Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

  “Yes, but that was before . . .”

  “Ah! Here it is.” Charity held up the needle. “Before what?”

  “Before the season started,” Louisa said, squinting to rethread her needle. There was a note of desperation in her voice. “We’re so enjoying ourselves, are we not?”

  They were, not that it mattered a jot how delightful it all was if ultimately they were to be exposed, tried, impoverished—

  “I think I’ll go for a walk,” Charity said.

  “At this hour?”

  Charity had no idea what hour it was, only that the sun hadn’t yet set, and that she was going to wear a path in the already threadbare carpet if she didn’t stop pacing. She might as well walk outside, where at least she wouldn’t trouble Louisa any further. There was nothing Louisa could do to help, nothing she could say to set Charity’s mind at ease, so there was no sense in plaguing her with doubts and worries.

  “There’s always India.” Keating was waiting by the door with Charity’s greatcoat. “Or South America. I could have us on a ship this time tomorrow.”

  That would never do. Keating was nearly fifty, with a bad leg and one ear that was completely deaf after years spent in the boxing ring. His only skills were being an indifferent servant, an aged prizefighter, and a loyal friend. She had hoped that Louisa, once married, could find a place for Keating in her gatehouse or stables.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I know you mean it.”

  She walked all the way down to the river, and then followed it up to Westminster before her nerves turned to outright misery. What was to become of all of them? She stopped at a sweet shop and bought a packet of lemon drops, immediately popping one into her mouth. The burst of tart sweetness did nothing to distract her from her worries.

  When she looked up she had reached St. James’s Park. In only a month this city had become as familiar to her as Fenshawe, which she had always considered the nearest thing to a home she was ever likely to find. From there she walked to St. James’s Square, only then realizing that she was too close to White’s and would doubtless run into someone she knew. She hardly felt capable of polite, cheerful conversation.

  What she really wanted was a friend. Someone to sit with, share space with, someone who would understand if she needed to spend the evening grumpily pitching wadded up balls of paper into the fire instead of being entertaining.

  She walked to Grosvenor Square without pausing to consider whether Pembroke actually fit that description, but held steadfast to the hope that he might.

  She found him sprawled on the settee by the fire, book in hand, spectacles slipping down the patrician slope of his nose. He glanced up and grinned when he saw her. She attempted a smile in return but must not have carried it off because his own, genuine smile immediately dropped away, replaced by a look of concern.

  “What’s the trouble?” he asked, crossing the room to stand before her. He tipped her chin up so she had to face him, and the familiarity of the contact sent warmth through her body. “Anything I can help with?”

  She shook her head. “I’m not feeling at all the thing. I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Ridiculous. Of course you should have. I was reading that book you wanted to borrow. Since you’re here you might as well take it off my hands.”

  “No, you finish it first. I have a headache and won’t be reading much of anything until tomorrow at best.”

  “That bad, is it?” When she didn’t answer, he gestured to the settee that still held the book, spine up. “I’ll read it out loud to you, then.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “Of course I don’t,” he sniffed. “I don’t have to do a damned thing. But I will anyway. Sit.” He folded his long frame into one corner of the settee, leaving her the remaining three quarters, an absurd amount of space given their relative sizes. This, she guessed, was to prevent her from getting any ideas of hugging and petting him the way she had the other night. Her face went hot with mortification. She on the opposite end of the settee, her hip pressed against the arm. When she glanced shyly over at him, he was regarding her with a raised eyebrow.

  “I’m not going to eat you,” he said, his voice low.

  “Likewise,” she managed, and felt the flush spread from her face down to her chest.

  He flipped back to the beginning of the book and started reading from the start, despite how boring it must have been for him to reread the pages.

  She let herself get carried away by the tale. Mad nuns and locked passageways, that was exactly what she needed on a night like this. What was a case of stolen identity, impending poverty, and criminally fraudulent behavior compared to murderous bandits in pursuit across swamps and over mountains? It put one’s own trials in perspective.

  She had read these sorts of tales to Robbie and Louisa. That was how she had come to be friends with the Selby children. Just the three of them—sick old Mr. Selby hardly counted, and the cook and other servants seldom left the kitchen—in the middle of nowhere. It was hardly to be wondered at that they sought companionship in one another.

  Charity had come to Fenshawe when she was eight, right after Mrs. Selby died, and had taken to telling stories to calm Louisa, who was little more than a lonely baby. Some were stories of her own devising, some were local fables, and some were from books she brazenly took from the library once she realized there was nobody at Fenshawe who cared to stop her. Robbie had at first listened at the nursery door, then edged in closer and closer until he too begged Charity for his nightly story.

  But nobody had ever read to her. Robbie had never been much for books and Louisa preferred to sew while Charity read aloud. Tonight was a rare treat. And Pembroke even did different voices for the characters, which she might have thought beneath him if she had ever thought about it at all, which she certainly had not.

  He also offered wry asides for her amusement. He would pause, glancing up over the rim of his spectacles. “She never even considered selling the emeralds and hiring a solicitor to find her missing half sister. Instead she gads about through tombs. Deplorable.”

  “Too right.” Charity yawned. “Do they not have pawnbrokers in Italy? I have to say I’m rooting for the nun. She at least has some ambition.”

  A low rumble of a laugh. “You would root for the nun, you wretch.”

  The nervous energy that had fueled her walk through London began to evaporate, leaving her spent and exhausted. She leaned against the corner of the seat and closed her eyes, letting Pembroke’s rich voice and the drama of the story lull her nerves into something like peace.

  She must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes again, Pembroke was no longer reading. The book was open in his lap, but he was silent, regarding her instead of the pages.

  Embarrassed, she sat up abruptly. “How long was I—”

  “Shut your eyes and go back to sleep,” he said softly.

  “I ought to go—”

  “There’s no need.” He reached out and pulled her against him with one strong arm, easing her head against his shoulder. “Rest.”

  As if that were a possibility. She could have laughed at the lunacy of such a command. How could she rest with her body next to his, with her cheek pressed against the fine wool covering his shoulder? With each breath she was confronted with the friction of her body against his, a reminder of all the places they met and all the places they didn’t.

  Not moving her head off his shoulder, she glanced up at his face and saw that his eyes were open, but he wasn’t reading. Instead, his gaze was fixed on some spot on the wall opposite him. Letting her eyes roam lower, over the inky stubble of his jaw, down to his throat, she saw his pulse beating quickly, his Adam’s apple working as he swallowed. He was no more at ease than she was.

  “I can’t,” she said, but she didn’t pull away. “I can’t rest like this.”

  She felt him exhale, a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. “No, Robin. No more can I. This is the least restfu
l I’ve felt in my entire life.”

  His fingers began tracing a circle on her shoulder. It was that easy circle that did her in—it seemed so of a piece with everything that had come before, the talking and riding and chatty bantering. It made her believe, for an instant, that what came next might also be a part of their friendship. It would be the two of them, only more so. It wouldn’t be a lie.

  She breathed in the scent of him, which she now realized was the scent of this room. Books and brandy, a fire burning low.

  God help her, she looked at the placket of his trousers. And really, what did it say that she felt no pang of conscience, no sense of remorse, nothing? She looked at the bulge in the Marquess of Pembroke’s trousers as incidentally as she might look at the wall hangings.

  And he caught her looking. She could have died of embarrassment, or maybe desire, or maybe both those forces were working in concert.

  “Indeed,” he said, and now he was not laughing, not at all. He was looking down at her very seriously, and his arm had tightened around her shoulder.

  That was all the prompting she needed. What was she, made of stone? He was warm and solid and he wanted her. Or rather, he wanted Robert Selby, but in this fuzzy state between sleeping and waking, none of it mattered. All that mattered was the way his breath hitched when she reached up and, with shaking fingers, gingerly plucked off his spectacles.

  He captured her wrist midair and looked at her with those dark, dark eyes for half an instant before closing the gap between them. His lips were warm, his stubble scratchy against her own smooth skin. She kept still, seized by the sense that if she actually kissed him back she’d be stealing the kiss. It would be taken on false pretenses. She, mere Charity Church, would have intercepted a kiss meant for Robert Selby.

  But that was before his tongue stroked her lower lip and all her finer feelings went up in smoke. What was true, what was virtuous, and who the hell could bring themselves to care? Not Charity, not Robin, not anyone else she might be.

  His tongue met hers and that was all that counted. She wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her. She bit his lip, and when he groaned she felt the vibration against her mouth. So she did it again. He liked what she was doing and by God, she liked it too. Any further analysis was beyond her.

  “You taste like lemon drops.” He smiled, and she could feel the quirk of his lips against her own.

  She kissed the corner of his mouth, then kissed her way down to his jaw, before pressing her lips to the soft part of his throat where the stubble gave way to smoothness.

  “Christ,” he said, his voice a baritone rumble, his hands threading through her hair.

  And so she sucked gently on that very spot that had made him blaspheme, using her hands to push his perfectly tied cravat out of the way. Had he avoided a dinner engagement in order to stay with her? She didn’t care about that either. She cared about the pulse under her lips, beating wildly. She cared about the fact that the Marquess of Pembroke was whispering her name—or close enough—in her ear in between curses. She cared about the big hands that were sliding up her sides, tugging at the linen of her shirt—

  No, that would not do. She had only enough presence of mind to remember that what lay beneath her clothes was not what Pembroke expected.

  “Wait,” she panted. “Wait. No.”

  His eyes were wild, his expression confused, but he took his hands away from her body immediately. He was a gentleman and she was a shameless deceiver.

  Surely that knowledge ought to tamp down her desire, but it did not. She still wanted him. And she would continue to want him, even after tonight, even after this season, even after she had disappeared from his life, from his world.

  She let herself skim her fingertips along his jaw one more time before dashing from the room.

  Chapter Six

  If Alistair had known Robin was going to act this way, he wouldn’t have kissed him in the first place. He didn’t go around kissing men willy-nilly. Or at all, for that matter. It was a delicate business. One couldn’t go about throwing oneself at men unless one wanted to be brought up on charges of sodomy or—at best—shunned by decent society and known as a criminal deviant.

  Besides, Alistair would rather have Robin present and unkissed than Robin absent under any circumstances. The wretch hadn’t been at the park this morning, nor yesterday morning. He had also been conspicuously absent from their club ever since that blasted kiss.

  A scratch at the library door, an apologetic cough, and Hopkins announced Mrs. Allenby. She had visited twice since the day she first requested his help, both times with inane questions relating first to the color of hothouse flowers Alistair intended to order for the ball (apricot) and then pertaining to the number of waltzes he planned (two). He had humored her, and he knew that was partly because he was distracted by other matters.

  It was Robin who had driven him to distraction. Where was he, and why was that place not here, by his side?

  He was a blasted idiot.

  “Oh, you poor dear,” Mrs. Allenby said from the door. “Gilbert said he thought you were coming down with some sort of spring ague and I dare say he had the right of it. You don’t look at all the thing.”

  Spring ague? He had never heard of such a malady, let alone contracted it. If he looked out of sorts, it was because he missed Robin. What was Gilbert thinking, telling tales about his health, and since when did bloody Mrs. Allenby have the right to fuss over him? She didn’t—heaven forfend—think that as his father’s mistress she had standing as some sort of mother figure, did she? She was only a few years older than he was, for God’s sake.

  Yet here she was, looking at him as if he were a child with a troubling rash. He folded his arms and glared down at her.

  “I’m perfectly well, Lord Gilbert is an interfering busybody, and if you’re worried that I’ll take ill and cancel the ball you have no cause for concern. I’ve told Hopkins that even if I drop dead he’s still to roll out the awnings and ice the champagne.”

  This recitation evidently did nothing to convince her of his well-being, because she frowned more deeply. “If you say so, Pembroke.”

  “I do say so. Do you have Aurelia’s gown finished?” He was delighted that he thought to misremember the girl’s name.

  She paid this rudeness no attention. She never did, damn her. “The modiste sent it over last week. She’ll never be a beauty but she’ll have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Nothing to be ashamed of! The child of a—well, never mind. “Mr. Selby finds nothing amiss with her appearance. I dare say Angelica has mentioned him to you?” How many A names could he think of, he wondered?

  “Mr. Selby? Of course Amelia mentioned him. Everyone has. I’ve never heard anyone mentioned as often as Mr. and Miss Selby, not even when Byron’s friend ran off with that poor girl.”

  Alistair neither knew nor cared about Byron’s lecherous friend; as far as he knew, that entire set crawled from bed to bed and Mrs. Allenby ought to know better than to associate with them. “It doesn’t bother you that your daughter might fall in love with a nobody from Northumberland? I doubt he has two thousand a year.”

  She was silent for a moment, regarding him with a look he couldn’t decipher. “I’ll be glad to see my children settled happily and honorably, my lord. I had heard that you were particular friends with Mr. Selby, so I’m surprised to hear you refer to him in those terms. In fact, I came here today to see if you knew any reason why I ought to warn Amelia away from him.”

  He felt his cheeks heat with shame and anger. She was right, this infernal woman. He shouldn’t refer to Robin in such a way. “I know of no reason why he wouldn’t be an eligible husband,” he forced himself to say. It was a lie, but he couldn’t very well go about announcing what he and Robin had gotten up to on the settee the other night.

  She nodded. “Thank you for that.”

  “Has he made an offer for her?” He felt like he was wrenching the words out of his chest, but he
had to know the answer. Could that be why Robin had been avoiding him?

  “No, no. Nothing like that. As far as I know he isn’t even courting her.” Her voice held a note of something altogether too much like reassurance, too much like sympathy.

  Still, relief washed over him. If he had, even inadvertently, dallied with a person who had been promised to another, he would have been brought to a new level of shame. That particular transgression was a bit too similar to his father’s misdeeds.

  He rang the bell for a footman to see Mrs. Allenby out. He didn’t trust himself to remain civil any longer today, and doubted whether he had managed it terribly well so far.

  The troubling thing was that even if Robin didn’t marry Amelia Allenby, he’d marry someone else. He’d have to. That godforsaken estate in the wilds of Northumberland was entailed. Robin needed an heir, otherwise the property would pass to that red-faced cousin. The idea of seeing Robin betrothed or married was enough to make him feel sick. Was he jealous of some future Selby bride? How lowering.

  He sat back down at his desk and attempted to write Robin a note. Something brief and friendly, just the sort of thing you write another man after licking his tongue on your sofa.

  When Hopkins announced another visitor he was entirely relieved to have an excuse to stop. It was his solicitor, Nivins.

  “It’s about Miss Selby,” Nivins said, sitting too stiffly in the chair across from Alistair. “A delicate matter, you see.”

  Alistair suppressed a groan. “She’s only 18. Has she managed to get herself involved in a scandal already?”

  The solicitor let out a breath that almost sounded like a whimper. “Ah, so she is 18. That was what I came to ask.”

  “Yes, she turned 18 in this past November, according to her brother.”

  “My lord, that would put the date of her birth as November 1799.”

  “And what of it?” Alistair could add and subtract as well as the next person. He didn’t pay his solicitor for that service.