Almost a Gentleman (3 page)

Nonsense. It must be a trick of the light or the unaccustomed lateness of the hour. Or perhaps that deuced waltz
was
simply too erotic for polite society
.

He'd be home in
Lincolnshire
in a week, to deal with the consequences of the vote in Parliament, back working his fields beneath an innocent wide country sky. He'd be safe, far from this clouded, cynical capital, wreathed in smoke and fog, mired in greed and vanity.

He took a calming breath. The lemonade had cooled his flushed cheeks. The little orchestra was striking up what sounded like a finale. He stood, holding the lemonade glasses in strong farmer's hands that strained the seams of his fine kid gloves. The music crescendoed, crested and stopped.

The waltzing couple stood right before him.

He blinked, recovered his manners if not his senses, and offered the young lady a glass of lemonade.

The young man smiled. "I think you've made a conquest, Miss Armbruster. You've captured the attention of the best dressed gentleman in the room."

And here, sailing into view like a clipper ship, was Lady Castlereagh to make introductions all around. The young lady smiled in pleased amazement (perhaps, she thought, this gown isn't so hideous after all) while David felt as though he were in some odd, unpleasant dream in which everyone including himself was speaking an incomprehensible language.

"You waltz beautifully, Miss Armbruster," he heard himself say. The next thing he knew, she was offering to guide him through the steps when they played another. And he seemed to be assenting, on the condition that they take it slowly and that he be permitted to stop if he felt too much the buffoon.

Mr. Marston remained silent, his eyes slightly veiled, his lips in an ambiguous curve that might, David thought, be a smile. But then again it might not.

Abruptly, David turned toward the young man, only to realize that he'd interrupted Miss Armbruster in mid-sentence.

From the corner of his eye he saw a slightly bewildered Admiral Wolfe move forward to fill the gap in the conversation. Ah well, he told himself, what's done is done.

"Mr. Marston."

"Lord Linseley?"

"I thank you for your compliment a few minutes ago, if compliment it was. But I confess to finding it quite mysterious. I'm a country farmer, you know, and quite out of touch with what a gentleman wears in Town these days."

"And yet, my lord, I called you the best dressed gentleman in the room."

"You did sir, but why?"

Marston knit his heavy black brows before answering slowly.

"I suppose, Lord Linseley, my assessment was inspired by the
fit
of your jacket—its drape about your shoulders—rather than its newness. And of course by the sublime knot in your cravat."

The young man had allowed himself a bit of a smile. How cleanly shaven his cheeks were, David thought. He'd heard that these London dandies spent hours shaving and then tweezing what was left. And that they used the finest soaps and oils. It must be true, for this Marston—this
boy
really—had the most exquisite ivory skin.

But the boy was saying something else now, that David had quite missed.

"Excuse me, Mr. Marston?"

"I asked you, Lord Linseley, how long it took you to knot your cravat this evening."

David laughed and shrugged his powerful shoulders, which were, in fact, quite perfectly encased in his jacket. "How long? I haven't any idea. In fact, I hardly remember doing it at all. My father taught me how to do it years ago, and I haven't given it a moment's thought since."

Marston nodded solemnly. "As I suspected. A
natural
, a spontaneous gentleman. The only one left in England, perhaps. And certainly the only one under the roof of
this
benighted pleasure dome."

Lord Linseley wondered if he were being mocked.

Marston lowered his eyes and bowed slightly from his slender hips.

"A pleasure, Miss Armbruster. And a pleasant evening to you, gentlemen. But I have another engagement this evening. And if I'm not mistaken, that's the opening phrase of another waltz."

He faded into the crowd, while David tried without success to see where he was going, to follow his slender silhouette, the tilt of his dark head above his dazzling high cravat.

Gone.

The earl of Linseley shrugged, smiled a bit grimly, and held out his hand to the obliging Miss Armbruster.

Mr. Marston and Mr. FitzWallace dined at their club on turbot and champagne. They made it a leisurely meal; Marston believed that food and drink should always be savored. Luckily, they were able to find a cab with relative ease, and so they entered the opera house just as the curtain rose on the fifth act.

The next venue on their night's prowl was Vivien's, a club devoted to gambling. One
could
, if possessed of enough style, frequent that establishment without sitting down at the tables. And in fact a few prudent gentlemen
did
drift about, sniffing the sulfurous odor of lives being ruined and families destroyed, as old fortunes were lost to clever upstarts. These timid voyeurs were expected, however, to toss a ten pound note onto the center of a table before leaving, in tacit acknowledgment of a good night's vicarious excitement.

What gave Vivien's its particular cachet was the house's custom of bringing out a new deck of cards for every hand. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of cards were discarded in the course of an evening, the used bits of pasteboard tossed onto the floor, kings, queens, twos and tens trampled beneath the polished Hessian boots of the knaves who strode through the room.

Marston was a player and not a voyeur, and had been known to remain at the tables until the cards on the floor had piled to the level of his well-tailored knees. He played with calm concentration and just a hint of recklessness, and he usually won enough to put to rest any question about how a vicar's son could afford to live as expensively as he did.

Of course, there were those who wondered whether he was a vicar's son at all. At least one bitter bankrupted gentleman, who had been physically threatened by a moneylender's thugs, suggested that Marston's shadowy origins be investigated: "For all we truly know of him, he might even be a Jew." But nothing had come of it. London continued to be amused and entertained by the young man, if occasionally inconvenienced by his skill at the tables.

Tonight, however, he was barely staying ahead, even as he continued to fortify himself with his preferred refreshment. And so it was a mere two thirty in the morning when he rose to bid his surprised adversaries a good night and collect his sparse winnings.

At the entryway, he bowed to the two gentlemen just coming inside.

"Mr. Raikes. Mr. Smythe-Cochrane," he murmured. The pair nodded stiffly, almost cutting him but not daring to do so.
Cowards
, he thought as he turned the corner. The gas lights accentuated his pallor as he made his way back to his house in Brunswick Square.

A ragged beggar called out to him from the shadows.

" 'Ere, guv'nor, got ha'penny for a man down on his luck?"

Marston pulled a coin from his pocket.

"Not a ha'penny, old fellow. Too small a thing to hold my wandering attention, don't you know. But here, take this. And better luck to both of us after this night."

It was a golden sovereign.

The beggar gaped. The smell from the few rotting teeth left in his mouth was overpowering. Marston nodded politely and strolled off.

Guv'nor
. Marston allowed himself a small, private grin as he savored the word.
I haven't lost my touch
, he thought,
I'm still as good as ever after three years of playacting the gentleman
. London's poor had sharp eyes, and yet this specimen of that beleaguered class had been absolutely taken in.

It was invigorating, enlivening, this power to do and say anything he liked. And best of all was the risk and danger of the late-night gaslit streets.

Marston never worried about whether he'd gulled society people.
That
benighted class couldn't see anything but glamour and social position, style and confident bearing. Glittering gowns and an unsteady tiara were all they'd ever really known of young Lady Claringworth. And after three years they'd grasped nothing of Phizz Marston except for his immaculate dress, style, and bearing. Their shortsightedness made him fearless. For whatever else he might be lacking as a gentleman, Marston knew he had quite enough
ton
to overwhelm any member of the Polite World.

Almost
as much, he thought suddenly, as the gentleman he'd met earlier this evening. Lord Linseley, wasn't it? Yes, Lord Linseley, the earl with the perfectly knotted cravat. A formidable man: no matter how he might play the simple country squire, there was nothing simple about his inborn grace, lit by the stubborn glint of intelligence Marston had discerned in his blue eyes. Beautiful eyes, Marston thought reluctantly. Dark and dangerously beautiful eyes in a strong and chiseled face.

Marston's own face softened for just a moment as something threatened to reveal the identity hidden behind his features. Not yet, he told himself as he let himself in at his front door, I'm not ready to think about Lord Linseley yet. He composed his expression. The two gas lamps flanking the entryway illuminated his face: eyes glittering and opaque, mouth falling back into its accustomed cynical curve; no one watching this personage would have taken him for anything but a fashionable young gentleman.

The butler had gone to sleep, but Marston's valet was waiting up for him, discreetly omniscient, a quiet, steely, gray-haired presence in the evening dimness. Nothing happened in the house in Brunswick Square without Simms' consent.

"There's a… guest waiting in the small sitting room upstairs, sir."

Marston raised his heavy brows.

"Thank you, Simms, I'd quite forgotten I'd made that engagement. Arranged things with Mr. Talbot, you know, so that Billy visits twice a week now. I'm becoming quite the domestic animal, don't you think?"

Simms nodded somberly, and Marston immediately regretted his little joke.

Callous of me, I suppose. It's impossible, though, to read his expression. Impossible, even now, to know Mr. Simms's opinion of my late night assignations.