by Vanessa Kelly, Christi Caldwell, Theresa Romain, Shana Galen
“I am gratified to hear that your landlady is watching out for men who try to exercise their base instincts. They are, no doubt, the sort of men who would be given to frothing with desire at the sight of bare toes.”
Some of them didn’t even need that much. Poppy was acutely aware of the shortness of her skirts, the bareness of her arms. She folded her arms across her chest. “There is a reason why I have a guard and why my contract specifies that I am not to be touched.”
Too late by far to do any good, unfortunately. A woman couldn’t live her life protected by a contract.
“I’ll accompany you home, if you’d like to depart. I do need to talk to you.” Leo’s dark brows knit. “But you’ll be cold walking around in your costume. Here.”
Before she could protest, he shrugged out of his coat, draping the heavy wool around her shoulders. This left him in shirt-sleeves and a waistcoat, which state of undress seemed to bother him not at all. And indeed, if one were to strip off random articles of clothing without censure, Vauxhall would be the place.
The look suited him: tousled dark hair beneath a high-crowned hat; a perfectly tied neckcloth and no coat whatsoever. The lines of his arms and shoulders were hard and strong. He was unmistakably a gentleman, but every inch a rogue.
“Thank you,” she said cautiously, clutching the lapels of the coat together. It was soft and fine and dark, cloth woven and dyed and tailored with the greatest care. The faint, spicy scent of bergamot tickled her nose. Once wrapped in this dark coat, she would look like a floating head with her light hair. The notion made her smile. “I ought to tell you, though, I have a cloak. It’s in the same case where I kept my spare shoes.”
“Ah! Perfect.” Leo snapped up the case and withdrew the black cloak, shaking out its folds. With a jaunty gesture, he twirled it around his shoulders and tied it about his neck. “Now I don’t have to be cold either.”
Poppy had to laugh. “It’s much too short.”
“Nonsense. It’s my costume. You’re wearing a costume, I’m wearing a costume. It’s perfect.”
She laughed again, and he smiled. “There, that’s what I really wanted.” He removed the cloak, draping it over one forearm. “It’s good to hear you laugh, Poppy. I always did feel happy when I heard you laugh.”
You could have heard my laugh many times over the past six years, if you’d stayed in England.
But she knew why he’d left. He had only done what his family had forced him to do.
Leo latched the case and held it in one hand, beneath the folded cloak. Extending his free hand again, he hopped Poppy over the low rope that cordoned off the small guarded area. Sometimes the crowd pressed tightly around it after a performance, held back only by the guard. But at the moment, with Poppy’s costume covered by a man’s coat, no one seemed to take any notice of her at all.
“So.” She took a deep breath. “Welcome back to England, Leo. What is it you need to talk about?”
This sort of question had the potential to change a woman’s life. Of course, it could also do no more than give her a few dull minutes. Which answer she hoped it was, she could not say.
“Let me buy you a sweet first. Honey cakes? You used to love those.”
“I still do. Though you’ll be shocked at the price here.”
“Did you think the prodigal son would return with empty pockets? Well, I suppose you might have, since he did in the old story, but I have not.”
With her wearing his coat and him dignified in shirtsleeves, they made an odd pair as they set off through the milling crowd toward the park’s exit. Here the candelabra stretched as slim and tall as saplings; lamps flanked every path. The garden was ablaze, as light as noon, but with strong, sharp shadows from the night that encroached at every gap. Clothing was lit; faces were hidden. Strolling bands sang songs from different countries, mixing in quiet chaos with the faraway orchestra and the chatter of visitors. And always, people slipped away to the dark edges and corners and nooks of the park. Despite Lord Bexley’s efforts to tidy Vauxhall, it was—it would always be—a wanton place.
She unwrapped the thick slice of honey cake Leo bought her, eager for a bite. She seemed always to be hungry these days.
“Out with it,” she said through a mouthful of sticky sweetness. “What do you need to talk about?”
He cleared his throat. “Truth is, I need your help.”
“My help?” She could have laughed. “I don’t have anything to give.” If she were to be strictly truthful, she had less than nothing. Ever since that ill-fated house party three months before.
“Oh, no, it’s not like that. All I need is you.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have stayed away for six years.”
She hadn’t meant to say it, but once the words were out, she was glad. She took another bite of honey cake, snapping her teeth together.
His smile fell. “You are angry with me?”
“Not angry. I know you left because of your brother.” She frowned. “I am only…disenchanted.”
His green eyes searched hers. “Right,” he said quietly. “You’re not the only one to feel that way, as I have been informed. I should have been more clear: It’s not help for me. It’s for Uncle Bernard. I need him to sign some financial papers, and he doesn’t trust me. He never has. But he does trust you.”
She struggled to swallow; the cake seemed dry in her throat. “I don’t understand,” she finally managed, shouldering past a stilt walker and a woman dressed like a French courtesan. “You want me to trick your uncle for you? That’s not right, Leo.”
“Not at all, not at all. I want…” He tipped his head back, as though searching the velvety evening sky for words. “I want him to associate you with the dukedom, so he will think as well of it as he does of you.”
She and Ubie had always got along rather well. She reminded him, he had once told her, of the daughter he had lost at a young age.
But. Wait. “Why would he associate me with the dukedom? I never return to the lands in Sussex. I’m a ropedancer, at least for now. I’ve nothing to do with the gentry or the nobility anymore.” And never would again, if she could help the matter.
“I was thinking”—he was still carefully not looking at her—“that we could pretend to be engaged.”
She dropped the honey cake.
He evidently took this as a sign that she needed only to be persuaded, for he halted in his tracks. “Do you see? It makes perfect sense. We can say that we just worked it out. He knows I was coming to see you tonight.” Leo tipped his head. “Is that right? ‘He knows’? ‘He knew I was’? The verb tenses are confounding.”
This had always been Leo’s way: a quick, darting sort of energy, three sentences ahead in the conversation and more vivid than anyone else.
To a man of rules and order like Ubie, it was intolerable. Poppy had always enjoyed his Leo-ishness. Right now, though…
“I follow your meaning,” she said shortly. She picked up the honey cake, glared at it for being covered with dirt, and let it fall again with a sigh.
“I am sure the ruse would work,” Leo added. “I informed him that I was prepared to be slain at the sight of you.” He eyed her up and down. “Which wasn’t a good figure of speech, was it? Because to look at you—why, Poppy, I can’t remember the last time I felt so alive.”
I can. It was six years ago, and you had given me a kiss I would never forget.
She pressed her legs together, the pantalettes strangely intimate, and retreated behind humor and the expensive folds of his coat.
“Oh, Leo. You say such pretty things,” she said lightly. “I will go home and write this one down. ‘Dear Diary, today I saw Leo for the first time since I was eighteen years old, and he asked me to pretend to be engaged to him because he expected to die when he saw me.’ Have I got the essence of it?”
He snorted. “You have. But you must take this seriously, Poppy. It’s for his good. It’s not just an impulsive idea, like—”
“When you brought a pig indoors for a bath?”
“This is definitely not like that, and not only because we don’t keep a pig at the town house.”
“What about when you pulled me into the pond so we could count trout, but we almost drowned?”
“Not a single pond will be involved. I swear it.”
She eyed him narrowly. “You sound serious. What are these papers? You must want them signed very badly.”
Yet everything left to the dukedom was his, fairly and squarely. He needn’t turn Ubie up sweet to get his hands on its remaining funds.
“It’s not for revenge, if that’s what you’re thinking. I mean to give him an independent income for as long as he lives.”
“And he won’t accept that?”
Leo cleared his throat. “He sees an ulterior motive. He believes that I want to get rid of him and pack him off to the country—”
“Perceptive man.”
“—so that I may lay waste to everything left of the Westfair fortune. Not that Richard left much behind.”
He sounded so sincere, so certain, that she hated to puncture his scheme. But she had to. “I understand what you want. But Leo, I can’t help you with this plan. You see—I’m pregnant.”
Leo’s head snapped back. “Oh! My apologies.” He looked confused. “Or congratulations? That is the first thing I ought to have said.”
She lifted her left hand and waggled her bare fingers at him. “Congratulations are not in order. I am unwed and intend to remain so.”
Leo drew her off the path into the halo of a hanging lamp. “Do you want to tell me about it? Is the father…that is, can I help you in some way?”
She had to consider both questions for a moment. “All right,” she decided. “It’s easily told. My cousin Hayworth inherited the manor house and lands after my father died last year.”
“I heard the news,” he murmured. “My condolences.”
“Thank you.” She hunched her shoulders. “My cousin and his wife are quite nice. They had a house party three months ago and invited some friends they thought might make a match with their spinster cousin.” She hadn’t minded the idea. She had given up on Leo the day he departed.
“Spinster! You are only what, twenty-four?” He shook his head. “Sorry. Not the point. I must assume one of the friends was dishonorable.”
“Extremely so.” The summer night was too hot and too cold at once. “I thought he meant to court me. He…didn’t want a courtship at all.”
“Oh, Poppy. I am very sorry for it.” In his tone was heartbreak.
She managed a shrug. “My cousin was so horrified by the way his friend had treated me that he gave me my whole dowry, plus houseroom for as long as I wished it. But I didn’t wish it. I couldn’t live there anymore. So now I dance on a wire and save every penny.”
“Good Lord.” He settled the coat more snugly about her shoulders, the silly cloak flapping over his arm. “A baby. You ought not to be up as high as a horse’s back, much less on a high wire.”
“Needs must,” she sighed. “I’ve had this Vauxhall season to secure my future before my condition becomes visible. Then I’ll go away from England for good. I don’t ever want to see the—the man who did this—again.”
In the dazzling light of the lamp that hung above them like a great firefly, Leo’s face was sharply cut with shadow: familiar and foreign at once. His expression had followed her words, malleable as gold. First bemused, then horrified, then indignant—and now, considering.
“I think,” he said, “this could work out perfectly for us both after all. We could pretend to be engaged for a few weeks. Only until all the papers are settled. Then you may toss me over with great brutality and finality and go along your way. We need never say a word to my uncle about the baby, and I’d be more than glad to give you whatever you need to feel secure in your new life.”
Hmm. When he put the matter like that, it did make sense. “You would give me anything I need?”
“Of course.”
“A thousand pounds?” She plucked the figure from the air. Added to her dowry and savings, it ought to be plenty to purchase a French cottage for two and to set up an annuity.
“Only if you are sure you would not need more.”
She eyed him askance. “You mean that? You would give me so much money for this?” At his nod, she laughed. “You must want to get rid of Ubie very badly.”
“Very badly indeed,” he agreed. Leo and his uncle were as different as chalk and cheese, and they had never got along. “But even more badly, I want to be sure you’re all right.”
Well. If she’d kept a diary, that would go in there too.
“You were my first friend,” he said simply. “And you’re the only person who has ever lo—liked me just as I am.”
She did not miss the correction in his speech. But that was wise. Better that they both pretend there had never been anything between them, nor any hope for more.
“You are the most exhausting of companions,” she replied. “But also among the most delightful. All right, I agree.” She extended a hand. “Gentlemen shake on a bargain, do they not?”
Leo’s brows lifted. “I dare not with a lady who has a contract stating she is not to be touched.”
“Oh.” That would have gone in her imaginary diary too. “Thank you, Leo. But you’ve taken my hand twice already, and it’s really all right. When it’s you.”
His green eyes met her brown ones—and he smiled. “All right. It’s a fake short-term betrothal.” His large gloved hand caught her bare one, enfolding it in strong fingers.
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather pretend to be engaged to before suddenly jilting him in a few weeks’ time,” Poppy said with mock solemnity. Her hand in his felt safe. Steady. It was strange, but in a pleasant way. “Shall we announce the happy news to Ubie tomorrow?”
Chapter Two
* * *
“Leo, just try it. It’s not even as high as your waist.”
Thus said Poppy Hayworth, who looked as pretty as a spring morning in a simple yellow gown. Leo had entered the parlor of the Westfair town house to see all the furniture lined up in a motley march.
This, she had informed Leo when he entered the parlor, was so that he could overcome his fear of heights one small step at a time.
“No,” he said.
“Also,” she added, “I pulled the furniture all about so Ubie would clearly find my behavior worse than yours.”
He should have known. There was always a good reason for whatever Poppy did.
“But if I climb upon it,” he pointed out, “then my behavior would become at least as bad as yours. Nice try, Hayworth, but it won’t convince me.”
Leo scrubbed a hand over his eyes. He hadn’t slept well the night before; too many things to mull over. This morning, he was feeling more jittery than usual: unable to focus on the newspaper, unable to attend to the steward or make sense of the accounts Richard had left behind. Not that there was much sense to those on the best of days.
“I’m not climbing on the furniture, Poppy,” he added. “You can’t know how many times my uncle railed at me for doing just that.”
“Bah.” She gave a shake to the back of a Louis Quatorze chair that had surely cost a small fortune. “You’re the duke now. You can rail right back at him. Here, I’ll help you along.” She extended a hand.
“No touching,” he said. “My contract is most clear on that matter.”
She shot him a withering look that bloomed into a smile, just as a crabbed old voice sounded from the doorway. “What have you done to this room, Leo?”
Thus had arrived Uncle Bernard. Ubie. Bernard Weatherby, seventy-five-time winner of the annual Most Crotchety Person in England Award. At least in Leo’s head.
Leo turned toward the doorway. “Hullo, Uncle. Thought I’d make it easy for you to take your pick of the chairs.” He crossed the room to offer the old man an arm, but Bernard waved it off with an angry gestu
re.
Bernard had been angry from the day he’d joined his sister’s household seventeen years before. Much older than Leo’s mother, he’d lost his parents, his wife, his daughter, his other siblings all in quick succession. Perhaps this was why he’d decided to hate almost everyone else he spent time with—except Richard, of course, and Poppy. He was whippet-thin and tall, though the years had stooped his back and whitened his hair. His skin was papery, his hands knobby, his form frail. But his brows were as thick and black as ever, above suspicious eyes much the same green as Leo’s own.
“I don’t need your help, and I don’t need a damned chair. Oh, hullo there, Poppy dear.” The change in Bernard’s tone as he shuffled across the room was striking. “Sorry that my nephew has pulled the room into chaos.”
“Oh, no, you’ll have to blame me for that,” she said without a flutter of distress as she sank onto the chaise at the far end of the line of furniture. “I wanted to teach him to wire-walk, but he doesn’t want to learn.”
“Doesn’t want to learn?” Bernard frowned, easing himself into the Louis Quatorze chair. “That’s not very gracious to our guest, Leo.”
With an effort, Leo kept his voice even. “Sorry. I’m not very gracious. Fortunately, Poppy is a kind soul who has forgiven my faults.” Across the room, dim with heavy drapery, he tried to shoot her a speaking glance. Let’s bring up the fake engagement at once.
“It wasn’t as taxing as all that,” she said. “But look, Ubie, before the tea tray comes in, we’ve got to give you some news.”
“Bad news, hm?” The old man sank against the back of the chair, looking resigned.
“No. Good news,” Leo said. He caught her eye, and when she nodded, he added, “The very best. Poppy has agreed to marry me.”
He probably ought to have flowered it up some. Poppy will make me the happiest man alive, or some blather like that. The truth was, nothing about this fake engagement was making him very happy at all. Especially not the expressions on Bernard’s face, which flickered through surprise, disbelief, suspicion, resignation, and a host of others as servants brought in tea things before leaving the trio alone in the parlor again.
