18. Chapter 18
In his own small room, Aaron tied the last knot in his cravat and turned slightly sideways to get a better look in the speckled mirror. “I haven’t worn this kit before,” he informed his observer. “What y’think?”
Where she sat on the floor, Atalanta Worthington stopped using Philpott’s best shears to snip her brother Dade’s third-best neck-cloth short enough to tie about her own neck and assessed Aaron’s getup with an artistic squint. “You aren’t fooling anyone, you know.”
Aaron’s belly did a little flip. He’d realized by now that sooner or later, Miss Elektra Worthington was going to discover his true identity. He was simply hoping he’d be safely miles away when that happened. Preferably in Scotland. Or maybe Finland.
Then his gut twisted slightly sideways at the thought of leaving Elektra miles behind him.
Pushing all that aside, he gave Attie one of Hastings’s most mischievous smirks. “I’m foolin’ everyone, all the time. Just like you.”
Attie rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “Anyone can tell that you’ve dressed up like this before. I think you’ve been trying on his lordship’s ‘kit’ behind his back!”
She’d wandered in after Aaron had donned everything but the neck-cloth, so she hadn’t seen him struggling to button the extraordinarily fitted weskit. “Well, a valet’s got to ‘ave some all to do with ‘is spare time!”
Attie lost interest in the cravat, now that she’d guaranteed a loud reaction from Dade, and crawled across the floor to where Aaron had laid out his coat over the chair by the fire.
“Get away from that with them scissors, you!” Aaron could move quite fast when necessary. He secured the shears on a high shelf and kicked Dade’s ruined cravat underneath and out of sight. One almost fine cravat: noted. Another item to replace when he regained his inheritance.
And will you buy a replacement for Elektra’s trust when someday someone points out the infamous Lord Anathema — formerly known as Lord Aaron Arbogast?
Someday wasn’t today, thank heavens!
To his secret dismay, it seemed he was fitting in quite well with this mad bunch after all, for his primary tenet now seemed to be “Don’t get caught.”
As he turned to leave the room, Attie spoke again.
“Do you want to pollinate with her?”
Aaron closed his eyes. Damn. He was halfway into the hall. One more bloody second —
He inhaled deeply and turned to face one of his many personal demons, the shortest one by far. “Why in the world would you ask that?”
Attie said, “Because when I say ‘copulate’ people tend to turn purple and sputter.”
He might be turning a manly shade of puce but he most definitely was not turning purple! The sputtering, on the other hand, was unavoidable. “How do you even know that term?”
“Mama gave me a book about the reproduction process.”
Aaron choked slightly. “Erk? Do you think it is appropriate to look at such things?”
She tilted her head. “It was mostly about frogs and bees.”
“Oh … well. Bees ain’t so bad I suppose…”
She shook her head at him in scorn. “You think I should know more about bees than I do about humans? I am not a bee, so the information, while interesting, isn’t terribly useful, is it?”
Aaron gazed about wildly for succor, but there was no one in sight to save him from this conversation. “I truly don’t believe it is appropriate to be speaking to you about this!”
“About what?”
“About — about bees!” With that he turned on one heel and strode away from the odd child.
She called after him, “You never answered my question. Do you want to pollinate with her?”
Aaron cringed and hoped the rest of the Worthingtons were out of range of Attie’s reedy little voice.
It was only too bad that he couldn’t also run away from the voice in his own mind.
Oh, yes. I want to pollinate with her.
As Elektra left her room, she could hear the babble of her family gathering in the front entry. She smiled at the excitement in their voices, but it was a wry smile. To them, this was simply more fun to be had.
Attie waited for her at the stairs, sitting on the top step with her elbows on her knees, her chin on her fists. She wore a strangely mutated cravat tied about her neck. Elektra realized that the knot was formed after a hangman’s noose. She shuddered.
“Attie, may I have that cravat? It’s just what I’ve been looking for to wipe my shoes before I walk into the ball.”
Attie sat up and pulled the macabre thing over her head, handing it to Elektra wordlessly. Seemingly, it had accomplished its mission, which was most likely to give her older sister the willy-wiggins. It was a classic Attie-style protest. Translation: I am tired of being the only one to stay home.
Thirteen was difficult for anyone, more so for the youngest child. Elektra remembered watching her older brothers leaving for evenings out, dreaming of when she might attend glittering balls clad in beautiful clothes.
Strange how it all seemed much more like drudgery now, instead of that scintillating girlish fantasy. She might as well be a chimneysweep gathering his brushes for all the excitement she felt tonight.
Time to pay the bills.
She passed Attie by with a swift caress to her little sister’s braids and made her way down the curving stairs to the once grand entry of Worthington House. When she descended far enough, her family came into view. Dade looked golden and handsome, if a bit dour. He knew it was his duty to escort his sister and cousin, but Elektra could see him twitching at the inconvenience. So many more important things to do, had Dade. She had long given up wanting to explain herself to her dismissive eldest brother. He couldn’t help his preoccupation, for he was both father and mother to them all now, with Callie gone away to the Cotswolds.
Next to him stood Orion, rather surprisingly. Elektra wondered how Dade had managed to bribe his next-younger brother to accompany him. Funds for a new experiment, perhaps? Orion seemed willing enough to be there, in his distant way. Elektra took two more steps down. Bliss came into view.
Suddenly Elektra did not feel quite so resplendent. Her dress was just as fine, having come fresh from Lementeur’s studio in Cabot’s hands that afternoon. To be truthful, it was that bosom! Elektra couldn’t help feeling that her quest would be so much more attainable if she were equipped with that sort of bait.
In addition to her fine gown and her world-class figure, Bliss wore an expression of pleased serenity as she held out her arm to someone. Elektra descended another step just as a male figure in black stepped into view to Bliss’s side. It was Mr. Hastings, clad in formal finery that a faraway part of Elektra’s mind identified as belonging to her lost brother, Poll. Except for the rich blue silk waistcoat, which by the precision of the fit, had to be something Mr. Button had made just for him!
The precise color of the butterflies in the meadow.
Oh my.
She had never seen him out of his rumpled, brown suit, which was much the worse for all their adventures. In black and sapphire, he was as striking as Dade, if a shade less golden. His blond hair was as tawny as a lion, she decided, and his eyes —
At that moment his gaze rose to meet hers where she stood frozen halfway down the stairs, poised with her hand on the railing, feeling as if she wanted to vault the damned thing and then drift dreamily down like a feather into his arms, all the while holding that warm, gray gaze with hers.
Then he took Bliss’s arm. Something spiked right through Elektra’s middle, just beneath her bosom, just above her belly. She pressed one palm to that spot in alarm. What was that?
I should have eaten something, instead of spending my day preparing for the ball.
The ache didn’t recede until Bliss slipped her arm away the better to adjust her perfect, pristine gloves. Elektra quickly lifted her own hand from the railing, which still gleamed from her recent cleaning, but she meant to take no chances. She refused to arrive at the Duke of Camberton’s ball smudged!
Her brothers realized that she stood above them.
“Ellie, good God, it’s about time!” Dade checked his pocket watch.
His impatience cut at her. She dared not fish for a compliment now. Her eldest brother already thought her selfish and vain. She wasn’t sure when he’d formed that opinion of her worthlessness. All she’d asked for was proper Season, after all. And that, only in the last year.
Haven’t you cost us enough?
Dade’s voice rang through her mind. That’s what he’d said when she asked for gowns, when he revealed to her that it was all they could do to afford to fill their plates. And he’d said it so wearily, as if she’d been begging treats from him for years and he was worn to a frazzle by it — except she hadn’t, not really.
For the thousandth time in her life, she wondered what he saw when he looked at her.
She wanted to tell him that he needn’t worry any longer. She wanted to tell him that she planned to fix it all.
How would he see her when she made the match of the decade? What would he think when she handed him the key to the front door of Worthington Manor someday?
Orion gazed at her evenly, with no more surprise at her appearance than if she were dressed in an ordinary gown on an ordinary afternoon. That was only to be expected. To interest Orion, one must grow wings, or a shell. Perhaps fins.
Only Mr. Hastings’s gray eyes gleamed with appreciation. Elektra rewarded him with a smile. His lips curled slightly in response, and he shared an exasperated glance at her brothers. Elektra’s belly warmed at his defense of her, as if he’d donned silver mail and challenged Dade and Orion to a joust in her honor.
What an unusual man.
Of course, then he ruined the moment by allowing Just Wonderful Miss Bliss Worthington to retake his arm. Bliss turned her attention to Elektra, all unaware of her cousin’s sudden bloodthirsty gaze.
“You look very fine, Elektra. Shall we?”
“Oh, God, yes,” breathed Dade. “Please, let us bloody go already.”
Orion nodded. “I am sufficiently prepared, as well.”
“Miss Worthington, please, lead the way.” Mr. Hastings waved Elektra down the last stairs with his gleaming black silk hat, which also looked very Lementeur, adorned as it was with a perfectly matched blue silk band.
In fact, Mr. Hastings’s sapphire-and-black could have been specifically designed to coordinate with Bliss’s summer-sky-blue silk gown with silver braid trim at the neckline (really, why bother? No one was looking at the gown, not with that bosom!) and the dainty cap sleeves.
More bloody points for Bliss.
Bliss looked very pretty, indeed. She sat across from Aaron in the Worthingtons’ elderly carriage, which held six easily. Mrs. Worthington was between the two younger ladies, facing forward, while Dade, Orion, and Aaron took the less desirable back-facing seat.
For a moment upon boarding the creaking contrivance, Aaron had wondered if the Worthingtons expected him to take a manservant’s place up with the driver. At some point since this very morning, “Hastings” seemed to have graduated to something nearing gentleman’s status in the household.
It hadn’t been Elektra’s doing, as he’d thought. She’d seemed entirely surprised to see him join the party, although thankfully not much bothered by it. Who then? Dade would just as soon “Hastings” fell off the nearest cliff — Aaron was fairly certain that the eldest Worthington sibling saw him as a harmless but annoying moocher. Orion might have enjoyed dissecting him, or stuffing him, or doing whatever it was he did in that den of horrors he called a study, but Aaron couldn’t imagine him giving a damn whether Bliss had an escort or not.
In the end, he decided it must have been some impulse of Iris’s, some half-formed thought of rounding out the party, which now she’d completely forgotten about as she chatted amiably with Bliss about Shakespeare and his farm animals.
Then Aaron ran out of inconsequential matters with which to distract his thoughts. His eyes slid slowly back to her, as if they were naught but steel balls and she, a powerful magnet.
She’d been beautiful when mud-stained and dressed like a boy. She’d been stunning when riding in the pony cart in a bright spring gown. But this …
There were words he could use. Exquisite. Lovely.
Incandescent.
Those were all perfectly nice words. They were also entirely inadequate.
She’d floated down those frayed stairs like a heavenly visitation, come to urge them all up from their worldly cares. Of course, there would be no colorless debutante chiffon on a woman like Elektra. Her gown enhanced her slender figure, draping closely against hip and breast, clinging like water to her flesh while still managing to give an impression of modesty. The rich purple silk turned her skin to purest alabaster and her upswept hair to moonlit gold.
And in that shimmering pile of silky gold nested a handful of blue butterflies made of silk.
Her hand in his, her laugh in his ears, her smile blinding his vision, as they ran through a whirlwind of azure wings.
Aaron had been born to astonishing wealth. He knew a fine gown when he saw one, so he knew that Mr. Button had quite outdone himself. The lads would be slavering and the ladies pining with jealousy.
But the girl inside the dress outshone the delicious work of art, especially when she smiled at him.
He’d had the most alarming urge to drop to his knees right there in the foyer, to rip the signet ring from his pocket, confess his many sins, and beg her to marry him on the spot.
The only thing that had saved him from such rashness, aside from the fact that she had hocked his signet ring to an innkeeper, had been the flash of hurt in her eyes when her brothers had behaved as if she were no more than an irritant, and this important evening nothing but a shallow, inconsequential waste of their time.
He’d cheered her up with his mugging and his cheeky bow, and now he kept his gaze down so that she could not see the longing in his eyes. He hoped the house where the ball was being held was nearby, for he didn’t think he’d be able to maintain his jocular distance for long.
When the carriage stopped, he leapt from it as if a sharp spring propelled him. Knowing how old those cushions were, it would not have surprised anyone if it had. They all seemed to take his abrupt exit in stride. One would likely have to behave very oddly indeed for a Worthington to take notice of it.
He took the opportunity to aid Iris from her seat and down the rickety carriage steps. Then he held out his hand to Bliss.
Because he feared he wouldn’t be able to release Elektra’s hand once taken, he continued to escort Bliss across the court and up the front steps. All the while, he was intimately aware of Elektra being helped from the carriage by Dade, who knew his manners, after all, while Orion escorted his mother inside the house.
Oh, hell. For the first time, Aaron looked about him. This was the city residence of the Duke of Camberton, a house Aaron knew nearly as well as he knew Arbodean itself. Neville, who was now the current duke, had once been Aaron’s closest friend! They had played together as children, though they’d not crossed paths in fifteen years. Neville, who had gained his title at twelve years of age, had always been of a more scholarly bent. Aaron remembered a tall, thin, quiet boy who possessed a quick mind and a shy nature.
Once he’d become the boy duke, of course, he’d been far too above Aaron to spend summer afternoons rambling around the Camberton estate while their parents kept company.
Aaron admitted privately that the young man he had been would have been bored stiff by anyone who wasn’t more interested in drinking and wenching than in books.
It was too bad. Neville would have been a much healthier companion than Wells, if only he’d had the sense to see it at the time.
Unfortunately, if he entered this house, his identity as “Hastings” would be punctured in approximately eight seconds. He must beg off, at once!
No, don’t panic.He would not be announced as Lord Aaron.
Elektra seemed to sense his unease. She leaned close to whisper in his ear. “If you don’t speak to the duke, and only bow, he’ll never know.”
Never know he was just a servant, she meant. Either way, he meant to take her advice. It was possible that Neville would not recognize him. He’d been away for a very long time, time which he’d spent filling out, changing, becoming a man instead of a feckless boy.
Then the second half of this revelation made its way into his consciousness. Neville, that weedy, thoughtful boy with a wild shock of black hair, was Elektra’s chosen prey.
Oh, I am staying right where I bloody am, thank you very much!