Private Arrangements (14 page)

Chapter Sixteen

January 1883

G
igi awoke to a room awash in pallid light. The clock read half past nine. She bolted straight up—and had to hurriedly gather an armful of bedspread to cover her nakedness. Good heavens! They were supposed to depart for Bedford at nine o'clock, to begin their journey to Paris.

She scrambled out of bed, shrugged into the robe that still lay in a heap on the Kashmiri rug, ran into the mistress's bedroom, and pulled the cord for hot water. Her traveling gown had already been set out the night before. She pulled on drawers, a merino-wool combination, an underchemise, a chemise, and stepped into her pantalettes, two layers of woolen petticoats, and a dress petticoat with an embroidered, scalloped hem.

The next item was her corset. She stopped. Granted, she'd dressed with exceptional speed. But still her maid should have arrived already, hot water in tow. Perhaps she'd made a wrong turn in an unfamiliar house.

She tackled the corset, straining her arms to pull the laces tight through each set of steel-reinforced eyelets, twisting her neck to check her progress in the mirror.

The door opened.

“Hurry, Edie!” she cried. “I needed to be dressed two hours ago.”

It wasn't Edie. It was Camden, all ready to go, looking as if he'd just descended from Mt. Olympus, cool, serene, and perfect. Whereas she was in a disgraceful state of dishabille, her hair a wild disarray.

But he'd already seen her in much less, hadn't he? She'd been a complete wanton, curious and rapacious, and he . . . well, he hadn't seemed to mind at all. They'd made delicious love well into the small hours of the morning.

“Hullo, Camden,” she said, feeling unusually shy. Her cheeks were hot, her throat and belly too.

“Hullo, Gigi,” he replied. He had lost all traces of his accent during the past month. Now he sounded as if he had been born and raised in the queen's household.

She struggled a little over what to say, gave up, and smiled at him instead. “Sorry. I will be ready in a minute. Then we can leave.”

He studied her, his face serious, his eyes opaque. “Can you manage that by yourself?”

Without waiting for a reply, he came to her aid, turning her around and applying himself to the intricacies of her corset. She sucked in a breath, held it, and admired his progress in the mirror. He had such a light yet sure touch, his hands as dexterous as those of Apollo himself. She loved admiring him, a divine sensation, all joy and breathless pride.

“Done,” he said.

She spun around, but he turned away just as she was about to reach for him. She hesitated. Perhaps he did not see her outstretched hand. She grabbed a hairbrush instead. “I don't know why my maid isn't here yet. I've only the most rudimentary idea how to manage my hair.”

He stood gazing out a window that overlooked the park behind the house. “No hurry, take your time. I gave the staff the day off. We are not leaving.”

“But you are already late for your classes.” She dragged the brush through her tangled hair. “The train doesn't depart Bedford 'til half past one. We still have plenty of time.”

His lips curved into something that resembled a smile but wasn't. “Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I didn't say
I
was not leaving.”

Many years ago, at a family gathering, one of her cousins had pulled the chair out from under her as she was sitting down. Though the fall had been less than two feet, the collision had jolted every organ inside her body.

She felt like that now, a moment of physical jarring and utter disorientation. “I beg your pardon?”

“I thought I'd come and say good-bye before I left,” he said, as if he wasn't proposing to do something as absurd as leaving her the day after their wedding,
the morning after the most memorable wedding night in history.

“What?” she cried stupidly, too stunned to think.

He glanced at her. His eyes glittered with something she couldn't read, something frightening. “I thought it was always the plan, that we go separate ways after we consummated our marriage, until it was time for heirs.”

An utterly asinine response formed in her head.
Don't you know anything about contracts?
she wanted to ask him.
You turned down my offer, therefore that offer no longer stands. This marriage is contracted on an entirely different set of premises.

“What—what about our reception?” She hated how baffled and despondent she sounded. But she could not grasp how he could have been that devoted, tender lover only hours ago and now speak as if he had never meant for it to be more than a marriage of convenience. Why, then, had he come to see her every day of their engagement? Why had he made plans with her for the future? What about the engagement ring that sparkled upon her finger? What about Croesus?

“There will be no reception,” he said.

“But we've already decided on the menu, and the wines . . .” She took a deep breath.
Stop. Stop all that blabbering.

A new emotion invaded her, a fast-spreading, horrified anger. She'd been played for a dupe. He had never been interested in anything but her money. All the sweet, joyful hours they had shared was but his way of insuring that she did not change her mind on him. She slammed down the brush.

“This is very new to me. I have been under the impression that we were going to live together after our wedding. My mother and I have authorized a good deal of financial outlay to secure us an apartment and a staff in Paris, to ship over my furniture, to”—suddenly she could not bring herself to mention the Érard piano that she had ordered for him—“I'm sure you get the idea. Important decisions have been made on the assumption that I could trust you, that you have acted
in good faith.”

Calmly, he listened to her tirade, her lecture. Then he turned around and picked up a porcelain figurine of a giggling girl from the vanity table. For one terrifying moment, his eyes burned, and she was sure he was going to throw the thing at her. But he set it down, without a sound. “Have
you
acted in good faith?”

She opened her mouth, but her reply withered before his stare. She had no idea he could look at anyone, much less at her, like that. It was the gaze of Achilles the man-killer just before he slaughtered Hector, a gaze that held nothing but blood rage.

It scared her all the more that he seemed otherwise as collected and civil as he had ever been.

“I . . . I don't know what you are talking about.”

“Don't you? I find it surprising. How do you forget your own schemes?”

The deafening cacophony in her head was the crashing of her happiness, that grand, shiny edifice that she had built upon a foundation of quicksand. She swallowed, trying to stay above the bog of despair.

“I'm curious about one thing. Where did you find a forger? Did you have to wade into a den of confidence artists? Or are they to be had everywhere in Bedfordshire?”

“My gamekeeper at Briarmeadow was a forger in his youth,” she answered numbly, not realizing until it was too late that she had negated his last doubts, if he had any.

“I see. Quite clever of you.”

“How . . . how long have you known?” she asked, as composedly as she could.

“Since yesterday afternoon.”

She reeled.
When you make a pact with the devil,
her father had often told her,
the devil is the only one who comes out ahead.
Would that she'd listened.

He smiled coldly. “Excellent. I'm glad we cleared any and all misunderstandings about our respective good faith on this matter,” he said. “I'm sure you understand now why I will be leaving without you.”

Intellectually, perhaps. But viscerally, all she knew was that she loved him and he loved her.

“I know you are angry with me now,” she said, her voice as tentative as a mouse tiptoeing around a cat. “Would it be all right if I joined you in Paris in two weeks, when you—”

“No.”

The finality of his response chilled her. But she would not give up so easily. “You are right, of course. Two weeks does not amount to much time. Would two—”

“No.”

“But we are married!” she cried in frustration. “We can't carry on like this.”

“I beg to differ. We certainly can. Separate lives mean separate lives.”

She hated pleading. She made sure she always dealt from a position of strength, even with her own mother. But what else could she do now? “Please don't. Please don't decide all of our future this moment. Please! Is there anything I can do to change your mind?”

The contempt in his eyes made her feel like something that had just oozed out of a badly mildewed wall. “You can start by offering me an apology, which both decency and good manners require here.”

She could have slapped herself. Of course he'd want her to grovel for forgiveness. Her pride, large and thorny, was difficult to swallow, but she forced it. For him. Because she loved him and she could not lose him. “I'm sorry. I really am terribly, terribly sorry.”

He was silent for a moment. “Are you? Are you really? Or are you only sorry that you are caught?”

What was the difference? If she hadn't been caught, would an apology even be needed? “For what I did,” she said, because that was probably the answer he wanted to hear.

“Stop lying to me.” He said each word separately—
Stop. Lying. To. Me.—
as if he ground his teeth as he spoke.

“But I really am sorry.” Her voice trembled and she was powerless over it. “I am. Please believe me.”

“You are not. You are sorry that I won't continue to be your dupe, that I won't take you at your word, and that you will be left behind with none of that perfect married life that you thought you were getting.”

Her anger abruptly rose to the fore again. Why had he asked for an apology when he had no intention of accepting any? Why had he forced her to abase herself for nothing at all? “Perhaps I wouldn't have had to do any of this if you hadn't been as dense as a peat bog. I've met Miss von Schweppenburg. I don't know what you see in her, but she would have made you about as happy as a drowned cat. And she never would have married you anyway. She is her mother's puppet. She has less spine than a bowl of trifle and—”

“That's enough,” he said, his voice dangerously smooth. “Now, was that so hard, a bit of honesty?”

She suddenly felt wildly stupid, ranting on about Miss von Schweppenburg, of all people.

“I wish you well,” he said. “But I would prefer not to see you again, not in two months, two years, or two decades.”

It finally occurred to her that he was dead serious. That what she had done was something hideous, beyond the pale. Unforgivable.

She raced ahead of him and blocked the door with her body. “Please, please, please listen to me. I cannot bear the thought of living without you.”

“Bear it,” he said grimly. “You'll live. Now kindly move out of my way.”

“But you don't understand. I love you.”

“Love?” he sneered. “So it's love now, is it? You mean to tell me that love drove you crazed with longing, thereby smashing your moral compass and whipping you down the primrose path?”

She flinched. He had taken the words she meant to say and slapped her with them.

Slowly, he advanced toward her. For the first time in her life, she shrank before another human being. But she refused to move aside, refused to let him simply sail on out of her life. Bracing his arms on either side of her, he brought his face very close to hers and fixed her with a brutal stare. “I wish you hadn't mentioned love, Lady Tremaine.” His voice was low, and cold as ashes. “Right now I am this close to throwing you against the wall. Again, and again, and again.”

She whimpered.

“It so happens that I know a thing or two about not-quite-requited love, my dear. It so happens that I have lived in that state for a while. I have not seduced Theodora so that she must marry me. I have not misrepresented my fortune. I have not forged some letter that declared my cousin's sudden death, clearing a path to the ducal title for myself. And when she writes me and tells me of her mother berating her because she is ineffectual with potential suitors, do you think I write back informing her that she must regale them with her fear of childbirth and her dislike for running a household?

“No, I tell her if she cannot look them in the eyes, she can look at the ridges of their noses and chances are they won't know the difference. I tell her that smiling with her head lowered is almost as good as smiling with her face raised to someone, perhaps even more alluring. And do you know why I give advice that is contrary to my own interests in the matter?”

She shook her head miserably, wishing time to go back, wishing all her crimes undone. She didn't want to hear about Theodora, didn't want to be reminded that he remained above reproach while she had stooped to swindling.

But he went on inexorably. “Because she trusts me and I do
not
abuse her trust to further my chances with her. Because
being in love does not give you any excuse to be less than honorable,
Lady Tremaine.”

He pulled back from her abruptly, his breathing uneven. “You may think you are in love, Gigi, but I doubt very much that you know what love is. Because it has been all about you, what
you
want, what
you
need, what
you
can and cannot do without.”

He moved further away. Too late did Gigi remember that the bedchamber had two doors.