Chapter 117

Sinking against the door to her room, Splendor closed her eyes and willed her head to stop spinning as it had done all the way back from the park. To say she wanted to die to end this misery was an understatement. Had her grave yawned before her she'd have jumped into it. Headfirst.
"There you are, milady, I've laid the cream dress out for you, although I must say I think the silver is better. Shows off your color."
She pinged her eyes open. "My color?"
She glanced in the wall mirror opposite. Did silver go with puce? It hardly seemed wise to contradict Mrs. Ferret. The woman didn't quail at Stillmore.
"Yes, milady. It quite highlights your hair. Brings out the copper threads."
"Do you think so?"
Splendor shot another glance at the cheval mirror. She seldom got compliments and today she didn't just look wan and wasted, her whole body was laced with weakness. Even her head felt like someone had stuck a boulder on her neck. But perhaps this was Mrs. Ferret's idea of nice?
"Indeed, I do. Is there something wrong, milady?"
"Wrong?"
"Well, pardon me and not wishing to give an affront, but you seem out of breath."
"Oh, that? I walked back from the park at a lick."
"And again, not wishing to give an affront, you look like you seen a ghost."
She had. As she'd stared at the slowly approaching dusk that crept in her window last night, at the softened view of church spires, what had haunted the edge of her smile, was terrifying,
Funny too. To look at the scrapbook of the last few months in which she had pinned her dreams and see the trail back to that one night. To know one thing, see it staring back at her true as any star.
A baby.
Enough to make her want to vomit. Right here on that cream gown adorning the bedspread. She couldn't. Not in front of Mrs. Ferret. Her eyes were sharper than a darning needle. Like everything else in Splendor's life, that would have to wait till later.
"No. I'm ... I'm perfectly fine. Really. I'm just-tired after taking tea with Lady Kertouche."
"Oh, indeed, milady. Them fancy women what don't do an honest day's work. Not like some."
Tiny ripples of fear spun through Splendor's veins. Ferret was staring hard for all she seemed not to be staring at the gown she was brushing. Did the woman suspect she was some serving girl?
And up the duff to his lordship. A baby, when he'd disinherited Phoebe. "But of course."
"And you'll be seein' her again tonight, too."
"Tonight?"
"Oh indeed, another evenin' here with His Grace would no doubt be far more to your likin' than airing the cat with that ton lot of harpies."
Splendor peeled herself off the door. Didn't Mrs. Ferret know how his evenings were mainly spent? At his club? Or wherever, with whoever? Shudders ran up her spine. She had had such hopes when she came here of so many things. Of having London, having him, at her feet.
There was a time too when she'd have given her eye teeth and every other tooth in her head to go to whatever it was Mrs. Ferret had looked that gown out for too. That dazzling world had got her into trouble in more ways than one.
So when it came to gowns, she'd die rather than wear that one tonight.
***
"For God's sake, just how long does it take for you to do Her Grace's hair? Have you seen my cuff links?" Stillmore jerked his gaze around. "I mean-"
Jesus Christ, the entrance to his bedroom was not a place she would normally stand-for a start the door was always closed-so he didn't know who was the more astonished. Herself, at finding her feet grinding to a halt, in the gray satin slippers? Or him, at finding her there, leaning against the jamb, when he'd been expecting Ferret?
His throat dried as he once again fought for his calm center. Strove to examine the facts. The cuff links had been in this drawer yesterday. Now it was empty save for some wood shavings. The gray satin slippers, so far as he knew, had not been here at all, until today. Had she taken the cuff links to pay for the slippers? Or should he expect another damned bill? She'd ruin him at this rate.
"Cuff links?" She snapped her mouth shut.
He withdrew his hand from the drawer. The funny thing was the amount of stuff that kept disappearing and reappearing beneath his nose. He wanted to say something. To do that he must first believe she had been in this room before-his sanctuary of claret and mulberry-when her eyes told a different story. Secondly was something he could not afford to think of, now that she stood there in the soft gray dress, a perfect match for her coloring, tied just below her breasts with a velvet ribbon. A ribbon he'd give his eyeteeth to pull.
"My gold ones. I was going to wear them tonight. Didn't Ferret give you my message?"
"If you mean her laying out my cream gown is a message, then yes. That does not mean-"
She hesitated, the tiniest bit. A bit that heightened his awareness of her, not just as a living, breathing woman, but someone things could have been very, very different with had she not opened her big mouth. Too bad she couldn't somehow exorcise the sweat that lay on him at the thought of that dreaded word-wedlock. Deadlock was more like it. It wasn't as if he hadn't tried. How he was succeeding was by turning all manner of blind eyes. Three months. He was getting through the three months.
"What?" He exhaled sharply. What the hell was wrong that she wasn't bounding about his bedroom at the chance of a social evening? And her eyes stayed fastened on the empty drawer as if they were going to ping from her head and masquerade as the cuff links instead. "Look, it has occurred to me that people will be talking. It may have escaped your notice, but we have not been seen together in public, and a honeymoon can only last so long."
"That depends on the couple."
"And your reputation depends on this being foolproof, instead of foolhardy."
"I didn't think my reputation concerned you, Your Grace. And, it's very good of you to ask me along ... "
It was actually. In fact, when he loathed social events with the passion of a man who has been made to eat nails and then been asked to regurgitate them, it was more than good of him. He straightened his cuffs.
"I'm hoping you will be there tonight. I fully understand that you may not feel like obliging me."
"Your Grace ... "
"Yes."
"Your Grace, if this is to-"
"It is not to make Lady Langley jealous. Before you start. In fact, us not showing ourselves is probably killing her. You don't care though, that we need to be seen occasionally in public to convince people this is not a sham?"
"So when you divorce me and cast me off without a penny to my name, you will look good? Is that it?"
Look good? Christ with horseshoe nails in his feet, how the bloody blazes could she be so wrong? He never looked good. It exhausted him. That wasn't why he'd thought of doing this. He wanted to look bad.
"Fine. Don't come then. But if you can't do this, I really see no point in your continuing to live here."
The bald words stopped her as she turned to leave. "Me, Your Grace?"
"Yes. Unless you do?"
***
His voice smoked up her spine, the thought hammering that she was going about this all wrong. Forget that business with Phoebe, the endgame to end all endgames was in fact, staring her in the face, harder than that wooden door there. A potent weapon. Why on earth hadn't she seen that a baby could be the answer to her prayers?
She pressed a hand to her chest. Futures were to be decided here after all. Hers most of all. "A good job you don't drive carts, the number of times you would place said encumbrance before the horse."
"What are you talking about?"
"Of course I will go and get changed. I was just a little tired, that was all."
"Hardly surprising the way you damn well prowl this house at two in the morning."
"I didn't forget how kind it has been of you to salvage my reputation after I so foolishly threw it away on ... on you, Your Grace. I wasn't thinking clearly about how this might look to outsiders."
"Frankly, it's nothing to me how this looks. Why should it be when I've stood outside all my life? You're looking at the man whose wife divorced him."
She turned round. She was looking at that man who seemed stuck by that divorce. Handsome, as he was bad tempered. Horrible, horrible, whatever the truth of him and Marietta. But she was also looking at the father of her child, unfortunately, who she needed that much recognition from. Was going to have, too, if it killed her.
"Oh, I'm sure you never meant to, Your Grace. That she probably deserved it."
His face darkened.
"And disinherited his daughter."
"Well, no doubt you had your reasons."
He narrowed his eyes so that they sank to the back of his head, dark, driven. "Are you being facetious?"
"Me? Not that I know of. No, Just give me half an hour, Your Grace. Then I'll be ready."
This time she would not allow herself to be dragged into any social whirl as she had before. Nothing would go wrong.