The Luckiest Lady In London (21 page)

He knew. And he was as guilty as the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

E
verything outside was shrouded in fog, indistinct, chimerical forms. The only reality existed within the confines of the town coach, within its velvet-upholstered seats, mahogany panels, and suffocating silence.

Louisa sat opposite Felix, her face turned toward the window, her hands hidden in the folds of her short mantle; the opalescent beads that trimmed her skirts shimmered and shuddered with each sway and jostle of the vehicle.

“You told me they were an incestuous pair, Lord Firth and
Miss Edwards,” she spoke at last, her jaw clenched. “Did you lie?”

“I did,” said Felix. His voice sounded as hollow as he felt.

He wanted to add,
I’m sorry
, but somehow he couldn’t.
I’m sorry
was what one said when one accidentally bumped into someone, or ran out of a guest’s favorite vintage. Before a disaster of this magnitude,
I’m sorry
was about as useful as a spoonful of water poured on a burning house.

“Care to give your reason? I can’t wait to hear it.”

He wished she’d screamed, or clawed at his face. Her coldness made him quake inside. “There was nothing wrong with Lord Firth,” he said, keeping his voice free of inflection. “Mr. Pitt disobeyed his parents by paying court to you, but Lord Firth was his own man. His finances were sound and his character was sterling. There was no chance of your becoming my mistress as long as Lord Firth remained a viable candidate for your hand.”

He never thought it would sound good, this explanation. But still, its egregiousness stunned him. He had never been uglier.

Her expression only turned tighter. “Did you not think of the possible consequences for them? I could have passed on this falsity. It could have spread beyond my immediate circle. In time it might have taken on a life of its own and made pariahs of Lord Firth and Miss Edwards.”

What could he say? There was no defense for his lies. “I calculated that there was no one in whom you could confide, and not necessarily because of the salaciousness of the charge, but the source of it. You knew that no one would believe it of you were you to say that The Ideal Gentleman had told you such a thing—it was for the same reason I dared to propose that you become my mistress.”

His name and his persona carried power. She had been a nobody, and her sponsor only the wife of a baronet. Society
would have chosen to question her sanity, rather than his character.

“How exceedingly clever you are. And how frightfully accurate your reasoning,” she said, her voice as flat as his. “I should be flattered that you would resort to such extraordinary tactics just to sleep with me. I wonder why I am not.”

“It was wrong of me.”

“
Wrong
of you? It was wrong of me the time I slapped Julia hard enough to loosen one of her teeth when I caught her deliberately trying to trigger a seizure on Matilda’s part. She was only six, with no real understanding of what she was doing. I should have explained, rather than hit her.

“What
you
did was hideous. Even if I were to accept that you were able to predict with perfect exactitude my silence concerning the matter, and that Lord Firth’s and Miss Edwards’s reputations were never in any danger of besmirchment, do you think I can overlook what you did to me?”

How stupid he had been to think that he would prefer her openly furious. Her anger burned him like live coals shoved into his lungs.

“As much as it scandalized me, I did not scorn you for trying to make me your mistress. It was immoral and opportunistic, but I thought at least you were honest about what you wanted. I thought you meant to compete on an even playing field. And now I find out that the whole thing was rigged and The Ideal Gentleman had all the scruples of a common cardsharp.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “I could live with a scoundrel, but I cannot stand a cheater.”

W
hen they arrived at their town house, he followed her into her room.

She turned around sharply. “What do you want, Lord Wrenworth?”

The formality of her address—the depth of the chasm that separated them—made him dizzy.

“Louisa—”

“There is a time and place for that name—and the time is now behind us,” she said, chilling him to the bone.

“Don’t say that. We have taken vows before God. We have committed to a lifetime together. And I know it does not mitigate everything, but part of the reason I offered you marriage in the end is that I did not wish your life diminished by the lies I told.”

“So if I had become your mistress instead, disqualifying myself to ever become another man’s properly wed wife, you would not have considered my life diminished?”

“I . . .” He felt like a man who had been pushed off the edge of a cliff, arms flailing to catch anything that might stop his free fall. “Louisa, please listen to me. What I’ve done, I’ve done—I cannot go back in time to make changes. But I’m not the same man I was.”

“How have you changed? And if you have changed, why did you not come and tell me yourself what you had done? Instead, you made up fresh nonsense concerning Lord Firth fastening his trousers as he came out of his sister’s room in the middle of the night. Then whisked me away from Huntington to avoid discovery. And that’s why you have been so nice and sunny to me since, to distract me from all the clues to which I should have paid better attention.”

“I didn’t want you to think ill of me. I . . .” He almost could not bring himself to say it. A lifetime of worshiping at the altar of strength and he was very nearly too weak to move the words past his lips. “I love you.”

She stared at him. For a moment hope spread unchecked in his heart that perhaps those very words, those sentiments that had been so difficult for him to express, would make her understand how important she was to him, how he could not
possibly have brought himself to admit to his misdoings for precisely the fear of this rupture between them.

“I am not particularly altruistic,” she said quietly. “But between the time I turned sixteen and the time I became your fiancée, I did not spend one penny of my allowance. That and whatever I could strip from the household budget went to the emergency fund I’d set aside for Matilda. And when I went to London, I was fully prepared to marry a man I did not love, so that I could care for her as long as she lives.

“I daresay romantic love isn’t the same thing as sisterly love, but all love should meet a minimum standard. A lover should take my wishes into consideration and have a care for my well-being. When have you ever thought about me, except so that you may better gratify yourself—either to make you feel more powerful or to make you feel less out of control?”

He could say nothing, could feel nothing except an ever-rising panic.

“I’m weary,” she said. “Please grant me some privacy.”

He did not want to be banished. Even if he didn’t know how to plead his case, even if—

He closed the distance between them, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her on her cheek, her jaw, her lips.

She struggled. “What are you doing?”

But he was much stronger than she. He maneuvered her backward until she was pinned between his body and a long-case clock. He would not let her dig a moat around herself and keep him out. He would not accept that she no longer wanted him to touch her. And he would not—

A resounding thwack. A burning sensation on his cheek.

He stared at her in incomprehension.

“Get out!” she shouted.

“I don’t want you to be angry,” he said dumbly. “You said that when we are in direct physical contact, you cannot remain angry at me.”

“I don’t care what you want,” she answered, her teeth gritted. “I deserve to be angry and you do not deserve anything. Now get out.”

L
ouisa did not go down for dinner that evening. When her supper was delivered, along with it came a vase of golden tulips, which in the language of flowers meant,
I am hopelessly in love with you
.

When the footman who brought the tray had left, she shoved the vase behind a wardrobe, where it could not stray into her line of sight. Five minutes later she moved it
into
the wardrobe. After another three minutes she yanked it out of the wardrobe and opened the window to defenestrate the whole thing.

She recovered her self-control just in time—the vase was costly, the tulips probably just as costly this time of the year, and the gossip generated by such a wanton gesture of rage would dog her for years to come. Taking a few deep breaths, she walked out of her room, marched the tulips to a room at the end of the corridor, and left them on the mantelpiece.

Coming back into the corridor, she stopped. Lord Wrenworth stood outside his door, watching her. He would have seen the exile of his flowers—the exile of his sentiments.

She returned to her room without another glance at him.

F
elix returned to Huntington alone.

Louisa had left London the day after she ran into Miss Edwards, but he had several appointments to keep—and she’d made it all too plain that she wished to be left alone.

The last time he had traveled by himself in the private rail coach had been before the wedding. He’d had
Messier’s Catalogue
on his person, and a smile on his face, thinking of the laugh she’d get from the dress dummies on the belvedere.

Now all he had were her words burning in his ears.

Hideous. Cheater. Common cardsharp. When have you ever thought about me, except so that you may better gratify yourself?

There was a part of him that squirmed at the reiteration of these accusations. It wanted to defend him by pointing out that she was far better off than she had ever been—or would have ever been had she married anyone else. Now she possessed a fortune of her own, never needed to worry about the
welfare of her family again, and could deploy the finest private telescope in all of England anytime she wanted.

But he could not deny the truth of the charges she’d leveled at him. Until now, whatever he had done for her, he had done for himself, whether it was to give her five thousand pounds a year—for his vanity—or to allow her access to his telescope—for his heart, in the hope that she would reciprocate his sentiments.

The entire aim of his adult life had been getting what he wanted, exactly the way he wanted it; so it was hardly surprising that his character would be marked by a keen attentiveness to himself. But what made his soul recoil was a dawning understanding that his love, so important and fearsome for him, was actually a remarkably shallow thing, little more than a will to possess.

Or at least so it would seem, viewed through her eyes, through the prism of all his lies and distortions.

He fought against successive waves of despair. He would not give up. He would make her understand. He would use every advantage at his disposal and he would—

It was only as the train approached its next stop that he realized what he was doing. He was still trying to turn the situation to
his
benefit, when what he ought to do was first become the kind of man who deserved her.

In his prior transformation from a young, orphaned boy to The Ideal Gentleman, his entire aim had been strength—strength enough to bend the will of others and strength enough to always hold the upper hand.

But now he would need to acquire humility. Or, if not that, at least the ability to truly put her needs above his own.

This brought a new surge of uncertainty. What if he became that better man, but she could not see it? What if she would only ever perceive him through the prism of his prior lies and distortions?

He pressed his fingers into his temples. He would simply have to accept failure as a possibility, that whatever he did might be futile. That her heart might always remain closed to him.

Now, given all that—or perhaps despite that—what could he do for her?

T
he day after his return to Huntington, Louisa received a note from her husband, informing her that the schoolroom was completely ready and he awaited only her pleasure to begin the lessons.

She tossed the note into an empty drawer.

At dinner that night—the only time they were in the same room, and with so many epergnes and vases between them that she was in little danger of actually seeing him—he asked whether she’d received his note.

“Yes, I have,” she answered.

Iterations of the same note, however, kept arriving. She kept shoving each day’s rendition into the drawer.

But after a week or so, she found herself going up to the renovated schoolroom. She could not recognize the place. The walls were now a pale celery green, the curtains a daffodil yellow. The ceiling, which had seemed so oppressively low before, had been repainted into a trompe l’oeil image of library shelves going up and up, reaching toward an oculus from which pink-cheeked cherubs peered down, as if they, too, were interested in quadratic equations.

Now there were two sets of a desk and chair, one set the same as before, except repainted and refinished. The other set—larger, more ornate, a professor’s perch—she recognized as having been moved from the library. On this desk there were a stack of notebooks with dark blue covers and a rectangle of white space in the middle—like all his other notebooks.

The one on top was labeled,
Lecture Notes: Fundamentals of Algebra
. She opened it to his familiar, handsome penmanship. His lecture plan was lucid and easy to follow, illustrated with plenty of examples. The notes were already halfway through lecture twenty-three.

The next notebook was
Homework
. For each lecture, there would be two full pages of homework. She would need to copy the problems into a notebook of her own, as he had not left room for her to work on the page.

She did not look into a third notebook,
Tests and Examinations
, but only rubbed her fingers along its spine and corners.

She remembered what it was like to be covered in his notebooks, notebooks still neat and clean, but with the pages having been ever so slightly warped by dried ink. Such a luxurious sensation to be surrounded by all that learning, all that data, all that
him
.

It was only when she looked up from the notebooks that she saw the tulips on the bookshelves. Golden tulips, freshly come to bloom.

I am hopelessly in love with you
.

She was out the door the next moment, as if a ghost had breathed on her neck.

D
ecember was upon them all of a sudden.

Mrs. Pratt had barrels of dried currants and candied peels at the ready, to undertake the huge quantity of Christmas cakes her stillroom manufactured and dispensed each yuletide to all tenants on behalf of the marquessate. Mr. Sturgess oversaw the production of ginger brandy and lemon gin. M. Boulanger muttered of not only chestnut-stuffed geese, but of capons, herons, and pheasants in the tradition of his native Poitou; a roasted suckling pig with pineapples, as was
served in the Sandwich Islands; or perhaps even a boar’s head in the manner of Oxford.

Louisa carried with her a large notebook filled with lists and determinedly saw to one item after another.

One morning, she and Mrs. Pratt, who employed an even more impressive notebook, sat down with the guest list for the Christmas house party and discussed the needs of each person on the list in order to begin the assignment of rooms.

Most of the guests had stayed at Huntington before, and Mrs. Pratt already had dossiers on their habits and requirements. The notable exception was Louisa’s family.

Louisa turned to the page in her own notebook on which she’d jotted down those particulars that needed to be mentioned. But before she could start, Mrs. Pratt said, “Here are my notes on the Cantwell ladies. The lamp wicks in Mrs. Cantwell’s room must be trimmed each evening, before she retires, as she needs a light on the entire night—either that, or she should be supplied with a long-burning taper. Miss Cecilia cannot sleep on a feather mattress, as it makes her sneeze impossibly. Being a late riser and generally irritable in the morning, Miss Julia would prefer to have her room not face east. Miss Matilda needs to room with one of her sisters in case she has a sudden attack, but not with Miss Julia, as the latter has never had the responsibility of handling a seizure of Miss Matilda’s by herself.”

Astonished, Louisa looked down at the identical items on her list. “Did . . .”

She meant to ask whether she had somehow spoken to Mrs. Pratt and then entirely forgotten about it. Mrs. Pratt answered, “Yes, ma’am, his lordship did give me these instructions.”

His visit to her family had lasted little more than a week. How did he know so much?

“Was that all the instruction his lordship gave?”

“No, ma’am. I also have here that Miss Cantwell is allergic to all shellfish, that Mrs. Cantwell will not eat anything orange in color, that Miss Cecilia and Miss Julia should preferably not be seated close to each other, as they have a tendency to quarrel.”

Louisa fidgeted in her seat.

“Is there anything you’d like to add, ma’am?” asked Mrs. Pratt.

Louisa looked down at her list. “Just that Miss Julia must have porridge for breakfast every morning. And that my mother does not mind her food being orange if the hue comes from saffron. She quite admires saffron and the distinction it confers.”

When Mrs. Pratt had left, Louisa found herself climbing the stairs up to the schoolroom again. It was a clear day, and sunlight streamed in from the south-facing windows. The room very nearly sparkled.

And there again, on the bookshelf, a bouquet of golden tulips, as fresh and lovely as a breath of spring.

She realized, only after she’d been at it for a while, that she was standing before the bookshelf, stroking the cool, smooth petals.

F
elix found her in the gallery, before a portrait of his mother. She cast one swift look in his direction, as his footsteps echoed in the long, cavernous space, but offered no greeting when he came to stand next to her.

She had become thinner, paler, her cheekbones prominent, her eyes almost too large. The only dimension on her person that hadn’t shrunk, at least not while she was fully clothed, was that of her bosom, as full and buoyant as ever, cantilevered by those bust improvers for which he harbored such a great fondness.

He felt a completely inappropriate desire to smile, accompanied by a sharp pinch in his chest.

“I understand you have been making guest room assignments with Mrs. Pratt,” he said. “In case you haven’t done so, I’d like Lady Tremaine placed on the top floor, away from the other guests. I’d promised her a house full of handsome men. Should she choose to take a lover, a room wedged in between the Denbighs and the Hollisters would not offer enough privacy.”

She made no response. His heart felt as if it had been made into a pincushion.

“I can speak to Mrs. Pratt directly, if you do not wish to concern yourself with the matter.”

“Do you—” She stopped, as if shocked that she was speaking to him. “Do you count yourself among the handsome men on offer?”

“No,” he said. “I only want you.”

Her throat moved. “I will speak to Mrs. Pratt about it.”

“Thank you.”

Silence expanded to fill all available space, making the gallery feel closed and stifling. He watched her unsmiling profile, then followed her line of sight to his mother’s equally unsmiling face. Something clanked inside him: the realization that like his father, he, too, was now married to a woman who wanted nothing to do with him.

He let the initial panic pass. It was what it was; the only thing that mattered now was what he could do for her.

“She was not happy here,” he heard himself say.

Surprise flickered at the corner of her lips.

“She was in love with someone else, a poor man,” he went on, relating the story that had come to him so long ago, and which, in the twenty years since, he’d never repeated to a single soul. “But her father kept her under house arrest until she acquiesced to marrying my father. My father loved her
greatly, but her pain and anger were so great she could not see past it to any possibility of joy ever again.

“I don’t believe she realized that, in her wrath, she was punishing herself as well. But she did, for years upon years, till the day she died.”

Don’t do that to yourself; don’t let go of
your
capacity for joy
, was what he could not quite bring himself to say.

She moved to a nearby globe and touched the lapis ocean. Slowly she spun the globe.

“I’m sure you find my daily notes repetitive, but I’d like to see you at something you love. If you do not wish for me to instruct you, we can find you a tutor.”

She kept spinning the globe; continents flew by under her palm.

“If we were in London, we could probably have someone of impeccable credentials by the end of the week.” Was he rambling? He could not tell. “It will take longer to find a qualified person willing to rusticate eight months out of the year at Huntington, but I will make it happen if that’s what you want.”

The globe went around a good dozen times before she said, “I am not in the habit of spending money for a tutor when I have a husband who can instruct me free of charge.”

If she had left the connecting door open at night, he could not be more thrilled. “When should we start?”

“After the guests depart. And after you have removed those tulips from the schoolroom.”

With one finger, she stopped the spinning globe. And then she turned and walked away.