19
Once a new plan was concocted, once the lists were made on what would need to be done, once a letter was written to send off to Heloise posthaste to indicate it was time to return, Iris was almost anxious to finally confess to her friends.
The confession to Oliver would come later, when next she saw him, and was by far the one she dreaded the most. He would hate her.
By God, he was sure to hate her. And after the wonderful morning they’d had, after how tenderly he’d loved her, she did not know how she could bear it.
But bear it she would. Just as she would bear the obvious disappointment in her friends’ eyes when she finally told them everything, as she was determined to now.
Before she could so much as draw breath to make that confession to them, however, Sylvia took her hand in hers.
“We have gone over just about everything, from materials required to the schedule of the next sennight to a tentative plan on where to go and what to do the evening of the exhibit. But we have not addressed one very important part of all this.”
Her gaze dropped to the cuff on Iris’s wrist for a time, emotion flooding her face. And then, voice soft, she asked, “What of Mr. Beckett?”
Iris’s breath stalled. “Mr. Beckett?” she asked faintly. She looked about at them all, at the patient understanding in their eyes, and felt the blood drain from her face. Pulling her hand from Sylvia’s, she cradled the cuff to her chest.
“You all knew,” she managed. Casting a quick glance at Euphemia, she caught the faint flare of guilt in her mild brown eyes and swallowed hard.
“Of course we knew, dear,” Sylvia confirmed gently, though for once Iris hadn’t needed the verbal confirmation.
“Though please don’t blame Euphemia. It wasn’t until after I had begun to suspect what was going on that I talked to her at all.
” She gave her a sheepish smile. “And you may blame my insatiable curiosity for discovering the rest.”
Iris swallowed hard. “And so you know everything? How I became friends with Oliver’s sister, Verity? How I met his mother? How Oliver kissed me and made love to me and how I wound up falling in love with him?”
But they had suddenly gone still, eyes wide in shock. “Ah,” she managed, looking to her lap, “so you didn’t know all of that.”
“We knew most of it,” Laney replied weakly. “Or, at least, we guessed at the details. All but for that last bit.”
“We knew there must be an infatuation of a sort,” Euphemia added. “But we did not think it had transformed into love.”
“I do not do things by halves, I suppose,” Iris muttered.
Sylvia snorted a laugh. “No, you do not.” Suddenly her tone gentled. “But that is one of the reasons I love you so dearly.”
Iris glanced up in surprise, eyes burning and chest aching from the unexpected admission.
Sylvia gave her a soft smile, so different from her usual boldness.
“Your mother was the same, you know,” she said.
“Always jumping in headfirst, losing herself in her latest subject of interest, unable to see the world around her.” She sighed. “By God, I miss her.”
She was quiet for a moment, lost in thought, eyes misty. Then she shook her head, her expression clearing, replaced with the sharp watchfulness Iris was used to. “But what shall you do now, my dear?”
Iris blinked. “What will I do?”
“Yes, about your Mr. Beckett.”
Iris shrugged, trying and failing to ignore the burst of both pain and pleasure in her chest at the wholly delicious yet heartbreaking phrase your Mr. Beckett .
He was not hers, especially not after she told him what needed to be said.
“I shall confess everything, and hope he shall be able to understand why I have deceived him. But I cannot hope for more than that.”
“You shall continue with our plan to infiltrate Durand Manor then?” Laney asked.
“Of course,” Iris answered, with much more bravado than she felt, raising her chin and her voice with it when they all looked at her with uncertainty.
“I cannot allow Lord Durand to get away with what he has done and defame my mother. Nor can I allow what happened between Oliver and me to affect this mission. No matter what it takes, I will do everything in my power to see this plan through.”
Suddenly a deep voice crashed over their heads, sucking the air from the room. “How convenient that you have answered my question before I have had a chance to ask it.”
Iris gasped and surged to her feet, heart sinking when her eyes confirmed what her ears had heard but her brain could not accept.
Oliver stood in the doorway to the sitting room, features dark and forbidding.
The maid stood just behind him, expression mortified before, with a little squeak, she hurried away.
“Oliver,” Iris breathed.
“Mr. Beckett,” Sylvia called out, seemingly unbothered by his appearance except for the tension threading her voice. Which only served to increase Iris’s own uneasiness. “How fortuitous. You were just the person we were wanting to see. Please come in.”
“Fortuitous,” Oliver repeated, upper lip curling ever so slightly as he strode into the room with jerking, angry steps. “I’m not sure, madam, that is what I would call this.”
“An understandable view, I must say,” Sylvia replied mildly.
“Oliver, what are you doing here?” Iris asked. Her voice warbled horribly but she didn’t have the strength to care.
“What am I doing here?” He barked out a sharp, humorless laugh. His gaze, Iris noticed, had yet to touch her, a fact that had her heart fracturing in her chest.
“Yes, I can see how that would be your main concern,” he continued, “considering the subject of your conversation when I arrived.”
Iris stepped forward. “I can explain—”
“You can and you shall,” he cut in, tone barbed, the fury beneath the words barely held in check. “But not now. I’ve something infinitely more pressing to say.”
He looked at her then, truly looked at her for the first time since entering the room, and the burning agony in his eyes made her ache to run to him and from him, all at the same time.
But whatever she had been about to imagine might come out of his mouth, it certainly wasn’t “Lord Durand knows who you are.”
Ah, so she had been right. Legs trembling, Iris fell back into her seat, her breath leaving her body in a sharp exhale.
She was glad to be seated a moment later, her trembling becoming so much worse, as she realized the other implication of Oliver’s blunt statement: He also knew who she was.
Or, rather, he knew her connection to Lord Durand.
Any hope she’d retained that he might forgive her fizzled in her chest. It had been slight before, when she had been determined to tell him everything herself.
It was nonexistent now that he had learned of her betrayal from someone else.
“We had feared as much,” Sylvia said, sighing in displeasure, as if this newest and devastating development were no more troublesome than dropping the end of one’s shawl in a puddle. “But won’t you sit, Mr. Beckett?”
“I would rather stand,” he said stiffly.
“And I would rather not have to strain my neck to look at you,” she countered pleasantly. “Please, sit.”
Thankfully he did as he was bid, though grudgingly. Sylvia nodded her thanks before continuing. “I suppose it was Lord Durand’s trip to London that did it. And you have learned of it from the man himself.”
“I did.”
“And I also suppose he claimed that Iris’s mother wrongfully attempted to claim his work as her own, that we are villainesses planning on continuing her evil deeds, that he is a victim in all this?”
Oliver raised one brow. “One would think you had been in the room with us, Lady Vastkern. Are you psychic then?”
She laughed lightly. “No, just a student of human nature. And really, the earl is so very predictable.”
But Iris had heard enough. Outrage had begun to creep under her skin during their exchange. Oliver’s verification of Lord Durand’s evilness, however, had broken through the haze of devastation that clouded her brain, causing that outrage to burst to life, burning everything else away.
“Does he truly believe he can get away with this?” she demanded.
“The pompous blowhard,” Laney bit out. “We should have known, of course, that he would continue to malign Iris’s mother, considering how Iris learned of this whole affair to begin with.”
“But to so blatantly paint himself as the victim?” Euphemia joined in. “Despicable.”
“But I have a question for you, Mr. Beckett,” Sylvia asked, eyes narrowed in thought. “Why is it you’re here telling us this? Is it to frighten us? To chase us back to London? I assume Lord Durand has ordered you to deal with us.”
“Yes, Lord Durand tasked me with dealing with you. Or, rather,” he continued, hard eyes shifting to Iris, “with Mrs. Rumford specifically. I am uncertain if he is aware that you are all working together.”
Mrs. Rumford. Why did that name on his lips, after all they had shared, feel like a knife to the gut?
“As you have surmised, no doubt,” Laney drawled.
He tilted his head in acknowledgment.
“Oh yes,” Sylvia said, eyeing him with something like respect, “Mr. Beckett must have guessed from the start. He was a highly talented Bow Street Runner, after all.”
“Though from Lord Durand’s treatment of you, Sylvia,” Euphemia said, “I do believe he has his suspicions.”
“Yes,” Sylvia murmured, “you may have the right of it.”
But Iris was still stuck quite firmly on one thing and one thing only. “And what did he order you to do about me?” she demanded.
Oliver shrugged, as if unconcerned, and that fracture in her heart grew. If his eyes didn’t betray his pain and fury, she would have thought he didn’t care at all, which would have been so much worse than him unleashing his anger on her head.
“He was quite vague, really,” he said. “But he did state that he wished you to rue the day you decided to cross him.”