Marquesses at the Masquerade(23)
“Ma’am?” Marcus sounded truly puzzled, and Rosamund couldn’t blame him. Lady Tremont looked as though she’d be more comfortable arranging a bunch of flowers into artful perfection, or judging the subtle variations among different-quality silks, than enduring the close company of an animal.
Lady Tremont lifted her chin airily. “He’s of a suitable size to be inside the house, and he might as well get used to the drawing room, since if he can’t bear to be parted from his master for long, that is where he will often be. Now, where were we, Marcus?”
And with that, Rosamund was released to attend to Socrates, who was nosing around the feet of a divan she dearly hoped he was not planning to nibble.
“As I was saying, what is it about this young lady?” Lady Tremont said to Marcus. “Is it just that she’s a mystery to you? In truth, you hardly know her.”
“She’s different,” Marcus said. “Special.”
Rosamund could not help but wonder about this conversation, which sounded like he might be speaking of Poppy, though it seemed odd that he should wish to discuss her with his grandmother. She sneaked a look at them as she knelt to direct Socrates’s little teeth away from a decorative tassel.
“And I venture to guess you found your mystery lady quite pretty as well?” Lady Tremont said.
“She is utterly memorable.”
Rosamund started, knocking a book off a nearby end table, and Marcus and Lady Tremont stopped talking and looked at her.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, replacing the book and hoping her blush wasn’t noticeable. But they were discussing her!
Her first reaction was excitement that Marcus hadn’t forgotten her, that he had found the time they’d spent together as memorable as she had.
This was followed by something more than disappointment. If he’d really found her so special and memorable, why didn’t he know her now?
She acknowledged this was an irrational complaint, since only disaster could be in store for her if he discovered that the servant he’d hired to watch his dog was his enchanting lady from the ball. But still.
She was blocking Socrates from chewing the tassel for the sixth time and wondering if she could make a discreet exit by encouraging him to dash out of the room, when she glanced toward Marcus and saw him showing something to his grandmother. Rosamund barely stifled a gasp as she saw her pearls.
He held the necklace out for Lady Tremont’s inspection, apparently unaware that across the room from him, a woman was nearly expiring. “Right here on the clasp, you can see the initials.”
Rosamund had forgotten about the initials. The pearls had belonged to her mother’s mother. But surely it would be extremely difficult for anyone to discern to whom they belonged, never mind connecting them to Rosamund herself. Or, for that matter, for anyone to deduce that the granddaughter of the couple represented by those initials was currently on all fours on a rug a dozen feet away.
“And you say she gave her name as Poppy?” Lady Tremont mused.
“Yes, though that could be short for Persephone, Penelope, or any of a number of other names.”
It was short for Penelope, her middle name, and Rosamund’s stomach fluttered crazily.
“It could,” Lady Tremont agreed, peering at the clasp as though it might be induced to yield its secrets through sheer intimidation. “Woodward, Wentworth,” she mused. “Wilkes.”
As the W in the initials referred to Rosamund’s mother’s maiden name, she felt a moment anxiety that Lady Tremont might stumble on that name and begin to make connections. But then she realized that, for once, her father’s unusual surname might be to her advantage, since they were unlikely to consider her mother because of Rosamund’s father’s infamy.
Marcus and Lady Tremont then proceeded to have a long conversation about who Poppy’s relatives might be, and Marcus revealed that he had taken tea with no less than eight families of the ton trying to find out. Rosamund might have felt thrilled that she’d made such an impression on him—and, of course, she didn’t want Poppy to be forgotten—but what she was starting to feel was annoyed.
How easy it was to become smitten with someone at a ball, when you were both at your best. But her “best” hadn’t been who she was at all. Her clothes had been borrowed, her persona a sham.
Marcus had been real, of course. He really was a marquess, and he really was handsome and wealthy and a good man. But now, as she listened to him sing the praises of the wondrous Poppy, he was also a little insufferable. She’d spent far longer sitting with him in the coach yesterday, alone, than she’d spent with him at the ball, and he certainly hadn’t been swooning over her then. In fact, he’d become downright unpleasant in the coach, and since they’d arrived at Lady Tremont’s, he’d behaved as though he hardly noticed her.
Well, except for the moment in his bedchamber, when she’d felt his desire like a live thing across the space of his room, desire that answered her own.
But she was not so na?ve that she didn’t know that men might desire women with whom they had no other interest. It happened all the time. But she couldn’t bear the idea that Marcus would see her that way.
Of course, she couldn’t expect a marquess to become enchanted with a servant, or even to really see such a person. But the fact that he didn’t seem to feel anything beyond lust for her now meant that the timeless connection she’d thought they shared the night of the ball wasn’t something that would endure once all the sparkle of the night was brushed away. Marcus, still caught up in the dream of his mystery lady, simply hadn’t realized this yet.