The Secret to Seduction (14 page)

Sabrina’s eyes flew wide; she turned away immediately, flustered, a little hitch in her breathing.

Wyndham appeared then, a handsome coat buttoned over him, cravat fluffed and white. He flung his arms out for inspection, and the earl shrugged, and began his recitation.

“All right, Wynd. Ladies, Wyndham already knows this, but the room we’re standing in is called the Star Room. The fourth Earl of Rawden was an astronomer by avocation, and the ceiling is in fact an accurate representation of the galaxy, or so I’m told. He built those vast windows on either side of the room to allow in as much starlight and moonlight as possible. To facilitate his view of heavenly bodies, of course.” He flicked an infinitesimal smile at Sabrina, who blinked, astonished, as though he’d flicked a spark at her.

Had that been an
innuendo
?

But the earl merely continued speaking. “And as the previous occupants of La Montagne managed to shoot out the upper windows while they were having a drunken go at grouse in the park—and they most definitely weren’t members of the Gillray family, I should mention—I commissioned the stained-glass insets you see here. As I told Miss Fairleigh a moment ago, when the light shines through at certain times of day, you can see the reflection of the moon and the stars very vividly on the marble floor.”

Sabrina glanced where the earl gestured. The swirl of snow outside was allowing very little light through, but she imagined for a moment she could see the moon and the stars on the floor. She rather hoped she’d have a chance to see them.

“Other occupants? Did you rent out La Montagne to other occupants then?”

“No.” A single word.

“But…then who shot out the windows?”

“They
owned
La Montagne, Miss Fairleigh,” the earl said shortly. He continued speaking as if her question had not been asked.

“The table you see here before the settee, and the chairs, were designed by Mr. George Bullock, who, coincidentally, was also commissioned to design the furniture for a certain emperor who was just exiled to St. Helena. I bought them from Mr. Bullock shortly before he passed a few years ago.”

Sabrina’s thoughts were elsewhere. So somehow the Gillrays had lost La Montagne, and somehow the Earl of Rawden had acquired it again. Sabrina remembered what Geoffrey had said: that Rhys had been nearly penniless, and that somehow, magically, he’d had money again. And somehow he’d managed to turn the money into a fortune.

Extraordinary to think it: he was probably just past thirty years in age, the earl, and somehow he’d managed to reacquire a magnificent house and all the magnificent things in it.

Sabrina eyed the pieces he was speaking of, inlaid ebony and gilt, simple but striking, gathered about the settee, which was much more ornate by contrast. She tried to imagine Napoleon Bonaparte on St. Helena sitting among his own furniture.

“Chippendale,” the earl said, noticing Sabrina’s glance at the settee, as if this explained everything. “Not a Bullock.”

Sabrina wondered if Sophia Licari considered Chippendale or Bullock curs, but the soprano refrained from comment.

And then the earl turned and strode from the Star Room.

Thus proceeded a tour of a seemingly endless warren of rooms, most of them featuring at least one portrait of someone wearing a wig or a ruff or mounted on a rearing horse. The earl pointed at things, chairs and settees and tables and candelabra, and names flew by Sabrina like exotic birds. Someone with the unlikely name of Grinling Gibbons had carved the gorgeously complicated panels in a predominantly green sitting room; a Mr. George Hepplewhite had made the chairs in another room; a carpet by the name of Aubusson stretched out over the floor of yet another room.

Sabrina was struck by the fact the earl seemed almost grimly proud as he announced the provenance of the various pieces, all of which were spotless, the wood gleaming, the colors in the carpets fresh. She considered that this might be the reason Mrs. Bailey never smiled. Perhaps she went to bed at night thinking of all the dust requiring vanquishing anew each day.

Most of the furniture at the Tinbury vicarage had been made by someone Sabrina personally knew, and was sturdy and functional and
never,
no matter how she tried, truly gleamed. Too much use had been gotten out of every stick of it. The pianoforte had been made by Broadwood, a very respectable maker of pianofortes, but it had been so thoroughly played by numerous previous owners by the time the Fairleighs acquired it that the D key next to middle C needed to be thumped hard to get it to move, and a few of the black keys didn’t move at all.

They passed by a small room the earl didn’t bother entering, though he did gesture to it.

“Used by my father’s man of affairs as an office,” he told them. “And no one uses it now.”

Sabrina peered in as they passed: yes, everything in there gleamed as well.

“Ah. And this is what I wanted to share with you today.”

The earl had paused in the doorway of a gallery of statues. Before them were rows of elegant marble figures captured in motion or repose, glowing softly in the daylight.

“The fourth Earl of Rawden began commissioning sculptures of the gods and goddesses and depictions of Greek myths. You’ll note here we have Leda tussling with the swan—poor Leda—and here’s Jason”—the earl strolled by and gave a gentle pat to Jason’s marble biceps and moved on—“and here’s Diana flanked by a pair of deer, and this is—”

“Persephone,” Sabrina breathed, drifting over to her.

She was beautiful, Persephone was, her face gently resigned, more thoughtful than unhappy; a pomegranate cupped in one palm, her cheek cradled in the other. The toga she wore flowed to her ankles, as fluid as silk. Her elbow rested on what appeared to be the arm of a throne.

Persephone, the daughter of the goddess of spring, compelled to live in Hades six months out of the year for partaking of pomegranate seeds. Thus denied the warmth of her presence, the earth experiences fall and winter, or so the myth has it.

Wyndham was lingering at one end of the gallery and appeared to be surreptitiously comparing Artemis the Huntress’s bosom with Sophia Licari’s. Signora Licari either didn’t notice or didn’t care; she was examining the row statues critically, her gaze taking all of them in, like a merchant mulling a purchase.

“They are very fine,” she pronounced generously. As though Rhys had been awaiting her opinion with bated breath.

Rhys said nothing; merely flicked an amused, slightly inscrutable glance her way.

The lovely singer moved on, roving past several more statues, and paused to study an anatomically…
thorough
…statue of Hercules. Not a modest people, the ancient Greeks. And Sabrina remained near Persephone and the earl, and the latter spoke to her.

“You are familiar with the Greek myths, then, Miss Fairleigh? But they’re all rather filled with uncontrolled passion and people behaving badly, wouldn’t you say?”

“They’re myths, Lord Rawden,” she said mildly. “They’re
called
myths precisely because they are not about actual people, and didn’t actually happen.”

Rhys gave a laugh. “Ah, but there’s something you should know, Miss Fairleigh . . .” He lowered his voice a little, as though to speak only to her. “This great window here is designed especially to illuminate the statues when the moonlight slants in. And legend has it that Persephone comes to life when the light of the full moon at midnight touches her face.”

Sabrina stared at the exquisitely detailed statue, the rounded arms and throat. She could almost believe it.

“What does she do then?” she asked. She was embarrassed when she realized she’d whispered it. She cleared her throat and repeated it in her usual voice. “What does she do then?”

The earl tilted his head in question, smiling a little. “Does your question mean you believe she might very well come to life, Miss Fairleigh?”

“I’m inquiring after the legend, Lord Rawden,” she said evenly. “I imagine the legend addresses what she does after she comes to life.”

“Well, I don’t know that part of the legend, truthfully. I imagine she looks for a way out, like the Persephone of myth.”

This suddenly struck Sabrina as terribly sad. She went quiet for a moment. “But the moon will be full tonight,” she said softly.

Sabrina peered more closely at the detail of Persephone’s face, struck at how yielding the marble could seem until one actually touched it. Her lips and nostrils were delicate; her hair was dressed high in the Grecian fashion, but remarkably fine marble tendrils of it clung to her cheeks.

“She does look soft, doesn’t she, Miss Fairleigh?” His voice was soft, too.

She looked up, startled that he should know her thoughts. And lost herself a moment in those eyes.

“Shall I tell you precisely where a woman is softest?” The question was husky, beguiling. More an invitation than a question.

When she didn’t answer, for she couldn’t answer, he began it as if he were telling a tale around a fire. His voice lowered, and the effect was as if he’d reached over and slowly turned down the lamp.

“There’s a place…here . . .” So soft, his words, and she watched his hand slowly, slowly rise up; her eyes tracked it. When it landed on the underside of his jaw, she exhaled a short breath; she could feel the echo of his touch on her own skin. And then he drew a finger beneath the strong elegant line of his jaw, lightly, from his chin to just below his ear. “Just here. The skin is delicate as petals, like a baby’s skin, as though nothing of the earth has touched it since the day she was born. And if a man touches a woman here, Miss Fairleigh, just so…he can feel the beat of her heart quicken in response to him.”

Sabrina could not have spoken if someone had fired a musket next to her ear.

The earl’s eyes were dark; the blue held galaxies.

“And when a woman’s heart quickens, I imagine what she is feeling at that moment…everywhere in her body. And imagining this does…extraordinary things to my own body.”

Sabrina’s mouth parted slightly; she could feel her heart leaping, jabbing against her. She wondered if he could see the pulse in her throat.

“Oh, yes,” he continued musingly, “there are oh-so-many places to savor. But the softest, most tender places are the sheltered ones. For instance, there’s a place just”—his hand moved again, down his torso, leisurely trailing the line of his buttons; she followed it as if it were a compass, as if her eyes were chained to it—“here.”

His voice was smoke when he said the word.

And he traced a slow semicircle, once, twice, oh-so-slowly, oh-so-lightly…just below his breastbone.

Sabrina’s lungs locked.

“Fine gallery, Rhys. And you’ve recovered all of the statues?” Wyndham had appeared, Sophia Licari at his side, and Sabrina hadn’t even heard his footsteps moving closer.

“All of them,” Rhys said, transferring his storytelling fingers casually into his pocket. “Did you know it’s a full moon tonight, Wyndham?”

“How on earth do you know that?”

“Miss Fairleigh told me so. And we know she would never fib.”

Wyndham turned to give Sabrina a gently quizzical look.

“We…we harvest herbs at a full moon in the vicarage garden. I always know the cycles of the moon. Mrs. Dewberry…well, a woman in Tinbury recommended it. It brings out their most potent qualities.”

There was a small silence.

“It is what country people know,” Sophia Licari indulged.

“I suppose,” Sabrina said curtly. It seemed vastly more useful information to possess than the things
these
people knew.

“Full moons bring out the potent qualities of poets, too,” the earl said idly.

“Oh, Rhys!
Siete così divertenti!
” Sophia’s fingers brushed the earl’s sleeve lightly and she gave a silvery little laugh. Sabrina recalled hearing that laugh float over to her on the winter air when they’d first arrived.

The soprano transferred her gaze to Sabrina. “Miss Fairleigh, good heavens. I do believe you look feverish. Perhaps we’ve wearied you?” Her tone, at least, sounded concerned.

Wearied her?
Sabrina was almost amused. She wondered if Miss Licari had any idea how much effort it took to simply be
poor.

“Thank you for your concern, Madame Licari, but I am truly…unaffected…by all the activity here.”

She addressed these words to Sophia, but she was gratified when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a swift little smile touch the earl’s lips. Because her words had been meant entirely for him, after all, and they had been meant to be ironic, and irony was not second nature to her.

And they were also a lie, of course. The words.

He knew that, too.

Rather than join the earl and Signora Licari and Wyndham for dinner, Sabrina invented a return of her headache. She took soup in her room, relieved to be alone with the soft colors and her own thoughts.

And later, restlessly, she sought out the library, as it was the closest thing to a den that La Montagne featured, with its dark colors and subtle patterns. She felt like a small animal seeking shelter.

She did want to think. She needed something to replace the image of the earl’s knowledgeable, illustrative hands, which lingered in her mind, and made her feel nearly as though she’d had too much wine.