Page 36 of His Mistress, His Muse, and Other Madness
Cordelia leaned close to Theo and whispered, “If only I had an ounce of talent, I would go after the prize myself.”
He grunted, studying his wineglass, around which his long, nimble fingers wrapped, spinning the glass by the thin stem and making light dance around the dark wine.
“But”—Pentshire raised his voice and his arms to quiet them all down—“your work must come from the challenges set daily to be considered for the prize.”
Theo’s fingers tightened around the stem of his glass, his knuckles showing as white as the tablecloth they rested on. “Do you think,” he hissed from the side of his mouth, “that he has the funds to offer such an enormous sum without beggaring his family?”
The poor man wore his every emotion on his sleeve though he tried heroically not to. Of course he’d feel sensitive about such expenditures. But her endeavor—her school—required them.
Pentshire downed the rest of his wine. “Nothing adds fire to artistic creation more than a little bit of competition. Now, if we’re done here, drinks in the parlor!”
He led the rest of them out, Theo and Cordelia trailing at the back of the group. Her arm had hooked into his, and though she looked up at him, she did not fully turn, so she saw only his stubbled jaw, tight and sharp against his black cravat.
“Theo?” Her voice a whisper.
“Yes?”
“I think I’d like to retire now.” She should stay and converse, begin discussion of her school and see who showed the most interest. But the discussion of Simon Oakley had shattered her a bit, had stolen her focus away, her confidence too. “Do you think anyone would be offended if I,we, retired early?”
Hopefully he understood what thewemeant. That she had to tell him about her past. She should have told him the moment she knew she traveled toward a house filled with people who might know her former betrothed.
She made her way up the narrow spiral staircase they’d used before dinner to find their rooms and freshen up. Each couple had been put in a corner of the house, secreted away for privacy, and though she and Theo had been given separate rooms, their doors sat at the same corner of the house and practically opened into each other. They reached the top of the staircase, and he opened the door to her bedchamber, ushered her through then followed, shutting the door tight behind him.
She paced away from him to the end of the low-eaved room and sat on her traveling trunk. Her feet ached. Her shoulders ached. Her head hurt a bit. The narrow bed in the corner had room enough for two, and it called to her. She toed her slippers off one by one. Who cared that she should not do so in a man’s presence. Especially when that man was not her husband. She’d done far worse in her life.
Simon Oakley, for one.
Theo leaned against a bedpost. His gaze, steady and strong, felt like a physical touch. She squirmed beneath it, stretching her toes and wiggling them within her stockings. She did not want to relive this, but she must.
“How come you’ve never insisted I tell you how I came to be under your father’s care?” she asked.
He shrugged a single shoulder, scratched at the back of his neck, and provided no answer.
Very well, then. If this was not to be a conversation, she could handle a monologue. “Every tutor and instructor your father sent to the house assumed the same thing at first—that I was his mistress. Then, I think, their minds wandered toward the idea that I was his illegitimate daughter. They became a tad kinder to me at that point. But they remained suspicious. Naturally, I suppose. Eventually, thankfully, they did not appear to care about the truth of my identity. They merely liked…me.”
She paused, pointing her toes and rolling them under on the hard floor. Lord Waneborough had always sent her kind people. Even when they’d been suspicious, they’d never hurt her with words or actions, never gossiped about her with others, at least in her hearing. They’d protected her.
“For their kindness,” she continued, “I am ever thankful. I’m grateful, too, for your father’s kindness in finding patient instructors to teach me.” She snorted. “Attemptingto teach me. It is not their fault they had such a talentless student.” She interlocked her fingers together and looked to him.
He watched her, stony as ever, arms crossed over his chest, looking too big for the small room.
“You have never suspected the same of me?” she asked.
“I know my parents.” His voice sounded gruffer than usual. Enriched by the wine? He scratched his jaw and let his arm fall. “I can see how others, who did not know my parents well, would think you were his mistress or the product of his liaison with a mistress. But anyone who had intimate knowledge of them would never think that.”
She smiled. “I understand. He brought your mother to meet me once, and they were so wrapped up in one another, they never stopped touching each other. Little touches. And when they couldn’t, their gazes always found another.” As if they were each other’s home.
“I’m bitter about many things.”
What an odd response to her observation. “No! Never say, my lord.”
“And one of the things I can find no faith in is love. It is too much like beauty—deceiving, blinding. That’s the kind of love my parents had—blind, loyal to a fault. My parents loved one another so much they could not say no to one another. My mother wanted a house party, my father gave it to her. No matter the strain on our finances. My father wished for another statue, and my mother did not say no, even if it meant they had to dip into my sister’s dowry. You do not love someone that much—to the point of destruction—and then give yourself to another.”
She flattened her feet on the floor. When he put it that way, it didn’t sound much like love. But what did she know, never having experienced it?
“My brothers,” he said, “all look on that relationship as the one good thing our parents ever did for us. I don’t see it that way. Their love ruined us. Had either of them loved each other slightly less, perhaps my father could not have done so much damage.”
“And I am a part of that damage. With my two hundred pounds a year and my lovely little townhouse?” Not hers for long.
