She took a quick, audible breath. “Your brother,” she said. “The Duke of Marwick.”
He tried a rueful smile. It did not hold, for she was looking at him as though he were a stranger, and he did not like it. “That’s the one.”
She walked around a silk-upholstered armchair, stopping behind it as though she required a shield against him. “Make your explanation, then. But keep it short. I have guests waiting.”
“It’s . . . rather too complicated for brevity,” he said. “But I can give you the bare outlines, and later—”
Her brows flew up. “Later? There will be no later.”
He exhaled. “Elizabeth, I—”
“I rescind your right to address me so informally.” She gave him a slight, chilling smile. “And I tell you now, if you ever speak of—us—abroad, I swear you will regret it. I am no Lady Heverley, Lord Michael. I will not sigh when I speak your name.”
Lady Heverley, again. His small, disbelieving laugh made her scowl. “You think this is funny?” she asked.
“No. Not in the least.” Not any longer. “I was wrong to misrepresent myself. But I confess, I did not realize . . . that is, you seem strangely . . . furious that I’m better born than you thought.”
She gave him a stony stare. “Higher born,” she said. “But far from better.”
He stared at her, trying to puzzle it out. “Then it’s simply that I lied. Is that it?” His own words belatedly made him wince. Put so plainly, yes, he could see cause for her anger.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said coldly. “I am well accustomed to frauds.”
Ah. That smarted. “Slotting me in with the other rotters. I suppose I deserve it.”
She shrugged. “One rotter is much the same as the next. Did you imagine you were somehow different?”
“I never meant to lie to you.” How bloody insufficient, even to his own ears. “That is . . . I should have told you sooner.” He had tried to do so in the gamekeeper’s cottage, but . . . he did not think she would care now to hear of his excuse. It turned out I was more interested in shagging you than taking the time to explain. No, that line would not serve. He was an ass. “Elizabeth. I’m sorrier than I can say.”
The silence, for a long moment, was broken only by the ticking of a distant clock. She looked down at her hand, rubbing her gloved thumb over her fingertips, and then shrugged again. “I find I do not particularly care for your apologies.”
“Then I must hope my explanation suffices.” He took a deep breath. “My sister-in-law, as you’ll know, passed ten months ago.” How best to tell this tale, without spilling secrets that were not his to share? “The duchess’s death . . .” No more lies, now. “Her death, and certain truths that emerged thereafter, sent my brother into a decline.”
“Truths.” She put her hands on the back of the chair, gripping it so tightly the fabric wrinkled. “What kind of truths?”
He grimaced. “They aren’t mine to speak. I promise you, if I could . . .”
She stared at him a moment, and then her chest rose and fell on a great breath. “Yes, of course. I suppose they don’t concern me.” She made an odd pause, then shook her head. “Go on, then.”
“My brother’s decline was gradual. At the beginning, he simply seemed less inclined to go into company. Mistrustful of his friends.” Michael hesitated. He did not like to divulge this. But . . . he trusted her. Ironic, that it should take betraying her trust to realize he had faith in her never to betray his. “In February, he ceased to leave the house entirely. This is no ordinary hesitance, mind you. He isn’t ill, he simply refuses to step outside. Not even in the garden. It’s almost as if . . . the world has begun to frighten him.”
“I see.” She watched him narrowly; he had the sense from her of quivering alertness, of powerful impulses leashed by hard effort. “And so, in response, you have undertaken a masquerade in the wilderness. Yes, it all makes perfect sense to me now.”
He acknowledged her mockery with a grim smile. “He gave me little choice. He will not sire an heir, he says, so I must do it for him, with a woman of his choosing: otherwise, he will use all his powers to close the hospital.”
A line formed between her dark, winged brows. “The hospital in London. The one that he sponsors.”
“Yes. The one I founded.”
“How . . . Machiavellian,” she murmured.
“You don’t know my brother. Machiavelli would be a mere apprentice to him.” He paused. “At any rate, you see why I cannot concede to his terms.”
She averted her face. He watched the plume bob in her coiffure as she smoothed one elbow glove. The stroke of her hand hypnotized him: from the fingers to the elbow, twice, then thrice.
“No,” she finally said, very quietly. “I suppose I don’t.”
He exhaled, an explosive burst of disbelief. “Is my life to be sacrificed for his own pleasure? He is—” He took a deep breath. “You don’t know my brother. I want to help him. By God, I tried my best to do it! I lie awake at night worrying over it.”
Her head bowed. The naked desperation in his voice had embarrassed her, he supposed. Probably it should embarrass him, too. But for some reason it felt vitally important that she believe him on this count. “I would not abandon him,” he said.
“All right,” she said slowly. She did not look up.
“But you must see, the solution he proposes will help no one. Far from it! He wants the line to continue? Then he will have to leave his house and find a wife of his own. That is the medicine I have prescribed. That is my cure for him.”
“Ah. So your motives have been purely noble, then.” She lifted her head, and the look on her face made him feel as though some shutter banged hard in his chest.
Lady Forbes imagined this woman immune to hurt? He had proof to the contrary before his eyes right now, and it cast him as the villain. “I have betrayed your trust,” he said, very low. God damn his clumsiness, his stupidity. “That was not noble. And it was never my intention, I promise you.”
Her one-shouldered shrug was no doubt meant to telegraph her indifference. “Rest easy on that front. We made no promises. You were only an afternoon’s distraction, after all.”
The breath went from him, ragged like a laugh, though he felt no humor. Now he was the one wounded. How peculiar was that? “I’d hoped we might distract each other a bit longer than that.” A good deal longer. He was only now seeing what potential they had. “What passed between us in that cottage . . . was unlike any passing pleasure I’ve felt. Elizabeth, it did not feel like an afternoon’s distraction to me. Indeed, the more I’ve thought on it—”
“Stop.” When she raised her gaze, her eyes looked suspiciously bright, and the sight struck him like a heavy weight to his chest. She blinked as though to bring him into focus, and then looked beyond him toward the door. “The guests,” she said. “I must . . .” And then she straightened, visibly gathering her composure. “I’ve heard your explanation. And now, sir, you will hear mine. In a minute, you will go into the drawing room and make pleasant conversation with my guests. Within the half hour, a letter will arrive that informs you of some trouble in London—you may come up with a story for it, if you like. Perhaps your hospital, perhaps your brother. Either way, you will make your excuses and announce your departure.”
Her voice had hardened during her speech. But her hands told a different tale. They were flexing on the chair, knotting and unknotting, and he wanted to take them in his grasp, pull them to his face, and fall to his knees before her and beg her to forgive him. To let him try again.
The image was so vivid, the impulse so foreign, that it made him stupid. Tongue-tied and amazed.
Which was well and good, for she had not yet finished. “As your concerned hostess,” she said, “I will arrange for my coach to carry you away—to your amusing little cottage, where the driver will wait while you pack your bags. John Coachman will then take you onward to the station. If you miss the last train, there will be
another at nine o’clock tomorrow.”
He exhaled. A very neat dismissal, that. Rather as if she owned the entire district.
Which he supposed she did.
Releasing the chair, she swept up her skirts and strode for the door.
“Wait,” he said. As she passed, he caught her by the elbow. Without hesitation, she spun on her heel and slapped him.
The flat of her hand cracked spectacularly. But he did not release her, though his cheek stung viciously. She stared up at him, her eyes wide, her expression strangely blank.
He did not like that look on her face. “I deserved that,” he told her.
“You did.” She shook her head as though to clear it. “I will not apologize.”
“Don’t.” He could feel her trembling where he gripped her, and it gutted him. What had he done here? He reached out to cup her cheek, and she averted her face. But she did not knock his hand away. That was something.
She swallowed audibly. “I must go write that letter.”
“In a minute.”
“Let go of me,” she whispered.
He knew he should. But his hand would not obey him. What was happening here? What was happening within him?
He hadn’t known until this moment. But suddenly it was plain, and he was a fool. He was the fool, not she.
“Elizabeth,” he murmured. Elizabeth, who laughed like a barmaid and parried his jokes with a philosopher’s wit, who forwent sleep for distant cousins whom other women of her station would never have acknowledged. Who drank ale with villagers and guided rude country doctors to the shores of a lake, simply to share the beauty of this place she loved.
Elizabeth, whose vulnerability her friends believed long dead. But she had wept in his arms in the gamekeeper’s cottage. She had wept, and then smiled at him, and kissed him as he’d never been kissed before.
She had offered him friendship, and in return, he had disappointed her.
How had he not foreseen this moment? How had he not glimpsed, until now, how little she could afford to be disappointed again?
How had he not divined the great cost to him for having done so?
“Elizabeth.” Her name felt delicate on his lips, precious. “Let me make this up to you.”
She would not look at him. “I am sick of you,” she said. “I want you to go.”
“No.” He stroked her cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Now she glanced around at him, and though he did not fully understand her expression—for it seemed balanced between surprise and pain—he knew better than to waste the opportunity. He would remind her of why she might wish him to stay. Before she could look away again, he leaned down to kiss her.
For a brief, sweet moment of relief, he felt her yield. Her hand rose to cover his where it cupped her cheek, and he tasted her tongue, and the heat leapt between them as consumingly as ever. The small sound she made might have been a sob, but it might also have been surrender. He stepped into her, gently guided her back a pace, and then another, until her shoulder blades touched the wall.
He had hope as he kissed her. All his experience, all his skills, could be put into this single kiss of apology, a kiss to persuade her, a kiss to atone. “Let me,” he whispered into her mouth, and her grip on his hand tightened, tightened to the point of pain—which was fitting; he did not mind it; he would encourage her to hurt him if that was what she required to forgive him. He leaned into her, his free hand finding her waist, gripping her there, pulling her solidly against him, letting her feel what she had enjoyed before, and what he would put into her service once again. “I will make it up to you,” he murmured into her ear, feverishly, as he covered her throat in a hot, open-mouthed kiss.
“You can’t,” she whispered.
“First let me try.”
“I must marry.”
For a moment the words made no sense. Her collarbone, the grain of her skin—
“Money,” she said. “I must marry. Have you any money?”
He froze. “You . . .” Marry? “What?”
She gave a strange little laugh and slipped out from his hold. “I said I must marry,” she said. “The look on your face—have no fear, sir. My need is too great for a second son to supply.”
“Your need?” He sounded as witless as an automaton. “What need?” She was the last woman he’d imagine in desperate straits. “What do you mean?”
She blew out a breath. “I am pockets to let. Why else should a widow remarry?” Her smile was not pleasant. “Surely not love? We are too old to be so naïve, are we not? Or I am, at least. Older than you, and wiser, too.”
“You’re . . .” He could not put it together. She gave no sign of suffering financially.
An unpleasant prickle moved through him, a tightening in his chest that spelled comprehension. “Weston,” he said.
She shrugged. “Or Hollister. Either will serve.”
A knocking came at the door. That black smile did not leave her face. “How shocked you look,” she said. “I do hope you were not planning to ask me to be your keeper? I’m afraid I can’t afford it. Ask next year, when I am once again some man’s angel in the house.”
Before he could reply to that fine insult, she pulled open the door. “Jane!” she said. “Excellent! Lord Michael was just leaving.”
And taking her friend’s arm, she hurried out of view—never once looking back.
• • •
He did not follow her instructions, for he never returned to the drawing room. Liza passed a black hour with one eye on the door before Baron Forbes’s fatigue brought an end to the assembly. Travel-worn, the company agreed that there was no shame in concluding this evening, and only this evening, at a shockingly reasonable hour.
Liza walked with her guests to their rooms, bidding them one by one good night, ignoring Weston’s idle remark—and Katherine’s more pointed one—about Michael’s disappearance. Once everyone was safely installed, she hurried back to the entry hall.
Moonlight was falling through the skylight onto the checkerboard tiles. A shadow detached itself from the wall: the night porter. He had let his lordship out the front doors over an hour ago, he said.
She opened the doors before she realized what she was doing. Not a breeze stirred. The night was still and warm and empty.
Her heart gave an odd, hollow knock.
Another lie to lodge against his account: I’m not going. But he had gone, after all.
Which was what she had wanted.
Coming to her senses, she pulled the doors shut. The porter was giving her a sideways look; in the servants’ quarters tonight, gossip would fly.
She picked up her skirts and started for the stairs. Good riddance, then. Lying ass! His explanation had not made him look any better. How lovely it must be to live as a man, and take to one’s heels whenever the threat of marriage was raised. If she could earn a living—
But no. She sighed as she laid her hand on the balustrade, handsomely carved walnut, waxed to a high polish. This house was its own burden, absurdly expensive to maintain. But it had been built for her mother, to Mama’s own specifications, and Liza could no more sell it than she could part with her own soul.
No living she could have earned, even as a man, would have supported her obligations. Nor would the earnings of a second son, as well he knew. He had not even tried to argue with her on that count.
She swallowed. Such ludicrous thoughts! Of course he had not argued. The widows’ catnip was, by definition, a bachelor.
“Liza!” This breathless call came from above. Jane was creeping down the stairs, casting thrilled glances over her shoulder—the very picture of a four-year-old awake past her bedtime, nervous that the elders might catch her out.
Liza felt a great weariness swim through her. It was all still a game for Jane. She had so much time remaining in which to play without consequences.
“You should be in bed,” she said.
“Not before we speak!” Drawing her shawl more
tightly around her, Jane bounced on her feet. “You put me off earlier, but now you must tell: why was he in hiding? Did you know who he was all along?”
Liza did not pause when she reached Jane. The girl turned and hurried after her.
“There’s nothing so mysterious in it.” Her voice sounded sluggish and flat, but she could not muster a better performance. Her head ached. Her mind could barely grapple with whatever odd emotion was pulsing through her like a bruise.
He had kissed her, and it had felt . . . not like a kiss, but something more. A promise. She grew drunk on him within the space of a breath.
That made her doubly a fool. But when he touched her, her brain ceased to function. All she wanted was more. Frightening effect. With Nello, she’d finally learned about desire—but her desire had always been tempered by anxiety. Even as she’d touched him, she had calculated his response, gauging whether he was pleased, and how she might please him better.
With Michael de Grey, she thought of nothing at all. Greed consumed her. More, was all she thought.
Enough, she thought now. And: Never again.
“But of course there’s a mystery!” Jane sounded breathless and slightly cross. “A duke’s son, masquerading as a plain doctor—”
“He had his reasons.” If he truly intended to oppose his brother, perhaps he’d been right to flee. She had never spoken at length with Marwick, but his reputation did not recommend him—not as a friend, and certainly not as a man to cuckold. Her shock at Nello’s betrayal had been edged by her amazement at his stupidity. Margaret de Grey, of all people! Marwick was famously possessive.
Machiavelli would be a mere apprentice to him.
She shivered. Nello had been full of remorse when she’d discovered the affair. He had pleaded and begged for another chance, and been so terribly sweet in the weeks afterward—in order to win her forgiveness, Liza had assumed. Only now did it occur to her that perhaps it hadn’t been her forgiveness he was desperate to secure, but her silence.