“Oh! Elma, of course.” She was on her feet the next second. Twinges registered in various delicious and very useful spots throughout her body, bringing a blush to her face. “Only give me ten minutes,” she said, “and I’ll be ready to leave.”
It was her fault, of course, that forty-five minutes later, as they lingered at the edge of the train station in wait for the southbound train, she stood wound around Alex like a vine. He had only offered his elbow; it was she who had threaded both her arms around it and hugged it to her like a rare treasure.
And this was the pose in which she was discovered.
“Why—Miss Maudlsey! Is that you?”
The greeting fell over Gwen like the shadow of an axe. She looked down the platform into the rapidly fading smile of Lady Milton. Her sister, Lady Fanshawe, was looking between Gwen and Alex. As recognition set in, she darted a quick, shocked glance to her sister, whose jaw dropped.
“Hello there,” Alex said pleasantly. “How’s Reginald?”
Lady Milton made a strangled noise and drew herself perfectly straight. She was a painfully thin woman, and she was wearing a triangular, flat-topped hat; as she turned on Gwen, she gave the impression of a quivering exclamation point. “Miss Maudsley,” she hissed. “Where is the rest of your company? Where is Mrs. Beecham?”
So, Gwen thought. Here it was: total and utter ruin.
Her spirits remained strangely buoyant. She looked the woman squarely in the eye. “I cannot say where she is, for I no longer travel with an escort.”
“And why should she?” Alex added smoothly. His hand covered Gwen’s and closed, lifting her fingers to her lips as he stared down the ladies’ glowers. “Mrs. Ramsey hardly needs an escort,” he said into her fingers, “when traveling with her husband.”
As a child, Alex had learned all the usual fairy tales about evil witches and beautiful princesses lost and trapped and cast a-slumber. Princesses pricked by maleficent needles; princesses stranded behind hedges of thorns; princesses poisoned on sweet apple slices. It had never occurred to him until this morning that so many of these princesses were notable chiefly for the way in which they passed out, and woke up. Had this pattern been pointed out to him, no doubt he would have noted that these women were invariably awakened by the hands or lips of some sickeningly humble but aggressively competent prince—and that the awakening itself was a sanitized metaphor for the good rogering the prince had probably delivered. Indeed, which he did deliver, in the less treacly versions that circulated in old French manuscripts.
But after this morning, Alex would never be able to view such tales so cynically. This morning, he had watched Gwen Maudsley wake from sleep, and there had, indeed, been something magical about it. He’d sat beside her, his thoughts strangely quiescent, and watched consciousness steal over her, spreading first as a faint blush across her pale cheeks, and then in the twitch of her lashes, and the soft sigh that stirred her dark red hair. She came to life like a character from a place far sweeter and less cruel than anywhere he’d ever traveled. The half-conscious brush of her knuckles over her mouth had reddened her lips. When she’d shifted, the scent of her had perfumed the air around him.
He might have mocked himself if he hadn’t been tired of always mocking at what others took seriously. It was easier to mock, of course, but other people refrained, and not always because they lacked the imagination or sense of humor required to mock. Sometimes they refrained because they dared to long for something that was not easily grasped, something that might slip away if one did not pay it the proper respect—prayerful respect, the sort that moved one to remove one’s hat by the side of a grave, or to bow one’s head to soldiers marching off to war, even while damning the fat MPs that sent them to die. Life was not all for mockery. Nor was laughter. But it was harder to spot the prayerful moments when they called for laughter instead of tears. Tears spelled an end.
Laughter could spell a beginning.
He had watched her wake, and he’d thought to himself that he had no idea what sort of beginning he might offer her. But he’d seen, in her face, which he’d touched lightly with one hand as she’d rolled toward him, that he had certainly reached an end when he’d met her again in London.
On the platform, when the sneering crone and her assistant harpy had popped up to peck at them, he’d thought he had found the answer. What a sleeping princess required was a heroic rescue.
Apparently that was incorrect.
“Are you mad?” she demanded. They were on the Milan-bound train. He was growing rather sick of trains. By the looks of her, so was she. She turned a tight circle in the compartment and then kicked the door, exhaling through flattened lips as she turned on him. “Really, Alex, have you lost your mind? Two days ago, you would not . . . and now we are supposedly married!”
He fell back onto the mattress, bracketing his eyes with a hand. He had already exceeded his weekly quota for the care and soothing of enraged womanhood. “It seems likely,” he said. “Madness, I mean. You will have to blame yourself for it.”
“What possessed you? Did I give you any impression that I would expect you to stand for me? Do you not think I heard you last night? Your speech about suffocating? Do you think I would ask this of you?”
He sighed. She made him sound like a martyr, which seemed highly unfair. He loathed martyrs. His mother had been a martyr, an endless slave to the whims of his lungs. I used to love London in the season . . . of course, Alex cannot take the air there, and so we keep in the country year round. Perhaps when the twins come out . . .
“Sit up! You cannot mean to go to sleep! Tell me why on earth you would have made that preposterous claim, and explain to me what we are going to do about it!”
Aside from the obvious fact that he’d shagged her silly last night, and was waiting with the barest thread of patience for another opportunity? Yes, aside from that small detail, the why was simple enough. “You would not have been running about, sans chaperone, had I not suggested the adventure.” True. “Any harm that befalls you as a result is therefore my responsibility to defray.” Also true. “There was no other alternative to what I did.” Even now, he could not think of one.
“You might have said nothing. Did you think of that? I told you—ruin was my aim!”
He smiled despite himself. Her hiss was audible, sharp as a snake’s.
“You do not believe me?” she demanded. “Last night you seemed to take me at my word. Last night, we did as we pleased without worrying about others’ opinions. Today you come out the moralist. Surely I’m owed a reason for it?”
He sighed. “Gwen, last night and this morning are two separate matters. I would not have mentioned last night, but you may bet every pence of your three million that Lady Milton has headed directly to the telegraph office.”
“So? What of it?”
“So, you may say that you won’t mind infamy, but I reserve the right to doubt.” One’s essential traits had a way of reclaiming a person. “You’re a pleaser, Gwen.” Her instincts would pull her back to the narrow path, no matter how much she might come to genuinely revile its constraints. And even if he was wrong—he would not be responsible for putting her to the test.
A savage pain in his foot made him spring upright.
She was holding a chamber pot over his toes.
“Did that please you, Alex?” she asked with a very sweet smile. “Shall I please you again?”
He swung his legs to safer ground. “Had it been anyone else—anyone but that woman—I might have tried . . . I don’t know, to purchase their discretion. But . . .” Bloody hell. He trailed off as astonishment overtook him. Running a hand over his face, he admitted it to himself: he was lying. He was damned cheerful about this turn of events.
He eyed her with new intent. Gwen Ramsey. Queen of the Barbary Coast. He’d take her there for a holiday. Make her sing. She’d enjoy making the lie a reality.
Perhaps now was not the best time to introduce this idea, or admit his own sudden g
ood cheer. She looked furious. He cleared his throat. “As I said. Anyone else. But Lady Milton?” He shrugged. “She ardently admired her son’s profile. And I was personally responsible for changing it.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Yes,” she said, and returned the chamber pot to the floor. “Richard told me how you interceded for him in that fight. But that is beside the point, Alex. What are we to do now?”
He laughed softly. The sound was odd, a bit—all right, he could say it; the sound was a bit hysterical. And he felt odd: boneless, supremely light, thoroughly enervated—as if some great weight had lifted off him. A beginning, indeed. “We find a chaplain,” he said.
“What?” Her brown eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”
“Perfectly,” he said.
“But—” She sank down on the chair opposite. “But Alex,” she said softly. “What if we don’t suit?”
He sat up at that. How in the hell could she doubt they’d suit? Had she not been there last night? The past weeks? “You’ve known me over half your life,” he said dryly. “Do you expect any surprises? If so, I assure you, all my skeletons live well outside the closet, creating tales that regularly terrorize the Ramsey clan. Handy, that.” She looked pale as parchment, truly and deeply horrified. A laugh rose in him, rusty; it seemed to catch on something in his chest as it passed onward. “All right, cheer up. If we don’t suit, we’ll find a lawyer. Three cheers for the Marriage Reform Bill. Gerry voted against it, of course.”
He lay back again, repositioning his hand over his eyes. So. Not a true marriage, of course, but something convenient. Why not? She was already part of his circle. She belonged in that same arena as did his sisters and nieces.
The idea made him wince. All right, not precisely the same. But obligations already tied them together. He’d simply continue to honor those obligations.
“Divorce?” Now her voice sounded full of rust and nails.
“Less exciting to you than ruin, is it?” He spoke in a bored drawl. “I suppose it’s true, divorcées are a dime a dozen, these days. Fashionable, almost.”
“Fashionable—” The word ended on a choking noise. “Oh, please do sit up! You’ve gotten me into this mess; you can’t mean to nod off while I think how to fix it!”
He lifted the edge of his palm to look at her.
She had her arms wrapped around herself again. And a tear slipping down her cheek.
He swung up and came off the bed. “Christ, Gwen—what’s this? You must have known there was a risk that someone would spot us when you agreed to this charade with Barrington.”
“Of course I did!” she cried. Her arms tightened around herself; she must be bruising her own ribs. “But I thought I was choosing the risk! Instead you have made the decision for me, a decision I’ve never thought about—did not plan for—did you plan for this?” She looked up at him, mouth agape, face lit by some emotion he could not parse. “Did you?” she asked softly. “Alex, did you think the outcome might be marriage?”
He cupped her elbows, as bony and delicate as a bird’s wings. She was shaking. The violence of her reaction made no sense. “I never planned for it,” he said slowly. “But if you were ready to be ruined, I fail to see why this turn of events should seem so much greater in magnitude.”
Her face bowed. Silently she shook her head.
He frowned down at her.
Oh, what the hell.
“Gwen,” he said. “I never had any intention to marry. I never had any intention to show you around Paris. I never had the slightest intention of shagging you—but I can swear by God and everything holy that I had dreamed of it for years.”
Perhaps her breath caught. He could not be sure. Certainly, he reflected, it was not the most romantic sentiment one could speak to a woman. But at least her shaking ceased.
This was a good enough result to merit greater investment. “For years,” he said. His fingers tightened of their own volition. “And not just because you are lovely, truly lovely, beautiful in a way that is only partly an effect of your looks. The way you see the world is beautiful. And you make others see its beauty through your eyes. And you have made me exceedingly irritated by wasting yourself on tossers. I have cursed you repeatedly for selling yourself so cheaply. And I have never placed a bid because I never believed you were for sale, and I did not know that I was capable of offering what you deserved. So”—he drew a great breath—“if it’s the divorce that troubles you, we can shelve that part.”
No reaction.
“That is, marry. For good.” Was he really proposing this? Dear God, his sisters would throw a party that would last until the new year. “For real,” he clarified. Christ, he sounded like a five-year-old. Next he’d be adding, For keeps! No take-backs!
A sigh escaped her, almost soundless.
He had no idea how to interpret it. His own thoughts felt a bit muzzy, but he supposed he was making sense. Wasn’t he?
Then why was she not replying?
“My bases are New York and Buenos Aires,” he said, feeling more and more the idiot, “but if you prefer to stay in London, I can move the operations here. Indeed, at this rate, with the Peruvian business—well, that’s no matter. Perhaps biannual trips would serve us. We can choose a house in town. Wherever you like—Grosvenor Square, if you prefer. If you must,” he added under his breath, because he could really only go so far.
She flashed him a dark look and pulled out of his grip. Giving him her back, she went to stare out the window.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
Her voice sounded very small. And he wondered, suddenly, what sort of divide it created between them, that he knew pieces of her that she had never shared with him—facts and stories and moments and memories to which she had no idea he was privy. He had collected them for so long, denying to himself that this acquisition was anything more than casual amusement, when in fact it was zealous, and jealous besides; disowning as accidental the fact that he never forgot a single remark she made, or that others made about her, and that he approved of these other people, or disdained them, according to their treatment of her. Such a lopsided intimacy existed between him and her. Inevitably, it created a chasm whose depth neither of them could know until they tried to chart it. Would this chasm prove impossible to bridge?
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I do love you, Gwen.” How had she never realized that? Even Richard had known it.
He was watching her posture as she turned to face him. She stood so painfully erect. He was waiting for her shoulders to relax.
They never did relax, even as she lifted her face to him and smiled, a smile so unearthly radiant that he had a brief, uncanny fear: he was in a dream; none of this was real; he was dreaming, and she was not really saying, “Then yes, Alex. I will marry you.”
Chapter Fifteen
For the rest of Gwen’s life, memories of the masked ball would be vague and indistinct, washed out by the immense, blazing light in which they were made. At the moment, however, the illumination lent an overpowering precision to the scene. One thousand French lamps had been lit within the Cornelyses’ house in Grosvenor Square. The flames reflected crazily off the scarlet and gilt molding of the Chinese décor, the best jewels of some six hundred guests, the sequins affixed to their shiny, expressionless masks. Combined with the tumult of hundreds of conversations, three over-competitive orchestras scattered across two floors, and the ring of crystal and steel-toed shoes, the effect rippled through one’s senses like champagne. Gwen had gone in search of the water closet and had lost her way back to the ballroom twice.
Or perhaps, Gwen thought, her brain was malfunctioning. All of these last twelve days seemed to her to have passed in a sort of intoxicated haze. From Milan, she had wired Elma to come quickly—an edict obeyed even more quickly than Gwen had hoped; she’d spent only one more breathless night with Alex before Elma had appeared, anxious to know the cause of this early recall, and a bit put out, besides (although Gwen did not dare ask how El
ma had been occupying herself that made her early return so much to be regretted).
Once revealed, their cause for recalling her had achieved the impossible: Elma had been rendered temporarily mute. And then, as astonishment had ebbed, she’d thrown herself into crisis mode. “Shall we bother with bribing an Italian priest? Oh, bosh, simply another mouth to tape shut. No, let us go to where we know our friends, and figure it all out there,” she’d decided. “We book tickets for London directly. Mr. Ramsey, go, go, go!”
It had occurred to Gwen that there was no point in bothering to make the marriage match Lady Milton’s dates. “What do we care?” she’d asked Alex, when Elma had finally turned her back long enough to give them an opportunity for private conference. “Will it matter, in Buenos Aires and New York, if people in London say we were traveling alone together before we wed?”
“It will matter in London,” he’d said. “And one day, it might matter to you.”
He would not listen to her arguments to the contrary. Indeed, he’d proved surprisingly amenable to all of Elma’s moralizing and marshaling, and his sisters’ besides. They had been waiting at St. Pancras, four days later—alerted by Elma’s wire that a “terrible tangle” caused by “two idiotic lovebirds” required their best efforts at reconciliation.
Gwen had predicted to Alex that at least one of his sisters would fall down from shock upon learning of the marriage plans. In reply, he’d merely smiled and said they might surprise her.
And indeed, upon hearing the news shortly after retrieving them from the station, Belinda had done no more than lift her brow and nod, while Caroline, with a cry, had thrown herself across the carriage to embrace Gwen and Alex in turn. “Well done,” she’d said to Alex, winking as she pulled away.
The trick was this: stirred by Lady Milton’s industrious hand, the news of the marriage had spread far and wide. A flurry of cards was appearing at the Beechams, all from acquaintances dying to learn the story. They needed a very influential person, then, to facilitate the procuring of the special license, perhaps even to twist an arm in fudging the date of issue; otherwise, news of its belated usage would become the season’s next scandal. “And Gwen has already provided two,” Elma said, “for everybody is saying now that she must have bribed Pennington into crying off so she could have Mr. Ramsey instead.”
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