by Edith Layton
“Yes and no, my dear,” the viscount replied calmly. “I angled for a little fish and caught a whale. We left you a note telling you our direction, child, propped up on the mantelpiece in the drawing room. But we didn’t label it with your actual name,” he said gently, “we addressed it to ‘Our Dear Little Cousin.’ Yes,” he went on, seeing the dawning comprehension in her eyes, “it was a test. For if you saw ‘Annabelle’ or even ‘Greyling’ upon it, you’d know enough to have the butler or the housekeeper read it to you, as I’ve discovered you’d always done with all other such notes.”
The marquess closed his eyes, as though he’d received a blow. “Ah!” he said before he opened them to reveal the dark dismay reflected there. “Well, sir, have you any further revelations as to my idiocy?”
“No, I think I’ll allow Leonora that pleasure,” the older gentleman said simply, “although she was the one who passed hours reading Shakespeare and Blake to her cousin, without ever an inkling of anything amiss, not even when her cousin always had some different and creative excuse for not reciprocating. So I daresay she’ll not gloat too much at your obliviousness. Her credulity persisted to the point that she believed me mistaken when Annabelle stepped in here, and was about to apologize for the trick, when you came in.
“But then, I might never have twigged to Annabelle’s deficiency myself,” he said expansively, “if I hadn’t misread the title of that volume you gave her, and then was amazed to find her agreeing with my mistake. It seemed more than a polite gesture when she completely changed the name of a book to spare my feelings.”
“Actually,” he went on, “I’ve quite a dossier on my desk, ten closely written pages that I was prepared to show you if you’d been caught in her net. Our little Annabelle has been a very busy, very naughty little girl.”
Annabelle smiled as he shook his finger at her, for she was sensible enough to accept defeat, and just inhuman enough to be immediately prepared to see what she could salvage from the wreckage of her plans.
“In fact,” the viscount admitted, “I find myself rather grateful that she never considered politics amusing, for she’s got quite a flair for it, I think. There’s blackmail and extortion among other things in her interesting past. Come, my dear,” he said, turning his attention to Annabelle, “we’ll have the housekeeper fetch you a shawl, and then we’ve a great many things to discuss, you and I.”
“All right,” Annabelle said simply. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking back at the marquess with every evidence of deep regret, “that it didn’t work.”
After a moment in which everyone in the room paused, except for Annabelle, who was occupied with rubbing at the scratch marks on her breast, the marquess said quickly, “Well, then, I expect I’ll be going as well if you have no further need of me, sir.”
“I should think not,” the viscount said over his shoulder as he steered Annabelle into the hallway. “I should think you’ve some explaining to do yourself. For I believe I just heard you make an offer for my daughter, even though admittedly, you did make it to another female. It’s most irregular, and I’m not enough of a social arbiter to decide how it should be handled. But I’ll leave you to work it out with her.”
When the viscount left and closed the door behind him, Leonora at last stepped from the window enclosure and said immediately, and in very grieved accents as she twisted her hands together in her skirts, “Pray don’t listen to my papa, he has an odd sense of humor. You needn’t stay. I understand completely, I assure you. You said what you did to Belle to be free of her attentions. I quite understand.” She wore a simple blue afternoon frock, and her hair had not been dressed, rather it had arranged itself like a dark corolla about her expressive face. She looked, he thought, not only every bit as lovely as he’d remembered her in all his thoughts this past week, but also extraordinarily fresh and vivid, perhaps even more so in contrast to the cold, wan child who had just attempted to ruin his life.
“It’s nothing to do with your father,” he said. “I was leaving because I didn’t think you’d want to look at me, much less speak with me, after our last encounter. But I think it only fair for you to know,” he put in quickly before she could speak, “that I’d planned to begin to insinuate myself into your life in these next weeks.
“If you were going to stay in Town, I’d have found so many excuses to visit your father every day that the poor gentleman would have thought I’d run mad. Either that, or he’d have to believe that there was such a sudden influx of suspicious foreign nationals I wanted his advice about that they were thronging the streets and piling up outside my door. And I’d have run you to earth so often in Hatchard’s and at the library that you would have had to become as illiterate as Annabelle to escape me.”
But she winced when he said “Annabelle,” so he went on rapidly, “If you went home to the country, I’d have employed more drastic measures. It’s as well your father spoke up, since I’d have disliked laming a horse just to get entry to your house. Leonora,” he said, “Nell. I came back to Town to say good-bye to your cousin and all her hopes. I had hopes of my own, you see. But I remember, indeed, I can scarcely forget, that I am a divorced gentleman. If that is what distressed you when I last offered, and still does, I shall leave right now, and understand.”
“I’d never refuse you for that!” Leonora blurted, “not when that was what attracted me to you in the first place. That is to say,” she said, miserably aware that her reaction to him was causing her to misspeak herself again, “I admired you for it. I did,” she insisted, seeing one dark eyebrow shoot up. “It occurred to me then that you were the least hypocritical man in society. For you refused to live a double life as so many gentlemen do, and chose the harder, yet more honorable path, in spite of all the hardships it caused for you.”
“Ah Nell,” he sighed, understanding a great deal not only from the conviction in her ringing words, but from her flushed face and shining eyes. Though the Marquess of Severne might have been duped by a pale little female, he had often served his country admirably as an excellent spy.
He’d survived by his wits before when his life had been at stake, and now there was something at risk which he valued above that. So he paused to frame an answer for Leonora with as much care as if he faced an assassin with a primed pistol, for he knew her to be armed with a few words that could annihilate his future.
He remembered that the Viscount Talwin was famous among his gentlemen friends as a fellow with a roving eye. And though the viscount was sometimes affectionately mocked by those same gentlemen for his notoriously absurd taste in female companionship, he was no less admired for all that. But that was the gentlemen, and that was their way. Watching the viscount’s daughter make her impassioned speech on hypocrisy and a double life, Joscelin thought it no great feat to venture a guess as to the reason for it.
He answered her at last in soft, sad tones. “Nell, believe me, there was nothing particularly brave or noble in what I did. Were it only a matter of not getting on with my wife, I would doubtless have stayed in the union anyway and suffered it, as so many others do. I’d like your admiration, but I’d like to earn it. In this, there was no merit. I’m only a man who couldn’t live an impossible lie.”
“Father told me of your circumstances,” she said, “and it’s only a matter of degree, isn’t it? After all,” she said, smiling, “what would be a possible lie?”
“Any one that I did not have to tell you,” he answered. The room grew still, and he looked at her so intently, and her dreams seemed so suddenly possible after all her recent fears, that perversely, she doubted the truth of her perceptions.
“Nell,” he asked softly then, “this is very important. If you wish me to leave, I shall. And I’ll not be back, I promise, for I’d never plague you. But I’ve been remembering you all this past week. I cannot believe I only imagined what I saw in your eyes, and felt upon your lips. Nell, for the last time, shall I stay?”
“Please,” she asked anxiously, “
don’t feel that you must say these things because you admire my papa, or because you still think you compromised me. You really scarcely know me, you know,” she added nervously.
“Oh do I not?” he demanded, relaxing, and dropping his air of tense watchfulness. He crossed his arms and asked challengingly, “Mercutio is your favorite character in Romeo and Juliet, is he not?”
“Why, yes,” Leonora admitted, “but please believe that my papa will understand if you leave now as—”
“And,” he asked, stepping closer to her, “William Blake is one of your favorite poets? And baroque music is one of your chiefest delights even as Richard Third is your favorite play?”
“Why, yes,” Leonora breathed, amazed. But the look in the marquess’s eye was so startling that she stepped back the pace he’d come forward. It hardly mattered. For he scooped her up into his arms and, looking down into her dark troubled eyes, gently smoothed the hair back from her brow.
“I’m so glad,” he sighed when she did not attempt to break free. “I couldn’t believe that I was such a fool as to fall completely in love with a woman who only excited my every sense and who merely made me yearn to make love to her each time that I saw her. Although,” he breathed, as he brought his lips closer to hers, “that is not so terrible a thing, I think.”
When he at last had regained enough poise and control to look into her eyes again, they were unfocused and smoky with desire. “You turned me down once,” he whispered as he held her tightly, as if to dare her to attempt to leave him now, “but then I deserved it, because I lied to myself and to you. And my only excuse is that Belle’s lies made me feel an idiot for continuing to want you. Then too, I think I tried to pretend I was forced into what I really desired, to quiet my own fears and trick myself into happiness.”
He paused, and then said, all at once, with no trace of laughter, “I want you, Nell, don’t make me plead for you.” He was so serious, his face so suddenly still, and he wore such a look of anxious entreaty that Leonora was appalled that she might cause him pain.
“What do you want me for?” she replied softly.
“Don’t be coy,” he said on a note of despair, “although doubtless I deserve it. I want you for your wit, and your beauty, and your—”
“No, no,” she said at once, horrified, putting her finger across his lips to silence the flattery. “I meant, be plain with me, please. Do you want me for your mistress? For your lover? Perhaps only for—”
“Nell!,” he growled, shaking her none too gently, “I want you for my wife.”
“Oh good,” she sighed as he felt her relax in his arms, “I had to be sure, you see. I was so afraid I’d have to tear this dress. And it’s a particular favorite of mine.”
“Wretch,” he laughed as he saw where she lay her hand, on the top of the low bodice of her frock. “But don’t bother,” he whispered as his hand covered hers and her eyes widened, “for I shall be delighted to do it for you.”
SIXTEEN
The young woman sat alone in the luxuriously appointed carriage. She kept one hand on the strap by the window to prevent her swaying as they rode over the narrow, bumpy country road. She watched the sheep and hedgerows that they passed with a slight smile upon her lips, but when the carriage halted and the door swung open and the gentleman came in, her smile grew wider still.
After planting a tiny kiss upon the tip of her nose as a greeting, he sat beside her, and as the coach started up again, he took her hand in his and said,
“I’ve your father’s full permission to accompany you, alone, for the remainder of the journey. But as that’s only an hour or so more, it’s hardly a boon. Still,” he said consideringly, “remembering what you were capable of achieving in a deserted library in far less time, I’m hoping you’ll look upon these moments in a swaying carriage as a challenge.”
She said nothing, but smiled at him so warmly that this time he took far more than her hand in his. Yet, when he raised his lips from hers, he muttered a most unloverlike, “Damnation.”
He sighed and then asked, “Are you as sorry as I am that we aren’t wed, Nell? I haven’t heard you railing against fate, and now and again I get the uneasy notion that you don’t mind, that perhaps you’ve changed your mind.”
When her lips were free again, Leonora drew back from the kiss she’d instantly given him. She looked into the softened, bemused face of the marquess and said simply, “No, I don’t mind in the least. For, as I calculate, we shall be wed in precisely five days, six nights, and four and a quarter more hours.”
“Thank you,” he murmured, brushing his lips against the back of her hand. “A chap needs a bit of reassurance sometimes, you know. Confound your sister Sybil,” he breathed without heat, as he studied the great sapphire on the finger of the hand he held, turning it to the light.
“No, there was truth in what she said, Joss. If we wed precipitously from St. George’s in the heart of Town, then everyone would suspect our haste. Better that we marry from home, among our friends, and when word gets back to Town, it will only be that it was a summer wedding,” she said, losing her calm assured tone at the last as she watched those well-shaped lips linger at her fingertips.
“Ah well,” he sighed, “if she believes that a marriage contracted by the infamous Marquess of Severne, attended by all his fell companions, with the Duke of Torquay as his best man, will go unremarked, I shall not argue with her. Though I can’t shake the unnerving idea that the news may eclipse that of Bonaparte’s recent rout in certain circles. He’s only a Frenchman, after all, and can’t be expected to know better, while we’re home-grown villains. Still, I suppose she’s the right of it,” he added with a bitter wrench to his lips. “Since you’re marrying a fellow with such a shocking reputation, we must, of course, avoid all extraneous talk.”
“Don’t forget, you’re marrying a lady with a shocking reputation too,” she interrupted, for she could scarcely bear it when his face assumed that cold, troubled look. “What was it Papa said when you asked if he objected to his daughter’s marrying a divorced gentleman? Ah yes. ‘And you met her in a brothel once, I’ve been told,’ ” she mimicked in uncanny replication of her father’s laconic tones. “ ‘Clearly, my lad, you two deserve each other.’ ”
He laughed, just as she’d wished, but then said with the merest trace of uneasiness, “I worried about that, too, you know. No really, Nell, until I discovered that your anxiety to be quit of London those years ago was because of your opinion of modern marriage, I’d sometimes wondered if those few moments at Mother Carey’s mightn’t have alarmed or influenced you unduly.”
“Well!” she huffed with every evidence of annoyance, as she sat bolt upright. “We haven’t attempted anything that athletic, not to mention comprehensive, but I’d like to know if I’ve given you any cause for complaint as yet. Are you changing your mind, Joss? Getting cold feet? No,” she said, suddenly serious, staving him off with two hands against his chest. “Truly, Joss, have you any worries about it, is there a deficiency in me? No, tell me first, before you show me.”
“I’ll tell you,” he said with more than a hint of threat in his eyes, “that the only deficiency is in your reason if you can’t see that I should have to be dead for a week before my feet grew that cold. And my only worry is that you’ll come to your senses before I manage to securely wed you. And that you’ll damage your arms if you don’t employ them more intelligently. Yes, like that.”
After a long while, Leonora raised her head a fraction from his shoulder. The sky was just beginning to take on the paler, thinner look of twilight. “Joss?” she said softly.
“Yes?” he replied, smiling, called back from some happy thought of the future.
“I really thought you were going to marry her,” she murmured, and he didn’t ask who, for they neither of them could yet easily speak her name, but she could feel his muscles tighten beneath her cheek.
“If I had to go to the Indies for the rest of my life, I would not have,” he
said grimly.
“Oh, I know that now,” she said, “but, you see, I thought she was so beautiful, so delicate, so lovely. I don’t know if you can understand it, but she looked so ethereal, and I felt, have always felt, so earthbound. She was light, and fair and dim, and I, so dark and ... Ah, how can I explain it? Poets sing about her sort of looks, Joss.”
“Do they?” he asked casually, although he knew this was important to her, and was thinking on it deeply. “Well,” he said carefully, “I wouldn’t know about that. Consider Shakespeare.”
“Oh Joss,” she laughed, “if you quote that sonnet about his dark mistress, the one about her hair being nothing like the sun, but being like dark wires or some such, I’ll shout for my papa to come and drag you away. It’s a nice bit of verse, but although it’s the opposite of what he intended, I’ve always considered it lowering to a dark lady’s spirits.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it at all,” he smiled, for he’d been doing his homework, “rather I was remembering what he had a certain favorite of yours named Mercutio say. Don’t you recall?” He laughed. “Why, when he talks about what ails his friend Romeo, he says of his infatuation with Juliet, ‘... He’s already dead: stabbed with a white wench’s black eye.’ I know precisely how he felt,” he added, delighted with the soft, wondering look that came over her face.
“Well!” he eventually paused to breathe, after she had done showing him how much she appreciated his taste in literature and lovers. “I shall have to tell Sybil at once. The gossip was all true. What a depraved, passionate creature you are,” and then he added fervently, while he was still able, “thank heavens.”
The carriage was jolting so very badly that the fair-haired young woman had to hold on to the strap in order to keep herself upright. A summer shower had rattled overhead for the past hour, and now the narrow North Country roads were so pocked by other passing traffic that the wheels constantly caught in holes and splashed through ruts.
