Everything I Ever Wanted (13 page)

Some color returned to South's complexion. The problem was that it was gray. "Have done, man. Your talk alone curdles the contents of my stomach. In any event, you mistake the cause of my foul mood." He made a dismissive, impatient gesture. "The dowager duchess's fete was unexceptional." Actually, the evening had been highly diverting, and in another frame of mind South would have humored his valet with the finer points.

His companion to the duchess's home had been North's lovely wife, a circumstance which made the night's affair exceptional from the outset. Northam, chafing a bit that his countess had helped hatch the scheme, was left at home to twiddle his thumbs with East and Marchman as his amiable alibis. It had all been in aid of helping North apprehend the notorious Gentleman Thief, and Southerton had not had a moment's hesitation in volunteering his services. An evening in the company of North's countess was infinitely preferable to the prospect of yet another performance of French farce in Drury Lane. Still more important was that no wretched disguise was required to attend her grace's ball.

He had come close to catching his man. Or North's man, he reminded himself. He had come upon evidence the thief had done his work again, only to lose sight of his quarry on the duchess's rooftop. He might have given chase, but his responsibility to Elizabeth forced him back to the squeeze downstairs. He allowed his friends to tease that he'd been more concerned with rending a sleeve or staining the velvet collar of his coat than he had been with stopping the thief. Elizabeth was the only one who found his response to stay off the rooftops at all sensible.

South wondered what she would say if she knew how he regretted it. He hadn't been thinking entirely of her, though he was gentleman enough not to admit it. His responsibility to India Parr had also been on his mind. He would be no good to her if a single misstep plummeted him headlong into the duchess's rosebushes.

But then again, he had not known last night that she had made another arrangement with her mysterious protector.

Out of the corner of his eye, Southerton saw that his valet was still hovering in the doorway. "The announcement, Darrow," he repeated, pressing three fingertips to his temple. "The Gazette . That is all I require at the moment. See to it yourself. I don't want it bumbled."

"Right away, my lord."

"And Darrow?"

"Yes, m'lord?"

"If there is no improvement to my head within the hour, I believe I will try that remedy."

Darrow said nothing. The morning was bound to improve if the viscount came around to thinking it was his own idea.

India pressed a linen napkin to her mouth. For a moment she thought she would be sick. A copy of the Times lay beside her plate, folded so the column she had been told to read was front and center. She did not look up until she had some control over her speech. There was no predicting when color would return to her blanched features.

At the opposite end of the breakfast table, the Earl of Margrave made a steeple of his long, elegantly shaped fingers and rested his chin on the points. It was not an attitude of prayer but of stern contemplation. His eyes were dark: the color of coffee without cream, bitter chocolate without milk. He watched her narrowly, with the flat, still, unnerving gaze of a predator. His smile, though, when India lifted her eyes to his, was pleasant enough. He had been told he had a beautiful smile, and if he were to judge by its effect on the women of his acquaintance, then it was no mere flattery.

At birth he had received the title Viscount Newland and the Christian name Allen. His mother was the only one to address him familiarly as Allen. To his father and his schoolmates at Hambrick he was Newland. Upon the death of his father seven years ago, Newland became Margrave, and almost without exception was addressed as such by his peers. India Parr fell outside all the neatly drawn boundaries, and he made allowance for this. He preferred that she address him as Margrave but did not refine too much upon it if she forgot and called him Newland.

They had known each other long enough that such could be brushed aside, provided she did not do it to provoke him. He had never pretended there was no end to his patience with her. She must be sensing that she had finally reached it.

He was twenty-eight years old, five years India's senior, but the attitude and tone he adopted toward her was as often parental, even proprietary, as it was intimate.

"This was unnecessary," India said, lowering her napkin. "I wish you had not done it." She smoothed it across her lap, hiding fingers that trembled slightly. She was angry, to be sure, but she also wondered at the emotion that made it surge inside her. Fear? Hurt? The prospect of further loneliness? "I thought we were agreed it need not come to this."

"That was your opinion, India. One I never shared."

India felt her stomach lurch again. If she were sick in front of him, she would never forgive herself and he would never forget. He was watching her closely, as though looking for some sign that she was injured or, more than that, suffering. If she were a cricket in a cage, he'd have just finished wrenching a leg free. Never the cage alone to trap his quarry. Must needs have crippled the creature as well. "You might have told me of your intention to do this."

Margrave did not lift his chin from where it rested on the points of his fingertips, but his smile deepened. "And listen to all your arguments to the contrary? I think not." Now he straightened his slim frame and sat back comfortably in his chair. His hair curled naturally close to his scalp, giving definition to the shape of his head and framing his brow and temples. He wore it in the common mode of consciously crafted carelessness and was never bothered by the paradox of such fashions. When a lock of gold and ginger fell forward, he did not raise a hand to rake it into place, but gave his head a toss instead, like a restless colt would fling his mane. "Have done with your pouting," he told her. "It is unseemly and changes nothing. I am set on the matter."

"For how long?"

"I have not decided." While his eyes continued to study India carefully, his shrug communicated indifference. "I suppose until your company ceases to amuse me. It is perhaps unfortunate, my dear India, that you have never had the least notion of what I find entertaining." He gave her an arch look as he picked up his fork. "One could even deduce from this that I am agreeably diverted by your very ignorance."

"And one would be wrong," she said flatly. "It is never so simple as that."

He laughed. "You see? You have amused me already and we are only at breakfast. It bodes well for a promising day." Margrave carefully cut a wedge from a slice of tomato and placed it in his mouth. "Eat, Dini. You will feel the better for it."

"India," she said.

"My pet has no use for pet names? Is that what you're telling me?"

India did not deign to respond to his assertion that she was his pet. It was too uncomfortably close to the truth. Denial might do more than merely amuse him; it might challenge him to prove it. Above all things she did not want that. "My name is India," she said with some dignity. "I have given you leave to use it. I would not take it upon myself to tell you more than that."

Margrave's chuckle was melodious. "Oh, yes, you would," he countered. "But I can see you are making an effort not to be entirely disagreeable. Now, do worry less about biting your tongue and apply those delicate buds to breaking your fast."

India stared at her plate. She thought she might manage the soft-cooked egg, but the sausages and toast and tomato would certainly remain uneaten. Picking up her spoon, she tapped the crown of her egg and began peeling away the shell. "I have rehearsal this morning," she said.

"I know. Speed the Plough ."

"You suggested the play to Kent, didn't you?"

"Of course."

"When?"

"I couldn't say. A few months back, I suppose. It cannot be important. I am in regular correspondence with him, as well you know."

She did. She also knew it was a correspondency that went in one direction only. Margrave would not have supplied Kent with the means to make a reply. That might have suggested there was some equal footing in their partnership.

India was clear in her own mind, even if James Kent was not, that the Earl of Margrave always maintained the high ground.

"I care very much about your success," Margrave said suddenly.

India glanced up in time to catch the earnestness she'd only heard in his voice just fading from his features. It would have been a mistake to suppose such a moment was unguarded or marked by weakness. Some observers might have found Margrave's countenance stamped with certain effeminate characteristicsthe delicately pared nose, for example, or the well-defined, sensual mouth. His expression might be described as boyish or a shade wistful. This, too, would have been an error in judgment. What India glimpsed in his face and mien was not youthfulness but immaturity, the desire for approval giving way quickly to the demand for the same. He was a boy, not boyish, without heart but without consciousness of the lack of it.

It made him a predator without peer.

"I know my success is important to you," India said. It was not quite as he had stated, but her words were more the truth than his own.

A shadow flickered across Margrave's features as he considered taking issue with her. He let it pass. "You will forgive me for the Times entry, will you not? It will be tiresome for you to continue to refine upon it. How will you learn your lines if your thoughts are drifting elsewhere?"

"I know my lines."

Margrave continued to apply himself to his breakfast, his appetite undiminished by her contrariness."Will Southerton see the announcement, do you think?"

"I cannot possibly say."

"He will hear of it, though."

"That seems likely." A chill ran under her skin, raising gooseflesh along the length of her arms. She would have risen and gone to the hearth to warm herself if Margrave would not have derived satisfaction from it.

"He was there last night, you know."

"At Lady Calumet's?"

Margrave nodded. "It was a decent piece of luck I found my own invitation. Being so long from this country as I was, it is remarkable the disagreeable old bitch had the presence of mind to place me on her guest list." He shrugged. "But then, she counts my mother as one of her many dearest friends. That seems to be more important than the fact that she and my mother actually share some ancestor. A grandmother? Great-grandmother?" He pondered this a moment, then dismissed the tenuous blood connection from his mind. "It signifies nothing. It is more to the point that she has such a large number of dearest friends. Curious, that. Is it always that way when one arrives at a certain age, do you think?"

"I do not know."

"Perhaps it will be so with us," Margrave said. "By virtue of the fact that we survive into old age together, you and I shall be the dearest of friends." He regarded her with a slight smile twisting his lips but was not in anticipation of a reply. He continued in the same rhetorical bent "Who else will be part of our dearest circle? I can think of no one now."

India spooned a bit of soft egg into her mouth. It had little taste, but it went down easily enough and it helped her swallow the ache at the back of her throat. She managed to keep threatening tears at bay.

"Aaah, India, you are not going to play, are you? That is very bad of you, you know. Will you ask nothing at all about him? I can tell you whatever you'd like."

She dipped her spoon once more into the bowl of her egg-

"I shall tell you anyway," he said. "Because it pleases me to do so. But first, about the evening." Margrave set his fork down and traced the flourished edges of the silver stem with two carefully manicured nails. "It was every bit the crush I predicted. I was reacquainted with any number of people I could have wished never to see again, which is always the hellish side of an evening such as it was. Though I did see Barlough and several others from my misspent Hambrick youth; therefore, it was also not without reward."

Margrave picked up his coffee cup and sipped. "At the moment I thought the evening had grown especially wearing, we were entertained by the appearance of the Gentleman Thief." He nodded toward the newspaper beside India's plate. "You can read an account of it there. I can tell you it caused a stir. Thank God. We might have expired for lack of fresh air otherwise."

"You saw the Gentleman?"

"No. More's the pity. What a coup it would have been to have captured the fellow." He briefly contemplated the laurels that would have been his to wear, then dismissed it from his mind. "The vandal apparently made free with the dowager's jewelry; a sapphire and diamond necklace is the missing piece. It is an intriguing notion that he was one of the invited guests, is it not? I suppose it is why his identity is a constant source of such delicious speculation. Why, India, it may have even been your viscount. I lost sight of him not long before the act of the theft was revealed."

Keeping her voice carefully neutral, she said, "I have heard the Earl of Northam's name linked to the Gentleman."

"Northam? He was not present. That will remove his name from the ton's collective dance card." He paused a beat, placed his cup back in its saucer. "His wife was there, though. On the arm of Southerton."

India blinked. A touch of color returned to her cheeks.