Gilded: The St. Croix Chronicles (25 page)

I would have no part of it.

Or, rather, I would do my part well. “I must disagree,” I replied, rising. The words came from me without conscious approval; I also made no effort to halt them, for the venom sprung full-formed in my heart.

“Oh?”

I stepped back, as clear a dismissal as I could suggest in posturing alone, and explained evenly, “Your son is kind and honorable. He is, as you well know, the very model of civility.” I smiled. It was mostly teeth, I know. “In short, Your Ladyship, he is nothing like you.”

Had I slapped her outright, I would never achieve the same expression. Shock, I read, as if I were the first to refuse to be cowed. Or perhaps she had not expected spirit from a St. Croix. Foolish woman.

She would get that and more.

“I am very busy, and although I had not delivered a formal acceptance to your son,” I continued, deliberately turning the knife I’d delivered, “I believe I shall pen one up immediately.” The skin of her eyelids tightened, a marked flinch. “I understand that you may wish to withdraw your financial support. Not to worry,” I continued, with a gay bravado that I did not feel, “my estate is perfectly capable of handling matters. Good day, my lady.”

The Marchioness Northampton weighed me for a long, silent moment, all but bristling with fury. I half expected her eyes to turn slitted like a snake’s as she finally rose, smoothed out her coat, and sailed past me. The breeze of her departure was as frigid as the woman herself.

I heard Booth’s step out in the foyer—he’d waited like a good man—but I did not relax until I heard the front door close.

I sagged suddenly, clutching the table set in the center of the parlor and rattling the salver with its pile of cards.

Fanny’s skirts whispered behind me. “Oh, dear,” she said quietly, making no attempt to disguise that she had listened. Likely through the far door. “You have made an enemy of that one.”

An enemy too well-bred to return my insult direct. I would feel this one later.

“Perhaps,” I said, looking up and pushing my wilting figure from the supporting table. I raised my chin a notch. “But I will not allow her to bully me any longer.”

Fanny said nothing.

She did not need to. I knew exactly what kind of feud I’d only just cemented as my own.

I made my excuses and walked sedately out of the parlor, up the stairs and into my bedroom. I shut the door with trembling hands.

My knees gave before I reached the bed. I sank to the floor, every particle of my body vibrating with mounting hysteria. As I reached for the decanter upon my nightstand and uncapped its topper, it rattled against the rim of the flask—a crystalline chime that sheared through my nerves.

The edge touched my lips before I recalled that there was nothing left.

A pit opened wide inside myself; fear, anger, frustration. Need. I feared it would devour me whole.

The decanter fell to my lap, my fingers clenched tight enough around it that the edges pressed into my flesh.

I shuddered. For the first time, the only time I’d ever managed to be as forthright as I relished in my collector’s role, I’d faced down the Marchioness Northampton. I could not be bought.

Not, at least, by the likes of her.

It was something. I wasn’t sure what, even then, but it was
something
.

Chapter Eighteen

T
he next three days turned into a blur I couldn’t remember even if I wanted to. Soiree after soiree, luncheons in pretty rooms with faux picnic atmosphere, teas and of course, the fittings. They all stacked atop one another, obligation after obligation.

On the sixth of October, one of the better known gossip rags caught wind of the marriage dance vainly enacted by Earl Compton. The impertinent paper printed the details—many made up, near as I could ascertain—and was then mirrored by other newspapers in town, resulting in even more cards. Letters of interest, sycophants who smelled fresh blood and were eager to be the Judas goat to my would-be titled lamb.

Maybe some were well-meaning. Some perhaps genuinely cared to meet the woman who had cracked the earl’s shell, or so the papers claimed—after all, he’d resisted the trap of matrimony for so long.

I couldn’t even begin to guess. All I knew was that time passed in a series of small productions—events where I playacted the part of a Society miss, smiled and curtsied and did everything in my power to avoid the topic of marriage until I could return home. And then I acted that of the dutiful charge. Though I was genuinely happy to see my chaperone walking about in a state of near-constant bliss, it wore on me. Tore at my nerves until I could not sleep more than an hour, maybe two at best.

I had no time for mysteries. None for trips below—and no clues to make them for. There were no new articles, not even letters of suffrage from Miss Hensworth to amuse me. Even the Ripper had gone quiet; and there’s a sad state of affairs, when I must turn to a murderer to provide for me an escape.

I sent Zylphia into the fog to learn the outcome of Mr. Pettigrew’s investigation, but she returned empty-handed. There were no clues, no evidence at all.

All I had was the knowledge of Miss Hensworth’s previous letter referencing the master of admissions and her removal from the Athenaeum. It was a frail link, yet on a thready hope, I quietly sent Levi with my card, asking Miss Hensworth to meet.

When Levi returned, he admitted to finding no sign of the lady.

“Did you leave my card?” I asked.

“In the post box, miss,” he swore earnestly. “Just like you asked.”

“Was it full?”

He scratched the top of his head, beneath his cap. “Now that you mention, miss, no.”

Good. That meant she was still about, somewhere. Once I located her, I would have answers.

Three dead. Even if this weren’t part of Lady Rutledge’s game, that bit of wisdom had certainly applied: The longer I waited, the more would die.

On the fourth day, the invite I’d been dreading most delivered Fanny and myself to the Northampton estate. The dinner invite came complete with the combined efforts of my chaperone and the damnable persistence of an earl. The weather had taken a nasty turn, pouring down rain by the bucketful. It hammered against the window, coloring the conversation at the long, filled table with a sonorous drone that worked its way into my skin and dragged like iron nails.

On edge as I was, it took every ounce of concentration to make artless conversation with my table companions on either side.

The earl was one.

Shortly before the last course ended, he bent his head to mine and whispered, “Make your escape in half of an hour. I’ve something to show you.”

My eyebrows very nearly winged their way right off my brow. “Truly?”

When he raised his eyebrows in subtle reinforcement, I nodded to show I understood, and turned back to the table to find his younger brother, Lord Piers Everard Compton, watching me.

A mystery, this young man. Perhaps my age, perhaps a shade older, he nevertheless had developed quite a reputation as an inveterate gambler and rake. The gossip columnists loved him; as, I was quite sure, did the ladies above and below the drift. I knew for a fact he was no stranger to the midnight sweets.

The younger Lord Compton was handsome enough for it, with the family golden hair a shade darker than his brother’s, and cut shorter as fashion strictly demanded. His sideburns were impressive, shaping his lean jaw and barbered to perfection. He lacked the icy polish of his eldest brother, yet utilized a certain urbane air that reminded me sometimes of him.

But unlike the elder, the younger maintained a dissolute demeanor that usually involved a rakish smile, at least when directed at me. There was nothing subtle about his wink.

I barely caught myself before I pulled a teasing face in return. I was not unaccustomed to the games men played—a girl did not grow up in the circles I had without learning a thing or two about holding one’s own weight among them—but I would not dare risk accusations of flirtations with the earl’s own brother.

Dinner finally closed. After the requisite parting of the sexes—women to the parlor, and gentlemen to the study for brandy and cigars; I would have given my eyeteeth to be included among the latter—I was all but climbing from my skin with curiosity.

And with that prickling, barbed anxiety pressing outward from my skin.

After dinner, there was the musical selection. This was much less painful than the ladies’ gathering. Fanny did her best by me, but I felt frozen out by the marchioness and her salon, even as they deliberately included me into their circle.

There was inclusion, I thought, and then there was that point where one realized one wasn’t a part of a group, so much as held as an example by them.

And not a flattering one.

The chance finally came for me to make my escape. It came, to my surprise, on the arm of my Lord Compton’s younger brother. “Have you seen the courtyard from the windows?” he asked, bending slightly so that his voice would not overpower that of the rather talented Lady Sarah Elizabeth.

Beautiful
and
the voice of a songbird. If I were ever required to stand in a parlor and sing, I would shoot myself with Ashmore’s dueling pistols first. I could play marginally on a small sampling of instruments, but I had nothing near my mother’s reputed talent.

“No, my lord,” I said, eager to escape this festering knot of cold study and judgment.

“Excuse us, won’t you, Mother?” continued the charming young lord. “I would like to give Miss St. Croix a glimpse of your pride and joy.” And then, a grin, that cheeky rotter. “Your other pride and joy, that is, for she has already met Cornelius.”

Bloody hell
, I thought slowly as the marchioness inclined her head. For although I was used to the frigid wall she insisted be erected between us, I would never have expected to see that glint of affection as she looked upon her youngest son.

Even . . . even amusement?

Lady Northampton turned to Mrs. Douglas, effectively dismissing me from her mind and company.

I leapt at the chance. Familial affection or not, clearly, I was not included in that attendance sheet. “Thank you, my lord,” I murmured.

“Please. If I am any judge, we are to be family, soon,” came his all too easy rejoinder. His eyes, colored more by his father than mother, were that muddled mix between brown and green. More brown, I suspected, than the other. They also retained a disconcerting habit of twinkling, as if all the world were a jest. “You may call me Piers.”

We would
not.
Yet I was tired of the constant pressure I kept myself under. “Very well, Piers,” I replied, surprising him, I think.

His smile widened with it. “I won’t be so bold as to call you by your given name just yet,” he returned lightly, his gloved hand patting mine on his arm. “Formalities being what they are, and I am given to understand that you have yet to accept my brother’s proposal.”

“Correct.”

We strolled along the music hall wall, the by-now familiar patterns of gilt and red drapery passing at a moderate pace. “Good for you,” he said, rather cryptic at his approval. But his head dipped as he murmured wickedly, “Although I might slip your Christian name once and again just to watch my brother’s mustache twitch.”

It did, didn’t it? I muffled a chuckle, swallowing it as we passed a pair of matrons whose disapproving frowns were as much a part of the societal charade as anything else. I smiled at them—a demure thing. Fanny would be proud.

Yet when we reached the far doors, Lord Piers did not stop.

“My lord, where are you taking me?”

“A surprise,” came the inscrutable reply.

I looked up at him, much taller than I, even a hair’s taller than his brother. “You are mischievous by design, not by nature,” I accused, rather baldly.

His step did not falter as he led me to the foyer, and then up the great staircase. But his laughter fell easy and without artifice from his lips. “Perhaps you are correct.”

“And if I am?”

“Then my brother has a rare prize, indeed,” came the unexpected compliment. And the grating assumption.

He paused at a large, oaken door, its carved surface blackened as if burned in place. There were no real images, just a pattern.

“Here,” he offered.

“What is here?”

“Open the door and see, busybody.” But there was no sting in Lord Piers’s words, only an indulgence that continued to surprise me. What had I done to earn such sympathies from the marchioness’s own sons?

Yet there was a challenge in the lord’s eyes, the folded arms held loosely across his chest. He leaned against the doorjamb beside me, and I tilted my head.

“Very well.” Challenge accepted. I gripped the latch with a gloved hand, and pushed gently.

It opened easily, without so much as a creak. Light filtered into the hall, painting my striped skirt in a splash of white and peacock blue luminosity.

And when I stepped inside, my breath escaped me on a rush. “Oh!”

I could not help myself. I rushed into the room, one hand tangled in my skirt and holding the fabric away from my hurried tread. I saw nothing at all, paid attention to nothing, but the walls.

Shelves upon shelves of books. Hundreds of them, maybe more. Every wall filled to the brim with bookcases, every last surface. Only the mantel was free, and that for a hazard, I’d wager.

Daylight, what little of it could break through the rain sliding over the tall, wide windows, painted the library in pale gray. Lamps hanging from the ceiling flickered and countered with a warm golden glow that gilded everything it touched.

I spun, my gaze darting from one wall to the next.

I had gone to heaven, and it was a place mad with books.

“I do believe this was well planned, brother.” Piers’s voice seized my attention, and I turned again in a swirl of poplin and lace. My eyes were wide, I know, and my heart pounding as I followed the young lord’s gaze to the man who’d waited patiently by the large desk while I gawked and envied.

The smile I saw on Lord Compton’s lips stole my breath. Genuine warmth. Doubt, the kind of endearing hesitancy found in a man courting, and affection he had not earned.

My gaze flicked to the books once more.

Maybe not earned, I admitted silently, but he was close enough to forgive the presumption.

“It seems so,” he said, much more seriously than his brother. Piers had followed me in, but leaned now against the shelf just by the door, while the earl waited patiently, one hand resting upon the desk I could so easily picture him seated behind.

The library, doubling as a study, was very masculine in many ways, but I could see touches of femininity in the trim chosen, the striped fabric of the upholstery, even the flowers placed at each window.

The marchioness kept an excellent house.

My throat closed. Nerves. So many new uncertainties.

“I . . .” I tried again. “My lord, this is wonderful.”

“My brother was quite sure you’d think so,” Piers volunteered.

But my gaze remained fixed on the man who’d assured me that all I required was a little polish to be his. A little refinement.

And in exchange, I would have this. A library large enough to put my father’s and Ashmore’s collections to shame. A man, a husband, who understood on some level what this meant to me.

I approached the earl, and realized suddenly that while the brothers shared many similarities of form and feature, the earl did not share Piers’s easy confidence. His shoulders were tight, jaw set as if prepared for . . . a blow? Rejection, perhaps. “You appear to like your books very much,” he offered stiffly.

I smiled, sank into as deep a curtsy as I knew. “You are well remembered, my lord.”

When I rose again, it was to find him staring at me. Not in the way of a man who saw what he did not expect, but one who saw something I wasn’t sure I could live up to.

A conviction, perhaps. A knowledge in his eyes that I would be everything he expected and more.

The tremors began low in my body. But when they reached my hands, they were not pleasant, or kind. I tucked my fingers into my skirts as Piers cleared his throat behind us. “Before I lose you both to each other’s eyes,” he said dryly, “I’ve a gift of my own, Miss St. Croix.”

A gift? I tilted my head, my gaze flicking between both men as Piers rounded me to stand beside his brother. In his hands, a thin book, no more than a journal. The leather was tooled beautifully, but worn.