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Another fact was that Alistair didn’t like the idea of Selby joining some other club and laughing like that when Alistair wasn’t around to hear it.
Selby laughed again, causing a lock of hair to tumble forward onto his forehead. He pushed it back, wreaking havoc on his hair, not that it had been terribly orderly even at the start of the evening. Really, he ought to cut it. It had no business falling onto his collar like that, flouting all standards of decent grooming. Surely that was why Alistair wanted to smooth it into place using his own hands.
Now that Alistair had his spectacles on, he could fully appreciate Selby’s impish grin. He wished he had left them in his pocket. It was impossible to retain a sense of gravity while looking at that impudent mouth, that pert chin.
It was only a companionable touch, one man to another. Men were always jostling and backslapping, treating one another with casual friendliness like so many puppies. She had participated in this easy camaraderie time and again, but there was nothing casual or easy about being near Lord Pembroke. Not only because of his rank and power, but because she wanted him, and she couldn’t disregard the sparks of warmth that seemed to travel from his body to hers.
His hand slid into her hair, massaging the back of her scalp. She suppressed a groan of pleasure. Now, why in hell did it feel so good when other people rubbed one’s head and so pointless when one did it oneself? But this felt more than good. She felt like she needed a bucket of water dumped over her, but still she couldn’t summon up the self-control to pull away, to come up with any excuse to leave this settee, to return home, anything.
“Robin. That’s what I’ll call you.” “Like Queen Elizabeth’s Robin,” she commented, only realizing that comparing herself to a queen’s supposed lover was not perhaps quite the thing.
Robin laughed, a single mirthful crack that seemed to warm the room by several degrees, and Alistair found himself smiling in return. Here, in this shabby room, he was happier than he could ever remember being.
Alistair, who rarely drank more than a single glass of brandy or wine, only knew that his insides felt warm and his mind mercifully clear of his usual cares. This, he suspected, was how everyone else felt all the damned time.
There were so many foolish mistakes that he’d make if only given half a chance. Robin had been sent from his dreams—or maybe his nightmares—to tempt him into making every single one of them.
Sometimes he forgot that other people had crushing responsibilities and fears and expectations. He was not alone, not in his burdens, not in his life, not in this house—not tonight, at least.
“I’ve found the fears are there whether you fret or not. So I sweep them aside and try to enjoy myself while I can.”
Suddenly Alistair felt furious. Not at Robin, not even at himself, but at everyone who gave a damn whose arms he was in. “I’m the bloody Marquess of Pembroke and I’ll do what I please with my arms, thank you very much. I’d like to see anybody stop me.”
That was his greatest asset as a marquess—simply existing, like a loaded and cocked pistol.
when he groaned she felt the vibration against her mouth. So she did it again. He liked what she was doing and by God, she liked it too. Any further analysis was beyond her.
He sat back down at his desk and attempted to write Robin a note. Something brief and friendly, just the sort of thing you write another man after licking his tongue on your sofa.
For a moment, Charity thought she might actually faint. Oh, why did today have to be the day she finally developed feminine sensibilities?
He found that he didn’t care terribly much whether Robin was a man or a woman. That was quite secondary, compared to the fact that Robin was a fraud and a cheat. Surely the fact that he didn’t care spoke badly of his faculties. There were men who preferred other men, and kept damned quiet about it, and there were men who preferred women. To not take a stand one way or the other seemed wanton. Greedy. Not at all like the sober, measured gentleman Alistair wanted to be.
“Well, actually . . .” Gilbert began. Alistair hastily drained his glass. Had any sensible observation commenced with “Well, actually”? If so, Alistair had never heard it.
“I’m not going to expose you or your sister, or do anything to harm you.” He spoke so gravely that it felt like an oath. Her eyes went wide. “Why not?” “Revenge, like horticulture, is beneath me.”
“Don’t call me that unless you mean to be my friend.” Friend. “Robin.” He heard her sharp intake of breath. “I’ve tried, but I don’t think I can stop being your friend.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked. He lifted his gaze to meet hers and raised a single eyebrow by way of answer. That eyebrow did all kinds of things to her that eyebrows weren’t supposed to do.
they would never touch one another again. As simple as that. When all else failed, he could still rely on his aptitude for self-denial.
They were drinking champagne while listening to a man in a velvet dinner coat read a poem about rats.
God help her, but she was going to have to add a mania for subdued tailoring to her list of depravities.
“Do you want me to?” she asked again. “Yes, for God’s sake, come home with me.” The carriage was slowing down. “Please.” “And what will we do when we get there?” “I’ll draw you a picture once we get inside.”
A changeling. She liked the sound of that, as silly as it was. She had been in between for so long. Neither man nor woman, neither servant nor gentlefolk. Neither fraud nor honest.
Because that’s what this was. Love, or something near enough to it. It would end in heartbreak, but in Charity’s experience it generally did. That knowledge was never enough to stop it from happening, though, and thank God for that. Imagine if people carried their hearts around like fragile birds’ eggs, carefully preventing the smallest crack or injury. Everybody would keep a polite distance, safe and protected and utterly alone.
“You.” She rose to her feet and pointed an accusing finger at him. “You are nothing but an arrogant, overbearing bastard.” All true. All irrelevant. He opened his mouth to say as much, but she cut him off.
They stared stupidly at one another for a moment. Then, to her horror, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Alistair!” she cried, wiping her hand on her skirts. “Don’t you dare behave gallantly to me.”
“Louisa told Mrs. Trout you meant it as a present.” She opened her eyes wide with feigned innocence. “They both thought it very gracious of you.” He looked so outraged at the idea of being considered gracious that she couldn’t hold back her laughter.
But that wasn’t how love worked. Love wasn’t a sum safely invested in the five percents. One couldn’t prevent future sorrow by capitalizing on present bliss. All he could do was have this moment, wring all the joy out of it, and then somehow continue after it was over.
This was what money and power were for: not to hoard up in the name of prudence and security, but to spend and use to take care of the people who needed it. The people who needed him, or at least whose lives would be better for a bit of help. Two months of knowing Robin, and his sense of value had twisted around so that he could scarcely recognize it anymore.
During the two weeks that passed since he received the newspaper, various Allenbys found daily excuses to visit. Mrs. Allenby, it would seem, had adopted Alistair and there was no reversing the process.
“My dear Aunt Pettigrew,” he said in his most aristocratic tone. “If you do not find brotherly love and filial respect to be standards worthy of being upheld, then you and I shall simply have to disagree.”
Alistair walked directly to the stables and was in his traveling chaise within a quarter of an hour. By the time he realized he was still holding the kitten it was too late to turn back.
He took her hands in his, nearly crushing them. “Hear me now, Robin. I will marry you regardless of what you’re wearing. And I will marry you. You could be dressed as a goat or as the Archbishop of Canterbury and it’s all the same to me.”
“Alistair, do you realize that you have a kitten peeking out of your coat?” “We’ll discuss kittens later. Will you marry me, Robin?”
“It will be my pleasure, my absolute delight to deal with anyone who wants to make trouble for my wife or children. You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’m afraid you haven’t yet realized how much trouble this will all be.” “You’ve been nothing but trouble since I met you. And I’ve never been happier. I want a lifetime of trouble from you.”
“Robin, I don’t think I’ll ever have the words to describe what you did for me. I was living a half life until that day you let Louisa’s bonnet loose in Hyde Park. Portia says I was on ice, and she has the right of it. I wasn’t living. I was only . . . there.” “Well,” she said, her eyes wet, “somebody really ought to build a statue of me. I’m amazing.”
She was the only wife for him, she was the only conceivable mistress for this house. Dreary and derelict, Broughton needed champagne laughter and infinite sunniness. It needed love. He needed love.
For weeks she had felt lucky to be desired by a man who was open-minded enough to tolerate her strange attire. But it occurred to her now, looking at his darkening eyes and feeling his erection hardening beneath her touch, that it wasn’t a question of toleration. He liked this. He liked her, funny clothes and odd hair and the entire in-betweenness of her. She wasn’t an ordinary woman, but he wasn’t an ordinary man either. They fit together, and it felt right.
Hugh Furnival, who had known Robin since Cambridge, seemed only minorly discomfited. “Well, I knew you weren’t quite in the ordinary way of things,” he said after a mere moment of stunned silence. “I wondered if you might be French.”
From Furnival, she knew that Alistair had received the cut direct from a few gentlemen at his club, but when she questioned Alistair about it, he only said that he had been looking for a way to have fewer dull conversations, and that if he had known that making an improper marriage would do the trick he might have tried it a decade ago.
