The brooding atmosphere of the place and the solitude had quieted Marchmont’s mind and brought him a measure of peace.
“He died a fortnight ago,” Dorothea said.
“He left his property to Papa.”
“The least one might do is wear mourning for him.”
Were they thinking of sending their youngest sister to Cousin Horatio’s? Zoe on a desolate, windswept island of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides? She’d think she was in Siberia. For one who’d spent twelve years in a land where the sun always shone and where even on winter nights the temperature rarely fell below sixty degrees, it would be exactly the same thing: bone-chilling and spirit-killing.
His gaze drifted to Zoe, in her wine-colored shawl and pale green frock. She was the antithesis of mourning, acutely alive and unmistakably carnal.
It wasn’t that her garments were seductive. It was the way she wore them and the languorous way she carried herself. Even standing still, she vibrated physicality.
“I did not have enough clothes, and the black dress my sisters found for me was too small,” she said, evidently misreading his prolonged survey as criticism. “To alter it was too much work. The maid must take a piece from here.” She pointed to the bottom of her skirt, drawing attention to her elegantly slender feet. “Then she must add it to this part, to cover my breasts.” She drew her hand over her bodice. “They must put in a piece here as well.” She slid her hands along her hips.
“Zoe,” Dorothea said warningly.
“What?”
“We don’t touch ourselves in that way.”
“Most certainly not in front of others who arenotour husband,” Priscilla said.
“I forgot.” She looked at Marchmont. “We don’t touch. We don’t say what we feel in our hearts. We don’t lie on the rug. We keep our feet on the floor except in bed or on the chaise longue.”
“Where were you keeping your feet?” he said.
She gestured at the furniture. “No chairs in Cairo. When I sit in one, my legs want to curl up under me.”
“This isn’t Cairo,” Augusta said. “You would do well to remember that. But of course you won’t.” She turned to Marchmont, who was with difficulty maintaining his composure. “Marchmont, you may find this all very amusing, but it would be a kindness to Zoe to face facts: It will take years to civilize her.”
She’d got him aroused in an instant, the little witch, and made him laugh at the same time. Zoe Octavia had never been fully civilized. She’d never been like anybody else. Now she was less so.
He let his gaze slide up from the hips and bosom to which she’d called his attention. Up the white throat and delicate point of her stubborn chin and up, to meet her gaze.
It was the gaze of a grown woman, not the girl he’d known. That Zoe was gone forever, just as the boy he’d once been was gone forever. Which was as it should be, he told himself. That was life, perfectly normal and not at all mysterious. It was, in fact, as he preferred it.
“If by ‘civilized’ you mean she must turn into an English lady, it isn’t necessary,” he said. “The Countess Lieven isn’t English, yet she’s one of Almack’s patronesses.”
“What is Almack’s?” said Zoe. “They keep screaming about it, and I cannot decide whether it is the Garden of Paradise or a place of punishment.”
“Both,” he said. “It’sthemost exclusive club in London, impossibly hard to get into and amazingly easy to get thrown out of. Birth and breeding aren’t sufficient. One must also dress and dance beautifully. Or, failing that, one must possess sufficient wit or arrogance to impress the patronesses. They keep a list of those who meet their standards. Some three-quarters of the nobility are not on the list. If you’re not on the list, you can’t buy an admission voucher and can’t get into the Wednesday night assemblies.”
“Are you on the list?” Zoe asked.
“Of course,” he said.
“Men’s moral failings tend to be overlooked,” Augusta said.
Marchmont ignored her. “You’ll be on it, too,” he told Zoe.
“That,” said Gertrude, “will take a miracle, and I have not noticed that you and Providence are on the best of terms.”
“I don’t believe in miracles,” he said. “Not that Almack’s signifies at present.”
“Doesn’t signify?” Augusta cried.
Why would they not go away? Why had Lexham not strangled them all at birth?
