How to Impress a Marquess(35)

“Ew! She’s sketching that horrid injured insect!” cried Miss Pomfret. “With its broken leg and ooze.”

“Beatrice, that’s unnatural,” Fenmore said. “Why don’t you want to sketch something pretty like the other ladies?”

Lilith couldn’t control her temper any longer. “She can sketch whatever she blooming pleases!” she cried and stomped away.



An hour later, Lilith waited beside Beatrice on the bench outside the village church as the guests ventured into the shops. Lilith had declined to join them. She was content to watch the crows hop along the old tombstones and not engage in another emotionally trying conversation.

“Am I really unnatural?” Beatrice suddenly piped up.

So much for a brief respite from emotionally trying conversations.

“Of course not. Don’t let an arrogant ignoramus like Lord Fenmore make you feel less about yourself. There are many wiser grasshoppers in the world than he.”

Lilith’s words didn’t seem to help Beatrice. Little lines formed between her sister’s brows. “I don’t find pretty what other ladies think is pretty. I try very hard to like what I’m supposed to. Lady Marylewick probably thinks I’m hopeless.”

“Well, you fascinate me. I think you are brilliant.”

“I’m not. Don’t say things like that.”

“Are you insinuating that I’m a liar? Or that I’m not intelligent enough to recognize when someone is brilliant? I certainly hope not.”

“No! I…I…don’t know how to answer you now.”

Lilith patted her sister’s arm. “It’s best to agree with me. I’m always right in these matters. It’s one of my better traits.”

Beatrice peered at the grasshopper through the pressed sides of Lilith’s bonnet. “It’s so amazing. A perfect life composed of thousands of tiny living miracles. I don’t understand how a dress or bonnet could be as beautiful.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I wish I had been born a man. It would be much easier for me.”

“You’re absolutely perfect as you are.” Lilith hugged Beatrice. “Don’t let anyone tell you differently or try to change you. Keep studying this magnificent world and its inhabitants. Don’t ever—bloody hell!” She saw Lord Charles emerging from the tobacconist’s shop. She only had a brief window of time to escape before he tried to make eye contact and then demand her company. “I must go. I’m going to get some…some…toffee. Yes, toffee! It makes everything better.”

She fled in the direction of the confectioner’s around a corner. When she was safely out of Charles’s view, she stopped, pressed her hand to her heart, and took several calming breaths before proceeding to the confectioner’s.

Inside the squat shop were tiny mounds of toffee, meringues, and nougats behind glass. The scents of sugar, butter, and vanilla had the magic effect of easing her tense muscles and momentarily chasing away her anxious thoughts.

She opened her reticule and drew out some of the monies McAllister had given her. Penelope could use some toffee and Beatrice might enjoy the vanilla meringue. Lilith kept adding to her order, trying to linger a little longer in this sugary haven. She knew George wanted to marry her off to a respectable, genteel man, and she wondered how he would take the news when she ran away with a confectioner and lived happily ever after in his shop.

She took her candies, paper-wrapped, and stepped out. She still wasn’t ready to face Charles, Fenmore, George, Lady Cornelia, and all the problems they represented. Nor could she leave Beatrice alone with wolves. She decided to take the long way back to the village church, giving herself ample time to eat enough toffee to fortify her defenses.

She was passing by an alley when a motion caught her eye. She turned, thinking a cat had sprinted by, but instead saw two men conversing deep in the shadows. George and Fenmore.

She concealed herself behind the brick front and peered inside the alley.



George hadn’t visited a boxing parlor since leaving London. The tension in his mind and muscles roiled like a stoked-up engine. Last night Lilith had pleasured his cock, and this morning she sat shoulder-to-shoulder with Charles, smiling as the man taunted George. And those damned pictures she had shown him still circled in his brain, refusing to leave. Then, atop it all, to have Fenmore dallying about…

“It’s one week,” George growled at Fenmore and spiked his cane in the ground. “Can you show some semblance of proper manners toward my family for one bloody week?”

“Good God, man.” Fenmore raised his palms. “I just accompanied the ladies to the ruins. Penelope didn’t want to go. What? Did you think I would ravish a lady behind a bush? I wouldn’t put it past that saucy ward of yours. She’s always eyeing me like she wants something.”

George dropped the cane and slammed the man against the wall, pressing his knuckles against his throat.

Fenmore gurgled for breath.

“When you are in my county,” George said in a slow growl, “staying as a guest in my house, you will show bloody respect for my sister and my family. That includes Miss Dahlgren.”

“Maybe your sister should show some respect to me,” Fenmore choked. “Maybe she needs to learn how to be a proper wife.”

He lifted Fenmore by his collar until the man’s toes grazed the pavers and then slammed him against the bricks again. Air roared through George’s nostrils. It would be so easy to punch the straying rogue. Again and again, with his bare knuckles, breaking apart that vacant, arrogant expression the man always wore.

Fenmore, realizing his peril, kept his stupid mouth shut, but he emitted humming, frightened whimpers.

George kept Fenmore suspended as he reined in his rage. His love for his sister was the only thing sparing Fenmore injury at the moment. He didn’t want to further humiliate her with the talk that would arise if George beat her husband to a pulp.

“One week.” George shoved Fenmore again, releasing his grip.

The man, dazed, slumped against the wall.

George turned on his heel, retrieved his cane, and walked away, fury still trapped in his veins and no relief in sight.





Sixteen


“I must kill the sultan,” Lilith said, alone in the safety of her chamber. She broke off a bit of toffee and chewed nervously on it. “A merciful death.”

After witnessing the scuffle between George and Fenmore, she had rushed down the lane and hid in the cheese shop as George passed. Amid the stinking cheeses, she had fought back her tears. The more she learned of George’s sensitive heart and quiet honor, the more ashamed she felt. She was as guilty as his father and Charles of mocking him, except she had ridiculed him before the entire world under a cowardly nom de plume.

She was the cruelest one of all.

She couldn’t continue writing, knowing that each word betrayed George. The best thing she could do in this tangled, heart-wrenching situation was quickly end the story. Everyone wanted the sultan to die, a classic good-over-evil tale. Why not give them what they wanted and be done with it?

The valide sultan allowed Colette neither food nor water the next day. Colette’s mind turned hazy, but still she would not confess the formula of Greek Fire. In her confused state, her memory drifted back to the sultan’s thrilling kiss in the garden and the secret in the mysterious box. What was this secret the sultan desired her to see?

In the early hours of the morning, weak with hunger and driven by some dark compulsion that she couldn’t comprehend, Colette stumbled to the garden. She found the sultan waiting, as if knowing she would come.

He sat on a bench. His turban was gone and his dark locks flowed freely. The plain box now rested on his lap. In his powerful hands, he held a bunch of grapes.

“My dove, you are ravenous,” he said. “Come eat the fruit from my mouth.” He bit into a grape, letting the juices drip down his lips and chin. Hunger drove away her natural reservations. She readily sucked the sweet juice from his lips and took in the fruit.

“You have come again because of the secret,” he whispered. “It drives you into the night. It pounds in your mind like the beating of your own loving heart. Do not torture yourself, my dove. Sate your curiosity. Open the box.”

She could resist no longer. She knelt before him, lifted the lid slowly, and peered inside. In the dim light she could see nothing.

“It’s empty,” she cried. “You have tricked me.”

“It is merely too dark to see the thinnest of paper. So old that the text fades, but I know the words by heart.”

“What are they?”

“The secret to Greek Fire.”

“W-what?” cried Colette.

“What!” cried the author too. “Muse, do you mean the sultan had the secret the entire time? You’re supposed to be painlessly killing him via some dreadful accident, not turning the entire story around and…” Lilith paused, the implications sinking in.

“Oh,” she said.

“Oh,” again.

And then, “Ooooh!”

Her pen flew across the pages, barely able to keep up with her ideas.



George sat in his study, surrounded by dour paintings of his forefathers. He pressed his fingers to his temples, trying to ease the dull throb in his skull. Between Fenmore, Lilith, his mother, his sister, Charles, the house party, and Disraeli, he felt as though he had been holding back the tide. But the waters were growing stronger.