Indiscreet (3 page)
"Consider the offer rescinded, miss."
Her mouth quirked. "Anyone who takes filthy lucre is no better than a rank charlatan."
Obediently, he swirled his cup and did as directed, upending the cup over the saucer. Though he did not like to admit it, she interested him. What was she? What had she become since Crosshaven? "And you, being above remuneration, are ho charlatan, I presume?"
Her smile became a direct and knowing connection with his gaze. "I am the worst charlatan in Christendom if you believe a word I say, my lord." She righted his tea and stared into it "This is utter nonsense, as you well know."
"My future?" He sighed. "I feared as much."
Miss Godard laughed softly. "Divination, my lord. As much as I admire the great civilizations of the past, I have concluded there is a reason men of modern learning do not maintain a belief in the ancient ways. Just as there were no gods on Mount Olympus, there is no magic by which one can infer the future from random patterns made in tea leaves." She quirked her eyebrows at him. "Or the entrails of a goat, for that matter."
He very nearly laughed. Nearly. My God, she was quick-witted and not afraid to show him. "Nevertheless, this"—he indicated the teacup—"is, as you say, quite a charming pastime for a lady to have."
"Thank you." She raised her voice. "You see, Godard, that I am vindicated by Lord Foye."
"What's that?" Sir Henry said.
"The marquess finds the reading of tea leaves to be an amusing occupation." She spoke so drolly and with such affection for her uncle that Foye was hard-pressed not to grin. Miss Godard handled her irascible uncle quite well.
"More the fool he," Sir Henry said.
Miss Godard lifted a hand and pressed the other to her upper bosom. "A moment of silence while I read the portents, my lord."
She could have been an actress, the gesture and tone of voice were so perfectly done. No wonder the officers vied for her attention. For one thing, she was miserly with it, and when she did look at you directly, there was so much there to see in her eyes, a man could not be faulted for wanting more. He leaned his side against his chair, his elbow over the back, and stretched out one leg while he watched her. "I believe," he said in a low voice, "that we have a mutual acquaintance."
Without taking her eyes from his cup, she replied in a soft voice, "Not a mutual friend, I am afraid. Unless you mean someone besides the Earl of Crosshaven."
"I do not"
Her expression closed off. "You have a bouquet of flowers, here." She pointed to a mass of leaves. "That signifies you are to be happy in love."
"I was," he said. "Once. But no longer."
She looked at him. "I am not reading your past, my lord, but your future."
"Happy in love?" he said, looking into her eyes. "I fear that is quite impossible."
“The tea leaves never lie," she replied.
He wriggled his fingers over his cup. "Pray continue."
Chapter Three
HOW LOUD HER HEART BEAT IN HER EARS. HER FINGERS would be shaking if she hadn't curled them around the teacup in front of her.
Sabine kept her attention fixed on the leaves clinging to the interior of the marquess's teacup and wondered how much Lord Foye knew about her. Safest for her to assume that the man sitting across from her had heard every boast Lord Crosshaven had ever made concerning her, all of them lies, whether said in relative private to his cronies or pronounced at some assembly to which she and her uncle would never have been invited. Lies to which a rebuttal proved impossible.
How many thousands of miles from England did she have to go before she could live without fear of being thought a whore? Or would Lord Foye, whom she had not met when she and Godard were in London, be like the others who had assumed she was now fair game for seduction? She flicked a glance at him, resentful and apprehensive at the same time. He might do her a great deal of damage if he desired. Better she find out now than later.
He was a physically formidable man, which she did not care for. Not only tall but muscular, with broad shoulders and chest, and thighs shaped by vigorous activity. And unlike Godard, she was well aware that his clothes were exquisitely made. He probably did spend hours before his mirror.
Lord Foye was head and shoulders taller than she. His hair was dark, not quite black, and quite willful in its curls. His eyes were the same blue as the Mediterranean. His nose was hooked, and the remainder of his features were set irregularly in his face, as if someone had put the parts together and then given him a hard shake before everything had quite settled into place.
She had, in her life, never met a peer until she and her uncle went to London where he was knighted. The aristocracy she'd found terrible in the extreme. They were a proud lot, too aware of their consequence and too overbearing in their expectation that she would be transported by the honor of an introduction.
Her mistake in believing the same of Foye became clear the moment he sat down to have her read his tea leaves. Not so much a proud man, she decided, as reserved. His consequence fit him like his clothes: exquisitely and without ostentation, but underneath there ran a river too deep to sound.
No one could spend five minutes in a room with the Marquess of Foye and not understand that here was a man to be reckoned with. Despite his title, despite his connection to Crosshaven, and even despite that he quite obviously knew every word that had been said about her, Sabine wanted very much to like him.
She was no longer so willing to believe the best of anyone.
Lord Foye sat sideways on his chair, one leg crossed over the other. When she looked up, he caught her glance. She'd been silent in her thoughts for too long.
"You have a complicated future," she said.
"Take your time," Foye replied. He had a deep voice. He spoke quietly, sure of himself, with a fullness of tone in his words that suggested nothing but that he hoped to be amused. There was no mistaking his voice for anything but that of a mature man, which, to be honest, was a pleasant change from the eager young soldiers and sailors she found so tiresome. "I should like my fortune read properly, Miss Godard."
She returned her gaze to his teacup. "I endeavor, my lord."
- Lord Foye was not a handsome man. She had, in fact, been watching him since the moment he came in, even before she knew who he was. How could one not? He was tremendously tall, and, as Godard had so baldly pointed out, not very handsome. If one felt inclined to generosity, and she had not yet made up her mind on that account, one might call him an arresting man.
"You will take a journey soon," she said.
He leaned forward to peer into the cup with her, a motion that put their heads close together. He smelled slightly of sandalwood. "What tells you that?"
"This arrangement here." She pointed to the place she meant. "Three horseshoes in near proximity to each other. Nearer the handle than farther, so the time of your journey is closer to the present than it is distant. Your more immediate future."
'Those are horseshoes?"
"Yes." By now, she didn't care what shapes the tea leaves made, which in the event was nothing much at all. This was, indeed, complete nonsense. She could no more tell someone's fortune with tea leaves than she could detect a scoundrel before it was too late to avoid making his acquaintance. The clumps near the handle of the cup were vaguely U-shaped; therefore, she styled them horseshoes.
Her idea of reading tea leaves seemed an unlucky decision now. She'd thought to amuse herself and perhaps a few others, that was all, not find herself cornered by some crony of Crosshaven's. "Horseshoes arranged just so signify you will soon go on a journey."
And may it be soon, she thought She wanted to be nowhere near Lord Foye. She wanted nothing to do with anyone who knew Lord Crosshaven.
"I am on one now," he pointed out.
She glanced up. 'The tea leaves do not tell your past" His eyes were guileless, completely clear of any salacious motive concerning her. Some of the tension in her shoulders fell away. But not all. He had been careful to make sure she knew of his acquaintance with Lord Crosshaven, and now she must work out why he would have done so, if not to suggest his willingness for an affair. He would not be the first man to make her such a proposition. "The leaves show only the future as it might be at the time you overturned your cup, my lord."
He waved a hand. His fingers were long and slender. He did not wear any jewelry. "Do carry on."
"You will journey through rugged terrain, as you may see from the lines surrounding the horseshoes." She improvised, as she had during all her readings so far. "Mountains, I suspect. The second horseshoe implies your journey will be a pleasant one, but I think—" She tapped the tabletop with a fingertip. While she did not believe in fortune-telling, she saw no reason not to attempt to follow the geometrical logic. She found it a rather stimulating exercise. "With the mountains surrounding, one should interpret this as an arduous journey successfully made. Yes, I think that is the correct divination." Travel in Turkey and the Levant was never easy, so she took no great risk there. "Now, this third horseshoe portends a woman."
Lord Foye looked uninterested in that possibility.
"Lady Foye, perhaps?" she said in a sweet voice.
"No," he said after too long a silence. "There is no Lady Foye."
She looked up, interested more by his flat tone of voice than by his declaration of bachelorhood. He wasn't looking at her. His attention was interior, on some deep and private pain. She hadn't expected to see anguish, yet that was what she saw in his eyes, and her heart pinched a little on his behalf.
"Another woman, then," she said. Looking at Lord Foye, with his irregularly put together face, was suddenly too intimate an experience. His eyes were too raw with loss. Had she inadvertently reminded him of a lost love? "Someone who will love you, my lord. Exactly as you deserve."
Without thinking, she leaned forward, peering into his face. Foye's gaze came back to the present Their eyes locked, and with no warning, her breath caught in her throat. Her skin prickled up and down her body, all in pointed awareness of the man sitting across from her. He wasn't handsome. He wasn't at all. But Sabine's heart beat hard against her ribs as if he were.
She leaned away,- still struggling to get enough air into her lungs. She felt she had not moved soon enough, that she had unwittingly allowed an intimacy she would never permit in actual fact A spark of fear settled in her chest because even with the distance between them, she remained lost in his eyes. Lost.
It was Foye who broke their gate. "What else do the tea leaves predict?" he softly asked.
Sabine thought that in all her life she'd never heard a more seductive voice. But her lesson had been a harsh one well learned. Her own future did not include love or marriage. She returned to his tea leaves. "Here," she said, pointing. "A dragon."
His expression was remote. Distant but pleasant She was reminded that he was a great deal older than she. This was not a man to be bothered with young ladies. If he happened to be looking for a lover, she suspected he would prefer a woman older than her twenty-three years. And a woman with some independence as well. She knew how things were done, if he was discreet. A married woman. Or perhaps a widow. Someone closer to his own age.
He leaned forward again and frowned. "A dragon, you say." He squinted and tilted his head. "Are you certain it's not a snake? Or a stick. Or even nothing more than an accidentally formed clump of leaves clinging to the inside of a cup?"
"Oh," she said, laughing. His mouth twitched, too, and she felt another bream hitch in her chest "Accidental? Impossible, my lord."
"Why ever so?"
She flicked a look in his direction. "Why, because then we would be wasting our time over this when we could be speaking of politics or mathematics or Newton's first law of thermodynamics."
Lord Foye sat back and crossed his hands over his very flat stomach. His eyelashes, she noted, were very thick and dark. "What a great many words just came out of your mouth. My head swims with all those syllables." That wasn't a smile, not precisely, lurking around the edges of his mouth, and Sabine waited breathlessly for one to appear. "I prefer that you tell me of this dragon in my tea, Miss Godard. What is it doing there, and what does it portend?"
"That's easy enough to divine. A snake signifies misfortune, and I see no misfortune in this cup. As for a stick, I assure you, there is never anything so mundane as a stick in one's tea leaves. No, I am quite confident this is no snake but a dragon, and it portends change. Typically with the dragon, the change is sudden and unexpected."
"And how is that different from the unfortunate snake?"
"Change isn't always a misfortune," she said. The more she looked at him, the more she itched to pull out her sketch pad and take a likeness of him. He was possessed of a fearsome intellect, and sooner or later, intellect always affected one's impression of a man's appearance. Lord Foye probably did quite well with the ladies, if he was a man inclined to dally. She peeked at him. Yes. He was a dangerous man.
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