How the Marquess Was Won (35 page)

Jules would not have been surprised to learn if later one of the gentlemen present wet himself.

Eyes, every last pair of them, were on the marquess and his cat.

The marquess calmly strode to past a frozen Waterburn to where Isaiah Redmond sat. He was equally as riveted as the rest of the club.

Jules’s wounds were beginning to itch.
Damn cat.

In the strange silence, his voice seemed to ring as if he was orating. “My deepest and sincere apologies, Redmond, but I fear I must delay our appointment. I’ve an urgent errand.” He gestured with the cat, as if this was self-explanatory.

“Certainly,” Redmond said, after a moment. To the cat. Not to the marquess. He was eye-level with the cat, after all, and its green gaze was as compelling as Isaiah’s.

The marquess could still feel the breeze of the tail swishing to and fro. It batted at his ribcage like a stick wielded by a Charlie.

Redmond looked up at Jules searchingly. His eyebrows were a little troubled. But Jules was certain he found the marquess’s expression as haughty and impenetrable as usual. If not more so than usual. It was an expression of the
strongly
discouraged questions, even from the likes of Isaiah Redmond. An expression that implied that everything he did was trustworthy and beyond question and above all,
sane
, and was of course rooted in style and sense and purpose.

All balderdash lately, of course. But he still had command of the expression, at least.

Jules bowed, and the cat dipped along with him.

Before he departed, he did one final anomalous thing.

Everyone watched, heads turning in unison, as the Marquess Dryden for the very first time paused by the betting books at White’s. He shifted the cat beneath one arm, turned the pages.

The first wager caught his eye because it was so unexpected:

Lord Landsdowne wagers Lord Calloway five thousand pounds that he will have Miss Olivia Eversea’s hand in marriage before the year is out.

Only fools and masochists wagered anything regarding Olivia Eversea. It was new, dated yesterday, and the first-ever bet concerning her.

He turned the page, following the sort of instinct that usually preceded winning thousands of pounds. Only this time his suspicions were sinister.

Here were the wagers he wanted to read:

Lord Waterburn wagers Sir d’Andre two hundred pounds that M.V. will have a nickname before a fortnight is out.

Sir d’Andre wagers Lord Waterburn five hundred pounds that M.V. will receive hothouse bouquets before a fortnight is out.

Lord Waterburn wagers Sir d’Andre two thousand pounds that a duel will be fought over M.V. in a fortnight.

The first two wagers were recorded as already settled.

M.V.?

Oh, God.

Miss Vale
.

Her success was a result of a fit of aristocratic
whim
. She was a pastime for a pair of bored aristocrats who were profiting from her hunger for beauty, to belong. Waterburn had employed the Emperor’s New Clothes stratagem to great effect—she was a sensation because they had made her one.

London society would not take its humiliation lightly if their ruse was revealed.

I never would have had an inspiration if not for you
, Waterburn had said to him the night of the Redmond ball.

It was
his fault
. The spotlight was forever on the supposed enigma that was the Marquess Dryden, and this was how he’d, in a moment of weakness, cast the spotlight on Phoebe. And what was it he’d overheard in White’s when he’d returned to London? They’d been debating something regarding the hothouse flowers . . . something regarding proof . . . what had they said?

“We’ll just ask the girls.”

Jules briefly closed his eyes. So the Silverton girls were privy to it, too. Had in all likelihood invited her to London for the express purpose of playing the game.

He stood motionless in the silent club, transfixed by the casual evil of those little bets, the cat’s tail whapping against his ribs.

And he turned slowly around again and fixed Waterburn and d’Andre with a gaze so calmly, uncompromisingly black and searching it likely withered the leaves remaining on trees all the way in Holland Park.

The cat gazed green at them.

“Interesting wagers, Waterburn.” His voice fair echoed in the room.

Waterburn fidgeted. But then he managed to hoist a pair of fair brows in mock innocence.

“I dislike dull wagers, as well you know.”

Jules took some comfort in the conviction that the notion of a duel was absurd. The bloods of the ton often behaved like sheep, but he couldn’t imagine anyone rash enough—or bored enough—to shoot each other over Phoebe Vale. At least inside a fortnight.

She would of a certainty be ruined, if a duel was fought over her.

But she was leaving for Africa.

He stared an inscrutable threat at Waterburn. A threat he didn’t dare voice. Willed it to sink into Waterburn’s very bones. And he thought of Phoebe’s glowing face, and her laughter, and he said a prayer, and he wasn’t a praying man:

May she never learn of these wagers
.

And then he swiveled and exited White’s, winding out through the frozen statuary of the crowd. Beneath his arm, a fat fluffy tail continued switching to and fro, to and fro.

It smacked the hand of one of the footmen as he maneuvered past bearing a tray of port.

“Oh! Soft!” The footman exclaimed and smiled.

A
murmuring went up and became a buzz after the marquess departed.

Waterburn doubled back to pull a chair up to a table where d’Andre sat. Turned it around and sat with his arms folded over the back of it. “Why a blue ribbon, do you suppose?”

“I should think it’s part of his family crest? The color blue?”

“Perhaps it’s a message about fidelity? Blue is for fidelity, after all.”

“Why does he have a cat at
all
?”

And so they discussed the Marquess Dryden with the intensity of conspirators against the crown.

Chapter 25

S
ince he couldn’t very well walk back to his town house—which was closer to White’s than the Silverton town house, and he couldn’t go to the Silverton town house, though his horse was even now stabled there, because of
Lisbeth
, whom he’d abandoned in mad, reflexive pursuit of a cat—he flagged a hackney and gave the driver his direction.

He wanted to be alone with Phoebe when he returned the cat to her. Nothing else mattered right now. And he suffered from impatience, because he could feel her suffering as surely as if it was his own. It howled across his nerve endings.

And so he tolerated the ruminative, cheekily amused stare from the gap-toothed bloke atop the hack.

“Five pounds for a to-and-fro journey. I’ll pay you when we arrive at my town house.”

The driver skimmed the marquess with an up-and-down glance. Took in the cat, the Hoby boots, the coat, the buttons, the cat . . . and then settled, riveted, upon the expression on the marquess’s face.

Whereupon his smile faded, and he shifted in his seat. “At yer service, guv. But that beast best not piss in me hack.”

Oh, God. Jules hadn’t even considered the possibility of pissing.

“Worse things have happened in this hack, I would wager my life on it.”

Fifteen minutes later, during which Charybdis seemed to doze in his arms, he at last stalked up the stairs of his town house.

Marquardt, who’d seen through the window the arrival of a battered hack and the disembarking of the marquess, greeted him at the door.

Jules shifted a now sleepy Charybdis beneath one arm like a parcel. Marquardt followed the motion eyes wide and fascinated, as though his head were leashed to the cat.

Jules began issuing orders. “Send that hack below straightaway to the Silverton place on St. James Square. Tell Miss Vale it’s urgent she come. I have her cat. ”

“Are we to compose a ransom note to send along, too, then, sir? Would you like to sign it, or shall I spend some time cutting out letters from the newspaper and affixing them to a sheet of foolscap?”

“How much am I paying you to be witty, Marquardt?”

“Not nearly enough, my lord.”

“Just ensure it’s done quickly, and that the message is delivered verbally only to Miss Vale.”

“What if she possesses the wits to refuse to board a carriage that hasn’t a crest? What if she isn’t in?”

“Ah. This is what I pay you for, Marquardt. Tell her . . . tell her . . .” He couldn’t very well send his own carriage or a message sealed with his own seal or written in his own hand into the Silverton household, particularly since Lisbeth was in residence, and he’d abandoned her. He’d
abandoned
her.

“Tell Miss Vale . . . she’ll think twice about ever wishing to throw a humidor at me once she sees Charybdis.”

Marquardt listened sympathetically, nodding and nodding. He was clearly reviewing the words over and over in his head.

“Had rather a good deal to drink at White’s, did you, my lord?” was his careful and sympathetic conclusion.

“No, Marquardt,” he said irritably. “I only wish that I had. Have that message delivered to her. Word for word. She’ll understand it. And do it
now
.”

“And if she isn’t in?”

Charybdis, bestirring himself, and finding himself in new surroundings, growled low in its throat.

Even Marquardt blinked and paled.

“Pray that she is.”

A
quarter of an hour later, the driver, who’d rehearsed his cryptic message all the way to St. James Square, delivered it personally to Miss Vale. It had taken some negotiation with the stuffy liveried fellow at the door before Miss Vale was fetched, however, which was insulting. Time was money when one drove a hack. And unfortunately, as if they were moons in Miss Vale’s orbit, two astonishingly clean, identically lovely women appeared behind her, followed by another one who looked like a painting she was so pretty.

They refused to budge.

It was proving to be one of the strangest days the hackney driver had ever had, and given that this was London, it was not a thing he lightly thought.

“I’m to give the message only to Miss Vale,” he tried.

“I’m Miss Vale!” the Silverton sisters chorused. Then giggled.

“I’m Miss Vale,” Phoebe said firmly, in her best schoolteacher voice.

Five pounds wasn’t enough for this nonsense, the driver decided. He directed his message to Phoebe, as she seemed the least full of silliness.

“I’m to bring ye to yer cat. Summat about a humidor thrown at a head.” The delivery was rushed and desultory. He waited.

“Ooooh, how exciting!” Marie and Antoinette clasped their hands beneath their chins and bounced on their toes. “Is it a game played by an admirer? Did someone kidnap wee Charybdis? Ought you to have a care about—”

Phoebe bolted out the door, scrambled down the stairs, her skirts hiked in her hands. She took a soaring leap from the bottom step into the waiting carriage and pulled the door shut behind her. The driver hastened after her, clambering aboard, as the ribbons were cracked over the backs of the horses.

Leaving the Silvertons and Lisbeth gaping in her wake.

T
he door swung open even before she’d an opportunity to hoist the impressive brass knocker. Revealing a short, unassuming, mostly bald man of indeterminate age, elegantly turned out in black and white. She would have wagered his bemused expression was permanent.

“Told . . . he . . . has . . . my . . . cat . . .”

“Ah,” the man said mellifluously. “You must be Miss Vale.”

He stepped aside and motioned for her to enter.

He looked her over. His eyebrows twitched but his mouth clearly thought better of frowning. He cleared his throat.

“The marquess has informed me I’m to . . . send you up.” His face was composed in carefully bland planes, but he couldn’t disguise the faint dubious note. Clearly she wasn’t the sort of woman who was usually “sent up” the stairs of the marquess’s town house.

She would think about that later.

“And if you would take this to him, Miss Vale? Turn left when you reach the top. Doubtless you’ll hear the creature’s unearthly yodels.”

He handed her a small white rag and a jar meticulously labeled in spidery script no doubt belonging to someone’s housekeeper, “St. John’s Wort.”

Oh, dear. Clearly Charybdis had left his mark.