Dear Impostor

by Nicole Byrd

  He was prepared with words of praise and encouragement, as one would give any hard-working and hopeful student of the art, but the prepared sentences faded from his memory when he saw the picture.

  He observed a park with trees in the background, and houses glimpsed beyond the budding branches. Early crocuses poked their heads through the grass, glimpses of yellow and white brightening the greenery. The sky was a soft blue streaked with patchy clouds. It was a simple scene, but light seemed to glint from the paper, and he could almost feel the movement of the wind that stirred the leaves of the trees and bent the grass.

  It was so far from the usual childish drawing of a schoolroom miss, so much more even than many of the landscapes he had seen framed on the walls of the big houses he had once frequented, that he stared for long moments in silence.

  Circe spoke first, her tone tentative. “You don’t like it?”

  “I think it’s remarkable,” he said with total honesty. “Circe, you have a gift that is–that is unique.” No wonder Psyche felt compelled to find Circe qualified instructors. This kind of talent needed to be succored, encouraged. He doubted that Circe would give up her art without a struggle; but if the insensitive Percy should become the child’s guardian, if Percy should wear down Psyche’s resistance and force her to agree to marriage–no, it would never do. Not just for Psyche’s sake, but for Circe’s, that marriage must be prevented. Gabriel was determined to do anything he could to prevent Percy from ruining two lives.

  “I look at this scene, and I feel that spring is coming,” he said slowly, gazing down at the paper. “The whole picture speaks of an awakening, of unfurling flowers and budding trees and freshening skies, and most of all, of hope returning.”

  Circe was pink with pleasure. “Yes,” she said seriously. “That is indeed what it is about. You do understand. Perhaps when it is finished, I will give it to you, to hang on your wall.”

  He was unexpectedly moved. “I would treasure it, indeed,” he told her. “Although I’m not sure I will have a wall to hang it on, at least for a while.”

  “When you and Psyche are married–” she began, then paused and glanced at Tellman, who had taken her usual seat in the other corner of the room. Circe lowered her voice. “Sometimes, I almost forget it’s all in play.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, forcing his face into an easy expression–this child was altogether too fey for his comfort–he must not allow her to see that he could easily slip into this daydream, too, and enjoy it altogether too much.

  The door opened again, and Psyche looked into the room. Her expression immediately changed when she saw Gabriel.

  Repressing a quick flicker of guilt, Gabriel kept his expression impassive.

  “Ah, there you are,” Psyche said, making a quick recover. “I would like to speak with you, Lord Tarrington, in private.”

  “Of course,” he agreed, rising and making his bow to Circe. “I have enjoyed our chat, Circe. Thank you for showing me your water color.”

  It pleased him to see Psyche’s grimace of surprise, although she mastered her expression quickly. He followed her out of the room.

  “You didn’t plague Circe to show you her work?” Psyche demanded, looking worried. “She’s very selective about who views her paintings.”

  “She offered,” Gabriel answered, not trying to disguise his annoyance. “I would not harass your sister, my dear Miss Hill, nor do I enjoy being considered a threat to small children.”

  She had the grace to color. “I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean–”

  ”Your sister has extraordinary genius,” he added. “I understand now why you are so intent upon finding her the instruction that her talents call out for.”

  Psyche nodded, then hesitated a moment in the hallway. “Come with me,” she said. “If you have seen her latest work, I think you should see more.”

  Not sure why this sudden change of heart, Gabriel followed Psyche up the steps until she came to the attic at the top of the house. Mystified, he watched her enter a cramped attic room and when she gestured, he came after her. She moved to a table and pulled out a portfolio from a stack of papers and boxes and untied the ribbon that bound it together.

  “These were painted after the death of my parents in a hot air balloon accident.” Her voice was controlled, but he could see the effort it cost her in the tightening of her lips.

  He moved closer to see, and even in the dim light from the small window at the end of the attic, he saw that these pictures were darker, in both color and mood, than the one he had viewed in the schoolroom. He picked up the first and glanced at the next one, and the next. These scenes showed lowering black clouds hanging over grim bleak landscapes of barren hills and empty lowlands.

  “I see,” he said after a long silence. “She has come a long way.”

  “And I do not wish to see her hurt again–”

  ”Farther, perhaps, than her sister,” he finished.

  Diverted from the cautionary warnings she had meant to repeat, Psyche frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, dear Miss Hill, that you have the same anger and hurt inside you, and you have had no method of relieving those poisons. Your sister at least has her painting. You have only the responsibilities of looking out for your sister, and the irksome task of fending off the noxious Percy.”

  He saw something in her face waver, and then the sheen of moisture in her eyes.

  “I–you are very perceptive, for a gamester,” she said slowly, blinking back the tears. “I suppose it comes from reading your opponents, seeking to determine their moods and weaknesses from across a card table so that you may best them.”

  Her tone was almost insulting, but he ignored it. He would not be distracted this time. “Does no one understand you, dear Miss Hill?” he asked, keeping his tone light with some effort. “I regret that you have borne so much alone.”

  She bit her lip, and the gesture made him reach forward despite himself. He put his hands on her shoulders, only to support her, only in a brotherly gesture of support–oh, hell, why lie to himself? He didn’t feel the least bit brotherly toward the cool beauty, no matter how genuine his sympathy for her plight.

  And she knew it. She glanced up at him, her blue eyes wide with alarm. “I didn’t bring you to this secluded apartment for–that is, you must not misconstrue my motives–”

  ”Oh, your motives are pure enough,” Gabriel told her. “And you have hidden your passion deep beneath that floe of ice. It may confound the rest of the world, but I see through it, dear Miss Hill.”

  “Will you stop calling me that,” she said.

  But this time, she didn’t back away; they were only inches apart, and he could detect the rise and fall of her breasts–hidden beneath the primly styled dresses she habitually chose– and the pulse jumping in the vein in her temple.

  “What shall I call you, then?” he teased. “Psyche, dearest, beloved?”

  “You don’t–don’t have to carry your role to such an extreme,” she argued, but her voice trembled, and they both knew that she was breathing quickly. Hell, so was he.

  “It’s no role, and for once in my life, I am not pretending.” He leaned forward. The shock of lips meeting was like the spark of a tinder box, and he felt a tremor run through his body.

  Her lips were soft and luscious. She shut her eyes and he saw the pulse in her temple jump. For a moment, she stood very still. Then beneath the hard, sure pressure of his kiss, her lips parted, and he could taste the sweetness of her mouth, the smoothness of her tongue as he taught her what a kiss should be.

  He shut his eyes, too, and forgot the dusty attic around them, forgot the killers that awaited him somewhere on London’s shadowed streets. He forgot–almost–everything except the way she stood in his arms, not quite leaning into him, but not rejecting his embrace.

  When at last she pushed him away, she was trembling. “I–You can’t–I am not one of your light women, sir!”

  But he had learned to
read women long ago, and he saw the uncertainty in her eyes.

  He grinned at her. “I’ve had my fill of light women, my lovely Miss Hill. I’ve had high born ladies and low, I’ve had sun-kissed beauties on tropical beaches who were happy to share my embrace. I’ve never forced a woman in my life, and I would not do so now. But at present I find I have a hunger only for an Ice Princess with a heat beneath her primness that she may keep concealed from the world, and even from herself, but not from me. Who, my lovely Psyche, is pretending now?”

  She had to pull away, she had to put this arrogant libertine in his place; hadn’t he just admitted that he had loved many women, had seduced them, most likely–no, be honest. The way she felt just now, the strange yearnings he induced–those women had likely thrown themselves at his feet, begged for his kisses.

  If Psyche had had no shame, she would have done the same. The tiny scar at the edge of his mouth, the way his brow furrowed when he narrowed his eyes, the keen blue-eyed gaze with which he seemed to look into her soul–Psyche felt a hunger she had never suspected, a melting pain low in her belly that made his firm, sure kisses almost impossible to resist.

  Just for one moment to lay aside all the weight of responsibility and decorum–strange, she had never considered her sense of propriety a burden before–but just to escape it all and relax into his arms. If he kissed like this, what would his further caresses be like?

  Shocked at herself, Psyche drew a deep breath. But Gabriel gave her no time to reconsider.

  He leaned forward again, and this kiss lasted even longer, sent her heartbeat even faster, till she felt as breathless as if she had run up four flights of stairs. He pulled her further into his arms, and the hardness of his body, the firmness of his thighs as they pressed against her own softer limbs–she had never been this close to a man. Even in a dance, there was a proper distance between the partners.

  This was like a marriage bed would be, and if their sham engagement had been real, on that night of wedding bliss even the thin muslin of her skirt or his fashionably tight-fitting trousers would not separate them. There would be only warm skin against warm skin, and she would know how his hands would move across her body, accelerating this tumult of emotion inside her to new and dizzying heights.

  A clatter from below–had some servant dropped a pail?–pulled her out of this forbidden fantasy. Psyche jumped, and then forced herself to step back.

  “I can’t–I mustn’t–” she stammered, then turned toward the doorway. “I’m needed below stairs.”

  He didn’t hold her back, as she half-feared he might, didn’t protest, but his dark blue eyes gazed at her with a knowing that made her blush. He knew her feeble excuses for exactly what they were. This was not a man you could easily deceive.

  Psyche hurried out of the attic, ignoring a red-faced maid on the next landing who was wiping up spilled tea and collecting shards of china. Psyche continued till she was in her own bed chamber. There she shut the door and leaned against it. She found that she was still breathing fast.

  Why did this one man, this gambler, have this effect on her? She had encountered good looking men before, charming, well-spoken men before. She was familiar with all the most accomplished flirts of the Ton. But no one else had ever affected her like this, she admitted ruefully in the safety of her solitary chamber. No one.

  That wicked twinkle in his lapis blue eyes, the grin that he didn’t quite allow to lift the corners of his well-shaped lips, the slight arch of his dark brows, the hard-muscled arms that had held her so tenderly–oh for heaven’s sake! She would not think of him.

  She walked across the room to her small desk and pulled out her journal of household accounts. Perhaps a listing of linen that needed to be replaced and complaints about the quality of the last canister of tea that must be returned to the merchant, anything as boring and common place as possible, perhaps these everyday matters would divert her thoughts from this engaging, wicked man.

  But when she found that she was humming a tune beneath her breath even as she added up the staff’s quarterly wages, Psyche bit her lip. How could she escape the power of his attraction when she could not expel him even from her thoughts, much less her life! She was so unnerved by the encounter in the attic that she stayed in her room until mid-afternoon, when the butler appeared to announce a caller.

  “Who is it, Jowers?” she asked, dreading the return of her annoying cousin. If it were Percy, she would turn him out of the house!

  “Madam Forsyth, Miss,” the servant told her. “She is waiting in the small drawing room; Miss Sophie is in the large drawing room with three callers, the Misses Baldwin and their mother.”

  “Thanks for the warning. Very well, I’ll be right down,” Psyche said. She put away her ledger and glanced into the looking glass to see if her hair was still in place–no one must know of the tryst in the attic, or detect that for a few moments she had forgotten all the proprieties–then made her way downstairs. She found her friend garbed in an elegant walking suit of green striped silk, perched on the edge of a settee, frowning at a print on the wall as if it offended her.

  “So, you have not taken to your death bed!” Sally exclaimed when Psyche came into the room.

  Her usual words of greeting died on her lips. “I beg your pardon?” Psyche raised her brows in surprise. “Did someone say I was ill?”

  “No, but I decided that must be the only explanation for your disappearance from all of your normal activities. Either that, or you have been closeted with your delicious fiancé, making passionate love even before the bans have been said–and by the by, when are you going to have them read, Psyche?”

  Psyche hoped she was not blushing. “Soon, and don’t be silly.”

  “Oh, I know Aunt Sophie would not allow any real love making, more’s the pity.” Sally’s bow-shaped lips drooped in an exaggerated pout. “But you have certainly been keeping close to home; you’ve turned down four social engagements in the last three days, and those are only the ones that I know about!”

  “What is there that you don’t know?” Psyche retorted. “You’re aware of everything in the Ton.”

  “Well, then,” Sally said reasonably. “Tell me why you are locking yourself up like a prisoner in your own home.”

  “I–um–” Psyche searched her mind for a convincing answer, but Sally shook her head.

  “If I did not know your spirit, my friend, I would say that you are hiding out from your annoying cousin.”

  “I don’t–” Psyche still hesitated.

  “But you would not allow Percy to frighten you, I know you wouldn’t.” Sally blinked her brown eyes in the manner that had captivated her numerous suitors, before she’d finally chosen her good-natured stout-framed husband. He was fourteen years older than Sally, but he doted on his young wife, and Sally seemed content with her choice.

  Psyche knew that this time, she was certainly red-faced. “It was very upsetting, having Percy accuse my poor fiancé of being an impostor; how can I allow Percy to harass Lord Tarrington in such a manner?”

  “How can you allow Percy to drive you into hiding? You have more courage than that, Psyche, I know you do. Will you hide out for the rest of the season?”

  “But I must think of my husband-to-be, as well as myself,” Psyche tried to argue, but she didn’t quite meet her friend’s accusing gaze. “Just because I have such lunatic relations, it is not fair to Lord Tarrington if I subject him to their denunciations.”

  “I would wager that Tarrington is not afraid of your hen-witted cousin,” Sally argued. “Oh, thank you,” she said as a footman brought in a tea tray.

  Psyche poured them both a cup. Sally accepted the fragile cup and sipped, allowing Psyche a moment to try to pull her thoughts together.

  “Besides, Psyche,” Sally continued after the servant had left the room, “if you want people to believe in Percy’s mad accusations–”

  ”Of course not!” Psyche said sharply.

  “Then you must not be
driven into hiding,” Sally finished, her smile triumphant. “You must continue about your normal social rounds.”

  “But if Percy makes a scene again?” Psyche picked up her own cup and peered into the brown liquid as if she might read her future there.

  “Then you must face him down. I will stand by you, and your fiancé is up to the challenge, I am sure of it. Come along now, Psyche. There is an opera tonight–”

  ”I never meant to go,” Psyche pointed out. “Everyone knows the opera is not my favorite, and Aunt Sophie says that all that caterwauling gives her a headache.”

  “Tomorrow, then,” Sally persisted. “There is a delightful excursion planned for the afternoon to the Countess of Sutton’s estate. We have a large party going, and you must not cry off again; it would be too bad of you! I have had no fun at all at the last two soirees and as for Lady Kettering’s afternoon card party, lord, it was too boring for words.”

  Sally sipped her tea, and Psyche tried not to smile. Sally had never been bored a day in her life; she imbued every party with her own infectious good spirits and high energy. But her concern for her friend was obviously genuine, and Psyche was touched.

  And perhaps Sally was right; would people begin to believe Percy’s accusations if she and Gabriel remained at home, avoiding the normal social whirl? She could not have that; it would defeat her aim and make all her risks go for naught.

  No, she must not be so craven, Psyche decided.

  “Drink the tea, it will not answer for you,” Sally said tartly. “And you are no gypsy, to read your future in the tea leaves. So, are you going tomorrow or not?”

  “I will go,” Psyche said, then repeated more firmly. “We will go.”

  “Good girl!” Sally said in approval. “Don’t wear your new red pelisse, as I am wearing purple, and we will clash.”

  Laughing, Psyche agreed.