by Gaelen Foley
She had no idea what lay behind the gates of his hidden self. She only knew she did not like being kept out. It made her all the more uneasy, because she might already be carrying his child; it was too soon to say.
At any rate, having made all their social calls on the surrounding neighbors, it was time to extend the hospitality of their home to the local Quality, in turn. Daphne planned her first dinner party as a married woman, to be held in early December. She began consulting meticulously with the man-chef of the house on their menu before sending out her invitations.
While visiting the chef’s domain in the kitchens, she noticed that the whole time they were discussing the best foods in season for the grand event, Wilhelmina and the young chef could not stop staring at each other. She hid her smile. It seemed a bit of an attachment might be forming.
Some mistresses might have been angry, but Daphne was glad. Now that she knew what love was like herself, she wanted everybody to experience it, too, especially a young woman as good-hearted as her loyal maid. The chef seemed like a solid young man, and after all, a woman who married a chef would never starve.
A few days later, when Daphne caught Willie savoring a special little vanilla cake that the handsome young chef had lovingly made just for her, she teased her about it, and Willie shyly confessed to their newly blossoming friendship.
Both twins, in fact, had received a warm welcome at the estate; country folk at heart themselves, they both fit in with ease. Certainly, Daphne had noticed that footman William spent much of his days being followed around by giggling maids.
As for the young orphan boy, Jemmy, he was making new friends and gradually beginning to lose his Bucket Lane attitude.
Daphne had him hard at work with the other servants on the frosty December day of the dinner party.
Several hours before the guests were due to start arriving, she was dashing about the house making sure that all preparations were moving along smoothly. Passing through the entrance hall, she saw their butler paying their country postman and realized the mail had just been delivered. Max had already taken it and was just now opening a letter he had received.
Daphne hurried over to him. “Any last-minute cancellations from our guests?”
“No!” he said cheerfully. “But this arrived for you from London. Another novel from Miss Portland,” he added as he handed her the latest thick letter from Carissa.
Daphne took it with a frisson of happiness, but put it in the pocket of her apron. “I’ll save it for later. Too much to do right now.”
“Too busy even for me?” he asked in a wicked murmur, leaning closer.
She blushed. “I’m afraid so, Lord Rotherstone.” She slid her hand up his shoulder. “You can wait until after the party, can’t you?”
“If I must,” he purred as he trailed a smoldering stare over her.
“I see you got something from London, too.” She stood on her tiptoes, peeking at the letter he had already opened. “Oh, dear. The old fierce Highlander again.”
“He’s keeping me apprised of any new broodmares of particular quality arriving at Tattersall’s,” he replied. “I had told him I’m interested in expanding our stock. Man knows his horseflesh.”
Glancing at Virgil’s short letter, she scanned a terse description of a black Arabian mare with four white feet, costing a full two hundred pounds. She eyed Max dubiously.
“Are you going to buy her?”
“Maybe. I think I will go write back to him and tell him to make an offer on my behalf.”
“I see. So, you trust him with your money?” she asked dryly.
“Darling, I would trust him with my life.” He bent and kissed her cheek, then marched off across the entrance hall to go and write his answer.
“Maybe when you answer him, you could ask him why he doesn’t like me,” Daphne remarked as he walked away.
“Doesn’t like you?” Max exclaimed, glancing back and pausing at the bottom of the stairs. “Nonsense.”
“He glowered at me at our wedding.”
He laughed. “That’s just his face, Daphne. He couldn’t have been happier to see me married off, especially to such a ‘fine young filly.’”
She snorted.
He flashed a grin at her, then jogged up the stairs to escape, she suspected, the controlled chaos of the party preparations.
Daphne watched him with a vague uneasiness until he had disappeared into the upper floor. She could not quite put her finger on it, but she had learned to read her husband well enough to detect the subtle change that came over him whenever he received a communiqué from that taciturn old Scot.
Doing her best to shrug off her inexplicable misgivings, she decided to take a moment from her party preparations just to steal a quick peek at her new letter from Carissa.
She still had a hundred things to do to get ready, but both girls missed each other deeply. Daphne felt guilty, as though she had abandoned her, for she knew Carissa was having a hard time of it, left in London to deal with her obnoxious cousins without Daphne as an ally.
While the servants carried more chairs and a large floral arrangement into the dining room, Daphne got out of the way to read her letter, wishing Carissa could have been at the party tonight. It would have made it so much more fun, plus, her friend’s presence would have helped to calm her nerves over her first occasion of playing Max’s high-ranking hostess. She still sometimes felt that she had no idea of how a marchioness was supposed to act.
At any rate, she vowed to read only the first page of Carissa’s letter, but she quickly saw that her friend had written in such a distressed state that she raced through the whole thing. With Daphne gone, Carissa’s cousins had begun tormenting her with renewed vigor; worse, Carissa’s newfound acquaintance with the scandalous Warrington and Falconridge had given the jealous harpies an easy source of new material. Their taunting and innuendos, Daphne could well imagine, would have jeopardized any girl’s reputation.
Dire worry had gripped her by the time she got to the end. At once, she knew that either she had to invite Carissa to come to the estate for a holiday or return to London herself long enough to rescue her friend.
Distracted by her concern over Carissa, she desired a moment in Max’s company to soothe her anxiousness and put her mind at ease. Hurrying upstairs to ask what he thought of the situation, quickly giving a few more directions to her staff along the way, she no longer needed the fingerpost sign to find the master suite.
Out of habit, she went in by the second door, which opened into her side of the master suite. The his-and-hers double bedchambers were connected by a little mirrored passageway with a closet and a hidden jewelry safe on one side, and a decadent Roman-style bath on the other, quite the miracle of modern innovation, with its marble columns framing the large nickel-plated tub, and already heated running water almost constantly available from the spigot.
It was extraordinarily quiet in their joined chambers.
She furrowed her brow and walked toward Max’s room, wondering if he had not come up here, after all.
But then all of a sudden, she caught a whiff of what she could have sworn was brimstone, with a hint of vinegar, emanating from his end of their suite.
She paused, grimacing. The harsh, pungent odor made her eyes water. Already reaching her end of the little passageway, she started to ask what he was doing, then saw his reflection in the mirror, and stopped, staring in fleeting confusion.
Without going any farther, she could see him sitting on the edge of the bed, using a tiny eyedropper to place a few drops of some solution on the letter he had received from Virgil.
Daphne went no farther but held her breath, watching silently as Max replaced the eyedropper into a little vial of some solution, which she gathered was the source of that hideous smell. She felt a chilly draft and realized he had opened a window in his bedchamber to help disperse its unpleasant fumes.
Then he blew on the moistened letter, as if to dry the droplets he had placed on
the sheet of paper. Her heart began to pound as he reread the letter with a new intensity, as though perceiving information previously hidden. Invisible ink? she thought in utter shock.
What on earth is going on?
If this were not astonishing enough, Daphne’s eyes widened in deepening incredulity when she saw his hiding place. There was a small decorative niche in the wall by his bed, which usually held a vase. At the moment, it was a gaping hole in the wall.
Satisfied with his letter from London, Max now took it, along with the vial of mysterious liquid, and placed the items inside some sort of hollow hidden inside the wall. Sliding the little curved part of the niche back down, he clicked it into place, put the vase back where it belonged, then went and shut the window. She glimpsed his troubled expression as he passed by her line of sight.
Daphne quickly backed away from the passage between their bedchambers as something warned her not to let him see her there. She was in a state of shock.
What do I do? What on earth is he hiding from me?
With a houseful of guests expected in a few hours and several dozen things still left to do, she realized she did not have the wherewithal to confront him right now. She did not want to start a fight just ahead of the local gentry arriving for her first effort as a married hostess.
She did not want all her neighbors coming in at the tail end of their first marital row, especially one that was sure to be apocalyptic in proportions. She shook her head, trembling with fury as she heard him leave his chamber by the matching door on the other side of the suite.
Leaning against the wall for a moment to try to collect her wits, she felt sick to her stomach to have confirmation of something she had sensed, but could never quite put her finger on—that Max was being less than open with her, as usual.
She felt like such a dupe! Living with him, waking, sleeping, eating, bathing with him, spending day and night together, and it had taken her a blasted month to catch on that there was a whole other side of her husband of which she had no inkling yet.
His betrayal of her trust felt like a stab in her heart. She had given him her all, and in return, he was making a mockery of her faith in him. A tremor of fury and fear rippled through her. What sort of dark business was he up to that he had to be so secretive? It must be bad—why else would he choose to conceal it?
Panic threatened to rise with her sudden sense of having no control whatsoever over her life, indeed, quite the opposite, of being entirely under his control, but she tamped it down, clinging to the strength that anger gave her instead.
A horse at bloody Tattersall’s? God, she wanted to hit him, shake that air of cool control right out of him, that liar. She looked around the corner of the passageway, wondering if she should go in there at once, rip open that hiding place, and find out what was going on.
She paused, listening as hard as she could for any sound of him returning. Instead, she did hear someone coming, but it couldn’t be Max. The footsteps were too light and swift. Just then, there was a light knock at her bedchamber door, which already stood ajar.
“Yes?” she forced out.
A maid peeked in. “My lady, Chef Joseph asked if you would like to come down and give your opinion on the almond soup.”
God, she could barely force herself to focus on the dinner party preparations now, but somehow, she managed a nod. Pushing away from the wall, she put Carissa’s letter back in her pocket and followed the maid back down to the kitchens, brooding on her next move all the way.
It might be nothing, she tried to tell herself. As he was her lord and husband, was it not his male prerogative to withhold important information that was not considered part of a woman’s domain?
But everything in her recoiled from her attempt to wave it off. She knew in her bones it was something big, and probably something deeply wicked, considering the lengths he had gone to, to keep her in the dark.
Resentment burned through her, all the sharper when she recalled how thoroughly he had investigated her before deciding to pursue her. To be sure, he had made a point of finding out everything he possibly could about her before deciding if she was right for him. In return, he had given her secrecy and deception. She shook her head to herself.
You lying, two-faced fiend.
Well, obviously, there was no point in confronting Max with his lies until she could find out for herself what exactly he was hiding. She couldn’t believe he had done this to her, but why waste her breath asking for answers or demanding explanations?
Slick as he was, the Demon Marquess would merely lie again unless she had hard evidence to put in front of him. That smooth devil could talk his way out of anything. But this time, he had pushed her too far.
She was growing wise to him. If he liked underhanded dealings, he would get just that.
It was far more intelligent, she decided, to wait for an opportune moment to look inside that little hiding place herself. She dreaded to ponder what she might find, but for now, she decided not to breathe a word or show any sign that she had finally caught on until she got a chance to see for herself exactly what was going on.
Chapter 17
Virgil had been scant on details, but apparently there had been another sighting of Drake.
As his team’s Link, Max had received fresh orders to get to the Westwood estate without delay and finesse whatever information he could out of Lady Westwood, Drake’s dear old mama.
His particular goal was to find out if the countess had received any communication from her supposedly dead son. It was feasible, after all, that Drake would want to spare his heartbroken mother any further mourning, considering he was alive.
Beyond that, Max knew very little. He would simply have to see what he might find when he got there. It wasn’t more than a three-hour drive in the direction of London.
In the meanwhile, he would have to come up with some credible story to give his wife to explain his upcoming departure. All through their dinner party, Max let his calculating mind brew on how to proceed, even as he played the gracious host.
Being rather skilled at compartmentalizing different areas of his life, he was able to put tomorrow’s mission aside for the moment—just as he had put aside his endless sense of guilt over lying to his beloved since their wedding day. He ignored it all with a will, focusing his attention on the dinner party. He knew how much a success tonight meant to Daphne.
So far, it was all going smoothly.
As for Lady Rotherstone, Max thought she looked more gorgeous than ever tonight. He had never seen her wear red before, and the effect was stunning.
Now that she was a married woman, she seemed to enjoy experimenting with the bold colors that were generally considered inappropriate for debutantes.
Clad in a rose-red gown of taffeta with simple lines and short puffed sleeves, she wore her bright blond hair pinned up in a sleek and elegant coif, her frosty beauty at odds with her fiery gown.
She had a pearl choker around her neck and a rare touch of rouge on her lips as if to keep her pale complexion from being overwhelmed by the crimson she wore.
It was a dramatic and sophisticated look, and it made him want her in a new and urgent way. Max had thought her beautiful before, of course, wholesome and innocent, with her sunshine loveliness, but she seemed different tonight, like a young woman fully coming into her own as she adjusted to her new place in the world as his marchioness.
She displayed an expert charm with their guests, but showed a little less of her usual endearing warmth, in favor of a touch more confident authority.
The room resounded with conversation and laughter, and glowed with the brilliance of the candelabras. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, and in all, Max thought she had done a magnificent job with every detail of their dinner party.
The lavish courses were perfection, from the almond soup, pigeon pie, broiled salmon, leg of lamb, and plum pudding, just to name a few, to the roasted lobsters, oyster loafs, savory pheasant, and stewed pears.r />
The sweet course was delightful, especially the fanciful “hedgehog” on display in the middle of the table, with its blanched almond bristles. The carefully sculpted animal creation was spun from a concoction of egg whites, sugar, butter, and cream, Daphne explained to them all.
Its eyes and nose were made from little pieces of black licorice, and she thought their Chef Joseph a genius for his art. The guests regretted cutting into the hedgehog in order to eat it, but eagerness to taste it outweighed their guilt at destroying it, and sure enough, it turned out to be delicious.
Meanwhile, a colorful array of fruits and nuts, apricot puffs, biscuits, custards, and three different types of cheesecakes were passed round. At last, the ladies repaired to the drawing room for tea while the men remained at table to enjoy their port and sherry.
Max, however, was eager to rejoin Daphne. Separated by their respective places at the head and foot of a dining table that seemed nearly as long as a cricket pitch, he was missing his lady’s company and feeling deprived of her conversation.
He refused to dwell too much on his guilt over the latest lie he’d have to tell her tomorrow. He knew his duty for the Order, and the trip would not take long.
He had to admit he had still not quite figured out how to handle the complexities of his double life from an emotional standpoint. His blood ran cold whenever he tried to imagine how Daphne would react if she were to hear the truth of his life story at this late date.
But even if Virgil would have permitted it, how could he come out with such revelations now, when he was already in it so deeply with her? He had only just barely convinced her to marry him in the first place.
If he told her the truth, she might regret ever agreeing to this, and then he risked losing her love. And if that happened, obviously, he would die. Or at least, to be sure, he would not want to live.
It was better, cleaner all around if she never knew, he thought, but the inner battle was tearing him apart.
He did his best to put the whole thing out of his mind. It was too late now to start telling her what he should have said months ago, but was neither then nor now at liberty to share.