A Dangerous Collaboration (A Veronica Speedwell Mystery) Deanna Raybourn (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📖

Mertensia rather felt she owed her something for it. Rosamund was in disgrace at the school for her part in the scheme, and only Malcolm’s intervention persuaded the powers that be to let her stay on after Mertensia left. I suspect he made a handsome donation to the school as well,” he said.

“Why should he?”

He shrugged. “The Romillys are dreadfully old-fashioned. Devoted to outmoded notions like loyalty and fidelity. Mertensia couldn’t bear the idea that Rosamund should suffer on her account, and as she was a scholarship pupil, Malcolm’s flinging a little money their way would be quite welcome.”

“So Mertensia came home to St. Maddern’s and Rosamund stayed on at the school?”

“She was training for a teacher.” A tiny smile played about his lips. “You cannot imagine anyone less suited for the profession.”

“Was Rosamund not clever?”

“Clever! The girl was clever as a monkey and twice as mischievous. She was too high-spirited for such a drab life. But it was the only one open to her. Her parents were dead and there was nothing on the horizon for her but genteel poverty unless she earned her crust.”

“I know the feeling,” I said.

The smile deepened. “Since making your acquaintance, I have been more than once forcefully reminded of Rosamund. It has been both a joy and a torment.”

He said nothing more for a long moment, then cleared his throat abruptly. “So, Rosamund began her profession as a teacher but found it did not suit her. She left in order to undertake private employment.”

“Was she more successful in this enterprise?”

“She was not. As I said, she was clever. Too clever to waste her youth and beauty teaching dull-witted children to lisp their ABCs. But she had a living to make. She took a series of assignments, each more unsatisfying than the last. Finally, some three years ago, she made up her mind to leave England and accepted a post in India. It was not due to start until the autumn. There was a period of some months during which she was at loose ends, with neither home nor occupation. She wrote to Mertensia, who immediately invited her to spend the summer here. It had been many years since their last meeting.”

“That was the summer you met her?”

His lips twisted. “‘Met.’ So tame a word for it. It was not a meeting, Veronica. I was introduced to her and it was like finding part of myself that had been somehow walking the earth without me. She was my other half when I had not realized I was incomplete.”

I said nothing; my throat was too tight for words.

He went on in a faraway voice, staring into the fire. “Malcolm had settled into comfortable bachelorhood, and I was much the same, content to indulge myself with what we shall call impermanent companionship. I believe you understand what I mean.”

I thought of my own eminently sensible indulgences of the flesh—there is no better remedy for low spirits and a poor complexion than a healthy and revivifying bout of copulation, I believe—and nodded.

“And yet I was occasionally conscious of a flicker of dissatisfaction. I enjoyed my dissipations thoroughly. I made a practice of them that would have put the most jaded and accomplished reprobate to the blush. But there were times when I was aware of a certain envy beginning to gnaw at me.”

“Envy?”

“Not a word you might immediately associate with the likes of me, I know. I do not inspire pity, as you have so astutely pointed out,” he said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm. “I am wealthy and titled and I am not uncomely. I have been dreadfully indulged and have got my way in almost every situation.”

“You are thoroughly spoilt, you mean.”

“Ah, that touch of asperity! You are the only one of my acquaintance who is unafraid to spice her conversation with that particular pepper. It is one of the things I adore most about you.”

“You are proving my point,” I warned him.

He smiled lazily. “Did you know that if you rub a cat’s fur the wrong way with a piece of silk, you can make sparks? Little flickers of electricity conjured from your bare fingertips. It is the nearest thing to being a god. That is how I feel when I spar with you.”

“I am glad it amuses you.”

“Amuses! My delectable Veronica, ‘amusement’ does not begin to plumb the depths of my regard.”

“You were telling me about how you fell in love with another woman,” I reminded him.

“Yes, I was. I have always thought it a ridiculous expression, to say that one falls in love, and yet that is precisely how it was. One moment I was myself, as I had ever been. The next, I was over the precipice and into the abyss.”

“And she felt the same?”

“She did,” he said, a sudden fierceness in his tone. His knuckles whitened on the glass. “I know she did. She resisted and she pretended. She prevaricated and she lied. But she loved me.”

“Why resist at all?” I asked. “As you say, you are everything a woman could want in a husband. You are titled and rich and handsome and charming.”

“I never claimed to be charming.”

“No, that is my personal assessment.”

A fingertip reached out to touch my cheek, light as a feather. “Why, Veronica. Perhaps you do care after all.”

I turned my head and gave a sharp snap of the teeth. “Careful, your lordship. I am no tame kitten for playing with.”

He drew back his hand. “No indeed. You are fully a tigress.” He settled into his chair. “She resisted me because she wanted Malcolm.”

I nodded thoughtfully and he turned an outraged face to mine. “Are you not going to protest? Will you not demand how any woman could prefer Malcolm Romilly to me?”

I shrugged. “But I understand it perfectly. Malcolm is handsome in his own pleasant country squire fashion. There is something quite jolly olde England and roast beef about him. One could well imagine him in Tudor velvets or perhaps in plate armor,