Page 5 of Unmasked by the Marquess
And Louisa had played it off marvelously—blushing and stammering as if she hadn’t a clue what Charity was up to when she tugged on the bonnet ribbon. To be fair, perhaps she didn’t know—Charity hadn’t exactly informed her beforehand. Some situations called for decisive action, and sometimes gently born young ladies had to be kept in the dark when scruples were to be abandoned. But it hardly mattered, because Louisa behaved exactly as she ought to. She always did.
Charity heard footsteps on the gravel behind her and assumed it was one of Louisa’s admirers come to get a closer look.
“Youdohave a situation on your hands.” The voice was coolly amused. “My, my.”
She didn’t need to turn her head to know who it was. Even at Cambridge she didn’t often encounter that sort of accent, cold and polished like hard steel.
“My lord,” she said, sketching a bow to Lord Pembroke. “I’m not sure I follow your meaning.”
“Your sister.” With his immaculately shaved chin he gestured toward Louisa. “You were quite right that she’s lovely. Too lovely, I’d venture to say. You’ll be overwhelmed with offers, but I’m afraid they’ll be all the wrong sort.”
“You think some fellow will offer her a slip on the shoulder?” Charity bit her lip. Even merely receiving an offer to become a man’s mistress could ruin Louisa’s chances at a respectable marriage.
If the marquess were put off by her plain speaking, he didn’t show it. “Oh, I’m certain of it.” He pulled his spectacles from his pocket and made a ceremony of unfolding them and placing them gingerly on his nose. “Luckily for you, I’ve reconsidered. I’d be most glad to take you and your sister under my wing, as it were.”
She was momentarily stunned. Tilting her head back to meet his gaze more fully, she studied his face, searching for any hint of what had caused him to move from haughty disdain to breezy acquiescence in the span of a few days. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t kindness. There was no trace of compassion on his chiseled features. “Why?” she finally asked.
“Does it matter?” He raised one eyebrow in a faint display of amusement.
“Frankly, no.” And it didn’t. But she still wanted to know what had motivated their benefactor.
He laughed softly, without any warmth. Charity had seen sneers that were friendlier.
“At least you’re honest,” he said.
That she most definitely was not, but she wasn’t about to contradict him on that point. “May I ask how you plan to assist us?”
“I will hold a ball. You and your sister will be invited and I will dance with your sister. Not the first dance,” he said, as if deciding whether to toss a farthing or a ha’penny at a street sweeper, “but perhaps the second one.”
He looked older in the daylight. In that dusty old crypt of a library she hadn’t been able to guess his age. Of course she hadn’t needed to guess, since Debrett’s told her he was thirty-four. But in the gloom, lit only by the fire that burned in the hearth behind him, he had been reduced to a silhouette of forbidding aristocratic hostility. Here in Hyde Park in broad daylight, she could make out fine lines near his eyes, magnified by his spectacles. But still, he was the sort of man one might say would be handsome, if only he made an effort, if he smiled or made any attempt whatsoever to be agreeable. Likely he had no need to be agreeable, being as rich and powerful as he was.
How utterly repellent. She had to force her face into some semblance of gratitude.
“You’ll dance with my sister?” She dragged her attention back to the matter at hand. A single dance? That would never suffice. Why bother making such a show of offering aid when it was so paltry?
“There hasn’t been a ball at Pembroke House in decades.” He hesitated, and when he spoke again it was with the grudging honesty of a man not willing to participate in anything so base as a half truth. “At least, not the sort of dance to which one invites respectable ladies. Receiving an invitation will be considered a mark of the highest favor, naturally. My dancing with her will cement her position as a person of considerable interest. She will be inundated with invitations and protected from inappropriate offers. That, Mr. Selby, is what I will do for you and your sister.”
Had she ever met a man so arrogant? She thought not. “Is that your experience, my lord? That a single dance with a young lady is enough to confer such an advantage on her? I’ve never met a marquess before so please forgive my ignorance. Is nobility a sort of contagion? Like lice or influenza?”
For a moment she thought he would take offense. His lips pressed together into a thin white line, and for the briefest instant he was the farthest thing from handsome she could have imagined. Then he grinned, a smile so lopsided as to be wholly out of place amid his severe, aristocratic features.
“I dare say, if this is how people act in your part of Northumberland, it explains why my father turned up there. He had no regard for the respect due his station. I once found him holed up in a cowshed with a couple of poachers. The poor fellows had no idea if they were going to get dragged before the magistrate or if they had made a friend for life.” Lord Pembroke’s expression shifted from amused to reproachful, the crooked smile replaced by a frown that matched the small creases around his mouth. “Of course, in the morning he was too hungover to remember any of it.”
In light of that fleeting smile, Charity had to revise her opinion of the man. Or at least of his face. Yes, he was insufferably arrogant and likely up to no good in his offer to help Louisa. But he was most definitely handsome, damn it. She couldn’t quite tell if it was the grin, or the face, or simply some ineffable combination of rank and privilege that created the illusion of beauty. Would she feel this tug toward him if he were a costermonger or a stable boy? Impossible to say, since he was so wrapped in layers of wealth and rank you could scarcely discern the nature of the man within.
He caught her staring at him and raised an eyebrow in response, and she had to fight off a blush.
Charity knew herself to have a lamentable weakness for handsome men. And now, it would seem, Lord Pembroke knew it too. There wasn’t much she could do about it in her current role, and even as a woman she doubted she was pretty enough to attract a man like this one. But it had been so long since she hadbeena woman that she couldn’t rightly remember.
He pointedly cleared his throat and she realized that she was still staring at him. She decided that the more gallant course of action was to keep right on looking. Staring might be rude, but looking away would be cowardice.
Also, she was quite enjoying looking at him.
Lord Pembroke held her gaze for an instant, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “To answer your original question, before you devolved into impertinence. My dear child, I can’t remember the last time I danced with anyone, let alone a chit in her first season whom nobody has ever heard of. If you doubt that my noticing your sister will confer any advantages on her, simply wait and see.”
“You don’t dance?” He had to be invited to dozens of balls and have infinite opportunities to dance. “Why ever not?”
His eyebrow hitched up once again. “Why would I?”
