Once Upon a Marquess (The Worth Saga 1)

Daisy didn’t blink at this, and Judith didn’t offer any assistance. It was not how their friendship was constructed. She knew that Daisy noticed that she purchased a small sack of sugar, just as she could not help but be aware that Daisy asked for soup bones at the butcher, picking the meatiest ones because she could not afford chops.

There had been some months early in their friendship, before Judith had sold her first clockwork design, when their fortunes had been reversed. They were friends because they could show these things to each other. The shopping was simply the shopping: a voracious beast that must be fed, a thing that they did together because the only way to alleviate the dull reality of the world was to deny it its power.

Daisy didn’t know any of the details of Judith’s life. She’d never heard of the Worth family. Judith’s father’s suicide had never been a topic of conversation. With Daisy, she could be just another lady shifted by poor luck into this not-quite-respectable neighborhood, struggling to find the gentility in her poverty.

When the last of the bones had been wrapped in paper, Daisy raised her head and turned to Judith. “Well,” she said, “I did not see any gloves that were worthy of my hands. My last pair had a matching set of diamonds right here.” She pointed to the hollow of her wrist. “I find I can’t accept anything less.”

“No, dearest,” Judith said. “Why should you settle? We never should.”

“I’ve nothing else, then.”

They had walked about halfway home when Daisy turned to Judith. “My mother says that you had a gentleman caller yesterday.”

Ah. She had managed to forget that. Judith shut her eyes. “I did.”

“Anyone of interest?” That was said a little more slyly.

Men, and their attentions, were not typically covered by the game. Men, unlike gloves, could be mocked or praised as the situation demanded.

“He was a marquess,” Judith said simply. “We have known each other for years, and of course he was once in love with me. He asked me to marry him, but I didn’t like the set of his chin, and so I told him no.”

Daisy did not blink at this. Men were not typically covered by the game—but they both understood the game for what it was: a way to politely beg off a topic. And while she’d told Daisy nothing but the simple truth, she knew how the other girl would take it.

“A plague on those pushy marquesses,” Daisy said with a toss of her head. “Once, I had a pair of dukes fighting over me. They were the most ridiculous things. One of them took a knife; the other grabbed a pistol. And, well, you know how those things work.”

“No! Did they kill each other?”

“Certainly not,” Daisy said. “But they lost all interest in me, because they were trying to determine whose weapon was larger.”

Judith let out a laugh. “Isn’t that always the way of it?”

Daisy let out a sigh, and then looked upward. “Isn’t it, though. So you’ve sent him on his way?”

“As much as one ever can.” Especially when she had an appointment to meet him as soon as her solicitor set the time.

Not for the first time in their friendship, Judith felt a twinge of regret. She and Daisy told each other horrible lies all the time; that was the point of their game. But they both knew that it was all falsehoods, and so in a way, those lies had more veracity and substance than many a whispered secret among friends. Telling her friend the bare truth and pretending it was a lie?

It wasn’t right. It was the sort of thing that might hurt, if Daisy found out the truth later. Much like the facts of Judith’s birth, the truth about Christian was not something she could admit.

But this was not the time for Judith to complain that the damned marquess who had once wanted to marry her had come to her assistance. Not when her best friend was squabbling over soup bones.

“They always do turn up again,” Daisy said with a shake of her head. “I advise you to keep to viscounts. They at least know their place.”

“Well,” Christian said. “It has been rather a long time since we went on a drive together.”

Drives in the summer were usually pleasant, the cool breeze making the heat bearable. But no breeze would cool the annoyance Judith felt at this remark.

She sat eighteen inches away from him on the single front-facing seat of Christian’s curricle. She’d attempted to refuse his offer to drive her, but his return message had rightly noted that he could hardly claim to take a friendly interest in her family’s affairs if he left her to arrive on foot.

He had been right.

She hated that he was right about anything, and hated that she was reasonable enough to admit it.

She glanced over at him on the bench. He held the reins loosely in his hands. His trousers were the kind of buff that attracted dirt: filthy paw prints, coal smears… She’d never thought about those things until she had to clean them. His boots glistened in the sunlight. He looked utterly at ease, smiling at her as if he’d forgotten the harsh words they’d exchanged a few days past.

Anyone who saw them together might imagine them a handsome couple enjoying a ride together. He was handsome enough with that little smile of his, that impish gleam in his eye tempting her to remember everything she’d tried to forget about him.

“Your memory is faulty,” she informed him. “We never went on a drive together.”

They’d only talked of it. That one summer after Anthony and Theresa and her father had returned home from China, they had talked about everything. She’d been unable to look at him without blushing, which meant that she’d spent a great many hours blushing. Their eyes had met at every opportunity, and they’d made excuses to spend time in each other’s company. They’d been obvious, so damned obvious that even Anthony had noticed.

She glanced at him now. His eyes met hers; his twinkled in response, as if he were mocking her because she was still looking.

“You can court my sister when she comes out,” Anthony had told Christian with Judith standing right beside him. “You can drive her in the park and all that other rigmarole. Until then, please refrain from making eyes at her when I’m around.”

Judith had punched him in the shoulder for that one, but Anthony had shrugged it off.

“That’s what elder brothers are for,” he’d remarked with a grin. “Getting in your way, despite your own inclinations.”

There had been no drives, no walks in the park, no courting, no coming out.

“There is nothing wrong with my memory,” Christian said beside her. “I wasn’t wrong. It has been a long time since we drove together. Infinity is a very long time. There aren’t many times that are longer.”

“Lord Ashford,” Judith said. “We must pretend to be civil with one another for the next hour or so. Did you ever consider that there might be some danger in cracking jokes with a woman who would rather crack your head?”

He tilted his head to consider her. “No,” he said slowly. “As a general proposition, I do not use humor to incite violence. I believe I am not abnormal in that regard.”

On foot, the way to her solicitor’s office would have wound through Hyde Park. In Christian’s curricle, they merely skirted the edges. The park seemed an impossible haven of gentility to her right, a gathering of brightly colored parasols and lush green grass.

“You know what I meant,” Judith said stiffly.

“Look! It’s a joke! Kill it!” He raised one eyebrow at her in a superior expression. “Now there’s a refrain heard in all the best drawing rooms.”

Judith sniffed. “I see it more as: Look, someone is angry with me! Let me laugh at her.”

He considered this as he directed the horses on to one of the driving paths through the park.

They were in his half of London, a part of the city where the houses were wide and the walls were kept ridiculously white. Here, streets were swept regularly and little flowerboxes adorned the windows.

Christian made an indignant noise. “You can’t honestly believe I’m laughing at

you.”

Nobody here made pots of common stew containing don’t-ask-what in the middle of narrow, cobbled streets. Even the sky seemed bluer here, closer somehow, as if the sun shone more warmly on the wealthy. Judith shifted in her seat, feeling out of place.

Everything felt hostile when her shoes pinched.

“No,” she said. “Not precisely that.”

The silver mirror of the Serpentine flashed at the edge of her vision. A pair of swans floated in the water, and another pair waddled on the grass next to the street. This was how everything always looked to Christian: cool, inviting, comfortable.

“It’s not that you’re laughing,” Judith said. “Sometimes, it’s downright cruel to crack jokes. People get upset for good reasons. Trying to cheer them up denies what is happening to them.”

“No, it doesn’t.” Christian set a hand on the seat between them. “It’s a way of recognizing their very legitimate feelings of distress and wishing that person well. You cannot reasonably think that it’s cruel to hope that an unhappy person will feel better. It’s like saying ‘my sincerest condolences’ at a funeral.”

Once, they’d argued like this.