Marquesses at the Masquerade(20)

“Oh dear,” she said to Socrates, who had begun pacing in a slightly panicked way. “I do wonder if you’re feeling quite well. Perhaps we’d better—”

But Marcus had also noticed Socrates’s increased agitation, and he was already getting the driver’s attention. They just managed to stop and get the dog outside the coach in time for him to cast up his accounts in the grass.

“Carriage travel doesn’t seem to agree with him,” Rosamund observed as Socrates retched again.

“Indeed.”

Marcus could not have imagined watching a small dog be sick in the grass with any other woman of his acquaintance, but standing there with Rosamund was oddly companionable, as though they were parents patiently attending a sick child.

Socrates, apparently instantly recovered, moved several paces from the scene of his handiwork and began nibbling grass. Rosamund crouched down next to the dog. “Are you feeling better now?” she inquired of him.

The spectacle of Rosamund addressing his dog made Marcus want to laugh, but then Socrates began to wander away, and she dropped onto all fours and crawled after him, and the laughter died in his throat as he watched her from behind.

He wanted her. He liked her and he wanted her.

He tore his gaze away. What the devil was wrong with him? He was besotted with Poppy! He was! He was not making this trip to seek his grandmother’s help on a whim, but because he’d truly felt something important, perhaps even eternal, when he’d been with Poppy. She was very possibly the woman for whom he’d been waiting his entire life, and he wanted more than anything to see her again, to talk to her, to know her.

So why was he noticing and thinking about and wanting Rosamund?

He’d never been so disgusted with himself, and he clenched his teeth and vowed he would master this. Clearly, he needed to stop being so friendly to his dog’s companion, and he needed to remember that that was all Rosamund was. And that he had urgent business to attend to.

“If you and Socrates are quite finished, Rosamund,” he said abruptly, “we will get back on the road.”

“I think perhaps another minute or two, my lord,” she called over her shoulder, still crawling after his dog, her rump swaying erotically, though he was certain she was oblivious to the effect she was creating.

“You don’t need to crawl around after him,” he said sharply. “Just pick him up and let’s go.”

She sat back on her heels and looked up at him, and he saw that she had perceived that his manner had changed. “Of course, my lord.”

She picked Socrates up gently, but all traces of her previous playfulness were gone, which only made Marcus testier.

“Have you considered, my lord,” she said with only the barest hint of injured dignity, which he knew he would not have noticed had he not shared all those other, nicer moments with her, “that since coach travel does not agree with Socrates, this episode may repeat itself?”

“We’ll stop again if that becomes necessary,” he said, holding out his hands for Socrates so she could mount into the coach. He was determined not to engage with her beyond what was required.

She was right, of course. They were obliged to stop nearly every twenty minutes for the duration of the ride. After the first episode, Marcus simply allowed Rosamund to get down from the coach alone to see to Socrates, which, as he reminded himself when he felt a twinge of something he didn’t want to examine, was what he was paying her to do.

The result of having to cater to Socrates’s delicate stomach was that they arrived at Lady Tremont’s home far later than Marcus had planned, in the middle of the night to be precise. His grandmother had long since retired, and Marcus was left to make arrangements with the housekeeper, Mrs. Clark.

“Please give Rosamund a guest room,” he said. However determined he was to keep her at arm’s length, being Socrates’s companion meant that she would likely sometimes be in Marcus’s company and that of his grandmother. A companion was a companion, and such women were not treated as servants.

“That’s not necessary,” Rosamund said quickly. He could see Mrs. Clark was confused.

“You are Socrates’s companion,” he said, “and you also need to be available should he require you, not far off in some distant part of the manor.”

“I’m sure we can find a suitable guest room for Rosamund,” Mrs. Clark said.

“Thank you,” Marcus said, eager to seek his own chamber, where he could fall into bed and finally have some undistracted moments to think properly about Poppy and his plan to find her. Tired as he was, a practical detail occurred to him. “And Rosamund?”

“Yes, my lord?” Despite his less-friendly behavior toward her, her manner betrayed no trace of dismay or insolence, and somehow he would have expected no less of her.

“Socrates will need to go out early in the morning. You may knock on my door and collect him after dawn.”

He thought he saw her swallow—the hour was late, and she was bound to be as tired as he was—but no trace of anything except cooperation colored her reply. “Of course, my lord.”

This was a little wicked of him, but after all, she was being paid quite handsomely to see to his dog. And he needed to not look on her as anything but a person in his employ.

Marcus, accompanied by Socrates, repaired to the handsome guest room where he always stayed when he visited his grandmother’s house and fell into bed gratefully. He did dream of Poppy, but this time Socrates was in the dream, and Rosamund as well, both of them quite maddeningly distracting Poppy from paying any attention whatsoever to Marcus’s dream self.