Page 52 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“Louisa’s asleep,” she whispered.
He closed the book. Miss Selby was indeed fast asleep, and now he and Robin could have some privacy. “We’ll have to let them marry, you know.” He kept his voice low. “They’ll need to marry by special license or there will be no end to the gossip.” He had already sent to London to arrange for it.
“Oh, indeed. The de Lacey reputation must be protected.” She rose and turned to face the dark window.
“I was thinking more of Miss Selby’s reputation.” He stood as well, the ingrained habit of rising when a lady stood. “Besides, they love one another.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you cared much about that sort of thing.”
“Did you not?” He was at her shoulder now, close enough so that if she turned he could take her in his arms.
She remained silent, her arms crossed and braced on the sill of the room’s one, high window.
“I wonder what I’ve done to give you that impression,” he murmured. Had he been as cold as that, so wrapped up in his own pride and sense of duty that she thought him incapable of anything else? He brushed the fine curls off the nape of her neck, then ran his fingers just along the inside of her dress. She made a soft sound that seemed to Alistair’s ears equal parts pleasure and dismay.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“How can you tell how I’m looking at you?” he said into her ear. “You’re not even facing me.” He smoothed his hands down the sides of her bodice, tracing the outline of her silhouette.
“I can feel it. You’re looking at me all gawking-like.” She rounded on him, and he took the opportunity to draw her against his chest. “I feel like a ninny, all trussed up like this,” she said into his lapels. “I can’t wait to get this off of me.”
“I can’t say I object.” She smelled different. Likely she had borrowed Miss Selby’s soap, but he missed her usual scent.
“Oh, to hell with you.” But he knew she was smiling. “It’s such a hoax.”
“A hoax?” he repeated.
“The dress. It’s... not me.”
After years spent dressed as a boy and impersonating a dead man, she felt that it was this dress that constituted the hoax? He took a moment to recalibrate his notions of fraudulence so they might be more in line with her own. “Well, I can see that,” he said, although the sentiment was more aspirational than actual. “But regardless of what you’re wearing, you look like my Robin.” And it was true. She could wear animal skins, she could wear a black robe and a barrister’s wig. It didn’t matter to him. But it mattered to her. “Only a few more weeks and you’ll be back to your usual self,” he offered.
She took a sharp breath and abruptly pulled away from him. In the scant light he could see tears in her eyes. “What a mess, Alistair.”
“Nothing that can’t be fixed.” He willed himself to believe that he spoke the truth.
“You don’t know the half.”
“Then tell me.” He’d fix it. Whatever it was, he’d move heaven and earth to make things right for her. Here he was sending her sweets and haberdashery, servants and barnyard fowl. Did she not understand that he would do more, if she would let him?
“There’s hardly any moon tonight.” Her voice strained with the effort of not crying, her hands in fists at her sides. “You ought to go back before it gets any darker. You’re probably not any good at traipsing about the countryside in the dark.”
He ignored this. She had to be quite overwrought if that was the best insult she could come up with. “I love you, Robin.”
“Stop,” she sobbed. On the bed, Miss Selby stirred. “Go,” Robin said. “Go.”
He kissed her once on her forehead and left.
When he arrived back at the Duck and Dragon, covered in what had to be half the mud in Bedfordshire, he found his solicitor waiting for him in the inn’s parlor.
“Good God, Nivins. What possessed you to come all this distance?”
“I... oh dear, what a very troublesome business, always to be the bearer of ill tidings.” The solicitor let out a panicked sort of laugh, and then adjusted his spectacles. “I have the information you requested. When I heard from your staff where you had gone, and in what company, I knew I had to tell you immediately.” He brought himself up to his full height, as if needing to draw on an inner store of fortitude.
It took Alistair a moment to remember what he had asked Nivins to do for him. He put on his own spectacles and took the sheaf of papers Nivins had placed on the table.
“I gather that you did not know the gentleman to be married, and especially not to a lady who seems to have vanished off the face of the earth shortly after the ceremony.”
“If only it were that simple,” Alistair managed, half stunned by what he was reading. “I saw the lady in question this very day.”
