He bowed. “Where am I taking her?”
“The ivory room.”
A strange look crossed his face. “The ivory room?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, with a tone that almost sounded smug to Poppy’s ears. “She mustn’t climb stairs, and it is the only bedchamber on the ground floor. Besides your own, of course.”
She thought she heard Westmead curse under his breath, but before she could parse the meaning of this exchange, he was lifting her once again.
When they crossed the hall, she immediately saw the source of his discomfort. The ivory room, so-called, was clearly the bedchamber meant for the lady of the house. The one meant for his wife.
The walls and floors were of a dark, gleaming wood, but the furnishings were sumptuous and feminine. A thick woven carpet in shades of ivory and gold spanned the greater part of the room. Creamy marble and gilt work crowned the massive fireplace at the room’s far end. Before it sat a polished copper bathing tub, nearly big enough to swim in.
Westmead excused himself, and she was left alone with Constance, who fluttered around, helping her undress and insisting she pick at a tray of broth and toast sent from the kitchen.
The effects of the brandy were fading and her ankle throbbed. She hissed at the pain.
“Poor darling,” Constance murmured, lending her shoulder and helping Poppy hobble toward the massive bed. “Here, take a few drops of this to help you sleep.”
“What is it?”
“Laudanum.”
Poppy had read of the tincture, made from a solvent of opium, but had never taken it. The botanist in her wondered if the drug was indeed as effective for pain as people claimed.
She accepted the phial and placed a single drop on her tongue.
“That’s better,” Constance said. “Here, let’s tuck you in.” She lifted the counterpane and made a cozy berth for Poppy, piling pillows beneath her swollen ankle.
“This room is very pretty,” Poppy murmured, burying herself in the feather mattress. The sheets were scented with rose sachets. She could not remember ever feeling more comfortable.
“Isn’t it? I designed it myself. When Archer announced he planned to marry, I became excessively excited. I had so nearly given up on him.”
“He is betrothed?” Poppy sputtered before she could stop herself.
Constance either did not hear or was kindly pretending not to hear the note of horror in her laudanum-heavy voice.
“No, not yet. That is what the ball is for. They don’t know it, but the unmarried ladies I’ve invited have been handpicked for the role of the Duchess of Westmead.”
Oh.
So this was why Constance had been so insistent she be hired. Why the decor for the ball had to be so spectacular. She was building the very scenery beneath which the duke intended to woo his future bride.
Perhaps it was the laudanum, but all at once she felt so leaden with exhaustion she had to close her eyes. When she opened them again, Constance was still there, staring at her intently.
She ran her fingers along Poppy’s brow. “I’m glad I found you. I was so worried he was about to make a terrible mistake.”
She wanted to ask what that meant, but the thickness of the laudanum made her too drowsy, and the thought drifted away as lazily as it had come.
Constance patted her head. “I will leave you to your rest, my poor invalid. Good night.”
As she drifted off to sleep, Poppy found herself piqued at the woman whose future life she was borrowing for the night—the phantom duchess who would someday sleep in this bed and bathe in the shiny copper tub.
No doubt, she would be a fine lady of breeding and accomplishment. The sort of lady who did not engage in trade and whose fingernails were never lined with dirt.
Poppy had never been such a lady and never regretted that she wasn’t. She liked the feeling of dirt beneath her fingers.
But now she perceived that such a lady might have one advantage over an ill-tempered gardener who fell off her horse.
That lady would be permitted to luxuriate in the Duke of Westmead’s arms whenever she bloody well wanted.
Archer sat very still as he listened to the faint murmur of his sister attending to Miss Cavendish across the hall.
This feeling.
This was the reason why he did not dance.
Why he confined his intimacies to those that could be bought.
Why he had not slept with a woman—kissed a woman—since he was last in this house. A man of one and twenty so lost to grief he could not rouse himself from bed or meet his responsibilities. A man who had fallen, for a time, completely and utterly apart.
He stood and poured himself another brandy. To stew in the past was the surest, fleetest path to ruin. A decade’s forward, plodding march had taught him that.
There would be no further dallying with Miss Cavendish. No more twilight rides or dancing lessons or intimate conversations.
For her sake, yes. But most especially, for his.
He rose. He needed a distraction. He joined Constance for an informal supper in the library, drawing it out by teaching her five-card loo, allowing her to smoke a cigar, and, as a final act of desperation, looking at her sleeping arrangements for the ball.
When she wandered up to bed, he turned to work. He read his way through two investment proposals, responding with detailed notes and questions even though it was clear that neither venture offered adequate return on capital.
Somehow, there were hours still to fill before dawn. He paced his study, conscious he was stalking like some kind of brooding panther. He recalled that Constance had found a number of old boxes in the renovation and saved them for inspection in case they had pertinence to estate business.
He retrieved them from a cupboard. Nothing like mildewed accounts of historic wool prices to clear a roiling mind.
He took a knife and pried the first crate open, wincing at the mess inside. Ledgers were piled on mismatched stacks of correspondence, stuffed with faded bits of paper and damp-spotted bills of sale. He rolled up his sleeves and plunged in with a grim kind of satisfaction. Sorting papers into tidy stacks: one of his life’s finest pleasures.
There was little worth recovering, save for a lumpy, threadbare bag. He pulled the contents from inside: two square frames that felt like—
Miniatures.
Two portraits. A dark-haired woman with golden eyes. A smiling boy with white-blond hair.
Christ.
The old black feeling soared around him, as suffocating as an underwater current.
He shoved the paintings back in the bag and the bag back in the box and staggered backward until his shoulders met the solid door behind him.
He leaned his head against the wood and tried to breathe.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
It rose in his throat. It climbed up around his ears, roaring in his blood, making his skin so hot he wanted to rip off his shirt.
It had been a mistake to come back here. He longed for the low gray maze of London. For his empty, sterile house. For Elena. For the searing crack of leather on his spine. The engulfment by numbness that would follow.
He straightened up. There were other ways for a man to forget. Namely, brandy. And he was going to dose himself with it until he could no longer recall his own name.
“No!” someone cried out, faintly.
“Yes,” he muttered back, reaching for the decanter.
But the sound was not purely in his head. He heard it again.