Once Upon a Marquess

  He had distracted himself.

  He hadn’t stood up and wandered around, poking into business that wasn’t his. He had studiously ignored the roll-top desk he could see in the adjoining room, the papers neatly stacked in order. He hadn’t questioned—much—whether the disturbingly rundown state of this home meant that creditors posed a problem for the Worth family, such as it now was. He hadn’t even looked for Anthony’s journals. He’d sat in one place and minded his business.

  His business had been the demolition of pastry into its constituent crumbs. Demolition, then division: He’d separated the bits first by size, and when that seemed unsatisfying on some gut level, by deviation from roundness.

  Then, he’d very carefully started eating—from the most irregularly shaped crumb toward the most symmetrical.

  He was almost finished with the infuriatingly oblong bits when Judith came in.

  She stared at him—and the four plates he’d laid end to end in order to sort the crumbs into place.

  “Lord Ashford,” she said. “What are you doing?”

  He had been arranging crumbs. After a moment, he gestured at the plates. “Making myself at home. Figuratively speaking. Not literally.”

  She waved a dismissive hand in his direction, thank God, instead of saying something like Is there something wrong with you? or Why is there a line of crumbs three-and-a-half plates long on my dining table?

  No. This was Judith. She’d never cared about his oddities.

  “If you have to do that,” she said, “next time use the big plates. Less washing up.”

  “Fewer gaps between crumbs,” Christian agreed. “I didn’t know where the large plates were, though. And it is doubtful there will be a next time.”

  Their eyes met, acknowledging the fact that he was unlikely to be in her home again. Not that he was unlikely to arrange crumbs when he was bored. Putting things in order was soothing. Some people found that odd—he’d heard various politely worded iterations of “Oh dear, Christian, what are you doing?” over the years.

  But he wasn’t too odd in that regard, he didn’t think. After all, there was the phrase “out of sorts.” Whoever had come up with that must have been something like Christian.

  He’d assumed, for much of his young life, that the phrase described the peevishness of mind that one encountered when one had nothing to put in order. He’d always been confused when his compatriots used it to describe a mere lowness of spirits on account of not having had their favorite pudding at dinner. That had nothing to do with sorting at all.

  It wasn’t until Judith had walked away from him that he’d understood that out of sorts could also mean that you’d entered a state of mind where no sorting would help.

  Judith was here now, but her presence didn’t help. She sat across the table from him and took a biscuit of her own, which she placed on a plate. A single plate. She didn’t meet his eyes. She picked up a knife and very, very deliberately, cut her biscuit in half. It crumbled, rather than slicing smoothly, little biscuit crumbs splattering about in an irregular pattern.

  “Christian.” She cut the biscuit in quarters. “I asked for your assistance on a delicate matter. You really ought to have sent a man of business, as I asked.”

  There was not an ice sculpture’s chance in Hades’s ballroom that he would have done so. “And as we both know,” he said, “I am not much given to following orders.”

  She sniffed. “The matter is beneath you. I need someone to glower and look manly while I ask questions.”

  “I glower.” Christian fixed her with his most intense gaze. “Behold this manly glowering.”

  She glanced up from her plate almost reluctantly.

  He gave her his best glare: eyebrows drawn down, nose flared in distaste. “Answer the lady’s questions,” he growled, “or it will not go well with you.” He glanced around the room and spotted a disappearing white tail. “You, or your cats.”

  Her lips pressed together, but she hadn’t managed to hide her smile quite swiftly enough. He awarded himself a tentative point.

  “You would ask too many questions yourself,” Judith said. “And this, as I said, is a delicate matter.”

  Once, Christian had made the mistake of agreeing to watch over his second cousin at a musicale. Her mother had become ill halfway through, and his aunt—who was supposed to chaperone her—had been nowhere to be found. Lillian had run afoul of a “delicate matter,” by which his cousin meant that she had started to menstruate while wearing a very white gown.

  He’d sacrificed two handkerchiefs and a cravat in service of her dignity.

  Christian looked over at Judith, who was subdividing her biscuit into indiscriminate crumbs. “Whatever delicate problem you are wrestling with, it is undoubtedly less delicate than some of the ones I have dealt with. I promise I’ll keep anything you tell me in confidence.”

  Her chin went up. She looked off over his shoulder, as if seeing that unfortunate event eight years ago in the distance.

  “If I have no other choice,” Judith said. She tapped her fingers on the table. “Recently, and anonymously, I sent my sisters money to be held in trust for either their marriage or their majority—some four hundred pounds apiece. This was sent to our family solicitor.”

  Christian blinked at her. “Anonymously? You sent them? But—”

  Her fingers stilled on the table, and she shook her head. “If I had wanted to explain myself on this matter, I would not have prefaced any of this with the comment that you ask too many questions. The money was not illegally obtained. I sent it. I don’t wish to go into any further particulars. Might we continue?”

  “I suppose,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, “that this money was somehow derived from part of your father’s fortune? Something that he managed to somehow hide?”

  She sighed. “Those are questions. You are the worst nonquestioner I have ever met.”

  “True. But look at my glower.” He demonstrated it for her again.

  “Christian.” She folded her hands on the table and looked in his eyes. “Lord Ashford. I know we were once on intimate terms. But you must get this into your head: We are not friends. My father was convicted of treason. My brother was found guilty of abetting him. And the entire foolish investigation surrounding them would have come to nothing had it not been for you.”

  It was a good thing he was still glowering.

  “We are not friends,” she said. “My brother was transported. My father was sentenced to death, stripped of all the properties that he could be stripped of. The only things we had remaining were those few items that belonged to me and my brothers and sisters, alongside an ancient, moldering estate in the family name—and that’s little more than a pile of rocks in the wilderness.”

  He knew all this.

  “I need help,” she said. “Because of you, my relations want nothing to do with me. I had nearly a thousand pounds set aside so my sisters might have a chance at a decent marriage. I know they won’t find lords; I had hoped for vicars. Camilla will be coming out in a matter of months. I sent every spare penny I had to our family solicitor anonymously, and now he tells me he can’t speak at all of their situation.”

  Christian slowly flattened his hands against the table.

  “I need someone with some social clout to send the message that I’m not to be ignored. I have no one else to turn to. I need help. Not a joke. Not a laugh.”

  He waited for a moment, just to make sure that she was finished. “I could hardly forget that I figure as the villain in your piece, either. But you asked me for help. Me. Not anyone else.”

  “I had noticed.”

  He ignored this. “This is not about reminding you that we are familiar. This is who I am. I’m shite at etiquette. I make jokes. And despite everything that has passed between us, I still try to do what is right. That is why, after all these years, after telling me to my face that we are not friends—that is why you knew that if there was one person on this earth you could ask
for help, it was me.”

  Her nostrils flared. “I thought I could ask you because you are in my family’s debt.”

  Christian found himself smiling. He steepled his fingers. “Why yes, I am.”

  She shifted uneasily.

  “I spent every summer with your family until I was eighteen years old,” Christian said. “Your brother saved my life. You—” But he wasn’t going to talk of her. He shook his head. “I am in your family’s debt. That time meant more to me than I can ever say. But that isn’t what you meant, was it?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer.

  “Did I ask to provide counsel to the man who was presiding over your father’s trial in the Lords? No. I did not. He came to me and asked me—me, a twenty-one-year-old boy, one who’d spent summers in the house of the man—to advise. He told me that I could ensure he had a fair trial. Of course, everyone in the House of Lords thought the whole thing was a joke and a farce at the time—something that they had to do to satisfy the public after those first rumors surfaced.”

  She shook her head.

  “Talk of jokes. It was a great joke. An utterly hilarious joke. That’s what trials in the House of Lords were, they told me. They were just there to meet the form of the law. That it was understood that nothing would happen.”

  He picked up another crumb.

  “Or do you think I owe your family because the truth came out? They handed me a mess of financial evidence, all of it confusing. I thought, ‘Well, here is something I can do—I can sort this out.’ I thought I could be more than a useless block sitting to the side. I expected that once I cleared away the cobwebs and the tangles, everything would be put to rights.” He looked at her. “What was I supposed to have done, Judith? Should I have realized that your father was guilty, and then hidden that fact? Is that why I owe you—because I assumed that should I find the truth, it would exonerate him completely?”

  She leaned forward and practically spat at him. “You spent summers with my family. You should have known it wasn’t true. He wasn’t guilty. Anthony wasn’t guilty.”

  She made no such impassioned defense of her father. Telling, that.

  He simply shrugged. “I don’t owe you your fantasies. I didn’t ask for the rumors to be true. I didn’t want proof your father had sent military secrets to Britain’s enemies. It wasn’t my fault the proof was there. It was your father’s.”

  She flinched.

  “We’re not friends.” They never would be. Not when she could scarcely look him in the eyes. Not when every time he looked at her, he remembered falling in love with her. Not when he still woke up in a cold sweat thinking of what had happened to Anthony. He was sure that he’d done the right thing, exposing the truth about her father and her brother. But he had never being able to quell that tiny whisper of doubt.

  Judith was right. He wasn’t here to make jokes. He was here to lay his final worries to rest.

  “We’re not friends,” he repeated. “I’m not here to help you. You told me in your note you’d think about the favor I asked of you. I’m here because I want something in exchange. I want your brother’s journals.”

  Her chin went up.

  “Anthony was my friend,” Christian said. “I miss him. It would be a comfort to have something of his.” Not just a comfort; his way forward hinged upon those journals.

  Judith’s face was pinched. “My brother’s journals are not for sale.”

  “Ah, well.” He stood. “Then looking into your little problem is something that you can’t purchase.”

  Her eyes flared in an almost-panic. “Please. There has to be something else you want.”

  Yes, he wanted to say. But he didn’t speak, and he wouldn’t let himself want. Judith felt like home to him in the way that only nostalgia and old memories could. He wasn’t about to be tricked by that. He’d yearned for her too long, but no matter how much this woman looked like her, the Judith he wanted didn’t exist. He wished for a world without complications, a world in which it didn’t hurt to look at her. He wanted a world where he could laugh at how much her younger brother looked like his old friend.

  He wasn’t going to get any of that.

  “I’ll accompany you,” he said. “While you ask your questions. Not my man of business. We’ll agree that you don’t have to like me, and I don’t have to change. I’ll borrow Anthony’s journals for two weeks. I won’t need them longer than that. That’s my final offer.”

  He’d known that Judith had been shunned when her father was convicted. He could tell that she had nobody, truly nobody, to turn to now, because she actually considered his offer with a frown.

  Her jaw worked. “You’ll get the journals when I have confirmation the money has been credited to my sisters’ accounts. And you won’t ask questions.”

  “I won’t ask many questions.”

  Her eyes narrowed and her nose wrinkled.

  Christian simply shrugged. “We both know I’d be lying if I agreed not to ask any. If you ask for my help, you’ll get help. My way.” He held out his hand.

  After a long moment, she took it, giving him a brief, firm handshake. She dropped his fingers almost immediately, pressing her hand to her skirt as if he’d burned her.

  “When will you need me to do my glowering?”

  She was still rubbing her hand against her skirt. “I’ll make an appointment and send you word.”

  “Good.” He stood, found his jacket. “Then I’ll be going.”

  He gave her one last nod and took his leave. The stairs to the house creaked as he left. They were uneven; he hoped they were safe.

  But the Worth family could not be his concern. He had to think of himself.

  Once he had Anthony’s journals, once he could make that list. Once he had given himself a target and a course of action, well… Surely then he would finally be able to sleep at night.

  Chapter Four

  Judith made herself put away the feast she’d prepared. The chair where Christian had seated himself had been intended for her brother. She should have been in the midst of a happy celebration. Instead, the gloomy clouds outside seemed to have gathered inside the room. The oil lamp flickered; there was a new crack in the shade, and the light cast shadows on the remains of the feast laid out. Dark plates laden with what should have been a bounty stared back at her like ominous ruins.

  It was a waste, a horrible waste. The biscuits would keep; the preserves, of course, wouldn’t spoil. The expensive Darjeeling she folded up in a twist of paper. It might be useful on some other occasion.

  The sandwiches, on the other hand…

  That was what was left of her hopes. Stale bread, when she’d hoped for so much more. She piled sandwiches on a plate. By the time she’d cleaned up the remains of their noncelebration, night had fallen in earnest.

  She headed upstairs with her plate.

  The door to Benedict’s room was still shut.

  God, the memory of his face this afternoon still haunted her. He’d seemed closed and flattened. That delighted spark her little brother always had in his eyes had been absent.

  Benedict had been five years old when their father’s scandal had changed their lives forever. He scarcely remembered their old family home. He was the one who had first forgotten what should have been his due because of his birth. He’d been the first to adapt to their new surroundings, the first to stop complaining, the first to start laughing again.

  She hated that someone had made him stop.

  She raised her hand and knocked on the door.

  Silence. More silence. Then, the shifting noise of furniture grating against the floor, and…

  “What?” Benedict’s voice.

  “It’s Judith. Can I come in?”

  Yet more silence.

  “I promise I won’t lecture,” she said. “But I have sandwiches. They’re turnip. Your favorite.”

  Food had been a problem when she had first found herself here. They had sold everything they could—gowns, porcelai
n, jewels, toys. This property had come recommended by her solicitor. Not too unsafe, still in town, and there had even been a real oven in the kitchen for a cook. Too bad they’d been unable to afford a cook, but how difficult could it be to heat food?

  Judith had quickly discovered the answer to that. It had been difficult. Damned difficult.

  Benedict and Theresa had eaten almost nothing for what had felt like weeks. They hadn’t started eating until Benedict had invented the turnip sandwich.

  They were cheap, filling, and completely horrifying.

  “Very well.” A further scrape—as of her brother removing the chair from beneath the door handle—and the door swung open.

  Her little brother, not so little anymore, looked up at her. “Good evening, Judith,” he said politely.

  Oh, his face. She could have cried. That bruise. The split lip. Up close, she could see the fading evidence of other injuries—tiny discolorations of his skin that said more about his Half at Eton than any of the complaints he had never made.

  “Well,” she said finally. “You look terrible.”

  That won her a cautious, tremulous turn of the lips.

  “Here.” She held out the plate. “You need a turnip sandwich.”

  He let out a long exhale and took one. He turned it in his hands, sniffing it, and then took a bite. “Mmm.” His eyes shut. “Now that’s a proper turnip sandwich. They don’t make those at Eton, now. Never enough salt on anything. Salt makes everything better.”

  A turnip sandwich—a proper turnip sandwich—was made with two toasted slices of bread. One should be smeared liberally with brown gravy. The other bore a scrape of gooseberry preserves. Between these two disgustingly bedecked pieces of bread, there was a generous slice of roasted, peppered turnip. Liberal salting was the key.

  A turnip sandwich, especially one made with such odd ingredients, should not have been good. It shouldn’t even have been edible. But six-year-old Theresa had cried that she wasn’t eating turnips, she wasn’t, and that she wanted a proper sandwich. Benedict had invented this. And when Theresa had still refused, Judith had salted the turnip.