The Proposition, page 19
“And what about you, Miss Rose?” he asked, voice hushed now that they were close again, practically in each other’s arms. “Are you enjoying this?”
“As much as one can with an unwilling partner.”
“I am not unwilling,” Audric corrected in a huff, but he was grinning. “Besides, you have surprising grace, Miss Rose. I’m impressed, you are a more-than-adequate partner—on the dance floor and on the hunt.”
This was a concerted effort to rattle her, she could feel it, and it was nearly working. Nearly. Clemency raised her head a degree higher, skewering him with her eyes through the veil. “And you would prove a most adequate partner, but only with a less severe expression. This dance is an outpouring of joy, sir. Where is your joy?”
He had time to consider the question, and he did so across from her while the fiddle dipped and dived. A small audience gathered, clapping along and whooping, mostly praising the obvious glee with which Miss Paisley and Delphine attacked the steps. As the afternoon wore on, more folk gathered in the hall, and Clemency noted a few new faces entering from the foyer, lingering there, a gentleman in a pale blue waistcoat perusing the patrons with a fond smile.
They were nearly to the end of the tune, and Clemency wished she could tear her veil off, for it made the room very warm and the dance required a good degree of concentration and exertion, not to mention coordination and energy. The fiddler did not spare them either, racing on, part of the fun in seeing if the dancers could meet the pace, the audience clapping along, encouraging them to spin faster and faster.
Audric, crooked grin at the ready, approached her for the final hand-in-hand trot up and down the dance floor. Miss Paisley and Delphine were ahead of them, skirts flying with the speed of the steps.
“Where is my joy?” he asked softly, only loud enough for Clemency to hear. She did not mistake the small squeeze he gave her hands, his serious expression at last banished, replaced by something softer, and kind, perhaps thoughtful. “It appears my joy is here. With Ralston and Delphine…” His eyes settled on hers in the most peculiar way. He squinted, as if unsure of himself, and then began to say, “And with—”
“Mr. Ferrand!”
Delphine and Miss Paisley had stopped abruptly, the taller blond woman holding Delphine’s forearm as the girl breathed hard, gasping for air, both of her small, gloved hands pressed to her chest as she struggled. The fiddling died down, the audience mumbling in confusion, and then Delphine ducked to the side, reeling, before she lost her footing and swooned.
“Delphine!” Audric thundered, diving for her. He caught her before she could hit the floor, Ralston at his side an instant later, the two men supporting her as she wheezed.
Clemency watched as the girl tore at the veil on her face, revealing a shine of sweat and a horribly pale face.
“Miss Paisley!” Clemency heard herself say, finding her courage amid the panic. “Have our carriage brought around now, quickly, please.”
The crowd clustered nearer, but Clemency strode forward, warding them off while Audric gathered Delphine into his arms and helped her toward the foyer, past the man with the blue waistcoat, who looked on with his chin almost on the ground.
“Disperse, please,” Clemency said, following after the men and Delphine. “It is only a fainting spell, fresh air will set her to rights.”
She joined them all as Audric burst through the front doors, Delphine in his arms, Ralston sprinting ahead to meet the carriage and leap up into the driver’s box.
“I’m all right,” Delphine murmured as he placed her into the carriage, her eyes wide and rolling. Audric swore under his breath, collapsing onto the bench. Beside him, Delphine giggled. “Lord, what a jolly afternoon.”
16
Clemency walked a slow, solemn circle around Audric’s study in Grosvenor Square, finding it a curiously intimate little window into his mind. It felt like her discovery of Ede had been the key unlocking her access to the inner sanctum of his machinations.
“This is everything you could find?” Audric was asking.
His hired man Stanhope stood with his arms crossed in the center of the room, eyes fixed on Clemency as she made her own investigation. The riotous hothouse flowers on Audric’s desk were no doubt from Delphine, but Clemency had foolishly and jealously glanced at them anyway, to make certain they were not from an admirer. A few glowering portraits hung on the walls, and she recognized the elder Ferrand at once. He shared Audric’s severe profile and gripping eyes, though somehow even the brushstrokes looked agitated and his gaze empty. Audric’s dogs dozed on the rug before his desk, crowding their master’s feet, jockeying for proximity.
“We are short on time, sir,” Stanhope said, impatient.
“Lady Veitch gave us nothing,” Clemency added. “She hates how crowded those musical rooms become and told Tansy never to ask again.”
“She sounds delightful,” Audric muttered.
“You have no idea.”
“I reckon these are the most promising.” Stanhope leaned over the papers in Audric’s hands and pointed. “Crane, Hewitt, and this one, Chilvers.”
“I beg your pardon!” Clemency had found another interesting portrait, this one of Audric’s entire family, but she was forced to turn away from it. “I know that name…How do I know that name?”
Both men froze, staring at her.
“How do you know that name?” Audric pressed. “It has come up repeatedly in connection to Boyle.”
A memory…a memory…of black ink on faded paper, a flaking wax seal pressed with a familiar design…
“Mrs. Chilvers! My sister’s letter!” Clemency nearly tripped over both dogs as she raced to join them at the desk. “My sister asked me to deliver a letter for her in London, and it was addressed to a Mrs. Chilvers. They sometimes correspond.”
Audric blinked at her over the edge of the paper. “That can be no coincidence.”
“My sister is not involved in Boyle’s schemes,” Clemency insisted. “It could indeed be a coincidence!”
“Not where Boyle is concerned.” Audric tossed the list of salons onto his desk and shooed the hounds away. “But this is a boon. We can use her knowledge of your sister to gain an invitation. Stanhope, can you arrange it? Make it known to Mrs. Chilvers that Miss Fry and a guest would like to attend the salon.”
“Sir, it’s tonight—”
“I noticed. Can you arrange it quickly?”
Stanhope simply tossed up his tweedy arms, withdrew a pipe from his pocket, and stormed to the door. After it had slammed shut in his wake, Audric gave a dry laugh.
“He will see it done,” exclaimed Audric, slapping his hands together with anticipation. “And that means you and I must be ready and ready soon. Will it be difficult for you to find an excuse to be absent this evening?”
“Not at all,” Clemency replied. That was hardly her primary concern. “I am not altogether comfortable using my sister’s friendship with this woman to advance our scheme.”
His face darkened, and he gripped the edge of the desk as he leaned back against it. “Clemency, I ask you: What is our aim?”
“To leave Boyle penniless and humiliated,” she replied. “I am not wavering in that, Audric, but Honora is such an innocent soul. It pains me to think she could be at all implicated in—”
“In what? We are only leveraging her knowledge of Mrs. Chilvers to attend a musical salon, nothing more. There is every likelihood that Mrs. Chilvers has nothing at all to do with Boyle, and if we act with care and tact, we need not make a scene this evening.” Audric pushed away from the desk, approaching her with open hands. She had never seen him look so…so…beseeching. “Is something else troubling you?”
Everything else was troubling her. She wanted to throttle him. Then kiss him. Then disappear. Then reappear and toss herself into his arms! Her stomach was in knots as she considered how close they were coming to the end of their arrangement. She did not want it to end.
“What if Boyle is there? We cannot be seen together,” she scrambled.
“True…True.” Audric smiled down at her, then carefully tilted her chin up so that their eyes met. His hand lingered playfully along her jaw. She told herself it would not be useful for their cause to kiss the tips of his fingers, and so she quashed the urge. Only just. Did he know what he did to her? How his presence, solid and serious and steady, made her feel like the rickety, trembling ground of her life might one day be still? That he made her feel weak in the stomach but strong at heart? Why did you kiss me? she longed to ask. And why won’t you do it again?
“A pity,” he murmured. “That I cannot have you there at my side.”
“Audric…”
“Yes. My mind strays from the task.” He sighed as he let go of her. That was not what she meant for him to do, but perhaps it was for the best. If he touched her again that way she might burst out of her skin. “Perhaps your brother’s wife might accompany you, and we will be but polite, having shared a brief acquaintance in Round Orchard.”
We shared and share far more than that, sir.
“Of course,” Clemency choked out. “That will be agreeable.”
It will be agony.
“Then, I will see you tonight, Clemency,” Audric said, his eyes dancing and alight. “I look forward to it with the utmost anticipation.”
* * *
—
Audric was surprised to find the Chilvers home comfortable but unexceptional, hardly the type of place to lure the most influential set of the ton, but then, he did not consider himself an expert on the intricacies and frivolities of the exceptionally powerful. In fact, he quite eschewed them. Yet that evening he dressed for the part, taking Delphine’s cutting advice on all matters of fashion and grooming.
“You must look your very best for Miss Fry,” his sister had said as he left the house.
“I will give her your regards,” he insisted, disappearing into the carriage.
Wrapped in a thick shawl, she called out into the night, “Give her your own!”
Delphine was not being at all shy about her respect for Clemency, A long list of obstacles stood between the fantasy Delphine imagined and the far harsher reality of their lives. He had no idea if Clemency would ever consider marriage again. She had been exposed to the cruelest and most pernicious aspects, the mercenary, contractual calculations that robbed unions of all real meaning. Not all marriages were miserable, but he had witnessed the long, slow death of his mother’s spirit at the hands of his father. Elise Ferrand sang less day by day, smiled less day by day, crushed in the tyrannical fist of his father’s need for control.
And there was every possibility that Clemency would only associate him with this whole messy business. Perhaps, if she did intend to consider marriage again, she would want a clean start, and not to be constantly reminded of Boyle’s many crimes. It ate at Audric that he could even be associated with such filth, but it was he who had started the hunt, and it was he who had drawn Clemency into it.
Miss Fry. Miss Fry, not Clemency.
A subtle, welcoming glow emanated from the windows of the Chilvers home. Stanhope had come through with a miracle, arranging invitations for him, Clemency and her guest. It was a lively, warm place, perhaps not modern but filled with obviously cherished objects—faded rugs and balustrades polished by a hundred sweaty children’s fingers, greasy lamps, and rump-worn sofas, portraits of little boys in blue coats, and geraniums blossoming from the wallpaper.
The obliging maid showed him to a larger sitting room, where a dozen or so of London’s finest had gathered. The musicians and their glossy string instruments waited before a red-and-gold tapestry of a medieval maiden holding a falcon aloft. He stayed to the back of the room, surveying. Hunting. He found Clemency at once, for how could he not? His gaze was drawn to her like a dancer down a line, her red-gold hair jewel bright, her gown simple, white, and flattering to her alluring shape. She must have felt his eyes upon her, for she half-turned, spying him, a flicker of a smile flaming before she remembered their ruse and she twisted away.
At once, he missed the mischievous gleam of her gray eyes.
How he would go that entire evening without taking her hand and feeling its soft strength, he didn’t know.
Heaven help me.
Only their plan kept him rooted there and not flying to her side. The guests began to sit down, while the lady of the house rose to address them, the musicians dropping their bows and ceasing the hair-raising scratch from finding their note.
“Thank you so much, old friends and new, for gracing us this evening,” the woman, presumably Mrs. Chilvers, said. Her straw-colored hair was piled carelessly on her head beneath a black lace cap, and she wore a gown of darkest blue, a mauve lace shawl fluttering on her shoulders like dainty wings as she spoke. She did not project the image of a fashionable London lady, but rather of someone’s kindly aunt. “The only person who loved music more than I was my dearly deceased husband. I know he would be so thrilled that the works of Haydn and Mozart and Beethoven still echo among these walls, and like a beacon they have drawn you here.”
Audric took a chair in the back row and stretched his legs out in front of him, realizing that there was nothing to do but wait and listen until refreshments were served later. He heard the music, or thought he did, though accepted that if questioned about it he could give only a recounting of which movements made Clemency sit up straighter, or lean forward, how one particular run of notes brought her hand to her neck, and her fingers curled into a fist, as if delicately catching a moth. It gave her such clear pleasure that it gave him pleasure too.
The music he did not remember, but her? He remembered her sharply. Like a dagger he remembered her, and she was still just there, not six rows ahead of him.
The eruption of applause at the end startled him out of a fog, and he joined in, standing, once more on the hunt.
He noted Denning Ede drifting toward the musicians to praise them, then standing off to the side while a maid hurried over to speak with him. Stanhope had given Audric a detailed description—a man of six and fifty, red hair fading to silver, tall and once a good rider but gone to fat, nearly always wearing a chrysanthemum in his breast pocket.
There was a specific thrum in the chest that came when he knew a hunt was almost at an end, and he felt it as he watched Clemency deftly draw Mrs. Chilvers into conversation. He watched her press a letter into the woman’s hands and saw the joy it brought the widow. As if by perfect design, the widow drew Clemency away, down a corridor, and out of sight.
Ede, meanwhile, bent his head low toward the maid. His expression soured, nostrils flaring as he adjusted his cravat, fidgeting, then followed the maid briskly down the aisle between the rows of chairs and out toward the front hall. Audric hesitated for only a moment, trusting the strange hum in his chest, giving Ede a brief head start before swiftly embarking on the chase.
17
Clemency liked Mrs. Chilvers at once. It was no mystery why she and Honora corresponded—Clemency sensed in them the same painfully raw sensitivity, an openness to feeling and sentiment that made Mrs. Chilvers appear almost fragile to the touch. Her open, good face was lined from smiling, her eyes weary and muted with the burdens of the world.
“You have no idea how much this means,” Mrs. Chilvers was saying, pouring a small measure of brandy into a glass for Clemency. They stood in a close, beloved study, filled with manuscripts and half-finished needlework. A sofa, desk, and chair crowded the one large rug. As she handed Clemency the brandy, she noticed Mrs. Chilvers’s fingertips were hard and ink-stained, evidence of a woman long at her needle and pen.
“A toast to you, my dear courier,” the widow added. “Honora writes so sweetly of you, and I am ever so pleased to finally compare you to the heroine of her letters!”
“She flatters me,” Clemency assured her, sipping. “And exaggerates.”
Mrs. Chilvers laughed and fondly placed her hand over Honora’s letter, which she had set on the desk.
“My sister is the gentlest creature in the whole world, she never has a cross word for anyone. Whatever saintly description she gave you is pure generosity, nothing else.”
“Oh, yes,” replied Mrs. Chilvers with a wistful sigh. “And that is what makes her my favorite correspondent. With her good nature, she cannot help but brighten my days, and a widow must take her ease where she can. There are diversions, of course, music and writing, but there is no replacement for the conversation of a like-minded woman.”
“My condolences, Mrs. Chilvers, until this evening I was not aware that you are also a widow.”
“My great loss is what led me to knowing your sister better,” Mrs. Chilvers told her. She did not look sad, perhaps, but thoughtful. “When dear Edwyn passed, I found myself penning a letter of consolation, one that, then, led to many more of ardent friendship.”
“Speaking of Honora makes me long for her to be here.” And it was true. But even just being in the presence of a woman her sister so admired brought Clemency a measure of comfort. One that was dashed when she remembered her purpose in coming. This widow, in her dowdy dress and handmade shawl, did not strike Clemency as the type of person to associate with Denning Ede, the golden man of London’s nobility and high society.
“If we both beseech her, then she has no choice but to agree!” Mrs. Chilvers grinned and drank from her glass. Clemency found it astonishing that she should host a salon with such elevated guests while her fingers were stained almost to the knuckles with ink.
“You are so prolific,” Clemency observed, gesturing to the mountain of half-finished letters and manuscripts piled on the woman’s desk. “I should endeavor to write more, though my words are always clumsy on paper.”
