Revealed (7 page)

Looking down the length of himself, Marcus silently sought out Phillippa’s eyes, and when he found them, the faintest sheen in the deep dark, they were wide with bewilderment.

Silently, desperately, he brought his finger to his mouth, pleading for her not to emit an admittedly justified scream. After a moment, she nodded, allowing Marcus to exhale that breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. It caused the hem of her dress, some floaty, lacy material, to flutter. However, before her eyes could widen at the sensation, a new conversation outside of the sarcophagus had begun.

“Wha . . . oh, Broughton, is it? What the devil do you do in my library?” The booming baritone of Lord Fieldstone, owner of the house, the library’s collection, and host of the party, sounded muted and dense through the thick stone.

“Lord Fieldstone! I was looking for . . . well, I guess it hardly matters now, does it?” Broughton began. Marcus could almost hear the affected charm, the sheepish smile in that man’s voice. Since he was encased in darkness, he didn’t feel it necessary to hold back his eye roll.

“It seems I became lost,” Broughton continued, “and found myself in this remarkable room. It’s quite the most marvelous collection, sir. You are to be congratulated.”

“Thank you very kindly; I am rather proud of it.” As evidenced by the pride in his voice. “But you should be careful. Good heavens, did that Venus get knocked over?”

“Hmm? Oh, no, I . . . I may have nudged it a bit, but it stayed upright.”

“Nudged it?” Fieldstone sounded panicked. “But she’s priceless! You can’t go nudging something priceless! Come with me; I’ll show you the way back to the ballroom.” And then, lower, as if under his breath, “Nudged it!”

“Oh, that’s too good of you, Lord Fieldstone, but I can find my way back, surely. Don’t worry, I’ll stay here, and . . . and set the Venus to right . . .”

“No!” Fieldstone’s voice was barely masked panic. “Don’t touch it! Come, my good man, I’m certain there are any number of young ladies eager for their dance . . .”

Their voices faded away with their footfalls. Then, with a solid click, the library door must have closed, leaving Marcus and Phillippa all alone in their quiet, tight space.

He sought her eyes once again, and, finding them, held up a hand, signaling her to wait, just a precautionary moment. Just in case.

But Mrs. Phillippa Benning did not hold precaution in high regard.

Or him, apparently.

“Would you . . . Ouch!” She squirmed. “Get off me. Lift the lid, please!”

“You—ow!”—he exclaimed as the heel of her dress slipper connected with his eyebrow—“are on top of
me
, ma’am. You push from your end, and I’ll push from here. Ready?”

“Stop staring up my dress! Ready.”

“Watch your heels. One. Two. Three!”

The lid came up, and two dusty, disgusted figures emerged, scrambling to get as much space between them as possible.

Which, in that library, was not terribly much.

After a few deep breaths and a small amount of coughing and sputtering, they regarded each other.

Or, at least Marcus regarded her. She seemed resolute in her determination to not regard him.

“I cannot imagine what you think you were doing in that sarcophagus,” she finally said, still not looking at him.

“No,” he replied, not able to suppress his reply or the smile in his voice, “but I can well imagine what you were doing on top of it a few minutes ago.”

That earned him a look. A deeply outraged one.

“A
gentleman
would not mention such a thing to a lady,” she sniffed.

“True.” He grinned, having too much fun watching her turn red. “But a lady would not have engaged in such an activity in the first place. Perhaps we’ve both been mislabeled.”

The light was dim, but he would swear she had gone from red to purple. “You . . . you did hear!” she spoke in strangled tones, her face mottled with horror. “You . . . knew I was coming here! Did you lie in the coffin to wait for us? To
overhear
? That . . . that’s disgusting!”

Marcus stared at her, bewildered. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Reggie Fieldstone!”

“What has that child to do with anything? Good God, he’s not here, too, is he? Where would he hide?”

“No, you . . . you
overheard
him telling me how to get to the library, and . . . and you followed me!”

Marcus took a deep breath. “First of all. I technically could not have followed you, since I was here before you, as evidenced by the fact you landed on me. But”—he said, cutting her off before she could speak—“I take your meaning. However, I can assure you that I did not overhear anything Reggie said beyond what I told you before, and I am here for my own purposes and certainly did not expect anyone to choose such a dusty, crowded space for a tryst. I promise, I am more surprised by you than you are by me.”

She bore herself up to regal height, her color returning to normal from its mottled, enraged shade. “Phillippa Benning does not engage in trysts.”

Well, what could a man do but shrug? “As you say.”

Her chin went up. If it weren’t so imperious, it would be charming in a girlish sort of way.

“I find no need to explain myself to you, Mr. Worth. No, indeed. You may or may not derive pleasure from lying in coffins, listening to other people’s romantic assignations. I assure you, it’s of little interest to me.”

She then swept to the door, certain in every step, and placed her hand on the doorknob.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, taking a moment to wipe the smudges from his spectacles.

“But you are not me, Mr. Worth. Thank the heavens.”

“No, but we do share a common trait at the moment.”

“And what is that?” She sighed.

“We are both covered in dust.”

Phillippa pulled her hand off the knob and looked down at herself. Even in the darkness, she had to see she’d become distinctly gray. Her skin, her dress—

“Even my hair!” she cried, as she patted the now-gray stands, only to engulf herself in a cloud. “Oh goodness! Imagine if someone saw me this way!”

“Yes, yes, imagine if someone saw
me
this way!”

“Mocking is only good for eliciting humor, Mr. Worth, and right now, no one is laughing,” she snapped at him.

“I’m quite serious, you know,” he took off his coat and began to shake it out. “Imagine if someone saw you covered in dust, and then me covered in dust. What would they think?”

“Oh!” her hands shot to cover her dropped jaw. “Oh, they would think—Oh, how appalling!”

“Thank you ever so,” he said drily. “Turn round, I’ll see what I can do about your skirt.”

He knelt beside her and began beating the folds of fabric of her skirt as if he were beating out a rug.

“Do be careful! This is imported lace; the design is one of a kind,” she said as she took off her left glove and shook it out as much as possible. “If you didn’t come to spy on me, why were you in that sarcophagus?”

“I thought you didn’t care,” he grunted as he continued thwacking the skirt free of the dust, albeit a little more gently.

“I . . . I don’t,” she said primly. “I asked for the sake of conversation.”

“Well, for the sake of conversation, and to assuage your apparently nonexistent curiosity, I will say that you are not the only one who had a scheduled meeting this evening.”

“Hmph,” she harrumphed in a not very ladylike fashion. “Some mousy little thing, no doubt, dared by her friends to meet a man—any man—at midnight, and turning coward before she even left that ballroom?”

“Hah!” he laughed aloud, surprising Phillippa into looking down at him. “Mrs. Benning, I told you, no one sane would chose such an awful space for a . . . romantic interlude,” he concluded, aware of her narrowed eyes on him. “No, contrary to your mind-set, not every midnight assignation is romantic in nature.” He rose, causing her to shift and look up at him. “Yours wasn’t, for example.”

Her mouth dropped open in shock. “It most certainly was!”

“Really? It seemed far more businesslike to me. You maneuvering to acquire an asset and to outpace your rivals in that acquisition. Tactical, and brilliantly so, if I may proffer my admiration.”

She narrowed her eyes, obviously not unfamiliar with the idea of a backhanded compliment.

“I am sane,” she said, her chin still higher than her nose.

He raised a brow. “No one claimed otherwise.”

“You said no one sane would chose such a spot for . . . Anyway, I’ve never been here before. I didn’t know it looked like this.”

He smiled wryly. “Fair enough. But next time you should do some reconnaissance. Check your surroundings in advance. Find a library with some cushioning. A sofa is just as easy to dive behind as a sarcophagus is to hide in.”

He meant it in a chiding, fun-mannered fashion.

It wasn’t taken that way.

“Mr. Worth,” she began, hands on her hips and all simpering artifice dropped from her frame for perhaps the first time that evening, “this is not how I planned for my evening to end. I am meant to be dancing in the great hall right now, before going on to any number of other parties. Not stuck in here with, among other things, fourteen knee-high Venuses, four Caravaggios, two of which are fake, six bas-relief panels, forty-two alabaster nymphs, one Egyptian sarcophagus, and you! And as cramped and horrific as these surroundings, the only one of my company I find wholly objectionable right now is your person. Now, would you be so good as tell me what you want in order to never mention the circumstances of our meeting
ever
, or give your odious opinion of it, else I will take my leave.”

She swept past him, but before she could reach the door, he took hold of her arm. Much to his surprise, she didn’t pull away, just turned to face him, blue eyes blazing in the darkness. Beneath the spectacles, his eyes blazed right back.

“Mrs. Benning,” he said, his voice pitched to a low growl, “make no mistake; this is not the ideal situation for me, either.” At this she snorted, expressing her disbelief. His hand tightened imperceptibly on her arm, a sort of subtle massage. “I have been teasing so far in an effort to make light of our circumstances. However, if you think I give a bloody damn about you and your carryings-on, you are more self-absorbed than I took you for—which is not an easy feat.”

An eyebrow went up. “What are you saying? That you can’t be bought? I have heard that before, and inevitably it is not true.”

“I have no use for your money; I have no use for you. What on earth do you propose to purchase me with?”

She flinched, as if struck. “I . . . I . . .”

He took the opportunity to lean barely closer. “I have a short lesson for you, and take note. The easiest way to assure my silence—”

But at that moment, the now-familiar sound of someone fiddling with the sticky door handle reached their ears. Marcus’s eyes shot to the base of the door, where an unusually wide shadow had blocked out most of the outside light.

Marcus blew out the lone lit candle.

“Quickly!” he breathed, pulling her back to the center of the room, back to the sarcophagus.

“What? I’m not going back in there!” She pulled at his grip, futilely.

“I’m afraid you have very little choice in that matter,” he whispered as he lifted the lid.

“But . . . but my dress! ’Twill be ruined!” she whispered, but to no avail. Before she could protest further, she was thrown into the familiar dusty, musty confines of the sarcophagus.

“As if a girl like you would ever wear a dress twice in any case,” he delivered his parting shot in a whisper and brought down the lid, just as Lord Fieldstone (incidentally, director of the War Department) opened the library door for the second time that evening.

“
H
ULLO? Who’s there?” Lord Fieldstone asked in a stage whisper, groping in the darkness.

“Marcus Worth, my lord. Thank you for coming.” Marcus stepped past Lord Fieldstone and shut the library door quietly behind him.

“Worth! Thank goodness. I came in here before and found the Marquis of Broughton nosing around my treasures.”

“Yes, I know. I asked you to meet me, because I—”

“You know?” Lord Fieldstone asked, interrupting Marcus. “How?”

“Oh. Um, I was here, actually. In hiding. I must say you got rid of him marvelously.”

“Where did you hide? You didn’t knock anything over, did you?”

“No!” Marcus held up his hands in protest. “No, I, erm, was in the sarcophagus. I was very pleased to find it vacant.”

“Vacant?” Fieldstone looked momentarily puzzled. Then his brow cleared. “Oh, that’s right, we took the mummy out last week to have it repaired. A limb fell loose.”

“Hmm,” was the only reply Marcus could give and the only one innocuous enough to cover up the muffled groan he was certain emanated from the interior of the sarcophagus. Luckily, Lord Fieldstone did not seem to notice.

“I do hope you didn’t nick anything on the inside, Worth. How was the fit?” Lord Fieldstone made for the coffin and almost had his hand under the lid before Marcus reached his side and ever so gently held the lid down.

“The fit was tight, sir, but everything is intact, I promise. Both of mine and the sarcophagus. I asked to meet you here for a very specific reason, but now, I must wonder if you wouldn’t recommend somewhere more spacious. I should hate to be responsible for breaking any of your Venuses or nymphs. How many nymphs are there, by the bye?” Marcus asked casually as he tried to maneuver Fieldstone to the door. Unfortunately, Fieldstone was not easily moved.

“Forty-two. And somewhere more spacious would be nice; however, I’ve got a houseful of guests, a wife with four glasses of punch in her, and absolutely no time to dillydally. So tell me what it is you want.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather—”