Anna Campbell – Regency Rogues and Rakes: Silk is for Seduction / Scandal Wears Satin / Vixen in Velvet / Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed / A Rake's Midnight Kiss / What a Duke Dares (страница 37)
Lucie went out, cradling the doll as though it were a living infant. Clevedon rose and watched her go out, through the door to the back of the shop. He was smiling, and it was a smile Marcelline had never seen before. It was not his charming smile or his seductive one or his winning one.
It was fond and wistful, and she could not withstand it. It won her and weakened her will more effectively than any of his other smiles could have done.
Which only made her angrier.
“Clevedon,” she began.
He turned back to her, the smile fading. “You may not rake me over the coals,” he said. “She set out to captivate me, much as her mother did—”
“She’s six years old!”
“You both succeeded,” he said. “What was I to do? She’s a little girl. Why should she not have a doll?”
“She has dolls! Does she seem neglected to you? Deprived in any way? She’s
“That’s all you think about. Your business.”
“It’s my life, you great thickhead! This”—she swept her hand to indicate the shop—“This is how I
“I’m not—”
“This is how I feed and clothe and house and educate my daughter,” she raged on. “This is how I provide for my sisters. What must I do to make you understand? How can you be so blind, so willfully obtuse, so—”
“You’ll make me run mad,” he said. “Everywhere I turn, there you are.”
“That’s monstrous unfair! Everywhere I go, there is your great carcass!”
“You upset everything,” he said. “I’ve been trying for a fortnight to propose to Clara, and every time I steel myself to it—”
“Steel yourself?”
“Every time,” he went on, unheeding,
The door to the back of the shop opened again and Leonie came in.
“Oh, your grace,” she said, feigning surprise, though she’d probably heard the row from the stairs. Marcelline hoped the seamstresses had followed orders and left early, else they’d have had an earful.
“He was about to leave,” Marcelline said.
“No, I wasn’t,” he said.
“It’s closing time,” Marcelline said, “and we know you aren’t buying anything.”
“Perhaps I shall,” he said.
“Leonie, please lock up for me,” she said. To him she said, “I’m not keeping my shop open all night to pander to your whims.”
“Do you plan to throw me out bodily?” he said.
She could knock him unconscious. Then she and her sisters could drag him out into the alley behind the shop. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d had to dispose of a troublesome male.
“You’re too big, curse you,” she said. “But we’re going to settle something, once and for all.”
Approaching Marriages in High Life.—A marriage is on the tapis between Mr Vaughan and Lady Mary Anne Gage, sister of Lord Kenmare. Viscount Palmerston, it is said, will shortly be united to the rich Mrs Thwaites.
She met chaos.
Worktable covered with scraps of fabric, thimbles, thread, pincushions. Floor littered with debris. Chairs left where they’d been pushed out. It looked as though seamstresses had fled or been chased out.
She didn’t have time or mind to wonder at it. She didn’t have time or mind to put two and two together. The state of the room was one more trial in a long, wearying day of biting her tongue and maintaining an even temper in the face of stupidity, rudeness, and ill-usage. A long day of crushing her own wants and giving all her energy to winning and pleasing.
She’d deal with this latest aggravation later.
Clevedon first.
She turned to face him, bracing her hands against the edge of the disgracefully cluttered worktable.
She took pride in the neatness and order of her shop, a stunning contrast to life in her parents’ household, or what had passed for a household. But it didn’t matter what he thought of the disarray, she told herself. How would he know the difference between how a workroom ought and ought not to be maintained? And what did he care?
“You’re not to come here again,” she said. “Ever.”
“That suits me,” he said. “This is the last place on earth I’d wish to be.”
“You’re not to buy my daughter any more gifts,” she said.
“Why did you think I would?”
“Because she’s a conniving little minx who knows how to wrap men about her finger,” she said.
“So like her mother,” he said.
“Yes, I connived, and I wrapped you about my finger. But now I’m done with that. What did I ever want of you but your betrothed?”
“We’re not betrothed,” he said, “thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me?” she said with a mocking laugh. Mocking him. Mocking herself. “You’re not betrothed because of
“Clara doesn’t need—”
“But why should you take any trouble, when you take for granted everything you have? You’re used to getting whatever you want and losing interest as soon as you get it.”
“I love her,” he said. “I’ve loved her since we were children. But you—”
“It’s my fault, is it?” she said. “I’m the demon destroying your happiness? Only look at yourself and listen to yourself. Like every other man, you want what you can’t have. Like every other man, you’ll stay interested—even obsessed—until you get it. You came here this evening because you can’t think straight—because it drives you mad not to have something you want.”
His color darkened, and she saw his hands clench. “If you think that something is you, think again,” he said. “I don’t want you. But you want me, and I feel so sorry for you.”
Inwardly, it was as though she’d walked into a wall. Her head pounded and pain shot deep, deep inside.
She wanted him. She wanted to be the heartbreakingly beautiful girl he loved. She wanted to be someone else: a woman who mattered to him and to all those who mattered, instead of a nobody to be used and discarded. She wanted everything her family had taken away: every opportunity they’d squandered and all the damage done to her future long, long ago, generations before she was born.
Outwardly, she didn’t blink. “Then send me more customers,” she said. “I find money a great comfort in any calamity.”
She heard his sharp inhale. “By gad,” he said. “By gad, you’re a devil.”
“And you’re an angel?” She laughed.
He crossed the room, and in that instant she knew what would happen. But she was a devil and so was he, and she only stood there, gripping the table, daring him, daring her own destruction.
He stood over her, looking down into her dark, brilliant eyes. They mocked and taunted, as her voice had mocked and taunted him with the ways he lied to himself and everyone else.
The truth was, he was no angel. Three years ago, he’d abandoned his responsibilities, gone abroad, and found himself. He’d settled in Paris because he could be free there as he could never be in England. In Paris, his hunger for excitement and pleasure could do no damage to those he loved.
She promised nothing but damage, everywhere.
She was wrong for him in every possible way, and especially wrong at this time. Why couldn’t he have met her a year ago, three years ago?
But when he looked down into her eyes, right and wrong meant nothing. He and she were two of a kind, and like called to like, and he wanted her. And she, who read him so easily and so well, had spoken one needle-sharp truth after another.
Yes, he’d go on wanting her until he had her.