Vanity (21 page)

“He couldn’t have meant it?” Octavia’s eyes widened as she imagined the obese figure of Lady Buckinghamshire whipped at the cart’s tail through the streets of London.

“No, I don’t think even Kenyon would dare punish a member of the aristocracy in such fashion,” Rupert agreed with a chuckle. “But the threat caused some alarm.” He linked his hands in his lap, and the emerald on a slender forefinger glowed dully in the darkness.

“And while I was being so busy, what did you achieve this evening?” Octavia asked with a touch of acid, reminded of how that particular finger had tidied up Lady Drayton’s escaping nipple. “Did you contrive to meet your prey?”

“I don’t believe they were there,” he said, making a steeple of his fingers. “I didn’t see them, at all events.”

“I see. And Lady Drayton? Was she useful to you in any way?”

Rupert looked sharply at her. “Why the acid-tipped tongue, Octavia?”

Octavia turned her head on the squabs behind her and gazed out at the darkness. “I just wondered why, while I was enduring the odious attentions of the prince, you were amusing yourself. I thought this was a joint enterprise.”

“I was making it easy for you, my dear Octavia.” He sounded amused, and she wanted to throw something at him. “Margaret Drayton is Philip Wyndham’s mistress. I thought to prod him a little in your direction … to give him a reason to get back at me.”

“I doubt he required a prod,” Octavia retorted. “He seemed quite interested enough in me before you started dabbling in Lady Drayton’s bosom.”

Rupert laughed. “Such games are played, sweet innocent. A little dalliance means nothing … particularly with a known whore like Margaret Drayton.”

“You don’t care for her?”

“Oh, she can be quite amusing, particularly when she’s annoyed. But she’s a trifle overblown for me. I prefer my women a little fresher.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” Octavia glared at the pale glimmer of his face across from her. “Like meat in the butcher’s shop—best if we haven’t been hanging too long.”

Rupert’s jaw dropped. “Now, just a minute, Octavia. Why are you so set on pulling caps with me? We’ve had a very successful evening. My quarry are not going anywhere—indeed, they’ll be beating a path to Dover Street once the news of a high-stakes gaming table is spread around. And we can leave the spreading to the royal mouth,” he added dryly.

When she made no response, merely continued to stare out of the window, he leaned over and took her gloved hands in his. “What’s troubling you, sweeting?” His voice was dark and smooth as caramel, and she could never resist the endearment that belonged in glowing candlelight and soft damask sheets and accompanied leisurely caresses and the languor of fulfillment.

She couldn’t admit the truth. Jealousy was a demeaning and petty emotion.

“I expect I’m fatigued,” she said with a little laugh that
didn’t sound particularly convincing to her ears. “Over-excitement, probably. Rubbing shoulders with royalty … sharpening swords with the likes of the Duchess of Deerwater.”

Rupert was not convinced, but he didn’t challenge her explanation. “Do you have the courage to continue ignoring the dictates of fashion?” he asked neutrally, releasing her hands and leaning back again.

“I don’t believe it requires courage,” Octavia said, accepting the change of subject with relief. “It might if I looked like a freak, but since I know I don’t, then …” She shrugged.

Rupert relaxed. Her confidence pleased him. It was certainly not misplaced. She’d been the cynosure of every eye all evening. Not every eye had been admiring, of course, but one couldn’t expect to stand out in a crowd without drawing resentment.

All in all, it had been a most satisfactory debut. It was only to be expected that Octavia would have a few flutters of apprehension and uncertainty, particularly in the aftermath of the evening. Such vulnerabilities would undoubtedly disappear as she became more accustomed to the part, and as the play took shape.

T
he coach drew up outside a tall, narrow house on Dover Street. An oil lamp hung above the front door, and lights glowed in the downstairs windows.

“I wonder if Papa is still awake.”

“If he is, perhaps we should pay him a good-night visit.” Rupert opened the coach door and sprang down. “I don’t know why it is, but I have the unshakable conviction that your father regards our marriage with a somewhat skeptical eye.” He reached up his hand to help her alight. “Am I right?”

“Possibly,” Octavia said, stepping down beside him. “One can never be sure what my father sees. In some things he’s very shrewd.”

The door opened as they walked up to it. “Good evening, Griffin. Has Mr. Morgan retired?”

“I don’t believe so, my lady.” The butler bowed her in. “He rang for fresh candles a short while ago.”

“Then we’ll go up and bid him good night,” Rupert said, shrugging out of his cloak. “Lock up, Griffin.” He strode to the stairs on Octavia’s heels.

“You might wish to send Nell to bed,” he murmured against Octavia’s ear as they passed her bedchamber.
“There’s nothing she can do for you tonight that I can’t do as well.”

Octavia looked over her shoulder at him, meeting the heat of a gaze that turned her limbs to honey. “Better, I would have said, my lord.”

She turned aside to open her bedroom door. “You may go to bed, Nell.”

The maid dozing in a chair beside the fire jumped sleepily to her feet. “Oh, ma’am, I’m quite awake,” she protested with a guilty flush.

“Yes, I can see that. Nevertheless, I have no further need of you tonight.” Octavia smiled at the girl, knowing how terrified she was that she would lose her position at the slightest dereliction. “Go to bed, Nell. And I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes, m’lady.” The girl curtsied. “I’ll trim the candles and make up the fire, though, shall I?”

“If you please.” Octavia stepped back into the corridor, closing the door quietly behind her. Sometimes she felt as if they were all living within a stage set, the limits of their play set in a fixed time and place. Every member of their household was a member of the cast, although only she and Rupert knew it. And when the curtain came down, the supporting cast would be out of a job.

But not necessarily, she told herself briskly. If all went well, she and her father would be in a position to staff a household again. They weren’t really playing with people’s lives, just because they hadn’t shared with the household the temporary nature of this employment. Besides, for as long as the play continued, these people were assured of food and warmth and a bed, and thus a great deal better off than the majority of London’s population.

It occurred to Octavia that this uncomfortable social conscience that she’d developed had grown out of her own intimate acquaintance with poverty’s grim and desperate face. Rupert knew that face too, but he seemed less troubled by it. Or perhaps he kept such reactions to himself … as he kept so much.

Now, however, was not the time for dwelling futilely
on the world’s miseries and Rupert’s apparent indifference to them. She hurried down the long corridor to the back of the house. She could hear Rupert’s voice through the open door of her father’s room.

“Good evening, Papa.” Smiling cheerfully, she entered the bright, warm room. “You’re up late.”

“I could say the same of you,” Oliver declared, regarding his daughter from a deep armchair beside a blazing fire. He looked well, his tawny eyes clear and sharp, his complexion smooth and pink, his thick mane of white hair luxuriant and glossy. He was wearing a fur-trimmed velvet dressing gown and fur-lined slippers, a rug across his knees. Books were heaped on the floor beside his chair, tumbled off the table at his side, lay open on the arm of his chair. He had a writing table across his lap, a quill in his hand, a sheet of parchment already covered in his spidery black writing.

“We had an evening of dissipation,” Octavia said. “Rather different from work. How’s it going?” She bent to kiss him.

“Very well, child. Warwick, do you remember that discussion we were having on Plato? About the influence of Pythagoras on his philosophy? Well, I have found the reference I was looking for … in Socrates … I have it here, somewhere.” He began to rummage through the heap of books, from which bookmarks bristled like the spikes of a hedgehog.

Rupert took a seat beside the old man, and Octavia perched on the arm of a sofa across from them. Her father’s cough had almost disappeared, and as she looked at him now, it was hard to imagine that the smooth course of his life had ever been disrupted. He behaved as if he had no recollection of their three-year sojourn in the East End alleys, of the days without sufficient food, the constant lack of warmth, the daily struggle to make and mend to keep adequate clothes on their backs. He had always behaved as if he had no idea how Octavia achieved her small miracles. He’d certainly shown no curiosity about the details of their past existence and had been singularly incurious about this change in their circumstances.

When Octavia had explained to her father that she and Lord Rupert Warwick had married without his consent because he had been too ill and feverish to be consulted, Oliver had offered no comment. Octavia had expected some reaction to this momentous fait accompli, and in the face of this calm acceptance of the new situation, she’d found herself expanding her explanation as if he were as skeptical and disapproving as she’d expected him to be. She’d rattled on about how he’d been so ill that she’d felt that his health was more important than convention and she’d agreed to a speedy and unceremonious marriage in order to hasten their move to somewhere warmer and more comfortable.

Her father had merely smiled, said he was sure she knew what she was doing. She’d always known what was best for herself and if she was happy, then so was he. And he had settled into his spacious apartments on Dover Street as if they had always been his.

Rupert had been surprisingly attentive to the old man, certainly above and beyond the call of duty in the circumstances, Octavia considered. And he’d evinced an astonishingly intimate knowledge of the classics that delighted Oliver Morgan. Not just knowledge, Octavia reflected, listening to the discussion. Enthusiasm. He seemed to find Oliver’s forays into the more abstruse realms of classical philosophy as fascinating as her father did.

She, herself, had long exhausted her interest in Oliver’s intellectual pursuits. He’d educated her rigorously in the classics, and she read and spoke Greek and Latin with an unusual fluency for a woman. Rupert, if he’d had the conventional education of a wellborn male, would have spoken Latin and Greek in preference to English throughout his school years. But somehow Octavia didn’t think the young Lord Rupert Warwick, or whoever he truly was, had had a conventional upbringing. Nevertheless, he was perfectly at home in the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome.

How he’d acquired that education he wasn’t saying.

“Now I’m making such progress with this article, I must write to my publishers and tell them how it’s going.
Alderbury was most anxious I should keep them informed of my progress when we last corresponded,” Oliver said happily, wiping off his quill.

A correspondence that had ceased three years earlier, Octavia reflected. But there was no virtue in pointing that out. It would only offend her father, and who was to say that Mr. Alderbury wasn’t waiting with bated breath for the next progress report?

She stood up. “I think I’ll go to bed, it’s been a long evening. Do you have everything you need, Papa?”

“Yes, thank you, my dear.” He smiled and kissed her as she bent over him. “I shall stay up a little while yet. Perhaps your husband would care to bear me company.” He turned to Rupert, and there was no mistaking the mischief in his eyes. “But, then again, perhaps not.”

“I beg you to forgive me, sir.” Rupert hid his surprise at that mischievously shrewd look. “But I find myself a trifle fatigued.”

“Of course, of course. Young people have no stamina these days.” Oliver waved him away, his eyes bright with that same look. “Seek your bed, Warwick, and leave me to my philosophy.”

“Good night, sir.” Rupert bowed and turned to follow Octavia from the room.

The door closed behind them, and Oliver Morgan smiled to himself. Surely they didn’t think he didn’t know what was going on. Octavia couldn’t really believe him to be such a dumb idiot as not to know this whole marriage tale was a gigantic fabrication. But fabrication or not, it had returned her to her rightful place in the world. And whatever lay behind this arrangement, it was one that clearly suited his daughter. He didn’t care to speculate on what work she’d been doing when she’d leave him for long periods during their sojourn in Shoreditch. When she returned, his books were redeemed from the pawnbroker, they dined from the landlady’s table, and there was fire in the hearth. But whatever she did to achieve those small miracles had taken a terrible toll.

Now the drawn look had left her face, her eyes glowed
again, and the frisson between her and Lord Rupert was as apparent as a rainbow in a shower.

He let the book fall closed on his lap and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. Perhaps he should be concerned about his daughter’s reputation, about her honor. But such concepts had ceased to have any relevance after Harrow-gate. And if he hadn’t questioned her activities in Shoreditch, he certainly didn’t have the right to do so now.