! Oh no!” Her hands were fluttering an inch from his chest, fanning him. “I did not mean you. Oh please, Mason, I said you made my mind simple. Now you see how simple!”

  She pressed her cool fingers against the skin at the base of his throat, like she could stop the flush in its tracks. He reached up and caught her hands, held them flat against his heart. It beat hard against her palms, but he supposed he was far past the point of hiding anything of what he felt for her.

  “I meant – I only meant that I thought of myself as Richard’s wife and…” It would probably haunt him his whole life, the way she looked at him with such kindness. “When there was no more chance to be married to him, I stopped thinking of being married. To anyone.”

  He let his hands slide away from hers. “It doesn’t matter.” He reached across to the far side of the bed, where his shirt had fallen earlier in the night. He sat up and pulled it over his head. “Really. It was just a thought.”

  A rash thought. An impulsive thought. A thought that became, at the moment he said it, exactly what he wanted. Even though he had no business thinking it or wanting it, it was there now. Damn it.

  He got up to retrieve his trousers from where they lay on the floor, and hastily buttoned them over his nakedness. At the desk, he began stacking the pages she had set out, trying to preserve the order she had made before closing them up in folders. He’d want to know, later, which ones she’d grouped together as her favorites. He could torture himself with it.

  “Why do you say it does not matter?” she asked from somewhere behind him. “I think it matters very much or you would not put on clothes in the middle of the night.”

  He couldn’t fault her logic, and he didn’t feel like explaining that it was hard to feel dignified without trousers on. He just carried the folders to the traveling case and began replacing the few items that she’d taken out, that were only there to conceal the false bottom. “You meant it, though. That we have to stop.” He set a book that he’d never read in the corner of the case. “Seems like clothes are a good idea.”

  At first he thought the rustling he heard was her putting on her dressing gown, until he remembered she hadn’t been wearing it tonight. He turned to see her pulling on his jacket over her chemise. As though in any possible world, that made her less tempting.

  “I will not be like these so proper ladies who say ‘Oh it does not matter’ and then bite my tongue until it bleeds,” she declared with a mutinous scowl. “Say to me what you are thinking.”

  “For God’s sake, Marie-Anne, you wake me in the dead of night and tell me you love me, then threaten never to speak to me again, then say we can’t be together. And I told you I love you and proposed marriage – which I promise you was nowhere in my plans for the evening – and you say no.” He closed the lid to the case with a little too much force, and dropped his voice to a whisper for fear he’d shout and wake the household. “It’s a lot for one night, and now you’re standing there looking irresistible but we’re not going to do anything about it, and you’re asking me what I’m thinking? Give me a goddamn minute to think, that’s what I’m thinking.”

  Her scowl deepened. She wanted to argue more, it was plain to see, but she only clamped he
r jaw tight shut and kept her arms folded across her chest. After a while she gave a resentful little huff. Poor long-suffering Marie-Anne, who had suffered for all of thirty seconds so far.

  “I hope it doesn’t bleed,” he said. She looked up at him sharply. “Your tongue.”

  She glared for a moment. But then she took a deep breath and gave a terse nod at him, an acknowledgement. With stilted movements, she took off his jacket and folded it carefully over the desk chair. He still wanted to shout, but he held his breath as she passed him on her way to the panel that led to her room. He wondered if she’d ever come through it again.

  When she reached the wall, she paused. “I did not say no.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Maybe I need a… a goddamn minute to think, too.”

  She opened the panel and stepped through. He didn’t watch as she closed it behind her. He looked at the bed instead. The empty, rapidly cooling bed.

  He hurried to the wall and spoke to the place where she’d disappeared.

  “You can have more than one minute. You can have however many you need.” There was nothing but silence. She was probably already in her own bed. “Marie-Anne?”

  He leaned against the wall, his ear to the crack, because he was a lovesick ass. It was a good thing, too, because after a minute he heard her soft, “I will think, mon amour. I will. Good night.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Marie-Anne did think. She thought all night and did not sleep. Why had she never imagined that she would fall in love again, and when had her mind decided that there was no such thing as marriage for her unless it was with Richard?

  She thought about what it would mean to marry Mason. She thought about how she could not lie to her friends about how he made his money, and wondered if he would quit it to do something else. Would he want to come to Bartle and, if not, would she want to leave it? She thought about how long the little inheritance from her uncle might sustain both of them, and about whether or not it really mattered – and how much – that he was so much younger than she was. She thought until her head ached.

  The sun was beginning to rise and she was finally drifting off to sleep when she had the thought that it was too impulsive to marry someone she had known for barely two months. But that forced her to think about how she had agreed to marry Richard only two weeks after she had met him. She was not hesitant by nature, or indecisive.

  Yet here she was hesitating, lying awake in indecision. Oh, love was very troublesome.

  Sleep only came at last when she took refuge in thinking about the placid life of Bartle, and of the smell that came from the bakery on Saturdays when Mr. Higgins kept the ovens going past mid-morning. It was a delight to dream about fresh butter melting into hot bread, but it made her unusually bad-tempered when she finally woke. It was late. She was no closer to knowing what to do about Mason, and now she had missed breakfast too.

  “Lucy, will you tell the cook that I will pray the rosary for him if he will send up bread toasted with very much butter?”

  “I don’t think it will move him, madame,” replied the maid. “He don’t hold with popish manners, beggin’ your pardon. But I’ll tell him it’s you who wants it and he’ll send up as much as you can eat, see if he don’t.”

  “One compliment to his custard tart and he is devoted to me, the darling man.” She put a hand over her eyes, feeling a headache coming on. “I want to be very rude today, and hide here with bread and tea.”

  Lucy was very happy to aid her in this endeavor, explaining that the other guests had gone on a ramble to see the ruins of a nearby abbey – a real one – and would not return for hours. This would allow Marie-Anne to hide until the evening meal, which suited her very well. She spent the afternoon chewing steadily through a stack of toasted bread slices until she nearly made herself sick with it. Then she added jam for variety. It was proving to be very difficult to gather her thoughts, so she just let them float by. By the time the maid returned to help her dress for dinner, the only thing she knew for sure was that she still loved Mason, and that she wanted him to have a different and better life than this one he was living – even if she could not quite see where she fit into it.

  When she came downstairs for dinner, he was talking with the insufferable Poetess in a corner of the drawing room. The searching way he looked at Marie-Anne was too obvious, but only Phyllida seemed to notice. She came to stand beside Marie-Anne, who was studiously avoiding Mason’s eyes, and tell her all about the lovely long walk they’d taken today.

  Amy talked about it too. She was seated next to Marie-Anne during the meal and, after observing that Marie-Anne looked rather pale, made everything a little worse by recounting how The Poetess had rhapsodized over the ruins and how much Mason had enjoyed her effusive descriptions of the scene.

  “He kept encouraging her,” Amy said low while the soup was served. “I think he is quite entertained by how very absurd – Marie-Anne?” She looked worried. “Whatever did I say? I thought it would amuse you, but you look as though you would like to drown me in the consommé.”

  Marie-Anne was in fact trying to decide between Mason and The Poetess as drowning victims, which she knew was very stupid. Mason loved her. He did not even like The Poetess. She was being very irrational, but somehow she could not stop herself. “No, it is only that I ate too much butter and jam today,” she said to Amy. “My delicate digestion, you know.”

  Amy looked askance as Marie-Anne took several healthy swallows of wine, but did not challenge this blatant falsehood. “I do hope it’s not the beginning of an illness, or anything that would interfere with our visit to London. Dahlia is depending on us, and she has promised that Mama will not be there so it will be a perfectly pleasant afternoon.”

  Marie-Anne had half-forgotten that they were to spend a day with Dahlia and her dressmaker in London. It sounded exhausting, but the planned visit was in a few days when hopefully she would be feeling her usual, sociable self. And how very kind of the girls, to ensure that Marie-Anne would not have to encounter their mother again. Lady Shipley, as Amy reported it, had been “entirely shocked” to learn of the events that had resulted in Amy’s sudden engagement to Mr. St. James, but neither parent had objected to the match. Now that they had a daughter in line to become a duchess, they weren’t very likely to object to anything. What a blessed relief.

  When the meal was over, Marie-Anne decided she could not endure an evening in the drawing room, playing cards and attempting conversation while Mason sent her questioning looks. And she could hardly make a decision about marriage while having passionate fantasies of stuffing a stocking in The Poetess’ mouth. She pleaded a headache, which was not entirely fiction, and ran back to her room.

  It wanted a good night of sleep for everything to seem clearer, that was all. If only she could fall asleep instead of playing over the previous night’s conversation with Mason. She had never really seen him angry before, and to her surprise she got a bit of a belated thrill, thinking about it. He did not bluster and intimidate like so many men. But he was very commanding. It reminded her of the time when he had bent her over the desk, then gleefully pounded into her and made her scream with pleasure. That had been wonderful.

  Oh, really. Now she was flushed and lustful, and not thinking about serious things as she was supposed to be. She exasperated herself.

  Almost as though he knew where her mind was, a very soft tapping came at the wall. It took a moment for her to recognize what it was but when she did, she was caught between excitement and annoyance.

  “Leave me alone,” she said to the ceiling, knowing he could not hear her from this distance. She did not want to get out of bed despite the lascivious thoughts that had recently come to her. “Go away, mon amour. I really must think without you.”

  There was a long silence, during which she thought very affectionately of the freckles on his forehead. The soft tap came again.

  She was out of bed and pulling open the panel on her side before she even thought. Than
kfully, she stopped herself before lifting the latch and shoving open panel on his side. She just spat words at the barely visible seam in the wall. “Oh, what is it, you said I could have many minutes to think, I am trying to sleep, what do you want?”

  Perhaps it was better sometimes to bite one’s tongue, even if it bled. He was probably bewildered at her vehemence. She was certain she would be bewildered at it too, later. Right now she didn’t have time for bewilderment, she was too busy being annoyed.

  “I just wanted to give this to you,” came his whisper. A corner of paper poked through the seam, but it was too narrow to allow more than that. “I didn’t want to trust it to a servant.”

  She frowned at it for a moment, debating. It was probably a drawing. Something beautiful and surprising and perfect, like all the art he made, and it would melt her completely. This was a very unfair thing to do. But curiosity got the better of her, as it always did, so she fortified herself with visions of him listening intently as The Poetess droned on, and lifted the latch. She only opened the panel a bare inch. Enough to see a sliver of his very dear face. The paper was folded into an envelope.

  She opened it and found the tiny torn pieces of the odious sketch of Helen. He had ripped it to bits.

  “Thank you.” She said it begrudgingly even though she was inexplicably moved by the gesture. It was only right he should destroy it, after all.

  He was looking at her hopefully, waiting. She scowled at him and closed the panel swiftly. Even after she latched it, she could still hear him waiting on the other side.

  “And stop flirting with the horrible poetess,” she hissed at the wall.

  “I’m not flirting!” He was incredulous. After a little silence, he asked with an unmistakable note of hope, “Are you jealous?”

  “I hate this stupid panel!” she cried, because it seemed like an excellent rejoinder. “I would like to find the one who made it and scratch his eyes out, espèce de connard!” Then she hastily secured it shut on her side, flung herself into her bed, and commenced weeping like a complete idiot.