The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne (11 page)

“Lord Southwaite arrived early, and
immediately
went to your father’s office, Miss Fairbourne.” Obediah’s expressions, invisible to Southwaite, communicated warning and distress. “He insisted that I accompany him
at once
, to explain what matters he might need explained.”

That clarified why the Kauffman had not been removed from the window, but left other unfortunate puzzles. “Matters?” she asked, tipping her head up to smile at the earl.

Southwaite ignored her prompt. He gazed down at the table where she sat. “Do you have a fondness for silver?”

“Yes, I do. I possess an unabated passion for it. I always come here before auctions to admire the silver.” It sounded stupid to her, but he had been the one to suggest such a possibility.

His right hand swung out sideways in a lazy gesture. Obediah rightly understood that he had been dismissed, and backed out of the chamber.

Southwaite sidled over to the table while his gaze examined its surface. “Some of it is handsome.” He lifted a heavy candelabra and turned it to check its mark. “Is there more, or is this all of it?”

“For now, this is what has come in. Obediah told me that he anticipates another ten lots’ worth next week.”

He set the piece down. To her surprise he then sat on the edge of her table, his doeskin-encased hip and thigh supported by its edge and the rest of him still braced by his other leg. The casual position brought him alarmingly close to her.

“Ten lots will help, but the sale needs more than silver. It is not looking good, Miss Fairbourne. Better to retreat and be remembered as excellent rather than to let the world watch one’s fall.”

“I am sure that more is coming, including more paintings. Also books, I believe. And cases of very fine, very old wine.” The lies trickled out with distressing ease. This auction had to be held now. More than pride and memories might be at stake.

“Wine?”

“So I hear. From the estate of a gentleman.” She hoped she appeared blasé. “A gentleman who needs to pay creditors.”

He examined her face, as if searching to see whether she merely put him off. She kept her expression innocent, she hoped, but his attention alone sent a series of tremors through her. She prayed she would not blush at the physical
evidence that her reactions during that last meeting had apparently left her vulnerable in new ways to this man.

His gaze warmed and became even more direct. He saw the secret excitement in her. She just knew he did. His eyes carried a new intimacy that provoked alarming inner shudders. She worried that he did it deliberately, to distract her and make her pliable. To prove that he knew the Outrageous Misconception became less presumptuous with every contact that they had.

“You are not in mourning today.” His examination moved down her body before finding her eyes again. His voice modulated in deep, quiet ways. He possessed a wonderful voice. Its sound affected her blood even when he vexed her. Right now she was helpless to its effects.

She self-consciously touched the pale rose muslin near her shoulder. “I am not in public. I am not receiving. No one is going to see me today.”

“I am seeing you.”

He certainly was. His attention overwhelmed her. So did the way his resting on the table made him loom large, too close and too
there
.

“Are you scolding me for inappropriate dress?” She wanted to sound haughty, but she spoke with breathless nervousness.

A smile. The disarming one. That smile was very masculine. Oh, yes, he knew the effect he was having on her.

“Far be it from me to scold you about wearing a hue that is so flattering to your complexion. As you said, no one will see you, except me. It is quite private here.”

Very private. Obediah had left the door ajar a bit, but not by much. The workers sounded far away.

“Are you staying in town now, Lord Southwaite? You often prefer your country estate, I have heard, even during the Season.” She spoke to fill the silence. Perhaps sound would help her evade the spell he was weaving.

“I was just there, for several days. I will remain in town for a while, I think.”

That was not good news. “All is well in Kent, I trust.”

“All is normal, at least. The volunteer units don their colors and drill, just as they do here in London. The tides still come in and the smugglers still run free. With the navy deployed to stop the French if they come, there is little to halt free trade on the coast now.”

It took great effort not to react to this inopportune turn in the conversation. “Well, they are no real threat, unlike the French.”

“If all that crossed were wine and lace, that would be true. However, spies also enter and information leaves.” He sounded preoccupied, as if his mind did not really give much thought to his words.

Her mind, on the other hand, grew increasingly alarmed.
Wine and lace
. One might think he knew about that wagon.

She waited for him to say something else, or to move. Neither happened. He just sat there observing her with some private consideration apparent in his eyes.

Excitement danced in her chest, the beat increasing with each moment their gazes remained locked. She told herself she was reacting like a fool, but that did not stop the sensation.

She sensed him about to move. It was in the air more than his body, although the hand that rested on the table began to rise. Almost as quickly he halted the movement. One more look; then he broke the power he had been exerting over her as surely as if he had closed a door to his soul.

She found she was free and in possession of herself again, but not truly glad for it. She sought the thread of a subject that would set aside what had just happened.

“Obediah said you were asking about matters here,” she said, remembering the way Obediah’s face had contorted in wordless warning before he left.

“I thought that I should examine the accounts. Have you seen them?”

“Obediah deals with such things. What would I know about accounts?”

“They are not difficult to comprehend, if well-done. These are not very detailed, I am sorry to say. There are few names attached to either income or outlays.”

She knew of what he spoke. She had tried to understand the books, but had given up. There were a variety of possible explanations for such sketchy bookkeeping, and she suspected the earl contemplated them. Considering what she had recently learned about her father’s dealings, she did not want him doing that too much.

“I know that some consignors wanted privacy,” she tried.

“So many?”

“My father had an excellent memory. All the rest of the information was probably in his head.”

“No doubt.” He pushed off the table and righted his coat. “I expect with some effort I will make sense of it all, even without his memory to guide me.”

“Perhaps you should take the accounts with you, so you may study them at your leisure.”

He thought about that, then waved the notion away. “I will do it here. It will give me a chance to see how Riggles is improving this sale, and whether it should even be held.”

He took his leave then. As he did their gazes met once more, very briefly. During those few seconds she again could not look away, or move, or even breathe very well.

“A
re you reading, Southwaite? Am I intruding?”

Darius looked up from his book. He had not been reading. His thoughts had been on a very nervous Obediah Riggles, suspiciously vague account books, and a pretty woman in a rose dress, surrounded by beautifully crafted old silver.

He had almost kissed Emma Fairbourne today. He would like to claim it had been a mad impulse. Only he never was a victim of such things, and today, in that back room, the
decision to kiss her had been just that: a decision, one that had been very cool and not at all impulsive, and also very calculated.

His better sense had stopped him. He supposed he was glad for that. Mostly. Probably. That he really wasn’t only forced the conclusion that he needed to end this alliance. He would do it very soon.

“You are not disturbing me, Lydia.” He set the book aside while his sister sat down in a nearby chair. “That is a pretty dress.”

She picked indifferently at the fabric on her lap and shrugged. Her maid had dressed Lydia’s dark hair in the simplest of styles, a chignon on the nape of her neck. That had been Lydia’s choice, not the servant’s.

For reasons he did not understand, his sister did not care about her beauty, or about much at all. She had grown so quiet this last year, so nondescript and separate from the world, that he often feared for her health.

He wondered if he found her even more vague and devoid of warmth today because he had spent time with a woman full of spirit and vivid humanity. He looked in Emma Fairbourne’s eyes and saw an active mind and frank disposition, and layers of thought and experience. He looked into Lydia’s eyes and saw…nothing.

“You went down to Kent,” she said. “You did not take me as you had promised.”

Her voice carried a note of accusation. He was glad to hear anything that reflected some emotion. “I went with some friends. It would not have been appropriate to bring you.”

She did not argue. She never did. She just gazed at him, her eyes shallow and opaque. “I want to go and live there.”

“No.” It was an old argument between them. Her relentless pursuit of isolation troubled him, like so much else about her.

“I will find a companion so I am not alone.”

“No.”

“I do not understand why you refuse me this, and force me to stay in town.”

“You do not have to understand it. You only have to obey.” He spoke with irritation, not at her rebelliousness but because this conversation was the only one they had anymore. He swallowed his resentment over that, and found a better tone. “You have removed yourself from society, from your friends, from our relatives…”
From me
. “I will not allow you to take the final step and remove yourself from even the observation of normal human activity.”

Her gaze fixed on a spot on the distant carpet. He wished she would truly rebel, and start a row. Any evidence of emotion would be wonderful. Instead she wore the kind of manner a woman might don for a formal evening among strangers. It was as if she had put on a costume one day, and forgotten how to take it off when she returned home.

The insight distracted him. Put her at the right table with the right people, and her cool blandness would not look out of place at all. The peculiarity, and his worry, came from the mask never dropping, even with him. Especially with him.

“If I were a man, you would allow me to be whatever I needed to be.” She said it quietly. Flatly. Then she left the library.

The chamber quaked for a moment with her sudden absence. Quickly, however, the shallow impression she had made on the space disappeared.

No chamber would dare obliterate Emma Fairbourne’s presence like that. But then, her spirit did not whisper in a monotone, did it?

“I
t will be a very small dinner party, Emma. Mrs. Markus specifically told me to bring you,” Cassandra said, while she and Emma walked together on Bond Street the next afternoon.

“How small?”

“No more than twenty, I believe.”

“It would be inappropriate for me to attend right now.” She made a sweeping gesture at her subdued gray dress and lack of ornament, the evidence of her state of mourning.

“Mrs. Markus obviously does not think such restriction necessary for such a minor social event. Nor do I; nor would anyone else who will attend. I will bow to your choice, if I must, but I intend to arrange a full social agenda for you once it is acceptable.”

Emma rather wished Cassandra would not do that. Emma had accompanied Cassandra to a few of her parties and dinners. She never felt comfortable at them. She so clearly was out of place that it was a wonder the other guests did not simply address her as such.
“The weather has been unseasonably warm, don’t you think, Miss Whoever You
Are?”
Or
“Dear Social Clawing Friend of Lady Cassandra, have you decided how you will live now that your father’s trade has been compromised by his death?”

Even Cassandra’s friendship was more a happy accident than a normal alliance. They had met two years ago while they both stood in front of a painting at the Royal Academy Exhibition. Emma had muttered to herself that the artist’s handling of form was flamboyant but weak and Cassandra had taken umbrage because the artist was a friend of hers. They had argued for fifteen minutes and chatted for an hour more before Emma even learned her new friend was the sister of an earl.

“I will be much too busy for a social agenda, whatever that is,” Emma said. “I have an auction house to manage. Remember?”

“I hope that you are not going to become like those men who attend to business and nothing else. With whom will I play, then? I know why you avoid my invitations, Emma. I promise that I will only arrange future ones to parties attended by the most democratic and artistic minds. Radicals and poets will never cut you. It would not be fashionable to do so in their circles.”

“I am reassured that they would condescend to know such as me. I still will not fit in. That you think twenty is a small dinner party speaks eloquently to how our worlds are very different, and ne’er the twain will meet.” They paused to admire some Italian cloth in a draper’s window. “As for doing nothing but attending to business, I will try to avoid having it consume me. I currently can think of little else, however. Fortunately, I had a visitor yesterday and I believe she may be able to bring me more consignments and relieve me of one worry.”

“Was it anyone I know?”

They walked on. “Possibly. She was French, although her English was quite good and not even heavily accented. She appeared poor, yet possessed a good deal of style.”

“If she is French, it is unlikely that I know her. My contacts with the émigré community ceased once my interest in Jacques did.”

“Surely your memories did not cease too.”

“I have made progress in encouraging that they do, thank you.”