No Good Duke Goes Unpunished (The Rules of Scoundrels #3)(107)

“If you change your mind . . .” he said. “If you wake up on Sunday morning and wish for marriage . . . I shall be ready,” he finished, so generous. So deserving of love.

She nodded once, seriously. “Thank you, my lord.”

He cleared his throat. “What next?”

The question had rattled through her during every waking moment of every day since the morning Cross had left her, sleeping, in her bed after making it impossible for her to marry Castleton. After making it impossible to do anything but care for him . . . more than she’d ever cared for anyone. What next?

What happened now?

She’d approached the problem in the same way she’d forever approached every part of her life. She’d considered it from all angles, posited answers, hypothesized outcomes. And, eventually, come to a conclusion—the only one that had any chance of resulting in the outcome she desired. For which she ached.

So this morning, she’d risen early, dressed, and come to Berkeley Square. She’d knocked, met her fiancé—who seemed to be more intelligent than anyone in Britain gave him credit for—and broken her engagement.

And what came next would be the most important experiment of her life.

“I admit, I am happy that you asked.” She took a deep breath, met Castleton’s gaze, and answered his question. “You see, I require your assistance for what comes next.”

Two hours later, Pippa and Trotula were waiting at the rear entrance to The Fallen Angel, for someone to open the door.

When no one responded to her several knocks on the great steel slab, Pippa grew impatient and moved to the entrance to the club kitchens. Knocking there produced a result—a red-faced boy who was at once elated to see a dog at the door and perplexed by the presence of the hound’s mistress.

“Didier!” he called out, “ ’ere’s a lady at the door! A real one! And a dog!”

“I am tired of the jokes you play on me, Henri,” came a familiar booming voice from outside Pippa’s view. “Now come back here before the béchamel is destroyed by your laziness.”

“But Didier!” he called, not taking his gaze from Pippa. “’Tis a lady! The one who comes for Cross!”

Pippa’s jaw dropped at the identification. How did this boy know about her meetings with Jasper? Before she could ask, the French cook had pushed the boy from view and faced Pippa with a wide smile. “Back for another of my sandwiches?”

Pippa smiled. “No one answered the rear door of the club.”

Didier stepped back, letting Pippa into the sweltering kitchens. “That’s because the doormen are all bothering me.” She cast a skeptical glance at Trotula. “The hound may enter, but I won’t have her near my food.”

Pippa stepped inside, directing the dog to a corner and registering the stares from a motley collection of servants and workers gathered around the great table at the center of the Angel’s kitchens. Uncertain and not a small amount uncomfortable, she gave a little curtsy, sending all their brows to the sky. “I am Lady Philippa Marbury.”

The doorman she’d met the evening she’d come with Cross stood, hulking and overwhelming. “We know who you are.”

She nodded. “Excellent. Then you won’t mind telling His Grace that I am here.” There was a pause, confusion flaring on several faces before she clarified. “I believe you call him Temple.”

The boy who’d answered the door was the first to speak. “But yer Cross’s lady,” he said, as if that was all there was to say.

Cross’s lady. The words warmed her.

Even if they weren’t true.

“Today, I’ve need of Temple.”

And Temple would help her get the rest.

When they arrived home that night, Pippa and Trotula had covered a wide swath of London, and both mistress and hound were exhausted.

Ignoring her mother’s admonitions that countesses did not leave the house with only their hounds to keep them company, and that Pippa would be devastated if she awoke on her wedding day with a cold, and that she simply must eat something, she forwent the family meal and made her way to her bed, crawling between crisp linen sheets she fancied smelled of the man she’d thought of all day. All week. For what seemed like forever. She should have slept, but instead she played her plan over and over in her mind. The moving pieces, the variables—both fixed and unfixed—the process, the participants.

Stroking Trotula’s head, Pippa lay in her bed, thinking of Jasper Arlesey, Earl Harlow. Of all the things she’d ever heard about this strange, elusive peer. She knew that he did not take his seat in Parliament. She knew that he did not frequent balls or dinners or even the theater. In fact, it seemed he did nothing that brought him into contact with society . . . nothing except running London’s most exclusive gaming hell.

And she knew that he was being an utter cabbagehead, about to toss his life away in a mad belief that he was saving her.

But most importantly, she knew that he was wrong. It was not she who required saving.

It was he.

And she was just the woman to do it.

Chapter Eighteen

The time for observation is through.

It is now time for action.

The Scientific Journal of Lady Philippa Marbury

April 3, 1831; one day prior to her wedding

She was to be married tomorrow.