Chapter 7 #3
“Exactly. If I know you, you will go on lying, bust improvers or no.”
“Then why did you propose to me?”
It always came back to this central mystery, this seemingly benign puzzle at the foundation of her current good fortune.
“Because you will never have headaches,” he answered in apparent seriousness.
“I beg your pardon?”
His lips quivered. “Nothing. Just know that I am looking forward to being the most happily married man in the empire.”
He smiled at her. And it was such a gorgeous smile that a few moments passed before she remembered that she, too, never trusted a word he said.
* * *
Why had Felix proposed to her?
He had not answered her because he was coming to the realization that it was impossible to prevaricate when he couldn’t pin down the truth.
Like affixing the position of stars in the sky—if one didn’t know where one stood, the exercise became futile. An accurate knowledge of the truth was, for him at least, a necessary starting point for any well-crafted lie.
He, who could look people in the eye, smile, and spin a perfect yarn on the spot, was dodging her question because he had failed to find the real reason behind his action.
Was it merely because his conscience itched over what he’d said about Lord Firth? Because he pitied her? Because he’d always planned on marrying a country bumpkin anyway, and she was as good as any rosy-cheeked girl he could have in twenty years?
He was able to become The Ideal Gentleman because he knew every last one of his faults intimately—and therefore understood exactly how he ought to misdirect attention and create illusions.
But now he had based one of the most important decisions of his life on a shifting foundation.
Perhaps more alarmingly, he almost didn’t care—not when there were bust improver–sized revelations to be had. The knowledge gave him a secret elation, an expansive pleasure, so that when they parted that day, he told her, “Go on wearing those bust improvers. In fact, have some bigger ones made.”
Her expression of befuddlement and suspicion was also a thing of joy.
He further misdirected her attention by opening lines of credit at various establishments and gifting her mother a house that had thirty rooms. As if she weren’t busy enough with a wedding breathing down her neck, she was now also required to inspect chairs, drapery, and side tables.
“If you are trying to make me drop dead from exhaustion, you are not far from succeeding,” she accused him the last time they saw each other before the wedding.
No one else spoke to him as she did, with as much frankness and…could he call it affection? Yes, he decided, exasperated affection, but affection all the same. “Will you ever stop suspecting me of ulterior motives?”
“Yes, when you stop harboring as many of them as a Medici pope.”
“Then whom will you suspect for fun?” he answered cheerfully. He usually enjoyed himself around people. Her company, however, he adored.
And tomorrow they would join in matrimony, for as long they both should live.
He had been trying not to think of the wedding night—no need to torment himself lusting after what would soon be his. But sometimes he couldn’t quite help the direction of his thoughts.
Dear, dear Louisa was in for a night to remember.
She cleared her throat. “You said you’d come to give me my wedding present.”
So she’d caught him ogling her—forgivable for a man the day before his wedding.
“Your wedding present is currently being set up in the conservatory at Huntington. After all your sisters and your mother each told me separately about the telescope, I had no choice but to buy one exactly like the one that slipped from your fingers.”
Her eyes narrowed dramatically. “You mean you wouldn’t have bought it for me on your own?”
“Of course not. I’d have bought you a much better one, but now you are stuck with your heart’s desire.”
Her scowl turned into a smile. “Well, I can live with that.”
People smiled at him all the time, but when she did it, he felt…supremely accomplished.
The thought gave him pause. Wasn’t that how he had felt earlier, when he’d made her testy?
He ignored that particular insight. “But it is hugely unsatisfying to be told that one’s present is hundreds of miles away, so I brought you this.” He took out a book from his pocket and handed it to her. “A telescope is useless unless you know what you are looking at.”
The book was a first-edition copy of Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d’étoiles, otherwise known as Messier’s Catalogue.
She frowned. And suddenly he stood chest-deep in uncertainty, not knowing how his present would be received, fearing that it would be cast aside as soon as he left the room.
It wasn’t even a real gift, just something he had taken from his study at Huntington on his way out to meet the train, after he was satisfied that the telescope had been correctly set up, because he thought it would please a girl who loved the stars.
“Don’t worry if you can’t read French.” His tone was stilted and formal. “There are far more comprehensive catalogs and star maps published these days.”
“I’m sure there are better works published these days, but this is the one I have always wanted to have,” she said, her eyes downcast, her fingers rubbing against the binding of the catalog.
He wasn’t sure he believed her. “Then why do you look so consternated?”
She turned the book around once in her hands. “Because it disconcerts me that you can so easily guess my heart’s desire.”
All the apprehension drained away, replaced by a startling buoyancy. How silly he’d been to be prey to such needless concerns. “I am to be your husband. I should be able to read your heart’s desire.”
She looked up, her gaze meeting his. “You are the sort of man who is just as likely to grant a woman her heart’s desire as to torment her with it.”
And she was the one woman who knew that he was the furthest thing from The Ideal Gentleman, yet still wept when she thought he would never have anything more to do with her. “May I remind you that you were willing to take me and my lady-tormenting ways for a measly eight hundred pounds a year.”
That brought a reluctant smile to her face. “I haven’t been able to make a single good decision since I fell in lust with you.”
Her sexual infatuation with him had always gratified him immensely. Yet for some reason, this iteration of the fact didn’t thrill him as much as it usually did. It was as if he wanted more.
What more, he couldn’t say—if the girl was any more willing, they would be copulating in the streets. Perhaps he was simply impatient to at last pin her underneath him, and watch her face as her pleasure gathered.
“I will leave you to study your new book then.”
As he turned to go, she took hold of his hand. They touched as infrequently as they ever did, and the sensation of her skin on his was almost numbing in its intensity.
“I do not mean to imply that I am not grateful,” she said.
“But you are not,” he pointed out.
“I am. I am just also wary, as any woman with half a brain ought to be, when it comes to you.”
And with that, she kissed him on his cheek. “I will see you at the wedding.”