Lord Camber suddenly levitated three feet off the ground and dropped hard to the marble. He landed with an unnerving thud. His booted feet flew nearly over his head, came down with a smack. He lay stunned.
When he looked up in tandem with Phoebe, he saw the face of the Marquess Dryden. His visage was granite. His eyes were murderous.
“I believe she told you to stop, Camber.” The words were evenly measured, terrifyingly quiet.
Camber scrambled to his feet with surprising speed. He stared at Jules, dumbstruck, scarlet with indignation and rage. His broad chest swayed with ragged, furious breaths.
And then he lunged, aiming a fist at Jules like a catapult.
Jules snatched the fist mid-air with shocking speed and spun Camber around and pinning him motionless with his own arm.
Camber’s eyes bulged. He was imprisoned against the wall of the marquess’s chest. He breathed through his nose like an angry bull.
“You’ve no claim on her, Dryden.” He muttered hoarsely.
“Nor do you.”
“For God’s sake, Dryden. Have you gone mad? Be sensible. She’s not a lady. She’s a schoolteacher. I didn’t intend to harm her. I know she enjoys doling out favors, I was told.”
Phoebe was numb with shock. Her voice came to her from what felt like miles away. “I . . . I swear I never . . . by whom?”
Jules’s every word was etched in leisurely menace. “I will not allow you to touch her if she does not wish to be touched. Are we clear?”
Camber fumed. He tugged.
Jules jerked his arm farther up his back. “Are we clear?”
Camber hissed in pain. “Yes. Very well. Release me.”
Jules unhanded him abruptly and Camber stumbled. He righted himself and then backed away from the marquess, glaring like a man cheated, holding his arm.
Jules reached out a hand for Phoebe; his hand hovered mid-air, stopping himself from touching her in time. “Are you . . .”
“. . . Hurt? No. Not really. Thank you. I . . . well, thank you.”
She drank in his face, fascinated, her heart swollen. The taut fury, the concern, the possessiveness, the longing that flickered there behind his control.
No one had ever come to her defense before.
And they stared at each other, rapt and speechless. But when Phoebe heard a throat clear she gave a start. It was only then that the two of them noticed the usual ballroom milling had come to a halt around them. A crowd was massed. She saw Lisbeth, and the Silverton twins, and Waterburn and d’Andre move toward them, rats called by the pied piper of scandal.
Oh, God.
She was instantly horrified she hadn’t defended herself more effectively. For she saw very clearly that Jules had risked the future he’d so passionately worked toward for so long. She also knew very clearly, and with a sense of despair: the separation she’d thought they’d achieved was an illusion. He could no more help himself from helping her than he could help breathing. He in all likelihood had known where she was in the ballroom at all times.
Jules inhaled at length, a man struggling to settle his temper. To find a neutral expression.
Because Lisbeth’s lovely face was part of the crowd, and she was fixedly watching the two of them, mouth a thin white line, jaw tense. Looking for all the world like hard and brittle porcelain.
“Jules . . . ?” Her voice was faint.
Jules took pains to sound bored. “Camber momentarily forgot he was a gentleman, and I reminded him rather emphatically. T’was naught that doesn’t typically happen in a ballroom at least once per night. And nothing that Camber will do again.”
The heads of the gathered crowd turned in unison toward Phoebe then, eyes glittering like a wolf pack.
Lisbeth’s voice rose. Thin, clear, shot through with torment, sounding like a thwarted child.
“But . . . honestly . . . over her? Why should you bother? Don’t you know . . . it’s all been a game, Jules.” She gave a tinkling little laugh and cast an inclusive look over the crowd: aren’t men silly?
“Lisbeth,” the marquess said quietly. The word contained an unmistakable warning.
She couldn’t seem to stop.
“Surely you’ve seen the betting books at White’s, Jules. She’s been nothing but a lark! A wager! An experiment. She’s not a lady at all, and her popularity is entirely manufactured.”
Phoebe swiveled and stared at Jules in horror.
Her hands iced, when she saw that Jules was staring at Lisbeth, stunned, shaking his head. His eyes closed.
Which was when the ground dropped from beneath Phoebe’s feet and the very air seemed to warp before her eyes.
“Betting books?” Phoebe’s lips were numb. She held her wrist in one hand. It didn’t hurt. It was just she wanted something to hold onto, lest the ground swallow her up.
Jules glanced toward her, and stiffened when he saw her touch her wrist. His face went deadly as an ax blade and he fixed Camber with a stare.
“Who suggested you might find Miss Vale accommodating, Camber?”
“As if I would tell you.” The man lurched away from the marquess as if shoved, and finally disappeared, hurrying off through the ballroom.
The crowd was now layered in rings about them. The low buzz of speculation and commentary sounded like flies about carrion.
Lisbeth wasn’t finished. “Oh, yes, the betting books, Phoebe! None of it was meant to be real, isn’t that right . . . Phoebe?” Lisbeth said blithely, horribly, almost conspiratorially, the shine in her eyes like the light glancing off a blade. “The nickname and so forth. The wager was that they could fool the ton by turning a plain schoolteacher with no family or connections into all the rage. That she would be showered with hothouse flowers and invitations. Hundreds of pounds, they wagered. They’ve really had one over on the ton. The Original and all that. Honestly.” She wrinkled her nose and gave another little laugh.
Phoebe couldn’t speak. She felt peculiarly separate from her body, hovering over the crowd. She looked down at herself, faintly puzzled, as though she was Queen Elizabeth’s lady in waiting and had just discovered her dress was poisoned.
And when she looked up with entreaty into the faces of the Silverton twins she saw nothing reflected but the sort of mischievous guilt seen on the faces of three-year-old girls when caught stealing a little cake in the kitchen. They were enchanted with themselves.
Please let it be a dream.
And then Lady Marie shrugged and Lady Antoinette raised her palms.
She waited. She was still in a ballroom, still surrounded by coldly speculative eyes.
“Of course it was,” Phoebe’s voice was a thread. “It’s all been a lark.”
She was encircled now, like a deer brought down by wolves. All the men she’d danced with, flirted with, eyed her warily, resentfully, as anyone naturally would if they felt they’d been dealt a counterfeit.
How could she not have seen? How could she have been such a fool?
“Who originated this clever plan, Lisbeth?” the marquess’s voice was coldly conversational.
Lisbeth looked uncertain. “Waterburn. But you knew about it, didn’t you, Jules? Or rather, Waterburn said you read it in the betting books. I thought you knew.”
Jules and Waterburn locked eyes. The antipathy that snaked between them was nearly visible.
“Of course,” Phoebe managed, through the ringing in her ears. “I was in on it all along!” she said brightly. “Didn’t you know, Lisbeth?”
Waterburn and d’Andre and The Twins appeared startled by this revelation.
Wary glances ricocheted between them.
“Were you?” Lisbeth’s question was uninflected. Entirely disbelieving.
The mutters of the crowd were gathering volume as realization took hold:
“She’s a fraud? Miss Vale. Bloody rotten of them. Made fools of us!”
“She’s not even very pretty.”
A more cheerful one. “Well, I actually I sent her flowers!
Bloody good trick, Waterburn! Best wager yet.”
“And now that Lisbeth has brought our pantomime to a conclusion, I believe I’ll make my exit. Thank you for being such a lovely audience.” Phoebe curtsied deeply, theatrically, and blew kisses from her palms, and turned on her heel.
There was a nonplussed pause.
Hesitant, scattered applause. Pat pat pat pat pat went hands.
Jules scowled it into silence.
“Is she really an actress?” A man’s eager voice came on the periphery of the crowd. “Does she have a protector?”
Jules fancied he could hear the sound of her footfall echoing over the marble, growing ever distant, that he could pick it out from the other ambient sounds. It took every ounce of hard-won control he possessed not to bolt after her. If he waited too long he was certain she would be forever lost to him, slipping into the dark of London, like her cat.
He turned and looked at Lisbeth again. Her hands were white knots against her brilliant blue gown. Her face was bleached of color.
He’d never before today wanted to run a woman through on a pike.
But he should have noticed. He should have been more aware, more sensitive, more careful. She was more astute than he’d given her credit for, and he’d refused to see her as much as she’d refused to see him. He’d dealt with her poorly, even dishonorably. He’d been carelessly at the mercy of his own emotions and needs.
And in a way, he treated her almost like an object.
The way the ton had treated Phoebe.
The way they treated him.
Very nice little vise you’ve gotten yourself into, Dryden.
“What about the marquess?” someone suggested on the periphery. “He can act, too? Was the whole evening a pantomime? The man can do anything.”
They were prepared only to admire him, because it was what they’d been told to do. How quickly confusion could spread and rumors grow and the truth become so diffused it could never again be retrieved whole.
Ridiculously, the Sussex waltz started. Lilting and jaunty. It struck Jules as a tastelessly inappropriate theme for the apocalypse.
And then Lisbeth smiled at him. It was the sort of smile that suggested that this was all for his own good. As if she expected to be congratulated and thanked for exposing this folly. As if she expected him to be relieved that she’d spared him any more foolishness over a fraud like Miss Vale.
Who, ironically, was the most genuine person in any room.
He realized with a shock he was expected to dance this particular waltz with Lisbeth.
And he knew of a certainty he couldn’t bear to touch her.
Chapter 27
Phoebe exited the ballroom through a gauntlet of fascinated eyes. She felt the stares like cinders on her skin. She knew her face was scarlet, which she couldn’t help, but she also knew her head was high and her smile regal and brilliant, the smile of a pleased performer. She was grateful she’d had the opportunity to see Signora Licari, because she could imitate that poise.
She would leave them believing she was complicit. Or at least leave them doubting the truth. One little seed of doubt could sprout in innumerable directions, and Waterburn and d’Andre and The Twins would have a time of combating it.
And then when she saw the stairs she lunged for them like a creature bolting for a hole.
Her skirts hiked in her hands, she ran blindly out into the dark, down the steps of the town house, plunging into the London streets, past the rows of identical, judgmental houses. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she wanted to run and run until her lungs were aflame in her chest, until her heart exploded, until she gagged with exhaustion. Until she could feel nothing, nothing at all.
And then she saw the Silverton carriage, the driver slumped atop it, sipping at a flask.
She halted immediately. “Take me to the Silverton town house,” she demanded imperiously.
He was so astonished he sat bolt upright and cracked the ribbons over the backs of the horses just as she slammed the carriage door behind her.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
He couldn’t hear her walking anymore. She could be out of the building. Walking out into the London night—
God. He wouldn’t humiliate Lisbeth, despite what she’d done, because he wasn’t entirely innocent.
“Do you mind, Lisbeth?” He heard his voice as if it belonged to a stranger, polite, elegant, apologetic. Centuries of breeding had their uses. “I fear I’ve twisted my wrist persuading Camber to behave like a gentleman. I never could tolerate watching a man treat a woman poorly.” He smiled. It irritated him suddenly that his smiles were so very effective. He hated himself for knowing it.
And it worked. She softened. “Oh! Jules. You’ve gone and hurt yourself, and all over someone who’s just a—”
Something she saw in his face stopped her like a hand clapped over her mouth.
There was an uncertain, fraught little pause.
“Your sense of honor is admirable,” she concluded hurriedly. Hectic pink moved across her fair face again.
Tick. Tick. Tick. In his mind he saw Phoebe Vale growing smaller and smaller and smaller, going farther away from him, until she vanished over a horizon.
His jaw ached from being clenched.
He could stand it no longer. “Lisbeth,” he said hoarsely.
And suddenly all pretense fell away. She saw it in his face. She was instantly all panicky entreaty. “Jules . . . please don’t . . . you don’t want to . . .”
“It’s no good, Lisbeth.” His voice almost cracked. “I’m more sorry than I can say. I wish you all the best . . . but it’s no good. I must—”
She opened her mouth, but said nothing. She closed it again.
He bowed and turned, moved along the perimeter of the ballroom, hardly noticing when some other woman was flung, twirling across the ballroom, while her partner fell to his knees.
Eyes followed him, but he was used to that.
He only allowed himself to run when he reached the stairs.
He stopped short at the entrance, between two footmen. The sky was dark and vast, London was endless, and she could be anywhere.
One of the footmen must have read something in his face and took pity.
“She went that way, my lord,” the footman said, pointing.
And so that was the way he ran.
Phoebe threw herself back against the seat of the carriage. And that’s when the shaking began. Rage and shame and hurt each fought for a turn with her. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, to keep herself from retching, closed her eyes, tipped back her head, thumped it slowly again and again against the seat.
“God . . .” she moaned.
She kicked the seat in front of her hard. As if it was Lisbeth, or Waterburn, or her own gullible, foolish behind.
And the worst of it was that Jules had known. He’d known she was a . . . a wager. He’d listened to her rhapsodize about the men and the bouquets and waltzes, all the while knowing she was being used as the ton’s performing dog, an amusement, a novelty.
The ride was short. She sprang out of the carriage, ignoring the proferred arm of the driver.
“Wait here,” she ordered him.
She pushed past the sleepy footman who answered the door into the house, nearly vaulted the stairs to her outrageously plush, pink room, and flung everything—so very little she owned, overall—carelessly into her trunk, slamming the lid.
And then she paused for a moment she could ill afford and retched into a chamber pot.
She pressed the palms of her hands over her eyes as if she could blot the ballroom scene out of her mind forever. And she breathed. And breathed. And she tried to reason with herself, to grasp for some place in the roiling chaos to begin rationalizing. It was futile. The pain was in the very air she breathed.
She’d been a pathetic fool. Wanting to be wanted so desperately she’d convinced herself she truly was. Wanting to belong so desperately she’d almost believed
she did.
She gave her head a toss. They could all go to Hades.
She was going to Africa. And she would never have to think of them or see them again.
And then she went still.
She might be a fool . . . but now she was a fool with nothing left to lose. She looked at the fine borrowed pelisse she’d just stripped from her body and flung on her bed, and decided she had plans for it.
She rang for a footman.
“Take my trunk down to the carriage.”
She scooped up her cat, which was watching her with deep, fascinated concern, dropped him into his basket.
And ten minutes later slammed the door forever on the Silverton twins’ town house.
He’d soon realized the ridiculous futility of roaming a dark St. James Square calling for Phoebe as though she was a lost dog. She was hardly likely to come to him, anyway.
And so he was home again.
The desolation was complete, the taste of it acrid in his mouth. In the library, he shook off his coat and flung it violently away from him. He was tempted to hurl it into the fire, to eradicate memories of the night. He yanked off his cravat as though it were a noose, and threw it, but it didn’t flutter far, which made him furious. He unbuttoned his shirt, allowed it to hang open on his torso. His entire life felt confining.
Still, he contemplatively eyed the brandy decanter, and wondered if he could become the sort of man who hurled things in fits of rage.
He was a man who always took swift, precise, perfect action. The action that solved everything, won everything.
Surely, despite everything, he was still that man.
The house was quiet as a tomb. He’d never noticed before, but likely it was always this quiet.
Perhaps I should get a cat, Jules thought.
The bell rang as he was pouring himself a glass of brandy. He froze. Gingerly he settled his full glass down on the table alongside the decanter he’d just spared.
Marquardt was asleep. No one was awake to answer the bell.
In two long steps he was at the window. He swept aside the curtain and peered out.
The lamps were doused for the evening, so he saw only a slight shadowy figure standing on the steps. It could only be a woman. He saw the hulking outline of a large, very fine carriage in the street below.
How the Marquess Was Won Page 27
