The Dangers Of Deceiving A Viscount (14 page)

Phoebe could hardly forgive her with the sting of Alice’s hand still in her flesh.

She glanced at Frieda, who was watching the two of them with the same sort of rapt attention she might watch a puppet play in Covent Garden. “Frieda, will you wait outside?”

Frieda blinked. “Yes, mu’um,” she said reluctantly, and gave Alice a long look as she slowly exited.

When Frieda had gone out, Alice started to move, too, but Phoebe threw up her arm, blocking her exit. “One moment, if you please, Lady Alice.”

Alice shrank against the squabs. “What?” she asked tearfully.

Phoebe leaned forward and said low, “If you ever raise your hand to me, I will strike back, so help me. Do not think I value my employment here so much that I will stand for such abuse.”

Alice’s eyes widened. “I am truly sorry,” she said as a tear slipped from her eye. “I’ve never struck a servant in my life before this,” she added as she shakily swiped the tear from her face. “I can offer no excuse other than to say I was alarmed. You cannot imagine how deeply my brother dislikes Roland.”

Phoebe could very well imagine. When she was twelve years old, she had fallen in love with Brian, a footman. He was dashing and handsome and he smiled when she flirted with him and laughed at her silly jests. Her mother had been so fearful of Phoebe’s infatuation that she sent Brian away. “It is no excuse,” Phoebe said quietly.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Alice said, swiping at more tears. “I assure you, I am not so hard that I do not understand. Yet I cannot convey my feelings for Roland.”

Phoebe sighed. “Have a care with him, Alice.”

Alice dropped her eyes to her lap and nodded.

Phoebe put her hand to Alice’s knee, ignoring her flinch. “You must know that if you are compromised in any way, his lordship will be forced to take action. You risk too much.”

Alice sniffed. Scratched her ear. “A perfectly fine thing for you to say. You’re beautiful,” she muttered petulantly. “I’ve seen the way men look at you, and be assured they do not look at me in such a manner. Before long, I shall be bartered away to a man who will smile at my purse and frown at my face.” She glanced up at Phoebe, her eyes beseeching her. “So why shouldn’t I be allowed to experience love at least once?”

“Your future husband may love you very well,” Phoebe argued, but Alice was hardly convinced.

“I don’t know how things are done at your station in life, Madame Dupree, but in mine love rarely has anything to do with the joining of fortunes. Roland was the only one to dance with me at the harvest ball last autumn. He was the only one to show me any kindness when others laughed at me and Jane and made awful remarks about our clothing…”

She paused, looked out the window. “And then Will came home and ruined everything! I love Mr. Hughes, and he loves me, and it may be the only time in my life I am free to experience it.” She suddenly moved forward, stepping out of the coach almost before Phoebe could open her mouth.

Phoebe reluctantly climbed down after Alice and walked inside, looking neither left nor right, moving up the stairs until she reached her two small rooms on the top floor. When she’d shut the door soundly behind her, and slid the bolt into place, she threw her hat across the room, and pressing a hand to her mouth, she slid down her back to her haunches, squeezing her eyes shut to keep tears of humiliation from falling.

J ane usually delighted in telling Will every little thing her siblings did that might cause them trouble, and that evening was no exception. Over supper, she gleefully told Will everything that had happened in Greenhill, beginning with the ribbons and shoes she’d bought to Alice’s encounter with the smithy’s apprentice, and moving right along to Alice’s striking Phoebe.

Will could scarcely believe what he was hearing. He could scarcely believe that the people seated at his father’s table carried the same blood as he.

He stared at Alice as he tried to comprehend how she could defy him so openly and behave so abominably. He tried to fathom how she could strike anyone, much less a servant, who was, by virtue of her class, deserving of Alice’s example and protection. That appalled him far more than if she’d struck him.

He was so distraught that he could not finish his meal. He looked down the table at four of the most misguided, ill-behaved young men and women in all of England and felt a roiling sensation in his belly. In the last thirty-six hours, Joshua had cheated at a gentleman’s game, Alice had been found embracing the smithy’s apprentice in an alley and had struck Madame Dupree, Jane was gloating with the delight in telling him, and Roger was still pouting for having lost their race the other morning. All in all, a spectacularly bad patch at Wentworth Hall.

Will threw his linen napkin on the table in disgust, shoved his plate away, and abruptly stood. “I cannot begin to imagine what has happened here in the last few years to make the four of you the most appallingly ill-behaved people in all of Bedfordshire,” he said. “Nor can I imagine how your reputations and your futures might ever be repaired,” he said, and stormed from the room, leaving his siblings gaping after him.

He strode to the green salon, slammed the door behind him, and poured a generous helping of whiskey. He removed his coat and yanked at the knot in his neckcloth, loosening his collar so that he might breathe. His anger and disappointment and disgust made his pulse race, and after downing the tot of whiskey, he stood gripping the edges of the sideboard, trying to calm himself, his mind racing with all the ways he had failed to affect the behavior of his siblings and all the ways he seemed inadequate to the job.

Phoebe Dupree was a beautiful woman who had been forced to endure the barbaric ways of his sister. He could not fathom how anyone might raise a hand to her, much less his own sister.

He feared the worst, if Jane was to be believed. A blackened eye. Or perhaps she’d already fled Wentworth Hall in terror. Who could blame her?

He could not bear it a moment longer and put aside the whiskey glass and strode from the room. He took the stairs two at a time, rounding each turn until he reached the top floor. He did not stop until he had reached her door.

He rapped firmly.

“Thank you, Farley, but please leave the tray outside,” she said on the other side of the door.

“It is not Farley, it is Summerfield. Please open the door.”

There was a long pause. “I am not well, my lord. Please forgive me.”

He braced his hands on the door frame. “Open the door, Phoebe. I know what Alice has done. Just…just open the door.”

Several moments passed—he believed she would refuse him. But then the lock turned and the door was opened a crack.

Will pushed it open. Phoebe hadn’t been to bed at all—her hair was still put up in a bandeau, and wisps of ringlets brushed her neck. Her gown—a beautiful, shimmering pink—was suitable for supper. She did not look at him directly but kept her face turned slightly to one side, her eyes on the floor.

Will’s gut sank—he could scarcely bear to look. “Phoebe…” he started, but words failed him. He could think of nothing he might say that would ever atone for the indignity his sister had caused her.

Phoebe folded her arms defensively across her middle and turned away from him, walking deeper into the room. Will followed her to where she stood, but she turned her head again. He caught her chin in his hand and forced her to turn her head so that he could see.

The sight of the bruised skin over her cheekbone caused him to draw a sharp breath; Phoebe flinched and moved back, out of his grasp.

“Dear God,” he uttered, completely at a loss for words. But he instantly thought of the obsidian stone in his suite. It was a stone he’d picked up on the Isle of Crete that held healing powers. He knew it did—he’d used it on himself more than once. “Stay here,” he said shortly, and strode out of her room.

He returned a quarter of an hour later. She was seated at the window, staring into the black of the night. She turned her head slightly when he entered. “You’re back,” she said listlessly.

“Of course I am.” He went to the window and sat on the sash before her. “Why did you not come to me?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a halfhearted shrug. “I feared what you might do to Alice.”

“Alice?” he echoed in disbelief. “I swear to you, whatever I do to her will not be enough—”

“Please,” she said, shaking her head. “Alice deserves your pity, not your disdain.”

Will was so astounded, he could scarcely speak. He wondered wildly what twist of fate had given a mere seamstress more grace and elegance than he feared Alice might ever hope to own. And when he looked into those pale blue-green eyes, he tried to fathom how this woman could possibly believe that Alice deserved as much as an ounce of his pity.

She must have understood his confusion because she said earnestly, “Alice is…she is lost, sir. This man she holds in such great esteem—”

“A smithy,” he said disapprovingly.

“A smithy, but a man nonetheless,” Phoebe quickly added. “A man who has shown a preference for her and her alone, however ill-advised, and at a point in time when Alice obviously needs it most.”

Will reared back in astonishment. “How do you know this? Has she told you so?”

“No! Of course not,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “She can scarcely bear my presence at all. Yet…yet I understood her fear—I know as well as she that at some point in the very near future, a match will be made for her that has more to do with her heritage and her fortune than it does with love or compatibility. It is no wonder she seeks some affirmation of herself as a woman—”

“Affirmation?” he echoed incredulously, trying to make sense of what Phoebe was saying.

She looked very fatigued all at once and abruptly stood, walking away from him. “Yes, affirmation. Alice is not like other young women in similar positions in society—she is not certain that a man would find her desirable without the trappings of her family and her fortune.”

Will gaped at her; such talk of affirmations and desirability was foreign to him, and when such notions were applied to Alice, it made him rather uncomfortable.

Phoebe glanced over her shoulder at him; he must have shown his disbelief, for she said evenly, “The situation is rather different for men—men are free to explore the bounds of propriety in ways women cannot.”

“Is Alice ‘exploring the bounds of propriety’ by compromising her virtue with a mere smithy? Or by striking you?” he asked impatiently, gaining his feet. “For I confess, I am at a loss to understand.”

“I am…” Phoebe paused and looked heavenward a moment. “I am astounded that she struck me,” she said softly. “I am appalled and shocked and hurt by it. Nevertheless, I understand her. Your sister and I are close in age, my lord—she is not so different from me, really.”

Will shook his head. “That is where you are wrong,” he said sternly, and he meant it. “You are vastly different from Alice.” Frankly, he thought she might be very different from any woman he had ever known. He certainly couldn’t imagine another Englishwoman forgiving Alice as graciously as she had just done. He couldn’t imagine another woman as delicate, but incredibly strong, as Phoebe seemed to be.

He looked at the mark Alice had left on Phoebe’s face. She tried to turn her face from him again, but he stopped her by carefully touching two fingers to the bruise.

She winced slightly, but she did not look away; she held his gaze as he trailed his fingers down her cheek, to her jaw, and slipped them beneath her chin, lifting her face higher. With his free hand, he withdrew the stone from his pocket. “Here we are, an ancient remedy for your injury.”

Phoebe glanced at the rock he held up. “It is a rock.”

“The ancient Greeks believed it had healing powers. It will remove the bruise from your skin. May I?”

“Do you believe in such things?” she asked, but angled her face to him.

“I believe there are many mysteries in our universe.” He touched the stone to her bruised cheek; she did not flinch.

“How did you learn of this stone?” she asked him.

He snorted. “I gained it from a thief,” he said casually as he rubbed the stone lightly on her bruise. “I was on the Isle of Crete when I caught a man attempting to steal my horse. I threatened to hang him.”

Phoebe flinched at that.

Will smiled. “It was just a threat, madam. Even if I had been so inclined, I didn’t have a rope. But he believed me, and in exchange for his life, he gave me back my horse and a few things he considered valuable. This was one of them.”

“I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t offer coin for his life.”

Will chuckled and smiled into her eyes. She was beautiful. He moved the stone again, but he could feel that familiar heat rising in him again. The scarab he wore around his neck was worthless, and he had paid good money for that.

“May I ask…what is the mark on your wrist?”

He paused in his ministration and looked at it. He folded his cuff back so that she could see the entire mark, the serpent twining around the ancient symbol. “It is an old Hindu symbol for peace and prosperity.”

Phoebe drew a breath and bent her head over his arm. “May I touch it?”

“Of course,” he said, holding his arm closer to her.

Her fingers were very light on his skin and sent a peculiar shiver through him. She traced the symbol with two fingers, going around one curving end and up again, to the other. Will thought he might very well explode—the light touch was making him mad with the desire to touch her. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly.

That surprised him. He expected her to be appalled like everyone else in Bedfordshire. “You…you like it?” he asked uncertainly.

“Oh, yes,” she said, and glanced up at him. “I adore art.” She looked at his arm again, retracing the lines. “See how it curves so elegantly here? That must have been very difficult to do on the canvas of your skin.”

“Yes,” he said low.

“I wish I could see more of this sort of art. It is lovely.” She withdrew her fingers and looked up at him again. Her gaze was glittering; she held him mesmerized, enchanted, entranced. Rational thought deserted him. He slipped his hand to her neck, splayed his fingers across her bare shoulder as he sank deeper into his feelings of desire for her.