Page 52 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
“Doubt there are many that would allow me to cross their thresholds.”
Laurence snorted. “You got a special license out of the Archbishop,” he said, “I don’t know if I’d believe you couldn’t wrangle a membership out of any club.”
Probably he could—but he’d never been motivated to try. Foisting his presence upon a club full of lords with sticks up their arses about it had never been his idea of a good time. And there was the likelihood that they’d all resign their membershipsen masse, besides, and the club would go under on account of it.
“See here,” Laurence said. “I don’t know why Phoebe chose you. None of us do. Near as I can tell, you’re an ill-mannered, bad-tempered, unsophisticated, crude son of a bitch.” He gave a shake of his head, as if the more he’d spoken, the less sense it had made. “But she’s happy. Somehow, someway, she’s happy.”
Chris wondered if he had been meant to be insulted or flattered. “Had you expected her to be unhappy?”
“I think I must have,” he said. “You see, every one of us has married for love.”
Every one of them, apart from Phoebe.
∞∞∞
The click of Chris’ cane upon the marble floor was a sound Phoebe had not heard in better than a week. She glanced up from her book just in time to see Chris stagger through the door, relying a bit more heavily upon the cane than he might have otherwise.
“What in the world are you doing?” she asked. “You’re meant to be—”
“Hadn’t you heard?” he interrupted. “Got the go ahead from the surgeon to get out of bed at last.”
As each step seemed to be a much more laborious process than she would have expected, Phoebe surmised that perhaps Mr. Fisk had less pronounced him once more in good health than he had rolled his eyes and let Chris do as he would, since he would anyway.
“Still,” she said, as he trod a painstaking path toward the couch she had claimed to read upon. “I truly think you would be better off in bed. Your color is not good.”
At last he arrived before her, his hand gripping the handle of his cane so hard his knuckles had gone white with the exertion of it. “For once,” he said, his voice clipped and edged with pain, “you and I are in complete agreement.” And he collapsed upon the couch, his head landing in her lap. His warm breath puffed against her thigh, a heat she could feel even through her gown, chemise, and petticoat. “Got the devil of a headache,” he groaned.
“Would you like some willow bark tea?”
His gold brows knit in consternation above his closed eyes, as if she were being deliberately obtuse. “What for? Got a wife torub my head for me, now, don’t I? Your brother and his damned children are responsible for this headache; seems only fair that you take care of it.”
Phoebe supposed she had, at one point in the not-too-distant past, heard a great deal of screeching from the upper floors. “They’re really very sweet,” she said. “And, really, you should be glad he brought only the eldest two with him.”
A deeper furrow of those brows. “How many has he got?”
“Six.”
“Sixchildren?” Horror thrummed within his voice.
“Well, he’s been married nearly ten years,” she said. “And…it’s not so many as eight.”
Chris made a strange sound, which might’ve been a something of a laugh. “I suspect he’ll get there eventually,” he said. “Might give your parents a run for their money.Sixchildren,” he groaned, as if in disbelief. “And one of your sisters is breeding again, I hear.”
“She’s not livestock,” Phoebe said primly. “She’s with child.”
“Even so. Within the next few generations,” he said, “I suspect half of theTonwill have been infiltrated by Toogoods.” He gave an offended sniff. “Notable lack of head-rubbing going on at the moment. Rather rude, when one considers that I was obliged to be nice to your brother.”
Nice, she suspected, was a matter of opinion. But she set her book aside and applied her fingertips to his scalp, raking her nails through his hair nonetheless. Crisp and clean, the soft blond locks slid through her fingers as smoothly as silk.
A sigh drifted from his lungs. “All right,” he said. “Let’s have it. There’s Laurence, you, Cynthia…”
“And?” she prompted.
“And that’s all I know.”
She supposed that from an outsider’s perspective—especially that of a man who had but one sister to recall—her family mightseem monstrously confusing. “There’s Laurence,” she said, “then me. Then Louisa, Margaret, Cynthia, Henrietta, Teresa, and Susannah.”
“Good Lord,” he said. “Somehow it’s worse to hear it said aloud. Will there be an examination?”
