Revealed (28 page)

And Phillippa, far from escaping her situation, realized she stepped deeper into it.

Marcus had never been one for sitting around with the gentlemen after dinner. In his mind, the practice originally allowed gentlemen to discuss business without rudely causing half the room’s population to be bewildered by the complexities of their conversation. That said, since gentlemen these days rarely had anything to do with business, the mind-set of most the gentlemen present was, since they were free to do so, vulgarity must be indulged in. As if gentlemen of leisure would ever lack for clubs, gaming establishments, boxing matches, athletic pursuits, pubs, and Parliament, where such manners were allowed and encouraged. But nay, since they were without ladies for as long as they desired, they were within their rights to get foxed and be free with their thoughts.

Too free, in some cases.

“And then I said . . .” Mr. Standen, a portly and florid man, slurred from the other end of the table, “that if the cheeky little skirt wasn’t going to give me a toss, I didn’t give a toss for her, and I left her on the side of the road!”

Those enough in their cups to find the notion funny laughed uproariously. Those whose tastes were more moderate found nothing witty in Mr. Standen’s speech beyond his sentence structure, and studiously looked bemused. Marcus was one of the latter party. But he was much surprised to discover that Byrne was one of the former.

It had not escaped Marcus’s notice through the course of dinner just how much wine and how little food Byrne was consuming. Marcus knew Byrne could hold his drink, in general, as long as he didn’t hold quite so much of it. He had always been careful.

“Don’t you think that’s enough?” Marcus whispered to his brother as Byrne signaled the waitstaff for another glass of port. Byrne just shot his brother a look, his eyes bright and shining, his face flushed with drink.

“I’m . . . I’m just faking it,” Byrne whispered, a bit too loudly. “Luring the crowd into a false sense of ser . . . security.”

Marcus’s mouth set tighter. “I’ve seen you ‘faking it’ Byrne. This doesn’t pass.”

Byrne simply returned his mouth to his port and his unfocused mind to the table’s conversation.

“Mystique is going to take it this year, I’ll wager you five to one,” Lord Hampshire was saying to Sterling on his left. “She’s the best of this set of threes. Never seen such power in my life. Wish she was of breeding age a decade ago; the war effort could have used her bloodstock.”

If Marcus’s mind pinched upon Hampshire’s words, Byrne’s either did not or he ignored it.

“But what about Pretty Lady?” Sterling replied. “I’m laying odds she’s going to take a bite out of Mystique in the mile if she gets close enough.”

Marcus knew Hampshire was horse-mad; it was the whole point of this gathering, after all. But in all his time working under Sterling, he had no notion that the man knew anything about horses.

“Byrne,” Marcus whispered to his brother, “Sterling doesn’t follow races, does he?”

But Byrne just shrugged. “Dunno. Dunno anything ‘bout anyone anymore.”

This was a fair point. How could Byrne, who had been recuperating in the country for the past year and who had been on the Continent for a few before that, have any notion as to the intricate details of Society’s life?

Marcus made a mental note to ask Phillippa. She would know.

Just as his mind flashed on the delightful Mrs. Benning, coincidentally enough, so did the conversation.

“I know another pretty lady ready to take a bite out of someone,” Thomas Hurston spoke up, causing the young bucks that surrounded him to begin chortling and slapping Broughton on the back.

Broughton, meanwhile, smirked arrogantly as he held up a hand. “I am a gentlemen and, therefore, will keep my conquests to myself.” But anyone could see that the gleam in his eyes invited commentary.

This was met with a chorus of boos from his cronies, who immediately took Broughton up on his silent offer.

“Come on, Broughton!”

“You can’t leave us with nothing!”

“She’s the ultimate conquest. I heard she’s had her legs closed since Benning kicked off!”

“Ripe for the plucking. She’s been playing you hot and cold for weeks!”

Marcus did his best to keep his blood from rising too high. After all, young idiots conjectured about females all the time, and Marcus had done his fair share back when he was a young idiot.

“You know she must be gagging for it! She’s probably wetter’n the Thames,” one young idiot added.

Lord Hampshire had his mouth dropped open like a fish, shocked beyond speech that this is what his table had devolved into. Marcus caught his eye, as Hampshire shook his head. Sterling was also without speech, but that could have been because he was laughing too hard.

Marcus reflected that perhaps this gentlemanly conversation had gone on long enough.

And given the time, the situation, and the stakes at play at this weekend party, Marcus cooled the blood in his ears with one simple phrase, as old as time:
Don’t get mad, get even.

He leaned over and whispered into his brother’s ear, “Byrne, give me the vial that’s in your coat pocket.”

Byrne’s gaze shot to his, clear for the first time all evening. “How’d you know about that?”

“Because I know. How many drops make you sleep?” Marcus asked, his face giving away nothing to the raucous crowd, as he palmed the vial from his brother.

Byrne was silent a moment. “Two or three. Maybe four.”

It was a deft switch, an easy thing for a master spy like Byrne. Unfortunately, Marcus didn’t trust Byrne’s hands that evening and had to make the switch himself. It was successful, if a little less clean than he would have liked, but the alcohol consumed by everyone that evening made him easily overlooked. An attribute he had always found to his advantage.

As the quips and comments continued about the various attributes Mrs. Benning and others of her set laid claim to, the Marquis of Broughton finally put an end to the ribaldry by holding up his hands in a gesture of defeat.

“All I can say, gentlemen,” he drawled nonchalantly, “is that there are some great advantages to courting a widow.”

A steady stream of guffaws and “hear, hears” erupted from the crowd of young bucks, clapping each other on the back.

“A toast then!” Marcus boomed out over the crowd, rising to his feet. All fell silent. Raising his glass in the air, he continued, his eyes never straying from Broughton’s face.

“To courting widows,” he said, his jaw set, his hand steady.

Marcus knew the moment that Broughton recognized him. Not as Marcus Worth, third son, but as Marcus Worth, recent favorite of Phillippa Benning and a rival for her attention and affections. Even through the haze of alcohol, Broughton kept his gaze sharp. His cronies, having fallen silent, watched for his reaction. Broughton’s jaw twitched into that lazy, dangerous smile that had so many ladies swooning. He rose to his feet, graceful, confident, swaggering. Raising his newly filled glass, Broughton matched its height to Marcus’s.

“To courting widows,” he replied and drank deep.

“
I
T’s just me; don’t look so disappointed.” Marcus Worth winked at Phillippa as she peeked out from behind the door of her bedchamber.

In truth, Phillippa was tired, irate, and sleep-deprived. It was three in the morning, and believe it or not, this was the first time someone had knocked on her door! She had been abed since ten, and wholly expecting to being forced to have Totty give a paltry excuse to Broughton when he came with his amorous intentions. Which never occurred. Eventually, Totty had fallen asleep, but Phillippa’s stomach remained in knots. Half of her mind was relieved, but the other half—really, did Broughton think her repulsive?

Perhaps her cry of illness was based in truth.

“Can I come in?” Marcus smiled at her, his voice giving nothing away, but she knew he was worried that the longer he stood out in the hall, the greater the chances were he would be recognized. He held a short candle, but in the darkness of the hall, it might as well have been a beacon.

“Can’t,” she replied, and at his quizzical frown, she continued. “Totty fell asleep in here—on the settee.”

“I need to speak with you. Should we, er, find another room?” Marcus asked, a faint blush spreading across his cheek, just detectable in the darkness.

“I told you, Totty can sleep through a battlefield—but just in case, we’ll go to her room. It’s just next door.” She said and, slipping out the door, grabbed his hand and tiptoed quickly to the room adjacent to hers.

The chamber was dark, and Phillippa groped for a moment to find a candlestick that Marcus could light. Finding one on the sideboard, she brought it to him, his hand enveloping hers, holding it steady, as he leaned the unlit taper into the flame.

Really, could she be blamed if she stepped a little closer to him?

But as soon as the candles were lit, the room relieved of its total darkness, the moment passed them by.

Marcus placed the candles on the small table next to a chair set up by the low fire, and Phillippa remembered again that she was tired and irritable and not exactly coiffed and clothed to her best advantage in the middle of the night.

“You should wear your hair like that always,” Marcus commented, falling into his lopsided grin, tugging at the long rope of braid hanging down her back.

“I was asleep, I’ll have you know,” she swatted his hand away.

“No you weren’t,” he retorted. “You answered the door a bare three seconds after I knocked. Were you up waiting for me?”

“No,” she replied coolly.

“Were you up waiting for anyone else?” he asked, raising a brow quizzically.

Silence descended on the room, as Phillippa’s throat went dry and her gaze shot to his. “Of—of course not,” she managed, “if I was waiting for someone, do you think I’d be dressed like this?”

Phillippa twirled in her plain white cambric nightdress, lacking in all ruffs and furls or anything feminine and alluring. The neck was high but wide and kept falling off her shoulder in a ragamuffin fashion. Her robe was a deep periwinkle but just as unadorned. No one could say she was dressed to impress.

But for some strange reason, Marcus was staring.

It made her acutely uncomfortable. As if he was looking through the clothes, and . . .

“Marcus,” she said, jolting him out of his reverie, “it’s the middle of the night. What do you want?”

The question hung in the air between them, and just for a moment, their eyes met. And for that moment, she wasn’t tired and irritable, she wasn’t in her plain nightclothes, she was being pulled forward by an invisible string toward him. Heat surrounded them, infused them, and she could see that heat in his eyes.

But only for a moment.

“I want you—” he said, his voice strangled, and so he cleared his throat and started again. “I want you to—Do you recall the exercise I asked you to do in the park?”

The tension that had awoken her skin, her spine, her fingertips left the air. Of course, she thought, deflated, he hadn’t come to her for . . . for
that
. He was Marcus Worth. Aside from one incident for which he had been roundly scolded, he had expressed no interest in her beyond her connections to society and, however strange it seemed, her brain.

Between Marcus’s lack of interest and Broughton not showing up at her door that evening, her ego was taking a tremendous beating.

Was this what it felt like to not be pretty? How very unpleasant.

“The memory exercise, you mean?” she replied. He nodded, to which she replied, gamely, “No, I don’t recall that at all.”

He smiled at her approvingly. “Very funny. If you ever fall on hard times, you can take up work as a court jester.”

“What about the exercise, Marcus?” she said tiredly, which he must have noticed, because he grabbed a shawl that had been thrown over a stuffed armchair in front of the smouldering fire and wrapped it around her shoulders, bidding her to sit.

“I’m sorry, you are exhausted. I’ll make this quick.” He pulled over the spindly chair from the escritoire and folded himself down into it.

“I’ve been trying to get the best lay of this place as possible, but it’s massive, there are a million things our adversary could be after, and just as many places to hide, so I need you to keep your eyes open.”

“For what? For Laurent?”

“I want you to keep track of who is here and where they are. The minute you don’t recognize someone, come and tell me. And tomorrow, at the evening festivities, if someone is
not
there who you think should be, I need to know.”

A daunting task, Phillippa thought as she swallowed nervously. Almost too daunting. “But what if I miss someone or something? I’m not a professional like you—”

But he silenced her with a wry smile and a shake of his head. “You have a mind like a steel trap, when it suits your purpose.”