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“And what use would that serve, my angel?” Lord Deveril now loomed above her right shoulder, smiling down at Miles. Miles would have preferred it if his smile was chilly, suggesting that he was a threat. And, indeed, Miss Mordaunt hadn’t indicated by more than an initial moment of discomposure that she felt an answering jot of the myriad emotions that assailed Miles each time she came within his orbit.
“I…I think it would be entertaining,” she stuttered, as if she were suddenly embarrassed, or caught out in some misdemeanor, though Miles couldn’t imagine why.
“It would take you a day of ardent study, when you could be entertaining me. No, I could think of much better uses of your time.”
Miles didn’t miss the strange look that crossed her face. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. With just a proud raising of her head, she took the arm Deveril offered her, and they bid him good day. However, barely had they passed out of the room than Miles was aware of some commotion just beyond the doorway. He hurried after them and nearly tripped over Deveril lying on the ground, and a great many people surrounding him with apparently no idea of what to do.
He took charge, purloining the sturdiest of the gentlemen and a rough-looking fellow to help. “Lift him carefully. Miss Mordaunt, can you order his carriage to be brought around? That’s right. We’ll carry him down the stairs. Gently.”
Clearly distressed, Miss Mordaunt obeyed, following the unconscious Deveril out of the building and thanking Miles as they laid him, still insensible, across the seat of his carriage, telling Miles it wasn’t the first time this had happened; that Lord Deveril had been afflicted by such turns since boyhood. They had defied the doctors but they had no lasting consequences. “He will awake with no harm done but it will be less mortifying if he wakes in his own home. He despises such lack of control but it is worse if he has an audience.”
Miles wished he didn’t feel so disappointed by her apparent relief that his lordship would recover shortly. While, of course, he wouldn’t wish him dead, Miles knew he’d be very happy to step up and fill his lordship’s boots.
The postilion was about to close the door upon Deveril and his barque of frailty, as he heard one coarse bystander call her, when Miss Mordaunt put her head out of the window. “Will you come with us?” she suddenly entreated him. “I know it’s an intrusion upon your time, but it would be comforting to have someone strong and commanding on hand when we arrive.”
Strong and commanding? Ridiculously thrilled by the invitation, Miles climbed into the carriage
, only to find himself tongue-tied by the proximity of the angel seated so close beside him in the small, confined space; owing to the fact that Lord Deveril’s large body took up the length of the opposite seat. To his chagrin, it was clear Miss Mordaunt wasn’t similarly beset by the searing awareness he experienced at inadvertently finding his hand touching her thigh as they rounded a corner.
She glanced down with a vague look before withdrawing; as if she were too preoccupied to notice properly, yet aware that such straying into her personal space wasn’t acceptable.
“Poor Deveril will be so mortified,” she repeated nervously, biting her lip and glancing across at Miles. “I wonder if I should have asked you to accompany me after all. He may not like it if he wakens now.”
“He must know that I’d have been acting in a most ungentlemanly manner had I simply abandoned you,” Miles was able to respond with self-righteous vigor.
“He may consider that your actions were motivated by something other than interest in his welfare.”
“You surely must know that they were,” he murmured.
Miss Mordaunt blushed a pretty shade and leaned across to rest her hand on her protector’s cheek, as if to check he was incapable of hearing them. Or to convey to Miles where her loyalties lay. Her mouth was set in a grim line as she whispered, “You must not say that, even in jest.”
“You must know that you are utterly ravishing and entirely irresistible, Miss Mordaunt. I thought it the moment I clapped eyes on you at Madame Plumb’s. When I thought you were married to that…knave, Mr. Graves—”
She blanched and then fire kindled in the depths of her eyes as she drew back and faced him squarely. “Do not refer to that unfortunate night! How cruel to remind me that it was the last evening I believed myself a respectable…married…woman. Yes, indeed! It was the very last night of my life I could hold my head up and pretend to the world that I was as good as any other virtuous female.” She seemed to crumple then, resting against the window as she put her hand to her temples and closed her eyes. “Oh, but I have been brought low,” she whispered. “So low! Never again be received in any respectable drawing room by any respectable person—never!”
They’d reached Lord Deveril’s townhouse, and a lackey was opening the carriage door, handing down Miss Mordaunt, and summoning help upon Miles’s instructions. He felt cheated that their sudden arrival had stolen from him the opportunity to respond other than with a heartfelt, “You are not lowered in my eyes, Miss Mordaunt.” But it sounded feeble amidst all the haste with exclamations for his lordship’s health. Instead, Miles had to resign himself to overseeing the transportation of his lordship.
In the doorway of Deveril’s bedchamber, he watched the care and concern with which Miss Mordaunt carried out the duties that would have been expected of a devoted wife.
As she came gracefully forward to thank him, and no doubt dismiss him, Miles couldn’t help himself. He wished he could grip her hands and ask the question with the fervor that did justice to his wildly beating heart. Instead, he inquired coolly and, yes, cruelly, “Do you think the future Lady Deveril will permit such tender care of her husband?”
“If you’re referring to a certain young lady whom the gossip sheets predict will soon become Lady Deveril, and that as a result I fear for my security, be reassured I don’t,” she said in clipped tones, coldness replacing her smile. “Haven’t you heard him say it? That I am his prized possession.” There was grim humor in her words, but she didn’t allow him to respond, nodding briefly before closing the door upon him and the busy domestic scene of making Lord Deveril comfortable upon the massive four-poster with its hanging drapery of woven hunting scenes.
The bed upon which he no doubt enjoyed great sport with Miss Mordaunt when he wasn’t visiting her at the cosy bower he leased for her, not far away.
Jemima tried to contain her restlessness in front of Deveril, who was reading The Times in his armchair by the fire while she worked at her needlework; her mind occupied yet again by the events at the British Museum the previous week. Not Deveril’s collapse. He’d collapsed without warning three times during their five months together. After an hour or so, he’d regain consciousness with no sign that he was adversely affected.
No, it was the hieroglyphics that obsessed her, and feverishly she wondered how she might obtain a copy of every engraved symbol of the three texts on the Rosetta Stone. But her lover was possessive. He didn’t like her away from his side for too long.
She dropped her needlework as she rose and went to the window. Was it a fantasy to imagine she’d somehow find her way back to Lord Griffith’s Blue Room and take possession of the clay tablet, then use it to ultimately secure her own future?
“After I’m married, I will send my wife to the country,” Deveril had reassured her the night before as he held her in his arms. “My marriage changes nothing between us.”
Jemima had stared at the ceiling, thinking that a little less physical attention from Deveril would be a nice change, yet his patronage was all that stood between her and the gutter. Strangely, Deveril seemed to mistake her natural gratitude for love.
Love.
Jemima could neither trust nor love any man again.
