He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he said, and it was as close to honest as I was likely to get from him. “All I can tell you is I suspected Malcolm might have something up his sleeve. I suppose I hoped that with you and Stoker here, strangers amongst them, he might behave a little better and not make the whole thing so bloody awkward.”
“If you knew this was going to be a difficult situation, why accept the invitation in the first place?”
To my surprise, he decided to answer. “Have you ever turned over a stone just to watch the nasty things wriggling underneath?”
“I think every child has.”
His mouth thinned into a cruel smile. “I am no longer a child. There’s a baser word for what I like to do. Let us simply say that kicking over this particular stone amuses me.”
“Then let us hope you do not get stung.”
CHAPTER
8
I was not entirely surprised to find Stoker sprawled in an armchair in front of the fire in my room.
“You should not be here,” I told him with some severity as I closed the door. “If the maid finds you in the bedchamber of your brother’s fiancée, it will cause all manner of talk.”
He waved a hand. “Let them gossip. It might bring Tiberius down a peg or two.”
“Your concern for your brother is touching.” I took the chair next to his, propping my slippered feet upon the hearth.
“Tiberius has a distinctly nasty side which you have never seen,” he reminded me.
“So you have mentioned. I might point out that while I am perfectly well aware that his lordship can be imperious and willful, to me he has been unfailingly courteous.”
“Only because he wants something. He has lured you down here with the promise of glasswings but he has an ulterior purpose, I’d stake my life on it.”
I refused to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with his suspicionsalthough I entertained a host of my own. “Your cynicism is fatiguing, Stoker. It is entirely possible that his lordship simply thought to do me a good turn. You forget he has already provided me with luna moths and a grove of hornbeams for the vivarium.”
“Making it all the more likely that when he imposes himself upon you, you will agree to his terms—no matter how ridiculous.”
“Such as?” I demanded.
“Such as this ludicrous masquerade of pretending to be his fiancée,” he said, lifting his brows in a gesture of exquisite mockery.
“You know why he felt it necessary. A respectable woman cannot travel alone with a man to whom she is unattached. It was the simplest means of offering me protection against the positively medieval norms of our society. Besides,” I added with a touch of malice, “I rather enjoyed the masquerade. Who would not appreciate the attentions of a gentleman of such sophistication?”
He shook his head, then leant back in his chair, crossing his legs at the ankles and lacing his fingers behind his neck. “I refuse to believe your head could ever be turned by the façade of elegant manners and excellent tailoring. I credit you with better judgment than that.”
“Tiberius is one of the most eligible men in London. Only a fool would refuse to at least consider the prospect of marriage to him. You have a decidedly low opinion of my pragmatism,” I told him.
“I have a lower opinion of my brother. You do not know him, Veronica, not really. He plays the gentleman, but he is nothing of the sort. He sharpened his claws on the back of my childhood and he has got worse with age.”
“Why?” I was curious in spite of myself. I liked the viscount and had little desire to hear Stoker’s flagellation of his character, but I was careful enough of him to be inquisitive.
Stoker shrugged. “He was old enough to pick up the servants’ gossipand realized I was Mother’s son but not Father’s.” Stoker seldom discussed the fact that he was the product of his mother’s brief liaison with an artist commissioned to paint her portrait during what might best be described as a “difficult patch” in her marriage to the previous Viscount Templeton-Vane. After bearing Tiberius, the heir, and Rupert, the spare, she had produced Stoker, a brilliantly blue-eyed cuckoo in the nest. The youngest, Merryweather, dated to a hectic period afterwards in which the viscount and his wife had attempted to reconcile.
He went on. “He used to torture me about it, but after a while he lost interest.”
“He simply ‘lost interest’? That doesn’t sound like Tiberius. He’s tenacious as a wolverine. What did you do tomakehim lose interest?” I demanded.
Stoker gave me a bland look. “I might have set fire to his bed. Whilst he was in it.”
“Enchanting. What do you know of his relationship with Malcolm Romilly?”
Stoker paused to think. “By the time Tiberius made friends with Malcolm, he and I had little to do with one another. Tiberius was not terribly happy at home, and neither was I. We both spent as much time away from the family seat at Cherboys as possible. Tiberius came here for school holidays and I eventually ran off to join the circus,” he added. In his case, it was no mere turn of phrase. Stoker had indeed run away with a traveling show before joining Her Majesty’s Navy. His youth had been a singularly adventuresome one.
