Chapter 7
Matilda tried not to stare at Ashford too obviously as she sat across from him in the post-chaise.
He was glowering. He had not stopped glowering since they’d left London together that morning, a week after she’d accosted him at his apartments.
His tall, lean body was ranged into the corner of the post-chaise, his garments neat as a pin, his black beard closely trimmed.
They were six hours into their journey, and she was not sure he had had a single pleasant thought.
At no point had the stern tension of his body eased.
She considered opening her sketchbook and drawing a picture of him. She wanted ink, she thought, for him—precise black lines, no shading.
She would title it, The Marquess in His Sulks, perhaps.
Possibly Surliness Unbound.
He had scowled when she’d informed him she did not intend to bring along a maid. He had looked quite thunderous when she’d demanded he pick her up in the mews at Number Twelve an hour before dawn, so that she could sneak out of her house with her traveling trunks and Margo none the wiser.
It was absurd. What had he expected, a decorous arrival at her front door? How else was she to smuggle out her pigments and oils, her brushes and stretchers, without arousing the interest of everybody in the house?
She had rather hoped to wait until he was in a better temper to reveal the last of her secrets, but thus far, he had refused to be cajoled into any semblance of good humor.
That morning, she had remarked on the unusually chilly October weather. Ashford had responded with a wordless glare.
She had proposed as they left the outskirts of London that they stop for a warm beverage. She’d inquired quite prettily if he took coffee or tea.
He had stared daggers at her and responded, “No.”
Which, honestly, made no sense. It was not a yes-or-no question.
“Chocolate,” she said now.
His fingers, which had been tapping out a jerky rhythm on his knee, stilled. He looked up and met her gaze. His pale gray eyes were glacial. “Pardon?”
“Chocolate,” she said again. “That is the only explanation I can come up with. I asked if you prefer tea or coffee, and you said, ‘No.’ Since no is not a reasonable response in that scenario, I assume you meant that you prefer something else entirely. Chocolate. With or without sugar? I prefer sugar, of course, but you seem the type to like your drink as bitter as gall.”
There. She’d seen it. It had been quick as a flash, but she was quite certain his lips had twitched.
He found her amusing. She tried to ignore the bolt of satisfaction that shot through her.
“I do,” he said, “prefer chocolate.”
Truly, it sounded as though the admission had been dragged out of him against his will.
“With or without sugar?”
“With.”
Matilda felt the corners of her mouth turn up. She had not expected that. Christian de Bord, the Marquess of Ashford, had a fondness for sweets.
“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you smile?”
She leaned back, startled. “Is it?”
“Yes.”
He did not say anything more. Something quivered inside Matilda.
He had been … waiting for her to smile?
Oh God. She was in serious danger of beginning to like him.
On that chilling note, she decided an uncomfortable plunge into honesty was warranted. Perhaps if he shouted at her, she would no longer feel so soft and melty in the vicinity of her heart.
Of course, knowing her, if he shouted at her, she would likely feel all sorts of feelings, except they would not be in her heart, they would be between her legs.
“I should like to tell you,” she said, before she could think the better of it, “how I explained my absence to Spencer and Margo.”
Down swooped the scar on his cheek. That particular frown, she was beginning to learn, meant frustration mixed with confusion.
Good Lord, she had begun to catalogue the man’s looks of displeasure. She was mad in the head.
“Must you?”
“Probably not,” she said, “but I would like to. I have told them we are eloping to Scotland.”
Ashford emitted a choked sound.
Matilda paused, looking up at him through the pitiful screen of her own eyelashes.
His fingers twitched, but other than that, he did not move.
Was he considering strangling her? She tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.
“Why, in God’s name, would you tell them that we eloped?” Ashford’s voice was so wintry that Matilda felt frostbitten.
“It seemed eminently logical.”
“How—how is that—”
She waited, but he appeared to have forgotten how to speak. She pursed her lips and ticked off her reasoning on her fingers.
“First,” she said, “an elopement is a reasonable explanation for why I will be gone for several months. I did not want to tell them about the engravings. I am hoping to keep that part of the story as quiet as possible.”
A muscle tightened in his jaw.
Matilda kept talking, now rather more rapidly. “Second, I—er—told them we had eloped because I knew they would not spread the tale around. Margo—well, this may come as something of a shock, but Margo does not care for you.”
She darted another glance at Ashford. Disappointingly, he did not appear to be blushing this time.
“I know my sister. Margo will keep the information in the note I left entirely to herself, and she will convince our brother to do the same. She will not put it about that I have gone off with you because she will hope I might change my mind. When we return with Bea to London in the spring, I shall tell Margo that is exactly what happened. We reconsidered. We did not elope. Everything will go entirely back to normal.”
“Dear God,” he said. “I can think of about fifteen plans off the top of my head that make more sense than this. You do realize that? That you’ve chosen the most Byzantine approach possible to this situation?”
Matilda scowled. Perhaps she was not in danger of liking him. “You do not know my sister. She thrives on excitement. She will be filled with purpose, trying to keep all of this out of the public eye. French spies could not persuade her to give up our secrets. She will love it.”
She felt slightly less confident in Margo’s reception of her missive than she sounded, but she hoped that was how Margo would feel.
Margo still enjoyed being a Halifax Hellion. Margo had always enjoyed it. She was so lighthearted, so filled with adventure—for heaven’s sake, her first reaction upon suspecting Matilda of a secret love affair was cloak-and-dagger subterfuge, rather than simple conversation.
Matilda loved Margo more than her own life, but she had never felt the same about their antics.
In fairness, she could admit that the last seven years had involved a great deal of fun.
She had satisfied her curiosity about many facets of human behavior in a number of delightful and intriguing ways.
But she had never taken the same pleasure in their exploits that Margo had.
She had never looked at their pictures in the scandal sheets and been able to recognize herself.
After they had been sent down from finishing school, they had considered, for a time, trying to go along with what was expected of them.
But Margo could never manage it. She was forever blurting out something shocking or hurling herself into some new, delicious scrape.
And while Matilda could have done it—could have played the demure debutante—it would have felt like a lie.
They had half-chosen, half-fallen into their scandalous reputations, and Matilda could not say now what she could have done differently.
She would never have let her twin go it alone.
“Do you enjoy this?” asked Ashford. His face was still forbidding.
“Enjoy what?”
“Doing just as you please. Tossing expectation to the ground and running over it in your phaeton.”
“Sometimes.” She glanced down at her gloved fingers. “When I feel it is worthwhile.” She made herself look back up at him and tilted up her chin. “I like our phaeton. I have a particular fondness for fast driving.”
He made a sound somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “Of course you do.”
It was decided that they would act the part of a married couple.
She had suggested it, of course. She had not really expected him to go along with the idea—despite how very reasonable it was!—but to her surprise, he’d merely looked around the post-chaise as though for some escape route. Finding none, he had agreed with only a half-hearted protest.
That had surprised her.
It had surprised her even more when he had tucked her cloak around her shoulders when they stopped for the night, bundled her into the inn, and placed one hand on her back, warm and solid, as he addressed the innkeeper.
“Adjoining rooms,” he’d said in that growly voice that she liked so much. “If you have them. If nothing adjoining, I shall share with my wife.”
Matilda’s mind echoed back the words in a kind of half-aroused, half-alarmed daze.
I shall share with my wife.
Good Lord. Surely he did not mean that the way it sounded.
Did he?
No, he could not. She was the one who found all of his scowls and brooding erotic. He was no doubt experiencing a dozen variations on annoyance and headache.
But then he said it again. A few minutes later—after adjoining rooms were made available, to Matilda’s mingled relief and disappointment—he directed the porter to carry his wife’s baggage up to their rooms.
Then again over dinner: “A glass of wine for my wife.”
Matilda felt something go loose inside her as she looked at him, his elegant mouth pronouncing the words.
She was sick! Demented! Why did she like it so much? He did not even mean it. It was not real. He had kissed her sister.
Despite these protestations, she found herself picking at the crust of her game pie and wondering if she should call him husband.
Would he enjoy that?
No. No. She did not care what he enjoyed. She flatly refused to think about it.
“Do you not like it?” Ashford demanded.