“I’ve disposed of the mob,” he said. “Next is the newspapers.”
He walked to the door, and the tragic chorus gave way.
He summoned a footman.
“You will find a disreputable-looking being named John Beardsley loitering in the square,” Marchmont told the servant. “Tell him I shall see him in the anteroom on the ground floor.”
As one would expect, this set off the chorus.
“Beardsley?”
“That horrid little person from theDelphian?”
“What is theDelphian?” came the lilting voice from behind him.
“A newspaper,” said a sister.
“Ghastly, gossipy newspaper.”
“He’s a vile little man who writes stories for it.”
“Sometimes in iambic pentameter. He fancies himself awriter.”
“You can’t mean to have him in the house, Marchmont.”
“What will Papa say?”
“Since I am not a mind reader, I haven’t the least idea what your father will say,” said Marchmont. “Perhaps he will say, ‘That was an excellent idea the ancient Greeks had, of abandoning female infants on a mountainside. Why was that practice given up, I wonder?’”
Having rendered them momentarily mute with outrage, he turned to Zoe. “Miss Lexham, would you be so good as to walk downstairs with me?”
Before she stepped out into the corridor, she smoothed her skirts. In another woman, the gesture would have seemed nervous. With her it was provocative. She did it in the way she’d trailed her hands across her bosom and along her hips.
I know all the arts of pleasing a man, she’d said.
He had not the smallest doubt she did. He was aware of heat racing along his skin and under it, speeding to his groin. He could almost feel his brain softening into warm wax, the wax a woman could do as she liked with.
Nothing wrong with that, he told himself. Men paid good money for women who possessed such arts. He’d be paying good money, too, come to that. He forgot about her annoying sisters and laughed—at himself, at the circumstances.
She looked up questioningly at him, and he almost believed she had no idea how provocative she was. Almost believed it.
I’m not innocent, she’d said. That he could believe.
“I was only thinking of the thousand pounds you’ve cost me,” he said.
“You refer to the wager with your friends,” she said. “You didn’t believe it was me. But why should you? I was worried at first that my own parents wouldn’t know me.”
“Well, none of us do, do we?” he said. “But it is you, beyond a doubt. And I am far too glad of that to begrudge the money.”
“You’re glad?” she said, her face lighting up. “You’re glad I’m back?”
“Of course,” he said. “Did you think I wanted to find that your father had been taken in by an imposter? Did you think I wanted to see him made a fool of?”
She looked away then, and he couldn’t see the hurt and disappointment in her eyes—not that he would have noticed. Eyes were reputed to be windows to the soul. The Duke of Marchmont didn’t care to look that deep.
That evening
Wearing a wry smile, Lady Tarling opened the oval red velvet box. Within lay a diamond and golden topaz necklace, with matching bracelet and earrings.
