How the Marquess Was Won (45 page)

Authors: Julie Anne Long

BOOK: How the Marquess Was Won

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Before they departed from Sussex for London, however, Phoebe needed to finalize matters at Miss Endicott’s academy.

Phoebe wrote to Mr. Lunden and told him she would not, after all, be accompanying his group on their mission. And Miss Endicott, when informed that the reason for Phoebe’s departure from the academy now involved a marquess and not a trip to Africa absorbed it with her usual alacrity.

“All of our girls eventually make triumphant matches,” she said easily. “I expected you to do no less, eventually. And much like a catapult, my dear, the lower you begin in life, the higher you can eventually fly. All it requires is the right person to, shall we say, effect the launch.”

And then . . . did . . .

Did Miss Endicott
wink
at her?

Phoebe believed she did!

She wondered suspiciously, then, if Miss Endicott had sent her upstairs with the marquess deliberately. But Miss Endicott was as enigmatic, in her way, as she was indomitable. Phoebe would never know.

Her next stop was to bid farewell to her pupils, including Miss Runyon and Miss Carew, who would never forget their encounter with the legendary marquess, and had indeed turned it into a sort of fairy tale they told to the other girls around the fire at night.

Phoebe gathered them around, dispensed hugs and cheek kisses, and told them her news.

The girls were bug-eyed and worshipful and rapt as she delivered one final lecture.

“And if you are virtuous and disciplined and hardworking, if you are kind to others and respectful of your elders, if you complete your lessons on time, if you learn your languages and Marcus Aurelius thoroughly, and if you are very good and virtuous—then you, too, might grow up to marry a devastatingly handsome marquess.”

The girls released a collective sigh.

“Is that how
you
won the marquess, Miss Vale?” Miss Carew breathed. “Because you are good and virtuous?”

“It is indeed.” Phoebe crossed her fingers in the folds of her skirt. The lie was her final gift to Miss Endicott. It was incentive enough for the girls to behave for a good long while.

A
week after his wedding—during which he and his wife had not once left his London town house, had in fact only seldom visited the lower floors of the house, and had lost themselves thoroughly in sensual abandon—the marquess appeared in White’s to share a drink with his friend Mr. Gideon Cole. He’d chosen an hour when he knew Waterburn and d’Andre would not be present.

For he had unfinished business to address.

The moment he appeared, the merry hum of conversation came to an astonished halt. For an instant the only sound was the ambient one of Colonel Kefauver snoring. Seconds later, it started up again, reincarnated as low, excited murmuring. For despite the discretion with which they’d married, word had indeed escaped. Had he changed, they wondered? Was he domesticated, any less intimidating, formidable?

But if
that
were true, why were they all shifting in their seats and nervously awaiting his first words?

He handed off his coat and hat to the footman. “Congratulations are in order, I understand, Lord Dryden,” the footman murmured. “I wish you joy in your marriage.”

“Thank you.”

He took up his position in the bay window, accepted an ale, and waited for Mr. Cole to arrive and have a sip of his own drink before he leaned forward, raised his voice, and said into the relative hush of the club:

“Do you know, Gideon, it’s the strangest thing, but lately I find it very unfashionable to be fashionable?”

Turmoil ensued.

His words were repeated, analyzed, worried over, passed from person to person to person. The fast set wobbled about rudderless, nervous and testy, casting suspicious looks at each other, wondering who was more “fashionable” and dreading to be accused of such a thing. The Row was a hostile, uneasy place, as everyone in high flyers felt suddenly unutterably self-conscious and a scramble was made to obtain ordinary horses, not the sort with matching socks and whatnot. Ballrooms were scenes of tension. Dinner parties, long ago planned and anticipated, were now comprised of long awkward silences and accusatory stares, for no one knew whether they were in the presence of someone unfashionably fashionable.

Phoebe seemed unaware, apart from one observation. “You seem unusually gleeful,” she told her husband.

“Do I?” he said absently. “You bring it out in me.”

The marquess enjoyed this for a few weeks, and then with his usual impeccable timing, deployed the second tier of his plan.

“Although . . .” he mused to Mr. Gideon Cole in White’s, in a voice that hardly needed to be raised, given that everyone was straining to hear it, anyway, “I believe
original
ought to be fashionable, don’t you agree? Uniquely lovely and interesting things and
people
, for instance.” He paused for delivering his coup de grâce, casually. “In fact, I can’t imagine anything more tragic and absurd than being a twin.” He gave a short, pitying laugh. “What could be
less
original than two
identical people
?”

Well.

A wave of relief rippled through the London society. Nearly prostrate with gratitude to be
finally
given something of a direction, it was tacitly decided that those heretofore considered the
most
fashionable of them would now be considered the least, and the ton set about shunning the Silverton twins, Waterburn, d’Andre, and Camber good and proper, until Waterburn and d’Andre were said to be considering enlisting in a foreign army to avoid the humiliation, à la Byron, whilst the Silverton twins were rumored to be touring convents out of desperation to be away from London.

And when he appeared with his wife in The Row, at first they beamed at her, because she was original and because they didn’t dare do otherwise given who she’d married. And then they beamed at her because it was nearly impossible not to melt in the rays of her obvious radiant happiness.

The marquess still made them a little nervous.

Satisfied he’d used his powers for good, the marquess settled into married life with Phoebe. At night, Charybdis slept beside them.

And when he allowed the marquess to pet his
belly
. . . well, Jules’s happiness was complete.

Acknowledgments

I’m so blessed and grateful to work with such gifted, lovely (and frequently very entertaining) people: my dear editor, May Chen; the hardworking staff at Avon; my brilliant agent, Steve Axelrod.

And I appreciate more than I can say the readers who’ve loved my work and shared their enthusiasm for it with me, their friends, and the romance community at large over the years. This list is far from complete, but it’s a start, and it includes readers, talented authors (both published and aspiring), and industry professionals: P.J. Ausdenmore, Manda Collins, Bette-Lee Fox, Sue Grimshaw, Beverley Kendall, Kathy Kozakewich, Janice Rohletter, Courtney Milan, Elyssa Papa—thank you! You’re all wonderful!

And my
heartfelt
gratitude to Julia Quinn for her kindness and generosity in sharing her enthusiasm for my work with her readers. I’m a lucky author, indeed.

About the Author

San Francisco Bay Area native J
ULIE
A
NNE
L
ONG
originally set out to be a rock star when she grew up (and she has the guitars and fringed clothing stuffed in the back of her closet to prove it), but writing was always her first love. She began her academic career as a Journalism major, until she realized Creative Writing was a better fit for her freewheeling imagination and overdeveloped sense of whimsy. And when playing guitar in dank, sticky clubs finally lost its “charm,” Julie realized she could incorporate all the best things about being in a band—namely drama, passion, and men with unruly hair—into novels, while also indulging her love of history and research. Since then, her books have been nominated for numerous awards, including the RITA®,
Romantic Times
Reviewer’s Choice, the Holt Medallion, Bookseller’s Best, and The Quills, and reviewers have been known to use words such as “dazzling,” “brilliant,” and “impossible to put down” when describing them. Visit Julie at
www.julieannelong.com
,
www.julieannelong.typepad.com
, or
www.myspace/julieannelong
.

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Romances by Julie Anne Long

How the Marquess Was Won

What I Did for a Duke

I Kissed an Earl

Since the Surrender

Like No Other Lover

The Perils of Pleasure

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

HOW THE MARQUESS WAS WON. Copyright © 2012 by Julie Anne Long. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062096432

Print Edition ISBN: 9780061885693

FIRST EDITION

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