“It’s just... Thackeray is my family.” She said this somewhat resignedly. Sadly. With the faintest hint of despair. “Maybe you don’t...”
She pressed her lips together. He thought she might have intended her next word to be “understand.”
They both knew he had essentially rescued her family once before, in exchange for a wife who had immediately proved faithless. And not once had he complained about his bad bargain.
“I do understand why you are concerned for your cousin’s welfare,” he said with a certain strained patience. “And I appreciate your sense of responsibility. I never knew my own family. But I look after Mrs. Scofield, the housekeeper from the home where I was raised. She’s the one who found me as an infant.”
He wasn’t certain why he’d told her about Mrs. Scofield. His reasons for paying for her keepduring her retirement were, in fact, a bit complicated. And he wasn’t certain he understood all of them, himself.
“It’s good of you to care for her,” she said politely. “I imagine Mr. Lawler has been paying her bills, as well?”
“He has been, yes. Her lodgings are in fact near the park. Before the statue unveiling ceremony, I’d like to pay a short visit to her to ascertain everything is well.”
“Very well.” She paused. “I should like to meet her.”
They didn’t speak for a time; they merely moved in the dance. Embers of rancor still smoldered. But their eyes remained fixed upon each other’s faces. He could not seem to think of a reason to look away, when she was the only thing he currently wanted to see.
Finally he said, “I apologize if you should like to dance a reel this evening. I’m not certain my leg is currently equal to it.”
It was both a tactic to break the tension and, alas, the truth.
Her face suffused with softness at once and everything in him yearned toward it as though it was one of those cloudlike pillows at The Grand Palace on the Thames. But then, he knew she was just naturally kind. He needn’t read a thing into it.
“Oh, my goodness, please don’t apologize, Magnus. I have danced countless reels in my life, and I find social badminton invigorating enough.”
He nodded.
“And besides,” she added. “We have a curfew.”
“Good God, I nearly forgot.”
This made her smile again. Her smile faded. “Does it bother you often? Your leg.”
“If I spend too much time on my feet without resting a bit, or if the weather is turning... it will remind me,” he said ruefully. “But mostly it reminds me of how lucky I am to survive the war long enough to dance with you while you’re wearing that pink dress.”
He’d said this aloud despite every instinct to the contrary.
Perhaps because he was so painfully full of unsaid things, he craved the release of just one of them. Perhaps it was because touching her, and being close enough to her to smell the fine soap she’d used and the lavender in which her gowns were stored, would erode his control a bit at a time if he let it.
Perhaps because she still had so much power over him, he’d wanted to know whether he could move her.
He was rewarded when he felt that precious little jump of her rib cage as her breath hitched.
Her cheeks were blooming pink.
“We’re all lucky you survived the war,” she said softly. And, it seemed, carefully.
His smile was somewhat ironic. If he’d died on the battlefield, they never would have married at all. He wondered if she’d ever entertained that possibility. He wouldn’t have blamed her one bit.
Chapter Ten
As was their habit at the end of every day, Angelique and Delilah sank gratefully down on the settee in their little room at the top of the stairs to do a little mending and review the daily affairs of The Grand Palace on the Thames—menus and budgets and repairs and guests and the like.
They usually left the door of their little sitting room open, but tonight they closed it hurriedly just as the faintest strains of a moan began to waft through the halls. Since they had discovered the Dawsons’ favorite pastime, the Hardys and Durands had gotten a little flinchy about going up to their rooms. They did not think they would ever reach Mrs. Pariseau levels of sanguinity about the noises. They didn’t want to walk through a moan any more than they wished to be confined in a small room with Mr. Delacorte after he’d devoured a rich meal.
Angelique pulled a stocking needing darning from their basket, and she gave a little laugh. “Lately Lucien has taken to imitating Mrs. Cuthbert. Yesterday I dropped my stockings as I was tucking a bundle of clothes away into the press and I said to him, ‘Darling, will you get those stockings for me?’And he turned to me and said ‘Stockings?Now it’sstockings?’ with bristling outrage. We both fell about laughing. And yes, I know it’s unworthy of us.”
Delilah laughed, then sighed. “Now I feel guilty for laughing.”