The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne (17 page)

“Or perhaps he has changed his mind. More recently his voice has called for better guarding of our coast. He pesters the admiralty about it. With property in Kent, he knows too well how vulnerable that coast can be, I suppose.”

Mention of Kent turned Emma’s mind to her father’s property there, and its contents. She would have to visit there very soon.

That thought led to others about the auction. She trusted that her plans today were progressing well. A certain wagon was moving from her house to a building on Albemarle Street this morning. By noon its contents should be mixed with the other items, and the wine hidden out of view in storage.

A movement up ahead caught her thoughts up short. A figure had appeared as if by magic on the path. Swathed in brown cloth, it seemed to merge with its surroundings from this distance, but Emma recognized the willowy form.

“Who is that?” Cassandra asked.

They drew closer, but the figure did not move.

“That is Marielle Lyon,” Emma said. “I think perhaps she wants to talk to me.”

“How odd that she guessed you would be here,” Cassandra teased. “Go to her, and see what she has for your auction. I hope it is worth the chill we both risked with this rendezvous. I will wait for you here, and be jealous that a woman who is wearing a dull sack dress twenty years out of style manages to appear so fashionable.”

M
arielle waited in the shade of a tree that overhung the path.

“You have come,” she said when Emma reached her. She
gave brief but sharp consideration of Cassandra, then ignored her presence. “I have found some things for your auction. A big roll of drawings. Old things. The owner says they are by artists sought after in England. I told him you wanted paintings, but he said you would know their value if you know anything at all.”

“Where are they? I must see them in order to know they are good enough for the sale, and authentic.”

“He said to learn if you wanted them first. If so, he will bring them to you.” She toed at the soil flanking the path with her mule. “Twenty percent, you said.”

“It will be yours if all is in order, after the sale. Tell this man that I do want them, if they are as good as he thinks. Ask him to bring them to my house tomorrow morning.”

Too conscious that Cassandra watched with unguarded interest, Emma started to walk back to her.

“Do you not want the rest?” Marielle asked.

“There is more? Are they also drawings?”

“I do not speak of art. That man, the one who brought the wagon. He will see you.”

Emma’s heart leapt. She glanced back furtively at Cassandra, who knew nothing about that wagon.

“When?”

“He said Thursday afternoon. At the east entrance to St. Paul’s. You should bring some money. I promised him good coin.”

Emma did not miss the reminder. She retrieved two shillings out of her reticule. “I will be there. Thank you.”

Marielle tucked the coins away. Her gaze sharpened on the path behind Emma. She tsked her tongue in annoyance. “I must go now. I have been followed, and you do not want it misunderstood why we meet.”

Emma glanced over her shoulder. A horse approached Cassandra’s spot at a slow walk. The man riding it did not appear interested in them, or in anything except the fine day.

Marielle laughed. “It is amusing. The English worry that
I spy for the French, and some of the French think I spy for the English. In truth, I spy for no one but you.”

Then she was gone, melting into the dappled shadows below the nearby trees.

D
arius visited the auction house the morning after Herr Werner had called there. He went the following afternoon as well. His detailed perusals of the records and accounts were yielding nothing of value. Their vagueness defeated any efforts to see what Maurice Fairbourne had been doing the last few years.

Miss Fairbourne did not grace the establishment with her presence either day. He thought that odd. She no longer had to pretend she was not writing the catalogue, and she had said she had much work to do.

He wondered if she avoided the premises in order to avoid him. Since he haunted the same spaces in part to see her, that was not acceptable.

He rode east to Compton Street after leaving the auction house the third day. Maitland brought him to the dining room. Miss Fairbourne stood at the table, flipping sheets of paper. As he approached he saw that she examined a stack of drawings.

“They were brought to me today,” she explained. “They are much better than I had dared hope. I am sure this is a Leonardo. I also accept the claim that this silverpoint portrait is by Dürer. What do you think?”

He admired the drawings, and her excitement over them. She appeared very animated today, even flushed. She wore a fashionable pale yellow dress, and appeared very fresh and pretty in it.

“These must be from the same consignor as the other new items that arrived,” he mused, while he bent to get a better look at the details in the Dürer.

Did he imagine that she stiffened beside him? For a moment she stilled, at least.

“You have been to the storage again, I see,” she said. “I hope that you did not move anything. It is all arranged to my liking, so that I do not miss anything as I complete the catalogue.”

He straightened. “I touched nothing at all. It has become so crowded that I wonder how you get to that desk, however.”

“I told you there would be more, and it is arriving. All I need is to hear from Herr Werner.” She turned two more sheets, and revealed a large drawing in ink and wash. “For all the other great names attached to these drawings, I think this one will be the prize among them. It is a magnificent Tiepolo, and a study for a ceiling painting. You should tell your friends that it will be offered. Any good collector would want to know.”

“Are you suggesting that I sell your sale, Miss Fair-bourne?”

“I would never ask such a thing of you. However, if you found yourself expressing interest in it while you attended parties and dinners, and described some rarities you have heard it will contain, that would help.”

“If I am not careful, you will have me in Mr. Nightingale’s coats and shoes, greeting the ton as they arrive at the preview night.”

She began rolling the stack of drawings carefully. “Well, someone has to do it.” She tied a thick ribbon around the roll. The flush had not left her face, and her fingers trembled at their task.

“You were not at the auction house today. Nor yesterday.”

She did not look at him. “I had other matters to attend to.”

“And tomorrow?”

“More matters. Other ones.”

“Eventually the catalogue must be written.”

“I will complete it in time. And you, Lord Southwaite? Are you quite done with examining the records and accounts?”

“Almost done.” More than done, in truth. He should just say so, and see her again at the auction. “Have you stayed
away because you fear I will be there? Has what happened in the garden caused you to hide?”

“I truly have other matters to which I must attend. However—” Her gaze met his with all the directness that could so easily undo him. “I have chosen not to think too much about that afternoon. I fear that if I do, I will only blame myself for the what, and you for the why.”

“Allow me to blame myself for both. I should have apologized that day.”

“Yet you did not. Because I am not a lady?”

“Your birth had nothing to do with it. I did not because I was not truly sorry.” Lies, lies. Deceptions and omissions. He had not apologized because his darker side was hoping for more, and her birth probably had more to do with that than he wanted to contemplate.

“Are you sorry now?”

“No, but I am not a man to take advantage of a woman.” More lies. Damnable ones. “There is no reason for you to be afraid of me.”

“I am not afraid of you.”

The hell she wasn’t. The caution showed in her eyes. He saw other things in them too. Vulnerability, as if she expected this conversation to insult her before it was over.

“Perhaps your restraint is better with wellborn ladies due to more practice. I doubt you have had much experience with ordinary women in these things,” she said.

“You have it backward. To me you are not ordinary. You are very unusual to my experience, and that may be what disarmed my restraint.” Some truth at last, but a flattery given with self-interest.

“What an odd world you must live in, Lord Southwaite. One so full of pretense that my lack of sophistication becomes intriguing in comparison.” She held the roll of drawings in front of her like a shield, but did not avert her intense focus on him. “Let us speak the truth we both know when we can, sir. Whatever your reasons or impulses, you took advantage of my surprise, but nothing more. I will not pretend that I behaved well, so we are both aware the blame
is not wholly yours. I trust that you know, however, that I will never be that surprised again. Not ever.”

Wouldn’t she now? Damnation, he had come here to make peace, and she sounded like she was lining up her knights to engage his again, and had just issued a challenge.

That raised the devil in him, and the devil was far too glad to stretch his black wings. “Are you saying that if I should try to kiss you again, you will find the fortitude to deny me?”

He did not intend it as a threat, nor did she take it as one. His words opened the possibility of more kisses, and other things, however. She knew it, too. She could hardly miss how it altered the air and forged an invisible link between them.

“While I have every faith in my fortitude, I thought it was clear that I assumed you would
not
try to kiss me again.”

“What an impractical and naïve thing for you to expect.”

“You apologized. I had every reason to expect it.”

“If ever a man’s apology revealed where his thoughts really were, mine did.”

“Then allow me to speak more plainly. I do not assume or expect you to resist such impulses. I
require
it. In fact, I would like your word on it.”

She did not plan a battle, after all. She wanted a diplomatic victory instead. Unfortunately for her strategy, he had learned that Emma Fairbourne well pleasured was much easier to deal with than Emma Fairbourne self-possessed.

“I never give my word of honor when I know that I am likely to break it, Miss Fairbourne.” He gently pried the roll of drawings from her arms and set it aside. “And I have known since I left that garden that I would try again.”

He cupped her face with his hands. She startled, but she did not pull away.

Her skin felt like silky velvet under his palms. A flush rose in her and its warmth passed into him, joining his own heat. Her eyes widened in surprise at her reaction and
arousal, revealing the same astonishment he had sensed in the garden.

As soon as his lips touched hers, he knew he would pay dearly for this kiss. As Kendale put it, he was not a schoolboy anymore. She was very sweet, and adorably artless, and despite her announcement, she was still very surprised at the way a kiss could affect her. His desire urged that he try for yet more, argued forcefully for it.

He ravished her mouth, but managed to keep his hands off her body. When that became unbearable, he released her and stepped away.
Not here. Not now. Not in her own household with her servants about.

It seemed they stood there forever, the passion and want still binding them. Pulling them. That could be a sweet torture, but only if ultimately it ended the right way.

He assumed that she saw it in him, what he wanted. Just as he saw her suspicions about the “why” and her fear of the “what.”

She executed a careful, slow curtsy. He made the requisite bow, and left.

E
mma walked around the corner of the western façade of St. Paul’s, heading for the yard to the east. She had worn black in the hopes that the man would recognize her from that, if he did not know her face already.

The visit from Southwaite yesterday repeated in her head as she examined the people she passed, hoping for a sign that one was her quarry.

Southwaite had apologized without the kind of embarrassment one might expect under the circumstances. The very correct earl had said the very correct words required, with exactly the right tone and the appropriate, if insincere, self-recrimination. He might have read a little pamphlet that served as a guide in such things.

The part about her not being ordinary had been a kindness, she assumed. She had challenged his motivations, hadn’t she? She had implied that he treated her with less respect than he did better-born women. It would have been insulting for him to admit it. What could he say? That the rules did not apply to a lord’s treatment of such as her, but only to his behavior with daughters of peers and gentlemen?

It would be stupid to be angry that he had lied to spare her the insult. And she had lied too, after all, in saying she was not afraid of him. He had always overwhelmed her, and now she found herself at an additional disadvantage. She had not trusted herself to show “fortitude” should he ever kiss her again. Now he had, and once more she had succumbed like a…a what? A wanton? A harlot?

She almost wished those damning words applied. She knew better. She had succumbed like an ignorant woman of mature years who knew little about men, and even less about her own sensuality. Perhaps she should ask Cassandra how long it took a woman to learn to master her own body’s reactions, to the point where she could enjoy or reject pleasure according to some objective calculation.

She was very sure that she did not overwhelm Southwaite in turn, so his excuse for those kisses in the garden did not ring true to her. The kiss this morning most certainly had not been the act of a man undone by passion. He had announced it first, for heaven’s sake. If a man had the mental faculties to map his path and point to the signposts, he had sufficient control to walk a different road entirely.

The real reason for all these kisses, she feared, was much less pretty than some poetic passion. He had made clear that first day that he sought a new mistress and thought she might do for a while. As she had suspected then, central to his mastery of discretion was probably choosing lower-born women whom the ton did not care about.