Chapter 116

"Would you like to tell me what all this is?"
The wad of paper slapping against the surface of the dressing table raised such a cloud, Splendor thought the answer was obvious. Dust. Her nostrils tingled. She pushed a finger under her nose to stop herself sneezing. As for the wad itself? She cleared her throat.
"Leave us, Mrs. Ferret."
"Yes, milady ... "
"Stay where you are." Stillmore's voice was an abrasive murmur. Didn't anything really prick him? "I am the one who gives orders in this house."
"Yes, Your Grace." Mrs. Ferret set the beribboned hair comb Splendor had found impossible to resist, the robin's egg blue one with the tiny cream rosettes attached, down amid the dust bunnies. "If you say so. It's just I thought I was taking them from milady, here."
"A ... A ... Ach-" Splendor held her nose tighter, trying not to sneeze. "Ach ... Achhh ... "
"And will you stop sounding like a bleating cow?"
She almost clattered off the stool. Cows didn't bleat. But saying so might fan the flames of an incendiary situation. She'd keep her mouth shut. Sort of, anyway.
"In a moment. Mrs. Ferret, whatever His Grace says, please go. Now ... Thank you."
She had spent a little money, it was true. She hadn't meant to, but now she was back in credit again. Why shouldn't she have the odd this and that? She was his wife. In ruination, if nothing else, although it did seem that being ruined would have been a damn sight easier than living with a miser.
She waited till the door creaked shut. "Do ...Do forgive me for sneezing, Your Grace. The dust ... "
He edged his tongue over his lips. "What about the dust?"
"It ... It ... "
The dust wasn't what he was staring at over her bare shoulder in that wolfishly intense way. He was staring in the glass, at the frothy neck of the peignoir. She shot out her hand, grabbed the first thing that came into it. "There. All it needs is a flick."
"They don't have servants wherever it is you come from-"
"Suffolk."
"You're so very accomplished with my mother's lace mat?"
She looked down at the lace in her hand. Now she'd gone and used his mother's mat as a duster. She gave it a shake and placed it where she'd found it.
"I'm really very sorry, Your Grace. I had no idea it was your mother's."
"If this is an attempt to distract me over these bills ... Over other matters ... "
"Other matters?" He wasn't on her trail was he? Because if he was, she was in trouble.
"Other matters but primarily these."
"Ah ..." She swallowed. "The bills ..."
"The bills."
While she was happier to see them than find him tailing her, she had perhaps gone a little far with the silk parasol and the shoes to match, but if she hadn't, Topaz would have stolen them and ended up in Newgate. Then there was the matter of just how respectful Madame Renare had been when she'd seen the address and the name, the new one she'd furnished herself with. Lady Winterborne, Countess of Stillmore. If he hadn't been so obnoxious to her the first morning she was here, she wouldn't have gone out, drifted past Madame Renare's in the first place. She'd have investigated a place for Topaz. It was just a matter of luck the posters she'd come across recently had all been of Emerald.
"Yes. Well..."
She hesitated. Actually, how had he come by the bills? Unless he was checking up on her? Following her? The servant remark was worrying. But who could he have talked to? Who would know?Unless? Unless it was Gabe?"If these bills are a little-"
"A little?"
"Very well, slightly more. Hardly an Alpine Mountain."
He had put ten thousand pounds on the table for one night. One night she had stupidly given for nothing. Now the clock was ticking she was not leaving here empty- handed. At the end of the day, which might be sooner rather than later if he'd been talking to Gabe, she could sell these things. Well? It made it all the more vital she face him down, shrug, as if it was all nothing. She'd never met a Starkadder Sister and one wasn't staying here one door along either. Whoever he'd been talking to, provided he'd been talking to anyone at all, was that awful thing. A liar.
She reached for her powder puff. Besides there was no denying that, immaculate in his dark brown coat and trousers, standing right there behind her watching her through the looking glass, he was rich enough to contribute to her financial cause. What she must hope was he would let this go. All of it.
"What is it about you and debt?"
"Me?"
"Well, I don't mean that damned powder puff. I mean the contents of these bills."
She shifted on the stool. Money begot money. How often had Papa said so? The thing was to look as if you had it, as he had. Make a show. Although looking as if he had it hadn't stopped them both being locked up in a debtor's ward. Perhaps that was because he had also spent it as if he had it?
How very strange, that for all she knew what debt led to, she had somehow developed a taste for finery that had set her on this path. Both at Mrs. Hanney's and here. It wasn't what she'd meant. But the thing was, it made her happy when she was able to make something she wanted hers. What did she have in her world otherwise? And that comb, this peignoir, the new day dress with the lace insert in the bodice, were all very nice. Too nice to leave feeling neglected in the shop. And the comb had been reduced by half a guinea. She had saved him half a guinea by buying it.
"Well, if you must know. I honestly thought you would want me to look nice, Your Grace."
"What I want ... "
She fought not to moisten her parched lips. What glittered in his eyes was both dark and empty. For a second she saw the man in there, lonely, haunted, reaching for other things. Was it insanity to think what he wanted was what he had had that night in the barn? What they had had?
For that she might even stop spending money that wasn't exactly hers to spend. In the few weeks since, they'd crossed swords more often than not, as if she was some sort of unraveling force he must walk away from. Then there was the matter of his club, which he as good as lived at, which pursued her like a dark shadow.
"What I want ... "
"Yes? Your Grace?" She waited.
"What I want is for you to refrain from running up any more damnable bills, do you understand? Because what I don't want is to end up in debtor's prison because of it. How you're meant to be a lady and yet you don't have a penny to your name is beyond me. Unless that's what you're after-someone to bail you out. Do I make myself clear?"
"But, of course, Your Grace. Although I suppose if I was Lady Langley there would be no trouble about it. She'd get to run up bills right, left and center."
He stiffened as if she'd struck him. "Lady Langley is none of your damn business. At least she had her own damned money and could pay for herself. At least she is an heiress."
He stormed out. Her shoulders sank. So was she. Heiress of the biggest mouth going. Why hadn't she handled this better? Especially given she'd told him nothing of her background as such and Nathan wasn't even in that background. Why arouse his suspicions?
Because the walls were closing around her and the fact that his door, his heart, and now his wallet were locked against her didn't give her much room to maneuver? Three months? Could she manage to avoid detection for that long?
***
Damn her to hell, if she'd spent thirty guineas, it was thirty guineas well spent.
He cursed the little voice that whispered in his ear as his feet thundered along the landing of the bachelor rooms he had spent so many happy hours in, smoking and drinking and shagging-he might as well be honest, a bad reputation was not founded on saying your prayers four times a night.
She was quite the smoldering beauty when she took that simper off her face. She was other things too, especially in that peignoir, despite the fact Mrs. Ferret couldn't do hair if the French revolutionaries had marched into the bedroom and said her hair or your life. And how the bloody blazes had she managed to even cultivate that termagant?
Ferret had been chosen for her name, her looks, her you say black, milord, and I will swear on me child's life it is white.
Ferret was the most vilely disagreeable woman he had ever met. Sort of. There were times it was a close run thing between Ferret and this slip of a snit. He threw open the bedroom door. His bedroom door. Sweet God, the only sanctuary left him in what had once been a wonderful place, sparsely furnished, dusty, the hearth full of cinders and ashes.
Live with the woman? When she ran up bills like that? Was he deranged? When a senseless, squandering snit had ruined his father? Some mistakes were not meant to be made twice. It didn't matter that until that night, the one in the barn, he hadn't realized how knotted, how gnarled, how impossibly in need of finding calm waters he was. Like a mariner with no sea left to sail, who longed only to unhook life's albatross and shout at that wandering star, I am home. Guide me in. He didn't need to be bloody guided. What was more, he'd be sunk in every way if he let this meander further than it had already.
All the same, for a second he stood breathing heavily against the door, letting a myriad of sensations wash over him. Dressed as she'd been just now, he'd have forgiven her anything, including the damned fortune she'd spent, which she'd no right to. And the fact that she was here at all. And let him not forget, not only had he no damned idea who she was, she distracted him every time he swore to find out. Why couldn't she just take offense when he insulted her like any other self-respecting woman?
Three months.
Well, there was one thing he didn't forgive her. It had been heaven on earth that night until she'd opened her blabby big mouth and said the words that coated his palms with sweat. Even now.
Matrimony was a horror itself, but when she ran up debts like that? Impossible.
That would be an undoing too far.
Certainly at this moment in time. At this moment it was vital to forget he'd ever had that thought about making this work and take the exit that beckoned.
Three months. If he could last that long.