Page 66 of The Rebellious Lady and the Phantom Lord
Fifteen
“Voices in the garden last night?” Hester’s mouth set in a prim line, but the morning light streaming through the kitchen window betrayed the furtive look in her eyes. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know what yer ladyship would be meaning.”
“And I am perfectly sure that you do.”
Phaedra whisked past the spit boy turning a haunch of beef over the kitchen’s massive hearth. She followed Hester round the broad oak table heaped with biscuits, cakes, and enough hunks of gingerbread to feed an army of hungry boys. Hester reached for a straw basket, affecting to count the currant cakes.
“I heard you talking to someone. A man,” Phaedra persisted, her temper fraying. She’d had too little sleep, and was oppressed by the heat rolling from the cook’s fires. “It must have been past two o’clock in the morning.”
“I am not the sort of woman to be found entertaining gentlemen in the gardens after midnight.” Hester sniffed. “It must’ve been one of the parlor maids.”
“I know your voice quite well,” Phaedra said. “It was you, although I could not tell who the man was.”
“Couldn’t you?” Hester’s smile was smug. She shrugged. “Yer ladyship must have been dreaming, ‘tis all that I can say.”
“I was not dreaming!” Phaedra slammed the palm of her hand upon the table with a force that nearly toppled a stack of cakes. Hester bustled past, issuing commands to the kitchen girls to look sharp and see that all the pastries were packed into the baskets.
“I’ve got to make sure the master gets his breakfast afore all those young devils of his descend upon us.” Reaching for the silver coffee tray, Hester shot a sly glance at Phaedra as she addressed one of the footmen. “John, there’ll be no need fer ye to set a place for his lordship the marquess. I’ll doubt he’ll be bearing much appetite for his breakfast. Proper done in, he looked when he returned.”
Phaedra,feeling on the verge of seizing Hester and shaking the truth from her, paused, thrown off-balance by the reference to Armande.
“You saw his lordship return?” she asked.
“Late last night. If ye had truly been awake, as yer ladyship claims, I don’t doubt but what ye would have heard him, yer rooms being so close and all.” Balancing the coffee tray, Hester disappeared through the kitchen door, a smirk upon her face.
Phaedra let her go. Hester’s moonlit tryst in the garden dwindled to insignificance when set beside the news of Armande’s return. She had tried his door first thing this morning, even risking a light knock. But the room had responded with the same grim silence as it had known in the days after Ewan’s death. Phaedra had despaired, fearing that Armande would never return. Perhaps he thought she and Gilly had been about to expose him.
She was therefore filled with great relief at Hester’s seemingly casual information. But she was not about to humble herself to Hester by asking after Armande’s whereabouts. Leaving the kitchen, she obtained the information she wanted from Peter.
Aye, the footman informed her, his lordship was indeed up and about. In the music gallery, so Peter believed. Phaedra ran toward the back of the house and quietly opened the door to the salon. The gallery was as still and empty as the nave of some great church on a working day. The discordant notes being sounded upon the spinet were all the more jarring, almost a mockery of the chamber’s solemn aura of stateliness.
Half-turned away from her, Armande stood over the instrument, his features beclouded despite the sunshine pouring in through the tall French windows, his fingers plucking listlessly at the keys. One look at him was enough to send Phaedra’s heart sinking to her toes. He was garbed in a blue embroidered frock coat and cream-colored breeches, all traces of his dark hair hidden by his powdered wig. Gone was the bronzed sun god whose loving had warmed her yesterday in the meadow’s sweet grass. Resurrected in his place was the lord of winter, come to chill her heart.
Phaedra sighed, pulling the door shut behind her. Armande’s head snapped up at the sound. She braced herself for his most frozen stare, but the expression on his face was one she’d never seen there before. His eyes were frighteningly empty.
“I have been looking everywhere for you,” she said. “I knew you were fond of music, but I didn’t know you played.”
“I don’t,” he said, moving away from the instrument. He swept her a mechanical bow. Her ears, fine-tuned to every nuance of his voice, caught the edge of sarcasm as he said. “Bonjour, madame. I trust you?—”
“Don’t!” she said sharply. She had to suppress a strong urge to fly to him, wrench the wig from his head and, kiss away the jaded weariness that marred his features. “You know I hate that pretense.”
“I thought it was only in bed that the performance didn’t amuse you.” He tried to hold her at a distance, but Phaedra refused to let him. She flung her arms about him, pressing her face against his waistcoat. The satin felt too cool, too slick beneath her cheek, his chest as unyielding as iron. He made no move to thrust her away, but his arms did not close about her, either.
“Please, Armande. I know you are feeling hurt, betrayed. But you will not give me a chance to explain. You were gone nearly all night. I feared that you were never coming back.”
“I almost didn’t. Then I remembered why I had come to London. I’ve taken too many risks to be undone by you now. I simply never realized how much his granddaughter you are.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer her, waiting with studied patience for her to release him. But she clung to him more tightly, fearing that if she let him go now, it might be the last time she ever touched him.
“So what did your Irish spy find out in France?” he asked. “Obviously not enough for you to go running to your grandfather and have me whipped at cart tail’s end for the low impostor that I am.”
“Gilly found out nothing that I didn’t already know,” she said. “He went to France the same day I tried to have you arrested for theft-before I ever came to your bed, before I even dared whisper to myself that I loved you.”
She searched his face, praying for one sign that he believed her words. But his eyes were like blue steel. She continued desperately, “I spent yesterday afternoon trying to persuade Gilly you really are the Marquis de Varnais, attempting todeceive him. Gilly, my dearest friend, who has been like my own brother.”
Armande raised an eyebrow. “And did he believe you?”
