“I suppose one is not truly on-the-shelf when one is nearly spoken for,” Tavy murmured as the gentlemen entered the drawing room from their port. Ben came last, beside the man who had spoken to Tavy during the dance at Lady Ashford’s. Lord Styles spoke with an easy smile. The marquess’s hands were clasped behind his back as he listened. His gaze shifted to Lady Constance at the piano and then he went to her.
“Will you play for us, Lord Doreé?” Lady Nathans said in the perpetually silky tones Tavy had already learned to dislike. “I understand you have a marvelous talent.”
Ben cast her a glance, smiling slightly, and seated himself beside the goddess at the instrument.
“Schubert, my lord?” Lady Constance inquired.
He nodded. “As you wish.”
They played beautifully. Tavy tried to drag her gaze away but could not.
“They are a gorgeous pair,” Alethea whispered.
A gorgeous pair, indeed, ideally suited, her golden beauty, his dark perfection. Why weren’t they wed?
Perhaps because he was a faithless cur who left women crying for him four thousand miles away then years later kissed them like he would swallow them whole? Because with a woman like Constance Read waiting faithfully to marry him, why hurry matters when other opportunities beckoned?
Tavy’s gaze slipped to Priscilla Nathans. The glint in the lady’s emerald eyes as she watched Ben was positively proprietary. A woman would not look at a man that way unless she had reason for confidence in his attentions.
In the seven years since her abrupt initiation into sensual pleasure, Tavy had educated herself about such matters, eavesdropping more assiduously than ever, still listening at doors and cracks but with a more mature interest. She had learned one important lesson through these endeavors: Ladies like Priscilla Nathans were not uncommon, and gentlemen who took advantage of them apparently did so without hesitation or shame.
“Octavia?”
“Hm?”
“Has Lord Crispin come to the point yet?”
Tavy jerked out of her unpleasant reverie. She peered at her sister.
“Why do you ask?”
“St. John heard Lady Constance congratulate you upon your betrothal. Are you betrothed?” Alethea’s soft hazel eyes held no condemnation. Tavy’s stomach tightened.
“He offered. I requested more time to consider it and he accepted that. But today he told two people that I am his fiancée.”
“You have not yet given him your answer?”
Tavy shook her head.
“Why not?”
Because she did not want Marcus Crispin. She wanted hot, stolen kisses from a beautiful man who had broken her young heart, whose faithlessness had taught her to mistrust and encouraged her to do away with the foolish impetuosities of girlhood in order to become restrained and respectable.
But Tavy did not wish to be restrained and respectable. She never had, even less so now that her daily relief from that restrained respectability—the tropical paradise she adored—was so distant.
“I do not love him,” she whispered, barely aware of her words.
“I thought you did not require a love match.”
Tavy’s throat closed. She raised her gaze to the source of the music. The marquess’s head was bent, his hands upon the keys graceful, as they had once been upon her. He glanced up and met her stare. Then he looked away, tilting his head toward the woman at his side. His lips moved in speech, and Lady Constance’s mouth curved into a smile.
“I do not,” Tavy replied.
“Then perhaps you should consider accepting his suit.”
Tavy swiveled on her seat, seeking out Marcus across the drawing room. His gaze rested on her. He stood.
“Ladies and gentleman.” He tapped his signet ring to the crystal goblet in his hand. “I would like to share with you tonight the greatest joy a man can claim. Miss Pierce has consented to be my bride.”
Only years of hiding her true emotions allowed Tavy to accept his hand when he moved to her, and to stand and nod graciously in acknowledgment of the well wishes. But she could not look at her betrothed. Instead, her gaze went to the Marquess of Doreé. He glanced to the door and gestured to the butler.
St. John shook Marcus’s hand. “Felicitations, my lord.”
“I am a happy man, indeed.” Marcus covered her fingers on his arm and smiled at her warmly. Alethea kissed her on the cheek but said nothing.
The butler appeared with champagne.
“Doreé, you old sentimentalist,” Lord Nathans chortled, drinking down his glassful in a swallow. His bushy brows peaked. “Damn fine vintage.”
“Please, my lord,” Lady Nathans admonished her husband, then turned her gaze on Ben as she set crimson lips to crystal. “A true gentleman always knows how to please his guests.”
“To the health of the bride and groom,” Lord Gosworth said, lifting his champagne, and the others followed, except their host, who did not drink. Tavy could not make herself look away from Ben. At his side, Lady Constance touched his arm. He grasped the stem of his glass and, like Lord Nathans, took the draught whole.
After that Tavy could not look at him again.
As soon as she could, she escaped with Alethea to the nursery. Jacob slept the sleep of the innocent. Tavy squeezed her sister’s hand in parting and went to her bedchamber anticipating the opposite for herself.
She drew her bedchamber door shut and closed her eyes. “My innocence is a thing of the past, Lal.”
But no soft patter of footsteps met her, no tiny comforting hands upon her face or hair. Lal was still in London with Abha, and she was talking to herself.
But Tavy already knew she had gone mad. Or perhaps only wicked. In a single day she had engaged in more deception than in seven years, and it had only required Benjirou Doreé in her life again to do so.
She breathed a weary sigh and studied the pale green and gold paper on the walls and the canopy bed draped in filmy fabric. The elegant dressing table and mirror shone with modest gilt accents. She slipped off her shoes, and the rug beneath her stockinged feet felt soft as butter. Everything was understated, tasteful, comfortable, just as the rest of the house.
“It is a lovely chamber,” she whispered. Mad, certainly. “Perhaps Lady Constance decorated it.”
She put her hand upon her brow.
She pulled the bell and her maid came to braid her hair and stir the coals in the grate. When she left, Tavy knelt before the hearth, tucked her linen night rail around her bared feet, and stared into the lapping fire.
A scratch sounded at the door, her sister wishing for conversation she could not yet engage in, no doubt. She opened it. Candlelight shone upon the strong planes of Marcus’s face, the glimmer in his eyes thoroughly contrite.
“Can you forgive me?”
“For wishing to marry me so determinedly that you cannot wait for my assent before announcing it to the world?”
He released a strained laugh and shook his head.
“You are a treasure. I never have anxiety that you will not tell me what you are thinking.”
“I am glad you appreciate that. Because I am thinking that you do not seem to know a jot about the way to a woman’s heart.”
His brow furrowed.
“Marcus, I am angrier than I have ever been with anyone.” Except one person, but that anger had been laced with grief. “You have shown a lack of respect for me. I do not know how you could imagine that would entice me to accept you.”
“Allow me to make it up to you.” He grasped her hand. A lock of dark hair fell over his brow. Tavy had the unsettling instinct to smooth it away in a comforting gesture. For all his presumption, he had been a loyal friend in India and since her return to England.