The Duke's Stolen Heart (London Scandals Book 4) Page 13

  “We play by the same rules as usual. As we've no newcomers this week, I shall remind you not to bid more than you can afford to lose. Just because I no longer have a husband to keep me in check doesn't mean you young women have such liberty. I won't be publicly shamed by your husbands for taking all your pin money at whist.”

  “That requires you to win, my dear duchess,” Lady Woolryte replied archly.

  Antonia bit the insides of her mouth to keep from smiling. She made her way around the tables, placing dainty plates at each woman's elbow. By the time she came to Lady Summervale’s seat, Antonia was sweating in her maid’s outfit. This was a giant risk. She knew several of these women by name. It was one thing to feign bravado and self-assurance before Malcolm but quite another to be here waiting to be exposed.

  Not one woman looked up at her face, though. Antonia remembered how invisible she had felt as servant. One reason she had hated it. She was incapable of erasing herself, folding and compacting her intelligence and personality into a package suitable for servitude until the girl she had been born no longer existed. In retrospect, Antonia wouldn't recommend her own methods to anyone, but there had been no possibility of keeping her below stairs.

  “Sally, fetch a fresh pot of tea,” said Lady Summervale without glancing up.

  Antonia started. She wasn’t Sally. She stood easily four inches taller and solidly built, unlike Sally’s thin figure. The lady who spoke hadn’t even glanced up long enough to discern the differences in their features. Nonetheless, Antonia hurried to comply. She whisked back the kitchen.

  “What are you doing here?” demanded the housekeeper.

  “Fetching tea for milady,” Antonia responded in a tone insufficiently subordinate.

  “You stay where you’re assigned,” the housekeeper rebuked her sharply. Antonia stiffened. A long time had passed since anyone had spoken to her that way—

  Well, not if one counted Havencrest ordering her to steal a gem from this household, on pain of being turned over to the magistrate.

  Antonia dropped a curtsey. “Ma’am.”

  The housekeeper frowned. Antonia had let her accent slip. Damn. She had gotten so good at imitating the marble-mouthed syllables of the upper class, but she had less practice with mimicking the musical cadences and clipped consonants of the lower classes. She bowed her head, heart thumping as discovery loomed over her like a sword of Damocles.

  “Get back to the parlor. A footman shall bring the tea. I expect one of Miss Dumfries’ Girls would have known better than to abandon her post.”

  Tea-less, Antonia hurried back to the game room. The quiet skim of metal chips over wood surfaces and the snap of printed cards was punctuated by the ladies’ conversation. Sally cast her a glare. Fine. She hadn’t known this particular process and would never need to again. She was only here for the day…

  And then she saw it. What she had failed to notice earlier. Antonia forgot all about tea and serving and did not try to stop the slight grin from tugging the corners of her mouth upward, for she knew where the duchess kept her half of the Heart’s Cry necklace. If winning it at cards did not work, she could steal it after all.

  * * *

  “I do hope Toni is safe,” Margaret fretted as they absently perused the artworks at the British Museum that afternoon.

  “Miss Lowry can take care of herself.” Behind them trailed Margaret’s lady’s maid, for propriety’s sake. He wished he believed it as firmly as he insisted to the young lady whose shorter legs churned to keep up with him no matter how slow he moseyed. He hadn’t believed Antonia when she had insisted they would not recognize her as she took the unbelievable risk in pursuing their quest. His quest. How deflating to realize that he had outsourced the achievement of his most aching desire to a complete stranger.

  Or rather, what had been his greatest desire. Over the past week a new yearning had begun to edge out the hollow space left by his mother’s death, and then his father’s a few years ago. It no longer felt like an unexplored cavern in his breast. Antonia had moved in and filled the space with her lies and teasing and sly wit. When sunlight tugged him away from his warm nest each morning, he could not wait to see his hired thief again. Yet he had let her risk her neck in going under cover as a maid in his grandmother’s house.

  “Lord Havencrest. Your Grace.” Lady Margaret cleared her throat. At times, it was difficult to hear her. The girl’s voice was so soft, and a foot of distance between her lips and his ear didn’t help matters of discussion any more than it did when they were dancing.

  “Yes, Lady Evendaw?” he teased mildly.

  Margaret’s cheeks reddened. “Do you think…maybe, perhaps…”

  Spit it out, girl.

  “Might we commence courting in earnest?”

  Havencrest’s stride hitched.

  “I realize, of course, that there is little genuine affection between us,” Margaret continued hastily. The apples of her cheeks fired with blotchy embarrassment. “At least, I presume you feel none for me beyond whatever loyalty exists between you and Toni—”

  “I have said this before,” he interrupted. “You are a delightful —” child, he could not see past her youth, “—young woman. You have your choice of men in your first season, and—”

  “I do not. Do not try my patience with notions of choice. I have none.” Margaret’s voice carried clearly the distance to his ears. How much further? Did her maid overhear? She went on. “I know I am regarded as a simpleton, but I am not, I swear, I only need a bit more time. I can become a worthy woman—”

  “Worthy of what, Lady Evendaw?” he asked softly.

  “Worthy of…of love.” Water beaded at the corners of her bright blue eyes.

  “You are already deserving of all the adoration a man has to give,” he said gently. “I regret that I cannot be that man. Someone will offer for you—”

  “I know that!” Margaret half cried, half sobbed. “I do not fear going unmarried, I fear marrying for the wrong reasons.” She sucked in a deep, shuddering breath. “I had hoped you might understand.”

  “I do, Lady Evendaw. I understand better than you might believe.” But Malcolm didn’t, because the greatest pressure to marry and swear fidelity fell hardest upon women. He took her by the elbow. “I am twice your age and unmarried. Why do you think that is?”

  “Because you are a man and can afford to be.”

  “No, my little bluestocking. Because I had the good fortune of being spurned by a woman before I could make that mistake.”

  “I am not a bluestocking.”

  “I know that.” As if anyone would mistake Margaret Evendaw for an intellectual. As though he would ever say that to her face. Margaret was not stupid. Not a thinker, but a fine woman with a soft heart and a kind temperament that made her interesting beyond the limits of her circumstances. She deserved no derision, only happiness. He could not promise to hold the sharp side of his tongue in perpetuity. For while he had not inherited his mother’s melancholy soul, his father had done everything possible to poison him toward women.

  It had taken a woman not unlike Margaret to show him how cruelly the snide asides and witty jokes could cut. She could have been Margaret’s twin. Short, blonde, and eager to please, but with a streak of independence that refused to be tamed. Rightly, she had chosen another man for her husband that night at Almack’s.

  A man could offer marriage. He could not compel it. In retrospect, he was glad his father had talked him out of trying to bludgeon the girl into marrying him through the influence of his title. Malcolm could never decide which was his greatest fear—becoming his father, or choosing an ill-suited bride and suffering thirty years in misery.

  He must have the Heart’s Cry. One time, one moment, a reunion with the mother he missed and whom his father had secretly loved all along. A closing of doors on their poisonous marriage and, hopefully, the opening of a new chapter for him.

  “If I am the man who spurns you before you find a better mate, I will fe
el honored. I hope you find what you need.” Malcolm swallowed. “I promise you, Margaret, you will find the husband you deserve if you are patient.”

  “And who might that be?” she demanded. “A fool? Like me?”

  “You aren’t,” he said vehemently. If anyone had told him two weeks ago that he would be participating in a public spat with Margaret Evendaw, Malcolm would have offered them a bridge for sale. “You deserve happiness, Margaret, for you are the best of women.”

  “I’m not,” she argued despite the tears falling from her wide blue eyes. “I am only…only me.”

  “That is enough.” He had no greater reassurance to offer.

  “It doesn’t feel like it.”

  “My lady. Believe in yourself. Antonia does.” He checked the gold pocket watch that dangled from his waist.

  “Do you truly think that?”

  “I’ve no doubts whatsoever.” Malcom checked the time on his pocket watch. “Now, let’s go find out whether your companion is in need of rescue from Old Bailey’s, shall we?”

  Trusting Margaret looped her arm through his. “I have no doubt Toni has managed just fine without us.”

  “Nor do I. She is a remarkable woman. Still.” Malcolm hesitated. “I have never met a woman with such a nose for trouble.”

  Margaret sighed. “You would never think it, but you’re right, my lord.” Unexpectedly, his companion winked. “I quite like that about her.”

  Malcolm winked back. “As do I, my lady. I have never met a woman as compelling as your friend.”

  Margaret’s chest puffed with pride. He was a fool to pass up a wife as generous with her affections as Lady Margaret, and yet, here he was. No longer making the mistakes of his father, but inventing new ones of his own.

  Chapter 14

  Antonia did not need rescuing. A note arrived in her distinctive hand late that evening.

  Havencrest -

  I am bone-weary after twelve hours of toil, but I have it. I know the best way to get the Heart’s Cry. We won’t even need to steal it. But you will need to get me back into Almack’s, and I will need to learn how to cheat at whist.

  Tomorrow morning, the usual place and time.

  -A.

  Wise of her not to sign her full name to such a damning missive, not that Malcolm had any intention of letting it exist long enough for anyone to find it. He had slept badly and rolled out of bed at the first grey hint of light, impatient to see Antonia.

  Margaret’s plea yesterday had thrown one fact into sharp relief. He hadn’t felt so alive in years as he had since the day he had spied Antonia and her quick fingers slide the lower half of the Heart’s Cry from the pale breast of an aging courtesan. Their interactions, whether disposing of a dead body or dancing to the mechanical clicks of a metronome in an unheated dance studio, embedded beneath his skin like the hooks of a burr. Annoying, but impossible to ignore.

  To ease the ache of burgeoning tenderness Malcolm spent the first hour at the studio scratching out likenesses of his mother’s face. The discovery of his mother’s ruined miniature portrait among his father’s personal possessions after his death had sparked him to take lessons in hopes of having it restored. Alas, not one sketch had ever come close enough for an artist to repair it. Despite a quarter-century of scathing remarks about women in general and his mother in particular, the previous Duke of Havencrest had never been able to let his wife go. He had never remarried. Malcolm had spent a few years resenting his abortive attempt at marriage before finally coming to the conclusion that Kitty had spared him from making them both miserable.

  The side of his palm turned gray and smudged the paper. Malcolm wiped it clean with a cloth dipped in kerosene and kept drawing until the tips of his fingers turned stiff with cold. He continued furiously, lost in thought, until the door burst open and Antonia’s light steps tapped quickly over the bare wood.

  “I am sorry I overslept. I haven’t worked that hard in years, but I have it, Malcolm. I know how we can get the Heart’s Cry—” Antonia halted abruptly as she caught sight of his drawings. A sense of shame crumpled up Malcolm’s confidence like a discarded scrap. His pride rose and tried to choke him.

  “Those aren’t pictures of…” She trailed off. “Not your mother. Of a woman.” The jumble of incoherent words told him just how badly his art had shocked the normally unflappable Antonia. She had blanched as white as parchment until her full red lips were the only things to stand out. Malcolm shuffled the stacks into place. Outside the church bell tolled eleven. He had been here since eight. Three entire hours of scribbles had resulted in a near-perfect likeness of Antonia’s face. Her long neck curved down to naked shoulders and round breasts with tightly beaded nipples. Malcolm had spent a good deal of time perfecting the precise pucker of her areola.

  Too much time. Discards of his efforts littered the floor, defying his efforts to collect them. Malcolm had long believed himself immune to embarrassment, but the fervor with which he had worked to draw the likeness of her naked body reclining in different positions—most utterly depraved—caused a prickling heat to rise up the sides of his neck.

  “I thought I would hear you coming up the stairs,” he mumbled, crouching to grasp a stray page that had fluttered beneath the table. Antonia overcame her horror and captured a stack of his middle-hour attempts to draw her face and breasts. She flipped through them, her dark eyes wider than he had ever seen them.

  “Please tell me these aren’t pictures of your mother,” she asked, ambling toward the window to scrutinize his handiwork.

  “You know they aren’t. I can hardly remember what she looks like anymore.” Malcolm swallowed. His cravat was trying to strangle him. “They are of you.”

  “Me?” Antonia echoed. Two bright spots bloomed over her cheeks. “You have a vivid imagination. I look nowhere near this pretty.”

  “‘Pretty’ is an inadequate word to describe your beauty and you know it.” He finally shoved the drawing paper into its folio and stalked toward her. Malcolm stopped short upon reaching her side. He had committed a violation. No matter how well she was taking it, he could hardly snatch his drawings out of her hands. “Give them to me. They are nothing but scribbles that do no justice to you. I will burn these insults in the grate this evening.”

  “I want to keep one.” Antonia offered him a sheaf, but retained the most complete version in her other hand outstretched from her body.

  What? Malcolm realized he had spoken aloud when she responded.

  “I want to keep it. As a memento. May I have it, since you intend to feed it to the flames?”

  He had been lying, and she knew it. “Why?”

  “Because you have quite a bit of skill. I have never had a picture made of me. My mother might like it.”

  “You cannot send that picture to your mother,” Malcolm sputtered, aghast.

  “You don’t know my mother,” Antonia said flatly. Malcolm heard the note of bitterness in her tone and wondered, not for the last time, about her past. “I send her money when I can. But my stepfather, Cyrus, despises me. He makes her return it. I know how badly they need funds because she always keeps a portion, though. My mother tries to have things halfway. She always has. He—they—never quite liked me.” She stopped. After a beat of hesitation, she continued softly, “I am not Cyrus’s daughter.”

  Malcolm inhaled. He managed to get close enough to pluck the drawing from her grasp. “Your mother does not need to see this. Not now, not ever. I was in error to create it. I will destroy it.”

  “Why?” Antonia pleaded. “Why did you draw me like that?”

  Because he could not stop thinking about her. Malcolm saw her naked and pliant every time he closed his eyes. But his teeth and tongue trapped the words where they stopped in his throat, too raw to acknowledge aloud. Instead, he changed the topic. “Lady Margaret Evendaw has offered her hand in marriage.”

  Antonia gaped at him, then frowned as if deciding whether or not to let it pass. Then, with characteristic brava
do, she laughed. “Did you say yes?”

  “In truth, Lady Margaret has offered me the ideal aristocratic marriage. Once there is an heir I am at leisure to seek any pleasures I like outside her bedroom, provided I claim any offspring she presents to me.”

  “Then why not take it?” Antonia asked, and Malcolm’s fragile hope that she returned his feelings shattered.

  “Your friend offers nothing I cannot already take for myself. No one expects fidelity from a duke.”

  “Your mother did, though, didn’t she.” Antonia’s flat observation gutted him.

  “Yes. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that I prefer to marry for the same reasons my parents did.”

  “Which is?”

  Malcolm’s lips refused to open and admit the word. Love. “Affection. Friendship.”

  Did he imagine it, or did disappointment flash over her features? “Well, I am surprised Margaret knows enough about marriage to make such an offer.”

  “She is full of surprises.”

  “That she is. Now, do you want to hear my plan for obtaining your precious bauble or not?”

  “Very much.” Malcolm set the metronome to swinging. Its mechanical clicking rhythm filled the room. “A reel. Hold your arms like this.” He demonstrated. They needed more practice with the waltz, but now was not the time. Not with his body in riot after hours of imagining Antonia naked, only to discover her in the flesh gazing curiously at the output of his fevered dreams. One would think he had never met a woman before.