Their gazes locked. Hers was bright and expectant.

“Were you really fine?” he heard himself ask.

The light faded from her eyes. “It was not actively painful. But it was not worthwhile either—having a husband merely for the sake of having a husband. I was already inquiring into an annulment when Giancarlo died. Never would I make that same mistake again.”

“Good,” he said, though he ached for the nearly two years she’d lost in her not-worthwhile marriage. He squeezed her hand briefly. “I’m glad you told me at last; you need never spare me any truthful answers.”

“All right, then, I won’t.” She smiled a little. “Have you any other questions that you need answered honestly?”

He flushed. If she only knew. But how did one ask one’s oldest friend whether she wanted to lie with him? He could already see her bursting out laughing. Freddie, you silly, silly man. Where did you get that idea?

“Well, yes,” he said. “Would you care for some tea now?”

She cast her gaze down for a moment. When she looked back at him, her expression was very even. He wondered if he’d imagined the fleeting shadow in her eyes.

“Do you have coffee instead?” she asked.

Chapter Twelve

Vere had hoped to arrive at Highgate Court before Edmund Douglas: far easier that way to return the coded dossier to the safe and to take an impression of the key therein. Unfortunately, as he helped his wife out of the victoria Lady Kingsley had dispatched to fetch them from the train station, Edmund Douglas came striding out of the house.

Lines furrowed the corners of his eyes and mouth, and much of his dark hair had turned gray. But otherwise Douglas’s appearance had changed little since the day of his wedding. He was still slender, still well dressed, still fine-featured and handsome.

He saw the Veres and stopped, his eyes as unreadable as those of a viper.

Vere glanced at his wife of less than twenty-four hours. For the first time in at least a decade, he’d been unable to sleep on a train. Instead, he’d observed her from underneath his lashes.

She’d kept the veil on her hat lowered, so he could not see her expression. But for most of their journey, she’d sat with one hand at her throat, her other hand opening and clenching, opening and clenching. From time to time she shook her head slowly, as if trying to loosen her collar with that motion. And very, very infrequently, she let out an audibly uneven breath.

She’d been scared witless.

The moment Douglas appeared, however, it was as if the curtains had lifted, and her stage fright was now but a dim thought next to the all-consuming importance of her role.

“Oh, hullo, Uncle.” She lifted her skirts, bounced up the steps, and kissed him on both cheeks. “Welcome home. When did you return? And did you have a good trip?”

Douglas stared at her coldly, a look that would have made grown men quail. “My trip was fine. However, instead of the joyful reunion I had anticipated, I came home ten minutes ago to find the house empty and my family disappeared, with Mrs. Ramsay recounting an Arabian Nights tale of revelry and destruction that concluded with your sudden departure.”

She laughed as bubbly as a barrel of champagne. “Oh, Uncle. Mrs. Ramsay is such a stuffy old dear. There were no revelries: Lady Kingsley and her friends were delightfully civilized guests. Although I must admit that when Lord Vere proposed, in my burst of excitement I did knock over a ship in a bottle.”

Lifting her left hand with its very modest wedding band toward him, she preened. “You are looking at the new Marchioness of Vere, sir. Allow me to present my husband.”

She beckoned Vere. “Don’t just stand there, my lord. Come meet my uncle.”

She still believed him an inmitigated idiot. Had she been less distracted, less afraid, and less drunk, she might have noticed quite differently: He had been completely out of character for most of the previous day—and night. But he was lucky: She had been distracted, afraid, and much, much too drunk.

Vere took the steps two at a time and pumped Douglas’s hand with the enthusiasm of a basset hound tearing into an old sock. “A pleasure, sir.”

Douglas pulled his hand away. “You are married?”

The question was addressed more to his niece but Vere jumped in. “Oh, yes, church and flowers, and—well, everything,” he replied, giggling a little.

She batted him on his arm. “Behave, sir.”

Turning toward Douglas, she said more earnestly, “I do apologize. We are so much in love we could not bear to wait.”

“But we rushed back to tell you the good news in person,” Vere added. “Frankly, Lady Vere was a bit worried how you would receive me. But I told her I could not possibly fail to win your approval with my looks, address, and connections.”

He bumped her lightly. “See, was I not right?”

She lobbed at him a smile brilliant enough to turn a field of sunflowers. “Of course you were, darling. I should not have doubted you. Never again.”

“Where is your aunt, Elissande?”

Douglas’s face had been impassive in the face of the Veres’ smug bantering. His tone, however, was anything but. Something seethed beneath his words: a monstrous anger.

“She’s at your favorite place in London, Uncle: Brown’s Hotel, waited on hand and foot.”

Vere could barely imagine the state of her nerves. She had no way of knowing that he would corroborate her lie. Yet nothing in her demeanor suggested the least nervousness or uncertainty.

“Indeed,” he said. “I was the one who suggested that Mrs. Douglas should remain at the hotel and not tax her health too much by traveling again so soon. Lady Vere but acknowledged the wisdom of my recommendation.”

Douglas narrowed his eyes, his silence ominous. Vere glanced at his wife. She gazed upon Douglas with enormous fondness, as if he’d just promised to take her to the House of Worth’s showroom in Paris.

Vere had thought for a few days now that she was the best actress he had ever met. But as good as she had been during their brief acquaintance, before her uncle she was spectacular. Everything Vere had seen up to this moment had been but dress rehearsals; now she was the great thespian upon her stage, flooded in limelight, her audience at the edges of their seats.

“Well, let’s not stand here,” Douglas murmured at last. “We will sit down for a cup of tea.”

No sooner had they taken their seats in the drawing room than Lord Vere started to squirm, obviously and embarrassingly. A minute later, he clamped his lips together, as if the integrity of his digestive system depended upon it. Finally, he wiped his brow and croaked, “If you will excuse me for a moment, I must—I fear—I must—”

He ran out.

Elissande’s uncle said not a word, as if her husband were but a fly that had had the good sense to leave. Elissande, however, felt his absence keenly—a sign of just how utterly petrified she was that even his mindless presence buttressed her courage.

When she’d succumbed to the mad idea of marriage as a route of escape, a useless husband had not been what she’d anticipated, nor an encounter with her uncle bereft of protection. But now she was all alone before an anger that had hitherto been largely channeled toward her aunt.

“How do you like London, Elissande?” said her uncle silkily.

She’d scarcely paid any attention to London in the whirlwind of the past thirty-some hours. “Oh, big, dirty, crowded, but quite exciting, I must admit.”

“You were at Brown’s Hotel, you said, my favorite in London. Did you make it known to management that you are my close relation?”

Her heart beat as fast as a hummingbird’s wings; her fear turned dizzying. Before her aunt became a complete invalid, when they, as a family, had taken afternoon tea together, he’d spoken to Aunt Rachel in precisely this same smooth, interested tone, asking her similarly mundane, harmless questions. And Aunt Rachel’s responses would become shorter and slower with every question, as if each answer required her to knife herself in the flesh, until she fell silent altogether and the tears came again.