“She will be down momentarily.” Miss Justina Barrett dropped her voice to a whisper that carried so loudly off the foyer ceiling, her sister would have likely cringed. “She’s been awaiting you all morning.”
Despite his vow to never smile, a rusty grin formed on his lips, and an odd lightness filled his chest. “Has she?” Why should that matter so much to him? Perhaps because he’d gone the past thirty-two years with no one truly desiring his company.
“She has,” she repeated with a nod.
The butler eyed their exchange with a wariness better suited a properly attending mama than an aged servant before stepping into the shadows, carefully watching and silent.
Wise man.
The young lady skipped forward and skidded to a stop before Edmund. “You are the gentleman I was hoping you would be.”
Unwise lady. In her innocence she failed to realize her sister deserved far more than him, the monster Marquess of Rutland. “Were you?” he asked, glancing up for Phoebe, wanting this exchange over.
“Oh, yes.”
Alas, the lady appeared to be demonstrating the same degree of reluctance Edmund had prior to taking his leave. Good, perhaps by now the lady had developed a suitable unease and sensed his evil. Why did that possibility leave this aching hole inside?
“Better than Lord Atwood or Allswoodson—”
“Allswood,” he supplied, snapping his focus back to the young girl, now attending her quite clearly.
“Oh, yes. He—”
Would never hear the remainder of just what Allswood was or had done.
“Rutland, my friend.”
Edmund stiffened and turned to greet the grinning, scent-wearing, silken garment-clad dandy. He swallowed back a sigh. So, it was to be a reunion of sorts with every one of Waters’ family. Why, they only required the Barrett children’s lax mama and the drunken sire to complete the happy meeting. “Barrett,” he greeted, sketching a bow. He tugged out his watch fob and consulted the timepiece attached. Surely, the lady would arrive any moment?
“Here to escort my sister for a ride?” Barrett asked, rocking back on his heels. His sister shot an elbow out and nudged him in the side. “Oomph.”
“Be polite,” she said from the side of her mouth, while still managing a smile. All the while she maintained Edmund’s stare. Did the lady suspect he could not hear her? Another grin pulled at his lips before he remembered himself.
“I am being polite. Rutland and I are good friends. Isn’t that true?”
That yanked him back to the moment. Good friends? Edmund didn’t have any good friends. Hell, he didn’t have any friends. He had enemies aplenty. Friends? No. “Indeed,” he forced out tightly. He’d spent the better part of his life shielded and guarded. This family, who’d expose themselves and their thoughts so unabashedly, filled him with unease and a desire to flee their happy fold. What right did they have to be happy? He didn’t begrudge them for having found happiness, but rather genuinely wondered how they’d managed that feat with their own foul sire.
“Perhaps we might share a drink at our club later this evening?”
Their club? The only clubs Edmund visited were not the manner of polite ones that should even be hinted at before innocent young ladies and one’s young sister, no less. “Indeed,” he bit out once more. Anything to be done with this blasted exchange. He glanced up…
And his breath hitched in his chest. Phoebe stood at the top. A twinkle lit the blues of her eyes. “Sorry,” she mouthed.
The vise squeezed all the harder. He’d forgive her anything. Edmund followed her slow descent. Then one such as she would never be needing forgiveness. No, she was the light to his dark. The innocence to his evil. And he was nothing more than that serpent tempting naïve Eve with that apple, and she was as drawn to that succulent red object as those two weak-willed sinners in the garden had been.
“Hello, my lord,” she said as she came to a stop before him. She didn’t wait for his greeting, instead turned a motherly frown upon her younger siblings. She’d perfected a look most governesses would have given half their wages for. Barrett and Miss Justina Barrett shifted back and forth on their feet.
“We were just making arrangements to meet at our clubs later,” the pup boldly intoned with far more braveness than Edmund would have credited.
Phoebe’s frown deepened and he knew; knew because he knew the darkest parts of a person’s thoughts, even when they themselves believed themselves incapable of such darkness. Though she’d done a masterful job of convincing both him and more, herself, that she didn’t heed the gossips, he’d wager the use of both his legs that she now wondered about the clubs he visited, her mind lingering upon the disreputable hells.
Edmund held out an arm. “Shall we, my lady?”
She hesitated and for a moment he suspected she’d renege. Then she placed her fingertips along his sleeve and some of the tension drained from him. The butler hurried to pull the door open and with Phoebe on his arm, Edmund did something he’d not done in eleven years—launched a proper courtship of a respectable, marriageable young lady.
*
Since she and Edmund had made love, her body still thrummed with remembrance of his touch and her lips ached for his kiss. Now, Edmund intended to visit those scandalous clubs her brother had spoken of. Phoebe bit her lower lip. She wanted the moment in Lord Essex’s gardens to hold a specialness to him, as well. Instead, he’d go off to his clubs where a sea of nameless, faceless women awaited him, all of them, no doubt, vying for a place in his bed.
“You are quiet, Phoebe.”
She jumped as his breath tickled her hair. “I am.” He continued to probe her with his hot, penetrating stare and she managed a smile. “Er…” Unnerved by the singular intensity of his gaze, she looked out at the busy streets and frowned, of a sudden, becoming mindful to this new, unwelcome, and unpleasant truth.
They were being stared at. What did you expect, ninny?
Yet, after days of their stolen meetings in the private aisles of shops and museums, and their heartachingly beautiful tryst in Lord Essex’s gardens, she’d not been forced to confront the truth of Society’s sick fascination—until now. And now she hated it. Hated it, for it cheapened the intimate, special connection she and Edmund shared and put them on display much like those poor creatures at the Leverian and Egyptian Hall. Guilt tugged at her. So, that was how those poor creatures spent their days.
Edmund touched his hand to the small of her back and she started, grateful for his stoic silence as he handed her up into the carriage and then followed behind her.
To give her restive fingers something to do, she fiddled with her bonnet strings.
“I detest that bonnet.”
Phoebe stole a startled look up at him. The chiseled planes of his face gave no indication as to his thoughts; no hint of warmth in his eyes. She shivered, reminded of the stranger she’d met on Lady Delenworth’s terrace. She let her hand flutter back to her side. “Oh.”
“Any garment that can be used to conceal your beauty should be burned.”
Butterflies danced about her belly. “Oh,” she repeated and then her cheeks warmed. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t intend it as a compliment,” he said in that same cool, emotionless tone she’d learned really was nothing more than a mechanism to conceal the true parts of himself from anyone—her included.
Oh, how I love him.
She wished to be the person he could be the true Edmund Deering with. If only he’d allow her. And what if he does not? Then, she’d be nothing more than a young lady, devoid of her maidenhead, and…she swallowed hard, as terror reared its head once more. Why, even now there existed the possibility she carried his babe. Phoebe scrambled forward on the edge of the bench just as Edmund guided the carriage into a turn.
A black curse split his lips as he easily handled the reins and caught her against him to keep her from tumbling over the side. “What is it?”
Oh, God help her. The cool, impa
ssive figure she’d come to expect was the one she needed now. Not the hesitant concern she detected in those hushed undertones, his gravelly voice roughened with emotion. For this gentler version he kept shielded from the rest of the world was the one she’d come to love, yet there could never be more when he was forever committed to presenting the image of an ugly, fierce vulture.
“Phoebe?” he demanded once more.
“I’m all right.” Except, she lied. She would never be all right again. Not when she’d given her heart and innocence to a man who had little use of it. “Why are we here?” she blurted as he expertly guided their carriage past other fashionable lords and ladies and through the crowded path of Hyde Park.
Edmund arched an icy, dark brown eyebrow. “Because Society would not permit me to take you where I truly wish to take you,” he said with the blunt honesty she’d come to expect of him.
It was all she could do to keep from asking—“Where would you take me?”
The whipcord muscles of his arm went taut in his coat sleeves, pressing hard against hers and a sound, half-groan, half-chuckle, emerged. He leveled a quick sideways stare on her. The molten heat in his eyes stole the breath from her lungs. “I would take you to the Pleasure Gardens when only you and I were there. I would see you laid upon the edge of the peering pool with that bonnet,” he jerked his chin at the offending article, “gone, tossed into those waters, forever ruined, while your silken curls are fanned about you and the sun kisses your skin.” Edmund deliberately shifted his knee close so the heat of him burned her through the fabric of her ivory skirts. “That is where I’d take you.”
Phoebe managed nothing more than a breathless, broken, “Oh.” He desired her, except even with his passion-roughened words and the hunger in his eyes, she wanted more from him and of him. Never once had she felt the overwhelming urge to shield herself from his gaze, the way she did the bold, impolite stares trained upon her by the men who saw her as a nothing more than the lecherous Viscount Waters’ eldest daughter and therefore an easy mark. Yes, there was the hint of more; in their meetings at the Leverian and Egyptian Hall and the curiosity shops, but he’d never truly spoken of what that more was. And still knowing that, she’d given him her virginity, anyway.
The carriage rattled through Hyde Park. Occasionally, the peal of excited giggles and exuberant laughs split the spring air. Phoebe shook her head. “No,” she said, startling the both of them with her one word utterance.
Edmund shot her a questioning frown.
“No, that is not what I’d meant, Edmund.” To give her fingers something to do once more, she loosened the strings of her bonnet and tugged it free. She rested the ruffled scrap upon her lap. Except, the slight narrowing of his eyes and his previously shocking, quite improper words spoke to the folly of removing that protective bonnet. His gaze lingered a moment upon the top of her head. … I would see you laid upon the edge of the peering pool with that bonnet gone while your silken curls are fanned about you and your skin is kissed by the sun… Her cheeks burned. The heat had little to do with the warm spring sun and everything to do with his intent stare. Phoebe waved the bonnet about. “Why are we here? Why are you here? You are n-not…” She allowed those stuttered words to remain unspoken, unable to finish those damning words.
“I am not what?” he asked in that coolly detached tone.
“By your own words you are one to bring women to the pleasure gardens.” Her cheeks blazed all the brighter. “Not ride through parks and not with young women in the market for a husband.”
“You.”
She cocked her head.
“I would not bring women to the pleasure gardens,” he dipped his voice to a dangerously soft whisper. “I’d bring you there, Phoebe. Only you.”
Oh, my goodness. She was no longer a virgin. She’d lain with Edmund underneath the stars in Lord Essex’s gardens and still yet, shock scorched her face with heat. Phoebe raised her hand to fan her cheeks and then caught his stare. Amusement tipped his lips up in an arrogant, crooked half-grin. Did he know her every thought? Well, she’d tired of the unspoken matter between them—a matter that would mean her ruin were it discovered. She drew in a steadying breath. “Will we not speak of it?” Her quiet whisper brought his dark eyebrows together.
“Of what?” He wrapped those two words in satiny hardness.
Frustration stabbed at her. How could he be so coolly indifferent? “What happened at Lord E-Essex’s.” He narrowed his gaze on her. “It should not have happened, and yet it did and it cannot be undone.” She spoke on a dizzying rush, her words blurring and blending. “I do not expect you to wed me.” Phoebe paused and when no protestation was coming, agony and that rapidly growing panic fanned through her once more. “And yet, I must wonder what brings you here this day when you’ve not come ’round—”
“I want you.”
Phoebe blinked several times in rapid succession. Her mind sought to make sense of those three words over the loud beat of her heart. Yes. This was not a new admission and yet her heart should flip about in this silly rhythm whenever he uttered them. Wordlessly, he guided the carriage onto a less crowded part of the path and drew the team off so they stopped with their backs presented to polite Society.
He said nothing for a long while. Instead, he remained immobile running his blank-eyed stare out over the lake. “My mother was a whore.”
Those words rang a shocked gasp from her.
A hard, wry grin played on his cool lips. “Oh, she was a lady by Society’s standards, but she was no more a lady than my whoremonger father was a gentleman.”
For all the words he’d hurled at her in their meetings these past days, words she’d known he’d intended to shock…these were faintly different.
“Those are the people whose blood I share,” he spat the words quietly into the gentle breeze. And at last it made sense. Nay, he made sense. Perhaps to no one in polite Society but to Phoebe, herself. Emotion swelled deep inside, filled every corner of her being, until words eluded her and movement escaped her. Edmund, the Marquess of Rutland, hadn’t feigned the image of dark, unyielding lord. Rather, he’d stepped into a role he’d thought he had no choice but to claim. He saw the darkness of his life and sought to live that, failing to realize that who he was had never been inextricably intertwined with what his parents had been or, more importantly, what his parents had not been. Phoebe toyed with the ivory strings of her bonnet and treaded carefully. “My father is not a good man, Edmund.”
A muscle jumped at the corner of his left eye.
“I don’t expect you move in the same circles as my father,” she said, filling the quiet. “But he is a shameful, loathsome, dishonorable figure. He gambles.” Then she thought of her brother’s intentions of meeting Edmund at their club and the gossip. “As do most gentlemen,” she amended. “But my father gambles in excess and drinks in excess…” She drew in a steadying breath and pressed ahead. “And h-he carries on with women.” Phoebe bit down so hard on her lower lip she drew blood. The sickly, sweet, metallic taste filled her senses and she embraced the distraction. For there were things a child should never know about one’s father or mother.
They were the very shameful things Edmund himself knew. Mindful that lords and ladies moved behind them, intently studying their private exchange, she discreetly shifted her hand upon the bench and covered his gloved fingers with her own. He tensed, but did not draw back.
Encouraged by his silence, she went on. “I’ve known the type of man he was since I was just a girl.” A bird spread its wings wide and soared gracefully upon the lake, skimming the surface. He dipped his head beneath the surface. That day as fresh now as it had been then. “I’d overheard the servants whispering about him.” Her ears still burned with shame and humiliation and shock at the words no child should have ever heard.
“What did you do?” The gruff question emerged, haltingly, as though forcefully pulled from him.
Phoebe lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “I
returned abovestairs to the nursery and played soldiers with Andrew and Justina.” But who had Edmund to turn to? “Did you—?”
“I did not have siblings. That was the one thing my parents did right. They knew to never bring another child into the world.”
An image slipped into her thoughts, of a solitary boy with no one but himself seated on the floor with toy soldiers and silence his only company. She tightened her hold upon his hand. How lonely he must have been. “Who did you have, though?”
He peeled his lip back in a sneer. “I didn’t need anyone.” Still wounded and hurt as he’d always been. Perhaps as he always would be… The idea of that ran ragged through her.
“Oh, Edmund, everyone needs someone.” She braced for the denial…that did not come and all the more telling than any protestation. For this man who’d crafted an image as black-hearted, relentless and unfeeling scoundrel wanted to be loved and more, he deserved to be loved. Yet, what had happened to him that he’d not trust himself to that emotion?
Finally, Edmund spoke. “How did you become,” he flicked his wrist over her person, “this?”
Phoebe didn’t pretend to misunderstand. The connection they shared as the children of reprehensible sires and, in his case, mothers, bonded them in ways that defied the physical and even every emotional connection to come before this. Slowly, she worked the glove free of his hand, tugging his long, powerful fingers from each place within the fabric. All the while, he eyed her through thick, impenetrable slits. She released his hand and his arm jolted, as though in a reflexive movement to draw her back to him. Discreetly, Phoebe tugged free her own glove, set it aside on the bench, and then quickly turned his hand palm side up. She laid her hand in a like position upon her skirts. “I was often fascinated by hands.”
The rakish stranger, who’d once delighted in shocking her, would have likely tossed any number of improper words to that statement. This new man, the one she’d looked close enough to see, merely studied their hands side by side with the same intensity as one who’d first stared upon a da Vinci masterpiece. “The maids had coarse hands and my mother had smooth hands and do you know what I have, Edmund?”
The Heart of a Scoundrel Page 16
