Page 70 of The Marquess Wins a Wife
Not really. In the past few weeks, she had made every effort to remain out of the house as much as possible herself. It had seemed a prudent thing to do. The safest place to be was elsewhere, and with Joanna at her rigorous lessons, Georgie off at school, and Imogen married and traveling, she had just scads and scads of time.
In the evenings, she went wherever she had been invited. During the day, she walked, often with Willie, in the parks and gardens that dominated this section of London. She suspected she’d walked the length and breadth of Mayfair by now, though still she would have been hard pressed to find her way home again without Willie’s direction.
“No?” he asked as he made the foyer at last. “I’ve been to dinner every night.”
“You needn’t have bothered. We’re accustomed to dining on our own.” She had managed the words placidly enough, without so much as a trace of bitterness. Clearing her throat, she said, “If you have need of the carriage, I can have it sent for.”
He stopped before her, and his gaze raked over her gown, admiring the rich blue silk that swathed her. “It looks to me as if we both require the carriage this evening.”
She shook her head. “Susan and her husband will arrive shortly for me,” she said. “We’re going to the—”
“The Clybourne ball,” he said. “I know. Susan’s not coming.”
Of course she was. Susan always retrieved her—Lizzie had no idea whether Luke’s carriage would even be available for her on any particular evening. “But the ball—”
“We’re going together,” he said. “I sent a note round to Susan early this evening.”
No. It was on the tip of her tongue to say it, and yet she pursed her lips around the word and forced it back. “My lord, it isn’t necessary for you to accompany me,” she said instead, striving to keep any tartness from her tone.
His brows lowered, expression inscrutable. “I think it is,” he said, finally. “You never did tell me, you know. Which event you wished me to attend. Were you ever going to?”
“I decided it would be best not to bother you with such things.” A polite response, issued from beneath layers of reserve. Not quite the truth—but that wasn’t the sort of marriage they were going to have.
That piercing gaze settled on her face as if it could peel back thick coats of artifice and falsehood and peer at what lay beneath. “I thought not,” he said, his mouth in a wry twist. “I suppose they’ve all passed, anyway. There will be others. I’ll attend those.”
She dodged the hand that reached for her, a neat side-step that left his fingers curled around nothing, unmoored in the air. “My lord, that is not necessary,” she said again.
“Still, I am going to do it.” A muscle twitched in his jaw as he retracted his hand, scraping it through his hair. “I wish you would not call me that,” he said. “You’re notbeneathme, Lizzie. You’re my wife.”
“I suppose I am,” she said absently, turning her head to glance toward the door, listening for the carriage.
“Yousuppose?” he echoed, and then heaved a sigh when she could offer him nothing more than a studiously blank expression. “Lizzie, tell me what I have to do to mend this between us.”
“There is nothing between us.” And there never would be. She had given up all of her illusions at last. No; that wasn’t true—he had crushed them out of her. One at a time, and it had been a painful process, but shehadlearned from it. She would not make the same mistakes again. “I do understand that, my lord.”
“I don’t think you do,” he said, slowly. “Hell, I’m not certain thatIunderstand.”
Her hands knitted before her, a nervous gesture. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
A queer expression marred his face, disgruntlement or dissatisfaction with her response, she supposed, though she knew not what else to tell him, what she was meant to say to him when he appeared unannounced and declared his intention to accompany her to aball, when he never had before.
His mouth opened, closed, opened again—and still he said nothing. And then a moment later there was the sound of the carriage arriving outside. “Damn,” he said. “I suppose we’ll continue this conversation later. Perhaps by then I’ll have sorted out what I’m meant to say.” The right-hand corner of his lips lifted in a self-effacing smile, and then fell rapidly once more as his gaze dropped to her hands. “Where is your ring?” he asked.
She gave a little shrug, turning for the door. “I left it on your desk,” she said. “It didn’t fit.”
∞∞∞
“I supposeyouattended Imogen’s wedding,” Luke said to Susan as he watched Lizzie take a turn about the dance floor with some lord or another.
“I did, in fact,” Susan said. “Pity you couldn’t be there.”
“Iwouldhave been, had I known,” he muttered, and waved away the servant that passed with a tray full of champagne glasses. “Is she going to dance witheveryrake in London?”
“Only the ones who ask, I expect,” Susan said archly, and by the tilt of the subtle smile that wreathed her lips, she wasvastlyamused. “I don’t believe you have much room to judge, Lucas, when one considers that you have been the worst of the lot these past years.”
“Was I truly so terrible? No; don’t answer that, if you please.” Why did it bother him so much to see Lizzie in another man’s arms? It was only a dance. “I didn’t even know shecoulddance,” he said.
“Yes, well, you’ve missed quite a lot,” Susan said. “Fortunately, Lizzie is a practical woman and a quick learner at that. She knows her duty, and she is determined to do it, despiteyour…honestly, I’m not certain what I’m meant to call it when a man manipulates a woman through trickery.”
