Page 33 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
“And how is he working out for you?” she asked.
“As well as can be expected,” he said, and began to lead her toward the Clarke townhouse, his steps slow and purposeful—disguising his limp, she thought, like a stray cat refusing to display weakness lest it provoke an attack. “Though I’m fairlycertain he and Brooks are conspiring against me. I expect to be poisoned any day now.”
“Have you tried being pleasant?” she suggested mildly.
“What the hell for?” he grumbled. His steps slowed still further the nearer they drew to the house, then stopped altogether just a few feet from the steps. His hand fisted the handle of his cane, his elbow straightening as if he were bracing himself.
In the faint light of the street lamp in the distance, Phoebe could see the tightness of his jaw, the swallow that rolled down his throat, disappearing beneath his cravat. “Chris,” she said lightly, “you’re not nervous. Are you?”
“No.” It was issued a bit too sharply to be an honest answer, and for a moment he ducked his head. At last he admitted, “There’s too many damned rules,” he said gruffly.
“I know you are not fond of them—”
“Oh, I’m quite fond of them. Breaking them intentionally, that is to say. It’s conforming to them that I’ve little experience with. Half the people within will resent me for having the audacity to exist, and the other half for having the audacity to force myself into their midst.”
“Hardly forced,” she said, affecting a conciliatory tone. “You’re an invited guest.”
“You said they’d be expecting me to fail.”
That was, regrettably, true. “Tonsociety is notoriously insular,” she said. “If not for Papa’s title”—and the titles of those gentlemen her sisters had married—“I’d no doubt have been cast out ages ago.”
“So you won’t be disappointed if I fail?”
Phoebe would be surprised if he succeeded. But it was no fault of his own; the deck had been stacked against him from birth. She knew well enough what it was to be judged as lacking by society, even if she had deliberately brought it upon herself.“I won’t be disappointed,” she said. “It’s only Lord and Lady Clarke. And Emma won’t be disappointed, either—but she will appreciate the effort to which you have gone for her.”
A strange quirk of his brows, as if the statement had somehow surprised him. “Yes,” he said. “For Em.” And then: “You truly won’t mind if the Clarkes never send you another invitation?”
“In fact, I’d prefer it,” she said, and gave a gentle pull of his arm toward the house once more. “They really are a tedious pair. If you feel they have made it impossible to meet their exacting standards, please do me a monumental favor—and fail with flair.”
Chapter Ten
Apall of silence hung over Chris’ section of the table, his nearest dinner partners stewing in it as if to break it might afflict them with the same sort of social leprosy that had clearly infected him. From somewhere down the table, there was the steady thrum of conversation. Laughter, occasionally, in dry, muted tones. Once, Chris had been certain that a particular husky peal of it had belonged to his wife.
Whom he couldn’t see. At all. Whatsoever. Because she had been seated near the head of the long table, which had been plated to seat at least twenty, and he—he had been consigned to the other end of it. Not in a place of honor beside the host, but rather in a middling sort of position he had concluded was meant to convey to him his own inadequacy amongst the present company.
Vaguely, he recalled that Phoebe had mentioned something about seating arrangements, that there was the possibility that they would not be seated together. Something about facilitating conversation, he thought, and ensuring that husbands and wives did not monopolize one another’s attention to the exclusion of their other dinner partners.
Not that his dinner partners had had any interest whatsoever in conversing with him. Which would have been perfectlyacceptable, if he had not been placed across the table from Lord Statham, who had spent the better part of the last two hours glaring at him.
Then there was the mousy woman at his left who had quivered straight through the last several courses, making tiny gasping sounds every time Chris had lifted his knife, as if she had expected to be run through with it. The woman at his right had leaned so far away in an effort to avoid him that she’d nearly ended up in the lap of the gentleman to her opposite side.
Even the food had been something less than palatable—or perhaps he’d spent so much of his life eating various bits of meat stuffed into pastry or smothered beneath a thick layer of potato mash that he hadn’t acquired the taste just yet for the food that Phoebe’s sort was wont to set upon their tables.
He’d suffered through tiny roast quail that had gone quite cold by the time it had arrived upon the table, lobster that had been cooked to the point that he could hardly chew through it, limp green beans, and a consommé of chicken that might, he supposed, once have been in the vicinity of a chicken at some point or another, though one could hardly tell from taste alone. If it wasn’t for the fact that he’d been served from the very same dishes as everyone else, he might have suspected it of being an elaborate practical joke at his expense. After all, his cook could do better—
Hell. No, she damned well could not have. At least, not until Phoebe had gotten hold of her. Just a week ago, he’d have counted himself lucky to have been served a slice of kidney pie. Now his kitchen staff produced meals of several courses, none of which had ever arrived to his table half so cold and tasteless as the dishes served this evening.
She had already transformed his house. Transformedhim, though that had been more careful planning and the knowledge in managing a household and a husband that had been bestowedupon her by way of her education. Through sheer dint of will—and the willingness to shout at him when it was called for—she had made him, if not respectable, then at least presentable.
He’d not set his elbow in the pudding, or forgotten his waistcoat. He’d bitten back more than a few scathing remarks he might otherwise have uttered. He had even retrieved Miss Mouse’s napkin for her when she’d dropped it during one of her quaking fits, though she’d snatched it from his fingers as though he’d contrived to steal it from her.
If he had not found acceptance at this table—and he certainly had not—it had not been because Phoebe had not adequately prepared him. And if he were honest with himself, he hadn’t even been thinking of Em when he’d hesitated outside the house when they’d arrived.
He’d been thinking of Phoebe’s small smile of satisfaction whenever he selected the right utensil for the dish served, of the delicate clearing of her throat and the way her nose tipped up whenever he happened to utter a word which she found uncouth at the dinner table. Of the stiff curls he’d have liked to shake free of their rigid perfection until she did not look quite so prim and polished. Of the way the rosy silk of her gown encased her breasts and revealed a hint of the valley that lay between them. Of the light pressure of her hand upon his arm, which he suspected she had meant to be soothing.
Hehadbeen nervous. But it hadn’t been because he’d feared disappointing Emma—it had been because he’d feared disappointing his wife, who had gone to such lengths in her attempts to transform him into the sort of gentleman who might find himself welcomed at dinner parties.
A footman swept away the last of the lemon syllabub at which he’d been poking without much enthusiasm, and he surrendered his spoon lest it be snatched straight from his fingers. As the servants removed the last of the dishes and cutlery and set outfresh glasses, Chris heard a chair being pushed back from somewhere near the head of the able—and then a succession of the same, as the rest of the ladies followed suit.
