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“But you and I will not be attending symphonic concerts together anytime soon, will we, Miss Bessler?” He gave her a look that was as arch as any she’d ever doled out to cloddish suitors. “And as long as my wife is well pleasured and happy, I can’t think why you would have cause to complain.”

She took a deep breath and let it out. “You are a very trying man, Mr. Marsden.”

“You are a very prejudiced woman, Miss Bessler.”

“You’ve earned my prejudice, Mr. Marsden.”

“True enough. Allow me to apologize. I never meant to distress you in any way and I’m sorry that I did.” He looked into her eyes. “Forgive me.”

She did step on his toes this time—his apology was even more unexpected than his offer of friendship had been. The music came to an end. He let go of her, offered her his arm, and walked her back to the periphery of the ballroom.

She eyed him, not sure how much she could believe of his sincerity.

“Marsden, haven’t seen you in a while. You’ve kept yourself out of trouble, I hope?”

Lizzy froze. Henry. She hadn’t thought of him since she’d stepped onto the ballroom floor with Mr. Marsden.

“Henry, how do you do?” Mr. Marsden smiled most pleasantly. “And how do
you
do, Mrs. Franklin? You are more beautiful every time I see you.”

“Mr. Marsden, you are too much,” Sweet Young Thing protested—sweetly.

“No indeed. What I am is too trite. I’m sure Henry finds new and original ways to immortalize your beauty with every passing day.”

Sweet Young Thing giggled in delight and placed her hand on Henry’s arm. “Mr. Marsden, you’ll embarrass Henry.”

Mr. Marsden was not at all repentant. “For having the wisdom and foresight to marry you, Mrs. Franklin? I hardly think so.”

Lizzy had thought that face-to-face with Henry and Sweet Young Thing she’d be paralyzed in stiff awkwardness. Instead she was entirely caught up in Mr. Marsden’s flirtation—he must have attended a great number of symphonic concerts indeed, to achieve this degree of deftness with the ladies. Sweet Young Thing was aglow with pleasure. Henry, on the other hand, looked as if he’d caught a whiff of some pease porridge, nine days old.

“Have you met Miss Bessler?” asked Mr. Marsden of Sweet Young Thing. “Allow me to present the lovely Miss Bessler. Miss Bessler, Mrs. Franklin. Miss Bessler, you already know Henry, I believe.”

“Mr. Franklin and I have met on several occasions,” Lizzy said.

“Oh, Henry, you never told me,” said Mrs. Franklin innocently. “And I was just admiring Miss Bessler’s figure on the dance floor.”

“My oversight, my dear,” said Henry.

“I dare say you would cut quite a dashing figure on the dance floor yourself, Mrs. Franklin,” said Mr. Marsden easily. “I hear a polonaise starting. Shall we have a merry stomp?”

He really was a superb dancer. It was easy for a man to look frantic in a polonaise, all arms and legs and tripping feet, trying to catch up to the relentlessly swift rhythm. But he managed to look as smooth as if he were in the middle of a quadrille, while flying across the room, spinning himself and Sweet Young Thing three hundred and sixty degrees every two seconds.

“Congratulations on your upcoming marriage,” said Henry.

Lizzy turned her head. She’d forgotten Henry again, this time with him standing right next to her.

“Thank you, Mr. Franklin,” she said.

“A word of caution from an old friend,” said Henry. He glanced about them—most of the young people had joined in the polonaise, leaving only a few chaperones engaged in rapt conversation. “I know you have strong needs, but you must be wary of men like Marsden.”

Lizzy raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Marsden is my fiancé’s secretary.”

“How convenient,” said Henry. “But Marsden is not to be trusted. He will use you and discard you.”

She didn’t think she’d ever come across a finer example of the pot calling the kettle black. “Thank you, Mr. Franklin. I’ll be most cautious.”

“Now that I know what it is like to be in love, I don’t wish your heart broken again,” said Henry, in an earnestness that was more unconscious pomposity than sincerity.

Lizzy wanted to roll her eyes. Henry in love was still the same self-centered oaf. How blind and stupid she’d been. “How good of you, sir. If you’ll excuse me, I’m suffering from a tremendous thirst.”

She was stopped on her way to the punch bowl several times by remote acquaintances offering felicitations on her engagement. By the time she reached the refreshments table, the polonaise had finished and Mr. Marsden was already there, helping himself to a piece of iced cake.

“Would you care for a little turn on the gallery, Miss Bessler?” he asked, once she had a glass of punch in hand.

It was exactly what she wanted. The gallery overlooked the ballroom, where a
minuet de la cour
had started. The ladies’ flared skirts in shades of pale sun and pastel skies twirled and swished in time to the music.

Lizzy sipped her punch. “How did you survive being cast out by your family?”

Mr. Marsden shot her a glance. She did not look back at him, knowing that she’d asked a far more personal question than their acquaintance granted.

“I’d like to say with élan and insouciance,” he said. “But that would probably not be an accurate answer.”

“What did you do, precisely?”

“Matthew painted portraits for tourists on the Pont Neuf. I learned shorthand and found work as a secretary.”

“Who is Matthew?” His lover?

“My brother. We were together in Paris. He’s still there.”

She didn’t know there had been two banished Marsden brothers. “And you generated enough funds by painting portraits and taking dictations?”

“Enough to keep a roof over our heads and buy bread, but not enough for anything else.” He turned his back to the railing. “I went to a great many symphonic concerts with the rich ladies of Paris in those early years, to have a proper dinner and sleep in a room that wasn’t freezing.”

She was both horrified and intrigued. “You sold yourself cheap.”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Beggars could not be choosers. Though I did my best to find women with whom I would go to symphonic concerts even without the inducement of wine and beefsteak.”

The heat in her returned. What did it mean that he’d sleep with women without the incentive of a warm bed and a full stomach?

“Was it really true, that story about two men fighting over you?” she asked. “Or did you make it up to shock me?”

“It happened in Paris, seven years ago, in front of dozens of witnesses—none of whom would admit to being there, of course. But should you ever meet Matthew, he would gladly give you a highly embroidered version of it, and tell you that it was a battle royal between a Bourbon and a Bonaparte.”

So much for her secret hopes that Georgette was dead wrong about him. “But it was not between a Bourbon and a Bonaparte?”

“No, they were a banker and a poet.”

“Was it…was it gratifying for you to watch?”

“Gratifying?” He glanced at her as if she’d lost her mind. “No, I was terrified. I was twenty years old. I’d been in Paris only weeks. And I’d thought the…the French a cheese-mad lot of weaklings. The men were both well over six feet in height, barrel-chested, and savage. I’m not ashamed to say that I fled that night and would flee again if I saw either of them today.”

A chuckle escaped her. They stood for a few minutes in a silence that, though not precisely companionable, brooded no dark, uneasy currents.

“I’ve been there,” he said. “It was a harsh life. No matter what I know or think I know about you, I would never subject you to the same.”

The
minuet de la cour
ended. The dancers drew apart. The center of the ballroom emptied in an exodus of soft laughter and elaborate trains.

He’d faced her nightmare—poverty and alienation—and lived to tell about it. There was a curious strength to him, a resilience not immediately obvious and probably easily overlooked by most people, including herself.

“If you are not rushing to a symphonic concert, or the music hall, perhaps you’d like to escort me to supper, Mr. Marsden?” she heard herself say.

He looked at her a moment, the way one might gaze upon a much-changed old friend. Then he smiled. “For that privilege I’ll give up music altogether.”

Chapter Fifteen

V
erity spent much of her Sunday cooking at the soup kitchen on Euston Road that handed out thin stew and bread in the cold months. She preferred that to attending church, where she usually fidgeted during the service. She didn’t think God minded that she was off feeding the poor—if He did, then she was doomed anyway, church attendance or not.

She’d taken Marjorie with her—she and Becky divided the task of looking after Marjorie when the latter wasn’t in the kitchen, with Becky responsible for the half days, and Verity taking the full day on Sundays. They returned to the house in the middle of the afternoon. She made Marjorie an omelet—the girl needed more substantial food than what the soup kitchen had to offer—set Marjorie in the servants’ hall to eat, and climbed up to the attic to wash her face and take off her dress for a good brush, so that it didn’t smell permanently of turnip.

She grabbed her stockings and drawers from the back and arms of the chair where she’d hung them to dry and put them back in her valise. Then she rebuilt the fire in the grate, changed, and ruthlessly scoured the hem of the dress she’d worn. More ruthlessly than either the soil or the fabric of the dress called for, no doubt, but the agitation inside her made greater gentleness impossible.

She could forgive herself for rushing out of her hiding place to embrace him—it wasn’t always easy to remember that he knew her only as Bertie’s former cook and paramour. But why, oh, why had she given into the impulse to taste him, when he’d already, mostly politely, told her that she should let go of him?

Every time she remembered the way he’d thrown her, she had to close her eyes and wince in mortification. To be rejected with such unequivocal force. To have to be told that he would not lower himself to hobnob with her—if only she hadn’t been so vain as to want to impress his breakfast guests with her croissants, for which she had to make midnight trips down to the kitchen to turn the dough.

But then he had held her face and kissed her tears. And his lips had lingered close to hers for so long she had been convinced he’d kiss her any moment, only to pull away and leave her completely alone.

She was confused. As much by his enigmatic intentions as by what
she
wanted from
him.
There had been so much that was impossible that what little remained in the realm of plausibility had all seemed tawdry. But things had gone in unpredictable directions. And sometimes, when she let her guard down, she could almost believe that he loved her.

Mr. Darcy’s love it wasn’t: This was no bright, honorable admiration for a pair of fine eyes and a lively wit. If anything, it was like a love for the bottle: full of guilt, shame, troubled dreams, and dark compulsions.

And she both hated it and thrilled to it: It made her vulnerable, miserable, and strangely happy all at once.

She brushed the dress one more time, shook it, and went to hang it on a hook on the wall. That was when she saw the package on the rickety desk, laid down before Michael’s photograph like an offering.

The package was wrapped in brown paper and tied in brown twine. She undid the twine, peeled back the paper, and looked upon an oil painting that was no bigger than her two hands put together.

It was a still life of someone’s midday meal. On a silver platter atop a still-creased white tablecloth, a helping of pink, caper-sprinkled salmon beckoned. A plate of lemons—one whole, one half-peeled—had been helpfully provided. There was also a ramekin of olives, golden wine in thick-bottomed glasses, a knife only the ebony handle of which could be seen, a salt shaker, and to the side, a large pewter jug so beautifully polished it gleamed like black pearls.

Rich details teemed on the tiny canvas: the light caught and held by an individual caper; the long, dapper curl of bright yellow lemon peel hanging off the side of a plate; the presence of a half-eaten olive that she imagined had been the long-dead painter’s appetite getting the better of his artistic patience.