Weston’s teeth were lovely, even and strikingly white. After Nello, she had not expected ever again to be fond of a blond man, but one’s mind could change. “Mrs. Hull only gave hints,” he said, “and in strictest confidence, I promise you.”
Jane? What was she doing, sharing confidences with Weston? Liza shot a look down the table. Jane had tried to intercept her on their procession into the dining room—too unskilled to know that she must conceal her shock at de Grey’s unmasking. But now she seemed to have recovered. Indeed, by Liza’s estimation, she was inclining a bit too eagerly toward Hollister. Why weren’t Tilney and Nigel making themselves useful?
Liza held on to her smile. “Dear Mrs. Hull. I’m so pleased that she consented to join us. I fear she still mourns for her late husband—it was a great romance, you know. She says no man will ever match him.”
From Sanburne came a soft, knowing laugh. She would have to speak with him later.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Weston said somberly. “I did not realize she was so recently widowed.”
“Yes, she just cast off her weeds.”
Weston nodded slowly. “We must endeavor to cheer her, then.”
“Indeed,” said Liza. “Only, lest we reawaken her grief, we must go about it very carefully, I think.”
“Ah,” said a voice two seats away. His voice. “Is Mrs. Chudderley sharing her rules with you, Weston?”
Her heart skipped a beat. Such low, purring words. Surely everyone must hear the taunt in them—and see it in the smile he gave her.
She had not imagined her country doctor capable of malicious pleasures. But . . . this was not her country doctor, was it? This was a stranger, well versed in the barbed ways of high society.
She swallowed. How curious that for the briefest moment, she felt a violent pang of loss.
“Rules?” asked Weston.
She shot Michael a warning look. He leaned back, a faint smile playing on his lips. Damn that smile. She did not care how well his suit became him, how sharply the snow-white neckcloth set off the square angles of his jaw, or how cleverly he could make her pay for having believed his ruse. She would not let him ruin this for her. “No,” she said flatly. “You misheard us, sir. We are speaking of the entertainments I’ve scheduled.” And if he persisted with talk of the rules, she would—she would hurl her soup at him.
“Oh, my apologies,” he said smoothly. “Entertainments, of course. Though they seem a touch superfluous, with you as our hostess.” The widening of his smile deepened the creases that bracketed his mouth. The effect should not look becoming. Wrinkles were signs of premature aging. He was too young to have them. Only thirty! He was a puppy.
Weston, blissfully ignorant, took Michael’s remarks as an invitation to break etiquette; he leaned around the baroness to reply. “I confess, de Grey, I’m surprised to see you here. Hadn’t imagined anything could drag you from London. But I suppose if anyone could work such miracles, it would be Mrs. Chudderley.”
“Oh, yes,” Michael murmured. “Our very own Miss Nightingale.”
Her hand closed over her knife, a spasmodic clench. How dare he bait her with the memory of that? Galling to recall how flattered she’d been—how very much she’d wanted him to approve of her.
Her judgment was rotten. Ever drawn to the deceivers.
“Yes,” she said, “I promised Lord Michael a very amusing departure from his normal routine. Namely, a host of experts who specialize in the broadcasting of curious truths. I expect he was drawn by the danger in it—for as we all know, some truths may be very unwelcome.”
With a soft laugh, Michael lifted his wineglass, an ambiguous gesture, not quite deliberate enough to be considered a toast. The candlelight spilled through his wine and gilded his throat with a crimson glow, which seemed a fine foreshadowing. If she gutted him with her fish knife, he’d be redder yet.
Why, his fraud surpassed even Nello’s. Nello, at least, had lied only about his intentions and his fidelity. His true name, she’d known from the start!
“How intriguing,” said Weston. “A riddle. Dare I guess it?”
She would never trust her own instincts again.
“Oh, it’s very easy,” piped up Lydia. “She’s hired a lot of—”
“Don’t say it,” said Sanburne. “Not while she’s holding that knife.”
Liza snatched her hand back beneath the tablecloth. This dinner could not conclude rapidly enough.
“Oh—very well,” said Lydia, sounding puzzled. “But do you know, Mrs. Chudderley, I meant to tell you—after I recommended that book on mysticism, I encountered a shaman outside Alberta who claimed to be able to divine truth from a bundle of bones. And he quite contradicted Beloit’s claims about tribal magic.”
“Did he?” She had no idea who Beloit was. The book’s author, maybe? Michael had turned back to Lady Forbes, as though he were not perfectly aware of her rage—as though it did not concern him in the least. She stared at his back and loathed him.
“Indeed,” Lydia was saying. “Had I persuaded him to return to England with me, I believe he might have set off a new fad. As a society, we incline quite ardently toward all manner of mystical nonsense, don’t we? I wonder if it indicates something significant about our broader need for a bit of mystery to flavor our faith.”
And here Lydia went, turning a proper dinner into a lecture on her anthropological curiosities. Bless her! Liza was grateful for the distraction. She sat back and breathed deeply in an effort to temper her pulse.
“An interesting question,” said Weston gamely. “I suppose there’s something deeply mysterious about the Christian concept of miracles, for instance. But wouldn’t you say that mystery is a common characteristic of all religions? For who can know the face of God?”
“Ah, too true! Perhaps I misspoke, then!” Lydia leaned forward, animated now, as her husband smiled on her dotingly. Doltishly, more like. Liza was not in the mood to admire lovesick puppies. “Rather than religion, perhaps we should consider this obsession with mysticism as a symptom of some societal lack—or a need; a need to believe in the existence of mysteries that science cannot explain. Why, yes! Yes, indeed! It was Hobart, I believe, who argued that one could characterize individual societies by their central preoccupations. His example, of course, was the Albanians and Hakmarrja, but for our purposes—”
James touched her elbow. “Don’t forget to translate for us, darling.”
“Oh!” Lydia blushed. “Hakmarrja is the Albanian philosophy of revenge.”
Liza nodded. She was calmer now. She could handle this mess. “I like that philosophy,” she said. “Revenge, you say? Tell us more, please.”
• • •
Michael swallowed a laugh at the transparent taunt. He’d be glad to give her a chance at revenge—later, in private, preferably near a bed. A wall or couch would serve as well.
God save him, but he was a shallow rotter for enjoying this. The moment she had disinvited him from this party, his course had been decided. No gently worded confession from him. He would change strategies. Force his brother’s hand, and confront Elizabeth Chudderley on equal footing.
It was damned bracing to have a clear mission again. She was angry, so he would soothe her. Apologize, and explain himself. They would make a game of figuring out common acquaintances. She would realize she no longer needed to condescend to him, to apologize for her airs. And then, the matter settled, he would have her again.
For once could not be enough. Not after that interlude. Her newfound concern for propriety might still be an obstacle, but it was a thin pretext that he would finish off in the course of five minutes alone with her. He would remind her again of how thoroughly she’d enjoyed the advantages of widowhood in that spartan little cottage.
“How do you know Mrs. Chudderley, Lord Michael?”
With difficulty, he dragged his gaze from their hostess back to the baroness—a pleasant woman, round and sweet as a muffin. “We met only recently,” he said. ??
?A pleasant piece of serendipity. And you?” Though he did not know the Hawthornes, five minutes in their presence had explained their inclusion on the guest list—they defined “fast company.” But Lady Forbes seemed a puzzling choice.
The baroness smiled. “Oh, I’ve known her practically since her infancy—or since her debut into society, which I imagine is quite the same thing.”
“Oh? What was she like as a debutante?” He could not imagine Elizabeth stripped of her knowing air. The attempt, after a moment, grew strangely unsettling. Her composure was her armor. He had stripped her of it briefly in that gamekeeper’s cottage, but he did not like to think of her thus disarmed in public. Without that invisible shield, a beautiful woman would make easy prey for any number of wolves.
“Oh, she was gorgeous as the moon, of course—” The baroness paused as a footman switched out their soup bowls for the fish course. “No surprise in that, nor in the great stir she caused. But were you to go back in time, I vow you may not have recognized her. She was shyer then—softer, too. Such a waste! That rotter never deserved her.” She made a tsking noise before spearing her fish.
“Rotter?” Had she suffered some unhappy love affair before marrying?
“Her first husband,” said Lady Forbes. She paused to chew. “Nobody credited me when I called him a nasty piece. Bland as a banker, Mr. Chudderley—that was the worst anybody else could say of him. But what others mistook for sobriety, I saw very clearly as a lack of charity, and an inflexible temperament.”
Elizabeth had never mentioned her husband. All her complaints had centered on a more recent disappointment. The realization left Michael feeling rather . . . out of sorts, in fact. Abruptly, he realized the depth of his ignorance about her.
Vexing thing, to take an interest in a woman with a history.
He frowned. No, that wasn’t right. He preferred women with histories. Innocents were the problematic ones: they expected things he would never give.
Why, he supposed he’d never objected to lovers’ complicated histories before because he’d never had any interest in knowing those histories.
Christ. He himself was more of a rotter than he’d realized. And this interest he felt in Elizabeth . . .
It was different, somehow.
Else why was he here? He had come because he wanted her to see him as an equal. An . . . eligible man.
The realization astounded him. Eligible? The notion was laughable. He had no money—his brother had seen to that. And Alastair would never consider Elizabeth a suitable match.
That thought triggered a hot anger. The hell if he cared whether or not Alastair approved of her.
Glancing up, he found the baroness watching him—and realized only then that he’d let the conversation hang.
He mustered his thoughts. “Bad luck in love, then.” He heard the leading note in his voice, and it unnerved him further. Why was he asking these questions? Wiser to leave the mystery intact, wasn’t it? Mystery was the spice of any affair. Surely he could not want . . . more.
“Oh, she’s had the worst luck, no doubt of it.” Lady Forbes lifted her wineglass, exhaling so forcefully that her breath set the Bordeaux to rippling. “The poor thing is putting on a very bright face, of course, but this most recent news must have left her furious.”
She must be referring to the unnamed cad’s betrothal. Furious seemed to Michael to be a very curious choice of words. “Or heartbroken,” he said.
The baroness laughed as though he’d just told a very good joke. “Heartbroken! Elizabeth Chudderley! I should like to see the man who could manage that! A very thick axe he’d require for that armor.”
He disguised his astonishment in a sip of wine. Did her friends know so little of her? For he had looked into her face on Midsummer’s Eve, and he had not seen a woman incapable of heartbreak. Far from it.
“At any rate,” Lady Forbes added idly, “it would take a far better man than Mr. Nelson.”
Nelson. His brain locked onto the name like a sharpshooter on his target. He felt a sudden, itching need to retire to Elizabeth’s library and comb through a volume of DeBrett’s. Nelson. The name rang no bells. “I can’t say I’ve met the man. But if he had Mrs. Chudderley on the line and chose to cast elsewhere, he’s a fool.”
“What a romantical statement,” came Nigel Hawthorne’s voice from across the table. He sat beside Jane Hull, who was alternating between avoiding Michael’s eyes and staring at him avidly. “And how surprising that such romantics should come from you, my lord. May we assume the countryside has awakened your chivalry?”
Michael had never met either of the Hawthornes, but they certainly seemed to keep track of him. “What can I say? Fresh air works wonders on me.” He recognized Hawthorne’s type from his school days: pinch-faced and malicious, but only when in a crowd. In private, he would whimper and tuck his tail between his legs. Harmless, then, and rather pathetic to boot. “I do hope you enjoy a similar effect,” he said. “You might find the novelty refreshing.”
Hawthorne laughed and lifted his wineglass, giving it a contemplative swirl. “I do wonder . . . how long have you been enjoying the fresh air? The rest of us ran into each other at St. Pancras, but I don’t recall seeing you at the station.”
“You mustn’t twit him,” said his sister sweetly, from Michael’s right. Katherine Hawthorne had been quite content all evening to confine her conversation to Tilney, who sat diagonally opposite her, on the other side of Jane; but even as she’d spoken with him, she’d been attempting to teach Michael’s right arm the precise shape of her breasts. “Perhaps he wasn’t in first class,” she went on, turning her bark-brown eyes toward Michael. “Some can’t afford it, you know.”
Tilney leaned forward, eager to join in. “Do you know—I didn’t see your luggage brought in, either.”
Mrs. Hull’s eyes were widening rather comically. She darted a nervous glance around their immediate company, as though only now realizing she sat in the carnivorous corner of the table. “I’m flattered,” Michael said, and then smiled at her in reassurance when her panicked gaze touched on him. “I had no idea my whereabouts were of such interest to those who had not met me before this evening. But I suppose friendships spring up in the unlikeliest of places. Even if the friendships themselves are unlikely.”
As Tilney’s eyes narrowed, Michael realized he was enjoying himself. It was not so hard to slip into his old skin, after all. There were mannerisms and attitudes a country doctor was not allowed to employ, that the son and brother of a duke might exercise at will—arrogance being one of them.
Katherine laughed, a low and sultry sound. “Cornwall is rather unlikely, isn’t it? I don’t know how we let Liza talk us into such shenanigans.”
“Ah,” said Tilney, “this is nothing. Do you remember last winter in Monte Carlo? My God. I lost half my year’s income in one night.”
And so the conversation turned again, to matters that had nothing to do with Michael. But he listened closely over the remainder of the dinner, gathering from the lively discussion a good picture of what Elizabeth had meant when she had told him she was different among her London friends.
She was the very definition of fast.
Normally, he had no interest in such routines. But when it came to her . . .
As the dessert course concluded, he deliberately turned his attention toward the head of the table. She was waiting and ready to meet his regard. Her jaw firmed. Her shoulders squared. A laugh started to rise in his throat—she looked like a soldier preparing for battle—but when she stood, his mirth died.
The candlelight licked over her skin like an ardent suitor. Her beauty at this moment could have stopped any man’s breath. But it was her presence that arrested him. She silenced all the conversations without a single word. Her composure was queenly, though the smile she showed the table was false. No one else would have guessed it, but he knew it in his bones.
“I believe we will skip the usual formalities,” she said. “To the
drawing room, if no one objects.”
As everyone rose and began to file out, he deliberately slowed his pace. As soon as the last of the guests had passed him, he was not surprised to feel a hand close on his elbow.
He turned. “Yes, Mrs. Chudderley?”
“You,” she said in a sharp whisper, “are coming with me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Michael let her lead him out of the dining room. But when he opened his mouth to speak, Elizabeth cut him off. “Not another word,” she said in a low voice. “Not until we are somewhere where I may scream.”
He made an interested noise in his throat. “That sounds promising.”
She dropped his arm as though it burned. Onward she stalked, her plum-colored skirts frothing around her ankles, her train hissing over the polished wood floor.
He followed her into the little salon off the entry hall. When she turned to face him, his uplifted hands—palms out, in the gesture of surrender—won not the slightest hint of a smile. He said, “I owe you an explanation—”
And then ducked the vase that flew past his head and shattered against the door.
“And an apology to boot,” he said as he straightened.
Bright spots of color burned in her cheeks. “I want nothing from you. Nothing but the sight of your back as you leave! Which you will do, at once. You—”
Abruptly she stopped, pressing her lips together very tightly. But she could not control their trembling, and that small sign of distress caused a startled shock to ripple through him.
He stepped toward her out of instinct. She took an answering step away, her brief look of surprise transmuting to a contempt so transparent that he froze.
Perhaps he had . . . miscalculated her reaction. But he’d supposed she would be relieved by the truth. If she had liked him as a doctor, surely she would find him even more pleasing as the son and brother of a duke. What woman would not?
This one, apparently. The look on her face left no doubt of it. “Listen,” he said slowly. “My purpose was not to fool you. I told nobody the truth. I was trying to avoid my brother’s notice here.”