Page 24 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“I don’t blame you for it,” he said, the words coming out in a rush. “He’s so prickly, it’s a wonder we all don’t quarrel with him. But he was so much... happier, I suppose, when you were around. If he wants to cut off my allowance, that’s fine. I’ll manage. But I don’t think he’d want to do that unless he was miserable. Do you see?”
Charity did see. And she agreed—that did sound like the action of an unhappy man. But knowing that Pembroke was miserable, and that it was her fault, only poured salt on her wound.
And what did it matter that sheenjoyedthis sham, this fraud? So what if by now she felt more at home as Robert Selby—Robin, she thought with a pang—than she did as Charity Church? Miss Church was a poor creature, a housemaid, with no family and no future, no possessions beyond the drab gray dress she wore to clean the floors of a house she was allowed to live in only on sufferance. Robin Selby, though, was free. Robin danced and laughed, was at ease with lords and ladies, and was able to take care of the people he loved.
But in a few months, a year at the utmost, there’d be no reason for her to keep up this charade. Once Louisa was married, Charity would have to give up this life.
Sooner, if Pembroke chose to expose her. The possibility of exposure had always seemed vague, contingent. But now she felt like a prisoner listening to the beams of a scaffold being hammered into place outside her cell. Her one hope was that exposing her deceit would create precisely the sort of scandal that Pembroke would want to avoid.
Lord Gilbert coughed, forcing her thoughts back to the present. “Do you think you could just make it up with him? He’ll never apologize for whatever it is he did to keep you away, so perhaps you could take the matter in hand?”
But hehadapologized to her. Twice. First for criticizing Aunt Agatha, then for commenting on her thinness. What must it have cost him to so uncharacteristically swallow his pride? And how must that memory compound his outrage, to know he had lowered himself to begging pardon of the very person who had duped him?
“I’m afraid I’m the one who owes the apology,” she admitted.
Lord Gilbert laughed, a startled and embarrassed sound. “Oh, I doubt that. You’re so agreeable, you and your sister. I can’t imagine either of you provoking a quarrel. But it’s kind of you to take the blame. Do you think you could pay a call on him this afternoon? Just to show him that you mean to go on as you have?”
She tried to imagine showing up at Pembroke House and acting as if the events of the other day had never happened. He’d have her committed to a lunatic asylum.
She felt the blood drain from her face when she realized that this was an actual possibility. A man with his connections might very well cause a woman of her crimes to be sent to Bedlam or worse. And then what would become of Louisa?
No. She would simply have to depend on his distaste for any kind of scandal, and refuse to consider whether there were methods a peer of the realm might employ to dispose of her quietly and without any notoriety attaching to his name.
“Are you quite all right, Selby?” Lord Gilbert had come to kneel by Charity’s side. “You looked like you were about to faint.”
He was a kind man. Harmless, despite being aimless and spoiled. She couldn’t even bring herself to resent his unearned good fortune or the part he might play in this unfolding disaster.
“I’m coming down with something, I dare say,” she lied.
“Oh, no. You’re not going to get sick.” He rose to his feet. “If you don’t show up at my brother’s ball tomorrow, I’ll come here and fetch you myself, even if you have typhus. There are too many people who are counting on you and your sister to be there—”
“We’ll be there,” she said. She wanted to lock herself away in this cheerless room, but that would do no one any good. They would have to go to the ball. There was no way around it. It was either that or they might as well give up London entirely. A few more weeks and one of the gentlemen who had been infesting the drawing room would offer for Louisa. Pembroke’s ball was exactly what they needed to bring this sham to a close. Each suitor would realize how very in demand Louisa was, and would hurry to win her hand before any of his competitors.
A fortnight at the utmost, another month before a wedding could take place. During that time she would count on Pembroke not wanting a scandal.
And then she would disappear, as if by a conjurer’s trick.
Revenge was beneath the Marquess of Pembroke. Revenge was best left to cuckolded farmhands and medieval popes, jealous fishwives and mad Plantaganets. Gentlemen who wore perfectly tied cravats and whose account books were testaments to rectitude had no need for anything so base as revenge. For such gentlemen, the mere knowledge of their superiority, their ability to outrank and outclass everyone around them, ought to afford sufficient comfort.
So why was it that Alistair spun himself yarn after yarn of how he would bring The Impostor low? He had one very sustaining fantasy of having that fraudulent creature tossed onto a ship and sent to the icy reaches of Canada, where there would be nobody to swindle or beguile but great white bears and bloodthirsty French trappers. It was cold there, and dark. Wintry and barren and silent.
A sun-kissed face and an infectious laugh would be quite wasted. Useless, in fact. Charm couldn’t protect one from frostbite. There, The Impostor would be quite as cold and alone as Alistair felt now, as Alistair had felt two months ago.
Robin. The coming of spring, he had once said.
Alistair wished he were the sort of man to smash glasses, to throw crockery at the wall, to swear at servants. Perhaps those men had the right of it—one explosion of anger followed by an embarrassed return to normality.
No, Alistair did not wish that. He was levelheaded, he was both rational and reasonable. He neither threw nor swore.
He fantasized about sending people to Canada. No trace of madness there.
“Fuck!” he attempted. Nothing. His anger and sorrow had not dissipated. “Damn!” he tried, vaguely embarrassed to raise his voice in an empty room. Still no use.
“Alistair?” came a hesitant voice from the doorway. The longer he spent in this library, the more timidly people addressed him.
Mortified, he slowly pivoted around. It was Gilbert.
“Everything all right here?” his brother asked, quite unnecessarily. There were babies in their prams, minnows in the brook, stars shining upon distant planets who could look at the Marquess of Pembroke and tell that things were far from right.
