Chapter 15
Ruby balanced several boxes of live bugs—beetles?—in her hands and tried very hard not to drop them as she pushed her way into the disused stables.
They had spent the twenty-four hours since Signor Neri’s arrival in a flurry of activity.
Alice and Tamsin had taken turns entertaining the signore on jaunts across the Cornish cliffsides while everyone else raced around Pomeroy House and tried to make it presentable.
Ruby had painted and carted furniture, and Archer and Lamentation had darted about locking doors to rooms that held various illicit items. Wall had transitioned fully into the role of French chef, and Eugénie had been charged with the creation of a luxurious suite for Zenobia as far away as was possible from Vanessa, toward whom Zenobia had developed a powerful antipathy.
Gerry had not been able to participate. If he left Zenobia’s side, she howled until he returned. If anyone else dared to approach—even Lamentation—she growled low in her throat and showed her tiny, pearl-white teeth.
By the morning, Ruby had turned to an enthusiastic decoration of the remaining bedchambers, including Tamsin’s and Alice’s. Alice had consented to have the beetles relocated to the stables, so long as Ruby had promised that Alice could attend to their habitation regularly.
She’d just settled the creatures into an abandoned stall—she hoped that they got on; if they ate one another Alice would be crushed—when she heard a noisy splintering and then a muttered curse.
She peeked out around the corner of her stall, though of course she already knew who it was. She recognized his voice.
Archer held an immense wooden crate, which he’d evidently knocked into a beam as he’d entered.
The bottom of it had broken open, and out of it had spilled an extraordinary cache of white lace stockings, which he was hastily stuffing back into the upended container.
His jaw was sharp and clean-shaven, and his dark hair tumbled over his eyes, obscuring all that piercing blue.
She had scarcely spoken to him since Neri’s arrival.
Since their kiss, rather. Since she’d told him everything she knew—revealed her own secrets—and then plunged, reckless and falling, into his embrace.
She cleared her throat, and he looked up, and oh, she felt like a soap bubble, thin and floating. Her heart was in her throat as she looked at him, and worse—
Far worse. She feared her heart was in her eyes.
He’d run with her back to the house, and when she’d fallen behind, he’d laughed and pretended to gloat in his victory, and then bent to fiddle with his shoe and feigned shock when she outstripped him.
He’d held her hand.
And when she had been poised to give up the Pomeroy House scheme—when she had been certain that everything had come to an end, the last brilliant vestige of her dream stamped out—he had not let it happen.
He had lied absurdly, madly, and somehow brought her wishes into being.
He had transformed the fabric of the world so that she might remain here, with him.
A lightning strike.
Could it be so?
But she knew herself—knew her tendency to embroider and dream. She held herself back and tried to make her voice light. “Those are fetching. I’m surprised you could spare them from your wardrobe.”
He blinked at her and then looked down at the stockings. The corner of his mouth tipped up. “I hear white is quite out this Season. Lady Alice says I’ll be barred from Almack’s if I turn up in stockings any color other than heliotrope.”
“Well. Alice would know. To the bonfire with these, then?”
“Oh, undoubtedly. Kindling, all.”
He was still smiling at her, but something in it was . . . not right. She could not have said what, precisely—he was still dimpled, still soft-eyed. But there was an edge of falseness to it, a lightness that she sensed he did not truly feel.
She wobbled, just a trifle, as she spoke. “They’re French? These stockings?”
Smuggled, she meant.
She was not certain if she ought to ask. Things had shifted between them after her revelations on the beach, and then again with Neri’s appearance. They were on the same side now, their forces joined to prepare for the princess’s arrival. No longer at odds.
And yet she feared saying too much, as she so often did. Perhaps she was meant to pretend, even now, not to know.
He looked down at the crate again, then brushed a bit of straw from where it clung to the topmost scrap of lace. “Not really. These are from Wales. We purchase them wholesale, then cart them to London and pass them off as illicit French ones. Turns a shocking profit.”
“You . . .” She hesitated, but her curiosity won out. “You don’t actually smuggle things, then?”
He sighed shortly. “Believe me. We smuggle plenty. It’s an even race between the things I oughtn’t have in the house and the things I merely lie about instead.”
She opened her mouth, helpless to hold back her questions, but his mouth twisted down, and he cut her off.
“Ruby.” His jaw tightened, a tiny pulse obvious in the hollow of his cheek. “Lady Ruby. We did not have a chance to speak last night. I’ve been hoping to draw you aside.”
“Oh,” she said, and even though her instincts were shouting that something was wrong, hope still broke loose inside her, buoyant and irrepressible.
He’d wanted to get her alone. Her brain spun out a brief fantasy before she could stop it—his big hands on her waist again, her back against the rough wood of the stall—
“You will have to tell your father you’re here,” he said.
Her heart pitched at the words.
He blew out a breath. “I’m afraid I’ve made that unavoidable with my deception. The next time Neri writes to your father, the signore will be sure to mention encountering you at Pomeroy House. You cannot hope to keep your whereabouts secret from your father now.”
“Oh,” she said again.
It occurred to Ruby then that she had closed the distance between them, edged nearer to his warm, solid form somewhere in between their remarks. She took a very small step back and hoped he would not notice. Cursed herself for her foolish, ebullient hope.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Tam and I talked it over yesterday—she’s going to do her best to persuade Neri to bring Princess Serafina to London, rather than inviting my father here.
Alice has offered to accompany the princess on the journey.
But still—” She swallowed. “It’s possible that Neri will mention me to my father.
Perhaps if my father inquires, I can say that we stopped by to visit the manor on a brief sojourn from the Bridestowe estate. ”
That seemed plausible. The earl would probably believe it.
“I don’t expect my father to ask too many questions of Neri,” she added. “At least—not about me.”
She said it casually—she thought she did—but Archer’s jaw ticked again.
She barreled onward. “In my letter, I’ll be certain to mention that you have everything well in hand here. I shan’t mention your crew, of course. I won’t—”
“Ruby,” he said, and then seemed to grind his teeth. “Lady Ruby.”
She quashed everything inside her. Ruthlessly stamped out any wild imaginings at the sound of her name in his mouth. “Yes?”
“I’m—sorry.” He was still tight-lipped, stiff, uncomfortable. “I should not have importuned you on the beach.”
She drew back, shocked into speech despite herself. “You did not . . . you did not importune me.”
“I did.”
“Of course you did not. How on earth could you think—” She knew she should stop talking, that she was poised to reveal too much. But as usual she could not stop her own reckless words. “How could you possibly believe that I did not share in your enthusiasm?”
“I importuned you,” he said again. His shoulders were tight, and he was not looking at her, his dark lashes shielding his eyes. “I took advantage. I should not have done so.”
With considerable effort, she strangled another protest.
She’d practically begged him to continue on. Her fingers had been in his hair, her mouth open beneath his. Don’t stop on my account, she’d said, as blunt and plain as day. He could not believe her indifferent. It was impossible.
Was this meant to be some sop to her dignity? Some misguided attempt to allow her to salvage her pride—to pretend she had not wished for his embrace?
He was still looking down—at his shoes, perhaps. At the crate of stockings at his feet. “It won’t happen again.”
It was easy to make sense of his words, to fit them into place in the story of her life. Of course he did not wish to kiss her again. She had dreamed herself once more into an impossible flight of fancy, as she so often did. And yet . . .
She’d never felt so right in her own skin as she had with him.
Astonishing, how much it hurt to have this new hope dashed: that this man might somehow want her exactly as she was.
Her nose burned. She plucked at a piece of straw on her glove. “You needn’t apologize. I had no expectations of you.”
“No,” he said flatly. “Of course you did not.”
The bit of straw had become entangled, somehow, in her glove’s lace trim. She wanted to yank at it. She wanted to tear it free. “I’ll compose a letter to my father. I am . . . I have made a great deal of progress in the house. It will be as ready for the princess’s arrival as I can make it.”
Ruby had thought, when she’d first entered society and been such a miserable failure, that she need only try harder.
If she read The Tatler instead of The Times, dressed in camelopard and wore her sleeves puffed, eventually she would take.
She would be invited to dance; she would have a houseful of callers.
Society would deem her acceptable. And so would her father.
But it had not worked. There had been no effort great enough to effect that sort of transformation.
And here at Pomeroy House—as she’d painted and cleaned, as she’d bantered with Archer and kissed him in the cove and tried to protect his crew—she’d begun to think that perhaps she need not change herself after all. Perhaps she, Ruby Ballimore, was already enough.
But. Well.
It seemed she’d been wrong.
“I have to go.” She looked down at the ground, away from the straw that still clung to her gloves. Away from Archer. “I will let you know when I hear from my father.”