How I Met My Countess, page 8
And in that unguarded moment, he saw the same wary light he had beheld just before he’d been about to kiss her.
Cutting off the others, Clifton raised his glass to her. “Madame, my brother and I have forgotten our manners. I must thank you for this generous and delicious meal. You have been too kind to us.”
“Hear, hear,” Malcolm added. “My brother is right. We should not be amusing ourselves at your expense when you have given us such a good supper—this stew is most excellent, and I am thankful for your kindness.”
Mariana raised her glass as well for another, different sort of tribute. “What you should be thankful for is that it isn’t at all like the stew Lucy made for Lord Roche.”
“Sister!” Lucy protested. “Be still.”
A bit of the conversation from earlier trickled back through the earl’s memory.
… and no dosing his stew … He is no Lord Roche …
Clifton took another glance at the pot on the table, and down at the half-eaten bowl before him.
“Whatever did your sister do to Roche?” Malcolm asked.
Mariana laughed. “He was ever so haughty and full of himself—”
“Rather like my brother?” Malcolm suggested.
Mariana shook her head. “Oh, your brother is far higher in the instep than Lord Roche, but he isn’t as much of an …”
“An ass?” Malcolm supplied.
“Oh, yes, that’s it exactly. Thank you, sir,” she said, as if he’d supplied her a cup of tea rather than an obscenity. “Well, Roche was such a, well, as you said, an ass, so Lucy dosed his stew and he spent the next day and a half in the necessary.”
Mariana bit her lips together for a moment, her eyes sparkling. “He left soon after and returned to London a much more humble fellow. He never did join the rest of Mr. Pymm’s associates in Portugal.”
“Nor should he have,” Lucy pointed out. “He would have been a terrible disgrace. A risk to all.”
Now it was Clifton’s turn to gape, first at Lucy and then at the stew set before them. Even Malcolm had edged back from the table a bit, his enthusiasm for this unexpected supper having cooled.
“Oh, good heavens,” Lucy declared, tearing off a piece of bread from the loaf and dunking it deeply into the pot. Then, as they watched, she ate it. “Will that do?” she asked before using one of the napkins to wipe her lips.
Then she refilled their bowls, setting them down on the table with an impatient thump. Catching up her glass of claret, she retreated to the card table in the corner.
Mariana had already settled into her chair. She leaned over to ask, “Whose card was it?”
“Mine,” Lucy declared, nodding to the discarded ones in between them. The two girls reconvened their game, and the two men were all but forgotten as the play began anew.
Clifton sat there, a bit in shock over Roche’s fate. That Lucy Ellyson had weeded him out, sent him packing because he’d been … well, an ass.
And so are you if you fail at this …
A rare sense of disquiet ran down his spine, followed by the hint of a suggestion, whispered in his ear. So leave.
It was a voice not unlike hers.
Startled, he glanced over to find her watching him. With those sharp, intelligent eyes of hers. With an air of superiority that would make a duke weep with envy.
The same look that had challenged him to kiss her this afternoon.
In that moment, in the blink of an eye, Clifton’s heart constricted. Not out of some waffling emotion, but a stab of determination to show this meddlesome bit of muslin that he was no Roche.
Clifton tipped his head toward her with all the noble grace of his ancestors, if only to get on her nerves. But what he really wanted to do was discover more about her.
Then he glanced over at her sister and asked, “So, aside from Mr. Moggs, have you any other admirers, Lucy?” Just as he suspected, Mariana— already on her second glass of wine—filled in nicely, all too eager to spill the family secrets.
“Naught but Archie, the clerk at Mr. Strout’s office,” she jumped in to say.
“Mariana!”
“Archie at Mr. Strout’s office?” Clifton asked as innocently as the worst sort of gossip.
Mariana followed his lead quite happily. “Mr. Strout is Papa’s solicitor in London. When he has business matters for Papa, Mr. Strout sends it over with Archie. He’s taken a fancy to Lucy.”
“He has not!”
Mariana ignored her sister’s protest. “Then why did he bring you flowers Sunday before last when he had no business being here?”
“Yes, and I sneezed for three days straight.” Lucy shifted in her chair. “And what Archie fancies is a position with the Foreign Office and thinks if he charms me, Papa will help him.”
“Hasn’t he the connections to gain his own place?” Malcolm asked. “Or is he another Mr. Moggs?”
Mariana shook her head. “Oh, heavens no. Archie is very well connected, but his grandfather thinks him a great fool.”
“His grandfather thinks everyone is a great fool,” Lucy amended.
“True enough,” Mariana sighed. “But you should be thankful he is foolish enough to fall in love with you.”
“Harrumph! Do you want to play cards or gossip?”
“Well, both.” Mariana laughed.
Malcolm chuckled. “Are you two planning on attending the assembly Wednesday night? The innkeeper’s wife, Mrs. Turkel—”
“Turnpenny,” Mariana corrected.
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Turnpenny told us that all the ladies and gentlemen from around the Heath would be there.”
Clifton glanced up and saw Lucy stiffen, her cards trembling in her hand for just a moment. “I prefer not to dance, Mr. Grey.”
“My sister is being too polite, sir,” Mariana said, her gaze fixed attentively on her cards. “We cannot attend because we are not received.”
This fell like a cannonball onto the carpet.
“Not received?” his brother said. “Why ever not? Is it because of that Moggs business, because that hardly seems—”
“Malcolm!” Clifton chastened. “Perhaps it is none of our business.”
“Oh, in Hampstead it is everyone’s business, so it is of no matter,” Mariana said. “We are not received because our mother is the Contessa di Marzo.” She paused for a moment. “Yes, I can see from your expression you know who she is. And since Father never married her, not that he could—” There was a pause, and the girl let out a loud “ouch.” She reached down to rub her shin. “There is no reason to kick me, Goosie. They will discover the truth soon enough. I’m surprised Mrs. Turnpenny hasn’t warned them off yet.”
“She has not,” Clifton supplied.
Mariana shrugged. “Oh, she usually takes great delight in scandalizing all with our presence.” She paused again and made a mulish face not unlike their landlady’s, then spoke in perfect imitation of her country tones, “The daughters of that woman! In our neighborhood! Be warned, my good gentlemen. Be warned!”
“You are in excellent company, then,” Malcolm told them. “For my mother was not married to my father either.” He paused and winked at Clifton. “Which makes my noble brother the oddball of our lot, eh, Gilby?” He grinned at Mariana. “We must stick together, our sort. And never fear, Miss Ellyson, I would dance with you at any assembly and be the envy of all.”
“You wouldn’t like to go to an assembly?” Clifton asked Lucy.
“It doesn’t matter what I would like to do, my lord. We are not received, so I give the idea little thought. Rather like wishing to fly to the moon.” She glanced up at him. “I try to concentrate my efforts on what is before me.” Then she turned her attention back to her sister. “How do you ever expect to win if you do not pay attention?”
At this, Mariana smiled triumphantly at her sister, then laid her cards down. “Ha! I’ve beat you, Goosie. I have to wonder where your attention is this night.”
“Distracted by your nattering, I imagine. Besides, this is only a temporary setback,” Lucy told her as she gathered the discarded cards together and began to shuffle with the skill of a sharpster.
“Where did you learn to deal like that?” Malcolm asked, as mesmerized by her deft handling of the cards as Clifton was.
“Thomas-William,” she said, referring to her father’s servant. “When he and father traveled together on the Continent, Thomas-William would play cards with the other servants—”
“—because servants usually know more of their master’s business than he knows himself,” Clifton and Malcolm said together, quoting another of Ellyson’s maxims.
The ladies laughed.
“Don’t be so dazzled by my sister’s dealing,” Mariana offered. Then she winked at Malcolm and Clifton. “For it is how she cheats.”
Does she now? Clifton glanced up at Lucy, who had her gaze fixed on her cards, but that telltale pink hue had returned to her cheeks.
“What a terrible thing to say, Mariana,” she said. “What need have I of cheating, when you are such a poor player?”
“I just beat you,” her sister shot back.
“Mere luck,” Lucy replied with that smug sort of arrogance Clifton liked about her.
“Do you truly believe in luck?” he asked Lucy. She shook her head almost immediately. Too quickly, actually. “No. I think we make, or take, our own luck.”
He paused, for he knew that statement was naught but another of Ellyson’s proverbs. Everything about Lucy Ellyson—the way she ran the house, held her secrets, even disavowed love— rang with that same practicality that was her father’s hallmark, but Clifton suspected that they were all parts of the same carefully constructed façade, just like her faded fashions and ugly bonnets.
Parts of a great conspiracy to hide her true feelings, her heart.
He glanced down at the tray before him, the supper offered with a nonchalant air on the sole purpose that “they were most likely hungry,” but he knew what it truly was.
An apology and a peace offering.
And for just those reasons alone, Lucy fascinated him.
He reached for the bottle of claret and was about to pour himself another glass, when out of the corner of his eye he watched her finishing the deal. And spied something he doubted he would have noticed a week ago, before he’d come to this madhouse and listened to Ellyson’s lessons on being observant.
While her fingers moved skillfully as she dealt, making the cards fly across the green baize of the table, he realized that their whirling flight distracted nearly everyone from discerning that she could pluck a card from anywhere in the deck.
He looked from her hands to the cards on the table and shook his head slightly. And when he looked up at her, her eyes widened in recognition.
Just then, her sister said exactly what he was thinking, for she had picked up her cards and frowned heavily at the hand she’d been dealt. “You’re cheating, Goosie. I declare I won’t play if you continue to cheat.”
Lucy straightened, rearranging her cards. “Mariana, what a terrible thing to say. And in front of company. You know I never cheat.”
Then she did something she shouldn’t have. She took a furtive glance in his direction and their eyes met.
“Well, I don’t,” she insisted, looking away, her hands no longer as skilled. She dropped one of the cards and nearly overturned the rest in her trembling fingers.
No one other than Clifton seemed to notice her distracted movements.
“I’ll catch you one of these days,” Mariana muttered for all to hear. “I’ll catch you, Goosie. See that I don’t!”
“You can try,” her sister shot back. “You can try.” Then Lucy looked up at him again, and he couldn’t help himself; he grinned back at her.
For he already had.
Caught her, that was.
Lucy’s breath froze in her throat. He couldn’t have. No, he must be bluffing … teasing me. He couldn’t have caught me.
But the truth was right there in the arrogant tilt of his brow, the grin that cut across his square jaw.
The Earl of Clifton had caught her plucking a card from the middle of the deck.
Had the world as she knew it been tipped upside down? First he flattened Rusty and Sammy, and now this? Who was this man before her, this mystery of a nobleman?
Wasn’t that the reason you made this intimate little supper? Invited him here for this very improper encounter, so you could ply him with claret and discover more of his secrets?
Yet here he was chiseling out hers as easily as she could deal herself an ace.
Oh, gracious heavens, she’d always considered herself a matchless judge of men, of their characters, of their ability to fulfill the tasks Pymm selected them for, and now this!
The Earl of Clifton. A man she’d dismissed at first glance as completely unworthy, an arrogant mistake. And he’d fooled her. Pulled the wool over her eyes and deceived her utterly.
For he hadn’t cared a whit for her good opinion. Or for currying her favor. Or anything beyond stealing a kiss from her lips to prove that he had …
Had what?
A better notion of love than she did?
What if he does? a wry little voice whispered in her ear. What if he does know more?
“Picking locks and cheating at cards,” Malcolm said. He wiped his lips with his napkin and placed it beside his empty bowl. “You two are an illustrious pair.”
Much to Lucy’s horror, Mariana dashed right into that opening and, without the least bit of shame, said, “Thank you, sir. We have our father to thank, for he insisted we have much the same education as he had, just in case we ever discovered ourselves … in need, shall we say.” She pulled a hairpin slightly out of her hair and then tucked it back in. “Then again, if we hadn’t had those lessons, I’d have never liberated that wonderful bottle of claret.”
“And what education was it that your father had?” the earl asked.
Lucy opened her mouth to stop this line of questioning, but Mariana went on blithely, “Why, growing up in Seven Dials, of course. He was the finest fork who ever worked the streets of London.” Mariana preened before she glanced down at her hand and played her next card, as if she’d just commented about the pudding, or the weather, or the state of the coals in the grate.
Not telling their guests that their father had grown up pursuing criminal endeavors.
Lucy tried her best to concentrate on her cards and tell herself it didn’t matter as to their good opinion. It mattered naught.
And no, she wasn’t going to look at him and see if Mariana’s revelation had left him gaping in shock. No, she just couldn’t.
“Your father was a …” Mr. Grey struggled for a polite way to say it.
“A fork. A foyst. A buzman. A diver,” Mariana supplied, her delighted gaze fixed on Lucy’s absentminded discard. “In essence, gentleman, a pickpocket.” She plucked up the card before her, then glanced over at their guests. “Well, he was until His Grace caught him.”
“His Grace?” the earl sputtered over his glass of claret, nearly spilling it.
“Why, yes, the Duke of Parkerton. The old one, not the one who has the title now. Mad Jack’s father.”
“The Duke of Parkerton?” Clifton set his glass down, as if he didn’t trust himself to hold it. “He caught your father picking a pocket and didn’t have him hung for it?”
Lucy hadn’t a care that Mariana was her dearest sister or best companion.
She kicked her under the table.
Hard.
“Lucy!” Mariana protested. “Whatever is wrong with you? That hurt! And if you think such a distraction is going to help you, I’ll have you know I win.” She laid down her cards to show her perfect hand. “No, not at all,” she said, answering the earl’s question. “Why ever would the duke want to have Papa hung? He was only a ten-year-old lad.” She made a tsk, tsk noise as if she thought perhaps Clifton had quite possibly had too much claret.
Malcolm laughed. “Because, Mariana, stealing is a crime. And child or not, picking pockets is a hanging offense.”
She laughed, as if she had never heard such nonsense. “Not when it can be put to good use.”
The earl, still struggling to recover some semblance of his usual composure, asked, “You want us to believe that the Duke of Parkerton caught your father stealing and instead of handing him over to the watch, put those ‘talents’ to good use?” He said this not to Mariana but to Lucy, looking at her directly with that piercing gaze of his.
She felt rather like a butterfly pinned to a mat, but still she managed to reply. “Parkerton was Papa’s mentor, and our benefactor all these years.”
“Parkerton?” Clifton asked as if he hadn’t heard her correctly.
“Yes,” Lucy told him, sitting up straight. For something about the earl’s doubt nudged her. Really, she had nothing to be ashamed of. Her father had served his King and country with all the loyalty of a good Englishman. While at times her father’s actions had been both morally and legally questionable, he’d done what had been necessary to keep Britain’s enemies at bay.
And there was no shame in that.
Mariana began gathering up the discarded cards, tallying the points and adding them to the sheet of paper at her elbow. “After His Grace plucked Papa from the streets, he hired him tutors, sent him to Oxford and then on a Grand Tour. That was the beginning of Papa’s career for the Foreign Office.” She glanced over at her sister. “Oh, Goosie, remember the stories he used to tell us as children? Wonderful tales about his time in Egypt, in Russia, of how he met the contessa …” She paused for a moment. “Oh, yes, and when he saved Thomas-William from a slaver in France. Remember how he used to tell us all those glorious tales before we went to bed?”
Lucy considered kicking her sister again, for the claret had her prattling on like Mrs. Kewin and her spinster sister discussing the neighbors. “Yes, nothing like a story of murder and high treason to give one nightmares. I believe you spent most nights with bad dreams,” she replied. “But it is hardly a proper subject—”
“Proper, Lucy?” the earl asked, reaching for the bottle and coming over to the table to refill Mariana’s now empty glass.
