How to Impress a Marquess(16)

“Please excuse me for a small moment.” Lilith left Penelope with the footman and dashed along the walk to the confectioner’s. Three minutes later she emerged with a box filled with tiny paradises. She gave two toffees, as well as several pence, to a hungry child under the shop window and hurried to catch up with Penelope. “These are little pieces of heaven. You put them in your mouth and they melt into something sugary and magical. Here, have one. Penelope? Penelope?”

Penelope stared across the street, her eyes large, mouth gaping, and hands clenched as if witnessing some bloody horror. Was there an accident? Were people hurt? A dozen or so dreadful images flooded Lilith’s overactive imagination as she followed the line of Penelope’s gaze. A beautiful woman in a vivid yellow gown smiled intimately at the man whose elbow she clutched as he opened the door to their pied-à-terre. Just another garish actress and her benefactor. An everyday sight in London. Lilith released a relieved breath. No one was bleeding in the street. Then the man turned and gestured for his little yellow lovebird to enter. Beneath his top hat Lilith recognized the features of Lord Fenmore, Penelope’s husband!

Without thinking, Lilith shouted, “You blossoming arse!”

The only weapon she possessed was a box of toffee. She threw it, raining toffee onto the street. “You bloody, blossoming bumhole.”

The man’s head whipped around as a small but strong hand clamped onto Lilith’s shoulder, yanking her back into Madame Courtemanche’s entrance.

“Don’t make a scene,” Penelope whispered.

“What!” Lilith cried. “He’s a deceitful, turgid arse. He needs to know as much. You are the perfect lady and he dallies with…with that bright canary. ”

Penelope pressed her fingers to her temple. “Don’t make a scene.” Her voice was breaking. “Don’t!”

“Oh, Penelope,” Lilith whispered and tried to embrace her. “I’m sorry.” Penelope remained immobile, watching Lord Fenmore escort his mistress into a flat. When the door closed, Penelope yanked away from Lilith and rushed down the walk. Lilith and the footman hurried to catch up.

“We must do the next thing on the list,” Penelope cried. “That’s what’s most important. Lord Marylewick gave me a responsibility.” She opened her reticule with shaking hands and frantically rooted through it. “George’s list! It’s not here. I’ve lost the list. How could I have done that? I’m so stupid. Stupid! Stupid!”

Lilith retrieved the list from the ground where it had fallen. “Here it is,” she said quietly. “You didn’t lose it. You’re not stupid. Don’t ever think that. And look, item three is teach Lilith to drink tea properly. Let’s find a nice tea shop.” She took Penelope’s hand.

Penelope didn’t protest as Lilith led her. Shame poured into Lilith for all her mocking thoughts about Penelope. Her expression resembled that dazed, lost look that Lilith had worn the previous day, when the outside world was a big blur and the only thing she knew was how much her heart ached.

Two streets over Lilith found an establishment with the words Simon Brothers Tavern painted in gold letters above a large, paned window. Inside, well-dressed men and women crowded around a bar and the tables, drinking spirits and smoking. The ladies’ enormous hats shook with their happy laughter.

“Come,” Lilith said to Penelope.

“This—this doesn’t look like a tea house.”

“Of course it is,” Lilith lied and let the footman open the door. The sunlight reflected on the brass fixtures, stamped tin ceiling, and glasses on the tables, spreading beautiful white light over the chattering crowd.

“I don’t think George would approve of this place.” Penelope clutched her reticule to her chest.

“We must remember to ask Lord Marylewick if we should not have come here when he returns this evening to check on my progress.” Lilith dispatched the footman to the bar for a pot of tea, teacups, a bottle of wine, and three glasses. She clutched Penelope’s elbow and led her toward an empty booth in the back corner of the narrow room.

Penelope sat and ran her finger over a stain in the blue table linen. “Don’t tell George,” she finally whispered. “About seeing my husband. Promise me.”

“If you wish.”

Penelope continued staring at the stain. As Lilith studied Penelope’s bowed head, loneliness washed over her. She had a sense that Penelope wanted to talk and that she had wanted to talk to someone for a very long time—someone who understood and didn’t judge.

The footman brought the wine and tea. Lilith poured the glasses of wine, gave the footman one, and asked him to leave the ladies for several minutes.

Penelope shifted her thousand-yard stare from the table to the deep red tones of the wine.

“My cousins on my father’s side left me yesterday,” Lilith shared. “I trusted them. I thought I had finally obtained the life that I had dreamed of. But they…they broke my heart.”

“Fenmore broke my heart a few months after we were married.” Penelope poured a cup of tea, took a small sip, and then reached for the wine.

“I’m sorry. How painful to witness.”

“Yes.” She drank more of her wine. “It’s not the first time. I just wish I didn’t have to see it.”

Lilith ran her finger down the stem of her glass. “Have you thought about a divorce?”

Penelope’s head snapped up, her eyes hot, as though Lilith had asked her to commit murder. “I couldn’t do that to George. To Mama. It is wrong. What would people think?”

Lilith only shrugged. “I think it’s wrong to sacrifice your happiness for something as trivial as another’s opinion. Your mother should desire your happiness. And Lord Marylewick is fully grown. You shouldn’t feel the need to please or protect him.”

“You don’t understand George,” Penelope fired back. “You never have. You’re cruel to him like Pa…” She gazed down, not finishing her angry thought.

“Tell me about him. I’m mad with curiosity to know about this George who creates beautiful sketches.”

Penelope resumed studying the stain on the cloth.

Don’t shut down, Lilith thought. Talk. I’m dying inside.

“Tell me what you want to say, Penelope,” Lilith said gently. “It’s all right.”

Penelope shook her head. “It’s horrid to speak ill of your parents.”

So George’s problems began with his parents.

“Oh dear,” Lilith said. “Pray, my father was a handsome wastrel and foolishly died in a duel after cheating at cards. My dear mother abandoned me to boarding schools so she could start a new and better family. And my stepfather—your uncle—had a higher opinion of plague-ridden sewer rats than of me.” Lilith lifted her glass and gestured to Penelope before taking a sip. “There, I daresay you can’t possibly be as horrid as I am. You are absolved.”

Penelope flashed a tentative smile, like a fragile, tiny sea crab venturing from under its shell. “George is like you.”

Lilith couldn’t help but spew the wine from her mouth in the most unfeminine manner. She grabbed a napkin and dabbed her lips. “Sorry. I just find that, well, a little more than shocking. And pray, never tell George you think we are alike, the man would have an apoplexy.”

“I mean he enjoys art, or at least he did. When we were young, he was always drawing pictures and painting. This was before your mother married Uncle Reginald, so you wouldn’t know. George would make strange sculptures from twigs and objects he found about the estate. He painted on boards, on walls, on his clothes…anything he could find. When I was sad, he made books for me, all illustrations of my favorite stories because I couldn’t read then.”

“George? Big, tall, booming, all-things-proper, don’t-you-dare-be-different George? Are you quite sure you don’t have another brother named George you’ve kept hidden from me?”

Penelope laughed. A true, easy laugh.

“He wasn’t always big and tall. He was once small for his age and ever so thin. He didn’t want to ride horses, shoot, or play cricket—all the things my father loved. Papa was positively terrified that George would turn into what he called a…a…” She looked about to see if anyone was listening.

Lilith leaned forward. “A what?”

“Molly,” Penelope whispered. “You know, a man who—”

“Yes.”

“Father was quite different when other people weren’t around. To everyone else he appeared congenial but…” She paused.

Lilith could tell Penelope struggled to articulate emotions she couldn’t fully comprehend.

“We had responsibilities because of our birth,” Penelope continued. “We had to be examples. We couldn’t be…” She gazed up, hunting for words.

“Human,” Lilith supplied. “You were actors in a play. You couldn’t stray from the lines of the grand stage production We’re Britain’s Most Admired and Distinguished Family.”

“Yes.” Penelope lips curled into a relieved smile. “I shouldn’t say that, but yes.”