Rhyme and Reason (16 page)

Emily should not have been surprised when Lady Murrow invited all the attendees at the reading to an informal gathering at her townhouse on Berkeley Square. She considered using the excuse of her headache not to attend, but Miriam accepted the invitation before Emily could speak.

“I am sure Lord Wentworth will be delighted to escort us there,” Miriam gushed as if she had never shown anything but affection for Damon.

“Miriam!” Emily whispered, aghast.

Her sister turned, and Emily saw her eyes were too bright. With more tears or with excitement? “Dear Emily, Lord Wentworth must plan to take us home. Why not take us home by way of Lady Murrow’s supper?”

“Then ’tis all settled,” the rotund dowager said before she rushed off to invite the rest of the attendees.

Miriam preened as she ran her finger through the feathers on her fan. “She was very, very anxious for us to attend, wasn’t she?” With a giggle, she squeezed Emily’s hand. “I never knew it could be like this.”

“Like what?” she asked, although she shuddered at what she feared the answer would be. She was not disappointed.

“Others have noticed how André is so attentive to me.”

“André?”

“The marquis, of course.” Pretty color splashed across her cheeks. “He asked me to call him that.”

Emily put her hand over her stomach. She feared she would be ill right here. The marquis should not have a first name, because she had never given him one.

When broad fingers settled on her arm, she looked up at Damon’s smile. It faded into concern. She longed for his arms around her to hold back the insanity. So easily, within that sturdy sanctuary, she could pour out the secrets pillaging her heart. She would rest her head against his chest in the moment before his fingers tipped her lips toward his. Then the madness would be as sweet and dangerous as the flame of his passion.

“Emily?” he asked softly, but his voice resonated deep within her.

Before she could answer, Miriam said, “Lord Wentworth, I hope I was not too presumptuous when I told Lady Murrow you would be escorting us to her supper.”

Damon glanced from Emily’s ashen face to her sister’s high color. No one could doubt that Miriam was aglow with sharing the admiration heaped on de la Cour. That might explain Emily’s apprehension.

When he folded her hand between his, he was astounded that her fingers were icy. Her eyes avoided his, and he knew something beyond her sister’s enthusiasm distressed her.

“I would be delighted to escort you,” he said, “if that is Emily’s wish as well.”

He almost recoiled when Emily jerked her hand away. The scathing glare she fired at him would have daunted him, if he had not known how her fingers trembled. He had no chance to ask her to explain because her sister pleaded with her to go to Lady Murrow’s townhouse.

That Emily agreed was what he had anticipated, for she seemed unable to deny her sister’s wishes, but he had not thought she would say nothing else during the short ride to Berkeley Square. Not that the carriage was quiet. Miriam prattled, nonstop, about how well de la Cour had read before his adoring audience.

Damon had heard little, for he had had the good fortune to be at the back of the shop where he could peruse a book on water gardens. What he had heard convinced him the only thing more irritating than de la Cour’s poetry was enduring the sound of the Frenchman reading those poems in English. Mayhap it would not have been so atrocious if the marquis had read in French, but his faltering ruined the cadence.

As he handed Emily out of the carriage in front of the townhouse that was bright with lamps, he said, “If you wish to take our leave at any time, you need only to say so.”

Emily shoved aside the blue devils that had been taunting her. “Thank you, Damon.” She sighed as Miriam hurried up the steps to the front door with Kilmartin in tow. “I am very worried about her.”

“I had thought your sister to have better sense than to come under de la Cour’s spell.”

“She is just pretending,” she said as they followed her sister at more decorous pace.

“Pretending?” He paused on the step. “About what?”

“Her calf love for the marquis.” She lowered her voice. “She wants to make Mr. Simpkins jealous.”

“Graham Simpkins?” He snorted. “Why?”

“She has had a
tendre
for him since the Season began.”

“Are you sure?”

Emily gave the footman in his perfect black livery a smile as he took Damon’s hat. She ignored the prick of envy when she wished Johnson would be even half as skilled. “She has spoken of little else.”

“But are you sure about that
now
?”

She followed his glance up the stairs to where Miriam was standing in the reception line on the marquis’s left. Her sister had her arm through his and was gazing at him with all the fervor of infatuation.

“Is she such a good actress?” Damon continued. “Or is she succumbing to de la Cour’s froggish charm?”

Chapter Eleven

Emily hoped Damon was wrong. Miriam had pined for Graham Simpkins for so long. Surely she could not turn her back on him simply because a false marquis was turning her head with
bon mots
.

But Miriam did not know the man was an impostor!

“Miriam,” Emily said, drawing her sister away from the marquis, who was exulting in his legions of admirers pouring through the door and up the stairs.

“What is it? André asked me to remain by his side in case he needed help understanding someone’s English.”

“I think he can manage quite well on his own.” She flinched as she heard the French phrases he sprinkled more liberally through his conversation when he seemed intent on impressing a person. He need waste them on her no more. She suspected he was as much a Frenchman as he was a marquis. If only she could think of a way to denounce him without divulging the truth …

“He is superb, isn’t he?” Miriam’s face took on a dreamy expression that added to the tightness in Emily’s stomach.

“Miriam, you know so little about him.”

“You keep repeating that.” She fluttered her eyelashes when the marquis blew a kiss in her direction. “I have never been this happy.”

Damon’s chuckle silenced Emily’s retort as he held out a glass of wine. “I thought you might enjoy something to wash away the disagreeable taste of de la Cour’s poetry. He—Look out!”

A man, his head down, his hands locked behind his back, almost bumped into Emily, but halted when Damon put out his hands. The dark-haired man looked up, and Emily was startled to meet Mr. Simpkins’s wide eyes. Next to her, Miriam stiffened.

“Why don’t you keep your eyes on where you are going, Simpkins?” Damon demanded. “You have an intolerable habit of running folks down.”

“Forgive me.” He squinted at Emily and said, “Excuse me, Miss Talcott.”

Emily waited for her sister to speak, but Miriam stared at him, not uttering a sound. Exasperation gnawed at Emily.

Mr. Simpkins took a step back. “Good evening, Miss Talcott, my lord, Miss Talcott.” He bobbed at each of them and rushed away.

“Terse fellow,” Damon said under his breath.

Emily turned to her sister. “Miriam, I—”

“Say nothing,” Miriam whispered. “Anything you say will just persuade me more of how I have been a clod-pate to wish that Mr. Simpkins would speak to me. He must think me a gawney for being unable to speak even a word to him.”

“He said little more than you,” Damon said. “He may be shy, too.”

“Shy?” Miriam cried. “He seeks out Valeria on every occasion. He must be bored with my silliness.”

“You can never win his heart if you flee,” Emily said. “However, if you wish, we can leave now.”

“That would be a shame, for then I would not have the chance to ask you to stand up with me, Miriam,” came the marquis’s voice.

“Stand up with you?” Miriam gasped, her smile returning.

“That is the proper phrase, is it not?” He motioned toward the dance floor. “Will you dance with me?”

“Oh, yes!”

“Miriam?” Emily put her hand on her sister’s arm and fought the yearning to throw her arms around her sister to keep her from walking out onto the dance floor with the fake marquis.

As the marquis looked at her with a slight smile, she feared once more that he knew the truth she hid. Again she reminded herself he could not guess she was Marquis de la Cour. If he had, he would not be seeking out her sister.

“Yes?” Miriam asked.

Faintly, she said, “Enjoy the music.”

As did everyone else in the room, she watched her sister walk away on the marquis’s arm. Even Mr. Simpkins, who was standing, as ever, next to Valeria, had frozen with his glass of wine halfway to his mouth. No one moved but the marquis and Miriam, who laughed at some sally Emily could not hear.

She blinked as a waistcoat blocked her view. Raising her eyes, she met Damon’s amused ones.

“She is an excellent actress,” Damon said quietly. “I doff my
chapeau
to her on her conquest of our frog poet.”

“Cut line!”

“Emily!” he called, but she did not slow or look back as she walked across the ballroom.

Miriam floated through the evening, for the marquis seldom left her side. Nor did Emily, who noted the expressions of envy in other female eyes as they watched her sister. She noticed as well that her sister did not waste a glance in Mr. Simpkins’s direction. Emily’s single attempt to mention that was brushed aside as unimportant, and she wondered how Miriam’s heart could be so fickle.

Wandering out into Lady Murrow’s garden, Emily sighed. She would find no comfort in this sterile place. She despised its attempt to ape a natural landscape, for the miniature hills and clumps of trees were out of place in Town.

Shadows chased the lamplight along the path of crushed seashells and into the shrubs. The odors from the river drifted toward her, but she paid them no mind. Hearing light voices and a feminine giggle in an arbor near the gate leading to the stables, she turned in the opposite direction. She did not begrudge anyone happiness, but it seemed ironic anyone could be so happy when she was so miserable.

A stone bench was still warm with the day’s heat. Emily sank to it and leaned her elbows on her knees as she stared at the pattern her toe traced in the stones. What was she going to do? If she spoke the truth about who had written the poems, Miriam would never make the good marriage necessary to save the household from penury. If she was not honest, that bounder might seduce her sister into believing his lies and giving him her heart. That would be just as disastrous.

“I thought I might find you here in this sorry excuse for a garden.”

“Damon!” she whispered, looking up to see his enticing silhouette against the lamps sprinkled through the garden.

“May I?” he asked, pointing at the bench.

Emily nodded. “Of course.”

“You are right to be worried.”

She smiled, glad he did not lather her with useless assurances.

Her smile disappeared when he went on, “I suspected de la Cour would seek out a willing victim for his charm, although I had guessed your sister to be wiser than this.”

“A few dances do not make a match.”

“You sound like one of the dowagers, Emily, but you cannot bamboozle me. You are worried.”

“I know too little about that man.”

He folded his arms over his chest and flashed her a challenging grin. “You are not the only one curious about our Frenchy friend. I cornered Homsby in his shop tonight and put a few questions to him. I was determined to learn more about our infamous Marquis de la Cour.”

Emily was sure the world had tipped on its side, for her head was suddenly light. Mr. Homsby would not have told Damon the truth, would he?

Calm yourself
. Homsby would want the truth revealed no more than she did. The Polite World would never again patronize his shop if they learned he had hoaxed them.

Taking a deep breath, she asked, “And what did you learn?”

“That de la Cour is a French poet who has gained a ridiculously large following here in Town. That is it. Are you disappointed? Did you hope to discover that the marquis is keeping a secret from the
élite de l’élite
? A wife kept in a dungeon in a castle on the Loire perchance? Or perhaps a mistress living in grandeur in that same
chateau
?” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “Could it be you hoped the quarto was privy to something even more detrimental to de la Cour’s reputation?”

“Enough!” She started to open her fan, then placed it in her lap again. The motion would not keep Damon from guessing her thoughts. “I wish to keep Miriam from breaking her heart anew.”

“Odd.”

“What is odd?”

He smiled. “I never thought to hear you speak such jobbernowl words.”

“What is jobbernowl about wanting to protect my sister?”

“Not that. I commend you for your sisterly affection, but she is old enough to find her own way.”

Emily glanced back at the ballroom just as her sister and de la Cour danced past. Her sister’s face glowed with happiness. When the marquis bent forward, Miriam smiled at whatever he said.

Loosening her clenched hands, for her fingers had been pressed so tightly to her palms that she could feel the prick of her fingernails through her gloves, Emily fought despair. Damon’s broader hand eased over hers, and she gasped as a pulse of delight coursed along her arm. So easily she could imagine these fingers tending a fragile seedling in the gardens Damon enjoyed visiting, but she was finding it harder and harder to envision them arrogantly holding a handful of cards. Her gaze slipped up his black fustian sleeve to the high collar edging his square jaw. Higher, until it met his.

“Let us speak of other things,” he said in a low voice that urged her closer.

She resisted, for she found her mind drifting from his hands to how easy it would be to place her head on his shoulder. “Yes, let us.”

“Of our trip to Wentworth Hall? Have you given my invitation some thought?”

“Yes.”

When he smiled, she realized her swift answer was revealing too much.

“Or we could speak of how your eyes change color like the sky with every different mood,” he murmured as he slipped his arm along the back of the bench. His hand curved around her shoulder, tilting her toward him.