Page 31 of Unmasked by the Marquess
“Don’t be absurd. I only want to know what Selby has to do with it.”
“The Selbys and Amelia are friends, and they go about together, as friends do,” Gilbert explained, as if friendship were a concept that Alistair was too slow to comprehend.
It wasn’t like Gilbert to be quite this testy, but Alistair didn’t know how to broach the topic. He was glad that Gilbert was here at all, and didn’t want to make a muddle of things the way he usually did with his brother.
“He’ll be at Portia’s salon tonight, if you really want to see him,” Gilbert continued.
By Portia he meant Mrs. Allenby, of course. Alistair had never set foot in her house, and few people had the temerity to mention her salon in his hearing. It was hardly respectable, packed with would-be revolutionaries and badly dressed poets, from what he gathered. But Gilbert looked strained to the breaking point—perhaps he had discovered that farming required actual knowledge, as well as manure and other unsavoriness—and Alistair didn’t want to irritate him any further. Their relationship was not as warm as it ought to be, he was realizing, and that was starting to feel like a loss. Moreover, it was starting to feel like his own fault.
“Very well, then. I’ll go to the salon. I’ll pick you up in my carriage.” Alistair took a long sip of tea. “What does one wear to one of Mrs. Allenby’s salons? Is evening attire acceptable, or must I fashion a pair of sans-culottes?”
Gilbert made a derisive noise, but Alistair could see the beginnings of a smile cutting through the gloom, so he kept on going. “Does one bring one’s own opium, or is there some sort of communal... I don’t know, tureen?” Now Gilbert was openly smiling, albeit sardonically. “Do the orgies commence promptly at eight, or—”
“Stop, stop!” Gilbert laughed. He threw his napkin on the table and rose to his feet. “I’m leaving before you change your mind.”
Victory. He had amused Gilbert out of his sullen mood, and better still, he was going to see Robin. The prospect seemed to make the light shafting through the windows all the brighter.
They were drinking champagne while listening to a man in a velvet dinner coat read a poem about rats.
“I think the rats are a metaphor,” Charity whispered.
“Something to do with the Corn Laws, I gather,” Amelia mused.
Charity was about to disagree but nearly yelped when her friend elbowed her in the ribs.
“Over there,” Amelia whispered. “Look. By the door.”
At first she thought she had hallucinated. The room was hot, and even though she hadn’t had much champagne, a drunken imagining seemed more likely than Alistair actually being present at Mrs. Allenby’s salon.
“Oh God, just look at him,” she breathed, and received another jab in the ribs from Amelia. But how could shenotadmire the man? He was wearing one of his most uncompromisingly tailored coats in unrelieved black. His waistcoat was also black, his cravat a masterpiece of simplicity. She couldn’t see his breeches but knew they’d be perfectly fitted and spotless. He stood out like a beacon of gentlemanly correctness in this colorful gathering.
She wanted to run her hands over every inch of him. And then she wanted to do the same thing with her tongue.
God help her, but she was going to have to add a mania for subdued tailoring to her list of depravities.
“Stop staring,” Amelia hissed.
Charity didn’t stop. She didn’t care who caught her staring. That was one of the nice things about this sort of gathering. These people prided themselves on their raggedy manners, which Charity privately thought rather silly, but she’d gladly take advantage of the freedom it gave her.
The freedom to stare at the Marquess of Pembroke like he was a roast dinner.
And he was staring back, but not at her. He was regarding the motley assemblage as if he were at the zoo. How long before he pulled out his spectacles? Ah, there he went now, reaching into his pocket, polishing the lenses on his handkerchief, and coolly placing them onto the bridge of his nose. Over a dozen times she had seen him perform that same series of gestures, every movement dripping with hauteur and breeding and privilege, and she could watch him do it a million more times.
“Stop itnow.” Amelia pinched Charity’s leg. “Even if you don’t care about your own character, have some care for his. He’d die if he knew he was being ogled by a man in public, and in this house of all places.”
Quite true. Alistair lived and died by his bloody reputation, and everybody knew it. So instead of staring, she would go over there and have a perfectly gentlemanly conversation with the man.
Making her way across the room, she could tell the minute he noticed her. His mouth quirked into approximately one-sixteenth of a smile—you would need a protractor to be sure it had really happened—and his left eyebrow shot up as if to say,Whatin God’s name am I doing in this place?
Charity could have asked him the same question, but she didn’t care what he was doing here, only that he was here at all. She went over to where he stood, not noticing who she had to squeeze past to get there.
When she reached his side, he dipped his mouth close to her ear. “There’s a man over there with a cat inside his coat.”
She could feel his breath against her skin and didn’t know how she was going to keep her composure. She kept her eyes focused on the poet at the front of the room, who had now lapsed into French. “They’re only people,” she whispered. “And clever ones, at that.” The man with the cat was some kind of astronomer.
“At least you didn’t bring your sister.”
That made her whip her head around to face him. “Yes, butyoursister is right over there.” Really, she had had enough of his disdain for the Allenbys, especially after Amelia had shown such care for Alistair’s precious reputation. If Charity were lucky enough to have a sister she would do anything to keep her close, and here Alistair had three sisters he had hardly met and a brother he scarcely seemed to know.
