With This Ring (19 page)

“Ghosts?”
Aaron offered helpfully, though for the life of him he didn’t know why.
Of course, Elektra would be flinging herself back into the breaches, eternally ready to sacrifice herself for her family’s return to glory.

You won’t give her glory. You have a title and a doomed estate—and enough notoriety to drown even Attie’s chances of that golden future.

Aaron swallowed.
Perhaps, before he made his confession and forced Elektra’s hand, he ought to consider her wishes.

If he cost her this chance, she would never forgive him.
A lifetime with a happy Elektra was a tantalizing vision.
A lifetime with a furious, betrayed Elektra?

Aaron shuddered.
Then he noticed Attie’s gaze sharpening on his face.
Subject change.
“Are you trainin’ for the circus, then?”
I hear they can always use more monkeys.

Her expression soured as if she had heard his thought.
“I believe there is a slope of at least five degrees from this end of the hallway descending toward the stairs.”

“Hm.”
Aaron tilted his head severely to squint down the hall carpet.
“I don’t agree.
It looks entirely level to me.”

Her green eyes took on an evil tint.
“Opinion is worth nothing.
Where is your evidence?”

That was how Aaron came to be somersaulting up and down the hall just when Elektra mounted the stairs with her brothers Orion and Dade.

Aaron froze in the middle of a roll, which only had the unfortunate effect of toppling him sideways—quite possibly the only way he could have looked any more ridiculous at that moment.

Daedalus Worthington had obviously spent some time perfecting his expression of exasperation, for he was very good at it.
He turned on the spot and walked away, returning down the stairs whence he had come.

Elektra’s mouth quirked in amusement even as her brows rose in disapproval at Aaron’s antics.
Orion merely gazed at him as if he were a not-particularly-interesting insect.

Yet Aaron couldn’t help grinning as he rose to his feet, dusting off the seat of his trousers and running his other hand through his tousled hair.

“It’s the ’allway—” he began, but Orion turned to Attie.

“I perceive an altitude variation of four degrees,” he stated to his youngest sibling, just as if debating with someone of his own scholarly stature.

Attie shook her head.
“Five, at the very least.”

Aaron, who had indeed observed that it was slightly more difficult to tumble up the hall than down, nodded sagely, but had nothing more specific to offer to the discussion, which quickly became heated when Attie dared her elder brother to produce his own evidence.

Elektra stepped forward and tucked one hand through Aaron’s arm.
“Mr.
Hastings, why don’t we step aside and let them thrash it out.
It could take hours, or even days.
I daresay we’ll find them rolling down every hallway in the house for the next week, plotting out the altitudinal variations of the scullery versus the kitchen hearth.”

Aaron laughed and willingly allowed himself to be led away.
“I was afraid to tell ’em that I only noticed a three-degree drop!”

Elektra flashed him a smile of such mischief and laughter that Aaron found himself descending the stairs quite short of breath, dizzied not by the height but by the new, playful Elektra.

Would he never plumb the depths of this unexpected creature?

Er, perhaps he ought to rephrase that thought, even in the privacy of his own mind!

“I have a favor to beg of you, Mr.
Hastings.”

Aaron inclined his head.
“Anythin’ for you, miss.”

“I must visit my dressmaker and I cannot seem to dislodge any of my brothers from their activities to escort me.
Would you mind terribly?”

Since he rather thought he’d be willing to face a dragon or three to see that smile again, he nodded mutely.
His reward came at once.
There it was, like a wash of light on a diamond.

She left him at the bottom of the stairs, begging his patience while she fetched her wrap.

As Aaron blinked away the visual afterimage of that fey grin, he wondered how many times Elektra had been left to fend for herself by her brothers.

*   *   *

Elektra found she actually didn’t mind having Mr.
Hastings’s company on her errand.
When he wasn’t waxing judgmental, he could be an interesting and amusing companion.
The fact that he was handsome—and broad-shouldered, and rather deliciously tall, and that she continued to have startling memories of his hot, exciting mouth on hers—well, that had nothing to do with it.

He was a convenient escort, one who did not seem impatient as her brothers so often did, and she was able to go about London without waiting for Orion to finish his dissection of something with too many legs, or for Lysander to snap out of his brooding, or for Dade to find the time out of his busy, busy day.

They
had nothing to fear.
They were men.
They could simply stand up and walk from the house on a whim.
They needn’t change their clothes or consider the propriety—and danger, for this was London!—of going about alone.

And she didn’t wish to take Iris, who would dawdle endlessly and flirt with every male above the age of—well, her mother had a way with men of any age, frankly.
They seemed to find her either adorably helpless or adorably dotty or in the case of Elektra’s father, Archimedes Worthington, simply adorable.

Elektra had never quite managed to carry off
adorable
.
She always seemed to garner adjectives such as
striking
or
stunning
or other such faintly violent words—not that she read any such thing into the world’s opinion of her.
What should she care?

If something wasn’t going to help her achieve her goals for the Worthington name, she refused to waste a single second of her life upon it.

Still …

“Mr.
Hastings, if you were to define me in one word, what would it be?”

“Complicated,” he replied absently.
Then he seemed to truly hear the question and, subsequently, his answer.
His expression took on a sudden pallor and she could have sworn he flinched a bit.

“I’m sorry, miss.
That weren’t very gentlemanly of me.
I mean to say … er … multifaceted.
Yes, that’s the very word, it is.
Multifaceted, like … a diamond!”

She narrowed her eyes.
“You think I’m hard.”

He blinked and seemed inclined to move away a step, although he staunchly stayed by her side, just with a slightly larger space between them.

“Not the hard part—I mean, you see, the shiny part.”

“So you think I’m gaudy?
Obvious?”
Now she was just having fun with his visible terror.
Men were so easy.
“Sharp?”

He must have had enough at that point, for he stopped cold in the middle of the walkway and turned to her.

“You aren’t any harder than a soldier in a war and ye aren’t any more obvious than a diplomat fighting for peace.
Ye may think you’re foolin’ the world with this, this…” He waved his hands about her.
“This façade, this foolish, shallow, social-climbing veneer—”

Elektra’s belly went cold at his words.
Could it be that this man, this irreverent, poorly trained servant, could see what she’d ensured that no one else in the world could perceive?

Her chin went up and she was about to cut him dead, but then he said the single thing she’d never, ever heard from anyone’s lips in her life.

“But, well, I think it’s just plain magnificent the way you look after that house of bedlam and everyone in it!”

He nodded as if he’d finally said something he’d been dying to get off his chest, then he bowed and gestured her onward, following at the discreet distance of the perfect manservant.
She had no choice but to breathlessly turn and continue her errand, as if the world had not just upended itself and the sky turned green and the trees blue!

How could this be?

If anyone had told her a month ago that she would meet a man who truly understood her, she would have laughed bitterly and assured them that they were soon for the madhouse.
No one but her dressmaker grasped her real reasons for the devastating wardrobe, for the haughty demeanor, for the practiced perfection of her face and form.

When one had a purebred horse for sale, one groomed it within an inch of its life.
When one had a pretty daughter and an empty bank account, one—if one were not Iris or Archie Worthington—dressed her up for market and displayed her to her best advantage.

To everyone’s best advantage.

How terrible to discover the single man in the world—who was not a dressmaker!—who understood her, and then to have that man be as far away from her socially as a draft horse was to the aforementioned thoroughbred filly.

Torn between joy at such a discovery—Mr.
Hastings!—and rage at its impossibility—Mr.
Hastings!—Elektra found herself quite without words for the rest of their short journey to Bond Street.

The shop of Lementeur—if one wished to designate such a fountain of beauty and style as a mere “shop”!—was completely discreet.
There were impressively carved doors, inscribed with the trademark looping
L
that graced the dress boxes and hatboxes and glove boxes that made every woman in London swoon.
These opened with soundless polish as if pushed by magical simultaneous hands, and Elektra strolled into one of her favorite places on earth—although not for the reasons that most people would think.

This shop was the workplace and home of a man she thought of as a benevolent uncle, or perhaps benevolent wizard, or sometimes as simply one of the two—perhaps now three!—people in the world who understood her.

A perfectly beautiful young man stepped forward and bowed deeply.
“Miss Worthington.”

Elektra dipped a gracious nod.
“Cabot.”
She looked about the shop, which was really just the public face of a much more complex operation within.
“Is Himself about?”

Cabot didn’t smile at her irreverence, but merely nodded.
“Of course.
He would never miss an appointment with you, Miss Worthington.”

Mr.
Hastings was staring about at the surroundings with the appalled face of a man who was more comfortable waist-deep in danger and adventure than standing in a forest of lace and silk and well, she had forgotten about that particular display of unmentionables …

Elektra Worthington was laughing at him.
Aaron knew it, even as he knew that the tall, lean fellow was hiding great amusement behind those cool gray eyes as he escorted Elektra away.

Aaron also knew that he was completely out of his depth at this moment.
Although he’d once walked Bond Street with its tailors and dressmakers and drapers, it had been a very long time since he had done more than purchase the barest necessities.

Then again, to Miss Worthington and probably many women in Society, the creations of this Lementeur fellow were considered necessities!

Chapter Sixteen

Elektra had always felt comfortable with Cabot.
They had a lot in common, after all.
They were both attractive, both cynical, and both pursued by men.

The greatest difference between them, other than the obvious dispersal of parts, was that despite his world-weary demeanor and his impenetrable severity, Cabot still believed in love.

One only had to watch his cool gray eyes follow his small, mischievous master to see the complete devotion burning within him.

One had to wonder why Mr.
Button couldn’t see it, not one little bit.

There was a time a few months ago when Elektra could have sworn that something happened between the famed Lementeur and his protégé.
Cabot had seemed … happy?… well, perhaps hopeful.

Now there was a haze of sadness in those misty evening eyes that made Elektra’s heart ache for him.
For them both, actually.
She didn’t understand why Button didn’t simply fall in love, when love was just waiting there to catch him!

She would kill for just that chance—

Except that her heart wasn’t anything anyone would actually want.
Not like the kindhearted Button, or the faithful Cabot.

Or even the chivalrous Mr.
Hastings, who could have ruined her with a word, yet kept his silence with no expectation of reward.

Whereas she herself had lost count of her own lies and deceptions and manipulations.
Her own family thought her shallow and vain.
The world thought of her in pointed praise that never actually included words like
sweet
or
good
.

I am not good, I am … indomitable.

How about “just plain magnificent”?

An afterthought, surely.
A stretch of the imagination when she’d teased him for calling her “complicated.”

It didn’t matter what Mr.
Hastings thought, anyway.
It only mattered what Lord Neville thought.

Cabot walked Elektra deeper into the sacred halls of fashion.
“And your master plan?
It goes well?”

Elektra indulged in an unladylike shrug.
Cabot never judged.
“I am hoping to permanently fix the attentions of the Duke of Camberton tonight.”

“You sound deeply thrilled at the prospect.”

Elektra had to smile.
No one did irony like Cabot.
“I know.
I cannot help it.
Things have changed.
Nothing … nothing is the same since I returned from Shropshire.”

Cabot never smirked, but his lips twitched.
“I hear Shropshire can do that.
Catastrophic levels of peace and quiet.
It’s disturbing to one’s equilibrium.”
Then, as he opened the door to the grand showroom, where many ladies, duchesses, and the occasional princess had their gowns revealed to them with appropriate pomp and circumstance, he turned to her.
“Nothing in London has changed in the last week.
If there is a difference, you might want to look within, rather than without.”

She bowed her head.
“I shall ponder your words, O wise one.”

“Mockery, for my pains.
Very well.
In you go.
And please remind him that he needs to eat sometimes.”

When Elektra entered the “gallery”—which was what Lementeur called his showroom—she found a short, slight, pointy-featured fellow dressed in utmost perfection, with not a hair out of place, standing in the center of the room regarding the ceiling most intently.