How the Marquess Was Won (15 page)

Does one ever really know anyone
? the marquess had asked her.

The pianoforte music started up again. Phoebe and the smoke were forgotten as Lisbeth folded her hands rapturously beneath her chin again and curved her mouth into a little smile. It looked to Phoebe very much like another pose she’d practiced in front of the mirror.

When Signora Licari opened her mouth to sing, Phoebe could feel her voice vibrating in her chest, as though her heart was singing along. And she ducked her head and, with great hope, surreptitiously sniffed her own shawl. She said a silent hosanna. It, too, smelled like smoke.

Which meant it smelled like him.

She closed her eyes and surrendered to a moment of weakness. She imagined the weight of his coat draped over her, warming and protecting her, simply because she belonged to him.

T
he church bells hadn’t yet rung, the sun was barely a suggestion in the sky, but Mr. Postlethwaite had already hung out his sign and was just about to take his first sip of tea. He sighed with happiness instead when the bells on his door danced and in walked Lord Deep Pockets.

He peered out the window. No carriage today, alas, advertising to the world his presence and luring curious crowds who would want to, need to, buy something where Lord Dryden had purchased something. He’d instead tethered a horse—an enormous black one, as glossy as the toes of the man’s boots—outside the shop. Which Postlethwaite assumed was the marquess’s version of arriving incognito.

He replaced the teacup in his saucer with a clink, and bowed low and deep.

“A pleasure and honor to see you again, my lord. Did the lady appreciate her gift, or have you had an opportunity to give it?”

“I believe the lady sincerely did appreciate it, and thank you again for your assistance, Mr. Postlethwaite.”

Postlethwaite was tickled by the opportunity to speak so formally. “May I help to find something else? We’ve a selection of gloves for gentlemen.”

The gloves again! Jules could have sworn there was a devilish glint in the shopkeeper’s eye.

And then the marquess said the words he’d been dreading uttering. But the compulsion could not be denied, and he wasn’t fundamentally a coward.

“I find today I am in need of a bonnet.”

Mr. Postlethwaite was silent.

And then his eyes crept toward the marquess’s hairline.

“It will be a gift for a
woman
, Mr. Postlethwaite.”

“Of course, sir.”

The marquess wished the “of course” sounded a bit more sincere. He’d scarcely been in the shop for more than three minutes and already his dignity was fraying.

But he’d actually lost sleep contemplating and rejecting strategies with the seriousness one might plan a military campaign. And
while
he planned, he tried to ignore the fact that he’d decided to do this was wholly irrational, and that he’d never yet done anything irrational in his life.

But there was no question that he would do it.

In the end, it all came down to whether he could imagine giving the instructions to a footman or to his valet for the purchase he wanted to make. And he simply couldn’t countenance it.

“Would you like to peruse the bonnets for a time, my lord, or did you have a particular one in mind? I can show you—”

By way of answer, the marquess merely raised one finger:
Hold.
Because the only way he could be certain he had the right one had to do with . . . geography.

Mr. Postlethwaite watched, riveted, as the marquess followed the instructions he would have needed tell a footman, as carefully and methodically as if he were walking off a treasure map:

Stand in the corner of Postlethwaite’s shop, the one brightest at three o’clock in the afternoon. Likely it is not so bright at half past seven in the morning. Align yourself directly opposite the mirror behind the counter, because that’s where she was standing when you first saw her. Make sure you can see yourself clearly in the mirror.

Then turn around quickly again, and seize the bonnet immediately to your right. The ribbons on it are a sort of deep lavender, and the silk flowers are various shades of purple.

With a certain amount of triumph and ceremony, he lifted it off the stand.

Yes. This was the one. Fine-woven, deep gold straw, it would frame her face. That was the extent of his guess regarding the reasons for her passion for it. He hadn’t the faintest idea whether the color of the ribbons or flowers would suit her; he suspected she knew. Women invariably did. All he knew it might as well have been the grail for the way she’d been yearning after it with her eyes when he entered the shop.

Women
, he’d thought then.

And now he was wildly, humbly (humble wasn’t one of his usual conditions) grateful he’d noticed, because he for some reason had never before wanted so desperately to please someone.

“Ah. A lovely bonnet, that one. And it’s a bit dea—”

He’d been about to say “dear,” but the marquess severed his sentence with a mere look. The very notion that something might be too dear for him, let alone a bonnet, was absurd.

And Postlethwaite was almost surprised to immediately find himself behind the counter, as much to do the marquess’s bidding as to put a little distance between him and the intensity radiating from the man.

“It’s a fine thing you’ve rescued that particular bonnet. A certain young lady was about to stare a hole clean through it before I sold it.”

“It’s a very good thing, then, isn’t it, Mr. Postlethwaite, that I rescued it from such a fate?”

T
he room was cool, the gray light filtering in through the parted curtains told her it was just past dawn, and her chest was too
light
. Perhaps it was because a fat striped cat wasn’t sprawled atop it. She patted her hand along the bed searching for fur; she recalled where she was when she heard the soft clanking sound of the maid building up her chamber fire.

The maid heard the rustle of her sheets as she sat upright.

She smiled shyly. Her white cap was sliding off of her head, and she pushed it back and put a coal thumbprint on her forehead when she did.

Phoebe smiled back. And then the maid was upright and quick as a wraith at the door again. Keeping fires burning and candles lit around the vast house was a Sisyphean chore.

She paused. “There was a box for ye at the door, miss. I brought it in.”

And she was gone.

A box? Phoebe leaned forward in her not-quite-for-servants bed and looked about her not-quite-for-servants chamber, and saw it. Large, and round, of the sort that might contain a . . .

. . . might contain a . . .

She practically toppled out of bed and lunged for it.

She recognized at once it was from Postlethwaite’s shop. Had
Postlethwaite
sent a gift to her? This seemed very unlikely, unless he’d undergone a conversion to a mysterious religion and had decided to divest himself of his possessions. He attended services every Sunday along with the rest of the town, but his allegiance—after his Maker—was to the almighty pound note. Phoebe harbored no delusions that he might be fonder of her than he was of profit, though she was certain she ranked highly enough in his esteem.

She sat cross-legged upon the carpet spread out before the new fire and tucked her bare toes beneath the hem of her nightdress.

And then with a certain amount of ceremony she shimmied up the lid and began to paw gently through layers of tissue.

She thought she glimpsed purple.

Oh, God.

She was so overwhelmed she needed to stop entirely for a moment. She paused, glanced stealthily back toward the bed, half expecting to see her sleeping form in it, still dreaming.

She began unwrapping again, the tissue rattling in her shaking hands. Her head was a bubble, light, floating.

When she uncovered her first glimpse of gold straw, she cast her eyes toward the ceiling and mouthed
Hallelujah!

As she did, a half sheet of foolscap, ragged-edged, tumbled out of the box.

She took it up in awkward fingers and read. The note said, in a script she’d never before seen, tall, emphatic, and very neat:

I should like to know you.

A signature was hardly necessary, and there was none.

Joy was a sunburst in her chest. She gave a short, wondering laugh, feeling wholly mischievous, alive.

She’d demanded a gift. And he’d actually given her a gift.

She thought she’d better open her eyes again quickly, lest the bonnet disappear.

Better yet—she lowered it onto her head and carefully—and quickly—tied the ribbons. There. It felt at home there.

Like it was made for her.

She didn’t know how she would send word down to Lisbeth that she would be spending the morning gazing at herself in the mirror. Because it was really all she wanted to do.

She stood up now, and did just that, turning her head this way and that.

How had he known?

It was yet another lesson that threw off her equilibrium. She’d thought the marquess had walked into Postlethwaite’s and reviewed the shop with dispassion at best, or judgment at worst. But he’d swept it more the way an army scout takes in the lay of any battlefield, taking note of everything, including the plain disheveled young woman gazing with unrequited loved at a specific bonnet.

I should like to know you.

She tested a number of theories, because she always wanted to know the why of things. She considered whether it was a game for him, if he was indeed a bored aristocrat distracted by novelty she presented, or by how she could dodge and feint with words like any talented fencer. Whether he was looking to form another
association
in the absence of one . . . though she was hardly his type. He wanted the finest. The best. The Signora Licaris of the world.

But she now knew something no one else in the ton truly understood: he wasn’t a frivolous or reckless man. He did nothing without a reason. Surely the bonnet represented . . . a
strategy
. . . at the very least.

Theories flitted in and out of her mind, but it was no use. They were all eventually incinerated in her joy. Like moths in a flame.

No one talks to me the way you do,
he’d said.

She thought of the marquess scooping a moth out of the air and releasing it again, only to watch it head straight for the lamp again.

Helpless not to risk its whole existence for light and warmth.

Chapter 11

P
hoebe was wrong. Jules had no bloody idea why he’d purchased a damned bonnet.

And
nothing
had ever troubled him more than this realization.

He’d only just become aware that he’d been on a kind of trajectory, as though he’d been shot from a catapult without his permission. It had culminated in him buying a bonnet. He’d been
helpless
not to buy the bonnet. And he couldn’t trace how he’d arrived at that moment, the moment where became at the mercy of something immune to his reason, and he disliked this as much as he disliked regret.

Because one of the symptoms seemed to be restless pacing. He was
not
a meanderer by nature, a person who moved purposelessly to expend energy. But he’d arrived in the churchyard before the bells even rang to call the town to services, and this was precisely what he did: walked among the ancient crooked headstones, counting the number of Redmonds and Everseas who had died in the town since 1500. Quite a few people named Hawthorne were buried there, too. Two or three Endicotts. Someone named Ethelred. He wondered how many of them had killed each
other
while a discreet messenger engaged by Postlethwaite ferried his gift over to Redmond House, with instructions to hand it to a footman, who would then deposit it with their odd silent discretion outside the chamber door of Miss Phoebe Vale.

Finally irritated by the pacing and by the evidence of mortality all around him, Jules went inside even before the bells were rung and took a seat in the Redmond pews.

He hadn’t been a churchgoer since it had been a compulsory childhood activity. The pews were still as hard as penance itself, and dug themselves with what he suspected was meant to be a purifying pain into his thighs and into an awkward place on his back. It was a squat little church, probably one of the first things built when the first Eversea and Redmond took a crack at each other’s skulls in 1066, and it contained a delicious hush, seasoned by thousands of prayers, births and deaths and weddings.

Moments later there was what could only be described as a sedate stampede, primarily of women, and he watched them avidly, with burning eyes. Mostly he watched their heads. His palms were actually
damp
. He surreptitiously pressed them against his thighs. He’d never been more enthralled by bonnets, more aware of their staggering variety of flowers and ribbons and shapes.