Page 16 of Every Rogue Has His Charm

They walked along at a leisurely pace. Though Royal Crescent stood on the far eastern edge of town, the distance between any two points in Brighton was not great. Fanny could almost wish they had farther to go. After so long in the Underground, she still marveled at every chance she got to stretch her legs and breathe in the fresh air.

“The seaside agrees with you,” Lady Chesleigh remarked when Fanny paused to tip her face to the sun before stepping inside the comparatively dark bookshop.

Beneath the young marchioness’s scrutiny, Fanny blushed, then scolded herself for the reaction. She must remember to act as if she’d been in company before. “You are too kind,” she said.

Fitz was holding open the door to Donaldson’s circulating library, both his posture and his expression as footman-like as she had ever seen them. As she turned her head, the better to avoid Lady Chesleigh’s gaze, however, she caught his eye. Agreement with Lady Chesleigh’s words—nay, more than that—approval glittered there. Not the shy glances he’d occasionally sent her in the Underground when he’d thought she wasn’t looking. Something bolder. Something that sent awareness shooting along her nerves like a spark.

It was not a look a manservant should be giving his lady employer.

To reprimand him here and now would only call attention to his impudence, however. Lady Chesleigh, whose eye had been caught by a display of the latest titles just inside the door, might not even have noticed the look. Once Fanny slipped past him into the library, she dared to glance back and discovered his expression was once more suitably blank. Perhaps his look of desire had been a figment of her imagination.

Disappointment flickered through her at the thought, but she ruthlessly stamped it out. She was here on assignment. A dalliance with Fitz Hopkins would ruin…everything.

“What sorts of reading do you enjoy, Mrs. Drummond?” Lady Chesleigh was asking as she perused the new books.

Fanny hurried to her side. “With all my heart, ma’am, I wish I could tell you that I devote myself to history and philosophy and sermons, but the truth of the matter is, I mostly read novels.”

“I quite often find more philosophical truths in a well-written novel than in those dusty tomes. And,” she added with a wry laugh, “in the less well-written novels there is often more moralizing than a sermon.”

“How clever you are,” Fanny said. “I confess, I weigh books on a far more trivial scale. Does it bring a tear to my eye? Does it make my hair stand on end?”

Lady Chesleigh gave a mild smile. “It amounts to much the same thing.”

“Now this,” said Fanny, reaching for a book, “would just suit me—the latest by Robin Ratliff. The Brigand’s Captive. Oooh.” She wriggled as if a shiver of delight had just traveled up her spine.

“The Persephone Press does offer its readers ample entertainment.” The smile slipped from Lady Chesleigh’s lips as she turned from the display. “But I cannot abide Mr. Ratliff’s work. Too predictable and implausible. If ever I have an opportunity of meeting him, I intend to remind him that the character with all the appearance of villainy sometimes is the villain.”

Was that remark about villainy an oblique reference to her husband? If so, it was the closest she had come, in their brief acquaintance, of mentioning him, and Fanny wondered whether she had intended to reveal so much.

The extraordinary tale of Lady Caroline Brent’s sudden marriage to the notorious marquess and his almost equally sudden abandonment of his bride had somehow led Fanny to expect a woman defeated by the experiences life had handed her—dull eyes, faded cheeks, curved shoulders.

And if not that, then she had imagined a posture of defiance—a woman who met the stares and whispers of passersby with chin raised and teeth bared, a woman more than willing to give them something to gossip about.

Lady Chesleigh was neither. Despite a stated preference for novels, Fanny had in fact read enough philosophy to call her stoic. She moved about town with her shoulders back, but her face covered. She lived frugally, particularly for a marchioness. She entertained rarely and did not dress in the latest fashions. If she had ever taken a lover in the six long years of her husband’s absence, no one, not even the servants, breathed a word about it. She was difficult either to pity or to judge.

Despite the manifest differences in both situation and status, Fanny was intimately familiar with the strategies Lady Chesleigh employed. The composed demeanor. The cool reserve. Garments that served as both shields and weapons.

She recognized too the signs of something simmering just beneath that placid surface. Something it cost the marchioness a great deal to contain.

Lady Chesleigh moved deeper into the shop, while Fanny remained at the table near the door. She heard the proprietor speak deferentially to Lady Chesleigh. In another moment, the man’s shadow fell across the books nearest to Fanny.

“Good morning, ma’am. May I welcome you to Brighton? I do not recall seeing you at Donaldson’s before.”

“Yes, thank you,” Fanny said, letting the cover of the book at which she’d been looking fall closed before favoring the man with a smile. “I’ve only just arrived.”

“Then perhaps you’d enjoy some books on the history of the area?” he suggested.

After a sideways glance of longing at the Robin Ratliff novels, Fanny followed him to another area of the library, where he left her to browse. After choosing two or three titles at random, she went to the desk where he had indicated she would sign her name and pay her subscription fee.

As she withdrew a guinea from her reticule, she marveled at the power of having a purseful of them at her own disposal. She had known, of course, that various cases required agents to be outfitted in a particular way, and even sometimes supplied with ready coin, but the amount of the bank draft Colonel Millrose had handed her, for transportation, clothes, “and other sundries,” had made her goggle.

Or would have done, if she had not spent more than a year schooling her every expression into perfect composure.

Something of her present pleasure must have been visible, though, for Lady Chesleigh, who had joined her at the desk with three volumes of her own, remarked upon it. “There is really nothing to equal the power of selecting one’s own books, is there?”

“No, indeed,” Fanny agreed. But they were walking home, their combined selections in Fitz’s capable hands, before she could bring herself to confess, “Reading is something of a guilty pleasure. My late husband did not like to see me with a book in my hands. Particularly not the sort of books that give women unrealistic expectations about the world, as he put it.”

As if in response to her words, Fitz made a noise in his throat. She was surprised he had even heard her, as he followed several steps behind, all propriety again. Was he trying to caution her? Well, it had been a rather clumsy attempt at urging a confidence from Lady Chesleigh, for all it was also the truth.