Page 82 of A Deal With a Notorious Devil
“I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. You were so determined to find me a husband.” Phoebe dashed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I love you so much,” she said. “And I love our family, as chaotic as it has always been. I love all of the children, I do, but…but I have never wanted any of my own. How could I have told you that your idea of happiness would have made me miserable?”
“Like you just have,” Mama said, and her arm slid about Phoebe’s shoulders to wrap her within that warm and familiar verbena-scented embrace. “My darling girl. All I have ever wanted was your happiness. I want that for all of my children, no matter what form it takes. Butareyou happy?”
“I have been,” Phoebe sniffled, turning her cheek against Mama’s shoulder. “I have been, though I know my choice of a husband has not been what you imagined for me.”
“Darling, if he makes you happy, then I shall love him despite his flaws.” A brief hesitation. “Hismanyflaws.”
Phoebe muffled a helpless snicker. “He does,” she said slowly. “He’ll never be a perfect gentleman, but then I am not a perfect lady. We suit each other.” In ways she had never expected. In ways she never would have learned if she had only summoned the courage to confess her secrets before now. Perhaps Mama would have allowed her to remove herself from the marriage mart, but if she had…if she had, she never would have struck that bargain with Kit.
She would have found contentment, most likely. But she would not have found love. Or this—this unlikely happiness she had somehow stumbled into.
“I suppose he shares your vision of happiness?” Mama asked carefully.
“Yes,” Phoebe said. “Mama, I know you must think it peculiar of me—”
“Darling, I have got seven and twenty grandchildren at present, and more will no doubt follow. If one of my daughters should pop round for tea and bring only her own delightful company, well, then, I shall count myself grateful for the reprieve.” Mama stroked Phoebe’s hair gently, and she added, “Should I be so blessed as to live long enough to meet them, I can only imagine how many great grandchildren I shall claim.”
Phoebe muffled a wheeze of laughter into Mama’s shoulder. “Good Lord,” she said. “I never considered.”
“Better me than you, hm?”
She really did have just the most wonderful family, Phoebe thought with a sigh. All of them—every obnoxious sibling, every loud, rambunctious child. Both loving, doting parents. “I love you, Mama,” she said.
“I know, my darling,” Mama soothed. “And unless I miss my guess, I believe you must love that disreputable husband of yours as well.”
“I do.” Confession was said to be good for the soul, but it felt wrong, somehow, to admit as much to her mother before she’d bothered to inform her husband. “I wasn’t supposed to,” she said. “I didn’t expect to. We agreed upon a marriage of convenience. And it was convenient, up until it wasn’t. And now—oh, Mama, it’s grown so very complicated.”
“Life often is,” Mama said sagely. “Loveoften is. May I offer you a tiny piece of advice? I do have some small amount of experience with a happy marriage, after all.”
Over thirty years of it, which Phoebe supposed must make Mama something of an expert. She nodded against Mama’s shoulder. “Please,” she said.
“It is so easy, darling, to torture ourselves with the worst possible outcome of any given situation—as I think you have discovered just recently. Sometimes it seems the simplest thing is to avoid it altogether. However, in doing so, you must alsosacrifice the potential of the best possible outcome and bear the weight of both in perpetuity.” Mama brushed a loose lock of hair away from Phoebe’s face, tucking it behind her ear. “In my experience,” she said, “a man who did not love his wife would have no reason to sit for hours awaiting her presence at this hour of the night. Isn’t knowing worth a tiny leap of faith?”
It wasn’t a tiny leap. It was a massive, blind jump across a vast chasm in the faint hope that Kit would be there to catch her on the other side. If he let her plummet into it—
She squeezed her eyes shut.No. She was not going to seize upon the worst possible outcome any longer. She had only just relieved herself of a decade’s worth of weight. Now was hardly the time to go about adding new stones upon her shoulders. “It is,” she said.
“Then, for God’s sake, darling, go talk to your husband,” Mama said. “And off my balcony, if you please. Your father and I ought to have retired for the evening ages ago.”
Together they slipped back inside the house, and Phoebe allowed herself a hug from Mama and Papa both, storing up the affection within them for a bit of extra reassurance. The worrying, she reminded herself as she wended her way down the stairs, was ever so much worse than the reality. And if Kit did not love her—well, then, she would simply have to endeavor tomakehim. She was eminently loveable, she assured herself as she cracked the terrace door open and slid out into the night.
She paused a moment to breathe in the scent of the roses that bloomed in opulent profusion within the garden and made a concentrated effort to settle her jangling nerves. How did one begin such a conversation? It hadn’t been a part of their bargain, but he’d been open to renegotiation before.
The stone walkway stretched out before her; a path leading out into the unknown. She’d walked it dozens of times before, but this time—this time waiting there at the end was everythingshe’d never known she wanted, if only she could summon to courage to reach for it. She would have to begin it one step at a time, and trust that when she reached her destination, Kit would be there waiting for her.
She flexed her fingers to still the trembling of her hands and thought instead of Kit’s head resting upon her lap, eyes closed in bliss as she scratched her nails through his hair. Of the way he had sprung to her defense, lunging at Statham over the dinner table when the man had dared to suggest she was something less than respectable. Of how he always seemed to seek out her company, even though she knew him to be quite a private man. Of how easily he’d capitulated when she’d asked him to stay with her at night, how he had held her to drive away the nightmares.
At last she came to the bench, the heels of her thin slippers sinking into the soft earth. For years, she had watched her siblings and her closest friends fall in love and marry. She had been happy for them, of course, every time, even if she had never wanted it for herself. How much more remarkable was it that her own love story had found her regardless? And it had begun right here, though she hadn’t realized it until now.
She settled upon the bench, let her hands fall into her lap. Turned her face to the stars sparkling like diamonds in the heavy blackness of the sky overhead. And it wasn’t fear that made her heart pound in her chest. It was just love. “Kit, I—”
In the distance, there was the faint, familiar shrill of hinges. Kit’s terrace door, she thought, and her heart sank to her toes. She’d missed him. She’d taken too much time and he’d given up his vigil for the evening.
And then— “Phoebe.” Kit’s voice, terse and commanding, pitched low. Close. Just over the wall. “Go inside at once. Lock the damned doors.”
There was a short, malignant laugh from some distance away, and a sudden chill swept over her, sending her awash inchill bumps. She’d heard that voice before. It was the same one that had haunted her nightmares. Fear jolted her upright, one hand clutching at the neckline of her nightgown, where her stiletto would have rested within its sheath had she been properly attired.
She heard a familiar, muted groan—the sort that Kit always made when he rose to his feet, forcing his injured knee to support him. He said, “Hello, Scratch. I hear you prefer Russell these days.”
