The Scoundrel's Secret Siren (9 page)

Lord Peter Wren, the
second son of Lord Gilmont’s cousin, was gawkish and fresh out of school. Mr Hunter was a quiet man whose features, while not exactly handsome, were pleasantly attractive and his manner was kind. His grey eyes were intelligent and observant: Lorelei could not help noticing that they were often fixed on Julia. Lord and Lady Riverham were many years older than their hosts, and had brought their daughters, the Misses Dawlish.

Lisa Dawlish, Lorelei found, was a conceited creature determined to set her cap at any of the unattached gentlemen in the party and Camille seemed just as determined to speak as little as possible. On the whole, however, there was diverting conversation to be had at table, and Mr Taylor led them all in many games of whist.

Despite all her anxiety at the thought of seeing him again, Lorelei had been taken aback to find that Lord Winbourne was indeed to be of the party. Being at Gilmont made it harder than ever to forget him: as she took in the beautiful house, she wondered whether he too walked the same charming little paths, admired the same paintings in the library. This just led her to wonder what his own house was like. Was it warm and inviting like Gilmont House, or cold and unwelcoming like the façade which he wore in public?

She
forcibly had to shake herself out of such absurd musings: her foray into adventure that night over a month ago had come at a very high price indeed. She was mystified, utterly intrigued, by the one creature who could never bring her so much as a shred of happiness.

Just that morning, h
e had spotted her sorry attempt to hide from him behind a camellia and pretended not to notice her – she was mortified over the entire episode. It was the outside of enough! Lorelei felt like a pudding-head. He was only a man, after all, not seduction incarnate, and she should have no problem conducting herself with perfect civility.

At dinner, t
he earl was resplendently dressed, as always. His burgundy coat was impeccably tailored, his Hessians polished to perfection and his cravat a veritable masterpiece. A gold watch-fob could be seen elegantly peeking from below the hem of his coat. He also seemed well-set on teasing Lorelei.

“
I have yet to compliment you on the excellent way the new gardens have been laid out, Eloise,” the earl said to his sister. “The little paths are quite delightful.”

Lorelei’s eyes flew to his, which
were trained on her face intently. She did not like the inexplicable warmth that flooded her heart upon meeting his gaze.

“Why, thank you, A
listair. The new head gardener possesses quite a genius for such things. Though I had no idea you had any interest in gardens!”

“I hadn’t until just this morning. Miss Lindon was good enough to enlighten me on the subject –
she was particularly taken with the camellias, I understand.”

Eloise looked pleased.
She smiled at Lorelei. “Is that so? Well, my dear, I own I am impressed – I’ve never been able to get Alistair to show even a shred of interest in country gardens!”

“Oh, it was nothing, I assure you
. Lord Winbourne is only being kind. The gardens are truly lovely – it is not at all difficult to admire them!” Lorelei replied pleasantly, returning the smile despite her irritation.

To
her relief, the conversation moved on quickly after that, though Lord Winbourne continued to bait her. Deciding that she had had quite enough of the whole business, and refusing to moon over the man no matter how well his coat fit his strong shoulders and slim waist, she made a point of engaging Mr Hunter in polite conversation.

After dinner, when they were all gathered again in Lady Gilmont’s favourite drawing room,
Winbourne had the audacity to produce the moonstone pendant out of a pocket of his coat. Lorelei knew he meant her to see it as he stood talking with Lord Peter about that gentleman’s search for a decent pair of carriage horses.

The earl carelessly twirled the pendant in his fingers
while Lord Peter described a pair of dappled mares he’d seen at auction and expounded on their virtues.

It was not the first time Lorelei had seen him do so. She had also glimpsed him playing with the necklace when he had not known her to be near, as if it were an object of unconscious comfort or a good-luck charm – this puzzled Lorelei excessively.

She had yet to think of a way of getting it back, after the disastrous way in which her previous attempt to ask for it at Almack’s had escalated into most improper behaviour. It seemed that, from his clothes and carriages to everything else in his life, nothing about Lord Winbourne was simple.

She found his impassivity infuriating, because it felt like a personal affront that he differed so sharply from the ideal in her head. That golden lord was quite irretrievably lost.

Fortunately, Lorelei could not devote all of her attention to her own troubles. It was not long before Julia revealed her mounting distress over the marital plans Lady Bassincourt had formed for her.
The letter arrived on the third morning of their stay and sent Julia into a fit of the nerves.

After a morning of watching her friend teeter on the verge of enacting a Cheltenham tragedy, Lorelei persuaded her to venture outdoors and explore the magnificent grounds.
It would never have done to leave her friend to her despair, and so she undertook to think of a way to help.

It was a fine day
outside and they took with them some of the spice cakes which had been left over from breakfast. It was very pretty walk along flower beds and shaped hedges. Lorelei wished that she could remove slippers and stockings and walk barefoot on the springy grass, but she could not risk some gentleman coming upon her in such a state.

“I don’t see why I ought to marry!” Julia exclaimed as the ladies strolled through the sunlit garden, in the general direction of the fishpond. Julia’s parasol trembled with indignation and her eyes were
overly bright.  “Gentlemen don’t have to. My Uncle Winbourne shall never marry – and no one urges
him
to be more engaging. Though one does wonder if Lisa Dawlish knows that her hopes in that direction will be entirely dashed!” The last bit was said with surprising vindictiveness.

Lorelei looked at her friend with surprise, wondering if there was more to the outburst than Julia was letting on. It was very unlike Julia, who usually had a perfectly placid temperament, to fly into such a miff. Even her dislike of Miss Dawlish couldn’t explain it. Lorelei supposed that the time her friend had been spending in the company of her outspoken Aunt Gilmont was having a very definite effect.

On probing the matter further, Lorelei discovered that Julia had already been fretting for about a week because, despite finding several of the gentlemen she’d met to be perfectly agreeable, none would have done for a husband. Julia’s mother had been quite shocked to learn that her quiet daughter held such outlandish notions.

“But, my love, you could be a
duchess
!” Lady Bassincourt had bemoaned, her face frozen in astonishment as she brushed a shining brown curl away from her daughter’s face.

Julia had prove
n herself to possess a much more discerning turn of mind than Lorelei had expected. Once she had come to know the heiress better, Lorelei found her to be not only engaging company but surprisingly outspoken when in the company of trusted friends.

“Only,” Julia continued, spilling her woes, as she agitatedly plucked petals off a gardenia, “I’m not at all certain I want to be a duchess – at least not yet, and certainly not if the duke is a dead bore. I’m certain I should be as scandalous as the previous Lady Jersey!”

“Surely not!” Lorelei exclaimed, highly amused. The previous Lady Jersey had been known as much for her shocking love affairs as for her charm. It was still a sore point with Sally Jersey and her husband, and no one who had any wish to one day receive a voucher to Almack’s would dare bring the matter up within her hearing. The girls giggled at the absurd picture of Julia in such a role.

When their mirth had subsided, Lorelei took a calming breath. She watched thoughtfully as fat bronze fish flitted this way and that under the clear water.

There was something Julia had said that had taken Lorelei enough aback for her to risk voicing a question. “But what do you mean that Winbourne will not marry, my dear?” she ventured as casually as she could manage.

Julia blinked a moment, as though trying to recall what she had just said. “Winbourne? Oh! I meant simply that he is such a cold creature and such a terrible rogue that I don’t see how he would. Don’t scold me! I know one oughtn’t know such things, especially not of one’s relations, but one can hardly help over-hearing what is being said. Of course, I shouldn’t say that – he has always been very kind to
me
. He was always in the way of bringing me chocolates as a child, though mother would insist they spoiled me for my dinner.”

Lorelei surprised herself with a chuckle. She had trouble imagining the icy earl sneaking chocolate past Lady Bassincourt – such things surely belonged to the golden heroic Winbourne that had only ever lived in her imagination.

“Mother is very concerned that he should take a wife and quickly – and she badgers him about it quite incessantly, but I don’t believe she will see much progress on that head. I think it would be even worse if he were to marry merely for the sake of it, after successfully ignoring mother’s attempts to parade eligible ladies under his nose for so very long. He was affianced once, you know,” Julia continued, thinking hard. “I can’t quite remember the details – it was more than ten years ago and I was still a child. No one ever speaks of it to me, but I’ve heard Eloise mention it once or twice to Mama when they thought no one was about.”

Lorelei could not hide the startled look that spread across her face –
she
had certainly heard nothing of the matter! She could barely credit it. Julia caught her expression and nodded sadly. “Oh, yes. I don’t even know the name of the lady – but I believe she threw him off and he must have suffered a great disappointment! I think I remember hearing that she was French, and that she returned back to France after she broke with my uncle.”

Both girls stood quietly a moment, mulling over this, as a light breeze fluttered their pale muslin dresses. Lorelei shivered despite herself. She was astonished at having never heard so pertinent a piece of gossip. It was an old scandal, perhaps, but such things had a way of surfacing all the same. It sounded like a very sad tale. She’d thought that she had a rather keen understanding of the dissolute man, but perhaps she had really understood nothing. Lorelei wondered, also, how much else she did not know about him.

Lorelei thought of the many different aspects of his character that the earl had inadvertently revealed to her. There was the icy fashionable creature known to the
ton
, whose brief dalliances never lasted more than a few weeks. And there was also the different kind of amusement appearing in his eyes when he had teased her, though admittedly his fun had been at her expense.

Most of all, she thought of the devil-may-care stranger she’d met that night on the Little Paddlington road. She had always imagined that disappointment was the sort of thing that happened to ladies. Certainly not to handsome wealthy gentlemen like Winbourne. And even at his most arrogant, he c
ouldn’t have deserved to be thrown off in so cruel a fashion that everyone would avoid speaking of it evermore! She wondered what could have prompted the French lady to act so drastically.

Once a
gain, the new image of him, which she had begun to build up in her head to replace her golden ideal, was unceremoniously shattered. Lorelei didn’t suppose she would ever be able to put the pieces together in any coherent way.

He was such an odious man outside the rosy world of her imagination! And yet, though she was certain she disliked him excessively, she felt a twist of pain as she imagined how he must have felt when his betrothed had cried off. She did not like picturing his suffering. Somehow, suffering struck her as particularly tragic
in so reserved a man.

“Well, that’s all in the past and I am certain it doesn’t matter a whit now!” declared Julia brightly, breaking through her grim thoughts. “You are very fortunate that neither Lady Hurst nor your papa wish for you to make a match by the end of your first season!”

Lorelei did not feel her own affairs to be so very fortunate as that: it was all a sad tangle, despite Lady Hurst’s tolerable outlook regarding her suitors. Strictly speaking, Winbourne was not even a suitor! Lorelei forced herself to dismiss her musings for the moment and attend to cheering Julia up their ramble out in the fresh air.

It took Lorelei a good while to convince Julia that all was not lost, and though her friend carefully avoided revealing any more of her troubles than she already had, Lorelei could not shake the suspicion that there was more to be discovered under the surface. Having promised to think of some way to aid her friend, she seemed to fractionally succeed in cheering Julia’s bleak mood.

They spent another hour chatting about silly unimportant things by the fishpond, until Julia felt sleepy and retreated to the house for a nap. Lorelei stayed longer, producing a slim book from a pocket in her spencer. Lady Hurst had been kind enough to supply the young lady with more adventure books since Lorelei had finished all the ones which she had sent. She was currently completely taken with
The Forsaken Baron,
a novel of smugglers, hauntings
and Sir Philip Harclay, the brave and marvellous hero.