How the Marquess Was Won (33 page)

As this topic of storing dresses in sage edged dangerously upon housekeeping, the Silverton twins changed it instantly.

“Don’t forget, Lisbeth, there’s a bouquet here for you, too! But only the one.”

They took a bit too much relish in saying it. But they gestured to the most spectacular bundle by far.

They were hothouse flowers, a profusion of pink roses and white lilies, sophisticated, delicate, tasteful, preternaturally gorgeous. Phoebe knew in an instant who had sent them.

“What does the message say?”

“I look forward to seeing you today.”

—Dryden

“Effusive,” Lady Marie commented, and her sister nudged her, amused.

“We’re riding in The Row this afternoon.” Lisbeth’s face and voice were abstracted. “Jules and I.”

“They’re wagering on you now at White’s, Lisbeth,” Lady Marie volunteered. “Waterburn told me.”

“Are they? What do the wagers say?”

“That you’ll be engaged before the month is out.”

“To anyone in particular?” Lisbeth actually sounded ironic.

“Very witty, my dear,” Lady Marie congratulated.

And then Lisbeth startled Phoebe by reaching over and picking up the bundle of sage. She gingerly turned it this way and that in her hand. As if she was trying to decipher it. Her brow was shadowed.

“Where does this plant usually grow?”

“All over England,” Phoebe said, mostly truthfully.

Lisbeth studied Phoebe the way she’d studied the sage. “Are you going to keep it?”

“Yes,” Phoebe said.

They locked eyes.

And then Lisbeth put the sage down as abruptly as she’d drop a poisonous toad.

As it turned out, Phoebe’s invitation was to join Lord Camber, he of the sincere brown eyes and solid chin, as well as Waterburn, d’Andre and the Silverton sisters, for a ride in The Row. As she didn’t ride, Phoebe would be treated to a trip in his high flyer. Lisbeth was generously included, but she demurred, as she was going riding later with the marquess.

Or
Jules
, as she referred to him at every opportunity.

“I think I’ll prepare myself for this afternoon,” Lisbeth said finally. And excused herself from the table.

Snatching up her bouquet of roses on her way out of the room.

A
n hour later the doorbell rang, and Phoebe was nearly bounding down the stairs with the Silverton twins to meet Waterburn and d’Andre. She was wearing her best day dress, which was a sort of faded shade of gold wool and rather practical and demure, but she liked to think it looked well with her hair. Her boots had been so polished by the Silvertons’ staff that she could almost forget the soles were wearing thin.

“I’ve news, gentlemen,” Lady Marie told Waterburn and d’Andre with a sort of hushed glee. “Miss Vale received not one hothouse bouquet this morning . . . but
five
.”

“You
jest
!” Waterburn’s mouth dropped open. He exchanged a look livid with delight with d’Andre. “
Never
say I have competition.”

“I fear the whole of the ton is your competition, Lord Waterburn,” Phoebe teased.

“We shall fight Camber for you. Or perhaps race him.”

Phoebe then watched as the men appeared to exchange money.
Men
. Likely settling some sort of wager or loan, given that this was Waterburn.

I
n The Row, Phoebe was goggle-eyed at the pageantry, and she didn’t try to disguise it. The day was crisp and clear and The Row was swarming with handsome people in handsome clothing perched on handsome horses or driving beautiful carriages, calling to each other, waving, and gossiping, in all likelihood, as they passed.

Camber’s high flyer was an almost outlandish contraption compared to the curricle driven by Waterburn, but she liked outlandish. She found it beautiful and very fast, both literally and figuratively. It told her definitively how Lord Camber defined himself and the set of friends with which he ran, and she didn’t object in the least, though she found the contrast between it and her first impression of him rather striking. She sat beside him, wearing her glorious new bonnet, and felt like a queen, towering over the other carriages, which were lower to the ground. Two shiny-haunched bays pulled it.

They weren’t quite as striking as black geldings with white stockings, mind you.

Nevertheless.

“I’ve won several races in this,” he confided. “And nearly five hundred pounds.”

The amount made her head swim.

“Well done,” she decided to say, when she’d collected herself.

She noticed the heads of other riders swiveling toward them as they rolled by. She nodded regally from atop her perch as Camber called greetings.

“And look, Miss Vale. Everyone envies me because I’m with you.”

It was such an extraordinary notion she didn’t even care that in all likelihood Camber was with her because he wished to be envied. All afternoon she drank in admiration and envy like wine, until she was almost intoxicated enough to forget to crane her head for a glimpse of a man on a black horse with white stockings.

Almost.

A
n hour or so after the twins and Phoebe and the young lordlings had departed for The Row, whilst Lady Charlotte was dreamily working on her embroidery in the Silverton town house, Lisbeth working beside her, Captain Nelson the Parrot began shrieking one word, over and over.

“Singe! Singe! Ferma le Bouche! Singe!”

Lisbeth looked up, startled. “Is the parrot shouting what I think he’s shouting?”

“He’s shouting something about a ‘monkey.’ He’s telling a monkey to shut its mouth. Daft old bird. He’ll stop in a moment. Never fear.” Lady Charlotte continued embroidering.

“Singe! Charlotte! J’ai faime!”

He sounded insistent and shrill.

Lady Silverton sighed, and settling down her embroidery and scooping Franz the dog up in her arms, as she scarcely ever made a move without him, she drifted down the stairs.

“Good Heavens, my
dear
Captain Nelson, what on earth is troubling—”

She froze at the foot of the stairs.

Clearly the poor parrot didn’t know the French word for cat, but he’d arrived at what he clearly considered an excellent substitute.

Charybdis was crouched below its perch, motionless apart from his fat, supple, switching tail, which
was
rather like a monkey tail. He and Captain Nelson were riveted by each other, their eyes locked with mutual, fascinated antipathy. Charybdis was keening low in his throat, his eyes huge and as green as parrot plumage.

The parrot was telling him to shut up.

“Charlotte! Singe!”
the parrot squawked indignantly. It sounded very much like “I told you so!”

“Good heavens! Now where did that creature come from? We don’t have a cat. Although, my goodness, it’s wearing such a pretty bow, now isn’t it? Heeeere, puss puss puss . . .”

Lady Silverton stepped off the stairs, and had just put her feet on the marble of the foyer when:

“GrrrrrrrrrUFF!”

Franz made a heroic leap from her arms, looking like nothing more than a flying squirrel. It was his first-ever break for freedom. He landed on the marble and for a few seconds his claws scrabbled futilely for purchase and he slid sideways. When he finally managed to correct his course he made straight for Charybdis.

“Yap!yap!yap!yap!”

Charybdis sat up interestedly from his crouching position. Likely he thought Franz was just a noisier-than-usual rodent.

SMACK!

Charybdis landed a blow to the snout, sending silky, slippery Franz spiraling across the floor like a weathervane in a stiff wind.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Charlotte squeaked, futilely trying to snatch him up again.

Franz finally lost momentum, righted himself, staggered forward, and blinded by his own hair ran confidently into Captain Nelson’s perch. Which rocked violently to and fro.

“
Merde
!” the parrot shouted with dignified disgust, and he flapped across the room to land on Charlotte’s shoulder.

Which is when the doorbell rang.

The footman, apparently inured to chaos, opened it. And Charybdis, perhaps smelling something alluring from his wild kittenhood, and perhaps with a cat’s loathing for confinement and passionate love for an open door, was out of the house and down the stairs like a musket shot.

“
What
the devil was that?” Jules stood in the doorway, dressed for riding in The Row.

“Why, it was a cat, Lord Dryden, if you can countenance it,” Lady Charlotte said. “Though my parrot seems to think it was a monkey—isn’t he funny?
Singe
, he said. Over and over. We don’t have a cat, at least not that I can recall, so I cannot for the life of me tell you how it got in—”

Jules swore something so heartfelt and profane that Lady Silverton gasped and crossed herself and snatched Franz up as though he was a talisman.

And he turned and bolted out the door just as fast as Charybdis had.

“D
id you see which way the cat went?” Jules asked the footman. Who, at first was speechless when confronted with the sheer force of the marquess’s presence, at last mutely pointed to the left.

Jules ran for it. The cat could have crossed the square by now; they were quick and slippery little beasts. It could have slipped through the gates into a garden; they were lithe as wraiths. It could have leaped aboard a hack and could very well be on its way to the docks by now.

It was a
cat
. It could be anywhere.

He halted deliberately. For
that
was no way to think for a man who made decisions and choices with precision. It would be, he decided, where he found it.

When
he found it.

He was distantly aware he was leaving muttering in his wake, the breeze from his swift passage practically lifting the tails of waistcoats and blowing the hats off the heads of men passing by. He heard stifled, amazed laughter, just the once. He was aware he’d abandoned Lisbeth and he would in all likelihood be late for a critical meeting with Isaiah Redmond at White’s. They seemed frivolous concerns in the moment.

He stopped passersby again and again with the same question: “Have you seen a cat wearing a blue bow? Striped, has lots of hair?”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one answered him immediately. They stared, rattled by his intensity, wary of the ludicrous question, of
him
.

He’d never seen that expression directed at him before in his life.

“ ’Ave you lost a wager, then, Lord Dryden?” one man asked, who clearly recognized him, and would likely gossip about it.

Jules scowled, which caused the man to take a step back.

“Would that I knew where yer pussycat has got to, Lord Dryden,” he said fervently, and backed away.

Jules heard “no” after “no” after “no.” The sun was lowering; a benign amber began to spread over the buildings, gilding wrought-iron gates, setting windows to dazzling.

He looked toward the horizon and he cursed it, threatened it. By God, he would
intimidate
the night from falling before he found the cat.

He was breathing heavily by the time he touched a stocky gentleman in a cheap blue coat on the shoulder.

“Have you seen a cat wearing a blue bow? Striped, has lots of hair?”

The man didn’t even blink. He looked almost pleased to at last have been asked.

“Aye, that I did. It was ’avin’ a bath out ’ere and I stop to try to pet the wee pretty bugger and ’e ’jes keep runnin’. ’E went that way, Your Lordship. Like a streak ’e was. Five minutes ago now?”

He pointed toward the mews of the town house nearest them.

“Bless you!” Jules planted a kiss on the shocked man’s shiny bald head and tore in that direction like the hounds of hell, or at the very least, a Pekingese, were in pursuit.

And then he came to an abrupt halt.

Because there was indeed a furry creature of some kind, upside down, all four limbs in the air, sprawled on its back in the mews.

It was wearing a blue bow.

Oh, God. His heart sank. From the looks of things, a horse and carriage had knocked into it, perhaps stunned or killed it.

Grief and disappointment sickened and stunned him. He put his hands to his head. He couldn’t bear telling her.

He leaned very carefully, very reluctantly toward it.

The cat stretched languidly, pointing all of its toes like a ballerina, exposing a luxuriously fluffy tawny-colored stomach to the sun. It blinked enormous green eyes sleepily, and then closed them again and curled one paw under its chin, looking for all the world like a prone, somnolent pugilist. With a fat, furry, belly.