Page 47 of Inconvenient Honor
“When does Mr. Stewart arrive, ma’am?” the girl asked. “Shall I do up your hair?”
Walter Stewart. Damn. That one is a tad sharper than Heaton. She had forgotten the schedule. Nothing for it but to endure the afternoon call, plead headache, and slip out with Sahin’s pseudo-tradesman at dusk.
“No, I think not. A simple knot will do.” The maid frowned over Lily’s choice of unbecoming gray, but she let the girl dress her before she dismissed her. There would be time enough tomorrow to learn to do for herself.
Lily sat at her vanity and pulled her hair back, whipping it into a casual knot. She loosened it for effect. Best lookthe part. A little powder enhanced her pallor. She made a pained look into the mirror. Loss of weight, underlying pallor, and the powder made her look genuinely ill. It will do.
Deep clouds blanketed London that afternoon when Lily stood at the window looking out at Gilbert Street. All nature conspires to match my mood, she thought. And Stewart is late.
She looked around for something to occupy her wait, picked up Aunt Marianne’s needlework, and tossed it aside. The dear, sweet woman had taken to her bed with “the vapors,” to Lily’s relief. Deceiving her aunt depressed her most.She deserves better, but what she does not know, she cannot tell.
The papers, ironed and correctly presented, lay on a table by Lily’s favorite chair. Most households for women did not receive newspapers. Lily insisted on it. She sat and began to read, quickly scanning the little international news that made it into London’s rags. An item in the gossip columns caught her eye.
Lady SW attendedthe performance of Cymbeline last night on the arm of Lord RH the M of G. Their box included LC and two dukes. Can the long anticipated announcement be forthcoming this morning?
HasRichard offered at last? The Marble Marquess and the Ice Queen. Perfect. She tossed the paper aside and leaned her head back. Will this day never end?
Footsteps in the foyer broke into her thoughts. Stewart at last. She sat a little straighter, thought better of it, and relaxed her posture. She pondered how best to put a wan expression on her face when a voice broke it.
“You look ill.” Not Walter Stewart. Blue eyes bore into her. Richard. Damn.
“I am not ‘at home’ today.” Servants, she saw, had left the door open.
“Yet here you are. I left orders my men were to be admitted at all times.”
“I left orders to admit only Walter Stewart today.”
“Yet here I am.” He stood in front of her, hands behind his back, glowering down.
“I have a headache,” she told him. “I planned to tell Walter I would stay in today.” She forced herself to keep her eyes on his, willing him to leave.
The moment dragged on, something hot and crackling in the air between them, until he looked away, turning to face the window.
“I came to discuss something.”
Lily did sit straight up then. “My father?”
“No, no.” He looked back. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“What then?”
He paced to the window, leaned on the sill, and looked back at her. “You look ill.”
“I told you, I don’t feel well. Why are you here? Not that certainly.”Get on with it and be gone.
Richard paced back in front of her, turned and began to fidget with a Dresden shepherdess on Aunt Marianne’s mantle.The Marquess of Glenaire does not fidget. I can’t fathom what he means to say.
“Am I to wish you happy?” she asked, glancing at the discarded papers.
He shot her a pained look. “No. Not yet, but that is part of why I’m here.” He walked closer and stretched his hands toward Lily where she sat. “What happened during our stay at Chadbourn Park?—”
Lily squeezed her eyes shut.Not that. Please not that again.
“—compels me to remind you what lies between us.”
“Nothing lies between us.”
“So you say. Nevertheless I am obliged to offer you marriage. That is the least that I owe you after what I took.”
