He’d left her to come to the clear, undeniable realization that she was not the one who required saving.
“Two lovely ladies!” Castleton’s happy utterance interrupted Pippa’s thoughts, and she turned toward her handsome, smiling fiancé as Trotula hurried to him, low to the ground, eager for stroking.
It was difficult to spend any time at all with Castleton without smiling oneself. He was a kind man, and good. Fairly handsome, very wealthy, and titled. An aristocratic mother’s dream. Indeed, there were few things more for which a young woman could ask.
Except for love.
And suddenly, that strange, elusive, indefinable word meant everything. So much more than all the rest.
How had she become such a ninny? She, who had never believed in the emotion . . . who had always thought that the ethereal was less valuable, less real than the factual . . . who had always ignored the sentiment—how was it that she stood here, now, in the receiving room of what was to have been her future home, with the man who was to have been her future husband, thinking of love?
Cross had changed her.
Without even trying.
“My lord,” she said, making her way across the room to greet him herself. “I am sorry to come without notice.”
He looked up at her from where he was crouched with Trotula. “No need for notice,” he said. “After all, in less than a week, it will be your home, and I won’t have any notice at all!” He paused. “Though, I suppose this is notice . . . betrothal!”
There it was, her cue.
She had considered any number of ways to begin this particular conversation. The gentle, the diplomatic, the evasive. But as she was Philippa Marbury, she settled for the honest.
“My lord, I cannot marry you.”
His hands did not stop as they worked their way through Trotula’s fur, and for a moment, she thought he might not have heard her. After several long seconds, he stood, and rocked back on his heels, putting his hands in the pockets of his waistcoat.
They stood like that for what seemed like an age, Pippa refusing to hide from him, this kind man who had offered for her even when he could have had better. More normal. This good man who had courted her even when she was the oddest woman in London. “I’m sorry,” she added.
“You do not think we make a good match,” he said.
“I think we would have made a very good match,” she replied. “But everything has gone pear-shaped.”
His brows rose. “Pear-shaped?”
She took a deep breath. “I thought I could . . .” She paused. “I thought I would . . .”
I thought I could simply research marriage. Investigate pleasure. I thought I would not suffer the repercussions.
“Do you require additional time? To consider it? We needn’t have the wedding so soon.”
She’d had more than a year. She’d considered Castleton from every angle. She’d planned her life with him. She’d been ready for it. And in one week . . . one day . . . one minute, it seemed . . . everything had changed.
She shook her head. “I do not require additional time.”
He nodded. “I understand.”
She was willing to wager that he didn’t understand at all.
He continued. “I think we could learn to love each other. I think I could learn to love you.”
It was a kind thing to say. He was a good man.
Before, it had been enough. He had been enough. More than. He’d been willing to be her partner, to let her live the life she desired. To give her marriage. Children. Security. All the things a young woman in 1831 required.
Before.
Before she’d decided that she required more.
She met his warm brown gaze. “Unfortunately, I cannot learn to love you.” His eyes widened, and she realized that she had hurt him with her careless words. She rushed to repair it. “No . . . I don’t mean it in such a way. It’s that . . .”
She did not know what to say. How to repair it.
She stopped, hating the feeling, the way the entire male of the species seemed to make her feel in recent days.
And she told the truth. Again. “I’m sorry, my lord,” and she was. “But the vows . . . I can’t speak them. Not to you.”
His brows rose. “The vows?”
The silly ceremony. The one that had started it all. “Obedience and servitude, honor, sickness, and health . . . all that, I feel I could do.”
Understanding flared in his brown eyes. “I’m amenable to all those.” A small smile played across his lips. “I gather it is the love bit that is the problem?”
“Forsaking all others,” she said. She could not forsake all others. She wasn’t sure she could ever forsake the only other who mattered. She took a deep breath around the tightness in her chest. “My lord, I am afraid that I have fallen in love—quite accidentally and not at all happily. With another.”
His face softened. “I see,” he said. “Well, that does change things.”
“It does,” she agreed before she changed her mind. “Except, it doesn’t, really. He . . .” She paused. He is marrying another. “. . . The feeling is not reciprocated.”
Castleton’s brow furrowed. “How is that possible?”
“You should not be so quick to defend me, you know. After all, I just ended our engagement. You’re required to dislike me immensely now.”
“But I don’t dislike you. And I shan’t. Such is the risk we take in this modern world.” He paused, stroking Trotula, who leaned against his leg. “If only marriage were still arranged at birth.”
She smiled. “We mourn the past.”
“I would have liked a medieval keep,” he said happily, “and I think you would have made an excellent lady of the castle. Surrounded by hounds. Riding out with a sword on your belt.”
She laughed at the ridiculous image. “Thank you, my lord, though I wonder if the best ladies of the castle were as blind as I.”
He waved to a nearby settee. “Would you like to sit? Shall I have something brought from the kitchens?” He paused, obviously considering what one offered one’s ex-fiancée in such a situation. “Tea? Lemonade?”
She sat. “No, thank you.”
He looked across the room to a crystal decanter. “Scotch?”
She followed his gaze. “I don’t think ladies drink scotch before eleven o’clock.”
“I shan’t tell anyone.” He hesitated. “In fact, I might join you.”
“By all means, my lord . . . I wouldn’t dream of preventing you from having a proper drink.”
He did, pouring a finger of amber liquid into a glass and coming to sit beside her. “Our mothers will be beside themselves when they hear.”
She nodded, realizing that this was the first time they’d conversed about anything serious. Anything other than dogs and weather and country estates. “Mine more than yours, I should think.”
“You’ll be ruined,” he said.
She nodded. “I had considered that.”
It had never mattered to her very much, reputation. For one who was often described as odd and strange, having little in common with others her age or gender, reputation never seemed worth much. It did not buy her friends, or invitations, or respect.
So now, it was not paramount.
“Lady Philippa,” he began after a long moment of silence, “if you’ve . . . er . . . that is . . . if you have need of . . . a-hem.”
She watched him carefully, noting his reddening face as he stumbled over the words. “My lord?” she asked after it seemed as though he might not say more.
He cleared his throat. Tried again. “If you are in a difficult spot,” he blurted out, waving one hand in the general direction of her stomach.
Oh, dear. “I am not.”
She supposed she might be, but that was a bridge she would cross at a later time if necessary. Without Castleton.
He looked immensely relieved. “I am happy to hear that.” Then, after a moment during which they both resumed calm, he added, “I would marry you, anyway, you know.”
She met his gaze, surprised. “You would?”
He nodded. “I would.”
She couldn’t stop herself. “Why?”
“Most people think I’m an idiot.”
She did not pretend to misunderstand. “Most people are idiots themselves,” she said, feeling suddenly very protective of this man who should have tossed her out of the house with glee but instead, offered her a drink and a chat.
He tilted his head. “Most people think you’re odd.”
She smiled. “On that, most people are right.”
“You know, I used to think they were. You’re brilliant and have a passion for animals and strange flowers, and you were always more interested in the crops that rotated on my estate than in the trappings of my town house. I’d never met a woman like you. But, even as I knew you were smarter than I, even as I knew that you knew that you were smarter than I . . . you never showed it. You’ve never given me any reason to believe you thought me simple. You always went out of your way to remind me of the things we had in common. We both prefer the country. We both enjoy animals.” He shrugged one shoulder. “I was happy to think that you would one day be my wife.”
“I don’t think you simple,” she said, wanting him to know that. Wanting him to understand that this mess she was making had nothing to do with him. He was not lacking. “I think you will make someone a very happy match.”
“But not you,” he said, simply.
She shook her head. “Not me.”
There was a time when you might have. It was true. She’d been happy to live out her days in country idyll, talking of crop rotation and animal husbandry and consulting the men and women who lived on Castleton land.
There was a time when I would have been content with you.
“If you change your mind . . .” he said. “If you wake up on Sunday morning and wish for marriage . . . I shall be ready,” he finished, so generous. So deserving of love.
She nodded once, seriously. “Thank you, my lord.”
He cleared his throat. “What next?”
The question had rattled through her during every waking moment of every day since the morning Cross had left her, sleeping, in her bed after making it impossible for her to marry Castleton. After making it impossible to do anything but care for him . . . more than she’d ever cared for anyone. What next?
What happened now?
She’d approached the problem in the same way she’d forever approached every part of her life. She’d considered it from all angles, posited answers, hypothesized outcomes. And, eventually, come to a conclusion—the only one that had any chance of resulting in the outcome she desired. For which she ached.
So this morning, she’d risen early, dressed, and come to Berkeley Square. She’d knocked, met her fiancé—who seemed to be more intelligent than anyone in Britain gave him credit for—and broken her engagement.
And what came next would be the most important experiment of her life.
“I admit, I am happy that you asked.” She took a deep breath, met Castleton’s gaze, and answered his question. “You see, I require your assistance for what comes next.”
Two hours later, Pippa and Trotula were waiting at the rear entrance to The Fallen Angel, for someone to open the door.
When no one responded to her several knocks on the great steel slab, Pippa grew impatient and moved to the entrance to the club kitchens. Knocking there produced a result—a red-faced boy who was at once elated to see a dog at the door and perplexed by the presence of the hound’s mistress.
“Didier!” he called out, “ ’ere’s a lady at the door! A real one! And a dog!”
“I am tired of the jokes you play on me, Henri,” came a familiar booming voice from outside Pippa’s view. “Now come back here before the béchamel is destroyed by your laziness.”
“But Didier!” he called, not taking his gaze from Pippa. “’Tis a lady! The one who comes for Cross!”
Pippa’s jaw dropped at the identification. How did this boy know about her meetings with Jasper? Before she could ask, the French cook had pushed the boy from view and faced Pippa with a wide smile. “Back for another of my sandwiches?”
Pippa smiled. “No one answered the rear door of the club.”
Didier stepped back, letting Pippa into the sweltering kitchens. “That’s because the doormen are all bothering me.” She cast a skeptical glance at Trotula. “The hound may enter, but I won’t have her near my food.”
Pippa stepped inside, directing the dog to a corner and registering the stares from a motley collection of servants and workers gathered around the great table at the center of the Angel’s kitchens. Uncertain and not a small amount uncomfortable, she gave a little curtsy, sending all their brows to the sky. “I am Lady Philippa Marbury.”
The doorman she’d met the evening she’d come with Cross stood, hulking and overwhelming. “We know who you are.”
She nodded. “Excellent. Then you won’t mind telling His Grace that I am here.” There was a pause, confusion flaring on several faces before she clarified. “I believe you call him Temple.”
The boy who’d answered the door was the first to speak. “But yer Cross’s lady,” he said, as if that was all there was to say.
Cross’s lady. The words warmed her.
Even if they weren’t true.
“Today, I’ve need of Temple.”