Page 21 of Private Arrangements
Her bliss turned to cold daggers in her heart. Her limbs froze. But disbelief still reigned, like a mother's denial over a child's abrupt and senseless death. “Youreallywant to marry Miss von Schweppenburg?”
“I've told her that I would,” he answered obliquely.
“Does she care?” Gigi could barely keep the bitterness out of her voice.
He sighed. “I care.”
Her hands dropped. The pain in her chest was her hopes charring to ashes. But still those hopes smoldered, pinpricks of unbearable light in piles of hot cinder. “And what if you hadn't pledged yourself to her?”
“What if my departed cousin had chosen a less fateful way to express his disdain for the great city of London?” His eyes were such raw intoxication, all ruinous gentleness and wistful resignation. “Life is intractable enough as it is. Don't torment yourself with what-ifs.”
The opportunities she'd lost with Carrington's death had not beleaguered her, because they were only those of title and privilege, a business alliance fallen through. She was the daughter of an entrepreneurial man. She understood that even the most careful nurturing didn't always yield the fruits one sought.
With Lord Tremaine, she'd lost all detachment and perspective.
“You have already proposed to Miss von Schweppenburg?”
“I will.” He was unequivocal. “When I hear from her next.”
Slowly, unwillingly, she began to understand that for good or ill, he intended to marry Miss von Schweppenburg. Neither the prospect of riches nor the promise of carnal delight would lure him away from this chosen path.
Her entire happiness—something she hadn't even known she remotely cared about—had hung on his answer. And he'd doomed her. He might as well have shot the stallion out from under her as she galloped toward him in feckless rapture.
“I'm sure you will be very happy together,” she said. A lifetime of training under Mrs. Rowland was barely enough to force that platitude past her larynx with any semblance of dignity.
He bowed and handed the reins of the horse to her. “The day flees. You'll return home faster riding.”
He helped her mount. They shook hands again as they bid each other good day. This time, he did not linger in his touch.
Half a mile out, it hit Gigi that Lord Tremaine didn't know exactly where Miss von Schweppenburg was.
Last season, Mrs. Rowland, in a mood of largesse, had invited the countess and Miss von Schweppenburg to attend a garden party. They'd declined—with a longish note full of regret from Miss von Schweppenburg—as they'd have departed London already.
Gigi had thought it strange that a team with nothing but advantageous marriage on their mind would leave before the most fruitful time of year for proposals: the end of July. She was, however, not surprised to later hear of rumors that pressing debts had forced the von Schweppenburgs to leave town sooner than they'd wished. Perhaps they'd underestimated the cost of a London season. Perhaps such was their usual practice and this time they misjudged the patience of their landlord and creditors.
She hadn't cared then to find out what exactly was the case. And she didn't now. The important thing was that Lord Tremaine's intelligence on Miss von Schweppenburg's whereabouts and goings-on at any given point in time wasn't much better than Gigi's. And if Miss von Schweppenburg's waffling stance was any indication, he was by far the more reliable correspondent of the two.
Part of her recoiled at the direction of her thoughts.Beyond this point there be monsters.But just as a locomotive hurtling at full speed could not be stopped by a mere wooden fence across the tracks, her thoughts rumbled on, to the defiantclickety-clackofif only . . . if only . . . if only . . .
If only Miss von Schweppenburg were already married. Or if only Lord Tremaine came to believe, somehow, that such was the case.
Do not consider such a thing,begged her good sense.Do not even think it.
But her good sense was no match for the wrenching pain in her heart, for her crushing need of him. She could bear everything, if only she could have him for a year, a month, a day.
If he would not offer her this opportunity, then she'd create it herself, by fair means or foul, at whatever cost, come plague or locust.
Chapter Seven
13 May 1893
The hansom cab stopped. “Yer house, guv,” said the driver.
A long line of landaus and clarences filled the curb up and down from the Tremaine town house. His wife was having herself a party, it seemed, with some thirty, forty people in attendance. Camden had been gone four days to visit his parents. Was she celebrating his disappearance off the face of the earth already?
The butler, though distressed to see his return, hid it well under a layer of huffy solicitude. Milord must be tired. Would milord care for a bath? A shave? Dinner delivered to his room? Camden half-expected an offer of laudanum too, to tumble milord into a quick, insensate slumber, so that milady's soirée could continue unhindered.
“Are more people expected?” he asked. They would be, if there was to be a ball.
