Wicked Becomes You (30 page)

Laughter could spell a beginning.

He had watched her wake, and he’d thought to himself that he had no idea what sort of beginning he might offer her. But he’d seen, in her face, which he’d touched lightly with one hand as she’d rolled toward him, that he had certainly reached an end when he’d met her again in London.

On the platform, when the sneering crone and her assistant harpy had popped up to peck at them, he’d thought he had found the answer. What a sleeping princess required was a heroic rescue.

Apparently that was incorrect.

“Are you
mad
?” she demanded. They were on the Milan-bound train. He was growing rather sick of trains. By the looks of her, so was she. She turned a tight circle in the compartment and then kicked the door, exhaling through flattened lips as she turned on him. “Really, Alex, have you lost your mind? Two days ago, you would not . . . and now we are supposedly married!”

He fell back onto the mattress, bracketing his eyes with a hand. He had already exceeded his weekly quota for the care and soothing of enraged womanhood. “It seems likely,” he said. “Madness, I mean. You will have to blame yourself for it.”

“What possessed you? Did I give you any impression that I would expect you to stand for me? Do you not think I heard you last night? Your speech about suffocating? Do you think I would ask this of you?”

He sighed. She made him sound like a martyr, which seemed highly unfair. He loathed martyrs. His mother had been a martyr, an endless slave to the whims of his lungs.
I used to love London in the season . . . of course, Alex cannot take the air there, and so we keep in the country year round. Perhaps
when the twins come out . . .

“Sit up! You cannot mean to go to sleep! Tell me why on earth you would have made that preposterous claim, and explain to me what we are going to do about it!”

Aside from the obvious fact that he’d shagged her silly last night, and was waiting with the barest thread of patience for another opportunity? Yes, aside from that small detail, the
why
was simple enough. “You would not have been running about, sans chaperone, had I not suggested the adventure.” True. “Any harm that befalls you as a result is therefore my responsibility to defray.” Also true. “There was no other alternative to what I did.” Even now, he could not think of one.

“You might have said
nothing
. Did you think of that? I told you—ruin was my aim!”

He smiled despite himself. Her hiss was audible, sharp as a snake’s.

“You do not believe me?” she demanded. “Last night you seemed to take me at my word. Last night, we did as we pleased without worrying about others’ opinions. Today you come out the moralist. Surely I’m owed a reason for it?”

He sighed. “Gwen, last night and this morning are two separate matters. I would not have mentioned last night, but you may bet every pence of your three million that Lady Milton has headed directly to the telegraph office.”

“So? What of it?”

“So, you may say that you won’t mind infamy, but I reserve the right to doubt.” One’s essential traits had a way of reclaiming a person. “You’re a pleaser, Gwen.” Her instincts would pull her back to the narrow path, no matter how much she might come to genuinely revile its constraints. And even if he was wrong—he would not be responsible for putting her to the test.

A savage pain in his foot made him spring upright.

She was holding a chamber pot over his toes.

“Did that please you, Alex?” she asked with a very sweet smile. “Shall I please you again?”

He swung his legs to safer ground. “Had it been anyone else—
anyone
but that woman—I might have tried . . . I don’t know, to purchase their discretion. But . . .” Bloody hell. He trailed off as astonishment overtook him. Running a hand over his face, he admitted it to himself: he was
lying
. He was damned cheerful about this turn of events.

He eyed her with new intent. Gwen Ramsey. Queen of the Barbary Coast. He’d take her there for a holiday. Make her sing. She’d enjoy making the lie a reality.

Perhaps now was not the best time to introduce this idea, or admit his own sudden good cheer. She looked furious. He cleared his throat. “As I said. Anyone else. But Lady Milton?” He shrugged. “She ardently admired her son’s profile. And I was personally responsible for changing it.”

Her shoulders sagged. “Yes,” she said, and returned the chamber pot to the floor. “Richard told me how you interceded for him in that fight. But that is beside the point, Alex. What are we to
do
now?”

He laughed softly. The sound was odd, a bit—all right, he could say it; the sound was a bit hysterical. And he felt odd: boneless, supremely light, thoroughly enervated—as if some great weight had lifted off him. A beginning, indeed. “We find a chaplain,” he said.

“What?” Her brown eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

“Perfectly,” he said.

“But—” She sank down on the chair opposite. “But Alex,” she said softly. “What if we don’t suit?”

He sat up at that. How in the hell could she doubt they’d suit? Had she not been there last night? The past weeks? “You’ve known me over half your life,” he said dryly. “Do you expect any surprises? If so, I assure you, all my skeletons live well outside the closet, creating tales that regularly terrorize the Ramsey clan. Handy, that.” She looked pale as parchment, truly and deeply horrified. A laugh rose in him, rusty; it seemed to catch on something in his chest as it passed onward. “All right, cheer up. If we don’t suit, we’ll find a lawyer. Three cheers for the Marriage Reform Bill. Gerry voted against it, of course.”

He lay back again, repositioning his hand over his eyes. So. Not a true marriage, of course, but something convenient. Why not? She was already part of his circle. She belonged in that same arena as did his sisters and nieces.

The idea made him wince. All right, not
precisely
the same. But obligations already tied them together. He’d simply continue to honor those obligations.

“
Divorce?
” Now
her
voice sounded full of rust and nails.

“Less exciting to you than ruin, is it?” He spoke in a bored drawl. “I suppose it’s true, divorcées are a dime a dozen, these days. Fashionable, almost.”

“Fashionable—” The word ended on a choking noise. “Oh,
please
do sit up! You’ve gotten me into this mess; you can’t mean to nod off while I think how to fix it!”

He lifted the edge of his palm to look at her.

She had her arms wrapped around herself again. And a
tear
slipping down her cheek.

He swung up and came off the bed. “Christ, Gwen—what’s this? You must have known there was a risk that someone would spot us when you agreed to this charade with Barrington.”

“Of
course
I did!” she cried. Her arms tightened around herself; she must be bruising her own ribs. “But I thought I was
choosing
the risk! Instead you have made the decision for me, a decision I’ve never thought about—did not plan for—did
you
plan for this?” She looked up at him, mouth agape, face lit by some emotion he could not parse. “Did you?” she asked softly. “Alex, did you think the outcome might be marriage?”

He cupped her elbows, as bony and delicate as a bird’s wings. She was shaking. The violence of her reaction made no sense. “I never planned for it,” he said slowly. “But if you were ready to be ruined, I fail to see why this turn of events should seem so much greater in magnitude.”

Her face bowed. Silently she shook her head.

He frowned down at her.

Oh, what the hell.

“Gwen,” he said. “I never had any intention to marry. I never had any intention to show you around Paris. I never had the slightest intention of shagging you—but I can swear by God and everything holy that I had dreamed of it for years.”

Perhaps her breath caught. He could not be sure. Certainly, he reflected, it was not the most romantic sentiment one could speak to a woman. But at least her shaking ceased.

This was a good enough result to merit greater investment. “For years,” he said. His fingers tightened of their own volition. “And not just because you are lovely, truly lovely, beautiful in a way that is only partly an effect of your looks. The way you see the world is beautiful. And you make others see its beauty through your eyes. And you have made me
exceedingly
irritated by wasting yourself on tossers. I have cursed you repeatedly for selling yourself so cheaply. And I have never placed a bid because I never believed you were for sale, and I did not know that I was capable of offering what you deserved. So”—he drew a great breath—“if it’s the divorce that troubles you, we can shelve that part.”

No reaction.

“That is, marry. For good.” Was he really proposing this? Dear God, his sisters would throw a party that would last until the new year. “For real,” he clarified. Christ, he sounded like a five-year-old. Next he’d be adding,
For keeps! No take-backs!

A sigh escaped her, almost soundless.

He had no idea how to interpret it. His own thoughts felt a bit muzzy, but he supposed he was making sense. Wasn’t he?

Then why was she not replying?

“My bases are New York and Buenos Aires,” he said, feeling more and more the idiot, “but if you prefer to stay in London, I can move the operations here. Indeed, at this rate, with the Peruvian business—well, that’s no matter. Perhaps biannual trips would serve us. We can choose a house in town. Wherever you like—Grosvenor Square, if you prefer. If you must,” he added under his breath, because he could really only go
so
far.

She flashed him a dark look and pulled out of his grip. Giving him her back, she went to stare out the window.

“Do you love me?” she asked.

Her voice sounded very small. And he wondered, suddenly, what sort of divide it created between them, that he knew pieces of her that she had never shared with him—facts and stories and moments and memories to which she had no idea he was privy. He had collected them for so long, denying to himself that this acquisition was anything more than casual amusement, when in fact it was zealous, and jealous besides; disowning as accidental the fact that he never forgot a single remark she made, or that others made about her, and that he approved of these other people, or disdained them, according to their treatment of her. Such a lopsided intimacy existed between him and her. Inevitably, it created a chasm whose depth neither of them could know until they tried to chart it. Would this chasm prove impossible to bridge?

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I do love you, Gwen.” How had she never realized that? Even Richard had known it.

He was watching her posture as she turned to face him. She stood so painfully erect. He was waiting for her shoulders to relax.

They never did relax, even as she lifted her face to him and smiled, a smile so unearthly radiant that he had a brief, uncanny fear: he was in a dream; none of this was real; he was dreaming, and she was not really saying, “Then yes, Alex. I will marry you.”

Or perhaps, Gwen thought, her brain was malfunctioning. All of these last twelve days seemed to her to have passed in a sort of intoxicated haze. From Milan, she had wired Elma to come quickly—an edict obeyed even more quickly than Gwen had hoped; she’d spent only one more breathless night with Alex before Elma had appeared, anxious to know the cause of this early recall, and a bit put out, besides (although Gwen did not dare ask how Elma had been occupying herself that made her early return so much to be regretted).

Once revealed, their cause for recalling her had achieved the impossible: Elma had been rendered temporarily mute. And then, as astonishment had ebbed, she’d thrown herself into crisis mode. “Shall we bother with bribing an Italian priest? Oh, bosh, simply another mouth to tape shut. No, let us go to where we know our friends, and figure it all out there,” she’d decided. “We book tickets for London directly. Mr. Ramsey, go, go, go!”

It had occurred to Gwen that there was no point in bothering to make the marriage match Lady Milton’s dates. “What do we care?” she’d asked Alex, when Elma had finally turned her back long enough to give them an opportunity for private conference. “Will it matter, in Buenos Aires and New York, if people in London say we were traveling alone together before we wed?”

“It will matter in London,” he’d said. “And one day, it might matter to you.”

He would not listen to her arguments to the contrary. Indeed, he’d proved surprisingly amenable to all of Elma’s moralizing and marshaling, and his sisters’ besides. They had been waiting at St. Pancras, four days later—alerted by Elma’s wire that a “terrible tangle” caused by “two idiotic lovebirds” required their best efforts at reconciliation.

Gwen had predicted to Alex that at least one of his sisters would fall down from shock upon learning of the marriage plans. In reply, he’d merely smiled and said they might surprise her.

And indeed, upon hearing the news shortly after retrieving them from the station, Belinda had done no more than lift her brow and nod, while Caroline, with a cry, had thrown herself across the carriage to embrace Gwen and Alex in turn. “Well done,” she’d said to Alex, winking as she pulled away.

The trick was this: stirred by Lady Milton’s industrious hand, the news of the marriage had spread far and wide. A flurry of cards was appearing at the Beechams, all from acquaintances dying to learn the story. They needed a very influential person, then, to facilitate the procuring of the special license, perhaps even to twist an arm in fudging the date of issue; otherwise, news of its belated usage would become the season’s next scandal. “And Gwen has already provided two,” Elma said, “for everybody is saying now that she must have bribed Pennington into crying off so she could have Mr. Ramsey instead.”

While Alex’s connections spanned the government, he’d never had cause to befriend anybody connected to the church. And so the matter of the special license came down to Gerard.

The twins, together with Alex, broke the news to their brother as Gwen waited outside with Elma. In the hallway, all that could be heard of the moment of revelation was a clatter and a great thump.

“Oh dear,” Gwen murmured.

Elma patted her hand. “He will be your brother-in-law,” she said.

For a moment, Gwen could not tell if this was a caution against further criticism, or a caution against the marriage itself. And then came another crash. Elma’s hand closed firmly over hers. “One can see why Mr. Ramsey prefers to travel abroad,” she said, her smile pleasant, her voice steely.

Silence fell. And then a voice lifted—Lord Weston’s. Gwen strained to hear, but she could not make out the words.

A sharp female reply. That would be Belinda.

The door slammed. The twins came into the hallway, Belinda stalking, Caroline slumping. Even the feather in Caro’s hat was wilting. But her smile was bright when she said, “Only give them a moment. He is very glad to see you join the family, Gwen.”

“As well he should be,” Elma said coldly. “But I daresay he has an odd manner for expressing his joy.”

The twins exchanged a look. “Oh, it isn’t you,” Caroline said. “Only . . .”

“Only he is upset with Alex,” Belinda said flatly. “Alex never does take the straight path when a spiral or zigzag will do.”

“He is yelling at
Alex
?” Gwen could not imagine anyone daring to do so.

“Oh, indeed,” Belinda said. “And Alex is no doubt sitting back and smiling, and thereby taunting him onward.”

“Well, you cannot wish him to apologize,” Caroline said sharply. “Gerry in a mood is thoroughly intolerable. What a pompous boor he becomes!”

“Agreed,” Belinda said with a shrug. “But he’s more like a top than a bull, so he’ll wind down soon enough. In the meantime,” she added, taking a seat on the bench next to Gwen, “we will wait.”

Caroline, meanwhile, began to pace.

After a minute, the indistinct yelling paused. Belinda gathered her skirts to rise, and Caro’s face turned toward the hall.

The shouting resumed. Belinda subsided with a sigh, but Gwen felt her patience snap. She sprang to her feet and paced toward the study, ignoring the startled remarks that followed her. It was well and good to sit about politely if one meant to charm one’s brother-in-law, but she knew that Alex had little concern for such aims, and she herself had finished with meaningless courtesies weeks ago.

She held up her hand to the footman stationed by the entrance, then opened the door without announcing herself.

It was just as the twins had predicted: Lord Weston was on his feet, thundering, while Alex sat comfortably in a chair, fingers drumming on his knee, politely listening.

“—the
top
of
beyond
,” Lord Weston said.

“Yes,” said Alex. “I thoroughly agree. Are you done yet? They’re waiting.”

“Not until you admit that this is the
last straw—
”

“I am the last straw?” Gwen asked politely.

Lord Weston stuttered to a stop. Alex turned in the chair. “Ah, Gwen,” he said pleasantly. He came to his feet, crossing to catch up her hands and draw them, one by one, to his mouth. “Martyr,” he accused beneath his breath. “I thought you chucked your virtues some time ago. Save yourself and run.”

She laughed despite her nerves and might have replied, had Lord Weston not stalked up and sketched a very stiff bow. “Miss Maudsley,” he said. “Welcome to the family. My apologies for the truly
unforgivable
circumstances of this match. I pray you pardon him. I pray you pardon all of us for supporting such a rascal.”

Such was the fervor of his tone that she felt offended for Alex’s sake. “Forgive me if I take a very different view,” she said flatly. “I have always found your brother to be thoroughly admirable in every way.” Alex’s snort, she ignored. “I cannot understand why you judge him so harshly,
particularly
when—”

“Why? You cannot understand why?” The earl’s eyes bulged. “Dragging you off to Paris—landing you in such a situation—why, I pity you if you cannot imagine the why of it! I fear you will be in for an unpleasant surprise before your honeymoon even concludes.” Here he paused, turning a dull red. Perhaps he suddenly recalled the circumstances in which Lady Milton had discovered Gwen and his brother, and divined that the honeymoon would not hold as many surprises as it properly should. More gruffly he continued, “It has always been thus with him. I would have expected you to know this! Certainly you know how he chose to make his . . . living.” He nearly sneered the word. “And of course, there is the small matter of your brother—”

She cut him off, in a tone far colder than she had ever used with anyone. “It was by my own desire that we contracted to marry. I must conclude, then, that you either mistake me for a fool because I wish to marry him, or you mean to twit me now by speaking so outrageously although you don’t mean a word of it. Yes, he makes a
living—
a very fine one. Indeed, you will forgive me if my personal experience of men with inherited privileges leads me to believe that a man who works for greatness is far more trustworthy than one who is handed it at birth.”

Lord Weston opened his mouth to reply, but Alex spoke first. “Oh,” he said softly from behind her. “Do be careful with him, Gwen. He’s a bit more fragile than he looks. And not all these titled sorts are rotters.”

The earl’s glare transferred over her shoulder.

She crossed her arms. An apology was called for.

Lord Weston’s lips remained sealed.

“I do not think the earl so fragile as
that
,” she said grimly. Perhaps his siblings’ cosseting was all that ailed him. “By my calculation, sir, you owe Alex your thanks.”

“My . . . thanks.” He spoke as though the words were some foreign language, meaningless syllables on the tongue.

“Yes. He has done you a great favor. You were conned by a criminal. Alex has brought you the proof to see this man jailed, and your land returned to you.”

Lord Weston’s eyes were nearly the same shade as Alex’s, but did not have nearly the same effect. When they opened wide and his lips parted in surprise, he looked like a glassy-eyed fish, appalled to find himself on the butcher’s slab.

“Mm,” said Alex, taking her arm and shoving his free hand into his pocket. “Hadn’t gotten around to telling him that bit, Gwen.”

“Oh.” She felt her cheeks warm. “Dreadfully sorry.”

“No harm done,” Alex said. “What say, Gerry? Proof of Barrington’s unlawful ways in exchange for one small favor in the form of a quiet marriage license.”

Lord Weston assented, of course. But, so Gwen noted, he did not bother to thank his brother for saving him from the hands of a conman. Family, it seemed, was not always the idyll she had imagined.

Four days it took to procure the license, once Lord Weston turned his mind to it. As she stood now at the edge of the Cornelyses’ ballroom, safely anonymous behind her mask, with less than twelve hours until the appointed time of her marriage, she wondered again what she was doing here. She felt distant, curiously apart from the scene. She and Alex had come on the twins’ insistence, for no newlyweds, if not bound for their honeymoon, would hide from the London season. People might expect odd behavior of Alex, but not of Gwen. And so they would go, Alex had told her.

But why? Why were they bothering with these people?

The mask probably did not help her sense of detachment. She lifted it away as she searched the crowd for the Ramseys. Stares began to find her immediately. A balcony ran along one side of the ballroom, and an entire group of women craned over the rail to peer at her. These looks were not wholly malicious, but they were curious, prying; it would take only one misstep, in the days to come, to sway public opinion against her. Then what seemed, right now, like a romantic spectacle would become a sordid scandal of the kind that deserved condemnation, cold cuts, turned shoulders.

A month ago, she might have crumpled beneath the weight of such censure. Now it felt no more than annoying.

She did not want to live amongst these people.

Why were they here?

By noon tomorrow, she would be married to Alex Ramsey.

She spotted him, finally. He had removed his own mask and was walking straight toward her, but he had not spotted her yet. The sight of his profile as he looked over the crowd, his hawkish nose, the firm straightness of his body, filled her with something hot and covetous.

I want this.

Oh, yes, she did. She had never wished for anything more in her life than to be married to him—to make his laughter, his wit, his slyness, his ferocity, his protectiveness, his encouragement, his courage and determination, hers by right and by law.

But she did not believe for a moment that he loved her.

Oh, he told her so. His sisters told her so. Elma claimed she had known it all along, had seen it in how he’d looked at her when she’d not been paying attention. Balderdash. She wanted to believe it—she would even pretend to believe it tomorrow. But she knew him too well. She knew his secret: for all his wandering, his independence and his unorthodox ways, he took his responsibilities very seriously. He even borrowed others’ responsibilities, making them his own simply because he thought this sort of service was owed to those whom he loved. From the moment Lady Milton had spotted them together, there had been no question that he would offer for her. He had promised Richard to look after her. Marriage was the only option the situation had offered.

His eyes fixed on her. His expression changed. He sent her a smile so slow and tender that her lungs squeezed.