Confessions of an Improper Bride, page 12
Several younger ladies passed them, chattering happily.
“Not here,” he added.
She gave a firm shake of her head, but her heartbeat surged. Would he finally accuse her of pretending to be Meg? Would he tell Will?
“I’ve nothing to say to you, Lord Stratford.”
His expression darkened. “I understand why you don’t think you have anything to say to me.” He hesitated. “But I’ve information of great consequence about… your sister. It’s something you’ll wish to know.”
Which sister, she wondered. Meg? Serena? Phoebe?
This was ridiculous. “I must find Phoebe.” She tried to pull her arm out of his grip, but he held firm.
“Tomorrow. Meet me at the servants’ entrance at the back of my house at noon.”
“Meet with you alone at midday, in plain sight?” She huffed. “I think not.”
“At midnight, then,” he murmured in a low voice to make sure only she could hear. “Meet me at midnight, and no one but you and I will be the wiser.”
She stared at him, memories slamming through her, hard and fast. They’d met behind his house and Aunt Geraldine’s house at night before. But that was six years ago, and she’d been a different person then. So had he.
She yanked her arm away from his grasp. “How dare you.”
“It’s important. Please, trust me.” He gazed at her, his expression so guileless she nearly faltered. He’d worked his wiles on her before, and she could never forget what had come of that.
Pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose, she turned away from him. “Good-bye, Lord Stratford.”
She marched away and up the stairs, then down the long corridor leading to Aunt Geraldine’s box. She knew he followed; she sensed his soft footsteps close behind her. She refused to acknowledge them. She reached the box and thrust the door open. Phoebe jumped to her feet, and Serena groaned.
“Phoebe! Where have you been?” She kept her voice low so she wouldn’t disturb the patrons in the neighboring boxes.
Phoebe rushed to her and took both her hands. “Oh, Meg, I didn’t know you were searching for me! It was so stifling in here, and when Miss Trumpet came in, I went downstairs with her to take some air.”
Despite herself, Serena glanced back at Jonathan. He shrugged, Phoebe saw him for the first time and curtsied, and Aunt Geraldine glanced toward the door to scowl at them all.
Serena squeezed her sister’s hands. “I’m glad you’re here, Phoebe. You scared me half to death, though. Don’t do that again without telling me where you are going, please.”
“I won’t, Meg. I promise.”
They looked over to Jonathan, who gave them all a formal bow and then retreated with a final meaningful glance at Serena.
“It’s important,” he’d said. What could possibly be so important?
Why on earth was she dying to find out?
Serena knew that if she arrived at his servants’ entrance at midnight tomorrow, he’d be there, waiting for her. Something deep inside her screamed that she must go.
She’d deny that voice.
Still grasping her sister’s hand, Serena returned to her seat and finished watching the tragedy of Othello.
Jonathan knocked on the door to Kincaid’s box and was granted entrance immediately. Everyone turned to see who the latecomer was—and Jonathan gave tight smiles to Kincaid and Jane and the other occupants of the box seats.
Kincaid and Jane stood to welcome him, and Jonathan kissed his cousin on the cheek. Kincaid asked him to sit with them for the remainder of the performance.
Jonathan hesitated, his desire to escape this place warring with his knowledge that Meg Donovan was still here, and Kincaid’s box offered a good view of Lady Alcott’s.
“Thank you,” Jonathan said. There were no available seats, but Jonathan was content to stand in the back of the box.
The fashionable ladies and gentlemen sitting in the seats in front of him paid little attention to the play—instead the men were engaging in a heated conversation about George IV’s failing eyesight and general health, and making bets on the number of months the monarch had to live. The women were using opera glasses to observe who had accompanied whom to the performance this evening, and gossiping in whispers among themselves.
Jonathan accepted a pair of tiny opera glasses from Kincaid and made a show of leisurely scanning the theater. He didn’t look at the stage, where Iago was doing his best to work Othello into an enraged frenzy over his wife’s alleged unfaithfulness, but at the audience, where he finally caught sight of Lady Alcott, Phoebe, and Serena.
She sat still, hands in her lap, eyes trained on the stage, lips moving slightly. It looked like she was reciting Othello’s lines along with him: “Lie on her! We say lie on her when they belie her…”
Hell, he was making assumptions again. He wasn’t positive she was Serena. It was only a strong hunch—an intangible sense. Only hope, perhaps. Nevertheless, it was a feeling he needed to either prove or disprove before his tangled thoughts drove him to madness.
Tomorrow at midnight. He hoped she’d come.
Kincaid nudged him, and he jerked the opera glasses, losing sight of her.
“See something of interest?” Kincaid murmured.
Jonathan gave a noncommittal grunt and gave a sweeping look over the boxes, catching a glimpse of a beautiful, laughing, dark-haired creature. Stunning, even in simple white muslin.
Jonathan sucked in his breath. There was no mistaking that wide smiling mouth, that dark waterfall of hair, that slender frame.
What was Eliza Anderson doing in London?
Chapter Nine
The following night, Jonathan slipped out of his servants’ entrance at quarter to midnight. His pulse pounded at his neck, and sweat beaded at his nape.
At the end of the night, he’d know her identity for certain. That was, if she appeared. He wasn’t sure she would, even considering the note he’d sent to her this afternoon with a cryptic explanation as to why he needed to speak with her.
After all he’d done, he shouldn’t expect anything from her. He didn’t deserve anything from her.
Pushing off from his position leaning on the servants’ entrance door, he glanced over at the darkened garden pavilion behind Lady Alcott’s house. No sign of Phoebe and Harper. He wondered if they planned to meet tonight.
He’d meant to stop Harper when he’d witnessed his meeting with Phoebe Donovan. The minute he’d seen the man approaching Phoebe, he’d lunged forward, prepared to stop their meeting before it began. But then she’d leaned toward Harper, true concern etched on her face, and Harper’s anger had instantly simmered and then disappeared altogether. Jonathan had stopped and stood in the shadows, uncertain.
Phoebe and Harper had talked in low tones, hers soothing, his anguished at first but soon taking on a more relaxed quality. Jonathan knew he should have separated them instantly, but ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to. He’d watched the entire assignation, though, and he was surprised to see Harper behaving far more the gentleman than he ever would have suspected. Moreover, when it had ended, Harper was the one to urge Phoebe to return to the house and get some rest.
The couple reminded him of himself and Serena. He and Serena had met in the garden pavilion several times. On the last of those meetings, he’d been sitting between two of the pillars, elbows on knees and head in hands, feeling hopeless about everything. About his father, who was demanding he join the clergy. About Serena’s dismissal as unworthy by both his parents. He’d been bold enough to suggest a permanent match between himself and Serena, and his father had laughed at him—no, he’d guffawed as if Jonathan had been telling him a hilarious joke.
Serena had sat beside Jonathan, gathered him in her arms, and held him. She didn’t speak—she didn’t need to. She’d understood.
He sighed, resting his head back against the brick wall and staring through the tree limbs at the night sky. Only a few tenacious stars shone with enough brightness to pierce through the London haze. Their glow was blurred and muted, not the sharp, crisp pinpricks of light clearly visible in the country’s night sky.
The sound of footsteps jerked his head around.
She approached, dressed in a dark, hooded cape as if in disguise, as if she didn’t want to be seen with him. Understandable, he supposed. It was always this way between them, meeting in secret in dark shadows, with hoods and other costumes to conceal who they were and what they were doing. Six years ago, it had been in an ultimately vain attempt to hide their love affair. Now it was because he was the man who’d ruined her sister, and she was engaged to Langley.
She was engaged to Langley. Jonathan swallowed the sickness that soured his throat at the thought.
Her head swung from side to side as she studied their surroundings. No doubt she searched for a sign of someone lurking in the shadows. Finding no one, she hurried up to him and spoke in hushed, urgent tones. “Tell me what it is you have to say, Lord Stratford. Please do it quickly. I’ve no desire to be seen here with you.”
He didn’t answer right away. His tongue seemed to be twisted into knots. She was so beautiful. Her cape was a deep gray, a shade darker than the luminous eyes that stared at him. Blond hair curled around her face. He remembered sifting it through his fingers, tracing her hairline until his fingers met at her pointed little chin, and kissing her there…
“Lord Stratford,” she snapped. “What is it?” She shifted her stance, impatient. “Your note said it had something to do with Phoebe.”
He took a breath. “Phoebe. Right.”
She arched her brows. “Well?”
He gestured at the door to his servants’ entrance. “Won’t you come inside? We can sit at the kitchen table and talk there.”
She narrowed her eyes in suspicion.
“Please, Miss Donovan. You have my word as a gentleman—” She made a scoffing noise, but he ignored it and continued. “I’ll allow no harm to come to you in my kitchen.”
When she continued to hesitate, he added in a low voice, “I assure you, there’s a far smaller chance of someone discovering us together in my kitchen than there is out here in the open.”
With a frustrated sigh, she relented and followed him inside. Jonathan would have preferred speaking with her in his drawing room, but he knew when not to push. The kitchen would be considered a more neutral territory than his drawing room.
At the worn wooden table where his servants dined, he pulled out one of the chairs and waited until she sat before he circled around to the other side and took the seat across from her.
She sat stiffly, her hands in her lap. “What do you have to tell me about my sister?”
“I think you must have an idea.”
Not meeting his gaze, she flinched. “Just tell me.”
He took a breath. As much as he sympathized with the couple, he knew well what would happen should they be discovered by someone other than himself or Phoebe’s sister.
“She and Sebastian Harper are lovers.”
Staring at a point on the wall beyond his shoulder, she didn’t move. After a long moment had passed, she asked, “How do you know this?”
He told her, from beginning to end, the story of what had happened the night of the fight, leaving out no detail and ending with the two young people saying their good-byes.
Her gaze moved from the wall to him, and she listened to him, unmoving, taking it all in without speaking. There was another silence after he finished, and her focus shifted away from him again to study the ovens, the stove, the shelves lined with rows of well-organized stores. Finally, her gaze once again settled on him.
“Thank you for telling me.” Her voice was low, rich, and smooth. Serena’s voice, just as he remembered it.
“What will you do?” he asked.
She didn’t hesitate. “I must stop it, of course.”
He gave a slow nod. “Of course.” And she was correct—as “perfect” as their affair appeared on the outside, Phoebe and Harper could not continue as they were. Her family would never allow such a match, and not only was Harper dangerously in debt, but he also possessed a marked lack of control. Though Phoebe appeared to soothe him, that might be only temporary.
“Might I suggest…” He hesitated.
She raised a brow until it was a perfect dark blond peak above her eye. “What do you wish to suggest, my lord?”
She clearly thought it was none of his business to offer a suggestion in how to manage her younger sister, and she was right. Yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
“I would suggest not being too harsh when you speak to her.” He leaned forward, studying her in earnest as he spoke. “I don’t think he’s using her, and I don’t think the opposite is true, either. I believe their affection for each other is mutual and honest.”
She stiffened visibly, the sheen of her eyes hardening and growing steely cold.
“That hardly matters,” she said.
“Doesn’t it?”
She shook her head, and the motion was stiff, as if it hurt her neck to move it. “Not at all. They must understand that nothing can come of this.”
Sadness swept through him at her words. He knew she was right, but he had to ask. “Do you believe that? Honestly?”
“I do.” So stiff, so cold, the way she stared at him. “My mother and aunt have already planned her Season next year. They are hoping to find a good husband for her, then, with my example…” She hesitated, took a breath, and continued. “I am to be married to Captain Langley, and Phoebe is lovely—witty and beautiful. We all harbor high hopes that she’ll do even better than I have.”
Her words brought such a rush of bile to his throat it took him several moments to recover. Serena never would have said such a thing—those words did not represent anything of what she had valued. Perhaps she wasn’t his Serena after all.
He spoke quietly. “Serena always believed that love matches—despite the disparate ranks of those involved—were possible. Even ideal.”
Her eyes narrowed at him and her lips thinned until the line of her teeth shone in the candlelight. “Do not speak of Serena to me. I’ve already asked you not to.”
“But what if I wish to speak of her?”
“You wish to cause me pain. Is that it?”
“No. Never.” He leaned forward. “Tell me, Meg. Does me speaking of Serena truly cause you pain?”
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Why is that?” Each word he was able to draw out of her lured him in more, made him hotter, made his heartbeat ratchet upward.
She stared at him, her eyes cold and hard as gray stone. “It reminds me of how you behaved toward her. How you betrayed her.”
“Does it remind you of what happened between me and Serena prior to that betrayal?”
If possible, her eyes hardened further. “No,” she said firmly. “There’s nothing I recall beyond that moment.”
“Which moment, exactly?”
“When she turned to you for support… for love. And you made it clear that she was nothing to you. You cut her.”
“I don’t recall you being there at that moment, Meg.”
Her lip curled. “I wasn’t. Serena told me about it. She was my twin, if you recall.”
“Oh, I recall. But if you’ll also recall, I was one of the few people who could tell the two of you apart.”
She pressed her lips together, saying nothing.
“Quite identical, you were. But in appearance only, wasn’t it? In every other way, you were very different.”
She shook her head, slowly, from side to side.
“I remember,” he murmured, leaning forward even more. “I remember what Serena sounded like. What she smelled like. The placement of each tiny freckle across her nose—she had a few more than Meg, because she was drawn to the outdoors and often forgot to wear her bonnet, much to her mother’s annoyance. I remember her little habits, the twists of her lips, the expressions deep in her eyes. I remember everything.”
She rose warily from her seat, the chair legs scraping the flagstones. “I believe you’ve said everything you wanted to say, my lord.”
He rose, too, keeping nose to nose with her. He kept his voice low. He captured her gaze with his own and wouldn’t let go. “You may think you’ve changed. You may even think you’re Meg. But do you know what I think?”
She swallowed hard but stared at him with steely eyes.
“I think it wasn’t Serena who died on that ship. I think it was Meg. And for some reason, Serena has decided to change her identity. To fool the world into thinking she’s Meg.”
“I do believe you’ve gone mad, Lord Stratford.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you, Serena?”
“Don’t call me that. Don’t you dare.”
Keeping her trapped within his gaze, he slowly made his way around the table until he stood beside her. She looked up at him, and he could see it clearly now—the panic flaring in her eyes, the deep crimson flush spreading across her cheekbones.
“I always knew the difference between you and your twin,” he murmured, staring down at her. “You knew that. How could you think you’d fool me now?”
She tried to patch her disintegrating nerves back together. He could see her near-palpable struggle to do it, to try to appear strong before him. “You’re mistaken, my lord.” Her voice shook as she spoke. “Serena and I were very much alike, and not just in appearance. I have changed in the past several years. Become more like her.”
“No,” he said quietly. “No. You haven’t. You are just as I remember you.”
She turned as if to go, but he snagged her around the waist with his arm, and before she could gather her wits to protest, he pressed his lips to hers.
Serena’s sweet taste, her essence, her soft lips, the curve of her waist under his arm.
His blood sang with the knowledge. It poured through him from their point of contact.
There was no longer any doubt in his mind. This was Serena. The woman he’d thought dead for six years. The woman he’d loved with all his soul but had been stupid and thrown it all away.
