Chapter Three

I 'm off to bed, darling," Mama said, smothering a yawn as she started for the stairs. "Lord, but these social events take more out of me every year. Don't stay up too late." "I'm going to read a little before bed," Phoebe said, pausing to press a kiss to her mother's cheek. "I'll be up soon." "My little bluestocking," Mama said on a sigh—but the words were fond. "All right, then. Enjoy yourself, dear." Phoebe intended to. These were her favorite moments, when everyone else had retired for the evening, and the house was just…quiet. A sort of quiet that soothed the soul, so very far from the chaos that had comprised her early life. More than half a dozen children all crammed into one household did tend to make silence seem a rare and precious thing. Instead of making her way to the small library, she wound through the house toward the door at the back which led into the garden. Even in July, the night air was cool and soft, scented lightly with the roses that bloomed in neatly-trimmed bushes. It wasn't quite Tuesday any longer—midnight had come and gone at least an hour ago—but she was certain he'd be waiting. So she hurried along the stonework path toward the high wall that separated her garden from the house to the left, and when she arrived, she sank down upon the bench placed there and heaved a sigh. "Long night?" The wry inquiry drifted to her ears over the wall. "Yes," she said, her shoulders sinking. "Lord Statham asked me to dance, if you can believe it." "Did you tell him to bugger off?" Phoebe muffled a laugh in her palm. It was so easy to forget that the rules which had long governed her life were not always known to others, that a man who had likely never set foot in a ballroom would have no reason to know what, exactly, went on within one. "Unfortunately, no. It's quite rude, you see, to decline an invitation to dance without a sufficient reason." "Then I hope you crushed his toes." There was the queer rustle and flutter of papers whisked about by the wind. "Alas, he was a bit too nimble," she sighed. "I did try." A chortle, rife with amusement and a certain dry satisfaction. "I'll just bet you did." Phoebe let her head fall back against the rough stone of the wall that separated them. "Thank you," she said, with a wealth of feeling. "For running him off today. Even if it didn't quite take." And how badly she had wanted it to take. "I don't think you're as bad as people say you are." "Oh, no," he agreed pleasantly. "I'm a good deal worse." But how bad could he truly be? He was Emma's brother, after all—and he ought to have been a hero for his work within the Home Office, and his efforts to root out a traitor within it. Unfortunately, whatever accolades to which he might have been entitled had fallen largely flat with the Ton . The circumstances of his birth and his long tenure within the seedier echelon of society apparently precluded any acknowledgement thereof. He made them afraid, she thought. Of the things of which he was capable. He had made her afraid—just a little, in the way that one might have a natural reticence of a dangerous animal— until she had learned better. Until he had, unprompted, driven off a gentleman who had gotten a bit too familiar with her person. But she rather thought they had established a friendship of sorts since. As much as a man of his station and a woman of hers could be said to be friends, at least. "How are you enjoying Pride and Prejudice ?" she asked, turning her face to the cool breeze that drifted through the garden. "I'm not. This Darcy fellow is a right arse." Phoebe pressed her lips together against a laugh. "He gets better." "He'd damn well better. He and that high-and-mighty friend of his." "Mr. Bingley," she said. "He's not so bad." "He's too easily led by half. A sheep of a man, content to follow where others lead, unable to form his own opinion," he grunted. "I'll have it back to you tomorrow." "Tomorrow! You'll finish so soon?" "Little enough better to do than read," he said. "Kind of you to share your library. I doubt there are many bookshops that would welcome me within their premises." Though she doubted that would have stopped him. "I'm happy to share my books," she said. "I've got rather a lot of them." She suspected that reading for pleasure was a hobby he'd acquired only recently; he seemed woefully unfamiliar with the literature of the day. And even with those that had been considered classics for some time. "You could send your servants out for books," she said. A snort. "They'd fare little better. Proper servants won't work in my home," he said, and there was a soft thunk , and the minor vibration of the wall between them, as if he'd rested his head there, too. "Even scullery maids have standards. Most of mine are those I brought with me up out of the gutters. You don't wish to marry, do you?" The sudden shift of the conversation scattered her nerves. "I—well—" Phoebe clenched her fingers in the folds of her skirts. "What makes you think so?" Another queer riffle of papers, as if he'd shaken pages in his hand. "Got a handful of scandal rags here that tell me you don't. At first I thought you might favor women—" "Women!" she choked. A rough chuckle. "Lord, your sort does shelter their ladies. You ever seen two old women that people refer to as the dearest of friends? Women who never married, but are always in one another's company? Perhaps they share a residence in their old age?" "Yes, of course." "They're not friends. Leastwise, not only friends." Lovers , he meant to imply. "It's not so uncommon for unmarried women to have companions to keep them company," she said. "Why, even my Aunt Joyce has—oh." Aunt Joyce, who had never taken a husband, had the company of her dearest friend, Miss Eugenia Conrad. They'd been inseparable since even before Phoebe had been born. She'd always thought of them more as sisters of the heart than as dear friends. But they weren't that at all. " Oh ," she said again. "I never suspected." "So you don't fancy women, then?" "No," she said. "Not like that." Good Lord, what a strange conversation this was. Not remotely the sort that an unmarried woman was expected to have with a man, even a gentleman. "I simply do not wish to marry," she admitted. It was the sort of thing that a woman of good birth did not admit to publicly. Her closest friends knew, but they would never betray her secrets. But neither would he, she thought. Not that anyone would have paid him much attention even if he had. "Why not? It's what ladies do, isn't it?" Phoebe clenched her jaw. "Yes," she said. "It's just—it's only—" She blew out a breath, her nails scratching at the delicate fabric of her gown. "Babies tend to follow weddings," she blurted out in a rush. A strange silence followed, long and tense. "You don't want children," he said. "Not particularly." Even that was a prevarication, but she had long become accustomed to pretending she was the sort of lady she was meant to be rather than the one she was. "No," she said at last. "No, I don't. I never have." Just the admission felt like a great weight lifted from her chest. "I have got seven siblings," she said. "Between them, I have got twenty-seven nieces and nephews. And I love them all, I do, but—" But she had never wanted that life for herself. Had never felt much of a calling toward cleansing sticky faces or enduring the unending, ear-piercing shrieks. Had never viewed childbearing as the miracle it was touted as being. On those rare occasions when she had been invited to feel the movements of the babies her sisters had carried, she'd experienced revulsion rather than the wonder that had been expected of her. "I've never had a desire for them. It's not very maternal of me—" "It's reasonable enough. You're not a mother. You don't want to be one." "But it's expected of me." A sigh tore itself from her lungs. "I thought I could simply slip into becoming a spinster," she said. "That I'd manage to escape marriage entirely." The general pity an unmarried woman of her age experienced would have been preferable by far. "But I've attracted an entirely new sort of suitor instead. Widowers with children, looking for someone to mother them." "I can't say I envy you." Somehow, she managed a laugh. "I don't want to mother children of my own, much less someone else's," she said. "Some think me the ideal candidate, however. From a large, fertile family, accustomed to the constant patter of tiny feet. I wouldn't put it past one or two of them to secure a wife—a mother for their children—however they had to. And there is only one way to avoid it." She shivered, busking her bare arms with her hands to chase away the chill bumps that had risen on her skin. "Ah," he said, reflectively, voice gone pensive. "You don't want to marry. But you need to marry a man of your own choosing, before that choice is taken from you." Put into ordinary terms, yes. "You make it sound so much simpler than it truly is." "I beg to differ," he said. "It's quite simple. You could marry me."

∞∞∞

"What?" she whispered, her voice hardly more than a shred of sound. " What ?" "You need husband," Chris said. "And as it happens, I need a wife. A proper lady to ease me into society. For Emma's sake. You are that, are you not? You might be only a miss , but—" "My father is a viscount," she snapped defensively. "Good." Probably he couldn't ever have dreamed to reach much higher. A viscount's daughter would do nicely. "Good enough for me." "Have you not been listening to a word I've said?" In fact, he'd listened to all of them quite closely. Moreover, he'd paid studious attention to every article he'd read, every tiny tidbit of gossip upon which he could lay his hands. "You don't want children," he said. "Neither do I. Likely can't produce them, anyway." A heavy silence, as if she were mulling the words around in her head. "Oh?" she asked at last, her voice laden with a sudden interest. "Caught the mumps when I was twenty," he said, "and followed it up with a particularly nasty case of scarlet fever. I very nearly died. The doctor managed to save my worthless life, but he'd seen similarly severe cases in his time. Suggested it was unlikely I'd ever produce children." At the time—a young man in his prime—it had seemed a blessing. And as he'd grown, that feeling had never changed. He'd had no desire to marry, and even less of one to populate London with his bastards. He'd had mistresses enough in his time, and not one of them had ever come up pregnant, though not for lack of trying. "I haven't got a title," he said, "or a hereditary estate to pass down. I don't need an heir. But I do need a damned wife . Someone to keep my damned servants from running me ragged, and to manage my house, and to wrest order from chaos. Can you manage a household?" "I should say so." This, with a frosty sort of dignity that suggested it had been offensive that he had even asked. "What are proposing, exactly?" "A marriage of convenience," he said. "If you've a dowry—" "I have. It is not insubstantial." "Then the whole of it is yours to do with as you please. I've no need of it." He had enough within his accounts for several lifetimes. Even the purchase of his house had hardly put a dent in his coffers. "And what would you require of me?" she asked. "A good deal less than any other husband, likely. We'd maintain separate bedchambers, of course. I value my privacy," he said. "Keep my house, fill my library with books, and lend me your respectability when I've need of it. I'll ask no more of you than that." "No children?" She breathed the words so hopefully, like a prayer tossed into the ether. "None." For a long moment there was just the rustle of the wind through the trees, the distant clatter of carriage wheels upon the street. She said at last, "My parents would never permit it." Chris heaved a sigh. Bugger . It had been a mad gamble, anyway. Half a plan, at best— "You'll have to compromise me," she said. "Publicly." Well. It was not often that Chris found himself surprised. But the Toogood chit had managed to do the job. "Ruin your reputation if I did," he said. Which would hardly serve his interests. She ventured, with a strange note of hesitance, "Likely not so much as you might think." "How do you mean?" "It's true that I have been somewhat less than circumspect," she said tentatively, and he could almost imagine her wringing her hands as she spoke, "in my efforts to avoid an inconvenient marriage." "I know. I read about the pigeons." It had been enough, likely, to make any mama of any potential suitor shake her head in consternation and suggest, perhaps not the Toogood girl , but not quite enough to see her stricken from guest lists—if only because there was the promise of good gossip with her attendance. "Still," she said, "when one compares our respective reputations…" She was loath to say it herself. Loath to make the suggestion, even if it was undeniably true. In comparison to his, her reputation was blameless. A clean, fresh, spotless lily-white. To compromise her publicly would be to confirm it—and reflect much worse upon him than upon her. Perhaps she would even end up the object of pity; the poor, unfortunate lady who had been trapped into marriage with one of London's most notorious figures. The sort of man from whom decent folk fled as if he were the very devil himself. There was just one problem. "How am I meant to compromise you?" he asked. "The usual way, I expect. At a ball, or a musicale, or some such event. Any function with a large number of people not particularly inclined to keep quiet about a good scandal. If you might provide me with your social calendar, I could find something suitable to which we've both been invited." She sounded so damned hopeful that he hated to disappoint her. "I haven't got a social calendar," he said. "What? But how do you keep track of which events you plan to attend?" "It's simple enough. I don't receive invitations." A pause, as if she could not quite make sense of the words. " No invitations?" "Nary a one." Well, that wasn't strictly true. He'd received one just recently. "Except from Em and Rafe," he said. "Some sort of charity event. She invites me every year. I've never attended." It wouldn't have been wise to do so; not when his presence was likely to detract from whatever it was she intended to accomplish with it. "It's a ball," she said absently. "It's meant to garner contributions for the children's care, and to help the oldest of them secure positions in reputable households." Another brief pause. "Truly— no invitations whatsoever otherwise?" "If your sort has one thing to their credit, it is that they know better than to invite me into their homes." It didn't matter, however. He was there anyway, in the servants he paid for information. Once, he'd made use of that information in the service of the country—but there was not much use in a spy who had been revealed for what he was. Not much use in a spy whose knee had been brutalized, who moved at a hobble even with a cane to his aid. "I can hardly credit it," she said. "Together, you and Lord Rafe brought down a traitor within the Home Office. By all rights, you ought to be in high demand." "Rafe has got a noble family name to his credit. I'm a bastard." Worse even than only a bastard; a wealthy one that had infiltrated their territory. Without sense enough, decorum enough, to remain in the gutters in which they fancied he belonged. "There's a chance—a halfway decent one at least—that I'll drag you down with me." Just as he had feared doing to Em. "You must decide how much a convenient marriage worth to you." This time, there wasn't even a flicker of hesitation. "Everything," she whispered, as if the very word were a vow in and of itself. "It's worth everything ."