Page 32 of Unmasked by the Marquess
At first she thought he would take offense—hell, he was meant to—but he only set his mouth into a grim line for the merest instant.
“I’m insufferably arrogant.” He brushed some imaginary dust from his sleeve. “Ask anyone.”
She snorted. “Do you want me to introduce you to people?”
“God, no,” he sniffed. “I’m not here for that.”
“Are you here to mock and scoff, then?”
“No, you daft brat, I’m here because I was on the horns of a dilemma. If I want to see you I have to either come to this den of vice or experience whatever circle of hell your drawing room is these days. Gilbert complains that you’re under siege by every bachelor in Mayfair.”
He had come for her. He had brought himself to what had to be the last place in London he would choose to visit. And he had done it for her. She felt warmth spread through her body. “Why didn’t you send me a note? I would have come to you at Pembroke House.”
She felt his shoulder jostle against hers. “I know you would, Robin.” His voice was a low rumble. “But I recalled the last time I sent for you, and didn’t want you to think you had been summoned to the headmaster’s office.”
He hadn’t wanted her to worry. “So instead you stayed away for days? I didn’t know what to think.” She shifted her stance, causing the back of her hand to stroke the side of his thigh. Oh, there were a thousand ways two gentlemen could touch one another in public without drawing suspicion, and Charity intended to explore every one of them before the night was through.
He caught her hand and squeezed it, keeping his eyes fixed on the poet. His grip around her fingers was strong, a warning, not a caress. She could feel his signet ring pressing into her skin, a reminder of who and what this man was.
“Do not toy with me, dear Robin.” His voice was wonderfully sinister. “Or I will take you into one of those alcoves and do awful things to you.”
He dropped her hand and she chanced a sidelong glance at him. He didn’t look like a man propositioning a lover, not even in jest. No, he had a frankly wondering expression, as if he had just now come to the not-so-welcome conclusion that he would indeed take her into the alcove despite all his best judgment.
“There are a good many alcoves here,” she observed conversationally.
He sniffed. “This room appears to have been designed for couples to slip away discreetly. It probably was, come to think. I can imagine the lady of the house and my dear papa deep in consultation with the architect.”
She would ignore that comment. “That passageway over there, for example,” she said, gesturing with her chin to a narrow vestibule, “leads to the music room.”
The sound he made came from deep in his chest, more a growl than anything else. “And what would you have me do in the music room, you wanton?”
“I haven’t quite settled my mind on a course of action, sorry to say.” She slid one of her feet over so her boot touched his. “I’m afraid I’m sadly indecisive. It’s as if you brought me to your library and asked me to choose only one book. I’d be paralyzed by the variety. I’d want to read them all, you see, but there isn’t time for that.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and saw his own eyes widen. “Then I will make the decisions.” His voice as cool and remote as it ever was, despite the fact that she could plainly see the throbbing pulse in his neck. “That reminds me,” he added, with a degree of composure that only the Marquess of Pembroke could hope to attain, “if you’re so overwrought by the library at my London house, you’d be brought to fits of insensibility by the library at Broughton Abbey.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” There was no possibility she’d ever see his family’s principal seat for herself. Whatever her faults, she wasn’t delusional.
At that, he turned to face her, but she kept her eyes on the front of the room, where the cat-carrying astronomer was talking about his observations of one planet having passed in front of the other earlier that year.
“Do you follow this?” Alistair whispered after a moment.
“Yes,” she said. “I went to Cambridge. I took a double first. Ask anyone.” She saw his eyebrow lift as he realized she had echoed his own words. “Perhaps you found Oxford less rigorous?” she asked innocently.
“Oh, the devil take you.” But his eyes were dancing.
“Mrs. Allenby is coming this way.” She leaned close enough to breathe in the scent of his soap. “Either you be civil to her—you are a guest in her house, Alistair—or I’ll step away so I’m not tainted by association with your rudeness.”
“Tainted by—Oh, that’s terribly rich coming from you, scapegrace.”
But when Mrs. Allenby drifted over, he bowed very properly and asked after her health.
The lady looked from Alistair to Charity and back again. “Thank you for coming, Pembroke. Very kind of you.”
Alistair opened his mouth to answer, but Charity cut him off. “You can’t thank him for anything. He’ll only start telling you that he doesn’t mean to be kind, and before he’s done you’ll quite believe him.”
“You have a sad lack of gravity,” Alistair said after Mrs. Allenby had moved on.
“It’s a failing,” she said merrily. “But I get along.”
