Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (20 page)

Silence fell like a death knell upon us. I bit my lip, forcing back a surge of hysterical laughter as Mrs. Douglas’s pallid skin turned ember bright.

The marchioness did not smile.

Chapter Fourteen

M
y nerves stretched to the breaking point. As I lifted the teacup to my lips, I looked down to find the tea sloshing within the delicate china. Too late, I realized my error. Too late, I lost the struggle with my own body; my hand seized, and the dark liquid splashed over the rim.

If my words hadn’t been enough to achieve the unintended effect, this would be the end of it.

A lady did not, under any circumstances, spill her tea.

Yet here I was, seated beside the Marchioness Northampton, with the dark, wet stain spreading over my bodice and dripping down my décolletage.

To my endless consternation, sudden, angry tears filled my eyes.

What the devil was wrong with me?

I heard a rustle, Fanny’s voice, and then the rich, educated tenor of Earl Compton. “Mother,” he said, in the tone of one who is preparing an excuse, “ladies, if you will forgive the intrusion, I would escort Miss St. Croix in a turn about the parlor.”

“By all means,” murmured the marchioness, who knew what her son had not said.

There would be precious little I could do—except perhaps make good on a mistress’s role—to seal my fate on the outside of his world.

She was pleased. Quite obviously so.

I took a deep breath as the earl took the saucer from my gloved hands, set it upon the tea cart and offered his arm.

I took it, because anything was better than remaining among that nest of vipers. Including a final reason for the earl to understand the mistake he made in me. Now was his last chance.

“Let her go,” I heard from one of Fanny’s friends. A sad advisement; one that suggested the matron had seen her share of social faux pas and knew the weight of those I’d made.

What possessed me?

If the earl heard the same damning whispers I did, he was too much a gentleman to acknowledge them. Instead, with my gloved hand in his elbow and the tea stain cooling on my bodice, he led me along the far wall, passing the wide windows with their beautifully dressed crimson draperies.

He said nothing. A glance up at him revealed only the façade I’d grown used to seeing. His handsome, aristocratic features were in stern lines, his mouth set beneath his sandy-colored mustache. His hair, as it ever was, was perfectly groomed, swept to the side and displaying that hint of curl in the waves.

The silence stretched between us. I grew increasingly aware of the stain on my chest, and the words he was not saying. Would he end his ill-fated infatuation with me?

Did I want him to?

Of course I did. What hope could a man whose mother loathed his choice of partner have, in the end?

I was too much for him to handle. I recognized this.

Finally, I could tolerate it no longer. “I am not accustomed to such fine company.” I did not stress the word; it was not his fault that his mother was such a cat.

“Such things may be learned,” came his response, quiet yet lacking in the recrimination I expected.

“Learned,” I repeated, drawing the word out.

“Tutors,” he replied, “and those with the patience to instruct.” He glanced down at me. “I would be pleased, myself.”

What manner of game was this?

“You confuse me, my lord,” I blurted, my voice low to keep from prying ears. Conversation had resumed behind us, yet I knew if I looked I would find eyes pinned to where we walked.

“I am a simple man,” he replied, inflection steady. His eyes met mine. “I am not so complicated.”

“You require a simple woman,” I pointed out.

His laughter surprised me. Quiet, even restrained, yet I read its warmth in those eyes, so different at times from the woman who birthed him. “I require,” he retorted, “a lady who thinks before she exclaims the first thing that comes to her not unintelligent head.”

I winced. “You won’t find that here.”

“You lie,” he assured me, “if I may be so bold as to accuse a lady of such.”

“Why, sir,” I replied lightly, for all his words caused an unhealthy knot in my chest, “you dare accuse me of falsehoods? Shall I fetch my second?”

He said nothing for a moment, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. Again. Then, quietly, he said, “Miss St. Croix, if ever there was a woman to duel a man, I would wager on you.”

And with that, the knot in my chest turned into a weight. And from the weight sprang a sudden inability to speak—guilt, uncertainty, and, yes, even curiosity—as the earl matched my shorter stride in a way that suggested he did so deliberately.

Propriety colored his every move; so why, then, did he defy it by undoing the cut direct of his mother? Why did he continue to hound me?

It would not stand.

I shook my head, at last. “You should not say such things,” I whispered. “Mrs. Douglas assures me that all conversation between a lady and a gentleman should be distant.” We passed molding after molding, each panel in the music room framed by the ornate stuff and glittering faintly gold.

More draperies filled the walls—it kept the sound of the room ideal for music, I knew—and the occasional statue on a pedestal broke the isolated lines. Greek in nature, various Muses. It surprised me.

“Perhaps.” Compton raised his eyebrows, a shade darker than his hair. “And what of the weather, Miss St. Croix?” he continued. “Rather chilly for an October.”

The clever man. He’d timed this just so; such an innocuous conversation as we once more passed the guests.

Or was it coincidence? A natural progression of my chastisement.

“Certainly, although I understand it’s not as wet as some years past.” I glimpsed Lord Trefawney’s unadulterated amusement as he bent to say something I couldn’t hear to his fiancée.

The marchioness did not look nearly so pleased.

“You don’t truly wish to speak of the weather,” the earl continued as we passed the group entirely.

I looked up at him in surprise. “No?”

“No. You wish to discuss other things, such as aether engines and”—a flicker of distaste crossed his features—“the correlation of electricity and the human body.”

My surprise turned over into something much less clear. Slightly more warming. “You remembered.”

“There are many things I remember of that outing, Miss St. Croix.” The silken note in those simple words completed what the topic had started, and I shivered despite the warmth of the room.

I looked away from the earl’s searching gaze. “A kiss does not cement compatibility,” I said flatly. “You require a proper wife.”

“A proper wife is a woman blessed by the sanction of marriage,” replied the earl, whose unending font of rejoinders and semantics was rapidly leaving me with no room in my shrinking corner.

“A proper wife is one who smiles and sews and makes delightful conversation. She does not spill her tea, or stumble in the ballroom.”
Or take opium for her nightmares.

I had so many more secrets than he would ever know.

Though I made as if to remove my hand from his arm, his flattened over my fingers. Trapped me against the warmth at the bend of his elbow.

My gaze lifted to his.

A single corner of his mouth tilted up; a near-smile I found so much more evocative than his others. His eyes all but glowed as he looked down on me. A shared warmth caused my lips to tingle in memory.

He’d looked just like this when he’d kissed me.

He would not dare here. No matter how pleasant a kiss had passed between us, it was not enough.

“A proper wife,” he murmured, low and more than a shade too intimately, “is a woman who may converse with Society on all the topics required of her. She may charm the gentlemen into agreeing with her husband’s politics, or engage the ladies in shared dialogue of fashion and social requests.”

My jaw tightened. I did not make the conscious decision, but suddenly stopped, withdrawing my hand forcefully.

He was quicker than I, stopped at the same time and faced me as if we only shared a conversation that did not leave anger pulsing through my veins.

He did not know me at all.

I opened my mouth.

His gaze twinkled. “A proper wife, Miss St. Croix, will then discourse with her husband on whatever topics capture her fancy, from whatever periodicals she has delivered to his door. She will engage in intellectual debate with him at her leisure, debate the merits of aether or electricity, ponder the weight of Her Majesty’s flagship,
and
perform in the marriage bed while she does so.”

The bottom dropped out from under my stomach. Whatever words I’d intended—brilliant, scalding things designed to strip the skin from his aristocratically self-entitled bones—came instead on a squeak. Surprise. Shock, more like.

“Think on it,” he said, once more offering his arm.

I stared at it. That perfect arm clad in spotless gray, gloved hand held just so.

“I offer you more than just a name, Miss St. Croix,” he said gently. “I offer you shelter, kindness, and support. All I ask is that you fit the demands expected of a future marchioness.”

I swallowed, hard enough that his eyes tracked the motion at my throat. And then they skimmed lower. Tracing the stain at my lace décolletage, burning a path along my skin.

This time, I recognized the slow uncurling of heat low in my belly. I found him quite attractive, certainly. I could not argue that. I was a daughter of science and a creature of experience, or at least knowledge. I understood that I found him attractive, just as a part of me felt drawn to handsome men with character.

His eyes lifted once more to mine. The stern angles of his face set in earnest lines. “I offer you a place, Miss St. Croix.”

Yes. But the price was far too high.

I
did not sleep that night.

My skin seemed made of parchment as I lay in my bed, staring blankly into the dark recesses of my bedroom. Everything pressed upon me, until I was sure my chest would cave and my skin would tear and whatever it was trapped inside my flesh would escape. Free, finally free.

The canopy over my head became a tomb, and sometime in the darkest hours, I fled the dubious sanctuary of my boudoir.

Mrs. Booth found me first. I paced Mr. Ashmore’s study, my dressing gown swirling in a froth of linen and ribbon about my ankles. I don’t know how many times I traversed that single path—from the heavy, polished wood desk in strong masculine lines to the window set into the far wall, masked by heavy drapes of striped slate and blue; back to the desk, my feet dragging on the vivid Oriental carpet, and then to the bookshelves that lined the opposite wall.

Back and forth, around and again, my stride short and harried. I must have walked it for hours as my mind turned and turned within the confines of my aching skull.

So much need in one small form.

Had I any laudanum in the house, I’d have taken it all, but there had been no injuries or ailments of late—and my stipend was all spent on my last batch. Fanny did not keep it near, for the very same reason that I wanted it.

I needed to sleep, blast it. I needed time to dream, to work through these manic thoughts swirling in my wild and unshackled brain.

If my housekeeper said anything to me, I did not realize. She was gone almost before I even recognized her presence.

What was I missing?

Answers. I needed answers.

The mystery of the murdered professors. What a terrible crime; and yet as thrilling a chase as I could expect, short of literally chasing the murderer through London below.

That would come. Once I knew what and who I searched for.

Jack the Ripper?

No, decidedly not. I turned at the window, the faintest seam of light gathering beneath the drapes. My hair swayed at my waist, a tangled plait whose curls had wildly escaped in my tossing and turning.

The Ripper didn’t care for common murder. One had been poisoned, the other fallen from a great height.

Were they both murders?

My thoughts flashed to the narrow closet, and the stolen book.

Yes.
I would wager both were killed in the name of this mystery. Killed, or persuaded to die. It became the same thing, after a point.

Why?

Back to the desk, my feet carrying me without command.

Alchemy.
“Bloody stuff,” I muttered, striding past the desk and to the shelves. My eyes raked over the books—polished, dusted, gleaming like teeth in neat rows—but I saw another book in the surging place that was my memory.

Why?

That was the question, was it not? “Why,” I repeated, muttering the word. And again. Over and over, with every footstep. “Why? Why? Why?”

“
Cherry St. Croix.
”

I spun, snapping my fingers as my nightgown hem flared gently. “Wrong question!” I crowed, and hurried for the desk. Fanny’s presence only dimly registered—her shocked dismay, Mrs. Booth’s silent concern behind her. Ignoring them both, I snatched up the quill I’d used to doodle nothing at all on several of Ashmore’s finer parchments and scribbled out the symbols I remembered from the papers I’d left with Mr. Pettigrew.