Chapter Six
Marcus, who about to set out on a journey north to visit his grandmother, had just stepped into his coach and was closing the door when Socrates unaccountably jumped out of the coach. Before Marcus had even dismounted, his dog, who had previously never run anywhere if it was not toward Marcus, had raced a good way down the street.
Marcus took off after him, calling fruitlessly, trailed by a footman doing likewise. He was still some distance from the dog when a carriage turned the corner ahead at a smart clip. Socrates was but a few feet from its wheels, and Marcus barely had time to conceive of imminent and appalling disaster, when a woman stepped into the road and snatched his dog out of harm’s way with moments to spare.
The coach rolled on obliviously as Marcus reached the woman, who was still holding his wayward dog. She was young, though he couldn’t see her face because she was wearing a bonnet and her gaze was directed at Socrates. Her worn and faded frock and the dated look of her bonnet suggested slender means, and he took her for a servant of some kind.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said, approaching. “That’s my dog you just rescued from certain disaster. I can’t thank you enough.”
She looked up, and as his eyes met hers, he was struck by the entirely unexpected, and strangely intense, sensation that he’d met her before. And was that an answering light of recognition in her own eyes?
He hardly had time to formulate these thoughts, though, because she immediately directed her eyes woodenly to his chest. As this was a not uncommon reaction among the servant classes when encountering someone like Marcus, he took little note.
He tried for a moment to place her. Had he perhaps passed her on the street before, or glimpsed her working in the home of an acquaintance? He must have encountered hundreds of servants over the years. Or perhaps she simply looked like someone he knew.
However, he really had no time for such inconsequential considerations. He was about to leave for a journey to the home of his grandmother, who’d retired to her country home as the Season was coming to an end. It had been almost three months since the masquerade ball, and despite his continuing lack of success in discovering anything about Poppy, he couldn’t forget her. She popped into his head at all sorts of odd times—when he was eating breakfast, while riding in Hyde Park, at dinner with friends. Never mind how often she appeared in his dreams. He was hoping that his grandmother would be able to provide some thoughts as to the possible identity of the owner of the pearl necklace, and thus of his mystery lady from the ball.
“He was almost hit by that carriage,” the young woman scolded him. Marcus couldn’t remember the last time he’d been scolded by anyone, being that he was thirty years of age and a marquess. Her bonnet must have come loose while she was running after Socrates, because it now began slipping toward the back of her head. As she pushed it impatiently off, he saw her face better.
She was pretty, a slim slip of a thing with thick dark brown hair escaping here and there from a careworn knot and those eyes that interested him more than they should. They were brown with flecks of gold.
She rubbed her cheek consolingly across the top of his dog’s head, though Socrates seemed unbothered by the notion that he’d just escaped death. That his dog was not merely tolerating the attentions of a stranger but making no attempt to reattach himself to Marcus was astonishing, because the only other person Socrates had shown any real interest in since Marcus had acquired him had been Poppy of the Ball.
It seemed his dog had a fondness for females or, apparently, certain females, since Socrates had not taken a particular liking to Marcus’s housekeeper, nor any of the maids, his mother, or even, inconveniently, his sister Alice, who’d volunteered to take care of him while Marcus was away. Much as he would have liked to accept her offer, he could not in good conscience have done so, since experience had taught him that as soon as Socrates perceived that his master had left the house, he began howling and didn’t stop until Marcus returned.
So far, all of Marcus’s efforts to train Socrates into better behavior had been completely ineffective. But apparently, and inexplicably, Socrates liked this young woman. Perhaps this was because she’d rescued him, but Marcus had no time to puzzle over the issue, because he needed to be on his way. He had, though, just had an idea.
“I am keenly aware that he was in great peril and that you saved his life,” he said. “For which I am extremely grateful. He’s a good-hearted fellow”—considering what he was about to propose, Marcus thought it best not to mention the diabolical howling yet—“but, I’m afraid, young and untrained. He was in my carriage, and I was closing the door when he bolted out. I can’t think why.”
“Dogs will do things like that,” she said reasonably. “Perhaps he saw a cat, or smelled something appealing to him, like a cheesemonger’s cart.”
Her speech was educated, her manner pleasant. He suspected she might be one of the numbers of women of good families who had fallen on hard times. And then her eyes met his again, and he was struck anew with the thought that he knew her.
“I say, is it possible that we’ve met before?”
“How—” the word came out as a croak, and she cleared her throat. “That seems highly unlikely.”
He grinned. “It does, doesn’t it? But I have the strangest sense that I’ve seen you before.”
“Oh, well, I’ve walked through Mayfair many times. Perhaps we’ve passed each other on the street.”
He nodded slowly, though he felt that this wasn’t quite right, that it was too thin an explanation for the jolt of connection he felt when looking in her eyes. But what difference did it make if he had once passed her on the street? He didn’t know her.
“Shall I relieve you of my dog?” Socrates had laid his head shamelessly on her shoulder and appeared supremely content.
“Could I hold him for a moment longer? He’s so dear.”
“Certainly.” Marcus would have gleefully agreed that she might hold Socrates for the rest of the day, since such an occurrence would allow him to do any number of things he had put off while he’d been busy keeping Socrates out of trouble. As Marcus watched, his dog licked the area of his rescuer’s neck right below her ear.
“Socrates,” he said sternly, “behave yourself.”
She laughed. “I don’t mind. He’s just a puppy.”
Something about her laughter made him want to laugh as well, even though there wasn’t anything especially amusing about their conversation. Or maybe it wasn’t only the sound of her laughter, but the way her eyes twinkled that made him feel as though they were sharing something fun.
“Well, I can’t thank you enough for saving him. It was fortunate that you were here.”
This was the moment when she might say why she had happened to be on the street, whether she perhaps worked in one of the neighborhood households.
“Yes, it was,” she agreed, not offering so much as a hint as to why she was there.
“Are you perhaps employed in the neighborhood?” he prompted.
“I am a seamstress.”
This made sense. Not a few seamstresses were gentlewomen fallen on hard times, and the more he talked with her, the more certain he was that she had had a good upbringing.
“Ah. Well, I hope that I might perhaps tempt you to make a change in position. I have a proposition of employment for you: I would like to retain you as a minder for my dog. As evidenced by recent events, Socrates is in need of someone to keep him out of trouble.”
“I’m sorry, did you say you wish to retain a companion for your dog?” she said, clearly puzzled.
He couldn’t blame her, as he would never have expected to find himself attempting to hire a woman he’d just met to be a companion for a dog, but he knew that he would not be able to bear the disappointment in his mother’s eyes if something happened to Socrates. Not that he wanted anything to happen to Socrates either, at least, not most of the time. Also, this woman presented the possibility that Marcus might have time unencumbered by his dog, which, after months of nearly constant canine companionship, sounded incredibly appealing.
“Yes. Suffice it to say that he was a gift and that, excepting yourself, it seems, he will not tolerate the company of anyone but myself. As you might imagine, this can create problems. Namely, if I can’t be with him, he howls constantly.”
“Ah,” she said.
“I’m journeying north today, as soon as possible, in fact, and I should be obliged if you would consent to accompany me—or, more specifically, my dog—on the journey.”
Not surprisingly, she looked taken aback by this abrupt proposal.
He smiled encouragingly. “I would pay you handsomely, of course.”
His words did not appear to put her at ease, and he thought she hugged his dog a little more tightly to her chest, as if Socrates might protect her from him. He was slightly offended, until he remembered that he hadn’t introduced himself and that a pretty young woman had good reason to be nervous about the idea of a strange man offering employment suddenly, particularly employment that would require a journey alone in his company.
“Please excuse me,” he inclined his head politely. “I have not introduced myself. I am the Marquess of Boxhaven.”
* * *
He didn’t recognize her.
She’d known it was him the minute their eyes met and she heard his voice, even as the carriage behind him with its gilded crest silently mocked her. But he didn’t know who she was.
True, he’d clearly felt some recognition—she’d seen it in his eyes and the wrinkling of his brow. The jolt when their eyes first met had been a shared jolt. But that had meant nothing. He didn’t know she was Poppy, and he apparently wasn’t under any kind of lingering enchantment from the ball that might have swept across the chasm between them and made everything into a happily ever after.
Rosamund knew she should be glad. None of the circumstances that had allowed them to meet at the ball was in force anymore, and she now was of an even lower status than when they’d first met.
Still, it stung that he didn’t know her, after they’d shared what had felt like the most special hours of her life. Over the past months, just thinking of him, of the fact that he was somewhere in London while she was there as well, had filled her with secret joy. Forbidden joy, but joy nonetheless. Now she was being shown how meaningless all that had been.
She briefly considered simply telling him they’d met before. Oh, this is funny, she might say, we met at your ball. But then she would eventually have to tell him her real name, and he would know her as the daughter of a man who was, however undeservedly, a national disgrace. And if Melinda then also discovered her whereabouts and made an issue of the “stolen” necklace, Rosamund might be in a great deal of trouble. Considering her father’s sad infamy, she could not, as his daughter, expect leniency.
She wished that none of those details about her mattered and that she could once again look in Marcus’s eyes and see that he thought she was special. But wishing was for people who were not in the kind of desperate straits she was in.
Marcus was offering her what would likely be a better wage than she was making as a seamstress, and for much easier work. Though she knew it was foolish to consider accepting his offer, not just because of the potential harm of her aunt’s accusations, but because she couldn’t bear for Marcus to find out that his mystery lady from the ball was really a poor, shabby seamstress, her future looked bleak, and his offer was tempting. The seamstress work paid barely enough to keep herself, and she had no hope of securing anything better. Was there really any choice?
“My name is Rosamund, my lord.” Socrates started to shift in her arms, and she held him out to Marcus, who accepted him.
“Well, Rosamund, what do you think? Will you agree to be Socrates’s companion, at least for the next month, or until he grows in wisdom and acquires civilized behavior, which might be rather further in the future? I would, of course, make it worth your while to set aside your current employment, and I would provide you with a character reference, should your work prove satisfactory.”
He then named a wage that would solve a great deal of her troubles, the kind of money that might allow her to leave London and establish herself somewhere else, perhaps as a dressmaker. Such a vision of the future was so vastly better than what she was now facing that she could hardly believe it possible.
“Your offer is unexpected,” she said, stalling for time as she considered whether it was the height of idiocy to be a companion to Marcus’s dog and thus inevitably put herself in Marcus’s charming company when he could never be for her. Now that he was not wearing a mask obscuring half his face, she could appreciate fully how handsome he was. His eyes were a gorgeous shade of dark blue, and he was just as tall and broad-shouldered as she remembered. Simply standing there talking to him was making her heart beat faster. “I would imagine there are not many dog companions employed these days.”
He gave her an amused look. “I would imagine so as well. Just think, it might be the start of a new sort of occupation, and you can be proud to say that you were the very first.”
She couldn’t resist smiling back—really, the man was too charming for his own good, never mind everyone else’s—and gave an inward sigh. Charming people, and likely charming women, probably came as easily to him as breathing. She would doubtless regret this, but she had little choice.
“Very well, I accept,” she said, hiding a smile as Socrates attempted to lick his master’s ear. “When should I start?”
“Well…” He grinned sheepishly, deftly evading Socrates’s little pink tongue. “Now, actually. I really was just about to depart on my journey.”
“Now? As in, this very moment?”
“Well, as soon as possible. I did want to get an early start so as to make the trip in one day.”
“But I would need to give notice and let my landlady know I won’t need a room now and pack my things.” Only a very few, since she didn’t have much.
He waved a hand, dismissing her concerns. “A footman can be dispatched to your employer to give notice for you and sort things out with your landlady, and someone at Boxhaven House can pack a valise for you. I’m certain there are any number of my sisters’ castoff clothes lying about.”
“Oh. Well, I suppose that would all be agreeable.” Since he was neatly doing away with all these details for her, agreeable was an understatement, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Excellent. You can have a cup of tea and a sandwich, if that would suit, while the valise is packed.”
“That would be welcome,” she said, trying not to sound absurdly eager about his offer of food. Since her dwindling store of coins had necessitated measures such as simply telling herself she wasn’t hungry when she was, the possibility of eating an entire sandwich in one sitting sounded like heaven.
“If you will come this way, Rosamund, I will take you to Boxhaven House, where I can finally put down this squirming bundle of fur-coated insanity.”