Chapter 19
“Oh, do stop for a moment, Rosaline. Look at that window.”
Rosaline let Abigail tug her to a halt before the bookseller’s bow window, and then forgot Abigail entirely.
There, propped open on a velvet stand behind the glass, was a first edition of The Mysteries of Udolpho. The real thing, all four volumes bound in worn calf, the very book she had read to tatters by candlelight at fifteen and had never once owned.
She pressed closer to the glass without meaning to.
“You have that face,” Abigail noted. “The one you get about books and hedge mazes and nothing on this earth besides. How much is it?”
“Far too much. And I have no business wanting things.” Rosaline made herself step back. “Come, we have the ribbon shop yet.”
“Well, well, what do we have here? Two foxes loose on Bond Street of a Tuesday.”
The voice went through her before she had even turned.
Lord Rivercourt stood a few feet away, hat in hand, all easy charm. Beside him, a head taller and not smiling at all, was Magnus.
“Lord Rivercourt. Your Grace.” Rosaline curtsied, and prayed her face was doing nothing it oughtn’t. “What a coincidence.”
“Is it not?” Magnus’s eyes had already found hers. “London’s a smaller town than it lets on.”
Rivercourt carried the small talk almost single-handed, drawing Abigail into a brisk exchange about the shocking price of gloves, while Magnus said very little and looked at Rosaline rather too much.
And then, because she could not help it, her gaze slipped past his shoulder to the window and the four calf-bound volumes behind the glass, and back again.
He saw her do it. She watched him see it.
“We must go,” Rosaline said quickly, before whatever was gathering in the air could arrive. “My brother expects us. Abigail?”
“Do we? Oh, we do.” Abigail, who missed very little, let herself be collected. “Your Grace. My Lord.”
They curtsied.
Magnus bowed. She felt his eyes on her the entire way into the crowd, a warmth at the back of her neck that she refused to turn and acknowledge.
She thought no more of it, or told herself so. Until that afternoon, when a footman brought a parcel up to her room. Four volumes, bound in worn calf, and a single card in a bold black hand.
For the fox who reads the world by its roots.
Tell no one. It does nothing for the reputation of a savage.
Rosaline sat down rather suddenly on the edge of her bed with the first volume open in her lap. She did not go down for an hour, and spent a good deal of that hour deciding what a person sent a duke in return.
“… and so I told Peel, My Lord, that a man who cannot manage his own tenants has no business lecturing the rest of us on the management of a nation. Do you not agree, Your Grace?”
“I’d nae dare disagree with ye, Me Lord. Ye put it far better than I could.” Magnus inclined his head at exactly the depth the old Earl required. “Though I confess I’d give a great deal to know how ye keep such order on land as fine as yours. I’ve twice the acreage and half the yield.”
Lord Ulverton swelled with pleasure and began to explain, and Magnus arranged his face into keen attention and let the man talk. Across the small circle, Leo caught his eye, clearly delighted, as though Magnus were a bear who had learned to waltz.
It was working—all of it. A month ago, these same men had looked at him as though he might bite.
Now, Ulverton was three anecdotes deep and two others had drifted over to listen, and not one veiled jab about Highland savagery had been thrown all afternoon because Magnus had given them nothing to catch.
He bowed his head. He flattered in the shape of questions. He swallowed a dozen opinions he would once have flung like knives.
“You are unsettlingly charming today,” Leo murmured, once Ulverton had been safely handed off to a new audience. “I keep waiting for the part where you threaten someone. It is like watching a storm decline to break.”
“I’m learnin’ the tune, that’s all.”
“You are learning something.” Leo gave him a shrew look. “I only wonder who’s been teaching it to—”
A footman appeared at Magnus’s elbow with a small box and a folded note. “For you, Your Grace. Delivered just now. There’s no name, I’m afraid.”
Magnus opened the box. Inside, packed in paper, were a dozen marzipans from a certain shop, along with a note in a neat and careful hand.
A savage kept my secret. It seems only fair I keep his. Thank you, Your Grace.
Magnus stood very still for a moment in the middle of the crowded room. Then he closed the box, folded the note once, and tucked it in the breast pocket of his coat, where it would sit for the rest of the day.
“Well?” Leo prompted.
“Hush.” Magnus could not for the life of him stop the twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Have some marzipan, Leo. They’re the finest in London, and I’ll thank ye nae to ask where I got them from.”