How the Marquess Was Won (11 page)

“Music this evening, Phoebe.” Lisbeth’s eyes were sparkling with delight. “Uncle Isaiah has arranged for a surprise!”

Oh, God. Phoebe very much enjoyed playing pianoforte, but she had skill and no real talent, whereas Lisbeth, who had been planted before a pianoforte since she could walk, was actually very good. She didn’t look forward to this being reemphasized.

Lisbeth correctly interpreted her expression.

“Silly, you likely won’t be asked to play, but you may turn the pages of my music, as I expect
I
shall. If that’s the sort of thing my uncle has in mind. But I don’t think there will be time. Neighbors are coming from miles around for just a few hours this evening—Uncle Isaiah has engaged Madame Sophia Licari, the famous soprano, to sing for us!”

She clapped her hands together and beamed beatifically.

Phoebe had read of Signora Licari, of course, in the newspapers. “Is she a very wonderful singer?”

“Oh, my goodness. Haven’t you heard her sing, Phoebe?”

The answer to this ridiculous question was of course “No.”

“Her voice is a marvel, and she’s so very haughty and beautiful and a little bit frightening. She is said to . . .” she lowered her voice to a hush “. . . take
lovers
.”

Lisbeth was flushed with her own daring and the sheer sophistication of such a word.

“Never say lovers!
Imagine
an unmarried grown woman taking lovers.”

Lisbeth missed the irony.

“Scandalous, I know, but she is very worldly and sings so well no one seems too mind.”

Perhaps I ought to take up singing,
Phoebe thought. “Particularly the men, I should imagine.”

“Phoebe!” Lisbeth pretended to be scandalized, because she suspected she was supposed to, but in truth Phoebe suspected no one spoke to her of such things, and now she was curious.

Because there followed a little silence.

“Do you think the marquess does that sort of thing? Jules?”

Jonathan and Waterburn and Argosy wandered into the far end of the room and flung themselves down before the fire on settees. She hoped for the sake of the maids they weren’t muddy, too.

Phoebe was feeling mischievous. “What sort of thing?” So it was Jules, was it? The diminutive of Julian.

She
wasn’t
going to discuss the marquess and mistresses with Lisbeth. For God’s sake, Lisbeth could read a broadsheet as well as anyone else. Perhaps she would hand her own stack over to Lisbeth with the appropriate pages marked and sternly inform her, “You will be tested.” Invariably the mistresses were coyly described as breathtaking. One young man had broken an ankle tumbling out of an opera balcony in an attempt to get a look at the marquess’s latest one.

“
You
know . . . do you think
he
. . .” She widened her eyes and gave her eyebrows a wag.

“I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning.” She was doing a brilliant job not laughing.

Her eyes were wide, wide, wide. Keeping company with Lisbeth was honing her ability to take passive revenge.

“
Takes
.
Lovers
,” Lisbeth said irritably, emphatically. And a little too loudly, because all the male heads swiveled in their direction.

Phoebe furrowed her brow. “Takes them where?”

Lisbeth was scarlet now. “Now I think you are teasing me.” She sounded wounded. Lisbeth was much too literal a creature, and took herself a trifle too seriously, to know what to do about teasing. She found it incompatible with her status as diamond of the first water.

Which meant Jonathan
enjoyed
torturing her, because she invariably became red and began squeaking, while Phoebe took little pleasure in it, because Lisbeth didn’t play along, and Phoebe liked conversations to be between equals, if at all possible.

“I’m certain he does. Or has. Honestly, all men of significant means do, Lisbeth.”

It was certainly the truth. It was also hardly the sort of thing anyone’s mother would want a paid companion to say. She was also aware her motive in saying it wasn’t entirely benign. Let Lisbeth toss and turn with uncertainty at night, too, she thought.

Lisbeth was subdued for a moment, considering this. In the end, she seemed to take it in with a certain amount of equanimity. After all, men did all manner of things that women were simply expected to endure even if they didn’t condone them.

“Of course he wouldn’t do such a thing when he is married.” It sounded like she was asking Phoebe another question.

Phoebe almost rolled her eyes. Who had allowed this girl to grow up so ignorant of men? She had Jonathan for a cousin, for heaven’s sake. And her other cousin, Mr. Miles Redmond, had written a book about his South Sea travels that famously described affectionate native women who went about wearing nothing above their waists all day.

But she was reminded that Lisbeth liked to acquire information by asking for it.

“Of course not,” Phoebe humored. “What on earth would he need with a mistress if he had a wife?” Phoebe said it for the sake of amusing herself. For all she knew it was true with regards to the marquess.

This mollified Lisbeth.

“Everyone would like to see a match between us,” Lisbeth confided on a lowered voice. She was flushed with pride and awe.

Phoebe slowed the stabbing of the needle in and out of cloth.

Not everyone.

“What do
you
want, Lisbeth?”

For God’s sake. They were scarcely two years apart in age. She was a young woman, too. She shouldn’t have to adopt a soothing maternal tone, as if she were a governess, or someone to whom men and sex and the like were uninteresting or unavailable. But her innate sympathy, curse it, did battle with her wits, and her wits wanted to flay Lisbeth.

She flirted with the idea of flaying her with wit and fleeing to Africa, but decided against it.

What did Lisbeth want? Did she even know? Or was she just a vehicle for the desires and ambitions of her influential family and the marquess?

“I think . . .” Lisbeth tipped her head back and a dreamy smile drifted over her face “. . . nothing could be more glorious than to be married to him. He’s very . . . very . . .”

She paused, seemed lost in a reverie.

Yes, he is. Very.

“. . . sweet.”

God, no. Did
she
ever have the wrong end of the stick.

Phoebe accidentally snorted. Then turned it into a discreet cough. Lisbeth stared at Phoebe with mild concern and something like curiosity. She’d never do anything so gauche as to snort. She was probably wondering how it was done.

But perhaps he
was
sweet to Lisbeth. And treated her with deference and kindness and delicacy, the way one would a well-bred prospective wife or an expensive Chinese vase.

Other
women were for flirting with. And making love to.

“And he’s impressive,” Lisbeth added. “He is quite the best catch in all of London.”

“He
is
impressive.”
Catch? You make him sound like a mackerel
.

Lisbeth perhaps caught a whiff of something too enthusiastic in Phoebe’s tone. She looked up at her from her embroidery and regarded her with mild bemusement.

“That is, from what I can tell.” She’d decided echoing Lisbeth was working out nicely, for it saved her from expressing opinions or lying.

“And everyone knows he will settle only for the very best,” Lisbeth added.

Settle. Did one actually “settle” for the best?

“Is that why you admire him, Lisbeth?”

She looked up, earnestly surprised. And almost reproving. “Don’t you think it’s why he admires
me
?”

Implying that naturally
she
was the best that could be had.

Clearly she’d thought
Phoebe
had gotten the wrong end of the stick.

A
fter dinner, another one in which Phoebe was installed at the nether end of the table and forced to listen to intermittent bursts of laughter from the other end while the elderly neighbor squire next to her dozed quietly, his chin tucked into his chest, the women and men separated politely, as they normally did—to recover from each other’s company?—and then the lot of them were ushered into the smaller ballroom, where chairs, at least a hundred of them, were aligned in rows, and guests, local aristocracy, Londoners who had made the trip to the country, and people of whom the Redmonds were simply fond, began arriving, milling about excitedly. Phoebe wore one of the two finer gowns she owned—it was a dove gray silk, and entirely frill-free apart from a shining silver cord beneath the bosom—and her fine gloves, which she liked to think rather elevated her ensemble to something close to what all the other glamorous guests were wearing.

The small ballroom was very warm, but then the temperature in the house was generally sultry, at least by contrast to the conservative way they heated Miss Marietta Endicott’s academy.

The marquess, who had been at dinner and seated by Lisbeth again but who seemed unusually distracted, remained noticeably missing even after the rest of the male guests reappeared.

Lisbeth seemed to have noticed it, too. She was waving the damned fan about as if she could invoke his presence with it, as if to remind herself that he had indeed given it to her. She smiled politely for all the guests, and exchanged pleasantries, but she was clearly growing increasingly agitated.

Which is probably why she said, “Phoebe, would you please run and fetch my shawl?”

“Run” and “fetch.” Phoebe spoke five languages fluently, and this girl was asking her to run and fetch.

“Perhaps you’ll want your own as well,” Lisbeth allowed, magnanimously. “Fetch that, too.”

It sounded like a bloody whim to Phoebe, as the house was warm as the inside of a closed hand.

Phoebe regarded Lisbeth evenly.

And said nothing.

Lisbeth stared back at her, pleasantly anticipating her dash to do her bidding.

When a man appeared and began to settle sheet music against the pianoforte, the crowd rustled and murmured with anticipation. Phoebe didn’t want to miss a note of the music.

“Of course,” Phoebe said at last. And sighed inwardly.

She spun on her heel. She half stalked, half ran up the stairs and retrieved Lisbeth’s Chinese silk shawl from Lisbeth’s Abigail. And then she dashed down the stairs, slipped with cat-like speed across the foyer and stepped out into the chilly night to dart across the courtyard to her own room.
Bloody Lisbeth
.

“Where are you going in a tearing hurry, Miss Vale? Dare I hope the salon is on fire and the musical evening has been canceled?”

Chapter 8

S
he came to an abrupt halt and whirled, looking for the voice.

“Here,” he said helpfully.

Ah! There he was. He was really not much more than a shadow leaning against the pillar, illuminated by a sliver of moon and the chandelier light pouring out of the windows. A few lamps were hung amongst the eves along the courtyard walls to aid the passage of servants and staff through the dark, each hardly more brilliant than a firefly. He was moodily smoking a cheroot near one. A few hapless insects circled it, moving in and out of the nimbus of light.

“Yes,” she said. “The house is all aflame, and I’ve decided to abandon the lot of them to their fates.”

He laughed softly.

“Don’t you like sopranos, Lord Dryden?”

“Oh, on the contrary. I like them very much indeed.” He sounded darkly amused.

He sucked at the cheroot as though it were the source of all oxygen. Finally the tip glowed like a demon eye. He exhaled a stream of blue smoke toward the flawlessly clear night sky.

She coughed melodramatically as it drifted back down again.

“My apologies,” he said insincerely.

“If you love sopranos, then if I may be so bold as to ask, Lord Dryden—”

“Fancy
you
asking permission to be bold.”

“—why are you out here alone smoking a cheroot? I thought things among the Redmonds were usually done in a proper order. Which means that after dinner the gentlemen retreated for manly drinks and cigars whilst the ladies talked about you, and now we’re to reconvene to listen to a singer.”

“Talked about me,” he repeated. “Amusing.”

“It was.” No one had said a word about him, at least within Phoebe’s earshot.