by Tessa Dare
“Did you decide, miss?”
Her eyes snapped open. She didn’t even recall closing them.
How long had she been standing there, entranced? Piers had moved away. His back was to her as he inspected a row of colognes.
Devious man. She knew he didn’t approve of her investigation. He must have been deliberately trying to rattle her.
For a minute, he’d succeeded.
She cleared her throat and willed her vision to focus on the sample vials. “I’m afraid none of these are quite what I’m searching for. I was hoping to find a signature scent, if you will. One that few other women could have purchased. Are you sure you’ve nothing else?”
“I do have something new from Paris. I only received two bottles in, and I’ve already sold the other.” He wandered briefly into a storeroom, returning with a bottle fashioned from dark, smoky glass with a gilded stopper.
Before she sniffed, Charlotte eyed it warily. “What’s in this one?”
“In a word?” He lifted an eyebrow with dramatic flair. “Passion.”
“But to put a finer point on it . . . ?” she prompted.
“Poppies, vanilla, and black amber.”
“Black amber.” Charlotte bit her lip. “Which is . . . ?”
“It’s a resin, miss. A product of the rock rose bush.”
“Oh,” she said, relieved. “That doesn’t sound so bad.” At least no animal hindquarters were involved.
“It’s the most remarkable process.” The shopkeeper pantomimed once again. “Nomadic herdsmen in the Holy Land gather it by combing the beards and flanks of grazing goats.”
“Really.”
She paused, debating just how much she wanted to sniff Eau de Goat Flank, but there was no turning back now. This might be it—the clue that could lead her to the mystery lovers.
She lifted the bottle to her nose and inhaled.
Recognition hit her like a lightning bolt. She was transported there again, behind those velvet window drapes. The library, the whispers and rustling fabric. She could all but hear the squeaks and growling.
She could feel Piers’s arms about her. Protective and strong.
“This is the one,” she said, shaking off the memory. “Do you remember who purchased the other bottle? If it’s going to be my signature scent, I’d like to know the other lady’s name. We might move in the same social circles.”
“Well, I suppose I could look in my . . .” The merchant’s voice trailed off.
Piers had joined her at the counter. He made the slightest nod. One that the shopkeeper seemed to instantly know meant, Wrap it up, and quickly. Cost is no concern.
Piers didn’t even need words to command immediate compliance.
The shopkeeper’s tone became brisk as he reached for the money Piers laid on the counter. “I don’t recall the lady’s name, miss.”
“Wait.” Charlotte clapped a hand over the coins. “Can’t you check your ledger?”
“She paid with ready money, not credit. Her name wouldn’t be in the ledger.”
She sighed, releasing the money. It was useless to insist. Thanks to Piers’s quick payment, the shopkeeper was a blind alley. Even if he did recall the lady’s name, he would never divulge it now—not when doing so could mean losing a guaranteed sale.
As the men concluded their transaction, she felt hope draining into her boots. She couldn’t leave this shop without new information. That would mean she’d sniffed beaver glands and whale bile for nothing. Inconceivable.
“Do you recall anything about her?” she asked. “Was she older, younger? Tall or small-statured? Did she have a companion along?”
“Now, now. No need to interrogate the man, Miss Highwood.” Piers collected the package, then put the other hand on Charlotte’s back, steering her toward the door.
“I’m not interrogating him. I’m merely asking him questions.”
“That’s the definition of interrogating.”
“You,” she whispered, “are the definition of an interfering—”
“Dark hair,” the shopkeeper called out, as a fishwife tossed a stray cat a bone. “She had dark hair, I think. Beyond that, I couldn’t be certain of details.”
Dark hair.
That was something. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“Thank you.” She gave the merchant a smile. “Thank you so very much for your time.”
“Are you going to thank me for the perfume?” Piers asked as they left the shop.
“I will thank you to stop thwarting my efforts to find the mystery lovers.”
“Mystery tuppers,” he corrected.
“You know, I’m certain he knew the other customer’s name. He just didn’t want to risk losing the sale once you and all your money showed up. And then you started chiding me for asking questions.”
“I was concerned about the time.”
“You were obstructing me. Don’t think I missed your purpose with all that neck sniffing and wrist stroking. Trying to break my concentration.”
“It seems only fair,” he replied evenly. “You broke mine first.”
She stopped in the lane and turned to him. “Could you—just for a moment—cease being so maddeningly perfect? For a minute or two, try to look beyond that allegiance to honor and propriety. Perhaps then you’ll appreciate that I am trying to save you.”
“You can’t save me.”
“Yes, I can. Save us both—from decades of exactly this frustration and bickering. Even you, with your stinting beliefs about love, cannot view this as any sort of ideal—”
She stopped in the lane. “Where is your carriage?” She turned in place, pausing to peer through the draper’s window. “Where are Delia and Frances and my mother?”
“Gone.” His gaze met hers, cool and grave. “That’s the reason I came searching for you. There’s been an incident.”
Chapter Eight
“An incident? What can you mean, an incident?”
As Piers watched, the pink flush of anger drained from her face. He offered his arm, and for once she didn’t fight him.
“I’ll explain everything,” he said.
He steered her across the lane and into the square. There, in calm terms, he related the events of the past half hour. Mrs. Highwood, at some point after realizing her daughter had separated from the group, had suffered a sudden attack of light-headedness in the draper’s shop—one which no amount of fanning or solicitous comfort could assuage.
“Your mother,” he said, “suggested that the Parkhurst sisters had better return her to the manor at once, and then send the carriage to return for us.”
Charlotte shook her head. “Of course. Of course she suggested that.”
“You don’t seem overly concerned for her health.”
“That’s because there’s no reason to be concerned. If there were any true cause for worry, you would have interrupted me at the shop and let me know at once.”
She was rather quick with these things.
Piers had been impressed with her questioning technique in the perfume shop. She lacked subtlety, but she had keen instincts.
When she’d first revealed her little plan, he wasn’t in favor of it—but he’d told himself it couldn’t hurt.
Then she’d burst through his window last night, and now he was reconsidering. Perhaps it could hurt, after all.
In fact, if he wasn’t careful, someone could be gravely hurt indeed.
She balled her hand into a fist. “Now we’ll be unchaperoned together for at least another hour. Frances will be salivating over the gossip.” She moved away from him and sat on a park bench. “We cannot have any appearance of a courting couple.”
He sat beside her on the bench. “Well, I cannot leave you alone. Not unaccompanied in a strange town.”
“Just don’t sit too near to me.” She slid to the farthest end of the bench. “Or look at me. And most especially do not sniff me.”
“Might I—”
“No.” She
drummed her fingers on the arm of the bench. “An attack of nerves, my eye. Really, my mother is shameless. Worse than shameless.”
“It seems to me that she is anxious to secure your future.”
Charlotte shook her head. “She belongs in an institution. She’s addled.”
“No, she isn’t.”
“I’m telling you, she’s mad. Barking mad.”
“No,” he repeated, more forcefully. “She isn’t.”
“I should know. She’s my mother.”
“Yes, but she’s nothing like my mother, who did go insane. So, in point of fact, this is a matter where I am well equipped to judge.”
“Oh, Piers.” She slid back toward the center of the bench. “That’s horrible.”
“It’s in the past. It was ages ago now.”
“It’s still horrible.”
“Others have it worse.”
She gave him a look. “It’s still horrible. No matter who you are, or how long it’s been. Don’t pretend you’re impervious. You wouldn’t have mentioned it if it didn’t cause you pain. What happened?”
He kept to the simplest facts. “She was ill from as early as I can remember. Violent swings of passion, followed by weeks of melancholy. After years of suffering, she died in her sleep.”
Charlotte tucked her arm through the crook of his elbow and made a quiet, crooning noise.
“As deaths go, it was a peaceful one,” he said.
A peaceful death, perhaps—but only after years of torment. Her words haunted him to this day.
I can’t. I can’t bear it.
“It must have been a terrible shock.”
His jaw tightened. “Not for everyone. My brother was too young to understand, and . . . families like ours don’t talk about such things. I’m not certain why I’m speaking of it now.”
He’d never spoken of this at all. Not to anyone.
“I know why. You meant to chasten me, and it’s worked. Here I’ve been complaining on and on about Mama, utterly heedless of your feelings. As if it’s the worst burden in the world to have a mother who cares about me. You must think me so heartless.” She squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry.”
“You could not have known.”
“But now I do, and I’m sorry. Truly.”
And she was. He heard it in her voice. She was sorry for his loss, and sorry for her own unintended offense. Not in a way that made excuses, and not with any maudlin, melodramatic excesses, either.
He wondered if she knew how rare that was—the talent for earnest, unqualified apology. It was a diplomatic technique he’d never quite mastered himself.
She was so open about everything—and he’d known enough deception to last several lifetimes.
Add in those pink-petal lips and her sunny hair . . .
He’d never known temptation this acute.
As they sat in silence, her fingers lightly stroked his sleeve, fraying what little remained of his self-control. Each idle caress came closer to the core of him. The contact felt more and more raw.
There was nothing to distract him from the soft rise and fall of her breath. The pulse that pounded subtly against his arm. Her warmth. Her scent.
He tapped the toe of his boot on the gravel path. How long would it take the coach to return from the manor? An hour at the least, if not two.
Piers could withstand torture of several forms, but an hour of this would break him.
At any moment, he could lose himself. Right here on this bench, he would take her in his arms, draw her close. Weave his hands in that spun sunshine of her hair, tangling them in a feverish grip—the better to hold on.
Hold on tight, and not let go.
Good God. What was happening to him? He was falling apart.
Pull yourself together, man.
He cleared his throat. “We’re meant to be shopping. What shall I buy you? A bonnet or bauble of some sort?”
“Luncheon, if you would. I’m famished.”
Charlotte gladly followed him to a coaching inn, where they shared a steak-and-kidney pie. Ale for Piers, lemonade for her. For a time, they made an unspoken agreement to substitute eating for conversation.
Once the edge of hunger was dulled, Charlotte reached into her pocket and pulled out her list of suspects. After that painful conversation about his mother, he would no doubt be grateful for a change of subject. And she was more convinced than ever that despite his protestations, Piers needed love in his life.
She’d begun with five names, then whittled them down by process of elimination. Now it was only a matter of matching one of the remaining possibilities to the profile.
Present the night of the ball.
The initial C.
An ample figure.
Now she added to her list:
Dark hair.
She stared at the paper. “Oh, drat.”
“Still more than one left?”
“Worse. None of them fit. Lady Canby is thin as a rail. Cathy had no opportunity, and I’ve already ruled out Caroline Fairchild. Cross—that’s the lady’s maid—and Mrs. Charlesbridge are the only two left. Neither of them have dark hair.” She massaged the bridge of her nose. “Perhaps the perfume merchant told us wrong.”
“More likely you left someone—or several someones—off your original list.”
“Perhaps.”
Charlotte was dejected. But not defeated.
“I’ll have to think on it more. The answer will come to me.” She dug her fork into a lemon tart. “For now, why don’t you tell me about your dog.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
“Well, I know you don’t have one here. But you must have one somewhere. Every gentleman does.”
“A bulldog, called Ellingworth. I acquired him as a pup at university. During my years abroad, he lived with my father or brother. By the time I returned from Vienna, he was positively ancient—but he knew me still. We had a good run of it, but he died last year.”
There was a guarded quality in his gaze, but something told her not to prod it.
He cleared his throat. “Your turn.”
“Me? I’ve never had a dog.”
“Tell me about your family, then.”
“There’s not much to tell. You’ve met my mother.” She jabbed at the crust of the tart. “I’ve no memory of my father at all. He died when I was little more than an infant. The estate passed to a cousin. My mother married young, and was widowed young. With three daughters to support and see settled, I suppose the worrying took its toll.”
“Why don’t your brothers-in-law intercede for you? At least offer to take her in for a while.”
“Colin and Aaron?” She shrugged. “I adore them, but they’re both new fathers living in connubial bliss. I don’t want to inflict my mother on their marriages.”
“Do they know how you’ve been treated this season?”
“You mean the ‘Desperate Debutante’ nonsense?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“And you didn’t tell them.”
“I don’t want them to feel responsible.”
“But they are responsible for you. They’re your brothers by marriage.”
“That’s not the kind of responsibility I meant.” She bit her lip, hesitating. “I don’t want them to feel responsible. For my humiliation.”
“Ah. Because their own marriages happened under unconventional circumstances.”
“Minerva is an odd duck. Bookish, awkward. She was the last woman anyone expected to elope with a charming rake. There’s always been gossip about their match. And Aaron’s the best sort of man, but he is a blacksmith. He knew it would affect my prospects when he married Diana. That’s why he asked my permission first.”
“He asked your permission? When you were what, fifteen?”
“Sixteen, I think.”
“And you gave it.”
“Of course I did, and gladly. I’m so happy for him and Diana. I’m happy for Colin and Minerva, too.”
“But
their happiness has made it more difficult for you to seek your own.”
She leaned one elbow on the table, then propped her chin on her hand. “To the contrary, seeing them marry for love is the best thing that could have happened. It taught me to believe I can find love, too. And if the circumstances of their marriages present a hurdle to prospective suitors . . . that’s doing me a favor, as well. I needn’t waste my time with gentlemen who are easily discouraged.”
He regarded her intently.
There was something new in his eyes, behind the dispassionate appraisal. A hint of ruthlessness.
“What is it?” she said.
“I’m trying to decide whether you truly believe that little speech you just gave. Or if it’s merely a thought that comforts you when you’re watching yet another quadrille from behind the potted palms.”
She was taken aback. Yes, in a few weak moments, she had stood forlorn in a crowd, indulging in the worst sort of self-pity. Much to her shame.
“When you’re a marchioness”—he lifted his ale to take a casual sip—“you’ll have your revenge. You’ll show them all.”
This must be his secret. How he bent kings and despots to his will. By seeing inside them and using their own broken dreams as leverage. The most dangerous weapon is the one that strikes closest to the heart.
“You’re wrong,” she said.
He lowered his glass. “Hm?”
“There’s a flaw in your plan, my lord. Becoming a marchioness would only convince the ton that I am everything they believe me to be. A shameless schemer, willing to debase myself to catch a wealthy, well-placed husband. Unless . . .”
“Unless?”
“Unless the marquess in question fell madly, irretrievably, publicly in love with me.”
He seemed to choke on his ale.
Charlotte lifted an eyebrow. She could be ruthless, too.
She didn’t need to be rescued by her family, or Piers. Once she’d learned the identity of the mystery lovers, she would convince her mother and Sir Vernon that Piers had no responsibility toward her. By next season, she would be exploring the Continent with Delia, and London would find a new laughingstock. When she returned, having broadened her experience and her mind, she would be free to marry—or wait—as she chose.
