Page 9 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
“Yes,” she said, her shoulders sinking. “Lord Statham asked me to dance, if you can believe it.”
“Did you tell him to bugger off?”
Phoebe muffled a laugh in her palm. It was so easy to forget that the rules which had long governed her life were not always known to others, that a man who had likely never set foot in a ballroom would have no reason to know what, exactly, went on within one. “Unfortunately, no. It’s quite rude, you see, to decline an invitation to dance without a sufficient reason.”
“Then I hope you crushed his toes.” There was the queer rustle and flutter of papers whisked about by the wind.
“Alas, he was a bit too nimble,” she sighed. “I did try.”
A chortle, rife with amusement and a certain dry satisfaction. “I’ll just bet you did.”
Phoebe let her head fall back against the rough stone of the wall that separated them. “Thank you,” she said, with a wealth of feeling. “For running him off today. Even if it didn’t quite take.” And how badly she had wanted it to take. “I don’t think you’re as bad as people say you are.”
“Oh, no,” he agreed pleasantly. “I’m a good deal worse.”
But how bad could he truly be? He was Emma’s brother, after all—and he ought to have been a hero for his work within the Home Office, and his efforts to root out a traitor within it. Unfortunately, whatever accolades to which he might have been entitled had fallen largely flat with theTon. The circumstances of his birth and his long tenure within the seedier echelon of society apparently precluded any acknowledgement thereof.
He made them afraid, she thought. Of the things of which he was capable. He had madeherafraid—just a little, in the way that one might have a natural reticence of a dangerous animal—until she had learned better. Until he had, unprompted, driven off a gentleman who had gotten a bit too familiar with her person.
But she rather thought they had established a friendship of sorts since. As much as a man of his station and a woman of hers could be said to be friends, at least.
“How are you enjoyingPride and Prejudice?” she asked, turning her face to the cool breeze that drifted through the garden.
“I’m not. This Darcy fellow is a right arse.”
Phoebe pressed her lips together against a laugh. “He gets better.”
“He’d damn well better. He and that high-and-mighty friend of his.”
“Mr. Bingley,” she said. “He’s notsobad.”
“He’s too easily led by half. A sheep of a man, content to follow where others lead, unable to form his own opinion,” he grunted. “I’ll have it back to you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow! You’ll finish so soon?”
“Little enough better to do than read,” he said. “Kind of you to share your library. I doubt there are many bookshops that would welcome me within their premises.” Though she doubted that would have stopped him.
“I’m happy to share my books,” she said. “I’ve got rather a lot of them.” She suspected that reading for pleasure was a hobby he’d acquired only recently; he seemed woefully unfamiliar with the literature of the day. And even with those that had been considered classics for some time. “You could send your servants out for books,” she said.
A snort. “They’d fare little better. Proper servants won’t work in my home,” he said, and there was a softthunk, and the minor vibration of the wall between them, as if he’d rested his head there, too. “Even scullery maids have standards. Most of mineare those I brought with me up out of the gutters. You don’t wish to marry, do you?”
The sudden shift of the conversation scattered her nerves. “I—well—” Phoebe clenched her fingers in the folds of her skirts. “What makes you think so?”
Another queer riffle of papers, as if he’d shaken pages in his hand. “Got a handful of scandal rags here that tell me you don’t. At first I thought you might favor women—”
“Women!” she choked.
A rough chuckle. “Lord, your sort does shelter their ladies. You ever seen two old women that people refer to as the dearest of friends? Women who never married, but are always in one another’s company? Perhaps they share a residence in their old age?”
“Yes, of course.”
“They’re not friends. Leastwise, notonlyfriends.”
Lovers, he meant to imply. “It’s not so uncommon for unmarried women to have companions to keep them company,” she said. “Why, even my Aunt Joyce has—oh.” Aunt Joyce, who had never taken a husband, had the company of her dearest friend, Miss Eugenia Conrad. They’d been inseparable since even before Phoebe had been born. She’d always thought of them more as sisters of the heart than as dear friends. But they weren’t that at all. “Oh,” she said again. “I never suspected.”
“So you don’t fancy women, then?”
“No,” she said. “Not like that.” Good Lord, what a strange conversation this was. Not remotely the sort that an unmarried woman was expected to have with a man, even a gentleman. “I simply do not wish to marry,” she admitted. It was the sort of thing that a woman of good birth did not admit to publicly. Her closest friends knew, but they would never betray her secrets. But neither would he, she thought. Not that anyone would have paid him much attention even if he had.
