The Secret to Seduction (39 page)

“I’m your sister Sabrina.”

Susannah smiled a little, but her eyes had begun to shine, and Sabrina knew they were tears.

Once he’d decided to sell the family name in order to save his own skin, Geoffrey began to feel a certain amount of peace. His next decision became very practical: who would be willing to pay the most for it? For there was absolutely no question that
someone
would pay dearly for it. Rhys was already a figurehead of London scandal, reliably notorious, an object of fascination. His ruination would make some fortunate newspaper publisher a fortune a dozen times over.

It could not be helped. He’d seen the look on his cousin’s face when he’d left him yesterday.
Get yourself out of it this time,
Rhys had snarled. And this time, Geoffrey intended to.

But Geoffrey knew the scandal sheets would never be able to provide him with the amount of money he needed; they hadn’t the budget. Nor would they provide him with the credibility he wanted. He not only needed the money…he also wanted the family secret exhumed and examined in a dry, thoroughly credible way, a way that left no room for scoffing, for disbelief. In a way that would make it impossible for Rhys to claw his way back into society’s good graces ever again, which would be the final black mark against his reputation, and which might even get him arrested for treason—for assisting a man who was being tried for treason.

Though Geoffrey hadn’t the faintest idea of the legality of it all.

The choice became simple then: he settled down to write a letter to Thomas Barnes at the
Times.

And given the illustrious family name Barnes was to be given an opportunity to destroy, Geoffrey had no doubt the editor would agree to meet him.

And would agree to his price.

Sabrina had nearly reached the bottom of her soup, her sister overseeing every drop she drank of it, when a woman’s face peeked into her room.

Green eyes, too. Sabrina could see the flash of them even from this distance. Dark hair. Very pretty.

“I sent for Sylvie while you were sleeping,” Susannah explained.

Sylvie came all the way into the room, a little tentatively. She was graceful, nearly regal in her bearing. Pretty, but not quite so soft-looking as Susannah; her very presence crackled. She smiled shyly at Sabrina.

“Sabrina came all the way from La Montagne to London without sleeping or eating,” Susannah said to Sylvie, sounding partly amused, partly awed. “Because she is angry with her husband.”

“Ah. So she has the family temper.” Sylvie said it matter-of-factly. Oddly, Sabrina already felt comfortable with both of these women, more comfortable than ever she had felt sitting with talkative Lady Mary Capstraw, or with her father, or with . . .

She wouldn’t think of Rhys.

“Yes!” Sabrina was surprised, half delighted, realizing what Sylvie had just said. “I’ve a temper!” She hadn’t known it until one particularly bloody man had come along. “How did you know?”

“Did you throw something?” Sylvie wanted to know. “I occasionally throw things.
Mon dieu,
it is a curse.”

“I once threw a rock out of pique,” Susannah confessed. “And I slapped a man.”

Sabrina stared at her sisters in awe.
Cor!
Lady Mary might have said.

“I haven’t thrown anything,” she confessed. “Yet,” she said quickly, hating to disappoint them.

“A duel was once fought over Sylvie,” Susannah volunteered.

Duels made Sabrina think of Rhys. She pushed the thought away.

“Do you dance?” Susannah asked. “Sylvie is a ballerina.”

“A
ballerina
?” Astounding. “I don’t dance, but I play the pianoforte very well.” She suddenly wanted to confess to a talent, too.

“Ah, she’s the family pride as well.” Sylvie nodded approvingly.

It was splendid to hear this list of family traits. She might never have known they were within her if it hadn’t been for Rhys. He’d challenged her, deliberately cracked her open to reveal pride and poetry and passion.

And if he hadn’t, she would never have known how immensely, powerfully, fully she could love, how rich her world could seem. She would have lived a quiet life.

Without him, she would never have known the immensity of this heartbreak, either.

“You’ll never guess who she is married to,” Susanna said in a hush to Sylvie. “The
Libertine
!”

Sylvie’s eyes widened. And then she looked relieved. “We were worried, you see, when we thought you’d been raised by a vicar. We thought you might be
sedate.
” She said the last word in a hush, as though it were scandalous.

“Oh, you’ve naught to worry over,” Sabrina said, and it was a trifle bitter. “I was raised by a vicar to be a very good girl, but I’m quite passionate, apparently.”

It had been an easy enough thing to track her to London. All the inns of course remembered her, the drivers of coaches remembered her. Rhys was about a half day behind her, and now he stood at the door of the Grantham town house, and he knew she was behind this door.

He was tempted to fling his body at the door, to batter it down, to ascertain she was safe.

He thought, perhaps, he should try knocking first. So he did. Vehemently.

A polite, gray-faced man opened the door.

“I know she’s here,” Rhys said without preamble.

“I beg your pardon, sir?” Unflappable, the man was.

“Rawden to see my wife, the Countess Rawden,” he clarified. He knew he was bloody intimidating when he spoke like that.

“She is not in.” Politely said, and as final-sounding as a door closing.

“The bloody hell she’s not in.”

“Sir,” came the even tones of the butler. “I assure you—”

“
Sabrina!
” he bellowed into the house.

“My apologies, sir.”

The butler closed the door.

One didn’t often hear shouting in Grosvenor Square, but the sound came up to Susannah and Sylvie and Sabrina as they sat in the drawing room.

“What is that sound, Bale?”

“A large, bellowing earl, Lady Grantham.”

“Rawden?” she queried.

“Yes, Lady Grantham.”

“Sabrina is not at home to him.”

“I told him as such. He seems to think otherwise.”

“Will you kindly tell him to leave, Bale?”

“As I said, Lady Grantham, he’s very large, and he seems quite determined.”

Susannah gave it some thought. “Ah, you’re quite right, Bale. Sylvie and I best speak to him, then. He doesn’t have a prayer against us.”

“Perhaps when the viscount or Mr. Shaughnessy is present—”

“The earl shan’t harm us, Bale. He’s family,” Susannah said sweetly.

“
Sabri
—”

The door was flung open. Rhys stopped midbellow.

Two beautiful women stared up at him, and neither was Sabrina. But, oh, they looked enough like her to hurt, with those large clear eyes the Holt women had. These women he’d turned away.

He remembered just in time that he wasn’t a brute, and bowed.

“I want to see my wife,” he demanded when upright again. He might not be a brute, but fine manners seemed superfluous at the moment.

“Good evening to you, too, Lord Rawden,” Susannah said. “I believe Mr. Bale informed you that Sabrina is not at home to you.”

“Let me in, and I’ll just talk—”

“No.” This came from Sylvie, gently but firmly. “You’d best go, Lord Rawden. No amount of bellowing will persuade us to allow you through the door.”

Evenly said, but he knew he might as well have been looking at a pair of armed guards. Armed with eyelashes and spines of steel.

“Speak to her for me. You can persuade her to see me.”

“Have you only just met your wife, Lord Rawden?”

This was a very good point. No doubt these women had already experienced a taste of how stubborn Sabrina could be.

“But you’re her sisters.”

“Yes. But if you’d had your way, she would not have known.”

He didn’t care about these women at the moment, though he knew he should. He knew he was looking at family. He knew he should apologize.

He only wanted to see Sabrina.

He seized upon an idea. “Kit—I want to see Lord Grantham.”

“Lord Grantham is not at home, Lord Rawden. Will you kindly leave?”

Rhys drew in a deep breath. The staring among the three of them went on for another tense minute.

“I’ll return,” he said grimly, making it both a threat and a promise. And he spun on his heel.

Rhys was at the bottom of his fourth whiskey in White’s when Kit Whitelaw, Viscount Grantham, appeared next to him.

Rhys glared up at him and said nothing. He merely tossed the whiskey back.

It was so strong it nearly clawed his throat going down, but that was what he wanted. To drink until everything in that damned club blurred and ran together, to forget for a blessed moment that his life was over.

Kit finally spoke. “You look horrible, Rawden.”

“You always were quite the diplomat, Grantham.”

“So what in God’s name did you do to upset your wife?”

And this made Rhys pause in his quest to down the most whiskey ever downed. “Sabrina didn’t tell you?”

This was a surprise. For some reason Sabrina hadn’t told Kit, which no doubt meant she hadn’t told her sisters. He didn’t know the reason. Maybe she just hadn’t gotten round to it yet, or it might be shame, or it might be loyalty. He would cling to the latter, for it gave him hope. And it penetrated his mind like rays of light through prison bars.

“No. In fact, she won’t speak of you at all. I would say she’s furious.” Kit said this with faint awe. He had nothing but respect for the tempers of the Holt women.

Rhys knew Sabrina. Fury was better than indifference or cold despair, because at the heart of fury was typically passion, and the source of Sabrina’s passion was love.

Or so he thought. He didn’t truly know. And if it had once been love, he didn’t know whether he’d killed it or not.

“So what did you do?” Kit repeated, cozily pulling out a chair, settling in at the table, ignoring the baleful warning glare Rhys treated him to.

“I can’t tell you,” Rhys said grimly.

“Why not?”

“Because you’d have to shoot me. And I might be irredeemable, but I’m selfish enough not to want to be dead. Yet.”

“Oh, spare me the dram—”

Kit was stopped by the flat, grim look in the earl’s eyes. “You’re serious.”

“Oh, yes.” Rhys almost sounded bleakly amused.

“It’s that bad?” Now Kit looked merely curious.

Rhys stared back at him. Bolted the whiskey and grimaced.

“Worse than Countess Montrose? Worse than Sophia Licari? Worse than all the duels you’ve fought, combined?”

Rhys waved an impatient arm at the waiter for another glass. “As much as I’m enjoying this recitation of my past misdemeanors, Grantham, I’ll have to stop you. It’s worse than all combined. It’s unforgivable.”

The word “unforgivable,” unequivocally stated, landed between them, solid as a stone.

And for a moment, Kit had nothing to say to this.

“So you can stop guessing. I won’t tell you. Now let me see my wife, damn you.”

“She doesn’t want to see you,” Kit said calmly.

“I bloody well
know
that.” Rhys slammed the glass down on the table; heads turned. He lowered his voice. “I know that.
Make
her. It’s your home. She’s your sister-in-law. You can invite me into your home. Make. Her. See. Me.”

And then he heard himself, the rank desperation in his voice. Dear God, he hardly sounded sane. Pride was nowhere.

And he saw the sympathetic look on Kit’s face, and despised it and himself.

Rhys held a hand up abruptly, as if to stop anything Kit might say. “I apologize, Grantham. You’re right to protect her. Please forgive me.”

Kit frowned a little, then leaned back and studied the other man quietly. He was remembering a night when he’d sat across from James Makepeace, another quietly despairing man, in this very club. James had been drinking whiskey, too. Or more specifically, he’d tried to drink whiskey. Kit had finished it for him.

“It might be unforgivable, but perhaps you can make it right, Rawden,” he suggested gently.

“No.”

“I shot my best friend when I was seventeen years old, and he forgave me.”

The faint smile on the earl’s mouth was bleak. “Believe it or not, Grantham…this is worse.”

Kit went quiet. In his experience in the Secret Service, he knew silence was an almost certain way to convince someone to speak. The Earl of Rawden was a formidable man, but he was filled with a secret, and with grief, and whether or not he knew it, with the desperation of love. And so Kit waited.

And even with—one, two, three, four, five glasses of whiskey, Kit counted on the table—Rhys spoke, and spoke clearly.