Lady Be Good

  It made for pathetic reading. Pointless, too. Yet he continued to require Lilah to copy the letters—and then, having delivered them, to sit for a while and keep him company.

  It spoke ill of him, no doubt, that daily tête-à-têtes had become the highlight of his routine. He would do better to focus on the vast task of acquainting himself with the duties ahead—politics, and the stewardship of great estates, and the various other tiresome chores that fell to Lord Palmer to supervise. And he did apply himself . . . until half four.

  Lilah appeared. She waited while he read the letters. And then he offered her tea and induced her to idle conversation, and let himself remember what he had once hoped for himself: the warmth and enfolding comfort of a peaceful life. Companionship. Easy affection.

  That he should find a ghost of these old aims in the company of a thief seemed blackly amusing. But fitting, somehow.

  Christian had no illusions about his future. Since his brother’s death, he had wrapped himself in dreams of murder. Longing for blood as ardently as a suitor for his beloved, his dreams twisted beyond repair, he could no longer embrace his old hopes. He could not envision with any optimism a return to the kind of innocence that made it possible to limit one’s dreams to a house full of hand-knitted doilies and gentle laughter. And even if he could . . . that was not the kind of life given to a peer of the realm.

  And yet . . . at half past four, he cast off Lord Palmer and remembered Kit Stratton. A man without enemies. A lad who, at military academy, had been renowned for pranks, bunking classes, cheekiness to tutors, and all manner of flirtation with local girls.

  Lilah liked this man. She did not recognize him for a ghost, an impostor in Lord Palmer’s shoes. Every day, she entered Christian’s study with studied stiffness. But she never left until she was flushed with laughter.

  “Ask her about the British Museum,” she told him one afternoon as they sat by the window sharing a strong pot of tea. “She was talking about the Oriental collection this morning. She has very passionate opinions about what’s wrong with it.”

  “Of course she does.” He had broken from form today, too restless to read; he had gone for a ride after his midday meal. The exercise had left him loose and relaxed, and he sprawled at his ease in a wing chair, his boots atop the window ledge, ankles crossed. “Finding faults is her main pastime.” One could not say the same, thankfully, of his thief.

  She shrugged. “It’s required, I suppose. What is a curator who can’t spot flaws?”

  She looked very pretty today, in one of her less severe dresses—blue velvet with a square collar. The shade darkened her large round eyes to the hue of storm clouds. Her dark chignon had not yet escaped its pins, but he had faith; the hour was early, yet. “Oh, finding fault is a very valuable skill,” he said. “And her application is very wide-ranging. Last night at dinner, she decided that the main problem with the British Army was our tendency to draw soldiers from the dregs.”

  “Goodness.” At times, between her large eyes and that wide, pretty mouth, she put him in mind of a homunculus, designed purely for the telegraphing of emotion. At present, she radiated amused dismay. “What did you reply?”

  He lifted his teacup, breathing deeply of the steam. “I told her that the dregs proved surprisingly stalwart in the face of cannon fire, while the crème de la crème seemed more content to critique from a safe distance.”

  “And her answer?”

  He lifted his brows. “She asked if I referred to myself.”

  Her laughter was husky, a fantastically warm and rich sound, inherently too generous a reward. She could have convinced a dullard that he was the second coming of Beau Brummel, simply by giggling. “No easy rejoinder to that, I think!”

  He laid down his cup. “Yes, a neat checkmate. Either I pointed out that I had been on the front lines, thus placing myself among the dregs—or I claimed otherwise, admitting to cowardice.”

  She tapped her spoon against the saucer. “Well, which did you choose?”

  “I asked her if she’d like to see my medals.” He winked.

  “Let me guess: she took you to task for vanity, then.”

  “No, she said she had inspected a Victoria Cross before, and was sorry to learn that the medal was cast from common bronze.” He smiled. As the Irish would put it, Catherine was a proper corker. “Then she added—‘You would think they would use silver, at least.’ ”

  Lilah gaped. “No human will impress her. Nobody alive, anyway. A pity you cannot pose as a carpet—or one of the late Barons Hughley.”

  “The ghost, perhaps? Shall I hunt up some chains to rattle outside her room?” He sighed and rolled his shoulders, then stood to stretch fully. Her gaze fell to his throat, where his collar lay open, before bouncing away toward the window.

  He hid a smile as he sat back down. “I confess,” he said wryly, “I’m finding it rather difficult to romance a woman whose conversation consists solely of complaints.”

  Lilah’s mouth had gone dry. What a peculiar thing to make her breathless: the sight of a hard, muscled body stretching with the languorous grace of a lion.

  He knew it, of course. As he sat back down, the dimple showed in his cheek.

  She cleared her throat. “Why do you wish to marry her, anyway?”

  “She’s beautiful,” he said. “An heiress. Why wouldn’t I?”

  She hesitated. Their afternoon conversations always devolved into idle talk. It was dangerous to converse with him so freely; she knew it. Her pulse still felt slightly unsteady, simply from one glimpse of the strong column of his throat, where his collar lay open.

  But she never managed to heed wisdom, and walk away once she’d delivered Miss Everleigh’s letters. That woman never made friendly conversation, and the rest of the staff labored under the mistaken apprehension that Lilah was too lofty to chat. She was lonely, perhaps. In London, she was always surrounded by people—her fellow Everleigh Girls, at work; and Susie Snow in the evenings, for they shared a room at a boardinghouse in Bloomsbury.

  Besides, as long as Palmer didn’t touch her, what harm was there in growing to know him? Know thy enemy. Wasn’t that advice from the Bible? Or Shakespeare. Either way, it made a time-tested strategy. “I can think of many other, wealthier heiresses who might catch your fancy,” she said. “Ladies, I might add, who are famed for their kindness as well as their looks. Miss Maudsley, for instance. She’s famously nice.”

  He arched a blond brow. “Sweet young ladies like Miss Maudsley draw men like flies to honey. The competition would prove exhausting.”

  “And you don’t imagine you could best them all?”

  He smiled. “Are you about to compliment me, Miss Marshall?”

  “No.” She sniffed, to let him know that she was serious. “You know very well that your reputation makes you a very romantic figure for the debutante crowd. Even if you were ugly and charmless, they would sigh after you.”

  “Ah. You compliment me anyway,” he said softly. “Perhaps you can’t help yourself.”

  His charm was like a sticky, invisible web. She resisted its pull. “You don’t even like Miss Everleigh.”

  “You sound so certain.”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “Tell me how you reached your conclusion. Have I, in some way, misbehaved with her?”

  She hesitated. “You couldn’t possibly like her. She’s . . .”

  “Sharp-tongued,” he said. “Prickly. Aloof. But put yourself in her place, Miss Marshall. A woman of intellect, in a world that prefers women to be featherbrained. A woman of ambition, in a world that casts women only as mothers and wives. All those qualities that make her difficult to know—could they not be disguises for what makes her a fine choice for a man of discerning tastes?”

  A very peculiar feeling rushed through her. To her horror, she recognized it as jealousy. Before she could check herself, she blurted, “A woman needn’t be cold or rude to be intelligent.”

  “Is that so?” His hand came over he
rs, his palm heavy and callused, shockingly warm. “I suppose you’re right. But it’s the wiser course, I think you’ll admit. A woman of such rare appeal, who fails to disguise it—she invites all sorts of troublesome attention.”

  His slight smile took her breath away. It seemed that he was not speaking of Miss Everleigh now.

  Clinging to wisdom, she pulled her hand free. “Poor Lord Palmer. At last, you have met your Waterloo—a woman you can’t charm.”

  “Alas,” he said softly. “I do believe there are two of them in this house.”

  She bit her lip. She’d never favored fair-haired gentlemen. But she’d been cooped up, deprived of the sun too long now, to remain immune to a man who looked like a piece of sunlight, golden hair and eyes like whisky, and that easy smile, which offered no judgment. He presented a very fine argument for blonds.

  “Well, that’s your fault,” she said. “If you returned those letters to me, I’d be charmed all around.”

  He gave a chiding click of the tongue. “Poor Miss Marshall. Forced to earn back through honest labor the fruits of your thieving.”

  “Is my labor honest? I thought it was spying.”

  “Whether it’s successful is my main concern. New proposal: I’ll pay you by installments. The moment Catherine laughs at one of my jokes, I’ll hand you a letter.”

  “Is that all you want? Then make a joke about Paisley shawls. She was ranting against them yesterday—loathsome, cheap facsimiles of the Indian originals.”

  He retrieved his tea. “I’ll take that under advisement. But it may exceed even my own powers, to draw humor from a shawl.”

  “And here I thought you could do anything. Why, to believe the newspapers, you’re the Queen’s white knight. You slay armies singlehandedly, and squeeze poetry from stones!”

  “Cheeky imp.” His glance trailed down her body. “Far more pleasant things to squeeze than stones.”

  “Stop flirting with me,” she said severely. “It’s poor strategy on your part. You’d do better to conserve your energy for Miss Everleigh.” And Lilah would do better for it, too. She could feel herself blushing.

  “But how boring that would be.” He put down his tea and reclaimed her hand. His middle finger stroked down to her knuckle, causing her own fingers to curl inward, trapping a shiver. “Where would you look for entertainment, without me?”

  She made a fist. “It isn’t entertainment that brought me here.”

  “Quite right.” He turned her hand in his, coaxing her fingers to open, one by one. “I’m sure your time here has been very onerous.” He rubbed his thumb down her palm, the massaging pressure unbearably delicious.

  She’d spent the morning prying open ancient jars to empty them of beads—all glass, to her disappointment. She could not quite bear to pull her cramped hand away. But she could certainly move the conversation to safer territory. “You should ask her about the tapestries tonight.” His fingers were wicked. She would have paid him to touch her like this. “We found a Flemish mappemonde that sent her into ecstasies. Why, a full hour passed before she found another reason to scold me.”

  “A map of the world?” He released her, sitting back. “My brother collected those.”

  Her hand felt bereft. How stupid. “Would you like to see it?” Lilah had discovered it lying in a crumpled heap behind a sideboard. She felt quite proud about that. “It’s still in the—”

  “No, that’s quite all right. We’ve got a dozen rotting away at Susseby.”

  His indifference amazed her. “You don’t even want to see these things before you sell them?”

  He shrugged. “I’m a heathen, Miss Marshall. I don’t put much store in collecting things. Don’t tell Catherine that,” he added with a rueful smile.

  “Oh, she wouldn’t be surprised. Half the clients at Everleigh’s seem indifferent to what they purchase. They send brokers to place bids for them. Not on specific objects, mind you. They have lists—anything Assyrian. All the Turkish carpets. I’ll wager they never bother to use half of it.”

  He shrugged. “One can only display so many carpets.”

  “Then why continue to collect them? What a funny world! The people with all the money seem least interested in what they buy.”

  “Human nature.” He took a sip of tea. “We tend to most want what we can’t have.”

  She sighed and poured more tea, then reached for the sugar. She’d been up since four thirty. Certainly she deserved another lump. “Perhaps that’s why I want so much.”

  “Such as?”

  “A million things,” she said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Name one.”

  She smiled. “Money, so I can buy all the rest of them.”

  He smiled back. “Were I a genie with three wishes, I would commend you. But for the sake of conversation, you must be more specific.”

  “I’m not sure I can be,” she said honestly. “I’m still learning. There’s a whole universe of delightful things that most people don’t know about. It’s like some grand secret kept by the rich. Russian caviar, French cheeses . . . mappemondes!” She shrugged. “Perhaps it’s better that way, though. What you don’t know about, you can’t long for.”

  “But you’ve come to know,” he said quietly. “And so you long?”

  She hesitated, growing aware of a sharp, fragile feeling. Why did he want to know her so well? And why did she wish to let him?

  “I’ve never been poor,” she said. “Don’t mistake me.” She had her uncle to thank for that, as much as it chafed.

  “Of course not. The daughter of a clerk.” He lifted his tea to her in acknowledgment.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. In truth, she’d grown up cheek by jowl with poverty. Half of London lived in the slums. Meanwhile, the other half seemed to find this quaint. Sometimes they came through the East End on guided tours, gawking and gasping from their plush, cushioned vehicles. They didn’t go slumming to expand their minds, nor to develop compassion, although that was their claim. They did it for entertainment. Poverty titillated them. The makeshift measures of the poor, the newspapers stuffed into broken windows and the rubbish burned for warmth, reconfirmed for them their own superiority.

  She’d been raised in streets the rich would never dare to walk. She’d grown up speaking in the round vowels and dropped consonants of an East Ender. But her desires were not jokes. She would not share them for the entertainment of a viscount.

  “Money doesn’t make a person special,” she said. “It doesn’t breed taste or decency or character.”

  His gaze was steady, open. “I would never argue otherwise.”

  “Good,” she said. “Because many do seem to think themselves better people for the fullness of their pockets. When what they are, in fact, is lucky. Money is luck. It gives you protection, and allows you to take chances that others can’t. You can visit the British Museum on a weekday, when others must work—it’s closed on the holidays, did you know that? You can study antiques, instead of worrying about next week’s wages. You can develop good taste, if you like.”

  “Yet many fail to do so,” he said. “And comfort, for all its perks, can stifle one’s initiative. For instance, I doubt most clerks’ daughters would dare to pursue a career.”

  There was a compliment in his remark. She hesitated before accepting it, knowing how easy it would be to give herself away. “Perhaps it’s not the career I want. Perhaps I only want the wages.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” He offered her a wry smile. “On a soldier’s pay, I did think longingly of the first-class compartment. Velvet cushions make far nicer seating than a wooden bench.”

  She snorted. “When did you ever travel on wooden benches? You were always the son of a viscount, even when a soldier.”

  “A second son,” he said. “Raised in wealth, yes. But I always knew it would never be mine. I would make my own way—that was made clear to me as a boy.”

  The rich did things so oddly. In Whitechapel
, a family shared what it had, no matter who was firstborn. “That seems unjust. Surely there was money to spare.”

  “But I didn’t want it,” he said. “That is . . . Naturally it sometimes chafed, seeing my brother take the lion’s share of attention. But it was also a great blessing. I would have the freedom to make my own place in the world. A freedom that Geoff didn’t have.” He glanced into his teacup, then set it down. “Didn’t want, either. Were life just, he would still be here. Overseeing the estates, adjudicating tenants’ quarrels. Speechifying in Parliament, and whatnot.”

  Something complex and raw lurked beneath his light words. It had never occurred to her that he might feel ill suited to his position—that anyone would scruple at such an inheritance. “You don’t want the title?”

  “I want my brother back.” His mouth compressed into a grim line. “All the rest is detail.”

  She remembered reading of his bereavement in the newspaper. He’d been a stranger, then—a distant figure, no more real to her than myth.

  But now, as she looked at him, she recognized a kindred spirit. He’d lost somebody dear. That death had changed the entire course of his life.

  Behind him, out the window, a flock of birds winged past, dark silhouettes against the lowering sun. The distant trees lifted their leaves to a passing breeze. Beautiful scene. Fiona would have liked the country, after all. Had she lived, she would have been here right now. The Everleigh Girl. And Lilah . . . a secretary. The instructors at the typing school had felt she had promise. With Fee’s support, she would have finished the advanced course.

  It would have made a more respectable path. Tedious, but safer. A secretary could age, and turn gray. An Everleigh Girl could not.

  “You would still be a soldier,” she said. “Had your brother lived.”

  He nodded.

  “That’s dangerous labor.”

  “True. The danger was the rotten bit.” He gave her a fleeting smile, sharp with self-mockery. “But there was also a great sense of camaraderie, of course. A sense of joint effort, and true brotherhood. And it wasn’t all violent. Rebuilding a destroyed village, shoring up the banks of a flooding river—we did a great deal of good in the world.”