Almost a Gentleman (23 page)

She smiled roguishly at Dr. Riggs, who was making no secret of his curiosity about the evening's events and participants. Fine, she thought, just so long as his curiosity doesn't prevent him from doing his job. Her relief that Billy would live made it all seem unbearably trivial, but she knew that the doctor would feel cheated if he weren't presented with some sort of explanation for the odd comings and goings in Mr. Marston's home this evening.

And since she couldn't think of a reasonable explanation, the best option was probably a scandalous one. Let the good doctor surmise—as he probably had already—that Mr. Marston had intended to stage a male orgy tonight. When he got a look at Stokes, he'd probably conclude that the man had been chosen for the most decadent of reasons, his monstrous beefiness a stunning contrast to Billy's erstwhile beauty. Well, let him conclude whatever he liked. Her masquerade wouldn't be hurt by scandal. Just pray that he remained unaware that Lord Linseley was in the library as well.

The only trouble with this plan was that the man Mr. Simms ushered into the room a few minutes later wasn't Stokes, but the Earl of Linseley himself.

Phoebe watched the doctor raise a quizzical eyebrow. Well, he knew about the gambling episode at Vivien's, of course; the estimable Lord Linseley was the last person he would have expected to find here tonight.

The earl nodded. "Good evening, Doctor."

He smiled coldly at Phoebe. "I insisted on helping instead of Stokes, Mr. Marston. You and I can continue our unpleasant financial wranglings some other evening. But since our disagreements have brought me here already, please accept my services in this medical matter. I know something about dislocated shoulders, you see. Just a few months ago one of my tenants sustained a similar injury falling from the roof of a barn."

"Thank you, my lord, it's very generous of you."

Gazing keenly at him, she found that she wasn't able to decipher the expression in his eyes. He turned away from her, quickly peeling off his coat and waistcoat and draping them on the back of a chair.

Dr. Riggs shrugged, delightedly befuddled by this interesting addition to the cast of characters Marston had assembled. With some evident reluctance he turned his attention back to professional matters. The shoulder—ah yes, the shoulder. Far less interesting than the story he'd tell tomorrow at his club.

"Grateful for your assistance, Lord Linseley. Let's begin, shall we?"

Lord Linseley rolled up his sleeves.

It had taken hours, but the shoulder was back in place, the bones set, the broken rib taped up, and all the various wounds stitched up and attended to. Mr. Simms had finally escorted Dr. Riggs to the door.

Billy was asleep, worn out by the doctor's ministrations and soothed by opiates. His face was more swollen and discolored than it had been when Stokes had carried him in, a patchwork of stitches, plaster, and bandages. Still, his features had settled into some reasonable serenity; he must be plagued by a thousand pains and discomforts, Phoebe thought, but at least he was free of the agony of the dislocated shoulder.

He'd screamed when the doctor had moved the shoulder back into place. It had been no easy task for Lord Linseley to hold him still, his forearms tensed, his face utterly devoid of emotion. Phoebe had fetched and carried, helping in such small ways as she could. Mostly she had forced herself to maintain Marston's sangfroid through Billy's screams. Now that she and the earl stood facing each other across Billy's slumbering body, she had to work even harder to maintain her air of calm detachment.

Lord Linseley was more skilled at masculine inscrutability than she could ever be, she thought. His expression remained impeccably neutral as he rolled his sleeves down over his powerful forearms and buttoned them at the wrist. The only thing Phoebe could tell for certain was that he was drained of energy and spirit, his cheeks ashen beneath rough black stubble, his dark-rimmed blue eyes opaque as winter ice.

I wish he looked angrier, she thought. A visible anger would have been easier to penetrate than this frigid rage.

"Thank you, Lord Linseley. I don't know how we should have managed without you tonight."

He nodded absently. "Yes, well, I wanted to save the boy any more undeserved suffering."

She winced at the accusation implicit in the word "undeserved."

"Quite right. He's suffered enough already."

There didn't seem to be a great deal more to say.

She corrected herself. There was everything to say. If her mouth had been capable of shaping the words.

He turned to pick up the clothing he'd hung over a chair back.

She opened a pair of drapes to let in a bit more light. The gas lamps in the street were still lit; their sickly yellow mixed with the cold pre-dawn glare in the sky to illuminate his back and shoulders. His linen shirt was rumpled, sweat-stained. A bit of it had come untucked from the waistband of his trousers.

His upper body was rigid, the powerful muscles knotted from the effort he'd expended to hold Billy gently but firmly. She wanted to unbutton the rumpled shirt, pull it down over his shoulders and out of his trousers. To put her hands on his overtaxed muscles, exerting warm, healing pressure on poor, overworked, distended flesh. And then to encircle his waist with her arms while she kissed him from the nape of his neck to the small of his back. If only, she thought, he'd let her bring him back to life, to reawaken the vital breathing body hidden within the carapace of exhaustion and fury that encased him.

If only, she thought, she could touch him in any way at all.

His face was still turned away from her. His hands were busy with his clothing. Helplessly, she watched his shirt—and the muscles beneath it—disappear beneath his gray waistcoat, his dark blue coat.

He'd be leaving in a moment.

He turned back to face her. Stiffly, as though his lips were as split and bruised as Billy's, he asked, "Why did you summon me tonight?"

Here it was at last. And it would hurt, she thought, immediately loathing herself for the word "hurt." It had been Billy who'd suffered pain tonight. But the word stayed with her: for it
would
hurt to have to suffer Lord Linseley's anger and disrespect. All right then. She'd face it.

She lifted her head slightly.

"I'm not quite sure why I asked you to come," she said. "It was Mr. Simms's idea at first," she added. "He was wise enough to know that we needed you. And I knew he was right."

He grimaced. "Yes, I expect that you do need me. Your Billy being incapacitated as he is."

"I deserve that," she returned, willing herself not to flinch.

"You're quite within your rights to assume the worst about me," she added. "It was very wrong of me not to have informed you of my arrangement with him. But the situation isn't what you suppose."

He spat out a brief laugh. "I suppose you're simply helping him improve his reading every Tuesday and Saturday night."

"Actually, I am."

He blinked.

"You needn't believe me. I freely admit that I haven't been completely forthcoming with you. But I'm being quite honest with you now. The truth is that I haven't… I haven't taken Billy to bed since… well, for quite some time."

She'd supposed that she'd be able to deliver that speech with more aplomb. But her voice had faded toward the end. For it was clear that he hardly cared that she'd stopped taking Billy to bed; he wanted her somehow to assure him that she'd never made love to the boy at all.

Perhaps the whole truth would help, she thought. Well, why not? Why not tell him that ever since that first night at Almack's she couldn't possibly have made love to anyone but him? She wanted desperately to say it but she couldn't. Not yet. Not without some signal from him.

The air in the room felt heavy, freighted with any number of things one or the other of them might have said but couldn't. Or wouldn't.

Damn his male reticence, she thought. For it was clear that she was no match for him when it came to this business of aggrieved, silent stares.

She conceded defeat and then quickly opened another line of attack. If he was too much a man to help her say what she was aching to say, he was still gentleman enough to respond to a direct question.

"Why did you come?" she asked.

He shrugged. "I'm no more sure than you were about why you summoned me. Odd, isn't it?"

"You're disappointed in me."

"I know I have no right to be."

"You thought I was something I'm not."

"As the rest of the world does. Except for a privileged few. Like Billy."

"You're very angry."

He shrugged again. As if the assertion were too simple, too obvious to warrant an answer. Or because he simply couldn't bear to admit it. She watched him carefully. He lowered his eyes for a moment, then stared truculently at her again.

"You're not safe here," he finally said.

"No," she replied. "I suppose I'm not. I think I shall take Billy to Devonshire with me in a day or two."

"I won't have you traveling without adequate protection."

Indignantly, she began, "I don't believe that it's
your
prerogative, sir, to prescribe how…" And then, as Billy groaned in his sleep, she stopped herself with a wry smile. "You're right, of course. It's been selfish of me, daring to be brave at others' expense. I shan't do so in the future. Perhaps Mr. Stokes would be willing to accompany me, at least as far as Rowen-on-Close."

Seeing him knit his brows, she quickly added, "Of course in the future
I'll pay
him for his services. I shouldn't want you to think that I'd continue accepting your generosity…"

"I don't think anything of the sort." The vehemence of this response, she thought, seemed to surprise him as profoundly as it did her.

"Well, then… ?"

"I want you—and Billy too—to come with me. To Linseley Manor. In L-Lincolnshire."

Surely
, she thought,
I'm not hearing him correctly. That faint stammer must be a trick of my imagination
.

But no, she'd heard him stammer once before, though she couldn't remember when. Did it matter when she'd heard it? No, of course not. What mattered was that just now he seemed to have said the most extraordinary thing. If she'd heard him correctly. Her incredulity warred with a tremulous elation, both of which she somehow managed to hide behind an air of prudent matter-of-factness.

"Is that wise?"

"A good deal wiser than your going to Devonshire. Remember, after all, that our vicious friend knows of that destination."

"Yes, but is it wise for
you? To
endanger yourself by traveling with Marston?"

"Damn it, I
said Yd
help you and I
will help
you!"

"You're still angry."

"I can't imagine what makes you think so, Mr. Marston. I'll be back for you and Billy in a few hours. At eight, does that give you enough time to prepare? Good morning, sir."

She dressed and bathed as quickly as possible, producing a reasonably convincing though rather pale and fragile version of Marston.

The important thing, she told herself, was to keep her wits about her. Not to wonder about the meaning of what she was doing, but simply to occupy herself with the details.

Clothing, first of all. Mr. Simms would help her pack—but which clothes? Marston's? Or the few gowns and pelisses she kept locked in a secret cabinet, behind a sliding wall in Marston's dressing room? She didn't have many women's garments that were suitable for winter, but she packed a few of her best. A riding costume seemed practical, she thought. The white cashmere gown with a pink satin sash, on the other hand, was doubtless absurd. Probably it was all a waste of time and effort: Lord Linseley wouldn't ever want to see her dressed as a woman. But yes, she'd take them—including the white, which was one of her favorites. Perhaps Marston would need a disguise.

The bags were finally packed. The next order of business was breakfast.

"Just coffee, Simms."

Wordlessly, he set a large bowl of porridge and several rashers of bacon on the table in front of her. She took a tentative bite—and then surprised herself by downing every bit of it, heaping marmalade onto her toast and stirring thick cream into her second cup of coffee.

Billy would also need to eat when he woke, she thought. He couldn't take more than gruel, which Mr. Simms brought to her in a pot with a tight-fitting lid on it, along with a large silver flask of strong, brandy-laced tea.

"I wish you were coming, Simms," she said. "I'm a little intimidated by the prospect of this journey, you know."

He smiled and shook his head. "You're not intimidated by anything, sir," he said.

She managed a weak facsimile of Marston's cocky grin. "Quite right," she said. "And how convenient to have a valet to remind me of it."

It was half past seven. The bags were packed. Marston's winter greatcoat was laid out on a chair. She and Mr. Simms agreed that the house should be shut down during her absence. The bloodstained rugs and furniture would have to be cleaned or replaced. The servants would be given a paid vacation, and Mr. Stokes would be hired to keep an eye on the house, reporting any strange goings-on to Mr. Simms, who would be staying with his sister and brother-in-law.