The thought made him impatient with himself. If she was pursuing her prospect, it was none of his business. He was hungry. He should be at the dining table, making calf eyes at Jane.
Ah, but curiosity was the devil. He stepped silently out from his hiding place and stole after her. As he turned the corner, he caught sight of her climbing the stairs above. “Oh!” she said, and drew to a stop to address someone out of view. “Miss Trelawney! There you are!”
He stepped beneath the staircase to listen.
“I was looking for you,” she went on. “Did you not receive my note?”
The reply was too soft to make out, but after a moment, the stairs creaked: Elizabeth and her companion were coming back down.
He withdrew farther into the cramped space, and in the process, nearly knocked a Roman bust off its pedestal. Damned strange place to hide it. The senator, noseless but still resplendent in his wreath of laurels, glared reproachfully.
“—compose my thoughts,” came a serene female voice, not Elizabeth’s. “A clear head helps me receive the messages from beyond.”
One of the spiritualists, then.
The creaking ceased. From the sound of it, they were standing directly over his head. “About that,” said Elizabeth. The uncharacteristic hesitance in her voice caused his ears to perk. “I was wondering if perhaps . . .”
“Perhaps?” came the polite reply. This one sounded quite young.
“Perhaps you might direct the visions a bit.”
He swallowed a laugh. The little rogue! Her intervention last night had been too public; now she employed more surreptitious measures.
The spiritualist did not catch on as quickly as he had. “Oh, no,” she said earnestly, “I can’t control what I see in a person’s palm. I would strongly urge you to mistrust any who claim to be able to summon specific knowledge—”
“Yes, yes, I understand that the—spirits or what have you—rove where they may,” said Elizabeth. “However, for the sake of my guests, I do wonder if you might not focus your insights specifically on matters of the heart.”
A pause. “The palm does have much to tell us about love,” came the cautious reply.
Well spoken, Miss Trelawney.
“Mm,” said Elizabeth. “Splendid. Mind you, though, there’s a certain lady in our group, recently widowed, who would not be able to bear such discussion if it concerns her specifically. I believe it would, in fact, offend her should you predict a successful romance in her future. Mrs. Hull is her name. Young, very blond. Barely out of mourning, you know.”
He frowned. Was she working against him now? Or did she mean to divert Weston’s attention from Jane? Yesterday she’d seemed quite intent on Hollister.
“I see,” said Miss Trelawney. “I should not like to offend, of course.”
“Indeed not! But as for the rest of us—well, I would say that I, for instance, am perfectly willing to receive any happy news provided by your visions. Indeed, nothing could cheer me more greatly than to hear that my soul mate was in attendance at this very party!”
“Soul mate?”
“That’s the term I’ve heard used, yes.”
Weston had used it. Michael supposed that answered his question. He felt oddly cheered. He did not like Hollister in the least. Monopolizing jackass. Bent far too close to her when whispering.
“Soul mate.” Said slowly, in accompaniment to a scribbling noise. Miss Trelawney, Michael realized with delight, was taking notes. “Any particular hair color?”
“Oh, goodness, I can hardly guess,” Elizabeth said. “This is your talent, after all. Whether his hair is black or blond . . . there’s simply no saying.”
“The vision is hazy,” Miss Trelawney said in tones of compassion.
“Very hazy, I assure you!”
“Well.” More creaking as they resumed their descent. “Rest assured, madam, I have a great deal of practice in refining on such matters. You will not be disappointed.”
All cozy warmth now between the two women. “Oh, I know I won’t,” Elizabeth exclaimed.
A long moment of silence followed, in which Michael began to wonder if they had slipped out through some exit he’d not yet noticed. But as he took a step toward fresher air, the conversation resumed, freezing him in place.
“There is one other thing,” said Elizabeth, her voice much more distant now.
“Oh? Pray tell me, Mrs. Chudderley! I am here to entertain your every concern.”
“A certain gentleman. Dark hair. Roman nose. Lord Michael is his name.”
He grinned. Roman? That was . . . flattering. And had the dust at his feet parted to reveal a venomous asp, he would not have stirred an inch now.
“I do wonder,” Elizabeth went on, “if he is not . . . in terrible need of some sign from the beyond.”
“We all stand in need of guidance,” Miss Trelawney said solemnly. After a beat, she added, “In which direction, do you suppose, does Lord Michael require encouragement?”
He waited, prepared to swallow his laugh as she threw out a suggestion sure to lacerate him.
“His brother. If you could subtly assure him his brother will be well, that would be . . . lovely, I think.”
His humor died.
Miss Trelawney murmured some reassurance, and then the women’s footsteps retreated. Silence closed over him again, deepening. Yet he could not move. He stood there, feeling as brittle as glass, one hand still resting on the Roman senator’s head.
He had not expected that.
He did not deserve it.
He closed his eyes.
An afternoon’s distraction. Nothing more.
What liars they were.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
He’d found it easy last night—in the manner that a tooth extraction might feel easy—to witness Elizabeth’s flirtations with Hollister. In a crowded room while some charlatan rattled off nonsense, it was . . . easy not to take such matters seriously. But now that he’d overheard her conference with the palmist, her every remark to the eligible bachelors grated on his nerves. He stewed silently over the noon meal, letting the repartee flow over and past him like so much flotsam and jetsam; feeling, at times, as though he’d lost the skill of smiling, so stiffly did his lips respond to the natural cues.
He begged off the boating expedition, and retired to his allotted chamber to read. Or to try to read. Instead he found himself sitting at the window, sulking like a young girl denied her supper, watching the trees for a glimpse of the party’s return. And then, when that, too, became unendurable, he went to the writing desk and pulled out a sheaf of paper.
He’d written to Alastair yesterday, a cordial note that made no mention of their quarrel. But that was not his intention now.
I write to you, he began, of a woman I have met. Your first impulse will be to disdain her. But if you are as wise as I once imagined you, and if even a shred of brotherly feeling remains to you, I beg you to read patiently. For I would make my choice.
Four hours after dispatching this note to the staff, he caught the sounds of laughter and conversation floating up through the window. Looking out, he saw the boaters returning, Elizabeth arm in arm with both Weston and Hollister. She was talking animatedly, and had a wildflower stuck in her straw hat.
A man’s pride was a damnable thing. It bucked like an unbroken colt at this sight. It bade him ring the bell and call for his letter to be returned. To be burned. You choose her? She does not choose you.
Instead he pulled on his jacket and stepped out of his room. It was time, he thought, to go hunting a widow.
• • •
He found her, after a half hour’s search, alone on the terrace that overlooked the house garden. She was sipping a glass of wine and staring out at the sunset.
“Success?” he asked as he stepped out the doors.
Her laughter was edged. “Failure,” she said as she turned toward him. “Miserable failure.”
“It didn’t look so from the window.”
/>
She took a swig from her wineglass. “Watching, were you? Hollister was attentive, but Weston—well, he’s not so easy a target as you said. I tried my very best routine, innocently coquettish, bashful glances and all. Do you know what he asked me?”
“I can’t imagine,” he said as he walked toward her.
“Had I injured myself while boating? For I looked as though I had a terrible crick in my neck!”
He tried not to smile. “Perhaps he wanted to rub it.”
“No, he’s not so forward.”
“True,” he said after a moment. “Not sure there’s a forward bone in his body, actually.”
Their eyes met. She lifted her brows. “Oh, God above,” he muttered. He slapped his palm against his forehead. “Terrible double entendre.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t catch it, shall I? So long as I’m aping modesty.”
“Many thanks.” But when he lifted his head again, he made no effort to hide his grin. Had he ever met another woman with whom he could jest with such pleasure? It wasn’t only their silences that were comfortable. “Come now,” he said, “he really asked if your neck was sore?” What a blockhead!
“Surely if I wanted to lie I’d have made up a more entertaining story than that,” she said. “Or a more flattering one! Do I look as though I’m in pain?” She scrunched up her face and crossed her eyes.
He spluttered out a laugh. So simply she destroyed his dark mood. “Oh, very charming. Surprised nobody ever tried to photograph that look for sale in the high street.”
She dropped the mugging and sighed as she turned back toward the parkland. “Those blasted photographs.”
Her disgusted tone surprised him. He was feeling easier now, amenable to a gradual and casual introduction to the matter on his mind. Propping his elbows on the railing, he leaned forward, craning his head to get a look into her face. “Never say you don’t enjoy your fame?”
“Enjoy it!” She shook her head and laughed under her breath. “They were one of the stupider exploits of my youth. Freshly widowed, dying to kick up my heels. My husband was not, shall we say, a free spirit.”
He recalled Lady Forbes’s words. “Bit of a killjoy, was he?”
“Killjoys are too animated,” she said. “He was a stick-in-the-mud. Terribly staid. He liked the fact that I was pretty—until we wed. And then he disliked the fact that men tended to look at me. He was convinced I was doing something to encourage them. Which I wasn’t,” she added more softly. “But his accusations grew wearing. And once he was dead, I thought—why, let them look. Let them look as long as they like. For I am pretty, and I’ll no longer apologize for it.” She shrugged. “Mr. Readey—a photographer, quite fashionable a few years back—asked me to pose at just the right time.”
“But you regret it now?”
She retrieved her wineglass from the ledge beneath the rail. “Well,” she said into her burgundy, and then took a deep swallow. “I can’t say I fancy the notion that every Tom, Dick, and Harry might fall asleep staring at my face. If you know what I mean.”
He smiled despite himself, for he knew exactly what she meant. But it still came as a surprise to encounter a woman willing to allude to matters that women were not meant to know about.
His smile dropped as the implications struck him. If she knew how men pleasured themselves . . . then perhaps she had figured out how women might do it.
She gave him a look from under her lashes. “I wonder where your mind is wandering.”
Her purr had much the same effect as her hand might have, between his legs. He shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think you want to know.”
She eyed him a moment longer, the smile playing over her lips an added goad to his already fevered imagination. He swallowed a groan and trained his eyes on the green field rolling away toward the trees. If Alastair did not see reason, she would be another man’s wife. For he had nothing to offer her. And these thoughts . . .
Oh, the hell with it. These thoughts would remain with him until he was old and gray and too infirm to do anything about them, even with her photograph as an aid. And he was—he drew a great breath—resigned to it. His letter today proved as much.
“My, what a sigh,” she said lightly as he loosed his lungful. “Now I’m burning with curiosity.” She took another long drink of her wine, and he wondered, not for the first time, if her drinking was a tell, as clear and predictable as a bad poker player’s grimace.
Or perhaps it was medicine—a sort of anesthetic, for she looked away from his regard and said quietly, “To safer topics, perhaps.”
“Indeed.” He cleared his throat and straightened, gripping the rail now with his hands to give them something to do other than wander toward her. In the dying light, she looked gilded with gold, a sylvan creature, small and neatly curved and blemishless. But the beauty of her face—though it would, perhaps, always astonish him—no longer interested him nearly as much as the brain working behind it.
It was the brain he needed to figure out.
“So you’ve given up on Weston, then?” he said.
She shrugged. “No results.”
“And Hollister?”
Her grimace was fleeting. “I should prefer Weston, I think. Hollister’s regard is too . . . marked.”
That was a pretty piece of illogic, for eagerness would only serve her greater purpose. But he would not be the one to point out the error in her thinking. Indeed, he found the statement profoundly encouraging.
“Weston, then,” he said. Privately, he now agreed with her: having observed Weston very closely these last few days, he’d noticed the man’s attention growing particularly sharp whenever Jane Hull was about. “Don’t give up on him yet. Perhaps you’re simply going about it wrong.”
“I told you—”
“Let me see what you’re doing.”
She flashed him a startled look. “The . . . coquettish look, you mean?”
“Precisely.”
Her white teeth flashed, a grin that made her look properly girlish, indeed. “Really?”
He waved encouragement. “Give yourself a good start.”
“Very well.” She set down her wineglass and spun on her heel. Sashaying a few steps away, she cast over one shoulder a brief, coy look, her chin angled downward.
If Weston had not responded to that, he was dead inside.
“Terrible,” he said. “You’re smiling too much.”
She spun back, her hands fisting on her hips. “I’m not smiling in the least!”
“Yes, you are. With only one side of your mouth, granted, but that’s half a smile too much. Almost worse than a full smile, really, for it suggests you have some secret. The key, of course, is to look as though you haven’t a brain in your head.”
Now she crossed her arms. “That’s the key to Weston?”
“Afraid so.” He tried to sound sympathetic. “He likes simplicity.” And the man mistakenly thought he’d found it in Jane Hull. Best of luck to him.
She shook her head in evident disbelief. “And you really want me to marry such a man?”
No, he thought. No, I do not.
But he would not play his hand now. Not until he knew Alastair’s response. So he merely looked at her, and watched as she realized her mistake, and what his silence signified.
She broke from his gaze and quickly stepped to retrieve her glass. One swallow and it was drained. When she looked around, he knew she was searching for the bell to ring for more.
And he did not want to be part of this—to be the man who, even by accident, drove her to drink more deeply. Happily, he knew now how to distract her.
“You should study Jane,” he said. “She manages a vapid, flirtatious look very well.”
For a moment she went quite still. And then she turned toward him, forgetting about her bell and her empty glass, too. “Jane? You’re using each other’s Christian names now, are you?”
“Not publicly,” he said. Which was true enough. Not privately, eith
er, but he saw no need to mention that.
“My.” She stared at him. “Has the sham become something more, then?”
The question sounded so bright. Suspiciously so. He waited a moment, and sure enough, out came her wide smile: her clever and most dependable mask. “But what happy news!”
“Don’t be foolish,” he said. “I and Jane Hull—that would be a match made in hell.”
“Or perhaps not.” She twirled the glass by the stem before setting it aside. “Perhaps you’d suit each other perfectly. Your brother would approve of her, which means you’d have the money you need to keep your hospital afloat. And she would marry into one of the foremost families in England. Why, an ideal match all around.”
He didn’t know how to reply. All the honest answers would not make this conversation more comfortable. “Of course, you forget that a loveless marriage is never a happy bargain.”
Her laugh sounded brittle. “You’re preaching to the wrong congregation, sir. You forget my aim.”
“I don’t forget your ideal,” he said softly. “I have heard you speak of your parents.” And it frightened him, he realized suddenly. For her ideal was the only thing that might persuade her to surrender the chance of a brilliant match—a match to a moneyed aristocrat. And that ideal was a very high standard for a man to meet, particularly if he knew nothing of happy unions.
She was staring at him. He offered her a slight smile. She stepped away from it, then spun on her heel, bound for the bell that stood abandoned on the terrace ledge. He moved too quickly, though; when she started to ring it, he caught her hand.
She went very still. Her wrist was so small. She was so small, to contain such a ferociously vibrant force of life.
“Listen,” he said very softly, his entire brain focused on this speech, this damned important speech, a desperate bid to win them both more time. Even if Alastair balked, he might figure out some financial solution, but it would require time. “I’ve been thinking on this. Your need can’t be so great that it won’t survive another season. Come March, London will be rife with bachelors of means. You needn’t resign yourself—”