A Delicate Deception

by Cat Sebastian

  “You keep making it worse. It’s really incredible.” She half wanted him to keep going; maybe after a few more idiotic sentences she’d forget why she ever liked him in the first place.

  He took a deep breath, as if gathering up his courage to make a distasteful admission. “He is effectively stranded in my house. He’s blind and he recently injured his leg. Conversing with your friend is one of the few things that has brought him interest in a long while. Perhaps you could put aside your objections to me, however justifiable, and do a kindness to your neighbor.”

  For the first time since he knocked on her door, Amelia really paid attention to what Mr. Goddard was saying. He clearly swallowed a great deal of pride in apologizing. But that didn’t move her—she had spent her entire life being aware that people had to swallow their pride to acknowledge her, and she didn’t want any part of it. What she noticed was that he was doing it for a friend. And someone who made sacrifices for a friend was not entirely bad. He had to be at least one percent not-horrible, and she didn’t like having to admit it. She much preferred to think that he was a villain, and that she had been naïve and stupid to think otherwise.

  She coolly extended her hand for the invitation. Whatever her feelings for Mr. Goddard, she would not let anyone say she would ignore a neighbor in need. “Dare I hope you’ll have the courtesy to refuse to attend this dinner?”

  He grimaced. “I’m afraid I have no choice but to attend, because it’s my house.”

  “Your house,” she repeated. “Pelham Hall belongs to you? I spoke of Pelham Hall many times to you and you never alluded to the fact that you own it. And if you own Pelham Hall, you must own this cottage. You knew I live here.” She thought back to the letters they had exchanged. “I believe you deliberately rendered your signature illegible. If I had known you were named Goddard I might have connected you with the Mr. Goddard who owns Pelham Hall.” He looked momentarily guilty and she knew she had been right. “I trusted you,” she said. She had trusted him with her feelings and with her body, and based on his blush she knew he understood her meaning. “Not only have you proven my trust unfounded, but you have met my trust with nothing but distrust.” She felt her chest tighten but recovered her composure. “It’s time for you to leave my house,” she said coolly.

  He solemnly nodded at her and left without saying another word, as if glad to remove himself from her presence. She shut the door before she could watch him retreat down the lane. Her heart racing, she ran her hands up and down her forearms and tried not to remember the expression of stricken shame that crossed Mr. Goddard’s face when she had accused him of dishonesty. At that moment she had watched him realize that he had done wrong, and the look on his face had been that of a man who had known himself to have made the gravest error, a man who had, through his own folly, lost something he had once held dear.

  “What the devil is that smell?” asked Lex as Carter buttoned him into his evening coat. “Don’t tell me the hedgehogs got back in.”

  “It’s a dog,” Sydney explained. Leontine had escaped the nursemaid’s clutches several times over the past few days, causing great consternation in the household. Sydney had determined that something had to be done. Remembering how Nan followed Amelia about the countryside, keeping her safe and alerting her to danger, he thought a dog would be just the thing. He had gone to the nearest farm and acquired a pup from a rat terrier’s litter, an animal apparently unsuited to farm life but otherwise healthy. He soon found out why exactly the dog was useless to the farmer: this was a dog without ambition. He had not thought it possible for an animal to sleep twenty-three hours a day, only rousing herself to trot alongside him with her tongue lolling and one ear flopping in a way that did nothing to increase Sydney’s estimation of her intelligence. He could not seem to impress upon the creature that her sole function in life was to protect Leontine. Something had to be wrong with it. Well, at least she would be easy to transport back to Manchester.

  “Has the dog taken a moral stance against bathing?” Lex asked. “Because otherwise it needs to be put under the pump. Carter,” he said, as the valet arranged his cravat, “will you wash the dog?”

  The servant cleared his throat, which Lex evidently took as a signal to begin negotiations. “Three bob?”

  “Make it four, Your Grace, and we have a deal.”

  “Excellent. What’s its name?” Lex asked Sydney.

  “She doesn’t have a name. And even if she did, she sleeps too much to answer to anything.”

  “Francine,” Lex declared, promptly. “Had an aunt Francine who smelled just like that and slept all day too.”

  Carter wrapped Francine in a blanket and took her off for her ablutions.

  “You see what’s happened since I purchased that range for the cook? All the staff believe they can negotiate with me.” Lex sounded cheerful, however.

  “You’re in a fine mood,” Sydney observed.

  “I really am. I forgot that I knew how to do that.”

  “Do what?”

  “Be happy. I’m not sure if it’s hearing Leontine’s English come along, or if it’s being back here, or if it’s a chance to scold people for being wrong about Richard III.”

  “You told me you enjoyed that woman’s company,” Sydney protested. He had compunctions about inviting people to dinner if Lex planned to torture them.

  “I just told you that I did.”

  “No, you told me that you enjoyed scolding other people for being wrong.”

  “Precisely. Good God, Sydney, it’s as if you don’t know me at all.”

  “Are you going to be rude to them?” Sydney asked. He struggled for a way to explain that Amelia Allenby found social intercourse difficult in some way he did not quite understand. He cleared his throat and adopted a stern tone. “I’d hate to think I’m complicit at a bear baiting.”

  Lex visibly bristled. “My, how you’ve changed your tune. A few days ago you wanted me to bar the door to these women. I don’t need you to tell me how to act. I may be abrupt and difficult, but I don’t make sport of people.”

  “I know that,” Sydney said, chastened.

  “And since we’re giving one another advice, I’ll suggest that you not hold a bit of carefree levity against Miss Allenby. Evidently you’ve spent the past two years deliberately forgetting that we aren’t all saints. Andrew was no saint, neither am I, and neither are you. So get off your high horse, Sydney. We’re all fallen, and all we have is one another. So kindly bugger off. Carter!”

  Sydney’s cheeks heated with shame, because he knew his friend was right. He had misjudged Amelia. Feeling the full weight of his wrongdoing, Sydney went to the dining room to make sure everything was in order for dinner.

  Amelia was stepping into her dinner dress when Georgiana burst into her bedroom wearing a dressing gown and wielding a pair of sewing shears.

  “I knew it!” she cried. “I knew you’d mean to wear that gray watered silk.”

  “It suits me!” Amelia protested, holding the dress behind her back, away from the scissors.

  “Ha!” Georgiana exclaimed. “It’s so boring I could weep.”

  Amelia cast a concerned glance at the scissors her friend continued to brandish. “Did you mean to cut me out of it? Or to threaten me with violence?”

  “What? No, I need to trim your ribbons to the proper length. Where’s that emerald green dinner gown your mother sent last month?” But even as she spoke, she dug through Amelia’s clothes press.

  Amelia sighed. She had not wanted to accept the duke’s dinner invitation. She could compile a list as long as her arm of things she would rather do: weed the garden, finish the mending, walk directly into the woods and never return. But what Sydney had said about the duke being stranded, bored, and alone had needled her. She, too, was stranded, bored, and alone, and she didn’t wish that on anyone. To soothe herself, she had begun reading advertisements for houses to let in even more isolated places.

  Georgiana thrust the emerald si
lk gown at Amelia. “You cannot expect me to wear this,” Amelia said, regarding her friend.

  “Of course you won’t wear it,” Georgiana scoffed. “I only wanted you to look at yourself. Here. Hold it up in front of you, and look at yourself.” She spun Amelia to face the mirror.

  Amelia instinctively opened her mouth to protest. Even in London, she had preferred her various white muslin frocks, a sedate nut-brown pelisse, and an evening gown of dove gray. All were perfectly ordinary, unobjectionable, a sort of social camouflage. Amelia had been delighted to discover that she could, with the proper attire, blend in with the other young ladies. Her nondescript frocks made her feel unremarkable, as if all her efforts not to stick out like a sore thumb had finally been successful.

  However, during her years in London, her mother and sisters insisted that with every safe, boring dress she ordered, she also purchase something special. Something that will make you look as special on the outside as you are on the inside, was what her mother always said. Amelia found that a nightmarish prospect, and therefore had never worn any of these special dresses out of the house.

  Amelia did as she was asked and regarded her reflection. Her first impulse was to hastily look away. Red hair and a green dress were . . . striking. Amelia did not enjoy being striking. There would be no fading into the background in this gown.

  “Do you see?” Georgiana asked. “You look impressive. You’re very good at making yourself invisible when you want to, which is all well and good. But this is who you are when I look at you. You look beautiful, but that isn’t the point. You also look powerful. The woman in this looking glass could be terrifying if she wanted to. Nobody else would stand a chance.”

  Poor Georgiana, she really was deluded if she thought Amelia was powerful. Amelia could hardly walk out of her house without hysterics. A week ago she had been strong enough to go to Pelham Hall and think she could emerge unscathed; not only that, but she thought she’d be so undamaged by the experience that she might be able to return to living a normal life. Now she didn’t even have that hope. The best she could hope for was a return to numbness.

  She folded the gown and returned it to the clothes press.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Pelham Hall was the sort of house that was pretty rather than grand. The part of the structure that survived the fire looked to Amelia to have been built in the sixteenth century as a small manor house. Certainly it had been built before the fashion for overgrown baroque rectangles like Chatsworth, or the nearby Stanton House. It was quaint, with its tiny windows and its profusion of ivy. If she had been visiting under any other circumstances, she would have been eager to explore. As it was, she felt almost rigid with anxiety. She hardly felt the stones beneath her feet as she climbed the steps into the house.

  Usually, when Amelia entered a room in which she did not know everyone present, she made directly for an elderly lady or a clergyman. She wound balls of wool, asked about grandchildren, and untangled embroidery floss until it was time to go home. That was all she wanted to do this evening. She would happily sit by the vicar’s wife. She would even submit to a lecture about her need for a chaperone.

  But the first person she saw upon entering Pelham Hall was Mr. Goddard, looking like a very large storm cloud. Much to her relief, her anxiety evaporated, replaced by searing hot anger.

  She knew what it was to be stared at, suspected, and judged. Those stares had pierced her skin and reached as deep as her bones, until they formed part of who she was. She had always reacted by trying to deserve approval or at least escape censure and it never ever worked: there was always more judgment. This, however, was the worst yet. It was judgment from someone she thought had really known her.

  She suppressed the urge to retreat to a dark corner of the room, unwilling to let him think he had won. Instead, she pretended not to notice him. She made a show of rummaging through her reticule for something, then smoothing the gray silk of her skirts.

  Mr. Goddard appeared by her side. “Might I speak to you for a moment?” he asked, his voice little more than a rumble.

  She steeled herself against anything like emotion. “I suppose,” she said, regarding him with bored expectation.

  “Privately?” he asked.

  She was about to oblige him, just for the sake of getting this over with, when she realized she didn’t have to. She could stay precisely where she was. Just because she was uncomfortable and out of her element didn’t mean she had to drift around at other people’s will. She owed nothing to this man, and his judgment did not matter in the least bit; it was a drop in the ocean.

  “No,” she said.

  “I beg your pardon.”

  She straightened her spine and snapped her reticule shut. “No, you may not speak with me privately. Regardless of our previous acquaintance, there’s nothing you need to say to me that can’t be said publicly.”

  To his credit, Mr. Goddard nodded, although his jaw was tight and his eyebrows especially antagonistic. “I’d like for you and your friend to visit once a week during the remainder of the duke’s stay in Derbyshire and talk to him about”—he made an expression that Amelia took to be a smile and which she resolutely did not respond to—“Richard III.”

  “I don’t even want to be here tonight,” she said in a tone that indicated precisely how irrelevant his words were to her. She pointedly glanced around the room, as if willing something more interesting into existence. “I can’t imagine why you think I’d want to repeat the experience.”

  “I suppose I deserve that.”

  Amelia flicked some lint off her sleeve and pointedly said nothing.

  “You need not come, if you choose not to,” he went on.

  “How kind of you to clarify that this is an invitation, not a summons from a magistrate.” Now he was blushing. She determinedly did not care. She looked him straight in the eye and tried not to remember a time when those dark eyes had been warm and kind. “If you think I’m turning over my friend to a strange man in an isolated house you’re very much mistaken.”

  “That’s not what—I didn’t mean anything untoward. Surely you know . . .” His cheekbones darkened above his beard. Amelia believed him. He didn’t have the imagination to orchestrate illicit liaisons, nor the cunning to do anything sly. He had all the subtlety of a puppy, all the capacity for guile of a newborn baby. How revolting. What kind of life did a person need to lead in order to be so transparent? Some people were raised without the constant need for secrecy and subterfuge and it showed.

  Amelia was not having any of it. She had been putting on a performance since she was old enough to walk. Some of her earliest memories were her mother taking her around (“be silent Amelia, and don’t speak until you’re spoken to, then we’ll get you a Bath bun on the way home”) with the express purpose of making her father’s friends sit in the same room as his mistress and illegitimate daughter. That was when she had learned to be invisible, but it was also when she had learned the inverse: the power of making people look at you.

  By God, she was making Sydney Goddard look at her tonight.

  She knew exactly how a lady was supposed to behave to put people at their ease, or, alternatively, to do the opposite. Her mother had taught her how to use her manners to ingratiate herself and win favor. Well, if this man thought she was careless and rude, she’d give him careless and rude. Some people were born with the knack of making themselves likable, but Amelia had learned those skills the way she had acquired languages. All she had to do in order to be profoundly unlikable and difficult to be around was to drop her veneer of manners entirely—all she had to do was to be the worst version of herself. So that’s what she did now—she said exactly what she would say if she hadn’t had any upbringing whatsoever, but dressed up her rudeness in a cloak of satin suitable for a duke’s drawing room.

  She imbued her voice with an acid politeness, replicating the exact tone with which grand ladies put her in her place. “I know nothing of the sort. I might have once
thought that we knew one another, but I was wrong, was I not?” It was an insult masked as a question and he knew it. He blinked at her then slowly looked away.

  “I was wrong about a good many things. I didn’t think you were the sort of man to deceive a friend about something as relevant as your name, and if I were not in a charitable frame of mind I might point out that a good deal of misunderstanding would have been avoided if you had been honest on that point.”

  “It was indeed a lie of omission, and I’m ashamed of myself for it. But I—”

  “I don’t care for your excuses, Mr. Goddard,” she said, idly folding her gloves, as if she couldn’t be bothered to give him her full attention.

  “It’s not an excuse,” he said, his voice so insistent that she looked up at him. “I came into ownership of this house through means I prefer not to think of, and I found it a relief not to be reminded of those circumstances during our time together.” He spoke those last words quietly, almost intimately, and she had to fight back a blush.

  “I see,” she said, even though she did not see at all.

  “I did not treat you as a friend. I assumed the worst. And I am sorry for that. I try to do better by my friends.”

  That was a better apology than she had yet gotten from him, and it was the closest he had yet come to resembling the man she knew from her walks.

  “That’s what I should have said earlier,” he continued. “When I thought you were refusing to acknowledge me, it cut me to the quick. I thought I was being insulted by someone I—someone I esteemed. I should have spoken to you, but instead of doing that, I hurt you, and I regret it.” He set his jaw, as if waiting for her rebuke. She remembered kissing that jaw, she remembered the scratch of his beard against her mouth, the feel of his lips against her own. She tried to push those memories away. “The fault is entirely mine.”