How the Marquess Was Won (2 page)

Phoebe bit back a smile. She planted her hands on the counter and peered into the mirror over it. She
was
a bit of a disaster. Her cheeks were scarlet, her eyes were brilliant and watery, and her fair hair was escaping in wild maypole streamers from beneath her bonnet.

“I’ve the London broadsheets for ye, Miss Vale. A bit in here about me rival for yer hand.”

“Lord Ice?” she said with idle and utterly feigned disdain. Her heart quickened. “What
has
he done now?”

“Wagered ten thousand pounds on a horse race . . . and won.”

She sniffed. “The man will do anything to elicit a gasp.”

“And it says here he bought one pair of gloves at Titweiler & Sons in the Burlington Arcade. And now all of the ton must have a pair. And they cost one hundred pounds!”

“I imagine the ton would leap from London Bridge if the marquess did it first. Mind you,
he’d
land on a cart carrying a feather mattress when he did it, whilst the rest of London would splatter.”

There had in fact been turmoil in the ton when the marquess had acquired four matched black horses with white stockings to pull his new landau. For a time, a black horse could not be had at Tattersall’s for anything less than a king’s ransom, and owners of black horses took to posting sentries at their stables at night against enterprising Gypsies who would steal them, then paint on white stockings and sell them.

The broadsheets were Phoebe’s secret vice. By day she lectured restless young girls in Latin and Greek and French and history. By night, in bed, she pored over ton gossip the way she’d first gulped down the tales of the Arabian Nights—both seemed equally fantastic, part of another universe entirely. The broadsheets were how she knew, for instance, that Lord Waterburn was known for outlandish wagers, and that the Silverton Twins were the most wickedly glamorous young ladies of the fast set, and that Lisbeth Redmond, a young lady she’d once tutored, was now considered a diamond of the first water.

But it was the formidable Lord Ice Julian Spenser, Marquess Dryden, who haunted her imagination. She knew all about him: he dressed only in black and white, he regularly shot the hearts out of the targets at Manton’s to remind the bloods of the ton how foolish it would be to
ever
challenge him; he tolerated only the finest, the most singular, the most beautiful, in gloves, in horseflesh, in women. He was said to be cold and precise in all things: the making of money, the acquiring and dismissing of mistresses, and, as was rumored to be next, the finding of a wife.

He made reckless things, horse races and blood-chillingly high wagers, seem so sane and effortless that in a rush to emulate him, London bloods broke their necks or lost their fortunes.

While Dryden always emerged with his arctic dignity and his enormous fortune unscathed.

Every man wanted to be Lord Dryden.

And if one believed the broadsheets, every woman wanted to be
with
Lord Dryden.

Postlethwaite finished sorting the mail. “Ah! Two of them addressed to the academy today, my dear Miss Vale! And wouldn’t you know, both are for you.”

“Probably yet another proposal from the marquess, for he is
most
persistent, despite the fact that I have explained again and again that I am promised to you. And the other would be an invitation to yet another ball.”

Postlethwaite leaned forward. “And what will ye be wearing to
this
ball?”

They never tired of this game.

“Oh, I suppose I’d wear my primrose silk, the cream kid gloves, and my necklace—the one with the little diamond.” She brought her hand up to her throat and tapped the base of it. “And . . . my second-best coronet, I suppose. I shall look as delicious as a meringue! But likely as I shall send my regrets, as their last do was such a bore.” She lowered her voice to a confiding hush. “Have I told you what happened?”

“No!” Postlethwaite’s voice dropped to a hush, too.

“So many young men wanted to dance the waltz with me that two of them came to blows. And one of them called the other one out and . . . well, I fear there was a duel.”

“Never say a duel!”

“Oh, I’m afraid so. They fought with pistols at dawn. And one of them was
wounded
.”

“Scandalous!”

“I always seem to cause duels,” she said sadly.

“Canna say as I blame them, Miss Vale. You were born to break hearts.”

“Hearts? Not mirrors?”

They grinned at each other. For if Phoebe Vale was a beauty, no one had yet pointed this out to her. Compliments were generally confined to her complexion, which admittedly was very fine. She’d danced but one waltz her entire life, during a party held in Pennyroyal Green’s town hall, with a spotty young man who was either too bashful to look her in the eye or too grateful to be so close to such excellent cleavage to do anything other than worship it with his gaze.

But men
had
indeed come to blows over her more than once. She was inclined to blame too much ale at the Pig & Thistle. But the men of Sussex knew something they couldn’t articulate: they wanted to be close to Miss Phoebe Vale the way they wanted to be close to the fire on a cold night, and they kept their distance for the very same reason. She threw off sparks.

And the sparks were in large part the reason she did indeed own one very beautiful thing: a pair of surprisingly fine cream-colored, gold-trimmed kid gloves, a gift from a bold and unlikely admirer who had shown her definitively that,
why
yes, she did indeed enjoy being kissed, and that no, she could not settle for an ordinary man. She’d even begun entertaining the notion of falling in love when he’d suddenly disappeared. She congratulated herself on the fact that he hadn’t taken her heart with him. Phoebe had learned long ago the consequences of fully surrendering it to anyone, as in her experience, disappearing is what people did.

Since him none of the young men she met fired her imagination or stirred her heart; none of them—and not once had she thought of this as arrogance, merely as an act of charity—seemed equal to her or worth pledging her life to. She would make none of them happy should she marry them.

And besides, her destiny lay elsewhere. And she knew that at least one of the letters waiting for her contained her future.

The bell on the door jangled again and two giggling girls jostled each other for entry and then threw themselves bodily at the door to close it against the wind, then elbowed each other a bit more just for the pure pleasure of it once they got inside. “Oy, you stop it now, Agnes, or I tell you I’ll—”

They saw Phoebe and went immobile. Their shoulders flew back so swiftly it nearly created a wind, their spines stiffened, their hands folded into neat little knots against their thighs, their eyes widened with doelike innocence.

They regarded her mutely.

“Good afternoon, Miss Runyon, Miss Carew,” she said kindly.

“Good afternoon, Miss Vale!” An angelic chorus.

“Are you looking forward to your holiday?”

“Yes, Miss Vale.”

“And will you be returning home to visit your families or staying on with us at the academy?”

“Home, Miss Vale.” In harmony, once more.

“Are you here to
buy
gifts for your families?”

“Yes, Miss Vale.”

Miss Runyon had been accused of being light-fingered, and her harried father had installed her at Miss Marietta Endicott’s academy when she was ten years old.

Coincidentally, about the same age Phoebe had been when she’d been taken there.

“I will show you some excellent things, and all can be had for a ha’penny. Buttons and bows and the like,” Mr. Postlethwaite assured them as indulgently as if they were fine ladies, for this was in part what made them
behave
like ladies, both he and Phoebe knew. She in fact knew how to manage recalcitrant young ladies so well it was almost unfair. Then again, she knew a little bit about being one.

He emerged from behind the counter and handed the two letters to Phoebe. “Do ’ave a look at the seal of
this
one, Miss Vale,” he murmured, with an upward wag of his eyebrows.

He tapped it with one finger and handed it over.

An elegant and unmistakable
R
was pressed into red wax.

Well!

Curiosity a bonfire, she took herself back to a sunny corner of the shop—she was of course
entirely
unaffected by the proximity to The Bonnet—after all, one could admire scenery without needing to own it, was that not true?—and slid her finger under the seal while Postlethwaite helped the girls choose gifts.

My dear Miss Vale,

I hope this finds you well and turning young hoydens into young ladies with as much alacrity as always. I apologize for the sudden nature of this message, but I should be delighted if you would join me for two days at Redmond House when I visit, beginning on Saturday. Mama and Papa are in Italy, as you know, and Mama is under the impression that I will not have a suitable friend or chaperone present for the duration of the visit, since my cousin Miss Violet, as you know, has lately become a countess and it is likely she will be in London with her husband. Mama will happily pay you for your time and Aunt Redmond approves. I have a surprise to share with you, too! I will tell you all about it when I see you. Oh, do say you’ll come!

With affection,

Lisbeth Redmond

Well.

Well, well, well.

She’d once been engaged to tutor Lisbeth—niece to Isaiah and Fanchette Redmond, cousin of all the rest of them—in French. Phoebe spoke five languages fluently and was a more than competent teacher, but Lisbeth had been impressively resistant to learning. She preferred to acquire information by simply asking for it. But she was charming enough company. And her two-month stay with Lisbeth was how Phoebe knew about things like primrose satin and coronets. Her stay with Lisbeth Redmond was also indirectly the reason Phoebe had once been kissed (and if the Redmonds had known this, she
certainly
wouldn’t have been invited) and the reason she’d decided to leave the country.

Because staying with a family like the Redmonds—and they were so
emphatically
a family—had emphasized how she belonged nowhere, to no one, wasn’t particularly wanted, and would never have the things the Redmonds had. It would be not only invigorating, she’d decided, but
essential
, to start her life over somewhere else entirely, someplace of
her
choosing, since the tide of fate had rather chosen everything for her to date.

Still. She
could
use a little extra money.

Not to mention a night or two in a featherbed, and excellent meals served on silver, and—

She would mull the invitation.

She knew who the other letter was from and what it would say. She would read it later in her rooms at the academy, and mull that, too.

She looked up when a shadow fell over the letter from Lisbeth.
Odd.
The day had been so astonishingly clear, so scoured by wind, it seemed unlikely a cloud would ever gain purchase in the sky.

She turned her head toward the window. And she nearly swayed with shock.

An enormous, pristine black landau had come to a halt in front of Postlethwaite’s. Phoebe shielded her eyes against the sunbeam that bounced off the glittering glass and gold lamps and ricocheted off her beauty-loving heart before returning to set the coat of arms—gold leaf, from the looks of things—aglow. One of the horses gave its head a coquettish toss and restively raised a fine leg.

The horse was black.

Its stockings were white.

And Phoebe’s heart jumped into her throat.

Because . . . Mother of God . . . hadn’t the door just jingled . . . ?

She held her body very gingerly when she turned, because if she
was
dreaming, she didn’t want to accidentally jar herself awake.

She saw him, and the air in the room became thinner, headier, as though she’d been jerked up high and deposited on a mountaintop. He seemed taller than . . . anyone. And suddenly all the hats and ribbons and buttons and gloves seemed like gaudy props arranged on a stage, awaiting just his arrival all these years.

He swept the shop with a glance, taking in ribbons, gloves, Phoebe, hats, watches, her students, reticules, shawls and Postlethwaite, in that order and with equal dispassion.

His coat and boots were black.

His shirt and cravat were white.