When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,68
least four, then.”
“I can’t believe Mr. Hawthorne’s just letting you spend whatever you like on the house,” Lucretia muttered.
“Well, why shouldn’t he?” Messalina inquired, a bit hypocritically considering all the arguing she’d had to do on her first trip to this shop. She paused by a side table with a red marble top and fanciful gilt legs that might work for the library. “It’s my money, after all.”
“I already told you I have plans to regain some of it.” Messalina stopped and turned toward her younger sister curiously. “Do you want Gideon to keep me from my money until then?”
“No, of course not.” Lucretia scowled at the side table. “I’m just suspicious about his motives.”
“You’re always suspicious. But I do understand why you’re worried over this in particular.” Messalina sighed, strolling past the side table. It was very garish. “All I can say is that we’ve made the best of this marriage, Gideon and I. He’s ambitious and has a terrible past, it’s true, but he’s very clever, and I find his conversation quite stimulating.”
“Stimulating,” Lucretia said flatly.
Messalina felt heat invade her cheeks. “Yes, stimulating.”
Lucretia stopped, and Messalina took several steps before she realized she’d left her sister behind. She turned.
Lucretia’s mouth had fallen open. “You bedded him!”
The clerk who had begun to discreetly shadow them did an about-face and appeared to remember an urgent matter on the opposite side of the showroom.
Messalina glared at Lucretia. “Must you announce my affairs to the entire shop?”
Lucretia hurried to her side and hissed, “You did.”
At least her voice was a little lower. “I don’t—”
“Last night,” Lucretia continued, pursing her lips and inspecting Messalina all over as if looking for a sign proclaiming that Messalina was no longer virginal. “Because you said just yesterday that you hadn’t. What was it like?”
“Lucretia.” Her face felt as if it were pulsing with heat.
But her sister had an intent thinking expression on her face. This was exactly why no one who knew Lucretia would play charades with her anymore. “You must’ve enjoyed it because you called him stimulating. And this morning at breakfast you had a silly smile on your face—”
“I did not!”
“I think you enjoyed it very much indeed.”
“Oh my Lord,” Messalina sighed.
Lucretia narrowed her eyes. “Was there blood?”
“What,” Messalina muttered, looking around for something to distract her sister.
A blond young woman was standing by the door to the shop, her bearing oddly familiar. For a second Messalina stared. She almost looked like—
“Because,” Lucretia continued relentlessly, drawing Messalina’s attention back to her, “they always go on and on about blood. If one is to believe the tales, it’s a wonder that all newly married women don’t bleed to death on their wedding night.”
For a moment Messalina could only gape in horror at her sister. She glanced back at the doorway, but the woman was gone.
Messalina shook her head and pointed blindly at a dressing table. “What about this one for your room?”
They both contemplated the table. It had a yellow marble top, and the legs were made entirely of gilt curlicues and…cupids. Naked gold babies with hardened middle-aged man faces.
Lucretia tilted her head, staring at the abominable dressing table. “Truly?”
“Dear goodness, no.”
“Hm,” Lucretia mused. “You know…”
Messalina looked at Lucretia when her words trailed away. Lucretia hardly ever hesitated to say exactly what she thought. “What?”
Lucretia frowned horribly and said in a rush, “I only want you to be happy. Truly happy, not just content. You used to loathe Mr. Hawthorne—we both did, the way he spied and lurked. I just don’t understand how you can have changed your mind so quickly.”
“Well, part of it is I didn’t truly know the man,” Messalina said dryly.
“And you do now?” Lucretia’s gray eyes—the same shade as her own—searched her face.
“Not completely,” Messalina admitted. “I’ve only been married to him less than a fortnight. But in that time he’s talked to me. He’s listened to me. Perhaps…perhaps I’ll find out something to his detriment in the future, but right now I have hope.” She half smiled. “I think even in the best of marriages that may be the only important thing.”
“But”—Lucretia turned to face Messalina, her expression grave—“have you thought about what will happen when we leave?”
Messalina blinked. She’d rather been avoiding the thought of leaving Gideon. She traced the inlay on a cabinet. “I don’t—”
“Because you might be with child.”
Messalina stilled at the stark words. Of course she knew that. Of course she’d considered that lying with her