Chapter Thirteen The Auction of Ruined Things #4
“No,” Marianne replied. “That would be unfortunate.”
The moment dissolved outward under the pressure of too many witnesses. Lady Honoria ushered people back toward the salon. Ashmont lingered just long enough to exchange one glance with Cale. The strongbox remained where it was, but not for long. Marianne knew that at once.
Sebastian turned slightly toward her. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Yes.”
His expression hardened.
“Later,” she said softly.
His gaze dropped to her reticule, then to the catalogue in her hand. “Did you obtain anything?”
“Catalogue number. Wax impression of the lock. And I saw a paper in his coat. Evangeline’s hand.”
His face darkened. “Then he has the originals.”
“Or enough to make us think so.”
“Can you move?”
“Of course.”
“You are pale.”
“I am furious.”
“That also.”
The near-smile between them lasted only a second.
Then Clara appeared at the door, breathless but composed. “Ashmont has asked for his carriage to be brought to the side entrance. The strongbox is being moved.”
Sebastian looked toward the corridor. “Cale?”
“Still in the salon.”
“Distracting us,” Marianne said.
Sebastian made a decision. “I will stop Ashmont.”
“No,” Marianne said. “You cannot accuse him publicly yet. We do not know who here would help him, and if the strongbox disappears in a scandal, we lose even the route.”
“He is removing evidence.”
“Yes. And we are going to let him think he has succeeded.”
His eyes narrowed. “What have you done?”
Marianne withdrew the small wax impression from her reticule.
Clara’s eyes widened. “Oh, excellent.”
“It is imperfect,” Marianne said. “But a locksmith may read enough.”
Sebastian stared at it, then at her, and despite danger, despite anger, despite the room still thick with threat, admiration broke through him plainly.
“You took a keyhole impression while Cale was in the room?”
“Before he entered.”
“Of course.”
“There is more.”
She opened the catalogue and removed, from between two pages, a small folded paper.
Sebastian went still.
“How?”
“When Cale took out the paper from his coat, another slipped halfway with it. He returned the first. The second caught beneath the edge of the strongbox when he leaned upon it. I took it when Lady Honoria spoke.”
Clara looked as though she might applaud.
Sebastian looked as though he might both praise and strangle her.
Marianne unfolded the paper.
A line of writing crossed it:
Sebastian, I cannot make them hear me, but you would know—
Evangeline’s hand.
Not testimony from Eastmere. Not a copy.
A sample. One of the stolen fragments.
Sebastian took the edge of the table behind him.
Marianne folded it again quickly. “Not enough.”
“No,” he said, voice rough. “But something.”
“Enough to prove Cale still holds samples. Enough to compare the hand. Enough to show method, if not yet crime.”
Clara looked toward the corridor. “The strongbox is leaving.”
Sebastian straightened. “Then we follow at a distance.”
“No,” Marianne said. “Not tonight. They will expect that.”
“They are removing it.”
“And if we follow openly, they will change carriage, destroy it, or lead us into something worse. We have the catalogue mark, the wax impression, and proof the samples exist. We do not throw that away for a chase arranged by men who know we are watching.”
His hands clenched once.
Then loosened.
“You are right.”
The words came more quickly now, but not cheaply. He still hated them. She appreciated that.
They returned to the auction before absence became accusation.
The evening continued as though nothing had happened.
That was perhaps the worst of it. Paintings were sold.
A widow’s relief fund gained pledges from men who would have ruined widows privately for less.
Lady Honoria smiled. Ashmont disappeared for twenty minutes, then returned without the tightness he had worn before.
Cale bid on a silver inkstand and won it.
Sebastian stood beside Lord Exford looking colder than any winter Halgrave had produced.
Marianne remained near Mrs Alderley, her reticule heavy with wax and stolen paper, her body calm because collapse could be scheduled for later.
When at last they left, no one tried to stop them.
That frightened her more.
The carriage ride back began in silence. Mrs Alderley and Clara travelled in Helena’s carriage ahead, leaving Marianne and Sebastian in his, with Tom riding outside and enough propriety preserved by exhaustion to satisfy anyone determined not to look closely.
For several streets, Sebastian did not speak.
Marianne held the reticule in her lap with both hands.
At last he said, “My public defence may have damaged you.”
She looked at him. “You did not defend me as helpless.”
“No.”
“You did not imply I was foolish or compromised.”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you have improved.”
“This is not a jest.”
“I know.”
The carriage turned. Lamplight moved across his face and vanished.
“Lady Honoria will repeat it. Cale will use it. Ashmont will twist it. By morning, half of London may believe you are under my protection in a sense neither of us stated.”
“Society has believed less accurate things with more enthusiasm.”
“Marianne.”
Her name, in that voice, made her hands tighten on the reticule.
He leaned forward. “I can protect you from the worst of it.”
She went still.
She knew before he finished.
Perhaps some part of her had feared it since the side room. Since he stepped beside her and attached his name to hers before all those polished watchers. Since the kiss in Bloomsbury, perhaps. Since he first said usefulness was not worth.
His face was very serious. Too serious. Honour sat on him like armour not yet examined.
“If my actions tonight have compromised your reputation,” he said, “then I will make it right. I will marry you.”
There.
The words entered the carriage and did not breathe.
Marianne looked at him.
Not because she had not heard. Because she had heard too well.
He continued, and each word made it worse. “The difference in rank can be managed. There will be talk, but talk ends once vows are spoken. Lantern House would be protected. Lady Honoria and Ashmont would lose much of their leverage. You would have my name.”
My name.
A Rookwood man offering a woman a future arranged to contain damage.
She felt the hurt before the anger, which made the anger colder.
“How practical,” she said.
He stopped.
“Do you have a solicitor waiting also?”
His face changed. “That is unjust.”
“Yes. It is. I find I am not at my most just when proposed to like a legal remedy.”
He drew back slightly. “That is not what I meant.”
“It is what you said.”
“I said I would marry you.”
“Because your defence may have damaged me. Because talk may become scandal. Because Lantern House may benefit. Because your name might cover what society chooses to stain.”
His jaw tightened. “Would you rather I did nothing?”
“I would rather you not offer marriage as one more form of management.”
The words struck.
He looked almost as if she had slapped him.
Marianne’s voice shook now, not with weakness but with the effort of holding too much feeling inside too small a carriage.
“I am not another woman whose life can be corrected by a Rookwood man deciding what must be done. I will not be saved into a position you chose because fear and honour stood nearest when you reached for words.”
“I care for you.”
The words came rough and sudden.
They might have undone her had they arrived differently.
She closed her eyes briefly. “Then care enough to know that is not the proposal you have just made.”
Silence.
The carriage wheels struck stone, steady and merciless.
Sebastian’s voice, when it came, was low. “Do you refuse me?”
“Yes.”
The word hurt.
It hurt enough that she almost hated him for making it necessary.
His face closed, but the pain entered before the control and therefore could not be unseen.
“I see,” he said.
“No,” she replied softly. “I do not think you do. Not yet.”
They did not speak again.
At Lantern House, he handed her down with perfect courtesy.
Too perfect. The kind that placed a wall around damage and called it manners.
Clara and Mrs Alderley had already gone inside.
Tom opened the door. Mrs Finch appeared in the hall, took one look at Marianne’s face, then at Sebastian’s, and said nothing, which was becoming her most terrifying habit.
Sebastian bowed.
“Miss Vale.”
“Your Grace.”
He returned to his carriage alone.
Marianne stood in the hall until the door closed, feeling the lantern brooch hidden beneath her bodice like a small, stubborn weight.
At Halgrave House, Sebastian did not go to the library.
He went first to the lesser corridor where Evangeline’s portrait still hung.
The house was quiet. Too quiet. His servants moved at a distance, sensing weather in him and avoiding unnecessary exposure.
He stood before his sister’s portrait and looked at the girl in white with the blue sash, the girl who had hated sitting still, stolen apples, fallen into streams, refused a gown meant to make her into scandal, written to him from a lodge where he never came.
“I did it again,” he said.
The portrait did not answer.
He had thought himself honourable. That was the worst of it.
He had been ready to bind his name to Marianne’s in public, to stand between her and scandal, to offer title, protection, restitution.
He had imagined sacrifice because rank taught men to misname power when they used it on behalf of others.
He had thought marriage the brave answer.
Marianne had heard the old pattern before he had.