Page 9 of My Lord Rogue (Wicked Widows’ League #34)
T heo lasted only until the first luncheon bell before surrendering to the certainty that the house—its corridors, its guests, its ambient scrutiny—was intent on breaking her.
She escaped as soon as etiquette permitted, crossed two wings and a gallery, and found herself at the door of the conservatory, the hothouse cathedral Verity’s father had built to coddle pineapples and cultivate rare camellias.
The glass panes had gone milk white with condensation.
As she entered, heat and moisture rose in a wave and flattened her, sticky on the back of the neck, heavy through the chest. Every living thing in the place seemed to exhale, the glossy banana trees, the monstrous philodendrons, the crowding ferns.
Even the air tasted overripe, sweet with crushed petals and the green bitterness of sap.
Theo lingered by the entrance, letting her eyes adjust, her body already starting to bead with perspiration beneath the high collar of the gown she’d changed into after their ride.
Verity’s voice drew her deeper. “Darling, you must not hover by the door like a governess awaiting inspection! Come, I’ve saved you the best seat.”
Theo followed the sound past an explosion of hibiscus and a spindly orange tree bowed under its own weight.
At the center of the conservatory, beneath a trailing canopy of bougainvillea, Verity had established her citadel, a curved white settee, its cane back softened with faded silk cushions, a round table already set with a full tea service and a pyramid of seed cakes.
Three other women completed the tableau, their postures too decorous for true relaxation.
Verity made a show of rising, arms open wide. She wore a gown of pale peach, filmy and close-fitting, and her cheeks glowed with a carnation flush that no doubt owed as much to the heat as to the prospect of gossip. “Theodosia, we have been on pins and needles for your arrival.”
The others murmured their greetings. Lady Jennington, with the implacable calm of a woman who had buried three husbands and enjoyed the process, Miss Fox, a local squire’s daughter with an addiction to puns and an unshakable smile, and Lady Amelia appeared happy to see her.
Theo perched at the end of the settee, arranging her skirts to insulate herself from the clammy surface.
“Goodness, it is like the Amazon in here,” Miss Fox said, fanning herself with her hand. “Is it intended as a sort of prelude to the equator?”
Lady Jennington tsked . “If you can’t tolerate a little heat, you will never survive marriage, my dear.”
Verity poured Theo a cup of tea with the solemnity of a priestess. “A little adversity builds character, don’t you agree, Theo?”
Theo’s laugh sounded brittle, even to herself. “Or at least exposes its absence.”
Verity grinned and handed Theo the cup and saucer. “Did the ride fortify you for the evening’s onslaught, or do you find yourself already in need of rescue?”
Theo sipped. The tea was scalding, almost medicinal in its intensity. “The company was…lively,” she managed, eyes flicking to the others.
Lady Amelia bared her teeth in a smile. “We saw the finish at the ridge. Quite the spectacle, was it not?” She looked to Lady Jennington as if she expected her to comment on how unladylike Theo’s ride had been.
Theo set her cup down, careful not to betray the tremor in her hand. “I find the countryside improves everything, even the most tedious conversations.”
“Not everyone finds Baron Teddington tedious,” Lady Amelia purred, watching Theo with predatory interest. “He seems to have rather a talent for enlivening a party. They say his wit is as sharp as his horsemanship.”
Miss Fox giggled, then faked a swoon behind her fan. “He is very handsome, is he not?”
Theo summoned her most aloof smile. “His looks are tolerable, I suppose.”
Verity clapped her hands in delight. “We must have every detail, Theo. It is your moral obligation to your friends. You cannot keep such a man to yourself—not after teasing us with your mysterious correspondence.”
Theo felt the walls close in—the humid press of the air, the opacity of the windows, the way the orchids on the table leered at her with lurid tongues. “There is little to tell. He wrote out of courtesy, being Charles’s friend. He is a man of…letters. Not much else.”
Lady Jennington sniffed. “Men of letters are rarely men of action. But I suppose the world needs both, though never in the same sitting room.”
“On the contrary,” Verity said, “it is precisely the combination that makes a man irresistible. Now, tell us about the letters. Did he quote Latin? Or was it all scandal and poetry?”
Theo shifted her weight, feeling the damp spread under her arms. She reached for a seed cake, simply for the excuse to look down. “He wrote about his travels. The melancholy of Paris. The fog in Vienna. I imagine he feared I was lonely with Charles’ passing and he sought to liven my days.”
Miss Fox gasped, the sound genuine. “How romantic. I should die of happiness if a man wrote to me like that.”
Theo looked at the surrounding plants, searching for more to say. “He is obsessed with horticulture. There is a greenhouse on his estate in Northumberland that rivals the Royal Botanic. He claims he bred a blue hyacinth last year, but I suspect it’s merely a trick of the light.”
Verity arched a brow. “You sound positively intimate with his domestic arrangements, Theo. Have you visited Teddington Hall?”
Theo swallowed hard. The words caught at the back of her tongue. “No, of course not. He describes it in such detail that I feel as if I have.”
“Is it true,” Lady Amelia interjected, “that he was a favorite of Byron’s during his Oxford years? My cousin insists they once shared a mistress.”
Theo hesitated, feeling the sweat pool at the nape of her neck. She glanced at Verity, who was watching her with the avid curiosity of a scientist dissecting a rare specimen.
“He doesn’t speak of Oxford,” Theo said, voice gone small. “Or of Byron. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he shared a mistress with other men, from the gossip I heard.”
“Then what does he speak of?” Verity pressed, shifting closer on the settee, her silk sleeve nearly brushing Theo’s. “You must give us something delicious, or we’ll be forced to invent it ourselves.”
Theo looked away, watching the slow drip of a tiny fountain into the stone bowl at the foot of a banana tree. The rhythm was hypnotic, a steady tap-tap-tap that threatened to drown out her thoughts.
“He writes of longing,” she said finally, the words an exhalation. “Of wanting to be elsewhere. Of the strangeness of being neither here nor there—always the outsider, even in his own home.” She realized, as she spoke, that she was quoting from memory—her own, not his.
Verity softened, just a little. “You see? That is exactly the kind of thing that makes women lose their heads. It is almost a crime to keep it to yourself.”
Miss Fox nodded, eyes wide with sympathy. “He sounds lonely.”
Theo pressed her fingers to her temple, willing the migraine away. “Most people are.”
Lady Jennington downed her tea and reached for the sherry. “I suppose the next question is when he means to declare himself, and whether the local clergy is prepared for the scandal.”
Theo nearly choked. “There is no question of it. Nothing is arranged. We are barely acquaintances.”
Verity’s eyes sparkled. “That isn’t what the Captain says. He claims the baron could not take his eyes off you at breakfast. And that you returned the favor, despite your best efforts.”
The chorus of laughter was instantaneous, ringing out over the hiss of the foliage and the damp click of the cooling pipes overhead. Theo’s cheeks burned, her breath suddenly shallow.
She seized her cup, drained it, and set it down with a clatter. “I think the baron is in love with himself, not with anyone else,” she said, her tone sharp enough to cut. “He enjoys the idea of being in love. The rest is performance.”
Verity reached over and laid her hand atop Theo’s. The gesture was meant to soothe, but the pressure of her palm only made the trembling worse.
“You’re afraid,” Verity murmured, low enough that the others could not hear. “But you need not be, darling. He’s only a man. Men are easy enough to manage, once you stop imagining they’re made of different stuff.”
Theo almost laughed. She wanted to tell Verity that this was precisely her problem—she could not stop imagining, not even to save her own life. The lies came too easily, because they were not truly lies, they were what she wished the world could be, if only she were someone else.
But instead, she smiled—weak, but credible. “You’re right,” she said, and squeezed Verity’s hand back, because it was easier than explaining.
The talk drifted on. Lady Jennington recollected her second husband’s proposal that he’d written on a handkerchief, but forgot to sign his name.
Miss Fox expressed her theory that tulips and women both thrived best with a little benign neglect.
Lady Amelia gave an icy prediction that men who came in from the cold too suddenly were bound to leave frostbite behind.
When the tea ended and the company dispersed, Theo was last to leave.
She stood for a moment in the center of the conservatory, shoulders slumped, head bowed.
Her skin glistened, her lungs ached with the effort of keeping so much air inside them, and the memory of the baron—his voice, his smile, the echo of her own words twisted back at her—clung to her with the ferocity of a burr.
She looked up at the glass ceiling, the world outside rendered diffuse, almost merciful in its vagueness.
She told herself she could survive anything, as long as the walls held.
But she already knew they were paper thin, and that every word she had spoken this afternoon was another fissure running straight through to the heart.