Chapter Twelve #2
Samuel started, staring with wide eyes. What the devil was she talking about? Oh, she played the delicate Society flower, but she surely did not believe she could take on the whole government?
Though if anyone could…
“I quite understand,” Mr. Todd was saying, “but the fact remains—”
“And I am certain that you are able to act in this matter with the utmost discretion,” Rose continued, smiling at Samuel as though they shared a secret.
Whatever it was, it was not shared.
The solicitor was flushing again. “Oh, anything you wish to tell me, Lady Aylesbury, I would be more than happy to keep quiet.”
“Well, then, here is the truth: and as I said, Mr. Todd, we would prefer it if the truth could be shared with as few people as possible. I understand a few government officials may need to be taken in your—into our confidence, but we would prefer it if that was the least number of people you can manage. Is that not right, dear?”
Samuel started. “What? Right. Yes. The truth should not be shared.”
A truer word had never been spoken. He watched with mounting dread as Rose sighed, shook her head as though she were about to tell a most tragic family tale, and looked beseechingly at the solicitor.
“If the news were to get out… Well, it would truly be a shame for the name to Todd, Todd, and Todd to be so sullied with the fact that you could not be trusted…”
It was very well done, Samuel realized. The hesitancy, the trust, the lingering looks that suggested most strongly that Rose could not wait to tell the solicitor the truth about how exactly Great-Aunt Tessie managed to accumulate a king’s ransom…
Yes, it was very clever.
The trouble was, whatever was about to be uttered from those luscious lips was not the truth. How could it be?
So it would be a lie.
“—most honored to be in your confidence—”
“Yes, I know,” Rose said with a teasing laugh. “Well, the long and short of it, Mr. Todd, is that at the bottom of this story is an actress.”
Samuel’s heart stopped.
It stopped for a very long time. At least three heartbeats should have gone by in the time that it halted, and when his pulse started again there was a great pain within him.
Somehow managing to prevent himself from grasping his chest, Samuel wondered how quickly he could get her out of here. If he lifted her bodily, would she still be able to speak? Would she still spill the secret of their connivance?
“An actress?” Mr. Todd repeated.
Rose nodded sagely. “Yes, Great-Aunt Tessie was an actress. Would you like a cough drop, dear?”
Samuel had yelped in a hoarse voice and managed to shake his head as his mute tongue attempted to formulate words. Any words. Any words!
Great-Aunt Tessie, an actress? Why on earth did Rose think that this was a sufficiently good lie?
“As I am sure you can imagine, Mr. Todd, being a man of the world, Great-Aunt Tessie’s acting exploits gained her a great deal of admirers, and I am led to believe that many of the jewels she was gifted from said admirers were transformed into property over time,” Rose was saying blithely, as though lying to the law for a living was something she had not only contemplated, but perfected.
“A long career, you know—and the properties one owns can be let out, and they generate money, and that money is in turn invested…you understand.”
Samuel understood. He understood that he was going to prison. Was that not the consequence for lying to the government?
Mr. Todd cleared his throat. “I do understand, Lady Aylesbury—and may I say how calmly you can speak of such a profession. An actress, goodness!”
Somehow, Samuel was on his feet, and he was pointing a finger at the flinching solicitor. “How dare you speak to my wife like that?”
“M-My lord, I did not—”
“Hush, Samuel, the man did nothing wrong,” Rose said hastily, tugging his sleeve. “Honestly, you are too protective of your great-aunt.”
The last few words were intoned sharply, a definite warning in her voice, and Samuel somehow came back to himself.
Ah. Yes. Right. Great-Aunt Tessie.
“Well, with all that cleared up, I have no further questions,” said Mr. Todd, his shoulders slumping, as if personally disappointed in himself that he could think of no pretense to keep the beautiful Marchioness of Aylesbury in his office. “Thank you for your, ahem, speedy response to my note.”
And it was handshakes and nods and ‘Anytime’ and ‘What a pleasure,’ and somehow through that whirlwind, Samuel managed to find himself standing outside the offices of Todd, Todd, and Todd, with Rose’s hand looped through the crook of his arm and his carriage before him.
“There,” said Rose in a satisfied sort of voice. “That wasn’t too difficult, was it?”
Samuel blinked. “Did… Did what I think just happened actually happen?”
“I really have no idea what you are talking about,” said his temporary wife happily. “Are you going to help me into the carriage?”
Moving in a dream, utterly unsure what he was doing, Samuel helped into the carriage the brazen actress who had just lied—lied!—to a man whom he was almost sure was a government informer. He followed her into the carriage and sat down, hardly certain who or what he was now.
An accessory to lying?
“You are very quiet,” Rose said quietly as the carriage rumbled forward.
Quiet? Samuel did not think he would ever be able to speak again. What was the point, if his newfound wife was just going to lie about everything?
“You are displeased with me.”
That got his attention. Eyes sharpening, Samuel looked at the woman seated next to him and wondered how on earth an actress of that caliber had ever been down on her luck.
“I am not displeased, no,” he said shortly. “Surprised, certainly.”
“‘Surprised’?” She was pressed up against him in the carriage, though why, he was not sure. There was plenty of room on her side. “You think a woman should not speak the truth?”
Samuel tried not to laugh, he really did. “Rose, you just told a pack of lies to a man I’m almost certain will tell the authorities.”
“‘A pack of lies’?” Rose’s eyes were wide in mock surprise—at least, he had to assume it was mock surprise. “Why on earth do you think that?”
“Well!” There was little room for Samuel to throw up his hands in the carriage, but he managed it. “All that nonsense about Great-Aunt Tessie being an actress, and jewels being poured into her lap—”
“I’m not sure I exactly said that,” pointed out Rose in a far-too-reasonable voice.
“You know what I mean!” Samuel’s breath was short and he was almost certain the walls of the carriage were closing in.
Oh, the woman was a marvel, certainly, but the question was: what else could she lie about so convincingly? What did he truly know of her, really?
“I will have you know that the great Contessa Margolotta was a stupendous actress.”
Samuel’s voice died in his throat as he stared at the flushing but obstinately bold young woman. “I… I… What?”
Rose adjusted her skirts, entirely unnecessarily.
“The great Contessa Margolotta. Though she preferred to go by ‘Miss Margolotta’ for her stage name. Your great-aunt, as your sister Frank told me, and I must say I was astonished to discover the connection. She was a great actress, and I knew that because I shared a stage with her—and the jewels were not poured into her lap, I’ll have you know, but pressed lovingly into her hands.
When they were not placed around her neck. ”
It was all Samuel could do to keep his lungs moving. This was nonsense. He was living in a dream world.
Great-Aunt Tessie…an actress?
“You cannot be serious,” Samuel murmured.
“After Frank’s mention of her name and title, I honestly couldn’t believe it myself.
I asked that butler of yours for more details of the family tree,” Rose said cheerfully, as though temporary wives to premature marquesses frequently rummaged through the family tree looking for scandal.
“I was astonished to discover that the two women were one and the same, but there it is.”
Samuel blinked. Then he blinked again.
The beautiful, utterly confusing, and most definitely his wife woman before him did not disappear.
“You… You knew her?” he croaked.
Rose nodded with a smile. “I did. I also suspected that something of this sort would occur—women, owning property? The very idea. Most men cannot abide it, so I thought it might be useful for me to share that little snippet of family history. Stave off any more serious questioning, that sort of thing. I perhaps should have checked with you first, but there it is.”
There it is.
She… She is magnificent. Samuel could hardly believe it, but somehow, Rose had seen off a family scandal, kept his newfound fortune, and done so with such charm and elegance that Mr. Todd was half in love with her already.
Rather like himself.
Samuel pushed the thought away sternly. He could not fall in love with the woman he had hired—yes, hired to pretend to be his wife!
That was, she was his wife. But not for long.
“You knew her?” It was still difficult to take in.
“I am rather more surprised that you knew her,” shot back his wife with a sardonic smile. “She always gave me to understand that she had little time for family.”
“She liked me. I visited…oh, once a month? Sandwiches and scones, gossip and rumor, that sort of thing.” Samuel had rather enjoyed his monthly visit to Great-Aunt Tessie. It was hard to believe they were over, in a way. “I shall miss her.”
“I am sure she loved your company.”
“And yet,” Samuel could not help but add, “you knew her all this while.”
“You… You do not seem pleased.” The pleasing smile which had for the earlier part of the carriage journey adorned Rose’s lips had disappeared.
“I am very pleased,” Samuel managed to say. “Thank you.”
Rose’s brow crinkled. “You do not look pleased.”
What possessed him to say what he said next, Samuel would never know. “Then let me show you.”
And he was kissing her—kissing her as though his life depended on it, which he rather thought it did. Samuel had expected Rose to draw back, to accept one kiss but then push him away, and he almost groaned with the effort not to crush her against the carriage seat.
His concerns were utterly unfounded. It was he who was pushed against the carriage seat, Rose pressed over him as her hands tangled in his hair and her lips parted to welcome him in.
God, this was everything—she was everything. Riding high on passion and pleasure, Samuel allowed his fingers to grasp first her waist, then her buttocks, half-pulling Rose onto his lap as his tongue lavished her own, twisting bliss from each moment as his whole body responded.
“Samuel,” she exhaled, and he thought he would come undone.
To hear his name upon her lips, to know that he was the one tugging it from her thanks to his efforts…
How long they kissed for, he did not know. Time around Rose simply did not exist as it did elsewhere. All Samuel knew was that Rose was now the one underneath him, and his mouth was on her neck, worshipping that delicate skin underneath her ear, and—
The carriage stopped. They were home.
“What… What does this all mean?” Samuel breathed against her neck, inhaling her, wishing he could taste her again and again.
He could almost feel Rose’s pulse, its thrum taut across her skin, but when she spoke it was in a calm voice that sounded as though nothing interesting had occurred.
“Nothing. It means nothing. Not for you and I.”
Samuel straightened, pulling back from the woman whom he had been about to ravish most thoroughly, and cleared his throat. “Oh, right, obviously. Nothing at all.”
Nothing at all.
The crash of pain, the jolt in his breath were unwelcome, but expected.
Damn it, but he was a fool. Try as he might to keep his emotions separate from this minx of a gem, he could not.
Rose was beguiling and clever and beautiful, and Samuel had never met a woman like her. He certainly never would again.
And their kisses, full of passion and heat and need and an aching desire to be known…
They meant nothing. As they should. He would not trap her into a marriage she did not want beyond next year. And he wouldn’t ruin her with a divorce, either.
Annulment. An annulment was the only way.