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He left the window and paced.
Hours, days, months, and years seemed to pass before something made him turn toward the door.
He must have heard her footfall without fully realizing. She paused in the doorway.
Her posture was correct. Her morning dress was correct, covering her arms and her bosom completely. But no other Englishwoman stood in quite that way. No other Englishwoman could linger for a moment in a doorway and create images in a man’s head of her falling back onto pillows, her clothing disordered, her gaze sleepy with desire.
“Thank you for silencing them,” she said as she entered. “You’ll wonder why I let them carry on so and don’t argue with them. The trouble is, if I do argue, it takes forever to finish my breakfast, and everything gets cold. In the harem, we had outbursts all the time, much worse than this. Women screaming, threatening, complaining, hysterical. I tell myself I’m used to it. I tell myself to let it wash over me, to pretend it’s a storm raging outside. But it’s very aggravating, and I’ll be so glad to move into your house, and make rules about how many sisters may be allowed at a time and what times they are allowed.”
It had never occurred to him that she might make rules in his house; but the realization came and went, quickly supplanted by the momentous thing that was about to happen, and about which he was experiencing doubt such as he hadn’t known since boyhood.
“Whatever you like,” he said distractedly. “I have something for you.”
Her entire being seemed to still. “A gift?”
“I’m not sure one calls it a gift.” He patted his coat. Which pocket had he put it in? Which one had he finally settled on? He’d taken it out and put it back a hundred times. “One moment. I know it’s here somewhere. Hoare became hysterical, because it spoiled the line of my—Ah yes, there it is.” He drew out the small velvet case from the pocket concealed in the lining of his tailcoat’s skirt.
She stiffened and folded her hands over her stomach.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Nothing,” she said. “I think I know what’s in the little box.”
“In general terms, I daresay you do.” He opened the container, his hands a degree less steady than they ought to be. He told himself this was absurd. How many times, to how many women, had he given jewelry?
He took out the ring and stared at it. Somehow, this morning in the shop, it hadn’t seemed quite so…quite so…
“My goodness.” She raised her tightly folded hands to her bosom. “It’s big.”
It was enormous, and perhaps, after all, too large for her hand: a great, brilliant-cut center diamond surrounded by smaller ones. He should have given the goldsmiths more time. They’d had to hurry. They’d misunderstood. They’d got it wrong. But no, Rundell and Bridge never got it wrong.
“Rundell was shocked,” he said. He was uncomfortably hot, and not in the good way, the lustful way. “He showed me scores of elegant, tasteful diamond rings. But I told him I wanted a great, vulgar stone, one that people could see flashing from a mile away.”
“Oh, Marchmont,” she said.
“Perhaps you could unclench your hands,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she said.
“Give me your hand, please,” he said.
She drew nearer. She put out her hand.
His heart beating unevenly, he slipped the ring onto her slim finger. It fit, as it ought to do. He’d been there, hadn’t he, when she was measured for gloves—for everything.
His heart continued its erratic nonsense all the same.
She held her hand up and watched the diamonds flash in the daylight streaming through the windows. There wasn’t a great deal of sunlight in this room at this time of day, but it flashed.
“It’s wonderful,” she said softly.
“It is?”
She nodded, gazing down at it. She took in and let out a long breath. He watched her bosom rise and fall.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “Elegant, tasteful rings are for lesser women. The Duchess of Marchmont must wear a diamond that could serve as—as a lighthouse beacon in an emergency. Oh, Marchmont.”
She laughed then, and flung her arms about his neck. Her soft body went along.
He wrapped his arms about her and pulled her close. He buried his face in her hair and drank in the summer scent of her. She tipped her head back, inviting him, and he bent his head to accept the invitation. His mouth touched hers, soft and warm and fraught with memories: the Green Park and Hyde Park and the wild heat in the corridor of this house and in their mad coupling in his aunt’s carriage. His hold of her tightened.
A loud “ahem” came from behind him.
He and Zoe hastily sprang apart.
“The thirtieth, I see, will be not a minute too soon,” said Lord Lexham. “Marchmont, we had better find a way to keep you occupied. Come along to my study. Let us reach an agreement about the marriage settlements before we summon the lawyers and they begin wrangling.”
On Sunday, Priscilla arrived at the crack of dawn. She was obviously overflowing with news, because she pushed past Jarvis and burst into Zoe’s bedroom mere moments after Zoe stepped out of her bath.
It was harder to bathe in England than it had been in Cairo, but daily bathing was one Mohammedan custom Zoe refused to abandon. Here she had only a portable tub, not a great pool, and no coterie of slaves to wash and massage her and remove the hair from her body and oil and perfume her. But the English were not troubled by hair, and she didn’t need the other attentions. The tub served the main purpose.
“He chose it himself,” Priscilla said.
“Chose what?” Zoe said as Jarvis wrapped the dressing gown about her.
“The ring.”
“What ring?”
“That monstrous great stone of yours. The engagement ring.”
“Oh,” said Zoe. “That was obvious.”
More obvious than she could have supposed.
He’d hidden it well, but she had been trained to see and hear what men hid. She was coming to understand him better. She was learning to read him better.
He’d thought about her.
He’d cared about whether she liked the ring or not. Cared deeply.
She felt a sob welling in her chest.
She told herself not to be a sentimental idiot. She told herself his caring was only his pride. She told herself not to imagine he cared deeply about her. Even if that was true for the moment, it wouldn’t last. He was a handsome, wealthy, powerful man. Every woman wanted him, and he knew it. To expect him to give his heart to one woman only was ludicrous.
She told herself she understood this about him and she could live with it, must live with it. But she cared and would never stop caring—he had lived in her heart all the time she’d been away—and she wanted him to feel the same.
She kept the tears back while she moved to the fire, where her morning chocolate awaited on a tray, alongside the newspaper.
She must have done too good a job of hiding her feelings, because Priscilla, apparently thinking her insufficiently impressed, said, “You don’t understand, do you? Marchmont never does that. His secretary always buys gifts. For everyone. Royals and relatives and mistresses alike.”
“If one of his concubines has a diamond from him like that,” Zoe said, “I shall have to accidentally break her finger. And his head will accidentally collide with a chamber pot.”
“No one has a diamond like that,” said Priscilla. “Oh, Zoe, may I see it again?”
Jarvis was told to fetch the ring. She brought it in its little box to Priscilla, who only opened the box and looked at the ring but didn’t touch it. “Put it on,” she said.
Zoe did so. The morning light caught in the facets and flashed rainbows.
