Almost a Gentleman (24 page)

"Have the furniture covered," she told him. "Keep everything in good order. We'll have to sell some assets if my emergency account is to cover all the expediencies," she added. "Of course, you know where I keep everything. You should go see Lady Kate Beverredge about it today."

"Very good, sir. And what shall I tell her in reference to the reasons for your precipitous departure?"

Phoebe shrugged. "I expect that you'll tell her everything. In scrupulous detail and to the best of your understanding and ability. As you always do."

Mr. Simms nodded respectfully, but his eyes flooded with sudden warmth. "Very good, sir," he repeated softly, and Phoebe felt a wild urge to undermine her disguise by wrapping her arms around his neck and weeping in full sight of the footman who'd appeared at the door just a moment before. She was saved from this mortifying excess, however, by the announcement that Lord Linseley was waiting in the foyer.

"Shall I help him carry the wounded boy to the carriage, sir?"

"Yes, thank you, Woods. And then would you get my bags?" She turned to Mr. Simms again. "I believe we've covered everything."

"I'm sure of it, Mr. Marston. Except to say that I wish you and Lord Linseley a fine, safe, and happy journey."

"Hmm. After the strife of last night, a peaceful, uneventful journey might be enough to wish for. Still, thank you, Simms. For everything. And do convey all my best regards to Mr. and Mrs. Andrewes."

Somehow it all seemed a bit too familiar, David thought, watching Phoebe stride out her front door and toward his carriage. There was a disturbing sense of déjà vu about it, as though he'd taken her home with him before, sometime in the past. But that was patently impossible.

What
was
possible, he thought with a start, was that he'd dreamed it. Yes, that was it. He'd dreamed it repeatedly, most likely every night for weeks. And he would doubtless have dreamed it again last night if he'd ever gotten to bed. It was a lurid dream, all bright colors and exaggerated detail, and it had probably become more lurid every time he'd dreamed it. Rather wonderful in its way, he couldn't help thinking. He stifled a grimace. So much for those chivalrous resolutions not to indulge in erotic fantasy. The purer his waking thoughts of her, the more salacious his dream life had become.

The dream had taken place in this very carriage. In fact, she'd made her first appearance in it looking very much as she did this morning: austere, diffident, groomed to black and white perfection—almost intimidating, with Marston's voluminous caped greatcoat swinging from her shoulders.

Much as he had in the dream, he nodded cordially to her as she stepped into the carriage and took the backward-facing seat opposite him. She returned his nod, adding a solemn smile,

She had violet shadows below her eyes. Well, of course—she hadn't gotten any sleep. He wanted to kiss her there, just below her great gray eyes—to make his lips delicate enough to caress, to comfort that delicate, bruised skin. Was he capable of such subtlety? He didn't know. The light was dim in the carriage; his emotions vague and hard to get hold of. He lowered his eyes for a moment, trying to recapture some clarity.

His dream had been brightly, even garishly lit, but this morning he'd regretfully drawn the carriage's velvet curtains against intruding glances. It had seemed the prudent thing to do, though now he wished he could see her more clearly in the morning light. He felt a sudden stab of jealous anger when he realized he'd never before seen her in the early morning. He couldn't help but wonder if Billy had.

She gestured toward the curtains. "Wise of you to shield us that way," she said. "Although who knows what our enemies know by this time."

"Yes, well, we'll simply take them on if we have to." Mysteriously, his anger had subsided somewhat at the sound of her voice. Or perhaps it had simply been her choice of words: "to shield us… our enemies."
We. Us
. He liked the two little plural pronouns she'd used.

His feelings, he thought, seemed to ebb and flow according to their own rhythms, quite beyond his understanding or control, while his love for her seemed utterly unaffected by the emotions that roiled within him. He wondered if that was always the case when you loved someone. Were you simply bound to work backward through all the accrued hurt and misunderstanding until you found your way home to the love that made it all worthwhile? It seemed maddeningly difficult, excruciatingly unpredictable, and demanding of constant vigilance. Rather like farming in English country weather, he supposed.

He'd been supporting a half-conscious Billy against his shoulder while he'd waited for her. She nodded approvingly.

"You've done a good job, propping his leg like that," she said, "but I'd like to hold him through the journey."

"Of course," he said. "Move beside him and I'll sit opposite you."

"You don't mind facing backwards when you travel?"

"Not at all."
So long as I can look at you all along the way
.

They negotiated the change of seats carefully enough, disturbing Billy as little as possible but bumping their own knees together rather gracelessly.

In his dream, she'd also sat across from him. But no one had bumped knees
. How clumsy, how tactless waking life was. This awkward jostling was the first time he'd touched her for weeks: a silly clacking of bone against bone, the rustle of fabric, shifting of feet in polished boots, as they settled into their seats for the journey.

"Sorry."

"It's nothing, my lord."

Perhaps it was nothing to
her
. He spread a large traveling rug over her and Billy and then draped another one over his own lap.

The boy settled his head on Phoebe's shoulder, sighing contentedly as she straightened the rug and smoothed his hair. David glared at him for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and took a breath. He'd expected to hate the boy, but found himself unable to do so. Billy was too young to hate. By the look of him he'd been born a year or two after Alec, and certainly with none of Alec's expectations or prerogatives. From his own encounters, David had concluded that the vast majority of people who sold their bodies only did so to avoid far worse fates; it certainly wasn't the boy's fault that his line of work had brought him into Phoebe's bed.

Enough of that, he told himself. One could be fair-minded about it, but it still wasn't pleasant to contemplate, especially at close quarters.

Her portmanteaus were loaded into the carriage boot, the doors shut. Croft had climbed up on the coachman's box and settled himself next to Dickerson, who cracked his whip and hied to the horses. The carriage lurched forward, jolted back, and clattered over the cobbles of Brunswick Square. They'd begun their journey.

David wondered what they would find to say to each other all day.

"We won't hurry," he announced. "It wouldn't be good for Billy. This evening we'll stop at an inn I know. The beds at the Swan are quite comfortable, and the food's excellent. We'll all get a good rest."

"Good," she replied. "And I'll change my clothes there. Marston may as well effect his customary disappearance, just in case we're being followed."

"Quite so."

"And thank you for your consideration."

"Not at all."

She continued to fuss over Billy, and David couldn't think of anything else to say. It would be a long day. He leaned back, letting the carriage jostle him as it would and allowing his thoughts to wander.

In his dream, the carriage never stopped. Nor did Phoebe do something as prosaic as change her clothes. In his dream, her costume magically transformed itself from stiff male masquerade to devastatingly flimsy female attire. First the greatcoat would disappear, then the cravat. Jacket. Shirt… Her masculine garments would undergo a total metamorphoses, reshaping themselves into a gauzy rose-pink gown with an exceedingly low neckline and little puffed sleeves slipping down her slender shoulders to reveal her breasts.

David wondered how much time he'd devoted to guessing the exact character of her breasts. Of course, one could never know exactly what they'd be like until one saw them. Until one kissed and caressed them, squeezed and teased and tongued them. Would their texture be soft or firm, their color like cream or like bluish buttermilk, tinted by the veins close below the skin? And the nipples, the aureoles surrounding them—would they be small and discreet or wide, dark, and poetic? One could only guess. One could only hope.

Still, certain characteristics were likely. Her small breasts wouldn't be girlish—she'd borne a child, after all, and that would show somewhere. At least he hoped it would. He loved the changes pregnancy and childbirth worked upon a woman's body; until now he'd never understood the fetish for untouched virginity that animated most men of his acquaintance. Of course, he could understand
now
, it was that deuced pride of ownership:
this is mine; no one has possessed it but my-

self and no one ever will
. Odd how easy it was to use the pronoun "it" when employing the language of property and ownership.

Lulled by the carriage's movement and befuddled by trying to follow the winding paths of his thoughts, he felt his eyelids grow heavy. Would it be permissible to indulge in a nap? Only the most fleeting of catnaps, he assured himself, a quick, visit to the colorful certainties of his dream world.

He settled back in his seat. Yes, that was better. The world beneath his eyelids was warm and rosy, soft and inviting. Raptly, his dream self watched a dream Phoebe slide slowly down onto her back, to lie upon the velvet seat. His dream self gasped softly as she parted her thighs and propped her legs on
his
seat, one narrow foot on either side of him, allowing him to lift the skirt of the pink gown and then the petticoat beneath it…

He fell into a blissful slumber, giving himself fully to the vision of her body so boldly splayed, so sweetly spread about him.

He woke slowly, much refreshed and happily attuned to the road running beneath the carriage wheels, the rhythmic thudding of the horses' hooves. They seemed to be making a nice pace; they must have already gained the great northern road. A margin of brightness seeped under his eyelids; she seemed to have opened the curtains a bit. He could feel the slow warmth of winter sunlight on his face. Or perhaps it was still the glow from that dream. Good thing no one could tell what went on within one's private imaginings…