How the Marquess Was Won (40 page)

She would leave them believing she was complicit. Or at least leave them doubting the truth. One little seed of doubt could sprout in innumerable directions, and Waterburn and d’Andre and The Twins would have a time of combating it.

And then when she saw the stairs she lunged for them like a creature bolting for a hole.

Her skirts hiked in her hands, she ran blindly out into the dark, down the steps of the town house, plunging into the London streets, past the rows of identical, judgmental houses. She didn’t know where she was going, only that she wanted to run and run until her lungs were aflame in her chest, until her heart exploded, until she gagged with exhaustion. Until she could feel nothing, nothing at all.

And then she saw the Silverton carriage, the driver slumped atop it, sipping at a flask.

She halted immediately. “Take me to the Silverton town house,” she demanded imperiously.

He was so astonished he sat bolt upright and cracked the ribbons over the backs of the horses just as she slammed the carriage door behind her.

T
ick. Tick. Tick.

He couldn’t hear her walking anymore. She could be out of the building. Walking out into the London night—

God.
He wouldn’t humiliate Lisbeth, despite what she’d done, because he wasn’t entirely innocent.

“Do you mind, Lisbeth?” He heard his voice as if it belonged to a stranger, polite, elegant, apologetic. Centuries of breeding had their uses. “I fear I’ve twisted my wrist persuading Camber to behave like a gentleman. I never could tolerate watching a man treat a woman poorly.” He smiled. It irritated him suddenly that his smiles were so very effective. He hated himself for knowing it.

And it worked. She softened. “Oh! Jules. You’ve gone and hurt yourself, and all over someone who’s just a—”

Something she saw in his face stopped her like a hand clapped over her mouth.

There was an uncertain, fraught little pause.

“Your sense of honor is admirable,” she concluded hurriedly. Hectic pink moved across her fair face again.

Tick. Tick. Tick.
In his mind he saw Phoebe Vale growing smaller and smaller and smaller, going farther away from him, until she vanished over a horizon.

His jaw ached from being clenched.

He could stand it no longer. “Lisbeth,” he said hoarsely.

And suddenly all pretense fell away. She saw it in his face. She was instantly all panicky entreaty. “Jules . . . please don’t . . . you don’t want to . . .”

“It’s no good, Lisbeth.” His voice almost cracked. “I’m more sorry than I can say. I wish you all the best . . . but it’s no good. I must—”

She opened her mouth, but said nothing. She closed it again.

He bowed and turned, moved along the perimeter of the ballroom, hardly noticing when some other woman was flung, twirling across the ballroom, while her partner fell to his knees.

Eyes followed him, but he was used to that.

He only allowed himself to run when he reached the stairs.

He stopped short at the entrance, between two footmen. The sky was dark and vast, London was endless, and she could be anywhere.

One of the footmen must have read something in his face and took pity.

“She went that way, my lord,” the footman said, pointing.

And so that was the way he ran.

P
hoebe threw herself back against the seat of the carriage. And that’s when the shaking began. Rage and shame and hurt each fought for a turn with her. She wrapped her arms around herself tightly, to keep herself from retching, closed her eyes, tipped back her head, thumped it slowly again and again against the seat.

“
God
. . .” she moaned.

She kicked the seat in front of her hard. As if it was Lisbeth, or Waterburn, or her own gullible, foolish behind.

And the worst of it was that Jules had
known
. He’d known she was a . . . a
wager
. He’d listened to her rhapsodize about the
men
and the
bouquets
and waltzes, all the while knowing she was being used as the ton’s performing dog, an amusement, a novelty.

The ride was short. She sprang out of the carriage, ignoring the proferred arm of the driver.

“Wait here,” she ordered him.

She pushed past the sleepy footman who answered the door into the house, nearly vaulted the stairs to her outrageously plush, pink room, and flung everything—so very little she owned, overall—carelessly into her trunk, slamming the lid.

And then she paused for a moment she could ill afford and retched into a chamber pot.

She pressed the palms of her hands over her eyes as if she could blot the ballroom scene out of her mind forever. And she breathed. And breathed. And she tried to reason with herself, to grasp for some place in the roiling chaos to begin rationalizing. It was futile. The pain was in the very air she breathed.

She’d been a pathetic
fool
. Wanting to be wanted so desperately she’d convinced herself she truly was. Wanting to belong so desperately she’d almost believed she did.

She gave her head a toss. They could all go to Hades.

She
was going to Africa. And she would never have to think of them or see them again.

And then she went still.

She might be a fool . . . but
now
she was a fool with nothing left to lose. She looked at the fine borrowed pelisse she’d just stripped from her body and flung on her bed, and decided she had plans for it.

She rang for a footman.

“Take my trunk down to the carriage.”

She scooped up her cat, which was watching her with deep, fascinated concern, dropped him into his basket.

And ten minutes later slammed the door forever on the Silverton twins’ town house.

H
e’d soon realized the ridiculous futility of roaming a dark St. James Square calling for Phoebe as though she was a lost dog. She was hardly likely to come to him, anyway.

And so he was home again.

The desolation was complete, the taste of it acrid in his mouth. In the library, he shook off his coat and flung it violently away from him. He was tempted to hurl it into the fire, to eradicate memories of the night. He yanked off his cravat as though it were a noose, and threw it, but it didn’t flutter far, which made him furious. He unbuttoned his shirt, allowed it to hang open on his torso. His entire life felt confining.

Still, he contemplatively eyed the brandy decanter, and wondered if he could become the sort of man who hurled things in fits of rage.

He was a man who always took swift, precise, perfect action. The action that solved everything, won everything.

Surely, despite everything, he was still that man.

The house was quiet as a tomb. He’d never noticed before, but likely it was always this quiet.

Perhaps I should get a cat,
Jules thought.

The bell rang as he was pouring himself a glass of brandy. He froze. Gingerly he settled his full glass down on the table alongside the decanter he’d just spared.

Marquardt was asleep. No one was awake to answer the bell.

In two long steps he was at the window. He swept aside the curtain and peered out.

The lamps were doused for the evening, so he saw only a slight shadowy figure standing on the steps. It could only be a woman. He saw the hulking outline of a large, very fine carriage in the street below.

He took his marble stairs two at a time and flung open the door.

Relief, disbelief made him light-headed.

It unmistakably was her. She looked smaller, but it could have something to do with the pelisse she was wearing, which obviously wasn’t hers. It was too large, and it was fur lined, with a collar that swallowed up her slim neck. She’d buttoned it all the way up to her chin.

A meowing basket was at her feet.

She stared at him, her pale eyes glowing. And even in the dark it was apparent she was furious. She fair crackled with it. He could
taste
it in the air, like an approaching storm.

She turned and called down to the driver very coolly, “If you would bring up my trunk?”

Phoebe walked past Jules without looking at him, without waiting for permission. She aimed straight for the staircase, scaled the stairs as quickly as she did nearly everything. He followed her, as if in a dream. He was unable to speak.

He heard the thunk of the trunk dropped in his foyer, and the door closing. The Silverton driver; bless him for remembering to close the door.

She reached his bedroom and settled the basket down and flipped open the lid. Charybdis leaped out, spotted the chair before the fire, and settled in and began nibbling on his hind leg.

Jules found his voice.

“Phoebe . . . I . . . Why are you here? I’m glad that you are, love, but . . .”

She peeled off one glove. Flung it to the floor. She peeled off the other and did the same. She gave it a kick. Beautiful kid gloves went tumbling across the room.

She slipped her feet out of her slippers. She kicked each of them aside and her bare feet curled into his thick rug.

Dear God. He noticed she was trembling. He reached out, tried to touch her. “Phoebe . . . sweetheart . . . You’re shaking. You’ve had a shock. I’ll pour a brandy—”

It was as if he hadn’t spoken.

“You’ve wanted me, Dryden. Take me.”

He froze. Dumbstruck.

In the silence that followed, the fire spat and popped in sympathy with the temper radiating from her.

His voice was cracked. “Phoebe, I don’t . . .”

“Don’t
what
? Want me, now that the game is up? Do you even
know
what you really think or really want, or is it all covered over in a carapace of “shoulds”? Don’t you dare repeat that to me. I know how ridiculous that sounded. And yes I know very large words like
carapace
and out they come. But it doesn’t matter, does it?”

His head was spinning. He didn’t know where to begin. “I—”

“I don’t
care
whether you want me anymore. Because you were right all along. I. Want. You. The way a woman wants a man. And I will have you tonight.”

“Do you even know what you’re . . . are you drunk . . . are you . . . please, can we discuss this?”

She was unbuttoning the pelisse.

“Are you a coward, Dryden? Are you
all talk
? It isn’t funny anymore, is it? You knew all along. You
knew
. And yet you allowed it to go on. You allowed me to be a mockery. It was in the
bloody betting books
.”

She took great relish in spitting out all those
B
’s sequentially.

“Hold. I know that you’re angry and hurt, but won’t have you falsely condemning me. I
didn’t
know. Not at first. I discovered only later. I never go near the damned books. And when I did,
how
could I tell you, Phoebe? I’ll admit to selfishness only: the greatest pleasure in my life in seeing you happy, even as it killed me to see you with other men. Breaking your heart would be the same as . . . the same as . . . breaking my own. And you were leaving. You said you were
leaving
. You might never have known.”

Well. That stopped her in her tracks. And for an instant he saw wonder, a thrilling yearning flash over her face, a raw hope that stole his breath.

And then she shook her head roughly. Her fury had momentum and she needed to spend it, and she didn’t want love or peace. She didn’t trust it.

The pelisse was unbuttoned. She shook her arms out of it and let it drop to her feet.

Holy mother of
 . . .

She was entirely nude.

Chapter 28

H
is senses took her like a lightning strike. He reeled. Her entire pale white loveliness, long slim legs, the nipped in waist and heavy round breasts.

His breath stopped in his lungs.

A sound at last escaped him. It sounded like “Guh.”

She reached up and yanked pins from her hair, one by one, clutched them in her fist, dropped them to the deep carpet, and down her hair tumbled. A pale gleaming waterfall. She gave it a shake.

“Tell me you don’t want me.” She knew what she saw in his eyes.

He couldn’t speak. He stared, unabashedly. Feasted his eyes on her loveliness.