Indiscreet (2 page)
Foye resisted the urge to smooth down his hair. There really was no dealing with his curls. They were contrary by innate disposition, it seemed. A good match for his face, which was one of the reasons he'd let his hair grow and never cut it short again. With a face that defined "ill made" and a body that tended to intimidate by sheer size—he had always been prone to muscle—Foye was used to women looking past him or away from him. Though since he'd become Foye, that happened marginally less often.
He plucked a crisp sugar wafer from his plate and took a bite. A touch of almond, he thought, and he had a taste of bliss melting over his tongue. Lucey's cook was superb, a Neapolitan man he'd succeeded in hiring away from the Italian ambassador's residence. The story of Lucey's raid on the Italian kitchen was amusing, too. Foye took another bite of his wafer and savored it while he watched yet another lovesick young officer beg to have his fortune told by Miss Godard.
Perhaps, he thought, it was something about the way she looked at a man. Yes. Something about her eyes. And her complete disinterest What bold young man didn't want the very woman who wouldn't have him? Given all that he and Miss Godard had in common, he ought to at least meet her. It was, however, quite plain to him that to get anywhere with the niece one must start with the uncle.
When Foye was done eating, he asked Lucey for an introduction to Sir Henry.
The old man was formidable, that had been apparent even from a distance. Closer up, he seemed no less so for all that his frailness was the more evident He had, Foye recalled, read one of Sir Henry's treatises, the 1805
On Hubris.
On Hubris.
When Lucey walked him over to the philosopher, Foye was speared by a pair of iron gray eyes that would have been at home in a man forty years his junior, they were that bright and perceptive. He did not believe it was an accident that he should think back on his university days with some sense of dread. This man would have had no compunction whatever about sending a prince packing for want of preparation. No more a mere second son—all that Foye had been in those days.
Foye bowed when Lucey completed the introduction. Already the object of much curiosity on account of his appearance, more stares came his way when his titles were pronounced. Lucey, unfortunately, knew the entire list. Marquess of Foye. Earls of Eidenderry and DeMortmercy. He was used to them now, at last accustomed to the change in his identity from Lord Edward to Foye. There were days now when he could hardly recall a time when he hadn't been Foye. His first titled ancestor had been ennobled before the reign of Charlemagne. The Marracks of Cornwall had never been viscounts. Their nobility had begun with an earldom.
It was with him that the Marrack line would end. With the death of his brother without any living children, he was the last of the Marrack men. When he died, his properties and titles would revert to the crown. What a failure to take to his grave, to leave no one to carry on the name.
"Well, well, young man," Sir Henry said, laboriously craning his neck sideways to look at him. "That is a mouthful of names."
Foye smiled despite himself. He had not been called a young man for a good many years. It wasn't as though he was old, but at thirty-eight, he wasn't a boy anymore. Godard held out a gnarled hand for Foye to take, which he did, gently. The philosopher was crippled with the gout, and his skin was hot to the touch.
"Yes, Sir Henry, it is, indeed, a mouthful." He smiled, aware of Miss Godard's attention to their exchange. Would he tell her, if the opportunity arose? He ought to but didn't know if he would. She seemed to have made a life for herself here, far from England. Why bring up what could only be painful memories for her? Because, Foye thought, if he were her, he'd want to know the truth. "I hope you were not bored listening to all that"
"Not at all." Sir Henry bobbed his head. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, my Lord Foye."
"The pleasure is mine, Sir Henry." Foye was aware that Miss Godard had stopped her inspection of someone's teacup—what nonsense that business was—to listen to the introduction.
Did she recognize his name from his connection with Crosshaven? Perhaps she did not know he and Cross had been friends and that Foye knew what had been done to her. Or perhaps she did, and now wondered if her reputation was to be ruined again by someone else who knew only the lies.
"Foye. Foye," Sir Henry said, tapping his chin with a finger permanently hooked into a claw. He narrowed his eyes and gave him a sideways look. "A King's College man, weren't you?"
Foye bowed. For a split second, he racked his brain for the essay he must have failed to write. "Yes, sir."
"Your elder brother, too, if I'm not mistaken."
"You are not."
"I thought so." Sir Henry grinned and nodded. "You were Lord Edward then, not Foye. That's why I didn't know who you were until you were close enough for me to see you." He pulled at a blanket spread over his lap. "Took a first in maths, didn't you?"
"I'm astonished you should know such a thing." It was at university that Foye had learned there were women who cared more for what he offered-when they were intimate than what he looked like in broad daylight He'd also discovered he had a talent for pleasing his partners. He'd made himself an assiduous student of the delights to be had between a man and woman. Well. No more of that for him. Those days were long gone. He was done with that life.
Godard waved a misshapen hand. "I made it a point to acquaint myself with the names of all the young men of promise. If we were at home, I would send Sabine to find my entry on you." He smiled, and the effect was disconcertingly sly. His niece looked in their direction at the mention of her name. “I kept a ledger, my lord. I followed you in Parliament, you know. Heard your maiden speech. I am rarely, wrong in my predictions."
"Am I to be flattered by that?" Foye asked. He did not look at Miss Godard, though he burned to do so.
"I should think so. I saw you once or twice at university." He chuckled. "No mistaking you for anyone else."
He smiled again. "No, sir."
"I should think you learned early on it's better to have something here"—he tapped his temple—"than to have a handsome face. Too many young men these days spend hours primping at the mirror when they would profit more from improving their minds."
"Godard," his niece murmured. She put an arm on her uncle's sleeve in a gesture familiar enough to be habitual. Foye could easily imagine her needing to restrain her uncle's bluntness. For all Sir Henry's rudeness, he rather liked the man for it. He wasn't a pretty man, after all.
"What?" Sir Henry said, turning his torso toward his niece. "With a face like his, do you think he bothers much with enriching his tailor over his bookseller?"
"I think Lord Foye is very smartly dressed," she said.
'Thank you," Foye said. In point of fact, he was vain of his appearance. Even as Lord Edward, he had never walked out of his house without clothes that made other men beg him for the name of his tailor.
"Look at him." One thin arm shot into the air. "Do you think he spent his time at King's with his mistresses instead of in the library?"
Good God. Foye held back his shock at Sir Henry's speech. Miss Godard, too, felt the indiscretion, for her cheeks pinked up. Sir Henry didn't seem to think anything of his declaration.
"Godard." She slid a glance at Foye, and their eyes met Hers were brown. There was nothing extraordinary about her eyes, but for the intelligence there. She was no ordinary girl, he thought. "Forgive him," she murmured.
"For what?" Foye said. "It's true. I am no model of masculine beauty. I am not offended by Sir Henry pointing that out" Age had its privileges, after all; and Sir Henry had to be nearer seventy than sixty. He had decided to be amused. There was brilliance yet in the old man.
"Sensible of you, my boy."
Foye nodded to Sir Henry, but he was absorbed by Miss Godard. She was a far more interesting woman than he'd expected. All this time, whenever he thought of Crosshaven and what he'd done that night, he'd been imagining a sweet young woman, weeping for her lost reputation. Naive and mourning the infamous wrong done her. Miss Godard was hardly naive.
"Have you been in Anatolia long, my lord?" Sir Henry
"No," Foye replied.
Miss Godard was how indisputably a part of their conversation. He could not help but look at her. Her eyes were not a common brown after all, but something a more poetic man might call dark honey. From the shape of her mouth, the tilt of her eyes with their thick, dark lashes, to the sweeping line of her throat to her shoulders, she was the sort of woman who made a man think of darkened rooms and whispered endearments. He understood very well why Crosshaven had chosen her.
"I arrived in Constantinople yesterday," Foye said to Sir Henry. "And you?"
Sir Henry folded his crippled hands on his lap. "We have been in Buyukdere coming onto a month. Is that correct, Sabine?"
She answered without hesitation. "In Anatolia, forty-three days. In Buyukdere, twenty-one, Uncle."
Again, Foye felt his understanding of Miss Godard to be maddeningly incomplete. Not a woman wronged and mourning her fate. Not a pretty girl who knew and used the power her looks gave her over a man. And to speak so crisply, with such unhesitating precision. He preferred it when the people he met fell into neat categories. Irascible old man. A young woman wronged. Foye did not yet know where to fit Miss Godard.
"Twenty-one days, my lord," Sir Henry told him with a smile that conveyed his pride in the precision of his niece's recollection.
The naval officer whose tea leaves she'd been reading bid Miss Godard adieu. She nodded, said good-bye, and though the officer waited for her to say something more, she didn't. For the moment, her table was empty of a companion, yet all the other men who had been waiting for their chance found themselves dismissed without a word.
"You have an able assistant, sir." There was an awkward silence during which Foye expected to be introduced and was not He cleared his throat and returned a bit of the older man's directness. "May I meet your niece, Sir Henry?"
"What for?" Sir Henry's eyes scalded. Foye could only thank the Lord he'd never been in one of Sir Henry's lectures when he was at Oxford. He would have quailed under that gimlet eye. Because, in truth, he had spent more time with his various mistresses than with his studies.
"Godard," Miss Godard said, firmly this time.
Sir Henry tipped his head toward her. "Very well. I suppose there's no hope for it. Sabine, will you meet the Marquess of Foye?"
She stood to curtsey but did not extend a hand to him over the very small table at which she sat. He bowed in return. "Delighted to make your acquaintance, my lord."
"My niece, sir. Miss Sabine Godard."
"Miss Godard." He was aware he was staring too hard. She was still so very young. He doubted she was much beyond twenty. Crosshaven ought to rot in hell for what he'd done to the girl
She cocked her head at him, and at that moment he would have given anything to know what she was thinking.
"Would you read my future?" he asked.
Sir Henry snorted. "It's nonsense, my lord," he said. "She knows that, too."
Miss Godard's gaze flicked to her uncle; she remained unruffled. "If he is on your list of men who will make something of themselves, Godard, I daresay he is well aware my tea reading is a nothing more than an amusing way to pass the time." She turned to him. "My lord, have you a cup you've been drinking? If not, you'll need fresh."
He pointed in the direction of the table on which he'd set his tea. "There."
"That should do." She smiled at him, but with no particular interest in him beyond what was polite and no indication that she cared anything for his title or his consequence. .Or his lack of beauty, for that matter. How egalitarian of her. "I'll wait, my lord."
He returned with his nearly empty cup and sat on the chair opposite her. His legs were too long to fit underneath the table, leaving him no choice but to sit sideways or remain as he was with his thighs wide open. He turned on the chair. Miss Godard took his cup and looked into it "Can you bear to drink another mouthful or two?"
He nodded. He would tell her, he decided. He would tell her about Crosshaven and then apologize for his role in her ruin, limited as it had been. He took back his cup, drank it nearly empty, and extended it to her.
"No," she said, refusing his cup. "Hold it just so and swirl the contents thus." She demonstrated the desired motion with her arm.
"Nonsense, all of it," Sir Henry said.
"Yes, Godard," she said without looking at her uncle. But he saw a smile lurking on her mouth. "Excellent Now upend your cup on the saucer."
"Shall I first cross your palms with silver?" Foye asked.
"Certainly not" Her eyes, her very fine eyes, flashed with humor. There was more to Miss Godard than she meant to let on, he realized. "If I allowed you to pay me in order to learn your future, my ability to accurately assess what tomorrow and beyond may hold for you would be compromised."
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