She was entirely sober in an instant.
And as lying didn’t come naturally to her, she hesitated too long before answering. No matter what, she was certain Olivia would know she was lying, anyway, so there was no point in attempting otherwise.
How did she know?
“Where?” Olivia’s voice was hoarse now. Insistent. She looked ill. “Who gave them to you?”
The crowd eddied around them, laughing too loudly, reaching for more ratafia, toasting each other, noticing nothing amiss about two frozen women staring at each other like animals about to lunge.
What in God’s name to say to her? What could possibly take away that raw hurt and fury and shock?
“He never loved me,” Phoebe managed, her voice a raw whisper. “Please believe me. He gave the gloves to me just . . . it was just because . . .”
Just because he couldn’t have you.
She would never really know. Lyon was a man, after all.
I kissed him because I was flattered and because I wanted to be kissed and because he was a Redmond. He kissed me because he could. And because he couldn’t have you.
She’d heard the rumors about Olivia and Lyon; it wasn’t until she saw Olivia’s expression that it became real to her, and it was disorienting, like seeing a myth come to life. She does love him.
She wished for an instant she’d never allowed Lyon to kiss her that night after the dart tournament, behind the Pig & Thistle. One second later she knew she would never, never apologize for it, for if she hadn’t kissed him she might never have known the difference between a mere kiss . . . and a kind that created a universe comprised of two people. The difference, in other words, between kissing Lyon and kissing the marquess. She might regret Olivia’s pain, but she would never apologize for a stolen moment of pleasure.
The silence stretched untenably. But Phoebe knew it wouldn’t have mattered what she said.
Olivia’s fine jaw had turned to granite. She gave her head a toss. And drew in a long, long breath, breathed out in a huff. Phoebe had the strangest sensation that she’d just born witness to the birth of resolve.
“Forgive me, Miss Vale,” she said with admirable composure. “I’m certain it isn’t your fault. I hope you have a wonderful time here in London.” She laid a hand gently on Phoebe’s arm, and she slipped into the crowd again and was gone.
Phoebe stared after her, composure rattled. She looked down at her gloves, that whimsically given gift, and wondered how Olivia knew. It seemed not even being a Redmond or an Eversea protected one from the vicissitudes of love. She had that at least in common with Olivia.
The thought held her motionless, despairing.
“Oh, please allow me to fetch another ratafia for you, Miss Vale. Yours is nearly gone.”
She blinked. A young man—there had been so many this evening, she could not quite conjure his name—was standing in front of her and beaming.
“I should like that very much,” she said.
And she pushed away the notion that she and Olivia and Lyon and the marquess might never get what they wanted. The best way to forget that, and Jules, was ratafia and compliments and dancing.
Jules danced with Lisbeth three times. Enough to prime the pump of gossip, enough to give the broadsheets fodder, enough to satisfy himself that he’d paid an appropriate amount of attention to her. Enough to convince Isaiah Redmond, should he indeed be taking note, of his sincerity. Because everyone knew the marquess did nothing without a reason. The dances, the flowers, the rides in The Row, were all paving stones set down along a path that would lead to matrimony. It was a dance everyone understood.
Unlike the one where a young woman was flung across the dance floor and her partner fell to his knees.
“What do you want, Lisbeth?”
She looked startled. “Want? Do you mean, like ratafia or a little cake or a new gown?”
“No. I mean from life.”
She seemed to struggle with the question, as if she’d been given something too large to hold in one hand.
“I’m not certain what you mean,” she confessed, apologetically.
“What makes you happy?”
“Do you think I’m unhappy?” She was trying to please him, he could tell, and he was very close to upsetting her with theoretical questions.
He knew a moment of genuine fear, a swift stab of it. A vision of a lifetime with a beautiful stranger. One he could please with gifts and compliments. One who would make him proud and wealthier. But one who would never learn his . . . language.
“No, of course not.”
She still looked puzzled. “Do you want something in particular from life?”
At least she knew enough to ask the question.
But what he wanted was something he never, never would be able to tell her.
He would lie in bed next to her for the rest of his life, and never be known.
“Yes,” he said gently, resignedly. “There is something I want from life. And I hope very soon I shall be made even happier.”
It wasn’t untrue.
And he made sure he stared into her eyes when he said it, and she blushed prettily. His meaning was unmistakable.
“Have you noticed, Jules . . . We’ve started a fashion.”
“We’ve . . . done what?” This was startling.
As if in answer to her question, some poor girl’s partner just sent her spiraling across the ballroom while he fell to one knee.
And someone planted on the periphery gave her a shove back in the opposite direction.
“You see? A new sort of waltz. It’s considered very daring. Because everyone wants to be like us.”
He stared down at her, utterly nonplussed. “Lisbeth . . . you’re aware that it was an accident? That I threw you across the room to avoid crushing your foot? I made a mistake.”
“Surely not.” She sounded genuinely surprised and a little troubled. “You are just being too modest.”
“I am nothing of the sort,” he said truthfully. “And no one has ever accused me of modesty. I do have flaws.”
“But even your accidents have style.”
“Lisbeth . . .” He gave up. “I suppose . . . it’s in the eye of the beholder.”
He ought to know better by now, but when he said it he watched Phoebe go sailing by in the arms of another man. Who looked as though he’d just won a million pounds, judging from his expression. Her flower was wilting, her dress was a bit crushed in the back, but her face was aglow and she looked to be laughing. Envy was serrated, excruciating.
He turned his head away quickly. Back to Lisbeth. Who had not stopped watching him for an instant. She’d followed his gaze.
“What is in the eye of the beholder?” She asked it with an edge he failed to detect.
“Everything is,” he muttered.
Jules slipped into the library, thinking perhaps he might find a crowd of gentlemen and a decent cigar and some stronger liquor, and of course he did. He might find conversation about horses and hunting and shooting, too, which would be soothing after the lashing his soul and heart had taken this evening.
He wove through the cheerfully glassy-eyed crowd, through a haze of smoke, and helped himself to the brandy decanter, knowing his host wouldn’t mind. He nodded to Gideon Cole, a friend and fine barrister who rivaled the marquess for smolder in the eyes of the women of the ton, and whom was leaning with the congenial Lord Kilmartin, the host, against the hearth. A gray-haired gent was bending Mr. Cole’s ear, likely seeking out free legal advice. From across the room, he toasted the marquess with his own glass of brandy.
Just as Lord Camber strode into the library, flinging his arms wide.
“She danced with me! I just danced with The Original! She gave me a waltz! How many of you can say that?”
A chorus of cheerful, envious congratulations went up.
“I swear I shall be the first to dance with her at the next ball,” someone muttered.
The Original, Jules thought. One ba
ll and Phoebe already has a nickname.
The ground seemed to shift beneath his feet. As though he stood on shore and was watching Phoebe going out with the tide, deeper into the social sea, away from him.
What if one of these men, less beholden to history, less shackled to land and family . . . were to seriously pursue her? What if she decided this was the kind of life she wanted after all?
He was known for his coolness and control. Suddenly he wanted to hurl the glass of brandy across the room and watch it shatter, watch everyone jump.
Just like one of his temperamental mistresses.
He must have been wearing a black expression, indeed, because poor Camber intercepted it and flinched and his smile evaporated instantly. He reached up and fussed nervously with his new forelock, wondering what he might have done to offend the marquess. Jules considered scowling, just to frighten the young man good and proper.
He turned away instead, with effort, because at heart he was a gentleman and a fair player.
Which was when he saw something curious:
Waterburn and d’Andre exchanged glances, Waterburn gesturing with his chin at Camber. Waterburn rubbed two fingers silently together, and d’Andre sighed, and rooted around in his pocket, came out with some bills, and counted them out to Waterburn.
It looked very like Waterburn had won a wager.
Chapter 23
“Phoebe, wake up! There are bouquets down below for you. Five of them! Five! Five!”
Phoebe struggled to open her eyes. It was strangely difficult; she was wound in a thick, black web of sleep.
She succeeded after what felt like considerable effort.
Well. Now that she was awake, she immediately went very still, shocked and a little fascinated by the ghastly pain in her head. A drummer had taken up residence in her skull and was playing with relentless, steady skill.
She opened her mouth to attempt to speak. Fur had grown on her tongue overnight. She felt a certain woozy fatalism: very well then. She would need to relearn how to speak.
“How many bouquets?” She could still manage sarcasm. Even if her voice sounded like a dry caw.
“FIVE!” Marie and Antoinette bellowed. Oblivious to sarcasm.
Phoebe winced.
Clearly the Silverton sisters were more accustomed to nights like the one they’d just had than she was. She patted a hand across the bed, encountered Charbydis, still sleepy, fat and soft, then found another pillow. Ahhh . . . Lovely, lovely, soft, cool pillow. She dragged it languidly over and slid it gently, gently over her face.
“What timezit?” she murmured from beneath it.
“Eleven o’clock in the morning, sleepyhead! Get up, get up, get up! You must see your bouquets and . . . and an invitation.”
“Invitation?”
She sat up abruptly and gasped as her brain sloshed forward in her skull. Gah. She put her hands up to her head to hold it motionless. It was like a pendulum knocking about in there.
“The maid is bringing up coffee. A whole carafe. That will put you right,” Lady Marie said, sounding like a schoolteacher. The Silverton Academy of Debauchery, Phoebe thought. “So we can do it again tonight! Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it in no time!”
A carafe of coffee did indeed put her right, but she wasn’t equal to breakfast. She watched in revulsion as the twins ate happily and gossiped about who wore what.
Phoebe’s bouquets were lined up on the sideboard downstairs. Lisbeth was studying them with an almost scientific fascination. As if she was witnessing an impossibility.
The twins interpreted the bouquets—all of which were of the hothouse variety, and all of which featured flowers like the one she’d worn in her hair—and their senders for her.
“This one is from Camber. Quite respectable if a bit ordinary. Heir to a viscount. Cheswick . . . a nonentity. A minor baron. Oh, Wapping . . . mmm, not bad. When did you meet him? Oh, I recall: the reel. Argosy . . . ah, now you’ve credibility for certain, as he only responds to who and what is considered the first stare of fashion, dear. You are officially a success!”
Imagine that. Phoebe basked, bemused, in the information.
“Oh, and this arrived, too. It looks like weeds someone plucked out of a field and we were tempted to toss upon the fire. But a message arrived with it. No signature, mind you.”
Phoebe stared at the bundle. Something in her face must have silenced the room for nobody spoke for a surprised instant as she gingerly took the “weeds” in hand.
It was a bundle of sage wrapped in lavender ribbon.
Bloody man.
She slowly lifted it to her nose and closed her eyes.
She pulled it away from her nose quickly, as her stomach did an unpleasant lurch. She was still unprepared for strong smells.
Her hands fumbled at the note and got it open.
You’re wrong. I do know you.
She wanted to crush it and hurl it at him, because he was right. About her.
Instead she sniffed the message. It smelled like sage, too. She folded it tightly in her fist.
“Is it witchcraft?” Lady Marie breathed. “They look like witch’s herbs.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Marie.” Her sister rolled her eyes.
“Well, look at that bundle of weeds!” Marie was indignant. “I’m quite serious. The Gypsy woman Leonora Heron who camps near Pennyroyal Green will cast a spell for a shilling or two, and they use herbs that look just like that. You can make a rival for a man’s love disappear, for instance.”
“Can you?” Lisbeth and Phoebe said in embarrassingly quick and equally fascinated unison.
The Silvertons were startled. And then their bright little pixie eyes went speculative.
“Er . . . so I’m told,” Lady Marie said after a moment, and studied her fingernails.
“It’s just a bundle of sage,” Phoebe told them. “The sort you pack your dresses in to keep them fresh. Sent to me by a woman I met last night. I imagine she thought I would find it useful.”
She laid the bundle gently down next to her plate. She ought to burn it in the fireplace in her room. She knew that sage was used to purify houses of evil spirits in some cultures. She wondered if she could use it to purify herself of useless longings.
As this topic of storing dresses in sage edged dangerously upon housekeeping, the Silverton twins changed it instantly.
“Don’t forget, Lisbeth, there’s a bouquet here for you, too! But only the one.”
They took a bit too much relish in saying it. But they gestured to the most spectacular bundle by far.
They were hothouse flowers, a profusion of pink roses and white lilies, sophisticated, delicate, tasteful, preternaturally gorgeous. Phoebe knew in an instant who had sent them.
“What does the message say?”
“I look forward to seeing you today.”
—Dryden
“Effusive,” Lady Marie commented, and her sister nudged her, amused.
“We’re riding in The Row this afternoon.” Lisbeth’s face and voice were abstracted. “Jules and I.”
“They’re wagering on you now at White’s, Lisbeth,” Lady Marie volunteered. “Waterburn told me.”
“Are they? What do the wagers say?”
“That you’ll be engaged before the month is out.”
“To anyone in particular?” Lisbeth actually sounded ironic.
“Very witty, my dear,” Lady Marie congratulated.
And then Lisbeth startled Phoebe by reaching over and picking up the bundle of sage. She gingerly turned it this way and that in her hand. As if she was trying to decipher it. Her brow was shadowed.
“Where does this plant usually grow?”
“All over England,” Phoebe said, mostly truthfully.
Lisbeth studied Phoebe the way she’d studied the sage. “Are you going to keep it?”
“Yes,” Phoebe said.
They locked eyes.
And then Lisbeth put the sage down as abruptly as she’
d drop a poisonous toad.
As it turned out, Phoebe’s invitation was to join Lord Camber, he of the sincere brown eyes and solid chin, as well as Waterburn, d’Andre and the Silverton sisters, for a ride in The Row. As she didn’t ride, Phoebe would be treated to a trip in his high flyer. Lisbeth was generously included, but she demurred, as she was going riding later with the marquess.
Or Jules, as she referred to him at every opportunity.
“I think I’ll prepare myself for this afternoon,” Lisbeth said finally. And excused herself from the table.
Snatching up her bouquet of roses on her way out of the room.
An hour later the doorbell rang, and Phoebe was nearly bounding down the stairs with the Silverton twins to meet Waterburn and d’Andre. She was wearing her best day dress, which was a sort of faded shade of gold wool and rather practical and demure, but she liked to think it looked well with her hair. Her boots had been so polished by the Silvertons’ staff that she could almost forget the soles were wearing thin.
“I’ve news, gentlemen,” Lady Marie told Waterburn and d’Andre with a sort of hushed glee. “Miss Vale received not one hothouse bouquet this morning . . . but five.”
“You jest!” Waterburn’s mouth dropped open. He exchanged a look livid with delight with d’Andre. “Never say I have competition.”
“I fear the whole of the ton is your competition, Lord Waterburn,” Phoebe teased.
“We shall fight Camber for you. Or perhaps race him.”
Phoebe then watched as the men appeared to exchange money. Men. Likely settling some sort of wager or loan, given that this was Waterburn.
In The Row, Phoebe was goggle-eyed at the pageantry, and she didn’t try to disguise it. The day was crisp and clear and The Row was swarming with handsome people in handsome clothing perched on handsome horses or driving beautiful carriages, calling to each other, waving, and gossiping, in all likelihood, as they passed.
Camber’s high flyer was an almost outlandish contraption compared to the curricle driven by Waterburn, but she liked outlandish. She found it beautiful and very fast, both literally and figuratively. It told her definitively how Lord Camber defined himself and the set of friends with which he ran, and she didn’t object in the least, though she found the contrast between it and her first impression of him rather striking. She sat beside him, wearing her glorious new bonnet, and felt like a queen, towering over the other carriages, which were lower to the ground. Two shiny-haunched bays pulled it.
How the Marquess Was Won Page 22
