Private Arrangements (20 page)

Chapter Twenty-one

31 May 1893

G
igi wished she could better predict this man who was her husband.

She'd been infinitely certain that he'd demand lovemaking in the confines of her private coach on the way to Devon—so certain, in fact, that she'd taken precautions. And suffered erratic heartbeats from the moment they left the house together.

He, on the other hand, began working on the designs of some mechanical contraption before the train even departed Paddington Station, leaving her with little to do other than watch the world hurtle by at sixty miles an hour, feeling entirely daft.

And self-conscious. And a little light-headed.

He'd paid her a compliment, an unadulterated compliment, on something that genuinely mattered to her. She felt like a green debutante at her first ball after an unexpected dance with the most extraordinary, notorious rake of them all: She knew perfectly well that the fizzy warmth in her was unreciprocated, unwise, and uncalled for, but there wasn't a damned thing she could do about it.

He wrote in a quick, slanted hand, unraveling reams of equations that would look to the uninitiated as incomprehensible as the hieroglyphs before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. Even she, having been extensively tutored in higher mathematics and mechanics—so that she wouldn't be hampered by ignorance when dealing with her own engineers—could understand only parts of it, looking at the numbers and symbols upside down.

She deciphered that he was working on something about the heating and exchanging of gases. When his calculations moved on to angular momentum, she further deduced that he was refining the design for an internal combustion engine.

She had her doubts about the automobile. Certainly it was wonderful and novel and—nowadays—feasible. But who other than the most adventurous and the most wealthy would want to own and operate one, when carriages were so much simpler and more convenient in town and trains a great deal faster and more reliable over long distances? At least one's horses were not likely to die three times going from London to Brighton.

But she was curious enough to have paid a visit to Herr Benz in Mannheim the previous summer and was about to negotiate a license to build Benz engines in her own factory. The internal abacus she'd inherited from her Rowland ancestors swiftly calculated the savings she'd realize if she could use Camden's design—if it worked.

And if he were truly her husband.

“What's the matter with your engine?”

“It can't expel exhaust gases fast enough when its rotational speed exceeds one hundred revolutions per minute,” he said, without looking up. Without expressing any surprise at her familiarity with subjects outside the grasp of the overwhelming majority of women— and men, for that matter.

But then, he knew all about the Honorable Mr. Williams, who'd been her tutor before he became her lover.

The partial vacuum created by the exodus of exhaust gas drew fresh air and fuel into the cylinder. The expanding gas created from the ignition of the air-and-fuel mixture powered the engine, but residual exhaust gases that were not expelled would reduce its efficiency.

“You should begin the expelling cycle at an earlier point in the crankshaft's rotation,” she said. “That would sacrifice a bit of power but improve your efficiency.”

“Correct.”

“The trouble comes in determining at which precise point, doesn't it?” she said. Her engineers had agonized over the voltage of the third rail they had designed for London's new underground tubes.

“Always,” he answered. “The design can be refined only to a certain point. I've narrowed it down to two possibilities and determined their angles to within one point two degrees. Now my engineers in New York will modify the engine and test it.”

“Good thing you won't get your hands dirty.”

“But getting my hands dirty is half the fun. I always build my own designs. I can build anything.” He glanced at her and smiled. Her heart thudded to a stop. The sun really did shine brighter when he smiled. “Would you like to be the first English lady to rumble down Rotten Row in a horseless carriage?”

She smiled despite herself. That fizzy warmth—half effervescent elation, half heedlessness—spread unabated within her. “I know you really
can
build anything. I know your little secret.”

He was puzzled. “Secret?”

“Claudia's gown that she wore to her first ball.”

“Ah that,” he said, relaxing. “That's not my secret so much as hers. She was rather mortified, if I remember correctly, that other people had ball gowns made by Monsieur Worth, while hers was cobbled together by her brother.”

“So modest.”

“When I say cobbled, I mean cobbled. I had no idea how to manufacture the kind of neckline she wanted without the bodice falling off her. So I took apart one of my mother's mesh bustles and wired the entire décolletage. She was terrified during the ball that the gown would either kill her or poke some handsome swain in the chest.”

“She showed it to me when she came to England in 1890,” said Gigi. “I couldn't believe that
you
made it until she swore it on the lives of all her children.”

“It was my first and last foray into haute couture,” he said dryly. “I was nineteen and thought there was nothing I couldn't do. When Claudia wept for hours on end because there was no room in the budget for a new gown for her first ball, I thought, how hard could it be? After all, couture was just the softer side of engineering, and I'd cut and sewn plenty of sails for my model ships.”

“She said you were a wizard.”

“Claudia has rose-colored hindsight. I never knew what panic was until the ball was two days away and I still hadn't figured out how ten yards of skirts should gather and drape under the bustle. All the non-Euclidean geometry in the world couldn't have dug me out of that hole.”

She thought of the gown, lovingly packed in layers of tissue, kept in Claudia's old chamber at Twelve Pillars.
I have the best brother in the world,
Claudia had said that day, a not-so-subtle reminder that Gigi should get on a transatlantic liner posthaste.

“You did all right in the end.”

“I wired the skirt too,” he said.

They both burst out laughing. The corners of his eyes crinkled in mirth, laugh lines that she'd never seen before—lines that had come from the sun and the salt of the sea, marks of a man in his prime.

He stopped and looked at her. “Your laughter is the same,” he said. “I used to think you all sophisticated and worldly, until you laughed. You still laugh like a little girl getting tickled, all hiccupy and breathless.”

What did one say to something like that? If he were anyone else, she'd consider it a declaration, not necessarily of love but of great fondness. What was she to make of it when it
did
come from him?

He quickly changed subjects. “Before I forget, I've never thanked you for keeping Christopher in line, have I?”

Christopher had gotten himself into a few scrapes over the years. Nothing terribly alarming—no illegitimate children, ruinous debts, or criminal friends—but his parents worried and wrung their hands. After Saint Camden and Mostly Sensible Claudia, Their Graces were ill equipped to deal with a more temperamental offspring. So Gigi had stepped in dutifully, extricated Christopher from potentially harmful situations, unleashed stern lectures Their Graces were too softhearted to deliver, and ruthlessly choked off his allowance whenever he deserved it.

“No need to thank me,” she said. “I enjoyed keeping him in line.”

“He complained about you in his letters. He said you were harsh as the Gorgons and twice as deadly. That you meant to ship him to Vladivostok and leave him at the port penniless. That you threatened to bankrupt anyone who dared to loan him money when you stopped his allowance.”

There was such relish in his voice that the dangerous warmth infecting her at last turned into a conflagration of recklessness. “Did you miss me?” she heard herself ask.

Suddenly the only sound in the coach was the low roar of the train's engines and steel wheels clacking on steel tracks, going a mile a minute. She looked out the window, feeling as stupid as a stampede of lemmings.

He, too, looked out the window. For a long time he didn't speak, until she almost had herself convinced that they were both going to pretend that her question had never been uttered.

But then he did answer. “That was never the point, was it?”

They arrived at Mrs. Rowland's cottage a little after teatime. The weather had turned dour and wet in London just before they departed, but a gentle sun shone upon this part of Devon, though the soil was drenched and rain dripped off leaves still.

The roses were at their peak. Mrs. Rowland's cottage, with its bright white walls and vermilion trim, was all pastoral charm. Gigi half-expected her mother to fall down in a faint upon seeing Camden and herself together. But Camden must have had a telegram sent ahead, because though a note of curiosity wended through Mrs. Rowland's welcome, she was not taken by surprise.

“This is a lovely house,” said Camden, kissing Mrs. Rowland on the cheek. “The photograph you sent didn't quite do it justice.”

“You should see Devon in spring,” said Mrs. Rowland. “The wildflowers are incomparable in April.”

“I will come in April then,” said Camden. “I should still be in England at that time.”

Gigi felt her mother's gaze on her back as she stood looking out at the garden, strewn with petals from the earlier shower. He'd said nothing new, of course. Their deal was for one year, and that one year didn't conclude until next May. But for some reason she could not see them going on like this for another eleven months, or even another eleven weeks.

For ten years things had remained frozen in place, because he'd made it abundantly clear the circumference of the earth was not enough distance between the two of them. When he first returned, he not only personified antagonism, he took it to hitherto unscaled heights. But things had changed. This thawing of enmity put them on terra incognita, before dangerous possibilities, possibilities that she dared not even think of in the light of day, because they led to utter madness.

“I shall look forward to it,” said Mrs. Rowland. “We don't see enough of you.”

“I believe I have issued invitations beyond number for you to visit New York City, dear madam,” Camden said, a smile and a challenge in his voice. “And you've always found reasons to demur.”

“But don't you see, my dear lord Tremaine,” said Mrs. Rowland sweetly, “I could never call on a man who would not speak to my daughter.”

Gigi almost turned around in her astonishment. Somehow she'd never thought of her mother as an ally in this matter. She'd always believed, perhaps because of her substantial culpability, that Mrs. Rowland blamed her for the silent disaster that was her marriage. That her mother's letters had given Camden the wherewithal to blackmail her had further contributed to her conviction that Mrs. Rowland would enter into a sexual union with the devil himself if Camden would only bestow his blessed forgiveness on Gigi.

“Of course, I really shouldn't have corresponded with you either,” said Mrs. Rowland. “But I always fall so maddeningly short of perfection.”

This time Gigi did turn around. Was that an apology? From the woman who'd never done anything wrong in her life?

Hollis entered with the tea service, and the conversation took a sharp turn to Mrs. Rowland's latest charity gala. Camden, it turned out, was intimately acquainted with Mrs. Rowland's charitable efforts.

“Isn't that quite a bit more than what you usually raise at these events?” he asked, once Mrs. Rowland had named a sum.

“It is, I suppose.” Mrs. Rowland hesitated. “His Grace honored us with a large contribution.”

“The same duke who's coming to dinner tonight?” said Gigi.

Good Lord, was that a blush on her mother's face? To be certain, they'd had some cross words over the Duke of Perrin the last time Mrs. Rowland was in London. But the colors staining Mrs. Rowland's cheeks did not seem to have originated either in consternation or embarrassment.

“The very same.” Mrs. Rowland was once again the closest approximation of the Madonna this side of the Italian Renaissance. “An admirable figure of a man. A classical scholar. I'm quite pleased that you will be making his acquaintance.”

Camden raised his cup. “I, for one, am looking forward to dinner with trembling anticipation.”