“They’d believe me over you,” he tried, but Matthew didn’t even believe that himself.
“Of course you won’t go to the police,” Sharples sneered. “You can’t bring yourself to speak falsely, can you?” He shook his head, disgusted. “I knew it. You may not be a missionary, Dr. Collier, but you’re not far from it. Up on your high horse, you are, scornful of us regular folks just trying to get on.”
“Trying to get on?” Matthew scoffed, incredulous. “You rob your neighbors blind! You—”
Sharples promptly cut him off. “Get him out of here, will you?”
This time Matthew didn’t protest as the lackeys dragged him from the room and down the stairs. When they maneuvered him out through the front door, ready to toss him into the filth ofthe street, he finally fought back, bucking wildly until the men released him with hissed curses.
The flimsy door clapped shut.
Matthew blew out a breath, completely enervated, his entire body shaking.
What on earth had he done?
And how in the world would he fix it?
Chapter Twenty
She could send forhim at his club. He’d told her as much.
But still Cressida hesitated, and still she remained in London, alone and melancholy, arrested by indecision and ambivalence. She wished to go out, but there was no place to go, nothing worth attending, nothing worth risking an encounter with some hoodlum who might expose her for what she had been up to.
So she carried on quietly, keeping to herself, playing cards with Henry, tending her garden. Anything to put off her return to the country.
Until she could bear it no longer.
At the secretaire in her drawing room she penned a quick note, her heart racing. It had been several days since she’d last seen him.
She wanted him. Desperately.
Her eyes fell to the little gold casket she’d purchased at the curiosity shop by the docks, with the engraved goldfish on the lid and the two diamond-studded gold dice within.
He was a gambler; it had been unwise of her to stake her future happiness upon someone drawn to risk as pathologicallyas a moth to flame. But Matthew nearly always won. He never courted games of pure chance, never dabbled in anything so dangerous as a hazard table. She felt a sudden urge to reach for the gold box, to open it and examine the dice, to hold them reverently in her hand as if they were a talisman. But she forced her gaze away and instead sealed the short missive she’d written.
When she handed it off to a footman, it took her a moment to search her memory for the name of the club at which he was a member.
The Transom Club. She wrinkled her nose as she spoke the words aloud. It sounded so plain, so… dull. No wonder Matthew sought membership at the Athenaeum, a proper gentleman’s club.
She went to the conservatory to wait for him, wishing she could wash away the uncomfortable churn of emotions, the unease of her ambivalence, the anxiety over wondering whether he would come. It pierced her heart like a dagger, even as Cressida knew it was pointless, this worrying. For of course he would come.
Even though he was far too good for the likes of her.
She paused, pursing her lips in a half-frown. Was he truly, though? He hadn’t denied knowledge of this Mr. Sharples. And there was that boy on the steps of the hotel, and his limp handkerchief incongruously embroidered with an elegant M.C.
Matthew Collier.
Don’t be foolish, she told herself. It was a silly thing to think. Why, she could hardly imagine the number of people in this city who must possess the same initials.
And yet that was all she could think of as she waited. Had she been a fool? Was she continuing to be a fool, calling him to her at her own home?
Cressida supposed tonight she would uncover the answer. She did not know how to feel about it.
Pacing the immaculately tiled floor, she ran her hands delicately atop the blooms, then stopped to finger a waxy leaf the size of a tea tray. She’d always done her best thinking here, amid the verdant foliage, in the thick, humid atmosphere. It hardly bothered her, for she wore her favorite tea-gown, without a corset, and the sun had set some time ago. As with most other conservatories, Rowbotham House’s was not heated, which would make it rather unpleasant during the winter months.
But for now it was tolerable, and with the scant, soft lamplight and the pitch-black darkness beyond the glass panes, it felt downright seductive.
Cressida lowered herself onto a cushioned wicker lounge, reclining into a nest of pillows. She shut her eyes. The hour was late. What exactly did she want?
