“The conservatory was the masterwork,” Devlin continued, and his voice carried through the gap in the connecting door with the clarity of a man who was speaking deliberately loud, though Imogen did not yet understand why, did not yet understand that the loudness was intentional, that the door was ajar because Devlin had arranged it. She understood only the words, and the words were dismantling her.
“Ash made the wallflower put her hand on him through his trousers. He reported back to me in the side hall, and said the lady had surprised him.” A pause. The sound of brandy swirled in a glass. “He said she gasped like a virgin reading her first French novel. Which, I suppose, she was.”
The conservatory. His voice in the dark saying:feel what you do to me. Her hand on his body, his pulse against her palm, his forehead dropping to hers. She had believed every second of it. She had believed the rawness, the honesty and the trembling, and now Devlin was telling her, from one room away, that the rawness had been reported to him over brandy in a side hall, the most intimate moment of her life reduced to an anecdote about a virgin and a French novel. The reduction was so complete, so casual and so contemptuous that it did not feel like cruelty. It felt like arithmetic. She had been calculated, and the calculation had been correct, and the answer was five thousand and a horse.
Rourke laughed, and then she heard footsteps, the door opening and closing, and the room beyond was empty.
Her hands, when she lifted them, were steady.
She was not yet thinking about yesterday. She was thinking about the conservatory and Ash reporting to Devlin.
She was thinking about the deadline. The thirtieth of June. Eleven days. She had been a deadline. A figure in a ledger. A line item in a betting book at White’s, her name beside a sum of money and a horse, and the man who had knelt at her feet yesterday and told her he loved her had accepted the wager in a brothel.
Yesterday’s events arrived in her thoughts.
It arrived all at once, a wave breaking over her, and the wave was neither sadness nor anger, but something larger and more devastating than either. She had given him her trust, the deepest trust she had ever given anyone, and the trust had been given to a man who had a wager on the books at White’s while he undressed her.
She stood, smoothed her skirt and went back into the ballroom.
Ash was near the orchestra. His face was lit with something soft and certain, the expression of a man who was about to propose to the woman he loved in front of five hundred people. The expression was beautiful, and the beauty of it was the cruelest thing she had ever seen, because she could no longer tell the difference between what was real and what was performance.
She let him take her hand and say her name. She let him begin the sentence he had rehearsed, the sentence that was going to fill the blank space on the license, and she watched his mouth form the first syllable and she let him get halfway through it before she spoke.
“How is the chestnut stallion keeping?”
He stopped. Everything stopped. The sentence died on his lips, and something moved behind his eyes, fast and terrible, the recognition arriving, the understanding that she knew. Shewatched the understanding cross his face, and she watched the color drain from it for the second time in two days, and this time the draining was not horror for her. This time the draining was horror for himself.
“Imogen.”
“The chestnut,” she repeated. “And five thousand. Those were the terms, I believe. Or have I misheard Lord Devlin? He was speaking rather loudly.”
The ballroom was around them, loud, hot, five hundred people dancing and laughing and not yet aware that the season’s most anticipated proposal was turning into the season’s most devastating reckoning. Imogen stood beside the orchestra with the Duke of Ravenhurst’s hand in hers and pulled him across the floor. Not by the hand. By the wrist, her grip firm, her pace fast, her face composed. She dragged him through the crowd, past the refreshment table and into the small Carlisle parlor off the main corridor and closed the door but not entirely. It was enough for privacy, not enough for scandal, and the closing was deliberate because even now, even with the wager between them, the lie andyesterdaybetween them, she was protecting her reputation.
“Eleven days.” Her voice was low and steady; a voice that was holding itself together by force and was aware that the force was not going to last. “I had eleven days left as your entertainment, Your Grace. You were going to win me by the end of June and put your horse in your stable and collect your five thousand and the whole thing was going to be very amusing for everyone except the wallflower who was foolish enough to believe you.”
“Imogen, please…”
“Did you tell him? About the conservatory? About my hand?” The steadiness cracked, briefly, and she pressed the crack closed and continued. “Did you tell him in the precise words he used, or were those his embellishments? Did you standin the side hall at the Asquiths and tell Lord Devlin that I gasped like a virgin reading her first French novel, or did he invent that particular cruelty himself?”
“I went a week ago to pay him out.” His voice was ragged, the polish gone, the performance gone, everything gone except the raw scraped sound of a man who was watching his world come apart and could not stop it. “I bought a special license. I came to you yesterday morning…”
“And you waited.” The word exploded out of her, louder than she had intended, loud enough that someone in the corridor might have heard, but she did not care. “Yesterday morning you came to my house, and I gave you my body, and you knew. You knew the wager was still on the books at White’s. You knew Devlin had not released you. You let me take you to my bed without telling me what was on the line.”
“I was going to tell you tonight. After the proposal.”
“After.” The word fell between them, heavy, final. “You were going to tell me after I gave you everything I had to give. You were going to propose to me in front of five hundred people and fill in the blank on your license and marry me, and then, after the ring was on my finger and the ink was dry, you were going to mention, perhaps over supper, perhaps over breakfast, perhaps never, that the entire courtship was a wager made at three in the morning in a brothel by a man who was bored.”
She saw the porcelain shepherdess on the mantelpiece. Small, delicate, painted in pale pink and white, an ornament that existed because parlors required ornaments and no one had thought to question whether it deserved to be there. She picked it up. Her hand closed around it, tight, the painted surface cool against her palm, and she drew her arm back to throw it. It would be satisfying, but she set it down again, carefully, precisely, in the exact spot it had occupied before, and her hand, when she released it, was shaking.
The tears came. Hot and furious, not the quiet tears of sadness but the burning tears of rage, grief, and the particular devastation that arrived when a woman discovered that the truest thing she had ever done was also the most foolish. They ran down her face, but she did not wipe them, and she did not look away from him. She was going to say what she had to say and she was going to say it to his face and the tears were not going to stop her.
“I gave you the conservatory and the cottage and the library. I trusted you, and I gave you yesterday afternoon.” Her voice broke on the word afternoon, but she let it break and continued through the break. “I gave you the truest part of myself. And you gave it back to Devlin over brandy.”
He was rooted to the carpet. His face was white, his hands at his sides, his mouth open on a word he could not produce, and she watched him try to say her name and fail.
“I would have forgiven a great many things, Your Grace.” Her voice was quieter now, the fire burning lower, the grief settling in underneath it, cold and permanent, the kind of cold that would sit in her body for a very long time and would not be warmed by apologies or explanations or any amount of kneeling. “I would have forgiven the wager if you had told me before you touched me. I would have forgiven Devlin, the betting book, the brothel, the courtesan and the name on the page, because those things happened before you knew me and a man is entitled to be a fool before he is entitled to be better. But I will not forgive that you let me give myself to you yesterday with the wager between us. You took my virginity with the wager still active, Your Grace. You let me believe I was the one being honest in the room while Devlin was counting the hours.”
She stopped. The tears were still coming, but the words were done, and the room was very quiet except for their breathing and the distant sound of the orchestra beyond the three-quarter-closed door, playing something she would never be able to hear again without remembering this moment.
